Apparently this year’s Salvation Army Red Shield appeal fell short by around $2 million, with apartment block security doors and an increasingly cashless society cited as two major reasons. I think most would agree the Salvos do a good job, so if you had planned to give but couldn’t, now might be a good time ... [More]
I unpacked my sparkly (not really) new flannel sheets last night, and immediately understood why they advise you to wash them before use. It’s not the excess dye that’ll get you, it’s the Pakistani cloth factory smell that comes with them (and at no extra cost). So I carried them to the washing-machine, popped them ... [More]
Okay, three doonas is too much. Might keep me warm on a cold night, but I can’t damn-well move under the weight of them. The third doona is relegated to the cupboard, and I went and bought some flannelette sheets instead. Meanwhile, you know that things are getting desperate in the public education sector when ... [More]
People who wanted their supermarket transaction split-up into separate $30 bills just to take advantage of “spend $30 for 4 cents per litre off petrol” and other such deals would have to queue up again between dockets. The expression “I’ll let you go”, which is meant to sound like the person is doing you a ... [More]
I hate to say it, but school concerts can be just a little… boring. Even when your kid is in it. Seems to me that the teachers push the whole thing just a little bit too far, so it moves from the realm of cute (“oh, they’re playing that well-known song on their recorders!”) over ... [More]
I think it’s safe to say that I live in the Coldest House in the Universe(tm). In fact I’m thinking of getting Guiness to come down here and declare it to be so. This morning, for instance, I awoke just the wrong side of 6am, and despite the double doona deployment on my bed, felt ... [More]
You remember in Day of the Triffids, particularly in the excellent TV version, how the plants would eerily click before attacking. It’s a bit like that at my house, at night when the wind blows. The enormous bush next to the front veranda, the one that defeated Cable And Wireless Optus Corporation, moves around in ... [More]
There’s been a lot of fuss in the blogging world over the last few days about Movable Type, and their new pricing. In a superb bit of customer relations, marketing and logic, they’ve bumped up their prices just a week or so after freebie tool Blogger delivered a big upgrade. I looked around at various ... [More]
4 cloth bags for $72 of groceries tonight. 1 Mars Lava bar included in the aforementioned shopping, after the subject of this new flavour seemed to continually creep into the conversation over the weekend. Yum. 6 correct in the footy tips for the weekend. 103.9 cents per litre for petrol. Damn, that should be a ... [More]
So I was looking in eBay at XBox games. Nothing that really grabbed me at a price that was enough below the retail to make it compelling. But at the bottom of the screen was one of those computerised guess things, where they have a wild stab in the dark about other items you might ... [More]
When I was starting primary school in the mid-70s, the second world war had been over for about 30 years. It was still in people’s minds — they still talked about it, a whole episode of Fawlty Towers was based around the recent memory of it. By the time I was in high school with ... [More]
A couple of years ago I was introduced to the range of Aveda (it’s German for wanky and expensive but environmentally friendly and rather nice and luxurious) hair care products. Well, one in particular: a leave-in conditioner thing which leaves my hair looking just slightly less daggy than it did before. I dab a little ... [More]
Recently I’ve been reading some of Jeff “Yak” Minter’s nostalgic look back at how he got into writing computer games in the 1980s, and it’s got me thinking about those days, and how it’s shaped my life — or at least, my professional working life. It’s something I have written about briefly before, but I ... [More]
Dear Sabrina Harman, you shouldn’t need the Geneva Convention to know what you participated in in that Iraqi prison was wrong. All you should have needed was a modicum of intelligence and humanity. Oh boy, are we all sick of hearing about Mary Donaldson yet? (Hmm, should the above have gone in the news section?) ... [More]
While some were at the footy on Friday night, Marita and I went to a truly excellent (new?) restaurant at Docklands — Renzo’s Bar. Utterly delicious food, and not expensive in the grand scheme of things — $61 for two, including an entree and some drinks, but no dessert or coffees because we were due ... [More]
It must be the month of May.