Monday 13th September 2004As a new week starts, the days just seem to blur together. It seems like just one long weekend - I need to get back to work for everyone's sanity. There was a job that I applied for that stipulated that the candidate must be able to start work today, so I can guess that I have not been selected.
My disk space problem has now been resolved. I am no longer limited to 55Mb,
I have 195Mb at my disposal... I still had to delete lots of 
slideshows
(all the older pictures) so that I could get below the 55Mb. Now I can put all
the slideshows back.
The only thing that I have found is that the slideshows that were made with
the Microsoft Slideshow Generator (with the black backgrounds) take up a lot
more space than those created by the Web
Album Generator (with the purple backgrounds and captions). This means that
I should re-generate all the slideshows that took up too much space, and replace
them with the format that has captions. It takes me a bit of time, as I have
to get the original picture, improve the brightness/contrast/colour, then create
the Web Album, then I need to change the generated album so that it fits the
format of the rest of the website. It's complicated to explain, simple to do,
but tedious and time consuming.
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After I had an extended lie-in, Ann decided that we needed to get out of the house. The weather was fine (Ann had already done some washing and hung it out to dry) so, we got everything ready to walk down to the little cafe that is at the end to our road. The Packing Shed Cafe had only recently opened up, and for days had had a bed sheet strung between two lamp-posts with a hand-written notice saying "Cafe now open". Ann and I had been down there a couple of times previously, to sample the coffee and cold drinks. It seemed a little 'naïve' and basic, with very bare shelves and photocopied menus.
Anyway, with today's sunny (but windy) weather, we all walked down, only to
find a small sign (not hand-painted on a bed sheet), saying 'Cafe closed down'.
So, seeing that it was such a nice day, we decided to walk the 25 minutes up
to the Village Shopping Centre. Whilst walking up the hill, a car pulled up
alongside us - giving both of us a little shock, and then some very strange
people looked out at us. Once we realised that it was Liam and Shirley, we were
able to relax a bit...
Liam and Shirley had driven up to our house, and when they found that we were
not in, they had walked up to the
playground
above our house to look for us, then driven over to the Packing Shed Cafe to
look for us there. Once they had seen us on the road, we all got together at
the Billy
Baxter's coffee shop in the Village. After a coffee and being handed more
hand-made clothes for Thomas from Shirley, Ann and I dropped in on the local
swimming pool to book Thomas in for a few classes. Ann and I will drop in on
Saturday so that we can see what goes on in the classes, and show Thomas what
he will be in for.
Shirley is a really good resource for most things that we need. Not only does
she make a marvelous coleslaw (for the birthday BBQ), but most of our old clothes
have come back to us in Thomas' size. It looks so funny to see an adult sized
pair of trousers be changed to baby size, complete with pockets, fly and stretchy
waist.
It reminds me of an upsetting time that I had in Harris
Scarfe a few weeks ago. For those of you who don't know, it can be equated
to British Home Stores in
the UK, with 'standard' clothes and items that don't break the bank or challenge
any of the latest fashions.
Anyway, I dropped in to buy some more trousers - because for some reason, all
my trousers have got ripped and shredded by the heels. Shirley had taken up
two pairs, and given them a bit more life, but I wanted to get a new pair of
trousers. As Ann and I were looking around Rundle Mall, we saw lots of trousers
that started over the $100 mark, and I did not want to pay that much (seeing
as how most of the time I am in a suit...), so we ended up in Harris Scarfe.
I saw some that were both appealing and cost effective, so wanted to try some
on. All the measurements were in metric, so I did not know my size, so had to
ask an assistant to measure me. The women behind the counter had to call a man
over to measure me, and he concluded that I am a 92 - then he said, "the
larger sizes are over here, sir" and said "I would recommend the shorter
lengths".
When I was younger, I always had to get clothes for taller and slimmer people,
and now I am in Australia, I am short and fat!
When I bought the trousers, I still had to get them taken up by Shirley - nearly 3 inches off the bottom.
This evening I bottled my beer. I had bought 30 plastic bottles, and all the
hoses to bottle it, and I was using my filtering kit from the UK. The filtering
kit is intended for wine, not beer, and is sized for filtering 1 gallon at a
time - not 5 gallons. After spending what seemed like ages cleaning and sanitising
all my equipment and hoses, I started to filter the beer. The cloudy beer went
into the top of the filter, and clear beer dripped out of the bottom. After
2 of the 30 bottles had been filled, an hour had passed and the drips were very
slow. I stopped the filtering, and saw that the filter pad was full of the sludge
of old yeast that the beer could not go through it. So, I changed the filter
pad, and started on the third bottle. Ann was not too happy as the smell was
quite pervasive, and she wanted me to feed Thomas. I explained that I could
not leave the beer uncovered as it could get infected and it would kill the
yeast.
I had filtered 5 bottles of beer, and used three filter pads (of the 8 that
I had), and Ann suggested that I get some more filter pads. The problem is that
they are a specific size, and they are not available in Australia - in fact
filtering is not really done here. When I asked at the homebrew shop for filtering
parts, he looked at me strangely and asked if I had an allergy to yeast. After
recounting this to Ann, and after she stopped laughing, she recommended that
I filter only half of the bottles. So, several hours later (luckily I missed
Australian Idol 'unmissible'
worst performances), I had bottled 15 cloudy beers, and 10 clear beers, and
ran out of pads. I tried using the coffee filter, and this was even slower.
By the end, I had filled all the bottles, and was left with 2 inches of sludge
at the bottom of the fermenter. I really wonder what this is going to taste
like, after all the work!
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After yesterday's marathon blog entry, I have very little to say today. Sad, but nothing much happened. I called the agency about the jobs, but there was no progress, and we all went out to the supermarket and the bottle-shop. Nothing exciting or interesting happened (what's new there then...).
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Maybe life is getting to ordinary - what can I do to add some interest to our lives? I guess I'm just going to have to win the lotto.
Ann and Thomas went to the physio class, but Thomas was not having any of it, and complained through most of the class. Ann is not feeling too well, and when Thomas is half-crying it gets very wearing. As soon as Ann came home, Thomas was put down to bed, and then the Landlady turned up.
The landlady is English (from Gloucester around 20 years ago), and had called last night to arrange to come over. We had told the rental agency that the fly screens had too many big holes and rips in them, and that the blind in the bedroom is falling apart. We had a coffee and chatted for a while - and we made friends, which is a helpful state to be in with your landlord. She told us that she had a new canopy to be installed over one of the outside areas, and that she would also look into getting fly-screen doors for the two sliding patio doors in the house. Ann and I tried to push for a security door on the front door, but the landlady was not too keen on that extra expense.
This evening, Ann was flicking through an Australian Magazine called Australian Women's Weekly. The magazine is very pervasive here, they have a range of homewares (kitchen utensils etc.) and TV programs are constantly referring to the recipes or fashion tips in the latest issue, and it seems very popular. One funny thing that Ann told me is that the magazine changed from a weekly publication to a monthly, but they decided to keep the name "weekly". I guess that it would not sound so good, a magazine called "Women's Monthly".
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Today we went up to Hahndorf
to be tourists. Although it is the other side of Adelaide, and in the Adelaide
hills, we got there in around 1 hour. Hahndorf is an historic
German settlement, and now a tourist attraction. Whilst there, we also wanted
to look around the Beerenburg
strawberry farm and pickles/sauces factory. There were two coachloads of grannies
dithering around and so the little shop was packed - there did not seem to be
anywhere to go on a tour, or pick strawberries (obviously they are out of season,
in any case), and the queue to buy stuff was very long, so we decided to drive
back to Hahndorf instead. Thomas, who we had just got out of the car to put
in his pushchair, decided to get upset about being in the car again. So, we
just gave him some
junkmail,
I think it was some flyer from a political party about the upcoming election,
and that calmed him down a bit. Ann and I walked up and down the
main
street in Hahndorf, looking in a few shops and poking around art and craft
places. We didn't buy anything, or spend too long in any one place, we just
mosied around soaking it in. We stopped for a coffee, which ended up going all
over my nose, but all
in all it was a relaxing spring day in Hahndorf.
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This morning we went to the local swimming pool to look at the lessons that they were giving to babies and toddlers. We were shown a video of what they do, then could see the lessons going on in the pool. The children are taught how to splash around, how to get to the side of the pool and hang on (helpful for if they start to panic) and how to go under the water. Thomas seemed really interested, so we have booked his first lesson on Tuesday.
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I have been looking forward to this day for a few days. I am going to Footie
Park to watch the first semi-final of the SANFL,
with Sturt playing
North for a chance to
play either Eagles or
Central for a chance to
play in the Grand Final.
Ann took me to AAMI
Stadium at West Lakes (Footie Park) for midday. Ann drove because I wanted
to have a few beers, but the journey is around 40 minutes, and the match is
only around an hour and a half long, so Ann had to find something to do in the
area, instead of going home. Ann had several choices, including visiting Francie,
shopping at the West
Lakes Shopping Centre visiting Heather or going back to do the ironing.
In the end, as I was at the footie with Kyle, Ann dropped in on Heather (Kyle's
wife), and they ended up watching the match on TV, whilst Kyle and I were at
the stadium.
The stadium holds around 51,300 people, and it is the first time that I have
ever been into anywhere like it. I was impressed by the size and the atmosphere
from the crowd. I took lots of
photos,
and really enjoyed the game. One of the best things about Australian Rules Football
is that the game moves a lot, the action keeps going, and your interest never
wanders. Each quarter is only 20 minutes (plus play-on time, meaning each quarter
is around 25-30 minutes), and as soon as the hooter goes for the end of each
quarter, the crowds rush out and try to get a beer in the 5 minute break. Alcohol
is not permitted in the seating area, and so everyone tries to down their drink
really quickly so that they can get back to the match. There is a big TV screen
in each bar, so some people stay in the bar and watch it on TV, even when the
match is just a few feet away.
Whilst watching the game, I was told some of the history
of the Sturt SANFL club. They started in 1901, where they got their nick-name
of the "Double Blues" from being on the corner of Cambridge Terrace
and Oxford Terrace, and they took the light blue and the dark blue as their
team colours. More recently, in 2002 they won every game (except one loss to
Central, and then they beat Central in the Grand Final) and ended up being the
SANFL champions. The team celebrated by all going on holiday to Bali. Most of
the team were in the nightclub during the bomb, two people were killed outright
and 5 players were so badly injured that they are unable to play again. One
of the killed people was the trainer, and the injured players have hearing loss
and a loss of balance which prevents them from playing. Since 2002, the team
has been struggling to return from their loss, but this season they could get
back into the final again.
The final score was Sturt 22.10 (142) and North 12.12 (84). This means that Sturt get a chance to play Central in the Premilinary Final next weekend, and then whoever wins out of that will play the Eagles in the Grand Final.
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