why?

this morning i locked my bike up on the corner of sydney rd and glenlyon for an hour while i got my hair cut. i came back to find my front brakes (including the cable) and my lights gone. why would someone do that??? i can understand the lights (i'm actually surprised this is the first time i've had my lights stolen, especially the rear one which was just taped to my panier rack with electrical tape) but the front brake? they would have needed an alan key to get that off. they left my cycle computer and helmet and seat which all would have been almost as easy to take (especially the seat). there was a pretty dodgy looking guy sitting near my bike but it could have been anyone (there's always dodgy looking people sitting around that area). i ended up just taking my bike to the closest bike shop (which isn't really my favourite) and it's costing me $65 to replace the brakes (and i'm bikeless the rest of the afternoon). when they told me to pick it up at 5 i should have just left and taken my bike to a new shop that just opened along the park st. bike path on nicholson. at least there it would be a much closer walk to go back and get it later on (and i've been intending on trying that place out for service). so annoying. plus, i NEED lights for my bike tomorrow cuz i work the late shift and it'll be dark when i come home and would never ride up rae st in peak hour traffic without lights (even with bright lights i've still had people come close to hitting me). i went to the $2 shop and bought some lights to do for now (i kinda think the front light came from there, and maybe the rear too, although they didn't have anything similar to my rear lite style this time). sometime you can get good lights from the $2 shop but it's kinda hit and miss.

update:
so i picked up my bike, rode most of the way home (3 blocks away) and the gear cable snapped!!! arrrrghhhh! i don't know if it was the bike shops fault or if the guy (or girl) tried to take my gear cable too (or got mixed up and started undoing that instead of the brake cable). i didn't want to ride back to the bike shop again. i tried to fix it myself but i definitely need a new cable so i called velo. i really don't want to leave my bike there (i think they do offer courtesy bikes or metcards) so the guy said if that's all i need then he'll do it on the spot for me in the morning (yea).
i also had issues with the cheap lights i bought. i went to exchange the front one (which only lit up 3 of the 5 leds). the guy at the shop tested it with his batteries and it worked fine (note to self: don't use the old batteries out of the remotes to test bike lights)
zac came home with a longie of coopers stout. that makes me happy.

straight up

it was SOOOOOO cold this morning (i think about zero with the windchill) but look how much the weather warmed up! 2 layer weather (i wore 5 when i went out earlier)! i'm so glad i haven't had to do 8am starts at work this week (and i only have to work 2 days). hopefully the nights won't be as cold next week when i go back to regular work hours (but then that means its probably not sunny and warm-ish during the day too).

warmth

at the end of last winter wombat discovered the space heater and how great it is to lay in front of it (we use the space heater most of the time in the evenings when we only need to heat the lounge room, the central heating only goes on if we need to heat the rest of the house because it uses a lot more energy and the house doesn't stay warm when it goes off anyway). so now when she hears the space heater go on, if she's cold she'll usually go over to it and settle as close as she can to the heater without burning (and i'm usually right there next to her).

never-ending cabbage and chipotle chilies

in our fruit and veg box last week we got 1/2 a head of cabbage. it was a VERY LARGE 1/2 head of cabbage. fortunately we like cabbage but it was HUGE (i wish i had a photo). i called zac at work yesterday to convince him that even though he was going for drinks after work, he still wanted to come home a cook dinner and not just pick up something on the way home. i told him we needed some kind of stew-y thing to use up the cabbage. i had already made a cabbage soup and cabbage rolls (both recipes from la dolce vegan) and there was still a huge amount left. i said i'd make some chipotle chili corn bread (from vegan planet) to go with the stew, zac just needed to use that cabbage up. he came home and put together a stew and we sat down and started eating. just before i finished my bowl i started talking about the left over cabbage rolls i'd had for lunch. it was then that i realized that the whole reason for making the stew hadn't happened-- the cabbage was still in the fridge! there was a bit of it that was already steamed and chopped so i threw that in to what was left of the stew but there is still a ton of cabbage in the fridge!
chipotle chilies have been my favourite food of the week. i don't know why i never got on to these before. i bought a small can of black beans in adobo sauce from the spanish deli a few weeks ago so i could try black beans in chipotle adobo sauce from veganomicon. they were sooooooo good!! now i've got the rest of the can to finish so i made the corn bread last nite (which is amazing too) and i think the rest will go into a potato recipe i saw in vegan planet. i think we'll have to swing by the spanish store again to get some more chipotle chilies in adobo sauce.

spring and winter

it was soooo nice this morning (and this afternoon until about 20 minutes ago). zac didn't even turn on the heat at all (i got to sleep in cuz it's school holidays and i'm only working a couple shifts this week and today wasn't one of them). i put the dog's blankets thru a quick wash to try to get some of the doggy smell out of them (they were getting pretty bad and giving her have a doggy smell too-- she doesn't normally have much of a dog smell). i hung them outside with our towels in the sun and wind to dry and i went off on my bike in search of chocolate beer. i rode down to carlton the walked around to a few bookshops before going to the cellars only to discover they didn't have any (next place to try is st. kilda). it was like spring time walking around. sunny and windy. and warm!! i just had sandals on and a thin long sleeve top. the ride home was a bit of an effort with the very slight up hill slope and the WIND. the wind made it sooo hard. a couple minutes after i got home a few drops of rain started so i've brought all the stuff in and it's almost dry! even wombat's thick furry padded mat that she sleeps on at nite! it's been a while since i've had laundry dry that quickly. now it's horribly grey and dark out and the rain keeps sprinkling on and off and the wind is banging everything around. it feels like winter again. i've got a fleece jumper on and i'm wondering how long i can go before getting socks on.

update (4:35pm):

and the rain comes down.

random flowers

a few pictures of flowers i've taken in the past few weeks (well the first one was a couple weeks ago or so and the last 3 were today)

i wish i'd taken more pictures of these irises before they started wilting (i do have more photos on the old computer but i haven't had the energy to deal with the annoying computer the last couple weeks to actually get the photos off):

i LOVE their amazing (almost unreal) blue colours

today i noticed this succulent has some amazing bloom going on (i must not have looked at it for a while since i don't remember seeing any sign of this before):

gianormous

this "little" guy was in our house last week:

i started to take photos but only got 3 (and no really good ones) and then i started getting creeped out that he was gonna jump at me (as far as i know they don't jump but maybe this one knows how to do things the others don't). i would have tried to put an object next to him for size comparison but that would have required putting my hand close to him since he was on the wall. for an idea of his size, that rectangular shaped dent in the door frame that his back left leg is just touching is about 10 cent piece size across (nickle sized in north america). he was one of the bigger ones i've seen in the city (the get MASSIVE compared to this in the country).
today on facebook i saw this:

definitely looks like a huntsman but it's legs are HUGE! very creepy.

the one in our house-- i used a cup and piece of card to get it outside to the far end of our small garden and hoped it crawled into our neighbours shed and hid to avoid death by the neighbours hand. zac won't go anywhere near 8 legged things so that's my job. he does the cockroaches because for some reason they creep me out more than spiders.

i want a gun

i had this conversation with a boy at work today:
boy: i want to be a policeman when i grow up because i want to find where the baddies are....and cuz i like guns a lot.
me: police don't get to use their guns very often. they have to try a lot of other things first before they can use their guns on a baddie.
boy: oh. can they shoot at a tree?
me: no. they would get in trouble. they can't even shoot baddies unless nothing else was working.
boy: oh. maybe i don't want to be a policeman then. pirates get to have guns. maybe i'll be a pirate........ but they're baddies and if i was a pirate i'd have to shoot goodies. then i wouldn't have any friends and i'd have to eat yucky food (i never did get to ask him what yucky food pirates eat).
me: maybe you could be a policeman that just helps people.
boy: no. i want to use a gun.
um yeah.....
funny cuz he's not a boy who seems really into guns and violence (i actually wouldn't be surprised if 15 years from now i heard that this boy had become a very feminine, possibly gay man).

not so innocent

she looks cute and innocent (and maybe a bit bored) laying on her nemo (who is now short 1 eye, half of his deformed-nemo-fin and a good part of his tail fin). the usual routine when i come home from work is to open the back door to let wombat in then ignore her for several minutes. she usually just goes onto her bed (after sniffing my leg to make sure its really me) and chews her kong until i come say hello. today when i walked in the lounge room after a few minutes of ignoring her i noticed she was chewing something other than her kong. when i looked closely i realized she had a very cute little toy calf i was given as a promotional thing at the conference i was at a few weeks ago. the calf was too cute to bring into work (check out the link to a picture of it) so i still had it at home. it must have fallen on the floor and wombat discovered it. it is now missing the hoof on one leg, has a deformed leg in the front, a mangled head and only 1 ear. when i took it off her i just kept saying "that was my cow. you ate my calf!" she dropped down and went into submissive position (belly rub position). when zac held up the calf to her just now (4 hours later) she gave a nervous twitch of her leg (which she does when she thinks she's in trouble). he didn't even say anything-- he just held it up in front of her. fortunately she very rarely chews things she shouldn't (she did tear apart most of a hulk hogan action figure zac had, some of the rubber coating on one of my weights, and several different kinds of balls that the neighbours have accidentally tossed over the fence). she also doesn't eat anything she chews up, she just pulls it apart into a million tiny pieces and piles it on or next to her bed.

so nice

i'm so glad today is my RDO. first i got to sleep in and not have to deal with the 4.8C morning (and since zac had to get up for work the house was nice and warm by the time i made it out of bed after he left). just before noon i went up to the shops. by the time i came home it felt really nice and warm riding my bike (lately i've regretting not wearing gloves home for lunch on more than one occasion when i arrive home with cold, hurting hands). i thought about going for a ride up the creek but there was a bunch of things i needed to do around the house. i took wombat for a walk and both of us were a bit hot after walking at her extra fast pace and then running around the park a bit. i gardened for a bit when i got home and i have ALL the doors and windows open to get lots of fresh air in the house. its a nice break to have a warm sunny day after soo much fog, overcast sky and just being cold. i think i will have to start closing some of the open doors/windows though to keep the house warm as the temperature drops down again for the nite but at least we got some sun and an aired out house (although i did bake bread today and the house would have that nice bread smell if i didn't have everything open).

what the dog does

i was hanging laundry out last nite and i noticed the outside table was a lot dirtier than what it was the day before when i was gardening. i took a close look:
muddy dog footprints all over it! i'm not sure what she thought she was doing up there (i'm almost certain there were no tennis balls on the table) but maybe this is the kind of stuff she does when no one is looking. maybe she gets up and does a little dog dance or tries to check out what the neighbours are up to or just stands there and barks and howls when all the other dogs in the neighbourhood do it (usually she's pretty quiet around us).

how to flush

last week we realized some of the kids didn't know about the half flush and whole flush buttons on the toilets (in oz a lot of toilets have these 2 flush buttons to try to help save water). one girl who's a bit short said she didn't even see the 2 symbols on top of the tank until her friend pointed them out. we decided to do something about this. first i taped up the whole flush button on each toilet because they'd rarely need it (most of them tend not to flush at all). then came the group time discussion. the teacher started explaining the two buttons (using a quick diagram she drew up). i walked in and out of the room several times. the discussion was STILL going every time. it went on for at least 5 minutes (everyone talking about how their toilets flush since there's at least a 1/2 dozen varieties of toilet flushers here). it was kind of funny. the next day one of the parents came in and said that their child had taped up the full flush button on the top of their toilet at home. we just laughed. today i designed signs on the computer to stick on the front of the toilet tanks in the kids' bathroom so even the short kids can see which button is which.
now we just need to work on the kids making sure the tap is off when they walk away from the sink.

and colder still

today didn't even get to 11C and with the windchill it didn't even hit 6C-- i had to wear all my winter stuff (gloves, scarf and ear warming head band) to ride home at lunch and after work. the wind was icy. i would not handle -35C well at all, brooke 8). i don't even handle close to zero well. i need warmth.

winter has hit

its soooo cold. and wet. i had a 4 day weekend. i spent a good part of the weekend curled up in the house, often with the heat on. i think i needed that rest. its annoying that my laundry took the ENTIRE weekend to dry though (piled onto our little clothes horse--is that what they're called?-- and sitting over the heat vent or in front of the space heater any time they were on). i'm sure there has been more rain than what the rainfall chart above says (there's a MASSIVE puddle in my garden where the watter won't drain into the dirt and there's huge puddles around the neighbourhood). it's not even 5:30 and already the temperature is below 10C (less than 8 with the wind chill). apparently it's gonna get even colder tonite than what it was last nite (i hate early mornings when its cold).

the epicenter

melbourne has now become the epicenter for swine flu in australia. we are now the equivalent to mexico, panama and japan. children who visit victoria are now being told they have to stay home from school for 7 days upon returning to their home state. in victoria they aren't even going to test everyone exhibiting syptoms anymore but just give them all antiviral drugs. only high risk patients and those with more severe syptoms will be tested to confirm whether or not its swine flu. surprisingly we've only had 1 case at work (and it was a child who hadn't been at the center for a week at the time of her diagnosis). we have taken lots of precautions like getting rid of all the hand towels for children and staff (its sad the amount of paper towel we now go thru each day), no more shared fruit and veggie platters and we are making sure parents are vigilant in keeping unwell children home (even if it isn't swine flu but there are so many other illnesses going around too). we sent a child home today with flu syptoms (headache, fever and no appitite). hopefully just a seasonal flu bug or something. fortunately swine flu hasn't been any worse for most people here than just a regular seasonal flu so it's not a huge deal-- just a few days feeling sick.