A (w)hole buncha stuff

I'm here! I'm hear! And there might be a few more visitors showing up
here as Ishmael has added me to his links. Does that mean that I'll
be going political? Not a chance! This here blog is a place for folks
to go and forget about their worries --Cheers, anyone?

This is going to be a very rambling, disjointed post; mainly cus that's
how my brain normally works when it does happen to work at all.

Oh, there might be a couple more visitors; family friend who was just
visiting us for two weeks, and The Old Fart (me poppa).

Our friend from Alaska (we'll call her Anna cus that's her name) was
down visiting. She's from Anchortown but has travelled all over AK for
her job.

When she left AK they were in the middle of a bit of a cold snap. Minus
15 F in Los Anchorage, minus 40 in Fairbanks; you get the idea: bloody
well COLD. She brought the cold temps with her!We were having beautiful
summer temps down here (like around 100 F in the shade), and the day she
arrived it dropped down to a right royal cold temp of 75 F in the shade.
Unfortunately, their was no rain with the freezing cold snap. But fear
not for us frost-bitten aussies; that only lasted a week and it's back
up to real summertime temps.

The pool actually had the temerity to cool down to 72 F! How, I ask HOW,
can anyone be expected to swim and frolic in such icy cold waters? It's
back up to 92 F water temp, but I tell ya: it was a rough week!

I had also gotten back on my mountain bike a few weeks before she arrived.
I think last post I alluded to a wee bit of a crash... Cracked rib, bruised
knee, sore shoulder. But really, nothing serious. Just enough to keep my
lazy ass off a bike for a bit. I'll be going out tomorrow morning for a
ride for the first time since; it'll be on the road bike so I'm sure I'll
have some great road rash to tell you about soon.

Got some great bird pics and also some good koala shots to show you, but
that'll have to wait till I get a chance to sort them. In the meantime, how's
about a couple of emu pics? An emu is a large, flightless bird native to
the Antipodes (that's a fancy word for New Holland)!






As you can see, they are rather large.

Oh, I got some more injuries: a jammed wrist and a skinned knee. I was
showing Anna how to bowl and bat in the nets at the local playground. The
game is cricket and it's way too complex to tell you about. She did pretty
good with the bowling, and the batting wasn't too bad either. One time I
decided to really let one rip (which she said she didn't even see as it
zoomed past her ankle and into the stumps). My follow through wasn't quite
as good as Brett Lee's... In fact, it sucked! Hence the jammed wrist and
skinned knee as I went cart-wheeling down the concrete pitch.

Did the above paragraph confuse all you folks up north? Well, it was kinda
the idea :)

I got a new set of chess pieces while she was down here: a set of winged
fairy figurines. Now I have the dragons playing against the fairies! They
are on my own chess table that I made, so I guess I'll have to take pics
of it and write a post about how awesomely handy I am. Although I didn't
use duct tape, it still came out pretty darned good so tune in soon for
handyman's corner.

Let's all give Jill a cheer in her upcoming race: winter mtb through 350
miles of Alaskan wilderness. Jill: I'll think of you every time I jump in
the pool.

Gotta run, naps to take and laps to swim.