Anthony Malloy

Oh boy, my heart is still racing.

Bert normally goes down for a nap about 9, which is when I have my morning coffee and a quick flick through the paper. I have an old coffee maker that I use just for steaming/frothing my milk as I make my coffee with a stove top espresso maker. I put the steamer on, let it build up, put the boy in bed and go back and make my coffee.

This morning I put the steamer on as I was doing the morning dishes. Bert was playing with a measuring cup on the floor. I finished the dishes, picked up the boy and took one step when BANG the kitchen was suddenly a steam bath and everything was sopping wet. The steamer had exploded. Everything is under control now. I’ve mopped up, the steamer is sitting outside waiting for next week’s garbage collection and Bert is about to put in bed but I can tell you; if you want a good ole fashioned scare just let a little steam pressure explode a metre away from you.

I think I’ll stick to plunger from now on.

I closed down my oldest surviving credit card today. It had a truly ridiculous credit limit on it which would have looked absurd when applying for a home loan and we hadn’t used it in over 2 years so there was no point in keeping it. I called Westpac and after jumping through their hoops they finally accepted I really did want to close the card, only thing was there was a 63 cent credit amount on it. It would have cost me $2.50 to a cheque or to transfer the balance so the Strarlight Chlidren’s Foundation is now 63 cents better off. Don’t spend it all once guys.

UPDATE

I also cancelled a Virgin credit card today. They too will donate your small balances to a charity but go one step further and match your donation.

Listen up customer ‘service’ at AirRoad couriers. If I say I didn’t receive a card from your driver, I didn’t receive one. There’s no need to insist that I did and thereby insinuate that I am lying to you. You were rude, there’s no other way to describe it. Unfortunately I don’t use courier services but if I did I’d take great pleasure in not using you in future.

I don’t like change. Well, that’s not really true. I like new and different things, but I like the familiarity of old patterns and places. This is probably why I’m not happy with what they are doing to ‘my’ market in South Melbourne.

I first discovered the South Melbourne Market in the late 80’s when I lived around the corner in a wonderful terrace share house at 8 Fishley St. I’d walk around there on Sunday mornings and spend my Austudy payments on donuts and cheap books. Almost 20 years later many of the same stalls are still there, although the book shop disappeared a fair while ago. Now, however, they are smartening the place up. Gone are the old dodgy store fronts that face on to Cecil St, replaced with roller shutters and stainless steal bench tops. It’s still chaotic inside but the feeling is that this is changing too. I suppose it’s better for the stall holders but for traditionalists such as myself it’s sad to see the introduction of matching stands at the fruit stalls, lock up shops and just too-fancy-by-a-shade deli stands.

Maybe I’m feeling it doubly so today because another important change occurred this morning – I swapped over my tatty old wallet for a brand new one (bought from the market). It’s always a momentous day for any guy when he changes over his wallet – lurking behind old photos of me and Phee I discovered the first given to me by Rae of herself. I’ve managed to prune out some old cards, found a MasterCard that I should cancel and organised my existing cards a little better. This wallet is a little slimmer too, but that may just be because I have no spending money left.

Another change, but this one a very pleasant one, came yesterday when I did my annual ‘clear out the business account at the end of the tax year’ purchase. I’m typing this now and watching it on a spanky new ViewSonic 19″ wide-screen LCD monitor. It looks great, seems easier on the eye and has built in speakers that sound pretty crappy, but the rest of the package more than makes up for it. Now my old 17″ is sitting forlornly to the side. I think I may try adding another video card to get two monitors working at once on this PC. Now that’s a geeky change, and one I’d be more than happy with.

10:40 am.

Yet just a few kilometres up the road the sun was shining on a glorious Melbourne’s winter day.

I did break my toe. And at some other stage I’ve fractured bones in my foot. And I’ve damaged a tendon. And my toe nail fell off.

I don’t like my left foot very much, but some orthopaedic surgeon out there will shortly be able to put their next child through a very expensive private school.

That’s how ‘warm’ it is outside at 11.17am. 7.2 degrees. Explains why the heater is on on full, why our gas bill will be through the roof this quarter and why I have to return to work soon, whether (weather?) I want to or not.

Time to catch up on some bookwork now, time and the ATO wait for no man. Bert’s sitting in his high chair next to me snacking down on a late morning tea, still in his pyjamas ’cause he’s so snug and warm and undressing him in our bathroom today would be just plain cruel. Besides, my fingers are so numb I’d probably drop the poor boy.

What a great day. Perfect weather, great company, good food, movies on the couch and presents – who could ask for a better birthday?

After presents in bed from the kids, Rob and Nana arrived and we all traipsed off to the The Coat for a leisurely (and massive) breakfast. Then we got to read papers in the sun before a stroll around Yarraville where we ran in to Daniel‘s sister and her hubby taking in the sunshine too. As the clouds rolled in we retreated to the couch to watch Munich. Now my love is making me chicken parmas for dinner – what a day.

Oh, and I was incredibly spoilt. Rae found a copy of my favourite painting and had it framed for me so some time this week Jeffrey Smart’s ‘Cahill Expressway’ will be hanging on our wall.

I don’t give it up easily, that’s for sure. Every time someone tries to get a needle in my arm it ends up being a battle royale between my arm and the syringe.

I had my bone/CT scan today to try and figure out what’s up with my foot. It took the guy five minutes to locate a vein in my arm, and even then he wasn’t that confident. “Um, I think I’ve got a tiny one on the side here,” he said after his first attempt failed. Thankfully it was just large enough to accept the radioactive dose. The same thing happens whenever I have to give blood, there’s always furrowed brows and much tapping of the arm before they can extract the tiniest of amounts.

It looks like there’s something wrong – there was a very bright white band across the middle of my foot. I won’t find out what it actually means until Friday though. Oh, and there was another bright white spot on the toe I damaged a while back. Maybe I did actually break it.

This weekend I scored 7 out of 8 in the footy tipping. You think I’d be pretty happy with that effort, but I’m not. The one game I missed was Geelong v Richmond. Yes, for the first time ever this year I’m tipping against my Tigers when I think they’ll lose and it’s having fantastic results. Not in the tipping, but 3 times I’ve tipped against us we’ve won. Guess I’ll be tipping Freo next week.