Anthony Malloy

Bedknobs and Broomsticks – the very poor man’s Mary Poppins. Discuss.

And we’re thirsty.

A broken water main somewhere near by means we’re without water, I think this makes it three times in three years we’ve woken up to no water. We’ve got a litre or so in the fridge, some in a little bottle and Bert’s bottle was filled last night so that will hopefully do us for the next couple of hours until City West Water can wake somebody to fix it.

Of course last night we didn’t do the dishes straight after dinner, and decided that Bert could just have a shower with one of this morning instead of a bath and Rae had organised brunch with a girl friend at the Famous Blue Raincoat who will also have no water.

 Oh the temptation for a post made up entirely of terrible single entendres.

A while ago it was 17″, last year it went to 19″ and now it’s 22″. Yep, it’s almost end of the tax year so the account has been cleared out and I’ve got me a brand spankin’ new 22″ widescreen as my primary monitor. The old 19″ widescreen is now the 2nd monitor and poor 17″ just doesn’t cut it any more so it’s destined for Phee’s PC (that’s still sitting by my desk waiting to kid-proofed).

This made me shudder this morning. Surely the good people at brisbanetimes.com.au (and its Fairfax stable mates) aren’t saying the loss of a father and being ‘evicted’ from a reality television show are comparable?

Big Brother housemate Emma suffered a double blow on the weekend after being evicted from the show one day after being told of her father’s death.

Emma was told about her father’s death on Saturday night by the show’s psychologist and her brother before her eviction last night.

brisbanetimes.com.au

A ‘double blow’? Surely one is a blow and the other little more than a mild inconvenience? Or is that view a little too 20th century?

 Phil Spector had his wall of sound

We have our wall of fridge.

Thanks Rob for your driving and white goods maneuvering skills.

The fridge we have now was Rae’s. It’s a great fridge but she bought it when it was just her and Phee so it’s reached bursting point now that a family of two is a family of four. On Friday we were discussing the bulging fridge/freezer problem and realised that adding two more mouths to the equation meant we were going to have to look at another fridge.

Thankfully some web sites have paid up recently so we had began the search, looking at the big chain stores online to see what our options where. Ouch. Fridges, just the plain white two door (for larger freezer space without going to a chest freezer) options we were looking at were almost two grand. Hmmm. Let’s wait for sales we thought but then Rae had the bright idea of looking on Ebay.

12 hours later we’d been to check out a brand new, but with a couple of tiny scratches, fridge in a funky Richmond warehouse apartment and paid up – for less than half the recommended price, and with a warranty.

Rob and I are off to collect it today and the old one is now for sale on Ebay. If you’re after a bargain of a fridge that’s not quite big enough for a family of six then bid away!

So that’s a new car and a new fridge. I wonder if I can convince Rae that our telly isn’t big enough for six people to be watching at a time and that we really do need that new big LCD screen.

Ah, what a day.

The day off, breakfast in bed, a wander through Melbourne Museum, Vietnamese for lunch, a nap in the afternoon and a wander through the city in the evening. What a wonderful way to spend your birthday.

Yep, today was my 37th birthday and it was magnificent. An added bonus was the whole family was home (Rae has finished work and Phee had a ‘curriculum day) and mum was in town for the weekend so she stayed overnight. It was the first time I’d woken up on my birthday with mum in the house in 20 years, the benefit of which became obvious at afternoon tea – one of her wonderful cream filled sponge cakes was my birthday cake.

And now my love has just brought me an Eskimo Pie. You can’t ask for much more than that on your birthday.

I’ve spotted a couple more signs over the past few days.

This one was in the city –

and this one I must have walked past 100s of times over the past 15 years but I’d never spotted it until today.

If you want to see where they are check out my Google map of old signs around Melbourne or zoom in on Google Earth.

• Draws suck. It’s like watching a play, say a murder mystery. It’s just at the end and the English detective has taken centre stage. He says ‘No Jeeves, the murderer actually was…’ and the house lights come on and the actors walk off stage.
• Why is it impossible to buy a pen at Telstra Dome? I forgot mine last night and couldn’t mark the goals in The Record. You also can’t buy batteries if your radio conks out.
• What happened to the surface at Telstra Dome? It’s half way through the season and it is perfect. I demand a royal commission.
• Why would you come to the footy if you just want to spend the entire game yelling the foulest expletives known to man at your own team? Yes C26 and C27 – I’m talking about you and I’m contacting The Tigers tomorrow. You’ve already driven the lovely two ladies and a family away but I’m not moving – you will be.

I had my first train ride.

We went in to city so Dad could get his eyes checked for new glasses.

We had coffee. 

And we caught another train home! 

But by 5.30 Tiger was exhausted so I thought I’d help him sleep.