Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Listening to George Megalogenis on the Monthly ‘slow tv’. He’s very good. Best writer on the Oz. http://www.themonthly.com.au/leadership-end-reform-era-megalogenis-and-tanner-2907
Aside from drafting a post on WikiLeaks to go up tomorrow (everybody else on planet Earth seems to have an opinion, I should have one…) I went looking for new four-wheeled transport.
Cleaning house for inspection. Gotta get back to it in a minute.
Spent most of Saturday still reading Chernow’s biography of George Washington. Watched Bed of Roses – its improving; Spooks and later The Counterfeiter on SBS.
Sunday- slept in. Have actually caught up on a bit of sleep over the past few days including one nine hour stretch and I feel a bit better for it. Some time on teh Internet. Not just LP, catching up on book, theatre, film reviews world wide. Haven’t done it for a while. Read more of Washington bio.
Aboriginal kids from next door visiting. After a lighter and cigarettes. They can’t be older than 7. I told them to go get their mother. They came back twice, same thing – lighter and cigarettes. Of course I didn’t give them any. They are nice kids except when they’re mucking up.
Going to watch SBS One and Two tonight. Good movie about Mussolini’s Italy on SBS 2, 9.30. Well it sounds good.
PB, sounds like your Sat evening was much like mine (except that I avoid Bed of Roses and had the Lady Friend over).
I’m spending some of the day going through boxes of mum’s stuff, still unable to work out what to keep, what to sell, and what to toss. (The kids aren’t much help, as none of them need any stuff, at least not right now.)
I spent time today, the weather being just wet enough to stay home, cleaning up all the papers and junk I tend to accumulate on the dining room table, thus perhaps staving off the time when I get packed off to an old folks home.
I was supposed to be coming back from Toowoomba, but a broken-down train and a landslide that blocked the track just outside of Toowoomba.
So I spent most of the day bludging instead, watching foreign TV shows on the internet.
Summer is the season of bioluminescent fungi and from a solitary glowing green mushroom a couple of years ago, we now have logs covered with hundreds. Shiny! And some solace for the brevity of the firefly season. My family begins to trickle in for Christmas from next week, I am fortunate that we are all quite similar and everyone is always conscious of the effort it still takes to mesh 3 families, even for a short time. My niece went to Rome for the canonisation, the next generation are looking to be very different from my siblings and I, all geeky atheists, it is so strange to suddenly find myself, the baby, middle- aged.
This time next Sunday I’ll be back in Fukuyama, where the newly-beloved’s late husband’s cousin Noriko will be trying to get me drunk in the Izakaya that closes at 25 o’clock.
We visited two friends who are both blind and, as usual, we marvel at their abilities to bring up their two sighted kids. I mean I, like many parents often whinge about how tuff it is, and then I visit them and am humbled. We spent some time listening to the talking book 78s from the 1930s that we recently unearthed in an op shop and then some recodings of the London blitz that our chums are currently engaged in digitising. These recordings, the blitz ones, would have been done on a “portable” wire recording system the size of two large back packs, carried and operated by one person. So a great day of listening. And of course, rain, rain and…more rain.
Vlad’ Putin singing Blueberry Hill = spent far too much time on the net http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV4IjHz2yIo
Watched The Fall and Diva over a very nice cold collation and champers and continued to indirectly undermine the share price of a publicly listed WA resources company.
Brian @6 I was much amused by your comment about clearing up the dining table which suggests that keeping one’s house in order in later years is for some of us very much a keeping up of appearances. Having been a slothful housekeeper all my life, suddenly in old age I feel the need to make my bed before I sit down to breakfast, wash up regularly and even polish the bathroom taps!
It’s a lot easier than I thought. Can’t imagine why I haven’t been doing it for ever.
Patricia WA, in part it’s a problem of not being able to make up my mind when I’m truly finished with something, or putting things aside to read later.
The longer you leave it the easier it is to clean up.
Cheers
Rode the XPT from Brisvegas to Dungog on Saturday, then trained it in from Dungog to Sydney and thence by bus and cab to Bondi Beach on Sunday. Checked into Hotel Bondi at 12:50pm, finished reading Alain de Botton’s Consolations of Philosophy and was much improved thereby, am now reading Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
My set top box carked it again last night, so I didn’t get to watch the movie on SBS. Spent the night reading the Washington bio instead. Think i’ve only got just over 100 pages to go before finishing it. Its been a gargantuan read. Set top box still not working, but it will undoubtedly get itself together as it has in the past. Have to get a new one next year.
Paul @14, I shelved the consolations into the reference side of my book shelve. From where I, as required, can easily dip into those profound insights. Later I found de Bottons ‘The Art of Travel” in a secondhand bookshop. It is equally entertaining and insightful particularly when en voyage or possessed by the travel bug.
Have you read anything by Aleksandr Isayevich before? The bleakness of ‘One Day in.. ” scared me off for life I think, never dared to go back. A better read though than Archipelago Gulag, a tomb everyone seemed to lug around in the early 70′s but rarely finished reading it, to which I too have to admit.
Visited my potter friend in Kuranda bought some serving plates and received a beautiful vaseyform vessel for all the help through the year and in particular for helping and documenting the exhibition in Port Douglas. Needless to say I am chuffed to be in possession of a major work of probably one of Australia’s outstanding ceramic artist. But then again I might be biased as well as ceramics or three dimensional art in general has never rated much in Oz, so it might not be such a big deal.
I spent a disappointing amount of yesterday hungover and confused about a range of things – one of which was still not being able to get to LP.
Naturally after flushing my computer’s DNS cache AND turning my router off for a while, I assumed it was everyone else’s fault.
Finally I had a second look in my own backyard, and it turns out you need to do BOTH, with your browser closed, or it doesn’t work (at least with my shitty setup).
Now it’s my real Sunday, I’m making osso buco with mash and a salad including the first tomatoes of the season – beefsteaks the size of my cat’s head. Thank you spring/summer rainfall, thank you diligent de-branching and staking, thank you baby jeebus.
Brian & Patricia WA, I can relate to the table tidying.I know I have to get it done before Christmas because assorted family will expect to sit at it laden with food, not my books and magazines. Sigh!
Went to Adelaide Saturday for the hair pampering, followed by a visit to Imprints, researching a cheap dvd cam for son #1′s girlfriend at KMart and taking my stupid phone to the telstra shop to make it ring audibly. All missions accomplished.
Went out for dinner with the said son and girlfriend on The Parade Saturday night. Very decent whitebait entree, but disappointing paella for main.
Back to the party animal daughter’s where she found me at 1.30am slumped on the couch, glasses askew and book clasped to my chest.
Woke refreshed and went to brekkie on Magill Road with some of her friends. Had very decent banana fritters and then staggered off to an art shop recommended by a friend, where I spent far too much money.
Took some (imo) excellent photos of sedge flowers and father christmases detaching from the parent plant and getting wind borne and there was plenty of that.
Saw a clutch of them snared in a spider web, but unfortunately had no joy getting clear photos. The wind wasn’t having any of it, so retired windblown and reasonably pleased for the rest of the journey through the Coorong and home.
Today, minding the shop while himself makes one of his frequent pilgrimages to the chiropracter. Whatever the fellow drives, I’m certain we’ve paid for it.
Triumf! Finally finished reading Ron Chernow’s over 800 page astounding biography of George Washington. A most incredible reading experience.
To give youse a bit of an idea: http://calitreview.com/12067
If I had bought it yet would be indulging in a glass of dry white and some Xmas cake, but not planning to buy such little luxuries till just before Xmas.
Oh that’s right. I forgot to add that on Sunday (the real one) I rediscovered one of the awesomest albums of the previous decade – Bows + Arrows by The Walkmen.
Do yourself a favour &c
I have recently succumbed against better judgement to the habit of describing musical acts as a cross between two others, with a dash of someone else. In this case, Rod Stewart and The Strokes, with a dash of Pavement.