Dot Pointy Day

I checked into Bloglines tonight and realised how little time I've made for blog grazing/ingesting. My Go Fug Yourself link had 166 unread posts! A year ago, a day wouldn't be complete without some high quality fashion snark. But then, I do find time for around 13 daily Scrabble moves, so I should just shut up and get on with it, shouldn't I?

Right. It's a dot point kinda day. Let's go.

-- Yesterday I got an email inviting me to participate in Movember. I know the obvious response is 'I'm a woman, so go jump', but then I started thinking -- how did they know that part of my entire daily beauty regime consists of washing my face, ruffling my hair and then tweezing my face? Not so much the mo, more the chin and neck, something which either naturally comes with increasing age, or indicates that I have a serious hormone imbalance and should not look forward to an easy menopause. Maybe I should join Movember! If I let it all go I'd probably be able to manage something like a Fu Manchu moustache coming out from my chin. Actually, no. Don't offer to sponsor me. Erk. But feel free to sponsor some other poor bastard like Dean. He manages a pretty good effort. Last year I offered to pay him double if he grew a Hitler moustache, but he didn't take me up on it. :(

-- I just want to register here my complete disapproval of the instant bribery of tax cuts rolled out by the Coalition within seconds of announcing the election. Classic appeal to the greedy cnuts who have elected them all the other times. I have no problem paying taxes even though they hurt, because (read my lips) TAXES = SERVICES. Am I wrong? Even if they get used for weaponry, at least the money is there to be protested over. Take away the taxes, then they have a perfect excuse to demolish things like Medicare and public schools. Meh. I'm certainly no economist but I know what I hate, and at the moment it's JH.
BRING IT ON. And buy one of my posters (on the sidebar).

-- In other news, I had a bit of a birthday party with a few chums at the Old Ducks Farm. We descended upon Lady and Colonel Duck, set up a temporary campsite in their orchard, and then descended like locusts upon a lamb spit roast and a shitload of alcohol whilst sitting around a fire. I'm not a crowd lover, and I got a bit anxious beforehand about whether the disparate group of characters (at least the ones that I invited/could make it) that I so love one-on-one (or family by family) would like each other, but it went swimmingly, with many new connections made. There was a huge gang of kids, and they went at each other with light sabres (of course), a billy cart and general running around until we shoved them in front of a DVD to flake out. We even had a posse of participants who got up at dawn's crack with Colonel Duck to watch the Rugby!

The weather was beautiful and the garden was glorious. Here's a glimpse of life in paradise:


Tents amongst the blossom in the orchard.


This is a beautiful historical replica tent; a simple A-frame canvas tent belonging to two friends who get into historical reenactment shenanigans. On the morning after, a Channelbill Cuckoo perched on the top of the tent and gave out the most raucous calls, scaring both this friend and myself. Apparently they migrate from the Philippines to the Bega Valley every year.


Lamb on a spit brings out the carnivore in the gentlest of people...


... and the cavemen out in others :)


This is how Zoe and Jethro spent most of the evening. That baby is in post-meat-frenzy. Truly.


I didn't get a lot of photos because I was in the thick of things most of the time. This is a group of post-rugby breakfasters, chilling out the sense of disappointment (which I don't understand, cause neither team was Australia).


Lightsabre battles were the bomb, until Colonel Duck upped the ante...


and took all the kids for a few laps of the garden on the back of his vintage Massey-Ferguson (lovingly named 'Chikka'). For some mechanically-minded kids, this was the best part of the weekend.


As usual, the cats came with us. Padge hated every moment. Can't you tell?


-- The poetry is going well.

Gosh, there's so much more I want to say but my eyelids won't stay open. Best Beloved is away for most of the week,* so there's a good chance I'll get to blog again while bedtime curfew is lifted. I just need to get a good dose of sleep tonight, I haven't caught up from the weekend yet...




* on a 'business trip'. He's gone to the Sunshine Coast, and I noticed that he did pack a beach towel and his juggling balls... gee, life's tough for him, isn't it?