A NEW TV FOR TOH

A practice post from my iPad with Blogger App. I practised taking photos with my iPhone and getting them onto the iPad but I can't remember what I did. Oh well more practice is needed.

Bill got a new TV for his birthday. David transported it from the store and helped set it up for him. Bill is one happy chappy.

BUSY HAVING FUN

I haven't had much time for blogging this past week due to too much partying. TOH celebrated his 70th  three times. First with Birthday Bear on Tuesday and.......... 

on Wednesday he celebrated at a surprise dinner at Baguette, a nice French Restaurant in town. Our daughter, Carol and SIL David flew from Sydney to spend a few days with us for Bill's birthday. He thought we were just having dinner with them but I invited a few more of his friends.

 On Saturday night we celebrated again just with family and it was time to say goodbye to our children as they were flying back home the next day.

We had a delicious dinner at Baan Thai Restaurant close to home.

 My SIL, David and I were having a happy time. I was trying out the camera on my new iphone for the first time on this night. Unfortunately the photos  are a bit grainy due to the low light.

During the 4 days that they were here we had iphone lessons. Oh to have fast thinking brains like these young ones.

BIRTHDAY BEAR GOES DRIVING

The first Birthday for 2013 in our Birthday Bear Group is Bill's 70th. We are all happy to see him reach this milestone as he has had some serious illnesses in the past. But here he is on his 70th as large as life and enjoying himself with Birthday Bear.

Bear came to the Birthday lunch dressed in his Snowy Mountain driving gear, ready to tour the Snowy Mountains. 

He has cars  to choose from and maps of the Snowy Mountain Region. We were supposed to drive there last October but we had to turn back due to bad weather. Hopefully Bear can get us there next time.

I love his driving cap. Thanks to Ann for dressing bear this time.

LtoR: Mary, Margie, Peter, Helen, Paul, Bill, Ann standing, me, Ros, Dennis and George.

We had the usual crowd plus a few extras this time. Friends Margie and Peter had come from The Hunter Valley to visit us and Dennis and Ros. So they came to join in the fun and celebrate Bill's 70th with him.
Paul had just got out of hospital yesterday after an operation to remove a tumour and a piece of broken rib from his chest. He wasn't going to miss the party. He is such a fighter.

CHASED BY PUBIC HAIRS

I found this old photo of me at the wedding  of a work colleague in 1961. It reminded me of the work I was doing then.

After finishing school in 1959, I desperately wanted to enter Teachers College but I was unsuccessful so I entered the work force as a Laboratory Assistant. The first job was at Sydney University in the Animal Husbandry Dept, where my boss was inventing a method of making sheep lamb more often. My job was to collate all his results and draw pretty graphs but I still wanted to be a teacher so I applied for college and again failed to be selected.

Elizabeth (the head girl) invited us to her wedding. I am far right.

I moved on to another laboratory. This time with Bonds Wear. Here we tested textiles and dyes before they were used to make undies and baby's clothes. The five of us worked for the chemist but he would give the list of tests to complete to the head girl, Elizabeth, and she would decide who would do which test. So it was important to be nice to Elizabeth so that you would get interesting work. However, the 'new girl' (that was me) would always get the worst jobs.
One of these delightful tasks was to check customer returns for faults and establish what caused the fault. For example was it a knitting machine fault, a sewing fault or elastic fault etc. There was nothing more exciting than scrutinising returned worn undies. Some had been worn and washed so often that they were just plain worn out but others had been worn and not washed and that was disgusting. We weren't given protective gloves in those days but we did use tweezers to try and negotiate between skid marks and pubic hairs.
I was glad when I was no longer the junior and I was given more interesting and responsible tests. The most rewarding task I was given was to do a whole battery of tests on a brand new textile that had been invented called "Bri-Nylon".
One day a junior was given the charming job of customer returns investigation and she didn't appreciate us sniggering at her. In revenge she picked up some pubic hairs in her tweezers and promptly chased us around the lab. Luckily the chemist wasn't in and he didn't witness this squealing and misdemeanour in his lab but the head girl brought us under control with threats of more dirty work.

CALM AFTER THE STORM

I planted Storm Lilies (Zephyranthes) as a border along one of the pathways in my garden. For most of the year they are not blooming but wilting over and lying prostrate on the path as if they are sulking while they are waiting for the rain. 

Two weeks ago we had a furious storm with buckets of rain for 3 days. Immediately these lilies stood up tall and popped out these beautiful blooms as if to say, "Don't worry about the tree that was blown down and broke your washing line just look at us and be calm and happy."

 There were more than I had ever seen before in my garden. Apparently, the wilder the storm, the more they flower.

They have six petals which make a cone shape and they have a pink hue.

 They made the pond look attractive. 

 They continue around the whole loop of the path. 

I found a website here where the lady makes an essence from the flowers which is used to help calm people who have been traumatised especially by physical abuse. She describes the flowers like this:

"These little flowers appear like the calm after a storm, nurturing the space. The more violent the storm, the more speedily they pop their little faces out to the sun and bathe in its brilliant calm, soaking up the life force and revitalising."

A WALK IN THE PARK 9

Sorry for my absence this week. I have been doing other stuff and blogging had to take a back seat. Well its time for another walk in the park. This time we did the second stage of the Cornubia Forest Park - Bushland Corridor.

 It was an easy walk and suits TOH well. He is happy to try out his new camera too.

 We crossed a few small creeks and they were not flowing at all as this walk was before we had all the storms and rain. I bet they were raging torrents during the storm.

 There were other families walking and this little girl was a splash of colour in the brown and green forest. I think I know what she was given for Christmas. She was also a loud precocious little miss.

The growth along the creeks was lush.

As we came out of the forest we passed these beautiful orange trees. They are Eucalyptus propenqua or Grey Gum. Grey??? you ask. Well most of the year they are grey but once a year, in summer, they shed their grey bark, (see the one in the background) and reveal their naked trunk which can range in colour from cream to this bright orange.

Apparently it depends on the weather how bright they are. After a wet spring they are more orange.

Tree art.

The houses near the forest were neat and tidy and on big blocks of land. Cornubia is a nice place to live.

CLEAN UP CHAOS

Last weekend's storm besides causing havoc to many Queensland towns it created a buzz of activity in our yard yesterday.  The storm caused a tree to fall in our yard taking out the washing line. The strong winds also broke the cross bar on a power pole in front of our house.

The tree loppers arrived to clean up the fallen tree and the electric company came to fix the power pole at the same time. Our little dead end street has never seen so much action. There were trucks and machines littering the street together with traffic safety people holding 'STOP'/ 'SLOW' lollipops.

TOH has all the power pole activity on his blog and I have the tree saga.

The loppers were a family of four big strapping young men originally from New Zealand. They were very polite and friendly and worked hard. They charge $350 per hour. (Anyone thinking of changing jobs?)

 There were four trunks to this tree. One fell on the washing line, one fell on the footpath and the other two were still standing. The whole lot had to go. 

 Untangling the branches from the rotary line.

 The two trees on the ground are cut up and removed. Then it was time to climb the rest of the tree and bring it down. 

The boss asked his offsiders who wanted to do it. They all shook their heads so the boss had to do it himself. He is helped into his safety harness and leg straps, 

It looked scary because the trunks were very skinny and had been weakened by the storm and this guy was big and heavy. Would it hold his weight?

I was amazed at how he just walked up the thin trunk. He must have had some sort of special grip on his boots.

His chain saw is dangling below him on a cable.

Notice the traffic control person in the street while the electricity linesmen fix the power pole just 10m away from the tree lopper.

 He saws off the branches on his way up. (These shots were taken from our deck upstairs by TOH and me.)

 Then he straddles both trunks to get higher. How do they support his weight I wonder?

 Now he saws off the tops of the trees, while the linesmen are in their 'cherry picker ' basket not far away fixing the crossbar of the power pole. 

The logs are carried away to the ......

 ........truck, which had to park around the side street as the front road was full up with the electricity vehicles. (We live on a corner).

Now all is cleared away, I have a load of garden renovations to do and TOH has to organise a new washing line. Luckily our insurance is paying for everything.