Thursday, November 17, 2005

All the young things are doin' it!

My mate Trent who lives nearby has made the most marvellous discovery. There is a genuine old-skool lawn bowls club within staggering distance of both our houses.

It is so old skool that the bloody thing was set up in 1896 - and they seem to have forgotten to raise the price of their beer since then.

So Trent and I rocked on up after work tonight and spent a seriously relaxing and entertaining few hours playing silly beggars in the sunshine, bowling badly in barefeet with beer in hand - it was pretty damn cool.

We were the only ones bowling (everyone else was inside looking after their beers) but soon enough the president of the club came wandering out and started teaching us how to do it slightly less badly than we had been doing it.

As the sun set over the immaculately manicured greens (that I spilt beer on but managed to hide lest I suffer the wrath of the skirted, doc marten-booted greenskeeper who seems to take her job rather seriously!) our game got even worse as the beer got to work - but it was even more irrelevant by that time than when we had started.

So if you're looking for an entertaining, relaxing outing, I thoroughly recommend raiding your local bowls club [and you can stop sniggering now!].

:-)

Saturday, November 12, 2005

[Phyrric] victory is mine!!!

Right - I THINK I have emerged from the other side of kit-set furniture hell more or less intact. The same can't be said for yesterday's endeavour - a cheap, nasty but more or less functional bookshelf.

Was going allright until I got to the bit on the instructions that showed the back board and a picture of a nail and hammer with the inspiring instructions: 'tap tap 004c x 40'.


So, I duly tap tapped 40 nails in, turned the blasted thing over and realised that I was somewhat off the mark with approximately 20 of em.

Ah well - the joy of bookshelves is that you can put stuff on them to cover up the nastiness, which, in my case, constitutes about 20 nails that are poking through the backboard.

I will not be repeating the kitset exercise for as long as I can possibly manage but, for the record, I came, I saw, I tap tap tapped x40 and [more or less] conquered.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to write a conference paper and moderate some essay marking - which will no doubt be mountains easier than wrangling nasty kitset furniture!

Monday, November 07, 2005

Sofabed: 1 Mad Hatter: 0

Continuing in the domestic ranting theme, the last few days have been kitset furniture hell.

It's a simple enough recipe: take one nasty kitset sofabed, one moderately domestically challenged gal - combine with a pinch of allan key and adjustable wrenchy thing and set to steam.

After a suitable length of time [let's just say it was a leetle longer than the advertising promised], the Mad Hatter tightens up the last allan key thingy that you tighten and stands up to admire her handy werk.

Cue: anguished groan as the Mad Hatter realises how royally she has fucked it up.

You would think, that with a four piece frame, two of which are impossible to put on the wrong way around and the other two of which have a very definite right and wrong side, there wouldn't be too many problems right?

But that's cos' you have over estimated the abilities of someone who is completely lost in the trees of nuts, bolts and screws and diagrams etc - rather than looking at the big picture. Sure enough, one of the ends of the sodding thing was on the wrong way around resulting in me starting all over again, swearing like a trooper and cursing the evil monkeys with design software that invented kitset crap.

Grrrrrrrrr.

Going to my zen place now, I may be gone for some time.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Full service will be resumed shortly.

So, ah, where was I?

Ah yes - came back from living in Vietnam, got buried for a little over a month in mundane real world stuff and am now just about ready to seek refuge in the soothing world of cyberspace monologuing once again ;-)

So, will start back into things gently - with a brief commentary on the adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

This has come about because I used a dishwasher for the first time in my life today. "How could such a geek like you not have used one of these indispensible pieces of electronic equipment?" I hear you cry?

Well the answer is threefold: Firstly, I grew up in a houseehold with 2 older siblings and a mother who maintained that she had three children so why would she need a dishwasher. In retrospect, I heartily agree [child labour laws are for pansys ;-)], although I suspect that the dishwasher would have been a more cost-effective move than the three kids. Secondly, when I moved out of home the classy abodes we rented never had such luxurious fripperies as dishwashers - so there was no change in the status quo.

Thirdly, even if there had been a dishwasher present, I probably would have failed to learn to use it - because, as everybody knows, there are many varying levels of geekdom. There are task-specific geeks - such as computer geeks, language geeks, magic role playing geeks etc. And there are the more well-rounded generic geeks who spread their geekiness across a wide range of nerdy activities.

I would like to think of myself as a more or less generic geek - but everyone has their archilles heel - in my case it is domestic electronic appliances. Computers? No problem. Televisions, video recorders/players, dishwashers etc? Serious issues. Just like I am physically incapable of filling out a form correctly, I am also incapable of operating even the most basic household appliances - rice cookers are an especial flaw.

So, when I recently moved into a new and rather more modern pad than my previous homes, I found myself sharing the kitchen with a near new dishwasher. I have been in the house for nearly three weeks now and there has been an increasingly uncomfortable silence growing between us as I consistently sneaked over to the sink and quickly washed my dishes by hand before retreating out of 'Dishy's' space. It took the more mature of us [me!] to break the silence today - by asking a mate what pellet thingys I should be buying and following her instructions to the letter: "get dishwash pellets, open door, put dirty dishes and pellets in machine, close door, turn on". It all started off smoothly enough but at the end [i think] of the cycle, Dishy got his revenge by stopping work mid-cycle [yes, even machines go on strike in Oztraylia] and beeping at me....incessantly.

After asking some mates on messenger how to fix it and getting no useful responses [standard response: "you don't know how to use a DISHWASHER?!!!"] I went for the jugular and turned Dishy off and on again. It stopped the beeping but I am pretty sure he will just do it again next time...bastard.

So now, the standoff has transferred from being betwen me and Dishy to being between me and Dishy's manual - which is sitting glowering at me in a drawer. I am a firm believer that instruction manuals are for wusses but I think I should probably get over that particular personal phobia and get the better of this appliance...soon.

So, after ranting to myself for a while I have come to the conclusion that I have no insights to offer on the adage about teaching an old dog new tricks [will get sued for false advertising - it wasn't brief either!] but have this to offer on old stubborn dogs teaching themselves new tricks: 'we're fucking useless at it!'.

Peace out :-)