Oops, Sorry Mate

I was driving up Victoria Street on the way home and, as usual, it was busy. A van was turning right in front of me. The car directly in front of me was a lousy driver who, I suspect, was on their phone and driving slow. So the two of us went to the left around the van turning right. The traffic in front of the van was banked up from the front of his car, so me and useless in front of me kind of squeezed around in front of him. I was concentrating on the van and I was concentrating on the idiot car in front of me. 

We finally moved forward. Unfortunately, or not, there was ute coming out of the side street, who I didn’t see, or I did but didn’t care. I was concentrating on other things and I didn’t let him in. It was hot and we all had our car windows open and the next thing I knew the ute driver was abusing me. Yabber, yabber. I’d moved forward I didn’t really hear what he was saying.

The traffic in front was banked up, so I decided to turn right at a street further up Victoria Street. The next thing Mr ute driver was next to me and yelling at me still. I turned to say sorry to him, but you know he was on a stop sign and I had the right of way, and as I looked into his angry face I really meant to say “sorry mate,” but it came out as, “Listen here buddy, I don’t fucken care if you live or die, mate,” instead. He started tooting his horn, as the traffic coming towards me broke into a gap, and I turned right leaving Mr About-to-have-a-stroke behind.

Surely being let into a main road from a side street with a stop sign is a privilege not a right?

Dressed in a Towel With a Very Red Face Doing Peculiar Things

As I drove down Nicholson Street Abbotsford to The Hive to go to the chemist, there was a youngish, kind of fit, bloke in the middle of the road only dressed in a towel with a very red face doing very peculiar things. 

When I drove back up Nicolson Street from the chemist, he was still dress in a towel and he was still doing peculiar things, but he was now surrounded by about five policemen.

I guess he started his weekend partying early.

You know, get as out of it as you like, but why don't they stay in doors, that is what I often wonder?

An Apple a Day

While visiting a friend in the hospital, I noticed several pretty nurses, each of whom was wearing a pin designed to look like an apple. I asked one of the nurses what the pins signified.

"Nothing," said the nurse. She smiled. "It's just to keep the doctors away… specifically, the married ones." She smiled again.

 

I Like The Rain

What a funny old day? It hasn't stopped raining since yesterday, or was it the day before? Actually, I like it. I like the drops of rain falling from the branches of the trees. I like the way the rain makes all the colours of the garden so rich and intense.  I like the feeling of everything being wet, glistening and shinny. I like the moisture in the air. I like standing under the veranda and watching the rain fall, as I stay nice and dry. I like the sound of it on the roof, the finger-like strumming of the raindrops against the house. 

I like the rain.

Home Sick

I got to work feeling fine. The office seemed to be hot when I got there, but that is nothing new, as two of the five girls in the office must have reptile blood running through their veins, as they always complain that they are cold.

My manager arrived late, complaining about the heat in the office as soon as she got there, so I thought, maybe, it wasn’t me.

I felt, essentially, fine, I made a cup of coffee, and got to work. But then I started feeling sick, and the office still felt hot and I felt sweaty. The back of my shirt seemed to be sticking to my skin. Not long after, I started to get a really bad head ache, starting as a painful dot in the middle of my brain expanding exponentially, like a bladder of pain was being inflated in the middle of my head. I tried to do a spreadsheet for one of the HR girls and I could barely get it together. I was feeling nauseous. And hot. I was having trouble concentrating. It was at this point, I decided I needed to go home.

I got home feeling nauseous with an aching head.

I lit a fire, which may not have been needed now that I am stripping off clothes again.

I pissed around on my computer, looking at pictures of Rihanna posing outside a mosque.

Then I decided to make some lunch. There was pork belly in the fridge, Sam told me. All I had to do was cook some rice. Cook 3 cups, the rest can be used for fried rice. Don't forget to rinse it.

Don't forget to rinse the rice.

Don't forget to rinse the rice.

I rinsed the rice. I would have done it, without reminding. I tipped out all of the white starchy rice water, with the intension of giving the rice a second rinse. I was just tipping out those last drops, when the rice pot slipped out of my hand and most of the rice fell into the sink.

Bugger!

There were our dirty breakfast bowls in the sink, covered in soapy water, as I'd washed my hands before I started to rinse the rice.

I decided, at that point, just to stop trying to do anything and pull the blanket over me.

I lay on the floor with Buddy in front of the fire for the rest of the afternoon, listening to the rain fall on the roof. Listening to him snore in my ear, just like Sam does. I pulled my hoodie over my head. The flat floor was surprisingly comfortable, I thought, as my body drifted in relaxation.

Yay, Monday

OMG! Meeting first up. 9am. Hello Monday morning. An HR team meeting, where I had to pretend to give a shit. Oh... ha ha... where I had to... um... think, be productive and contribute.

Not that I am really complaining, no not really, I've got a job, after all.

It is still baffling to me how I ended up in HR, however, after all the things I have written. Ha ha. Proof, that no one needed, that there is no god. Would it be termed cruel irony?

Then it was a meeting well into the afternoon to discuss the notes we took at the 2 day conference. Yay Monday. And I work with all girls, so I couldn't even sit there and imagine them in the underwear, if they have hairy chests, or foreskins.

The universe knows I don't want to imagine all those mystifying little string things and that extra chest flesh.

If you'd killed me around 1pm, I wouldn't have cared.

Do you think all gay men have an underwear fetish? I had the odd dirty thought when all those GM boys came down in their suits for their quarterly meeting. Damian's arse in grey wool... that's all I'm saying. But, alas, that wasn't today.

Bored on Sunday

I'm sitting here typing up my notes from the two day conference I was on on Thursday and Friday. My gung-ho boss has organised a meeting for us Monday morning to get together and compare and collate notes.

Legislative changes to employment legislation.

Can I tell you how bored I am?

Sam is on the couch behind me... seemingly without a care. (Grrr) Buddy is lying next to me, stretched out across the carpet. (Rrrr) Both asleep.

The sky has just clouded over grey and the light has seeped out of the room as if was pulled out like a single piece of material.

I think it is about to pour with rain, I am sure.

The music has stopped. It is very quiet and still. The only noise that can be heard is the clip of the keys on my laptop as I depress them.

Sam is breathing rhythmically.

Buddy is quiet, unusually.

The wind blows the trees occasionally out in the garden. (rustle)

It feels like a Sunday where we've done very little. It feels like a weekend where I've had my choices taken away from me. It feels like a day where I am unable to do what I want. What would I call that? Working on the weekend? Working from home? I don't know, but I don't really want to do it anymore.

Oh, come on, whatever, write faster, I think.

Replacing The Tram Lines

Victoria Street, looking east. Big boys with their big toys. 

We headed down to Victoria Street for some lunch, and it was awful with all the dust in the air from the digging up of the tram tracks. Grit in our eyes. Grit on our lips. Victoria Street was unusually deserted.

I had Pad Thai. It was really sweet. Sam had Hainanese Chicken Rice. We swapped half way through.

Victoria Street, looking west. They should absolutely make that vacant block on the right a park. All the old Asian woman who sell produce from their boxes in the street, would have a lovely place to hang out during the day, among others. It would transform the whole street scape into more of a village feel.

Perhaps, The NSW Bush Fire Victims Are Getting A Taste Of What They Voted For

I wonder if they are Coalition electorates burning in NSW? Just wondering. It would be interesting to work it out, I reckon.

Just a little taste of what their voting (stupidity) may be bringing to them in future?

Last month was the hottest month NSW has ever had, last summer was the hottest summer ever in Australia, breaking many weather records. And this is the earliest start to a bushfire season Australia has ever had. 

Climate change is here and it is influencing these bushfires, so repealing carbon pricing is quite possibly the worst thing we could do. 

Voting for a government that promises to repeal climate change mechanisms is, quite possibly, the second worst thing we could do.

In the words of Barack Obama, denying the reality of climate change is the equivalent of belonging to the Flat Earth Society.

There you go Flat Earthers.

The Afternoon Peak Hour

Walking home with Sam after work. It was a lovely afternoon. I had a conference all day on St Kilda Road. I met Sam after work at the La Trobe Street Hungry Jacks. He wouldn't let me eat any food once I got there because I'd taken so long in getting there and he'd finished eating his. "No." Push in the chest back out the door. The St Kilda Road tram, what a nightmare. They should so build that underground train line, the length of Swanston Street and St Kilda Road. The city needs it.

Buddy Checking His Mail

Buddy, the cutest dog on the planet, but I might be bias

 

Fucking up the inner suburbs

The ugliness that property developers expose us to every day in the pursuit of lining their own bank accounts. This is a hideous development in Victoria Street Richmond, really awful.

The Inconvenient Truth

Apparently, the climate sceptics have won. The great unwashed wants to believe them, rather than the scientists, as it fits in with their budgets better. You know, fuck the orang-utans,  fuck the future of the children, let's repeal the mechanism that could possibly save us.

Beyond belief.

Everyone is so caught up thinking about themselves that they want to believe the people who say there is no problem. Yeah, good onya. (bucket, sand)

It is hard to believe?

What does Joe and Josie Blogs think is happening to the weather? What do they imagine the future of their children looks like?