Sunday

Breakfast - oats, banana, sultanas, honey and cows milk (I feel like you have to differentiate now a days) 

Then its cleaning day. It's Sunday morning, what are you thinking, it is time to clean the house. Sam's orders. You know, it is probably good, as I don't tend to clean until I see the tumble weeds blowing through the house.

Then it is time to take the dogs down to the river to let them run free with all the other dogs running free down the river. First Sunday out of lock down, I guess, half the city will be down the river running free. (a few hours later, it was really quiet down the river, it is a long weekend, the first after lockdown, people must have left the city)

The sun is shining, it is a lovely day. I've been out in the garden drinking coffee. Oh, I could lazy away the day from my position on the back veranda.

Still, there are things to be done.

Haircut

I got a haircut, we got a haircut, after 3 months, we needed haircuts. I had longer hair than I have had in I don't know how long. 

We didn't eat breakfast, just coffee, it was the first Saturday out of lockdown and we wanted to get to the hairdresser early.

There was a queue at the hairdresser, even at 9.30am Saturday morning. I sat down in the chair and shuddered when I looked at myself in the mirror. I mean, I have looked at myself in the mirror in the last 3 moths, but that mirror at the hairdresser is so close up and in your face. 

And now it's done. My neck felt cold all day, kind of good cold, pleased to have a cold neck good. I keep rubbing my hand through my hair, it always feels good after a haircut, and it has been a long time since I could do that. 3 months. Funny the things you miss.

We ate Yum Cha afterwards , where there was a surcharge for weekends , and a surcharge for paying by card, ah, the brand new world.

MacBook Pro

The new MacBook Pro has been released. Finally, it looks as though they have fixed the problems that affected the old model. Sadly, I bought the previous dud model, the 2016/2017 MacBook Pro, with the faulty keyboard and the dud screen, both of which I have had repaired. The keyboard three times, not at my expense, and the screen has been replaced, for which I had to pay.

So, what do I do now? Do I buy the new model, because I still have the shit keyboard, it has only been replaced 3 times with new versions of the same crap keyboard. Does buying a new one kind of reward Apple for selling a shit laptop at a premium price?

So, while I haven't had to pay for any of the three keyboards - the current keyboard is starting to show all the problems of the previous three - I did have to pay for the new screen, a known fault with the model I have, which cost me over $1000, which made my dud MacBook Pro even more expensive than the premium price I initially paid for it.

So, what do I do?

Sunrise this morning. I was up early and I nearly missed it, but I just caught sight of the glow beyond my lounge room window at the last minute. So, I headed out to the bakery with my camera, except I wasn't getting bread, and I only had Explorer socks on and no shoes, so I don't know what people thought, except there was nobody else around, so nobody thought anything, it was only 6am in the morning, after all.

Cute jogger in the park. I was taking photos of flowers and he jogged by and I had my camera out, so... those black shorts fitted him well.

There has to be a level below which no one in society is allowed to fall below. It is the governments role to provide the income to individuals if they can't provide it themselves. That is the minimum a fair and equitable society can provide. In a rich country like Australia, nobody should live in poverty.

There is this new sign in the park, and each time I have been walking I laugh as there is always people walking passed it with their unleashed dogs.

Parks are for dogs running free and people riding bikes, surely. You can't always legislate down to the stupidest person in society, there must be a 'normal person' model that we can all follow. If you keep dumbing it down, surely we all become stupid?

 

There is something special about doorways

The shops will be open soon. Lock down is nearly over. All the politicians are facing re-election. Have you noticed that all the politicians are now willing to trade away lives for business, those political donations sure come in handy, hey.

The glorious structure of trees. I see hexagons, multiple hexagons. Isn't that the shape of plants cells?

Words to live by

Recently, David sent me a message telling me he'd watched the last episode of Clickbait, he said it was awesome!

I messaged him back saying, The Grand Canyon, or looking back at earth from space is awesome.

It's a shame to see words such as awesome down graded.

 

Sunrise this morning, as I headed to the bakery to get still warm bread

"A spelt loaf, please."

They encourage us to use cards, and to move away from cash, but on a $8 loaf of bread, they charge me a 64 cent service fee using a card.

So, apart from anything else, every 12.5 loaves I'd get one for free if I used cash.

Still, the sky was glorious.

Hallelujah!

I went through all of my hand written journals to discover there is still about 5 that I have to type up. Momentarily, I wondered about consulting something like AirTasker to find a typist, but that would mean giving them to someone else, which could be fraught in itself, but it would also mean letting them out of my sight.

Years ago I tried dictation software and it was garbage. As we were taking Bud and Bruno for a walk yesterday, I casually mentioned this to Sam. "Do you think diction software has been perfected yet?"

"What do you mean?" asks Sam.

"Well, I used it years ago and it was no good, I just wonder if it would be any better now?"

"What?" (as vague as you fucken like)

"What do you think?"

"Isn't the Apple dictation function any good."

"What Apple dictation function?"

"On your phone," Sam says. "In fact, I think you can activate it on any application."

"What?"

"Yeah," he says.

"Yes? What? What are you talking about?"

So, to cut a long story short, Apple has dictation software and it works really well. It has taken me three weeks to type up one hand written journal. Last night, (albeit, a much smaller travel journal I took to San Francisco) I dictate a whole journal in hours.

Today, I am racing through one of the big ones. And now, a task that seemed unmanageable just days ago, may well get completed in weeks.

(Yes, I am supposed to be working today. You've got to love working from home. Fuck it, I stared early)

 Still in lockdown, but at least the sun is shining.

I kind of like lockdown, the world is quiet and peaceful. But it is about to end. Would it be too much to 😟

Here is before and after, young and old, father and son, sporty and Norm, fat boy with food, buff boy going places.

Sunday

And now it's Sunday morning again and another week rolls around.

I've been busy typing up my old hand written journals, so I haven't written anything for my blog, but I have still been taking photos, so let's go with a photo blog for the last week.

We walked into the CBD, with Bruno and picked up click and collect.

There were lots of people in the city with dogs. I guess, since we can't go into shops, at present, it is the dog's time for a walk. I don't think I have seen so many dogs in the city before.

The city streets are still nearly deserted because of lock down. I think it is kind of nice, though, a slow and quiet city nice to walk around. It has that serene feeling, like everyone has left and now there are just a few. Echos along the footpaths. Being able to see as far as you chose. Nobody jostling you and the pedestrian lights, hardly a car insight.

I like clever Street Art

 

Paul McCartney says what?

Last year I pulled out all the multi coloured geraniums in my garden and replaced them with red ones. I'm pleased now with them all flowering. I love that colour scheme, green foliage and red flowers.

Harriet

We have a girl at work who is named Harriet. Seriously, Harriet. I know old fashioned names have made a come back, and some of them work really well, Amy, Emma, Charlotte, Daisy, Lily, even Alice, but Harriet? Seriously? It is a terrible name.

No one is going to revive it, just like Mildred, Ethel, or Gertrude, they are not coming back.

Harriet - the only way Harriet is cool is if you are a jump jet, then it's not quite the same spelling.

Harriet?

It conjures up some single female who never married, who lives with her widowed mother, or alone in a bedsit with a cat, who dresses in clothes buttoned up to her throat, who is deluded by the god con BS because she has nothing else in her life. (like most other people with religion, filling their empty lives with something, you might as well declare Hans Christian Andersen as god)

But I digress...

The Harriet at work has straight lifeless black hair, parted down the middle of her head and brushed behind both ears. Glasses on a hooked nose, a pointy chin, and pearls and twinsets around, and buttoned up to, her neck. And flat shoes and tweed skirts just a fraction too long to be anything but dowdy.

Do you think people grow into their names?

I nearly laughed, laughed undetectably to myself, when I met her. The absolute embodiment of a cliche.

Harriet Dousley, spinster. That's what her business card should read.

You wouldn't say that about a man.

I would.

You wouldn't call a man a spinster.

I might.

You wouldn't talk about a man's appearance.

I do.

You are being sexist.

Is it sexist to talk about a person's appearance just because they are a woman? I don't know. I could just have easily said the same thing about a man, as a woman. But women are so often judged on their appearance and men aren't. Truthfully, I have never met this woman, I have only stumbled across her name and then image on our work directory. It was her name that made me look at her. I thought Harriet? Harriet? You don't often see a Harriet, now do you? And I was expecting a 67 year old secretary, a moment off retirement, not a twenty something lawyer. I was surprised that someone so young would have such an old name. It was what her name conjured up in my mind, more so than anything else.

But, seriously, Harriet? It is a form of child abuse.

 

A beautiful Lancia I see when I walk the dogs

Flick Of The Wrist

 I've hurt my wrist. (Yeah, okay, make all the humorous comments now) I'm not really sure how I did it. I'm not really sure when I did it.

I was watering my ZZ plants, taking them out side to give them a thorough water, and my wrist just kind of failed on me when I went to pick up one of the big pots. I lost all strength in my right hand, and there was a sharp pain up the outside edge when I tried to put weight on it. There was pain when I forgot and tried to put weight on it again.

It was really painful, shooting pain, and a general weakness.

And when I forgot, my wrist was playing up and used it again, there was even more pain. Continuing pain. Damn it.

My phone rang, I was sitting on the floor around my over sized coffee table eating dinner, I push myself up to get my phone, forgetting about my strained wrist, it gives way under me, and I nearly land face first in my dinner. 😜

It was David, we both laughed at me potentially wearing my dinner as a face mask.

I hate it when things aren't working properly. I don't know how people cope with anything more permanent.

Flowers

Flowers on a wall. I had to restore some of the image

 

Day Off

They call me up to fix a problem on my day off. Grrrr. My boss, Boris, called me while I was eating lunch.

"Sorry to call you on your day off." Then don't, was my first thought.

"We need the (blah blah) fixed urgently," said Boris. "It has to be today."

Oh, I thought. I shouldn't have answered that.

"Okay. Sure. I can do that." What else could I say?

"I'll get all the details together and call you back."

I don't think Boris knew how to do it?

I should have thought quicker and said I was in St Kilda visiting a friend. Yeah, sure, I guess that is against the covid rules, but it was my boss and not the police.

It took me two hours to sort it out. I don't, actually, mind, but as I said earlier, it is not a two way street, it won't make any difference to my pay rise, or bonuses coming up, because I am not one of the execs.

The corporate world only looks after those at the top of the corporate food chain.

A random act of kindness causes an endless ripple

Being Gay

Blue-haired old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next."

They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

Chuckle.

Performance Reviews

The Performance reviews are up and the self assessment is ready to be completed. We've got until Oct 15th.

Performance reviews are pathetic, they are a sign of an HR team stuck in the past. They are simply one more thing to justify HRs existence.

I know from past jobs that mostly assessments and payrises are done way before the last of the performance reviews are submitted, because workers and managers are too slow at completing what they have to do for anything to be dependent on PDRs.

I never worry about performance reviews too much, because in the current climate set by successive conservative governments, it is only the very senior people who get substantial pay rises and bonuses. Twenty years of Liberal Party rule and it is only the rich, those in positions of power that the corporate world cares about. Sad but true. It is only the very high up in the corporate world who get pandered to.

But, if you look on the bright side, it releases the rest of us from caring.

So, what do I care about performance reviews. I banged mine out in 5 minutes, essentially copying last years, there, done. 

It is a waste of time.

Buddy, Bruno and I were sitting on a shop window waiting for Sam while he shopped. I was messing around with my phone.

Distracted

Distracted with typing up my old 20 year old hand written journals.

Regular transmission will recommence shortly