I Blame Insomnia

My relationship would outlast the zombie apocalypse!

Take the How Long Would Your Relationship Survive in the Zombie Apocalypse? Quiz at JessePetersen.net

This is one fun and clever piece of marketing for Petersen's book "Married with Zombies". While it's not the kind of book I would usually pick up I stumbled onto the quiz while surfing the net in the wee small hours and it's piqued my interest. It sounds fascinating and fun. Or maybe I just need more sleep.

I Had A Dream

Last night I dreamt that my washing machine was chasing me around the house.
It wasn’t my real washing machine and it wasn’t my real house but in the way of dreams I knew that both this white good and this residence were mine although I wouldn’t be able to identify them on waking.
Eventually I ran outside and hid amongst the bushes around the letterbox. Obviously not my real letterbox which stands alone at the end of the driveway because I would not plant anything that might attract bees to a place I must visit regularly, but again in the dream I knew the letterbox was mine. The washing machine eventually found me and we danced around the letterbox dodging each other. Eventually a friend appeared. Again not somebody I actually know just a generic person who my dream self identified as a friend. They distracted the washing machine while I cut off its power cord (with a handy pair of scissors that mystically materialized in my hand).
This did not have the desired result of stopping the washing machine dead.
In fact, it seemed to irritate it and I had to run off down the street with the washing machine in pursuit. And while I didn’t look back I knew the machine was morphing into something else but I’ll never know what because at that point I woke up.
This all probably says something deep about my psyche. Not sure what. Feel free to analyse if you care to.

Resolved?

The year has hit the half way mark and I thought this might be a good time to review the progress made towards my new year’s resolutions.
Surprisingly enough, there is progress to be reviewed.
So far this year I’ve managed to see seasons 1, 2 & 3 of The Tudors in their entirety. Likewise I’ve watched all three series of Primeval completely. I’m part way through the first series of Dead Like Me and I’ve even managed to see a couple of movies I missed at the cinema (though let’s face it I miss most movies at the cinema).
I’m slowly working my way through my cd collection. And while there have been a couple of OMG what was I thinking (All Saints-really?) there has been much more rediscovery of old favourites (Eva Cassidy and Bryan Ferry).
I’m making inroads on my library list, even though said list is growing faster than I can keep up with. I’ve also finished off an anthology I’ve had sitting around partly read for 10 years, yes, that’s right ten years and now I’m working my way through another partially read collection. While I haven’t yet finished any particular series I am working my way towards the end of a couple and following up on trying new authors that have been recommended to me.
Attempting new recipes hasn’t happened so much as trying new recipes of old favourites. Not surprisingly we tend to prefer our version rather than the newer ones. But I have had a go at a couple of new recipes that worked well and I still intend to try my hand at others as the year wears on.
I’ve not made the progress on craft projects that I would have hoped for, arthritic fingers keep my knitting to snails pace and prevent me from doing any cross stitch or tapestry at all. Hopefully when things improve (which they do on occasion) I will be able to get back into things.
And finally, I’ve made a concerted effort to wear more of my wardrobe. It’s actually been a bit of fun. Old clothes are just like new ones if they haven’t seen the light of day for a couple of years.
So forward ho, into the rest of the year.

Pop Quiz: Home Economics (aka Domestic Science)

You’re heating something up in the microwave and it accidentally erupts. The appropriate action to take is:

a) clean it up right away

or

b) leave it there to go all hard and deny all knowledge when your mother later finds the microwave covered in caked on crud that now needs to be scrubbed away

Everybody espouses the correct theory but nobody passes the practical.

Fish and Chips for Tea

In the past my house has not been the focus of poltergeist activity so when a very loud, yet dull, thud reverberated through the place at around half past five last night, accompanied by a chorus of “what was that?” from the girls, my first thought was that the cat had knocked something off a bench. But even as I made my way to the kitchen I knew that was unlikely. As far as I knew, even if he dared to jump up, there was nothing out on the benches for the cat to knock down. Unless, of course, in a burst of nuclear mutant strength he’d pushed the microwave onto the floor (he hadn’t).
At first glance nothing in the kitchen seemed amiss-but there was something not quite right. A few seconds later I realised that I could not see the oven light. The glass was completely opaque. Steam, perhaps? Surely not food, quiche (the contents of the oven at the time) after all, is not known for its explosive qualities.
I turned the oven off and cautiously opened the door. There was a kind of gritty-crunchy sound as black glass scattered broadly across the floor at my feet. The inside of the door had sort of imploded. Naturally boy genius found this fascinating: hot, broken glass nothing was going to keep him away from that. It was no small effort to get him out of the kitchen but eventually I managed with promises of going to the shop to get fish and chips for tea.
The oven still being under warranty I reported the incident to Westinghouse. Apparently, though rare, this is not an unheard of situation. After ascertaining that nobody was hurt they have pledged to repair of replace the broken door by next week.
In the meantime boy genius’s interest in the oven shows no sign of waning. I’ve only had to hear him ask “oven?”, “where’s the oven?” about twenty thousand times in the past twelve hours. He even found the camera and took a picture.
I have long suspected the kitchen is out to get me. The ignomious death of our last oven just eight weeks ago had seemed proof positive. But the behaviour of the new oven has removed any lingering doubt. Unless of course this is the opening overture of a poltergeist haunting.

How Had I Never Heard of...Shaun Tan

I had never heard of Shaun Tan when the Professor of Pedantics brought home a copy of his book Tales from Outer Suburbia. I don’t know how it is I managed to miss such a talented local artist but I’m glad the situation has been rectified.
This picture book is aimed at older children but there is so much to be found in it for adults that I would recommend it to everyone.
His use of language is deceptively simple-delivering a depth of meaning and emotion well beyond the words. Likewise the illustrations are sketchy at first glance but on examination contain a phenomenal amount of detail. The stories are even presented in a delightful manner. For example, a poem about destroyed poetry is presented as an amalgam of torn pieces of paper.
Tales from Outer Suburbia is delightful, embrace your inner child and read it.

Bye-bye Baby

Yesterday Boy Genius turned 18.
There was no wild night at the pub with mates-just a small party at shcool, followed by a quiet night at home. Once my hero gets back from his current job we'll do something special to mark the occasion. His godmother baked him a cake-as she always has-and got a bit of a surprise when hearing her voice he wandering into the kitchen stark naked to say hello. After he was appropriately attired, candles were lit and blown out with almost as much joy as the chocolate mud cake was then eaten.
If I'm honest I must admit that when he was born I never really consisdered what his 18th would be like. But I would never have guessed it would be like this.
In some ways I feel a little sad about all the things he's missing but on the upside I never have to worry about him getting drunk or doing drugs, going halves in a teen pregnancy, getting into fights or a dozen other things 'normal' lads of his age get up to.
So I'm sad but not too sad-really.

Tempus Fugit

Ain’t that the truth!
It feels like only a couple of days since I last wrote and yet the date of my last post shows it to have been, in fact, weeks. The Big Event during that time-The professor of pedantics turned 15.
The event was marked by a trip to the theatre. I accompanied four teenaged girls to see Mama Mia, and inadvertently, a nude cycling protest.
The stage show was just as much fun as I remembered-even if white stretch satin and platform boots did feature heavily in the encore. And while my group didn’t dance the entire way through like the pink-enwrapped four year old in front of us, I’m sure they enjoyed the show.
I’m uncertain of their feelings about the nude cycling. It was, to say the least, somewhat unexpected. We emerged from the underground car park to the cheering of those at sidewalk cafes and the honking of taxi horns, as a group of about fifty cyclists rode by in the buff. There was much averting of eyes, blushing and giggling. I thought the smiley face painted on a passing bum a friendly touch.
I’m not entirely sure what the cyclists were hoping to achieve, I can only hope their message got through to somebody (and that those bikes weren’t rented-eewww).

On an entirely unrelated note: Lucy has not bothered contacting me through more traditional channels, so I guess I’ll always wonder who she was and what she wanted. Or more likely, not.

Who's Lucy?

Last night my next door neighbour dropped in with a phone message for me from Lucy. I was very surprised, not in the least because I rarely actually speak to Lucy (mainly our communication is via email) and if she needed my phone number surely one of our mutual friends would be approached before a neighbour. My neighbour and I had a quick chat about how strange it was, she passed Lucy’s phone number on to me and, noticing it was a Queensland number and not the NSW number I have for Lucy, I gave it a call thinking perhaps she’s moved.
All I got was an answering machine telling me to call back during business hours. Strange, but okay, maybe Lucy had called from work for some reason.
Not ten minutes later the neighbour from the other side came by. Lucy had left a message on her answering machine. Lucy’s trying to contact us, she knows we live next door, could somebody call her back and give her our phone number. I went in and listened to the voice on her answering machine. Lucy has a distinct New Zealand accent. She is not the Lucy I know.
I later confirmed this by calling my friend Lucy just to check. We had a lovely catch up chat-Hi Lucy!
We are all now curious as to why somebody would go to the trouble of finding out my neighbours’ numbers when trying to contact me. Our phone numbers are not similar so Lucy couldn’t have misdialled a digit and serendipitously ended up speaking to my neighbours. Our surnames don’t begin with the same letter, let alone having the same name, so she couldn’t have been trawling the phone book for us and called the right name, wrong street address.
Whoever it is had to make a real effort to contact my neighbours. If you know a name and address (as this person does) then obtaining a phone number isn’t hard. It’s not like it’s a state secret or anything.
Unlike trying to find out who Lucy is via the number she left me-apparently that’s illegal in Australia (damn those privacy laws!).
So, Lucy (no surname) if you’re out there, I won’t be calling Queensland again. If you really want to contact us, you have a name and address, might I suggest the quaint, old fashioned, traditional letter or if times are desperate-a telegram.

Myki and Me: A Love Story (NOT!)

When the Victorian government decided to spend a couple of million on the public transport system it didn’t opt to replace train tracks that seem to buckle in the heat every summer, neither did it choose to increase services during peak hour, nor to man stations (a radical concept that would create employment, reduce fair evasion and be of service to the public). No, the Victorian government decided to overhaul the one part of the system that seemed to be working quite adequately-the ticketing system.
They decided to introduce Myki.
In theory it’s a great system-in theory.
As the mother of two regular train users there’s been more than one occasion when a monthly ticket has met a soggy end in a uniform pocket long before its expiry date. And I’m no stranger to the words “mum, my ticket’s run out”, usually heard at ten to eight in the morning. So I liked the idea of Myki. A plastic card has a greater chance of surviving the spin cycle and being able to keep track of ticket validity and top up accounts online could be a real time saver. So I duly applied for, received, registered and activated Myki cards for the family.
And that’s when the trouble started.
The week before school went back I found myself at the local railway station and decided to load tickets onto the girls’ cards so they would be ready for use. The first transaction went well. I had no trouble purchasing a ticket for the master of the bleeding obvious. Delighted with how easy the system was to work I went ahead with a second transaction. Part way through the ticket purchasing sequence the screen went black. A few seconds later it started flashing system error/out of service. O-oh!
When I got home I checked the account, no ticket had been credited. I checked my bank balance, payment had been made.
I’m sure there are systems in place for this eventuality, so I call Myki. It takes fifteen minutes for the operator to understand my problem (I paid for a ticket and it wasn’t credited to the card-not rocket science folks). I am assured that the ticket will be credited to the card within twenty-four hours.
It was not.
So I called Myki.
And explained the situation again.
I was told that the system had gone down (I fairly much had figured that one out for myself), offered profuse apologies and told the situation was being investigated and a ticket would be credited to my account within forty-eight hours of my original report. In the mean time would I like to purchase another ticket to ensure the card was valid to travel? As it happened, yes I would. So I purchased a second ticket for the professor of pedantic’s card.
All appeared to work well on the first day of school and although I had received no refund or ticket credit, I gave Myki the benefit of the doubt and let the situation rest for a further two days.
Since it was now five days since my original report and I have heard nothing I call Myki.
And explained the situation again.
The operator tells me that a ticket was credited to my card twenty-four hours after my initial report. I explain to her that I purchased that ticket and my enquiry was in regard to the ticket for which I had been charged but not yet received. Hmm, tricky. I’m referred up the line.
Yes, they understand the problem. Do I have a receipt? No the system shut down after taking my money but before issuing a receipt. Did I pay by cash or card? Card. Then my bank statement will show a debit to Myki without a corresponding credit to the Myki card. Could I forward them a copy of my bank statement? (My second thought was lucky I used my card. My first thought was what? Your system fails and the onus is on me to prove you took my money!! My third thought, if you’re interested, was and if I’d used cash I’d be stuffed at this point.) The situation will be resolved within forty-eight hours of receipt of said evidence.
It was not.
So I called Myki.
And explained the situation again.
Yes, they have my bank statement. And there is a credit on the account. I point out my second purchase and ask if there is a second credit to the account. After much waiting, to-ing and fro-ing, they don’t know. My report is being referred up the line. Somebody will contact me within forty-eight hours.
On Saturday master of the bleeding obvious reports that her card is failing to touch on and has recorded a debit.
So I called Myki.
Who couldn’t help me at all but assured me somebody would look into it by the end of next week. I pointed out that meant I couldn’t use a valid ticket for a quarter of the time I had paid for (and yes, I had a receipt to prove it). Awfully sorry but there’s nothing they can do.
So I wait until this morning and…
I call Myki.
And explained the situation.
Over half an hour of negotiation later they agree to rectify the erroneous negative balance. (Because even in a Myki world 7 days is not 28 days and school buildings do not wonder between transport zones) This should correct the problem. I’ll know for sure in twenty-four hours.
And, no, there has been no further progress on the other situation.

Quite frankly Myki is a total balls-up. The system went down and it is me that is out of pocket, inconvenienced and has the aggravation (and expense-all those phone calls) of sorting it out.

Myki might be haemorrhaging cash but they’re not going to stop the flow by taking money from the little people. They’re going to drive us all to boycott the system.

Electronic ticketing systems have been in place all over the world for years (London’s Oyster card comes to mind). Surely the Victorian government could have installed a system that was tried and proven elsewhere. At the very least they could have asked what problems arose with those systems and anticipated similar issues here-an ounce of prevention, as they say.

In the mean time my advice is to avoid Myki for as long as you can. That way they may have the system sorted before you’re forced to use it. And if you’re game to give it a try don’t use cash-you may need to prove your purchase with a bank statement.