Shaking Bed

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep my bed started vibrating. (And before you ask, my hero is away and I was sleeping alone).
This isn't the first time my bed has shaken (really you want to go there?) but I have been noticing it happening a lot lately. I don't recall it happening if there is anybody else in bed with me (oh, grow up!). Nor can I remember it occuring with any light on (either the room light, bedside lamp or light coming in from the hallway or ensuite). While last night it hapened as I was falling asleep in the past it has happened when I've been awake and once or twice I have been woken up by it.
It's a difficult thing to describe. If you've ever experienced a mild earth tremor it's sort of like that but not quite. It is definitely the bed moving and not me. It feels like a gentle shaking that increases in intensity but never really gets too vigorous.
I'd love to know what could be causing it or failing that if anybody else has experienced anything similar.

Melbourne Eathquake

I think this picture says it all.
Apparently this was the largest quake we've had in 30 years but the couple of quick shakes we felt here were barely noticed. The last quake at least cracked the plaster in our ceiling.
On the plus side at least nobody was hurt and the resulting damage is mainly mess than actual destruction.
In fact I'm a bit embarrassed to call it an eathquake at all, even if it did register 5.3 magnitude.

Messages from Beyond?

I returned from my daily pilgrimage to Woolies (bread, milk, peas and corn) to be greeted by the light flashing away on my answering machine.
Typical, thinks I. I'm only gone for fifteen minutes and that's when the world wants me.
I press the play button and wait to hear which of my many devotees desired an audience (mum or one of my kids wanting a lift home). What I hear instead is hold music-a bad synthetic rendition of a lesser know classic. After about ten seconds an unfamiliar male voice cuts the music off with a confused "hello...hello" then the line goes dead.
What's happening here?
Bizzare crossed-line fault or mysterious voice from the other side?
One is more likely but the other far more interesting.

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.

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.

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.