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Yawn

2006-09-13T01:12:00.000+14:00

Well, what has happened since I went to Alex Heads?
We're having a baby!

Two Pink Stripes means a positive pregnancy test, kids.

I went a bit nuts with my fishtank recently. I gave my goldfish away to a little boy who lives next door to my wifes parents. I was all keen for chichlids, but we already had an eel-tailed catfish, so maybe next year or something.. Heres some pics

Black acrylic background:

Snails and neon tetra whizzing by:

Plants and bubbles and stuff:

Angelfish (greedy buggers have almost doubled in size in a few weeks):

Bristlenose, which has disappeared o.O :

I got my tax back and bought myself a present.

A bicycle.

Weird.

I haven't ridden a pushy in about 10 years. I still have my old Giant Boulder 550 in the shed (most of it anyway), and contemplated speccing it up (read: getting some brakes, gears, bars, post and seat etc etc. It's pretty much a bare frame with cranks).

30mins of ebay searching and I was getting all moist over road bikes. You can get a damn good used bike for under $500. I ended up buying a Raceline Peleton (yes, they spelt it wrong) for $365, which is a bit of a bargain, considering it retailed for about $1500. RX100 groupset, for thos who are wondering. I figure it'll be just the thing to get my fitness up. Next tax return, I'll blow a fat wad on a 105 groupset if I think I have to :D Selle Italia saddle, black Velocity Deep-V rims with horny black spokes, and thats about it. I bought some Sidi shoes for almost nothing, and a Sigma 'computer' with cadence for about a third retail. And a gel seatcover. That tiny little saddle is great for reducing strain on the glutes, but sheesh, it sure is hard on the butt bones.

Coasties

2006-07-05T23:23:00.000+14:00

I never got into a fight with any skegs at Alex Heads. I didn't run into any celebs at Mooloolabah. I still have my arms and legs even tho I went in the ocean. How sweet is that?
Ok so it wasn't all sweet. Actually, yes it was. Ok, the suckyest thing all weekend was traffic on our doorstep. Heres a pic at 6am. By 7am it was as busy as it gets on the coast I guess.

I expected winter to bring more tourists to such a lovely place, but as you can see in this morning-walk photo, there weren't many ppl out and about.

Not much else to talk about, so I will post up a few pics and leave it at that.

Crikey!

2006-07-05T22:01:00.000+14:00

On the first weekend of the school holidays, we took the kids to Australia Zoo (aka Crikey World), which was pretty cool, except Steve Irwin wasn't there.

Neither was his enthusiatic little exploitee, Bindi (see below).

Harriet, the 175 year old Galapagos tortoise wasn't there either. She died the weekend before. Charles Darwin found her and sent her to England. Sometime later she got sent back to Australia. The tortoise guy had lots of other things to say, but I wasn't listening. I should have taken my Ritalin when I woke up.

We did get to see a lot of other critters tho. South-east Asian small clawed otters were probably the highlight for me. Otters move a lot. Quite a lot. They eat a third of their bodyweight each day. They have 130,000 hairs per square cm on their body. I thought about my cats. Glad I don't own an otter.
The elephants sucked. "Line up with 300 other ppl and feed the elephant a piece of fruit!" Woo. Their trunks are rough on the outside, and snotty on the end. And rather stinky. Just as I had imagined them, really.

We watched a Tasmanian Devil doing laps of its enclosure.
I counted 10, 20-second laps in a row, before feeling bad for it and moving on. You know how a kelpie dog will wear a track around the fence-line of a house block? Thats what the Tassie Devil was doing, only it wasn't interested in biting passers-by. It looked up at me occasionally as it trotted around its circuit. I wonder what it thought.

We fed the baby animals (not Suze De Marchi), which really was as fun as the stupid grin on my face would lead you to believe. I considered stuffing this piglet inside my jacket. Only I didn't have one. And if I did, it would have been my brown suede jacket. And the piglet probably would have had issues for the rest of its life if I had stuffed it inside a brown pig-suede jacket and smuggled it away.

If you want to see crocodiles in action, watch them on tv. The croc show in the main arena sucked. Don't believe the hype. Maybe I'm jaded, but it was far from the best thing I saw all day.
Even this camel toe out-rocked the croc show.

The end.

Livin' Levuka Loca !

2006-05-30T00:41:00.000+14:00

I finally went to Levuka 4wd park with Guru in Old Smokey, his silver Nissan. We met up with Eyepee in the 40, and Dibbz in the 60. My zook stayed home with the shakes.

The first thing I want to say about Levuka is this. Stinging trees are teh suck.

Research shows that antiseptic cream does little to quell the burning sensation. Staring at it intently drowns out everything thats happening around you. Insect repellent will have you looking for the Fiskars. Doctors recommend hair wax strips as the most efficient remidy for stinging trees. My wifes mothers neighbour said to try Vicks Vaporub on the affected area, so next time, I plan to cropdust the entire park before I go.

On the Upside, we had a ball at the Levuka 4wd park.

Guru was listening to the latest Mark of Cain album. Eyepee had Gnarls Barkley ripping off the Violent Femmes' "Gone Daddy Gone" from 1979, and Dibbz gave Resin Dogs some intermittent airplay, all of which I enjoyed.

Heres a very brief 'up and down' view of the weekend:

Dibbz had a minor power-steering issue in the big blue bus.

(always good to see a yota with the bonnet up. It makes me feel better in my zook. 'Zook' is japanese for 'uh-oh something just stopped working'. I love how they can turn a phrase into one simple little word.)

He also got to lift a wheel for about 1/2 a second, captured here on my crusty/trusty 2mp cybershot:

Guru had fun blaming Dibbz for his demeanour early in the night:

He also tried to fall off the road:

Eyepee, comfortably seated in his jaytee shod 40series, looked back down at the previously slithering silver Nissan and kindly offered to test his winch out:

He also tested his tractor plow out. Only he forgot to attach it:

I missed getting any shots of the mad mad mad mad drunken Nissan guys with their all-terrained 7000rpm-limited long wheelbase gq's, but they did promote some brave rally-style driving later in the day, from a certain silver mq driver..

Overall, Levuka is a great camping spot, if you remember that trees and bushes can bite. There are clean, modern hygeine facilities. The ppl who run the place are pleasant. You can bring your dogs. $50 a vehicle for the weekend (no bikes). Also, it will be closed for a private function on the last weekend of July this year.. Google for the website.

health.

2006-03-23T00:38:00.000+14:00

my wife and i went to the gym today. our local gym has closed down. they transferred us to the next closest franchised gym for a discounted weekly fee.
in this day and age when every second tv show is about weight loss, our gym closed.
every womans magazine you look at features a new eating program, and our gym closed.
awesome.
so now that the gym 5 blocks down the road is closed, the $6 a week i save in fees is balanced by the 40 mins i spend in traffic each afternoon to go to and from the next closest gym. why i fatting up?

theres a guy i work with. hes going to the gym most fridays after work. he asks me about health and supplements and weights and stuff. hes a bit overweight, but certainly not fat. he wants to look like an aussie rules footballer. good for him.

'how do i trim the fat?' he says, displaying his tuckshop lady arms

'cardio,' i say. '45mins a day and you will lose the fried chicken and hotcakes from your short and portly body inside 3 months'
'ok, cool.' he says.

'how do i get bigger muscles?' he asks
'regular cardio to make your muscles more efficient, protein to feed them, and creatine to give you more endurance when youre lifting' i say
'and read this when you need an instructor'

simple tools, yet effective.

'ok, cool' he says with a steely glint in his eye.
i even notice his mid-morning meal has changed from hotdogs to a cup of porridge.

3 months later and hes taking protein powder, creatine monohydrate, eating more healthily, but still not doing cardio, or losing weight.

'hows the cardio going?' i enquire
'sometimes' he says 'i take the dog for a 10minute run..'
i take this to mean that the dog drags him around the estate, just long enough for it to crap on someone elses lawn.

'my girlfriends sisters trainer says she should do some cardio after her weight routine. do you think that is the key?' arrrgh!

'no. eating maccas for breakfast 3 days a week, rice with every second meal, and 2 protein shakes a day even tho you're only weight training once a week, will give you the buff body you desire. cardio was a trick to fool you into thinking i have no idea about simple mathematics. what? you're putting on weight? thats ok youre just loading.'

i'll bet a happy meal he's still overweight and asking why at christmas. :/

Urban Terror

2006-03-18T23:06:00.000+14:00

Whatever happened to urt?
I logged into Gaymarina this week.
Dead. Man I loved that game :(

Wagon of Bands

2006-03-18T20:40:00.000+14:00

This is my big piece of chicken!