Brickies are on site

Our fabulous bricklayers have been awake long enough to lay a few bricks. This exuberant activity has culminated in a series of underdeveloped walls, and so we are well on our way to forking out hard-earned cash for our next stage payment. Well, I say hard-earned – my baby soft and silky hands paint a different picture. Nevertheless, we are stoked, and are quite pleased with the look – especially the ‘off-white’ mortar – an extra $1,639 for a bit of bleach mixed in.

A friend of mine asked me the other day, “why do you write this blog?” At least that’s what I’m telling you he asked. It could just be a preamble that is in fact a porkie pie, written for effect. But in this case, it’s true. It reminded me of a time Judith and I were at the old Rivervale hotel, waiting to be entertained. Some Australian Idol third-place ‘celebrity’ was going to sing, so we stuck around for a couple of beers in the shade. We watched as they started getting the place ready, and we heard the celebrity was in a room off to our side, signing CDs. No queue, just an open door. Then these two DJs came on, they were a couple on the morning radio, and I think I had heard their show one time. So, they’re on stage and they momentarily get some duff-duff music going, then they go live on the radio. The commentary was something like “Yes, we’re live at the Rivervale Hotel at the Stan Wor-kah gig and IT IS ABSOLUTLEY GOING OFF, so get down here now and join in…” As they turn the music down, I look around and there’s them two jokers on the stage, me and Judith with a pint and another couple drinking wine in the other corner. Apart from a few tumbleweeds, we were it. But without proof, the radio listeners thought it was a Rolling Stones concert. The place started filling, and I thought ‘genius’. So back to this friend who asked. It’s plausible I have a friend, and it’s plausible he asked. But I can’t remember what my answer was now.

Another piece of news is that if you have made it this far down the page, you are reading a new and improved blog. I ported the original web site that was on a cheaply hosted platform, to new infrastructure where I could better manage the hosting, emails, SSL certificates, site backups and the like. But so what? I used to get this all the time from our alleged software Product Managers. It would go something like, “so Steve – when’s the next software release?” I would reply that it is in about 6 weeks and would contain many bug fixes and stability fixes. “But what’s the big-ticket item?” they would ask. I would reply as before, even though I knew they really really wanted a big splash announcement saying how great the new, improved and whiter software was. We used to try to come up with interesting ‘benefits’ for our user community, but it was a waste of time. So how does my new and improved blog benefit you? Well, it doesn’t. But it’s new and improved. For me, anyway.

Our beautiful Franke flushmount black onyx fraganite deluxe sink UBG-221, with a 50-year warranty, has been discontinued. It’s been replaced with an almost identical looking sink, but the new one can’t be mounted flush with the benchtop, only on top. I don’t like raised sinks. I’ve got one now and when I scrape crumbs from the bench top, they stop at the entrance to the sink. It’s annoying, but it’s a first-world problem, really. I’m just going to have to live with it for the sake of the beautiful sink. Some people might say, “get over it.” I know I would.

I went up to the block last Sunday, to take some video with my drone. Or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) as we were taught on my drone flying training course. I even got a certificate. Anyway, I wish they had taught me to always check whether I had fitted the SD card, because I forgot it and could not take any pictures or video without it. I did, however have a bit of a practice and so my next post will have a 360-degree walk-through, in Panavision or similar. Coming soon!