Gimme the good news...

This week has been unbearably hot! It feels like my brain is in a slow cooker (my skul- my slow cooking skul…mmmm…there might be a poem in that somewhere?). I don’t know if the weather buro is just trying to make us feel better or what, but when they say 30’C the car’s thermometer indicated 38’C after about 5 minutes in the sun. This is not my car that we’re talking about by the way – some days it feels like I am the only person in AFRICA who doesn’t have aircon in my car! Anyway, when I get into that car it is of little to no consolation to me to hear that it’s just because the car was standing…a moving target apparently gathers less sun? It’s 38’C – deal with it. The car feels it, I certainly feel it, and we don’t know why you can’t just admit it and move on…

In an effort to entice thunder and lightning and a reprieve from global warming and heat waves – I will attempt to wash my own car this week – by hand! If it doesn’t rain then I have no idea what I will do…be warned that it might actually snow, or hell might freeze over.

A progress report on project proper swimming pool: It has been established that the pool is too deep and after thinking that the worst of it was behind us now, we were once more visited by our “friendly and efficient” construction team yesterday for the pouring of another layer of concrete to rectify this problem. Now it will have to stand another week being watered three times a day. At that point they will return to put the last layer and the water in. Rumour has it that the pool will have to stand for three weeks before we can swim in it after that. And my dad plans to empty the temporary pool into the new pool because it will halfway fill it up and save on water. So I see plenty of cold showers or hosing down in my future.

I should be happy to report that I now have access to my dad’s uncapped ADSL for free (the little pleasures of unemployment), however – I can not download my Gmail to outlook with it or access IRC with it for some reason only known to Telkom. And to be honest that’s basically where I use most of my data anyway so I’m not getting as much joy from it as I had hoped. It seems that intentionally or unintentionally every telecommunications network in SA is out to get me…yes…you guessed it! I am still not at peace with Vodacom either. I will be investigating the training and maintenance needs of messenger doves in weeks to come. ;-)

Other news this week: I managed to see Freddy for a visit. Initially we were going to re-inact a pancake day that the people in the UK had on Tuesday which we only found about afterwards – but it didn’t work out that way exactly because Freddy also helped me restore some stuff on my PC which didn’t make it through the re-install after Trojan, and we never got round to the pancakes – although we did have some excellent coffee. Thanks Freddy!

Also I saw Louelle on Friday and again on Saturday because it was the food collection week for the Lions. Every month they collect non-persihables at the Pick ‘n Pay at Heathway Shopping centre for soup kitchens and impoverished families in the area. Louelle is such a ray of sunshine when it comes to this. She smiles and works the kids and it’s clear to see that people find it hard to resist her request. We collected an astonishing 4 trolleys between 8:00 and 13:00. I saw with my own eyes how a guy walked out with a bag containing a loaf of bread and a liter of milk while leaving us with half a trolley of canned goods. When you see genorousity like that how can you help but be positive?

I was also invited to a couple of braais over the weekend. Yesterday our family went over to our neighbours house and today I attended another one at Tanya’s house. It was all very nice but I think I should keep a low profile at places without pools until the end of the heat wave at least! Sitting outside in this blistering heat for 5 hours will take it right out of you!

Some sad news: an old friend Desire’s brother died in a car accident this week and the funeral will be held on Friday. It’s a terrible shame - and my thoughts and prayers are with her family in this time of need. He was such a friendly little guy with so much potential when I saw him. We met on a Voortrekker camp that I used to help organize (many moons ago), he was a junior (std.6) and it was his first Seekamp ever. Des was also one of the organisers and so her brother tended to tag along quite a bit. One day he injured his wrist with some careless horseplay on the beach and as luck would have it both his big sister and the lady in charge of first aid was out on overnight trips with other groups. First aid was my baby for the day and after doing a thorough examination on his hand I came to the conclusion that he was just craving a little attention. It was a sprain but not very serious in my opinion – not even any swelling and the injury seemed to flare up whenever he needed to do something or wanted to chat a bit. So I played a little trick on him. I bandaged his arm all the way to his shoulder and put it in a sling for him. And I told him that if it didn’t feel better soon we’d have to take him to hospital! He got such a fright that the arm was miraculously cured within the hour. We had some good giggles about that afterwards when he realized what I had done… he was a sweet kid and it’s a shame that his life was cut short so suddenly. I want to go to the funeral so I will have to figure out where Springs is before Friday. GPS, don’t fail me now…

That’s about it for this week – I hope you all will have a good week. Keep a lookout for that rain!

Quotes of the week...

It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others – John Andrew Holmes (Quotationspage.com)

He who slings mud generally loses ground – Adlai E. Stevenson (Google quotes)

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it - Douglas Adams :The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Quotationspage.com)

You can learn from anyone even your enemy – Ovid (Adam)

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age - Lucille Ball (Erno)

Heat Wave...

Heat wave…

This day is wind-still and feverish

Hedges full of brown beetles

Provide the shrill-screamy backtrack

To this hellish summer's day.

I pause and wipe my brow

Sweat trickles down my neck and breasts

Into my already soaked shirt

That clings to me like a lover.

Force another deep breath of scorched air

My footsteps soft on melted tar

Walking amongst the wavy heat ripples

Always walking-walking to where you are…

Infestations all over...

What a crazy week!!

Firstly, my computer (momma’s little sweet laptop…*sniff*) got infected with some wicked Trojan. This is the first time EVER that I’ve had a computer virus…and it was very traumatic. When I became aware of it was when I tried to log onto IRC to chat with John on Valentine’s day, and it wouldn’t let me! I was directed to go to some bogus scanning site for a free scan and to get my PC cleaned up before trying again. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

Well, out of desperation I did go there where I was scanned extensively for hours, only the site never ever come up with a diagnosis or a cure- just scanning forever. I did the next stupid thing by downloading probably close to 12 different scanning programs and trying them all. Even after I allegedly cleaned off 3 Trojans and a worm (according to free programs) I was still unable to get into IRC. So on Valentines Day I basically stayed up the night trying to get my Trojan destroyed with no joy, and no chat to John either. *sigh*

Two days I battled without any results, before calling in the big guns. My buddy-old-pal Tiaan...henceforth will be known far and wide as Tiaan-Trojan-Slayer entered the battle field and after installing a shiny new anti-virus called BitDefender on my Laptop which also did not defeat the beast he spent a whole day working on my problem and won the battle on the 17^th of February after four days of our combined efforts. I have dedicated the day to him and erected a commemorative plaque in his honour on our news group’s pages (Kwaaiplaas). Basically we strongly suspect some dodgy Microsoft updating let it in and it wormed into my registry nice and deep where we couldn’t find it. So we backed up documents, pics, e-mails and music and re-installed. It was a scary and horrific experience (the four days, not the cure) and not something that I wish to go through ever again.

So my advice to everyone out there is:

* Get decent anti-virus and malware protection

* Be vigilant about downloading anything (not everyone is your friend)

* Trust no one, and don’t open dodgy e-mails in funny formats even if they are from people you know

And if you’re an idiot and you do everything wrong hope that you have a super-cool-trojan-slaying friend like I do. J Thanks again Tiaan!

Here is a picture of the master at work on my poor little laptop…

As if that’s not bad enough even more pests have infiltrated my world. Due to our dogs’ feeder and therefore constant availability of food, we have developed a rat-problem at our house. (I know: the shock! The horror!) Actually I’m not really afraid of rodents (unlike spiders who are all out to get me), but I am getting nervous because they are starting to vastly outnumber us now.

And our little rat family (who are as big as small dogs due to the very nutritious food they enjoy here) have been blessed with a litter of baby rats. The grown ups up until now have had the decency and good sense to keep to the ceiling where they enjoy midnight romps and day-night-series soccer games, and occasionally send someone to the trap so that we don’t get discouraged and call an expert exterminator. The babies however have less sense and two have found their way into the house. One was running for its life away from Diablo when my dad unsuspectingly opened the back door at just the right moment to make it a viable escape route. It now lives in my brother’s old speaker box.

The other has been graciously brought to my room for inspection by my cat Tigger. It would have been gross but okay if she had brought it in dead or killed it once she showed it to me, but Tigger is not interested in anything except her Whiskas and only wants to roll on prey. She honestly doesn’t even use her claws…and that is how the second baby came to live behind my bookshelf with an enormous spider that I saw going in there a while ago and have been too terrified to find and destroy. I think if it does not eat the spider or the spider does not eat it, one or both of them will want to come out again at some point and that is why I now study and chat at my desk wearing my winter slippers (boot-like and fluffy with lots of protection from little scampering feet on my bare skin…urrrgh!). It’s a bit uncomfortable in the hot summer climate I’ll confess…but probably more comfortable that jumping into my ceiling fan head first – which is what I almost did when I first saw Tigger’s catch hot-footing it across my room for the safety of the bookshelf. Here is a picture of Tigger at the entrance of “behind my bookshelf” waiting for her toy to reappear.

Other news this past week, not related to pests: Bug-boy and Bugzilla have both disappeared…I suspect one disappeared into the other one. Vodacom, the bane of my existence, have informed me that I will be getting a R1600 credit on my next phone bill – we still have one outstanding issue between us, two if you also consider the mailing list they sold my details to. Louelle came to visit me and has offered me a commission for selling her paintings for her (I’m very excited about this). And a rabbit has taken the opportunity while the dogs are confined at the back for our swimming pool construction to move in under our deck – I have decided to call him Deckster for that very reason. He is fast but cheeky and I suspect that Diablo will probably attempt to eat him as soon as they get released to the front again…in two weeks at the most. Hopefully he will go back to where he came from before that happens?

I hope that you all will have an excellent week ahead… I am looking forward to it that’s for sure! Thank you for everyone who participated in last week’s poll…it looks like everyone agrees that the police (super-crime-fighters) are afraid that their trailer will get stolen if they don’t disable it.

Have a great week! Take it easy…

A fine selction of quotes...;-)

Into each life some rain must fall - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Google Quotes)

There is a theory which states that if anybody ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened – Douglas Adams (Wikipedia Quotes)

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable - -Dwight D. Eisenhower (Quotationspage.com)

I will persist until I succeed. I was not delivered unto this world in defeat, not does failure course through my veins – Og Mandino (The Greatest Salesman in the World)

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves – Eric Hoffer (Adam)

An opinion poll and the weeks drama...

Well this was quite a busy week – mostly busy with birthday parties for Freddy! Happy birthday Freddy and thanks for all the festivities I had a great time, sorry I couldn’t make the third and final? one that happened today…At the first party we had cocktails and fantastic Greek food at the restaurant next to Kitchen Bar in the Design Quarter followed by more mocktails (no alcohol cocktails that all oddly tend to have roses worked into them) at said Kitchen Bar. All very nice… and then last night more partying at the Grill Shop at Rock Cottage where the food was great, as was the company, but the service not exactly what we’ve come to expect from them and they basically booted us out fairly early. Under no circumstances have a cocktail there called an Indian Summer! It’s nasty and smells a bit like Acetone. However…if you do order it by accident because it looks yummy on the menu then just take three looooong sips and it starts tasting a lot better. ;-) Freddy I hope you had a good time – I know I did! And I had a good giggle at Freddy’s friend Angus who was entertaining us with tales of a group of people who have moved into tree overlooking his garden and how he plans to get them evicted or even the tree felled because they infringe on his privacy and cause a fire hazard when they make fires up there.

Okay, you must be wondering what poll I’m referring to? Well this week I joined my brother and his friends at the Barnyard Theatre for a fund raiser show and on our way there I saw this: (A police trailer with its wheel clamped)

So this is what I want to know…do you think there wheel is clamped because:

a) The police – the enforcers of law and order – parked in the wrong spot? Or...

b) The police – super crime fighters – are afraid that someone will steal there trailer if they don’t disable it?

Unfortunately I have not the faintest idea how to make a poll that you can vote on with the click of your mouse – so I’d really appreciate it if you could include your vote in your comment. Thanks! (You are of course also welcome to come up with other suggestions about why this happened).

Other than that there are major developments at our house since my parents are having a swimming pool installed at the moment. The whole place is full of earth and at the moment we have to keep the dogs at the back so that they don’t either disturb or attempt to assist the contractors digging. The contractors have of course also come with their own share of drama but in general they’re getting on with it. We had a slight hiccup on Monday because my dad asked me to open up for them when they come and to make sure that the gate stays open so that they can move the soil out to the sidewalk. So I did as instructed – however: They were due there at 8:30 and only rocked up at about 9:15, at which time they informed me that they needed to go and collect their tools first (who?! I ask you goes to a site without their tools?) And they would be back in 10 minutes. They said they were leaving one guy to guard the gate so I left it open and continued with my normal day-to-day activities. At 11:00 my brother came home and asked me if I was aware that there was no workers there and that the security gate was wide open. I told him that there should be at least one guy but we looked and couldn’t find him anywhere. The workers and their tools arrived back at about 13:15 at which time my brother gave them a lecture that I doubt they will ever be able to forget and subsequently found out that their car broke down and the guy who was left guarding the gate was interrogated by the police about what he was doing there and decided to make a run for it. Mmmm…you have to wonder about that?

In the meantime Nala had a very eventful week as well. She was taken for a shave because it’s soooo hot here at the moment. Poor baby! She looks a bit ridiculous but at least she’s cooler…here is a before and after shot for your entertainment.

We also had to take her to the vet because she’s been having problems with her one back leg and she picked a fight with Diablo which earned her a bite that needed stitching up. We’ve noticed that she doesn’t lift her back legs properly when she runs so she’s always bashing a foot against the steps and we just wanted it checked out. Once she was shaven however it became clear that there was something very wrong with her one leg since she never puts any weight on it. So it came about that our pooch had to stay at the vet’s for two nights and had some knee surgery this week to correct a birth defect which caused her knee to dislocate. The patient is already looking a lot better and steadier on her feet – but she has to stay indoors until the stitches come out in 10 days time which is causing Diablo a lot of heartache and Tigger a lot of frustration. Nala and Diablo are sweet at night though because they call to each other almost continuously. My brother slept on the floor next to her the first night to keep her company and last night she flatly refused to be go into the room we prepared for her and instead roamed around in the house, politely waking my mom up every time she felt like going outside.

Other than that I can just say that this has been an extremely hot week and talking with some friends we all agree that this is one of the hottest summers we’ve seen in Johannesburg. During the day it’s often up to 25 degrees INSIDE the house and at midnight you could easily have that exact same temperature outside. It’s a wind still and stifling kind of heat. I live under my ceiling fan or rushing from shade to shade. Wish we could have a nice big and serious thunder storm to cool everything down a bit. Funny to think that on the other side of the world John and Vera both played in the snow this week!

Good luck with the week ahead…sympathy to all the singles for Wednesday when no one can switch on the radio or the TV or go out in public without being bombarded by Valentine’s Day propaganda. And of course in the same breath – I wish all the couples Valentine’s day filled with love and laughter and a happy ever-after. I hope that will find inventive ways of showing the people that you care about exactly how much you appreciate them – I’ve been busy doing something special for John too but I can’t say too much now since it’s a big surprise and I don’t want to give it away!

Hope that this will be a great week for everyone!

Weekly Quotes!

I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day – Douglas Adams: The Salmon of Doubt (Thanks Wikipedia Quotes)

I wanna hang a map of the world inmy house. Then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first I’m gonna travel to the top two corners of the map so it won’t fall down – Mitch Hedberg (Thanks Quotationspage.com) – just kidding ;-)

Henceforth I will recognize and identify the mystery of moods in all mankind, and in me. >From this moment I am prepared to control whatever personality awakes in me each day. I will master my moods through positive action and when I master my moods I will control my destiny – Og Mandino (The Greatest Salesman in the World)

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it – Terry Pratchett (Thanks Wikipedia Quotes)

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity – Albert Camus (Thanks Quotationspage.com)

Adventures of bug-boy and intro to hellopeter.com ...

There is this brilliant website called Hellopeter.com where you can lodge complaints about service or even compliment someone if you feel that you got exceptionally good service from them. The owner of the site is Peter Cheales who wrote a book about service called either I was your customer or I used to be your customer…I forgot which. Anyway you get the idea. I know a while ago they tried to make it more international than South African but I’m not sure how successful that was – but it’s pretty good for SA. You have to register if you want to make comments but it is free. The companies who respond pay something for this feedback service I believe although it is entirely possible to make comments about companies even if they aren’t registered there. I like this because it’s nice to have a place to moan (it’s not just a female thing I assure you…many men also use this site) and also if you are considering moving to a new bank or taking out a contract for some service you can use this to see what some other customers experienced there before you jump from the pan into the fire, so to say.

This week I had the opportunity to complain about Vodacom …at length…Unfortunately I only get more or less 120 words to do it in so I had to trim down my scathing remark to about half its original size. The bones of it can be seen on the link below if you’re interested and if they actually take the time to respond their response should appear there too in a day or so. The original title also didn’t quite fit. It was meant to say “slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through Peanut Butter” and now it just says stampeding through p? Well close enough for me…

http://www.hellopeter.com/the_comment.asp?recid=60999

Other events this week – I saw Freddy during the week for a nice skinder (gossip). I missed that! Thanks Freddy. And on Friday I took Wanette out to dinner because I missed the big birthday bash and after that I went to the club with Simone’. It was so weird...I almost never go there and the one day that I do I run into so many friends. We saw Werner and his entourage...and Tammy and Ryan together with theirs too...it must have been the full moon that caused it? ;-)

And also I don’t mind sharing with you that a praying-mantis (Hottentotsgot in Afrikaans) has started hanging out in my one bonsai tree this week. It has been four days running now that it’s been there, and I am tickled pink because it’s supposed to be very lucky to have one around. (Guess who’s buying a lotto ticket? whooooohoooo!). My brother feels sad for the little fellow and told me not to get too attached because he thinks it’s male one and a female will surely be round any day now to chomp its head. (They are well known for the fact that the girl-mantis bites the boy-mantis’ head off during mating), and won’t you know it?! Today when I was watering my trees and herb garden there she was…the wanna-be-killer herself is approaching from the herb garden directly below where my gogga (bug) has been hanging out in the tree for this whole week. I managed to take some photos of both for you to see… You might wonder if I’m going to interfere, and save bug-boy’s life? And the answer is sadly “No”. If he wants to survive he’ll have to keep it in his pants or outsmart her like any other wild mantis. Good luck bug-boy! I hope to still see you sitting in my tree next week.

.

Saturday morning after a late night Friday I zipped through to Jacky’s place for an enormous cooked breakfast with her and some of her other pals. It looks like they want to do it once a month or so. I like the idea…and the breakfast was very tasty. Here’s a pic of Jacky getting ready to cook the bacon and scramble Ben’s eggs… (The recipe apparently originated from her boyfriend Ben…it’s not his actual eggs…hahahaha relax!)

Anyway, I hope that you all will have a great adventure filled week ahead! I will be spending my time mostly studying of course, and investigating the prospect of earning bucks by filling in web surveys or writing trashy novels for cash? Also after a chat to my cousin Melanie I am contemplating doing 5 sit-ups for every e-mail I send…I am going to have abs of steel that’s all I can say! Please spare a thought for the life of bug-boy too if you have some time…

Quotes for this week...

Holding onto anger is like grasping onto a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the one who gets burned. – Gotama Buddha (Thanks Erno!)

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever. – Napoleon Bonaparte (Thanks Adam!)

Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult. I will persist until I succeed. – Og Mandino (The Greatest Salesman in the World)

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle (Thanks Quotationspage.com!)

All Opinions are not equal. Some are a great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others – Douglas Adams: The Salmon of Doubt (Thanks Wikipedia Quotes!)