It's been a crazy 24 hours so I thought I'd share a cute little story with you all.
A few weeks ago I popped into Aldi for a few things and because I pay cash I have to use the wo/manned register. So I'm behind this dear elderly couple, maybe in their late eighties/ early nineties. She has a walker, he as nimble as an elderly gentleman could be at that age.
They go to pay and she's obviously the keeper of the funds so she opens the purse and is handing the young cashier the mullah, one penny at a time. That's ok. I'm patient with the old cheeses. We all get old. Oh no. Somethings gone wrong. Not enough cash. The poor banker is confused. The cashier offers a solution. You can pay some with cash, some on the bank card. Great many discussions were had between the 3 of them. A decision was made. The banker now produces the card and hands it to her husband. The gentleman did not know how to use the eftpos so the cashier helps him. He then carefully punches in the numbers one per minute. Approved. More discussions were made about how they could've got the budget so wrong before they slowly move on with an apology.
No worries mate. We get it. Shits fucked.
So what are the chances that I get stuck behind this couple AGAIN a week later. Probably a million to one but hey just call me lucky. This time the budget was better. The banker opens the purse and hands over the cash one penny at a time while the gentleman is packing the groceries. All done but she hasn't moved from the cashier. A discussion was had. activate the patience button CEO. She takes a tiny step. More discussions. Do not push the old lady with your trolley like they do if you breakdown in the Burnley tunnel. At this point I look at the cashier and she swivels her chair so she could have a little giggle. I look at my groceries thinking I'm hungry. I could start eating them. A few more ballerina steps and the couple have now stopped at the corner where the groceries get thrown at you. More discussions. It appears they can not walk and talk. breathe. At this point the cashier has said "have a good day" at least 3 times. He is now aware they are holding up the line so apologises and encourages her to keep walking. They stop at the end where the trolley goes to pack. The cashier can not start yet. I dare not look at her. I am hungry. They eventually move on.
I waited the whole time with a smile on my face but I'll still refer to it as Helldi.
Moved to Tecoma, near Belgrave last week. Call it bad timing as we've been out of power for over 24 hours.
Luckily we don't eat meat or dairy, so food spoilage is minimal. But I'd like to see what I'm unpacking.
Neighbour left a note saying "welcome to the hills haha!" with his phone number and a recommendation to get ice.
Not 10 minutes ago, Mickey (my cat) was meowing at my partner and I, just chatting. I walk towards him as I leave and say "watch him, as soon as we're out of your sight l he'll beat me up", so my partner crept behind me as I entered the living room, where Mickey has trotted to, and the jerk didn't do a thing.
But! As soon as my partner goes back to the other room, Mickey has pounced and started biting my leg like a Christmas ham.
He's so damn dumb, but he knows what words mean and definitely did that on purpose. He plays softly when my partner is watching, and then claws me up like a mofo when we're alone.
I love him so damn much haha
the culprit
Can you read cursive?
The Australian War Memorial is looking for volunteers to read and transcribe letters and diaries. They have a ton of material that needs to be made more accessible
I have power, but most of the area around me doesn't. Mr Woof and I had a very dark walk this morning with no street lighting. On a positive note the weather obvioudly kept people home and the food cupboard was still stuffed with bread from last night's delivery, and I managed to score some hot cross buns as well as a loaf of white bread for lunch. The trip to work was a bit anxiety producing, as well as the whole area being dark the first two sets of traffic lights were out - I'm glad it was still early and not much traffic as a right turn onto a major road was bad enough when there was only limited traffic, I would not want to try it a bit later.
I've reached the point that I can't do a full 8 hour shift just on phones. The anxiety and stress are killing me.
Been applying for work where phones are just a small part of the day and part time work. Partner starts his job soon so it won't be so bad. But I do feel like a failure and worthless. Irrational, but all my shame comes from not being what I think I should be.
Bill Cat brought a live mouse inside. He and Ted have a mission now, a sense of purpose and some much needed kitty fun.
Poor mouse. 😔
It has been a long day and I am really ready for it to be over. Today has been way too busy for my liking, I think an early bedtime might be on the cards tonight.
Took all three cats to the Vet yesterday for their shots. They always feel a little sick after their shots, especially Gwyn he gets really unwell from them. So now today I have three moppy and sad cats who all want love.
Still no power here plus the 4G has gone to shit, not looking forward to today
They reckons it will be back on tomorrow by 1pm so I guess I am just doing nothing today.
Power was still flickering and going in and out when I came home.
Spoke with my other neighbour and she was having the same problems as me then all power went out.
It came back up about 20 mins ago and has been stable for both of us since, I think I have power back now!
Yay!
So a refurbished laptop I bought had 1 year warranty.
Invoking it for a noisy fan (failing fan bearing?). Person on the phone suggested I try cleaning it first.
Only problem is that the blades are on the other side, meaning the whole cooling system needs to be detached to access it for cleaning. Meaning it'll need a new application of thermal paste. Meaning I'll need to buy some as I haven't done this sort of thing in years.
I can refuse right? 😪😴
Bonne nuit
Melbcat has been a bit fussy and painy still, from her body language it seems acute (like tummy cramps) and then it passes. I've given her some metacam the past few days and she might have to go back to the vet to make sure the uti is gone.
Hearing about the blackouts... luckily my area was spared, it's stressful as shit to hear about and I hope everyone gets their power back on soon. Especially on these stinking hot days/oppressive nights which have screwed my sleep.
I still haven't fixed the shitty little car battery solar setup I got a few years ago anticipating problems like this... didn't end up troubleshooting the low output plus the wiring pulled out of the crimps when it was moved. Perhaps they weren't done strongly enough despite passing the plier pull test. That needs to be redone, and even if it gets fixed I really don't think it would hold enough juice to run cooling for long. At least I have a few solar phone battery packs and a solar lantern I leave on the windowsill. Cheap but better than nothing.
Doing anything with that actually might not happen anytime soon. I don't even have a multimeter/voltmeter, can't exactly pop down just to get that, and would have to wrap my tired brain around using it.
I did the DIYish sorts of stuff back when I was relatively healthier but right now I'm in a fair amount of pain on a regular basis, have no spare energy, and am basically just scraping to get by. Another hospital admission might be on the cards soon.
I'm not even feeling up to using my cheapie paints that arrived and feel a bit anxious about them. It's fine. They'll still be there whenever the time comes. It's ok that I'm not up to the actual doing at the moment. I can take it easy and stick to just learning about things for as long as I want.
Art rambles and infodumps
Buying from Kmart and plastic isn't good. But I guess on my budget it is what it is.
I haven't tried them out yet and they're bound to be less good than real art supplies but I'm kind of hopeful...? so far. Getting a small cheap acrylic kit on clearance from Kmart means $3 got me 12 small tubes of paint, a tiny plastic palette tray about the size of a small chocolate bar (a bit longer than a Fry's Turkish Delight), 3 cheap little brushes, plus a sketch pencil, eraser and sharpener for spares.
It was picked loosely according to a list, specifically the 'absolute beginner' list. It's not perfect but I possibly got kind of close.
Some thought went into this. I really did my best to get a minimal number of tubes with as many of the versatile primary colours as possible. There are no names on the tubes but I looked at the colours on the tube by eye. It's looking like there's a warm and a cool version of some colours which is unexpectedly good for Anko.
As you'd expect though the colour selection for a lot of the paint sets on there seemed kind of shit and very likely aimed at kids. Most had a bunch of flashy tertiary colours but didn't include all of the basic ones I was looking for. Even with this one I don't actually own a colour wheel so will have to just swatch them on slips of paper and hold them up to the monitor to see how close the actual colours inside match up to what I was going for.
But I chose this set for the following:
The cool bright yellow colour, because even if it's not exact, a lemon colour can apparently substitute for cadmium yellow (?? and if not there's the darker warmer one to try). They do look a little bit like Hansa yellow light and medium from the colour on the tube but we'll see. Perhaps if needed they could be mixed to make a colour in the middle very similar to cadmium yellow...
The two blues look quite close to cyan and ultramarine as far as I can tell, if my monitor is accurate and I'm looking at the right colour from the varieties shown. Very nice. One warm and one cool, both seem to be popular colours. Options.
The dark red is nice to have if it's crimson. It looks similar from the tube. (There is no warm vermilion red though - I'd have to see if I can make that with the orange but I don't think that will work if this red is cool crimson. It might work if it's closer to cadmium red which is more neutral?? I will have to swatch this colour to work out whether it's more warm or cool but the label very much looks like cool. And apparently mixing colours from crimson can make some colours desatured or muddy... makes sense as it's not a true primary red and the blue in it could mess with the brightness of warmer colours.)
I would have really liked this set to contain magenta though, as a primary for CYMK. I want to be able to mix a wide range of colours from very few tubes so that's the mindset I was choosing with, but there is a tube of purple/violet in there too. So while you can't mix proper magenta and it could end up a bit off, that could at least mix up an approximation while I'm learning. At least if the red is crimson there'll be blue in there that would play well with violet.
There's also the white, the black and a dark brown. Which is really solid, you need those.
But the brown has me a bit worried. I saw to get burnt umber and the tube label looks like a cooler dark brown so could be closer to raw umber or sepia. I don't fricking know. I'll have to crack it open and compare a few to see what I really have.
I had initially felt more confident buying this set as thinking I was getting something very close to the burnt umber (which I now see is more a warm reddish brown, must have confused it with another popular earth tone) so I hope I haven't fucked up. Because I am not buying more tubes. It would have been nice to have both a warm and a cool brown like with other colours. Apparently that's called split primaries. I would have traded off the violet and the orange for a second option of red and a second option of brown, as as those are secondary colours that can be mixed. But beggars can't be choosers. Maybe if this brown is too cool it could be altered.
I'll see if it can be mixed down with orange. If it is raw umber that could counteract a supposed 'green hint' and the coolness, and black to darken further if need be. If it's sepia which is more neutral that will be closer but the red might matter. But if there is 'a green hint' to it, is the complementary orange to warm it up going to desaturate the result? Will mixing warm and cool make it muddy? Will the dark red do to warm it and darken the value, and might the warmth or coolness of that red affect things? Argh!! I'm new to colour theory and teaching this shit to myself!
I will say one final thing too, the paintbrushes don't look nice. They're small and low quality, stiff synthetic bristles that may not apply evenly, only slightly different sizes and all basic flat style. But it's fine for a beginner who may not commit. It's to be expected and the total I paid for this whole set was less than a cheap pack of brushes alone.
Nice or specialised brushes can wait. I didn't even buy a palette knife as while a variety pack was on there I would only want one. The tip of an old butter knife or a toothpick would be fairly inflexible for mixing but whatever.
The tubes of the exact proper colours from art supply shops can wait as well. I did see one set of primaries that was nice quality... This one is what I was leaning towards. CMYK. The exact right primary colours plus titanium white, black and burnt umber to adjust.
But I'm currently struggling with art block and bad anxiety around art, not even drawing or doing digital at the moment, and hopping about all over the place any time I do try.
For a dabbler like me I will definitely try to cheese it with a $3 kit first rather than spend $30 on the proper paint alone. I just really hope my guesstimation of off brand colours don't come back to bite me and make learning to mix colours that much harder.
No power, mobile network is barely working. Can’t send texts and most calls fail. Fortunately I have solar and generator but the destruction is crazy. Powerlines over roads and people are driving on them. No police to be seen. My husband went out to work (I’m wfh today) and relayed back the destruction - he couldn’t get mobile coverage until back in suburbia 20km from home.
Have got the fallen trees off the fences and patched them up to stop animal ingress/egress.Rather fortunate here, we just had a power flicker at quarter to 3. We didn't cop much rain either. I saw Mornington got some rain from the water on my manager's door in a meeting.
Now I just need to make sure the restaurant for tonight got my booking...
Hey you got security cameras that loop record? Wanna grab the storm before it gets overwritten?
Reminder: if you have no power and a battery powered usb thing plugged into a hub with other usb things...unplug it.
Sincerely,
The woman who just found out her vacuum sealer on its dock was running her pi
Rewatching Fargo 3.
geebus. multiple times in every episode the characters are presented with moral choices and every single time they choose wrong, they dig their own hole deeper
except for gloria and winnie , they do the right thing
it's interesting to see how the morally weak are no match for the truly evil and that there is no winning against evil, there is only survival
ooooohhh my pakidge has clear the US customs. It took from 23 Jan - now to get from Nebraska to Illinois. Let's see how long it takes to get here
Open house has come up for a house the housemate and I are keen on, but it just wee bit early to start actually diving in. Not sure if we should go have a sticky beak or put it from our mind's.
25 minutes to drive from one side of my suburb to the other. 25 frigging minutes. there's no lights out or anything, just he gray army seems to have mobilized for some reason. Is it pension day or something?
Not a single thought occuring