Pretty good story, ey? [entries|friends|calendar] Andrew [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ] Greetings people. This journal may appear busy or quiet, depending on my mood at the time... if you think there should be more than you're seeing, make sure you're logged in and on my friends list.

Mother's mooted return to the valley [16 Aug 2010|08:54pm] [ mood | tired ] Looks like mum's coming home on Wednesday: well, that's what they're saying. She was supposed to be home nearly two weeks ago and she's still at the hospital, so I shan't inform the community just yet! Her bile duct procedure went well and so, barring unforeseen eventualities, that should be it. I was surprised to see that in addition to twice or thrice daily morphine shots mum's still wearing the fentanyl patches that she's been on for over a year, and in ever increasing doses too: I was under the impression that the former had replaced the latter. It's things like this that contradict any positive signs I see: things are not so good under the surface, obviously. A few days ago the nurse gave her a little more than usual and as I walked out to the balcony with her so she could have a smoke (when that stops, I'll know it's *really* serious) and she swears her feet weren't touching the floor! "Good stuff, this!" I ducked down to Melbourne for one night in order to take delivery of my new bed frame and pick up a few things that I forgot when I came up here in a rush, such as my hairdryer (shut UP!) and, at mum's request, my espresso machine. She is demanding proper chai latte on her return, and who am I to refuse? I spent the night on my brand new mattress, which is ridiculously soft. Comfy in the shop, but a whole night made my back sore. Snooze assure me that will improve after a few weeks of sleeping on it but I am unconvinced. Oh well, it will be a while before i sleep on it again anyway! Picked up a few things for mum today as well, today, in preparation for her return: a terry towelling dressing gown, which she wants to use instead of a towel after showering (good idea!), a plastic chair for the shower and a touch lamp for her bedside, as bending down to the power point to turn on her antique crystal lamp won't be so easy any more. Come to think of it, it was never easy, and I don't know why she persisted with it. 1 comment|post comment

Shift work [19 Jul 2010|12:48pm] I'm sort of torn about whether I like working shifts or not. I'm currently writing this from a bus on the way to Doncaster to pick up my laptop, after having swanned out of bed at 10:30, and will go straight to work from there. If I worked normal hours I'd need to wait until Thursday to do it. I get a lot of stuff done during the day, including catching up with friends who are studying or work in town. On the other hand, there are so many times that I miss things in the evening as I'm working a late shift. And let's face it, working on weekends isn't that great either. "think of the money" is what people say, but actually weekend penalties only bring the wage up to something that isn't totally embarrassing so that's not a "bonus" as such. I should ask the other 4 people on the 305 what they think, and why they're not at work either. Posted via LiveJournal.app. 5 comments|post comment

Long night [27 Mar 2010|03:41pm] [ mood | fuzzy ] 8pm: Leave home to visit a friend 11pm: Realise I didn't take my keys, text housemate 11:30pm: No response: housemate obviously asleep ready for huge bike ride next day. Decide to take chance he's put keys out and didn't send a text, or the back door will be open, or a window's unlocked. 12:15am: None of these things are true. 12:45am: Exhausted all points of entry. Consider waking housemate. Decide not to, as this is totally my fault and he's got huge bike ride next day, planning for weeks. 1:00am: Decide I'll make myself comfortable in the courtyard and sleep til morning. 1:45am: Realise this is impossible, what with lack of comfortable things to sleep on, night getting colder and a mosquito buzzing in my ear. Check all doors and windows again. Consider climbing in through housemate's open window. Decide against this. 2:00am: Start walking to various places, before doubling back, resolving to wake housemate. Lose nerve every time: this is totally my fault, etc. 2:45am: Walk to the Peel. 4:00am: Two beers and some awful music later, leave the Peel. 4:20am: Arrive at Supper Club. Greeting by typical friendly and understated Supper Club waitress. Ushered to table overlooking Parliament house. Order coffee and welsh rarebit toastie. 5:40am: Leave Supper Club, walk back home. 6:15am: Arrive home. Housemate's car gone. Frantically check letterbox. No keys. Panic. Call housemate's mobile. Buh-bow. Not enough credit to make this call. Fuck! Go to Virgin website, enter card details. Declined. Fuck!!! Enter card details again. Accepted! Call housemate. Rings out. Fuck!!!!! Leave panicked voicemail. 6:20am: Call back from housemate. Why didn't I just wake him up? Reveals existence of stashed back door key. Flood of relief. 6:30am: In bed, which has never felt so good. Resolve to never ever leave house again. post comment

Gems [31 Dec 2009|07:56pm] [ mood | amused ] "How many potato gems do you want, mum?" "Four?" "Sure you'll eat four?" "Well, I've only got the little bit of fish, and... oh shut up." post comment

Is LJ the new Twitter? [31 Dec 2009|05:29pm] No, but I'm not on Twitter. I'm on here, so I can post with less effort. I've been driving mum into Wodonga every day for a couple of weeks now (or rather, most of the time: sometimes a friend will be the driver!). 80km one way, however it's a plesant enough drive along the picturesque Kiewa Valley Highway. Really racking up the kms though: mum's car has done 10,000 since I got here in May. No, there's no point to this. I think I wanted to type something pithier but I can't remember what it was. post comment

Hot [30 Dec 2009|04:23pm] [ mood | hot ] How about this heat? 2 comments|post comment

Sydneh! Visit Sydneh! [08 Jun 2009|04:51pm] [ mood | content ] I am quite excited as Dominic, my lovely lovely boy, is coming to visit me on Saturday! I shall head down to Melbourne on Saturday morning and we shall not part for two weeks or so. Plan is a week in Melbourne, about 5 days at mum's house, then a couple of days in Sydney. I shall make arrangements about a dinner or something in Melbourme. Any Sydney people want to do dinner on Friday 19th or Saturday 20th? That's YOU, bizza, all_summer_long and buckylea! EDIT: Make that the 26th and 27th! :) post comment

The rise and fall of the Victorian Transport Ministry [02 Jun 2009|06:55pm] [ mood | amused ] The ad by the Victoria Government spruiking their "Smarter transport options" rips off the drum track of the Shadows' "The Rise and Fall of Flingel Bunt". So much so that it could well be a sample. They have however turned it into some other song. They don't fool me though! post comment

The Channel 10 voice-over people [02 Jun 2009|12:39pm] [ mood | irritated ] So, watching Dr Phil (as you do when you're not working) and there's an ad for "Merlin". The two people who do the voiceovers are annoying me. This will be a common feature of my posts: things that irritate me. The man has a deep gravelly voice and sounds like he has a cold. The woman treads a fine line between sultry and bored. When they speak the lines they modulate their voices in a sing-song way which somehow drives me absolutely nuts. I want to punch them. The woman's voice in particular seems to be quite common across TV and in particular commercial radio. There's a particular tone they take, talking about things in a sexy but disconnected way: they want to sell you something but they're actually thinking about something else. If I were more musically inclined I'd be interested to map the notes and see if there's a particular pattern, like a tune that they put the words to each time. More "you know what really grinds my gears?" later. post comment

Annoying iPod behaviour [31 May 2009|02:44pm] [ mood | irritated ] In the past few years I've hardly used my iPod: I haven't needed to as I don't really like listening to music on public transport (the headphones are annoying to deal with, I find, plus I like to be able to hear what's going on). At home I have my Airport Express so I can play music from my laptop which is easier than the iPod interface. Due to having a lot of music sourced from various locations the volumes are at different levels, so in my 1500 or so favourite songs I manually made some of them louder. This was achieved over a long period, obviously, so all my music plays at a fairly even volume. Except for when I play from my iPod! At mum's house I have my iPod hooked up to the stereo and every time it gets to a song I've manually made louder (via the iTunes volume adjustment) it plays twice as loud as the unadjusted songs. I can't understand why this. The song is half the volume naturally, and the adjustment makes it about the same. If anything it should play quietly, ignoring the iTunes adjustment: that I could understand. It's got a feature called "sound check" which is supposed to do this adjustment automatically but my experiences with it weren't great: it make sure sound funny and took an age to adjust things. Toggling that makes a small difference but nowhere near this current problem. Mum's asleep on the couch at the moment and so far things like "Take the skinheads bowling" blaring out at a huge volume haven't woken her up, so that's one problem I don't have to worry about, I guess. post comment

Hello again [10 May 2009|12:55am] [ mood | sleepy ] Well LJ... I may just start you up again to capture some of my thoughts over the next few months. Pens at the ready. post comment

Credit cards [03 Jan 2009|11:19am] [ mood | Winner! ] Just a tip... if you ever get hit with a "missed payment charge" on your credit card or a similar "fee" which is really a penalty, just call them up and ask for it to be refunded. Doing so in a reasonable manner, waffling on about not keeping an eye on the date, sorry, it's now paid in full, generally pay on time etc will usually result in them doing a "once off" refund of the fee. It happened to me with my Westpac card just recently as I stupidly booked my flight home on it rather than my UK card (long story) and the fee was the final straw. I think it mainly comes down to two things: firstly the bank wants to look good, and secondly these fees aren't actually enforceable due to them being penalty charges to recover the bank's cost. The bank's cost is actually almost nothing, so any challenge to them should be successful. 2 comments|post comment

Oh no! [26 Dec 2008|06:56pm] [ mood | sad ] I have just found out that the Rainbow Hotel has closed in my absence! I was planning on a Sunday session there with friends when I came back in Feb to see the Grand Wazoo... wahhh! Looks like it's because the lease wasn't renewed. What does this mean? I hope it's not being turned into flats, although given the problems they've had with residents in the past I wouldn't be surprised. Oh, so many good memories of that place. Hot Summer nights seeing the Paul Williamson Hammond Combo with Claire and drinking VB for a laugh, afternoons with Jan & Dec seeing the Grand Wazoo... I guess nothing lasts forever. But sometimes I wish certain things would. post comment

Logging [16 Dec 2008|04:01pm] Ahh, you see so much more when you're logged into LJ. I must have been logged out for a week or more. Hello again: I am now up to date with your lives once more. post comment

Unpaid [17 Nov 2008|12:27am] Today I got a notification from LJ saying that my paid subscription would be expiring soon and $19.95 would be deducted in a few days. I have cancelled my automatic payment now, as I don't think it provides enough incentive to pay for it any more. It's also a case of fewer and fewer people using it now. In 2002 when I started it was growing, and I met some great people through this, but it's been a couple of years since my friends list changed. Maybe it's just me, but I think sites like Facebook have syphoned off all that stuff. I don't think it's a good thing as I haven't met any "friends" through Facebook (I don't think you can) however it's the reality. I'll still keep posting, I think, although I don't think my mobile phone photos are going to come through any more: I believe that's a paid feature. Ah well. I think the refusal to pay is more out of disappointment that the owners of LJ have managed to let things pass them by. 7 comments|post comment

I'm not behind the curve [16 Nov 2008|09:56pm] No really... but sometimes it's just that even though I'm aware of a song and have been enjoying it for a while, I miss things about it, or don't realise just how good it is. The song "Hurricane Jane" was everywhere (well, on 6 Music a lot: that's good enough for me) about 4 months ago but it's only now I have listened to it on my spiffy large £10 headphones. And my, this song is wonderful. Generally for a song to be classed as an Andrew wonderful™ song it needs to have the minimum three things: a great bassline, good drumming and slick production. Naturally it's the bass that really interests me, and in this case there is a real master at work here: subtle, driving yet meandering, and so smooooooooth. Especially during the chorus. post comment

Viewing [05 Nov 2008|09:14am] Oh, if only that area there were open- i could stand up there and get a great view! Actually no, if it were open there would already be people up there taking up the good spots. One tends to forget that part. post comment

Money [03 Nov 2008|09:27pm] I do like how that handful of coins is about 30 australian dollars. post comment

Snow [29 Oct 2008|09:50am] ...and it keeps snowing! October, etc. Cool! post comment

Geezus [28 Oct 2008|09:59pm] [ mood | cold ] So it appears that Autumn's been dispensed with and Winter's sitting in its place. It was about 5 degrees today, and my hands froze while walking from work to the tube station, and when I got out at Tufnell Park, there was snow on the ground. SNOW. It had been snowing! We're only supposed to be a third of the way through Autumn! I did hear the other day that we're in for a proper Winter this year. I am all for that actually, however with gas and electricity prices having gone up 40% in one go this year (no pussyfooting around) it's probably going to expensive to heat this little flat. At least with this one we have a thermostat: with the old flat, the heating was either on or off, and so probably wasn't that efficient. This way we can set it to 17 degrees so that when it's on it won't get tropical like the old place. Hmm, what else apart from the minutiae of my central heating? My mum visited for two week recently: I suppose that's worth a mention. I took the time off work, we did the touristy things, went to York for 3 days, etc. The girls were away for most of the time which worked out well. I can't help but think it wasn't coincidental that their New York holiday happened when it did. My science course is going well: first assignment back and I did went alright: made some silly errors like not using units throughout entire calculations. What the? I remember in maths all you had to do was show your working and make sure you stated your answer with the correct unit at the end. Oh well, I'm sure it was mentioned and I overlooked it in my haste to get to the interesting stuff. No final result for my maths course yet: for some reason I don't get it until December. Passed it easily though. Saw the Boosh. They were so-so. Show I saw at the comedy festival many years ago was way funnier. Have tickets for Sigur Rós at Ally Pally next month. We are looking at which panto to go to for Christmas. Hansel and Gretel looking good at the moment. I should go study. Bye Livejournal, sorry for neglecting you! post comment

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