snow

Tuesday 17th Aug
Looked out my front door after two or three days of rain and was surprised to see snow-capped Mount Wellington towering above the city against a blue sky with a few white clouds.  The sunny afternoon brought out twenty of us to play croquet and I won 7-5 and lost 5-7... so not too bad.  
Likewise the quiz night went pretty well.  We scored 88 points and came in second,  behind Jambag (again) with their 94 point score.  If I were the stewards, I think I'd have them swabbed.  And congrats to Minerva's Disciples who came in third,  thanks to answering the puzzle question in the first round and getting a perfect score on a double-points round.

 Wed 18th Aug
Tired after yesterday and didn't feel that well this morning.  A bit better after lunch, managed to fill out the medical forms for next week before I went out to buy drugs.  After I got from the pharmacy, rested up for a little while before going out to the Wednesday night quiz.  There were ten teams there, but since our old rivals Barnstoneworth were absent we got third place even though we only made 46 points.
Still having trouble getting my blood sugar down.  I had a bowl of soup at 8 pm and had nothing to eat the rest of the night, but thirteen hours later my BGL reading was still 10.2 which is a bit disappointing since I've been getting more exercise while I haven't been driving.  :(

Thursday 19th Aug
Sleepy in the afternoons;  makes me wonder if I will even need sedation for my procedure next week !
Tussles with trying to log into one of my accounts  ("Either the user name of the password is incorrect") then took a walk down to the shops.  On the way I noticed two places with what looked like Christmas lights in their windows, though August is a bit early for the Yuletide decorations.  On a related topic, I see that Coles are now selling what they label "Not Cross Buns", presumably a reaction to the backlash in some quarters about them selling Hot Cross Buns in January in recent years.

Friday 20th Aug
On local radio's morning show this week,  Leon Compton asked his listeners whether they still read comics (or graphic novels).
I was pleased to hear the first caller was a proud Carl Barks fan who is still reading Uncle Scrooge at the age of 66.  What I thought was that we are not breeding a new generation of comics readers.  When I was growing up in the 1960s every newsagency had big racks of comics, all types and categories.  Kids bought them avidly and traded them wit their friends.  But now if you look a.round, all you will find are The Phantom and The Simpsons usually. Comics are something expensive that you buy in a specialty shop.  As an experiment a couple of years ago I asked the counter staff in several shops why they didn't stock comic books;  most of them were baffled by the question, though one replied he didn't know if distributors still handled them.   The 21st century only seems to see comic books as seed material for blockbuster movies.  

I may have mentioned this a while back,  but "the cloud" can be a mixed blessing.  One of the New York internet radio stations 920 WON puts its programs up on Mixcloud so you can listen back to anything you missed.  And that's a good thing, we'd all agree on that.  But they're only a small operation, I surmise, and they can't always spare the time to post things promptly.  This was obvious last month when in one day they posted ten episodes of their weekly program "One Nostalgic Weekend."  That's twenty hours of listening made available in one fell swoop!

Tuesday 24th Aug
Cold night followed by a fine and sunny day brought the croquet players out in big numbers today.  We've had to start having both morning and afternoon games, the demand has been so high. In the evening, another big turn out for the quiz night with twelve teams taking part;  we worked hard on the answers and scraped into third place


Friday 27th Aug
Back from two days staying with friends at the beach after my first cataract procedure.  No pain and a vast improvement in vision in the right eye.  Even the eyedrops get easier with My hosts were very attentive and even their dog made me welcome  -- if I was in my bedroom with the door closed he'd come along and woof because he wanted to come in.
I thought I had come through it pretty well, but when I got home this afternoon I suddenly felt really tired and had to lie down for an hour before I could summon up the energy to do anything at all.  The list of things I need to do next week and next month doesn't help.

Favorite radio show title of the wee --How the west was strung - WDCB

Sunday 29th Aus
After church walked back into the city for lunch before taking the bus home.  In the mall I passed a man walking a large shaggy German Shepherd.  "What a beautiful dog," I said and held my hand out for the dog to sniff.  He whuffled for a second, then began licking the back of my hand.  "He doesn't usually do that" said the surprised owner.
Ha!  I could have told him some stories about my sister.  One time she was on Bondi Beach and someone went past with a German Shepherd.  Suddenly the dog stopped and put its head on Julie's lap.  "I didn't do anything," declared Julie to her boyfriend.  He just sighed and said "I know."   :)

Monday 30th Aug
Tasmanian author wins prize for Best Crime Novel for Children.  The award went to A CLUE FOR CLARA by Liam Tanner.  The detective is a chicken...(Somewhere my sister Julie is smiling.)

Tuesday 31sr Aug
Last day of winter and it was very windy at croquet club  (my sister always said to beware the equinoctial gales).  In spite of that, enough people there to use three lawns.  I won 7-5 and lost 4-7, which isn't bad for someone who was seeing double if he forgot to close one eye while hitting the ball.   My  cap blew off for the second time this month but at least I managed to retrieve this one from where  it landed against the boundary fence. It will be interesting to see how I go in two weeks time after I've had my other cataract done.  Watch out!

Nine teams at quiz night.  The three of us applied ourselves to the challenge and ended up in fourth place with 62 points -- there was a three-way tie for third, something I haven't seen before.  The winners were Diamond Set Stickpin with 91 points.  I wasn't too disappointed with our score  --  we got 8/10 for TV/Cinema and 7/10 for Art/Literature.  I was amused when the final question showed a photo from the THUNDERBIRDS television series while the theme tune was played  --  "Name this British TV show."  Did anyone not get that  I wonder.