water, water everywhere

 

March 13th

Drove down to Sandy Bay for an hour involving sexual immorality, lust, greed and filthy language.  Next week we plan to study the rest of chapter 3 of St. Paul's letter to the Colossians.

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March 20th Tuesday I went out and played (badly) one game of croquet.  In the evening, there were only two of us on the team at the quiz night. Even fortified with alcohol and pain-killers we fared badly on some rounds, adequately on others, and finished in fourth place.  (The winners, as usual, were Jambag with 91/110)  But we won a bottle of wine for solving the puzzle question on the second clue.  One team member who was sick at home asked how we did it and (channeling Joe Friday) I told her "I just played a hunch. It was just a hunch. I played my luck; sometimes a hunch pays off, sometimes it doesn't, I was just lucky, I just played a hunch."  She replied "Your hunches are the stuff of legend."   I rather like that;  I might get Anita to put it on my tombstone.

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I spent most of Wednesday resting at home but it didn't help my performance at the quiz night.  Not only did we fail to finish in the money, I scored 2/10 for the TV & Cinema round  --  possibly my worst score in memory.  I think the problem may be that more and more questions are things like "Name the Marvel super-hero that this actor will be starring as later this year on Disney+."  I am flummoxed.

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Two months till the solstice but Thursday morning I could feel the first sting of winter in the morning air.  The sun broke through just as I was feeding the chickens so maybe it wasn't so bad for the rest if the day.  Bought more feed for the poultry this week.  I notice they seem to be using twice as much water as they did last year;  I suspect I'm watering a lot of birds and small mammals without knowing it.  As long as this doesn't include rats  -  rats can bugger off.

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I seem to be drinking more coffee this year too.  Not that it does much good.  Yesterday I had several cups of  coffee and still dozed off twice during the day, once before lunch and once after lunch.  I keep promising myself I'll go back to having afternoon naps.  Maybe I should actually do it.

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This year I kept running out of space on my laptop hard drive.  With one thing and another I have accumulated a lot of radio show downloads on my laptop, so I buckled down to move all my 2021 downloads onto my external drive.  It took me a while.  I had 133 GB.  Yikes!

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Played two games of croquet on a fine Tuesday afternoon then had a rest before going out to the quiz night.  Caroline and I represented the team at this week's quiz and we started off the evening by winning a bottle of champagne for solving the puzzle question after the first clue.  The quiz master looked a little surprised when she looked at our answer sheet and said "That's right."  Things took an unexpected turn when a waiter appeared at our table with a piece of cake and said "Is this your birthday?"  Following this, the whole restaurant sang "Happy Birthday to you".  I have a good idea who was responsible for this. 

The end of the evening saw us finish third, with our friendly rivals Minerva's Disciples actually beating us to come in second.

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The following night,  we had a complete team at the Wednesday quiz night for the first time this year, I think.  I wasn't much use in the puzzle question (which was about elements) because I got myself mixed up between Platinum and Palladium, and Lisa eventually came up with the correct answer.  But I did get to give a sardonic chuckle when the last question in the movie round asked what was the actual meaning of Rosebud in CITIZEN KANE's ending;  I said "This will separate the men from the boys in movie trivia!" 

I think we came fourth out of seven teams, with 78 points, nothing to be ashamed of.

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May 3rd - Tuesday was a peculiar sort of afternoon.  I went over to the Croquet Club and played a couple of games;  during the second one, we were followed around the lawn by a ride-on mower that cut the grass on whichever part of the lawn we weren't actually playing on.  A little distracting. 

When I came home, I found a note from the RSPCA telling me my goose couldn't walk.  Well, sometimes he can and sometimes he can't.  I left them a message and sent them a photo I took last month of the goose standing on his own two feet.

Just before I left for the Quiz Night, I received a text message from the water company telling me there were urgent repairs being done in my street and they hoped to have the water turned on again by 10.30 tonight.   That explained the mass of lights at the end of my street when I drove off.

The quiz was quite normal though.  We came in third with 70 points, behind Walt Quizney who won with 80 points.  Jambag?  They were taking the night off apparently.

At least there were two issues of THE NEW YORKER in the mailbox today.

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May 5th.  Thursday was proof that sometimes the weather bureau gets it right.  For about 24 hours they'd been issuing warnings about severe weather conditions Thursday night and Friday.  Coming back from the monthly meeting in the church hall, it started to drizzle before I caught the bus home.  By the time I reached my house it was raining lightly.  Then it got heavier.  I moved all the stuff in the back room off the ground just in case. 

After dinner it was coming down pretty hard.  I put on my raincoat and went out to check on the drain in the driveway, which was slow to get rid of the water.  I got one of the hoses and with some trouble set up a siphon to take away some of the lake that was rapidly forming.  Felt tired after half an hour on my hands and knees in the rain with my head in the gully trap and had to rest for a while before I went to bed.  

Then I was woken three hours later by a tremendous display of thunder and lightning.  The rain poured down, but there was nothing I could do except pull the covers over my head and hope the siphon kept running.

The next morning the rain had almost stopped and I warily opened the back door, bracing myself for a lake lapping at the back steps.  Praise be, the water was not even enough to fill a small pond.  There were plenty of signs where the water had been, though.  It's a good thing that years ago I changed from cardboard cartons to plastic crates for storing my stuff.  (Friends dropped in that afternoon and were horrified by the water damage;  I guess I had been preparing for the worst, so it didn't seem so bad to me)

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Tuesday the plumber came bright and early to flush out the blocked drains.  Second time in 25 years we've had to do this, so I guess we can't complain.  And since it was fine and sunny today I went over to play croquet in the afternoon.  Usually I can get through a game in an hour, but not today  --  it took us an incredible 45 minutes just to get past hoop #3.  I thought of going home after we finally got hoop #12, but in the end I stayed for another (more normal) game.

Ironically the people in one suburb are without water because of a burst water-main, while the rest of the city are drying out carpets and repairing storm damage.  There's never a happy medium !