I am so excited about this new TV series I just had to share it with you.  It’s good to see Lucy Lawless back on TV and with all those half naked men battling I just know I’m going to be glued to the screen.  I can’t wait ’til 2010 for it to air, however being in Australia I may have to wait a bit… but I won’t wait too long… my downloading finger may get itchy!

I have often wondered if any of my mail goes to my past addresses.  Of course I pay for mail redirection each time we move but it’s easy to forget to contact one or two companies to change address on their files… Boystown for instance or the Endeavour Foundation.  How many letters are sent each year that never reach the designated target? I know I return heaps to the mail box with “not at this address” and “RETURN” on it and most of those are past tenants. A few months later I seem to get the same letter from the same company for the same person and it frustrates me, don’t they get the returned letter?  Don’t they see the permanent marker stating “not at this address”?  I have taken to writing in BIG capital letters in the hope that it will be noticed but somehow I doubt it will.  Just today I wrote “DEAD: no longer at this address” but I doubt that will make a difference either!

Earlier this year, the last week of January to be precise, the council needed to dig up some concrete in front of our house.  They left two witches hats next to the rubble and drove away… months went past so I called the council.  They told me that the job order had been finished and that no work was required at this address.  I assured them that the concrete had not been replaced and if they didn’t do it soon they wouldn’t have any witches hats left as one had already been stolen.  The woman said she would place another work order into the system and it should be done in four working days… fast forward eight weeks and the council workers were finally on the job.  It was now the last week of July and the concrete was replaced in a matter of 15 minutes, maybe less… it just took them six months to get to the job site!

I like to inspect my progress when sucking on a lollipop… I pull it out of my mouth, inspect the size reduction and nod approvingly at my progress. That’s normal, isn’t it? Well it was during one of these inspections that I noticed my yellow lollipop had turned into a browny red colour…ahhh… it was blood! I was enjoying my pineapple lollipop so much I didn’t notice the jagged shard that had sliced my tongue and the roof of my mouth…  owie owie pain pain… lollipop injuries really do hurt!

Driving home from the shops the other day Luke said “Have a look at this guys tow ball”… being short I had to wait for the traffic to move before I could see it.  I assumed it would be some funny cartoon character shoved on the ball but as the ute started moving I saw the tow ball and it was bare, what was I meant to be looking at?  Then the car moved further in front of us and there it was,  a silver scrotum dangling from the tow ball… swaying in the breeze!  The first thing that popped in my head was the voice of Duke Nukem… “I’ve got balls of steel”.

Yesterday Luke and I took the kids to Dreamworld and Claire really impressed me when she said yes to going on The Giant Drop with me… it’s the tallest free falling ride in the world and she still said yes. We got seated in the contraption that would pull us up 120 meters (39 storeys) and as a person terrified of heights I had a moment of panic when I thought to myself “You crazy twit what have you done?”… then we started moving.  About ten metres up I had to look at the horizon and resist the urge to look down while we were hoisted up, 90 seconds sure seems like a long time when you are trying to ignore the fact that you are dangling in the breeze WAY up in the sky. Then came the waiting and waiting and WAITING as the ride operator left us up there to sweat a little. Then the drop and my oh my it was not at all what I expected.  It was a 5 second free fall that lifts you off your seat and a feeling of nothingness really, no stomach churning or rough swaying… just free fall.  It was AWESOME and as we walked away Claire had the biggest smile on her face, it really was priceless and that’s a good thing because I really did have to bite my tounge at the expense of the day.

We have had our fair share of rip offs on e-bay but I’ll just tell you about the latest one… udvdz. Claire bought me Jim Henson’s “The storyteller” DVD for my birthday and while her intentions were good she was ripped off because $7.99 postage was charged but the BONUS disc (yes that’s right the FREE disc that comes with The Storyteller) was sent using a pre-paid $1.30 envelope!  First of all I don’t think this seller should have been selling the free bonus disc without the companion DVD … the one with all the stories on it… a bonus disc is just that… BONUS. All our communication attempts with this seller were simply ignored and e-bay couldn’t give two hoots about it, their advice was to contact the seller…dur! There wasn’t much we could do if the seller was refusing to respond so we left negative feedback and that was that.  I wasn’t happy though so over a coffee I decided to have a little fun and send udvdz questions about his other items he had for sale on e-bay.  Questions like “I see you intend to rip someone else off as well”  and “charging WAY too much postage I see” as well as a few “Are you going to reply yet?”  I intended to send one question for every item he had in his store but after 35 or so I got a message “This form is not available at this time”… I had reached my quota for the day.  So I contacted a few of his customers who had also been ripped off and who had left negative feedback.  I encouraged them to do what I had done and flood his inbox. I got a few responses from angry people who had also been taken for a ride and they assured me they were going to do the same… let it flood e-mails I say. In fact I think I’ll go send a few more now… for good measure!

Last Friday Luke came out of a meeting with his future a little uncertain… REDUNDANCY! Actually the term that was used was “surplus to requirements”… still means the same though. So after slaving his guts out working  to fix up a certain course it will now be handed over to the accounting department for them to destroy and the whole I.S department in the business school is officially disbanded.  Seven poor souls have now had their careers squashed and I think Luke put it best when he used these words…. “ungreatful cocksuckers!”

My six year old has a security blanket of sorts, her squeeky bear.  This blue bear has been her favourite toy for about four years now.  She can’t sleep without it and if it happens to fall off the bed during the night she wakes up to look for it… or more correctly wakes ME up to look for it.  As the name suggests it has a squeeker in it’s belly, actually it’s a dog toy squeeker now due to an assault that occurred a while back.  You see Natalie left her toy in the school playground one morning and by the time we returned it was gone. That afternoon we went up to the office to see if anyone had handed it in. I described the bear and the woman looked at me then gingerly picked up what looked like a scrap of blue rag…. oh no…. Squeaky Bear! The students tore Squeaky Bear open, removed the squeaker then most likely had a game of football with her remains. Natalie was horrified and the tears really flowed that day. After many phone calls to craft shops, toy shops and fabric stores I simply couldn’t locate another teddy bear squeaker to give Squeaky Bear her voice back.  In desperation I bought a procupine dog toy and after a good soak in nappy san and quite a few stitches later, Squeaky bear was back in Natalie’s loving arms. She loves that toy so much and just the other day she said “When I go to heaven the first thing I’m going to do is ask God for Squeaky Bear.”