So, stuff happened in the past month. We went to the Soundwave festival, then to see God Forbid, then to see Helmet although I haven’t written that one up yet. Just yesterday I booked tickets, flights, and accommodation to see Nine Inch Nails in Syndey next month, but we’ll miss Stone Sour (playing in Perth the same night). There’s probably other stuff too…
Today we went for a walk down down the Kingsley end of Yellagonga. I took some photos. Here are some of them.
So, today we picked it up. Can’t rave enough about:
how cool having a brand spanking new “out of the showroom” car is (picked up with 10kms on the clock)
how quickly Phoenix Holden got it ready – especially Jeremy our salesman/kidnap victim
how quickly the bank for the lease together – we applied Friday and settlement was today despite Monday being a public holiday in Victoria where their office is – go SunCorp
did I mention the new car thing is cool?
The dash glows red in a rather disturbingly evil way:
This year the chilli festival was pushed back a few weeks to the second weekend in March – previous years have seen it held in mid-February. I don’t know if it was planned that way to escape the inevitable searing heat but even if that wasn’t an intentional side-effect, I’m grateful. Last year it was far too hot for comfort. This year it was warm but the extreme heat was reserved for the chillis.
I wanted to buy a bottle of my fave from last year, but DeathSauce was not at the Festival. We did get a few jars of various hot condiments, including a jar of chilis in lime and tequila, the red stuff pictured above, which was actually really sweet. I saw the sauce that nearly killed me and Ben last year, and stayed well away.
Overall there were not as many stalls as last year, which was a little disappointing, but on the up side parking was much easier (or maybe that was because we went Saturday and not Sunday).
Over the past six months we’ve been finding more and more that often, the various limbs of the Starfish need to be in more than one place at once. Which makes being a single car family a bit of a pain. With the Munro out of action until the end of the month (either a new clutch or a new clutch cylinder required), it’s even more serious.
So, we talked to the bank about a business lease and they were more than happy for us to have a brand new SS Commodore to play with. We picked it out today – black like the picture, but with silver track stripes.
To make room in the garage, my beloved Kingswood was put on the back of a tow truck on Friday – and transplanted to my Dad’s house, where it will be fixed up for my brother Luke, who’s just getting his license now. I’m sad to see it go, but I’m overjoyed that it’s going to get some use.
Now, the question remains: we need a custom license plate for the new toy. The Munro has PWN3D – we need something else just as cool! Suggestions?
I’ve been asked a couple of times for an update on the status of the redback in my letterbox… sadly, the story is now over.
A couple of weeks after we last visited our arachnid heroine, Dave went out to get the mail. When he opened the mailbox door he was surprised to see our spider doing battle with a large stick-like flying black insect. The black bug flew away and our little spider didn’t look very well. Dave performed mouth to mouth resuscitation but sadly it was not to be – our little spider friend went to that big mailbox in the sky.
I like to think that she’s terrorizing someone up there right now.
So where’s the goatlady gone, you say? Well, there’s nothing more annoying than a blog with nothing except “sorry I haven’t posted for so long”, usually interspersed with discussions about eating breakfast and toenail clippings, so we’ll leave that aside. Let’s just say that there are things in life that have to come first, so they did. I’ll have to start double-posting to make it up.
The photo above captures Honey in mid-complaint. She has a very hard life, oh my. Firstly, there’s the annoying fat boy cat who is so stupid and slow and stupid, and then there’s a constant battle against utter starvation, and fitting in 22 hours of sleeping per day whilst still maintaining a svelte 2.2kg frame is tough work, even for a multi-talented Abyssinian like herself. Then, goodness me, she’s always so terribly itchy and everyone has to scratch her and well, they’d better not stop scratching or I tell you what, she might start doing some scratching herself.
Prue Ashurst conducted the Festival choir for part of the evening’s perfomance. I remember Prue from when I was at uni, when she conducted the Conservatorium Chorale.
If she ever wondered why some of her altos were a little giggly at late afternoon rehearsals, it’s because we had a three hour break between the end of our last class for the day and the beginning of the chorale rehearsal, and we used to mostly spend it in the tavern, drinking bourbon, eating Kinder Surprises and making the little toys that you get in the Kinder Surprises.
I really enjoyed chorale (and not just because of the bourbon and chocolate). Because I had years and years of choir training, I can blend nicely with other voices and tell right away if I’m not in tune, but I cannot for the life of me sing solo. During my first year at the Con, we sang Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, which is still one of my favourite pieces of music. It’s spine-tingling, ephemeral and downright terrifying in some parts.
I also like the Kinder Surprise toys although the chocolate is a bit sickly.
The Supreme Court Gardens in the city centre hosted the opening event: firstly the specially commissioned overture, composed by Iain Grandage and performed by the Festival Journey Chior and Tetrafide percussion ensemble, with visuals onscreen from BLINK, a photography exhibition from regional WA.
Then a screening of the brilliant stop-animation film version of Peter and the Wolf by BreakThru Films with the live score performed by the Australian Youth Orchestra. Although it’s for kids as well as adults, I found the film quite scary, and the intensely atmospheric music only added to the unsettling feeling.
Here’s a trailer from the world premiere of the film in London. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnPrTEKibJI] The animation is just beautiful.
Being a family event, the evening was quite short – the film is 30 minutes long, and we were home by 10.30pm – but it was a good start to what’s going to be a really great festival program.
I got the big lens out and did some scurrying around the sides of the choir stand, and managed to get a few passable photos of Mr Grandage, Prue Ashurst, the other director of the choir, and the Tetrafide percussionists – just more material for slow days in the infamous photo project!
This month was the first of the Port80 “mini-talks” – two speakers giving 10 minute presentations on suitably geeky topics. First up, Brian Madsen (better known as Deprecated Cruelty on the Port80 forums or CSharpZealot in other circuits) gave an overview of the new Microsoft Expression suite.
Next up, Myles Eftos gave a presentation entitled “Out of the way JSON – if CSS can be unobtrusive, so can JavaScript” which covered the basics of DOM scripting.
Both speakers did a great job and the concept was well recieved. The Velvet Lounge rocks as a Port80 venue – looking forward to many more cool events there!
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