Unexpected That Was

I looked at the whale photos today and some of them are pretty bloody good … even if I do say so myself!

I will edit them tomorrow and hopefully post some here tomorrow night.

BGWLBH and I drove into The Bay today to purchase a mop bucket for Adoring Husband. His work bucket broke and currently he is having problems with his shoulder and sometimes the pain is so bad, he can’t drive because turning the steering wheel hurts.

So we did a run to Bunnings and along with the bucket, we bought some potting mix.

We drove over to the Boat Club to book and pay for our next whale watching trip on 21st August. We became members last year so that we could get cheaper rates for whale watching. We lunched while we were there.

Officeworks got a visit from us, as well as the newsagent in Scarness, the bakery and Urangan Fisheries.

We arrived home quite late so I played with and fed Harley, shelled my sand crabs and king prawns, made the marinade for our chicken and then sat.

It’s now way after midnight so …

Nite all.

Deep Sleep

I slept deeply and soundly last night for a solid 8 hours.

Today has been uneventful.

Just the usual.

No art. Nothing to calm or soothe the soul.

Footy tipping is off to a good start. I’ve taken this week as my joker round which means double points for each win.

I still haven’t looked at the whale pics that I took. Might do that tomorrow.

That’s it from me.

Nite all.

Done In

After another big day in the bay buying breakfast, tape, paint, books, baskets, pillows, lotto, lemons, organic castor oil, pens, Harley toys, juices, eggs and lotto, then picking up the FROG box, I am just about done in.

The weather was appalling with black clouds, heavy rain and cold winds.

We arrived home late, almost 4pm, so there was only time to unpack our goodies and have a quick play with Harley before preparing dinner. I crumbed the leftover chicken and BGWLBH prepared the salad.

It’s only 9.30pm and I’m ready for sleep.

Nite all.

Uneventful Day

Nothing happened today.

Cooked breakfast.

Harley play.

BGWLBH vacuumed, mopped, washed blankets and cushions while I played.

Adoring Husband had appointments for two scans so he was out of the house for about three hours.

Cooked dinner - crumbed chicken thighs with salad.

Still feeling pretty tired after Childers on Sunday and whale watching on Monday, which reminds me, I haven’t looked at the photos yet.

We are into The Bay tomorrow for breakfast and a walk out onto the pier to watch the whale boats go out.

Time to sleep now.

Nite all.

Whale of a Time

Today’s whale watching trip goes into my top five of all time. I estimate that I’ve whale watched approximately 25 times. Once or twice each year for the from 2006 - 2017, then, due to a terrible weather day where I was incredibly unwell, no whale watching for five years, three times last year and once today.

There was a pod of five whales. One female being fought over by four males. It was FULL ON! The males were jumping and rolling onto each other and they were all swimming super fast under and around the boats. The males were opening their mouths and filling them with water and air to make themselves look bigger and stronger.

A couple of the males were bleeding from where they knocked their barnacles off. They were roaring from their blow holes.

All the while, the female was rolling onto her back and slowly flapping her fins onto the water.

This lasted for about an hour and then we had to start heading back to the marina.

On the return trip, we found two more whales. A male and female. The male looked all cut up on his head like he’d been fighting and all his barnacles had been knocked off. He placed himself half under our boat and wouldn’t move. The female just floated beside the boat, every so often bobbing her head up to say hello.

Boats are not allowed to turn their engines on when whales mug them like that, so we were stuck there for a good 40 minutes and had to call on another whale watching boat to come get the whales attention.

We didn’t get back to the marina until 1.05pm and the boat was supposed to leave for the afternoon whale watch at 1pm. The crew had to clean the boat before the new customers came on board.

I haven’t even looked at the photos yet but here are a couple of short videos from the day …

After spending three hours holding up my 4kg camera and lens, my back was burning and I was exhausted!

It was 1.30pm by the time we left the marina and since we hadn’t eaten all day, we stopped at Su Jus for some energy providing juice. It was the longest drive home and it was 2.30pm when we walked in the door.

I lay down with Harley on the couch until moving to the lounge room for an hour. I took Harley outside for a short play and then I collapsed on my bed where I fell into a deep sleep for two hours.

I’m still tired so it’s back to sleep for me now. Too much fresh air for one day haha.

Nite all.

Festival Fun

A little old lady was walking down the street dragging two large plastic garbage bags behind her. One of the bags was ripped, and every once in awhile, a $20 bill fell out onto the sidewalk. 

Noticing this, a Policeman stopped her, and said, "Ma'am, there are $20 bills falling Out of that bag."

"Oh, really? Darn it!" said the little old lady. "I'd better go back and see if I can find them. Thanks for telling me officer.."

"Well, now, not so fast," said the cop. "Where did you get all that money? You didn't steal it, did you?"

"Oh, no, no", said the old lady. "You see, my back yard is right next to the football stadium parking lot. On game days, a lot of fans come and pee through a knot hole in the fence, right into my flower garden. It used to really tick me off. Kills the flowers, you know.

Then I thought, 'why not make the best of it?' So, now, on game days, I stand behind the fence by the knot hole, real quiet, with my hedge clippers. Every time some guy sticks his pecker through my fence, I surprise him, grab hold of it and say, 'O.K., buddy! Give me $20, or off it comes.'

"Well, that seems only fair," said the cop, laughing. "OK. Good luck!

Oh, by the way, what's in the other bag?"

"Well, you know", said the little old lady, "not everybody pays."

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

We experienced an exhausting morning at Childers for the festival.

Typically, we always arrive before 8am and get to spend the first ninety minutes crowd free and able to see all the stalls without issue. We follow that with some food from a van and we sit near the staging area and enjoy some of the entertainment before working our way back to the car and heading home before midday.

This year was a bit different.

By 9am, the crowds were difficult to negotiate and we were feeling a bit claustrophobic. We persisted until almost 11am and then made our escape. No entertainment and we couldn't find any gluten free food so we decided to try Arkarra Gardens for a late breakfast, but unfortunately they stop serving breakfast at 11am, as do Goodys on the Beach.

We thought The Bay might have all day breakfast somewhere, but then we figured we may as well have lunch.

A great idea in theory, and even though traffic was almost nonexistent, the restaurants were super busy! So we hightailed it home to the safety and solitude of our own kitchen and we were sitting down to our home made lunch by 1pm.

Yes I made some purchases at Childers - a silver sugar bowl mobile with silver cutlery, two home made stuffed toys (gifts), a crystal, a hanging shell, a card and some treats for Harley.

Much less than I usually buy at my favourite festival!

Tomorrow is whale watching day, so another early start for me - that means it’s time for me to sleep!

Nite all.

Restful to Not

After preparing breakfast, I took Harley to the pool area for play time.

The weather was absolutely glorious. A perfectly mild sunshiny day and I sat in the sun watching music videos on YouTube while tossing the ball for Harley for almost 3 hours.

It was one of the most relaxing mornings I’ve had in a long time and I was feeling ‘at peace’ with the world until …

Adoring Husband appeared asking if I had made our Frog box order because he saw an email and had just paid it. He had seen last weeks order in the email and paid it for the second time.

Now my peace was gone as I tried to figure out how to fix this error as quickly and painlessly as possible.

😳

I decided to make this weeks Frog order and try to get it as close to that amount as possible so that we could phone the frog people, pay the difference and explain that we gave the wrong order number.

The amount that AH had paid was $72.55

I put in an order totalling $73.25 and figured we could pay the 70c difference and phone them with the correct order number so that they could correct the payment details at their end.

When I got to the checkout, there was a note stating that we had 70c credit from last week and our new total for this week was $72.55! How freaky is that!?

So AH phoned them and told them the order number that should go with the payment he’d made and they fixed it over the phone. Problem solved.

Now that my peace was shattered, I attempted to do some art but I couldn’t settle the voices in my head, so I gave up and decided to watch some “Pottery Throwdown” on telly, but first I made toasties for lunch.

I napped on the couch before the footy started.

Took Harley out for a couple of quick plays and made a lamb and rice dish for dinner.

I’m in bed watching the end of the Cronulla vs Penrith game and hoping for an early night so that I’ll be fresh for the Childers Festival tomorrow.

A tomato from our garden …

Nite all.

T Paper

BGWLBH and I drove into The Bay after breakfast.

Adoring Husband had a coffee date at 10am so Harley had his second ‘home alone’ time this week.

He was fine and was sound asleep on his outdoor bed when AH arrived home. He didn’t even hear AH come through the gate!

We started at G&D Products to purchase toilet paper for AH’s work, after which, we went to all our favourite places - Nana’s Pantry, Office Works, Newsagent, Choice, Coles, 2 x butchers, Foodworks, Happy Hippy and Post Office.

It was quite late when we arrived home so I made a late lunch of ham, cheese and tomato toasties for AH and BGWLBH.

Harley got 15 minutes of play time that really wore him out. He was huffing and puffing for about 30 minutes after we stopped.

I made the marinade for our Friday night chicken and then parked myself on the couch.

Buggered.

So far so good in the footy tipping.

Tomorrow will be a rest day to prepare for the Childers Festival on Sunday.

Thinking of Number One Son who is struggling with some mental health issues. He’s receiving the best care at the moment so I can be grateful for that.

Bubbles is in South Australia visiting her Dad for the weekend.

I received my third letter from Chicklet yesterday which included some pages with her doodles of hands and bananas. She has arty genes from her father and from me! She created this great anime of her and Hazie …

So sweet.

Time for me to sleep now.

Nite all.

Drama Drama

One in 35

Some time this morning when Adoring Husband turned on the TV, the screen turned pink and he had to reset the Foxtel IQ box.

Once reset, there was no sound at all.

When switched to Netflix or Prime Video or Stan, the sound was fine, but zip on Foxtel.

I went through ALL the settings but couldn’t find anything wrong. I checked the mute buttons on both remote controls. I checked the Foxtel settings AND the TV settings. I checked on Google for problem solving, tried all the suggestions to no avail.

Finally, I got onto the Foxtel website and opened the live chat to ask the questions.

I spoke to Ava and provided personal details to prove we were Foxtel customers. She passed me on to Jikka who asked a few questions and then passed me on to Triss.

Triss asked me to change the position of the HDMI cable and then fix the setting to show the new position, which I did. She then reset the box from her end … to no avail. She then passed me on to Leio.

Leio asked me to go into settings and change the audio output to a different setting. He then reset the box from his end … to no avail.

We tried a couple of other things and he conceded defeat and told me we needed a new box, which he ordered and told me it would arrive next Wednesday. Mind you, the box we have is only one year old!

We ended that chat.

I wondered why the TV in the bedroom worked ok with the sound in Foxtel so I opened a new chat and spoke to Ava (again) who passed me on to Nic.

I asked why the smart TV in the bedroom had sound for Foxtel and was working perfectly - apparently it works via an app. Who knew? Not me.

By this time, almost two hours had passed.

AH then discovered that the TV was not connected to the WIFI so he spent considerable time fixing that - it had nothing to do with the sound though.

Then, for no apparent reason, AH pressed the microphone button on the Foxtel remote control and said “Turn sound on”. 

Instantly, the sound came on!

What the!?!?

So I contacted Foxtel, speaking to Jessica, and cancelled the order for the new box. Jessica didn’t even ask how we resolved the issue.

So six different operators were unable to resolve our issue in two hours.

I was exhausted but grateful that AH tried something random and stupid which worked.

Now I need to sleep!

Lemons from our 1 yr old tree!

Nite all.