Lyrid Meteor over Crater Lake.

A lovely view of Crater Lake, a nested caldera in Oregan, USA.  A few nights ago there was no sunset or moonglow to interrupt viewing of the Lyrid Meteor Shower which showed as many as 30 meteors streaking across the sky from various locations

From almost the same vantage point a composite of nine exposures combined to show our Galaxy and a bright Lyrid Meteor streaking across the sky. The image is copyright to Brad Goldpaint.

Other meteor showers this year include the Perseids in mid-August and the Leonids in mid-November, both expected to also dodge the glare of a bright Moon in 2012.

Fata Morgana

This optical illusion known as a Fata Morgana makes strange shapes or a false wall of water appear above a watery horizon. When conditions are right, light reflecting off of cold water will be bent by an unusual layer of warm air above to arrive at the observer from several different angles. One hundred years ago, such a Fata Morgana mirage might have obscured real icebergs from the clear view of crew onboard the Titanic.
Additional evidence for this distortion hypothesis arises from the nearby vessel SS Californian which reported sightings consistent with Fata Morgana mirages. Read more about the SS Californian and the mystery of why she didn't come to the aid of the Titanic.
The above Fata Morgana mirage was taken off the US Pacific coast in 2008.

Look  at this Fata Morgana in greater detail.  The site also gives a very good explanation for the phenomenom.

Doing some housework

And we start with the important work, finishing off the jewellery that's been sitting patiently in boxes. The photography isn't great but at least I've figured out how to make the images smaller.  The big stone is Rhodochroisite so I decided to keep the beads as neutral as possible. 

 I thought these would be easy, just thread the beads on, close the clip and I'm done. No such luck, I had these beads off the chain so many times until the balance was right, my fingers were complaining.  It's not until it's picked up that any odd bead stands out like a sore thumb. The large stone here is Carnelian.

 This is silverplated and the central stone is a large cubic zirconia originally from an Avon necklace but the chain was so fine I was forever cutting it out of my hair when taking it off. It looks better here.

This is only one of four bracelets that I finished.  The dark beads are dichroic and shimmer from green to purple to black.  The only thing about these bead bracelets is getting the size right and even this one with so many beads, falls off my wrist.  The backside is large, the wrist is dainty.  I also made another necklace but I could not get it to photograph it without the sparkles flaring. It's central pendant is a jewell covered ladybird with beads of pale blue and turquoise.  The other monster thing about the necklaces, the clips (not the bracelet) close like shark teeth on a boogie board.  I have come home and slept in one rather than attempt to open the clip and strangle my self.
Next in line are my new hair combs.  The old hands are struggling to twist wire onto combs these days so when I bought the green brooch in an online sale, it seemed a perfect comb shape so I pinned it to fabric over cardboard then stitched around to make it more stable.  I could have removed the pin but I might go mad one day and ditch the long red hair and I'd still have a brooch.  It looked and felt so great, I went back and bought three more, well, the sale was still on or I might have thought twice but I didn't.  So I have a pink one at the top, a pale purple, green and one should always have black in the wardrobe.  I realized then that I was missing a red one so I found a rather nice oval with red stones, on sale, honest.

Awards night.

Liebster is a German word that translates to; dearest, beloved or in this case favorite. The idea of the Liebster Award is to give it to an up and coming blog with fewer than 200 followers. – in order to create new connections, and bring attention to their wonderful blogs.



Here are the conditions that go along with accepting the award;



1. Thank the Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.


2. Link back to the blogger who presented you the award.


3. Copy and paste the Liebster Blog Award on your blog.


4. Present the award to 5 bloggers who have a following 200 or less, who you feel deserve it.


5. Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment on their blog.


Thank you Elephant's Child and now for the hard part.


It's amazing how many blogs have disappeared from my list and deserted to Farcebook, even the political blog L.P. has shut up shop. 


My first award is for Miss Ann O'Dyne.  I can't link to her because she's in seclusion due to the League of Trolls making her blog life miserable. From the first time we met and almost wrecked a small eatery (broken glasses, tipped over bottles, fights with Lord Sedgwick) we've been blogmates.


Then another blogger who blogs so infrequently that it's always a joy to see a post. Take a bow Brandyman and hug your best beloved and Bear and Mits.


I really couldn't leave out my IT consultant Antikva an artist of note and noted for her injuries. How can I not love someone who falls over more often than I do.


Our Fen who is currently propping up another hospital bed deserves a bucket of love.  Keep writing Fen, reading about another's pain makes me feel so much better. She also has the most beautiful cats.


And my last goes overseas to a very funny boi who treasure acorns, Dr Who and Lego.  If I need a laugh and Sedgwick's off his game then this is the blog I run to.  The first thing I aim to do when I win Tattslotto is send him every StarWars lego toy in the inventory.

Damned hard work awarding awards and unlike the Logies, Oscars and Brownlow, I'm not even close to being pissed.

Well, I never!



You know you get to a certain age and think there's not much you don't know about life and stuff in general until you come across an article about flower frogs and don't take much notice until up comes a photograph.  Well, blow me down with a feather, so that's what those holey, spikey doovers that go in the bottom of vases to hold the flowers steady are called.  So I went looking for a few more images and they're in every shape, size, ceramic, glass and metal and some are frogs and some aren't.

I know all you flower people would probably know this but I'm of the silk flower brigade because they only fade not die.  I do have an English original flower frog in the original holder and original stand from the l930s. It's made of glass designed to look like tortoiseshell when the light shines through and was given to me by a friend who had a daughter-in-law 100% worse than mine.  She knew she would throw it out so I was to be its keeper and I still am.  I will always keep it as she was only given 3 weddings gifts and two she entrusted to me.

Flower frog, It really makes it live.



Life at the Home aka The Black Hole of Age

If you want to see life pass by in all its crap and glory, put a parent in a Home.
They don't change, in fact, Mother blossomed like bulb in Spring although I have to admit Autumn is more her style these days. 
Nasty things are happening in that left hand and arm where the cancer is creating havoc on nerves up around the shoulder and neck and who knows where else.
She had me cutting up cards the other day and I am not being dragged back into the days of servitude.
I am investigating an iPad or eReader for when she absolutely cannot hold a book in both hands, like last week.  She was terrified that she would go back to lying in a bed looking at the ceiling, not that she remembers doing that, it's just that we've told her how bad it was.
Phone call this morning and the hand is slightly better. Two fingers are cold, that's the carpel tunnel and two finger are burning hot, that's the Rheumatoid Arthritis, she says, self-diagnosing which is better than knowing the true situation.

It's the changing of the residents which is the entertainment.  I think of Elephant's Child whenever the MS sniveller whines about her lot in life. She's relatively young as against the oldies and could have had a nice unit, carer during the day and nurse on call at night but she prefers not to be independent. She is not liked much.
Opinionated new resident is not well liked either and her opinions are voiced very loudly.  Two of the little old ladies must have at least two wheel chair widths between them or it's like rumble in the jungle with fists flying.
What can I say about the escapee? Well he hates me because I wouldn't let him out the door.  He hides behind the potted palm just waiting for the one person who doesn't read the notice and doesn't shut the door hard and fast. They found him face down in the garden last week. We're not sure if he fell or was digging to freedom.  It still hasn't stopped him from trying to climb the fence or smash the combination lock on the gate with a pot plant. The good news is, he hasn't tried to strangle anyone in weeks.
And now the ladies, elderly, are having to deal with explicit sex lectures from a dear old bloke who barely uttered a word in 6 months. Something has shifted in his brain and he can't be stopped.

And in the midst of all of this is Accreditation time.  A time that is really important for a small home like this as the barracudabigtime Aged Care Health providers are always circling for any that don't make the grade.  This place would be torn down and two stories of tiny rooms at exorbitant prices would be up in no time.  So the nurses are not allowed to be over friendly, no hugs, no pats on the head, no nicknames, not even 'dear' and no loud voices.  Half of the residents can't hear if you talk softly and I'm certainly finding it hard, loud is my middle name.  The best thing about this place is the staff, take away their friendliness and kindness and the heart disappears. 

It's fine for the 'expert' who's been there a mere 3 weeks to say she'd like everyone to have their tea at the tables to be sociable before being put to bed.  It lasted one night. The next day every resident shot off to their room as soon as afternoon tea was finished and demanded to be in bed at 3.  They're in wheel chairs all day, backs hurt, bums hurt and all they want is to be settled and comfy in a bed for tea at 5. You'd have to be blind not to see the concentration waning and the bodies drooping but experiment is the name of the game.

Residents come and go, shuffling off to the big beyond and new ones take their place and the atmosphere changes to a more lively one only to change again in a few months. So if the 'expert' wants to know how things work or don't work, try having a meeting with us poor sods who are there day after day, year after year, on the other side of the bed.

I have no complaints about the staff or the Home, I think they are fabulous and are doing a great job of making the Home a home. They work for crappy wages as well.  Joe Hockey should try doing it for a week.

Time flies like like volcanic ash, fast.

Two years ago this month and Eyjafjallajokull, the unpronouncible Icelandic volcano, blew it's stack.



Scientists were worried then that neighbouring Katla caldera would also erupt and two years on, it's rumbling with erratic movements of the surface and bursts of earthquake activity beneath the caldera.
Katla's eruption in 1918 produced five times as much ash as the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull one. Last July, a flood of water burst from beneath the ice cap indicating that an extra pulse of heat from magma had reached the base of the ice.
Since Iceland was settled in the 9th Century, Katla has erupted nearly every 60 years but no significant event since 1918 and usually an eruption follows any eruption of Eyjafjallajokull within months. It seems it's well overdue.

Titanic still sails.

William Lange is the director of the Advanced Imaging and Visualization Lab at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and was on the the 1985 expedition that showed us the first images of Titanic. He returned to the site in 2010 to use new equipment and techniques to photograph the ship which lies at a depth of more than 13,000 feet where the water pressure is 10,000 pounds per square inch with near freezing temperatures on the seafloor.



In 1985 Bob Ballard's idea of live video images from the depths to a surface vessel was a revolution. The scientists could make real-time decisions on where to go in the ship but it still only had black and white video. Then humans went down in the submersible Alvin with high quality colour video cameras and a small ROV called Jason Jnr to penetrate into areas to small for Alvin.

These are photomosaics of Titanic from 2012 and 1987 and shows that the bow has remained relatively intact compared with the stern. The top mosaic consists of approximately 1,500 high-resolution still images shot in 2010, revealing structural changes that have occurred to the bow section.
The bottom image was the first complete image of Titanic on the seafloor and is made up of 100 images pieced together from the 53,000 taken by a towed camera sled. It took approximately 700 hours to make.
(copyright 2012RMS Titanic, Inc.)

There have been many Titanic visits made into documentaries but not enough was done on the position of the images in relation to the ship and the debris scattered on the seafloor. The hope was to detect a pattern in the placement of large sections of the ship indicating how it disintegrated as it sank. Bob Ballard proposed that as Titanic sank, the denser objects would fall more quickly and the less dense objects would fall more slowly and get separated over time by ocean currents to form a trail of debris. But later viewings showed that there were multiple debris fields that didn't fit that proposal.

The aft end of Titanic's keel is deeply embedded in thick, clay-like sediment and the port propeller is also visible in this view. (copyright 2012 RMS Titanic, Inc.)
 
William Lange felt that pieces of the wreckage were still not giving us the complete story. When in 2009, RMS Titanic Inc., the company which holds the salvage rights, was ready to return to Titanic, he went along to survey the site in an archaeological manner. The team developed scientific protocols including using REMUS vehicles which are not connected to the surface by cables and could be pre-programmed to map the seafloor with sonar devices. They also used a salvage ROV to collect high-resolution optical imagery. This enabled the team to see the wreck in 3-D, a time shot of Titanic as it was in 2010 and will be compared to other expeditions in the future as this voyage is compared to 1985.



According to Lange, the ship is decaying but the destruction is just more noticible due to the high resolution images available. The main aim is now to use the debris patterns to try and reverse the sinking and reconstruct what happened and when.

This is the first map of the Titanic wreck site based on images collected by Bob Ballard, Elazar Uchupi and William Lange during two WHOI expeditions in 1985 and l986. It was the most complete map until the new one was completed after this expedition.

If you have any questions then ask because I had to condense this down from four pages.

From the home front

IE8 and I have had a little discussion and if it behaves then I'll stay with it but I've imported all bookmarks to both Firefox and Google Chrome and I can change anytime IE8 annoys me.  Thank you to Antikva for all your advice and see I've put a link in, something I wasn't happy about doing at Firefox.


I mean I did love my little orange cat icons but using it was like wearing a cardy two sizes too small with burrs in it.  I suppose I would have gotten used to it if I was using it for more than an hour a day but we're back where I started and I feel my computer is ning-nong friendly again.


The home hunting is still going on. I just wish it wasn't left to someone who can't remember whether to wipe her nose or blow her bum.  I'm so hopeful I've started to clean up, washing the cutlery and the other dishes.  Tonight I should have a brand new ladder with wide steps, only two, and a big can of undercoat paint.


I've spent two days finishing up most of my jewellery projects and there will be photos. I can't seem to remember that I have an instant camera.  The earrings I finally got around to making were so nice, swarovski crystal pearls in powder rose, that I went back to the website and bought 35 12mm pearls for a matching necklace.  No, I didn't need a matching necklace but it will look nice when I'm hanging out the washing.  And I just love magnetic necklace and bracelet clasps. The joy of not strangling oneself trying to unhook a stupid teeny clasp.


Next on the list is enhancing my natural hair colour.  Two inches of white hair is enough to tell me I wouldn't be happy looking my age, the face is bad enough and don't ask about the weight, never ask about the weight.  I'm not supposed to use anything until the eye and sinus trouble clears up but it's taking forever and depression will overtake me if I look in the mirror once more and see Miss Haversham looking back.


My ladder has just arrived, lovely big wide steps but will plastic steps take a 120kgs load?
That's what it says and it's not like I'm going to be standing on them for hours at a time but when 6'4" leaves I'll have to change the smoke alarm and the light bulbs myself.  As for the undercoat, that will go on when I have taken all his tools out of and off the cupboard I need to paint.  I must remember to spray considering the size of the redback that disappeared behind it last time I tried to clean up.

And a big thank you to River for sending Captain Mal to keep me company. 

For something I have such a passion for, I'm constantly amazed at how little I know about gems, precious and semi-precious.

Take this lovely rainbow piece. It's almost exclusive found in a place called the four corners region of the Colorado Plateau in the USA where the states of Arizona, new Mexico, Utah and Colorado touch. It's dinosaur bone, petrified, permineralized or replaced with agate-type compounds. The original bone material has been replaced so that the structural detail is preserved and the interior pores and cavities have been filled with silica or quartz cystals letting us see the unique cell structure of once living dinosaurs.

 

There is a wide variety of colours from dull brown which looks like dino poop to these gorgeous specimens which look anything but. It all depends on the impurities that were in the surrounding sediment, chlorite, chromium, iron-oxide and manganese being some. The pink piece is extremely rare. 

Of course non-gem grade fossilized dinosaur bones are found in many places around the world.



But only a small portion has everything needed for a fine piece to be made into jewellry like these from Mark Anderson.

These specimens have not been raided from official sites as it's illegal to collect dino bone on US state for Federal lands. Most of the bone available is in broken blocks and chunks which due to erosion, weathering, and method of deposition, the pieces are not associated with a complete dinosaur skeleton and are of little value to a paleontologist

But the colours of gem quality Dino Bone are worth looking at and it is Jurassic Age material dating from 136,000,000 to 145,000,000 years old.

From Jupiter to us.

This is the Easter special.  An image taken from the Cassini spacecraft of the moon Io against the background of Jupiter. 

And here's one I prepared earlier...

I was supposed to post this before the merde hit the windfarm and it was worth posting.  On the menu it was sticky date pudding and pudding usually means heavy but this was like sticky date sponge. The sauce was toffee caramel with ice-cream and vanilla/cinnamon cream.  Every time this comes up on my screen saver I drool.  Mother wants to know if they do take-out.  She's decided not to go on any more trips by bus or have us wheel her any further than the park around the corner which I am pleased about.  She is more frail than she appears and I wouldn't mind carting a couple of these desserts down to the park.

I saw Doc Marvin yesterday and copped a mild lecture on thinking that everything that goes wrong with me is due to stress except for the blood pressure, up enough to power a rocket for NASA.  Despite leaving a note that no flowers are to be left near Mother, countless bunches came in for her birthday and while I was hauling the pollen laden allergens away from her, I caught pollen on my face.  Nothing came up on the skin, no itching but the sneaky little globules got in under my eyelid and into the sinuses.  So the eyelid is inflamed, the eyeball feels like it's being pushed out to sea, the bones around the brow and cheek are infected from the sinus cavity.

On the other foot, the tear in the Achille's tendon seems to have healed itself, go me!  

Now I have extra blood pressure tablets, sinus spray and eye drops.  Hopefully the morning nausea will now stop and I'll be able to open my eye straight away instead of waiting 5 minutes for it to unglue.

I have not bought an Easter egg or chocolates but compensated by buying hot cross buns and butter for Sunday brunch.  The expectant family is supposed to be going away to see his other grandmother who is loopier than the one he has here.  I will cheer for the freedom of a whole 2 days and 1 night but not until the car is out of sight. 

White Elephant successful

The top image which I can't be bothered writing underneath because I'm lucky I got this far without a meltdown is mine from the White Elephant sale.  Handpainted gold on a bisque finish but I'd say a Chinese knock-off since there are no markings but really nice and I fell for it as soon as I saw it.

And here we have Mother who came out to supervise the selling while having lunch.  Her head was getting a bit sunburnt so I plonked a black straw hat on it and she ended up looking like Darth Mother.  She threatened me if I dared put it on the blog.  You can see by the blue sky what a fantastic day it was and even though we only had about 25 people buying, the total for the day was $438 but another $150 was due from the staff  so we did rather well.  Nothing was priced higher than $10, mostly $1 to $5 so I'm at a loss at how I managed to spend $60.  8 pairs of sunglasses for my sister and she still hasn't rung to say she liked them or sent me the $20.  Numerous kitchen (new) odments for the happy couple who still haven't found a bloody place to live yet.  Nobody wanted the cookbooks and 2 were right for me and 2 for River's kitchen. Sending soon River, promise. I really wanted to give you the little book of muffins and slices but it was too, too delicious to let go.  I'll probably never bake them but just looking is sometimes enough.

Firefox is still bamboozling me but is giving Antikva hours of hilarity at my incompetency despite her week long migraine probably caused by my pathetic emails.  The only thing I like is the row of little orange cats as icons, cheery, while I sob about the other stuff.  If I could just figure out how to get google images I'll be happy and importing bookmarks went well except I'm not used to everything being in alphabetical order. I don't do the alphabet very well, tend to get lost around m or n.

I see there's quite a few comments on the last post so I guess that Lord Rochester has been composing more of his memoirs.

River, I feel so guilty about that muffin book.  If only you baked and delivered by mail, I'd send it immediately but then I'd feel terrible that our Kath would miss out on the chocolate ones. Sometimes I wish I was a cold hearted bitch, it would make life so much easier. 

I'm here hiding from IE8.

I still don't know what is going on with Internet Explorer and Google and why I've been locked out of Blogger for weeks.

So, GoogleChrome was downloaded again from FileHippo because I couldn't sign in to blogger from anywhere. It didn't matter because I can't sign in to Google Chrome either.

Firefox was still on the computer so download all updates and switch browsers.  Favourites still had blogs on it from five years ago and I still have to comprehend "synching" favourites from Internet Explorers.

One problem at a time.

I am blogging and I switched off the double word verification. Thank you Google for answering the numerous emails complaining about this.  Unfortunately I have to sign in as anonymous because signing in with my google leads to the IE8 message that it can't display the page.  So anonymous it is.

Mother is ill. Temperature was 38.5 this morning and she's pulled a muscle in her back which makes breathing very painful. Temp. came down to 37 this afternoon but it's the first time she's asked for the window to be opened for a cooling breeze. Usually she's very cold even on a hot day.  She didn't sound great so I pulled on the glad rags and reached out to call a cab when she rang to see if I'd come down.  I always know when she needs someone around.  Doc Marvin will call in tonight or tomorrow morning and I'll be back there on Wednesday.

Wednesday we start pricing all the white elephant goodies and hopefully it won't rain on Thursday.  I've covered 14 note books and diaries and would have finished with 6 covered boxes but I think I'll make do with 4.  I'd forgotten how long it takes to do one book let alone 14 of various sizes.

This Firefox takes a bit of getting used to but I did find a lovely green theme with little orange cats so the page pleases me but I'm still going along with IE8 until I can figure out how to import a very long list of sites even after culling a few dead ones along the way.

To Miss O'Dyne, I can't access any of your blogs, IE8 hates both of us.

To Antikva, thank you for trying to help the extremely computer illiterate. I still can't understand how I can be on the phone with you up country, me in Cheltenham but you roaming around in my computer telling me which buttons to press.  I've been to places in this computer that I didn't know existed.  Creepy little programs running in the background but fortunately no viruses but plenty of tracking cookies which are now languishing in the virus vault.

I was wondering why I hadn't had any accounts from Mum's pharmacy for this year, Gmail decided they were all spam and chucked them in the bin along with Taste.com and a load of delicious cakes. The worst thing that ever happened to our Blogger.com was Google taking over. If I wanted a facebook type blog I'd be on facebook so stick that up your little netcrawlers looking for illicit mentioning of your Google name.

And Galah of the Year goes to........

What a day was yesterday.
I lost my blog identity. Piss off Google+ and the Chrome you've been sniffing.
I was credit card scammed over the phone.
Then there was the burial plot/funeral insurance scam in the morning.
And in the afternoon they tried for the Centrelink pension scam again.

Antikva did her best but could only assume I bonked some button that connected blogger with google and deleted myself. I was a non-blogger for a day and almost had a melt down. I had a blog post to put up. I sent off 3 emails to Blogger, put Googlechrome in the sin bin, IE8 is my browser and google is default search.
I managed to get the blog page up but couldn't access dashboard so I clicked on create blog up in the corner and sneakily crawled in the back way to old dashboard and took up their invite to new dashboard. I was back, did the post and fingers crossed it was up but I still couldn't access half the blogs until late last night when Me was restored to JahTeh.

In the meantime I had told the funeral insurance/burial plot seller to piss off as I felt I already had one foot in the grave.

Next call was very official from the bank.  Now question time, how many of you know that the first four numbers on a credit card is the same for everybody?  Shut up you smarties.
This member of the Peter Sellers Memorial Call Centre had a lot of my information and I realised later where she'd gotten it from and the scam went like this.
Bank of Melbourne has been overcharging fees for some years and the department of consumer affairs had ordered refunds for customers. Gong number 1 should have gone off then as I've banked with St. George which has just merged with BofM so I shouldn't have been affected.
They had my address plus post code. Asked if I did internet banking. Asked If I did phone banking and did I do it with mobile calls. Checked my birthdate which they had. Asked to check my bank card details or my credit card details. Okay getting edgy here and my bank account is linked to mother's and a lot of money there so went with credit card which has only debt.
Before this, I was told that the consumer affairs person would ring today (Saturday) and when I pointed this out, she said they were working overtime on this problem. Gong 2, a government department working overtime to help a bank.  I was given a password. I had to ask the consumer dept worker ant for their password so that it matched mine and I would know I was secure.  Now comes the scam part. In order to have my refund I would have to pay a one off bank tax, if I had a refund of $4,000 then I would have to pay $400 and I could pay it at any post office then I would have the money.
So stupidly and knowing it was stupid as soon as the numbers were out of my mouth, I gave them the credit card numbers and the CVV number on the back. Bingo, they had what they wanted, credit card fraud was out of the starting blocks.

As soon as I hung up, I rang Bank of Melbourne, cancelled the card and had a watch put on all accounts.  The girl was good, she'd had so many calls this week about this particular scam that she knew all the details, made sure my last transaction was mine then cancelled everything. I felt such an idiot but she said it wasn't only old people (me?) that were being caught this time, the younger ones were as well and they were giving out mobile numbers so at least I hadn't done that. I don't give my mobile number to anyone except the nursing home. She also asked if any official mail had gone missing but everything like bank statements and centrelink (more about them later) are filed straight after I review the credit card statement. I mean I'm so paranoid about identity theft that I take my name and address off every parcel I receive from overseas before it goes in the recycle bin.  I will have a new credit card sometime next week. And I rang the nursing home to make sure that none of the residents did their own banking and the assistant DoN said her card had been hacked to the tune of $81,000 in America and this was while she was on the phone with the bank who were checking an item for $60.

Late in the afternoon while I was still wrangling blogger, another phone call comes in.
Not Mrs....... but my first name and last name together. This is a call from Centrelink regarding my pension from another member of the PSMCC. She was told (crudity coming up) to shove her scam up her twat and don't ring again. Surprisingly she hung up.

And about Centrelink who now are pushing for not sending out pension statements but want everyone to see their details online. After today I want everything in writing which I need to have as Power of Att. for mother.  So I'll be stomping up to centrelink on Monday to get her bank balance adjusted and told I don't have online access. Not only do they want me to go online for details but print it out as well.  With all this going on, I'm not surprised I was ripe for scamming.
 I forgot, the details for the bank scam, remember the centrelink scam from a few weeks back, yep all those details were enough to start off the bank one.

How did I ever do it?

When Mum and I started crafting in the early eighties, it was imagination all the way with very little in the way of craft books or patterns unless we're talking knitted tea cosies or baby stuff.  The massive boom in patchwork and quilting was still 12 years away and making your own jewellery no more than stringing round beads together.

The brooches came about when I had felt ovals left after embroidering photo frames. I mean they did have to have somewhere for the picture to show through. The one on the left, cream one isn't as delicate as the black. I exchanged green thread for gold metal and later instead of freehand embroidery of the bows, I used small gold metal bows. Then I moved on to embroidering on pure silk, highlighting with very tiny pearls and putting them into gold and silver surrounds.

With the first brooches I did everything. The internal support was cut from cardboard after being traced from my template. My thumbs did ache after cutting out a hundred 6cm x 4.5cm ovals and not one to waste, small pieces of cardboard became smaller and cheaper brooches without bows. 

The guipure lace trim would never go around and lay flat without a small piece cut out of the edge.  Something that one woman never got the hang of when she tried teaching a class using one of my brooches as her own. A loyal customer came to the market and told me.  So the roses followed the same pattern on each, just the colours changed and those bows were a horror to get even. The felt was glued to the cardboard and pinking shears used to make the zigzag edge which was then glued down without buckling.  The back went on with a simple safety pin pushed through the felt. I did have a photo but the computer went on strike when I was trying to load it.

At first it was just the guipure but I thought it was a little too plain so in between the tiny arches of the guipure I'd drop a little glue and then with a darning needle, pick up the pearls and drop them on the glue making sure the holes couldn't be seen.  I think the most I ever sold was 35 at the Christmas market of l989 and I charged a whopping $6 each. I made more money at that market than I'd ever seen and I bought a Hoover vac with it. The vac's still going strong even if I'm not.

By l992, the brooch market was dead and so were my photo frames. I was ahead of the times for embroidery, during the nineties it became big, ribbon embroidery, Brazilian, petit point, cross stitch and books for it all.  Then came Tracey Marsh with her 'How to make' books and suddenly every woman and dog became a crafter, even later came the smarties who cut out the fabric and sold ready to make kits.  Mum and I managed to keep ahead of the pack by changing the things we made, babies everything for mum and I found a hole in the market for wedding favours.  That was until dressmakers began using left over from the wedding dresses and made to match.  One of our fellow stall holders said that if we saw an idea in an American magazine then we had 6 months to make and sell it before it reached here and everyone was into it. She was dead right.

Hate google chrome and google and the new comments box

What stupid idiot re-arranged all the comments, the verification and generally put me in a bad mood?

And for heaven's sake don't click on this photo or it will look like it's going to eat you.  Another bloody stupid thing to learn, how to get the photos small.
Anyway today's Wednesday so I ate this on Monday and enjoyed every delicious bite. Mind you, it wasn't that big but cherry ripe sponge with coconut and large morello cherries and a thin layer of chocolate sponge in the middle. It was covered in a thin layer of chocolate and I only ate this because mother got in and grabbed the last of the lemon meringue.
The Trevally was a bit overcooked and overpriced but then so was the Barramundi we had at the last place.  I haven't been to The Sandy pub since I can't remember when and the view over the bay was fantastic but while the air-con was icy inside, outside was like a sauna.  Very wheelchair friendly but the chairs were murder. The sharp edge of the back hit the spine and really hurt everyone but especially me who spent half the night with ice packs on the one spot I don't need to be hit on.
Most of us decided on fish and salad but mother wanted old fashioned sausages and mash until she saw the Guinness beef pie and Irish mash which came with a can of Guinness. She didn't drink that but passed it on. She did a good job on the pie though and the lemon meringue.  One and a half hours is tops for her, mostly it's getting in and out of the taxi.
I left about four when they were putting her to bed and she went to sleep, through tea, until breakfast the next morning.
Even though it's a bit pricey, $9 for a glass of wine but only $3.50 for soda, lime and bitters (mine), we've decided to go again simply because of the spaciousness of the dining area and the view. But we're changing the chairs whether they like it or not. 

This was supposed to be "MY YEAR"

According to all the stars at the end of last year plus all of those stars predicted a new baby coming in to my life and all I'm thinking is, my granddaughters couldn't be that stupid, surely not but we know the stars never lie and I'm not going to be a greatgrandmother just an interested onlooker.

So here is eldest granddaughter, 19 in February not 20 as I thought. One loses track when their bitchqueenoftheuniversemother doesn't let them keep in touch with me not to mention her consort bastardoftheuniversestepfather.  Youngest does email but has to sneak photos to me and as their internet was slow I only received this one. She's working two jobs to keep a roof over her head while my 39 year old teenage father to be is still living here but enough of him, blood pressure goes up. I should yell and throw his things into the street but it wouldn't make him face reality, he has to leave on his own or it won't mean he's growing up.

Now down to my year, all good things happening but with only one full moon in my sign this year and it's gone. 

1. Mother is still with us, well me mostly since I'm the one carrying the bird seed bells and the books and all the other crap she needs/wants immediately.

2. Weight.  Right back to where I was 10 years ago and very pissed off. And pissed off was where I was 10 years ago until I suddenly became very happy and dropped weight like 6 biggest loosers. I hate that show, utter crap. If it was that easy with weight lifting I should be sylph like with the family I'm carrying on my back.

3. I'm healthy apart from blood pressure (goddess knows why) Diabetes (my name is copperwitch and I am a chocoholic) dodgy knees (jeebus Southland raise your damn toilets to people height,we're not all gnomes) and now a tear in the Achille's tendon. Of course it would be the left leg, always the left leg. It's like that movie where they transplant the murderer's hands and the guy starts killing people. It's the same with the left leg, it's always getting in the way and falling over, I'm sure it belonged to someone else who was fat and clumsy.

4. Money. For some reason, I'm a little in front. Absolutely nothing to do with playing the pokies.  And, 'Getup', stop sending me petitions calling for the abolition of poker machines, I feel like a hyocrite if I sign them.

5. Family. Me losing, them winning. What can I say, once a family doormat always a family doormat.

The good news is that I only appear to have a small tear in the Achille's. That's as far as the experts in thin leg ultrasounds can tell. Doc Marvin was more positive. I was more positive after googling (sue me for using your crappy name!) ruptured Achille's tendon. I don't advise the squeamish to google (go on get me again) images. There's a site  devoted to the experiences of people with ruptures (no not the ones ascending) and the neg and pos of surgery, plaster, moonboots. Now there's a joy, you can take them off to go to bed but you must put them back on even if you're only going for a pee and as a nightly frequent pee'r that comes under the heading of sheer hell.

I digress (and now need a pee) but from the reading I have only a small tear which will heal with the help of scar tissue and probably hold.  Most on this forum are basketballers, marathon runners, all that masochistic stuff and just can't wait to get back to breaking and tearing some other body part.  The self healing part happened to a lot who had only a small tear, colour me happy.  Thank you Antikva for telling me to strap it with Fixomul stretch tape, now get down here and do it for me. What a bluebird of happiness stretch ultra sticky tape is to get on the back of a foot below a fat leg that belongs to someone else and doesn't co-operate.

And just when you really need that half price taxi card, the micro chip fritzes itself. Happily fritzed chips are the taxi directorate's fault and I don't have to pay $16 for a new card but I have to wait a week for it to arrive.  Oh dear, sorry mother, can't stagger to the bus this week but I will meet you for lunch on Monday since I'm being picked up.

AAAAAAAAnd I'm signing up for online shopping with both Coles and Woolies. Whichever store has the best bargains for the week, gets my shopping. Lateral thinking, I haz it.

 Lucky Rio Tinto, with all of W.A. to plough around in, it manages to find this 12.76 carat pink diamond. The largest of the rare and precious pink stones ever found in the resources-rich West.



Named the Argyle Pink Jubilee, the huge rough stone was found at Rio's pink diamond operations in the Kimberley region.


"This rare diamond is generating incredible excitement. A diamond of this calibre is unprecedented -- it has taken 26 years of Argyle production to unearth this stone and we may never see one like this again," said Josephine Johnson from Rio's Argyle Pink Diamonds division.


Rio produces more than 90 percent of the world's pink diamonds from the Argyle mine, and said large stones like the Jubilee typically went to museums, were gifted to royalty or end up at prestigious auction houses like Christie's.



Christie's had only auctioned 18 polished pink diamonds larger than 10 carats in its 244-year history, Rio said.


When the Jubilee diamond has been cut and polished it will be graded by international experts and showcased globally before being sold by invitation-only tender later this year.


It would be nice if Gina R picked up the tab and presented it to Her Majesty.
 
I'm hoping they make a documentary of the cutting and polishing and that it turns out to be absolutely flawless.

They ain't heavy, they's my family

Well they're getting heavy now and I wished they'd leave before I'm in real trouble.
I feel like I've been carrying all of them on my back for six years. Now piss off.
I have a small tear in my Achille's Tendon and all the recommended 'get it better' stuff is not good for me.
So Doc Marvin is hedging his bets and hoping I won't do anything further to damage what's left.
I have to walk with a stick in my left hand and not trip on it.
I can use my 3 wheelie walker but try and get that on a bus that doesn't have the step lowered.
I have my foot in the air tied to the bed head to try and reduce the fluid. That works only so far as I found out tonight, if I leave it too long, the knee cap appears to drop.
So I've looked at online shopping for groceries.
BOH said he will drive me to the supermarket when it's not busy. I remind him that he has an expectant mother and baby to look after.  Hey, no sweat, it's not for five months yet.  
HEAD.    CRASH.   DASHBOARD.
I may kill before he leaves here.  The EM is not much better.
Fortunately the foot doesn't hurt if I'm careful and watch what I'm doing, if I don't forget the stick or the wheelie walker.  If I don't trip over the mat at the door of Coles.  If no-one runs their trolley into the back of my leg at Safeway.  If I don't walk up stairs. How about if I don't walk at all and stay home and read books. Eric the mower is coming on Thursday and I intend to sit in a chair and yell instructions to him.

*I should not abuse the parents to be. I confess to leaving my child in his pusher outside the shops while I wandered home enjoying a quiet ice-cream and then remembering why it was so quiet.