something else

After suffering the horrible effects of the head cold all week, I finally succumbed to it on Friday night and crawled into bed with a throat full of razor blades, at 6.30pm, staying there until 6am on Saturday, then spending Saturday grumbling about the house in my daggiest tracksuit pants, complete with ugg boots. I cancelled my appointment with the chinese doctor whom I've been seeing for my sore shoulder, I cancelled my dinner that had been arranged with some dear friends whom I was keen to catch up with, I grumbled by txt msg to the boyfriend that I was `bored witless' having to stay  home all day, and I went back to bed at 9pm.  This morning I woke to a warm wind blowing dust into the atmoshphere which resulted in a spectacular sunrise. Captured on the Nokia N96 mobile phone camera - it's a bit hard to get the focal depth, but as they say `you get the picture'.  The photo of the maple is also captured on the Nokia, but was taken in clear daylight and within a good ...

I've spent a fair bit of time over the past 2 and a 1/2 weeks, flying. Not virtually or metaphysically, but really. In the air in aeroplanes. Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Rockhampton. This weeks trip was to Rockhampton. I woke in the middle of the night on Sunday with a sore throat. Realising that I'd been sleeping with my mouth open, I moistened my mouth and shut it and went back to sleep, with a nagging bloked nasal passage and vague headache.  Up in the air on Monday morning all was going well until we began the descent to Brisbane.  My left ear began to block up. I pressed against it, I swallowed, I held my nose and blew gently into the cavern of my skull, all to no avail. As the descent continued, the pain increased. We landed, I had nearly three hours to wait for my connecting flight to Rockhampton. Long enough I thought, to regain control of my eardrums. As the plane lifted from the tarmac of Brisbane airport I realised that this would not be fun. Now my right inner ear b...

It's Autumn. I love this time of year! As I drive home I just want my eyes to become a camera framing everything as the late evening sun strikes colour into the most mundane surfaces. I just missed catching it along the sides of the plane trees and manchurian pears this evening. The traffic wouldn't stop long enough for me to frame the photo with my phone camera. In the morning I'll get up and look out the kitchen window to see the first rays catch the burnished red and gold of my two maples. So much beauty to have with my cup of coffee.  We've had a sudden cold snap this week, and rain, glorious rain. I snuggle down at night under my fleecy blanket and relish the cold on my cheek and nose, while my toes sneak into the warmth of the bottom of the bed.  In the vegie garden the worms turn in the compost and blood and bone, the snow peas send tendrils searching for the trellis wire and the pumpkins mature roundly, patiently waiting their harvest.  Oh Autumn, time of prolif...

It's ages since my last post on this site, but I'm prompted tonight by the intersection of Twitter, TV, and  the question of massive Executive payouts and my social left background. I've been watching an SBS Insight program which has raised the question of Executive pay levels. I find it hard to imagine the type of money these guys are earning/amassing. I mean most of us can only physically work a maximum of 20 hours a day - even the most brilliant need to sleep at some point.  While I agree that if an Executive drives their organisation to new levels of financial reward, they should be paid well, the question remains, What happens if the org doesn't perform? What happens if the decisions that Exec makes leaves the business in ruins 5 years later? What is `Paid Well'? If we equate pay with performance, then we need a radical re-think of how we reward the majority of our workers. I see too many $45,000 p/a employees who put in as many hours as their boss or the CEO, ...

I've got a great home office set-up. After initially creating my office in the spare room, I found that I felt totally alienated, sitting and working in the little room off the corridor through the middle of the house. After a while, I moved the computer desk out here, next to the kitchen bench on the right and facing a view of the backyard to the left. I put the printer on the kitchen bench, and left all the files and boring stuff back in the spare room. Now this is really ridiculous, because at that time I didn't have anyone else living with me, and there was no reason to feel isolated in the spare room, but I did. Now I feel connected, I can watch the news on telly while I work, watch all the little birds in the garden and think about what to plant next. It's not procrastinating, just an enjoyable work environment. I put an old microwave down by the garden shed, waiting for the next hard rubbish collection. A little black and white plover has discovered his image in the...

Had a rough nite, my right shoulder has been giving me curry since I came off the bike, 3 weeks before Xmas. I've pretty much been using pain killers so that I can get to sleep since then. Yesterday I was feeling quite exhausted and put it down to having commuter ridden to work. So I went to bed early at 9.30, taking 2 nurofen and 1 panadol. I woke at 4am in pain and with a low blood sugar, so I ate and took 2 more panadol & went back to bed - no good :-( The alarm went at 5.30 and I felt like crap, so I decided to `work from home'. Didn't do me much good, I've been feeling awful most of the day & have a sore throat, earache and a stiff neck, so I'm guessing the shoulder & back pain is probably emphasised because I've got some sort of virus. But how about the capapcity of technology to allow me to do my email, set up files, check online quality control stuff and so on! I love the fact that when I'm not able to go into the office, I can still co...

10 days out, the impact recedes. Everyone is saturated with media stories. ABC 774 is doing an incredible job of community networking. They have reporters and mobile studios in every major centre of the fire damage. In the evening as I drive home, they air snapshots of stories their reporters have filed. Sad little vignettes, heroic recountings, renewal of faith, loss of memory. Tonight I hear for the first time, what sounded like a government related `Community broadcast' with notes on how to prove identity, get financial help, get help to remove toxic waste, claim funding and so on. In the city we are past the first wave of shock and are moving into or on with our lives. Unless we have a direct connection, we are preparing to forget. I hear counsellors on the radio talking about the stages of emotion victims feel, and I think to myself, it will be years. He's talking about how some people will react by rebuildingtheir house exactly as per the original plans, but hten one day ...