Rhonda Bracey: At Random

The Blues at Bridgetown was last weekend. It’s a BIG event for the town—the local population of about 5,000 expands by some 10-15,000 music lovers. We had every intention of going on Saturday to see some of the free live acts in the town’s main street. But the best-laid plans of mice and men can go awry!

We went to Bunbury on Friday where I donated blood to the Red Cross Blood Bank (as I try to do every 3 months). We walked around town for a bit, then went to lunch at the Rose Hotel… Where I promptly fell in a heap with fainting symptoms and excessive perspiration. I had to lie on the floor for ages before I was OK enough to raise my head. Not a good look for the pub, having a female lying on the floor with her legs on a chair! Needless to say, we didn’t finish our shopping and obviously I didn’t drive back home. When we got home I slept for 2 hours followed by a good night’s sleep. So that was Friday.

On Saturday I was still feeling a bit weak, plus I had a reasonable headache. And it got very hot over the weekend. Because the main street and side streets were closed (or packed) for the Blues Festival, we would’ve had to walk there and back. ‘There’ is downhill all the way; ‘back’ is up a massive hill. Under normal circumstances, it’s a tough walk.

So with my low blood pressure and having given blood and had a bad turn the day before, we decided it wasn’t worth it. There’s always next year…

My friend Suzanne has been learning to do stand-up comedy for a few months now, though I have NO IDEA what possessed her to do such a brave and scary thing!

Well, a couple of weeks ago she had her first ever, debut, inaugural, whatever-you-want-to-call-it performance in front of a real live paying crowd. She had five minutes and, in my opinion, she did really well. Suzanne lives in Tasmania these days so I wasn’t able to attend the live performance (she may not have wanted people she knew there anyway—I know if it was me, I wouldn’t have wanted the embarrassment of friends and family seeing me freeze up with stage fright).

Anyhoo… to cut a long story short, someone video-ed her performance and it’s now available on YouTube. I thought she was fantastic, and she made me laugh out loud more than a lot of paid comedians do. Tell me what *you* think of Suzy’s first-ever public performance—I’ll pass your comments on to her. She’d be too embarrassed to ask herself! Go Suzy! (BTW, the video is 5 mins.)

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZfxO5Zx820]

Oh, and she’s really tall (around 6′) and she really DOES have a small car. She also really does Tai Kwan Do, so in the modern comedic tradition, she’s drawing a LOT on personal experiences in this routine. I can’t wait for a routine talking about her massage therapy experiences.

Despite pulling some 15 bags of weeds out of the front yard the past four days, they’re still winning!

I won’t even mention the back yard, especially the section down by the fruit trees. The lawnmowing people will slash that this week. It may not get rid of the weeds (oats and similar grasses, mostly, and the remnants of soursob), but at least we’ll be able to see any snakes! Until the weeds grow back again, of course…

The green patches that look like lawn (ha!) above the retaining wall in the picture below are some of the remaining weeds out the front. It’s been a wet winter, and our soil is very clay-ey so I haven’t been able to get out and attack them until now. I’ve cut a swathe through them, but it’s a big job. “Roundup” is looking increasingly attractive, even though I’m loathe to put poison into the ecosystem.

It was a LONG wait, but finally the Eagles have released their double-CD set of “Long Road Out of Eden“. Was the wait worth it? Absolutely!

This is a great album – it may not have any one song that reaches the heights of popularity such as “Hotel California”, but for Eagles fans and anyone who enjoys that West Coast country rock sound, it’s a must.

Just in time for Christmas too, in case you have any baby boomers or other Eagles fans in the family…

And yes, you can buy it via my Amazon store, along with the brilliant “Live at Massey Hall” from Neil Young, recorded in 1971.

Why do birds fly in to windows? Is it the light? The reflection? Or some kamikaze death wish?

The other day we were working in our home office which overlooks the back yard, when we heard a thump on the kitchen window (across the open plan room). I looked out and this little New Holland Honeyeater was lying very dazed on the paving. He (or she… I can’t tell the sex of these birds!) picked himself up—sort of—and sat/squatted on his haunches for close to an hour looking very sorry for himself. I wondered if he was going to live. The temptation was to go out and pick him up, but that would only traumatise him even more. So I didn’t. But I was still concerned about him. When I went to open the back door, he got enough of a fright to flap his little wings and fly off to a tree halfway down the yard.

I hope he survived. But if he did, I bet he had a VERY sore head. Poor thing.

One of friends had a birthday, so six of us went out to dinner on Monday night to the only restaurant open in town. Nice evening, good BYO wines, VERY ordinary food.

As we were about to leave, some of our group got talking to a large group at a nearby table. They were walkers from a big fundraising walk for motor neurone disease (MND), and Ken Judge, the ex-West Coast Eagles coach was with them. Seems they’re walking from Perth to Albany, and Monday night they’d made it to Bridgetown.

Having seen a work colleague go through the early stages of this debilitating disease some years ago, I happily handed over a donation.

Last night I finished reading a great book about an ‘energetic’ dog and its journalist owner: Marley and Me.

It had me in tears of grief at the end—not because of any cataclysmic event in the story, but because of the memories it evoked. I read somewhere recently that we are never really given time or permission to grieve for a beloved pet; there’s always that “Oh, you can get always a new dog/cat/whatever.” But the grief is real, and it lasts for a long time.

In this case I was grieving for my childhood boxer—Cassie—who I grew up with and who had to be put down the afternoon of my Year 12 Ball (Senior Prom for the Americans). I sure didn’t enjoy that night, but I held in my grief as it wouldn’t have been cool to be in tears the whole night.

And I was grieving for Anouschka, my beloved cat for some 17 years, who I held in my arms when she was put to sleep in 1995.

The grief never goes. You think it has, then you read a book like this, and it comes welling back up.

Update (19 February 2008): I just read that this great book is being made into a movie, starring Owen Wilson.