Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Four day weekends should be compulsory! Especially for your birthday. I had my birthday this past weekend and had a lovely time. Here are some of the highlights:

Friday

• Massage given to me as a gift by Suzanne from Tasmania for helping her out with some marketing. It was the first deep tissue massage I’ve had since moving down here and I really must get back into having massages once a month to keep my ‘mouse shoulder’ in order.
• Payment for the “Sun and Earth” quilt received from the friends who are coming down today. They paid me FAR more than I suggested. Thanks guys! It will go to more fabric! 😉
• Lunch with my friend Bobbie at the Bridgetown Hotel. We enjoyed their great Beez Neez fish and chips, and Bobbie gave me a lovely gift of a needle case (I’ll take and post a picture later).
• Late afternoon sitting out on the back porch with friends from Perth and Tasmania (yes, the Suzanne of the massage!), enjoying a glass of wine and feeding the magpies. And lots of chatting and laughter!
• Dinner for six of us at the Bridgetown Hotel (yes, I ate there twice in one day!). Four of us had the racks of lamb (delicious) and two had the steak (equally delicious). This was followed by a HUGE chocolate mud birthday cake for Suzanne and me (Suzanne’s birthday was three days before mine). Sparklers, candles, the lot. We took the remainder of the cake home.

Saturday

• Showing our friends around our little town, including the estate where we have our land (they met Bobbie and Brian), and the Peninsula Rd circuit. Then they went off to enjoy the Cherry Festival at Manjimup, before going on to Pemberton and then back to Nannup for the night.
• Quiet afternoon and evening at home. I did some quilting in the afternoon, finishing the back of the queen bed quilt! photos to come…

Sunday

• Drove to Busselton to have lunch with my parents who have just returned from 8 weeks overseas. Celebrated my birthday, my Mum’s birthday next week, and their wedding anniversary last week.
• Drove to Bunbury to spend the night in an ocean view room at the Lighthouse Beach Resort Motel. Hot day, calm beach. About a 3-star place, despite how they advertise themselves.
• Birthday dinner at a local Thai restaurant (Just One Thai). Ordinary ambience etc, but HOT HOT HOT food! We asked for ‘hot’, the waitress advised against it, but we insisted. It was VERY hot — and very yummy!! So much so I asked if we could buy some of their chilli paste. I lead with the “we’re from out of town, we don’t have a local Thai restaurant” argument and the manager let us buy some.

Monday

• Had an egg and bacon breakfast at Buck’s Diner in Bunbury. Mine was good, though my husband said his scrambled eggs were a little dry and lukewarm, as were his baked beans.
• Got some crocs for me and sandals for my husband.
• Did some grocery shopping in Bunbury to stock up the pantry with stuff we can’t get locally or that was on special.
• Purchased some more quilting fabric!

It was a lovely weekend — filled with friends, laughter, food and various non-strenuous and non-taxing activities, like shopping! We contributed more to the economy this weekend than for the past few weeks combined, so that’s gotta be good!

Back in September when I left a major project, Sarah P, one of my colleagues in the Brisbane-based company, said she was going to get a fish for her desk and call it Rhonda! A fish called Rhonda… get it? (guess you have to be a certain age where you remember the movie ‘A fish called Wanda’!)

Anyhow, she has FINALLY sent me a photo of Rhonda (who is a ‘he’ by the way, so some in the office call him ‘Ron’). Sarah reckons whenever anyone asks its name, she says ‘Rhonda’ and they say ‘Perth Rhonda?’ so I guess some of them still remember me. 😉 (and no, I have NO idea why there’s some space-suited figure with a ray gun hanging over the side of the fishbowl!)

A fish called Rhonda

Update, 2 June 2011: I just heard from Sarah P that Rhonda passed away last night. 😦 He will be buried in her backyard in Queensland, under the poinsiana tree, next to the guinea pig, so he’ll be doing a little bit towards improving the environment.

Last night we were driving back from Balingup and low in the crystal clear western sky was a terrific sight—a sliver of a moon topped by Jupiter and Venus. Tonight’s meant to be even better as the planets and the moon line up into a ‘smiley face’—at least in Western Australia. Even nicer is that Sagittarius (my star sign) and Capricorn (my Mum’s) are in the picture.

Planets and moon in a smiley face configuration

More information:

• http://www.astrovisuals.com.au/Events.html
• http://www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/blog/?p=1428
• http://www.skymaps.com/events/20081201/index.html

Update 9:00pm: I took a photo at 8:30pm. My (old) digital camera doesn’t have a way to stop or minimise camera shake, so there’s a little bit of shake in the photo, even though I steadied my arm against a back veranda post. Here’s my photo:

My photo of the smiley face

We’ve been having some really unusual weather the past week or so. Here, it’s rained heavily—we’ve had twice our annual rainfall for November and most has fallen in the past week. Huge drops, and big heavy gushing downpours. Good for the dams as we come into summer… not so good for the farmers who are in the middle of the grain harvest right now.

Yesterday, over near Salmon Gums, they got massive hail and ice and it flattened the crops. Now to put this into perspective, it’s late November here. It’s getting hot (usually). Salmon Gums’ average maximum temperature from 1932 to 2008 throughout November is 26C (about 75F), and their average minimum is around 10C (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_012071.shtml)

So, here’s what happened near Salmon Gums yesterday (photos courtesy of my friend Bobbie’s chiropractor!):

Highway, Coolgardie to Esperance, 26 Nov 2008

Highway, Coolgardie to Esperance, 26 Nov 2008

So we opened the gate...

I guess if you don't laugh, you'd cry — drought, now this...

Hailstones the size of small eggs