Rhonda Bracey: At Random

So far there aren’t a lot of houses built on the estate where we have our land. As a result, the function centre sits unused for a lot of the time.

One of the ladies—who’s in the process of building with her husband—has kicked off what we hope will become a regular gathering at the function centre. She realised that a lot of the women residents and landowners do some form of craft, so she’s scheduled three Saturday afternoons over the next three months for the ladies to get together and do their craft. The aim is to start forming a community. I think it’s just an excuse to meet each other and have a natter!

The men and children are invited to join us later in the day for a BBQ, tennis, billiards, cards, or whatever, but the afternoon belongs to the women.

The first craft afternoon starts today—in about 20 minutes in fact! My car is loaded with my sewing machine, some of my fabric stash, cutting board and tools, etc. I hope to make some more progress on the dragonfly quilt (more leaves, possibly tendrils), and if I get that done, then I’ve got fabric to cut for the next project whirling away in my head!

Here’s hoping the afternoon is a success. Those of us who do turn up will have a great time anyway!

Update: Three turned up… a spinner and two quilters. When husbands joined us for the BBQ, there were five. Still, it’s a start. It did clash with the date of the monthly garden group gathering, which meant that some who may have attended didn’t because they were off with the garden group, so our organiser may change the date. I can’t make the next one anyway as I’ll be away.

The things you learn… The other day I walked past the TV and heard someone say that the “V” in Morse code was the same as the opening bar in Beethoven’s 5th symphony! ta-ta-ta-daaaaa (dot, dot, dot, dash)

Well, who’da thought?? So I checked it out on the internet, and sure enough it’s correct. Seems it was used a lot in WWII after victory.

So why did this ‘fact’ take my attention? Well, V in Roman numerals is five, and Beethoven’s symphony is the fifth. And the Morse code sequence is the same as the opening bar of the 5th! I thought that was pretty clever. I’m assuming someone (Samuel Morse?) made a conscious decision to use that sequence. But if they didn’t, I’d call it a serendipitous moment!!

Well, not exactly stars, but ‘planet light, planet bright’ just doesn’t sound right!

The past few mornings have been stunning. When I’ve gone out to get the newspaper just before dawn, low in the eastern sky has been a fingernail sliver of the moon, with two bright planets close to it.

One I knew was Venus, but I wasn’t sure what the other was until I checked out the weekly astronomy column in the paper earlier this week and found out it was Jupiter! So bright for reflected light from such a long way away.

Update (26 Feb 2008): At 5.45am this morning, when dawn was just a very faint light in the sky, the early morning ‘stars’ where shining very brightly in the east near the horizon. Venus was the brightest, and close to it was Mercury. Higher up was Jupiter, and Saturn (I think) was high in the north. There was about a half moon as well. Amazing. All those people who sleep through until the sun is well up miss out on a sense of their place in the universe… (Oh, and thanks to The West Australian‘s “Night Sky” column on Monday for alerting me to these—and telling me which planet was which!)

Not long after we moved into our house almost 12 months ago, I walked from the bedroom across the passage to the bathroom—and saw a tiny scorpion! In the house. Near the bedroom. Freaked me out.

It was really quite small, so my first reaction (after the shock and horror) was to pick it up in a paper towel and dispose of it. I told my husband when he woke up—and told some other people over the next few months—but he and the rest of them didn’t believe me. They thought I must’ve seen an earwig or something like that. I know what an earwig looks like, and yes, we have quite a few of them here. But this was a scorpion. No-one believed me, so eventually I shut up about it. But I knew what I saw!

Well, tonight after watching some TV, my husband went to the fridge and told me there was a scorpion!! On the floor of the kitchen. This time I wanted proof so that all those nay-sayers would now believe me. Here are the photos. The vinyl tile shapes are 9 inch (22.5 cm) square, so you can see how small this thing is.

Maybe it’s an inch long. But hell, it’s a SCORPION not some damned earwig!!! And now I have the pictures to prove it. I don’t know how well I’ll sleep tonight…

I’m not sure if it’s the education system, or the specific customer service training that people get, but this YouTube video highlights how ANY information you receive from a customer service representative over the phone is suspect.

The issue is not that the customer service people didn’t have the information to hand (some obviously didn’t), but that even with the correct information, they didn’t know how to communicate it correctly to the customer.

I’ve been a bit lax in posting recently… There’s a few reasons for that:

• I’ve set up a blog for my company newsletter and have been working through all those hints and tips I’ve accumulated over the years. I’ve been putting one into each post, and have been working through my old newsletters checking the currency of the information and making posts of each article if it’s still relevant. There’s still a long way to go… The neat thing about WordPress is that I can post-date articles, which means I’ve got one article a day ready to go for all of February, much of March, etc. So if I get caught up with other commitments, the posts will keep on coming.
• I’ve been doing quite a bit of editing for my friend Char’s training materials, and updating my own Author-it instructional material to suit v5 (this has been much more time consuming than I first thought…)
• Work has been pretty full on. I’m still only trying to do three days a week, but they’ve been very busy days (some 10 hours), and by the end of each I’m happy just to loll in front of the TV with my husband. Besides, it’s the height of summer here, and doing anything more energetic is too taxing (well, that’s my excuse anyway!).

I haven’t done anything on the quilt for more than a week—I packed up my sewing machine a week ago expecting to swap it with my Mum’s slightly newer model last week, but we didn’t get to see them in Bunbury as we had planned. We’re going over there on Saturday to see their new house (they moved in on Monday just gone), so I’ll pick up her sewing machine then and give her mine. Maybe I’ll get some more sewing done this (long) weekend…

The lawnmower guys came a few weeks ago, before Christmas. We’ve had a LOT of hot weather since then and the lawn out the front of the house is as dry as. It’s not dead, but we’re not watering it, so if we get a really long hot spell, it will die off. But the back lawn is a different story!

Again, we don’t water it, and until the lawnmower guys came two days ago, it was growing like a weed! Why? Because I think we have our own little mini-ecosystem happening out there. Here’s a pic of the fairly steep back lawn and fruit trees (with a back shed we don’t use hidden in the background):

So, what’s happening here? Why is this area so lush and green and rampant and the front so dry and brown?

I put it down to gravity combined with a septic and leach drain system! Our house is on a hill (as all houses in Bridgetown are), and we’re near the top of one hill. Our backyard slopes down quite steeply—it’s steep enough that we have three levels out the back separated by retaining walls. The final section has no retaining walls, but that’s because it just has some fruit trees and no buildings except two sheds. The main house is one level down from the road, and the three levels at the back step down from there.

With no sewerage system, the grey and black water waste from the house ends up in the septic tank, and then leaches in to the soil. If you look at that photo, you can probably guess that the septic tank is on the level immediately below the house! We’ve never found it, but we figure that’s where it is…

No wonder the lemon tree (closest in the picture and situated on the second level) is so prolific! It just LOVES the food and water it’s getting, and rewards us handsomely with more lemons than we know what to do with. I can’t deal with all the lemons—I freeze some, give some to friends, but now give the bulk of them to the local hotel which uses them for in the bar (that slice of lemon has to come from somewhere…) and in the restaurant’s kitchen.

The cycle of life at work.