An Evening with Brian Cox

We're off for an evening with Prof. Brian Cox on 10 August.

I love his documentaries and now I can see him in person.

He's easy on the eye too :)

Back for a Wee Vent About Nasal Sprays :)

I went to the supermarket the other day to buy a nasal spray. I thought it would be cheaper than going to the chemist - says she laughingly. There were two brands, both in the $8+ region. I looked on the label to see what was in them - active ingredient: Sodium Chloride (salt). One of them actually had Sea Salt in brackets, but the other one didn't.

'How much!?'

The bottle contained 15ml of salt water - that's about half an egg cup full. I looked around for the masked men with shotguns.

Needless to say, I came home and made my own. I already had a squirter thing from a previous lot from the chemist. That stuff had something other than saltwater in it but it had gone past its 'best before' date, so I washed it out and refilled it.

I wonder how many people are shelling out for this stuff thinking it's something special?

PS I'm not sure if I clicked the right button to de-privatise my blog, so I hope someone leaves a comment so that I will know :)

LinkedIn!!!!

For some time now I've been receiving invitations from various people - some I know and some I don't - to join LinkedIn. As far as I can tell it's a social networking group for business people. I don't do social networking; I've never accepted an invitation; never joined and today saw at the bottom of the latest email from them, an 'unsubscribe' link, which I clicked on. It took me to a page where I have to enter my email address and password in order to unsubscribe.

As I never asked to be part of their group in the first place this will be difficult. I know my email address but as to password, I'm stumped. I never asked to be on the stupid list in the first place so why would I have a password?

When these invitations arrive there is a place to accept the invitation but no place to say 'no thank you', so they keep coming. Because you haven't accepted, you get reminders too. Why wouldn't they give you a choice? I find it quite annoying and even more so now that I'm expected to jump through hoops to get them to ignore me.

I'll have to see if there is a place where I can contact them - but I'll probably need a password for that too.

Senior Citizen Cheer

A friend sent me this in an email over the weekend. I can totally relate and it made me giggle.

I often have an idea about a blog post, but when I sit down in front of the computer, can I remember what I was going to write about? No! I really ought to carry a little notebook around with me.

Let's face it, I can't always remember why I walked from one room to another and what it was I was going to fetch :) This is not because I'm losing the plot, it's because my mind's so busy and I can cover quite a few subjects between one room and the next.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My Eco-Friendly Butter Cooler

We eat butter. We don't eat margarine - which is only a few molecules off plastic (see the sidebar on the right to find out how it's made and you'll be eating butter too). Butter comes from cows and is a natural product.

The only drawback is that, in summer, it gets very soft. I don't keep it in the fridge as it is un-spreadable if I do, but I don't like it liquid either. So I searched the web for something to keep it cool out of the fridge. I came across a French Butter Bell.

As you can see, the butter is pressed into the cup shaped piece and some water is placed in the straight piece and then the cup is upended into the straight bit and the water keeps it cool. Good idea! However, they wanted around $43 Australian + shipping for it! The one pictured shipped to US states and territories only.

I thought there would be complaints about there being water on the butter .............. and the price! I decided to make one for myself.

I packed my butter into a ramekin, then I purchased an unglazed terracotta plant pot of a suitable size and a saucer which would fit the top of the plant pot. I put the ramekin of butter on the terracotta saucer, wet the plant pot under the tap and placed over the ramekin and then poured water into the saucer. The water evaporating from the plant pot keeps the butter at just the right temperature for spreading. I am going to buy a wooden knob to screw through the hole in the pot and into a small piece of wood and 'voila!' an eco-friendly (and cheap) butter cooler. The plant pot cost $3.50 and the saucer $2.95.

Possibly not quite as decorative or posh as the other one, but it does the job.

My Little Win

Recently my oven decided not to work. I had made a pie and put it in the oven to cook. This usually takes about 20 minutes on 200C and it is golden brown. Twenty minutes went by and the pastry was looking very .....................well, pasty! I felt the oven door and it was barely warm. So I broke out the old electric frypan, turned that up to whatever the Fahrenheit equivalent of 200C is and stuck the pie in there. It took a little longer but turned out OK.

My sister has recently been telling me about her George Forman roasting oven, which is a little electric machine for doing roasts (of course). She offered to let me try it, but I declined telling her I would get one of my own, but hadn't got around to it yet.

However, the universe was listening.

Last weekend my daughter and I took two of my granddaughters Op-shopping for clothes. They had a great time and bought a few bits and were pleased to have found bargains. We went to the Salvos and there, sitting on a shelf, was a George Forman Roasting Oven - price $20. It used to be that the Salvos did not accept donations of electrical goods, but apparently now they are accepting them and getting them electrically tested before putting them on sale.

I grabbed it and took it to the counter along with a couple of toys I got for the little kids, but thought the lady had undercharged me. When I pointed this out, she said, 'No, that's on special. See.......... $6.99', (on a smaller label attached to the cord) which made me even happier. I now have something to work with until I either get the oven fixed or a new cooker.

My Morning Exercise

I go for a walk five days a week at 8.00 am. I do two laps of the local shopping centre (4 km). Now, if you don't live in OZ, this may seem rather a strange thing to do - it may even seem like a strange thing to do if you do live in OZ. My reasons for this are as follows:

1. I can go at 8.00 am rather than 6.00 am. I don't like the sun and if I want to walk outdoors I have to have a really early start so that I'm back before it gets too hot. I've reached an age where I don't particularly want to leap out of bed and go pacing around the streets at the crack of dawn. I can mooch around in my nightie for a while and take my time. I still get up at 6.00 am because I like the early mornings, but I have a couple of cups of tea and a slice of toast before I start.

2. There are no flies in the shopping centre, so I don't have to walk along waving my arms about and cursing because bush flies are trying to climb up my nose. For those who live in other countries, if you've ever seen anything filmed outside in Australia in summer you will know what I mean.

3. I can incorporate a bit of food shopping at the end of my walk.

4. The shopping centre is air-conditioned so it's bearable even in the middle of summer.

5.  In winter I can walk without getting wet!

I am not alone in this pursuit. There are others who walk around the shopping centre. One group only walk on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I almost joined them but they seem to spend an awful lot of time waiting for the whole group to arrive, so I gave that a miss. I'm usually finishing my second lap by the time they get started. There are a couple of other women - trailed several paces behind by their husbands - who I see some mornings but not every morning.

There are regular shoppers who always hit the shops when the doors open.There is a frail old lady named Marie who is in a wheelchair pushed by her husband. We always have a bit of a chat. There are others who are regulars but not inclined to chat. Some are just 'Good morning' and-a-smile people. I quite enjoy my walks but if I want to do any shopping other than in the supermarket I have to leave a bit later as most of the stores don't open until 9.00 am.

Other than first thing in the morning I can't stand the shopping centre and give it a wide berth. Shopping of any kind is one of my least favourite things to do.

A Tweet of a Different Nature

There is a bird hanging around my garden that is driving me nuts. It is tweeting. Not singing, there is no variety to its noise. It goes tweet..tweet..tweet..tweet..tweet..tweet, same sound, same interval between tweets - ad nauseam.

For a while I did not know what kind of bird it was. Now I do. It's an olive coloured honey eater. Hubby thinks it's a baby bird tweeting to be fed, but this is not the time of year for baby birds and it's just the one bird doing it. If it is a baby bird surely there would be several of them around the place tweeting. If it is, I wish it's mother would teach it how to fend for itself. If I could catch it I would wring its little birdy neck!

It's one of those noises that gets into your brain and you can't ignore it, and it never seems to stop. These particular birds have inhabited my garden for years and I've never noticed this before and, as I say, it just seems to be the one bird. It's been going on for weeks and I'm sure it doesn't take that long for them to learn to feed themselves.

***********************

Something else that's pissing me off somewhat is, when I type something in the search bar Google decides that I'm really wanting something else and changes it, well not changes it exactly, but it produces another search space and fills it. There is the 'search' place in my toolbar which I type in but then a second Google Search place opens below it with something else in. Often it has nothing to do with what I want. When I click 'enter' it's the one Google's chosen that I get, not what I wanted. It makes me very vexed!

I don't want Google guessing what I want. I'm quite capable of making my own decisions. I don't know how to get rid of it either as it comes up as the header to a page.

************************

PS. I've just had a look in settings and it's called Google Instant and I'm turning it off!

PPS. Monday, 4.2.13. - Oh, bliss. I haven't heard that bloody bird all morning. Maybe its mother got sick of it and it is now fending for itself................. or maybe a cat got it. I swear I haven't touched it.

A Wunch of Bankers

This is the collective noun for bankers.

I was listening to the radio on my way to the shops yesterday and a snippet came on about a Turkish bank employee who had been refunding customers' fees which he had considered unfair or inappropriate. I gave a little cheer for the man.

Apparently they can't trace the people he refunded to nor can they trace him. He's done a runner. This made me giggle.

There should be more bank employees of this ilk!

Tattoos and Stuff

I suppose I really ought to get back into this blogging thing. To be honest I haven't done much of anything this month. I've read several books and done some gardening. I've sorted out the pantry and tidied up my art room. Rearranged my bedroom; made some curtains and that's about it.

*********************

I have noticed that there are a lot of 'older' women getting tattoos! Not a good look. I think there's a 'best before' date for tattoos and it's not in your fifties. I was pondering that in twenty or thirty years time there is going to be a lot of loose, wrinkly skin with pictures on that nobody can decipher anymore. When you get into your sixties your skin takes on the texture of crepe paper and your muscles give up and hang below your arms. Even skinny folks get bingo wings - they may be smaller, but they are still there.

Can you envisage a nursing home full of ancient people with tattoos and piercings? But I suppose there will be more of them than the un-tattooed lot. I'm beginning to feel like the odd one out already.

I noticed at the senior's club that a woman in her seventies had had her wrist tattooed. Why would you at that age???

As my mum used to say, 'There's nowt so funny as folk'.