My uncle and cousin are just about at the end of a 29 day or 14,400 km mad dash from London to Cape Town in their 1923 Vauxhall OD 23/60, known as Penny. Penny (and my uncle) is quite the adventurer having completed the ERA Peking to Paris rally in 2010 and coming 2nd in the pioneer class.  The original plan some time ago was to do London to Cape Town in their “everyday” 4wd but look at the picture below and I think you can understand why Penny is doing London to Cape Town and not the Landcruiser…

This is them a few days ago barrelling down a road between Moyale and Marsabit in Kenya. The photo is by Gerard Brown who is the rally photographer.

They are currently placed at 31 in what is now a field of 41 cars, pretty darn impressive for a car which is the oldest in the rally by 41 years … The second oldest car is a 1964 Volvo PV 544 C. The rally was designed for “classic rally cars”, those rally cars of the 60s-80s, that are the type of cars you think of when you think major long distance rally. They’ve done really well climbing up from 40th which at the pointy end of the rally I would really say comes down to how well they prepped Penny to start off with.

One of the coolest features available to us rally watchers is the yellowbrick car tracking, at any time of the day you are able to see where all the cars are located and what speed they are travelling at etc. If you’ve got some time to spend I highly recommend having a poke round the rally website but also looking at the various participant blogs etc

I leave you with this photo also by  Gerard Brown. This is what happens when you run out of petrol 500m from the petrol station. I’m betting that is one tale those locals will be talking about for some time to come.

The birds reappeared in the Silky Oak this morning. I woke up, looked out the window and there they were; preening their feathers in the early morning light. As per usual it has been about a week since they were last in the garden.

What else have I been up to since then?

Making use of one of my Christmas presents – a jam funnel, thanks Mum!

Using the above leads to this. Mulberry Jam, yummo.

Stocking up on mangoes, then slicing and freezing so there will be golden mango goodness way past the mango season. A whole tray of mangoes for $8 <– that’s my kind of bargain.

Look at all those bags of goodness.

After a few years of umming and ahhing over different digital radios, I finally picked one up. A Pure Elan II, whilst I dearly loved the Orla Kieley and the look of the other Mio radios they didn’t offer a pause feature. If I was getting a new kitchen radio I wanted to be able to press pause and come back to the radio when I’m off the phone/finished shooing away the sales person/bible promoter at the door etc.

I’m loving it, it’s great having ABC Jazz in the kitchen without either having to have the TV on or having my laptop on the kitchen table.

The house currently looks like a cross between a bomb site and a warehouse as Mum packs up as the ticker counts downs the days till she departs, we are almost in the single digits!

I leave you with this.

That’s my attempt at making a Mango Juice Bali style -> mango, ice, sugar syrup. Blend it together and drink up the sweetness.

It’s not from these birds (Trichoglossus haematodus or Rainbow Lorikeet)

and it’s not from these birds either ( Cacatua roseicapilla or Galah)

nor is it from this bird (Egretta novaehollandiae or White-faced Heron)

It’s not from my magpies either (Gymnorhina tibicen), the magpies (and the butcher birds) are something I’m going to dearly miss with my upcoming move from the balcony suite to the master wing, no more will the magpies on the washing line be the first thing I see and hear in the morning.

It’s not from the crested pigeons (Ocyphaps lophotes) either

nor is it the Pale-headed Rosella (Platycercus adscitus) who sometimes comes to visit and it is most definitely not from the Blue-faced Honeyeater (Entomyzon cyanotis), it is also most definitely not from the  Noisy Miners (Manorina melanocephala) who think they rule the roost in the front yard.

The feather comes from the birds known as Podargus strigoides, which bird is that you ask? Why it is this delightful creature.

Yes, that is a Tawny Frogmouth, well not just one but two! The above photo was taken on Christmas Day, we were patching some holes in the tent before my departure for Woodford the following morning when I looked up and saw these fellas in the tree. The one at the front of the above photo is a juvenile whilst the mature one is in the background. Mother and I were quite tickled pink at seeing these birds in our yard, if Pabbi was still alive he would have been tickled pink to see these as well, he adored taking photos of the birds in the back yard. On that note I’m sure Grandad would have been chuffed as well knowing we had Tawny Frogmouths in the the yard as well.

The parent bird is watching us.

We weren’t sure how long they would stay in the yard so imagine my delight when I came home from Woodford and saw this face in the Silky Oak. It’s the juvenile! Hello you Tawny Frogmouth.

Oh hello Tawny Frogmouth!

Sadly though, I’ve not seen them in our yard in the last week, each day I scour the trees hoping that at least one of them has returned. I do so hope they make an appearance when my brother Karl and his partner Kata come to visit in February. I am so dearly looking forward to not only finally meeting Kata (she was unfortunately in Russia when we were in Iceland last year in 2010, we met one of her sisters though!) but also to having Karl “home” for a little while. Whilst Kata is going to see sooo many things on their seven week jaunt to Australia as Karl shows they lady who has his heart Australia the country in which he was raised it would just be quite something special if there was Tawny Frogmouths in the backyard when they arrived. I’ll just have to talk to the trees and see what they can arrange.

I remember the first time I saw a Tawny Frogmouth, were were on a pre-school excursion to Coochiemudlo Island and there was one perched in the rafters of one of the toilet blocks. We were ushered in ever so quietly by our teacher to look at it.

Well that is the story of some of the birds who like to hang out in the back yard. Their stories are not quite as adventuerous or humerous as the blue tounge lizard clan that resides over at MMMC but I wouldn’t trade my birds for all the world.

This Christmas season has seen many, many changes in our household. A couple of months ago, after Mum had come back from exploring the bush in NSW, a conversation was resurrected from one we had had years ago about why we (really my parents) live in Brisbane. It was about Grandad of course and nothing could have taken my mother or myself away from SEQ whilst my grandfather was alive. With his passing in June and the passing of my father in May last year; that conversation could be had again as those events have changed a lot of things in our lives. I moved back home. We purchased an investment property. We’ve taken on a boarder (who may have had a Lotte bowl slip out of his hand and land on the floor in more than one piece … My Lotte is now more secure in where it is stored) and that’s just the billboard changes. Mum has had the chance to revisit that conversation we’ve had a few times over the years about leaving Brisbane and teaching somewhere else, I always used to suggest WA but that is an awfully long way a way. Mum though discovered a place closer to home though and next year she will be still be a Maths teacher but in NSW in a country town situated in the north west region. The town she is moving to is about a 7hr drive from Brisbane, luckily it is also on the Melbourne to Brisbane bus route so she will be able to hop on a bus to come home for a visit! Most importantly there is plenty of bush walking and an active club to keep her weekends occupied.

This has meant that Mum is packing up her life or perhaps I should say “culling her life”, there has been items leaving this house left, right and center. Some via Lifeline, some via Gumtree, some via Freecycle, others via the rubbish bin, some to people here and there. Some times it feels like that unless it is bolted down, it won’t be there when I get home from work!

Another change this year is that for the first time in the sixty years my mother has lived we have an artificial Christmas tree!!!! And we put it up on Dec 18!!! My father and my maternal grandmother are probably rolling in their proverbial graves (well more accurately, their ash particles are probably vibrating at a higher frequency than normal …)

However, it’s not just any artificial Christmas tree. It’s a 6ft Mistletoe Pine Aluminium Christmas Tree made by Raco. Yep, how many people do you know in Australia who are rocking an Australian made Aluminium Christmas Tree? Very few I would wager to say. I normally see two or so appear each year on Ebay and one of the ones that appeared last year made its way to me. I then gave the tree as part of my present to Mum last year (Well actually it was to both Mum and the house. Do you do that? We have often over the years had presents to the the house from the kitchen or to the fridge from the stove etc). My reading of the date codes on the box say it was made in 1964 and the price label reads £6/15/ which according to our friends at the RBA that is about $84 in the money of today.

Our tree has always been real and has always gone up around the 23rd or so and then comes down on the 6th of January or shortly there after (A major pet peeve of mine is when people talk of the twelve days of Christmas as been the twelve days leading up to Christmas, I grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. You seriously think the three kings got an early warning that Jesus was been born and started their journey twelve days before he was born ??? I’m a by no means a believer but it riles me when people talk about and use an idea that they clearly seem to have no idea what it actually means).

Moving on from that point. This is our tree. Click to see it larger of course!

Have you seen such a beauty? It makes such a lovely sound as you brush past it and oh I love how the lights reflect off it and dance on the ceiling. I actually lay under it on Sunday night whilst on the phone to a friend like a child, watching the light dance on “the leaves” … It is so smile inducing.

and the above photo is why.

My dear dear grandfather passed away on June 15. He was 91 years and a bit. In my direct family lines now, all I and my brothers have now is our mother. It’s been hard.

There is so much I could write and maybe at one time I will. Now though this is what I’m saying.

I helped plan another funeral, I made another slide show, I scanned bucket loads of photos and ephemera, I wrote the better part of another eulogy and then read part of said eulogy. We cleaned up a house and started sorting through a house full of belongings. My aunts and a few of my cousins made the trips over for the funeral and house sorting. There were laughs, tears and all that goes in between as tapestries came down off the walls, china came out of cupboards, wood items were stacked and everything was sorted.

Mum and I packed up everything else and took it all home to sort into something like 7 different stacks under the house. I’m taking a suitcase or two to the Suitcase Rummage this coming Sunday with some items.

I’m still studying – no real uni break for me. I had to defer my exams as it is a bit hard to have an exam on the same day as a funeral.

This was my grandfather. My Grandad.

My father didn’t do that. In the morning he was alive, he called the ambulance because he wasn’t feeling good, he walked to the ambulance and then maybe an hour later he was dead.

This is what I wrote a year ago minus 12 days – 12 days ago.

It’s been a period of adjustment at varying levels for all of us over the past year and it will continue to be for the rest of our lives. As there are all those things that you just imagined Pabbi would be there to see, things like more grand-kids, weddings, graduations, Christmases and of course more volcano eruptions.

Yesterday Mum and I went to the Service of Thanksgiving which is an annual event “in recognition of organ and tissue donors and their families who make transplantation possible”. We went because we donated Pabbi’s eye tissue. It was a good event to go and it was nice to hear the stories of transplant recipients as well as stories of other donor families.

Below is who my father was. This is the slideshow that we played at the reception we had after the funeral.

Spring Flowers in waiting.

A sizeable number of Primulas have been planted in the front garden beds so there will be Spring flowers again (I said to Mum just after moving back in that I wished she would put plants in the front bed again – her answer to me of course was something along the lines of “you’re old enough to plant the bed yourself” so I did).

And then there is study.

Best done with a Kit-Kat of course. The flavour pictured is Shinshu Apple. It’s a sweet slightly fake apple taste.

That’s right, Excuse me while I kiss the sky, I certainly don’t say it like Jimi said it oh it sounds good. Oh the sky has been glorious the last few days. That lovely blue, mostly clear with just whispers of clouds around and so crisp. Love it.

There’s been quite a few going-ons in my life recently hence the radio silence.
1) I moved back in with my mother a few days ago. I loved the location in Spring Hill but I had a few issues with one of my flat mates over what joint tenancy means … I gave a few options over Easter and my last option was that I would move out when she found a replacement.

2) Grandad is still in the hospital, he is now in the rehab unit but it doesn’t look like he will be going home to his home at the end of his stay. Mum is in the process of looking at aged care options. It’s sad. It’s also quite consuming visiting him.

3) Uni, ahh Uni. I handed in my Cost Accounting assignment on Monday night – so glad to have that finished.

4) Work, we’ve had our staffing levels reduced significantly the last few weeks with one girl resigning, one girl on leave and another two going on leave for a week each as well … It’s been non-stop at work.

Tomorrow though I’m going down the coast to pick up a very special purchase. You’ll have to wait and see what it is but I’m nearly over the moon in excitement at picking it up.

3 pictures for now because everything else will have to wait till I get back from Japan.

Saying hello to Grandad after the ceremony

This photo just about sums up the wedding 100%. The beach, playing in the water, having a picnic and a wedding as well.

and the cake, mmmm flourless chocolate cake and a very very good one at that. With the mountains of Freycinet in the background

Tomorrow – I have work (of course), I get my tooth implant, I’ve got postgrad orientation stuff to do at uni and then I have The Whitlams with the QSO tomorrow night.

Friday – Work and then straight to the airport to catch a flight to Hobart.

Saturday – Wedding of my cousin on the beach at Coles Bay/Freycinet

Sunday – Post wedding activities and flying home Sunday night.

Monday – Work and first uni lecture

Tuesday – Fly to Japan for 2 weeks. (Yeah, I’ll be missing four classes – two for each subject, whilst I’m away)

I’m so crazy looking forward to going to Japan. G (one of my best girl friends) and I are going to have a blast (literally as they having a bit of a cold snap at the moment and it is forecast to snow for the days we are up in the alps!!!).

It’s going to be crazy. I bought a new lens the other week, the 28mm 1.8 which will be one of the two lenses I’m taking to Japan, the other will be the 50mm 1.4. I was thinking of taking my 16-35mm 2.8 but it is a heavy piece of glass. I took a few photos with the 28mm the other day and I’m impressed

Yep, some more of my Figgjo Flint Lotte. Here you see a creamer which doubles as a bobby pin and nail utensil holder, a sugar pot that holds bracelets and hair clips and my soufflé dish which holds jewellery.

I love Christmas. Without a doubt it is my favourite time of year. The last few days I’ve been working on some of my Christmas crafting and I’m doing my first batch of Christmas baking tomorrow. In saying all that though, this Christmas is going to be oh so very different to any Christmas past. There’s no Pabbi to dish out the rice pudding or to hand out presents from the tree. When we were in London on the way home from Iceland, we came up with the idea to go to New Zealand for Christmas to hang out with Mum’s sister and her family. Mum, Grandad and I are going (Matthew was not interested in the idea and is staying home) on the night of the 23rd and return on the night of the 31st. Will be great to catch up with my cousins and get to see the first great-grandchild.

I’m so tempted to start putting up decorations in my room but I’ll wait till Dec 1… though I’m going to hang a few porcelain snow flakes in the next few hours. They are white, you’ll hardly be able to see them hanging from the white shelf against the white wall …

This Saturday is the Christmas BBQ for the Icelandic Club -> hence the Christmas baking tomorrow. Really looking forward to the BBQ especially to catch up with one of my good friends who I’ve not seen in an obscene amount of time. I’m going to take along a big container of Loftkökur … mmmm. A funny note to mention, google Loftkökur and my recipe is normally the first or the second result to appear . When I was in Iceland a few months ago, one of my sister’s told me that someone she knew had been raving about this Loftkökur recipe that she had found on the net and how great it was. She sent the link to my sister and my sister replied – that recipe is from my sister so funny.

In order to make Loftkökur, though I need the secret ingredient so I made a trip over to Mum’s today to pick up the Hartshorn salt, I also “borrowed” two of her biscuit trays … and I brought home some of my Christmas decorations.

mmm Hartshorn salt, there’s nothing quite like a sniff of Ammonium bicarbonate.

In other news, I go back to work tomorrow! yikes. I’ve got some crutches which make getting around easier. The first thing on the agenda for me to do tomorrow at work will be finish organising the Christmas Party – it’s next Saturday night. It’s themed, the 20th Century. There was too much debate amongst my two other planners between doing a 20′s theme or a Mad Men theme. I ended up suggesting let’s do the 20th Century instead. People can come dressed from whichever era they wish and if they don’t want to put much effort in they can just come as the 90′s.

I’m doing an early 60′s/late 50′s theme. I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of a few essential packages to arrive early next week for my outfit. All I have left to do is figure out my jewellery (will probably try to find some “pearls” at diva or the like) and practice my hair. I’m going to have to do some op-shopping before then though to find a shirt for N to wear. I’m so excited, can’t wait to see what outfits people put together.

I had almost the best weekend after my exam. I got the CityCat home, did all those jobs round the place that I had put off for the last two weeks, went to the markets, purged stuff from my room, made a really nice turkey and pork bolognese for dinner with N on Saturday night, went to Finders Keepers with G on Sunday arvo (we think it should have been called the Brooch Market as I think the majority of stalls had broooches for sale). Then since Mum was leaving for Patagonia and Antarctica on Monday morning for the next 7 weeks, I headed over for a bon voyage dinner (cold roast lamb, fresh roast vegies, chocolate self saucing pudding and custard – so so yummy).

This is all sounding pretty good isn’t it? but here comes the event that changed the best weekend to the almost the best weekend.

I went to the sewing room to borrow a sewing machine to fill in my time that was formerly occupied with study … Then I stood on something and let out a few words. A sewing room of course meant that I stood on a sewing needle. I looked at my foot and couldn’t see anything but a itsy bitsy teen drop of blood. I ran my hand over the carpet and pulled out a needle fragment – about 1cm long.

Ok I thought, I must have just stood on that spot in the carpet and it poked me and didn’t do anything else …. you can see where this is going can’t you ….

I walked back out to the kitchen, grabbed an ice-pack and numbed my foot for a while and then it was time for me to head home and for Mum to pack her bags.

I woke up Monday morning in pain, so much pain. I called Mum at sparrow’s fart to wish her will on her trip but the call was mostly me sobbing in my pain about my foot. Poor Mum, here she is heading half way round the world for the next 7 weeks and she has a 25 year old daughter sobbing down the phone line in pain.

I took Monday off work, went to the local GP and got a tetanus shot and he told me just to keep my foot elevated and stay off it. By the way, tetanus shots are so painless now – nothing like they used to be. I’ve had no bruise or arm pain – bonus. At this stage I had no reason to think that there was any part of the needle in my foot.

Monday night I was still in agony. Tuesday morning, I drove into work (no way could I walk to and from the train station) for a couple of hours to sort out my work and then I made an appointment with my family GP on the Northside for that arvo. A bit of a chat, a script and an x-ray referral later I was heading down to the local x-ray clinic for a few scans as the amount of pain I was in was indicating that something must be in there.

A few jokes with the radiographer later and ohh look at what we have here. Yep, there sure is a needle in my foot. I must have stood on the needle, part of it went into my foot and then broke off (thus the part I found in the carpet). A call to the doc to tell him that I yep I’ve got a needle in my foot. He then went into organising me to see a surgeon to remove it as it is not something that a GP can remove due to possible complications with the bone/nerves etc. Fun times.

Why hello sewing needle, what are you doing in there?

I had today off and will have the rest of the week off at least.
I’ve got a consult with the surgeon tomorrow morning and hopefully they will be able to fit me in for surgery on Friday…

I’ve spent the better part of the last three days, in bed with my foot elevated and an ice-pack strapped on it at times. Laying down in bed the pain is only there in the morning. I wake up to the most excruciating pain.

As I type this now, I would only be able to tell you that I had a needle in my foot by the fact that I can’t move the smaller toes on my foot or the fact that it is slightly swollen.

If I stand up though, that is a whole different story … that is when the pain kicks in and the needle starts to make its presence known. I’ve become apt at walking on the heel of my foot.

I’m sooo looking forward to the consult tomorrow morning. I just want that thing out of my foot! I’ve spent a fair bit of my life walking round bare-foot and I think after this I will be wearing shoes a bit more than I used to. I don’t want a repeat of this adventure any time soon.

The lesson to learn from this post? Wear shoes when walking round a craft/sewing room.

To be continued …

For everything that the last 364 days have brought me, from the good, the bad, the ugly, the forgettable, the unforgettable, the amazing, the challenging, the one thing that I think will always be a hallmark of my 24th year is of course Pabbi dying. My 25th year starts to unfold tomorrow and as the year passes it will be interesting to see what it brings. I’ve got a number of things I want to complete/accomplish next year but mostly I’m here to live and to make the most whilst doing just that; living life.

and to move away from birthdays but onto happenings of the last week.

For the past week I’ve been literally overdosing on strawberries.

I am very pleased to announce that I got 80% for my accounting exam last week, it put me in the top 9% of the class, I aim to improve on that as the semester continues. The exam was Saturday morning and Saturday evening was Riverfire which we watched from a hill in Wooloowin. Oh sigh, we had 3, yes 3 dump and burns this year from the one plane. Oh the F-111 is one special plane.

Tonight after work N and I had “dinner” at the 40 Days and 40 Nights of Chocolate Buffet at the Bistro Allure. Oh I’m just recovering from chocolate and sugar overdose. I’ll go again in a couple of weeks with some of the girls from work and I’ve got a game plan worked out. The plan from which I shall not deviate is to get one piece at a time, eat that piece and then go back for more. mmmm chocolate ….

One of the many cases of goodies

N’s plate

My plate

This is one of the adorable presents I got from one of the girls at work today. A mini tea set. The perfect desk accessory for a tea fanatic like myself. I had received the little sugar pot at Easter and was told that I would get the rest of the present for my birthday. Total gold. The best thing is that the tea pot actually pours

This is the last year for the F-111, well so they say since last year was meant to be the last as well, frankly I’ll believe it when it doesn’t do a flyover next year …. There are no Roulettes this year which is quite a for me. I love seeing them doing all their formations etc instead there’ll be some Black Hawks flying about …

I made pizza muffins earlier – basically this recipe but with more veggies in. They’ll be snack food tonight along with some Lebanese pastries I picked up on the way home from uni this morning.

I had my first uni exam this morning, 9am on a Saturday … I was fairly confident going in, going out well, I’m still confident I’ll get a decent mark but not as confident as I was going in.

Some collected links from the last little while which I’ve been meaning to share.

Loving this photo of my brother for everything that it is and everything that lies behind it and ahead.

The Cath Kidston August “magazine” arrived the other day and oh so many pretty things. Kind of makes me wish I had picked up another bag whilst I was in London

If Historical Events Had Facebook Statuses 1 and 2

this amazing blog which puts the fun back in the sky

Scratch It World Map – I so want one of these (me and everyone else on the net it seems)

Amazing collection of photos from Russia circa 1910

Amazing interactive panoramas

Fish Apartments, makes me want a fish

New York, the tale that was

I’ve had ABC News24 on most of the day and have had a fantastic time drawing my own conclusions from polling data on the AEC website. It’s really interesting to look at the first preference breakdowns for individual booths (Auchenflower Booth for the seat of Ryan). I’ve compared the swings, the informal votes, the two-candidate-preferred results and more. Looking at the results on a booth basis can confirm what you already may think as the general political feel in that area.

I would really love to see the booth results mapped and to have the ability to toggle layers to show first preference votes for each party. There would be some very interesting gradient changes shown.

However, all this talk of polling data and the such does not talk about what has been on my mind the most since about 17:00 yesterday and that is of Pabbi; my late father.

For as long as I can remember on election nights, he was always glued to the TV (well glued in a Pabbi way, which meant going back and forth to the verandah for a smoke or a drink). When he was younger he was quite active in politics both in Iceland and in Australia. One of the things I remember most is the fact that in Iceland he was a member of one of the right-wing parties. When he came to Australia, he realised that right-wing in Iceland was closer to the left-wing in Australia…. He was a member of the ALP for some time and he would often talk about his time as a scrutineer or about ALP identities  from his era.

I would love to know what Pabbi’s views would have been on the removal of K-Rudd, the rise of Gillard, the shocking campaign that has been run, the numbers that have resulted and the hung parliament situation which we are extremely like to be faced with. In wanting to know his views on the current events, part of me is happy in a way that he is not here as I do not think he would have been impressed with the actions of the campaign, the way in which Australia has voted and well everything Tony Abbott has done. Pabbi was very much not an Abbott fan … and I am happy that he doesn’t have to even contemplate the possibility that Abbott might be the PM.

As a side note though, if you are looking for the most up to date results go to the AEC site. Currently the ABC says the ALP has won 72 seats and the Coalition has won 70 seats, Channel 7 says ALP 72 and Coalition 71, SBS says ALP 70 and Coalition 72….. The AEC, you know the Australian Electoral Commission, says ALP 70 and Coalition 72… ahh numbers