ferrousland.com - daily news archives
Thursday, March 03, 2005
brown legs - 06:12 PM
(filed under 'general')
i went for a swim again this afternoon with smiley. i went a bit earlier in the day than i have the past two days, so it was still quite warm when we got home.
not that i'm actually trying to get a tan or anything, but at this rate, if i go swimming every day with smiley, especially since we're only in the sun for about fifteen minutes & not even in the hottest part of the day (australia's sun is renowned as being much more intense than in many other parts of the world) my legs might begin to look as though they're attached to a living body.
i have the whitest legs in the universe. my sister's legs are really pale & she's generally very fair all over, but even she thinks my legs are white. add this to my thighs being a little wider than i'd like them to be & being kind of spotty, i've tended never to wear shorts. it's too hot here to wear jeans all the time though, so i've been bearing them to the public. no one's run screaming yet, so i'm pretty sure that it's mainly me that doesn't really like them. if they start to look a bit more presentable, i certainly won't be complaining.
as i said, though, i'm not chasing a tan. i don't want skin that looks like elephant leather when i'm fifty, not to mention not wanting to get skin cancer.
cow girls - 01:56 PM
(filed under 'general')
as i type this (from home before i get to the library's free internet connection), out the window i can see a couple of girls (students, i assume) in jeans & cowboy hats walking along the road barefoot, carrying their boots. one's got mud on the seat of her pants. i've seen some people digging up a big wet hole in the ground just nearby, so they must have become all wet doing that. man, they must have tough feet. it's hot out there. that road must be boiling!
more library internet - 01:54 PM
(filed under 'general')
wow. that half an hour this morning really flew by with a squirmy, bitey, tired, throwing-his-toy-phone-on-the-floor kid on my lap. i'm back at the library for another half hour. one of my last entries had been spammed to death & the next person was tapping on my shoulder for their half an hour on the computer before i was able to de-spam, so i rebooked for another half an hour.
not much new to say, i'm here again mainly to clean up the spam & finish reading my email. cya. 
in emerald - 10:08 AM
(filed under 'general')
i'm here in emerald! smiley & i arrived on monday night at 10pm, exactly on schedule. as the bus drove into emerald i recognised our car. once the bus stopped & i waited for everyone to get off (it was only a tiny bus. maybe three times bigger than a minivan) so that i could carry a sleeping smiley off the bus still in his car seat, i headed towards the front door & heard a voice say, "can i help you with that?" it was shroom.
he took smiley down the stairs & we put his seat on the ground & i gave shroom a big hug. it was great to see him again after four weeks away.
smiley stayed asleep while we strapped his seat into the car & we drove all of three minutes home. our house is on campus. once we got home & took him out of his seat, he woke up & wandered around the house, very pleased to see his daddy & mcgarnicle again. needless to say daddy & mcgarnicle were happy to see him again, too.
the house belongs to the college here where shroom is the new computer guy. there are quite a few staff & their families living on campus. the house itself is quite nice. it's nothing flash, but it's definitely a good house. it's pretty hot up here in emerald (emerald is in central queensland, for those of you who don't know. queensland is in the northern half on the eastern side of australia. it's hot in the northern part of australia & gets hotter the further north you go) so we're rather pleased that the house has two air conditioners as well as lots of large windows to let the breeze in when we don't use the air con.
there's a pool on campus, just around the corner from our house, which smiley & i have used twice already since we arrived. it's perfect to use in the afternoon heat & by the time we get out it's cooled off a bit so that we don't even get hot on the short walk back. i'm trying to teach smiley how to blow bubbles underwater. so far he's tried a few times (he does it on his own, copying me) but swallows a bit of water every time. it hasn't put him off trying again though.
we don't have the phone on yet, but hopefully that'll be sorted out soon. of course, that also means that we don't have internet access yet, either. i've written this at home & saved it on floppy, then gone to the local library to upload it to my site. i'm checking email while i'm here, too, if i have time in my allotted half hour while smiley jumps around on my lap & i type with my one remaining hand. so if you don't get a reply to an email you've sent, don't worry too much. i'm not ignoring you, i just didn't have the time or enough hands. 
i found out something disturbing yesterday. shroom forgot to pack my toilet gnome! he's still sitting on the window ledge in the toilet in the house at childers! noooooooooo!! i'm talking about a silly little garden gnome which i've had since i moved out of home at the age of about twenty one. at that time, my two housemates & i would move him around the house, putting him in various amusing places, such as in someone's bed with his head on their pillow & a bottle of alcohol next to him. he ended up spending most of his time in the toilet, placed so that he would stare down anyone sitting on the loo. since the three of us moved out of that house & went our separate ways, he's been following me around from house to house for over ten years, so it would be terrible to lose him now. i called someone at the mill (where shroom worked in childers) & have arranged for them to get him & check through the house one last time for anything else we might have left behind.
we're still unpacking here, but shroom did a fantastic job of getting all the comfort things put into their proper place & ready to use: computers, tv, bed, etc. in only the single day he had since the movers put our stuff in the house, he even did a week's worth of grocery shopping, so we've been able to eat real food. he's very good.
stuff is really expensive here. for example, a cooked chook (chicken) from the supermarket is usually about $6 or $7. here it's $10. a baby proofing thing for keeping cupboard doors closed has previously cost me about $5. here it cost closer to $7. i suppose it's because it's two hours drive to the closest big town, so freight is more expensive. i think that i'll be buying as much as i can online. groceries aren't an option since that's only available in the big cities. there are some decent online pharmacies, however, at which i can buy many things which i would normally buy at the supermarket, such as cotton buds, personal care products, that kind of thing. the shipping for that is around $5, so it's going to be easy to save money there.
i have to get ready to leave for the library now (i'm writing this at home, remember?) & i've just realised i don't even know where it is yet, so i'd better save this & get going. talk to you again soon.
one last thing. when i arrived here on monday night & finally got into bed, i gave shroom a hug & said, "it's good to be home." he pointed out that we only just moved here, so he was wondering how it was 'home' already. i said, "well, home is wherever you are."
btw, i've updated my postal address for anyone who wants it.
it's under the 'about' section in 'contacting me'. find it in the menu to the right on the front page.
ferrous
gmail
com
