sodding electricity

Posted on Fri 16 February 2007 at 11:24

  Not much to report really

Steve still seems to be enjoying work – he must have at least one mate as he is going to his barbeque tomorrow.  And now that I have changed my shift pattern, it is, of course on an evening that I am working – typical!  Not to worry, I may just be able to catch the tail end of it…..

Melissa also seems to be enjoying school – the little of it she can remember to tell us about!  I have been cycling up with her and Shannon a few times and both I and Chelly think they are capable of going on their own.  That is of course on the grass and pushing their bikes across the pedestrian crossing.  Call me picky, but I argue with Melissa every time.  She wants to ride her bike across the road and I say ‘no, it is for pedestrians’.  That said, we still cycle on the pavement, but always go round any pedestrians on the grass – and there is grass all the way to school.  Possibly a bit hypocritical but I am not chancing her life with some of these daft buggers on the roads.

I seem to have so much more time off since I changed my shift pattern.  It just suits me so much better.  It is also a far more laid -back shift in the evenings so who wouldn’t prefer that?  I have managed to go swimming several times since school went back in and even joined in with the aquacise (?) group yesterday which was good fun and good exercise too.  It is nice to feel that you are becoming a local as the staff there start to recognise me.  I got into conversation with another swimmer on the way out today.  The inside door at the Pool is automatic but the outside one isn’t.  And every day I just about walk into as I expect it to open for me, the same as the inside one does.  I started laughing, then explained to the young Maori lad who was just behind me.  He immediately asked which part of Europe I was from and when I replied Scotland he started to tell me how much he loved the time he had spent there.

Now this was truly bizarre.  The electric was off at the Pool yesterday.  Or some of it was…one till worked at another didn’t, some lights worked, some didn’t.  At the traffic lights on the way home, the actual traffic light worked but the separate pedestrian crossing didn’t.  I got home and put the microwave on a while later.  The light came on and the plate went round but it didn’t heat.  I thought maybe I hadn’t put the timer on for as long as I thought and tried again – nothing.  I was in a right strop – swearing about cheap crappy goods, threatening to go and find the receipt (didn’t quite get that far!).  So then the dishwasher came on. Steve had put it on before he left for work.  I can only assume that there was some power but not the full strength so that when there was enough, the dishwasher finished it’s programme.  And the microwaves now works perfectly!!

I’m sure I mentioned cicadas in passing previously.  The noise is phenomenal – not amazingly loud although it is quite loud: it’s the depth of the noise I mean.  You can hear it coming from all over, especially from the gully where the tree and bushes are really thick.  I guess it is the sound of summer here.  We have a tree in the garden that they seem to love in particular.  There are hundreds of shed skins on it.  For those who have never come across them before, they settle somewhere and proceed to spit out of their skins, down the back it would appear from the shells we have found.  The tree is studded with them – not as many as it used to have before the kittens started racing each other up though.

I have just written this on Word and managed to add 2 photos of the cicadas on the tree.  But when I transferred it over, I lost the pictures.  I have just had to delete a bit about how sodding clever I was as it turns out I'm not!