G-n-L Ganesh and Lauren

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A few bricks short of a load...

Sunday, 10 January 2010

You may possibly consider G and I a few bricks short of a load after hearing what we did today... Having stumbled across what we assumed to be a small lot of cement covered bricks on ebay for only $10, 8km from our house we excitedly prepared the little yellow car to collect our new veggie patch path. On arrival it became clear that we definitely bought more than we bargained for. Sitting on the front lawn of the house were 400 cleaned and neatly stacked bricks, and about 1000 more cement encrusted bricks randomly scattered around the garden. Evidently not a job for the little yellow car. We hightailed it to the nearest Budget rental and hired a '1 tonne ute'... Even with this impressive vehicle it took us 3 trips and most of the day in the searing heat to pile the bricks up in our backyard. We now have enough bricks to last us a very long time - though we are of course too tired to do anything with them today. Instead we strung up the defences for the plants against tomorrow's 43 degree heat wave.

I also packed my bags for the first day of bootcamp! I start a 1 month, 3 mornings per week intensive bootcamp course tomorrow to get back into shape for 2010... Am looking forward to the workout, but definitely not the heat or the 5:15am start! Oh well, the sacrifices we must make to attain good health. Oh, and in health news apart from the chocolate thickshake and chocolate chip cookies I scoffed today, the Nepalese cookbook trial has been enormous success :-) Apart from the daal every single recipe has tasted delicious :-)

Fingers crossed for a fire free scorcher tomorrow!

Labels: bricks, home improvements

Honesty and a Week 2 recap

Sunday, 11 October 2009

Week 2 of the "3 weeks to a better life" plan has been more of a spiritual quest than a physical transformation - though I did finally manage to lose 1kg! Yay!

I think it's all about being open to ideas... to share more of oneself and to be honest about everything! When dinner with Catherine turned into a surprise game of competitive netball (filling in for some missing team mates) - I had a blast! :-) and despite not being very good at netball anymore the subsequent bbq invitation was a welcome change... It turns out that a saturday night spent with chemical engineers (all with phds!) is actually rather entertaining :-)

I also took a conversation class run by a rather inspiring lady, Jacqueline Wise, who clawed her way back from a complete mental breakdown in South Africa (where she couldn't even buy tissues at the shops) to become a world renowned conversationalist and counsellor (though with a terrible memory from the electric shock treatment she received)... I found her honesty refreshing... she's 62... divorced... her house is worth a fortune now, though she bought it when it was worth nothing... etc etc... It made me wonder why I've ever been embarrassed about my age... or my skill levels... or what I have or haven't done... No one can be perfect... and it's actually quite selfish to be shy and nervous and anxious. It made me feel much better about instigating conversations in the streets. I had quite a good chat with the mechanic about the bulbs in cars and how it all works together and how to change them...

I made a small amount of progress with household improvements, though Dad and I hit a major road block with the study shelves - apparently the entire wall is a mess of pipes, electrical cables and indented bathroom shelving... I have high hopes for my steel road through the brackets suggestion but Dad thinks it's too much of a technical challenge... he's off to Darwin this week anyway to get some sun and run a lab up there for a week - funnily enough he's considering a permanent move while Will is still young... (and yes, the rumours are true - I really saw him crawl!)...

Overall a positive and productive week!

Labels: home improvements, honesty, new years resolutions

3 weeks to a better life

Saturday, 26 September 2009

Apparently it only takes 3 weeks to change your habits and to be living a better life! With Ganesh away for three weeks and the big 'Around the Bay in a Day' trip the day before his return, it seems like the perfect opportunity for self improvement :-) Areas of focus will be health and fitness, ideas and business, household improvements and relationships...

A rough guide as follows:

Week 1

Daily trips to the gym or taekwondo (1 hour every day)
1 hour on the exercise bike each day
Follow the Kickstart diet all week
Have lunch in the lunch room (not at my desk!) everyday and be sociable - try to recruit greenies for the implementation of the sustainable ideas jar project
Recruit a programmer to finish Trash 2 Treasure coding
Get back to various people regarding their job offers and finish their web work!
Obtain recycled wood for bookshelves & workbench project
Clean up the entire house
Clean out the shed
Visit (after work): Mum & the boys, Grandma, Paul, Catherine, Grace
Organise mum's birthday present
Draw out the plan for the garden
Make a final decision on what to decorate the fridge with
Post a daily green card blog entry
Obtain books from the library to read
Create mood boards/project boards for each room of the house for constant inspiration
Make a decision on which photos to print for the photo wall & have them printed

Labels: home improvements, new years resolutions

Back in action...

Sunday, 21 June 2009

Wow... it's been a long time... Between projects, work and visitors there hasn't been much time to sit down and write, but I'm finally updating, mainly just to get back into practice and to be more disciplined!

The photos are of the ramp at our place - we (well mostly Ganesh, I was more involved in the design phase) built it for Grandma as she's been hesitant to climb our stairs. It was a big success and she's been over twice since it's gone up! We've also made a start on some gates for the front (harder than it looks to keep a pole straight in cement!)... and the plum tree chair is just such a novelty I had to include it! You can see people trees as well at http://www.pooktre.com.

It's been an interesting weekend filled with stress about the eclipse specifics given the visa issues which I can't elaborate on until I return! Grandma's 80th birthday at the Windsor... A lovely bike ride to the CERES farmers market with a friend which included the best egg rolls eva! (Toasted turkish bread, freshly laid fried eggs topped with feta and parsley, fried onion, green tomato chutney and lots of freshly picked spinach)... Lots of visitors.... and a trip to the farm to clean out the shed which means I now have a whole trailer load of trash waiting to be turned into treasure!

Happy Greening :-)

Labels: garden, home improvements

The Living Room Part I

Saturday, 23 May 2009

Like most people (I think!), I have rich fantasies about how the house should function and how it should look. The fantasies regarding the smart house that uses no energy, is completely wired up to the server, orders and cooks healthy organic local produce every night, keeps tabs on my health and won't let me go to bed until I've gone for a jog may still be a few years off yet... but I do have some control over the decor - keeping in mind the extremely limited budget!

I've wanted to use some of the sari fabric I bought in India for a while now, but every time I find a seamstress the prices seem excessive. I finally decided that despite my torturous experiences with sewing machines in my youth involving spending the entire textiles semester with a screwdriver in my hand fixing machines, and a tie dye skirt that I was immensely proud of until it fell apart while I was wearing it, I would get one... It took a while to find a bargain on ebay, but eventually I found a little $10 unit that I could pick up from one suburb over. I think the owner had been similarly frustrated with sewing machines because when I unpacked it the entire machine was covered in an enormous tangle of knots. Eventually with a bit of brute force and some help from Ganesh the machine was in working order!

I started on the simplest thing I could image - a table runner! (I think the knitting equivalent would be a scarf!).... then ventured into pillows. The pillows could use a bit more stuffing and I'm really not sure how long the zips will last but as you can see the end result wasn't nearly as bad as my tie dye skirt! I thought I'd make a start on my living room theme (white/wood/sari) while I was at it and so Ganesh and I cut and sanded some wood that we'd found in the backyard to make some candle holders... Against one of the white couches we got for an absolute steal on ebay (though picking them up in the trailer was an adventure in itself) I think it has improved the situation (though sanding and repolishing the very old table will be one of the next jobs on the list!)... of course your imagination is always leaps and bounds beyond skill, but it's a small step in the right direction.

Of course I'm pretty biased because I was involved in the work and was expecting a textiles catastrophe... in any case, good or bad, it was fun!

Okay, enough procrastinating - time to get some work done!

Labels: decorating, home improvements

Home is where the heart is

Sunday, 18 January 2009

Book of the Week: The Invention of Clouds... The extraordinary tale of Luke Howard and the birth of meteorology... What is most amazing is how by simply defining 6 words this discipline took off in leaps and bounds. Highly recommended!

You will be pleased to know that Green Card is back online... Someone managed to guess the password somehow - rather than any particular flaw in the code (human error I guess you could call it - I made the password too simple or distributed it to too many people!)... At least I hope that's all it was!

pond

Apart from that it has been a weekend of home improvements... Mostly turning over the soil for growing veggies (and finding some very weathered 1958 pennies in the process), planting fruit trees and native herbs, and repainting old furniture with the spare paint from the shed. I read that the imagery of a pair of birds in feng shui is suitable for the southwest corner of the bedroom so I repainted my previously fluorescent blue and yellow chest of draws to match the room with a simple design... It worked out well as the yellow blended into the walls and so the room still looks spacious! While I was doing that Ganesh started work on the pond... When I planned the garden out I decided to capture the water from the shed roof via a simple water wheel into a pond as extra water storage for when the drought is extreme. He did a fantastic job digging a deep hole, about 2m long 1m wide and 50cm deep... It will have to be reduced to 30cm deep to comply with the law, but the amazing part was that we struck a layer of clay at the bottom. We had a lot of fun spreading clay all over the sides of the hole to seal it... I felt like I was in a New Zealand mud spa - the texture of the wet clay was like cream! I finally understand why people enjoy mud baths!

This evening we had dinner with my aunts and uncle at a lovely Thai restaurant in Alphington and tasted some deliciously sweet mulberries from their farm... we are now listening to Osho videos on you tube. Osho turns out to be on the surface a crazy Indian guru... "I know for sure God does not exist. And thank-God he does not exist!"... But under his jocular exterior he makes some interesting points, and he also is a fantastic example of a person who so easily introduces humour into his speech. While his humour is a little more crass, Osho does remind me of Douglas Adams - the greatest author of all time!

Labels: book, home improvements, osho