random life – Page 39 – helenthura.com

October 19, 2007

Target 140 refined

Well it is now a bit over three months since the Water Commission formally introduced Target 140. When I did the last post on our water usage the Brisbane average was 137L per person per day. That has now dropped to 133L. Our water usage in that period has dropped from 77L per person per day to 54L. In the next period I/we are going to try to reduce that to 35L as that would mean that we would be doing Target 140 for the whole house instead of per person.

For the entire 3mths that this advice note reports on, our washing machine has been fed off the rainwater tank 100%. It is dead easy to reduce your water use and we don’t have aerators on our taps, we don’t have a water efficient shower head and our toilet rigged to use less water by the shampoo bottles full of water inside it. If we did have these we would quite possibly reduce our use even more. It is just a matter of taking a millisecond when you turn on a tap or step into the shower to reduce what you use.

October 13, 2007

Juicy, Juicy, Green Grass

Before Hi-5 and before The Wiggles there was Peter Combe and he is back with a toffee apple, playing the songs that he played to Aussie children in the late 80’s/early 90’s again, though now we are young adults. We still know the words, and with a bit of thought we can easily fold our newspaper hats again. He is coming to town on October 21st and I am dragging everyone I know along to it with newspaper hats of course, even my Mum is going to come along. We are still trying to drag Matthew along but unless we drag him there I don’t think we will have much luck. To say I am mildly excited would quite possibly be an understatement 🙂

Mum and I are not too sure if we ever saw him the first time round, though I am sure we probably did at some ABC Kids thing but I won’t be missing it this time 😀

October 1, 2007

Birthday Breakfast

We went to Walkabout Creek yesterday morning for a Big Breakfast Buffet to celebrate my Birthday. Pabbi picked Grandad up from The Farm for the occasion and then we headed over to Brisbane Forest Park for some serious Breakfast Buffeting as in I am not having lunch today and won’t eat much for dinner sort of Breakfast. It t’was very good indeed. Lots of very yummy foods. The waffles were huge and very nice with Greek yoghurt and berry compote and there was Danishes and bacon, lots of bacon and very nice breakfast.

I had hoped to get a photo of Matthew as he was told that he had to let me take his photo as it was my Birthday event, somehow it didn’t transpire. I did two very nice photos of Pabbi and Grandad though.

Grandad brought a Hippeastrum stalk down with him for me to put my desk at work this week. He must have known that the Crucifix Orchids that I had picked at The Farm a fortnight ago had reached the end of their life on Friday. I have quite liked looking at the Hippeastrum flowers at work today, so big and red 😀

September 25, 2007September 26, 2007

Kangaroo Point

Two weeks ago today I turned 22, two weeks ago today I also spent a very very fun evening out with the POTN crew taking photos of the city, of our resident fire twirler, partaking in “Flash Wars”, generally been silly and pimping the gear. We have no shame. There is always that moment when you can slip in a comment about well if you had that lens or if you upgraded your camera or if you had a flash, especially when it comes to me and my beloved Sigma 12-24mm. This thing isn’t just ultra wide angle it is ultra ultra wide angle. I loved it on the 350d, on the 5D it is a perfect partner. Though as much as I promote the beauty of the 12-24mm, there was a few moments on that night when the city was just a little bit too far away from the cliffs and I think some people just about fainted when I commented that the 12-24mm was just too wide 😀

Anyway photos.

Ohh I wonder if the flash will show the bones in my hand? (not my hand, but my partner in “flash wars” hand)

September 19, 2007

music and photos, just the way I like it

At the moment I can’t get enough of some of the live recordings from Bonnaroo. I also just like saying the word Bonnaroo. Even if it is meant to be Cajan Slang it sounds quite Australian to me. This year there was also a swag of Aussies showing the people stateside how music is made. Well two of them did, I am still not sold that the third one makes music. The first two are Xavier Rudd and The John Butler Trio. Both of whom have been nominated for ARIAs as could be expected.

The three live recordings that I am loving at the moment are all available at the 2007 Bonnaroo at Large Hearted Boy

John Butler Trio: 2007-06-17, Bonnaroo (Sendspace link) [mp3]
Regina Spektor: 2007-06-16, Bonnaroo (Sendspace link) [mp3]
Xavier Rudd: 2007-06-16, Bonnaroo [mp3,ogg,flac]

I still have quite a few artists on that list that I want to check out live.

On the weekend Clare and I went to the Acoustic in the Park afternoon at Southank. It was a nice afternoon of relatively unknown local singer/songwriters. We went because we wanted to check out Georgia Potter who delighted us.

Clare’s Shoes

Georgia and then two of the other acts. I can’t recall their names at the moment and can’t find the slip of paper I was writing it down on. Southbank has not posted the names anywhere.

Also went to the farm on Sunday morning and took a few photos. These two are my favs.

Work is still going pretty well but getting quite busy.

September 13, 2007

work, socialise, sleep. repeat

It seems like ever since I started working that my social life has been filled up with places to go, people to meet etc. That may have been in part due to Georgie coming home and also not working 4 nights a week.

Since I don’t think I will ever catch up with big blog posts I will do a mini recap – I still have photos from Melbourne to post, namely the warbling Tom Woodward gig from the last night.

Saturday 8/9/07, two parties.
The first party/bbq was a farewell party to a friend from high school, Belinda who has received a 3 year scholarship to Cambridge(yeah that Cambridge) to complete her Phd in something to do with MRIs and modelling. Great to catch up with both Bindy’s family and the girls from high school.

The second party was an interesting hour filled with ramblings, alcohol and photo taking. A couple of people from work and their random friends.

Sunday Arvo 9/9/07
Shakespeare on Oxford.
A free presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on a Sunday arvo. How could I resist? Georgie joined me for the last part of the play before we headed back to her house for dinner with her family. Quite a nice afternoon.

Monday 10/9/07
POTN Brisbane night time adventure night 1, Southbank.
Someone had the whacky idea of going out two nights in a row to take photos of the City at dusk/night from two different angles. From Southbank the first night and Kangaroo point the second night. They were both very fun nights with lots of flash war fun. Props to the fast recycle time/flash strength of the 580ex. I could out flash all night long 😀 Still going through photos from this night and I haven’t even started on the next night. All I have left to go through for this night are photos from the break dancers we stumbled upon at Southbank and random POTN crew photos.