Spirit of Christmas

Was on the way to bus stop with one bus pulling away, then another close behind so I started running but was not going to make it. Didn't bother signalling as thought I'd missed that one too, but the driver carried on past the stop and pulled over right next to me :)

What a nice guy, and that my friends is the real spirit of Christmas!!!

Back in the water with another Uni Dive Club

After searching for a dive club here in Perth for the last few years I managed to track one down! Not rocket science with my expert Google skills you'd think, but seems putting scuba and diving didn't do it and I kind of stumbled upon them....Anyway! 

Joined the club last week with a 'meet and greet' dive at Robb Jetty which is now none existent from the surface but forms a good set of pylons that have a lot of life around them, so some good macro life!

Then out on Satruday to dive just off the boat between Carnac and Garden Island, which was a good spot with some excellent weather. Dead calm and we could see the bottom (although only the usual 10m depth) but a good dive, just need a camera to take some photos.....Interesting to find out that all the beaches had been closed on and off over the weekend as there 4 or 5 big sharks around too...... so they wouldn't be interested in us divers out to sea, honest!

Christmas, where did that come from

So struggling to entertain the fact that Christmas is nearby, we got ourselves in gear this weekend and got the tree (not a real one this year....) up and a spanky (yes spanky) looking light rope out the back, that has 8 different colour settings - rock on!

We're not hosting the feed on Christmas day this year, but having the crew around this weekend which should be good.

Had to construct the tree (adding branches too!)

Looking all sparkly! With tree skirt, of course...

Spanky Light show

They're green and square

Janice likes to cook, but will admit she's not usually a baker (or butcher/Candlestick maker!).

So when she does create something sweet its always with some excitement and trepidation, for both of us.

This time it was an interesting recipe for mint chocolate squares, which I have to admit tasted as good as they looked. With a little help from my excellent "magazine" style photography :)

"Delicious" eat your heart out...

Feels like we're in Cairns

Another storm forecast for today and had some rain and bit of thunder earlier.... then about 30 mins ago the lightning started. So like any sad, photographic lunatic I'm grabbing my camera and tripod (sorely under used lately) to head outside and try and capture some lightning shots.

It was mostly sheet lightning in the clouds, so really just lit up the area making the 9.30 dark look like early evening nearly (with the help of some long exposure times)

Then the rain started to come over so I headed inside....and not a moment too soon as it erupted like a classic  "Cairns tropical storm" - you were wondering where the title was from....go on admit it!

Massive winds and LOTS of rain, very cool, because I'm indoors in the dry of course. Tried to get a shot of the rain coming off the covered roof (with the help of the green garden light). But as you can see, should have used the tripod again, but it's the affect we're after.

If you really want get a sense of it you can check out my "video" on my youtube channel. Which is in reality only audio as it was too dark, but is some classic phil rambling to amuse you....

Jacaranda trees

They are J's favourite trees (until the WA Christmas trees come out - another post). Is just about the end of the season for them but this one is still blooming, with some crazy Galah's hanging around above it.

Visitors from Adelaide

Had a visit from Sharon and Stuart this weekend as they are over visiting from Adelaide as sharon now works for a Perth based consultancy (and loving that....not!). They were over for the works christmas party so not bad to get paid to come over. Good to see them both :)

It was our works Christmas party last night too which was really well done and a very nice venue of the Blue Water Grill, on the south side of the river overlooking the city.

Garden growing great guns

The Garden has been growing really well over the last few months with all the rain and not too hot sun so far.

And one year on we actually have some idea of the plants and what they can/will do and planted a bunch of other ones to fill out and give some more colour.

Never thought I would become a gardening gimp, but is something pleasing about having it all growing and looking nice, especially with the way the house is designed and with our large outdoor space so we spend a lot of time out here.

Added more pictures to the Picasa albums too.

Saturday afternoon in Innaloo

Baffles me that people do this shopping mall stuff every Saturday....once every few months is enough. As you can tell from my scruffy bored look, while J gets a dress measured to be taken in!

See, its not all surfing/diving in the sun. Well maybe will do that later anyway, cause I can :)

The J is on show

And for Kath and the girls, the very nice J that they made for J is on show in pride of place next to one of the wedding pictures in the kitchen.

Expanding my plumbing-ness

So after being fed up with our toilet since we moved in as it was old, single flush only and takes about half an hour to refill! Then it started leaking so I decided rather than mess about trying to get it fixed we would be better off to replace it. Of course this meant that the room had to be painted first, so just went for a basic white to freshen it all up and that meant no colour choosing trauma, something we were both glad about!

So after a discussion or two with more DIY-ness people I decided it wouldn't be that hard to change it myself. So I sent Janice out for the afternoon in case it took longer than I thought (having only one loo isn't alwyas good....) and discovered that the most time consuming part was getting the old loo out as it was cemented down AND had a huge lump of it underneath too.



Nearly got it all

The good news was that I got some more use out of my lump hammer and other tools of destruction.

Then after some fiddling to get things in the small space it all installed easily AND no leaks :)

All sparkly and new, just needs the sealant to finish (no cement this time)

Tea - old school

In the attempt to gets good strong cup-o-tea I am trying the old tea leaves. So needed a one person "dunking" strainer and its working quite well. Although feels kind of like having tea at my Nans house from years gone by :)

And bonus points for Eleanor if she can remember the mug, which was a Christmas present sent over here several years ago...

Egg cups in action

As we have never owned egg cups before which was pointed out by mum when she visited, so we decided it was time to fix that!
Good breakfast, although a disagreement over butter or tomato sauce with the egg, between the UK and Canadian contingents...

Testing Blogger Android app

See who is paying attention to the photo, showing the Android app on the Laptop!

Well, it works. Although is not the best for formatting posts...

Now I can write more randomness while "out and about" (for all the Canadians in the audience).

First YouTube Channel post

I decided to create a YouTube channel a month or so ago, in case I got the urge to post some videos. And one morning this week the urge did indeed strike!

Based mostly on the rare occurrence of fog in Perth, it was worth capturing (so I thought at the time....). If you're really bored, go take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/user/philmduffy

 

p.s. I'll promise to try and not make it so bad next time....

Thanksgiving, with chooks

Being Canadian (not American as well) Thanksgiving this weekend we invited some peeps round to share the food and booze with us. Wasn't really turkey time over here in Perth, so we substituted with two chooks (Translation: chickens) and a heap of veg, spuds and gravy.

The Taylor Clan came round and after some "subtle" suggestions about bringing something Canadian they did good.... Not only did Glynn find some Canadian beer called Whistler (although I'd never actually heard of it).

The whole family made a genuine apple pie, complete with a maple leaf

Erin also came by too and was a good afternoon in all, including the crazy swirly straws....

Our New Zealand North Island Adventure - Part 2

After leaving the Caves at Waitomo, we headed North towards the Coromandel.

We started with a night in Thames with a great camp site right by the river, which offered some great slow shutter speed options (while I waited for Janice to get ready).

Unfortunately we hadn't encountered on being terrorised by a crazy bull that night... Seriously getting from the camp kitchen to the entertainment room I came across this LARGE bull that had wandered in and was busily munching on the hedge. Thinking it was all happily distracted I went to walk past until it turned round and did the old "mock charge" at me, which was really funny (afterwards). So myself and other bloke went and to find the wireless signal (ahem... hid from the bull) until it finished destroying the bush and left. While shouting warnings at other unsuspecting people wandering round the camp that evening!

After getting back to the campervan safely for the evening, we decided to go for an early morning walk up a track next to the campsite before. We didn't count on the first 10 minutes being a STEEP climb, but gave a great view from the top :)

Lookout from the morning stomp

So we set off along the coast road which was very dramatic, which unfortunately meant a bit of a hairy drive along very a very narrow road with big logging trucks thundering round the bends in the other direction.

Lots of views like this all around the coast

Stopped for the afternoon for some lunch at the town of Coromandel and then took a break so Janice could have a nap and I could chill out, so found a pretty good spot to do that.

The much anticipated before and after pics of our house

The first room that got a total overhaul was the most important in the house... the Kitchen!

This is what we started with. Thank goodness you cant see the inside of the cupboards! And yes that is the dreaded lino flooring that was hiding another layer of lino that would take us 2 days to scrape off!

And this is the much loved finished product!

We are still looking for some chairs for the new table, but they work for now.

The second room that we decided to tackle, much to Phil's dismay was our bedroom. Everyone knows that Phil's favourite colour is yellow, but let me tell you it was a bit much!

It hurt my eyes!

Phil agreed to go with a water theme so blue was the go. I am still looking for some new curtains but I think I may just have to make my own in the end.

The after!

All the bedrooms got the same colour carpet, and the flooring that runs through the kitchen is in the rest of the house.
Next we had to tackle the vaulted ceiling of the lounge/living room (to satisfy the Canadian and UK readers).The rest of the house needed to get painted before the floor could go in so that meant every room had to be done eventually. I do enjoy the concept of the feature wall so we carried that into the lounge as well. We went a bit more bold with our colour choice here but I am very happy with our final product.

White, bright and crisp.

 Trust me the carpet looks much nicer in the pics!

With a bit of adjusting of the furniture, new curtains and curtain rails, painting of the brick wall (never again) and some new art work we have...

The final product!

Sorry, this one is a bit dark.

 The last thing to do in this room is to replace the hideous chandelier, and we are still debating on getting an area rug for in front of the sofa. Stay tuned!
We have also painted the 2nd spare bedroom but nothing exciting to see in there. Phil thought it was going to be his 'Man Room' but my sewing machine has become a permanent fixture with all the projects I have been working on. But that will have to be another post on another day!
Hope you enjoyed the show!

Our New Zealand North Island Adventure - Part 1

Pondering a holiday to the sun (Thailand?) or New Zealand we decided it was definitely time to head to NZ and happened to get a good deal on a flight to Wellington, so that settled it!

The flight took us via Melbourne (another interesting blog post for another time) and then onto Wellington where we saw the Welsh rugby team (being a week before the rugby world cup of course). Then were picked up by Aled and great to see him again after about 7 years, then also got to meet Diane for the first time. Had a very tasty curry that night at Planet Spice in Newtown and then headed off to pick up the campervan (motorhome) the next morning just north of the city.

A very smart Mercedes 2 berth van that was to be our home for the next 9 days. Much easier than camping we decided, you just turn up at a camp site and plug in to the power.

We took off for one of the longer driving days up the west coast heading north, via Wanganui (where this photo was taken) with New Plymouth being the destination for the day. Driving past Mt Egmont (or Mt Taranaki) we were lucky enough for the clouds to clear while we took a great walk along the coastal path.

Later that day we headed to Waitomo to do the "black abyss" tour of the caves, which was a whole different way to see the caves and the "glow worms",  which we discovered are actually maggots with bioluminescent "poo"! Strangely enough they don't market it this way...

This was great, except for the minor detail of the water being about 8 degrees, so even with the double 5mm wetsuits, was VERY cold.....brrrrrrr!

More ramblings from the trip in post part 2....soon :).

In the meantime don't forget to check out "a few" more photos on the picasa site (not the 650 that we ended up with....)

The year of the teeth (not sure that's an official one on the Chinese calendar)

After my discovery that my wisdom teeth had to come out NOW, and as it had been left so long (due to the lack of decent advice from other dentists) one of the teeth next to my bottom widom tooth (growing sideways) also had to come out!

Then the fun just continued as the tooth next to the extra tooth that had to come out (surgeon took one look and ripped it out while I was under) had been having problems for a while too. Again I'd asked several dentists and as it already had a filling on it they told me it was just that. But going back to my new dentist and making sure he checked he confirmed there was a BIG hole in the root of my tooth.

So yesterday I had a fun time with him drilling my old filling off and getting right down into the root of the tooth to get rid of the decay. After about 30 mins of drilling he pulled out a laser to slice through the gum, never knew they could do that..... Love the smell of burning gum flesh, especially when it's mine. Good job I was all numbed up :)

Then he re-built the tooth with about 5 types of filling stuff and we just have to wait and see if thaty fixes it, or it's going to come out too. Really don't want to lose that tooth being on the same side as the others.... And officially had enough of the dentists this year.

If you as Kath she'll probably say it's karma from all the years that she had fillings and I didn't ;o)

The time BC (Before Carpets)

With the imminent arrival of the carpets (finally) we got down to painting the spare room, which had been a bit of a mess with the lovely RED wall, not my favourite.
Luckily my interior decorator decided to go simple and stick to one colour for the whole room, which turned out to be a "lilac". Then the skirting boards had to be painted too and we are ready for the new carpets.

My painting job, honest (door frame and door to go)

Food mixer + Janice = Bread

A few weeks ago J and I went on a bit of a spending spree, as we were planning to get a laptop for a while as the old one was from Canada and had seen better days! In our favourite electronics store "Good Guys" we found a really good deal on the laptop (in use right now) and also saw a food mixer that Janice had wanted for a long time and and with her birthday coming...

So here it is (and for those of you that are paying attention, it is the same model they use on Masterchef).

And as she is rather partial to some nice bread, that was the first production to appear.

 Unfortunately it didn't turn out quite as good as it looked and smelt, more practise needed :)

My first speeding ticket, ever

Glad to see the police are fighting crime where it's needed, as I was obviously going to cause a major accident doing 8 kms over the limit in a dark quiet road on down near margaret river...

Winter break in Yallingup

After work being very hectic for the two of us we decided to get away for a quick weekend break "down south" and found a quaint lodge attached to a Winery just outside of Yallingup, called Sienna. We got things packed up Thursday night and I grabbed a train (being a city commuter now...) to a station south of the city (J works down towards Freo) and we set off around 5, getting down there for just after 7.

The place was as expected, with a real fire (my second favourite element to play with) and was a challenge to light it with the damp wood, but some of the wine they left us helped the time go by too!

We had to laugh at the bedroom as it looked "a bit red" in the photos we saw online, but how about this....

OK, that was a bit of an exaggerated slow shutter speed, but still :)

After some (well needed) wet and grey weather it was lovely to have a crisp and frosty morning to start us off  the next day.

In true J and P style we don't "relax" very well, so we headed for a very nice breakfast in Dunsborough with the best fresh orange juice I've ever had (and most expensive). Then of course had to go to the Yallingup coffee company to keep J happy :)

And being near Smiths beach we had to go surfing, or at least try. Can you spot the difference to the Perth beaches, big long clean swells, perfect for us learners....and a bit fresh to get in but then very nice.

Day two, saw us heading to the northern point of the Cape near to the lighthouse which we hadn't been to before. A great walk around the tracks with some surfers showing us how it's really done right at the point.

Then of course always on the lookout for critters in the sea and first saw several groups of sea lions chillin out

And even though it's not officially whale season "eagle eye" phil spotted some blow and then a breaching whale!!! Was a way off from us, as you can see from the shot using my zoom lens, then the next I did a major photo crop.

We were told that there was another nice place for a lunch called the Wise Winery which was on the way back in Eagle Bay, so called in there and were not dissapointed by the view or the food.

So overall was a great break and just what we both needed.

The great escape...

Just what you want on your first week of work, day 2, 7am, is to get locked in the bathroom! And not just me, J was getting ready for work too (and she was the one that broke it ;o). But the mechanism just locked up....

The "blighter" that caused all the trouble

So after 40 mins and getting the handle off and still no joy, then breaking my "high tech tool" or tweezers, we were still there! Laughing, in a kind of manic unbelieving way.

Not quite the screw driver I needed

Next effort, trying to get the hinges off WAS NOT going to happen, as this was enough trouble with a hammer and tools before.

And of course, having a security screen which is built into the frame meant that there was no window to just open and get out (which you would have done in the UK!). So had to break it and climb out (thankfully NOT like the UK we were on the ground floor).

And even coming back and taking the hinges off, the door wasn't budging, those damn metal frames sure are strong. And being a tad late already Janice had to climb out the window with me (and yes we had some clothes with us, which has been one of the questions...)

Getting home that evening took a few "gentle" kicks to the door from the other side to get it off the hinges as even after taking all the handles off and using pliers that mechanism wasn't moving... "Weird as"!


The silver lining is hopefully giving a few of you a good laugh and now waiting for the glass guys to come and fit the new glass on Monday (got the other sliding glass pane wedged in for now).

Luckily Winters in Perth aren't that cold