Full of piss and vinegar…

Posted on October 10, 2008 by borysSNORC

Last night over dinner, the small child was telling us that they are studying sea creatures at the moment and he was asking me about blue bottles (which strangely I was writing about just last week). I told the Small Child that blue bottles are a type of jellyfish and that I was stung by one once when I was about his age…. and gave him a truncated version of how it’s sting feels like a bee sting and how they used vinegar to try and soothe it (which I just read on that Wikipedia link is NOT a recommended treatment method for treating Portugese Man O’ War/blue bottle stings!).

To which the Small Child responded: "What is vinegar made out of?"

Nonplussed Mom:
*blink blink* "Errr… I’m not sure actually… I suppose it is fermented from some sort of grain, perhaps wheat?"

How could we not know what vinegar is made from? It’s a pantry staple and we’ve been using white vinegar, balsamic vinegar and even rice wine vinegar our whole lives? How could we not know how it’s made? So I grabbed a bottle of vinegar out of the pantry thinking there would be a table of ingredients listed:

100% vinegar

Really helpful that. Oh well.. thanks to the internets we were able to look it up

Vinegar : a sour liquid consisting of dilute and impure acetic acid, obtained by acetous fermentation from wine, cider, beer, ale, or the like: used as a condiment, preservative, etc.

No doubt you lot are all going to tell me that you always knew the process used to make vinegar and I’m going to look like an ignorant twat…. again.
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No sheeps were harmed in the making of this test.

Posted on October 9, 2008 by borysSNORC

My Dad used to be hyper-reflexive apparently…. and I apparently am not. I was fiddling with this little online reaction tester and even though I didn’t do great it was fun. Yaleman was emailed it by a friend and it carried a warning I feel obliged to repeat here – Warning it is strangely addictive 🙂 You have to try and hit the sheep with a tranquilizer dart (your mouse button) as soon as you see them bolt for freedom.

Go nuts.
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Sweet Dreams aren’t made of this…

Posted on October 8, 2008 by borysSNORC

Had another weird arse dream last night…. oy!

i was out at the shopping centre (Carindale?) with Mr K and he led me into a shop. It was a lingerie shop that had no style about it whatsoever… there was no signage, no store displays and merchandise was just laying about on pallet racking, It looked like a Bunnings Hardware Warehouse but with lingerie thrown about on the shelves.

Mr K told me with a magnanimous wave that the shop was all mine to run and that I had to work there because he had put all our money into it as a surprise. I stood there like a stunned mullet for a bit and when I regained my composure I told him that there have been three failed lingerie stores in that centre and they didn’t look like a hardware store. I then dragged him around the mall to the other lingerie store in the place that was all lush and fabulously laid out with immaculate window displays, elegant signage and classy retail layout. I told him that this was the competition and there’s no way the lingerie shop he bought would sell anything compared to this.

But Mr K said ‘Ah-ha’ with a knowing smile and said that we would be selling more than just lingerie! He then pulled out of his pocket a brown piece of coconut shell about the size of his palm which had been defuzzed, polished up and then painted with acrylics with a tacky tropical beach picture on it. He told me that my little sister had been painting them and that everyone absolutely loved them and we were going to sell heaps of them in my store!! … and I was standing there looking at him like he’d lost his marbles when I woke up.

Jaysis, merry and jozeff!! What the hell was that all about!

I was a good little Catholic schoolgirl and it was my first time.

Posted on October 7, 2008 by borysSNORC

I was thinking the other day while tossing up the virtues of cleaning out my CD collection …."what was the first album I ever bought with my own money?" Took me a few minutes and I remember buying my first album – admittedly I purchased a tape and not an LP because we didn’t have a record player with us on holiday and no one had ever heard of CDs yet. Yes, yes, yes. I know – my crinoline petticoats are showing.

Me and BigSal had been given some money for Christmas and decided to go shopping for some tapes as we had a Sony Walkman circa 1983 and only tapes full of music we had taped off the radio. I shit you not. We used to sit by the radio waiting for our favourite songs to come on so we could tape them. We didn’t have a lot of disposable income back then… hang on… what am I talking about? We didn’t have ANY income, disposable or otherwise!!! Not like kids these days. OMG did I just say that? Hell, it’s not just my crinoline petticoats showing… I think my whalebone corset and bloomers are out in the breeze with that comment… sigh.

When did we get so old?!?! :S Hopefully I can restore a bit of street cred with my choice in music. My first tape was Quiet Riot’s ‘Metal Health’ album. Which I played to death! Even now, any track of that album rapidly makes me feel like I am about 14 or 15 again.

Big Sal picked up Midnight Oil’s ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’ which was also a pretty great rock album. Goes without saying that my Dad wasn’t overly impressed with our selections 🙂
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Some people like to watch….

Posted on October 6, 2008 by borysSNORC

But I ain’t one of them.

IT FRUSTRATES THE LIVING HELL OUT OF ME!!!!!

Sigh…. that feels a little better. Yesterday the BCC had a free weekend where you could take as much green rubbish (trees and prunings etc) to the ‘Refuse Transfer Stations’ – a DUMP by another other name smells just as foul – to try and encourage residents to get their trees trimmed back ready for the storm season. So we decided it would be a good weekend to cut down about half a dozen trees that had been ill-advisedly planted by the previous owners that were getting way too big and were way too close to the fence.

We got a chainsaw, hired a ute, pruning shears, gloves, hats, sensible shoes and everything else you need for a day o heavy yard work…. and then I spent the entire day watching the guys do all the work 🙁 I spend half my life watching other people do the things I wish I could do for myself. My Mum who is in her late 50s is stronger and fitter (and painfree) than me. She’ll come over here grab a ladder and clean MY gutters or get outside and weed my garden for a few hours and I can’t do that stuff without ending up in massive amouts of pain. And it frustrates me to tears that I have to get other people to do the jobs that I want done.

But it’s not just the work. I stand by and watch my friends go motorbike riding … something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve watched friends go white water rafting, scuba diving, parasailing, hell I even stood by and watched my Dad with MND and his father (my grandfather who was 89!!!) go sky diving!!! It’s shit.

It’s just shit feeling like you’re sitting on the sidelines of your own life when you desperately want to get in and get your hands dirty.
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