I got me a black eye from a jellyfish once.

Posted on October 5, 2008 by borysSNORC

When I was a kid we used to spend most of our holidays camping and one of our favourite places to go camping was Stradbroke Island. It’s about 20 mins drive and an hour on the vehicular ferry (I remember when it was $12 return and now it’s about $110 return) from here and we used to go camp up the 4WD access only sections of Flinder’s Beach. My Mum tells me I was 3 months old the first time I went to Straddie….

Sledding down the sandunes on the hood off an old car.
Snorkelling amongst the rocks at Pt Lookout to look for octopii.
We snorkelled at Amity Pt too but you need a shark spotter there.
Driving down the beach hearing the bluebottles popping under the tyres.
Swimming at Blue Lake and laugh like hyenas on the rope swings.
Dad teaching us how to dig for pipis and how to fish in the surf.
Yabbi pumping down at the mangrove mudflats at low tide.
Watching the soldier crabs scatter as the mud squished between your toes.
Swimming at night when the water was phosphorescent and magical.
Gutting fish up on the rocks and then cooking them for breakfast.
Watching the tyre tracks crisscross in the sand out the back of the Nissan.
Getting dumped by rough surf over and over but not wanting to get out.
Ice creams from the Mintee Street shop as special holiday treats.
Getting sunburnt bums while skinny dipping in the lagoons at Main beach.
Scuffing the sand at night and looking for sparkles.
Collecting shells and making bracelets of them with fishing line.
Laying under the casurina trees and looking at the stars.

We had some strange adventures at Straddie too….there was the time we were all swimming at Flinders and suddenly some semi-aquatic military tanks came rumbling out of the water (very surreal). And one other time when I was about 7 I cut my hand on a beer bottle and the local doctor stitched it up without any anesthetic (we was tougher back then). One time we came back to the camp to find our dog Josie going postal at the car and it took us ages to figure out that a red-bellied black snake had decided to wrap itself up under the wheel arch. I remember once waking up in the middle of the night to find that a couple of the local indigenous peoples were trying to steal our esky… the one full of beer of course not the one full of food.

I even went to Straddie for Schoolies in 1988… about 14 of us crammed into a two bedroom cottage 🙂 with loads of grog and hardly any food… but for Mandy’s ‘special’ jam drops 😉 I remember Colleen passed out drunk on Malibu rum and got really badly sun burned… ah to be young and stupid again.

But I think my fondest memory of Straddie is of Mum waking me up in the middle of the night as a kid and taking me for a drive out to Point Lookout. We carefully picked our way along the very dodgy ‘Scenic Walk’ to watch the blow hole going off in the moonlight. I could go on and on… I don’t think any of us knows for sure exactly how many trips we’ve taken to Straddie and I think we’re well overdue another visit.

But what I started writing about was how yesterday I remembered a silly story of how I ended up with a black eye from a jellyfish sting when I was maybe 8 or 9. We were swimming near Adder Rock with my family and my Unc and cousins. My Unc was or I should say is a bit of a larrikin and he stole his wife’s bikini top and threw it into the surf leaving her stranded under the water trying to preserve her modesty. She asked me to
swim out and fetch it back for her which I did and quickly threw it back to her. As I was swimming back into the beach I swam right into a blue bottle jelly fish and it’s tentacles wrapped twice around my torso causing me to scream blue murder in pain. Think of it like being stung by bees in massive long lines :S Unc raced me up the beach and they scrubbed sand all over my body to remove the tentacles off my body (somehow I don’t think that is the recommended first aid treatment for jellyfish sting nowadays). Then they raced me up to the Surf Lifesavers where I got doused in vinegar. But where did the black eye come into the picture?

When we got back home to BrisVegas after our holiday, my Mum was telling my Not-So-Favourite Aunt about what happened and I lifted my shirt up over my face and walked towards them to show her the big red welts left around my torso from the bluebottle and… smuck! I walked straight into a big knobby bed end and got a black eye for my efforts ….
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Look at me I’m Sandra “D”

Posted on October 4, 2008 by borysSNORC

So far the list experiment has been working well…. forcing myself to sit and think of ten positive things I like starting with a letter is a real challenge as I think I’m a cup is half empty kinda girl. But this week I am proud to say I found the ‘things I don’t like” list was harder. Which is a good thing… I think.

List of 10 Things I Like That Start With “D”….

1.   Diazepam – please sir, may I have some more?
2.   Das Keyboard – if you’ve used one… you’ll know what I mean.
3.   Digital cameras – instant gratification
4.   Dairy products – cheese, yoghurt, custard, cheese, ice cream and cheese.
5.   Dita von Tesse – she’s ten colours of fabulous.
6.   Devil’s Dictionary – Ambrose Bierce…I like normal dictionaries too.
7.   Drive In Theatre – crappy speakers, bean bags, booze… Ahh good times.
8.   Dexter – what does it say about you if you empathise with a sociopath.
9.   Diamonds – they make pretty rainbows in my car on sunny days.
10. Disney cartoons – totally formulaic but in a comforting sort of waywhere the good always thrive, the bad are invariably punished…. love reigns triumphant and all that other stuff that bears no direct correlation to Real Life™ whatsoever.

List of 10 Things I Hate or Dislike That Start With “D”

1. Dishonesty – If you feel, said or did something, own it.
2. Dinner guests – who RSVP but then pike at the last minute.
3. Dentists – not needlephobic but I HATE needles in my mouth.
4. Dog farts – OMG! How does such a stench emit from such a small dog.
5. Dude, Where’s My Car? – the worst shite ever committed to celluloid.
6. Diet softdrink – full of chemicals that no doubt are killing us.
7. Dust bunnies – they always… always… comes back.
8. Discontinued products – how dare they stop making our favourite stuff.
9. Discs laying about – they belong in cases and filed alphabetically!
10. Daewoos – sounds like a childish euphemism for accidentally peeing and/or shitting oneself… as in “Oh no Daddy! I mades a daewoo in my pants again.” or something to that effect. One should never have to drive a car that is in anyway reminiscent of excrement.
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Virgin Territory….. should have remained so.

Posted on October 3, 2008 by borysSNORC

Oh dear. I saw a film called the Virgin Territory today and to be honest I hadn’t seen a trailer for it, had heard nothing about it but was watching only because my friend, MD had passed it on to me. For the first time since being subjected to the cinematic excrement affectionately known ‘Reno 911! Miami’, I found myself watching a movie thinking… this may well be worse than Breaking the Waves.

Perhaps if I’d done a quick Google search or watched a trailer online I might have spared myself the totally wasted 2 hours of unadulterated crap that Virgin Territory turned out to be. For I think I may have given it a wide berth if I’d known that it was released in Italy under the name ‘Decameron Pie’ and released in France under the name of ‘Medieval Pie’. But alas, I’ve no one to blame for my not having looked it up BEFORE I sat through it. I do have one question though… how did they get such a fantastic actor such as Tim Roth (of Pulp Fiction, Rob Roy and Four Rooms fame) to be a part of this complete drivel? The mind boggles…. perhaps it was some sort of contractual obligation thing or perhaps it is as we suspect and all those even remotely connected to the film indutry are all on crack.

Anyway, I’d advise people to avoid this crap for it hasn’t even any pretty period frocks to redeem itself and I found the most satisfying thing about this movie was being able to click on the ‘delete’ button at the end of it!

Weeding…. on a sunny afternoon.

Posted on October 2, 2008 by borysSNORC

When we moved into sunny Belmont, there was a flurry of activity. Firstly there was a major push to try and convert Bleak House (for bleak it was – decorated entirely in shades of dark grey and black) into something with a little less craptastic 80’s feel and a little more posh English study feel. Which was done by painting every bit of grey out of the place with deep cream colours, lots of heavy gold picture frames, dyed the grey carpets burgundy and navy and moved in small tonne of timber furniture, books and rugs etc.

The garden likewise got a swift makeover. Ripped out two vicious date palms (you know those ones with the massive unfriendly spikes on them… great for kids to play around :S) and removed a massive fan palm thing which was particularly resistant to the idea and required my Dad’s 4WD and some chains to remove the root system. If memory serves I also dug out a huge golden cane palm that was opposite the driveway too. If you’re starting to think I don’t like palm trees you’d be quite correct in that assumption. They’re not native plants and I really just don’t like them. So they were pretty much condemned before we even moved in.

We also had a couple of areas around the back yard where grass wasn’t growing very readily due to either shady conditions or too much direct sun or the ground wasn’t getting good water as the grass was competing for moisture from near by trees. Given that Mr K isn’t overly fond of yard work – I thought we’d reduce the amount of mowing to be done over sections where the grass doesn’t want to grow too well by making garden beds and planting some drought hardy shrubbery 🙂

Big mistake… … Huge!

For while I was effective at reducomg Mr K’s mowing obligations and transferred them all into weeding for yours truly. Not my best laid plan. Especially not now when my back is arcing up and I can’t hardly manage to weed the gardens for 15mins together without doing that thing I do where I hold my breath because I’m causing myself more pain. Sigh… not good. So for months and months I sit and look out my lounge room window at what should be a lovely little garden covered in delighful red and purple little bushes and groundcovers but instead is a mass of weeds trying to reclaim my pathetic excuse of a garden. 🙁

Might go nice with a robust cab sav….

Posted on October 1, 2008 by borysSNORC

I didn’t take my drugs last night.
Well I took some of them.
But I had to drive early this morning.
Which means I didn’t get to take the good ones.
So I’m shaking and fidgeting and trying to ignore BACK PAIN FROM HELL.
Not thinking too clearly at all.
I think I better delay my internets shopping until tomorrow.
So a word from our sponsor…. who is probably Roche (they’re the people what make Valium)….

… it was this or hamsters in little pink race cars.
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