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earthkissed

Just me and my thoughts, most of them silly.

Name:
Location: brisbane, queensland, Australia

I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a friend. Sometimes I am good at these things, sometimes I am not.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Enough Peace


There hasn't been enough peace
Enough walks in the park
Enough space
I haven't created the time
To allow my insides to breathe
And I feel it all collapsing in on me

We should all go back in time
And sit beside the pond
Walk beneath the trees
Share our red wine and cheese
Lie on the grass
And laugh at life

Monday, February 11, 2008

For Pitfinder's Interest

For Pitfinder's interest the general gist of my new house and how it is built:
Steel framed with NRG green board as the outside material (essentially rendered styrofoam - instead of being built from brick which holds the heat, it is built to keep out the heat)
Roof - colourbond with insulation directly beneath the roof instead of above the ceiling (prevents heat being trapped in the roof)
full ducted, zoned, reversible airconditioning
5,000L water tank, which is plumbed into my toilet and washing machine because of this it has an automatic filler from the mains water system for if it gets too low - which means I can't use it on my garden as it is considered part of the mains system (and we are on level 6 water restrictions) - as a result I am putting in another tank.
9 foot ceilings

Now for the fun stuff, photos of the disasters - although they are after they have been "fixed" so they're not that super!
THIS IS THE EDGE OF THE BATH, THE HOLE IN THE WALL SHOWS HOW FAR IT FELL:


THE TANK AFTER BEING FIXED - IF YOU CAN SEE THE BOLT GOING INTO IT - THAT'S WHAT SHEERED OFF TO BECOME A FOUNTAIN:


THIS IS NOT WHAT THE ENSUITE SINK HOLE IS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE:


IF YOU LOOK YOU CAN SEE WHERE THE MAN WHO CAME TO FIX THE LOCK ON THE DOOR, DIDN'T REALLY UNDERSTAND AND DUG IT OUT SIDEWAYS INSTEAD OF DEEPER, AND THEN FILLED IN THE WOOD HE'D CHIPPED AWAY WITH SOME KIND OF BROWN FILLER


THESE AREN'T BROKEN, I JUST THOUGHT I'D SHOW YOU THE LITTLE ALCOVES THAT JUST NEED A NAKED STATUE IN THEM - I THOUGHT A WHITE ONE WOULD CONTRAST THE DARKER PAINT WELL.

The Flies

In January, I went outside to check on my birds and noticed a _lot_ of flies around their cage (probably over 40) and when I cleaned their cage it made no difference, so I decided to go and buy something to kill the flies with. Matt and I went to bunnings and bought amongst other things to kill flies with a fly trap that was essentially a jar with holes on top and there was a powder you mixed with water to attract and drown the flies. I was dubious about it because as I expressed to Matthew, I didn't want any non-toxic crap, I wanted something that would work! How wrong I was, it worked, so well that I was morbidly fascinated and stood outside watching flies drown. It was supposed to take 24 hours to heat activate, there were over 100 dead flies even before it had reached the 24 hour mark. Here are two pictures (not for the faint hearted) of the flies at under 24 hours and then three days later......

Monday, February 04, 2008

"teething problems"

Well, mostly my new house has been lovely and I have been enjoying it. However I have to say that like most new products it is has not been without a few teething problems.

Firstly, all excited with our new house, we ran a bath, as I sat in it while the water filled, I was suddenly disturbed by a sort of clunking noise. Matthew tried to reassure me it was water in the pipes, however I had another theory. "Do you think the bath has dropped?" I said. He looked at the seal around the top of the bath and said "yep". Mmmmm.... it had fallen about 5mm, although it did bounce back once all the water was out of it, still it did make me wonder what else I should go sit on or stand in or jump up and down on whilst the house is still under warranty..... The fixing of this is still a work in progress, as the first attempt doesn't seem to have quite done the job.

Next, it seemed rather odd that the key for the front door went around 1.5 times instead of just one or two times. Turns out that the lock has two settings one turn locks it, two does an extra dead lock, but when shut it wouldn't do the second one because the hole the lock went into wasn't quite chiselled out deep enough.... This has since been fixed, but that's another story.

I won't bore you with the other minor mishaps that occurred, but I must tell you about the tank.

I was deep in a beautiful sleep in the middle of the night (2.30am) in the middle of last week, when I was awoken by a distressed shreek from my birds (Oscar and Pepper now live on the patio in their cage unless they're inside playing on the table or their playgym). Often they just settle down on their own and I go back to sleep, but even though they settled down I decided to check on them, so I plodded outside, scaring off the cat that was upsetting them and was just making sure they weren't bloodied when I heard a fountain in the background. Now we're on Level 6 water restrictions, our government has sent us all 4 minute sand hour glass type timers so we can make sure we don't take longer then that in the shower, so fountains are pretty much a giant no-no. So I thought, that's not right, and looked around the corner at what had been a reasonably full 5,000 litre rain water tank, to see a stream of water coming out of the pump which resembled a cherub on a fountain peeing. Not good. So I called Matthew and we tried in our sleepy state to try and work out what had happened, it appeared the top of a bolt had sheered off, and that bolt was hollow and water was pumping out. So we had to turn off the flow of water from the tank to the pump and turn off the pump. This would not ordinarily be a problem, but our tank is internally plumbed and provides the water for that little luxury known as "flushing toilets". I bought my birds a treat to reward them for waking me because if they hadn't we may have lost more then 3,000 L of water that we probably did lose, which is a particular problem because when the water in our pump gets below a certain level, it fills from the mains so that there is always water for the toilets and washing machine.... Luckily the plumber was able to come and get the errant bolt out and fix the problem.

Tune in for my next post: The Fly Plague and My Disgustingly Successful Solution

Sunday, February 03, 2008

Climbing out of my internet blackhole



Well it's not that I've been slack, I actually haven't had the internet (through a series of incompetencies mostly by aapt) for 1.5 months. So hopefully now I will have a chance to see what people have been up to more. In the meanwhile, I have moved house, changed jobs, got a new bird (Azure, a blue indian ringneck, who belonged to my nephew has come to live with us) and taken plenty of photos. And more of these various boring stories shall follow!