photos, too march?

For the month of March I’m taking part in this photo scavenger hunt, organised by Pastor Tom.

So for the whole month I need to take and upload a photo each day, using the list to gain points for each photo.

Instead of boring you each day with a photo, I have put up a separate page which you can easily find at the top of this site.

May the best man (me) win.

I make MacGyver jealous.

Often with lunch I like to have a can of popular soft drink.

Today I made myself a gourmet roll (margarine, cheese vegamite) then went to the fridge to grab my accompanying beverage.

There was no cans!!!!

Some people would enter a deep slump at this point, but not me.

With 1 room temperature can, 3 rubber bands, 2 ice bricks and and 1 tea towel I managed to turn this grim situation around.

I then enjoyed my gourmet lunch with a nice cold beverage.

I’ll probably solve world peace next, that’s the kind of guy I am.

#respill

I’ll keep this short as I’m getting sick of reading stuff about the Labor leadership as I’m sure you are too.

I think tomorrow morning that Julia Gillard will receive a large majority of the caucus votes and will remain prime minister. Rudd will take his place on the back bench and Labor will lose the next election convincingly. (and probably lose a few elections after that too).

There some things that make this thing a whole lot of poo.

Kevin Rudd in my view was a pretty good PM, It was a shock and sad when he got ousted but then he shone as foreign minister. I think he could be one of the best foreign ministers this country has ever seen. He has a genuine passion for reducing global poverty, he commissioned an audit into our aid budget to hopefully weed out the excessive bureaucracy and over spending on projects that could be more efficient. He attended numerous forums and NGO events.

We have lost a great foreign minister.

The Coalition scares me, and the thought of them being in power for quite a while after the next election is daunting.

Their concern for the poor, marginalised, climate, environment, first Australians is seemingly non existent. Of course there are individuals in the coalition who have e passion and drive to work on these areas but as a party they are lacking compassion.

Julie Bishop is a surprise in the coalition, she was the one who stood up to Abbott and Hockey recently when there was talk of the coalition not continuing it’s bipartisan commitment to lifting our aid budget.

the end.

birth search process over.

You may recall in early January after almost a 12 month long process my birth mother received a letter from the birthlink agency in Scotland to say that I had conducted a search and would like to make contact.

She didn’t reply to the letter so birthlink made a follow up phone call yesterday.

The phone call revealed a few things,

Firstly she confirmed that she gave birth to me.

She made it clear that she does not wish to be contacted and didn’t want to receive any information about me.

She stated no one in her family knew she was pregnant or even had a child and also confirmed that she never set eyes on me even during birth.

She feels that giving me up at birth was the right decision although it was a very hard decision.

So this is the end of the line, all along this has been a strong possibility so it’s not a shock. I feel I too have done what is right by attempting to make contact.

If you want to read about the whole journey you can click here.

crossing the enemy line

I’m no community hero but when we lived in a house that had a grassy verge that continued across the neighbours verge I used to mow it when I was mowing mine, and often the neighbours would do the same when they mowed. We never talked about it, in face not sure if I had even ever spoken to the two neighbour men but we all just did it.

In our current street this does not happen.

It’s not that hard people, a few extra minutes..

I just want my…

The wife was out this morning so Oscar and I were talking about what we could do. I was was feeling pretty tired after staying out late with some lads.

I have wanted to make another video with Oscar for a while but whenever I ask he says “no I don’t want to”. But this morning he said yes!!!!!!

So this is it. Hope you enjoy.

my buddies think I

I’m really sick of the dumb occupation pictures going around the net at the moment, so in protest I made one. If you can’t beat em, join em.

long poo exposed

My wife did an arty long exposure photo today of a heart…awwwwwwww

I stepped it up a notch and produced this little gem.

Adding some class to Valentines Day.

poetry rocks

There was a rich lady from Perth,
who planned on digging the earth,
People opposed,
So she buried those,
Oh what a barrel of mirth!!

I have to say it’s pretty odd that Gina Rinehart has stuck a poem to two big boulders outside a shopping centre, where she has a dig at the government and says that digging up natural resources is the cure for poverty.

Here is her full poem.

The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
And billions now are pleading to enjoy are better life
Their hope lies with resources buried deep within the earth
And the enterprise and capital which give each project worth
Is our future threatened with massive debts run up by political hacks
Who dig themselves out by unleashing rampant tax
The end result is sending Australian investment, growth and jobs offshore
This type of direction is harmful to our core
Some envious unthinking people have been conned
To think properity is created by waving a magic wand
Through such unfortunate ignorance, too much abuse is hurled
Against miners, workers and related industries who strive to build the world
Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores
To benefit from the export of our minerals and ores
The world’s poor need our resources: do not leave them to their fate
Our nation needs special economic zones and wiser government, before it is too late.

very strange indeed.

Sourced from here.

Cover of a Cover.

Many of you will have seen this cover of ‘Somebody That I used to Know’

It is a pretty damn good cover…..well it was until this parody of the cover came out. Pure Gold!!!

powerhouse blues

Oscar and I haven’t been on an adventure for a while so this morning we had a brain storm to come up with ideas for something do do. The only criteria was that it had to be inside. Oscar suggested Luna Park, Luna Park and Luna Park.

I thought of the Powerhouse Museum, I won because I wear the pants (I only wear the pants in my relationship with Oscar, we all know I wear pretty little skirt in my other close relationship).

The first problem of the day was that the we where already committed to the adventure before I realised it was trackwork weekend and I hate trackwork buses.

Oscar was very excited about a bus trip.

After being told our bus was express to Srathfield then Central we arrived at Strathfield to find out the bus stopped there and we then had to get an all stations train the rest of the way.

Oscar has some kind of super hero lungs because from when we got on the bus to arriving at the door of the powerhouse museum an hour and a bit later he didn’t stop talking.

He wasn’t really interested at all, I thought he would love looking at the big trains, and planes and cars and stuff but no he was pretty uninterested in the whole place and kept asking if we could go now.

There was some short lived happiness when he discovered the wiggles exhibition.

Fixing the big red car

Doing some circle work in Captain Featherswords ship

We went outside for some lunch and Oscar watched all the other kids playing on the equipment but didn’t want to play too.

Things where going ok again for a bit until Oscar pressed a button that made a small steam engine start up, the hissing and steam freaked him out. So we started to head back towards the exit. On the way to the exit we saw a cool cage lift, the ones they stick on the outside of skyscrapers when they are building them. They are doing heaps of renovations and have this cage lift inside the building while they build a new one.

It was by far the highlight for the both of us, a friendly man opened the doors then turned a key and pushed some buttons before whizzing us up a few floors.

As we walked out the exit doors Oscar said ‘I don’t like the Powerhouse Museum”.

That’s a shame.

The look on his face pretty much sums up our whole time inside the museum, a double decker purple bus outside didn't even lift his mood.

To cheer him up I offered a ride on the light rail which did cheer him up.

Mr Perfect ???????

Every meal time Oscar refuses to eat unless we read him books. It sucks, I hate reading.

I often pick Mr Men books as they are easy to read and not very long. (parenting 101)

Tonight I read ‘Mr Perfect’.

It was a perfect summer’s day.

And on this perfect summer’s day, Mr Perfect was looking even more perfect than usual.

He didn’t have a hair out of place.

WHAT ABOUT THE FACT HE IS STANDING IN A GIANT PUDDLE OF HIS OWN WEE?!?!?!?!?!?!

This is not a helpful image for showing to a toddler who is only just toilet trained and now is being shown that you can be perfect whilst standing ankle deep in your own piss.

milestones or useless rubble

2012 is a big year in my online life.

This blog turns 10 years old.

I should get my 200,000th visitor. (although if recent stats are anything to go by that could be pushed back to sometime in 3056)

My twitter account turns 5 years old.

And my last.fm account should hit 30,000 tracks scrobbled

How should I celebrate these events or should I shut my geeky mouth and go back to blogging poo stories?

Who still reads this thing anyway?

coming up next….

Yesterday I submitted a job application for a super dooper job. Basically it’s working in Parliament House, Canberra,  running simulations for school groups about how Parliament works. The job also involves creating new simulations and support materials and a bit of travel to remote areas in Australia to run purposely designed activities, I guess for places where it’s impossible to get the kids to Canberra. The job would be awesome. I love politics and parliament, I love using simulations and role plays to educate and stimulate young people and I love working with young people. The downside is of course is that Canberra is not close to Hornsby. So if I was to get it, it could mean some changes or a lot of commuting.

The job excites me but I’m not excited about getting the job as I haven’t got any job I’ve applied for in a bit over a year so getting my hopes up seems like a waste of time. I’ll be happy if I get it but not expecting to.

In other news my buddy Ben Thurley and I are going to start working on a project together, we are going to write and produce simulation games, with the goal of partnering with relevant NGO’s. It’s just going to be a slow long term project but hopefully a fruitful one where we can create engaging educational experiences for a broad range of topics. We have already chatted about it a bit and next week are having our first big brainstorm of direction, mission etc. We are even going to use butchers paper!

lemon

Birthday Tom

Me: “hey Oscar what should we get Tom for his birthday?”

Oscar: “how about a face”

Me: “do you mean a prettier face?”

Oscar: “yesssssssssss”

what the p

What the hell! Why am I only finding out today that pterodactyl starts with a ‘p’.

No wonder they are extinct, the way they spell their name is  pdumb!