Somewhere rant

I started writing this post on the verandah but have since moved to an outside toilet, as that is where the internet signal is strongest, and the roof doesn’t leak in here.

A couple of years ago for Christmas, or fathers day or a birthday or something else significant I gave my father the present of ‘A holiday with your son”.

My Dad works hard in his little shop and needs a good break. So it was finally arranged, and thankfully convincing him that he needed to pay for his own present seemed to go down well.

I asked if it was ok to book everything as a surprise, and my parents thought that was a good idea and let me loose with their monies.

So after a few years of waiting my Dad and I are somewhere else on a holiday.

The only info I gave him was his train ticket from Armidale to our place, which he caught yesterday.

On arriving at our place Oscar handed him an envelope which revealed more details of his trip away. “Your holiday is to: Perth, Fremantle & Rottnest Island”

He seemed chuffed which is good because it was too bloody late to change anything.

After spending some time with a feverish Oscar and some dinner the two of us headed off to the Formule 1 motel at Mascot Airport. You can tell this trip is going to a posh with with a start in the upmarket Formule 1.

The train trip into the city was uneventful, the only thing that happened was me remembering the stuff I had forgotten to pack.

As established above this is one posh trip so we got off that train at Mascot instead of the Domestic Terminal as it would save us $10 each. (downside is the 1km walk dragging our suitcases). We dragged our suitcases through the bowels of Mascot and eventually popped up at the F1 in all it’s glory.

checking in it was revealed we had booked a roo with a double bed and a bunk, sounds fine but the bunk is for kids and only 4 foot long. Thankfully the man was kind enough to ‘upgrade’ us to a twin room. (Not actually sure the F1 is capable of an upgrade).

the room was as expected, we had a view of the carpark, no avenues for fresh air to enter the room and the bathroom was conveniently located in a cupboard beside the bed.

The blind on the window looked like it would be super cooper. I love pitch black rooms because as soon as light creeps in I generally wake up. This bling blocked out the light totally.Well until 2am, 3am and once more when it opened itself. And woke me up each time.

Oh yeah and the lady in the room next to us tripped the power on our whole floor when we where trying to watch Graham Norton…

The sleep was terrible, not just because of the self opening blind but because it was just terrible.

Around 6am we head down to the ‘buffet’ breakfast that had a choice of 3 different cereals, and bread. I had some toast, then managed to spill a full cup of orange juice all over the buffet table. The man at reception kindly donated a cloth, but a cloth could not contain the orange flood I had brought on. I used up a months supply of paper napkins to build a table levy, the levy held quite well and the clean up operation went smoothly. I poured myself another cup of orange juice and enjoyed it.

A bit before 7 we walked to the airport and checked in, went through security then boarded our plane.

Earlier in the week I logged in to our flight booking to choose our seats from their diagram of the plane. I picked what i thought would be super seats, close to the front, window etc.

they where near the front of the plane, but we had the only seat on the plane that didn’t have a window, the row in front had a window, the row behind had one, we had a figgen wall!.

So the normal joys of take off and landing where replaced with wallpaper.

There was an entertainment system which included a forward facing camera, but of course my screen didn’t work properly.

I have never watched an episode of Glee before, I thought I would see what the fuss is about. It was TERRIBLE!!! never again.

Once we got to Perth we grabbed a cab to the city with a taxi driver who had the gift of red lights, always a joy when you watch the meter ticking over.

We had some lunch then caught the train to Freo.

We made it to our accomidation, a hippy house in South Freo that is solar powered, tank water, outside funny etc. It’s pretty quirky and cool. nothing in the house matches. On arrival we discovered to major flaws. The first being the internet is not working, the second being no power points work.

The land lady came up and fixed the power and let us know the internet is strongest on the back verandah, which is where I intended to write this post but it’s raining and the roof leaks, so I moved to the outside dunny.

Cheese sandwiches for dinner and tunes playing in the background.

While things didn’t really all go to plan and this quirky house is bloody weird, we are having a good time so far.

time to flush and publish this post.

Idiot box Baptists

I watch very little television, and the television I do watch is mainly programs on the ABC or SBS.

In our little house we don’t pick up any of the commercial stations with our aerial and in the last few weeks we don’t pick up the ABC or SBS either.

My parents moved to the country a bit over 10 year ago, and when they come back to Sydney they are often overwhelmed by the pace and get frustrated by all the traffic and commotion. In fact even back in their little country town my Dad gets frustrated by the local ‘peak hour’ because he may have to wait at one of the two sets of traffic lights in town for over a minute. So he refuses to drive around town between 3:15pm and 4pm.

Why am I telling you that? Well it’s a little hard for me to admit to, but I quite like Australia’s Got Talent and I’m even getting in to The Voice. But they both frustrate the hell out of me too. As we have no TV reception I have to watch them online, normally the day after they have aired. That’s fine. The frustrating part is that I’m not used to ad breaks, and the even more frustrating part is that for some reason the online playback systems are only capable of playing one ad. So every time there is an ad break I get the same ad repeated 3 or 4 times before the show resumes. Then in most cases the playback fails and I have to watch the ads again while the video buffers or restarts. If you are going to bombard me with advertisements, put in some friggen variety, not just the same ad over and over and over.

Then inside the shows they spend half the time recapping what I have just seen and then previewing what I’m about to see so that when the next thing comes on I have already seen most of it. Commercial television and Baptist sermons are quite similar I’m realising.

So if you want to write a Baptist sermon or create a high rating talent show follow these simple steps.

1. Outline all the things that are about to happen
2. Show / tell stories of the past
3. Re cap the stories of the past
4. Preview the main point or next segment
5. Replay step 4, 3 times
6. Re cap all the above
7. Preview next time.

I don’t even know why I like the shows in the first place, they are dribble.

I wish my internet couldn’t pick up commercial TV websites.

And yes I am playing a bus driver simulator game while I wait for tonight’s episode of The Voice to go online.

Leave me alone.

brain cell out

I don’t want all my rants to be about parenting and children but it’s hard to escape ranting about them when there is so much material.

Remember in primary school whenever you hit your head someone would say something like “haha you just lost ten brain cells”. Well parenting is like a daily club to the head. It seems the longer you are a parent the more stupid the things you do are. Logic and reason are replaced by brain jelly.

A couple of days ago after breakfast the wife and I were discussing trampolines and how it might be a good idea to get one for the boy. He loves jumping on friends trampolines and we had recently moved the snail, bug, spider and slug infested sand pit to a hopefully more bug free part of the garden. So the poor bugs, slugs and spiders lost their home so it would be the right thing to do to provide them with a much bigger new home.

You would think at this point that maybe we would conduct some internet research and go and get one. Well we didn’t. It wasn’t until about 3:30pm that we decided to get a trampoline. Jenny set off to Target to see what they had, while the boy and I stayed home watching play school. Jenny rang up to say she was heading for Castle Hill as Toys r Us had a good one for half price. After a few more phone calls and Jenny going in and out of the store a couple of times we were owners of a flat packed trampoline.

Jenny got home around 4:30pm and Oscar eats dinner a bit after 5. The instructions indicated that assembly should take 1 hour.

Did we try to stick it to the instructions and get it done quicker???

No, for some reason at 5pm we decided to start construction.

We began by emptying the content of the box on to the front lawn. The instructions said to open it on a flat even surface.

Oscar then decided to ‘help’ by picking up random pieces and moving them to different parts of the lawn. We followed the first step and began clipping big long poles together. Then it was dinner time for the O man, so we sat him on the front steps with his dinner while we continued the build. We were past the point of no return but for no reason. There would be no time for Oscar to use it even if we finished it within the hour.

Somewhere between Oscar starting dinner and him finishing it became almost pitch black. I used to own flood lights but not these days, the best I could find was a 15 metre extension cord and a desk lamp. So I ran the cable from the lounge room out to the front lawn while Oscar went through my tool box in the dark distributing screw drivers around the front garden. To add to the chaos my extension cord is faulty so every now and then the little desk lamp would flash like a strobe light. Constructing something using long bits of hard metal, coupled with a 3 year old swinging screwdrivers was bound to end in tears, and it did. Oscar somehow manged to bonk himself on the head with one of the poles. So just before bed time we had an upset child, which always makes bed time just that little bit harder than it already is.

Oh and I forgot to mention just before bed time we also lost an important nut in the grass somewhere.

After the child was in bed we continued building the trampoline’s outer netting.

All but one of the long poles was bolted in to place when we realised we had missed a vital step. The vital step involved removing the top of the installed poles and inserting a piece we missed. Taking the tops off was mildly easy but putting them back on proved more difficult as it was a black top, secured by a black screw into a black hole in a black night. The desk lamp was useless.

We finished the trampoline at around 7:30.

We were flustered and tired. Why the hell did we do it?

We left for a week away the next morning so the poor kid only got an hour or two of jumping before we had to leave.

Stupid.

oppps you bwoke it.

I got another warning email today from my hosting about excessive CPU usage on the server for my site.

So I have disabled many WP plugins , installed a super cache thingy and switched themes for a bit. I’m waiting for a response from the tech support of my host, but it could be my server has been hacked or something.

The below is from everyone’s favourite Homestar Runner and Strong Bad.

OOPS! You bwoke it.

The requested URL was not found.

We’re sorry, you did something wrong.

Some possible reasons for this error are listed below:

• The page you have requested no longer exists.
• You have your head up your stupid, ugly butt.
• The page you have requested has been moved.
• Your crappy computer is full of crap, crap, and more crap.
• The web site you are trying to reach no longer exists.
• Homestar is a stupid crap for brains webmaster.

I Hope to have it all fixed soon.

bad things come in three’s

In my almost a decade of youth work and youth educating, I always sunk a little inside when I knew there was a program involving kids in year 9 coming up.

Year 9 kids are no longer the runts of high school, they begin to feel power, and the need for acceptance by their peers is greater than ever. They are too cool for school, and spend all their time impressing and imposing. If you are a substitute teacher or some youth worker guy coming in to run a session, bring a helmet and a pack of panadol. Well I think 3 year olds are the toddler equivalent.

Sometimes the 3 year old son drives me batty.

Before kids turn 3 they are super cute and make funny noises. Eventually they start to pronounce words in their own cute way and mix match them to create funny cobbled together sentences like when Oscar tried to say the name of his toy Percy train he would say something that sounded very similar to ‘Bulls%&t’ and sentences like  “Oh what I smell?”.

But when they turn three, suddenly their vocabulary and grasp of language is greater than that of an entire NRL team and their desire to justify and correct everything is stronger than a member of the Young Liberals.

Oscar loves telling me what to do, “Daddy we don’t do that” and “Daddy stop that you need to do it this way”. Some days it’s like I have two wives. (Jenny doesn’t call me daddy so there is a slight difference).

He is also extremely inquisitive and sometimes this can be a little awkward, especially when he combines his grasp of language, inquisitive nature and his desire to be bossy.

Yesterday the wife went out for the afternoon so the son and I headed to the local shopping centre to buy some new chopping boards. When we got to the centre I needed to wee so we headed for the toilets and I found an ‘accessible’ cubicle so Oscar didn’t use his inquisitiveness to comment on other men at the urinal and also so I could keep a better eye on him. He was adamant he did not need to wee so I asked him to go and stand to one side of the cubicle while I prepared to relieve myself. Which reminds me of another three year old quirk, they don’t talk quietly.

I unzipped my fly and Oscar moved a little closer, he has seen me naked many times so it’s not like I’m about to unveil a surprise package. I asked him to move back a bit which got a “Why”.

Eventually after explaining numerous times and ways why I did not want Oscars face in the firing line he stepped back and I was ready.

But then in his nice not so quite voice so the whole mens bathroom could hear – “you have a big doodle don’t you daddy”

This is a phrase that in a different context and without the word ‘daddy’ would probably be flattering or something, but from a 3 year old loudly in a cubicle in a public toilet I did not feel flattered. I tried to hush him a little and began the stream.

As I was mid flow I could see him slowly moving closer to me, very intrigued by my weeing. I fought off the stage fright and managed to almost finish precedings when he piped up again, this time using the bossy voice and tone, “Daddy you need to shake your doodle”.

I know he is just vocalising things that he himself is learning to do but the timing causes much grief for his poor father.

After the toileting experience was over we left the bathroom with me looking down and walking determinedly out the door avoiding any possibility of eye contact with absolutely anyone.

There was a brief flashback to the cute days when I told him we might look in the “King of Knives” shop for chopping boards and he said “Will the king be there?”

But it was a brief moment followed by several minutes of “But why isn’t the king there” “Where is the king” “But why is there no king” “will the king be there tomorrow” “But why is it called the name of the shop” “But where is the shop” …………………………………………….and on and on and on.

Whilst waiting for the man and lady behind the counter to process our purchase Oscar said “But why is it taking so long, daddy? It’s taking too long I want to go”

The man in the shop smiled at Oscar and he looked down at the floor.

Whilst walking home I got in trouble for walking on his side of the path, I got in trouble for pressing the crossing button twice, I got in trouble for having a sweaty hand. At one point Oscar was walking in the grass and dirt beside the path and I asked him to join me on the path. He said “Why” and this went on for a while, before he started telling me about dog poo and that rocks are like dog poo but you can step on rocks and that he can walk in the grass because there is no dog poo in the grass.

A simple trip to the shops is a saga on the parental brain, everything is questioned and everything needs answers and the answer again and again. I guess the difference between a 3 year old and a kid in year 9 is that the 3 year old is annoying and trying to understand the world where as a kid in year 9 is annoying and thinks they are the world.

Now I’m off to the toilet while the boy sleeps.

The simple things when a parent of a 3 year old are sheer bliss, sweet peeing alone bliss.

Sunday Rant

Due to popular demand.. well myself and B. I’m going to try and write a witty post every Sunday probably complaining about something.

For 2 reasons.

1. So I can pretend I have a Sunday column
2. Because I’m naturally gifted in complaining.

Today is not Sunday, so get stuffed until then.

boom

My little old blog that gets almost no visitors it cranking at almost 100% of my allocated CPU usage for my server.

any advice my nerdy pals?