Thursday, December 31, 2009

56 of 365TTSM - people who put their rubbish in my skip.




Who would have thought that something as simple as a skip would provide such good blog fodder.  I liked our last skip so much I ordered another one, which we managed to fill up with all sorts of renovation rubbish yesterday. But when we went out this morning, there was a bag of rubbish that hadn't originated with us. It was a green rubbish bag full of manky jackets. I could probably just tolerate someone else's funky rubbish in our skip, but this stuff was decidedly uncool. At the very least, they could have tied up the bag so I didn't have to see its contents. Yick.

55 of 365TTSM - masking tape




You'd think by now someone would have invented an easy removal masking tape. They haven't. Instead, this stuff had the tips of my fingers sticking together as I tried to remove it from the windows and every so often a line of it would flick back and adhere to the back of my hand, giving me a quick, cheap and easy hand wax. When I pulled out my phone to take this photo, my finger adhered to it briefly.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

54 of 365TTSM - vanishing salespeople





This was the powertools helpdesk at the hardware shop this morning. Just minutes before this photo was taken, it was attended by several people. Then my significant other and I had a question we needed to ask about a power tool and they all mysteriously vanished. We saw several in the distance and as we walked towards them, they all seemed to somehow move further away from us. Several times we turned to speak to one we saw out of the corner of our eyes, only for it to turn out to be an apparent trick of the light. Finally, by each of us walking in opposite directions of a circle, we managed to trap one between us. By his greying hair and look of general experience, we considered we'd made a pretty good catch. "Does this router have a half inch collet?" we asked. "I don't know," he replied. We gave up and bought it anyway.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

53 of 365TTSM - skip amnesia




A few weeks ago we ordered a skip for our renovation rubbish (see 36 of 365TTSM). It has been sitting full at the front of our house for a couple of weeks now, so I decided I'd better ring the skip company to come and pick it up. Unfortunately, it has been sitting at our house for so long that I couldn't remember which skip company had provided it. So I asked my significant other. "I can't remember," he said, "but the name will be on the skip". Bzzzt - wrong! So I looked for the receipt I'd received when I paid for it, which would have the company's name on it. Bzzzt - wrong again! All it contained was the scrawl of a mysterious man named Jim, who appeared to have no surname and not particularly neat handwriting. Finally, I resorted to leaving vague and confused voicemail messages with the two companies whose names I found in the yellow pages who seemed most familiar. One of them must have been right, because several hours later I went outside and the skip had vanished. Either that or we've been the victim of skip thieves. . .

Monday, December 28, 2009

52 of 365TTSM - smoke alarm that can't tell the difference between life-threatening inferno and two slices of toast.




This is the smoke alarm that went off this morning during the toasting of two slices of bread. TWO SLICES OF BREAD! And only cooked to marginally beyond warm bread. After that little ear-shaking episode, it wasn't the only slightly oversensitive thing in the house.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

51 of 365TTSM - stuff that's too big to fit in the car




Today we bought a sheet of splashback material and when we got it to the car, discovered it was too big to fit. So we went back into the shop and bought a scoring knife with the intent of cutting it down to size. The scoring knife didn't work all that well, so we went back into the shop and bought a hacksaw. When we were about three quarters of the way through cutting it with the hacksaw, the blade broke. By then we were too embarrassed to go back into the shop to buy a new blade, so we got through the last section with the broken bit of blade and a bit of swearing. Then we could fit it in the car, but had to sit squished down into our seats all the way home so we didn't bump our heads on it.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

50 of 365TTSM - abnormally large spiders leaping about when they should be sleeping.




I normally like spiders. I didn't used to. I used to think the only good spider was a spider that had been sucked up by a vacuum cleaner and chased down with half a can of insect killer. However, as I gradually came to know more about these fascinating creatures, I developed a certain fondness for them and now often follow them around with a camera to compare the different body markings of, in particular, different varieties of hunstman spiders (which usually results in them feeling very uncomfortable and leaving our house much more rapidly than they used to when I was afraid of them and just screeched amusingly in their general direction). However, when they grow to the abnormally large size of the one in this photo and then leap all about the place on the front door when I arrive home from a dinner that involved perhaps one glass of wine too many, I lose the love a bit. This is not the sort of adrenaline rush I need at nearly 11pm. This spider should have been curled up asleep in a neat little comfy crevice somewhere, not leaping about on my door, dammit.

Friday, December 25, 2009

49 of 365TTSM - committing to blog every day for a year




It's 7.10pm. I've had two glasses of champagne. There is fresh Tasmanian crayfish on the table. And I need to write my freaking blog, when there has been nothing to shit me all day. I've had a fabulous day with lovely people, managing to avoid any mention of the word Christmas while still enjoying lots of good food, wine and company. And still the blog screen is calling. That shits me.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

48 of 365TTSM - book pile size and holiday length don't match.




This is my pile of holiday reading. So far I am about a quarter of the way through it. But I am about three quarters of the way through my holiday. Something doesn't add up. . .

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

47 of 365TTSM - kettles that take a very long time to boil




This is our renovation kettle. It was very cheap and was bought with the express purpose of allowing us to make cups of team while renovating our investment property, which is located several thousand kilometres from our usual house and its accompanying super-schmick, super-fast, stylishly chrome-like kettle. The renovation kettle is not super fast. During the time it takes to boil, I usually have time to change my mind five or six times about the sort of tea I would like, and sometimes to paint a room or two while I'm at it. 

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

46 of 365TTSM - Shops playing contemporary Christmas carols




This is a ceiling speaker in a shop I was in this morning. It was playing contemporary Christmas carols.  The song I was treated to was by a singer whose career highpoint was, I suspect, having his music played in downmarket shops over Christmas. As lyrically meaningful as an episode of A Current Affair, it had a line that said something like "did Mary ever guess her son would become the leader of a nation?" Well, I'm an atheist and even I know Jesus never did any nation leadership. Irritating and inaccurate. Resisting the urge to rip the speaker from the ceiling and shout hysterically "I hate Christmas and all its musical accoutrements!!", I quietly bought my bathroom cleaner and left.

Monday, December 21, 2009

45 of 365TTSM - that this should make me love my insurance company




You would think that being greeted by a scene like this in your bathroom first thing in the morning would provide amply opportunities for irritation. But no, the plumber was prompt and helpful, the insurance company was prompt and helpful and the whole situation will be tidied up and on its way to being an amusing dinner party story in no time at all. The thing that shits me about the whole episode is that I now love my insurance company in a slightly obsessive manner. I feel extreme brand loyalty and want to pay them large premiums for ever. All because they were nice and efficient and solved my problem quickly and painlessly, dammit.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

44 of 365TTSM - paint rollers that don't roll




There were two things that irritated me more than the paint roller in this picture today, but I was unable to take photos of them, so you get a picture of the stupid paint roller that I bought especially to paint the ceiling in the smelly room. The rolling bit wouldn't actually roll and then when I thumped it on the ground in the hope that violence towards it would make it perform, the end of it fell off and I probably lost all chance of it working. Just for the record, the two things that irritated me more than the paint roller were a black cat who stalked our resident backyard bluetongue and former tenants who left the walk-in wardrobe smelling suspiciously of faecal matter. Enough said.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

43 of 365TTSM - big dopy blowfly




I really dislike big round slow-buzzing flies. Especially when they congregate. For some reason I think of them as corpse flies, and after three days of 15-hour days of non-stop painting, I begin to imagine there are bodies hidden in the very thick walls of our new house. I may have inhaled too many paint fumes (which may also explain today's very arty, blurred photograph).

Friday, December 18, 2009

42 of 365TTSM - People who blog about their children




Today I was looking for an excuse to avoid doing more painting for a while and decided to ensconce myself more fully into the world of blogging by clicking on the "view next blog" link at the top of the page. And what I discovered was that just about everyone else in the world appears to blog about their children. I'm not interested in the children of complete strangers. I don't care how many words they know, how many toys they own, the behaviour of their digestive systems or whether they have strange rashes on their foreheads. I just sort of figured that the only people who would want to look at pictures of other people's children are family, friends and paedophiles, so why not change your privacy settings to just let friends and family into the viewing realm, eh? And that way, other blog browsers can read about things they really find interesting, like whatever is irritating me on any particular day of the year. Because people find that just fascinating.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

41 of 365TTSM - crazy volume control button on cheap radio




This is my renovation radio. It's a pretty good radio. It was the cheapest one I could find that would provide me with music and cricket scores while hopefully surviving sanding dust and paint spills during my month of renovation adventures. However, it has a button instead of a dial for volume control, which is the first thing that shits me a little bit. But the thing that shits me the most is that it turns its own volume back up whenever I turn it down. It doesn't do it in a sudden and obvious way, just sneaks it back up so that the volume pretty much stays at one constant volume all the time. As a result, I need to control volume by moving the radio or myself. If it is too loud, I move it a couple of rooms away. If a song comes on that I really like, I move closer to the radio and shake my booty until it's over, thereby losing valuable renovating time.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

40 of 365TTSM - painting coveralls that let paint through


This is a large paint stain on one of my many pairs of favourite Kathmandu trousers (I liked them so much I bought several pairs). The paint stain occurred THROUGH the painting coveralls I was wearing. I would assume that if I bought something designed to be worn while painting, that one of its purposes would be to ensure that paint DID NOT GET THROUGH ONTO MY TROUSERS. But instead I spent 15 hours looking like a nuclear waste disposal expert and getting quite hot and still ended up with paint on my trousers. Ripped off again.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

39 of 365TTSM - Flies with no sense of self-preservation




Today I put masking tape on all the windows in preparation for painting tomorrow. As I tried to put the masking tape on one window, two little flies kept flying underneath it. As a vegetarian and general non-animal killer, I tried to gently shoo them away, but they seemed to have a bizarre attraction to the masking tape. Eventually, they both got their little feet stuck to it, so I tried to delicately flick them off. Unfortunately, that resulted in the flies flicking away without several of their legs. I was then faced with the enormous ethical dilemma of whether their suffering would be minimised by me squashing them quickly, or whether they were likely to still have some quality of life with only two out of six legs, in which case killing them would be wrong. In addition, I was a little bit annoyed about having fly legs stuck to my masking tape. As I tried to decide whether to kill them or not, I wondered whether they would be ostracised by their fellow flies for their disability, or whether they would be surrounded by a supportive community who would help them find meaning in adversity. Were they in any pain? If they were in pain, should I kill them or see if I could give them some paracetamol or gin? While I was grappling with my ethical dilemma, the semi-legless flies flew off somewhere and I couldn't find them again.

Monday, December 14, 2009

38 of 365TTSM - expanding foam (it's a love/hate thing)




I love expanding foam. It cures no end of renovation ills. It will fill any gap and sets like rock. You can chip it up with a chainsaw. I once saw a documentary about an entire house built of expanding foam. However, it really annoys me when people who own houses before I do think it's a similarly good idea. Because it usually means they've taken a quick and dirty approach to renovation. And when used in places like under a laundry trough, as in the photo, it provides lots of little curvy hollows for ancient bits of detergent and lint to bond and set up home together, and they're really hard to clean. Even my good friend Ms Bleach struggled a bit with this.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

37 of 365TTSM - the boat




Our new house in Hobart is accessible via a very narrow street (a fairly common phenomenon in the old parts of Hobart). Someone who lives in the very narrow part of the street has decided it's a good idea to keep their boat parked on said street. So every time we need to drive along the street, we have to drive very slowly and carefully past the boat, which takes up an unreasonably large amount of street space. Now, I could somewhat accept the boat-parking and its accompanying inconvenience if it seemed the boat's owner loved his or her boat with a passion and took it out to enjoy the Derwent on a regular basis - even more so if they did something noble like photographing penguins or endangered sea creatures, as opposed to catching and killing fish. However, the boat trailer is resting on bricks that look like they haven't moved for several years and the boat is now full of a thriving community of local spiders (one of whom probably has a little spider boat that is blocking someone's web accessway and really pissing off all the other spiders). My message to the boat's owner is: "Get over the dream. You're never going to have time to go boating. Sell it and put the money towards buying a Smart car or a bicycle or SOME OTHER FORM OF TRANSPORT THAT DOESN'T REALLY ANNOY YOUR NEIGHBOURS!!!!".

Saturday, December 12, 2009

36 of 365TTSM - The skip




Yesterday I rang up and ordered a four cubic metre skip to be delivered at 9am today. This is the two cubic metre skip that arrived at 2.30pm. The delivery man was annoyingly chirpy and cheerful.

Friday, December 11, 2009

35 of 365TTSM - cleaning




I have spent the past three days cleaning. If I was the sort of person who wrote a blog about 365 things to be grateful for instead of 365 things that shit me, I would find all sorts of positives in having to scrub the walls of an eight-bedroom house in preparation for cleaning them. Positives like it gives me a chance to meditate on the nature of transformation, or that I am probably getting fit and healthy from 11 hours a day of scrubbing THC-infused grime from walls. But frankly, I just find it mind-numbingly tedious and suspect that all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten the carpets of this house (with apologies to Shaekespeare) and I'd have heaps more fun demolishing the kitchens. So in a fit of pique I cast aside the cleaning equipment and broke some stuff instead. That was fun.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

34 of 365TTSM - people who stick glowy stars to ceilings



Today I removed dozens of little sticky stars from the ceiling of the main bedroom of the house we are renovating. I believe they are meant to glow in the dark and the former tenants probably peered up at them through the smoke haze (we know there was a lot of smoke haze because it left the walls all covered in a thin veneer of nicotine-stained grime that I spent EIGHT HOURS SCRUBBING OFF) and imagined themselves in an open field somewhere, peering at the sparkly stars in space. I wonder why they didn't, you know, GO INTO THE BACK YARD AND LOOK AT SOME REAL STARS and leave my freaking future ceiling alone so I didn't have to waste my time scraping their stupid little glowy stars off when I could have been using a wrecking bar to demolish the kitchen instead.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

33 of 365TTSM - teaspoons that melt in hot liquid




Today we bought some plastic teaspoons so my partner in renovation could have sugar in his coffee when we took a break from sanding to have a cuppa. When I used one to stir his coffee, it went soft and squishy and changed shape and colour (the front spoon in the picture). Obviously, it was not meant to be used in hot water. TEAspoon. Tea is hot. Spoon melts in hot liquid. I don't understand.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

32 of 365TTSM - Shenandoah




This is the Shenandoah, a three-masted schooner out of Southampton, dating from 1902, currently docked at Elizabeth Street pier in Hobart. The photograph doesn't capture how achingly beautiful this boat is. Not only are her lines representative of design perfection, everything about her is immaculately maintained. Today several young men were varnishing her already shining rails. Her decks are made of teak and her pulley blocks are some other sort of stunning timber, so polished that they wouldn't look out of place in one of the timber galleries on Salamanca. So why does she shit me? Because when I stand on the dock admiring her, I start to romanticise a potential future of sailing the oceans of the world on a vessel with sails and what a jolly fine life that would be. And on the basis of that I will accept the next invitation I receive to go sailing with a Hobartian. And it won't be until I'm well out in the Derwent that I will remember that I have the sailing stomach of a young midshipman Hornblower  and spend the entire event vomiting and remembering that it doesn't matter how beautiful they are - boats are evil.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

31 of 365TTSM - Aurora Energy




Today we arrived in Tasmania to spend a month renovating a house we have bought here. So we decided we needed electricity for that month (power tools being an important part of the renovation experience) and rang Aurora, the local electricity supplier, to see about getting a pay as you go card. Fortunately, we had been previous Aurora customers, so thought it should be pretty easy. After all, it wasn't like we were wanting to use lots of electricity and run up a debt, we just wanted a pay as you go card so we could actually pay for our electricity BEFORE using it. So, the three conversations I had with various customer service officers, amalgamated into one for blog brevity and coming in at the point where things went strange, went something like this (noting that these conversations took place in my mobile phone in the car):
Customer service officer: Oh, that's a different driver's licence number to the one you gave us last time.
Me: Yes, that's because I live in another state now.
CSO: Well, we'll need you to fax us a copy of your current licence so we can verify your identity.
Me: I am in a car. I don't have a fax. Can't I just tell you my licence number?
CSO: No, we have to see it.
Me: Well, can you tell me where you have a shopfront and I'll bring it in and show someone, because that's easier for me.
CSO: No, we don't have shopfronts. You'll have to fax it.
Me: But you don't know what I look like. You've only spoken to me on the phone. How would you know it was actually me on the licence.
CSO: (long silence) You'll have to fax it.
Me: I don't have a fax. Who still uses faxes?
CSO: You can go to a post office and do it.
Me: (Defeated) Thank-you. I will go and visit the post office's museum of 20th century technology and fax you a copy of my drivers licence.
CSO: I'll just give you our fax number.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

30 of 365TTSM - rego sticker keeps curling up


It has been extremely hard to find something that fits in the "things that shit me" category today. I've only been on leave for 24 hours and already I have a lightness of heart and spring in my step that doesn't bode well for pursuing this blog theme for the next month. However, I will persist, because I have made a commitment to a year of irritant pictures. This picture is the current view from our car window as we sit in the queue waiting to board the Spirit of Tasmania. The queue doesn't shit me at all, because I'm sitting here feeling very tech-savvy blogging in the passenger seat and anticipating the glass of Jantsz awaiting me in the restaurant shortly. The thing that shits me is the car registration sticker in the bottom left hand corner of the picture. It has been curling off for several weeks and I have pressed it back down roughly a dozen times. I do it quite firmly and smartly, and it sticks flat for about 30 seconds, and then slowly curls up again, in a somewhat snarky manner. But it only shits me a little bit.

29 of 365TTSM - I just know I've forgotten something




This is the bag I am packing to go on holiday tomorrow. What shits me about it is that despite writing a very long list of all the things I need to include, and checking it twice, I just know I've forgotten something. But I don't know what I've forgotten. To make up for the fact that I know I've forgotten something, I've added several random extra things that I know I won't need and which will start to shit me as soon as I begin living out of my suitcase. I know that I will remember the thing I have forgotten when we reach that point in our travels where we are borderline between being close enough to turn back and so far away that turning back would be a major inconvenience. By the time I argue with myself the merits of turning back vs continuing on, we will be past the point of no return and I'll need to buy a new one of the thing I've forgotten, which will turn out to be one of those things that I only ever use on holiday, so it will then spend the rest of the year put away in a safe place so that I won't ever see it, and as a result will forget it next time I go on holiday.

Friday, December 4, 2009

28 of 365TTSM - Telstra was the best option and the salesperson was nice




I tend to view Telstra as the evil empire and am quite proud of the fact that I have no accounts with them. But today I needed to get some pre-paid wireless broadband in order to keep blogging when we head down to Tasmania for a month. My research suggested that only Optus or Telstra would (possibly) have the required coverage. So I went to the Optus shop. I asked the shop assistant if I would get good coverage in Hobart. Her reply: "Ummm. . .I went down to Tasmania on holiday once and I couldn't get very good reception, but I didn't go to Hobart, but you could go home and look on the internet and see if we have coverage there and then come back and buy a pre-paid wireless pack if we do." (Seriously!!). So I bitterly trudged to the Telstra shop. Where a charming and delightful young man was immensely helpful and asked friendly but unintrusive questions as he told me what I needed to know, while also sharing a little bit of his life story. Telstra people aren't supposed to be NICE. It felt so wrong, but I'm sure I'll lose the love when my $30 pre-paidness runs on in the first couple of days. . .

Thursday, December 3, 2009

27 of 365 TTSM - caffeinated energy drinks



I think caffeinated energy drinks epitomise food and drink evil, so it shits me that I have resorted to having two a day while red-lining on sleep deprivation this week. They give me shaky hands and occasional heart palpitations, and not particularly loud noises make me jump. I imagine this is what methamphetamine feels like to people who normally consume caffeine. But I am getting heaps of work done. Very quickly. Last night I dreamt that I decided to take cocaine, which suggests that at a subconscious level I equate caffeine with a class A narcotic. Maybe I should become a Mormon. . .

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

26 of 365TTSM - Dog is not very cuddly any more.





This is our dog. He died just over a year ago. It still feels wrong to open the front door when I get home from work and have no dog waiting to say hello. On the plus side, he can now sit on the table, which he wasn't allowed to do when he was alive. Sometimes I sit with him on my lap, but his urn is really not very cuddly. We keep meaning to take him to Tasmania with us and scatter him at his favourite former walking spot, but we keep putting it off. Partly because the lid of the urn is glued on very solidly and I feel bad about the fact that I'll have to smash it to get him out. Jeff has suggested we could glue him to a skateboard and take him for walks, but I'm worried the skateboard might tip over and he'd smash.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

25 of 365TTSM - non-vegetarians eat all the vegetarian food




This was the last piece of vegetarian pizza at the banquet lunch I attended today. There were about 10 people and eight different dishes - two of which were vegetarian. There was one vegetarian at the table (that would be me), so imagine my shock when I looked up to see this last lonely bit of vege pizza left, when I had only eaten one piece. Oddly, there was rather a lot of the non-vegetarian pizza and pasta left. Okay, non-vegetarian people - the token items of vegetarian food in a banquet meal are not there for you to have a novelty culinary experience ("oooh - food that doesn't contain dead animals - I must try some!"). They are there for us who do not eat meat to, you know, EAT FOR LUNCH.