The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

This snailish serpent still hasn't got back in the habit of squiggling.

So many distractions.

Sitting in the garden sniffing Angel's Trumpet flowers or watching the rainbow lorikeets squawking while feasting on the nectar rich bottlebrush flowers, slinking in Cyberia or even doing a Putz Blitz like this evening when I nuked a bunch of old newspapers and sorted piles of books.

I didn't do anything special for this real Black Friday (no time for that fake November nonsense)

The other serpent temptation is Duolingo.

I'm a sucker for the Early Bird and Night Owl freebies as well as the biggie - 60 minutes of Happy Hour on Saturday. Needless to say, I use up lots of 15 minute double points specials to max out the 5 extra points per lesson.

I've managed to team up with the Cat a lot lately in the weekly Friends Quests.

But thanks to the magical Jail House Jackpot that has turned up 3 times this week, I can clock up points at almost Criminal rates.

If the Jail house lesson revision or the even juicier Federation Jackpot turns up tomorrow, I'll be busy clocking up 50 point scores for 20 second lessons

For some strange reason, these honeypots are only available in Russian for English speakers.

I'm sure other languages have such perks but I've yet to find any.

I'm still plodding along with the music lessons but I've been in Zombie mode so much the last 6 weeks that I'm doing them a lot less lately. Not helped by their pissy points count.

Timed lessons is another thing not suited for zombie mode.

I'm now off to the serpent sack.

I'm such a slacker lately.

I'd hoped the new month would
get me back in the habit of squiggling in Dreamwidth Land especially since I recently got my forked tongue on the Daily Stoic journal with a writing prompt for every day of the year.

Sunday evening is my catch up on decluttering & reading time ever since Duolingo moved the goal posts for the weekly leaderboards then
brought in the deliberately addictive Early Bird and Night Owl double points sessions.

I make a point of staying away until as late as possible on Monday evenings so that I don't end up with a bunch of Hermione Grangers or annoying Zaris.(Zari a Duo charter and such a sad little swat)

I think I've mastered the dark art of getting the most points for the least effort.
My number 1 rule
Never do a lesson that isn't either earning double points or unlocking them.

With the exception of Musuc which I do solely for the sake of learning. Especially as the points to work ratio is so abysmally low.

I'm certainly getting my money's worth from upgrading to Super in the dying days of 2023 when they had it on offer for $108.00

I'd already turned down the $120 deal on offer after the free month trial from the partnership with Chess.com

I've also noticed that Duo is a very good way to test out the state of the old serpent grey cells.

Sadly, the Green zone days are rather less frequent than they used to be

I am still hunting and pecking in the tweet stone because I'm logged out of DW on the Big Mac and the whole reset password business is beyond my ancient brain lately.

There are so many interesting posts from friends that I want to reply to.
I do hope this is the month where I finally start lurking and squiggling on this site.

It's that time of the year again in Oz.

The last day of the financial year or as I like to call it, Goblin New Year's Eve.

I didn't achieve my Number 1 goal - to start the year with the plastic fantastic in the black.


But I'm a bit more organised with some other stuff.

While I have automatic deductions for the seperate account I use for bills, I do need to assess if I need to top it up.

It sure helps having solar panels & not having a car (those things just eat money)

I have found a sneaky trick to save money & reign in my hoarding habit.

I'm not doing Camp Nano but I will be doing Plastic Free July.
The rules are simple but definitely not easy.

No single use plastic for the month.
Which basically means a lot less food shopping, using up stuff in the pantry & making more meals from scratch.

And of course, a LOT less junk food since chips, biscuits and most snacks come in plastic.


It also means no cheese unless it's a shop that cuts from the wheel and wraps produce in wax paper.

I don't think it's possible regards milk since milk in glass bottles seems to have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Petunia used to insist on milk in proper glass bottles and her local grocery store did have it on stock as did mine.

But not anymore

Pretty much most of the weekly catalogues of the 2 main supermarkets are not kosher in Plastic Free July.

It's funny how motivating deadlines can be.

I did a bit of a blitz in the loop & laundry & made sure the garden table is clean & empty for the beginning of the new month.

That was helped by all the planting I did yesterday.

The other thing that really sucks is how hard it is to find a fee free ATM these days.

I refuse to do internet banking or direct debit for utilities no matter how much the banks,gas & water keep pestering me.

I'm off to do a Goblin toast.

I've just come back from my second visit to the Spanish conversation group at the local library.

Both times there were only 4 of us including the MC. And not one hombre to be seen.

I missed last month due to a clash with another event. I'm such a busy Izzie!

The host is not a native speaker herself but has lived around 5 years in South America.

She says if you feel tired or get headaches later, it probably means that your brain has had a good workout.

It's certainly very different to learning on Duolingo.

In a way, it's like a 60 minute taste of what it was like when I was living in Germany & then having to improvise with the basics I had learnt

We started with questions concerning daily routine. What time we usually get up or have breakfast etc

We went around in a circle and I was the lucky last.

I said I get up between 7am & 8am on days I'm working.
So of course Anna (the MC) asked about my work & I explained that I work in the books section of a charity shop.


Later I mentioned that MAD magazine was a really good way to learn German because it's funny, it's possible to work out a lot from the context and all the hypothetical situations

"If I were

Bundeskanzler
President of USA
UK Prime Minister

I would...."

Best way ever to learn the subjunctive I added

Anna groaned. You mean they have the subjunctuve in German too!
(I really don't understand why the poor old Subjunctive gets such a bad rap. It would be a shit language if you could only ever talk about stuff that actually happens)


The MAD article "20 things to do with a Trabant" got us onto the subject of dodgy cars and lemons.

Apparently the Spanish language has not yet adapted this useful term.

But apparently some dialects of Spanish in South America refer to penguins as Pajaros de negocio (loosely translated as Birds in business suits which I think is just utterly adorable)

I'm still having a lot of trouble with having German or Russian being my default foreign language setting.

I'm not sure if other people have a similar problem with code switching.

German is the only foreign language that I ever learnt well enough to feel "at home" listening or speaking and trying to switch it off definitely drains the brain batteries.

If the conversation had been in English I would have been able to mention that 3 economists won a Nobel Prize for their study of Lemons in the car market and the role of assymetric information in general


https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2001/popular-information/

I was supposed to be squiggling this post upstairs on the Big Mac. But once again the demon of procrastination has possessed me.

So I'm still on the tiny tweet stone.

Monday was a public holiday so I indulged in one of those slack "Lurk around the Lair" days

Not least because I was at a gorgeous garden festival on Sunday so I had leaf babies needing to be planted.

After the driest autumn on record,we finally got rains so it was the perfect opportunity to get planting

These days sunset is around 17.30 so that leaves very little time on the days I'm working

I'm saving Saturday afternoon for the last 6 specimens.
Mainly hakeas and one grevillea

This evening Duolingo cheated me out of not one but two 15 minute double points sessions.

I'm so mercenary that aside from the music course, every lesson has to be either earning double points or getting a double points freebie at the end of it.

I first claimed the Early Bird reward by clicking on the shop page.

I got the egg timer, the purple page and everything only to discover that a nasty "race the clock" blitz got me only 40 instead of the 80 points I expected

I then finished a level, got the same purple parade but once again the Duo goblins didn't get the memo.

I know that finishing certain daily quests randomly gets you a 15 min freebie but the Early Bird, Night Owl & level ups were always guaranteed.

It's all very weird.
Even stranger than the evil green owl's aversion to cheese.

Tomorrow I'm off to the clutter bug meeting.

Maybe I will finally get around to a proper post about it.

It's already 5th May and I'm still pecking away on this Tweet stone.
So much for the grand plan to be back on the Big Mac by 1st May. Today at the latest.

The Heritage festival is over so I have no excuse but laziness or good old fashioned procrastination.

The weather has cooled down & the nights are noticeably longer now. No excuses on that front either.


I did have an interesting distraction. Other than a big fat chat with the Izzie sister this evening, I spent the afternoon on a talk & tour of a recently renovated old Art Deco cinema.

Even got a proper peak in the old projector room upstairs.

Some pretty serious relics up there along with a more modern digital projector that would look more at home in some supercomputer centre.

The place is full of the old fashioned reels that required real people to operate them.

The event was organised by the local Art Deco society. I've asked to join but since they seem to do EVERYTHING on Facebook, they will need to send me a quaint old fashioned paper application form.

Next week is the annual garden festival so I'm really being quite the culture culture this year.

I've been quite the Culture Vulture this year.

Late January began 4 weeks of the Fringe Festival. This one was my biggest binge ever.

Then it was Sculptures by the Sea in March & now a whole month of Heritage events in the city. Unlike the Fringe, most of them are free but require registration. The days of just spontaneously turning up to stuff are pretty much over since COViD.

So I've already been on some Art Deco walks in the city, the old hospital museum and on a treasure hunt at the Mint.

But today's event was the icing on the cake.

A talk about the Sean Bells with demonstrations from real be ringers.

I booked several weeks ago and swapped my shift at work to make space on my schedule.

Apparently 30 people had booked but by 14.30 only 8 had shown up.

So an audience of 8 with 7 bell ringers who all came in specially to put on a show for us.

We even got a go at chiming the bells. Something you normally have to go on a paid tour to do. I did it this time last year.

But back then we did not get a big fat 80 minutes in the ringing room nor did we get to see anyone ringing changes or ringing the biggest bell.

It was geek heaven topped off by tea and biscuits in the staff room with views over the river.

I'd already spent an hour at the tower on Sunday for Open Day.

There really is something so mesmerising & enchanting about bells especially when you can see them ringing with nothing between you and them but a lot of double glazed glass.

Even though, you can still feel as well as hear them ringing.


On Saturday is Open Day at the old Observatory - a place that I always miss out on seeing because it gets booked out so quickly.

This time I got in early. Then the afternoon I'm off on an art Deco tour of the spooky old girls school.


I've never had so much fun. For free.

I will now have bells ringing in my ears for a week.

It was a public holiday here in Oz and also the last day of a street art festival.

That meant I didn't follow my usual Monday routine of lurking in the cafe before work.

So went to see lots of amazing short shows but got to read no newspapers today.

Pity really because 1st April newspapers are always fun with so many fake adverts. I love looking for them.

A decade later, I still remember the advert featuring an elegant black car on an empty road.
Mercedes Benz - now with built in right of way.


As if Merc drivers don't already act as if they've always had it.

So I'm hoping to find a cafe tomorrow that has the old papers. If that fails, there is always the library.

I've also decided that my DW posting is a bit of a joke so now I'm hoping to get back in the habit of squiggling and commenting.

Time flies when you're having fun.

Once the clock struck midnight on Thursday 29th February and I now no longer have to tweak the dates on my old 2019 calendar, it was a bit hard not to be constantly reminded that Sunday 3ed March 2019 was when I spent a whole day at an auction trying to get back some of my mum's stuff.
Most important were her nursing medals earned over 60 years of service.

Of no interest to any potential bidder but of course of great sentimental value to my sister and me.
Unfortunately they were in the same lot as 3 US silver dollars which were of great interest to other bidders but not much to me.

I only got half of the items on my list as so many went well over my price limit. But I was not expecting to find myself bidding on the magnificent mahogany dresser that used to be in the dining room of Number 4 Privet Drive.

So the garden festival in the hills was a much nicer way to remember Petunia. I even brought her black grandma shopping trolley because I knew I'd be adopting a lot of leaf babies.

This time I knew the bus and train routine since I first visited last September.

The lady with the stone pine trees had a stall. This time the pots were a lot bigger and $35 each not the $20 I paid 6 months ago

The festival venue was gorgeous. An old park with lots of shady trees and so many stalls selling the most beautiful weeds.

But unfortunately, it was such a beautiful day that there were hordes of rug rats there too.

I had to keep finding little nooks off the beaten track to hide in to recharge my batteries.

So I suppose it was suitable that the book I had brought was "The Autistic Brain" by Temple Grandin.

It's now nearly a year since I've been diagnosed "officially" autistic.

It sure explains a lot. All those times that I thought I'd fallen into zombie mode or the pit of depression turned out to be basic sensory overload.

At least it wasn't Sundowners as I used to see with so many oldies from about 4pm onwards.

I'd already known about the traits of terrible facial recognition, avoiding eye contact, developmental problems with speaking, clumsiness and obsessive special interests but it was the sensory issues that were the biggest revelation


I'm off to a different festival tomorrow & will adopt the same tactics to avoid Constant Vigilance mode.

I've been missing in action online again. It's becoming quite a habit.

It had a lot to do with the annual feast of freakery that is Fringe World. But that finished last Sunday with a whimper.
A vile hot and muggy 40 Celsius day which meant that even the Fringe Pleasure Gardens were hot and steamy.
Way too muggy to lurk until 19.30 as was my plan. ( Based solely on the lousy Sunday bus schedule)

But we also had a string of these 40 Celsius sizzling summer days which meant no proper squiggling on the Big Mac desktop. I think I've turned it on only 3 days this year.

It got to 38 yesterday but today has been a gorgeous 25 max. It started muggy with the odd drop of rain but now the sky had cleared and I can finally see the full moon some 3 hours after moonrise.

This weekend is the annual Writers Festival. It used to be held at on university grounds amongst gorgeous lush groves and lawns.
There was a mixture of ticketed and free events.

Since I blow my culture Vulture budget on Fringe, I very rarely bother with paid events.
I made an exception for Margaret Atwood about 10 years ago. That was before she started drinking the sparkly Trojan Unicorn pee.

This weekend there was absolutely nothing free.

I did pay $25 for last night's opening event with Deborah Conway. I felt so ancient thinking that it's almost 30 years ago when I saw her in Concert.

Today I just lurked around the library bar. I did not bother attending a single event.

No way would I pay $25 to see a bunch of talking heads after 4 weeks of amazing singers, acrobats, burlesque & boylesque performers. Especially when the best sessions are often broadcast later on ABC Radio National

But the big black cloud over the last few days is that I absentmindedly left a shopping bag behind at the bus station at 9pm.

Not only did I have grocery shopping and my Happy Hour sushi in it which I was so looking forward to eating by the light of the nearly full moon but also 2 books. "Lessons in Chemistry" which had been on my watchnlist for ages. It turned up at the charity shop on Thursday. I started reading it after the opening event last night and was already hooked in the first chapter.

But that book can be easily for from the local library.

It's the other one from my old stash about Mind / body healing that will probably be the impossible to replace esp since I did not take note of the writers name.

As soon as I realized I'd left the bag of goodies behind, I got off the bus at the nearest stop and returned to the bus station.

After only 30 minutes, it was gone without a trace.
The security guards knew nothing. I checked in the bins. Not there either.


Went back today and it had not been handed in to lost property so I guess some other passenger just took it and later dumped it.

Those items were of little value to anyone else but a lot to me especially when I realized I had also put my "Office Tarot" deck in that damned bag earlier that morning.

I still can't believe that I could be so careless.

So needless to say, I was in zombie mode the rest are f the evening.

I'm not even going to bother at all with the Writets' festival tomorrow. I will take advantage of the free Sunday buses to visit Hammerbarn instead and do some Bluey spotting.

I just hope most of the rug rats will be gone by the time I get there.

PS apologies for the long long post.
Using cuts is way too difficult and risky with this Tweet stone.