izmeina: (Scabbers)
Strange days in Dursleyville..
Since Tuesday 20th I have tested positive for COVID and the tests I did on Wednesday and Thursday are still positive in spite of now having little more than a sniffle to show for it.

When I woke up on the morning of Monday 19th December delirious, hot and clammy with a splitting headache, my first thought turned to hot flushes. Since that was impossible in my case I then turned to the slice of SPINACH quiche I had in a cafe for lunch on Sunday.

It never even occured to me that it could be COVID until a coworker suggested doing a RAT test. Since I had a stash of 20 of RAT freebies just lying around the house, I figured why not. Not least because I had been invited to lunch with old friends on Thursday so better safe than sorry.

I did manage to go for my long awaited Graveyard Picnic on Christmas Day. I masked up on the empty bus and there was no danger of Petunia or anyone else at the cemetery catching it from me.

Lurking )
izmeina: A skeleton playing a pipe (Pied Piper)



After what seemed like a century of sizzling stinking hot days, we had almost a week of 28 to 30 degree days. I felt almost human again.
But then today a nasty stinking 36 popped up out of nowhere. Not just hot but extremely humid and muggy.


So once again I am feeling totally brain dead and unproductive. The old mojo is definitely missing in action.
It is so sad walking on the verge hearing the grass crunch like cornflakes.
I don’t want the lawn anyway and hope to get lots of ground cover plants up and running when the weather turns.


But pottering in the garden seeing another plant turn up its toes every other day is just so depressing.
Soon I will be left with nothing but the old established trees and grape vine, succulents and dragon fruit.

I had planned to squiggle here on Wednesday 23rd but was once again too tired and brain dead to make the effort. I had been thinking that it was exactly 2 years ago on Monday 23rd March 2020 that was the start of the Great Lockdown.

From midday, all cafes and restaurants were take away only and all pubs and bars were completely closed.
The city and streets were like a ghost town. It was so surreal.
Since there was so little else to do, people signed up fro the Toilet Paper Wars.



Ghost Town )


izmeina: creepy spooky old house infested with crawling critters (spooky)
I am so so tempted to just become a grumpy hermit and vanish without trace. It has taken more than 10 minutes just to get to the Dreamwidth post page on the Big Mac. I have to wade through endless piles of evil spinning beach balls or just boring old blank pages that take an eternity to load. That partly explains why my visits are less and less frequent.

Often it will be 2 weeks between sessions. I can tell how long it has been because the calendar shows the last time I logged on and takes a while to update to the current time. This time it was only a few days for the simple reason that I had to fill in the census. I just assumed it would be a total nightmare trying to do it on the Tweet Stone so I wasn't even going to try. Also Dreamwidth is dreadful on the Tweet stone. I guess it is simply not designed for such devices. It is especially awful if inserting images or using HTML code for links and things. So this means of course that I have not been replying to so many juicy thought provoking comments.

Dursleyville Dramas )

PS I hate the new look Dreamwidth posting rules.  It had been so long since I have posted that I don't even know when these changes were brought in.

I thought I was being clever  by going straight to Rich Text to solve the horrid spacing problem only to discover that it is much more difficult to do the cut text thing and that once you go over to RT  you cannot go back to whatever it used to be for the same post.

It took ages to even find the icon for cutting/ hiding text and then I found out the hard way that you have to put it in some special box and if it is shaded then you know that it will be hidden when posted.
This ancient serpent is not in the mood for learning so many new tricks so I guess I will stick to making short posts in future to avoid having to fart around with all this complicat4ed editing.

izmeina: Roz with clipboard from Monsters Inc (Dolores)
Two very dodgy tradies doing a wallpaper cover up job and failing badly

There are just layers and layers of hidden Easter eggs in this wicked work. Aside from the obvious Covid cover ups and stuff ups, there is also a new book spilling the beans on the creeps in sQomo's Old Boys Club cabinet.



Menacing Controlling Wallpaper

In the meantime, I have been having my own dramas with tradies. No wall paper jobs. Just plumbers. First thing I have learned is that they operate in a world with the wierdest clocks.
A 9am job is considered EARLY if they turn up at 10am. 12.30 is more like it.

But beggars can't be choosers. It is a seller's market. I guess it always has been and don't they know it.

Meanwhile, over in the Badlands of Sydney, it turns out that the Gold Standard of contact tracing and containing the virus without SHUTTING DOWN THE ECONOMY has turned into lead. They are averaging 30 cases a day and with the more infectious Delta variant and exponential growth, those numbers are going to explode any day now.

Over here in the west we are the other extreme - going into short sharp lockdowns with only a couple of cases which has happened 3 times so far this year. I suspect they could safely up that number to 4 or 5 before triggering the nuclear option. But the virus and its variants have been around long enough now for people to see what happens when you just let it rip because The Economy. People who get sick don't go working or spending nor do people who are afraid of getting sick.

Look after people's health and the economy will take care of itself.

I have to wait another 6 weeks before getting my second dose of AZ. Since it's the first one that usually causes the trouble, if there is trouble, I guess I am pretty much out of the woods on that one.

Going Nuts

01/07/2021 06:40 pm
izmeina: (Don't panic)
Nutty Clusterfuck of Oz


It's a strange start to the new Goblin year. I got up early to go to the day job only to discover that the place is shut and nobody had bothered to pass the message on which they have always done in the past via email.
It is funny because last year the shop was shut from Wednesday 1st April and reopened on Wednesday 1st July. This time it was closed for 1st July but probably also yesterday and the day before too.

I suspected it could be closed on account of the lockdown since a second hand charity shop does not quite count as an essential service the way a chemist or supermarket does.

So I just pottered around the other shops nearby before catching the bus back to the Lair. I ended up waiting 30 minutes for a bus that usually turns up every 10 minutes. Then of course 2 of them turned up at the same time.
So I was back at the Lair just in time for midday and spent the afternoon sitting in the garden soaking up the sunshine, reading the paper, planting a weed or two and doing a few Duolingo lessons.

Tomorrow will be more of the same since both the nursery and the op shop are closed. There is no point actually going anywhere since all the cafes if not closed are take away only. Since for me the whole point of going to a cafe is to sit down for an hour, read the paper and watch the world go by, if I cannot do that then I just don't bother at all since it is not the caffeine that I am addicted to but the ritual.

It is so sad and weird seeing nearly everything closed. After the last year of on and off lockdowns, many businesses have long used up their reserves and each lockdown could mean death row.
Especially since the cafe, pub and restaurant industry were so happy that all Covid restrictions had been lifted only 2 weeks ago so they were all back at maximum capacity and looking forward to the lucrative school holiday season.

There is a giant shit show in Canberra on account of the federal government's complete Covid incompetence. OZ did very well last year keeping the death toll low. It was one of the big success stories of 2020. But no thanks to sQomo and his happy clappy mates in Canberra. Like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, they wanted to just let it rip and keep the economy going. They were dragged kicking and screaming back into the real world by the state governments who would be left burying the bodies.

The Feds have tried to piggy back off the success of the states but everything they touch turns to shit. Now there are giant shouting matches between the Feds and assorted Chief Health Officers and medical organizations about who should get the AZ vaccine because that crowd screwed up getting sufficient supplies of Pfizer.

I had AZ just over 6 weeks ago. If I had known that they would have extended the age group for Pfizer I might have chosen to wait. Mind you know that the virus is doing the rounds, a lot of vaccine hesitant people have changed their minds so there is an even bigger shortage than usual.
izmeina: creepy spooky old house infested with crawling critters (spooky)
Scomo and his Amazing Chocolate Announceables Factory

Stolen from Ozfile

Oz politics is complicated. But chocolate making isn't. Especially when you just spend all day talking about that chocolate but never get around to making the damned stuff.

The Liar from the Shire - also known as the OZ prime minister - just keeps coming up with the same old fibs in brand new wrappers. The joke has long worn off now.

I bet he's glad for a bit of Royal distraction. It's an ill wind that blows no good.

So while Scomo did snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - well at least according to the pollsters back in May 2019, since then, the magic and the miracles have long worn off

Scomo has now squandered the huge advantage Australia had with keeping the Coronavirus under control. Not that he had anything to do with it. He like trump and Bojo was all for herd immunity and letting it rip because it's all about the Economy, stupid.
It was the states that dragged him kicking and screaming to follow health and science guidelines

The federal government dragged their feet on the vaccines thinking that they had all the time in the world. Never stopping to think that rolling out the vaccine faster means less need for large lockdowns when the odd community case occurs

Now that all the government Covid subsidies are over, each new lockdown is more likely to mean a death sentence for tourism and hospitality businesses
We have gotten away very lightly in the wild west but knowing that the government can pull a lockdown out of the hat with only a few hours notice leaves everyone just a bit on edge.

I think I can be pretty sure of one thing. With travel restrictions and 30,000 Australians still stranded overseas but trying to get home, it might be time to convert my Emirates open ticket to cold hard cash because I will not be going anywhere overseas any time soon.

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izmeina: a snippet of Escher's circle of serpents (Default)
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