Encounter with a Spider Wasp

Coming back home one day, we noticed a large strange looking orange insect on our front door step.  Miss 8 was fascinated but scared and Miss 10 didn’t care.  My first thought was to grab my camera and decide which lens to use.  Not knowing exactly what it was, I stayed my distance. 

I’ve since figured out that it’s a spider wasp, and they’re probably quite harmless so I could’ve gone a bit closer for better close ups.

Here’s Mr Wasp scoping me out.  Its snack, Mr Spider, already comatose in the background.

After Mr Wasp was satisfied that I wasn’t going to steal his lunch, he thought he’d give Mr Spider some tail action.

Mr Spider, now definitely drugged out and not being much fun, just lay around.   Mr Wasp took advantage of the situation and started preparing? eating? sucking?  Who knows.

 

I left the two of them to chill out together, and when I checked them after a few hours, they had left.  Or maybe, more correctly, Mr Wasp took Mr Spider to home for tea.

Getting a pool from green to blue

I swear the pool looked fine 2 weeks ago! 

But last week, I noticed it getting greener and greener.  During the week, I did do a manual vacuum of the whole pool, but it didn’t make much difference.  I think when I manually vacuum, I tend to be impatient and do it too quickly which results in the particles churning back up into the water instead of being sucked through the filter.

So, on Saturday morning, I was faced with trying to recover a green murky pool.

Pool on Saturday

First I checked the whole filtration system.  Yep, the Klever Kleena hadn’t been doing its job.  It seems that it was stuck on the incline down to the bottom of the pool.  I cleaned out the filter baskets and did a backwash.  Checked the timer settings on the automatic filter and seems that it was set to run for only 4 hours a day – my winter setting.  I bumped it up to 7 hours a day.   OK – that bit done.    Unfortunately I didn’t take a “before” photo, but just picture the pool above BEFORE the cleaner went through it – gross!

My home water test kit seemed to think the levels were all fine, but I took a sample to my pool shop just in case and the guy said the same thing.  I bought a container of Chlorine to shock the pool anyway.  So in theory, any algae that’s floating around should be killed and then sink to the bottom of the pool, and then the Klever Kleena should suck it up.

So, back home, poured in the Chlorine, then turned on the filter to run for the rest of the day.

By Monday morning, the pool was starting to look better.

Pool on Monday morning

And this morning, it was looking much better.  Visibility was great, but there’s stil a bit of sediment at the bottom of the pool in sections – might need to do a manual vac.   Chemical levels still seem OK with chlorine on the high side.  

Now the challenge is for me to keep it this way so the kids can swim through summer!

Pool on Tuesday morning (today)

One Blurb Book done!

No blog updates for over a week!

No late night TV for over a week!

Wifey and I have been working madly to finish our first Blurb book for our Round the World trip in the summer of 07-08.  We were nearly able to finish 1 city per night, but then we hit Paris and found we had over 1,000 photos to prioritise there alone!

And then came the borders and page backgrounds.  Wifey got really excited and nearly went crazy with them, but I tried to hold her back.  There’s something I really like about clean white crisp pages with photos on them, but Wifey wanted to pull out certain colours from the photo onto the page background. 

We weren’t quite sure what to do about the text though.  On our trip, we did keep a travel diary which started off quite detailed, but started to thin out at the end.  Should we go back and complete the diary now?  Should we include days of activities with the photos for those cities?  Should we just use bullet points?

In the end, we wanted our book to be primarily a photobook/photojournal – the emphasis on photos and some captions if required and we felt 1-2 pages of text might break up the flow.  But I did condense the activities of each day into a 3-4 line paragraph, and we put these at the end of the book for reference.  Each paragraph is a summary of the day’s events.  The full travel diary exists only in electronic form for now.

(By the way, I found it much easier to edit text in Microsoft Word and then copy and paste the whole lot in once done.)

Once the whole book was complete last night, we did a final spell check which picked up a few embarrassing typos.  And then it was upload time to Blurb.  With over 300 pages and roughly 860 photos, we had to leave this overnight.  And then this morning, I checked it and it was all done!  I hope all pages and photos are there without corruption – unfortunately I can’t seem to find a way to check.

So what now?   We have to do the final touches to the Italy trip book, then place our orders!

And so the WAYO cycle continues

This Saturday, Miss 10 has her first audition to join a WAYMA orchestra.  Her cello playing has improved in leaps and bounds in the last 2 years, but so far, she’s really only been playing by herself. 

Playing in an orchestra or ensemble is such a different and enlightening experience that I really cherish from my youth.  Just mixing with other like minded kids, meeting new people, working towards that concert, going on fun tours/camps…   although there were obviously times when I thought orchestra was drab, boring, why did I have wake up to go orchestra every Saturday morning, why am I doing this instead of some sport…

I think Miss 10 has reached a stage where she needs exposure to other people who play the cello, playing in time and in tune with each other, and really, the joy of playing with other people making a bloody big sound!  There’s nothing like everyone playing some symphonic fortissimo passage together…

I hope she goes OK with her audition!  (and also the many other hundred kids auditioning tomorrow!)

PICA’s Artist Car Boot Sale

Did you get out to Northbridge on the weekend?  We went for dimsum and stumbled across the Northbridge Festival.   And towards the Art Gallery end of James Street, PICA held an Artist Car Boot Sale!

It was a great atmosphere with lots of interesting sculptures, paintings and craft mixed with street performers and activities for the kids, melding into the normal Cultural Centre weekend markets.

More info here:  http://www.pica.org.au/events

I wish I had brought along my SLR, but here are some iPhone snaps.

Tango dancing outdoors – looks like a lot of fun, but I do wish we had swing dancers there!

 

The Artist Car Boot Sale in full swing!

Graffiti’ing the pavement!

Free popcorn, but only as much as your hat or hands can hold.  Note to self – bring a large container next time!

Nina Ferro at the Ellington

A month or so ago, I saw that Nina Ferro was on the calendar to perform at the Ellington.  I was so excited I bought tickets straight away – she’s an Australian female jazz singer that I had heard on the radio a very long time ago and bought two of her CDs.   She’s not so Aussie now as she’s been living and working in the UK for the past few years.

So, last night, after a busy day running around, We settled into a table at the Ellington, ordered some finger food, had a glass of wine and had an extremely enjoyable night.  Nina is extremely talented and sang a range of jazz to more soul/R&B tunes last night, including many originals or reworkings of other songs that just worked really well.   I love her rich velvety tone and her relaxed timing and phrasing - she sounds as good live as on her recordings.  She did cut loose on some scatting for a couple of songs – I wish she did that even more as I love the bebop scatting sound and she’s obviously got the talent for it!

Got to meet her during the break, buy her latest CD, and let her know that we did use some of her CDs as background quiet time music for our kids

One thing I couldn’t believe though was that the Ellington was not packed at all.  Why not?  This was an ideal gig for the small cozy venue!  

I have to say, major props to Ben Vanderwal on drums.  This guy is amazingly talented and plays so tight, right on the beat.  I spent a while last night just enjoying all his variations and ease at which he plays.  Good stuff

If you missed last night, you can buy her CDs here – http://www.ninaferro.com/

Sorry no photos – last night I decided to just relax and take in the music rather than burden myself with the camera!

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By the way, tonight – Phil Emmanuel playing bluesy guitar!

Jigsaw Mania

 

We’ve finally done it!

A few months ago, Miss 10 bought a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle..  a beautiful Holland landsacpe shot, and we completed it without too much trouble.

But this… our second 500 piece jigsaw puzzle was a nightmare!  All the lilypads and pond areas just looked the same!  We started by doing the corner and borders, but then skipped to the horizon line in the middle and tried to work outwards from there.

Don’t you just hate it when all the pieces are the same colour?

Luckily, after much perserverance, it’s done!  The last 10 minutes was like a race to see who could put in the final piece.  And then we hit a brick wall – we were one piece down at the end.  After much searching around the lounge room, we were all relieved when we found it had fallen onto the storage shelf below our coffee table.   I breathed a sigh of relief – I thought I had vaccuumed it up.

So, what now?

We’ve already started the next one – a Singing in the Rain poster jigsaw puzzle!  The kids are hooked – I’m hooked – all good..

 

Blurb Photo Books

Have you made a photo book before?

We’ve made a few through Target’s Photobook service.  But we just heard that Blurb currently has a special that is free shipping!

So Wifey and I have embarked on making some photo books through Blurb’s BookSmart software.  We have a huge list to get through:

* Italy trip book
* Separate books for each city in our family’s round the world trip
* Books for Miss 10’s dancing and Miss 8’s dancing concerts so far
* Books for various other family vacations
* Books of up to date family and casual snaps
* Books of the kids birthday parties
* Books of my photography
* The list just goes on…

Here’s a sneek peak of what our Italy one is looking like!

The main problem is time.  Books take a lot of time to design!  So far, we’ve only managed one Italian city per night (about 2 hours)!  At this rate, every night this month will be tied up in book designing!

Last night we had some good debates on which photo to use, which layout, what order to put them in.  Luckily I’ve already processed most of the photos so they don’t need touching up as well!  But it’s all fun.  I can’t wait until they’re done – they will be AWESOME!

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On BookSmart – I like the various page layout options and the ability to edit the layout too.   These save a lot of time!

One tip so far – my iPhoto library is HUGE, with every digital photo from 2002 onwards in there.  This basically makes the BookSmart software come to a grinding halt.  Also, I’ve configured iPhoto to not manage the location of my photos and this doesn’t agree with BookSmart.  The photo browser in BookSmart is not that great either – I can’t zoom in to preview photos or sort them the way I want.   I’ve found it’s much easier to use iPhoto to find the photo you want, and then drag it over to BookSmart.

Miss Johnson’s Vintage and Handmade Market

When we were at the York Jazz Festival, we came across a really nice vintage stall.  It happened to be run by 2 sisters – Miss Johnson and Miss Johnson!  They had a great range of vintage jewellery and tidbits that caught my Wifey’s eye.

The good news is that they are hosting a Vintage and Handmade market this weekend in the Guildford Town Hall.

If you’re into lindyhop and swing from the 30s and 40s, and the fashion and culture from that era, or just character homes and you’re looking for some ornaments, you may want to pop along.  They’re even open until 9pm tonight!

More info here:  http://missjohnsonsvintageandhandmademarket.blogspot.com/ and http://theshabbychateau.blogspot.com/

(Great to see that these “old” ladies have embraced the digital era too with a blog!)

Parental embarrassment

One of the joys of being a parent is walking your child into school.  Especially when they’re super young, like in Kindy or Year 1.  It’s such a proud moment – your child all dressed up in the school uniform, holding your hand.  You saying goodbye to them.

Unfortunately those days just don’t last.

Little Miss 10 does NOT want me to hold her hand on the times I walk her to school. 

I still remember the first time it happened last year.  We parked the car on the roadside.  I held her little hand to walk her in.  But when we got the school grounds in sight of other kids, she shook my hand off and took a step away from me.  Well, it’s daggy now right? 

Now she even complains that I walk her down.  She moans, “Daaaadd.. why can’t you just drop us in the drive through?”

I wonder if the number of metres that I’m allowed to be seen near her at school will increase as her age increases.  In High School, she’ll probably want me to drop her off around the block or in an adjoining suburb.

Luckily Miss 8 hasn’t quite reached that stage of parental embarrassment yet.  I have a few more months to treasure