Politics

Its been rather amusing to watch minions of the left spinning the by-election in the seat of Griffith, Its seems most likely that Labor will retain the seat but with a noticeably slimmer margin than was the case under the recently departed Brother Number one. This salient t fact makes it very hard for them to claim that the by election is a slap in the face for Tony Abbott or his  candidate in the seat, Bill Glasson.

The lesson that we conservatives can take form the whole experience is that the Abbott government, and the state  government led by Campbell Newman  must therefore be far less unpopular  that the pundits of the left  would have us believe.

Sport

As for the winter Olympics well in this house its a total non starter, If I have seen half a second its been a case of reacting like a scalded rabbit to get the remote to send the pictures to another channel, even a shopping channel,rather than watch any of the inanity, I must be getting even more cynical about the Olympic games as a concept because I just can’t get excite d about meat heads spending years practicing silly activities that have no meaning and then trying to out do each other. Yawn-full does not come close to describing how I feel about such things especially as we seem to have an unstoppable and eternal cacophony of raving about one sport on the TV. Heck since I got the T-Box we even have a channel devoted to AFL. Now if anyone knows how to permanently skip that one and the “cartoon Network I would really appreciate you sharing…

Project

Ive been committing one of my periodic redesigns of the arrangements of my room here at Chez Hall  with the aim of de-cluttering and giving myself a greater feeling of space to that end I think that I will need to make some shelves to house my collection of DVDs and PS3 games. I have been looking at just buying a ready-made bookshelf but every one that I have seen seems to be far too deep, too heavy for me to move and too expensive. Looks like the best option will be to use metal brackets screwed to the wall  There is a spot where I think that I can have half a dozen shelves that are nearly 2m long which should hold quite few disc cases. This should do the trick for a while. Hopefully it won’t take me months to finish this.

Pain

One of the ironies of my condition is that its a rather long drive to visit the pain clinic, in fact that drive is a bit longer that my driving threshold but its probably worth it to get the opinion and advice of the experts on the best way to manage. I have been having rather more bad than good days of late so I am going to inquire about just how I will know when to ask for a higher dosage of my Norspan patches. I am most reluctant to do an Oliver Twist and ask for more but I also want to avoid  taking too much paracetamol /codeine for breakthrough pain because that has serious effects on your liver, further I don’t want to be so medicated that I can’t drive or look after my children’s needs. Thirdly each step to a higher dose is one less step that you can take if things get really bad.

Entertainment

Just finished watching Season three of Haven which has been the best one yet in this franchise. I love DVD box sets because they allow you to get fully immersed into an imagined universe without the intrusion of ads or having to wait for each new episode to screen. There are however some shows that are just awful, We have abandoned watching “Broadchurch” its well made and all that but strewth its bleak and so angst riven that I think it fails as any sort of entertainment, you really should not have to work that hard to enjoy something.

Twitter

Those of you who follow me on twitter may have noticed a small spike in my output of late which is largely due to me having got a new phone that allows me to connect to the net via our home Wi-fi this has allowed me to do things like check Twitter on the toot or when I have had to cede access to the computer to the wife and kids. I am sort of getting the attraction and potential for addiction to 140 characters and the challenge to be witty and clever in the shorter form of the social media game.    Currently able to resist posting pictures of trouser draped feet taken while emptying my bowels though. 🙂

Morris

Not been up too doing much on the Morris of late but I did go to the Toowoomba swap meet and even though it cost me a couple of days flat on my back zonked out on painkillers I had a good time and bought a few things like spare carburetors, at a couple of bucks each, a heater assembly  from a Mini Moke at $10 and a lovely air filter assembly from a Mini for $10, As many who tinker with old cars will understand its the thrill of the chase rather than completion of a project that gives you the satisfaction with these sorts of projects. But I do feel that I am getting close to the point at which I will lift the entire body off the chassis so that It can have the skin properly welded to it and then it can be finished well enough for it to be painted I am planning to make a rotisserie for the body welding job though because If I don’t want too much heat distortion then I am going to have to dance around doing lots of very small tacks that are allows to cool before the welder touches down next to them again.

Kids

My wife would dearly love it if one of our offspring were to become as dedicated to music as she is but so far my daughter has disavowed formal lessons even though she has some natural  talent and obvious musical ability, she actually plays the recorder very well and sings nicely so maybe there is hope yet but I also think that, mother daughter rivalry is in play and that her disinterest in music is an artifact of that inevitable teenage desire for differentiation. My son has begun having lessons to learn the electric guitar and I have been been hoping that he will stick too it more than he did with piano and acoustic guitar. So to help things along I’m planning to buy a PS3 game that I have heard  about called “Rocksmith”  that allows you to plug in any real guitar into your PS3 and play along. If it works for the boy I may just earn a few brownie points with the wife as well, heck the boy may even be able to join GD in his eternal quest for falafals!

Signing Off

As usual I offer a hearty Cheers to all of my blogging Comrades