The plan for Thursday was that Lindsey would go to an early piano lesson and then take her car to be serviced.  She would then come back in a courtesy car and get herself ready to go on holiday.  When her car was ready to pick up she would collect it and then drive to Melbourne for a dinner engagement. Following that she would come back to Mount Helen and she and I would leave, in her car, for work at a little after 06:30 on Friday morning.

That was the plan.

At some point she remembered the existence of the train. No need for all that dashing about. She would go to Melbourne on the train for her evening engagement and stay overnight, then I would drive down to Melbourne in her car on Friday morning (and not quite so early!)

And that is what happened.

It was a beautiful morning for driving to Melbourne.  I settled back into Lindsey's Car Which Almost Drives Itself.  Just after I had gone past the last opportunity to do a u-turn to go into the service station at Warrenheip, the car sounded an alarm.  Your tyres are under-inflated it yelled. Check the tyre pressure immediately. Alarm, alarm, alarm.

It seemed unlikely to me that the tyres were under-inflated. I was more than certain that the Audi people would have checked the tyres the day before. But I pulled into the service station at Ballan and checked them all.  And they were perfectly inflated.  But the alarm didn't go away.  Fortunately it only yelled briefly, but thereafter the alarm light came on and stayed on.  We rang the Audi people when I got to work and he talked us through the way to turn it off.  I am relieved to tell you that it hasn't happened since.  I wonder if the car's computer system was a bit bored, or feeling under-appreciated.

At the end of the day Lindsey and I went to the airport and Lindsey set off on her two week trip to the US and Canada.  I took her car back to Mount Helen, following a route that I suspect would have been beautiful in daylight.  I must do it again one day when the sun is up.

So now Lindsey and Ian are both away and Jim and I have possession of their house, their dogs - and Lindsey's car.

It's a beautiful morning.  We are off to the Lakeside market.  We won't take the dogs :-D

Thursday

All right.  Who stole my week?  How did it get to be Thursday already?

We had a busy weekend, it is true.

We went to see Stella and Tony on Saturday, taking with us a proper shepherds' pie (the apostrophe is in the right place - this would have done several shepherds ). I made it in a very traditional way, with lamb mince, a proper mirepoix (finely diced onion, carrot and celery, gently sautéed) with stock and Worcestershire sauce plus, of course, buttery mash on top.  It was very much the way my grandparents would have made it, and Jim says it tasted exactly like the ones his mother used to make.  A win for me, then :-D

It was quite exciting trying to get to Mount Martha. Multiple people tried to kill us.  The one that would have been the most likely to succeed was the one who pulled straight out in front of us from the emergency stopping lane with no notice, no warning, no indication, while I was doing 110 km on the freeway.  I am happy to tell you that the car brakes work and I can still do an effective emergency stop.  Fortunately, this was also true of the car and driver behind me!  No one else came even close to success but I did have to concentrate quite hard to avoid mad drivers.

We had a good visit. We enjoyed the shepherds' pie for lunch. There was a good bit left to I packaged that up and put it in their freezer for other occasions. We had a good natter.  Everyone seemed fairly cheerful and in not too bad health. We didn't stay too long because I really wanted to get back before it went properly dark.  So, we had 2.5 hours driving there, 2.5 hours there and 2.5 hours driving back.  The weather pretty much held so that helped with the driving.

We had considered the possibility of going to the Talbot Market on the Sunday. But it's a large market and we would want to buy things.  Sadly I had taken the "Market Budget" out to play in Costco the previous weekend. There didn't seem to be much point in driving all the way to Talbot if there wasn't the budget to buy things.  So we had lunch with Lindsey instead, and then went to the vegetable farm gate shop and then to the Elaine farm gate shop.  It was a very pleasant way of spending a Sunday.

So a busy weekend.

And then I had a busy week.

I went with Lindsey to Reservoir very early on Monday morning, leaving Jim all tucked up in bed. I don't usually work on Mondays but a couple of the receptionists are away and I am helping to fill in for the next few weeks.  I had three rostered reception shifts this week, plus there is all the usual stuff to do as well. I'll go back down tomorrow with Lindsey. Then she heads off on holiday for three weeks.  Alas, I do not.  But I've got out of the habit of working four days a week. I feel as though it should be the weekend already.

It was Simon's birthday on Monday so Lindsey and I joined him for dinner.  Lindsey made spectacular roast potatoes to go with our steak, salad and veggies.

We came back to Mount Helen yesterday evening.  I think Jim was quite pleased to see us.  He had been on his own since 06:45 on Monday morning when I had left him snuggled up in bed.  He had moved up to Hill House after he got up and had been here with no company but the dogs ever since.  I had thought that he and I would go down to Tani no uchi for the night but Lindsey and I didn't get back until 8:30 and the stew I had prepared for dinner was here, so here we stayed.  And here we will stay until Lindsey and Ian get back in mid-June.  Fortunately our place is only a few minutes away so we can drop down and keep an eye on it.  In fact, I will probably go down later this morning.  I don't seem to have any clothes up here :-D

Ian is playing in Baltimore this week. He will meet Lindsey in, I think, Chicago on Sunday..

Mostly weather

I was stood in Lindsey and Ian's kitchen on Thursday,  gazing idly out the window.  Goodness, I thought.  That rain is very thick and fluffy.  You'd almost think it was snowing.  Well that was because it WAS snowing!!!  It wasn't settling but it was definitely snowing.

Rupert and Hugo were a bit nonplussed by it and were quite keen that we should have it removed :-D

It didn't snow for long and then the sun came out.  I went outside a bit later to do something, looked out over Ballarat and saw this over the mountains behind Ballarat, slowly heading our way:

Fortunately, by the time it got to us it had transformed into rain rather than snow and wasn't, quite, a storm.

We stayed up at Hill House on Thursday evening. Lindsey had bought in chicken kievs for dinner and Annie the vet was expected at some point to trim Rupert's claws.  Rupert HATES having his paws touched.  So Annie had prescribed a sedative to make him sleepy enough so it wouldn't be so dramatic for him.

Sleepy?  The sedative obviously made him feel a bit peculiar but it didn't make him sleepy.  Far from it.  He was positively hyperactive.  When Annie arrived it took both Lindsey and Jim to sit on him to allow Annie to do his claws.  I almost had to sit on Hugo who clearly thought that Rupert was being attacked and wanted to rescue him.  Alternatively, of course, he might have thought it was a great game.  Whatever, it took all my strength and cajoling to keep him at a distance.  No one knows why Rupert is so sensitive about his paws.  As far as we are aware no one has ever tried to hurt his feet. He's been with us since a tiny puppy and we definitely haven't.

On Friday the weather was horrible.  It was raining fit to burst and it was windy.  Rupert dashed out for his morning wee as fast as he possibly could.  Hugo flatly refused to go outside.  Flatly.  And when a Great Dane digs all four paws in and refuses to move there isn't much you can do about it.  If it is a small dog you can pick it up and move it.  You can't do that with a Great Dane!  Jim reports that Hugo retired to our bed and eventually went outside when the rain had dropped off at about 10:00!!!

It was Lindsey's birthday on Friday so Jim and I once again stayed at her place overnight and I cooked a birthday tea of beef wellingtons, proper thrice cooked chips and Lindsey's favourite vegetables.

Sunday was Mothers' Day.  Plus, of course, it was still Lindsey's birthday weekend.  She had had breakfast with Emily on Saturday morning and dinner with Ian, who had returned from Sydney, on Saturday evening.  The rest of us rocked up to Stella and Tony's place on Sunday for a "picnic" lunch to celebrate Lindsey's birthday and Mothers' Day.  I took party pies and party quiches.  Suzie brought her apple and fennel sausage rolls.  There was smoked salmon, chicken burgers, salads, vegetable spring rolls, buttered potatoes, all sorts of picnic style food.  There were also 17 people and 5 dogs.  It was a boisterous celebration.  Having a picnic was a great idea.  Nothing like the amount of work that a "proper" Sunday lunch for 17 takes.

Lindsey's son Ant made her a birthday cake:

Inside it was a rainbow layered cake with a centre filled with smarties. It was very beautiful.

Lindsey took this photo

We were very fortunate with the weather.  It was gloomy, cold and drizzly when we left Mount Helen but the weather cleared the closer we got to Melbourne and by the time we got to Mount Martha the sun had come out. There was a lot more traffic than I had been expecting for a Sunday morning - I was glad not to have to tackle grumpy weather as well as lots of Sunday traffic.

Jim and I went to Costco on the way home. I haven't been for ages. It was seriously busy - at one point I wondered if we would get a parking spot!  I hadn't expected it to be quite so busy but I guess lots of people had had the same thought as me - it's not an enormous detour to go there when en route between the two Mounts.

This morning we have blue sky and the sun has just got up. The new week beckons.  I suppose I should consider getting dressed and go out to meet it.  I hope the weather won't be quite as exciting this week.  I know we need rain but gentle rain rather than flooding rain would be better.

A good few days

We went to the Bridge Mall Market on Saturday morning with Lindsey.  It was smaller than usual - the spice lady wasn't there, which wasn't an issue for me because I still have lots of spice mixes.  I found some more when I used my steamers and woks!  The pork people weren't there either, which was a bit disappointing. No bacon and egg sandwich for breakfast.  And I had hoped to buy some of their bacon.  Oh well.  Next time. Fortunately the egg, the mushroom and the vegetable stalls were there!

Lindsey headed off to Mount Martha and Jim and I hit Bunnings, then the supermarket.  I was quite excited to discover that you can buy wonton wrappers in Woollies. Not even frozen ones.  Fresh ones.  I had thought I might need to find a Chinese supermarket. I assume there is one in Ballarat.  I had bought some frozen ones in the Japanese supermarket in Smith Street in Fitzroy, but I have left them in the freezer in the flat.  They are not much use there!

On Sunday our friend Pat made her first visit to Tani no uchi.  She is on a restricted diet for various reasons and, in any case, can't eat large quantities of food at a time.  Japanese food is fairly low in calories and you don't have to eat much of it. The Japanese generally don't. I had decided to go down that route.  Lindsey also joined us and we had butternut pumpkin and ginger gyoza, prawn and lemongrass gyoza, karage chicken "nuggets" and, of course, rice and salad.  It was good to see Pat.  I think she liked our new place :-)

This week, so far, has followed almost a routine pattern.  We headed up to Hill House on Monday after lunch. I went to Melbourne, as usual, on Tuesday morning and stayed over.  I came back after work yesterday.

The only excitement was when I lost Jim on Tuesday evening.  He had been around just after lunch when I spoke to him by phone.  When I got to the flat at my usual time in the evening his phone was telling me that it was unavailable.  I assumed he was talking to someone else.  But it continued to say it was unavailable.  I tried the house phone.  He didn't answer that.  If he is at the other end of the house he doesn't get to the kitchen phone before the answer machine kicks in. But usually if you try a few times he goes and waits by the phone, or rings me.  Nup.  I tried FaceTime and Viber and Facebook.  Nup.  By the time it got to 6pm I was beginning to get a bit worried.  I contacted Lindsey.  We decided to wait for a bit and then send in reinforcements to check if he was OK.  You don't want him lying on the floor or in the garden unable to get up, or unconscious. If nothing else it would mean Rupert and Hugo wouldn't get their dinner :-D

Fortunately, before we called out reinforcements, he answered the house phone. He had indeed been at the other end of the house, had heard the phone ringing but had assumed that it was the Cold Callers being particularly active that evening - until the phone started ringing incessantly, when he decided someone possibly did want to speak to him.  But what was wrong with his mobile phone?  Turned out he had accidentally set it to flight mode so, of course, it wasn't receiving anything.  His laptop was turned off.  He was out of digital range!!  His phone is off flight mode now.  But I think I need to set up a code for the house phone so he knows it's me and not the Cold Callers.

I treated myself to a souvlaki for tea from the take away shop downstairs, after all that excitement.  It was very nice but I must remember next time to get them to hold the onions. People who make take away souvlaki are always a touch over enthusiastic with the raw onions.

We are definitely heading towards winter.  The deciduous trees are still doing autumn and looking beautiful. But the temperatures are forecast to plummet in Ballarat over the next few days. And I think we are forecast wind and rain.  I've dug out the winter clothes.  And turned the heating on.

Driving Along Memory Lanes

Usually on Wednesdays I leave work and head back to Mount Helen.  This week, however, I was going to Mount Martha instead.  So I left work and asked my trusty Sat Nav to take me to Stella and Tony's place.

Off we set.  We trundled along Plenty Road.  We turned along to La Trobe University.  I was confidently expecting it to take me along Waterdale Road.  But no!  Go straight on, it said.  So I did.  We turned onto Waiora Road and later on to Lower Plenty Road.  I wonder where we are going, pondered I.

Then it said to turn right, just too late for me to realise that it meant rightnowthisveryminute.  I couldn't just abruptly turn right. There was traffic behind me.  So I kept going.

Cross the railway line, it said, then turn right into Turnham Avenue.  Turnham Avenue??????  I looked around and realised that we were trundling through Rosanna and that we were about to turn into THE Turnham Avenue.  The road we first lived on when we moved to Australia in the mid 1960s.  We had lived in a rental property up Lower Plenty Road for a short time but Turnham Avenue was the first road we had lived on long term.  Cool!  Haven't been there for such a very long time.

Naturally I went to look at the house we had lived in.  Turnham Avenue is blocked off after our house and there is what I think is a disabilities support centre next to it before you get to the path that leads to the park where there certainly was (I don't know if there still is) a scout hut where I went to Brownies and Guides.  The railway is being put up on stilts so there is LOTS of scaffolding and building works going on.  The house we used to live in is now two units and looking very much tattier than it did when my parents owned it!  The house next door (on the other side, not the disabilities centre) is not looking tatty, and never did.  I should have got out of the car and had a wander round but I was supposed to be heading to Mount Martha so I didn't.  Next time.

The sat nav took me up to Rosanna Road and then along to Heidelberg where I would have ended up had I gone along the usual route.  Assuming that the sat nav hadn't decided it was time for me to revisit my childhood haunts, I guess it was avoiding traffic delays somewhere along the way.

No further excitements and I got to Mount Martha in good time for salmon and chips for dinner.

On Thursday we all went to Heidelberg so Tony could see his oncologist.  No excitements getting there or back, except that we stopped at an Oliver's for afternoon tea. I've not eaten in an Oliver's before.  I have bought coffee but that's about it.  I was quite impressed.  I had rosemary seasoned baby baked potatoes and they were delicious. Stella and Tony seemed to enjoy their orange and poppy seed muffins.  I think we will go again next time we are coming back from the oncologist. We miss lunch when we go to see him because we always have the first or second afternoon appointment and it's too early for lunch when we leave Mount Martha and a touch too late when we leave the oncologist as the local pubs stop serving food at 2 and there isn't really anything else. So somewhere which has nice coffee and decent cake about half way back is ideal.

Friday morning I headed back to work.  Had a good run along, no traffic hold ups, nothing exciting happening.  Until I got to the Bulleen Road exit where I expected to be told to turn right.  Instead it said to turn left.  Left?  Yes, left.  So I did.

Then, of course, the sat nav wanted me to turn right onto all sorts of local roads, where you aren't allowed to turn right at that time of day.  Eventually I ended up in North Balwyn turning onto Burke Road.  Oh look. If I turn left here I would end at Robert and Susan's place.  I used to have a friend who lived in that direction. Moving right along we end up in East Ivanhoe and I used to have tennis lessons there and in my teenage years I had a long lasting boyfriend who lived over there and I used to go and .......  Another drive along memory lane.  I don't know what we were avoiding but it was a beautiful drive on a sunny autumn morning through leafy suburbs with trees in autumn colours.

I think my sat nav loves me :-D

Yesterday evening I was coming back to Mount Helen from work.  And the sat nav led me a merry dance.  It didn't really do anything it hasn't done before at that time on a Friday, except that it combined a whole load of diversions, which it hasn't done before.  Again, I don't know what it was avoiding, but other drivers' sat navs were obviously avoiding it too.  Eventually I ended up on roads that I didn't know in places that I didn't know, before ending up back on the Melton Highway and in familiar territory again.  So not a trip down memory lane but an interesting drive all the same.

And all this was made all the better because I still had Lindsey's car which pretty much drives itself.  All I have to do is steer and watch the road a bit and listen to the sat nav.

She's taken it back now ;-(

More Excitement

So.  (Don't you find it irritating when people are being interviewed on the radio or TV and they're asked questions and they preface every single answer with "so." ? Yes, so do I!)

So.  I drove down to work yesterday morning, in Lindsey's car.  It was a nice morning for a drive.  I can wear my glasses again now.  I haven't yet taken them to an optician to see if they can be repaired.  I have stuck the wing back on with a bandaid which seems to be working for now.  Apart from the interminable roadworks on the Western Freeway it was a good run down.

Lindsey came back to the surgery from her nursing home visit.  Terribly sorry and all that, but I have tried to tear your front wing off the car.  The Honda is a very low slung car and the bottom front is too low for most shopping centre kerbs.  If you get too close to them you have effectively pushed the car up and trying to get off the kerb drags the front wings.  Mindful that the bloke in the Honda shop had told us to repair it with cable ties and small screws we set out in search of cable ties to make an emergency repair.  They sell cable ties in Kmart in assortment packs of 500.  We now have a tub of 497 so should you need a cable tie, Lindsey and I are your women!  We managed to get the wing more or less back in position and I have tied it in place.  It should be ok for now but might need some more screws.

Back to work for both of us.

I was about to take a stroll around the shopping centre after lunch when Lindsey appeared.  You might want to ring Jim, she said.  So I did.

He had been outside at Hill House doing something when he heard the dogs barking and a horse whinnying.  Goodness, he thought.  That horse sounds a bit close.  That was because it was a bit close.  It was, in fact, on the house side of the fence and not the paddock side of the fence.  It trotted off down the driveway with Jim in hot pursuit.  Down the driveway, through the gates (which are never shut), across the road, down into the University grounds and off across to the lake.  Jim still running down behind it as fast as his 76 year old legs would carry him.  Lindsey and Ian do not own the horses. They are agisted there.  Jim rang Ian who rang the owner, who couldn't help because he was in Melbourne.

Somehow Jim managed to get the horse back onto the property and closed the gate behind them.  The horse might not be in the paddock but at least it can't go off exploring anymore.  And eventually, just as reinforcements turned up, sent by the owner, he got the horse back into the paddock.  He's been round and tightened up the fences in the hope that it can't go off exploring again!

I think he thinks he's getting a bit old for all this excitement, and especially for rushing up and down Lindsey and Ian's very steep drive.  Just as well he was outside though or he might not have noticed the horse setting off on its adventures!