Footy

Great news - the new AFL season started today.  Australian-rules football is probably only second to regular football in terms of the sport that I watch the most.  And in terms of spectacle, I could argue that it is a more enjoyable sport to watch than football.  It is definitely on my bucket list to watch a game live - presumably in Australia.  Maybe something to consider doing should I suddenly happen to have a lot of free time on my hands...

Costco 2

A second visit to Costco this week.  A different warehouse, and it felt like a better one - slightly bigger and less crowded (and less Asians).  But not enough to change my mind on how I feel about this place - I'm still a long way from being sold on remaining a member.  They just don't sell the items I prefer or in quantities that are practical for me.  If I was less fussy then perhaps I could make it work - but I just don't think it is for me.  Despite needing lots of stuff, I just came away with a few items in this visit.  Included was a block of cheese called "Coastal".  The packaging describes it a "rugged, mature English cheddar" and, surprisingly, it is actually a product of the UK - made in Devon to be precise.  Sadly, if I'm going to be honest, I'm not sure I care for it very much.  The packaging states the following: "Aging for up to 15 months gives this West Country Farmhouse cheddar a unique, sweet, distinctive flavor" (note: it doesn't use the English spelling of "flavour").  Essentially, it's just comes across as a quite odd tasting, crumbly cheese.  But perhaps the weirdest thing is the texture, and it's like nothing I've ever experienced before with a cheese.  Again, let's go to the packaging: "You may encounter a characteristic 'crunch' when you bite into Coastal - a consequence of naturally occurring calcium crystals which often develop during the aging process".  Yes, you actually crunch on these crystals when you're having this cheese.  Very strange, and which somehow seems fundamentally wrong.     

Drinks

 Now I feel like getting drunk.

Good Intentions

I'm a little bit annoyed with my landlord at the moment.  Firstly he let me know that he was going to trim back some of the trees alongside my driveway.  Great, I have no objections to that.  But when he said trim, what he really meant was cut down entirely.  Which I was less than thrilled about because it reduces some of my privacy (I can see more of the road from my house, and vice versa) and may also increase the traffic noise I'm exposed to.  And then today, he and one of his sons cleaned my house roof.  I've been through this before, and it's horribly messy - the pressure-washing brings down all kinds of debris everywhere.  And sure enough, the outside of my house is a mess - and doesn't smell great either.  The problem is that they don't really clean up after themselves properly, so I need to do that myself tomorrow.  And something that happened today that hasn't happened before is that a little bit of water leaked inside - via the skylights in my bedrooms, and also via the extraction fan in my kitchen.  This was unexpected - I've had to wash a duvet cover that got dirty, and not happy that some of my belongings on the kitchen counter got wet.  First world problems right.         

Animal Violence

I noticed today that my trail camera had been knocked over and was laying on it's side pointing to the sky.  It can't have been like that for long, I would have noticed it before.  But what was the cause?  The only possibility is an animal.  The camera is sheltered from the wind and the rain, so it simply couldn't be anything else.  Now I was very curious to check out the photos that the camera had taken - it should have taken one at the time it got knocked over, since that would be perceived as movement.  Sadly, the last photo is just a blurry mess and I have no idea which animal it comes from.  I've included this plus the 3 other animals that were captured on the camera over the last few weeks.  Perhaps one of these?  My number one suspect would be the local squirrel who often passes right next to the camera, but they have been missing from my photos for a while - so I sadly suspect they are no longer with us.

Technology Breaking

Yesterday it was a Microsoft outage resulting in my e-mail breaking.  Today it was my TV set top box not working.  Yesterday affected millions of people.  Today I think it was just me.  And what a nightmare it was trying to fix it.  Firstly, it was really difficult to describe the problem - basically as soon as the picture appeared on the TV then everything became unresponsive.  The program information that you get when you first turn on the TV stayed on the screen and I wasn't able to change channels, access menus or anything.  But the video and audio of the TV channel I was stuck on remained working.  Very weird.  Tried to go through online solutions to the problem, none of which worked.  Then had to deal with customer service (based in India), which was painful and didn't work either.  Had to schedule a tech to come out here - the earliest time I could get was tomorrow, so thought I might have to go without TV until then.  But then my TV decided to reboot itself, and everything was miraculously fixed.  No idea what the cause of the issue was - but apparently it was my TV rather than the TV set top box.  Which was frustrating to say the least.  Turning the TV off and on was one of the first thing I did, but apparently that wasn't enough.  I hate new technology.  And if this isn't a sign that I need to cut the cord, then I don't know what is.      

Jigsaw

Because it was a quiet week at work (I fear it's only the calm before the storm), I decided to make a start on a jigsaw.  But I took a different approach than normal to this one.  Normally I start with the edges, but on this one I'll leave the edges until last - because it was more intuitive to start with putting together the various labels.  As you can see from the photo, I've done the easy parts and now I'm just left with the rest.