Sunday 3 February 2008

Paddock Basher

All three boys are now back in school, after the Xmas holiday break. JD goes into Year 9 (3rd Form High School) into a brand-new just-reconstructed school facility. The old one burnt down to the ground (literally!) about three years ago. For the past three years they've been living out of a huge conglomerate of demountables. So yeah... one brand new public education school facility, thank you very much.

JD has his very first "paddock basher" of his very own now. It's an old Toyota Land Cruiser, and while it's not registratable (is that a word?!?) for driving on the road, it goes OK and is fine for him to rap around around the paddocks. Hey, he's a working man now. He got a cheque for $600 for working over Xmas at the farm, in the cauliflower paddocks. Bloody good on him. So yeah, he contributed a major way to the purchase and upkeep of the boys first paddock basher!

It kinda looks like one of these ones:

(Just a random image found on Flickr.)

I'm kinda enviously jealous! I grew up in the 'Big Smoke'. I knew zip/zero/nada about driving until I first started having paid driving lessons when I was about 17. Here's JD, all of 14, and cruising around the paddocks in his own Land Cruiser! Blimey!

I think it's mighty impressive!

Dang, I'm proud of him!

Wow... that took a bit longer than I anticipated! For the past TWO days I've been sorting thru all the 'bands' music lists, organising and burning CDs for everyone. I knew I hadn't done that much with it lately, but with a new guy in the band, he needed to be bought upto speed as to what we already know etc etc etc.

But, two days? Sitting in front of this bloody thing, organizing and re-organizing lists, to make them more user and punter-friendly, downloading, ripping and burning CDs. At least it's all done now. Whew.

It stands at 49, the number of items we already do, know and play. You don't want to know the number of songs on the "possible/new" items list we could/will/will try - over 100! hahahahaaaaaaa! It never ends. That's just what happens when you bring five different peoples' musical tastes/experiences/abilities/talents into the mix. The next few weeks will continue culling the weaker material and tightening up the stronger stuff, and getting a firm grip on some new stuff.

Then we'll start introducing originals, some of our own stuff.

Funny thing is... we don't actually have an "official" name yet! "Redshift" is still floating around, but purely in an abstract kinda way. Matt's drunken suggestion was "Pistol Knights" (ie. "pissed all night"), but something more suitable will come along eventually.

Having both Mick and Eddie around... wow... the possibilities are endless. We're all multi-instrumentalists... so yeah, multi-guitars, basses, keyboards, harmonies, percussion... the next few months should be a wonderful musical experiment. I'm really looking forward to it. I mean... the simple way to look at it is... the more people playing (there will be four and five or us, depending who is available when), you end up playing less as an individual. The old "Less is More" motto comes into play.

Makes it so easy to be involved and to play. Yeah!

Oh dang. I still haven't uploaded those photos yet, have I? (palm-slaps self).

While I was at it, I burned Matt a copy of the two music CD's I recorded back in 1989/1990 with the band I was in back then, "Surprise". He'll get a laff outta that.

Oh, and I'll play a few songs at the open mic evening at one of the local pubs here, this arvo as well. I'll take just an acoustic guitar and my voice. I might read some poetry for a change as well. Gotta keep 'em all on their toes, you know [giggles happily].

A cactus-type pot plant that means a lot to me... oh god, let me start this sentence again... [Take Two]. I have this cactus-type potplant that lives on my kitchen windowsill. I first bought it when I was seperated at first, living for a few short months in Tweed Heads, seven years ago. Back then it was about 3 inches tall. In those years, mainly due to inattentiveness on my part ( I would normally kill indoor plastic plants!), it has grown to be about two hand-spans high and wide! Needless to say... it no longer fits on the kitchen windowsill.

Basically... middle of the night... there's this large loud sudden "clunk"! It'd fallen down, and no matter how I tried to position or secure it... this green rubber cactus-type thing wouldn't stay there! Basically, I'm gonna try potting it on, but I fear when it fell it might have broken the 'tap-root' at the bottom of its root base. So, chances are it may not survive.

But, what the hell... it's lived this long, without more than a bit of water now and again. It's more-than-likely to keep thriving in a larger pot. I'll just have to make a new home for it on the back table, next to the broadening small indoor palm I've got living there.

So yeah... off to Bunnings to find an appropriate small pot, and a replacement little cactus-thingy for the kitchen windowsill.

It just doesn't look right without anything there! 4-1/2 years in one spot is a long time... I've got quite used to the little thing... kinda grew up on me while I wasn't aware of it.

I like my little plant. Fingers crossed.

Last week I watched a Blue-Ray DVD version of "Seven Years in Tibet" on Matt's 45,95,183-inch-wide plasma TV! I hadn't seen this epic before... great film... the scenery, and Tibet itself, is one of the main characters in the film. While it's a highly-dubious reworking of a real-life tale involving Tibet and the Dali Lama getting ass-porked by the invading Chinese, there's some great acting from Brad Pitt (even tho I'm not "into" Brad Pitt, he earns his credo on this one).

Yesterday I just happened to find, quite by chance and accident, a cheap DVD copy of it. So yeah, I grabbed it.

But I wont confess that I sat up at 3 o'clock this morning watching it, will I? Good gawd no, I wouldn't even think of admitting I'd done such a thing as that...

Maybe there the kinda goofy things you do when you've got the whole place to yourself for a few days. My housemate (with whom I had a constructive chat with the other day) is on three weeks' annual leave. He raced off back to Newcastle to his dad's place for a week. So... it doesn't matter to be up at ridiculous hours watching DVD's... the only person who's gonna suffer is me the next morning.
Peas be with ewe

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1 comment:

  1. if you like that Tibet lifestyle, there are some great descriptions at Donkey Blog, he is a Melbourne guy who works in Lhasa ...

    cheers

    ReplyDelete