I’ve moved!

As part of my review of my websites and blogs, which is thing 13 in my 21 for 2021 list, I’ve decided to move my blog to a self-hosted WordPress site.

I have my own shiny new domain, steppingonthecracks.com, and I’m currently on a very steep learning curve trying to work it all out.

I’ll continue to post updates on here until I work out how to notify readers who have already signed up to this site about the new site. At the moment, my world consists of email forms that don’t actually seem to send emails to me.

I hope you’ll join me on my new site and continue to share in my adventures.

20 for 2020: week 20

Week of 11 May

My 20 for 2020 list.

Remember last week I said I was going to track my days for the wellbeing work (thing 3) to help me identify things that take up too much time and find windows of wasted time?

That lasted a couple of days and I kept forgetting to do it. I think I know what the wasted time windows are without doing that though. Constant scrolling of social media on my phone is right up there, so of course, what did I do? I reactivated my old Twitter account and spent more time on there than was strictly necessary. Anything to distract me from my uni assignment (thing 8).

Walking on the beach also distracting me from my assignment

The assignment was due on Sunday night, and by Saturday morning I had a mass of words and references and thoughts all shoved randomly under the various headings that I thought I had to respond to. Whereas in the other units, by this stage of the assignment I had a complete document that was in the final stages of being trimmed down to fit the word count, this time I only had a mess of stuff that I was going to have to somehow make fit into 1500 words. There were eight sub-themes to cover in the essay so, as you can imagine, for someone as verbose as I am, this was going to be a challenge. I probably could have written 1500 words on each of the issues, most of which would have been rubbish because I was finding pretty much everything of the unit material to be somewhat irrelevant to completely irrelevant to my work. There was going to have to be a lot of long bow drawing to get this done.

On Saturday morning, I set myself the goal of having the ready-to-cut-down version finished by the end of the day, and then spend (as little time as possible on) Sunday cutting it back and making it as good as I could get it to submit it by 5.00. The deadline was actually midnight, but I had no intention of pulling a late nighter to do it. One of the five principles I’ve adopted to get through this is “protect your sleep” so there will be no all-nighters. Ever. I aim to be in bed every night no later than 10.30 and I have been sticking to this (give or take a few minutes) pretty well since the end of February.

This was going to be a test of whether or not I really could live with “good enough” as opposed to perfect, something that I’ve been trying to embrace (and generally falling at). However, this time, I hadn’t allowed myself the time to make it perfect. I deliberately didn’t apply for an extension even though requests for extensions were being viewed favourably, because the reason that I haven’t done the work has been my own procrastination, not any external factors. If I’d spent as much time working on it as I had complaining about it and distracting myself, I’d probably have had a half-way decent draft by Saturday, regardless of how confusing the material was and how irrelevant it was to my actual work. It was my responsibility and I had fallen way short of a standard acceptable to me. And that’s something I have to deal with and live with the consequence of.

Long story short, I didn’t have the long version finished by Saturday. It took me until lunchtime Sunday, which gave me less than 12 hours to do the edits that would normally take a week. By 9.00 Sunday night I was well and truly sick of it, and couldn’t stand the thought of re-reading it one more time even though it was more than the allowable ten per cent over the word limit. Perfectionism, begone! I submitted it and collapsed, feeling completely drained, knowing that even though I can get something done at the last minute, it doesn’t feel good and I am not going to do this again.

I finished Module 1.2 of the Photoshop class (thing 7) and am really glad that I put the other class on hold to do this one. I think I would have felt completely out of my depth starting with the other one and I feel like I have a lot more grounding in Photoshop basics now. There’s over 100 videos in this class so It’s not going to be something I’m going to finish in an evening, but now I have a lot of the basics I don’t really mind how long it takes. I just want to get into the work. One of the tasks has been to go out and collect images of things that can be used as backgrounds in larger works, so I’ve started to take a camera out with me to build my collection. Yes, I am that crazy lady who takes photos of weird stuff on the ground and your brick walls and tree trunks and tyre tracks in the mud.

Beautiful beach find

This week I finished reading The Ravenmaster, which is Ravenmaster Chris Skaife’s account of his life with the ravens at the Tower of London (thing 14). I was lucky enough to visit the Tower in 2014 and saw some of the ravens then.

The book was a really enjoyable read and it was interesting to find out more about these complex and fascinating birds. I’m a bit of a raven fan and I love it when they come to visit my yard or I can hear them out and about calling to each other. It’s inspired me to read some more about them. When I’m not learning about Networked Governments . . .

Summary for the week

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 8 (1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 16, 18)
• Things I progressed: 3 (7, 8, 14)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 5 (3, 11, 13, 17, 22)
• Things not started: 6  (2, 9, 12, 19, 20, 21)
• Days I stuck to my 15 minutes creative habit: 7
• Days I read a book:  7

Southwest Tasmania Day 1 (part 2)

In the first week of the school holidays, we took a few days off and travelled to Strathgordon on Lake Pedder in the southwest Tasmanian wilderness.

You can read about our first stop on the way, at The Needles, here. Or if you just want to look at some photos, they are also here.

Not much further down the road towards Lake Pedder is another spectacular range called The Sentinels. It’s a quartzite range about five km long and one km high.

It would seem the most common reaction of people seeing it for the first time as they drive round the bend is, “Wow!”

That was certainly my reaction, and I insisted we stop immediately so I could take some photos.

Wow!

The Sentinels Day 1

That had to be the most jaw-dropping thing I’d seen all day and I certainly got my huge rock fix!

This was one of several photo stops here over the next couple of days. You can find the complete series of photos on my photoblog Straighlinesgirlimages. Or stay tuned for more posts here.

Our accommodation was the Pedder Wilderness Lodge at Strathgordon. Strathgordon was constructed in 1969 to accommodate the workers on the hydroelectric scheme (more on that in the next post). Apparently, it accommodated about 2000 people when the scheme was under construction but the population now is about 70.

We’d booked one of the self-contained units at the very reasonable rate of two nights for the price of one. Winter travel has its benefits. Our plan was to self-cater for breakfast and lunch then splash out at night and have dinner at the restaurant. It was a good plan. Because who wants to cook on holidays? Not me.

Lake Pedder behind the lodge

The helipad. No unauthorised landing.

I managed to capture some images of the lake in the afternoon sun as well as seeing the beautiful light on the hillside as the sun was setting.

Beautiful afternoon light on the hills

More giant rocks

The lodge has become popular with the local ravens, who seem to have no fear of people and are quite happy to pose for photos. And steal food, we were informed.

Raven shows no fear

We ended the day with dinner at the lodge and were all looking forward to the next day’s adventures.

 

 

Day 2: Christchurch

Day 2: Christchurch Christchurch, New Zealand

Christchurch, New Zealand

Day 2 began where Day 1 left off – on a plane!

We got into Christchurch just after midnight. From there it was a fairly simple matter of getting through Customs, explaining what all the “yes” boxes were that we’d ticked on our arrival card, having our bags xrayed and sniffed by the sniffer dogs, and finally we were free to go. Our motel runs a shuttle service until 2 am, so all we had to do was call and by the time we got to the meeting place, they were already there.

Another couple had called before we had, but hadn’t managed to work out where they had to go, so after putting our bags in the bag, the driver disappeared back into the terminal to look for them. When we got to the motel, she asked if the airline had told us that daylight saving began in New Zealand today.

Uh, no. So you mean it’s not 1 am, it’s 2 am?

We went to bed pretty much as soon as we got into the room (after telling Kramstable that no, just because there were three pillows in the bed, it didn’t mean it was a three-person bed, and no he wasn’t going to sleep with us).

We’d only booked this motel one night, because it was close to the airport, and were transferring to another one closer to the city centre for our second night, but in hindsight it would have been better to have stayed where we were.

Never mind.

We had (a very expensive) breakfast in a cafe down the road, and checked out at 10 am. Our rental car company had a shuttle service that picked us up from our hotel and took us back to their terminal at the airport (yay!) After sorting out the paperwork (and arranging to get a new registration label for the car during the week!) we were on our way.

Only we had no idea where we were going, so we just asked the guy at the rental agency how to get out of the airport. After a brief detour we made our way into the city with no real idea of what to do.

We decided a tour on the Christchurch tram would be interesting, to give us a feel for the place. Our tram was a 1920 tram, which had originally been a two-driver tram but later modified to a one-driver tram. It does a couple of circuits around the city, going past the main interest spots over 17 stops. You can get off and on at any of the stops on the day you buy your ticket.

The thing that strikes you most about Christchurch is the devastation from the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. The 2010 quake was the strongest, but the bulk of the damage was done by the 2011 quake. It’s hard to describe what it’s like, and difficult to see what’s changed because I wasn’t familiar with the city and what it looked like before, but it was sad to see the broken and boarded up buildings, empty blocks and remains of what had once stood.

I felt a bit guilty about travelling round and looking at it all – but I got the feeling that the city is recovering and rebuilding and they don’t want you to feel sad, but to share in what seems to be an optimism for the city’s future. We saw things riding from the rubble – the Re-Start mall built out of brightly coloured shipping containers, the public art installations and paintings on some of the empty walls, and the exhibition about future Christchurch.

There’s a lot of activity, and I couldn’t help wondering if every crane and digger in New Zealand was in Christchurch. I felt especially sorry for the cathedral. It was one of Christchurch’s iconic buildings and was so badly damaged that apparently there has been a decision to demolish it, but no real plan on how to replace it. There is opposition to this, and I can understand this. I imagine it would be like if Sydney lost the Opera House. Still Cathedral Square is a hub of activity for the city, and one of the new features is an installation called Planted Wheare, “affirming life and existence, alongside the acknowledgement of loss”.

The last leg of the tram route is through New Regent Street, which our driver Ian described as the best shopping in Christchurch, and we just happened to see the Wizard of Christchurch and a couple of his apprentices at a coffee shop.

After lunch we found our new motel just out of the city centre, It’s the first motel that I’ve ever been to with emergency advice for what to do in an earthquake in the motel directory. Slabs and Kramstable had a rest and I went for a walk to get a bit closer to some of the things we’d seen from the tram.

I love walking through new cities and exploring and seeing the little random things you’d never see from a car, bus or tram.

In the evening we headed out to Willowbank Wildlife Reserve for an introduction to New Zealand’s birdlife and Maori culture. First up was a tour of the birdlife in the park. This included a stop-off with the slimy eels and an up-close encounter with New Zealand’s most annoying bird, the kea. The kea at the park are very fond of people and will just land on your shoulder and start to chew your jacket, scarf or finger (if you’re stupid enough to put your hand anywhere near their beak lalalalala).

The main focus of this part of the night was the kiwi, which we saw in the nocturnal house. We learned that there is more than one type of kiwi, their eggs are massive (see picture – this is a kiwi egg compared to a chicken egg – when the mama kiwis lay an egg it’s so big it’s equivalent to a human giving birth to a 3 year old child – and they do this three times a year!) A baby kiwi’s chance of survival in the wild before they reach 6 months is about five per cent, so a lot of the eggs are brought to the park and incubated and raised to a size where they have a better chance of survival before being put back into their habitat, which has apparently helped to maintain the population. They are threatened by all manner of introduced species including stoats (introduced to kill the introduced rabbits, but kiwi are easier to catch and kill), possums, cats and dogs, and wild pigs.

The second part of the night was the Ko Tane Maori experience, where we learned about the Ngai Tahu Maori people, which is the tribe of the South Island. We received a traditional welcome to the South Island and learned about how the people lived in the area. Then we had a performance of some of their cultural songs and dances, which included a chance for the women to learn a poi dance (this is not a skill I possess) and the men to learn a haka. It was fascinating introduction to the culture of this country and something I’m really glad we did.

Finally it was time for dinner. Four courses, including dips, kumara soup (“one of the best soups I have ever had,” said Kramstable – and I agree), a huge banquet of meat and vegetables cooked in a pit of hot rocks, and dessert. Somewhere in the middle of all this food, the kids went out to feed the deer, which Kramstable enjoyed immensely. By this time we’d definitely made up for last night’s dinner on the plane (not sure how long I can drag this one out as an excuse for overeating!), and it was time to head back to our motel for (we hoped) more sleep than we got last night.

12 of 12 february 2014

12 February 2014 was a Wednesday, two days after a Public Holiday. This week is the second week of school and I’m still trying to get myself back into the routines. I’m struggling.

1 of 12 – The sun rose.

2 of 12 – Juniordwarf’s current obsession is the TV show Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom. He rather likes the Nanny Plum character, and he’s designated me as the Queen and himself as the maid, AKA Nanny Juniordwarf. So he’s given me his crown to wear. I have permission to leave it in the car when I go to work, because I’m not a Queen at work.

3 of 12 – Hobart was hit by a major storm on Sunday and we were driving home right in the middle of it. Some trees in St David’s Park were badly damaged and the park was closed this morning while they assessed the damage and made the area safe.

4 of 12 – All that can be seen of the old Print Building in Salamanca Place from street level now.

5 of 12 – The mountain emerging from low-lying cloud. Today was a welcome relief from the heat. (If you’re on the mainland, my definition of ‘heat’ might differ from yours . . . I have a very low tolerance.)

6 of 12 – Zoe hasn’t been to work with me for a while. There is weird stuff going on in Teddy Land, and Zoe is now a witch who lives in a very messy house separately from the other teddies. (If you watch Ben and Holly you’ll understand, otherwise you may nod and move on.)

7 of 12 – There was quite a lot of activity going on in the park when I left work and there were a few people standing round watching branches being cut off this tree. There were also a few cruise ship visitors around, and I wondered what they made of walking in between the demolition of the Print Building on one side of the street and the chainsawing of the trees in the park on the other side. (See photo 4.)

8 of 12 – We got home to a delightful display of birds in our garden. We think we have identified these as Yellow Crescent Honeyeaters.

9 of 12 – Some days the chickens don’t want to use the laying box. Earlier in the month we thought they’d stopped laying, only to find a stash of about 15 eggs in what has been dubbed “The Egg Butty”. Blame Juniordwarf for that one.

10 of 12 – Whenever we let the rabbit out, the chooks don’t take long to move in.

11 of 12 – Juniordwarf has allocated himself some jobs to do in his new role as the maid. One is the washing, but it’s a magic washing machine and he has to say, “Washing machine: wash all the clothes. Abracadabra!” (If you watch Ben and Holly you’ll understand, otherwise you may nod and move on.)

12 of 12 – Coincidentally today’s Ben and Holly story was the one where Nanny Plum and the Wise Old Elf swap jobs for a day, and the Wise Old Elf has to do the washing. “Washing machine: wash all the clothes. Abracadabra!”

 

Bruny – day 2 (part 3)

After we’d finished exploring Cape Bruny (Day 2, Part 2), we still had enough time to head back to north Bruny and visit the Get Shucked Oyster Bar and Bruny Island Cheese Factory.

Get Shucked was great. 

You can buy oysters to eat there with a beverage of your choice, or to take away. There were several different styles, but we opted for natural.

Juniordwarf has a bit of a phobia about oysters, ever since I got sick one day, which I put down to a bad oyster – but I really don’t know. He’s been obsessed about ‘bad oysters’ ever since, and has been worried that if anyone eats oysters ever again they’ll get sick.

So it was a huge step for him to try an oyster today and I’m very proud that he did.

Despite the look on his face, he nodded a lot and said, ‘I like oysters, I do, I do.’ But one was enough.

Not to worry, more for us!

Oysters and a glass of Tassie Sauvignon Blanc. What a lovely way to wind down the afternoon.

The Bruny Island Cheese Company is just down the road from Get Shucked. We were too late for the café, so no woodfired pizza for us, but were able to taste some of the cheeses on offer.

They were great cheeses and I liked them all. Some more than others, and it was interesting to see the differences in our tastes. (1792, which is matured on Huon Pine, had a very interesting flavour from the wood that I really liked.)

The cheeses are hand made and aged in the rind.  It was interesting to see the difference between the size of the newer cheeses compared to the ones that were more mature. The reduction in size is due to the water loss that occurs during the ageing.

The lady at the cellar door explained that most factory-made cheese is not aged in the rind because the manufacturers don’t want to lose the volume that is lost during the rind-ageing process. It’s aged in plastic so it doesn’t lose water. (At least this is what I think she said . . . feel free to correct me if you are a cheese guru and understand how all this works.)

We restricted ourselves to one cheese to take away, the raw milk C2, which was high on my list of favourites. The plan was to have some of it with one of our favourite wines later in the evening.

When we got back to the campground Juniordwarf and I decided to go over the road to the beach. Four years ago, Juniordwarf would very reluctantly go into the water, and he’d freak out whenever a wave came near him. We have video footage from one trip of him asking if he could turn the water off.

Now he’s a lot more used to the water and it’s hard to get him out. He started out with his usual trick of holding up his board shorts so they didn’t get wet.

Not long after, he realised that it was much more fun to actually get in the water. He ended up rolling around in the shallows laughing hysterically every time a wave crashed over him. It was hilarious to watch.

Dinner tonight was a BBQ at the campground, and we were visited by a little group of wrens that had been around the whole time we were there.

After dinner we had this.

Tonight I watched a yellow full (ish) moon over the beach until it was sucked into low lying clouds. Beautiful.

Then I went to sleep listening to the sound of crashing waves. Today was awesome.

P365 – Day 264 – the budgie

This is our budgie.

He’s been staying at my mother’s place since we went away.  Today was the first day Juniordwarf had seen the budgie since we left, and he was very excited about seeing him.

We’re going to pick him up tomorrow.

P365 – Day 204 – they won’t peck me

We went to watch our local footy team play today. Because there was a function being held in the area we usually go to, we sat on the boundary fence to watch the game.

Juniordwarf got a bucket of hot chips – as you do at the footy – which, after a mix up between him and Slabs over who was holding the bucket, mostly ended up on the ground next to our feet.

As you can imagine, this attracted some very eager seagulls.

The arrival of the birds freaked Juniordwarf out, and was somewhat untimely. Just today we’d been talking about how a time we’d been in a park when Juniordwarf was much younger, and a flock of ducks had descended upon us. He’d been terrified by them. He was asking about that day today, asking why the ducks had come near him (because we had food) and whether they had pecked him* (of course not).

So when the horde of seagulls arrived, he got a bit upset and pulled his legs up on the bench we were sitting on to get away from them. He was worried that they were going to peck him. He kept seeking my reassurance: ‘They won’t peck me?’ he kept saying.

I explained that they were only after the chips, not him, and that they wouldn’t even come close enough to get the chips because they were more scared of him than he was of them.

Juniordwarf was eventually convinced that he wasn’t going to be pecked by a flock of seagulls (a task made easier by Slabs getting him another bucket of chips) and relaxed enough to watch the game. Or at least let us watch the game. He read his books.

And we threw the chips a bit further away so the seagulls could feast in peace and stop bugging him.

The game was a good one. Our team, which hasn’t lost a game all year, was quite a long way behind when we got there at half time, and made a good effort to try and catch the opposition during the third and fourth quarters. Near the end of the game our team had closed the gap, but I didn’t think it was going to be enough. Towards the end of the quarter one of our players scored an amazing goal that just got over the line before it was caught by the opposition defender. We were in the perfect position to see it had just cleared the line, despite the protests from the opposition supporters.

Hipstamatic – really doesn’t work with long shots

Shooting into the afternoon sun (Camera+)

Action! (Camera+)

That goal put our team in front, and shortly afterwards our team scored another goal to win by seven points.

It was pretty good afternoon then. The footy team won, and Juniordwarf didn’t get pecked by seagulls.

* I think Juniordwarf’s fear of ducks pecking him has come from a Dr Harry book, of all places. Dr Harry is a TV vet, and Juniordwarf has a book where Dr Harry walks around the farm checking on the chickens and ducks, and on one page he’s holding a duck ‘very carefully so she doesn’t peck him’. 

P365 – Day 131 birds

Tonight as I was walking up the street to pick up Juniordwarf from after-school care, I noticed a flock of birds doing laps in the sky above me. 

I’d noticed it last week as well and had wondered if this was something they did every day at about 5.00 or if it was just something they felt like doing that day, so I was happy to see them again today. 

I’ve only seen this happen twice, because I don’t normally go that way, so I still don’t know if it happens every evening or if it’s just something they randomly do. I don’t even know if they’re the same birds.

I wanted to stay and watch them to see how long they did it for and where they went to next, but my little boy was waiting for me, and picking him up is one of my favourite parts of the day.