He’s working away as I write… well ok *as* I write he’s gone off to the toilet… but I’m sure he’ll be back.
Seems the defrost element has stopped functioning.
Let’s hope all is fixed soon! We need to stock the thing up… I need salad! 
Edit:
Done and done! He’s finished and gone. Took him 15 minutes whjich included him scraping enough of the frost off to do the job… and, of course, going to the toilet!
What’s more he didn’t even ask to see the invoice.
Back in 1836 on March 6th, a few ‘Texians’ were waiting to be killed by the Mexican army. The actual assault took little over an hour by some accounts after which virtually all the defenders had been killed… many brutally. The siege and battle held up the army of Santa Anna long enough for Sam Houston to gather sufficient troops to be able to defeat the Mexicans a few weeks later at San Jacinto on April 20th. After San Jacinto, almost a million square miles of territory were ‘released’ and eventually absorbed into the USA.
The cry “Remember the Alamo” was used as a rallying point, especially at San Jacinto, and helped in the push for the subsequent creation of Texas as a sovereign state.
Most of what I know about the battle came from the John Wayne film which was destroyed by critics but still gave a reasonable picture of events. However it brushed over the ‘private lives’ of those most famous people who were killed, such as Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie.
For example, until the events of the Alamo, Bowie had a quite amazing and charmed life and his short Wikipedia entry is well worth reading!
What has happened to the education system in Wales? I had a comment posted on the blog a short while ago that, apart from making little sense in the context of the post it responded too, was chock full of spelling and punctuation errors!
I happen to know this person was born and educated in South Wales. Am I wrong in assuming this person is representative of the output of the education system? I’ve seen reports in the media about the rocky state of education in the UK but I’d not really appreciated just how bad it had become.
Her post stands as a sad indictment of an school system that can turn out someone so badly educated they are unable to extract relevant information from an article and comment on it with anything resembling coherent thought.
C’mon Wales – pull yourself together!!
The youngest daughter goes ice-skating and she really loves it. Whether she’ll become a world champion is open to some doubt of course, but she’s been having lessons three times a week and making progress.
Her coach is Galina Pachin, who is an international world class skater. To see a couple of the stars Galina coaches, look up Joanne Carter and Bradley Santer. Anyway, Galina coaches and the daughter skates at the Sydney Ice Arena… or at least she did until tonight.
The daughter went for her lesson at the usual time, but when we arrived to collect her we discovered that virtually out of the blue, the management at the rink had effectively sacked Galina with immediate effect! We knew that she and the managers hadn’t been seeing eye to eye for some time, not least because of the decision to cancel all early morning figure skating sessions forcing Galina to try to wedge all her pupils into whatever slots she had available which caused a lot of people a lot of stress… those people being the coach, the pupils and the parents!!
My opinion is that the managers have been incredibly unreasonable and have deliberately engineered this ‘crisis’ for reasons I’m not privy to, but I think it has a lot to do with Galina’s refusal to to allow herself to be treated either as a child or as a ‘staff member’ She runs *her own* coaching business at the rink and *pays them* for the use of their facilities. It shouldn’t be for them to dictate how she runs her own business!
Anyway, I can’t claim to have inside knowledge about exactly *why* tonight was the night the management decided Galina was no longer welcome to coach at the rink but I know what the fall out is for us… and that is chaos.
We decided long ago that changing coaches isn’t something to undertake lightly. Coach and pupil share a relationship which develops and matures thru years of close interaction so we have already decided to attempt to follow Galina to wherever the nearest rink is… if possible.
The nearest rink to us is Macquarie Ice Rink which is a short drive down the M2 motorway. On a good day it should take us 40 – 60 mins or so to get there and park so is substantially further away than the Ice Arena. The question that comes to mind of course is what happens on a *bad* day… and this is where it gets complicated.
In the mornings the M2 driving ‘east’ is a parking lot from 6:30 a.m. onwards. This would mean that to get the daughter to the rink, we’d need to be on the road at 5:30 a.m. *latest*. Well of this is a possibility and if we have to do it, we have to do it, but it would be hard to say the least.
Driving back wouldn’t be so hard because we’d be travelling against the morning flow, but even so we’d have the extra petrol *and* extra tolls to pay and neither are cheap!
Other rinks that are ‘available’ and not so far away are Canterbury Olympic Ice Rink which, truth be told, is a bit of a dive but is filled with enthusiastic figure skaters. This rink *really* cares about it’s skaters! Another rink not too far away is the Liverpool Catholic Club Ice Rink. I’ve never been there but have been told it is *very* well presented and pretty cheap to access… tho of course there is considerable travel time from here and more tolls to be considered.
The upshot is that currently, tho we’ve told Galina we’ll be staying with her if she can fit us into her new schedules, it isn’t going to be easy and may require attending two or more differing clubs in order to be able to meet the training regime the daughter is on.
Times will be tough until we can sort this out. I wonder if this is the jinx at work again?? 
Ok I know this ‘toe related’ rambling is getting tedious… but it’s a blog and if I can’t whinge here where can I do it?
So today, I got to the specialist after I managed to find a space at the other end of the car park. Naturally, as I approached the building itself two people pulled out of parking spaces right alongside!!!!!!!!!!! Typical that.
The specialist (who was as strange this week as last) looked at my toe slowly oozing away quietly, and decided it really wasn’t improving as much as it might have and decided the nail would have to come off. Couldn’t help but agree, it didn’t look at all healthy.
He snipped off the stitches and away it came leaving a lovely soupy looking mess. He said the ‘soupy’ look will clear up quickly if it’s kept exposed to the air (???) so he wants to me to spend as much time as possible with it uncovered. Since I’m spending most of my time at home he thinks this is ideal… hmmm! However he also thinks it would be good for it to be covered when I go out… not for my benefit but for the general public because they’ll freak out Eww…… charming!!!
As far as the rest of my life is concerned, I can now go back to doing whatever it is I want to do (except for making sure the toe has a dressing on it whilst I’m out and about). One immediate benefit of his decision was that without the nail my toe stopped ‘hurting’ immediately. I assume the nail was digging in somewhere, or maybe the stitches were pulling or something… either way it feels better.
I have to keep it ‘clean’, mostly by showering, but occasionally bathing the foot in a salt solution wouldn’t hurt it either – tho he doesn’t think salt baths are particularly effective (tho *I* do and that’s what counts!).
Either way…. I’m now less one toenail. Lucky me.
Another handy decision was that I can go back to the gym when I like! Before I make a start back on the treadmill, I think I’ll wait a day or two to give the nail a chance to bed dry out a little, and especially before I try walking about in trainers! Even then I’ll need a dressing on it while I’m wearing them – at the best of times the inside of trainers isn’t the healthiest of places.
So – towards the end of the week I’ll drop in and start ‘testing it out’. If I can walk for 30 mins or so with no undue pain or damage I’ll he happy… if exhausted. I can start properly next Monday and… maybe… this time I can start to *lose* weight again! Oddly enough, I can hardly weight… err wait.
Will the nail regrow… if it does what will it look like… watch this space for future developments… or not!
When we got the new fridge at the end of 2006 the old man insisted we should get extended warranty on it… luckily we did ‘cos it broke down last week!
Yesterday I emptied and cleaned it out just in case it was something simple… like a need for a defrost or whatever… and plugged it back in. So right now if nothing else it’d clean for the first time since we bought it which will be far less embarrassing than it might have been.
Of course it still isn’t working so I called the store to get someone out to repair it. That was when I discovered that Fisher and Paykel fridges have 2 years manufacturer warranty so I need to call them. However, I *did* learn we have 4 years extended warranty as well so it’s covered for 6 years in total! Sweet… assuming someone comes to fix it quickly!
Hmmm… seems the oven is covered for 4 years as well! I wonder if cleaning is included? Probably not.
Ok… as per usual in this house nothing went quite as simply as it could have… or should have.
I called Fisher and Paykel (didn’t realise they were a New Zealand company!!) , explained the problem and started to make a booking. I find the serial number by lying on the floor and looking up under the door… which is an ideal place to put it if you’re ‘infirm’ in some way… luckily I’m not quite that bad just yet. Great… how would I like to pay for the $100 call our fee and the parts? Excuse me… did you say pay? It’s still under manufacturers warranty!
Apparently her records show the fridge is out of warranty… which my highly trained mind (?? ??) instantly deduces is caused by Harvey Norman (the store it was bought) having sold us stock they’d been holding for some considerable time!
We then have a short discussion about her having to ‘sight’ the invoice before they can do the job under warranty.. and my having to explain to her I don’t much care what her records show, the date on the invoice is what counts. In retrospect I realise I *could* have faxed a copy straight to her… but as the invoice doesn’t have the serial number on it anyway I’m not sure what difference seeing it would make anyway!!
In the end I agree to have the invoice available for the technician to view, and to sufficient funds available to pay the call out fee in cash if required… which satisfies her requirements even tho it was clear to both of us there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of me paying out *anything* regardless. On the other hand he (funny how I assume it’ll be a male eh??) may decide the problem was caused by mice chewing the wiring (and be able to demonstrate that’s the case) in which case I’d just have to fork out the cash and smile through gritted teeth.
Anyway, service is provisionally booked in for Thurs 6th March between 7:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. We’ll see what develops then.
The wife was going to change her user name to ‘Dogsbody’ but you aren’t allowed to modify names once they’re set. I was wondering if she’d like to register with this username… I thought it was cute
We’ll see!!
So… the toe is *still* infected and looks dire (to me), however the specialist tells me it looks much as he expected it to. He also says I’ll almost certainly need another operation to ‘cauterise’ the nail to stop it regrowing since it looks like it won’t regrow onto the bed properly.
The wife was able to take a few days off work to look after me until the doc said I could drive again but we rang Bunnings up to ask them for a little help in paying for taxi bills… to get me to the hospital and the kids to school. We know we can’t claim anything from them because of the changes in the law but we felt they might be willing to help out a little nonetheless because it was quite clearly not *my* fault the damn box was on the shelf with the bottom unsealed!.
I had a charming letter from a ‘Melinda Reilly – Customer Relations Officer’… which I copy below for your comment.
Dear Mr Lewis,
We write to inform you that Bunnings Norwest has forwarded information to this office regarding the reported you were involved in on the 8th February2008.Bunnings are always concerned to hear of incidents involving our customers and products and thanks you for bringing the matter to our attention.
Please be advised that all information it shall be passed onto our claims managers for their consideration, and they shall contact you accordingly.
(by the way the errors, ommissions and lack of sense this makes are reproduced exactly as written in the letter)
My *own* comment is that the bare minimum Bunnings need to do is retrain ‘Melinda’, or whoever drafted this patronising and insulting piece of crap in simple customer relations!
Right now words fail me. If anyone would like to help out by constructing a draft response for me to send to them I’d appreciate it. What a bunch of gits.
September 17th saw us publishing a picture of a three year old New Zealand girl called Pumpkin (real name Xue Qian Xun) who’s father had apparently abandoned her at a railway station.
We later learned that Pumpkin’s mother had been found dead in the boot of the car outside the family home and that her father (Xue Nai Yin) had managed to evade capture for questioning and was loose somewhere in the USA.
There has been speculation he was trying to earn a living teaching ‘martial arts’ since he was a known expert.
Today we learn that he has been captured and is expected to be extradited to New Zealand to face questions about both his wife’s death and his apparent abandoning of Pumpkin.
To be honest I’m *amazed* that he was found! Seems he was recognised by neighbours after his picture was shown on ‘America’s Most Wanted’. It just goes to show that sometimes there *can* be value in the vigilante type programmes.
In the meantime, little ‘Pumpkin’ has been living In Southern China with her grandmother (Xiao Ping Liu), and seems to be settling down quietly. Best of luck to her.
Today is the day when women can traditionally ask men to marry them instead of the more usual practice of the guy asking the girl.
This is based on some obscure reference to the Scottish Paliament having passed a law in 1288 to that effect. Further, it would seem a man who refuses can be fined in the sum of £1, a pair of gloves… and a kiss!! There are no extant parliamentary records to this effect however!
What’s more it was supposedly introduced by Queen Margaret… who was aged five at the time and lived in Norway. Still, it’s a nice idea.
On the radio this morning I heard a male announcer relate this story and ask his female newsreader if *she* would be asking anyone to marry her. Her response was "Why should I get married? I’ve done nothing wrong!". I like it.
Shortly afterwards the announcer told us about his favourite Tommy Cooper joke which involved him watching his wedding video running backwards. That way he could see himself leaving the church a free man!
There’s a lesson somewhere in all this I’m sure.
Something that interested me… being of a strange mind… is why it was called a *leap* year. So I looked it up. There are hardly any references to tell us why exactly it’s called ‘leap’ this this might be as good as any:
Divide the 365-day typical year by 52 weeks. You will see that there is one additional day. Thus, in nonleap years, if a fixed-date holiday, such as Christmas, was held on a Tuesday, one knew that the next year it would fall on a Wednesday. But in a leap year, the festival would fall two days after the previous year’s. This skipping of a day is the "leap" in leap year.
Trouble is that even after reading that I’m not sure I understand why it’s called a ‘leap’ year any more than I did before.
Maybe this is simpler?
The noun is O.E. hlyp (Anglian *hlep). Leap year (M.E.) so called from its causing fixed festival days to "leap" ahead one day in the week
It’ll do me anyway.
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