immortalised

Out and about today, and I came across this framed photo for sale. (Excuse the crappy mobile-phoneness of the photo, not to mention the reflections in the shopfront window.)

immortal-pasha.jpg

That's right, the grounded Pasha Bulker, gone though she may be, is now art.

For the paltry sum of … er, whatever they're asking, I didn't actually get a chance to look, whatever, that's not the point — for a paltry sum you can hang a picture of a grounded coal ship on your wall.

Although, to be fair, it's a pretty good picture.

And, to be doubly fair, I'd far rather hang a picture of the grounded ship on my wall than hang the 19 tonne shard of discarded rudder, ripped off during the un-grounding, in the town centre. No, I'm not joking.

The Second Attack (Death Of Gavroche) (Les Miserables — International Symphonic Recording)

11 September 2007 @ 13:28 | 4 Comments

alone is the last place i want to be

Lo, the sequel has begun. Not fantastic progress — turns out the words, they are not willing — but it's a start. You know what this means? Oh yes, the public thrashing as I flail and grope for plot has also begun. You are all very, very lucky.

I tried to outline in advance, and I guess to some extent I succeeded, but my outlining in advance has never run to anything as handy as, you know, plot points. Oh no, that would be too easy. My outlines are full of character and world scribbles: Amalia runs on spite as much as anything, Matilde is finally quit with the self-pity.1 Sure, it gives me character motivation, which always helps with reactions, but I'm still driving blind here as to what, precisely, they're reacting to. C'est la vie.

In other news, the big ship is no longer on the beach. Three attempts, and various snapped cables later, apparently it's back to fulfilling its purpose in life. Or at least, it's stopped sitting on rocks and is back to floating again. It's a start.

  1. I hope. I'll smack her if she's not [↩]

What Can I Say (Brandi Carlile)

3 July 2007 @ 17:13 | 6 Comments

that's not a storm — this is a storm

Well. That was a fizzle.1 We didn't even lose power. You call that a storm? Look, unless there's a coal tanker on your beach, it wasn't a storm.

[poll=1]

  1. Er, except for the people south of Sydney. I expect they will disagree with me. But for my local purposes… yeah, a fizzle. [↩]

Just Might (Make Me Believe) (Sugarland — Twice the Speed of Life)

20 June 2007 @ 17:10 | 6 Comments

i has intarwebs!

Or at least, I have the phone line and the power and the wireless network up and running.

The net itself is a little sketchier.

And, here's the fun news: the stormwater drains are filling again. More heavy rains and storm-force winds are on the way. One local radio station has even claimed gale-force winds. (nooo! they be stealin mah intarwebs!)

Bear with me, peoples, the blog will be up and running once this stupid weather pattern stops being abusive.

In the meantime, have a lolcat:

via I Can Has Cheezburger, naturally.

Love And Some Verses (Iron & Wine — Our Endless Numbered Days)

19 June 2007 @ 8:00 | 2 Comments

we need lies to make it through the day

I have power! Oh, sweet electricity, how I missed you! Hot showers, how I missed you!

On a sadder note, I still have no internets.

To celebrate the return of power, I promptly went and ordered a copy of The Perishers' "Let There Be Morning", which I can highly recommend. I also bit the bullet and bought a new mobile phone (since the old one took a little fall and thereafter refused to turn on) — only to find my new number already belonged to poor Chris, who was beleaguered by calls and texts from my friends and family for a day before the network carrier figured out what they'd done wrong. Sorry about that, Chris, whoever you are. Electricity and modern networks and I have always had an uneasy relationship.

Also? I have decided my next garden will have pansies. Uprooted pansies never hurt anybody.

Pills (The Perishers — Let There Be Morning)

13 June 2007 @ 17:43 | 4 Comments

here away with the view of mountains

staring at the floor for hours on end…

Hello! A quick update from work, where they have power and therefore the interwebs.

For those of you in and out of Aus worrying about my fate, all is well. There's a tree down on the pool (thankfully it only clipped the house on the way down; damage yet to be assessed but we're not open to the elements at least), but otherwise the storm has passed and now it's just a matter of cleaning up. We may not have power until the end of the week, and of course our phone line is still down. But at least the trees blocking the road either side of us have been removed, and I can get out of the house now.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, it all started on Friday morning, when gale-force winds and mammoth seas drove an empty coal tanker onto the beach. Seriously, it's only 100m offshore.

There were fears for three other ships at the time, struggling less than a kilometre offshore, engines at full-power yet unable to make any headway.

The storm on Friday night caused flash flooding in the CBD, among other areas.

My brother, caught in the flood, had to abandon his car in waist-deep water and walk wade home. It also uprooted trees and downed power lines over the entire region.

Definitely one of the worst weekends I've ever had to live through — especially when news forecasts predicted Saturday night's returning storm would in fact be worse than Friday night's. Worse than lifesavers ferrying people along the main street on jetskis? Worse than a tree on the house? Let's just say I had the cats' carrycases ready and the car packed.

Luckily the wind was from a different direction, and mostly passed us by, this time without any further damage. It's not over for people up the valley, however: all that rain means major flooding in the riverine system, with thousands of homes evacuated and the river still to reach its peak in some places.

I'll update again when we have power (and hot showers!) back. In the meantime, if I've missed anything important, leave me a comment here — there's no way I'm trawling through a missed weekend's worth of blog posts, for all y'all are a chatty lot.

See you on the other side!

11 June 2007 @ 9:01 | 7 Comments