Somethin's Always the O'Haras

This is a happy face. As an outing for one of the days Toby has been off during the school holidays we decided to take the kids for a train ride.

Originally we’d planned on going to one near us there were special events taking place due tothe holidays. However when I added up the cost for our small family to attend I realised it was going to be over $150. That was a no thank you!

So my little brain went a thinking and I remembered a place down the mountain for little tykes to enjoy miniature trains at a much more reasonable price that fitted our budget. And so off we set.

When we got there they said we could choose which trains we wanted to ride on so we asked for Toby naturally. Well would you believe it they had lent him to the event we rejected due to cost, darn it! So the kids picked two others to ride on. The first was Thomas and the second was James. We also saw Gordon and Mavis doing some work also.

The kids loved it. The weather turned out great and it’s great to be able to do simple things that don’t cost much that the kids really enjoy and we can to.

Saturday last week we took a picnic in the city. We had intended to visit the deaf school down there but my memory was wrong as to it’s location so it was just all fun and no work. We packed ourselves a picnic and were ready to enjoy some family time.

We scored as the road I took went right past Toby’s new work so we got to see his fancy building he’ll be working in at KPMG. Right on the water. If he’s lucky he might get a nice view.

Observatory Hill is a lovely location right next to the Harbour Bridge on the south side. The weather was perfect soaking in some rays of sunshine. Above was our view.

The funniest part was when this little white dog came to the park our kids went berserk, screaming the house down. Saying I don’t like dogs. The first time it was only William as the other two were off with Toby exploring. The couple with the dog decided to go somewhere else so as to not scare our kids. When they came back through, possibly hoping we’d left they got all three loosing the plot. Our kids were the centre of attention as the whole park patrons couldn’t believe our kids reactions to this small dog. Toby and I laughed hard. If only we’d video taped it we could have won ourselves some money on Funniest Home Video’s.

Some pictures of our day.

As you all know I’m an avid mountain biker. See here for more examples. Now that the weather is quite chilly these days, shorts simply won’t cut it. Not to mention I’ve put on a bit of blubber so it’s harder than ever to get my shorts on - long story I’ll tell you that one sometime.

I might as well tell you that one now, the story isn’t that long. How many times do we say “long story” and then go ahead and it takes like 2 seconds to tell. I know that’s happened to me. So I’m on eBay browsing around and I see these mountain biking shorts, Kathmandu (which is a super overpriced brand here Aus-land) going for like $15 bucks. I’m like, “dude, that’s a bargain!” so I bid and won. When they came, they had a strap going around the waist, so you can slip them on and yank it tight. Problem was, the strap around the waist only opened so far, and it’s a bit of a struggle to get them over my bulbous derriere. Well I gained some weight recently and where does it head for first? My bulbous.

That was slightly  more than 2 seconds, but you know.

Anyway so I needed pants to ride in. I tried the black tights I have for running, but seriously, riding around with tights on just didn’t go well. So I’d been riding around in pegged pants.

That is, until I thought to myself, “Rather than go to all this trouble every time I want to ride, why not just make the pant legs narrower?” And so I did. And, I’ll be super cool because the result, the result would be just like those ultra hip kids going around in skinny pants. Oh yeah.

The plan was propelled into action the day I put my food through Willy’s pants, which were lying on the floor in the parental bedroom. This seems about the right diameter, so I used his pants for sizing purposes (16 cm) when determining how big an opening I’d need at the bottom.

It was harder than you might at first think. Those jeans did not want to just be stitched in a straight line, the actual cut of the leg was such that the back piece of fabric was bigger than the front piece, and the angle it was cut meant that I had to figure out how to stitch it without getting big ripples. I didn’t entirely succeed, but I would say that in the end I accomplished what I’d set out to do.

If you look closely, you can see where one of my knee patches is actually going at an angle into the seam. I know, you wish you had a pair. After thinking long and hard, I have decided that I will sell them to you.

For $600.00

Which is pretty reasonable considering what the market charges for designer looks such as this.

Speaking of fashion, did you know that designers, once they make their clothes, cannot copyright them? Watch all about it here.

One thing that doesn’t seem to be in the news much, and one thing that mass consciousness has not grasped, at least not in the U.S. and Canada and not here in Australia, is the question: what really caused the Gulf of Mexico disaster? What caused a company to build a mechanism that would go a mile under the ocean, and drill a hole in the earth’s crust, even under precarious circumstances, with new technology, going where disaster would be next to impossible to manage if it ever struck, and where the implications of that disaster would be felt for years and years to come?

It’s right here, in this picture.

The picture is too small? Click on it.

In keeping with the impatient streak in my personality, I’m reviewing this book before I’ve even reached halfway. I absolutely recommend it to anyone. It is an adventure, a true story, well told and well written, and with good details and pacing. The book: Running the Amazon: The story of the only expedition ever to travel the full length of the Amazon river, from its source high in the Andes to its union with the Atlantic Ocean by Joe Kane.

I’m not sure if the blurb after the title is actually the subtitle or if it’s a blurb to summarise the book. It does seem like a long subtitle, I probably would have done something more like Running the Amazon: From the tip of the tail through the guts the wrong way and out the gaping mouth.

I never thought of it this way, but, in rivers slop is running from tail to mouth and in most animals slop progresses from mouth to the base of the tail. Vewwy intewesting.

Anyway the author does a great job giving enough backstory to grab us and make us wonder what will happen to them as they set out. He helps us understand the magnitude of the situation, but also makes the expedition quite real by narrating the various landscape, towns, and people they encounter.

When I was a kid, I almost never considered non-fiction. I wonder if it bordered too much on a school assignment / history book / chemistry book vibe.  Not only have I learned since then that there was a point to making us read all those facts and figures, I have also learned that those facts and figures can be interesting. I also learned that real life isn’t all that boring to read (or write for that matter) about.

This is totally off the topic:

It would be 2 days ago now, on Tuesday I was on the train, and happened to have my hearing aids going, which isn’t all that often, I’m preserving what little hearing I can wring from my cochs each day, anyway - the last leg of the trip I’m pretty sure the announcer had been assimilated.

I would not be able to look myself in the mirror. There’s something about the fact that money doesn’t come from thin air that would bother me.
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