Monday, May 19, 2014
The Trees Have Faces
A quiet day here in Northam, Western Australia. The husband went for a run, and I went for a walk downtown with our hostess once we'd hung the laundry out to dry. Here are my favorites from the 18 photos I took.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Christmas, Asbestos, Marmite and More
Going from Sydney to Perth to, now, Northam, and we may now be approaching being on local time. The husband crashed a wee bit earlier than I did last night and got a good 12 hours of sleep. I probably got 11. Today has pretty much felt like a normal day save for the view from a passenger seat on what should be the driver's side of the car.
We went for a drive around the area today, stopping for lunch in Toodyay. Several of the shops have changed owner and/or theme since we were there in 2012. One new shop is the Christmas shop. The backstory here is a local doctor who passed away. He and his partner had always dreamed of opening a Christmas shop, so upon the doctor's death, his partner opened one as a memorial. There were a few non-Christmas items, though perhaps they could be purchased as Christmas gifts.
There were decorated Christmas trees galore, though some reminded me more of Mardi Gras than Christmas.
We also stopped for some landscape and bird watching.
We also explored an old refractory site though not too closely because of the abundance of asbestos lying around.
Our final stop was at a grocery store to obtain some items a friend asked me to try to obtain for him.
If anyone else wants some Aussie items that aren't too expensive and are legal for me to bring back into the States, I'll be here for a couple more weeks.
We went for a drive around the area today, stopping for lunch in Toodyay. Several of the shops have changed owner and/or theme since we were there in 2012. One new shop is the Christmas shop. The backstory here is a local doctor who passed away. He and his partner had always dreamed of opening a Christmas shop, so upon the doctor's death, his partner opened one as a memorial. There were a few non-Christmas items, though perhaps they could be purchased as Christmas gifts.
There were decorated Christmas trees galore, though some reminded me more of Mardi Gras than Christmas.
We also stopped for some landscape and bird watching.
We also explored an old refractory site though not too closely because of the abundance of asbestos lying around.
Our final stop was at a grocery store to obtain some items a friend asked me to try to obtain for him.
If anyone else wants some Aussie items that aren't too expensive and are legal for me to bring back into the States, I'll be here for a couple more weeks.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Looking Up from Down Under
What does the world look like when you're severely jet-lagged?
At least that's what it looked like when my head fell onto the husband's shoulder as we sat and rested a bit. We arrived in Sydney at 6:00 a.m. local time (Sydney is 14 hours ahead of the Eastern U.S.). We didn't expect our hotel room to be available, and it wasn't, so we left the luggage with the concierge and headed--where else--to the local zoo. The view above is from the zoo looking across the water to the downtown area.
I should backtrack a bit and say that we were lucky as heck to make it here. When our Delta flight landed in Los Angeles, we checked the board for our flight to Sydney. The only flights listed were Delta ones, but one of the Sydney ones was dual-listed as Virgin Australia and had the same departure time as the Virgin Australia flight we were on. The flight number was different, though, so we decided to find a Delta person who might be able to tell us if that was, indeed, our flight. We did find such a person--fortunately--and learned that the flight in question was not our flight and that we needed to trek to Terminal 3 (we were in Terminal 5) for Virgin Australia. We did trek there and, upon acquiring new boarding passes, trekked to yet another terminal from which our flight would depart. Our actual departure was delayed because the flight had been selected for special TSA screening. Then, once we were all on board, the pilot announced that we would be sitting on the tarmac a wee bit longer. The conditions were such that if we left on time we would arrive in Sydney before 6:00 a.m., the earliest the flights are allowed to land.
Fifteen-hour flights are not for the faint of heart. Perhaps because of all the trekking to make the flight, I was able to sleep much more than I usually can on a plane. According to the husband, I totally missed the announcement of the breakfast options, though I was awake when breakfast was served. We made it through immigration and customs with no difficulties and were pleased to discover that our hotel was, indeed, at the airport as in right across the street from the terminal. After checking the luggage as noted above, we decided to spend the day fighting jet lag and that the zoo would be just the place to do that. First, though, we needed caffeine in the form of a flat white.
Fortunately, Charlie Koala was willing to share with us. He was a bit hurt, though, that the immigration officer wouldn't stamp his passport.
Caffeine consumed, we headed to the zoo, a process involving a train from the airport to Circular Quay and, from there, a ferry and bus to get to the zoo. The ferry ride offered some great views of the opera house and the harbour bridge, two places we wanted to see but not necessarily visit.
The zoo itself was well worth the visit. We saw more than a few "local" animals as well as some old favorites such as orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees.
In terms of the locals, we'd not seen tree kangaroos or Tasmanian devils before.
Coming back, we added cable car to the list of transportation means we'd used today.
At least that's what it looked like when my head fell onto the husband's shoulder as we sat and rested a bit. We arrived in Sydney at 6:00 a.m. local time (Sydney is 14 hours ahead of the Eastern U.S.). We didn't expect our hotel room to be available, and it wasn't, so we left the luggage with the concierge and headed--where else--to the local zoo. The view above is from the zoo looking across the water to the downtown area.
I should backtrack a bit and say that we were lucky as heck to make it here. When our Delta flight landed in Los Angeles, we checked the board for our flight to Sydney. The only flights listed were Delta ones, but one of the Sydney ones was dual-listed as Virgin Australia and had the same departure time as the Virgin Australia flight we were on. The flight number was different, though, so we decided to find a Delta person who might be able to tell us if that was, indeed, our flight. We did find such a person--fortunately--and learned that the flight in question was not our flight and that we needed to trek to Terminal 3 (we were in Terminal 5) for Virgin Australia. We did trek there and, upon acquiring new boarding passes, trekked to yet another terminal from which our flight would depart. Our actual departure was delayed because the flight had been selected for special TSA screening. Then, once we were all on board, the pilot announced that we would be sitting on the tarmac a wee bit longer. The conditions were such that if we left on time we would arrive in Sydney before 6:00 a.m., the earliest the flights are allowed to land.
Fifteen-hour flights are not for the faint of heart. Perhaps because of all the trekking to make the flight, I was able to sleep much more than I usually can on a plane. According to the husband, I totally missed the announcement of the breakfast options, though I was awake when breakfast was served. We made it through immigration and customs with no difficulties and were pleased to discover that our hotel was, indeed, at the airport as in right across the street from the terminal. After checking the luggage as noted above, we decided to spend the day fighting jet lag and that the zoo would be just the place to do that. First, though, we needed caffeine in the form of a flat white.
Fortunately, Charlie Koala was willing to share with us. He was a bit hurt, though, that the immigration officer wouldn't stamp his passport.
Caffeine consumed, we headed to the zoo, a process involving a train from the airport to Circular Quay and, from there, a ferry and bus to get to the zoo. The ferry ride offered some great views of the opera house and the harbour bridge, two places we wanted to see but not necessarily visit.
The zoo itself was well worth the visit. We saw more than a few "local" animals as well as some old favorites such as orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees.
In terms of the locals, we'd not seen tree kangaroos or Tasmanian devils before.
Coming back, we added cable car to the list of transportation means we'd used today.
This offered some more great views of the opera house and harbour bridge.
And now that the husband has had a bit of a nap, I expect I should awaken him. Our plan was to force ourselves to stay awake until an early bedtime, but that didn't quite work out as well as it might have.
Tomorrow, we're off to Perth and, from there, to Northam for some time with friends before the gathering of quilters (the reason for the trip) begins mid-week. I don't know when I'll post again, but I expect that that post will be a bit more coherent than this one.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
On the Road ... Well, In the Air Again
A week from now, the husband and I will be in transit in the Atlanta airport, awaiting flights to Los Angeles and then on to Sydney, Australia. I have decided to put whatever trip blogging I do here rather than set up a stand-alone blog. It's one thing to do that when we're actually living somewhere for a month or more, but this is travel rather than residence.
One friend suggested that I not blog the trip but simply enjoy it. I could easily do that, but the blog posts function as my trip journal. I could write the narrative down in a paper journal or type it into a word-processed document that only I see. Blogging it saves me from feeling as if I am repeating myself when people ask how the trip is or was. It also means that I don't unnecessarily bore people. If someone wants to read the words and see the photos, they can. If they don't, they don't have to.
In terms of those photos, I am making this something of a point-and-shoot trip in that I am not taking my Canon 60D DSLR. Instead, I'm taking the Canon Powershot SX50 I got because I was intrigued by the 50x optical zoom. It's not a SLR, and can't be set manually, but it will do. Much as I like it in terms of shooting manually, the 60D is large and heavy, and I do get tired of carrying it at times. I'm also taking the pocket-sized Pentax that was the husband's camera or my backup camera in Vietnam and Australia two years ago. I am not really looking to shoot masterpieces or prize-winners. I really just want decent images that will stoke the firing of some memory cells.
The current trip business is figuring out what to take clothes-wise. The evenings will be cool given that it is late autumn there; nights may be cold. Given that we are doing the "gold service" on the train, I should probably plan to dress a bit above t-shirts there at least when it comes to the dining car. I always feel inept when travelling especially when travelling internationally. Everyone else looks to me to be so put-together, confident, and comfortable, as if they just stepped off a travel magazine page. I usually feel like someone tagging along, disguised as best I can to look like all those other people.
I am also trying not to get too nervous over things left here. I should not miss any work since both projects I'm working on will be done by when we leave. Older son can work out the kinks of the pets and his work schedule not to mention the overnight GORUCK Challenge he and younger son are doing. Yes, s**t may happen, but that's what trip insurance is for, eh? And now I should get back to some proofreading so that those work projects I mentioned might even get submitted this week.
One friend suggested that I not blog the trip but simply enjoy it. I could easily do that, but the blog posts function as my trip journal. I could write the narrative down in a paper journal or type it into a word-processed document that only I see. Blogging it saves me from feeling as if I am repeating myself when people ask how the trip is or was. It also means that I don't unnecessarily bore people. If someone wants to read the words and see the photos, they can. If they don't, they don't have to.
In terms of those photos, I am making this something of a point-and-shoot trip in that I am not taking my Canon 60D DSLR. Instead, I'm taking the Canon Powershot SX50 I got because I was intrigued by the 50x optical zoom. It's not a SLR, and can't be set manually, but it will do. Much as I like it in terms of shooting manually, the 60D is large and heavy, and I do get tired of carrying it at times. I'm also taking the pocket-sized Pentax that was the husband's camera or my backup camera in Vietnam and Australia two years ago. I am not really looking to shoot masterpieces or prize-winners. I really just want decent images that will stoke the firing of some memory cells.
The current trip business is figuring out what to take clothes-wise. The evenings will be cool given that it is late autumn there; nights may be cold. Given that we are doing the "gold service" on the train, I should probably plan to dress a bit above t-shirts there at least when it comes to the dining car. I always feel inept when travelling especially when travelling internationally. Everyone else looks to me to be so put-together, confident, and comfortable, as if they just stepped off a travel magazine page. I usually feel like someone tagging along, disguised as best I can to look like all those other people.
I am also trying not to get too nervous over things left here. I should not miss any work since both projects I'm working on will be done by when we leave. Older son can work out the kinks of the pets and his work schedule not to mention the overnight GORUCK Challenge he and younger son are doing. Yes, s**t may happen, but that's what trip insurance is for, eh? And now I should get back to some proofreading so that those work projects I mentioned might even get submitted this week.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
On Being Suited to a T
I delivered a quilt this morning, one I was somewhat hired to make. I usually do quilts intended to be given to a particular person. This was the first I did at someone else's request, in exchange for, yes, money. As Homer Simpson was told, "Money can be exchanged for good and services" and in this case it was exchanged for a quilt. As I began to draft this post, it occurred to me that I did not post about the quilt I finished before this one. I finished that one some weeks before the recipient was in town to receive it, after which it just slipped my mind. I'll add something about that after covering the one delivered today.
Several years ago, a friend approached me about doing a quilt or quilts from t-shirts following her daughter from about kindergarten to adult-hood. I blogged about those quilts here along with one I made for my son to practice working with shirt fabrics. Then, in response to a karate master instructor's asking me to make him "something," I did a quilt of shirts from several decades of Myo Sim Karate and Kendo. That's the one I'll show below. As I was working on the two for my friend and her daughter, I was approached by a Facebook friend whom I met through the Charlottesville Photography Initiative about doing some t-shirt quilts for her. Never having done one for money, I perused various websites and set a rate of about the midpoint of what those sites charged.
When I finished the karate t-shirt quilt, I started the quilt delivered this morning, one made of t-shirts collected at various rock concerts or festivals over the years, centering on--I hope I get this right--Phish. The logos had already been cut from the shirts, meaning that I didn't have much leeway in terms of how to frame the images. I ended up going with blocks that measured 15 inches finished with something of a pattern in terms of the colors of the shirts. Here's the finished product.
I quilted each shirt square a bit differently. Here are a few of them.
I was very satisfied with the result and, more importantly, so was the person for whom it was made. When I delivered this quilt to her, I accepted another set of t-shirts, these related to a summer camp in Maine. While I may play around with design ideas now, that quilt won't actually get started until I return from Australia in early June.
The quilt of martial arts t-shirts was also well received by the recipient and all the more special because it was a complete surprise to him.
Here are just a couple of the squares.
This last one was not from a shirt, but is an insignia from when our school of karate was taught as a physical education class at, where else, the University of Virginia. There aren't many of the top symbols still known to exist, so I was quite grateful to the master instructor who gave me this one for a quilt for the master who had been his principal instructor.
Several years ago, a friend approached me about doing a quilt or quilts from t-shirts following her daughter from about kindergarten to adult-hood. I blogged about those quilts here along with one I made for my son to practice working with shirt fabrics. Then, in response to a karate master instructor's asking me to make him "something," I did a quilt of shirts from several decades of Myo Sim Karate and Kendo. That's the one I'll show below. As I was working on the two for my friend and her daughter, I was approached by a Facebook friend whom I met through the Charlottesville Photography Initiative about doing some t-shirt quilts for her. Never having done one for money, I perused various websites and set a rate of about the midpoint of what those sites charged.
When I finished the karate t-shirt quilt, I started the quilt delivered this morning, one made of t-shirts collected at various rock concerts or festivals over the years, centering on--I hope I get this right--Phish. The logos had already been cut from the shirts, meaning that I didn't have much leeway in terms of how to frame the images. I ended up going with blocks that measured 15 inches finished with something of a pattern in terms of the colors of the shirts. Here's the finished product.
I quilted each shirt square a bit differently. Here are a few of them.
I was very satisfied with the result and, more importantly, so was the person for whom it was made. When I delivered this quilt to her, I accepted another set of t-shirts, these related to a summer camp in Maine. While I may play around with design ideas now, that quilt won't actually get started until I return from Australia in early June.
The quilt of martial arts t-shirts was also well received by the recipient and all the more special because it was a complete surprise to him.
Here are just a couple of the squares.
This last one was not from a shirt, but is an insignia from when our school of karate was taught as a physical education class at, where else, the University of Virginia. There aren't many of the top symbols still known to exist, so I was quite grateful to the master instructor who gave me this one for a quilt for the master who had been his principal instructor.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
To Blog Here or There
In less than a month, the husband and I will be setting off to spend almost three weeks in Australia, revisiting some of the people and places we went in 2012 while adding a few new adventures, some more off-the-wall than others. It appears that we will have free Internet at most of the places we will stay (the two overnights on a train excepted), I should be able to post some photos and narratives as a blog since not everyone who will be interested in our adventures is on Facebook. When we visited Iceland for our 25th wedding anniversary, I did a trip mini-blog as part of this blog. When we have taken longer trips including living in Hue, Vietnam for a month, I have used stand-alone blogs, here for the 2009 trip and here for the second one. (Those links will actually take you to the last post in each blog, but if you got that far you probably know how to get back to the beginning.)
The 64 cent question today is how I should handle the upcoming trip, somewhat longer than the Iceland adventure but quite shorter than the Vietnam ones. Where does the middle ground put me? By posting this, I'm allowing the few people who still read this now-very-irregular blog to comment on their preference. As I proceed down a pre-trip checklist of items such as notify the credit and debit card companies of our travel plans, I need to get the question of where to blog decided. If I'm going to do a stand-alone blog, I need to get it set up and maybe even add a post or two about the getting ready of it all.
But for now, I need to get started on dinner, the husband's having just awakened from a nap to ask me what time it is. Comment away!
The 64 cent question today is how I should handle the upcoming trip, somewhat longer than the Iceland adventure but quite shorter than the Vietnam ones. Where does the middle ground put me? By posting this, I'm allowing the few people who still read this now-very-irregular blog to comment on their preference. As I proceed down a pre-trip checklist of items such as notify the credit and debit card companies of our travel plans, I need to get the question of where to blog decided. If I'm going to do a stand-alone blog, I need to get it set up and maybe even add a post or two about the getting ready of it all.
But for now, I need to get started on dinner, the husband's having just awakened from a nap to ask me what time it is. Comment away!
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Is it Pronounced "pica-key" or "pie-cakey"?
Younger son has, for the last several years requested a pie baked inside of a cake for his birthday. He asked for it again this year, but I decided to mix things up and see if I could bake a cake inside a pie. Indeed, I could, and younger son thought it actually turned out better than the various capiekes (pronounced cah-pikes) have. The photos below are from the pilot piecakee that I did two weeks before the real one, which did not look too much different from the one shown here.
That's just a pie, you might be thinking, but not if you look at its inside.
If you want to make one of these, it does help to have a (very) deep dish pie pan. Step one is, obviously, making a pastry crust and placing it in that (very) deep dish pie pan. I could show you a photo of that, but (1) you probably already know what that would look like and (2) I forgot to take any photos until I got to the step of adding the upper pie filling.
That's a lower pie crust topped with cherry pie filling, chocolate cake batter, and a second layer of cherry pie filling. Next is adding the top crust. I made this easy on myself and used a cake mix and canned pie filling. For the pilot, I only used one can of cherry filling, which meant that I didn't have enough for the whole area. I remedied that in the final, birthday version.
Note that the top of the unbaked crust seems a bit lower than the top crust in the above photo showing it post-baking. Cake batter always rises--the finished cake is higher in the pan than the batter alone was--and that's what happens here as well. In terms of temperature and time, I baked it much as I would a pie. The first 15 minutes were done at 425 F; the last 30 to 40 minutes was done at 350 F. If you're still thinking that it might not work, here's a close-up of a slice.
Nice browned, flaky pie crust, cherry filling, and normal looking chocolate cake. Now if I could only find a way to work the icing in.
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