Just an update.

Went to the police and real estate. Turns out his parents manage his affairs and deal with the real estate. The police had a chat with him. His mum brought him over to apologize to me. He denies throwing Worf over the fence (mummy says he wouldn't do such a thing). Feel sorry for his mother who really had to work hard to keep him in line. Apology couldn't have been less sincere if it had been Howard saying sorry to the Stolen generation. He even wrote a sorry note but screwed it up instead of giving it to me. Slammed door in his face when he started to gloat. However he did promise to leave me alone and so far this is the case.

Moving may be a problem. There are no places of less rent than where I am. One squalid little unit at equal price. Anywhere remotely livable starts at another $40.00/week more. So it goes

No News Is Good News

As a blogger I have been pretty dismal with the regularity of my posts. While there has been a lot happening I am currently not really in the mood to update everyone on everything at the moment.

Sadly I have only one thing that I feel the need to report at the moment.

Mr Worf is no longer with us. On Tuesday night he was mauled by the neighbor's dogs. The injuries were: a broken pelvis, a deep puncture at the base of his tail, several smaller bite injuries and severe bruising to his one remaining hind leg. The blood tests given by the vet revealed that he had diabetes and serious kidney problems. After several days at the veterinary clinic he showed signs of going downhill. Even his breathing became difficult and at the end every breath ended in a faint moan (the dodgy kidneys meant that a strong pain killer was not advisable). On Sunday afternoon at ten past five he was put to sleep. He was fifteen and a half years old and I loved him very much. He is now buried at my parent's property at black river.

My gratitude goes out to the staff of Green Cross vets Aitkenvale for doing all that they could for him and for putting fresh flowers on the table for his last moments.

Hopefully I will pull my finger out and gove a more complete update sometime soon.

The next bit is more unpleasant and I don't actually recommend that anybody read it (yet still I feel the need to write it down). That goes especially for you Polly.







As for how the dogs next door got hold of him I have two theories. They are locked in their yard at all times and Worf was not stupid enough to go through the fence. In fact I have never seen him enter that yard even when there were no dogs (he has grown quite timid in his old age). However he would often go to the toilet near the fence and they may have grabbed him through the bars. This seems unlikely but it is a possibility.

The second theory is more unpleasant. The tenant of the flat above me is very strange, at first I thought that he must have spent most of his time drunk or stoned (this may still be the case allong with the following). Now I am leaning towards severe mental ilness and an urgent need to be institutionalised. After he moved in upstairs he started accusing me of stinking up his flat. (This is the same flat that was once occupied by Ernie the Ogre. A person so foul that towards the end of his tenancy urine would drip down through the ceiling from his bedroom [do not pity him for his incontinence, he was a font of malice]. A person who just chucked his befouled mattress off the balcony and left it when he moved out. His flat required two days to be rendered habitable by a crew of professional cleaners. However, unless they ripped up the floorboards and decontaminated the space below then his foulness must still remain. I have noticed that tenants rarely stay long in that flat.) Just after Worf was attacked a letter was stuck to the door of my flat. I will not transcribe what it said but will say that it could not have been written by a sane person. In it's ramblings it included the foulest and most abusive language I have ever encountered (and I once worked in a place where everyone referred to each other using the C word) and explicit threats of violence both to myself and to Worf (I am also aparrently responsible for him not being able to find a woman). So I feel that there is a good chance that he may have grabbed Worf and thrown him over the fence to the dogs.

As for the letter, it is so alarming in it's content that Mon says that I should take it to the police and the real estate agent. I am tending towards agreement.

So much for blogging regularly.

It's not like a lot hasn't been happening either. I'm going to try and keep it in some sort of order but no promises.

Congratulations to Dave and Fiona on the birth of their son. I was talking to Jimbo on skype when he got the news.

The Zoo. As stated earlier I worked like a very busy person. Managed to correct all of the senior (year seven only) and general fiction entries in between checking things in and out. The only easy ones (just need the first three letters of the Author's last name) left are the junior and red dot (intermediate between junior and general) fiction. All of the non-fiction needs the actual book in hand to do the corrections (curse you Melville Dewey).
It wasn't all fun and games. I got drafted into the annual older mammals vs keepers cricket game. It is once again confirmed that I can't bat, bowl or catch. There was some serious play with some (possibly vengeful) body line bowling done by both sides. Also it was hot as a hot Downsville day and I got sunburned. Keepers fielded first and won by a lot. I was sent in early in the keepers' innings to use up some of the fast bowlers but didn't last long, hit a few balls but scored no runs, copped balls to the elbow and the arse.
In the end I think the keepers were happier about the end of the zoo year than the animals.

Visitors. Shortly before Xmas a friend of mine who had been living in Taiwan moved back to Oz bringing with him his lovely wife. Briefly staying in Downsville to visit his parents we managed to catch up with each other and went for a swim at paradise lagoon (water a lot greener than on my previous visit). We had been through primary and high school together and lots of reminiscing occurred. Some troublesome memories resurfaced more clearly than they had been for a very long time (surfacing like some bloated primordial amphibian in the swamp of my mind and sinking back down to hide under it's log again). Strangely enough a side effect of such deep memories resurfacing was that they seemed to dislodge a lot of other unrelated memories which rose up and sank over the next few days. After xmas we caught up briefly just before they went down to Brisvegas to live.
Also visiting this sweaty armpit of a town was the Simonster we visited the new Riverway development and went and saw the non 3D version of Beowulf at the movies (pretty good). Had some very good coffee, food and conversation at the Lucabean (Si had a lamb tart which I will definitely order next time I am there). Caught up with him again after xmas where he joined in a lan games session at Big Waa's place.

Neebo. Went down to Neebo for xmas again this (2007) year. First stopping in Mackay for the 21'st of Mon's oldest niece. Fun party but bloody hot and no breezes. Christmas was good with some great thunderstorms (thunder following lightening instantaneously and so loud you couldn't even hear yourself scream "FUCK!"). Scored amongst other things a voucher for the best bookshop in town, a George Foreman G2 grill and a really cool electric razor. Among the highlights was playing Texas holdem while consuming a bottle of scotch (a little improved my playing ability but it was hard to keep the right balance and in the end a lot improved my enjoyment of the game). Also there were many many crows around but they didn't caw at all, just looked at you and hopped or flew away if you approached (briefly entertained the thought if giving this post the pretentious title "Summer of the Silent Crows").

New Year. Very quiet, didn't even stay up for midnight. Also NYE was Mon's birthday. Although this year I managed to keep my foot out of my mouth over xmas I failed dismally on Mon's birthday. Even managing orally insert my foot while my head was up my arse. I'm very sorry Mon, I love you very much.

Keith. Yesterday I received a call from Polly telling of the death of a friend of ours. I don't really want to talk about it but I must thank Polly for her follow up calls, making sure that I was all right. Goodbye Keith, I don't know what else to say without sounding trite.

There's probably other stuff I could add (like Morgan's $2000 dog) but this'll do for the moment.

Got my blue card back (O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!) and have been working like a bastard. It is good to be back at the zoo.

One of the aides accidentally did an open ended batch process without previewing it. 11000 (Eleven Bloody Thousand) entries had their call number and location changed. Last backup was a week ago. It has been decided to change them as they are borrowed and returned (its not like we aren't busy just checking things in and stuff this time of year [11000!! That's about six or seven years worth of entries {fortunately it is quicker and easier to edit an entry than to make one from scratch}]).

Also the database we use was updated to a new version at the start of the year. The company providing it was immediately bought by another which decided to scrap that database, harvest it for features and fuse it with a new dbase they planned to make. This means we have had to put up with a buggy alpha version of some discontinued software while waiting for the new product (the dodgy batch processing features included). One of the main problems is a memory leak which slowly ties up all of the available ram (when the computer starts to bog down you can call up the running processes and watch as the available ram dwindles to nothing and the computer locks up). So it goes.

Despite this it's all good.

As I type this my father is in hospital having a large gall stone removed from his bile duct. Yesterday he had emergency surgery to remove his gall bladder. Serious symptoms only manifested on Saturday night. He thought it was his heart but the pain didn't go away. Mon knew exactly what it was and how serious, accurately predicting even the surgery. Her diagnosis was about a day ahead of that of the doctors.
It will be a trial getting him to stay in bed and do nothing. Unfortunately this also means that the 40th anniversary party for him and mum this Saturday has been cancelled.

Went to Paradise Lagoon at Big Crystal Creek far a picnic and swim on Saturday. Paradise is the right name for it. Wonderfully clear water which was not too cold and a day that wasn't too hot. As we were leaving a light rain started. The next day heavier showers gave some much needed relief to this dry old town. According to Mon, it was probably the consumption of loads of greasy chicken wings at the picnic which triggered dad's attack.

Another in a probably doomed effort to continue regular blogger entries.

Just read "Signal To Noise" and "A signal Shattered" by Eric S. Nylund . I thought they were pretty good.

Just listened to "Life On Air" written and read by David Attenborough (I hope nobody needs links to know who he is). A brilliant and entertaining autobiography by one of the most interesting people in the history of broadcasting.

Occasional listening:
Shonen Knife who are surprisingly easy to listen to even when singing in Japanese. With fantastic lyrics like "Sheep in the sky, Like a butterfly" who can resist them. Which reminds me, I should get some Tortoise brand pot cleaners, the best pot cleaners in the world.
Paul Kelly is good for a melancholy mood (too much and sometimes a shot of Shonen Knife is needed).

Watched:
Hot Fuzz - Better even, I feel, than Shaun of the Dead.
Stranger Than Fiction - Watch it with an open mind. I am even considering buying a copy.
The new Flash Gordon television series - Don't get your hopes up (couldn't even be bothered finding a link).

K9 And Company V2.0

Elizabeth Sladen is back. Her brief resurrection in Doctor Who has led to The Sarah Jane Adventures. A show primarily directed at young teens it is well dodgy but improves noticeably as the stories progress (I have seen eps. 0-6 so far and they are now verging on just plain dodgy). Apart from the pilot it is in the format of two half hour episodes per storyline. Also (apart from a brief appearance in the pilot ) there is, so far, an absence of annoying robotic dogs.
Recommended only for die hard fans of Lizzie.

I have had to put the grille back on the fan on my computer desk. I took it off to clean it and decided that the airflow was better without it. Unfortunately my idjit (not idgit) cat keeps jumping on the desk and sticking his head or tail into it. It's gotta hurt (hypothesis confirmed by experimental test on finger), but he just stands there and takes it until I yank him out of the way.

The little bugger is also going through one of those "you call this food?" phases. Even fresh mackerel and barramundi (my thanks to the Blue Marlin Fish Bar [conveniently close, delicious and they use lamb fat in the deep fryers]) get left, along with minced portions of animals domestic, foreign or mysterious. Also anything that's not put on his plate right then and there is no longer classed as food. As nothing is edible he is hungry all of the time and subtly hints that he should be fed by interposing himself between me and the monitor (or as earlier mentioned, sticking bits of himself into the desk fan).

I foolishly let my blue card lapse at the end of last term and it will take till the end of this term to reprocess. Since I don't need it for paid work I am barred from the zoo for the rest of the year. This kinda sucks. Otherwise not much has been happening.