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There is only one reason that I am sure this is not Pooka. Pooka doesn’t smile in the bath.
Onions
So I’m doing a spot of cooking – I’ve decided on Boston Baked Beans for dinner tonight. Highly recommended.
But anyway, sitting at the table chopping onions and browsing a few forums, it occurred to me that onions don’t make me cry anymore. Why is this? I can’t think when I last had eye troubles with onions but it was definitely more than 3 years ago.
Possible reasons:
1. I’m taller. This doesn’t apply for the current situation because I’m sitting at the table. Also I don’t think I’m any taller than I was 10 years ago. But certainly when I was shorter, I had more onion problems.
2. I’m better at peeling onions. My current technique I learned from a TV chef while I was meant to be studying for my HSC (year 12 exams). I think it has made a difference. Year 12 exams were 10 years ago too. This confounds matters somewhat.
3. Onions are less potent. I suppose that tomatoes are less potent than they were in the good old days… perhaps it’s somehow related to the rise of the seedless watermelon…
4. I wear contact lenses. Perhaps the onion vapour adsorbs onto the outside of the lenses…
5. My onion receptors have become insensitive or have been downregulated or something…
Others?
Speaking of addictions
It’s not just me. Pooka is worse! I can hear her out on the balcony dealing with a bone – it’s an enormous one (I think it might have been about 20cm either side of a cow’s elbow.. now it’s two bones…). She went to bed a few hours ago (it’s now 20 past 11), but there is much clonking of bone on deck.
Her other addiction/obsession is Air Kong Squeaker footballs. I bought her a new one on the weekend (I believe it’s her fourth. Actually I bought two because they’re sometimes hard to find). I was pleased to see that they’ve changed the design so that the squeaker is in a lower-pressure position (and hence less likely to get broken by enthusiastic dogs – I did write to Kong asking them to make their squeakers more durable. It seems that they have listened!).
This morning we went to the park and she chased the ball solidly for about half an hour. When she lay down with the ball in her mouth and wouldn’t get up again, I figured it was time to go home. We did another good half hour this afternoon. I confiscated the ball and gave her dinner to take her mind off it. Then when I was watching tv, she quietly entered the room with one of her BIG STINKY BONES and settled down on the carpet to have a snack. I ejected the bone from the house and she pottered into the laundry (where her food lives. Who knew that dogs can silently open plastic containers despite their lack of opposable thumbs?). She found the Air Kong Squeaker football! So then she ran around the house squeaking for another half an hour. I put her to bed… then the bone clunking started. Dad has reported bone-eating activity when he gets up for his 4:30am walks.
There will be squeaking footage to follow sometime.
spooky
I have been playing an incredibly addictive game on the internet recently. Because I recognised its potential to devour all of my time, I have not bookmarked it. Have to go via google.
But I just noticed that it’s on my bookmarks toolbar (Firefox – ie. permanent button for the game on the screen all the time). I’m certain I didn’t put it there…
Sadly I cannot share the name of this game because some of my weaker readers may be unable to avoid the temptation (I’m lookin’ at you penguin!)
I must admit I find this development a bit disconcerting…
Communications update
New phone number is up and running – it is a different one again to the one I predicted last night. To calculate my new number, subtract 9205174 from my old number. I will send out a text at some point. The old number will still be active (although not in my pocket. Don’t expect instant service) for quite a while.
Hmm Pooka would like a new friend..
I don’t think her pocket money will stretch to one right now unfortunately.
The horrors!
So my phone company is closing in July. This is creating a bit of a logistical problem. However the main issue is transferring my number.
See my phone company, let’s call it Bazza, was originally a subsidiary of a phone company called Wayne. Wayne sold Bazza to Trevor, a third company, however Trevor uses Wayne’s network, so Bazza is still kind of a part of Wayne… but kinda not.
Anyway, before I learned of Bazza’ss imminent demise, I bought a new phone – pre-paid, locked to Wayne’s network (and therefore compatible with Bazza’s sim card). I intended to keep using my existing company, but did try to activate the new sim card to utilise various data things that came with it. Unfortunately this sim didn’t work with the phone it came with. Not a huge drama. Until Trevor let me know that Bazza is shutting down. So I called Wayne to find out what the deal was. Wayne said “Oh… apparently there was a batch of those phones that were shipped with incompatible sim cards. No probs, they’ll send a new one! And yeah you can transfer your old number, no problems. Just call when it arrives.”
So the new card arrived today. I called Wayne. All went smoothly until Wayne wanted to know what network my old number was on.
“Well er it’s a Bazza sim card, which is on your network however Bazza was taken over by Trevor and is now shutting down and I don’t think anyone is there…”
Apparently the “porting officer” at Bazza needs to do something to make the number available for transfer….
So the future of my mobile number will depend on whether I can be bothered to go through whatever horrors are involved in this process.
STOP PRESS!
An email just arrived from Trevor in response to my email to Bazza:
“An account was automatically created for you but you can’t login until your password has been set.”. It wants me to log-in and submit myself to their “service” department.
Looks like it’ll be a new number for me I think. I will keep both numbers running until Bazza bites the dust or my credit expires, whichever happens first.
My new number will probably = old number + 11032574. I’ll try to send texts to everyone, but I’m a bit scatty and have possibly lost numbers in phone changes in the past….
It wasn’t actually a survey. It was an exam.
I’m afraid that the correct answer is “late is anything less than 15 minutes early”. Some of you were close… but still too LATE!!
And anyone who hasn’t replied yet – also too LATE!!!
Survey
What is your definition of “late” (in the punctuality department, not the euphemism department)?
Takes two to cheat
This is the actual game referred to in this post.
So I was playing Wabble tonight. And I have an etiquette question regarding made-up words.
If you look in the bottom left quadrant of the game, you will see “JAILER”. This scored 42 points and put me ahead of my very able opponent. If you look closer you will see that for JAILER to be valid, LE has to be a word. Which it isn’t. In English at any rate.
Now in the rules of Scrabble, and in the online versions there are guidelines regarding situations where it is suspected that a player has made up a word. If you think your opponent has been creative you can challenge them. If you’re right, their word is removed and they miss their turn. If you’re wrong, they get their word and you miss your turn. If you think it’s not a word but you’re not sure enough to risk missing a turn over it, you can let it go.
The question: if you make up a word and are not challenged and then win the game, did you actually win the game or not? Or in other words, is making up words simply a strategy that can be used at the player’s discretion if they are willing to take the risk of being challenged?
If you look at the rest of the board you will see a number of other non-words. I “accepted” these “words” in the full knowledge that they were… not words… in an attempt to assuage my guilt about LE.
