Diverse Ramblings

Saturdays mornings only

Saturday afternoon was incredibly frustrating. We needed two people - someone to sell us a vacuum cleaner, and someone to sell us miscellaneous music stuff.

I primarily want a vacuum cleaner to suck up all the white hairs that our cat Jenny sheds with impunity. Did you know that if you have dirty dark clothes covered with white cat hair, and you wash them, then you end up with clean dark clothes covered with white cat hair? At least the ginger kitten doesn't shed.

Well really I don't intend to vacuum our clothes, but mostly the sofa and the bathroom mats (which, besides white cat hair, are also suffering from an attack of cement dust from when I accidentally yanked the towel rail out of the wall and Mike's Dad fixed it, and all the other detritus that accumulates in there).

The music stuff we need is a fairly long list - we seem to end up doing a big music xirja about twice a year. This time, we need guitar strings, violin strings, a violin shoulder rest, and drum brushes. Also I'm thinking a spare capo, spare tuner and half-a-dozen picks wouldn't go amiss. And if anyone has around two hundred euro going spare, we'll get a new (small) amp while we're at it.

So, Saturday afternoon we set off in search of two people to sell us what we wanted.

And we didn't find them.

There were some shops open, sure, but mostly (for some reason) clothes shops. We drove all around the island, sweating bullets in the August heat, looking in vain for what we needed.

After the fifth closed household appliance shop we tried, we had the following conversation:

Me: Well, I guess the bathroom will have to wait.
Mike: *not liking this* Well, what would Jesus do?
Me: Hah, he'd get Martha to do it! I'm not Martha!
Mike: Let's roleplay...

Top three things you don't want to hear...

...when someone is drilling a hole in your bathroom wall:

1. Oops.

2. Quick, turn it off from the mains!

3. Erm, have you got a floorcloth?

Please give me a wide berth, thanks.

Yesterday I drove to Għadira and back, with Middle Sis in the passenger seat to keep an eye on me (Dad has a policy of not allowing his daughters to drive unsupervised until they seem ready, and have preferrably read the Police Defensive Driving manual).

I was very nervous about driving, but it's one of those things where you have to bite the bullet and just DO it, because otherwise you never will. So I did.

The drive didn't go too badly, but I didn't like the way some people drove in my very very very near vicinity - when I was a learner, people would see the "L" plates and keep well away, but yesterday I had a bus practically tailgating me (and I wasn't going slowly). *sigh*. I wish I could put "New Driver" plates on the car! Mum tells me that in Australia, new drivers get "P" plates, which sounds like a good idea.

Left at the next roundabout

Yes folks, this week I finally passed my driving test, on the third try, and I now have a license to... well, to drive.

My examiner was OK (my first was kindly, my second was supercilious), and OH HOORAY there weren't any especially sticky situations to impede my drive through Hamrun at the ungodly hour of 8:30am.

Well I did encounter at least six double-parked vehicles, and one very big concrete-block-laden truck with a confused driver who kept weaving about all over the place, but nothing I couldn't handle. I remembered to not block side-roads when stopped in traffic, and to use fifth gear on the regional road, and only stalled the car once.

13 faults, one of them grevious.

After over a year of lessons (with a couple of extended breaks), I finally had a crack at the driving test.

I didn't do that badly - I didn't fail because of accumulated faults, but because of one big one that was an automatic fail (cos it's rather bad when the examiner has to grab your steering wheel and wrench it to stop you from driving into a truck because you were too busy checking for cars behind you to pay attention to where you were going).

After the test, there's a debriefing, where the examiner explains where you went wrong, and in it he said that I did OK aside from the big fault, that I could stand to be a little less cautious, and that he didn't see why I should have any problem passing next time.

So, three weeks to my next attempt.

Muahahahaha.

Between two and fifteen MegaHertz

Today I went for my first ultrasound.

Before you start cooing, no, I'm not pregnant! It was just a routine scan as part of a medical checkup. (Don't you hate checkups? All those tests just to show that you're healthy?)

In the waiting room, you could tell who was scheduled for an ultrasound - they were the women with bottles of water and tightly-crossed legs.

One-and-a-half litres in the hour before your scan, they told me. OK, I can do that. Knowing that it was unlikely that I'd be seen on time, I spread out the drinking, an average flowrate of one half-litre bottle every twenty minutes, so that I'd have it all drunk by the time of my appointment but (hopefully) wouldn't have drunk too much too far ahead.

Sitting there (with crossed legs), my appointment time came and went, woman after woman went in to get scanned, and the pressure on my bladder inexorably increased. Michael was my designated driver for this little outing, and he amused himself by teasing me with various "flowing water" sounds.

He may have some bruises tomorrow.

Eventually, forty minutes after my appointment time, when discomfort had turned into pain, they finally saw me.

Getting to look at my insides on the monitor was cool, but I was too busy trying to not widdle all over the couch to really appreciate the moment. The scan was very quick and soon I was sprinting down the corridor to the bathroom. I think I can safely say that I have never been so glad to see a toilet.

Oh, and apparently my scan was perfectly normal. (heh, finally something about me is normal!)

Living the high life

These days I don't watch much TV - partly because there's so many other interesting things to do (blog, read boingboing, learn lines) and partly because other people are usually watching programmes that I don't really like.

But this weekend, every single person in my family is away on business or pleasure, so I get exclusive access to the TV, the DVD player, the piano and the ADSL connection... heheheh...

I've moved my desktop into the living room and now I'm living the high life, editing photos, blogging and watching CSI Miami at the same time.

Well, when I say blogging, I mean writing posts... haven't yet figured out how to run a connection from the living room to the router. Daaaaaaaad...

Update: Ooooh, Middle Sis just walked in, and she set me up with an extra-long cable running from the router, out and through a window and into the living room... now I'm all set! And CSI: Las Vegas is just starting...

Just cos I'm a girl...

Next up at Stagecoach, we will each be working on a monologue. And heh, someone did ask "How many people are in a monologue?" LOL.

Anyway, the drama teacher told us that we've all got to use a prop as well, and after some thought I decided that mine would be a football scarf. An English football scarf, given that my character is English.

So on Friday after work I went to Valletta to obtain said scarf. I'd asked one of my football-crazy colleagues about where one went in order to obtain such paraphernalia, and he sent me to Anastasi's in Merchant Street.

When I entered the shop, I knew I must be in the right place, because it is wall-to-wall-floor-to-ceiling full of football merchandise; T-shirts galore, scarfs, keychains, stickers, footballs. I tell the proprieter that I want a football scarf, an English football scarf, and since I can see lots that are of particular English teams, I add that it should be just generally English, e.g. of the national team for example.

OK says he, and dispatches another guy upstairs to look for one. Five minutes later, he hands me a scarf and points out that it is the latest kind, came out this very year, the very latest one, official merchandise, and sure to be appreciated by the person to whom I am obviously giving it to as a present.

And no, I didn't have the courage to wade into an explanation about props and monologues with him.

So he must have thought I was a very lousy girlfriend when I went for a thinner, cheaper and definitely inferior kind but I can live with that given that (a) I will be wearing this scarf in June in Malta, and (b) I would do well to save the money for tuition rather than props, lol.

Now I just have to figure out what I'm going do with this scarf while talking.

Oh yes, and memorising the monologue would be a good idea too, I suppose *grin*

It's brake and THEN clutch!

This week's apologies go out to anyone who was driving in Sliema late this afternoon - the next student had to be picked up from the Strand, and my instructor decided that I should drive through Sliema instead of sticking to those lovely wide roads where you have room to manouver around the crazy people who seem to have a deathwish.

I want a bumper sticker: "I'm only stopping for you because I don't want to go to prison for manslaughter" but I don't think all that will fit on it.

I'm finding driving to be almost as much of an adrenaline buzz as white-water rafting, but not nearly as much fun.

Health and Safety Warning: suggest you stay off the streets between 11am and noon on Saturday next (the 15th).

Sod's Law

On the weekend when I finally, after much whining, get my very own key to the canoe boathouse, that's the weekend when the weather turns wintry again.

My plan was to go kayaking after church today, so this morning I packed my gear into my sports bag that I had bought specially last year, and which makes me look all cool and athletic when I walk around with it slung casually over my shoulder.

Anyway, I'd just like to say that it's generally a bad sign when you are packing kit for a water-based sport to the sound of hail battering your windows.

*sigh*

Well, I'm not afraid of a little rain. I mean, when you're practicing a sport where you have to assume that you're going to end up in the drink, a few drops from above aren't really anything to be concerned about.

The worst thing in canoeing is WIND, because it keeps blowing you off course and you end up wasting most of your energy just trying to go in the right direction.

So after church, I was thrilled to see that the rain had stopped, but oh so annoyed to find that I had walked out into the teeth of a gale. Grrrrr.

I went down to the boathouse anyway, and judging by the condition of the sea, it was about a Gale Force 7.

I may do stupid things sometimes, but I'm not THAT stupid, certainly not stupid enough to go out in a Force 7 by myself, so I just stashed my kit there for next time.

The annual marathon (three laps around Manoel Island) is in two weeks, by the way.

About time I started practicing, eh?

I already have a Gold trophy, last year I got the Silver, who knows, maybe this year I'll get the Bronze to round out the set.