Starting the muck raking

I have sorted out the HTML and have made a beginning on the history of my immediate family.  I've made a template and have opened up ten files; there will be more.  However, it is much too inflammatory to publish online and will probably be discreetly distributed via CD.

I have also paid out a lot of money for what I hope will be the Will of my Uncle D., my grandfather's twin brother.  It was his will which first caused the poo to hit the propeller and opened my eyes to some of the hidden facts and opinions about my grandfather's siblings and their wives.

I now need to get the wills of Uncle R. and Aunt A. which will be lodged with the South Australian records;  Uncle D. died in New South Wales.  There is already quite a lot of information at the Trove site regarding the court case in which Aunt A. sued the people who bought out the family assets at an extremely low price  -  something which was always a festering sore.

And that is before I even start on my Great Grandmother's family and their doings which I have been reading with a great deal of interest, once again at Trove which is publishing all the archived court cases and social news from way back.

My maternal grandmother's family is more of a mystery but at least they appear, for the most part, to be reasonably respectable, simply rather prone to multiple marriages with a little bigamy thrown in.

It is going to be a lifetime project and will need some editing as the threads cross; it should keep me occupied and entertained for years to come.

The relearning curve is steep

I started on my family slush history yesterday and decided to do it in HTML as it makes it easier to connect up the dots (links?) but alas I have forgotten most of my HTML and am going to have to relearn it.  The simple stuff is still OK but I am going to have to look up how to do tables again because it is the simplest way to do an index.  It should be fun and I will be able to link it to my web page if I want, although I suspect that some of it should never get out into the public arena for the sake of those who are still around and who might find and read it.

And I went out and pre-ordered a MS Surface this morning because I am going to find that I need to know something about Win 8 if I am going to keep on teaching computer  to older people who have not grown up in the computer age.  It is going to be Win 7 all over again but more so and people are going to expect us to know how to show them.  At least the tablets are lighter than my Win 7  computer and I can probably slip it into my handbag.

Techie told me to get one directly from Microsoft but they courier them and I have discovered that it is not possible in a high rise apartment, and the Post Office quite rightly doesn't think that it is their job to take the parcels in.  I was going to have it delivered to D3's workplace but she is going on holidays next week so that won't work.  Anyway, with luck I will get my tablet before Christmas, which is when JB HiFi are expecting to get their first order.

Techie has promised to set it up for me and put in a start button.  The sales person at JB HF said that they are having no end of problems with Win 8 on desktop computers so I suppose that there will be a Win 9 along before too much time passes.  I think that is when I will give up and spend my time doing HTML and dredging up all the oddments of family history and its secrets.

All those cousins!

Last weekend was the second family reunion held and this time I felt that I should go over to Adelaide and meet all the cousins who have been creeping out of the woodwork lately.

D1 and D2 also attended and it was a fun weekend and I'll probably go to the next one.  The hesitation is that rumour has it that it will be held at Victor Harbour and there is no way I am going to go all the way to Adelaide and then all the way to Victor, much as I love the place and knowing well that it is the place where the family's roots are.

There is also a problem with the cats who didn't take very kindly to being boarded at the cattery again; Parsifal's behavior caused Poppy to become quite aggressive.  They have settled down now but Poppy needed room to run from Parsifal and there was nowhere for her to go.  I had to resort to the water spray bottle in order to get the message through to him that he needed to leave Poppy alone.

When I consult with the animal behaviorist I am hoping that we can resolve that problem as well; Parsifal needs to understand that he is no longer a proper boy and that it is unseemly to act like one.

While we were in South Australia we took the tram to Glenelg where I spent some of the early part of my life and it was in Glenelg that I went to boarding school for seven years.  D1 wanted to see it and I suggested that the traditional way of getting there was by tram so we did that.  But it is no longer the tram which used to do the run.  For starters it now goes as far as  the Entertainment Centre on North Terrace and it is not a tram any more but light rail.  Not nearly as much fun as it used to be and I would have thought that the original tram was heritage listed; obviously not.

The kids, bless their hearts, want a barbecue on Christmas day so this morning I went over to Cottesloe and loaded up with sausages and a vacuum-packed rib-eye fillet of steak so all I need to do is salads and a trifle  -  not 'deconstructed' like the one I had at the Playford Hotel on Friday night.  It would certainly be easier  -  slices of cake, a bottle of sweet sherry, some fruit, custard, jelly and cream and they could all reconstruct their own. 

Where there's smoke ...

We had much excitement last night when, in the midst of late-night shopping, the fire alarms went off and orders came over the loud speakers to evacuate the centre.

I bundled the babies in to the kitty carriage and took them down the lift  -  contra-indicated in case of fire but no-one had suggested a fire at that stage.  However, soon after we hit the street the fire engines rolled up, blazing red and blue flashing lights and with sirens going full blast.  No-one seemed to know what the problem was and I still don't know if there was a fire or just a false alarm but eventually the all-clear sounded and we sheepishly returned to whatever we had been doing.

As soon as I started wheeling the babies in the kitty carriage I realised that the tyres were flat but didn't have time to pump them up so this morning I collected my bike pump and discovered that not only were the valves badly angled but my bike has schrader valves and the kitty carriage has presta so the pump didn't fit even when I managed to get it through the spokes.  I suspect that the pump could be converted but that didn't make it any easier to attach.

So  -  I removed the wheels and caught the train over to Cottesloe where the man in the bike shop straightened the valves, pumped up the tyres and sold me a pump which, being very small, I can store in the kitty carriage.

I had intended, this morning, to wash my car but there was no water on level 4.  I later discovered that there is a broken pipe out in the street with water bubbling up between the pavers so I assume that is where all the water has gone.  I guess that it will be fixed eventually but I will be going to lunch at the Selfs' on Sunday in a very dusty car.  I don't like using the car-washing area on weekends when there are cars parked close by.

All in all an interesting few hours and the staff of Zoo showed me how to dismantle and fold the kitty carriage if I need to take it in the car.

'ear no evil

I went to my first yoga session today and had to stop about halfway through because I started to feel dizzy and nauseated; my inner ears can't cope with that much head movement and rotation.  I think that the instructor who took the introductory session on Monday was right that if I am going to do yoga at all it will have to be the 'restorative', not the 'vinyasa' yoga. Pity about that  -  I really wanted to do the vinyasa type.

The Restorative sessions are at 12.15pm on Monday, Thursday and Sunday afternoons so I'll give it a go next week and see if I can cope better with the less kinetic version.

Parsifal has eaten a bit of a polystyrene meat tray which I had thoroughly washed and put into a soft, woven plastic-type bag.  He ate a hole in the bag to get to the meat tray.  I am now waiting for it to appear out the other end or he will upchuck (hopefully).  No sign of either option yet.  He is a worry and I am hanging out waiting for the return of the animal behaviorist next month although I suspect that he will not start practising again until next year.

For all that he is a problem he is also a most delightful cat; a real clown and wants to be into everything.  He keeps me constantly amused.  Poppy's aim in life is still to be a lapcat and she is always curled up on my bed when I wake up in the morning, ready for a bit of smooching.  His nibs is out on the balcony sunbathing, since we get early morning sun during summer.  He is making the most of it and I can understand that.  Poppy joins him when I get out of bed.

Senior's moment or do I need a diary?

Would you believe that I didn't just double book the middle of the day of 18th December, I triple booked it.  I have spent time this morning rescheduling my appointments but all is finally sorted out.

Now I need to go out and buy a diary to carry in my handbag so that I don't just assume that things are so far ahead that I am bound to have nothing scheduled.

On Monday I went to a Council sponsored "Introduction to Yoga" and am now waiting for the Yoga Centre to call me back so that I can book myself in for a beginners' course as I would feel more comfortable joining open classes if I already had some idea of what I was supposed to be doing.  The classes take place just across the road so I can even manage early morning without too much trauma.

I have finally bitten the bullet and been measured for a new hearing aid; hopefully the new one will fit better than the current one.  The audiologist is trying to persuade me to get one for each ear and I agree that it would benefit my hearing but unless the second one fits (and I know that the right ear is going to be harder to fit than the left) I won't wear it and they are expensive.  I'll see how I go with the new one and if I can get a good fit I might reconsider.

What the butler saw

Sydney was fun; the long-haul plane rides in cattle class weren't.  

The hotel "upgraded" me to a horrible little room with twin beds and I fell out whenever I turned over but D2 had a chat with the concierge the next day and I found myself in  a four-room suite for the second night.  Very nice.  I have upgraded myself to a "Delux King" room for the trip to Adelaide next month for the family re-union.

Talking to Bro at D1's birthday dinner I realised that there was a lot of contemporary history about the family which he didn't know so I am going to try to get it down in writing so that the wild stories which I was brought up on will not happen in the next generation.  He is several years younger than me and a lot of the goings-on would have gone over his head; best to record it or it will all be forgotten.

I am not quite sure where to start; I guess that I should work through person by person.  Some of the stuff is on my web page but that is mostly the wild stories, not the information about the marriages and divorces, law suits and property division  -  things which I assumed that Bro would know about.  I'll probably start with Uncle Dud, my grandfather's twin brother and work out from there to Great great Uncle Charles and all his works  -  the ultimate money launderer who lost his position as mayor of Adelaide because he was in jail cracking rocks and missed two council meetings without just cause.  I must learn how to copy the information on the National Archives web site for details.  My mother's family really were a shady lot; my father's family were respectable for the most part.

In Sydney, D3 and I visited the Hedrena shop in the foyer of the Wentworth Hotel where we stayed and bought a lot of clothes and again sorted out sizing so that we can buy online.  Then we spent the rest of the morning doing retail therapy at a spectacles shop, shopped for shoes and then dressmaking fabrics.

After lunch we inspected D1's new apartment which is lovely but much smaller than mine.  That night was the birthday dinner and I finished off with a decaf coffee affogato with drambuie; memorable ...

On Sunday morning I met up with Cousin H. and her daughter and in the afternoon we all congregated at D1's place for a party for her friends before flying back to Perth.

The kittens arrived home the next day but will be off to boarding school again in about four weeks for a short weekend stay. I spent some time this morning retrieving all their rubber balls from under the spare bed after which they exhausted themselves and are now asleep.  The balls are probably back under the bed; that is where they always end up.