On my first step into the kitchen this morning, my bare right heel crushed the life and a significant portion of goo out of a large grey slug. I recoiled, looked at my foot, looked at the mashed gastropod, had to stop and explain what had happened to L who was coughing. Helpfully he informed me that:

“That came out of mouth.”

“No, no it did not.”

You have not been to the Upside Down L. Nor will you, ever. Ever.

Shuddering as I began attempting to rid myself of the slime in the bathroom sink. More difficult than you might imagine, scrubbing brush, soap and hot water were required to remove the film of grease like gunk on my foot. My best guess is the slug and its companion found on the bench made their way up the greywater pipe from the garden into the sink. There are probably cheap comparisons to certain topical politicians but lets not get bogged down.

The day has been all uphill from there. Sorting the shed to make room for my new Mitre Saw 😀 and just generally making the space workable again. A whole family trip to the dentist with not a single problem or filling required. Productive classroom preparations and organisation with delightful help from L choosing poster locations and geeking out over the 3d printer.

 

2nd ever #printfail. The first was much less impressive and this may actually be salvageable. Both thanks to Filament feed issues. It is a set of #goldenmean #calipers. #3dprint #3dprinted #3dprinting #printfails #3dprintingfail

A photo posted by Kim Lang (@liatach) on Jan 30, 2017 at 3:29am PST

A swim, a sublime meal of grilled peach and white cheese salad with pesto chicken skewers. A good day till the end, despite the gruesome start..

 

Today we willingly drove in expanding circles around the site of the school we will visit tomorrow. Morning tea was had as a simple picnic at Hanging Rock. I have to say I was disappointed in the eponymous rock itself though the jumbled mount it is a part of is certainly very impressive.

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BNVot-tlM69/

 

Lunch at an Ash Wednesday memorial park. We have three main areas we are looking at living in longer term. All centered around schools family or both and a complex mix of proximity to a capital,  land price,  local culture,  etc. So far nothing has ruled this district out,  though the ever present fire risk is a real concern. There are some promising blocks and interesting artistic townships to choose from.

Tomorrow after an appointment of unknown length at the school here we will begin the long drive home.

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Another epic Tuesday. Early morning call in and double tutoring clients this afternoon. Makes for a long hard day for N as well. Packing progresses and as my internet has been shaped down to 256k and I’ve still got tons to organise I’m calling it a night.

Plenty of creativity no energy to apply it with.

A Link

The indomitable Le Guin on the value of libraries.

Daily

L’s early super hero birthday party went swimmingly. Limited party games, a huge costume box, good food and lots of cousins.

N acted as primary photographer and I’m sure some images will be shared socially soon.

Costumes, cooking, activities and eating consumed the day.

Edit: Including this shot from N’s Instagram

This is what happens when you come dressed as a ‘baddie’ to a kids superhero themed birthday party…. Just in case you were foolishly thinking about doing that any time soon….

A photo posted by Nadine (@nadinemmitchell) on Apr 24, 2016 at 4:56am PDT

Link

By far my favourite political cartoonist at the moment David Pope.

Create

I got nothing done last night, in the end I almost fell asleep at my keyboard watching Youtube instructionals on how to make a saw table. Aiming for some sketch progress this evening, right after part two…

 

 

Devouring ‘The Silkworm‘ which is easily as good as the first Galbraith thus far.

F took a nasty turn and spiked a fever up to 39°C with Panadol and water it has mellowed and he is now sleeping relatively smoothly. Anticipating a rough night.

N’s computer has taken a turn for the worse lately, despite the new brand new power supply. Going to try a network card based on a recommendation but it seems unlikely given the nature of some of the glitches and crashes we are experiencing. 

A devastated L had his daily time limit on Lego super heroes cut short.

Short of a new CPU or motherboard there is not much else I can try save for rebuilding the machine. The graphics card is less than 2 years old, the primary HDD is brand new, the RAM shows no errors, brand new and bigger powersupply, extra fans, an upgraded CPU fan nothing has worked. Very frustrating.

Painting and listening further this evening.

Link

The deft and sublime works of Conrad Jon Godly

Daily

Delivered my first ever religion lesson today, on the 5 senses and why they are a gift from God. Also participated in a number of prayers. All new experiences for me. I’ll share my thoughts on the differences in the education systems someday, but likely not any time soon.

The school I am at has no nuns, maybe it did at some point in the past, not anymore.

Had an altogether pretty lovely day and am very happy to be back in the classroom. I have another day with the same class tomorrow and days with the neighboring class next week. Also squeezed in an hour of tutoring making it easily the best paid day of work since the move.

Creative

Rushing this post out so I can put some time into the castle card this evening. I also need to do some handwriting practice.

Links

N shares this link to a free collection of Art Ebooks from the Met. Hard to top openlibrary though I just wish the had audiobooks too.

Fun, Real skiing staged reactions and set pieces obviously:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paid a visit to the local library so the boys could have a sing along.
Tormented myself perusing online computer sales trying to decide if a purchase is worthwhile. I really wanted my next computer to be a desktop and a ‘Beast’ at that. That plan depended on my frail machine surviving this years adventures. As I will need a laptop to continue working through our Scottish adventures later this year. I’m thinking I will try replacing the primary harddrive with a decent Solid State Drive and see if I can reinstall win10 on that. Even if I can’t the SSD will be useful.

Incidentally we believe the boys passports arrived today, though we missed them getting a failed delivery notice instead. Provided it is indeed them we are just waiting on N’s new passport to be able to purchase tickets.

Planted a whole bunch of seeds in punnets and created the first of many self watering beds today. This first self watering bed for carrots and radishes, others for lettuce and spinach to follow.

No art progress today. Going to do some drawing tonight.

I have a day off from the boys tomorrow, provided I can get the place clean enough for first in house client tomorrow afternoon, I’m planning to make some progress on a card and my storybook.

Links:

Lovely golden age of adventure travel space posters by JPL

Extraordinary and borderline masochistically detailed paper craft  (Artist’s website is a flashblob)

 

Spent the day preparing for the Dubbo trip tomorrow. Preparing paperwork for local teaching registrations and fiddling with card templates. Got around to completing the online pre assessment for my first aid. Supposedly four hour online course… Nope 85% on first attempt 100% on second. I got three wrong on the first attempt due to ambiguous wording. In fairness I have done a LOT of first aid courses the five + hour refreshers are usually entertaining provided the trainer is interesting.

Accomplished many things on the list for today but far from all. Trying to get some digital painting in this evening while my stamina lasts.

And because I shared it with somebody else already today, I give you…

Adam Savage’s Ultimate Duck Army!

 

Painted the hen house a lovely dark chocolate brown today, as that was the colour of exterior primerless acrylic we have in abundance. Chicken wire and a few fittings remain. Present wheels are as I suspected too old and are buckling under the weight and will need replaced. Close enough to finished that we have begun contacting hatcheries.

Attended the local primary schools pre term staff drinks by invitation to say hello this evening.

Doodling a couple of evolution cards and going to try my hand at a fully digital work flow post preliminary sketch for the next batch. Also planning to knock out a colour sketch mockup of one of the board books over coming days.

Tomorrow will be spent preparing for the trip to Dubbo on Monday morning. We are leaving the infants with their grandparents for the night so that we will have room in the car for a very big shop and also so we can have a date night. I’ll spend Tuesday in a First Aid course and then we will drive back to the farm and probably stay there to come home early Wednesday morning. Posts maybe intermittent Mon-Wed nest week.

Playing a game with N this evening. The Humble Sale has been taunting me and SpaceBase looks such a perfect match for N’s and my own recent reading material that I couldn’t pass it up.

 

Three interesting links.

From my daily politics newsletter care of The Monthly and of particular relevance to Mister Rabbits comments over the weekend: What will future generations condemn us for?

Based on actual events. See the authors comments below. Scenes From The Emu War

American Politics. “If you’re a Democrat, and “it’s easy to imagine” neoconservatives advising your choice for president, then you’re not truly a Democrat. You’re a Republican on foreign policy, but enjoy spreading disparaging memes on Facebook representing your viewpoint of socially backwards conservatives.”