Election

Today is election day in the Australian state of Victoria.


In our fine, dry land it's compulsory to vote, so there is always a long, snaking line.


But the best bit (apart from having your say about who should run the state)? Aaaaah, the sausage sizzle at the end!

Excuses, excuses

Where have I been the last week or so? Goodness knows, but I can tell you one thing - I appear to have lost my blogging mojo. Completely misplaced it. In fact, I haven't even been reading any blogs, so if any of my regular haunts has had some bizarre misfortune occur, say like their great aunty Mabel tumbling out of the pensioner bus as it docked at the servo, landing rather ungainly on the tyre air hose and was pumped full of air until she exploded, and admist their grief they've been wondering why I haven't left a note expressing my condolences then, sorry. Maybe I'll get to it later on this week. Actually, probably not. So, better late than never:

I'm awfully sorry to hear about the explosion of Aunt Mabel.

Now that's over and done with, I expect you want some hard and fast excuses for why I've been absent. Well, I've been doing lots of swimming. Man, I am such the superstar swimming person now. I'm a-racing down that pool. In fact, you know that snail you trod on yesterday on the way to the mailbox to grab the details about Aunt M's funeral, I am almost as fast as that snail had they avoided their sudden, rather squishy death and been dropped in the pool and told to swim, swim, swim! Still, the arms are toning up nicely, and I can do 20 whole laps without collasping, so that's a good thing.

What else? I made a cat for this lovely person, but unfortunately gave him a name with previous traumatic connotations. Oh well. That might explain why Basil is doing his best dead man impersonation in the pic.

Gah, I've just reread this post, and helllloooooo, scary gory tone, Jorth. I'm going to disappear before any more grisly thoughts make their way from my brain to the keyboard to you. Yikes. Enjoy the swimming pic.

Mr. R. McScruffity, Esq.

Rufus! Ruuuuuufus! Come and meet the readers, you rascally cat. For the last time, put down the martini and get yourself over here. Right, everybody meet Rufus McScruffity. Rufus, meet everybody. Now, Ru, would you like to tell everybody a little bit about yourself? No, I should do it? Okey dokey, he's made entirely from scraps, is a gift for Grumbles for Christmas and is based on the cat pattern in Denyse Schmidt's Quilts.

Excuse me a sec, Rufus is trying to tell me something. Oh! You want me to tell them interesting things about you! Got it. Well, Rufus likes to spend his days banging away on his typewriter, churning out best selling mystery novels under the pen name of Doofus McCrappity, and then at five o'clock on the dot every day he prowls over to the local garbage tin bar where he enjoys a very dry cat food martini, and has a yowl with any delectable felines he comes across. Quite the ladies man, our Rufus.

Horses vs. Life On Earth As We Know It. Damn - the horses won.

Not a bad turn out for the Walk Against Warming we did on Saturday. 30,000 people walked in Melbourne alone! Ok, so it's not as impressive as the 120,000 who went to the races on the same day, but I suppose watching the gee gees run around a track is far more important that letting our pollies know that we want action on reducing greenhouse emissions, hmmm?

(Psssst! Go sign the petition here!)

A dress, a plastic shell and some pimples walked into a bar...

Random things:

- Recently our suburb had a hard waste collection day, and the Galumph was quick enough to grab this little beauty off the street. I always wanted one of these shells, and let me tell you, it's GREAT! Whack in a dribble of water (even better, use the bucket of water collected whilst showering), put the Grumbles in her bathers and hey presto, she's happy for hours. One of these days I might even don my togs and jump in there myself.

- I've finished another dress, and I am so excited about this one that it's pathetic. Unfortunately, you'll all have to wait for pics, as our rechargable camera batteries aren't playing ball. Over 10,000 charges my sweet arse. Try, hmmm, 53 at best. How can I be a concerned enviromentalist, dutifully recharging my batteries instead of buying new ones all the time if they are going to conk out on me faster than you can say "oh, look, another crap product labelled as green". Answer me that, battery makers.

- I upgraded my skincare range from cheapo supermarketo to something much more swish, and my skin has decided to celebrate by breaking out in as many ways as possible. It almost looks like I'm desperately trying to win the "Most Acne Riddled Skin, Sponsored by Scary Chemical Cleaner, and If You Win We'll Put You Up On Our Website So People With Hangovers Who Need To Go To Work Can Take One Look At Your Photo Then Rush To Throw Up, And Thus Manage A Day At The Office With No Further Danger Of Hurling Because Thanks To You and Your Hideously Grotesque Zits They Have Got It All Out Of Their System" competition.