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old_black
30 June 2008 @ 05:13 am
stuck in a new rut (for the time being)  
Back to a little on the side this morning.

[Campos coffee, banana-walnut bread with rocotta-honey-cinnamon]

Look at that Campos coffee! - rich, dark, beautifully made. It tasted every bit as good as it looked.

It's very hard to choose my weekday breakfast venue. Based on recent experiences, I'd be more-or-less equally happy:

  • at my office desk,

  • in the Bogota Café,

  • at a little on the side.


but I have a feeling alots won't be working with me for that long so I'm enjoying it while it lasts. I might go to alots 2 or 3 times a week and see how it goes.

Probably they'll have a change in chef, get taken over by more commercially driven management, change to later opening times, or just become unreliable in some way that will make it a less attractive proposition. After all, I was completely happy at Toby's for a while, but then they decided to use ordinary crap raisin toast instead of Fuel bakery fruit and nut toast, and I've never been back.

So I'm psychologically prepared. I feel a bit like [info]heathery_t - just going out and having fun with wild abandon, but fully expecting it to end abruptly and come crashing back to earth. We're both "screwing around" (although I'm hoping I'm somewhat less at risk from STDs in my partnership with alots than she is with her selection from the on-line dating world!).

When the let-down happens to me I'll just revert to the principle: "if you want something to happen, do it yourself..." and I'll go back to making my own toast and coffee and sitting in relative solitude. Hmmm... you never know, heather might end up doing the same thing; and we won't be the only ones in the world either.
 
 
Current Mood: cautious
Current Music: Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet - Bach on recorder
 
 
old_black
29 June 2008 @ 05:02 pm
Wondering what the future holds  
I'm sitting here feeling very pessimistic and wondering what the future holds. Tomorrow morning I'll be catching the bus to work because I'm too sore to even walk there. I appear to be degenerating rapidly....I wonder what the future holds?

It's still June (just!) and although we've gone past the shortest day, the Bureau of Meteorology tells me that the worst is yet to come in terms of the temperature when I'm out and about:

[average minimum temperatures]

However, my garden tells me that there can be hope, despite a worsening outlook. A brave daffodil and a team of snow-drops poke their heads up among the weeds.

[hope in the garden]

So who do I believe, a daffodil or a bunch of scientists?

 
 
Current Location: daiskmeliadorn's old room
Current Mood: not as optimistic as appears
Current Music: Hosannah! 2MBS-FM
 
 
old_black
28 June 2008 @ 01:31 pm
the entrance to (rat) heaven  
I came across this dead body last night, dimly lit from the minimal street lighting.

He/she nearly made it into rat-heaven - a drainpipe. Or was he/she ejected unceremoniously from the pipe? Or was she/he placed in this position by some person or animal unknown?

[dead rat at drainpipe entrance]

(apologies for the picture quality - My phone-camera doesn't have a flash, I'm afraid, and I'm too lazy to carry my proper camera all the time.)
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Current Location: daiskmeliadorn's old room
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: a clarinet concerto (not Mozart!)
 
 
old_black
26 June 2008 @ 09:19 am
jumping the gun  
[A Little on the Side]

[info]daiskmeliadorn is on the move. She's moving back to her old stamping ground in a week or so. So we'll be meeting at one of her favourite coffee places, a little on the side. I've never been there, so I thought I'd check it out before our first scheduled meeting. They say they open at 7am, but I got there 5 minutes early and they welcomed me in (contrast nearby Toby's, where you can be still standing outside at 7:05).

[alots at 7am]

I found my way to a well-padded quiet corner seat and settled in. Breakfast was soon in front of me. Excellent coffee (Campos) and a just-baked banana and walnut bread with real butter (which I didn't consume) and ricotta-honey-cinnamon (which I most definitely did consume). I large bottle of iced water, my phone-radio tuned to ABC-Classic-FM, and a good book (The Secret Life of Bees) completed the ideal breakfast.

[alots brekky]


I reckon that banana-walnut bread is the best I've ever tasted. I can't wait till our scheduled meeting, I'll be back again next week! In fact, I think this place might be seeing quite a lot of me in future...
 
 
Current Mood: markedly elevated
Current Music: Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony
 
 
old_black
24 June 2008 @ 08:30 am
heaven  
You don't have to die to get to heaven.

This isn't a theological statement, it's a simple reflection of my own experience.

Today's experience:
I'm sitting alone in the early morning. There's blue sky I can see out of a little corner of my window. I'm reading a book which is drawing me in to the lives of its characters. I've just finished my Bun Fair Trade, Organic, Shade-Grown Rainforest coffee, and I'm working my way through a slice of toasted Fuel Bakery fruit & nut bread. I'm feeling pretty good.

...then the radio starts playing J.S.Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D-minor. I turn it up loud....now I'm momentarily in heaven.

The music stops. The news comes on - more trouble in Zimbabwe. I hear the boss arrive behind me.
Well, I had a glimpse of heaven anyway.
 
 
Current Mood: momentarily at peace
Current Music: J.S.Bach, Toccata
 
 
old_black
23 June 2008 @ 01:53 pm
cockroach - lying on back  
The species may survive a nuclear war, but the individual is surely just as vulnerable as me.




[dead cockroach]
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old_black
21 June 2008 @ 05:32 pm
dark without a dawn?  






[fruit bat]



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Current Music: Turbulent Indigo
 
 
old_black
20 June 2008 @ 01:53 pm
 
[Bogota Café)

I had a great celebratory breakfast with [info]daiskmeliadorn today. It wasn't planned to be celebratory, I just wanted to try out the famous Bogota Café near her place. However, after making our meeting arrangement, she received great news about the result of her honours thesis, so we turned an ordinary brekky into a party! I can tell you, she's actually a lot more pleased than she appears in this photo. She's thinking "I wish he'd take the rotten picture and cut me a piece of fruit-and-nut bread" - or something like that!

Coffee, food, service and ambiance were all great, and so the Bogota experience was well and truly worth repeating.
 
 
Current Location: Bogota Café, Mascot
Current Mood: proud :-)
 
 
old_black
17 June 2008 @ 10:30 am
Mystery box  

Yesterday [info]daiskmeliadorn arrived bearing this box:
[fron daiskmeliadorn]

Hmmm, I thought. Bara Brith sounds like a religious movement  of one type  or another...but in a box?

Well, it turns out that [info]daiskmeliadorn was making a connection with her roots, as it were. We originally named her with a classic Welsh name, Bronwyn, not because we had any connection with Wales - we both have Scottish ancestors and my father's side were English - but we liked the name and liked other Bronwyns that we knew. She has since changed her name to Bronislava, so this discovery of a Welsh connection was a surprise to me.

Anyway, Bara Brith is actually  a Welsh bread. It apparently means speckled (brith) bread (bara). Here is her vegan version....looks good eh?


[bara brith]

So today's morning tea is a thick slice of Bron's Bara Brith, toasted, with a strong long black made from Bun coffee. An excessive use of the letter B perhaps, but tastes fruity, spicy, hot, and pretty damn good :-)
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Current Mood: somewhat revived
Current Music: Beethoven
 
 
old_black
16 June 2008 @ 08:30 am
end of life  
During my run to work this morning one of the things I heard on the radio was Schubert's Rosamunde Quartet, played by the Belcea Quartet. In introducing the piece, the presenter, Julian Day, read (part of) this quote from one of Schubert's letters, which Day said* corresponded to around the time the Rosamunde Quartet was written:
In a word, I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this ever makes things worse and worse, instead of better; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have come to nothing, to whom the joy of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain, at best, whose enthusiasm (at least of the stimulating kind) for all things beautiful threatens to vanish, and ask yourself, is he not a miserable, unhappy being?—"My peace is gone, my heart is sore, I shall find it never and nevermore." I may well sing every day now, for each night, I go to bed hoping never to wake again, and each morning only tells me of yesterday's grief.
(quote taken from: this web page)

Yes, Franz, I understand.



*Of course, I don't know if Julian Day is correct...or even if this quote can be correctly attributed to Schubert
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Current Mood: solemn
Current Music: piano - modern (2MBS-FM)
 
 
old_black
14 June 2008 @ 02:22 pm
more death  




"...extinction...."






[rainbow lorikeet]
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Current Mood: deeply depressed
 
 
old_black
13 June 2008 @ 05:18 am
old age poetry - part 2  
Having contemplated Dylan Thomas' approach to his father's old age, I offer an alternative view. I responded to Thomas' poem because it stirred up feelings and thoughts from the past. Philip Larkin writes more about my present experience.

[Philip Larkin]
Great photograph of Larkin  - by Jane Bown. Located on web site:
http://www.philiplarkin.com/

Philip Larkin - The Old Fools

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;
Why aren't they screaming?

At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. Next time you can't pretend
There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside you head, and people in them, acting
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.
This is why they give

An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out.



I like that phrase:
...crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is.
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Current Mood: deeply depressed
 
 
old_black
12 June 2008 @ 03:55 pm
even more mysterious  
I had thought I'd solved the mystery of what was eating my pears. The local theories (mice) were scuttled by the capture of the image a large fat cockroach dining out on some left over strawberry.

[RoachCam]

But now, with no signs of pear consumption (except by yours truly), new evidence has deepened the mystery.




[PixieCam!]

These ivory tower academics like [info]geowench and [info]ferrousoxide (the cockroach theorists), and now elm-theorist [info]smellingbottle, might know more about the real world than we ignorant masses give them credit!

The question is: Is this pixie guarding the pear for my benefit, or is she looking at 12 months supply of food for herself?
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Current Mood: avoiding the grim reality
Current Music: Boccherini
 
 
old_black
12 June 2008 @ 05:38 am
poetry!  
(Note: An error in this post was corrected, thanks to Geowench's reply. I originally thought Broadstock had written the poem. Shows how much I know! ...Note to self: Read some Dylan Thomas, educate yourself!!).

This ordinary looking bloke seems to have quite an interesting life story to tell.
[Brenton Broadstock]
Photograph by John Warren ©2006
Image is located on this page: http://www.brentonbroadstock.com

After all this talk about poetry, as I was running to work this morning the announcer, Tim Dehn, read part of a poem I had first heard about 20 years ago. It was Dylan Thomas's Dying of the Light  with music by Brenton Broadstock. It inspired me to look up Broadstock when I got to work...and I found out that he seems to be a rather interesting character. What's more to the point is that the poem speaks to me at my level! Here is an extract from Broadstock's  web site:
Broadstock introduces Dying of the Light:
The media hype, hysteria and bigotry surrounding the AIDS virus has waned but the suffering of those who have contracted the disease continues. The title comes from a poem of Dylan Thomas and is a tribute and reminder that many HIV sufferers are still raging against the dying of their light, still fighting to maintain their health, their dignity and their humanity.



Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words have forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

When I first heard this, it was as a song, sung with great emotion by Jeannie Lewis. Takes me back to the beginning of my marriage - I think it was on her album Free Fall Through Featherless Flight (1974) which was lent to me by L. .
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Current Mood: reflective
 
 
old_black
09 June 2008 @ 09:09 am
Recording progress  
I'm sick of problems with Runstoppable. The software is fine and has all the features I want to record my running, but the database has been not allowing updates of my data for about 4 days. No one at Runstoppable responds to emails. Ever.

I've temporarily (at least) sought refuge in MapMyRun instead, after also trying WalkJogRun. They all use the same Google mapping facility so it's the extras that make a difference. MapMyRun has a decidedly commercial feel to it, and I suspect my email address will be bombarded with offers from 'partner' organizations. We shall see. Being the complaining type, it won't take much to get me to record my indignation if I feel I'm being exploited (although I have a feeling that my demographic is not a prominent target for sporting type sales, in general).

At the moment I'm going through a phase of trying to increase the length of my longest run so I need to keep careful track of distances, efforts, etc. to obviate the risk of injury. Today's run, 25 km, is the greatest distance I've ever run. I want to push this upper limit to at least 30 km by early August, but I'm very wary of getting an overuse injury.

I do want to use one of these run-recording systems. Apart from helping track runs to facilitate injury-free training, I find it's a good motivator to keep records and to compare my current performance with previous occasions.

I need all the motivation I can get.
 
 
Current Location: daiskmeliadorn's (old) room
Current Mood: positive - for a short time
Current Music: Boccherini String Quartet
 
 
old_black
08 June 2008 @ 05:16 pm
PearCam becomes . . .  
The latest edition of news on an intruder eating my pears.

I went home on Friday night leaving an added attraction with a new sacrificial pear to see if my mystery intruder would be interested. A slice of strawberry was rescued from the rubbish bin - left over from the creation of a birthday cake for someone at work. PearCam was set up to take a picture every 5 minutes, with the strawberry slice just visible in the foreground. The movement detection mode was also turned on.
I couldn't wait till Tuesday (Monday is a public holiday - "Queens Birthday"), so I found an excuse to go in to work on Sunday morning. When I got there I found that the pear was completely intact - much to my disappointment - and the strawberry slice was still in situ. However, close inspection of the strawberry slice showed a round crater, 2 or 3 mm deep, near one edge!

I started scanning through the PearCam images. All were just the regular 5-minute-interval pictures; no motion-triggered images in between. I saw nothing much (I was hoping and even expecting, despite evidence to the contrary, to see a small rodent). But then I noticed, in three images, sitting in the same spot, poised above the crater area, a fat cockroach!

[PearCam becomes roachCam]

PearCam becomes RoachCam!!
[picture taken 22:28 on Saturday 07 June 2008]

OK, it's not proof that he/she also eats the pear (and how do you tell the sex of a cockroach, anyway?), but I am convinced!! The roach sat there for around 15 minutes, in the same spot where a crater now exists, and the crater was a very similar morphology to the ones I'd found in my ripening pears.

I conclude that a large cockroach is growing larger, thanks to my unripe pears.
 
 
Current Mood: triumphant
Current Music: Hosannah! 2MBS-FM
 
 
old_black
06 June 2008 @ 02:43 pm
my ignorance  
As an older (mid-50s), lifetime-English-speaking person, reading an English author, it's embarrassing to have to admit to needing a dictionary sitting next to me while I read.
Anita Brookner has added these words to my vocabulary...although my memory isn't what it used to be, and I have to keep checking on a many of them!
  • evanescent
  • inanition
  • apotheosis
  • decoctions
  • maunderings
  • decorous
  • peregrination
  • depredations
  • refulgence
  • deracinated
  • fiacre
  • simulacrum
  • lubricious
  • avidity
  • nugatory
  • recondite
  • solecism
  • solipsism
  • ineluctable
  • anodyne
  • suzerainty
  • mephitic
  • artifice
  • propitiation
  • uxorious
  • appurtenances
  • complaisant
  • incubus
  • inveigled
  • afflatus
  • scansion
Looks like my education was sadly deficient. It was certainly poor in producing a well-adjusted and sociable young man.

I think I would have been better off reading Brookner in High School (well, the 1960s equivalent anyway) instead of all that Shakespeare (Macbeth, Hamlet, A Mid-Summer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet etc.) I think the school curriculum of the time suffered from a bad case of Bardolatry. Actually, I must take some of the blame. I didn't open a book to read for pleasure from age 10 to about age 50! I wonder why? Maybe it was the result of being forced to study literature I didn't like and didn't relate to in High School?
 
 
Current Mood: Have I wasted my life?
Current Music: Schubert
 
 
old_black
06 June 2008 @ 05:54 am
Not such a good day  
Ugg...I am getting morning headaches which are getting worse, I think. Took Ibuprofen+Codeine this morning.
Run was OK except right hamstring is niggling.

Runstoppable database is not allowing updates for the 2nd day in a row.

PearCam showed no action and the pear was not eaten further.

It's still wet and windy.

Hmmm....not such a good day
 
 
Current Mood: depressed
 
 
old_black
05 June 2008 @ 05:48 am
top drawer!  
With the exception of the overnight failure of PearCam to detect intruder nibbling, it would have to be said that yesterday was up there with the best.

After the great pre-breakfast walk and near-perfect breakfast+reading session, the weather did close in and the rain became heavier and more continuous, as the BoM predicted. However, my afternoon was brightened enormously by having coffee with [info]daiskmeliadorn. We sat in our usual place by the French doors which are normally open onto busy George Street but were closed against the rain.

[de La France]

I like this place for a few reasons.
  • They're open 24/7 so you never feel like they're wanting to get rid of you to close up the shop.
  • the coffee is quite acceptable (although they don't have the type of soy milk that [info]daiskmeliadorn likes)
  • You feel like you're part of the busy world outside, yet you can have the benefits of inside seating
  • It's the spot where half a dozen of J.J.Richards' garbage collectors meet for breakfast coffee when I run past at about 4:30 am
It's probably not [info]daiskmeliadorn's first choice, but it suits me!  We ate some smuggled-in toasted muesli sourdough bread (which I originally sourced from a dumpster located near home).

We had quite a good talk, although a lot of it was necessarily at the catching up level, rather than a deeper analysis. Her post-honours life is destined to be rather full and it was great to hear her plans and feel her enthusiasm. Ahhh...being young has a lot to commend it.
 
 
Current Mood: contemplative
 
 
old_black
05 June 2008 @ 05:26 am
 
Damn! PearCam motion detection didn't trigger at all last night, but the cavity in the pear has now approximately doubled in volume :-(
Having now played around with the system, I have come to the conclusion that the motion detection may not be sensitive enough to detect this (presumably small) intruder.

So the score is now...

     old_black: 1
     intruder: 1

I haven't given up.
 
 
Current Mood: temporarily defeated
Current Music: Mozart Symphony #40