Its Christmas (nearly) so I thought I had better start looking for pressies.
Seeing as how my boys both have cars I thought car accessories may be good

So I did the modern thing and looked online for car accessories shops around here
and found AutoPro in Malaga (Western Australia), I live just across the bushland in Koondoola, so it’s close too
Out of curiosity I thought I would look at the directions online (as I have a few options from here )
but I didnt expect the option I got on the net.
first the map didn’t look familiar, there is no lake here (only a storm water sump)
N Chester Dean rd didn’t sound familiar either

It definitely says Malaga, Australia with a WA postcode
so I Zoomed out to see if i could get my bearings
and got the full map from AutoPro to my place
well sort of

ummmm, that doesn’t look right
how far!!!!!!!!

514 hours??? thats 21.4 days of driving if you drove 24 hours a day
16,663 miles, thats 26,816km (will my EH Holden make it, at least the speedo is in MPH)

sail across the Pacifc to Japan???

errrrrr, I don’t speak Japanese, except for Toyota, Mitsubishi, Daihatsu
I may need a navigator
Hang on now it says sail across the Pacific to Australia
I think some one is having a lend of me here
why didnt I get to go across the Pacific straight to Australia the first time

um Darwin harbour

how big a boat is it I am on??
and I drive through a park, fish tailing it by the looks?? I doubt the old 179 is up to that, although it looks like dirt not tarmac. (the foreign tourists have to walk through that?)

which shed is customs and immigration?

So now I have to drive down the west coast of Australia home,
at least when I get on to highway one, I know my way home
I did notice that on the drive home the route did not go down Beach road, Malaga, WA
I also noticed on the way I got to go through Hawaii
but miss out on Bali (I thought that was now part of Australia)

the other odd thing was I thought I asked for directions from here to there
so I am still non the wiser, sigh, I guess I will get out the map book, not sure I could trust sat nav even, do they use Google maps?

I noticed it didn’t take me past your place
I would of popped in for a cuppa

There were way too many toll roads for my liking also, it would become a bit of an expensive trip for a couple of gift vouchers.

Remember when Global Warming was an issue critical to LIFE and DEATH on this planet?

Alarmist couldn’t cry loud or long enough. We were doomed! Australia put in a whole Carbon Tax to save us from the end of the world!

Andrew Bolt noticed it, and I have to ask. If Global Warming, or as its other name, Climate Change, why wasn’t this a HUGE issue at at least one of the debates?

The first time the debates have been silent on climate since 1988.

Interesting.

But I can answer you Mr. Bolt, Obama health care is NOT about health for all, and Global Warming, is NOT about saving us from doom here on Earth. It’s all about control.

But  there is interesting news from Scientist in England!

A small British company has produced the first “petrol from air” using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour.

The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral.

Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, said: “It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. They are doing it and I’ve been up there myself and seen it. The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process. It’s a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well known principles. It uses well-known and well-established components but what is exciting is that they have put the whole thing together and shown that it can work.”

I am sure that the first few bars of the familiar song, “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” makes you cringe, but I just had to share with you something that popped up on my facebook. It seems that AccuWeather is calling for a snowy winter. You remember, the year and winter you’ve decided to come for Christmas?

Northeast cities from Baltimore to New York could be in for a snowy winter, according to AccuWeather forecasters.

The weather service’s winter 2012-2013 forecast calls for cold weather and large systems of moisture to converge, dumping above-average snow totals along the East Coast. The timing is expected to be in January and February.

El Nino, the global climate pattern expected to develop by the end of September, could contribute heavily, according to the forecast. It typically causes a strong southern branch of the jet stream across the country, which can often phase together with cold air and the northern branch of the jet stream around the mid-Atlantic, causing major winter storms.

If the right blocking occurs, when areas of high pressure settle over Canada or Greenland, forcing cold air down to the U.S., that can also contribute to a snowy winter. Moist systems need plenty of cold air to produce snow and not rain.

Normal snowfall in Baltimore is 20.2 inches in a season, on average. Last season fell far below that, at 1.8 inches, the least since 1972. The season before that was a bit below normal, at 14.4 inches, while the 2009-2010 season is by far the outlier for Baltimore, with 77 inches.

I guess don’t worry too much, they’ve been wrong before. They keep predicting horrible and many hurricanes due to global warming and that hasn’t happened either.

You’re loving and WARM wife. (Boz)
xoxox

you may like to know that I (finally) finished doing my (ooops our) kitchen floor.
You know, the one you started back in March by ripping up (whilst I was at work) 2 of those rather yuck tiles, that started out grey, but some had turned green and started to crack and break up, I dont think sticky vinyl tiles were meant to be stuck to a wooden floor that expands and contracts with the weather. Below are a few pics of the progress, the first 2 you are familiar with, as you took them.

vinyl tiles and glue

sanding the glue off

the glue is gone

The sanded floor free of glue and without the hideous yellow quarter rounds (what do I do about the door frames).
The sanding wasnt too hard, a bit scary as the machine seemed quite aggressive (and noisy) and took a bit of controlling.
The hard part was to let it down slowly as I walked, not “drop” it suddenly.
Sanding should be done with the grain, but to get the glue off initially I had to go diagonal. The other hard part was cleaning sticky sawdust off the sander.

The edge sander was harder to use though, not sure I got the hang of that one, in the end I did a bit of patching up using dads square orbital sander . There was a bit of hand sanding too in hard to get to areas.
I also didnt do the draw scraper thing, maybe I should of , but $40 ????

after one coat

first coat close up

oiling a jarrah floor

the colour changes with the light

The above pics are from various angles and times of day after one coat of oil.
I went with Livos Ardvos natural oil, rather than polyurethane. After some research and reading various woodworking and renovation forums I liked the idea of oil.
It soaks into the wood and hardens rather than sits on top as a plastic coating. It is also easy to repair (my kind of finish) with a light sanding and reoiling, plus I wasnt moving out of the house for a week until the poly fumes went away, this stuff has a light smell of linseed oil and so far it feels nice under my bare feet.

It is dead easy to apply too, no mixing parts A and B just a good stir, brush it on with one of those lambswool brush/mop things, leave it 20 minutes then wipe of the excess then leave it 24 hours between coats, although I did walk on it in as soon as it felt dry, wearing socks .

after 2 coats

After 2 coats, one more to go and a photo or two to go with it.

OK 3 coats of oil down, so I guess it is technically finished
some close up photos of parts of the floor to show the grain patterns.

There a few areas I am not happy with, especially with the nail holes where the wood putty didnt blend in as good as I hoped. I used 3 colours of putty, black, jarrah and a beige. Mixing them together to get different shades. Also after the first oiling dark lines appeared which I think are where the joins in the vinyl tiles were (they are the right distance apart), not sure what I could of done about those. Sanded more?
Anyway I am happy it looks a lot better than the vinyl tiles, now I dont want to put the furniture back in the room on my new floor lol.

close up

after 3 coats

3 coats of oil

with a bit of sunshine

close up

close up

close up

close up

what do you think?, worth the effort?

You know I’ve been sick.

So, today I spent the day in bed, and this program came on the television. Historic Barns of Maryland- I thought you’d like a preview:

its in my zazzle shop

wow that was close I missed the r out of shirt in the heading, that may have sent some odd and disappointed people my way
lol

the pictures are in the previous blog

this one is a K1000 camera photo, as close as I can get it to life size
it reads 1000 reasons to take photos

Pentax K1000 t shirt

Hyperfocal distance for a white or black tee shirt

11 hyperfocal distance

hyperfocal distance at f11

and a rather simple f stops t-shirt based on a Pentax 50mm f1.2 manual K mount lens, just for the fun of it

f1.2 to f22 or should it be f22 to f1.2

I am sure the last 3 will confuse some people lol
and imagine being able to explain hyperfocal distance, on you T shirt

hmmm seems they arent in the shop yet, I was to quick
I will let you know when they are in there, and post a link 

Thinking of going back the airport again tomorrow
especially if it is raining, to try and get some photos in the rain
plus I am hoping the planes will be coming from the South and therefore landing near the viewing platform rather than taking off
I havent got many landing photos, the last time I went we had to evacuate because of the fire
anyway I thought you might like a look where the platform is in relation to the runway
see the map below, its the red X

Top of the picture is North

The yellow road is Dunreath Road

I went back to take more photos of the planes at the airport
I had noticed on the net they were coming in from the opposite end
which meant i could get (hopefully) some photos of them coming in to land

however it didnt eventuate
instead there was a bushfire at the end of the runway with quite thick smoke at times
a couple of planes did manage to land while I was there and i got photos
but the real excitement was watching the helitankers dropping water on it to put it out
I got quiet a few photos and here are a few
I will post more as I do them in my gallery
the helitankers got really low over the flames
you would have to be game to fly them, plus the smoke got so thick that they disappeared in it at times

Perth airport fire 2012

Perth airport fire 2012

Perth airport fire 2012

Perth airport fire 2012

Perth airport fire 2012

We were all told to evacuate the area eventually
and it now sounds the fire got pretty bad