Aussie Readers discussion

Well that sounds like fun, can I join you?

Partying really doesn't start until I get home from work and my daughter home from school. As she will on her own this week, I have organised to leave work early each day so she won't be on her own too long. Yippee.

My daughter got an 'A' in her 3rd Grade piano exam. She was over the moon. :)

Fantastic news Gail ... time to party now :)

I should lift the lid on the upright piano we have here and start trying to make noise... but I'll wait till Elita has left the house first :D

Did you learn to play? I never did, since my kids have been learning I have been tinkering. It was always something I wanted to do when I was young but never had the opportunity. (My kids are suffering the consequence)

Gail,

No, I never learned. I did always -want- to learn but time and life escaped me on that. I also suspect I don't quite have the tenacity to be a player. Sure, I can touch type well enough but that's only because I've been doing it the last 30 years and there's a backspace button on the keyboard that gets abused a lot [ can't imagine what a backspace would look like on the Piano :D ].

Sometimes when Elita goes out I find myself sorely tempted to just 'let loose' on the piano and unleash the artistic deamon within... I think I've been watching too many movies like "The Matrix".

Paul.

It's like anything you need a goal and a lot of repetition to make it sound effortless. :)

My mum is just learning to play the piano for the first time at age 71! I think she's pretty cool.:)

Wow that is cool. It's a wonderful thing to do. I have been surprised how much I have learned just from following what the kids are doing.

Gail,

Just avoid the "eating mudcakes" - I don't think that's a good thing to learn from the kids... though CHOCOLATE mudcake is a different story :D

LOL, thankfully the kids are passed eating mudcakes.

I'm hoping to get some writing done tonight - my other half is watching the Brownlow and complaining loudly that there is too much attention paid to the women when it's supposed to be about the footy players...at least he doesn't expect me to watch it with him!

I knew there was a benefit to having the boys away this week. No brownlow on the TV for me this evening. Good luck with your writing. :)

Good luck with the writing Amber! I often wonder about the spouses of writers of very Alpha heroes! Do you model your heroes on your partners or are they the complete opposite?

I don't know about Amber but after nearly 20 years of marriage I'm all for re-writing the story book. (just don't tell the other half)

Elita sadly intertwines some of my traits with her characters, when she did Deacon in Tree of Life she enjoyed taunting me a lot about various similarities - it mostly taunted me because I know there's a bit of Garret Hedlund in there and I hate him.... I swear she'd taunt me just to get me all riled up :(

Congratulations to your daughter Gail, but being an ex removalist I not very partial to pianos.

Voices

Electric activity in dark corridors
Racing deep within my mind
Knowing I shouldn’t do this

Echoing Voices say, Do it! Do it!

Sweat oozing from my forehead
Vessels pumping, pushing blood through veins
Heated brain feels like exploding

Haunting voices say, Do it! Do it!

Moving forward every muscle straining
Can’t stop, what’s started must be finished
Satisfaction must be finally achieved

Persistent voices say, Do it! Do it!

Why do I do this, hurts so much
Day in day out, why can’t I stop
Thinking of those who need me

Amplified voices say, Do it! Do it!



WHY! WHY! I ask




Why do people need bloody piano’s

S
R
I
A
T
S
P
U



David J Delaney
30/04/2008

To Paul: just refer back to this she might taunt you but this is what she really thinks. With the help of my stunningly gorgeous, amazing husband

David wrote: "Congratulations to your daughter Gail, but being an ex removalist I not very partial to pianos.
..."

You would have no problems with ours David. We have an electronic version. Nice and light. Though she does have her eye on a grand piano...that's for when we win lotto. :) Thanks for the poem.

David, ours is one of those old, upright, cast-iron-frame types. I had to move it about 30cm on the carpet recently, I did NOT enjoy that (what's really annoying is the castors don't even work - I mean really, 20mm castors on a several-hundred-kilo beast!)

Gail, maybe she wrote that to keep me under control ;)

You know Aramis, I though she wrote it to make us all jealous. ;)

Paul wrote: "David, ours is one of those old, upright, cast-iron-frame types."

That's a good thing. If it was a half-wooden frame I imagine it'd never hold a tune up your end of the continent.

Mark,

The internals are cast-iron, surrounded by a wooden shell. It has to be retuned quite often, despite keeping it on an interior wall and such. We have to put a container of water on the inside of it to stop it drying out so much in winter after it absorbs all the moisture in summer. ... as you can imagine, we tend to just let it go out of tune :p

Paul, you're a man who's clearly not afraid of a little DIY and has at least some mechanical aptitude - so I respectfully submit this and this for your consideration. You might be able to stretch out the time between tunings, and there's even a good chance you won't kill Elita's piano :-)

I didn't mind those electric ones eh! Gail (-: I remember we had to deliver a baby grand to a block of units & of course the piano had to go to the top floor & because 99% of the time, due to the design of stairs/stair wells, only 2 can fit in the delivery of these, so with straps on & around the piano, my offsider & myself climbed 6 flights of stairs. Remember almost all times there was not just the piano, one still had the furniture etc. to go as well.

Mark,

Maybe I can make it my new career ... should be interesting considering my hearing loss :)

Paul.

It's World Car Free Day tomorrow the 22nd September!

:( Bummer. Normally I don't need my car mid week as I catch the train to work. Tomorrow because the husband is away I have to take my daughter to dance class. It can't be done without a car.

Couldn't sleep last night, so here I am at 11am just waking up and getting my first cup of Satan's broth.

How's everyone else holding up today?

Lovely Wednesday up here in FNQ, overcast (Neither Elita or myself have an excessive fondness for the Day-star).

Paul.

Paul wrote: "(Neither Elita or myself have an excessive fondness for the Day-star)"

Quickly, Igor, my stake! :D

All is well in Sydney, it's overcast here too. I would like it to be warmer though. Get that coffee into you then come in here and have a chat.

Hello Gail and Mark,


It's been a busy week up here for us - a lot of marketing, push push push push... and push. It does seem to be paying off though, we've managed to elevate our visitor count (per day) quite a substantial amount. We were also lucky that Google Adwords sent a 'free' $75 voucher for us to use - very well timed.

I should be at the other end of the house right now working on my electronics business - a large order has come through and the clients have paid already. Doing the electronics work isn't a lot of fun, it's a repetitive, boring business unless you're actually designing new things. Consider it like having to retype a book every time someone buys one. :( Still, it does bring in the money :)

Oh, I still can't paint the house :p

Paul.

Paul wrote: "We were also lucky that Google Adwords sent a 'free' $75 voucher for us to use - very well timed."

Ah, webmaster heroin - "The first taste is always on the house". Careful with that, it's easy to get carried away.

edit: I'll need to be careful too, as they've just e-mailed me an offer of some free on-line training aimed at getting small businesses up to speed with adwords.

LOL. Oh Mark you are on fire today. Now we have heroin addicted Vampires running lose in Aussie Reads today.

Gail "cyborg" wrote: "LOL. Oh Mark you are on fire today. Now we have heroin addicted Vampires running lose in Aussie Reads today."

I'll have to ask Joanne Valiukas if her living ones could get hooked; the undead ones wouldn't, as they don't ingest anything except blood (unless they're shifted, in which case they hunt and east just like the creature they shift into). She's done some cruel and unusual things to some of her poor characters, but I don't think drug addiction is on the list... yet. Unless you count the drinking and smoking in a group of genetic-diversity-challenged living vamps in her unpublished stuff...

Mark wrote: "Ah, webmaster heroin - "The first taste is always on the house". Careful with that, ..."

Fortunately for us I've been on AdWords for a few years now, mostly for pushing my electronics/aircraft/software (and AdSense - nice way of paying the monthly colo bill) when the money runs out I just put the campaign to sleep. Nice thing is I've noticed that AdWords can now be done on a prepaid scheme rather than post-paid only.

Beautiful day here in Perth. Forecast:27. How easy it is to spend all morning on Goodreads instead of cleaning up every last crumb so the ants don't come in again!

Jan wrote: "...instead of cleaning up every last crumb so the ants don't come in again!"

You need a dog, Jan, and you need to keep it hungry.

But then you always need to get someone to look after it when you go away. Going to Melbourne in October for the Sing Australia national gathering. Anyone else here part of Sing Australia?

We just let the ants take over the place - they do the cleaning up for us ;)

The ants do a good job at my house. :D

Paul, Gail, do you have an echidna too?

I love that ad. Echidnas have been spotted in the area!!! :)

The only ants I don't recommend are termites (okay, they're not really 'ants'). I erected a new partition wall in the house a while ago and within 2 weeks the blighters had raced through and chewed out a moderate portion of the sole-plate :( Probably my fault for using radiata pine - it's like sugar to them.

Treated concrete floors here and walls internal and external are brick as termites are a big problem in W.A. But I believe the presence of regular ants helps keep termites away.

Ok, I'm sorry to push my book on all of you again but my publisher has just made up a book trailer to go on YouTube, and I was wondering if anyone would be interested in having a look...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cTESt...
It's a different interpretation of the story, but I quite like it... Again, sorry to plug it! :-)

TGIF!!!!

Wah Hoo!!!!!

Poets day...

Mark wrote: "Poets day..."

Is this official? Where did you hear about it?

Jan wrote: "Mark wrote: "Poets day..."

Is this official? Where did you hear about it?"

I think POETS day is a cheeky acronym for the last day of the working week Jan. If I recall it's 'P*ss off early, tomorrow's Saturday'!! In an earlier post we were talking about TGIF (thank God it's friday);)