Okay, I think I have now not blogged for long enough, that I can be let back onto the world . . .
Latest news . . . we had an AGM of the Briz Crowd this weekend. I'm not sure if Briz Crowd is still the appropriate name for it, but that's what it was. AGM sounds pretty good.
The Briz crowd are myself and three friends I met during the high school homeschooling days . . . they were all groomsmen at my wedding (and I've groomsed and MCed for two of theirs . . . we're still waiting for Josh to buy the ring).
Needless to say, it was an awesome weekend, with a lot of flack given to my driving skills . . . the old, "Who's put on the most weight?" question and a swapping of time-tested marriage tricks and tips. (e.g. "Mate, every time I take out the garbage, I just win brownie points plus." "Really? I'll have to try that one.")
All very exciting . . . Also . . .
My sister has challenged me to sing up for NaNoWriMo.
What? You haven't heard of NaNoWriMo?
National Novel Writing Month? Actually, it should be called InNoWriMo, because it's pretty international now . . .
The idea is simple . . . You sign up and between 1 November and 30 November, you write yourself a 50,000 word novel.
It's not that difficult, is it? You'll get a certificate of achievement if you actually pull it off, plus you'll be able to talk to lots of different people at the same time.
I'm debating . . . if I said yes, it'd be one of the all-time craziest things I've ever done.
If I said no . . . it'll be an ordinary old month . . . well, except for the Wagner, of course. (More about that coming soon on the Arts page . . .)
I wonder if I can combine the two?? What do you think? Should I do it?
For more info, go to ??
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Better yet, anybody want to take the plunge with me? What about you, Mr Dave E
It all started one fine Sunday afternoon...
What is IT you say? Well, IT is the incident of the "
Flaming Crepes".
Matthew R Hodge was being a wonderful, loving husband by offering to make us lunch. When he asked me what I wanted I said, "Ham & Cheese Crepes". And even though this gourmet sounding food (which I make relatively regularly) was daunting to him he said, "OK!"
I let him off the gourmet hook and told him there was a Greens Packet of pancake mix in the pantry and he went to turning the packet into crepes! (Well, done sweetheart!)
Anyway, this crepe mixture was sticking, scorching and being genrally cantakerous so the first crepe ended up being discared as a small heap of crepe fragments. Trying to get this lovely crepe out of the pan and onto the plate took some maneurving and one piece fell down into the stove tray.
Okay that's fine...happens all the time around here.
That is until Matt asks me to help so I'm standing there trying to get this crepe to cooperate when we smell this nasty burning smell. I lift up the fry-pan and what do I see but a small flame shooting up from the stove tray! That piece of crepe is burning!! We both watch it for a few seconds thinking it will burn out but NO the flame only grows larger and more insistent that it would like to burn down our kitchen....OH NO YOU DON'T YOU LITTLE FLAMING CREPE!!
I quickly grab a glass from the sink, fill it up with water and wildly throw the water onto the flame...with a sizzle the flaming crepe stops flaming and becomes the water-logged, blackened coal it should be. The water boils up rather quickly in such a heated environment and we can get back to the task of making lunch...
What a lovely lunch! :) Lol...it did taste nice although from now on we stick with our home-made crepe batter and leave the Greens Pancake Mix to grow mold in the pantry.
THE END
P.S. To those of you who like cooking I've recently posted a recipe for apple pie that doesn't use apples....check it out it does actually work!!
Well . . .
I spent most of Friday preparing my slides for the talk.
Got nervous on the way out there.
I had a set of the slides I'd printed out for myself, and I wrote down a whole stack of notes next to each slide to help myself while I talked through it.
Anyway, got out to this place at the Epping Club.
As soon as I walked in, I thought to myself, "Oh man, they're not going to want to pay us."
There was hardly anyone there!
Seating for 500 and they only had about 100 people there!!
John did predict this happening, but still. I felt a bit sorry for them.
Still, this is why we charge $2,000, so we don't go all the way out to these little things and find there's only a handful of people.
I had to wait till some woman from "The Garden Clinic" finished talking about gardens. Which is where we talk about clothing.
Now, I figured that a $2,000 an hour statistician would wear something along the lines of a suit. So I wore jacket, tie, trousers; I had a shave; Rachel helped me colour-coordinate everything (Thanks, baby!). I even risked the mortal embarrassment of travelling by train from Carlton to Epping wearing this outfit, even though on a Saturday afternoon, nobody is wearing anything at all like that.
This woman from "The Garden Clinic" is wearing a tight skirt, singlet top and thongs. Maybe it's the "I've been out in the garden all morning look." Anyway, I caught the tail end of that and learned a bit about water crystals. Half a teaspoon in the plant. Put too many and when it rains heavily, you have little volcanos all over your garden.
Oh, yeah, don't put tap water or ex-laundry water on plants or vegetables. It's bad. Really bad.
Speaking of bad, after a brief intermission where they showed some houses for sale (this was a real estate agency do after all), a bald guy came up and demonstrated yoga. While he was taking his shoes off, he told us all how yoga was a beautiful thing and how it made you feel really good.
He then proceeded to do some of the nastiest acrobatics I've seen in a long while. The splits was looking relatively mild compared to this guy's contortions. Bending in half, wrapping your legs behind your head, you name it, he did it. . . .
After that, there was a few more houses, and then yours truly.
I was nervous for about a minute into it. After that, it was really easy. And it was so dimly lit in there, I couldn't see my handwritten notes. So I just glanced at my overheads from time to time and made it all up. Turns out, I pretty much had memorised what I was going to say anyway.
Unfortunately, I was a bit late due to Weed Thong and Bendy Man going overtime (and then I took longer than expected, but hey, for $2,000, you want to do these things properly, right?), so at about 5.30, the lady from the real estate agency was getting kind of keen for me to wrap it up because at 5.30, they had to be out of the ballroom so The Greens could come in and celebrate another election loss.
I hung around, answered a few questions, and was out of there by 6.30.
I think I could do this again.
Thank you, God. (Thank you all those praying.)
Have you ever thought you should get better at public speaking?
Does the thought absolutely freak you out?
You might not want to read any further.
There was this real estate agent mob up at Epping that have been ringing us for the last two weeks because they wanted John (the boss, celebrity real estate guru, etc. etc.) to speak at some do they're having at the ballroom of the Epping Club. I haven't been to the EC myself, but it does sound rather like a posh establishment.
Anyway, we couldn't give them a straight answer because Mr Edwards (John's last name) was away in WA and didn't get back until Wednesday. Wednesday, he said he'd do it for $2,000. (He can't be bothered preparing speeches for less than that nowadays.)
Then the next day he actually asked when the date was. I said this Saturday. (The 9th.)
He said, "This Saturday?? I'm down in Melbourne for a seminar. You know . . ." [giving me a look] " . . . you could do it."
Now, what do you do if you're standing in front of the scary ride at the theme park? Do you wander back and forth all day working up the courage to do it? Or do you say, "Damn it . . . let's get it over and done with."
Yeah, yeah. I'm the latter. So I said, "All right."
So yours truly is now the $2,000 guest speaker at this function. Seating for 500, they said. Plus standing room, they said.
And they were narky about paying for $2,000 as well. "What am I getting for my $2,000?"
"Well," I'm explaining . . . "You're getting a professional property statistician from a respected property statistics company coming to talk to your crowd."
Ladies and gentlemen, if you can spare a prayer for Matthew Hodge, Mr $2,000-An-Hour Professional Property Statistician, that would be most appreciated.
Incidentally, there's $500 bucks in it for me, so I'm not just doing it for the fame.
Or the infamy.
Wonder if I'll pass out??
On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being talking to myself and 10 being asking Rachel's Dad for permission to go out with her, this is about a 9.5.
Let's do it.
I was up late last night cleaning up the house before Rach gets home.
Have you ever noticed, though, the crazy things you do when you're by yourself, though?
For no particular reason, I decided to tackle the special features on my
Wizard of Oz DVD. Now, I don't know whose idea it was over at Warner Bros, but they got together about six hours of audio material of all the different takes they did of the songs for
Wizard of Oz. So I left that on as background music.
"Number 2,021, take 8"
JUDY GARLAND: "Somewhere over the rain . . . " [cough, cough, cough]
"Number 2,021, take 9"
[Start again]
You get the idea. If you ever wondered what the Munchkins sounded like at normal speed, I can claim to have heard it. Better to have left them speeded up, I think.
I also decided to go through some of my old correspondence and throw old letters and Christmas cards out. However, some of them I couldn't bear to part with.
For instance, there' s a card given to me on my 21st that cheers when you open it. Even after all these years . . . I had to keep it.
Anyway, the house is cleaner, we're now hooked up to Optus ADSL (no more disconnections and slow internet to drive Rachel up the wall).
I'm seeing winged monkeys in my sleep, but that's not such an issue . . .
For those of you wondered where I was, I was in Melbourne. Rach's grandma turned 70, and so I went down to Melbourne for the weekend to join in the celebrations. Those celebrations consisted of a dinner up at the Cuckoo Restaurant in the Dandenongs.
So we all enjoyed a wild night of eating food (lots and lots of food), celebrating and being entertained by a bunch of guys putting on German accents and yodelling . . . and woodchopping . . . and doing that weird slapping dance that Bavarians do . . .
The rest of the time was spent lounging around the grandparents luxurious Rosebud house . . . with about a dozen other people as added background noise. It was very nice.
And now I'm back in Sydney, at work again . . .
