More non-news on the road progress.

We got this flyer in the mail a couple of weeks ago but got another dose of annoyance so just put it away. Anyway here's a scan of it to show that in the last six months of waiting they've made no real progress.

Come on EBC, our lives are on hold and you're killing everyone on Fairford Road, just hang us or pardon us but don't keep us waiting on death row forever.

Still toiling away.

The Sunbirds are still working hard at having the nest up and ready, I think the male is doing his fair share of the work too, here he puts another bit of fluffy white stuff into the nest.

Merry Xmas all.

I did a little trip up town this morning to see how quiet it'd be but turned around when the chap ahead of me lit up to satisfy his drug addiction. Not everything was closed, one of the filling stations was open, and the video hire place will open this afternoon. Ingham must be changing as many businesses will re-open early in January.

I had a bad setting on the camera which I hadn't noticed so my pictures were a poor crop this morning but the fountain was interesting as it had red foamy water in it.

More bling.

I've just stuck another fancy thing out the front. I'll take Santa away tomorrow, it looks like he's already brought us plenty, but he may add a bit more cheer to passers by tonight.

Quiet.

I slipped up the street this morning to have some blood drained for tests, took a few piccies so I may as well post something.

Nothing much to look at here but at least it shows the fuel price.

This makes things awkward.

A sunbird has decided to make a nest on our xmas lights. Unless they're real fast breeders I won't be able to take that string of lights down on the 6th of January, at least I can still turn it off then though.

Good stuff.

We met our old friends John and Theresa for the first time on the weekend, where they're from will become screechingly obvious from looking at the lovely presents they gave us.

We tried the beers last night and gave them all the big thumbs up, so much so the XXXX we washed them down with afterwards was a disappointment. I'd fancy the Coors light which at 4% alcohol is between our light and full strength could become very popular here if promoted. It went down very easy in our climate. Molson's had more hops and the Jockey Club was a fuller maltier type again but still a cleaner less bodied tipple than the XXXX. Maybe it's time we addressed our brews.

I'll give the Screech a try soon when i'm in the mood to lose control of my speech.
Very impressed by it having a plastic bottle, it just makes sense.

End of the road.

This morning my last Grandparent died, my Dad's mother Betty who was just two months short of 100.
This is my last photo of her, taken at her nursing home in May 2008.
I never really knew her but she had a good run.

I found why Tru had a rear end clunk.

Her rear shackle bushes were quite knackered, so was I after doing the job, even though it's not difficult.

Cheapskate.

I noticed the other day that the old cheap can of 'ocean blue' spray paint I had was pretty close to Tru's 'shockwave' so I used a bit of it yesterday to touch up some stone chips on her bonnet. It may not be spot on but it's better than white undercoat.
Good enough for me anyway.
BTW I sprayed the paint into a little container and applied with a paintbrush to try to keep it tidy.

How it's done.

In case anybody's curious how you put these whizzbang alternators back together, that's why they put a little hole behind them. You push the brushes back, an allen key is very useful for that, I didn't want to dirty one of my good metric ones so used an otherwise useless imperial one for the job. At the same time you push a something thin (I used a 2mm drill bit) down the little hole and past the brushes one at a time. With the brushes held back it's a rather simple job to whack the alternator back together again.

Alternator

Today I inspected Tru's alternator to see how her brush wear was going. Not bad but they're worn past the fitting holes so i've ordered new ones.
While I had it apart the used 'low mileage' alternator that I ordered a week ago for a spare finally arrived and upon inspection had as much wear as Tru's 190,000 km one has, hardly what I'd call 'low mileage', it looks like it'd had a power steering fluid bath as well, yuck.

Blu-ray desert.

It's pert near the end of 2009, Ingham has two video hire shops (shown here) and a fair few DVD retailers yet if we want to buy or hire a blu-ray movie we either have to drive to Townsville or order online.
Even Target embarrassed themselves the other week by advertising a blu-ray movie that was never in danger of being transported here.

Right way up.

This plant in town got my interest today, In the centre there's a linking branch between the two staghorns. I dunno how it grew sideways like that, it helps to make it look like I've turned the shot sideways but I haven't.

More power for Tru.

I fitted an accessory power socket behind the driver's seat today, for a gadget dabbler like me they can be very useful.
It's always on so probably illegal in our nanny country but it's protected with an overload breaker from a junked jump starter that was fitted from new with a battery that had a cracked case. Little wonder it was useless, so at least I'm getting a bit of use from it now.

Not so pretty from the rear.

Our Xmas tree is a mess from the rear but at least it looks good from the front.
It only takes a few seconds to hang it from its clip over the window every year too.

GPS mount.

Quite a head scratcher working out how to mount the GPS in Tru.
I decided to unclip the top plate over the centre console and sit a lump of wood in its place which the GPSes are screwed to.
At least it's all of about 10 seconds work to remove them and make the car look standard again.

Finally the sun goes down,

And the lights look much fancier now.
Quite obvious from a couple of hundred metres down the road too.

December begins and...

It's time to put up some pretty do-dads.

I'll sort out the wiring a bit better later, but it should bring a bit of cheer to evening travelers.