Must be an non-local driver.

The local's usually turn in here from the centre lane, the left turn arrow lane being quite invisible to them.

Ouch.

Serves me right for doing something, naturally this splinter hurt even more to remove it but at least I think it came out clean.

Not so old this time.

Bought today, thanks to reductions like this I get to eat fancy food often enough.

A symbolic fridge find.

Old broken valentines lollies I'd long forgotten about.
"Kiss me quick" and "-smiling" a touch of sadness about it.

Hidden for years.

I found some stuff when transferring to the new fridge that was quite a surprise, from a shelf above my eyeline. The coffee tube dates back from Grace's travelling days and despite a use-by of 2007 I made a cup, but sadly because the taste wasn't doing wonders for me I abandoned it, now this hoarder will have to bravely build up the strength to dispose of it.

On the other hand the sardines were superb, though that may have been aided by the generous application of the salt ageing taste buds long for.

A replacement arrives.

Much smaller and simpler, also very pleasantly much quieter as well.

The interior lamp burnt out after about a minute of woeful service but since it's a Noah's ark style incandescent it's no big deal, I hate the things, their warm colour gives a very poor look to food, plus using extra power only leads to heat in a place that's trying to be cool.
I removed the nice LED one I had put in the old fridge freezer and pressed it into service here.
Tomorrow I'll shuffle the fridge into place.

Good luck boys.

The Crushers team bus leaving to go to Townsville for the Grand Final of the Townsville district Rugby League competition. I expect some noise tonight from the clubhouse, with luck it'll be fairly rowdy till near dawn.
EDIT: Happily the clubhouse should be a rocking tonight (again), Crushers 24-14 over Brothers, a very successful season.

A lovely sight.

On the way back from hunting a patch kit for the pushbike I spied this superb combo.
The HD Holden is 1965 vintage and I'd have to say the caravan would be at least as old.
Very tidy.

It won't hold pressure.

Annoyingly my pushbike has a puncture (or as I've seen written far too many times in this overeducated age, puncher). Hard to explain why, it has just split in the white circle, seemingly of its own accord.

Thinking sideways.

The switch on Cubby's tailgate hasn't worked since purchase but while I had the trim off to do the number plate lamps a week ago I had the idea of using a gravity switch, so ordered one and left the trim off until the job was done. Quite a simple job but still with a touch of fiddlyness. I made a bracket to mount it at a proper angle out of some scrap, painted it a cute colour and pop-riveted it in place.
Now the rear area is lit again when the tailgate is open, as well as the warning lamp on the dashboard working. I had played with the idea of an electronic solution but quiescent current is a no-no, also until I can find a Hyundai dealer who will accept orders on-line, buying genuine parts is quite awkward.
This is probably a modification that will not draw the ire of the law, we still have a few freedoms to personalise but nothing like free countries like the USA and 2nd and 3rd world countries, even old time communist countries would have way more freedom than we have, but our constitution doesn't really grant us any rights. Almost amusing in a sad way is for many years seeing what messes USA people can make of their vehicles and be road legal, if they were here then they would travel about 5 metres on one of our roads before being ordered off it, but many of those mods are very selfish, like removing mufflers in order to see how loud they can be (something also done here) and taking mudguards off old cars, perhaps to help their mate who's a windscreen fitter.
Happily though for us many things that can incur the wrath of the law are overlooked or at least advised to fix if you pass the roadside attitude test.

Boom!

My own fault of course but I had my first explosion since I began brewing ultra cheap Ginger Beer a few weeks ago. I've been bottling a bit green and relying on checking for over-pressurising by a squeeze test, but I had left it too long for this one. being able to squeeze plus not having to pick up fragments afterwards is why I won't use glass bottles, but I can report it made a thunderous noise when it yielded to pressure, maybe something akin to what the poor folk in Dresden copped 70 years ago, though since it was only one perhaps Hiroshima may be a closer comparison.
The bottles reside in the bathroom (a real one, not a quasi USA one) and sadly it scattered them, so now I've lost the order, but that's no big deal. A mopping and a hosing make for a fairly easy cleanup but the shock of losing a whole bottle has put me off drinking for a couple of days to compensate for the loss and waste.

End of days possibly.

Our supersize fridge has been emitting loud clicks for a long time which have been quite a mystery, yet also with no apparent ill health from them but the other day things were a bit warmer inside than they should have been but a system reboot seemed to cure that, however I have to think the time has come to pension the old dear off.
Fridges are more efficient now and I'm not going to need anywhere near as big a fridge as this now.
The door seal should be replaced (though is not split right through), and I no longer use the water dispenser.
The rust on the door is rather cosmetically poor.
Looking around a bit indicates a new fridge could pay for itself by reduced power bills in 5 years.
I shall get fairly serious about shopping for a new unit, though in this part of the world choice is very limited.

Not much demand for these here.

These would be much more popular 2000 km south of here but I suppose the store has to stock what's available.
I imagine many years ago some may have sold just so they could entertain by being plonked on a fencepost and shot at, but guns are a rare beast now and road signs at least must be pleased about that.

Looks better now.

The number plate has good visibility now.

So I soldered up the job fairly decently.

I must love doing these things.

Grommets that I ordered a week ago arrived today, in my mind I sort of figured a fix, hopefully it'll all be good. They were blank grommets so I had to cut a hole for the mount to fit through, of course drilling rubber is a proper pain so I was finally able to make use of the wad punches I bought a decade ago and made a lovely hole. You can see the old damaged fitting here, the heat from the old style incandescents would have weakened the plastic though to be fair in these times cubby is due to be melted down, but since it's working pretty well it'll have to wait a while.

The opening for the lamp is 15 mm and the grommets have a 13.9 mm fitting diameter, about as close to perfect as it needs to be. I put the white dot on to indicate the position of the LED, later I found I could see it fine through the glass so it isn't needed.

Now the sad part is I have to wait till nightfall so I can see the result before doing the work of wiring them properly. I removed the trim after having the misfortune of dropping a grommet when I was testing for fit, after much groping I removed the trim to get better access but after a long fruitless search including a hectare of ground surrounding the crime scene I happened to find it had dropped into my shirt pocket. The typical million to one shot that will happen whenever it isn't desired.

Cheaper now.

The USA grapes are down to a more reasonable price now, almost tempting in fact since they're good hearty looking black ones instead of the usual insipid green ones.

Green light.

I now have another green LED lamp out the front, green so I can find the place at night, we can't use red or blue so there's not a lot of other choices.

After a bit of searching I couldn't see a ready built lamp that was suitable as I needed the light to shine sideways in one direction, so I made one up using a mixture of salvaged and new parts.

Now this little beauty uses 3 Watts of power to do a nicer job than the old 20 Watt CFL.
I will have to do something about the rusty glass holder very soon though.

Possibly our new PM's house.

When I saw Tony Abbott with his pushbike on TV I noted his house number was the same as ours, that sprung me into curiosity mode, and had me wandering the streets around his electorate (yet he's just outside the boundary now since it shifted), after thinking I'd found it earlier, finding it was wrong only made me try harder. It's a good house and he must love it but in a few years those stairs will become a burden, sadly they had become a major burden for Grace.
He claims to never having been rich, I find that easy to believe, a mortgage on this lovely house would ensure that.

We have a new Prime Minister.

The Milky Bar Kid is gone, lets hope we have some stability again.

Voting day.

I went for my longest drive so far this year when after popping in to see how Grace was doing I drove out to the fairly quiet locale at Macknade to vote.
24 solar panels on the roof, I suppose with the added cost of an inverter it's worth about $5,000, so I suppose the taxpayer coughed up $50,000+ for it and the contractor who did the job is still smiling.
These are the three main candidates with the hat in the middle being our famous and long term member.
Here's hoping tonight ends up a good night though it's off to a bad start with the Cowboys game clashing with the vote count, hopefully that'll be the only bleak part of the night.
Voting is compulsory here and naturally failure has a heavy penalty, I'm not sure if the Mikado is correct but he may be close, " I think boiling oil occurs in it, but I'm not sure. I know it's something humorous, but lingering, with either boiling oil or melted lead." 
Though now that the country is broke a $60 fine might suffice.

Grace's red and yellow flowers look nice and neat.
Talking of bleak the weather for the last couple of days has been a bit horrid, I hope that isn't an omen.
P.S Happy birthday to Rhonda.

Philippine Pineapple.

At 75 cents I had to grab it.

The yeast I'm using is quite old.

I noticed this when I did another batch yesterday.
Just as well it lives in the freezer as it still works fine.

Another task to do.

The RH number plate light isn't illuminating properly, I'll have to fix it soon.

Mango season has started.

From the Northern Territory, ours are still a while from being ready. Not my favourite fruit, we have a couple of trees in the yard but the birds get all of them.

I suppose it impresses some.

In reality the reason ancient people ate ancient food was because they didn't have a choice.
There would have to be massive discounts for me to buy things from the health food aisle, the ongoing promotion of trendy foods for many years has always left me cold, but then I couldn't really name any song released in the last 35 years either.

I'm tinkering a fair bit these days.

I wired up a camera charger to run off the solar powered 12V line I put in the house to run some things. The yellow thing the switch is mounted to is just an old peanut butter lid. It'll probably never save enough power to cover the cost of the switch but may be handy when we have our next blackout.