Made in Philippines.

When I fitted this new hard drive to my main computer last night I happily noted it was made in Philippines, I hope it's a sign of progress for them.

Olivia having fun.

We went to a community meeting to do with Sing Australia this morning and happily Olivia loved it, it gave her a chance to meet people and sing, here she's singing a little ditty. Jimmy doesn't really have the puff or the voice to do a half decent rendition of most their catalogue but at least one of us in in their element.

Here Colin Slater OAM who runs Sing Australia leads us in a song while Rita Phillips does a excellent job on the keyboard.

The leaders pose here for a group shot.

Times change.

I saw this sign today and immediately took a photo as the spelling error was quite obvious, a lovely lass working there was curious about it but had to check it against the spelling on a calendar in the stand before realising the whoopsie. I couldn't help but think of how our standards have changed over the years, in my days at school I failed English, with my spelling being abysmal, the word beautiful escaped my limited ability until about a decade post-school. I don't think the term fail is even used these days, and even in my time I had it very easy compared to my Grandparents' generation, they indeed had the training to go forth into the world.

Nearly done.

This morning I had the puff to thread the pipe that I'd cut, I'd used the board in the background to lever a bit of pressure under it to get it started, from then on it was just hard work.
Here I fitted a female union to it.

While threading the replacement section I noticed the camera, so naturally I smiled, a scary moment for Olivia.
All my old pants are extra loose on me these days so I put an elastic belt over them to avoid embarrassing disasters, It can't be seen here but I follow the fashion of the legendary Fred Astaire by wearing the buckle on my left hip, gee he had talent.

 Here it's in place waiting for a final tighten up but after that I'll leave it exposed for a while so I can check for leakage.

This may help me avoid a jail term but the work I've done is downstream of a tap. We live in such a regulated country that almost anything you can think of doing has a law preventing it, and we have generations now who won't even attempt to do so, even the word asbestos will have plenty cringing.

A difficult chore.

This pipe had corroded to the point it had started leaking a while ago. I had simply dug a bit of dirt away to get a bit of an idea about the job ahead and then merely removed it from service.
Today I decided to repair it because it's in a very useful position.

I figured the simple approach was to cut off the bad section.

Then dig away the ground around it to find where the fitting joins it.
My knees are old and have hurties so I sure appreciate having something to kneel on.

 This was the end of my day, I started to rethread the old pipe where I had cut it but quickly ran out of puff and called it quits for the day. this is going to be at least a two-parter, and a difficult one as I'll have to cut the replacement pipe pretty accurately and I don't have much wiggle room for it.

This label gave me a scare.

I was careful to avoid the light/lite offerings but when I got home reading that this supposedly normal ice-cream was reduced fat had me very wary, but I was relieved when the taste was still up to Coles pretty good own brand standard. I don't eat much ice-cream but as per most things in life I don't see the point in paying more for stuff that in most cases isn't even as good, the $4.26 this costs for 4 litres is a good sharp price.
People who know me would have no trouble believing that I always call the flavour napoleon.

Mount Fox or Mayon?

We drove up to have a look at the Australian mainland's mightiest volcano Mount Fox this morning, it was cold too in that rarefied atmosphere at 700 metres altitude.
Olivia's camera must have had memories of a great time a couple of years ago as keen eyes may notice something is rather odd it its viewfinder.

New flowers for Grace.

A cold but lovely sunny day today so we went to check out how Grace was doing and I put in some new purple flowers to give her a fresh look.

From what I've noticed so far a change of flowers 2-3 times a year is about right.
I still visit her grave monthly, and have to say the new Ingham cemetery is a lovely one.

Olivia's left foot is over Grace's new flowers.

Almost spring.

It's still too cold for my liking but for a change the sky is blue and our orchid is about to bloom.