Mini wildlife

As I was walking back to my car after work on Tuesday afternoon I spotted this little fellow sunning itself on the edge of the driveway. I was carrying a backpack and a guitar case and didn't much like my chances of getting my camera out without disturbing him but much to my surprise I did manage it.

Baby Eastern Water Dragon

It was about the length of my hand from wrist to finger-tip and those tiny delicate toes were just beautiful.

Right after I captured a one-last-shot it decided it'd had enough of the big creature leaning over it and did an astonishingly high speed scurry off into the garden. And I continued on to my car with a smile on my face, gorgeous reptiles in my everyday spaces never fail to uplift me.

More pics on Flickr

Sundays in My City - Happy birthday Adam!

Hosted by Unknown Mami

Today was Adam's 42nd birthday. The day began with the obligatory breakfast and presents in bed and then on to some slight silliness with Christmas tree decorating. Caitlin asked Adam to put an angel on the top of the tree. So he did.

The Angel on top of our tree

He doesn't look too pleased!

The middle part of the day was less than wonderful, but we'll skip over that, other than to mention that Adam had to go to his mum's place (who was oblivious to it being his birthday) and fix her toilet.

By late afternoon we had regained some equanimity, and Adam and Tom had made 12 bottles of ginger beer and 6 bottles of lemonade for our Christmas party next weekend. Then we headed off to Darling Harbour for dinner at Jordon's - the plan being to indulge in a seafood platter and a bottle of sav blanc. The order was duly placed, along with a few extras, and we began playing with Adam's new toy - a Canon Powershot S95. Most of the following photos were taken from our table in the restaurant.

The Christmas tree at Darling Harbour

Caitlin

Me with my very indulgent cosmopolitan

Tom

Darling Harbour, looking towards Pyrmont Bridge - the world's oldest surviving electrically operated swingspan bridge.

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Darling Harbour looking towards the Imax theatre.

People gathering to watch the street theatre and carols.

We were too busy eating to think of photographing the food until after we were fed. At which point fun was had with the crab shells.

The seafood platters on their tall stands were very tempting to the local seagull population. Several chips and scraps of fish were liberated from people's platters around us. One couple were given a water pistol by a waiter to defend their meal with! Our kids wanted to be armed as well but we were left alone by the birds for some reason, I think they knew we were watching them.

My dessert defeated me in the end, I couldn't finish the last few bites. But I did drink the muscat!

The birthday boy

The sun set as we sipped our coffee and the city lights came up

Time to go home!

(Arachnophobes beware, the last two photos, which come after this shot of the Christmas tree, are of a huntsman spider.)

There was an unwelcome visitor waiting for us when we got home, eviction duties fall to me in these cases.

Only a little specimen this time.

And there you have it, my Sunday in my city.

Head on over to Unknown Mami's place to visit more Sunday in My City bloggers!

Friday Fragments

Hosted by Mrs4444.

I'm doing a blog giveaway over this weekend, one lucky reader will be getting a parcel with lots of goodies in it: 2 pairs of Christmas earrings, a copy of one of my favourite picture books, a travel version of Connect Four, some yummy chocolate and a scrumptious scented candle. Click through for details and to enter.

On Monday Adam did canteen duty at the primary school, it was Dads Do Lunch Day and Christmas was the theme. So he got dressed up. It was a big hit and a whole bunch of kids even asked for his autograph - he signed the inside of their hats "Santa" with a smiley face wearing a Santa hat. When the kids asked where his elves were he pointed at our Canteen supervisor and said "There she is." So then she had to sign their hats too, as "The Elf."

If you look closely you can see that Adam was an expendable Santa.

This morning I went into Caitlin's room to see how she was going getting ready for school. We had to leave early as there was a dress rehearsal for the school dance group on at 7:45am. She'd just finished getting dressed and was shrugging on her denim jacket when movement caught my eye and I looked down to see a large-ish (about 1.5cm) black house spider running up her jeans leg past her knee and heading further north. I was rather surprised to find myself not hesitating at all to reach out and brush it off with my bare hand.

They're poisonous but not deadly, if you want to see what one looks like there's a very good shot here on Flickr. We have them all over the outside of the house, I think this one probably got in through the damaged flyscreen on the sliding door leading from Caitlin's bedroom to the back deck. Fixing of flyscreens is going on the to do list for the weekend.

Need something to read while you sit in front of the air-conditioner/fan/fire (depending on your location and climate!)? This looks like it's worth checking out:

December Lights Project

We love short stories.
We love writing them, and we love reading them. But most of all, we love sharing them.
At this time of year - as the sky goes dark by 4.30 pm in Wales, where we live, and the cold wraps around us, chilling to the bone - what we really want more than anything else are stories that make us laugh and feel good about the world.
So we thought we'd gather some, and share them with with you, as our December Lights Project.
You can read the stories here.

Don't forget to head on over to Half-Past Kissin' Time for more Friday Fragments!

Tuesday tidbits

Please excuse this pseudo post for I am tired and do not have anything of substance in me tonight.

I've started using my Tumblr account, I think I've figured out where it fits for me, it's Twitpic and Facebook sharing and the stuff that ends up spread over multiple tweets all bundled in together in the one spot. Or something. Anyhoo, I'm mimbles there too.

Remember the cranberry and macadamia chocolate I made on Friday that I said wasn't very photogenic? I lied. Once it was cut up it photographed just fine.

No, you can't have any, we ate it all.

And in conclusion, I'd like to say - aren't kookaburras awesome?

Friday Fragments

Hosted by Mrs4444.

It's been a while since I did a Friday Fragments post and I've missed them! So here I am back again with the bits and pieces that have been rattling around in my head just waiting to be thrown together in a tossed thought salad and shared with all you lovely bloggy people out there.

I was pulled up at lights behind a cement mixer one morning and found myself reading a sign on the back of the truck that began like this:

"Attention Please!

Our drivers are instructed to leave the site immediately if they are subjected to verbal abuse or physically threatened in any way."

It makes me really sad that people have to work in environments that make a company feel it necessary to adopt something like that as an official policy.

On Wednesday I went out for dinner with friends I met when I joined a local mothers group after Tom was born. It was quite a large group to begin with but over time it settled down into a group of four of us who still occasionally get together. Very occasionally now as one of us went and moved to Italy! Anyway, Cathy was here in Sydney for a holiday and we seized the moment. I went to pick Cathy and Malyn up from Malyn's house. I was wearing a red t-shirt, Cathy came to the door wearing a red top too (identical shade even), I laughed and said "We match!" Then Malyn came to the door wearing, go on, guess...a red t-shirt. When we met up with Romaine at the restaurant she protested "Why didn't anyone tell me we were wearing red?"

We had a scrumptious Thai meal and talked till we got chucked out of the restaurant. I do not see these people nearly often enough and I completely failed to get a photo :-(

I blame the photo forgetfulness on the ear infection. I blame the ear infection on the weather but I'm counting my lucky stars because for once I did not get the ear infection whilst on a dark ages camping trip. No, this time it waited till we came home from the trip.

The trip in question being Beorgwic, which was wet and awesome as usual. Deb and I taught a glass bead making workshop, Adam helped out with the blacksmithing workshops, the kids played with fire all weekend and we ate and drank and talked and had a fabulous time.

Clara came too this year and had an absolute ball bolting all over the camp with her new bestest friend ever, a cattle dog named Ohana. When she wasn't bolting all over the camp and stealing people's breakfasts she was hiding in the tent from all that horrible wet stuff that kept falling from the sky.

"I'm not moving till you make the rain go away."

There's currently a very large huntsman spider living in my bedroom, probably behind the bookshelves. I know this because when my ear woke me in excruciating agony at 3am a few nights ago I saw it crawling across the ceiling towards me. I poked Adam and pointed at the spider. He rolled over and mumbled "kill it?" Now, I do not condone the killing of innocent arachnids and this one had not yet trespassed beyond the point of no return (ie, it wasn't actually in bed with us) so I considered the disruption to sleep that would be involved in trying to catch it and put it outside and decided that if I hadn't been woken by my ear I'd never have known it was there and that therefore the logical thing to do was turn off the light, close my eyes and pretend it wasn't happening. So I did. Well, I turned off the light and watched in the glow of the clock radio as it continued across the ceiling. I held my breath for a while then breathed again as it veered off to the left and went behind the bookshelf. THEN I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. I presume it's still in there somewhere.

In the morning I described the spider on Facebook as being a little smaller than my hand, Adam commented to assure me that it had in fact been somewhat larger than that. He's so helpful.

Caitlin's bedroom is all done aside from getting the new built-in wardrobe installed.

I actually got a bit dressed up to go out for Caitlin's 12th birthday party, we took 5 of her friends to teppanyaki for dinner. Then brought them back for pinata bashing, ice-cream cake eating and general running around like a bunch of 12 year olds hyped up on sugar before they settled down to watch Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. Which they seemed to rather like. My work here is done, mwhahahahahahahahahaaaaa *ahem*

Outfit of the DayWeekMonth?

Dress and cardi - Sara

Tights - We Love Colors

Shoes - Colorado

Necklace - Made by Mim :-) 

And last but not least, the Fuckh8 campaign video (NSFW!)


FCKH8.com Straight Talk About Gay Marriage from FCKH8.com on Vimeo.

Now, off you go to visit Mrs 4444 at Half-Past Kissin' Time to check out all the other Friday Fragments posts!

Well, hello there poss!

This evening when I came home, after dropping Tom at his drama class and then dashing up to the shops to grab some groceries, I pulled into the driveway and in the process transfixed in my headlights a dumpy little ball of fluff that was about to venture up and over our roof. It was no doubt heading for the back deck in the hope that the birds had been fed today and that there might be some leftover apple cores to clean up. Apparently the thought of braving that vast expanse of tile while being watched was too much for it and it headed back into the branches of the tree that overhangs our front deck instead.

It then stayed perched above the front door while I brought in the groceries, took a series of blurry dark photos with my phone - flash going off in its eyes all the while, rummaged around looking for Tom's camera, turned lights on and off, and eventually came back to subject the poor creature to even more blinding flashes in order to get these photos.

Ringtail possum

Let's see if we can get a bit closer

Must you keep pointing that thing at me?!

Maybe if I sit verrry still she'll go away...

I should probably go and put some apple out by way of apology.