Beyond My Control

New things

It's always good to do new things. 

Today I did several things that I have never done before.

I called an ambulance.  In this case for one of my staff.

I went in an ambulance.  Thankfully as the accompanying person not the patient (if I never do that as a patient I'll be perfectly content).

I went to the emergency room for something that was a genuine emergency and went behind the curtain and was the accompanying person for a couple of hours until her husband could arrive from a business assignment in woop-woop.

I was introduced multiple times (and in a complimentary fashion) as someone's boss:  "This is my boss."  "This is my boss."

Now that I've done all of those things, I don't think I need to do any of them again, thanks.

As for the patient, she's now hopped up with pain killers and hopefully on the mend, which is good because in the office she went from "oh, you're not feeling well" to "good, you've made a doctors appointment for after work" to "I think you should go home now" to "I'm going to get in a cab and take you home now" to "I'm going to get in a cab and take you to the emergency room now" to "I'm calling an ambulance" in the space of less than half an hour.  The major lesson of which is "No one expects kidney stones".

I did take some photos of the full moon in the clear sky on the way home though.  I'll post them if they turned out okay.

Shoe-in

The results of the Great Shoe Clean-Up of 2009 are in.

The grand total of shoes owned pre-clean-up was a vaguely disappointing 92.  I'll admit I was kind of expecting to have broken the ton, but was not to be. 

And even less likely to be in the future as I have now thinned the ranks.

This is the group of automatic keepers:

49 in that group, plus 1 from the other group that was buried at the bottom of the pile so I didn't realise they were there until I sorted through the second group.  So, 50 automatic keepers.

This is the second group of nos and maybes:

43 in the photo, 42 in the pile after the boots referred to above were extracted. 

Do you notice a particular theme going on up there?  That in the keepers pile are a wide variety of colours, while in the maybe pile there's a lot of black.  It's mainly because the maybe pile contained a lot of old shoes from my early working life when I was (a) required to wear suits to work and wore more conservative shoes; (b) only just really getting into the shoe thing; and (c) poorer and therefore tended towards more practical everyday wear instead of shoes that wouldn't go with everything.  These days it's really rather rare for me to buy black shoes.  They bore me, really.

Anyway, those nos and maybes broke down into a few sub-groups:

11 that were broken or worn to death beyond repair

2 repaired unsatisfactorily

7 that never really fitted correctly or were otherwise rarely if ever worn

And the rest that were either just old, completely out of fashion, in need of a litle repair or forgotten about.

From this group of 42 I kept 12 pairs (including 3 to be repaired), threw away 17 pairs and am sending the rest to the op shop.

I was fairly, but not totally ruthless in the clean-out.  I kept my old cowboy boots that I wore to death through years of high school and uni and which have been re-heeled about 75 times, but which fit my feet like the proverbial glove.  The chances of me wearing them again are small, but it took so long to find them and I loved them so much there's no way I'm giving them up.  And I also kept my purple patent D&G shoes with the fluted heel even though one of the heels snapped in half a while back (after several years of wear, I must add) because they're still a lovely pair of shoes and it just doesn't feel right to get rid of them yet.  But aside from that it was toss, toss, give-away, give-away.

So I'm left with 62 pairs of shoes and boots.  Which don't all fit into the wardrobe neatly, unfortunately, though after the sort out I can at least find them all again and see what I actually have, which was becoming something of a problem before.

Still too many?  Don't be silly, there's no such thing provided they're not broken or worn to death.

My version of how many jelly beans in the jar?

Is how many shoes do I own before the big, years overdue, shoe clean out?  Go on, guess. 


In lieu of being able to tip the "jar" every which way to get an idea of mass, I give you this angle:



(I don't know the answer yet, will find out as I sort.) (Also, there was no photo-shopping involved (just regular shopping, obviously) so the weird optical illusion that those decade-old brogues that I'd forgotten I owned are hanging in mid-air is all natural.)

Tales From Taxiville – Volume 12

As I have mentioned numerous times before, I take a lot of taxis. 

Between being car-free, working in the city where I would never drive to work even if I was car-ful, and liking a drink, cabs are one of the three main ways I get around.  Feet, trams and cabs.

So I’m respectful of the cab driver.  They provide a service I value, and I know that they must have to put up with major amounts of crap from all sorts of horrible people, or regular people in borrible states (even, occasionally, me).  I’ll chat to them if they want to chat, I’m happier if they don’t.  I even went so far as to write down the name of that awful James Blunt song for the driver a couple of weeks ago who turned it up – instead of off like any self-respecting person – when it came on the radio because he’d been wanting so long to know what it was called and who sang it.  So, I am a generous soul.

Today, however, that generosity was called upon to a ridiculous extreme by not one, but two cab drivers.

I take taxis to meetings, between offices, home from friends’, home from dinner.  But more than anywhere else I take taxis to and from the airport.  I don’t expect taxi drivers here to be like they are in London with an encyclopaedic knowledge of every part of the city.  I do expect taxi drivers, even if it’s their first day on the job, to know how to find the bloody airport.

This morning’s driver needed directions to the airport. 

No only how to get on the freeway – which I could have forgiven even though you can practically see it from my house – but which exit to take to get off the freeway, which lane to be in to go to the departures section instead of the car park, and that no, stopping in front of the first class international check-in area was not in fact the Qantas Domestic terminal.  You know, the one with the giant sign on the front of the building saying “Qantas Domestic” right in front of you.

I have to add here that getting from my house to the airport is about as simple as it gets without me actually living on the freeway.  The directions are, literally, drive straight for about a minute, turn right on to the freeway, get off at the airport exit.  Even if you’re new to the country, or not that great with the language, or fundamentally lacking in any sense of direction, you should be able to do that on your own.  Especially given that there are pictures of planes right there on the signs showing you where to go!

Then, on arriving back tonight, the driver had almost as much trouble.  Leave airport, drive on freeway until exit “X”, turn left, drive straight until I say stop.  Easy.  Except I had to actually tell him where the exit was.  It’s a main road, idiot!

Mind you, at least neither of them was this guy.

The Local

Last night, after several months of recommendations, we finally checked out my Local.  My closest pub. 

As I have lived here for heading on for 5 years you would have thought that I, pub girl that I am, would have achieved this before now. 

But there are extenuating circumstances.

Mainly that my Local was, when I first moved into the neighbourhood, something of a biker bar with a reputed penchant for exposed breasts and the odd shooting or two.  Then it was closed for some time. 

Therefore my Local became the various pubs on Sydney Road which, for the most part, were slightly too long a walk to be a genuine drop in, round the corner pub.  And the other two pubs between my place and the Local had both been turned into apartment buildings, big and small.

But sometime back The Union reopened and word started to filter through of a good menu and a nice atmosphere.  Then more word came down of a large seasonal Specials menu and multiple vegetarian choices, which is handy when one's best friend has gone all unreasonably vego again.

Last night we finally got around to wandering up there to find a very busy pub with music playing and the footy on the TV and a big menu and a wait, but not an unpleasant one, to get a table, and the presence of a beer garden that was positively freezing yesterday but must be nice in summer.  And a noisy, happy, non-rowdy atmosphere, and Mountain Goat on tap and good food.  And it still looks like a pub instead of an over-renoed bar type thing, and there's still the grizzled old guy sitting at the bar drinking his beer and eating bangers and mash.  And no pokies and apparently, shock horror, live bands several nights a week.

And it's 5 minutes walk from home.

It proved a great start to a long weekend, and will be definitely be heading back.