Springtime in the suthern hemi

Some things I love about Australia
1. The plugs are smarter, and all have on/off switches
2. There are 4 traffic lights per intersection (compensation for the liberal use of yellow?)
3. Roundabouts are fun and add exciting uncertainty to the daily commute
4. My favorite bird lives here (Rainbow Lorikeet) and eats outside my window
5. Its so sunny and beachy
6. You can split lanes on a motorcycle
7. MotoGP is coming in October (and I'm going)
8. The casual diving is fantastic and semi-tropical
9. Downtown is full of nice old buildings, and I work in one of them
10. Summer is coming and we won't need wetsuits to go swimming for the next 5 months

I saw a golfer loose his golf bag on wheels down the slope outside our kitchen window this morning. The grass was so smooth it didn't even tip over. Just kept on a roll'in in the true springtime way.


I recently dove Botany Bay NP south of Sydney - It's an amazing dive that is 1/4 treacherous, 1/2 beautiful and 1/4 dynamic. It's dynamic because you start out flying in a deep boulder field after you jump in off a ledge that varies from 4' to 10' off the water depending on the tides. Then as you swim out there are short kelp beds the home the Weedy Sea Dragon, the motivator of this dive (no luck there) - after a ways out you're in 30' of water and the kelp gives way to a bald ledge covered in colorful sponges, not afraid of heights as the ledge drops off another 30' down to 60' with excellent light even in low-vis conditions (seattlite speaking).

This is the sponge garden at the end of the kelp, and a seaslug living there:




As I dropped over the ledge I exhaled to exaggerate my descent and have an overview of the wall, which was so exciting I had to equilibriate myself back up it to pick off these shots of all the small life struggling in the muck.




When I landed on the sand at the bottom of the wall I saw a writhing mass of Pajama catfish. I followed them across the sand at their slow, edibly-cautious pace. Waves of data traveled across the encima (no better word in english) in a time-tested struggle to be in the middle of the bait-ball.

Another pair of the ever-interesting cuttlefish came my way (then reversed tack) and I got a nice vid of one mimicking a white sponge, meticulously adopting the same black "holes" as it passed over.

This post is dedicated to Einer, Bart (no dragons this time) Selz, and my SeaLife DC1000 camera.

♫ Back home again, in Aust-u-ralia...

Firstly - go see Ponyo - really good new movie.

It's nice to be back. I've been settling in for the last few weeks getting used to the new job, fine weather, the ocean, Karin and my motorcycle. Today I went for my second dive in Australia.

Not feeling so witty - these pics are better.


Cuttlefish cammo.

Sea slugs!!


^ Click this one it's worth it.

I was less afraid of seeing sharks this time and naturally saw one. Actually most of the sharks around here don't even have teeth, they just rasp their food I guess.




Bonus 2-in-1 post! We went to Barrington Tops NP recently and car camped.


Native Orchids in Barrington Tops NP. Not flowering yet.



A brush turkey.


A Funnel-Web! Deadly spider.
I tried to coax it out with kind words.

The house back home was pretty stressful and we got it done and renters in place an hour before I left for my flight back here. Finished pics to come. New job's going great. Couldn't be happier. I've been working on curved pipe elements.

Home base

Progress on the house is good. I'm buying a paint sprayer tomorrow to just get it done. All of the appliances needed major work and we put in a new furnace today. It was such a relief to see it fire up and work with my old thermostat because it was used and all the wires had been cut. The oven took some tinkering. Unshielded sparker wires actually loose power by induction if they are too close to metal. The fridge is just dead. The water heater and furnace are also dead from basement flooding.

Oh and I fixed the doorbell, which is sweet because I hadn't heard it since I was about 7.


This is me as a toddler. That's my mom.


Our attic yielded some treasures, including my old clothes and a few old toys I really loved. I've kept all the good bits for whenever we have kids.


My sister just showed up to help out for the last week. More finished house pictures to come soon.

Also, today my truck made a distinct 'ping' sound, and started running way better.

Bloomington House

I've been working hard to get my house back in shape to rent out.

I showed up expecting to use my dad's Toyota truck, but it had a blown clutch. So I had to replace that first.
That took a day and a half, which is less than half the time it took me to do the last truck clutch in my old pickup.
I can't wait until electric cars come along and we can stop wrenching.








The house is pretty much covered in Virginia Creeper. Scraping off the old paint is the worst task on the whole job. Unfortunately I've become the black belt paint scraper.



We have a very old furnace. It was originally designed to burn coal or wood or whatever you want, like Freddy Kruger gloves. It is seriously creepy. It's convection forced too. It's been converted to gas and is super inefficient.
I'll probably replace it with a used mid 90's unit.






I had to replace some siding where the carport came down last time I was in town. It was a lot harder to do than I though. First of all, the original boards are old growth knot-free cedar... and somehow were cut by a master craftsman to fit just so. It looks ok now and with a little paint it will look perfect.














The old and new toilets. We can't flush the new one until the sewer line is done. Should be a few days still at this point.





I'm hiring my buddy Sasha's 17 year old brother to continue digging this ditch we started to dig out the sewer line...
Also my friend Greg seems into it and brought his own shovel, so I might let him dig some too. I had a strange dream about mineral rights in this context a while ago.

It is going well. We're saving $3000 over the lowest quote by doing it ourselves. Roto rooter can stick it.