Saturday, May 12, 2007
A Lazy Derby Saturday
0750 AM: We stayed up watching silly TV till late Friday, so this morning slept in until 8AM. But then we had to get up when the last "retic" (lawn irrigation) station switched on. This makes such a loud, vibrating noise beneath the bedroom, the raised floor of the house acting like a huge loudspeaker, that we are driven from the room.
0815-0930: Coffee and apricot muesli with passion fruit yogurt on the back veranda. It is cooling off a little at nights, although the days here are still peaking in the 92-98 F range. We sit on the back porch and listen to the birdsong, which has changed as new migrant birds come into this tropical area for winter. The unseen dawn choristers in the garden are very loud and sing continuously until about 9 am when they suddenly all cease. The frangipani in the back yard are still blooming vigorously, and their fragrance fills the morning.
0930-1100: Vicki got an email from our daughters to call them. We talk for about an hour. She bought a phone card at the newsagent in town which runs $0.0502 per minute for calls to the U.S. It is probably cheaper for us to call family in the U.S. than it is for them to call each other. Vicki's brother Bill is visiting Leah on Long Island, and Liz has come down to attend her sister's Masters Violin Recital. Leah will graduate with her Masters in violin performance next week. We are very proud of her, and sorry we can't be there. We talk about their plans for summer work. Its obvious the three of them are having a great time together.
1100-1200 AM: The pool opens. We swim, I do a kilometer of laps, Vicki churns out 1.5 klicks. It is a beautiful sunny day, and we manage to get done just as the children start to fill up the pool. We agree we enjoy watching the black kites, and butterflies drift overhead while we backstroke.
1200-1300 PM: Showers and dress. Vicki has a snack; apple and peanut butter on bread. I have a few pieces of Whittaker's chocolate- "Special Dark" and "Cashew". We have been looking for Rum Raisin but have not been able to find it in Australia.
~1300-1500 PM: Errands in town. I go down to the Tourist Information center to find some maps and info about driving up the Gibb River road. I'm interested in places to drive out and do some day hikes and picnics, now that the weather is improving. I get information about some local gorges, only 2 hours drive away up the gravel road, and also a good place to swim. "There are Crocodile Warning signs there" the woman says, "but everyone swims there anyway". "When was the last time someone was eaten there?" I ask, and to my amazement, she turns to the older woman at the Center and repeats my question! "I can't remember any, but a boy did report seeing a crocodile there last month. But no one's been eaten".
I go to the Blockbuster, which in Derby has quite a nice selection. I rent an Australian romantic comedy, a sci fi movie, a classic ("On The Beach"), and "Garden State". Vicki is bound to like at least 1 out of the 4. A stop at the Newsagency and I nab the Weekend Australian- something to read on the veranda on a Sunday morning. And then a run out to Woolies, where I am on a search and destroy mission for Magnum ice cream bars. They are out of the really good ones- the chocolate ice cream covered by chocolate bars. (Today's blog is brought to you by CHOCOLATE- you can see why I have to swim a klick a day!) I settle for a box of 6 mini-bars. Woolworth's is not too crowded, except for the liquor store which is doing a booming Saturday afternoon business.
As I leave, a flock of rainbow lorikeets are flying over the parking lot, making a racket. On the way home, I notice a flock of about 30 black ibis on the footie oval. These birds probe the grass with their long bills- they are huge and identical to the ibis seen in Egyptian art.
3PM and its time for a little read and a nap. I am taking a break from reading Australiana and Aboriginal literature, and relaxing with Robert Charles Wilson's Darwinia. We nap for about an hour in the heat of the afternoon. Its hitting the high 90's but we are trying not to run the "AirCon" now that its less humid. We give up and turn it on for an hour when it becomes stifling.
5 PM: We are both starving after our swimming. At Woolies I've nabbed some Chevap (Serbian sausages) which we threw on the grill with onions, red peppers and potatoes. Supper on the veranda and we stuff these ingredients into Pitas with cabbage/carrot cole slaw. Yum.
6:30 PM and we watch SBS World News. This has become an evening habit as we can not get a daily newspaper here. The papers have to be shipped up from Perth and they are a day late at the minimum, and there is no home delivery. SBS is the "alternative" government-funded station, which shows the most eclectic programming I have seen. Its a mixture of old movies, great news programs, documentaries, Aboriginal programs such as "Going Bush" and "Living Black", and hour-long foreign language news (in Italian, Chinese, French, German, Greek, and a smattering of Eastern European countries). Their radio broadcasts cover 68 languages, but we only get three radio stations in Derby: 6DBY which is local within 30 Km. of town, and is mostly country, oldies, and on weekends footie games; ABC-AM Local Radio, and a station from Port Hedland called Spirit which doesn't always come in. 6DBY does have the National Indigenous Radio Network, which often has an interesting view of the national and local Australian news and politics, and is worth listening to.
7:30 PM and I'm checking email and blogging a bit. We watch TV here a few evenings a week- guilty pleasures like Desperate Housewives, McLeod's Daughters, Heroes. I am disappointed that I've not found any Australian produced programs that have captured my interest. (The number one program here, on Channel 9 is Home and Away, a soap opera in which the recent Logie winner, Kate Ritchie, has been playing her character for over 20 years, since she was 8 years old.)
8:30 PM Vicki is a fan of Inspector Lynley, a BBC crime program based on the Elizabeth George novels. He is a hunk, and he drives a nice car. England looks very cold. They have foggy salt marshes where we have hot, dusty mudflats.
10:30 and off to bed. For the first time we keep all the aircon off and open the windows, even leaving the overhead fan off. This is cool and comfortable for sleeping, but we listen to the myriad canine population of Derby howling all night long. Sometimes being half-deaf has its advantages. Oh well, I have cleverly reprogrammed the #6 retic setting for 8PM in the evenings, so we are able to sleep late on Sundays from now on...
0815-0930: Coffee and apricot muesli with passion fruit yogurt on the back veranda. It is cooling off a little at nights, although the days here are still peaking in the 92-98 F range. We sit on the back porch and listen to the birdsong, which has changed as new migrant birds come into this tropical area for winter. The unseen dawn choristers in the garden are very loud and sing continuously until about 9 am when they suddenly all cease. The frangipani in the back yard are still blooming vigorously, and their fragrance fills the morning.
0930-1100: Vicki got an email from our daughters to call them. We talk for about an hour. She bought a phone card at the newsagent in town which runs $0.0502 per minute for calls to the U.S. It is probably cheaper for us to call family in the U.S. than it is for them to call each other. Vicki's brother Bill is visiting Leah on Long Island, and Liz has come down to attend her sister's Masters Violin Recital. Leah will graduate with her Masters in violin performance next week. We are very proud of her, and sorry we can't be there. We talk about their plans for summer work. Its obvious the three of them are having a great time together.
1100-1200 AM: The pool opens. We swim, I do a kilometer of laps, Vicki churns out 1.5 klicks. It is a beautiful sunny day, and we manage to get done just as the children start to fill up the pool. We agree we enjoy watching the black kites, and butterflies drift overhead while we backstroke.
1200-1300 PM: Showers and dress. Vicki has a snack; apple and peanut butter on bread. I have a few pieces of Whittaker's chocolate- "Special Dark" and "Cashew". We have been looking for Rum Raisin but have not been able to find it in Australia.
~1300-1500 PM: Errands in town. I go down to the Tourist Information center to find some maps and info about driving up the Gibb River road. I'm interested in places to drive out and do some day hikes and picnics, now that the weather is improving. I get information about some local gorges, only 2 hours drive away up the gravel road, and also a good place to swim. "There are Crocodile Warning signs there" the woman says, "but everyone swims there anyway". "When was the last time someone was eaten there?" I ask, and to my amazement, she turns to the older woman at the Center and repeats my question! "I can't remember any, but a boy did report seeing a crocodile there last month. But no one's been eaten".
I go to the Blockbuster, which in Derby has quite a nice selection. I rent an Australian romantic comedy, a sci fi movie, a classic ("On The Beach"), and "Garden State". Vicki is bound to like at least 1 out of the 4. A stop at the Newsagency and I nab the Weekend Australian- something to read on the veranda on a Sunday morning. And then a run out to Woolies, where I am on a search and destroy mission for Magnum ice cream bars. They are out of the really good ones- the chocolate ice cream covered by chocolate bars. (Today's blog is brought to you by CHOCOLATE- you can see why I have to swim a klick a day!) I settle for a box of 6 mini-bars. Woolworth's is not too crowded, except for the liquor store which is doing a booming Saturday afternoon business.
As I leave, a flock of rainbow lorikeets are flying over the parking lot, making a racket. On the way home, I notice a flock of about 30 black ibis on the footie oval. These birds probe the grass with their long bills- they are huge and identical to the ibis seen in Egyptian art.3PM and its time for a little read and a nap. I am taking a break from reading Australiana and Aboriginal literature, and relaxing with Robert Charles Wilson's Darwinia. We nap for about an hour in the heat of the afternoon. Its hitting the high 90's but we are trying not to run the "AirCon" now that its less humid. We give up and turn it on for an hour when it becomes stifling.
5 PM: We are both starving after our swimming. At Woolies I've nabbed some Chevap (Serbian sausages) which we threw on the grill with onions, red peppers and potatoes. Supper on the veranda and we stuff these ingredients into Pitas with cabbage/carrot cole slaw. Yum.
6:30 PM and we watch SBS World News. This has become an evening habit as we can not get a daily newspaper here. The papers have to be shipped up from Perth and they are a day late at the minimum, and there is no home delivery. SBS is the "alternative" government-funded station, which shows the most eclectic programming I have seen. Its a mixture of old movies, great news programs, documentaries, Aboriginal programs such as "Going Bush" and "Living Black", and hour-long foreign language news (in Italian, Chinese, French, German, Greek, and a smattering of Eastern European countries). Their radio broadcasts cover 68 languages, but we only get three radio stations in Derby: 6DBY which is local within 30 Km. of town, and is mostly country, oldies, and on weekends footie games; ABC-AM Local Radio, and a station from Port Hedland called Spirit which doesn't always come in. 6DBY does have the National Indigenous Radio Network, which often has an interesting view of the national and local Australian news and politics, and is worth listening to.
7:30 PM and I'm checking email and blogging a bit. We watch TV here a few evenings a week- guilty pleasures like Desperate Housewives, McLeod's Daughters, Heroes. I am disappointed that I've not found any Australian produced programs that have captured my interest. (The number one program here, on Channel 9 is Home and Away, a soap opera in which the recent Logie winner, Kate Ritchie, has been playing her character for over 20 years, since she was 8 years old.)
8:30 PM Vicki is a fan of Inspector Lynley, a BBC crime program based on the Elizabeth George novels. He is a hunk, and he drives a nice car. England looks very cold. They have foggy salt marshes where we have hot, dusty mudflats.
10:30 and off to bed. For the first time we keep all the aircon off and open the windows, even leaving the overhead fan off. This is cool and comfortable for sleeping, but we listen to the myriad canine population of Derby howling all night long. Sometimes being half-deaf has its advantages. Oh well, I have cleverly reprogrammed the #6 retic setting for 8PM in the evenings, so we are able to sleep late on Sundays from now on...
