Make the Most of 2022 While It Lasts
Dec. 31st, 2022 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capn_n_pyeNot much left of the year - quick, better get some more adventures in!
This term was all about hoping that goals would be met and we’d be happy with the outcome - whether it be Year 12s or building progress, let’s tick some boxes!
D’admiral and Chuckles came for a little look, even though there’s currently literally no room at the inn.
Chuckles was up the nearest ladder before you could say “Do you still have your White Card?”...
… and thankfully approved of the progress up to that point. There was a new Filipino restaurant down the road that sounded interesting - seafood boil, you say? Sounds good! We didn’t actually expect it to come out in a bag that got directly emptied onto the table for us all to trough into, but hey, we’re not about to complain!
Meanwhile, the sky kept doing cool things like having Jupiter sneak closer by, and this big fat blood moon (we wish we could take credit for the close-up, but all props go to D’admiral!).
In other ‘news’, the Geelong Advertiser decided that they needed to do something for International Teachers’ Day. But could they run their usual rubbish about terrible teachers and schools? Finding themselves apparently incapable of coming up with a positive article on their own, they contacted schools and asked them to get five staff members to write responses to a handful of questions, which they then reframed as if the answers came out of an interview. We both got asked to respond by the next day - that’s flattering! But oh no, now we had to make sure we didn’t write the same things!
We think we pulled it off, but more importantly, the ads that got served up were a real highlight. For instance, this first one, which then continued to appear as Pye scrolled down…
… although at one point it did swap out for this ad for briquettes, presumably for when we want to burn witches??
But then it came back in time for Stinky!
We also like this lady’s name and fashion choices (which serves to highlight the lack of direction from the ‘journalist’ - they asked for a written response and a photo, and this champ must have gone to the effort of picking her favourite photo, whereas everyone else just had their school photo chucked in)...
Then we had a little snicker about how this guy was in our Year 12 class but has spent waaaaaayyyy more time in the sun ah ha ha ha ha ha, ball chasers be like that.
An important part of teaching is being there for the young folks, and the biggest event of term four is when the Year 12s finish. Pye was put in charge of the muck up day quiz, which the kids accessed via a link. There were two different posters to scan - where do you think the other one took them?
Sadly, there is no hope for many young people these days, as entirely too many of them were hopelessly confused as to what this music video clip was supposed to mean, booo. Stinky’s Year 12s were much more clever - look, they fixed the sign for the hall!
And when they had a ‘dress like a teacher’ day, they borrowed two of Stinky’s batik shirts and one of them chucked on a red wig and said she was Pye! The other one is dressed as the other Indonesian teacher. Very clever!
Veering away from clever and into terrifying were the life-sized cutouts with googly eyes. One of them found a home on the Indonesian classroom door, and now Stinky has a new hobby - getting there first and then hiding in the dark to scare the children when they arrive!
The Cabin Girl is getting perilously close to being a Year 12 herself (and indeed did quite credibly in two Year 12 subjects this year). She turned 17! She is the dancing queen!
No, wait - Ra Ra Jasputin! That’s better!
Whatever, let’s eat cake!
The Cabin Girl’s birthday kicks off a domino effect of celebrating leading up to Christmas, including Italian Christmas in the Park! Yay!
The unseasonably cold November was certainly unexpected, but not as unexpected as getting home that evening and finally realising that the living room wall adjoining the extension was not as watertight as it should have been and hadn’t been for some time. We hadn’t noticed because that wall was obscured by bookshelves and a desk. Fortunately, we’d already moved the beautiful books to safety (after an incident where it came in through the roof, so all we had to deal with was soggy carpet and some growth in one corner.
In a very My Big Fat Greek Wedding ‘Put Some Windex On It’ move, Stinky immediately shouted "I'll get the Sgrassatore - SUPER POTENTE!" which ought to make Chuckles very proud, for she has long known there is nothing that product cannot do.
Speaking of things that can’t be done, something that we cannot do ever again after September turned out to be going to London to visit the Queen again.
Not that it was very likely anyway, but I suppose we’ll see what happens in the afterlife (although if you ask Irish Twitter, we'd have to go downwards...).
It wasn’t just our carpet getting a good soaking, the region in general was increasingly sodden, and we excitedly watched the water storages dance around 100%.
Of course, all that water has to go somewhere. Ah shit.
This put our soggy carpet into perspective - we felt very lucky! Meanwhile, down at D’admiral and Chuckles’ estuarine paradise, they had so much water upstream that even at the top of a high tide, the creek kept pushing out! Wow!
Their place never ceases to amaze - please enjoy this picture of life quite literally imitating art.
Outside of work and climate-change-driven natural disasters, we took an evening to go and see Sandi Toksvig…
She played the same venue as where we’d seen Hannah Gadsby a few weeks earlier and unfortunately didn’t come off all that well in the comparison - but anyone who likes boomer jokes loved it!
In between all of these shenanigans, Stinky finally completed the last character in the Great Ghosts Crochet Project that began in lockdown. Look at them all! Precious babies!
She had the bit between her teeth at this point, though, and couldn’t stop - she then went and made The Crone from Yonderland!
Her boobs were supposed to be marbles and a lot more unruly, but the torso turned out too small, unfortunately. Now if we had a nickel for every time she made a character played by Jim Howick we’d have four nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened four times…
She also had the urge to go back and re-do the first one she ever made (Humphrey Bone, the beheaded Tudor with magnets in his neck!) because she’d learned a lot and there were things about the original that could have been better. This coincided with a new bestie on the internet (degopunk on Instagram - a crafty lady from Wyoming with whom we have formed a mutual appreciation society) asking if she could ever buy one. Usually we’d just direct her to the pattern and recommend she find a crochetty friend, but it was the perfect excuse for someone who almost definitely doesn’t have a problem.
Then somewhat at a loose end (thread?), she thought she’d have a go at making a lil lilac flower to wear on the Glorious 25 May but the pattern wasn’t as good as she wanted it to be - which may turn out to be a blessing for everyone who would have otherwise been inflicted with one.
This result is about the best you can hope for, though! If you like your Wordle to have a narrative arc, anyway…
Let’s take a break from craft and fart jokes for a moment for a house update. The scab in the kitchen came off!
But what are you doing on the washing machine, Tony?? BE CAREFUL!
Although we now feel somewhat exposed, it’s nice to have the space open again, and it means we can connect with wildlife if we feel like it. For example, this moron, who flew head-first into the window, then sat there looking embarrassed for a while before wandering off. Wouldn’t have seen that the night before!
Uncharacteristically, we thought things through to an extent and realised that the plasterers were probably going to kick up a shit-ton of dust and there was nothing to stop it from rampaging through the kitchen and into the lounge room. Cue a visit to the linen section of an op shop and viola! A Dexter-style kill-room aesthetic for us all to enjoy!
Next we got to see the delightfully meaty-looking insulation go in…
… before it was carefully tucked away behind plasterboards…
Tradies continue to be baffling creatures. Take, for example, this very non-2020ish event of finding a roll of toilet paper in the gutter after the plumbers had been by…
…or this one lad who seemed to be laying a Hansel and Gretel-ish trail to the house, using fruit…
Oh look, the trail leads to a healthy snack!
It got rather less appetising over the next three weeks or so that it was left there, though. Yikes.
Tell you what does whet the appetite - catching up with someone you haven’t seen for four years! Davros bravely came all the way from the UK for Christmas, yay! We had ourselves a cheeky excursion to Werribee Zoo to enjoy a beer and gifts next to gorillas…
… and it turned out that giving someone a box of RATs as a joke is actually quite thoughtful when they have to get back on a plane in a few days!
Anyway, here is us waiting for the safari…
… and check out these stealth-camels! They have feathers!
Look, this ostrich has no head!!
Moose was desperate to get off the bus and spank a zebra, but we kept a firm hold on the little bugger.
He was intimidated by the hippopotamuses, it must be said.
Ahhh
AAAHHHH
And DID YOU KNOW that they can talk?!?
If you can’t read it, the sign says ‘Hippo Talk at 3:35' - wow!
The lions were off derping…
… except for Aslan, who was very wise and allegorical…
… but even he could not stop a dirty great storm from sneaking up on us!
We took refuge with the meerkats…
… while it quite nicely skirted around us and fucked up air traffic at Tulla instead. Meanwhile, back in Gtown, the Spinster Pad got lashed by big fat hail stones (which thankfully didn’t trash anything!).
And then it was Christmas! Huzzah!! We were very helpful and took care to fix some of Chuckles’ decorations (extremely thoughtful, I know).
Pye found the first gift of the day, but unfortunately it was a dead bird. She was very brave about cleaning it up and decided to regift it to the crabs in the creek. Look at that poor stiff thrush, floating away like John Everett Millais’ Ophelia!
Christmas lunch was an absolute cracker, from prawn cocktails to an actual honest to gosh turkey. Even Moose got his own libations!
The gift-giving part of the day was very normal, and everyone felt perfectly safe at all times…
… and on Boxing Day, Camel got to try cheese made out of camel milk!
The weather decided to show a bit of summer after all, and even though some of us were still inclined to jigsaw like it was 2020 again…
… the beach also drew us in with its charms…
…. until the sun set on the most merry of Christmases
It wasn’t until a couple of days later that we found the perfect present that we should have given to the Cabin Girl:
The exfoliating power of snail shells? But then the Powder Monkey may have felt left out, so we would have had to get him this to have all of own.
While shopping, Stinky was quite terrified by this demon…
… as well she should have been, look, it followed her around the store!
In the perianus of the year, we dashed back to G-town for some more adventures. The train to Melbourne is a lot more interesting when you can look out the back…
… and Lume had a delightful Impressionists show afoot (even though it wasn’t as good as the van Gogh one).
If you’re an influencer, the whole world is your canvas, and we must say, we’ve never really noticed the ‘tits forward’ pose before…
There were pre-New Year’s catch-ups to be had, where Moose got some bling and we got another sneaky look-in with Davros before he had to sprint back home to the UK again.
Follow that up with an agreeably low-key New Year’s Eve, and Bob’s your uncle, that’s 2022 in the bag. We made it, everyone!
This term was all about hoping that goals would be met and we’d be happy with the outcome - whether it be Year 12s or building progress, let’s tick some boxes!
D’admiral and Chuckles came for a little look, even though there’s currently literally no room at the inn.
Chuckles was up the nearest ladder before you could say “Do you still have your White Card?”...
… and thankfully approved of the progress up to that point. There was a new Filipino restaurant down the road that sounded interesting - seafood boil, you say? Sounds good! We didn’t actually expect it to come out in a bag that got directly emptied onto the table for us all to trough into, but hey, we’re not about to complain!
Meanwhile, the sky kept doing cool things like having Jupiter sneak closer by, and this big fat blood moon (we wish we could take credit for the close-up, but all props go to D’admiral!).
In other ‘news’, the Geelong Advertiser decided that they needed to do something for International Teachers’ Day. But could they run their usual rubbish about terrible teachers and schools? Finding themselves apparently incapable of coming up with a positive article on their own, they contacted schools and asked them to get five staff members to write responses to a handful of questions, which they then reframed as if the answers came out of an interview. We both got asked to respond by the next day - that’s flattering! But oh no, now we had to make sure we didn’t write the same things!
We think we pulled it off, but more importantly, the ads that got served up were a real highlight. For instance, this first one, which then continued to appear as Pye scrolled down…
… although at one point it did swap out for this ad for briquettes, presumably for when we want to burn witches??
But then it came back in time for Stinky!
We also like this lady’s name and fashion choices (which serves to highlight the lack of direction from the ‘journalist’ - they asked for a written response and a photo, and this champ must have gone to the effort of picking her favourite photo, whereas everyone else just had their school photo chucked in)...
Then we had a little snicker about how this guy was in our Year 12 class but has spent waaaaaayyyy more time in the sun ah ha ha ha ha ha, ball chasers be like that.
An important part of teaching is being there for the young folks, and the biggest event of term four is when the Year 12s finish. Pye was put in charge of the muck up day quiz, which the kids accessed via a link. There were two different posters to scan - where do you think the other one took them?
Sadly, there is no hope for many young people these days, as entirely too many of them were hopelessly confused as to what this music video clip was supposed to mean, booo. Stinky’s Year 12s were much more clever - look, they fixed the sign for the hall!
And when they had a ‘dress like a teacher’ day, they borrowed two of Stinky’s batik shirts and one of them chucked on a red wig and said she was Pye! The other one is dressed as the other Indonesian teacher. Very clever!
Veering away from clever and into terrifying were the life-sized cutouts with googly eyes. One of them found a home on the Indonesian classroom door, and now Stinky has a new hobby - getting there first and then hiding in the dark to scare the children when they arrive!
The Cabin Girl is getting perilously close to being a Year 12 herself (and indeed did quite credibly in two Year 12 subjects this year). She turned 17! She is the dancing queen!
No, wait - Ra Ra Jasputin! That’s better!
Whatever, let’s eat cake!
The Cabin Girl’s birthday kicks off a domino effect of celebrating leading up to Christmas, including Italian Christmas in the Park! Yay!
The unseasonably cold November was certainly unexpected, but not as unexpected as getting home that evening and finally realising that the living room wall adjoining the extension was not as watertight as it should have been and hadn’t been for some time. We hadn’t noticed because that wall was obscured by bookshelves and a desk. Fortunately, we’d already moved the beautiful books to safety (after an incident where it came in through the roof, so all we had to deal with was soggy carpet and some growth in one corner.
In a very My Big Fat Greek Wedding ‘Put Some Windex On It’ move, Stinky immediately shouted "I'll get the Sgrassatore - SUPER POTENTE!" which ought to make Chuckles very proud, for she has long known there is nothing that product cannot do.
Speaking of things that can’t be done, something that we cannot do ever again after September turned out to be going to London to visit the Queen again.
Not that it was very likely anyway, but I suppose we’ll see what happens in the afterlife (although if you ask Irish Twitter, we'd have to go downwards...).
It wasn’t just our carpet getting a good soaking, the region in general was increasingly sodden, and we excitedly watched the water storages dance around 100%.
Of course, all that water has to go somewhere. Ah shit.
This put our soggy carpet into perspective - we felt very lucky! Meanwhile, down at D’admiral and Chuckles’ estuarine paradise, they had so much water upstream that even at the top of a high tide, the creek kept pushing out! Wow!
Their place never ceases to amaze - please enjoy this picture of life quite literally imitating art.
Outside of work and climate-change-driven natural disasters, we took an evening to go and see Sandi Toksvig…
She played the same venue as where we’d seen Hannah Gadsby a few weeks earlier and unfortunately didn’t come off all that well in the comparison - but anyone who likes boomer jokes loved it!
In between all of these shenanigans, Stinky finally completed the last character in the Great Ghosts Crochet Project that began in lockdown. Look at them all! Precious babies!
She had the bit between her teeth at this point, though, and couldn’t stop - she then went and made The Crone from Yonderland!
Her boobs were supposed to be marbles and a lot more unruly, but the torso turned out too small, unfortunately. Now if we had a nickel for every time she made a character played by Jim Howick we’d have four nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened four times…
She also had the urge to go back and re-do the first one she ever made (Humphrey Bone, the beheaded Tudor with magnets in his neck!) because she’d learned a lot and there were things about the original that could have been better. This coincided with a new bestie on the internet (
degopunk on Instagram - a crafty lady from Wyoming with whom we have formed a mutual appreciation society) asking if she could ever buy one. Usually we’d just direct her to the pattern and recommend she find a crochetty friend, but it was the perfect excuse for someone who almost definitely doesn’t have a problem. Then somewhat at a loose end (thread?), she thought she’d have a go at making a lil lilac flower to wear on the Glorious 25 May but the pattern wasn’t as good as she wanted it to be - which may turn out to be a blessing for everyone who would have otherwise been inflicted with one.
This result is about the best you can hope for, though! If you like your Wordle to have a narrative arc, anyway…
Let’s take a break from craft and fart jokes for a moment for a house update. The scab in the kitchen came off!
But what are you doing on the washing machine, Tony?? BE CAREFUL!
Although we now feel somewhat exposed, it’s nice to have the space open again, and it means we can connect with wildlife if we feel like it. For example, this moron, who flew head-first into the window, then sat there looking embarrassed for a while before wandering off. Wouldn’t have seen that the night before!
Uncharacteristically, we thought things through to an extent and realised that the plasterers were probably going to kick up a shit-ton of dust and there was nothing to stop it from rampaging through the kitchen and into the lounge room. Cue a visit to the linen section of an op shop and viola! A Dexter-style kill-room aesthetic for us all to enjoy!
Next we got to see the delightfully meaty-looking insulation go in…
… before it was carefully tucked away behind plasterboards…
Tradies continue to be baffling creatures. Take, for example, this very non-2020ish event of finding a roll of toilet paper in the gutter after the plumbers had been by…
…or this one lad who seemed to be laying a Hansel and Gretel-ish trail to the house, using fruit…
Oh look, the trail leads to a healthy snack!
It got rather less appetising over the next three weeks or so that it was left there, though. Yikes.
Tell you what does whet the appetite - catching up with someone you haven’t seen for four years! Davros bravely came all the way from the UK for Christmas, yay! We had ourselves a cheeky excursion to Werribee Zoo to enjoy a beer and gifts next to gorillas…
… and it turned out that giving someone a box of RATs as a joke is actually quite thoughtful when they have to get back on a plane in a few days!
Anyway, here is us waiting for the safari…
… and check out these stealth-camels! They have feathers!
Look, this ostrich has no head!!
Moose was desperate to get off the bus and spank a zebra, but we kept a firm hold on the little bugger.
He was intimidated by the hippopotamuses, it must be said.
Ahhh
AAAHHHH
And DID YOU KNOW that they can talk?!?
If you can’t read it, the sign says ‘Hippo Talk at 3:35' - wow!
The lions were off derping…
… except for Aslan, who was very wise and allegorical…
… but even he could not stop a dirty great storm from sneaking up on us!
We took refuge with the meerkats…
… while it quite nicely skirted around us and fucked up air traffic at Tulla instead. Meanwhile, back in Gtown, the Spinster Pad got lashed by big fat hail stones (which thankfully didn’t trash anything!).
And then it was Christmas! Huzzah!! We were very helpful and took care to fix some of Chuckles’ decorations (extremely thoughtful, I know).
Pye found the first gift of the day, but unfortunately it was a dead bird. She was very brave about cleaning it up and decided to regift it to the crabs in the creek. Look at that poor stiff thrush, floating away like John Everett Millais’ Ophelia!
Christmas lunch was an absolute cracker, from prawn cocktails to an actual honest to gosh turkey. Even Moose got his own libations!
The gift-giving part of the day was very normal, and everyone felt perfectly safe at all times…
… and on Boxing Day, Camel got to try cheese made out of camel milk!
The weather decided to show a bit of summer after all, and even though some of us were still inclined to jigsaw like it was 2020 again…
… the beach also drew us in with its charms…
…. until the sun set on the most merry of Christmases
It wasn’t until a couple of days later that we found the perfect present that we should have given to the Cabin Girl:
The exfoliating power of snail shells? But then the Powder Monkey may have felt left out, so we would have had to get him this to have all of own.
While shopping, Stinky was quite terrified by this demon…
… as well she should have been, look, it followed her around the store!
In the perianus of the year, we dashed back to G-town for some more adventures. The train to Melbourne is a lot more interesting when you can look out the back…
… and Lume had a delightful Impressionists show afoot (even though it wasn’t as good as the van Gogh one).
If you’re an influencer, the whole world is your canvas, and we must say, we’ve never really noticed the ‘tits forward’ pose before…
There were pre-New Year’s catch-ups to be had, where Moose got some bling and we got another sneaky look-in with Davros before he had to sprint back home to the UK again.
Follow that up with an agreeably low-key New Year’s Eve, and Bob’s your uncle, that’s 2022 in the bag. We made it, everyone!
