DAMPIER: “Wandoo makes damn good fence posts,” Payton L. Inkletter says, “and some of the best poetry has been written in honour of it.”

In other news…

22^nd January 2009:

Thursday: Another relatively cool day, high twenties Celsius and long may they continue, but they’ve about one day to go if the forecasters are right. Janny got Pa pree before five o’clock, and they did a tad of shopping at Dewson’s, and returned for Janny to continue preparing vittles for our distinguished guest this evening.

Janny had a pretty good day nausea-wise today, discovering upon a wave of nausea that a sugar free chewing gum instantly helped, but this last week she’s had some pretty rough trots with handling the Byetta, outright vomiting again at least once. She is hopeful that the chewing gum might be the deceptively simple solution she’s looking for. Ever on the alert for what in her daily routine works and what doesn’t, hopefully she’ll finally crack how to tame the Byetta beast, and simply enjoy getting Byetta and Byetta every day in every way, thank you Emile Coue`.

I did a tad of back garden summer maintenance before beautifying myself for the guests, who first called to see Umple Daffyd, and were here about half seven: the Babies Ink&Peggletter no less. We enjoyed a magnificent curry meal that Janny made – its name escapes me (breaking news added a little later!: Janny just got up for a wee tinkle, and informed me that it was ‘Thai Green Chicken Curry’, but she’s gone loopy, full of crap, coz no chickens in the world yet are green), but it’s a popular dish done in a wok (wokkle they think of next) – before a game of Absolute Balderdash, which is a fabulous game we all agree, with Baby Inkletter winning (again). We had a dash of two different wines the Babies brought, a red and a white, from our matchless Southwest, one I recall with the lovely brand name Chudacud – ‘Yo bro, chew your cud a hundred times every bite!’. It’s funny how two sets of our friends, Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons, would be tempted to think I was in league with Satan for drinking alcohol, while another set of friends, Jehovah’s Witnesses, would likely think I was in league with Old Nick if I didn’t drink. Funny that.

Bab Yinkletter brought a dessert she’d made, a lavender flower cheese cake, and it was urrerly derishus. They left about eleven, taking Pa pree Inkletter home for us, and it concluded a wonderful evening. They let us know that my mother had, with sister Mary and niece Elizabeth and hubby Michele, had din dins with them in Adelaide Terrace last night; this pleased me very much to learn, for all generations of my family are getting to know the excellent soul that Baby Peggletter is, and Bab Yinkletter and her nanna have not spent a great deal of time together these last few years, not the least reason being distance in miles.

We sat to watch Letterman, but the rat bastards put a repeat on again, the December show with Tom Cruise, which I could easily not suffer again. In fact I fell asleep.

Reviving, I came to the dungeon and caught up with pooter jobs. Baby Inkletter sent a number of emails, burning the midnight oil herself after returning from their visit with us, one of which was the witty exchange of one David Thorne from Adelaide who tried to pay a utility bill with a drawing of a spider; it’s worth reading for a laugh at this link. I was too exhausted to go for a walk, more is very much the pity.

+paytontedwithlove+

BUSSELTON: “The quickest way to raise your garden beds is to lower your paths,” claims Payton L. Inkletter, “unless you have very wide paths”

In other news…

21^st January 2009:

Wednesday: A cooler day, mid twenties Celsius, how nice! Janny entertained a pair of Mormon missionaries, giving them lunch, and after this I took her and Pa pree (the little people) shopping, first to Benara Fresh Markets in Beechboro, our first time for the new year, then on to our local major shopping centre where they went their way, and I went mine, purchasing a replacement torch for my nightly walks, my last one having barely lasted half a year before the screw switch mechanism was utterly jammed and jiggered, giving up its ghost in a long drawn out set of fits and starts. This latest beauty, from Kmart and 20% off – yippee! – supposedly can survive a million foot drop and a thermonuclear explosion at point blank range, the Energizer Hardcase LED, no less.

I was a tiny bit embarrassed, just a whisker, but more inconvenienced, when I used my Fujitsu Visa Card that we received with $200 cash on it as the winter time sweetener for buying a Fujitsu airconditioner, to pay for the torch and other sundries, and it was pronounced invalid. I had used it once in Coles if I recall correctly, late last year, and it should have well over half its credit remaining, and it doesn’t expire till September this year. So another time consuming hassle to get to the bottom of…

Eventually we got back home, and I did a tad outside, including photographing my bamboo shoots up close to capture the lovely detail on them, before tuck tuck with Pa pree and Janny, watching My Beloved. I stayed for The 7.30 Report, and the always funny My Family, but couldn’t stay awake, and had to hit the DVD record button before hitting the sack for a couple of hours. I surfaced for Letterman – Janny having returned Pa pree about ten – and found it was a repeat (damn you Channel Ten for never putting ‘(Rpt)’ after ‘The Late Show’ in the Sunday Times’ TV Guide when it’s a repeat – but Janny plied me with homemade slice and a cup of tea, and after watching some of the pre-recorded The Omid Dhajili Show – marvellous, funny, wonderful – I got interested in an old sci-fi film on Aunty, ‘Silent Running’, and watched it all, and was glad I did, for it was different enough to be worth it, and a little curious. I enjoyed the Joan Baez songs, all two of them, and was fascinated by the way the robots walked. Wikipedia later informed me on how that trick was achieved…

I did get to the bottom of why I was refused access to the credit on my Fujitsu Visa Card: online I discovered the news that a pile of shops, including Coles and many in that oligarchical stable such as Duck Smuff and Jacques Target, Kmart and Tandy, as well as Woolworths, have ‘elected not to accept Prepaid cards’, and ‘We apologise for any inconvenience caused.’ Well, surely your boffins could give a little message on the screen to the hapless bird or boy serving to that effect? Said hapless staff could then inform the hapless customer? Confusion and embarrassment reduced.

I went for a very late walk, and while it was much cooler than last week, the humidity was high, and I got quite sweaty. My Energizer Hardcase was superb, throwing light on the situation, and giving truth to the claim that two hardcases can be found wandering these local streets late at night.

On my return I watered the glorious mother-in-law tongues under our front patio, and cowboy washed the car, breaking the law by using the hose briefly rather than a bucket only, waking Missus Inklewhatthehellisgoingonoutthebedroomwindow up. Then I tackled more uploading to this ‘In other news…’ site, and added some more widgets, and tweaked the main site with links to this ‘In other news…’ site, so there!

After that marathon I watered outside in the early morning light, and there was some gossamer light drizzle around under a grey sky. I took a couple of photos of the amazing elastic yucca plant out the front, which has bent down and touched the ground, all ten feet of it, in about three weeks, before coming back inside and updating several of my web sites’ copyright dates from 2008 to 2009.

Today I received an email from my cousin Muriel, which was a treat, and funny.

+paytontedwithlove+

EAST VICTORIA PARK: Maximus Coccioli to be taught to write his signature by Payton L. Inkletter, using 7 paw prints and two strokes of his big tail

In other news…

20^th January 2009:

Tuesday: Janny took Pa pree to his doctor’s appointment late morning, and then spent the next 4 to 5 hours shopping with him, despite feeling nauseous and tired. She had to have a sleep for over an hour when she got back, but I had to wake her even then at her request to prepare vittles for me to deliver to Pa pree, which I did just before 7 o’clock and My Beloved.

I micro-fertilised and watered some outside, as well as did a photo shoot in the front yard of the two famous koala bears – myself and Baby Inkletter – sitting among the sharp yucca leaves, now flowering, of the corner twin plants, one of which has over the past three weeks laid down its ten feet height to touch the ground, this photographing session much to the curiosity of visitors to the neighbours’ house (which visitors, as well as being wogs – which I don’t hold against hem – seemed incapable or unwilling to grunt anything in acknowledgement of my polite and socially normal greetings), in a few shifts interrupted by TV watching: I find SBS’s Blood and Guts: The History of Surgery documentary fascinating if gory, and I caught half of a repeat Letterman, then some of American ABC’s coverage of the pre-inauguration build up of Barack Obama before my walk.

I walked a fair bit earlier than I have been of late, and that might explain the extra cars and folk about, but it was still one o’clock, so maybe it was the Obama Inauguration on the other side of the world coming up in an hour that accounts for it. The walk helped me clear my mind from the sore test of earlier today when I was the recipient of immaturity beyond what is reasonable from someone significant. To err is human, and we all do often, but to defend erring is just stupid, or immature, take your pick.

On my return I watched the inauguration, which was airing on four of the five free to airs, and it was uplifting and well worth watching. I dearly hope Obama and his colleagues can strongly help improve his nation and the world, in the best senses of the word.

After this I finished watering outside under lights, and before rustling up some vittles, I tackled replacing two hinges on one of the two pantry doors which was about to fall off from decrepitude. Wonder of wonders, it turned out much better than I thought, for all the holes matched, even though the hinges were from a cupboard off the street verge six months ago at the roadside junk collection at the time, and they were different hinges at that.

Pantry door almost looking respectable, one to go (the other side), and vittles under my belt, I returned to the TV and watched the procession of the new president from Capitol Hill to the White House, and finally hit the sack after 8 a.m.

+paytontedwithlove+

SWAN VIEW: Payton L. Inkletter proposes to move desperate polar bears to Antarctica, and showed how to catch one by putting salt on its tail – dinkum!

In other news…

19^th January 2009:

Monday: I cleaned up the kitchen for Janny, and Baby Inkletter called in and had lunch with her, so it was nice to catch up – I planned not to eat (other than a nibble) until this evening after taking Bob out. I eventually was functional enough to go to Guildford to get him and take him by train to Perth city for his one in four outing.

The city was reasonably busy. The skyline is dominated by cranes these days, from the wealth of the pre-financial crash days last year, and every time I visit there are several more storeys added to fractures on the skyline. We did a different thing today: we got all the usual freebies and costies that Bob likes, except in different places, other than his Express paper, and even caught a different CAT service to finish the day, the yellow one, and my how East Perth has developed in the four or five or so years since I last was up that way! We spoke to my diminutive neighbour Prem in King Street, who thought he knew Bob, but he’d confused him with Peter of Kenwick; I walked past the infamous Julian Grill in Hay Street, who eyeballed me looking every bit a nervous and greatly harassed man. While in the city we ducked into 78 Records where I ordered Emmylou Harris’ ‘Cowgirl’s Prayer’ album, which means I now am looking forward to two CDs coming hopefully soon, for I ordered Alison Krauss’ ‘Lonely Runs Both Ways’ album online from JB Hifi back about the eleventh of this month. I cannot remember the last full price CD I bought for myself, and now I have two coming – yippee! And such quality both albums contain!

I mailed a birthday card to our dear niece Alice from town, at the Wellington Street Bus Station in fact, so I hope it arrives tomorrow; she will be a mere 31. She was a babe in arms less than two weeks old when she and her mum, my dear sister Mary, saw me off on the Indian Pacific in ’79 to Sydney then Queensland for 19 months.

On the way home, about half seven p.m., I called at the local Dewson’s and got four more slabs of the UHT milk sposhull, and a jar of the newfangled green blend Nescafe coffee antioxidant palaver malarkey stuff – ‘Greenblend’ –to try, also on sposhull. Janny did make a cup of it for me after tuck tuck, and it was very nice; you’d be hard pressed to know it wasn’t one of the normal nice instant big bad coffees. So what with that and my almost daily unsweetened – gggrrr… – 4 heaped teaspoonsful cocoas which I now imbibe, I’ll never die… what’s that noise? Aaaarrrrrgggghhhhh…splat!!

So yes, Janny gave me a pile of lovely nosh, then delivered nosh to Pa pree and spent nearly an hour with him, bless her fishnets. I was so whacked I stayed in front of the box till about nine, then had a nap till a bit after ten, when I watched most of ‘Made in Chicago…’ on Aunty about Barack Obama, before another short nap, before Letterman, with Janny, on which he featured his last ‘Great Moments in Presidential Speeches’, as well as his tribute to the same. (I am in two minds about the enormously great degree of ridiculing of George W. Bush: he portrays himself often as a bumbling idiot, while doing a lot of harm, and so is fair game to lampoon; he is the highest office holder of an important nation, and his standing and the USA’s standing is certainly suffering due the intense comedic focus. But then even I have ridiculed him on my main site, now in my Visitors’ Book Celebrity Archive.) It was good to see Arj Barker do a tad of stand up. By the end of all this I was onto my third white comforter to ease my headache pain.

Today has been much cooler, thankfully. I went for a late walk, after half two a.m., I don’t know how, but my need for exercise outweighed my exhaustion. Some folk are a bit slow to get it it seems: a young adult son of a neighbour a few houses down the street happened to be walking up the street across the road with some other folk, and saw me putting on my walking shoes under my front patio in preparation for my walk, Sekim, or some such spelling, who would have to be about 20 or more, and called out “Hi Payton!”. Now there wasn’t a breath of breeze, you could hear a pin drop, and he’s calling out at half two in the morning. I quietly called back, wincing, but it’s a wonder I didn’t wake Missus Inkletter up, with the bedroom window open and curtains up for ventilation and cooling. He probably disturbed half a dozen homes’ sleeping occupants, given that it’s summer, warm, and windows are open. Discretion would stay one’s normal desire to call out a greeting at that hour of the day, one would think. This fellow happens to be the extremely forward youth of some years ago, whose forward manner I grew instantly to find very repellent, yet after all these years I’m still popular enough with him to be greeted for some reason.

I spent quite some time after my return uploading ‘In other news…’ entries on the new page of that name, and researching with Google more blogger improvements and workarounds, but they all look as time consuming and fraught as they always have.

+paytontedwithlove+

MANDURAH: “I’ve got a secret tube of Vicco toothpaste that Missus Inkletter is unaware of, and she won’t see this headline,” brags Payton L. Inkletter

In other news…

18^th January 2009:

Sunday: I had only a little badly needed sleep to try to get the debilitating Blogger experience out of my system, but it’s more a case of mentally trying to wipe the slate clean and thinking of better things. Missus Inkletter watched some Aunty TV with me after My Beloved, and after I did some watering outside. First there was Robert Lindsay in the intriguing ‘The Trial of Tony Blair’, and later Compass’ third and final in the series ‘The Quiet Revolution’ on the Interfaith Movement, and I don’t tire of the hope that such progress, however slow and small, engenders. Then we watched part of my earlier recorded ‘Eye for and Elephant’, which was fascinating and moving, and I must watch the rest soon about this second most intelligent animal on the planet.

What then followed for me was a rare treat: I watched for the first time one of the best 100 films of all time: ‘Dr Strangelove or: How I learned to stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’, on Aunty from midnight. It was great, a hoot, and as funny as all get out, plus witty, plus wise, plus an education experiencing the genius of Peter Sellers.

Perked up, and with the Blogger hell experience of yesterday partially expunged from my psyche, I went for a late walk, and on my return did some more uploading of this diary to my new page ‘In other news…’ It was quite late when I finally got to bed.

+paytontedwithlove+