Ruben Hillier's 'lectronic home.

This morning I picked up a fellow hitching out of Sawtell. As we crossed the railway line into neighbouring Toormina he told me of the gang fights he used to get involved in when he was a young lad in the 70s.

"We'd light bonfires up on the headland and could see the Toormy lot burning fires over in the scrub."
Indicating with a nod of his head, off towards Minorie Drive.
"...used to have some great punch ups with the [Toormy] gangs and when the Coffs lot came over we'd join up with Toormy and the blackfellas and bash the hell out of them"
He looked a little wistful as we drove down the Link road,
"...there was punks and all sorts, Sawtell is way better than Toormina"

He was nice fella, it's worth picking up hitchers especially when they tell a good story.

:)

My mate Matt got sick of me moaning about the crappiness of aluminium for bicycle frames after my old Trek bike frame cracked last year. so he gave me his old steel framed Nishiki. I stripped it down and suffered various frustrations trying to make random components fit. I bought a nice Pake crankset which pretty well clammed up my wallet. So the rest of the bike was put together with junk. I painted it with some old red waterbased acrylic. I'm amazed it has not all peeled off yet.

UPDATE: I changed the drops for moustache handlebars for some stylish slow-bike action.

Yesterday I cycled to the foot of the ranges. I've not been for a cycle for fun for a while, it was just the thing to sooth the soul.

Life is drifting along like a plague of jellyfish. Cheri is working madly at her Latin degree. Latin texts are stuck up all over the house, tables are laden with incomprehensible tomes. It has been school holidays which means most of the stuff our boys do is not on at the moment. So Evan has been surfing and 'hanging out' ...man. Em has been disabling donkeys with his talking. That boy sure can talk.

Jimmy had his fifth birthday last week. He threw a party down at the Jetty foreshores. A fabulous cake as you can see. I'm hoping to meet up with Jimmy today to make a Sonic Screwdriver. Emrys and I made a Berrocca torchy thing last week for practice.

Our pal John Lee has been coming round for lots of visits recently. His book of poetry is coming along. Attached is a picture of John and Cheri in the kitchen. Cheri is holding my beloved twenty buck uke.

Meanwhile I keep myself busy; drawing onions, reading a Vincent VG bio, playing my uke badly, snorkelling and tittering inanely at stupid websites. Ah well... work on Tuesday.

We just got back from a fun weekend at Fingal Head. It was the 40th Birthday of my mate Kath. The theme was facial hair. I started growing a flavour-savour and was told I'd be divorced unless it was shaved. I guess beards and me just don't go.

The beach and weather all conjoined for some fabulous snorkeling and larking around in the dive-through cave on the headland. Beautiful little Max was the star of the beach. Click the pics to see. Also Em did an odd little dance which I caught on video.

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Just spoke to Ma and Pa on the phone, they have just been out listening to some native North American singers so I thought I'd add link to the very cool video of the Yolngu Dancers doing Zorba the greek, click the vid link below.

I just found this old thing I wrote back in 2001 - Who is Tregeagle?.

Here is a copy....

Tregeagle was a pretty evil man in life. He married one rich heiress after another and murdered each of them to get their inheritances, he underpaid his employees and hit small kids. It was no surprise he went straight to Hell when he died.

Hooray for the Muppets, still having fun.

I have a little black book in my undy drawer.

It is a travel diary, when I take it traveling and it is a shed/home-brew diary, when I stay home. Here is a brief summary of the shed entries [amended] :

Monday 28th December 2009

Putting a brew on

• Morgans Blue Mountain Lager + yeast
• Dextrose/Corn Syrup/dried malt
• Morgans finishing hops (Hersbucker)

Good flavour, especially after I had left it for the full month! Hops were maybe a little harsh, try adding some lactose next time to sweeten it.

Previous brew from July 2009

• Black Rock Miners Stout

Came out OK flavour not always quite right probably from brewing temp being too high or perhaps not rinsing off all the meta-bisulphate also a little too much sugar at bottling so too fizzy.

Brigalow Ginger Beer

• tastes shit, explodes well.

Saturday 30th January 2010

• Building rudder

ran out of Norseal Epoxy Wood Preserver 50:50 500ml

Wednesday 10th March

Putting two brews on

• Bishops English Bitter [Morgans] – made in Queensland :)
• Smelt good, hoppy.
• Brewcraft English Bitter [Muntons of Stowcraft] – made in UK
• Lager Brew, Dextrose/Malt mix

Not sure if Cheri will approve of the barrels of beer in the front room for the next couple of weeks, fingers crossed that they don't ferment too excitedly – could get messy.

Brigid Veale the press officer here at SCU (not the other one) just sent me this pic of me taken down Coffs Beach before I had my weekend swim.
Results just in:
position: 189 / time: 41:43

Cameron kindly assembled the montage of everyone's favourite characters Ponch and Jon. I am looking forward to buying Cameron a choc-top in 2011

oh, and another pic from Sarah as well...

My Pa's mate, Martin, dropped by last week. Em was away so he stayed the night in his room. When Em got home in the morning he was a bit cranky to find a strange english man in his room. Which is why it was tricky to get a photo of them together. However with the magic of pixels I have glued together two rather crap photos just to prove they were in the house at roughly the same time.