Monday, November 23, 2009

A bit of a work day today - sheesh, isn't this supposed to be a holiday? :-)  We spent the morning cleaning - yuck!!!  It took quite a while to clean the bathroom.  I don't think it had been done in quite a while.  Christine asked us to use this cleaner that is environmentally friendly (she made it up for us) and so we used that to clean the shower stall (walls and door and the outside of the stall as well).  She has asked us to use an environmentally friendly cleaner because the water that goes down the drain (grey water) is captured and then used to water their garden (a common practice in Australia due to water shortages).  I had to use a green scrubby all over the shower stall and then throw water on it from a pail and then wipe it down.  And no, it was NOT exciting at all. :-)  After that, there was still the sink, toilet and floor to do.  It took ages to do and since there is not a ceiling fan in the bathroom, we were quite sweaty by the end of it all.  I went and stood under the fan in the living room for a while just to cool off.  We then figured we might as well keep on the cleaning track and so went outside and cleaned off the outside chairs (totally filthy) which took ages to scrub down with my little green scrubby.  However, they are lovely and clean now and ready for us to sit outside on and enjoy the fresh air and warm sun and lovely breezes we get here in Hervey Bay. :-)

After lunch, we decided to watch the last of the Blockbuster movies - this one was called 'Body of Lies' and it starred Leonardo Dicaprio.  The movie was basically about a CIA agent who was looking for the mastermind behind a wave of terrorist attacks in the middle east.  We watched about half an hour of it before we turned it off.  The movie itself wasn't badly done and Leonardo was good in it, but they showed a lot of people being tortured and it looked like the rest of the movie was going to be more of the same.  So we decided that we weren't really into watching any more of it. 

Christine called us out into the yard while we were watching the movie to show us what looked like grey clouds in the sky, but was actually smoke from a bush fire that had started not that far from Hervey Bay.  Her husband, Chris, works for the local council and his job today was to watch the fire from here and to see how bad it looked like it was going to be.  When we watched the news later on, it turned out that there were fires in three areas not that far from Hervey Bay.  The temperatures have been around 30C here in Hervey  Bay for the past week, so it has likely been higher in those affected areas which are inland from us. 

While we were out there, Christine showed us around her yard.  They have tons of fruit trees, vegetables and nuts growing in their yard.  They have over an acre of property and much of it has something growing on it.  They would like to become self-sustaining in the fruit/veg/nut areas in the next few years.  She is growing some plants that we have never heard of, so it's going to be interesting to see what they look like when they produce fruit.  They also have two chickens (chooks) in a pen in their yard which produce fresh eggs daily for them.

Since we had turned off the movie, we decided to watch another one (this one from the library as we had gone through all the ones from Blockbuster)  - this one was called 'Wire in the Blood'.  It was about a squad of detectives who used the assistance of a clinical psychologist to catch a killer of patients in a hospital.  It reminded me of 'Criminal Minds', so of course, I really liked it.  We did try to watch a dvd of a British comedy called 'Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em', but the humour wasn't funny to us - as Mike said, it was too dry.  I do like some British comedy, but this one isn't one of them. 

While I read the paper to catch up on all the local happenings in Big Town Hervey Bay, Mike learned how to put photo albums on this blog and he successfully did it.  If you look on the right of this blog, down below the 'Blog Archive' (which tells the dates I have entered a blog), you will see three photo albums: one with just two Hervey Bay signs (more photos of Hervey Bay to come), one with pics of the granny flat we live in, and the third with pics of our chapel here in Hervey Bay (when you look at those, notice how different the building style is from what you are used to seeing in Canada).  If you click on a photo album, it will open to a large size and you can click on the arrow at the top to see each photo or you can click on slideshow at the top and it will automatically run through the photos. Mike says, "to get back to the blog, you have to click the 'back arrow'."

After a few games of cribbage (Mike says he keeps letting me win :-), we went for our daily walk - we try to get in a walk every day that we do not have the use of our friend's car.  Today, we walked around the block one way to go and see the outside of a house that is for sale.  When we got there, we realized that we had seen the house from the outside before - it had a big green power distribution box in front of it which blocks clear access through the gate to the back yard.  So, needless to say, we crossed that property off our list.  We are still looking at houses in the property for sale newspaper even though we aren't going to buy anything until the exchange rate between the Canadian and the Australian dollar improves.  We still haven't found anything that matches up to the 'dream house' that we found a couple of weeks ago - everything we see, I compare to that house.

We spent the rest of the evening watching two of our favourite tv shows: 'Big Bang Theory' and 'Criminal Minds'.  We're quite tired today - we both almost fell asleep on the carpet in the front room today - so I think we will call it an 'early' night tonight and head off to bed at 10:30pm.