Cats do just enough

Saturday night church sure makes Sunday mornings much more relaxed. I took the trailer load to the tip then Sport Boy and I went down to the Nade to watch the footy on Foxtel.
The Cats won but it was a long way short of the massacre everyone expected, in fact Melbourne kicked the first three goals of the game to totally deflate the crowd after the unveiling of the premiership flag.
Things improved after that but Geelong never really clicked into gear today, just did enough to win.
The good news though is that they are on top of the ladder. Hopefully they can stay there all season.

Tom Hawkins, aka Tomahawk, kicked 5 goals and took a couple of great marks. He's starting to show some of the signs that accompanied the hype when he was drafted.


I spent a couple of hours this afternoon trying to level the shed in preparation for the concrete floor. I had to raise the bricks up that it is sitting on, a strategy to keep it dry when it rains because it sits at the foot of a small slope in the garden. I managed to use my car jack to lift it up, then raised the level of sand before repositioning the bricks. I bought a level from Bunnings this arvo (a bargain at $4.95!) and managed to get it pretty close to level on all four sides!!
Another load of sand to lift the floor and stabilise the bricks and it should be just about ready. After I manufacture some sort of form work for the concrete that is!!
With the weather getting wetter and colder I'm really keen to get the job finished and get everything put away, and get our patio and carport back!!

Mum rang this evening, they've been away over east for a month and not having a very good time of it, with conflict with part of the family, Vicki's serious health problems, and Walter himself getting sick and needing to go to hospital in Mt Gambier.
I think they'll be glad to get home.

The Shed Takes Shape

The shed building has begun!

Yesterday I spread a load of sand and levelled out the pad, sort of! I couldn't find my level, which is tiny anyway, it wasn't billiard table standard but at least it creates the impression of being the sort of thing you could build a shed on.

The walls are all up, a tricky operation in windy conditions, requiring the help of all members of the family at various times.
The centre beam is in place and more solid now that I drilled holes and put bolts right through it and the brackets it sits in. The original small screws for the purpose didn't seem convincing, especially as we had a hard time aligning the holes.

I broke about half a dozen drill bits whilst drilling out all the pop rivets in readiness for the next, and most challenging stage, putting the door frame together and rehanging the doors. It is a complex puzzle and made out of heavy and awkward material. The Heir and I scratched our heads over it for quite a while this afternoon, and it was only after he went to work that I managed to work out which bits go where. I'm not saying his departure had anything to do with the breakthrough...

A blackout stopped me in my tracks with the drilling process so I adjourned to the park with Sport Boy to kick the footy. That ended in a bit of a drama, prompting SB to descibe it as the 3rd worst day of his life! I'm sworn to secrecy re. the details.

Hopefully tomorrow I will manage to reassemble the doors and door frame and get them secured. After that will come the roof, and as soon after that as possible, we'll pour a concrete floor in and make the whole thing permanent!

Meanwhile, Mrs Holt-Press spent the day weilding pruning shears and a tree lopping saw and performed radical surgery on the trees and bushes down the side of the house, marvelling over the size of the branches she cut down and dragged off the roof!

Tomorrow is Favourite Daughter's 19th birthday so the day won't be devoted entirely to shed building. The plan is to go for a picnic somewhere, perhaps Meelup. We need to pick up Fashion Boy from Dunsborough where he's been staying at a friends place for a couple of days anyway so Meelup makes sense.

Movember

You probably know that this month is Movember and blokes all over Australia have been growing mo's to raise money for men's health issues like prostate cancer. A mate at work, Patesy, has been leading the charge and sent this reminder to everyone the other day. I liked the picture so much I decided to blog it (and to make a donation).

The value of the blog was shown again today. While I was watching the soccer with Dave last night he said, "I read on your blog the other day that you've bought a shed, if you need a truck to move it you can use my work truck". Dave runs South-West Glass, behind Bunnings in the LIA, so this afternoon The Heir and I borrowed the truck, which has those handy stands for transporting glass, and headed down to Quindalup to pick up the shed we dismantled on the weekend. We managed to heave it all over the fence and load it successfully without mishap or bloodshed, although that run ended when we got home and in the process of unloading it I re-opened a cut on my finger whilst digging out one of the retic pipes we need to move in order to get the shed into the space between the carport and the fence. That will be it's home for a few weeks until I manage to recruit (con) a few mates into coming and helping me put it up. Mid-January is looking most likely!

Local Heroes

The Heir and I have just returned from fighting a fire and saving the neighbourhood from going up in flames, or a small patch of bush near the drain at least. Mrs HP went to pick up Fashion Boy from a party (One of those wild moustached drawing parties!) when she rang to say there was a fire burning down the street and that we should go and put it out. The "little" fire she reported was well alight by the time we got there so I called 000 to report it then with the help of another bloke who'd stopped the three of us managed to beat it out with tree branches. It wasn't near any houses but it would have burnt a significant area if we hadn't extinguished it. The fire brigade arrived a few minutes later, took a look, then put their lights and siren on in a peculiar piece of timing.
They proceeded to give it a good soaking to deal with the remaining coals and embers.
Our good deed done for the day we headed for home.

We had been out at a quiz night at the hockey club and came from 5th with one round to go to storm into 3rd place. That scored us an assortment of prizes which we had to divvy up. We got a digital camera that will make a good present for one of the kids.

The big news of the day is that we have a new government in Australia with the Labor Party winning and Kevin Rudd becoming the new Prime Minister. The most amusing part of the whole deal was that the sitting PM lost his own seat, only the second time it's happened since federation!

I spent the afternoon dismantling the shed in Quindalup. Stu aka The Gardener and The Heir helped. Stu was the brains of the organisation, with me happy to follow his lead. The Heir provided material assistance, going to buy me a new key chuck when mine broke, and then when that one broke! going to get a stronger one from Bunnings back in Busselton.
While he was away I managed to fall off the wheelie bin I was standing on drilling out pop rivets and cut and scraped myself in a few places. The bleeding has stopped but my leg and arm are aching.
We managed to get the whole thing apart. The next stage is transporting it back to our place. We'll need a large trailer to do that.

Unfortunately there's been no progress on getting Sport Boy's bike back. Mrs HP did get busted inspecting a couple of bikes laying on the front lawn of a house around the corner though! The lady in the house was very nice once she explained what she was doing!