Computer broken. New one ordered. Hate living off iPhone, but am grateful to have it.

OK, lazywebs, any Perth people know where I can get some good jamon?

This week's forecast:

Tuesday Showers.
Wednesday Showers, easing later.
Thursday Shower or two, clearing.
Friday Few showers developing.
Saturday Showers, windy.

I like how somebody tried to make this week of rain as interesting as possible. Rain each day, but different.

Now here's a meme I can get behind...

Thank You...
If there is one person or more on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/film/carradine-murdered-by-secret-sect--family/2009/06/09/1244313122951.html

Reassuring to be able to find this article again, that I hadn't just hallucinated it during night shift this weekend.

Whatever happened, it's GOLD!

Back in Adelaide, with occasional interthingy.

Will be back in Perth next Friday.

The Camera D'Or for Warwick Thornton and Samson and Delilah!

How many years has this daylight savings thing been going for now? Several? You'd think by now employers like hospitals and the Health Dept would have worked out a solution for how to pay their staff appropriately the night the clocks get turned back. But, apparently not.

Hurrah for all the nurses, orderlies, clerks, radiographers, path lab folks, and doctors who are working a night shift on a Saturday, on the longest night of the year, and not getting paid enough for it.

Yar boo sucks to the employers who think this isn't a problem.

Remind me to avoid working the last Saturday in March if DLS gets voted in....

No internets for me. My puter just refuses to see the network. The only access I get to the net now is when Dave's asleep or in the shower.

Photos from my road trip - incomplete set, but mostly done.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctor_k_/sets/72157614052309235/

Does anyone have any use at all for old VHS tapes? We have a large amount we're finally ditching. Mostly random things we've taped off TV.

Please - if you were after packing boxes or butcher's paper, please organise a time to come round and get them.

We're finding it hard to move.

I'm sure I spent my Christmas holidays unpacking boxes, moving furniture and sorting out my life. Why do I have to do it all again?

If anyone wants packing boxes, butcher's paper, a coffee table, just drop by. We have one or two going begging.

5 hours sleep = road trip postponed.

I'll stay in a motel in Alice tonight, and head for Coober Pedy tomorrow, Adelaide on Wednesday.
Without a 13 hour work-day, I should be able to get an early night tonight (possibly chemically assisted).

I'd like to be on my way, but (my) rules are rules. Don't drive tired, it's that simple.

Free-floating anxiety has hit again, after quite a calm weekend. I'll label it 'excitement about tomorrow's trip' but have to concede there's some fear, uncertainty about the condition of the roads, and frustration about still being at work. Plus knowledge that there's till so much to get done!

I need to add swarms of locusts to the hazard list. Must remember to rig up a screen for the front grill of the car.

reaps asked: what, exactly, is causing the lack of food?
...is this a matter of finances (do we not make money available via welfare/centrelink/food vouchers) or transport or availability of food or a social issue?
what do you think can be done to resolve this?
( my answer ended up being kinda long and complex, so I've posted it separately )

This is one of the important Dreaming stories for the Alice Springs region. I suspect this story takes place in December, which is when there are caterpillars and stink bugs EVERYWHERE. This story belongs to the local Arrende people, but is a public story that can be shared.


Three groups of caterpillar people came together for ceremony - Yeperenye, and the two others I can't remember the names of. They stayed up late into the night, dancing and singing. When morning came, and the sun rose, they didn't get up, so they were turned to stone.
The stink bug people, the Ilkerenye, needed to pass through the region, but their way was blocked by the stone caterpillars. So they bit their way through.

The town of Alice lies nestled at the base of the McDonnell Ranges, that leap almost vertically out of the flat desert. These are the caterpillars, and the gaps in the ranges are where the stink bugs bit them.

I can't find very much about the local green stink bugs on the net, and I can't find any detail about the stink. I suspect it's much like asparagusic acid and its metabolites - the smelly compounds that are in your pee after eating asparagus. Not everyone has the olfactory receptors for these compounds, and so not everyone can smell stinky asparagus pee. I can't, and for me, the stink bugs just smell pleasantly sweet, but I'm assured they do in fact smell a lot like asparagus pee.

I can remember the name Yeperenye because that's the name of the local shopping centre.
One of the smaller caterpillar rocks was in the way of a gazetted road. Extensive negotiations took place between the white folk trying to build the road, and the local Arrende caretakers of the land. It ended up having its nose blasted off one night, ending the negotiations. The road is known as "Broken Promises Drive" to local people.

This is a little bit of the story of one of the mums on the ward at the moment. Her story is fairly typical for indigenous women in the Central Desert, though she has a few advantages over many of her peers.
( Life in Central Australia )

It's a dreadful situation, a common situation, one that coastal people usually have no awareness of or might suspect is being exaggerated. Sadly it's not, and this is one of the better and perhaps easier-to-fix problems encountered out here.

Merry Christmas, y'all.