A day on the lake - Part Two!

 

Hi everyone,

Posting an update on the rescue boat course yesterday.  Sorry it's taken a while: I was dead tired last night and today I spent a large whack of time revising with the road crash rescue manual.  Is SES taking over my life a bit?  Probably.  And I'm good with that.

Anyway, yesterday I was able to head over to the course a bit later than one normally would - herein one of the perks of it being based at the Tatura unit.  The morning session was initially theory based - what to do in the event of a capsize or a man overboard situation, or a fire on board.  Then, over to Waranga Basin.  This started out with the water search exercise - moving the two boats in line while scanning for 'debris' of a capsized fishing boat.  I was kind of pleased how much of the mapping and navigation training I'd retained.  I think it's fair to say, though, that hanging over all of us was the knowledge that later we'd all be going into the lake for capsize and casualty handling drills.

Well, this stage rolled around.  The task was to roll over a small tinny, and with two other crew members to right it and then for one of us to bale it while the others supported the bow and the stern while treading water.  Baling it was harder than it looked: just as you felt you were making headway, a gunwale would dip below the water and it filled right up again!

That's me in the boat - bale dammit bale!

Image from here

On the plus side, the lake wasn't actually freezing: just a little on the chilly side.  Happily lightweight uniforms dry quickly, and when we went in for lunch the sun was out so clothing could be dried pretty well.

My friends Maddie and Ross, drying out at lunch

I had one particular insight when it was my turn to be the casualty recovered from the water.  When you're scooped aboard on the stokes-litter, it's remarkable how helpless you feel.  You can't do much to help move yourself.  I was kind of struck by how reassuring it was, even then, to see above me the focussed 'game faces' of the two people lifting me out.  If a person were actually being rescued I can only imagine that feeling multiplied a couple of times over

The final assessment was quite straightforward: navigate across the lake and recover two barrels and bring them back, while also transporting a dummy casualty for part of the trip.  We all managed pretty well at that.  After we recovered the boats, we went back to the unit for the theory assessment which went smoothly.  I'm double happy to report that we all qualified!  Not gonna lie, I feel great about this.  It's great to have a skill that two years ago I'd neve have thought I'd possess!  I can tell you I gave the trainers raves in the course review.

Scanning my emails this morning, I had a decent reminder about why this sort of thing is important.  The flooding in Texas seems to be particularly bad and making life difficult for the good people of Dallas.

Image from here

At the risk of being a bore, it's worth reiterating the guidance the State Emergency Service gives about floods, which can be boiled down to -

• Stay Informed – monitor local conditions and be aware of the situation
• Never drive, walk or ride through floodwater
• Floodwater is toxic – never play or swim in floodwater
• If you are likely to become isolated, make sure that you have enough food, water, medication and pet food, and be aware that you may need to live without power, water and sewerage
• Raise belongings by placing them on tables, beds and benches, or move them to higher ground
• Block toilets, household drains, sinks and plugs to stop sewerage backflow

In addition, the International Civil Defence Organization advises that -

• Switch off electricity, gas and central heating.
• Implement the measures planned for the immediate protection of people and the environment (if possible untie and set free animals from stables and other such buildings).
• Do not cross flooded areas on foot or in a vehicle. If necessary secure yourself by holding onto ropes or cables.
• Collaborate with public safety bodies and the services helping the homeless.

Image from here

The rest of the weekend has been good for me.  As I said above, I've been doing some road crash rescue revision today, and I also got out for a gentle run - my first in almost a fortnight.  Felt good I can tell you.  I'm really feeling positive for the week ahead.

Hope your weekends are or have been good.  And if you're reading this in Texas, I hope your feet are dry!

Norm, a channel, and voting Fascist.

Hi everyone,

 

This is the post I'd planned to write last night.  Simple truth is that by about 11pm I was dead tired and falling asleep, so that knocked that out.

 

Anyway, after my last post I finished up at work and headed back into Shepparton.  I stopped at the supermarket for a few things (cat food, copy of the Weekly Times, exciting stuff like that) and on a whim went into the K-Mart next door to see what the pricing on a couple of things would be.  Maybe there's an element of vanity at work (maybe?!) but I think this is the first time in almost 20 years I can hit the beach in Speedos without making people want to rip their eyeballs out.  Shortly after I left high school I kind of morphed into Norm from the Life: Be In It ads.

 

 Image from here

 

Shopping done, I went over to the pool for a swimming test I mentioned yesterday: 100 metres swimming and 2 minutes treading water while wearing lightweight two-piece uniform.  The uniform wasn't as bad to swim in as one might have expected - a bit more drag, and slightly restrictive, but that's all.  I noticed that the studs on the jacket come undone quite easily: if one were to be thrown out of a boat it seems to me it'd be little effort to take the jacket off altogether.

 

Aquamoves Pool - Shepparton

 

I headed for home after the swimming test.  The sun was going down by that stage, which gave me a chance to get a really good photo of the East Goulburn Main Channel looking south.

 

 

Today has been a little frustrating.  The business unit I'm part of met and discussed a range of things, some of which will at least result in me getting some extra work (this is a good thing, trust me).  I'm still looking for something better, something I'm passionate about.  Life is not slowing down!

 

I see that one of our media commentators has just launched his own political party: the Derryn Hinch's Justice Party.  What is it with people insisting on having their own names in the names of political parties these days?  Off the top of my head I can think of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party, the Jacquie Lambie Network, Katter's Australian Party and the John Madigan's Manufacturing and Farming Party.  It's like suddenly being surrounded by Cults of Very Annoying Personalities.  Mr Hinch is probably not a name my American readers will know.  Essentially, he's a cookie-cutter shock-jock who could be considered an Australian Rush Limbaugh, if one stripped Limbaugh of his fluency, panache and compulsive listen-to-able-ness.  His party is based around the usual simplistic tough-on-crime slogans, although as a cyclist I find it hard to forget hearing people with bicycles described as "cockroaches on wheels".  I'd like to think that Mr Hinch somehow did not realise the homicidal implications of that phrase.  Anyway, happily the makers of Red Dwarf have spared his party the need to create their own posters for the next election:

 

Image from here

 

No more for now.  I may have a little time on my hands before SES tonight, so if I can post again I will.  Hope all is well with you.

 

 

Tram update ... tired (and edited)

Hi everyone,

How are things?  I'm posting this from the tram; I'll probably post a bit more later tonight.

Tired as hell right now.  I expect thats because of getting to sleep about 3am on Sunday night and 2am last night (Skype and Coursera being, respectively, the culprits).  Although it might also be because work seems a little pointless at this moment. Indeed, so much so that today I spent about 3 hours applying for jobs today (applied for one in insurance and two contract roles in law reform).


Almost my stop. More later.
 
=================================

Hi everyone (again).  I posted that from the tram, as discussed, but decided to go back and edit it a bit and then I thought: just keep writing.

Anyway, here I am.  It's been what one might call a kind of standard evening.  I went for a decent run, had dinner, posted a few reviews on goodreads.com (if you'd care to, add me as a connection - the link should be there on the right), got caught up with blogs, facebook, twitter, dailymile and everything else in the wacky world of social media.  And now, about to go have a shave and another shower (the evening is really humid), then turn in and do some reading and an early(ish) night.  This will be a plus - this last week I've been working flat out in the evenings to get caught up with the course at Uni of Virginia.

Of course, I still have the course at Uni of Central Florida to catch up on too, but I'm only a week behind in that one.

Anyway, that's why it's felt good to have an evening of relative inactivity.

Back to reality tomorrow though.  Some recent developments in Floridian and Oklahoman law have brought to the fore a couple of opportunities for publication.  Also I'm still  trying to turn out a piece for the ABA Workers Comp Committee newsletter, and a piece for Agricultural History that I have about half written and need to finish.  And of course, there's that pesky "find a frickin' job" issue!

Anyway, that's my evening.  Hope all's well with you!

See you tomorrow.

Back to Work...

Hi everyone,

Typing this on a warm evening with Miles Davis on the speakers.  The windows are open in the hope of catching any wandering breeze, and if it were any more humid I'd be sitting here naked, neighbours be damned!

How've your days been?  My first day back at work today.  I managed to get out of bed and into a suit at a reasonable time and was in the office about 8:15am.  I spent most of the morning sorting out the mess I left in December, updating the deadlines on my whiteboard, setting priorities and generally getting organised.  I have tolerable hopes for the next however-long going well.

The day itself was, as you might have guessed, unexciting.  Getting back into the work groove is never easy; I usually find it takes me a few days.  So, I left about 6pm.  I was surprised to learn that the 20km run I did on Saturday was just short of a half-marathon(!) and my legs and feet were still sore, so I went to the City Baths for a swim to loosen the legs up and give them some low impact exercise and swam about a mile.

Dinner in my room and more research for the article I'm writing.  Have punched out about 2000 words and frankly think it could be a doctoral thesis if I had endless time, money and no other priorities in my life.

Starting to sniff out jobs in the US.  I have to get there before the girls get much older.  There may be some opportunities in Oklahoma, where they're overhauling their workers comp system.  I have the skills, but it's still a ways from Louisiana and not work I want to do.  Still, I might not be in a position to be picky (although, that sort of thinking is a big whack of how I wound up in my current situation ... or at least in the negative bits of it.  Hmm.)

OK, I guess that's it for tonight.  More tomorrow.

See you then.  Be happy.

Only three days? But it's a long post.

Hi everyone,

Has it really only been three days since my last post?  It felt like it had been fully a week.

It's been a full - or not - few days.  On the Thursday I went and got the judgment I mentioned in the last post.  We lost, which was a little disappointing as I thought we were in with a chance on this one.  Still, by way of consolation, our department lunch was that afternoon, at a nice place on Southbank.  I'm pleased to say I stayed sober, didn't embarrass myself, and even had the discipline to walk back to the office a little after 3:00pm to finish the appeal advice following the aforesaid  loss and also do a couple of liability-and-quantum advices.  Running in the evening.

Friday I was in the office tolerably early to get through the last of the work.  I was a little shocked to look at my timesheets and realise that I'd been at the office every day for about 30 days on the trot!  Friday kind of petered out: I got out what was necessary; by 2:30 people were just knocking off and leaving.  I got as far as 5:00pm, but by then it was a case of "who am I kidding?  I'm not actually working ... time to go...".  So I did.  I found my way back here, went for a run through the back streets of Brunswick - there was no way I was going to try and run on Lygon Street or Sydney Road the day most people's work finished for the year!  Got groceries in the evening and then sat up for a few hours writing a not-half-bad column on the Jon Hammar affair.  I sent it off to a couple of places and then turned in.  Naturally, when I woke up the next day I found the Mexican  government had released him.  As Bender said, "Ah crap, a miracle"!

On the plus side for Saturday, I found two of my letters had been published on the other side of the pond (here and here).  Letters to newspapers are surely the lowest form of publishing, but my strike rate on getting columns on history or law published is basically nil.  I need to get my name out there, and this is a way of doing it.  Not great, but better than nothing.  And it's a useful discipline to be able to condense an idea down to 250 simple words, so there's an upside there.  On that point, I remember something Oldest Sister Economist once told me: the reason The Communist Manifesto has been read far more than Das Kapital is because Kapital was  largely written by Marx - an economic theorist.  The Manifesto was largely written by Friedrich Engels, who had been a journalist.  Guess which one of them knew how to write?

Saturday itself I was actually up about 8:00am and on the road to USA Foods, on the other side of town.  I'll fry a turkey for the tribe for one of our extended-Christmas gatherings, so I needed to be injectable butter marinade.

USA Foods is the only place in Melbourne you could ever buy it.  When I got there I found they no longer carried it (which, when I think about it, isn't a huge surprise: how big a market for it could there have been?)  Nevertheless, while I was there I got some Zatarains etouffe mix and a bottle of - oh joy! - Crystals hot sauce.  Oh Lord, how I have missed Hot Sauce!

You may assume I've been eating it with almost everything since yesterday.  I even thought about putting it on a banana but decided I needed to draw the line somewhere and that was probably it.  I ran out of hot sauce from the before-time in about February; the only reason for not getting more is that USA Foods is (a) not cheap and (b) not really on my anywhere unless I'm going to see the parents.

For the balance of Saturday I re-edited the Hammar column into something current and emailed it off to a few more places.  As the day was warm I decided to go swimming at the Coburg Olympic Pool.  The warm day was one factor; also all the running I've been doing was drawing protests from my ankles, knees and hips, and my leg muscles were running in a fairly sullen "I'll do it because I have to" way.  Thoroughly enjoyed the swim, and it's been a long time since I've swum in an open-air pool.

Saturday evening - more writing, another column on a historical theme.  I settled that column when I woke up this morning (about 6:50am - on a Sunday?  What's become of me??).  Anyway, having finished the column I sent it to a bundle of places and then went to Mass at St Ambrose's over in Brunswick.

It's a beautiful old late-19th century church in bluestone where, mercifully, the Mass is done straight.  There's a time and a place for electric guitars, but it really isn't during Communion!

After Mass I came back here and waited to skype with the girls for their bedtime.  Oh my Lord, how cute were they this time!  Grace, my little extrovert, was a ball of energy, chattering like crazy and thrilled to tell me all she'd been doing and how she knew how to make a tunnel with a blanket and now she could do a kind of a forwards-flip.  I love how she calls me "Dad" and wants to talk to me every moment I'm on the screen and got quite insistent I pay attention to her when Joni turned me round to speak to Rachel.  Twas ever thus, though: Grace looks like me, but her personality - sunny, extroverted and enthusiastic - is all her mommy.  And Rachel was being her sweet, placid self.  When we got the skype connection happening she was already lying down in bed looking very much like a tired tiger.

But when she saw me, the first thing she started to do was blow kisses at me.  And she stood up and wanted to smile and pass things at me.  I love that she sleeps with the Kermit the frog I sent them after Hurricane Isaac.  Seriously, together or apart, I'm the luckiest man in the world to have them as my daughters.  I'm so proud of them already.

Skype dropped out and Joni needed to get the princesses to bed.  I went down to the City to get the last of the presents for the tribe.  It occurred to me that this is a good barometer for how well you actually know your family.  That is, do you know people well enough to know what they really like?  Or only well enough to take a stab at it and hope for the best?  Hmmm.

Shopping was kind of done by 5pm (need to go and get a few things tomorrow), so I decided to go swimming again.  This time I was completely beat after swimming a kilometre.  It was a 37C/104F degree day, though, and the cold water of the pool was heavenly.  Swimming done, I came back here and watched Big Bang Theory and had a shower and dinner.  Then, updating this blog which brings me to the present moment.  Tomorrow I'll finish Christmas stuff up here and then head for the parents place for the next few days: there's really nothing to keep me in town.  Looking forward to some time out of the City for sure!

OK, I guess that's the update.  I should post this and shut down, especially as my laptop's air cooling fan is making a very unhappy noise and feeling badly overheated.

Hope all your Christmas prep is coming along well!

See you tomorrow.

Wednesday already??

Hi everyone,

Sorry I've been a little patchy with the blogging the last few days.  As you can probably tell from the title, it's been an incredibly busy couple of days, between working flat-out during the day and exercising a lot during the evenings.  The exercise is partly for health reasons and also because it seems to give me a good kick-along during the day.  Kind of, run the brain to empty at the office, then go and pump some fresh blood into it in the evening and recharge it.  All of which is great but does mean I haven't written anything more than a very short - and I suspect abortive - history piece about the recent demise of the town of Quitman, Missouri.  On the plus side, one of my news alerts told me of pending changes to the Oklahoma workers compensation laws, which has prompted me to send an email to a legislatrix there seeking further information and which might, perhaps, offer me the chance to get my name out there and keep building the contacts.  As I see it, it's critical I keep moving forward with the move plan and don't let it drift.  I don't want Grace and Rachel to think I'm over here because I don't care about them.  I want them, when they're old enough to understand, to know I came across as fast as energy, earnings, and a somewhat restrictive skill-set could achieve it.

This evening's exercise was swimming at Melbourne City Baths, to give my legs a workover and also not to pound the crap out of my knees.  I got to a new record of 46 laps (1380 metres).  If it hadn't been near closing time I think I could have got to the mile!  Well, next time.

I'm pleased to report - and a little surprised - that the attitudinal change I blogged about the other week  appears, genuinely, to have stuck.  I've never felt this durable before in my entire life, or this settled, or as comfortable inside my skin.  I'm struggling for a simile here.  It's as if, having worn a too-small wetsuit for year, that crushed your muscles and restricted your breathing and wouldn't let you stand straight, you'd finally taken it off, and felt the sun on your skin and your joints free up and your lungs fill, as strong and free as a Mallee bull.  I guess I sound like a broken record, but I wish Joni could see me like this, and not like I was when I was falling apart.  Well, no point brooding over it.

I should close this and go and have a shower and wash this chlorine off and get some sleep.  Thankfully tomorrow is an appointment and meeting free day, which is just as well - two advices to crank out and a Mount Everest of medical records to wade through.  Starbucks card on standby!

See you tomorrow.