Fuel, El & Spiders.

G'Day,
I have had quite a busy week. My sister has been visiting. She is now living in outback Queensland and is on holidays. I took her to Yass this morning to meet up with her sometime but long term partner, Sandy, who is driving her home before they continue on their holiday shortly which will include hiring a cruiser to sail around the Whitsundays with another couple. Very nice. There are not many shops in Biloela where she is living now so she has had a real picnic in the shops here. She doesn't mind spending a bit of money on something that is quality goods.
When she was here, yesterday she was most amused to look out my kitchen window to find four sulphur crested cockatoos very happily going from one of my potted plants to another, gleefully snipping all the flowers and buds off and nipping off my coriander and parsley. Bloody cockies!
El's latest claim to fame was earlier this year. She was interviewed by some American reporter bloke who came out here especially to see her after hearing that she had had to close down a whole ward of her hospital because it had been over run by red back spiders. It went to air around Australia and overseas. Very funny. My sister on international T.V. Not that she hasn't been interviewed on T.V. before in the course of her job, because she has, but this went international.
Anyway we trawled the shops in Civic and Tuggeranong and had meals out. And if you know my sister ... had a few glasses of wine too. T'was all good. We had a beautiful dinner at the Hellenic club on monday night in their Ginseng restaurant, which serves excellent chinese food. She also took my Mum back with her this morning as far as Grafton, (so I get a break) to visit my niece and attend her daughter, Ivory's, second birthday party. I thought she was 3 and bought an age card for her saying so, she can't read yet so it does not really matter:)
Last night was a bit bad though. Mike and I were leaving work, he was driving and backed into one of the cars in the car park. It left quite a scratch on the back bumper of the other car and dented my front left side panel. I went inside and found the cars owner, he was one of the bosses there office, but he was very nice about the whole thing and reassured Mike that it would be o.k. etc. Lucky I have insurance or it might not have been so easy eh! And lucky it wasn't one of the Mercedes, BMW's, Audi's or flashy little Mazda sports cars that inhabit that car park. He was quite sympathetic especially when he saw the L plates on the car. I think what happened was he turned around in the seat to look behind him and must have pulled on the wheel when he did so and the car went across and hit the other one. It took some talking into it, but he got back behind the wheel today.
Oh Dear. Never mind, accidents happen. I remember when I was learning to drive I turned into a driveway on my Mum's cousins chook farm in Griffith and took out the letter box which was a 44 gallon drum set on a post. It slid up the bonnet of the car and hit the windscreen in front of my face making a really loud bang which scared the hell out of me but didn't do any damage to the car luckily. The people in the farm put the drum back on the post and stuck a few more nails in it. He he.
That reminds me. Today I put petrol in my car and it cost $1.67 a litre. It has gone down a little bit, a few months ago it reached $1.85 a litre or there abouts. When I started driving I was 17 yrs old and petrol cost 15 cents a litre. Hmmm. Not fair. I hope that soon there will be a viable alternate fuel source to run our cars on. One that also doesn't cost heaps to change cars over to like gas does. There was a bloke at Junee who Pete knew that had converted his cars engine to run on recycled vegetable oil which he sourced from fish and chip shops and when he drove it the exhaust fumes smelt like hot chips, funny eh! I use the cheaper version petrol which contains ethanol. At the moment the govt. here is talking about subsidising costs of Eco friendly cars and is investigating alternate fuels. They also subsidise gas conversions for your car but I think my old car is a bit past spending that amount of money on, if I indeed had the money to spend. It is all very well believing in supporting climate change and the rest of it, but many of the normal day people don't have the money to put it into practice.
The new jail in Canberra was officially opened today. They won't be putting people in it for a while yet though as there is still some work to be finished off yet. Pete didn't go to the opening. His personal choice. It will be good when it opens though as it is only a 10 minute drive from here for him to travel to work. At one of the schools I clean, the one at Campbell, they have been fixing up our cleaning/ store room buiding lockable cupboards and taking the door away. It is a bit strange but I will have to wait until it is all put back together to see how it works out.
Oh well it is bed time again. Good night. Love Linda.