Monday, November 20, 2006

Red Bull Air Race and Worm Farm Were This Weekend's Highlights

The boy was sick this weekend. So, no Korean school or taekwondo for him. Instead, we built a worm farm. Well, I wasn't going to pay $90 for the plastic version in the shop. Hopefully that which I have put together will work as the 500 starter worms cost over 20 bucks. Wish I had my camera with me. I've glued some supports inside a few planter trays, put legs on the base and installed a tap.

Talk about getting the runaround at Bunnings whilst searching for the tap. I looked in the plumbing section, aisle 42, for a plastic tap. Then I went to gardening, where they sent me to reticulation, aisle 17. The team member at reticulation needed help and they dragged me over to homewares, aisle 29. Finally located a plastic tap but it was only a threaded version without a locknut. Do you think that I could find a locknut? My best bet was going to be a reducer but the reticulation guy found a sprinkler accessory that did the job. Only problem was there was no sticker and the checkout girl had no idea what the part was. I told her that it was 99 cents, which was no word of a lie, and she found a sprinkler part that cost 91 cents and put it down as that.

Nearly finished the worm farm on Saturday night while we watched Chicken Run. On Sunday morning I ventured to Bunnings again to purchase a holesaw arbor as I had a holesaw but not the right size arbor. There was a nice brand-name set of holesaw that I was willing to pay a bit extra for but they were all too big so I had to settle for the cheapie Chinese variety. This was one occasion that I wanted to pay more for something and I was let down by it not quite being appropriately. Got myself a lovely rat tail file also. It's some new fangled design and is not a solid piece of metal a all.

Anyway, put it all together up until the last bit of gluing. Vaccumed the house prior to us going out to see the Red Bull Air Race. I'd seen these guys practising during the week. My boss let me use his car park at work which was a great help as I would otherwise have had to pay for parking. There were a few hundred thousand people lining the foreshores of the Swan River to see this spectacular event. We found a spot under a tree so weren't going to get sunburnt. I was surprised that Miky got so into it. Didn't think that it would be her cup of tee. Yu-Jin was inspired too and it helped that I brought a couple of planes along. I even saw one of my workmates there.

To see the pilots going at something like 360 km/h and pulling 11 Gs on some of their turns was amazing. On the news we could check out the cockpit footage. Brilliant. Nice and loud too. Not too many drunken yobbos about either. After the first leg of the race, we and many thousands of others decided that that was enough. Walking back to the car and we have to leave the roadway as an ambulance was in a hurry to leave. Found out later on the news that some guy had dived off his boat into the river and broken his neck. Not the smartest move.

Caught a bus into the city after showing Miky my office. Good move although the traffic was so bad we were only moving as fast as people walking but the bus was airconditioned. Went to Jaws sushi for lunch and had to wait 10 minutes to get a table. The city was buzzing. They had a book sale in Myer with 40% off so we bought a few books for the boy. A Harry Potter novel, book on Egyptology and an animal encyclopaedia. Bought myself a new shirt which will probably end up being a Christmas present in some form as it was so expensive.

Got home and put the worm farm into the garden. Chucked the worms in and some scraps for them to get started on. We'll see how it goes.

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