Scam Mail

I was surprised today to receive an actual piece of scam mail. Not the usual email sort that you get regularly, but an actual old-fashioned letter.


The usual wording though.

I was amazed that the scam business was so profitable that you could print customised colour letters, put them in good quality envelopes, and post them to the other side of the world.

This letter was sent all the way from Spain.

I guess that I should pass it on to the Federal Police.

A real pity. I could have done with the $4 million.

The Mystery of the Shrinking Crocs

Karyn almost ruined my Crocs the other day.

I left them strategically placed in the family room in just the right place for me to find the next time I needed them. She obviously disagreed with my positioning and put them outside.

The next day when I tried to put them on, I found that they were too tight. I reckoned that because they'd been sitting in the sun for the morning they must have shrunk. Believe me, the hot summer sun in Canberra can be pretty fierce.

I was devastated. They'd cost me around $50.

I googled "crocs" and "shrunk" and found lots of cases where people's crocs had shrunk when exposed to heat; even those just left in hot cars. There were stories about how people had contacted the manufacturer who refused to help. The common estimate was that they shrink 2 sizes. There were also a few suggestions on how to stretch them back again.

So, throwing caution to the winds, I put them in a hot clothes drier for 10 minutes and then put them on my feet which were wearing 2 pairs of socks. I walked around for a few minutes, and to my surprise they were wearable again, maybe even larger than before. It seems that heat makes them, what would be the word - "malleable"?

Hooray!


Now all I have to do is work out how to fix my Crocs thongs that have also shrunk and because the front is curled upwards, they look like they are designed for pixies to wear.

New Year motivation

I've been a bit motivated in the past few weeks to fix the steps to the spa.

The existing steps had reached the stage of actually rotting.  It all seemed to happen pretty quickly.  When I looked at them underneath I realised that there was a lot of raw timber underneath that general dirt had built up against over the years.  Being untreated pine didn't help either.

Anyway, two full days work resulted in some new steps.   It was a lot harder than I thought because the ground around the spa isn't level, so I had to make the steps correspondingly uneven so that they'd sit straight on the concrete.

The real problem was that every day was very hot, around 32 degrees C.  And every time I lifted my head this is what I saw.

At least the steps work.  Here are two votes of confidence.

New Year's Eve & New Year's Day

For NYE Karyn, her mother, and I went to the restaurant where Matthew works.

No chance of getting served by him though.   Whenever we go there he stays as far away from us as possible.  Generally he works behind the bar, making up drinks, making coffees, and organising the bills.

This year the restaurant had a 4-course dinner menu.  And of course we ate too much.  I went for a walk after the first 3 courses to get some fresh air and help the food go down.   Karyn and her mother stayed behind and made sure that the wine had no chance of evaporating.

We went home before midnight because Karyn's mother was yawning so much that she couldn't talk.  In hindsight, we should have stayed longer.

Matthew arranged to get a lift home, which was great, I thought.  Until I realised that Matthew didn't have any keys with him so I would have to stay up anyway and let him in.  I had to play Farcry for hours just to stay awake.

He finally got home at about 2:15AM.  He then decided that he was hungry and so made a meal out of the food that Karyn brought home from the restaurant because she couldn't eat it as she was too full.  It was actually her main course (course #3 of 4).  I think that he actually went to bed at around 4AM after playing some more World of Warcraft.

The next day we had a BBQ'd leg of lamb with roast vegetables.  It was a great meal, but my undoing was a bucket of pina colada mix that Karyn made that had half a bottle of white rum in it.   The mix was put into the freezer until it became slushy.  It was so easy to drink a person could lose track of how much that had actually drunk.  I think that we all had a sleep that afternoon except Matt who was doing something vital in World of Warcraft.

Here is a picture of Karyn wearing one of the silk tops that I got her in India.  It's the first time that she's worn one, so I guess she may have troubles coping with my superior sense of style and fashion.