Slowly growing on me this place, still don’t like coming here on my own though. Come up here for work to utilise a facility that we don’t have. That’s a boring matter not for here, but for the poor ears in close proximity when I feel like having a whinge. Would still love to come here for a lazy holiday. Beautiful and seemingly endless beaches. That bakery in Newcastle. In fact, if you ever come to Newcastle, I highly recommend you go there. Not even sure what it’s called. I know it’s across the road from Spotlight. Here is where I think it is. It’s got a concertina window with a bar table in it and the staff look like hippies. Get the Baker’s Breakfast. The mushrooms are to die for and the sour dough is freshly baked on premises. Coffee is the best I have had in my travels of Newcastle to date. Was supposed to get into Newcastle early enough this morning to actually have this exact breakfast before heading off for work.
This trip though, was a bit of an exception. Didn’t start well from the weekend, for reasons you needn’t concern yourself with. The morning however, well. Christmas is on it’s way. Monday morning. About quarter to six in the morning. Not the best of times to be travelling to Melbourne Airport. Well I misjudged this one severely. As Mark (who I bumped into at the airport, going home to Sydney) put it, “it was a brothel at the airport this morning!”. I concurred (my word of the month). The line at the Jetstar terminal, started at the Jetstar terminal and went to Qantas domestic. When will those clowns put in a separate baggage drop line? That wasn’t my problem. I got there late to start. 0615 to be precise, my flight, 0640. I thought I had checked in on the web, however this was not the case. I had instead just went half way through it, forgot that I hadn’t and in haste, printed off my itinerary again. If I had checked in, I might have had a fighting chance of getting on. Sorted that one out,just caught a later flight after forfeited my fare. Well, work’s fare, still not a happy camper.
Enough about work, not really much else to report. Missing home, and everyone there. You know who you are. Although a few of you aren’t so good with the keyboard. Little hard without opposable thumbs. One of you is more likely to take a nap on the keyboard. Miss my Japanese maples who need some TLC. Really need to get my butt into gear and find some nice pots for them. Also gotta repair the chilli plant’s pot that those little menaces broke. Really should finish painting my hammock stand too. The weather should be sufficiently warm to facilitate that. Shade cloth needs to be put up. Need to
make a new box for my hand scraping set and also one for my new straight edge.
Actually there is so news. First some insight into the context of this story and also, my current position at work, which is becoming more and more stressful but much more rewarding and beneficial.
So we are custom building a machine, which I am not sure of its classification, so lets just call it a CNC machine.4 axes. Currently building a small version which will be re-purposed for other uses such as 5 axis routing and 5 axis profile cutting. Just got shits and giggles. So this machine is coincidentally what I absolute love doing. Making machines, machining metals, mechanisms, electronics, software, basically everything together. Been on a shopping spree buying controls, motors, software packages etcetera etcetera. As part of moving forward, we obtained a substantial milling machine whom I will name sometime later. This milling machine is fucking huge. It’s like this but bigger and much higher quality. Went to visit her (yes she’s a she) to measure her up for making her “house”. While talking with the current owner of the machine whom I have known for quite some time now but not so well, we got to talking about my love of machines, machining and related topics when he offered, for nothing, a Browne and Sharpe hand scraped camel-back style precision straight edge, which looks like ngarr (think Cartman). I couldn’t believe it. For most of you, if there are even any of “you” who read this, then you will probably have no idea what it is for. Trust me, if you are in this category 99 times out of 100, you are the person who doesn’t want to know. I think I have talked many an ear off about my love of these odd creatures and the activities to which they are related. Trust me, don’t ask, and if you do by accident, don’t be polite and let me ramble on, just cut me short and tell me straight out that I am boring you. Thrown into the mix was a box of hand made hand scraping tools, about 10 in total. Very very excited. Now all I need is something to hand scrape…. the next mission. I haven’t been this happy in a long time though, was so appreciative and now deciding what relatively insignificant present I could buy to show my appreciation for this act of generosity.
So watching cable TV because that’s all that I feel like doing and pretty much all there is to do in Newcastle on a Monday night on your own. Tuesday night is trivia down at the Stag. Great food, really clean pub and trivia is a hoot wherever you go it seems. Bear Grylls was on before. American Chopper too, if only you could get just one station with Foxtel, I could get Discovery and be done with it, although it is heavily repeated. Almost like commercial radio. SNAP!
Quotes of the day
“It tastes like salad that someone has covered in mosquito repellant” – Bear Grylls in Patagonia
P.S.: You’re hot and I loved holding you 