Saturday 18 February 2012

Crocs 'n' clearances, music 'n' melancholic dog

Well another week or so has passed and still no movement at the station.  Katrina and I are in Ashburton with her sister waiting for the off..  Sigh

After another series of phone calls I now know that the delay is being caused by their security clearance processes.  Guess they need to make sure that I am not an undesireable.  Which is fair enough.  There are plenty of nutbags in the world these days and I would rather they took their time and got it right.  Although I am told that so far this particular process has taken 6 weeks - which in the scheme of clearances is no biggie - yet!

I have asked and been told that they will get their agency head to attempt to escalate this process.  Which is a relief because I really would like to be away and doing things.

Speaking of which my Au clearance process is also running and should be completed soon.  That's been rather long running, but most of that is my fault in not getting the papers  submitted.  Could be a race to see which process is finalised first.

While we were wandering around we visited Camberwell for a bit of a poke around, Katrina wanted to find a fabric shop so she could get some hand sewing done.  Guess what NO FABRIC SHOPS in Camberwell.  Luckily we ran into Dawn, who was on her way out to lunch, so a quick feed and chat later we headed off for the train station on pilgrimage to fabric.

So while Katrina researched train routes I staggered into the antique shop opposite t station  entrance and poked around a bit.  While there I took a photo of a renaissance recorder intending to show it to Katrina later.  However she rather unsurprisingly finished her research before I'd finished my reconnoitre. So into said shop she comes, and being a nice lad I showed her the recorder - Greater love hath no man!  A short time later we departed with said recorder in tow.  For any interested Melbournites there is a small collection of other unusual/interesting instruments also underpriced left on display.  (through entry up stairs in glass display cabinet near the centre of the store.)

It was a rather interesting day out as I was wearing in new shoes and we had to stop to buy socks, otherwise I would not have been walking by days end.  You see the previous day we went to Chadstone shopping centre and no sooner had we walked in looking for shoes for me than I spotted a Crocs store.  Huh says I let's go there and have a laugh at the rubber shoe thingies... So dutiful wife in tow we sauntered into the Crocs store all prepared to scoff and laugh at the, well, croc things.  Fifteen minutes later we walked out with shoes for me and thongs for Katrina.  Who knew that they actually sell shoes that look like shoes, rather than small rubber boats! At least it got us out of Chadstone in record time.  And I have to say they are rather comfy shoes.

So much so that yesterday I set out to take Jack (the dog) on a 7k walk yesterday. We got most of the way round before it became painfully obvious that all was not well in the world of Jack.  Staggering and falling over is not normal dog behaviour.  Thank goodness for mobile phones, a pick up was arranged and veterinary advice was "sounds like anaphylaxes". The rest of the day was spent on dog observation and this morning he seems pretty much back to normal - but no walks til at least tomorrow.  So what caused it? Well as far as we can tell the only change to his diet was the inclusion of plastic dinosaur.  Given the amount of other plastic toys and traffic cones Jack readily consumes perhaps the dinosaur paint disagreed.

1 comment:

  1. How frustrating for you both! At least you're getting to explore Melbourne better than many of the locals have.

    ReplyDelete