I remember when we got "Red Car" in March 1978.  I even remember going on a pre-school excursion and seeing our new car at the car dealership on the Princes Highway in Sutherland/Gymea ready to be picked up.

Before that I have one memory of being in the garage about to get into the white car we had before Red Car (BDL Bomb!!).

But my earliest memory I have probable confirmation on was from September 1977 when I'd only just turned four.

And I have this memory from 1986 when I was convinced (when we holidayed in Canberra that year), that I had a memory of seeing the Carillon being played (like being in the room to see it played).

For years that's all it was, just a thought that I'd seen it being played.

Well I didn't have any confirmation of this until August 2020 when I was scanning Dad's slides, and here it was, a photo taken from the top of the carillon on 25 September 1977, while we were on a family holiday to Canberra.  It was a Sunday, so entirely plausible it was being played that day.

!!!

How cool is that ?!?

I really wish I'd kept a blog in my twenties.  How else am I meant to remember the "dark ages" of my life otherwise?

And now with dementia taking over my brain it's kind of a race against time to document my memories.

One of them is Fantasia 2000.  I (thought I had) vivid memories of watching this on Friday evenings when I was living in my flat in Marrickville.  I'd have a shot or two of Cointreau and be very happy watching it before watching something "edgier" after.  I lived there from February 2000 to May 2001.

According to IMDB it was released in Australia (presumably theatrically) in June 2000.

I also thought I saw it for the first time after November 2000 at Cynthia's place, because I thought I saw it for the first time at her place and was super excited to see the "been-there" at Times Square during the Rhapsody in Blue sequence (I was in New York in November 2000).

So the logic would be I saw it in late 2000 with Cynthia, bought the VHS tape soon after, and watched it in early 2001.  Except early 2001 was a pretty dark time after my car got kidnapped and murdered and I don't remember many happy times there before I eventually bought my place in Kogarah and moved houses.

So I dunno.  Maybe the memories were more of it at Kogarah... I didn't think so though...

It's all part of Life's Rich Tapestry..

OK does anyone remember this song?  Noriega's Great Aunt.  Done by Triple M back in the late eighties or early nineties to the tune of Je Ne Regrette Rien ???

So we were watching Anthony Bourdain in Nicaragua, and that's all I could think of the whole way through.  And I'm like singing the song (well the entire three words I remember of it) and thinking Stu couldn't possibly know of it, and yet he did.  What the??

The internet has failed me, I can't find it...

We were scanning more photos of Dad tonight and came across this photo of him taken outside our church as it burnt down on January 8, 1994.  I believe this photo appeared in the Leader in 1994.  Well last week the same photo appeared in the Leader again for the twentieth anniversary of the fires.

Came up to Sydney today.  Saw Dad.  Got grumpy.  Because he has that affect on people.  *sigh*

We threw out a whole lot of monitor and tv service manuals today.  Dating back to the seventies.  And all mum's meat orders from 1982 to 2010.  Because she kept those all in a file.  But she didn't think she'd ever need them again.  Did you know a 1.5kg leg of lamb cost $7 in 1985?  And 500g of mince was $1.55.  

We kept a bunch of cutouts from electronics magazines dating back to the seventies.  They contained projects that a hobbyist *might* be interested in (I'm not holding out much hope).  Dad had copied them all from magazines he'd bought and ordered them neatly in folders, with a typed up description on the front of the folder with what was in it.

Tonight we scanned a whole stack of photos of Dad.  We're only up to about 1987..

Also today ... significant day ..

I've been blogging for eleven years today .. happy blogiversary to me!

Also today marks the twentieth anniversary of the bushfires that tore through Como and Jannali in 1994, destroying our church and many of our friends' homes.

And it's David Bowie's birthday.

In about year eight (give or take a year) we were learning to solve mathemetical formula such as this one:

Yes really :)

ok so were just learning this stuff in general when a magazine advert came out with the above formula.  Well not quite.  It actually had a mistake in it and didn't work.  So we figured out what was wrong with it and fixed it, and that's what's above.

I can't imagine for a second that anyone will bother to try and solve it, but just in case anyone does, I'll hold off posting the photo from the magazine.

Formula courtesy of http://www.codecogs.com/eqneditor

I was looking at some work I did for my last job tonight.  Talk about a trip down memory lane.  Some of it I'm doing again in my current job.  It's funny to see the differences, and the similarities.  Talked to Jake for a while tonight too (I was reminded of the server we had called "kazza" that was our utility and software repository, which was later moved to a share on the main file server when the servers got virtualised.  Asked him about it - sadly, the share has gone now - oh well!).  I was talking about the cleaning I'm doing at work at the moment, and he said "I still envy your cleaning/documenting powers"  .. wonder if I could put that in my next performance review?? :)

Yeah so didn't get too much sleep.  Too humid!!!  Even with the fan on we were pretty uncomfortable.

The sweetie and Sally.  Animals like Stu because he's so soft and squishy :)

Breakfast on the deck.  Quite civilised really!

They wanted me to kill this march fly, but it was so cute!

So yeah a fairly slow morning.  Debated going for a swim but I was a bit stressed about getting myself all messed up (we were going out to meet people later that day).  So in the end we just did a big drive around South West Rocks.

We drove through the town and up to Trial Bay Goal and out to the Smoky Cape lighthouse.

Then back into town for lunch.

After lunch, we got ready, then headed out for a slow drive down the coast.

They have police radar traps even on the quiet back roads (not that they're that quiet - there's an awful lot of people camped up and down the coast).

The GPS originally said it would take four hours, but it kept revising it down.  Here's where we hit some dirt road.

Nice view of the beach near Point Plomer

South of Point Plomer was where we were most concerned about the road.  Then we saw this sign

.. and this mud ..

.. and decided we wouldn't tempt fate.  So turned around and headed back to Crescent Head, then back to the Pacific Highway.

South of Kempsey, where they're building the bypass, they have this sign telling people to ignore their GPSes..

In Port Macquarie we went to Big W to pick up some stuff for Stu, then we headed out to visit Stu's mum's grave

Then went for a drive round Port Macquarie

Then to our destination for the evening - Finnian's Irish Tavern for a school reunion of sorts for Stu.  He actually only really knew two of the guys there, and they were pretty cool.  Had some squid and some wedges and a couple of beers.  I also might have stolen some of Tom's steak after he declared himself done with only half the steak eaten.. it was nice steak, this would never do! ;)

We migrated outside when the band started up, as they made talking over the noise a bit difficult.

And then we headed back to South West Rocks for the night.