Results tagged “Pool” from Kazza the Blank One

Tuesday we had dinner with Cath at Malaysian Chapter which was nice.  

Thursday had lunch with Chrissie.  Nathan has two teeth!

This week I finally finished a project I started shortly after joining my new team a year or so ago.  I said it would take two years.  But it took only a bit over a year.  So we had a team lunch on Friday to celebrate.

Friday evening met up with Chrissie and went back to her place for dinner while Stu did some clothes shopping. 

Didn't get a whole lot done on Saturday.  Had the feeling that there was too much to do so didn't know where to start so nothing much got done.  Le sigh.  We were all set to go out to the club in the afternoon but the sweetie got a migraine.  After an hour he was still feeling very delicate so we didn't go.  Which was a bit disappointing because we'd been going to help with the prep for the Christmas party.  Sorry guys!  Instead we had chicken kiev and potato gems and watched Death in Paradise and Cars 2.  I'd never seen Cars 2 before.  It was, well.. silly..  Although I did laugh out loud quite a few times in spite of myself.  Had a quiet drink with Kit and Pete before bed time.  Less than two weeks before they move :(

Today was just more bits and pieces and not achieving a whole lot.

Except.

We sadly said goodbye to our pool, and have spent the afternoon draining it off.  While I was getting the pool ready for summer a couple of months ago I noticed a patch of rust at the bottom of the steel below the skimmer box.  Seems the skimmer box had been dripping water into the gap between the two layers of the skin of the pool where they overlap at the end.  I tried contacting Swimart but they never even bothered to respond to my query.  So contacted Poolwerx instead and they sent someone out to have a look but couldn't really say how serious the problem was.  I contacted the previous owner of our house.  They bought the place in 1991, and the pool was a few years old at that point.  Which means our pool is around thirty years old!!  It's definitely had a good run, and we had it for ten years.  I was too paranoid to keep it, on account of the club pool splitting a couple of years ago.  Fortunately there was no damage at the club, but I was terrified that ours would split and damage the foundations of ours and/or Kit's house.  We had some great times in that pool and we're both very very sad to see it go.

Autumn

Winter

Spring

Today was meant to be the first official day of our staycation, meaning the fact I didn't get anything much useful done in the past week and half shouldn't have mattered too much.  And today was meant to be the start of getting really stuck into things.  Except I didn't really get much done today.  

Sigh.

I did get most of the Christmas decorations taken down and put away.  

And did go to Chrissie's diagnostic ultrasound, which got moved forward a week on account of she's really struggling at the moment.

And did a bit of receipt consolidation.

And had a walk with the sweetie to go pokegressing.

Except I forgot I'd turned the hose on the pool for half an hour to top it up a little.  For the next two hours (at least).  And ended up with an overflowing pool.  

Sigh.

Fortunately I noticed it (after our walk) when it had only just started overflowing.  But did have to drain a bit of water (a lot of it on the garden, hope chlorinated water doesn't hurt plants too much).  Super sad times. 

I guarantee it'll pour down on Canberra tonight simply because of that.  You're welcome.

Tonight I was going to cook dinner of lots of veggies, but after pool dramas delayed me so much we ended up getting pizza.  And watched the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery (not convinced), and Look Who's Talking (because I needed some fun).

Last night we had no plans for new years, and in the evening we watched Fuller House and Rake.  Then Ben and Sarah came over to Kit's so we went down for a quiet celebration.  Watched the fireworks at midnight then we all had a swim.  Bit of a late night for me, because I still wake up at stoopid o'clock no matter what time I go to sleep.  Yeah I woke up at 6:30 hurrah.

Today I had a nice quiet day pottering around the house tidying up and Getting Things Done.  I tested the pool water pH and added some more acid, and more chlorine as well.  Fingers crossed things might stay stable now.

Stu cooked up some of the fish for dinner tonight and then we watched Fuller House, the last episode of Rake (hoping they'll film the next season in Canberra) and then The Danish Girl, which was only loosely based on a true story.  One thing that annoyed me: identifying as a woman is a very different thing to having fettish for women's clothing.  Just sayin'.  And it turns out the real Lili Elbe died after complications from a uterus transplant (it was rejected).  What's amazing is how long ago they were attempting such a thing, and how long it's taken for it to be successful (first actual live birth from a transplanted uterus was only a couple of years ago!!).

Oh the other thing I've been doing with the blog is back-dating a lot of photos in some of my older posts.  If you feel inclined you could go through the archives for this year and you may see something new. 

Last summer (or possibly the end of the summer before) I was getting frustrated with the chlorine we had taking forever to dissolve, so I thought I'd pay a bit more for a different variety (which did seem to dissolve a bit better).  Last summer I had issues with algae, but I attributed this to me being a slacker.  Towards the end of the season I think we added too much chlorine at one point, and the pool got very acidic.  It was so bad that the test kits didn't work at all - all the colours were comletely wrong - off the scale!  So at the beginning of summer I added some pH up and things returned mostly to normal, although I did notice the buffer was a bit high.  I wasn't sure why that was, as I hadn't added any buffer this summer.  But given that the pH changed the colour of everything I wasn't sure what to believe.  Anyway, at Christmas the pool had gotten a bit green, but again I attributed that to being a slacker and letting the chlorine get a bit too low for a couple of days.  So treated with flocculent and vaccuumed to waste and it cleared up.  From Christmas on I've been super diligent with the chlorine, and kept it within range the whole time.

But the pool just got greener and greener :(:(

So this morning we took a sample in to get tested.  Turns out the buffer is actually *super* high and even though the test strips say there's chlorine, there was actually very little.  Hence greenery.  Turns out the chlorine we bought has buffer built into it, and so it's been building up higher and higher.  Fricken great.  Pay more for something that actually makes the whole situation worse :(:(

So basically we have to vacuum to waste all over again to try and get the buffer levels down.  

*sigh*

Why does everything take so long?  Or why does time seem to be moving so quickly?

Last night I did one thing - download and process photos.  And it took all night.  Tonight I did one thing - blog my Queensland trip.  And it took all night. 

Although we did put a solar blanket on the pool earlier this evening.

And a shelf collapsed on my white desk downstairs (reminscent of the time my brother's one did the same thing thirty-odd years ago when we camped out in his room), sending old fish tank chemicals (set aside for disposal) all over the floor.  Of course a bottle of methylene blue went everywhere didn't it, and that stuff is nasty.  All over the white desk (even on the laminate I didn't fully get it off) and all over the garage floor (that stuff's *never* coming off :( ).

Here I was trying to do the right thing and save them for a safe disposal (if I could find such a thing) when if I'd just thrown them out years ago this wouldn't have happened :(

So we were about to get in the car to head off to work today when I noticed the pool level was a lot lower than it should be.  It looked to be at about the bottom of the skimmer box, so my first thought was that piping had broken to the filter/pump, and the pool had drained off.  As it turns out, it was siphoning itself off via the hose.

!

One end of the hose had been in the pool since the last top up a while ago.  The other end I'd draped over the edge, having disconnected it from the tap a couple of days ago to fill up a watering can.  Then the wind last night blew the end onto the ground, and the pool started draining.  Was super annoyed at the waste of water and a little worried about the flood (which, fortunately, seems to have drained fairly well).  But I was glad that it wasn't broken piping, and that I discovered it before a day of water had the chance to drain out.

In other news, all the documentaries I'm watching on America and its national parks is making me want to go back there!!  Just don't know that I could convince the sweetie..

Realised yesterday morning that I've somehow managed to delete the resized and geotagged copy of our Hong Kong and Taipei photos from last year.  Dunno how or when.  And I'm not holding out much hope that they'll be on my backup disks, because I do mirroring and any deletions will be gone from them too :(  So that totally sucks because it means I'll have to geotag all my photos all over again :(  At least it wasn't the masters I suppose.  I should have done a dad and made 17 backups.

Also, we finished watching Veronica Mars season two last night, and started on season three.

Vacuumed the pool today and went in it.  It was pretty cold, under 24C, but very refreshing on such a hot day.

Mum came back from the little brother's tonight.  We had a very nice swim in the pool and talked about family and life and stuff.

Then I cooked dinner - cheesy meatballs and cutlets.  Yumm!

Then we played on the wii for a while.  I checked in for the first time in two years.  I might have put on weight.  Sigh.  Mum lost weight.  More sigh.  At least I won at bowling and tennis heh.

So we had last night out at the club.  But it was a pretty quiet night for us.  In fact we were struggling to even stay awake til midnight.

Today we came home and I did mostly housey stuff.  Setup dad's slide scanner with the idea of maybe scanning slides while watching the 900 or so episodes of various documentaries he'd taped off tv (I'm sure I can toss most of it).  But after a couple of test scans I'm not happy with the slide scanner.  The drivers are super fussy and aren't working properly, which means the "intelliscan" isn't working - just quick scan.  But the quick scan is pretty down and dirty and the scans are very "soft" - focuswise.  Really not happy with the results, and don't want to put in the effort of scanning seven thousand slides for less that great results.  Might have to investigate a better quality scanner.

Other than that took care of the puddle, had a swim in it (finally), then watched some Veronica Mars with the sweetie.

Also we might have had bacon and eggs for brunch and pizza for dinner.  Such a healthy start to the year.   Hrmmmm.

Accidentally overflowed the pool last night.  AGAIN.  Fricken.  Fortunately the heat was keeping us awake and Stu heard it shortly after it started overflowing.  Almost broke my ankle racing downstairs in the dark (and in a state of delirium) to turn the hose off.

This morning I emptied many buckets worth onto the front garden, because it's completely parched.  Then this afternoon Annie wanted to come over for a swim.  Which was fine, but the pool was still completely full, and the displacement of five people (well, seven actually) was going to be a disaster.  So I spent ages emptying more buckets onto the garden.  Then did a backwash and rinse of the filter which needed doing anyway.  Was hot and stressed but felt better after the swim.  For about five minutes until the heat made it unbearable again.

Watched some Sherlock with the sweetie but otherwise just sweltered and tried to keep the fish tank temperature down with ice.

Just a stack more photos that still haven't made it online..

A truncated dodecahedron I made for a guy at work

George, who jumped onto my seat straight after I got up because it was warm

Some daffodils out the front

Lego R2-D2 and C-3PO in Myer in Sydney

Lego mosaic in Myer in Sydney

Sometimes the algae in the pool gets away from me.

Add flocculent and wait a day for it to settle

Vaccum to waste - shiny!

A lovely dragonfly at work that obligingly sat still for us to photograph it

A ginormous caterpillar - a White-Stemmed Gum Moth

The Birds!  A huge flock of galahs out the back (this wasn't even all of them)

Neil with his brand new car that he got himself for Christmas.  His last car was a Datsun 120Y that he bought new - in 1978!

Last night Nat and Andrew (and Steve for a while) came over for a small pool party.  We put the spa bar to good use, and nibbled on cheese and crackers and chips and dip and carrots, all while enjoying our respective drinks.  

Only my brother (and Stu) could appreciate these photos, because they saw the *before*.  This is the during and after.  Gotta love aluminium sulfate!!

Since the weekend I've been keeping my news feeds under control.  A typical day takes about 20 minutes to read all the news feeds for (it was a lot longer before I culled lots and lots).  Which doesn't sound like a lot until you miss a day or two, then it adds up very quickly.  So got today's feeds read and spent the rest of the evening geotagging.  Well sort of.  Finding photos taken over Japan, Russian and Germany and tagging them in Google Earth.

I cleaned my desk a bit more today and decided to attack a folder of photos that my mother had sent to my grandmother over the years.  Mum had put some baby photos and all our school photos into folders with nice labels and everyone labelled!  She would have done this with three copies of photos - one for her and one for each set of grandparents.  Dozens of names repeated over and over again over the years.  (In case you were wondering where my obsessive-compulsiveness comes from!!)

Yesterday was a day of mostly downs.  Just too much crap.

Put our new Spa Bar to good use tonight..  how fricken amazing does this look? :)

So last night I thought I'd top up the pool after vaccuuming out the last of the dust from the dust storm.  Except it was just before I started dinner preparations and I forgot to set a timer.  Then we were watching carols and I completely forgot about it.  Until I was sitting at my computer and hear water splattering all over the ground :(  Was most depressed that I'd wasted so much water :(  And then at 3am it started raining.  A lot.  The pool will be overflowing yet again.  On a lighter note, at least there's been so much rain that the catchments will have been replaced with all the water I wasted...

It was a little dusty this arvo...



So dusty, couldn't see Mount Ainslie from home..