August

 Making progress on the house, including the lean to. Slow, painful progress but progress nonetheless.

Hopefully finished the remote tasks with work and I can stay around the house to continue doing work.

No other really major things coming up at the moment.

Though this weekend? Was very much a lazy long weekend. Should have gotten a fair bit more done, but ended up doing late starts and being rather un-motivated. Really not feeling it. But wet season approaches, and it must be done.

Over a thousand

Chopping down trees, and moving the bits off onto the burn pile. Not a huge drama, chainsaw makes short work of dropping trees and cutting them into manageable bits.

The problem? Green ants. Lots of them, very angry. I suppose justifyably so, I was busy cutting down their homes and source of food. Still, the bites are annoying and painful. Luckily I don't seem to react to them, though I do feel like garbage.

Estimate over a thousand bites. I was getting covered in ants as I was picking up branches and logs to move around. I was countimg them, and stopped counting when I'd hit 20 (sometimes 30). Each trip I still got more bites on the way to the dump point. Some trips I'd reach 20 just before I dropped that load off. Some trips I hit 30 before taking a few steps.

And I did a lot of trips.

So just had a shower, took an anti-histamine and generally feeling like garbage. Oh well, managed to clear some land. Still lots more to go.

Night shift

 Definitely not a fan of working overnight. Good news is that I don't have to do it very often, but it's still annoying.

Just need to remember to bring in the laptop, or a book or something to keep me entertained. A quiet shift is a boring shift - but a boring shift means no paperwork! If there are incidents, it can take weeks to get everything sorted. Not fun.

In this case, boring is good - just don't get bored! :D

Orange cascade

 Whoops, made a bit of a mess this morning.

Was getting breakfast at work and the drink machine (one of those with a big plastic tank on top, some spinny thing inside to stir the drink and a push tap on front) did a dirty on me. I held the cup up to it and pushed on the dispenser, and the top of the dispenser popped off!

Had a min-fountain of juice, trying to plug the holes with my hands while calling for the staff. Must have been quite amusing - for people watching. Made a bit of a mess, I think lost about 2L of juice. Luckily I didn't have to pay for it, and one of the staff said they had issues with the machine earlier this morning.

Shorter days

Seems like each day has more things to do, fewer hours to do it and I end up achieving less and less.

Might switch my creative attempts to digital. Made zero progress with physical stuff.

Back to work

 Sigh, back to normal hours now. I could have gotten used to working one day on, two days off. Though not so good when the day on lands on a day there was something on (looking at you PoGo community days!)

Another big improvement

 Still going on about the bike riding!

So, on the weekend I was able to do some more modifications on the bike. I replaced the tyres (and tubes) which were ... I have no idea how old. At least ten, possibly up to fifteen years old I think. Old and cracked rubber, the sides were breaking and I could see the reinforcement starting to poke through. Definitely on the way out, and the last thing I'd want is a tyre bursting on the way to work. A puncture I could fix, a failed tyre would be impossible. The original tubes seemed ok, so I'll hang on to those as emergency backups.

I also picked up a new (to me, got it from a second hand shop) bike seat post that was longer, so now I have the seat up a lot higher. Now I can actually extend my leg when pedaling! Much less stress on the knees, able to put much more power down and able to use higher gears. Instantly noticeable difference.

My first ride was about 1 hour 10 minutes each way (or so), my old best time was 55 minutes or so, today's ride was 44 minutes (and a few seconds). A ten minute improvement! Not sure how much of that was attributable to the tyres and how much to raising the seat, but it's good to see improvements.

Ride to work!

First time riding the bicycle to work today. Just under 32km round trip, and was quite hot in the afternoon on the ride home.

Sore. Very, very sore - especially the knees. Bike wasn't set up properly, had the seat as high as it would go but was still only half knee extensions. So it was putting a lot of stress on there, especially on the uphill stretches.

Made some modifications after I got home, including swapping the seat out for one from another bike with a longer metal support so now I can get my legs almost to fully straight when pedaling. Should help with the knees. Also added a bit of padding to the seat by way of an old t-shirt taped on. I don't think it'll be adequate, but better than the cheap plastic seat that's on there, which should help with my butt.

Going to ride to work again tomorrow. I must be  masochist...

Tomorrow is going to hurt

 Short version: car is in at the mechanic's for a while getting repaired, the few people I have that I can bum lifts off to work and back are all busy on other schedules or at other locations and I won't have a way to get to work.

Bike it is! It's actually been a while since I rode a bike at all, and many years since I've done a long ride... so it'll be interesting.

Camping, day sometime

Days are blurring, I don't really have markers to define the days. It's a combination of not much to do, hours of some random task, back to not much, onto some other task. Makes it harder to mentally keep track of what day it is.

Today is Sunday. Should be at home. :(

Camping, day two

Going away for work again, probably through until the end of September. At least we're staying in the top part of the country this time so it won't be as cold (and fingers crossed no rain either!)

It's been a while since I've had a longer trip like this, last two years the majority have been shorter ones.

Getting this one off the ground has been a bit chaotic, fingers crossed things settle down.

Camping trip!

First one for the year, luckily this is only a short one. Hopefully back before I know it. Going to have several this year.

Seventy seven point four

Just got back from two weeks running around in the heat and the dust of the woods and weighed in at 77.4kg. Bit of a loss after only ten days or so, though I suspect much of that is water weight as I sweated heaps. Was drinking loads of water (and electrolytes and eating salts with food) but I still feel mega dry - especially on the skin around my fingernails which is all retracted.

Going to take a bit of time to recover (it usually does) so I'm glad we came back in a bit early. Normally we go where it is cold and muddy rather than baking hot. The humidity didn't help either!

A good day

Today was a good day. Did practically zero paperwork - most of the day was physical work in the yard, working on trucks and changing tyres.

Much better than being stuck behind a computer all day. A bit sore now (and will probably be more sore in the morning) but it's a good sore, from getting things done with your hands.

Flies

Currently on a job, sitting out in a field, wondering why I'm out here doing nothing productive instead of being at home looking after my family. I guess the couple of extra dollars from this will help, and being away provides fewer chances of exposing my family... still sucks being away during this global crisis. Would much rather be at home. I guess somebody needs to be out here. Could be worse,I could be dealing directly with people.

Out here we're outnumbered a few thousand to one by the flies. So glad I have a fly net to keep them off my face, it would drive somebody mad to have these xreepy crawlies all over you. It's bad enough having them on my hands. Eating something is almost impossible without it being instantly covered in flies. Would be nice to be indoors again...

Ugh... worst feeling eva

Setting an alarm for the next day for work.

We were away for just over five weeks, and although it was busy, it was a different tempo to normal work. And change is like a holiday, right? Anyway, back to regular schedule from tomorrow.

So have to set the alarm again...

Getting on top of it...

...paperwork that is.

Been quite busy at work, trying to do my job and do courses as well. First two weeks was a lot of running back and forth but now that I'm mostly on top of it, the pressure is off a bit.

Now to stay on top of it...

Still sick

Still have the nagging cough. Doesn't flare up too much during the day, it's mostly at night when it gets cooler. I'm sure all the dust I'm breathing in isn't helping! With all the vehicles rolling around here, we kick up one heck of a dust cloud.

Keeping the air filters clean is an ongoing struggle....

Under the weather

Urgh... down south for work and definitly not feeling the best. Feeling quite crummy actually.

It was about this weather when we were in Perth not that long ago. But it feels a lot colder. Might be because it is a wet cold here.

We *should* be heading back up north soonish, so hopefully I can soldier through it. We'll see how I feel in the morning.

South

Flying out of town today. Going to be down south for about two weeks or so, with a chance of coming back in the middlish for a bit. Going to be interesting seeing things from this end of the zoo.

Going to be interesting adjusting to the climate difference.