jayneandmarty.com

Three Wednesdays ago we decided to have Bunnings-style barbequed sausages and onions in bread for dinner. I expect we were feeling particularly lazy that night. Maybe the train was late or something.

Needless to say, the snags were delicious (mostly because of the awesome lamb and rosemary sausages we get from the local butcher), and since then sausages in bread has become our standard Wednesday night fare.

Tonight was no exception.

Is that weird?

Last night Jayne noticed that the half-sink was taking its sweet time to empty. It has one of those Insinkerators attached to it but we haven’t used it for ages as it almost blew up the last time we switched it on. Anyway, she got the plunger out and successfully emptied the sink, but set herself to fix it all up today.

So when we got back from the beach she got cracking. Facemask and all.

It didn’t take her long to get the Insinkerator off and it was foul foul foul. We have no idea when it was last serviced but there was at least 10 years of gunk in there. We can’t believe it didn’t smell - maybe when you put 20 stinky things together all their respective bad smells cancel each other out.

Here it is waiting to be chucked into the skip that we’re getting next week. If you look really closely you can see some of the crap. I have a close-up but it’s definitely not suitable for publishing on the blog. This is a family show.

Once she knew which bits went where and which ones needed replacing it was off to Bunnings for some pipes, joins and the like. $40 later she was home and having a ball drilling holes, hacksawing pipes and joining it all together with the Teflon tape.

Then, a couple of hours later she was done! Who needs plumbers anyway!?

It’s Friday night, it’s 10.36pm, we’ve had a couple of beers, the SingStar’s on, and so is the video camera.

Oh yeah.

I bought an external hard drive today - a 320gb Seagate FreeAgent. $170 (i.e. about 50c a Gb), nice and sleek, should take care of our storage needs for a year or two. Had to reformat it for Mac using Disk Utility but that’s simple enough.

The thing is, after reformatting it I noticed that the available space was 297.88gb. What happened to the other 22.12gb???????

I’m totally into surfing at the moment. I just love being out there.

There are a few reasons for the stoke.

1. We live less than 20 mins from a heap of good breaks. I’m out at Ocean Grove every weekend and last Saturday we had a good session at 13th Beach. Other breaks like Torquay, Jan Juc and Pt Lonsdale are just as close (not that I’ve been to any of them for years) and Airey’s Inlet and Fairhaven aren’t far away either. One day I’ll get to Bells, but it’s a right and I’m a goofyfooter so I need to practice my backhand first.
2. The surfboard that Jayne bought me for my 31st birthday in 2003 makes me look good. It’s a shortboard/longboard mashup: it’s a thruster shape, 7′0” long, 3″ thick and 22″ wide, so the volume of the board makes catching waves easy, but unlike longboards it’s short enough to stay manoeuverable. It’s helped me catch so many waves in the last four years that I’ve improved to the point where I’m looking at a new board.
3. My 4/3 wetsuit, gloves and boots mean that even though the winter water temperature is 13deg celsius I can stay out there for a couple of hours.
4. My surf buddies make it fun even if the waves are ordinary. On any given weekend I can surf with one or all of John, Damian, Jon B, Stu or James, and they’re all just as stoked as I am. When the surf’s on we’re concentrating but if it’s a bit slow we’re just sitting out the back talking. Last week with John and Damian we even had a big seal keep us company for 30 mins.
5. When I’m out there I completely forget about work. Even on Fridays when I have to work for the rest of the day.
6. I can actually surf a bit now. I’ve had some awesome rides in the last six months. It makes a big difference when you can actually ride the waves properly instead of just fumbling around on them.

It’s become a big part of my life. Well, my leisure time, anyway.

Can’t wait for Friday! (2-3ft and offshore)