jayneandmarty.com

Jayne tried to run a bath tonight. This was the result.

Rusty bath water

No, that isn’t an autumn-inspired bath bomb turning the water a lovely shade of orange. It’s rust. Our hot water system has carked it. The water’s hot, but it’s brown.

So we need a new system. Trying to be environmentally friendly, I researched solar hot water systems. Yes, they seem to be more efficient than gas or electric systems. And yes, they’re more environmentally friendly. But they cost around $5,000 after rebate (not including installation costs). A quality gas-only system is around $1,200 and I’d estimate it’d be 50% cheaper to install.

So, ignoring the environment factor, to be convinced to buy solar we’d need to save at least $3,800 over the life of the system.

Will that happen? I doubt it.

Convince me otherwise…….

Just posted 40 photos of yesterday to our Picasa page.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jayneandmarty/ChristmasDay2008

Let us know if you want copies at more than 1000px ……

Jayne steam cleaned our carpets today, with a little help from Dexter.

It took her just over 5 hours to do the whole house. We have a lot of carpet, I guess. We hadn’t done it since we moved in, and they don’t look much different now they’ve been done (apart from a few obvious spots where wine/mud/tea stains are gone), but the filth that Jayne kept pouring down the sink was testament to a job worth doing.

I helped by staying out of her way, going to the shops to stock up on wine for Christmas (20% off at Safeway if you buy 6 bottles), and “roofing” the balcony with some left over merbau. Quite a fun Saturday all in all.

…Rob called me on Saturday to see if we wanted their MASSIVE Sony stereo for “next to nothing”. He said he’d tried to offload it to Cash Converters but they wouldn’t take it because it was too big (!). They’re useless, those guys. (Cash Converters, not Rob and Nic!!)

I wasn’t really sure where we’d put it but we have a big house with some spare rooms so I was pretty sure we’d make use of it somehow. So I ditched my Saturday arvo plans for roofing our balcony and drove up to Wezza to pick it up.

While I was there they offered me all sorts of other junk and I came away with a pumping stereo and 5 speakers, 15 CDs of dubious quality, and a party light. That made Jayne laugh when I got home.

Anyway, I got everything home and proceeded to spend plenty of time trying to decide where to put it. We’ve been thinking about buying a TV stand thingy to suit our new plasma for a few months now, but it’s been difficult finding a corner unit. Nobody sells them anymore, which is a shame, as the unit that sat under our old CRT telly just looked crap with the plasma on it.

Enter Stereozilla.

The thing is in two sections, one of which is supposed to sit on top of the other one to form a skyscraper the size of the Eureka Tower. But I noticed that the sections were the same size, so there was a chance they’d sit next to each other … under our telly.

And they did. The only problem was the two front speakers, both of which could easily pass for the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey (below).

Luckily, our corner-unit configuration lent itself to placing the monoliths BEHIND the telly, and the centre surround speaker on top of them. Hooray. Besides, that’s the only way Jayne would let me have them

I had to buy a few extra metres of speaker wire to get the left and right rear speakers where we wanted them, but now we’re set up with a kicking home cinema, in my humble opinion. Rob and Nic told me that after the Cash Converters rejection they tried to give the whole thing away out of the boot of their wagon. Well, we’re glad there were no takers. It works great for us.

Here’s Jayne in front of the setup. Should work nicely at Christmas for Singstar and/or Guitar Hero!

P.S. For bonus points, what is the film we’re watching? (too easy!)

Jayne and I have just had a good chat about whether or not to continue with this blog. It was always only a diary for us – we started it when we moved into our house 2 1/2 years ago – and it’s a really just a bonus that we can easily share bits of our life on the web with anyone else. But recently, as you may have noticed, we’ve been recording our activities less and less. That’s because it takes effort to blog.

Anyway, we decided to keep it going. Mostly for ourselves, but the stats clearly show that other people read it (repeatedly) too, so partly for you guys.

That is all.

The Polaroid camera was broken for a while but unexpectedly started working again a few weeks ago. Here are some more shots.

There are others – I’m having a great time playing with the camera even though it’s very basic. Taking a picture with it is so instant and rewarding.

I’m pretty happy about this – back in late August I wrote an email to the editor of Surfing World titled “I love Surfing World, except for one thing”. It praised the magazine but condemned the number of typos, and to offer something constructive instead of just having a simple whinge, I offered to proof read the next issue for free. I didn’t expect anything to come of it, but as it happened his old proofreader had just left, so he took me up on my offer.

Cool.

Even cooler was this little surprise when I was proofing the contents page. Look closely at the Editorial Contributors section:

Yeah!

It goes without saying that you all have to buy the next issue of Surfing World when it’s on the shelves in a few weeks. Just for posterity’s sake.

P.S. if any of you find a typo that I missed please don’t write into the editor.

I haven’t posted for more than a week and still don’t have much to say, so I thought I’d document the current music setup I’ve got going at our place. Because it’s great.

1. A solid iTunes library

2. Airport Extreme wi-fi with an Airport Express connected to the lounge stereo (circled in red)

3. iTunes lets me select which speakers I want to stream music to over wi-fi

Pretty cool. If I had a second Airport Express in a different room or outside I could stream music to there too (part of the plan).

But wait, there’s more.

4. Remote, a free application for my iPod Touch, lets me control the laptop from the iPod (as they’re on the same wi-fi network). I can choose any song or album from my entire iTunes library and also control the volume. Very cool.

But wait, there’s even more.

5. iTunes 8 includes a feature called Genius, which creates a playlist of around 25 songs from your library that are similar to any song you select. So if I’m feeling a bit Saturday Night I can choose Michael Jackson’s Rock With You, and Genius will pull up songs from Kool and the Gang, Madonna, George Michael, Daft Punk, S’Express, Cut Copy, Brand New Heavies, Marvin Gaye, etc.

So, to recap, when we want some music (and assuming everything’s turned on) I can pick up the iPod, choose a song, hit Genius, and we’re set for the next couple of hours. Very cool.

Yeah, I’m an Apple fanboi.

These photos show that I’m starting to make progress in the front yard. Finding the time is the hard thing.

Before

Not quite so before

Today

Before

Not quite so before

Today

Jayne’s painting everything cream to match the window frames. It makes a big difference to the house (front and back). Looks quieter, calmer, more set back. No idea why.

We’ve decided to sell the boat. Not an easy decision, but we’re tidying up our finances and she doesn’t make sense for us at the moment. We loved having her though, and will definitely buy another one in a few years.

She’ll be up on BoatPoint / eBay etc shortly, but in the meantime I thought I’d chuck it on here in case any of you know someone who might be interested.

The paint could do with a touch up but otherwise she’s very sound. Since we bought her from Matt in 2006 we’ve added a ski pole, carpet, a bilge pump, fixed up the seats and bought a brand new Dunbier trailer. The motor is solid despite its age and we’re including all the lifejackets and ski gear (except our wakeboard). We never got around to painting her name on the side so I suppose she’s unnamed, but as far as we’re concerned she’s Muchacha.

We’ll be sorry to see her go.