5-ish

Last night's dinner: barramundi baked with "Bone Sucking Sauce" (delish, though it's obvously meant to be used for grilling rather than baking - sauce bought at Charlottesville gift shop), broccoli, sourdough bread. Tonight: I bought way too much barra, so more fish, perhaps with one of the Chef Paul boxed rices I brought home. (A big package of rice, sauces, and spices turned up shortly before we left for the airport, and had to be crammed into the spaces inside the atoms of my other luggage.)

I oughtn't to have left the house yesterday, though. I was so out of it in the Macquarie Centre at one point that I had trouble buying a coffee: the needed decisions and words were being phoned in from another continent. I'm lucky I didn't end up under a bus, or indeed a barista.

Floppy and useless, I spent the rest of the day wandering the halls of LJ, and catching up on hundreds of talk.bizarre postings.

When smart letters turn stupid

From today's SMH:

Getting your groceries out of the supermarket without using a dozen plastic bags is really very simple.

Say "No bags, thanks" to the checkout operator and they will place your purchases to the side. Then you simply put them back into your trolley and take them to your car.

You then pack them into the box or clothes basket you have in your boot so you can easily carry them indoors when you get home. It's easy, practical, and works; and you don't even need any calico shopping bags that the greenies are in a frenzy to sell us.

Darin Russell, Coogee, March 8.

This is an intelligent and environmentalist solution to the plastic bag problem, spoilt by the whine at the end. I don't know about you, but my alarmingly large supply of calico bags comes not just from tree-hugging Maenads, but from Adyar books, West Ryde library, Amnesty International, Mom, and... the supermarket.

Of course, as a frenzied greenie, I don't actually have a car into which to load my groceries, which means that (a) a sturdy backpack is more useful, preferably one not recently confused with a kitty litter tray; and (b) I hafta bum rides offa people.

Well **** me

Just opened our letter box and found an actual honest-to-gods red-back spider. I haven't seen one of those since I was a kid, and then only because an adult showed me one in a jar. I apologised respectfully, took off my shoe, and hit her several hundred times until she finally gave up the ghost. I'm going to go out now and get the mail with a pair of tongs.