3 in a row

Three updates in one day, things are getting out of control.

This is where we are getting married in April its the WA rowing club, lovely venue right on the river overlooking south perth.
 
 
And here is the latest addition to Perths waterfront, its a big ferris wheel. Not as big as the london eye or anything like that but stll pretty good, the ride lasts about 12 minutes, 3 revolutions with great views. the day we went up there was a forrest fire in kingspark (where we are getting married) and we could see the emergency services helicopters scooping water from the river and dropping it all on the forrest, about 6 helicopters back to back on a constant rotation for hours to but out this fire.

More Aqua

What are the odds, 2 updates in the same day. Here are some more pictures from AQUA.
 
 
Aqua is great, they really go all out to make the exhibits as interesting as possible, which includes making the most boring fish in the sea, the jellyfish, into a really funky lava-lamp-esque light show.
 
Finn is talking almost all the time now but still has some words mixed up, he still calls fishies, shippies, so here we see a starship.
 
Check out this stingray, because of the concave glass everything appears 1/3 smaller, these guys are huge!

Happy New Year (again)

Hi Everyone, well, January can go down as the worst blogging month of all time, I am still on holidays so hardly spending any time at all on the ol PC, that'll change shortly when I go back to work in Feb, so apologies if I havent replied to any emails in a few weeks. Here are a few highlights of the last few weeks to keep you entertained till I get back to regular updates.
 
Played a wedding a few weeks ago and came across this double pedal steel guitar, twas the property of no other than Lucky Oceans, grammy award winning muso and resident of Perth.
 
Finally got to wall mounting my yard of ale, and believe it or not i still haven't drank it yet, that may all change on monday.......
 
We took Fin to the aquarium last week (aqua) and we had a great time, his favourite was the sharks, the stingray and when he got to touch a starfish.
 
And check this out, I had a break between students the other day so I got out both my instruments and had a viola'vs'violin play off, and i have to say the viola won in every category!

The Finn Man

 
We were doing a gig in a shopping centre over christmas, all carol singing (yes, singing) and Finn came along for a listen. Here he is outside the cinema checking out the dinosaurs
 
Then we went home and set up thomas-land with his brand new crane.
 
Here he is with another of his christmas presents, a helicopter
 
And here he is from a few days ago with his brand new haircut.

Birthday Beers

 
Twas my birthday the other day, we had a really small party as Jane was ill with a flu so twas just me and a few of the lads for a 'quiet' beer or two. I made these beers especially for the occasion. Both are pretty basic lagers (kinda like carlsberg) except for one ingredient (both ingredients do the same job in the fermentation process but one costs twice as much as the other, so i wanted to see if it made any difference), so it ws kinda like a pepsi challenge.
 
Here are the kegs fully loaded. Both beers were fine, but the general verdict was that the more expensive one was better (it was about $3 more for the fancy ingredient)
 
And just to give you an idea of the temperature over here at the moment, this was taken at about 5pm on my birthday. No wonder we were so thirsty.

Dogwatch

 
Here's Kirby the wonderdog having a bath for christmas day from Jeff, our dogwasher. I got talking to Jeff a few months ago about homebrew, showed him my settup etc. and he got right into it. He went straight to the brewshop that evening and bought about $500 bucks worth of distilling equipment and now he makes his own whisky.
 
Heres another of Kirby enjoying his christmas present
 
The dogs got me a present too for christmas
 
And last off, here is Kirby and Reilly filthy from a swim in the river at low tide and playing with a stick.

Happy New Beer

First off HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY! 2009 eh, last year of the naughties, that went pretty quick! Highlights of the last year for me would definately have to be doing that 88 show run of miss saigon whilst still teaching 70 hours a week at the same time then getting a staff position which meant I could cut my working week in half and still earn the same. Had a few visitors from Ireland which was great, got to conduct in the concerthall and got myself one of these. Its called a yard of ale. I am sure you have all heard of it. I saw it in an antique shop around the corner from the house whilst I was buying dog food. $20 bucks, thank you very much. It holds 3 pints, i haven't donw it with beer yet, i have had a few goes with water though and i keep soaking myself.


Here it is next to a wine bottle for scale

And here are some instructions I printed off stuck to the fridge (already with a beer stain for authenticity). Ill let you know how I get on....

Toilet humor

 
We have had the same poster up in the loo for nearly a year now so it was time to change it.
 

New years resolutions....

 
Heres one of my nrew years resolutions. In order to loose a few kilos I am going to start making low carb beers, this special enzyme consumes all the unfermented sugars, so my homebrew is going to be the healthiest drink in the world!

Wheres the ball

Fionns favourite words are Park, Kong, and Wheres the Ball? Particularly tenisballs. So the other day I went and got him a giant one.
 
photoshop i hear you say..........
 
here it is next to a bottle of beer for scale
 
It blew his mind, i threw it to him, he tried to catch it in his mouth but couldnt figure out why it wouldnt fit, not unlike the father ted sketch "These cows are small, those cows are far away". Of course, the ball lasted about 2 minutes before he did eventually fit it in his mouth, puncturing it fatally in the process.
 
And here is one more doggy shot, its the lads waiting patiently to cross the road yesterday evening.

Suprise me...

 
We had our neighbours Liam, Noreen and kids over for an evening of merriment and festive delight last night. Liam called me that morning and said "what should I bring", to which i said, "suprise me, and it doesnt have to be a food or drink sort of suprise either".

So Liam went and welded this sign out during his lunchbreak at work out of the same high tensile steel as they use for tower cranes, its pretty heavy. To get an idea of scale here it is next to a bottle of wine.
 
and yes, i was suprised!

What did Finn do yesterday

Its been a while since we had anny Finn on teh ol blog so here goes.
 
Well, first of all we went driving trains. He loves trains, we have heaps of thomas the tank engine stuff in our house, they are great.
 
Then he went driving police cars
 
Then he build the christmas tree in the bar with the dogs
 
and then he put the first decoration on, its a little white bird with feathers, a present from Jane.

The day the wheer-bix man met the orange juice man

 
Yup. Thats right, i tried orange juice on my wheet-bix (exact same as wheatabix back gome) on recommendation from a guy i met last week. Its delicious!

What western australia is really all about

 
A late night with a local red and a bottle of mozzie repellant.