Melrick

Btw, the name “Darwin’s Law” would work on two levels.  The capital city of The Northern Territory, which is up the Top End where all the crocs are, is called Darwin.  Drop them off there and tell them it’s okay to go swimming in any of the waterholes in the area.  The reality is that only the insane would go swimming in anything vaguely wet up there.

Excellent! If we add whale hunters to the mix, we could intimate that there are whales in the water. Nice early pay off for the viewers.

Green whales, with lots of teeth.

I actually love crocodiles. There was a program on not long back here called Spy in the Wild, and they put two cameras in fake baby crocs, and left them to see what happens to real babies. And when they all hatched, their mother (who’s been waiting for them) picks them all up in her mouth and carries them to the water where they’ll be safe. They’re all there, peeking out of this weird natural cage between her teeth. Most amazing thing. Especially since when I was a kid, nature documentaries were still telling us all that crocodiles didn’t care for their young at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bVZeOt7bCw

I’ve seen that show.  Very interesting.  They used to think crocs ate their babies, because they saw them pick them up in their mouths, and they couldn’t entertain the idea that these giant, savage creatures could possibly be that gentle with their young.

Both the lizard and millipede fought hard for their lives, but they didn’t reckon with someone as stubborn as me.  And millipedes that large do not go down easy, let me tell you!  If it could have given me the finger, it would have.

I say Disney Princesses are allowed to kick ass, whether it be tarantulas, lizards, or millipedes, so Melrick keeps his tiara.  

Perfect. I concur with the above speaker   

Honestly, this whole conversation is beginning to make me wonder whether Melrick will actually survive his first visit to a snowy, cold place  or if it will just be like, Melrick steps off the plane, gets all the way to the exit of the airport and then just goes, “Nope, fuck this shit, it’s too cold...” and then turns around and goes back home to Hell… ::cough, cough:: I meant, Australia… 

I could handle the cold season by Melrick just fine, but sadly, I’m not looking to run away then. And even as heat-seeking as I am, without the occasional foray into air conditioning, I’d not last in the hot season there. 

But you know, I used to say the same thing to ShadowKnight, who swore he would love snow, and cold weather.

I don’t know how I’d handle truly cold weather.  The coldest winter day time temperature here is maybe 10C degrees, and even then I honestly can’t remember the last time it got down that low.  A 15C degree day is a bloody cold one to me.  So sub zero would probably freak me out.  It would be fun to experience, but probably for a few seconds only, and then I’d be awful keen to find a nice roaring fire nearby. lol

Moradin. He has a hammer.

Now to count down the days...

Ouch, Melrick. I do hope you will still have hair left when your relatives go back to their own homes.

Yep she’s on blood thinners, which should hopefully deal with the possible blood clots, but they don’t stop the actual atrial fibrillations, which can be pretty devastating for her on its own.

And she’s probably not well enough for surgery, unless they could do a minimally invasive Maze procedure or something. Sorry it’s been so tough.

Yeah surgery seems out of the question.  Ah well, we just have to cross our fingers and hope things improve somehow.  Just one of the joys of growing old I guess.

Thanks. And I can only try, I guess.

I'm sorry for it, Melrick, but I know from experience that these kinds of reactions can't be "logicked" away, and it's very frustrating. I have a couple of practical tips for when you are stressed though. If you look up when you breathe, it will open your airways and you'll get more oxygen, which may help to calm you. Also, cross your arms over your body and stroke the outer edge of your upper arms with your fingertips - it's very calming and comforting. I hope tho...

I'll try it. Hopefully it'll help to some degree.

aw man Melrick that sucks to not have a/c

Awww… you are right, though – you are not missing that much. Once you’ve done with the snowman building, and the falling and playing, and the sledging, and the tickling touch of snow on your face and eyelashes there’s not much left that’s good about it. As soon as you need to go to work, or go anywhere for any reason, you’ll find the public transport system has ground to a halt. The roads are full of idiots who’ve taken the car out and got stranded, making it all but impossible to get around for people who <i>do</i> know how to drive in it. So you walk, but the pavements are covered with compacted ice four inches thick (and that is not nice to fall on!). The hospitals fill with people who’ve broken arms and legs. The entire world turns into a giant freezer for weeks while it melts into filthy sludge, even if snow doesn’t fall again. No matter how many pairs of socks you wear, your feet are always freezing (your toes to the point of pain). Your hands are cold and your fingers hurt, so you wear gloves which don’t really help, and as you go about your business it’s like wearing a bundle of candy floss on each hand, making it impossible to do things like eat, write, go through your wallet to pay for a hot drink, hold a hot drink…

Having said all that… heat without aircon sucks A few years ago I went to Spain where they had a similar temperature and the AC was broken in our villa. I spent the whole week in the villa, out of the sun, wearing a succession of frozen tea towels on my head, interspersed by endless cold showers. My hair was wet through for the whole seven days. You have my sympathy. *pets*

I know only too well what your trip to Span was like, because I do stuff like that every summer. lol  And I only want to visit snow, I sure as hell don’t want to live in it!  You can keep all that crap to yourself. lol

I think I’m smitten! I’m going to have to read up on rules, and then watch more, but this looks far more interesting than I’d imagined. Thank you!

lol You’re welcome!

and lazy idiots that are more concerned with clothes, make-up and music than learning something that was taught way back in grade school.

Things aren't much better in this country, sadly.

I know teens here, and grown ups too, who think it's boring to read... I nearly beat the living daylights out of the girls who said that to me, with my one volume, hardcover Lord of the Rings...

And I was right, not a wink of sleep last night.

I’m sorry you didn’t get to sleep. I will admit, in the heat of our summers, I do enjoy my air conditioning at bedtime, which is really the only time I want to be cold.

Yeah I much prefer things to be cold at night.  Oh, and that was a record high temperature last night.  At least tonight isn’t quite as hot.

Your very welcome, and I wish you the best of luck with whatever you do in life.

Thanks. :-)

You very welcome.

Thank you, I appreciate it. 

Prayers for you & mum, Mel.  I’m very sorry to learn she has even more hurdles ahead. 

Thank you, Pitt. I don't think it pays to get old. 

SK has the right of it - Some of your cats symptoms will most likely be the same as renal failure if they are undersized and can't filter as much as a regular kidney

Thankfully, he's not at the stage where his kidneys are failing. They're smaller than they should be, but that's it for now. He's now stopped eating the dry cat food you buy from supermarkets because they ALL actually cause cat kidneys to shrink. So he's now on the fancy, expensive sort you can only buy from vets and pet supply places. They actually help the kidneys.

Ohh, no no no...Yea, this is why we should talk - Sent you a PM

Happy Birthday!

oops! forgot to say it here! Happy Birthday!

Thanks for all your birthday wishes! I appreciate it. :-)

So generations of Americans grew up never knowing the joys of dunking their soldiers in their soft egg yoke.  You poor underprivileged bastards!

My daft one pointed out that some of us have closer ties to the Continent, and therefore were raised with the knowledge of how to keep that freaking egg in place.

On he other hand, I have yet to purchase an egg topper.

Me neither.  Just use a knife.

btw, we do have Sprite here, but Sprite is just a brand of lemonade.

Wow! No homemade lemonade.... So no 10 pence stands near your house, I'll wager, huh?

We don't use pence in Australia, but no, I've never seen or even heard of that happening here. lol

If you wind up back this way, we’ll go to JG Melon’s again, for a good burger and perfect Key Lime pie  

Years ago, while visiting a friend & his GF, we went into a steak place, pretty fancy, one look at the menu prices ($50 to start), it was like “nope”.  Went back to go with a frozen pizza (cooked, of course), way better decision.

JG Melon’s burger was genuinely the best burger I’ve ever had, and that key lime pie was sublime!  btw, we wouldn’t call anything like that a pie here, we’d call it a tart.  A pie is only something with a filling inside a pastry thing, like a meat pie.

Or, if I need to shut off the machine, right now, but windows decides that’s a wonderful time to install an update… it’s like, damn, I don’t have to option to even defer it to the next boot.  (My desktop is dual boot, linux vs windows, and a quirk of the motherboard lets me use a slider switch to choose between the two.)

If you get fed up with windows, one can try one of the Linux distributions (Mint is a typical “safe” choice).  Mine, Gentoo, is very rough, however, it doesn’t mess around when I tell it to do something; ie, shutting down doesn’t bog me down with all those “do you want to save” or other dialogs, it shuts down as instructed.

No wonder I have a headache.  Microsoft is enough to give anyone a headache.

For a short while, with win 7 and 8.1, they seemed to start getting it right, so much so that I had switched my desktop to windows due to a rather intractable technical difficulty that made Linux really tough to get working properly (new hardware and something I hadn’t dealt with before), and this was after more than a decade with Linux.  However, they soon began pushing windows 10, very aggressively, effectively forcing the switch, and that told me enough to double my efforts to get Linux back.  Once I can afford new hardware, I’m divorcing the two, and will go back to dedicated separate linux/windows machines.  (I still need windows, from time to time, both for games and tax software.)

And relatively inexpensive at that, even for a bronze certified.

True, it's just lousy timing. At least I might actually be able to enjoy my holiday now, anyway.

and now I have to get one for me. Mine is completely dead

And my friends in NSW posted on FB yesterday, that there’s now also a plague of spiders running away from the flooding…  So, good luck with that, Melrick!

omg a plague of spiders and mice! remind me never to visit austraila! but be safe Melrick! guess i wont complain about the weather either

lol I read about the spiders.  I’m not bothered by spiders, so that doesn’t worry me.  Well, as long as the deadly ones stay outside.

Today was a day of sunshine!  Actually sunshine!  Man that feels good.  Some areas got 1 metre of rain in a 7 day period, which is about 3.3 feet.

I hope despite the wait that he is okay and cancer free!

~agrees with Apollo's sentiment~

I hope so too.

I’ll try turning it off and on again, see if that helps.

My physics professor used to say, when something wasn’t working, that we should hit it. Fifty percent of the time, that would fix whatever was broken, and the other fifty percent of the time? Well, it was broken anyway and giving it a good thumping would make you feel better.  

Aw, the good old “percussive persuasion” @BronxWench?

Kitkats and Crunch we have have, don't know what 100 Grand is and Reeses I've tried.

100 grand is like a crunch bar blown up around caramel.

Peanut butter M&Ms.

If the car is written off, the agreed value of it wouldn't even be enough to buy the same car again. So I either have to buy a worse car or put my own money to it. I loose either way.

That absolutely sucks. Is there any hope that they'll choose to fix instead?

Don't know. I'll find out next Wednesday.

Actually, that was me showing tremendous restraint. You should see me when I'm annoyed.

Honestly, I think this has gone too far. It's easy to read mal-intent when you can't hear inflection. Melrick, I do not deny your right to express yourself, I responded because your initial statement was very challenging towards naysayers. I hold no disrespect for your position, I just gave an opposing one and I thought it was funny that it didn't take much to break your restraints. LockedBox - I don't feel I incited with my view, as my words were not inflammatory, but perh...

Aack! The comment box lets you ramble on but there seems to be a character limit. I was cut off and so was Locked Box. How do you read the entire comment?