f365: Day 305

Early morning walkies with Bruce, Cookie and Jenn (35 weeks pregnant).

There is a nice little circuit around the block that we take them on down Jubilee Terrace and back around Lizzie St. I've uploaded a few shots as the lighting situations were all different!

PS One of the earliest posts of the year!

f365: Day 304

A group of us from work went to the Staghorn Bar at the Breakfast Creek Hotel after work (the Brekkie Creek Hotel has featured on a number of occasions this year!).

It is an excellent place to mingle. My shot from today is a small sample of the numerous different types of rum available.

f365: Day 303

I usually go for a walk or two during the day to take time out from work, or to problem solve.

My usual journey takes me past the Breakfast Creek Hotel. It sits near a busy motorway - here is another view of the hotel from above a busy underpass.

f365: Day 302

The storm season has arrived, well at least today! Seasons are quite different here. In the Northern Territory, there are just two seasons - wet and dry (with tropical heat year round).

Here our climate is less like Darwin, but a hybrid between Sydney and Northern Queensland. Winter and spring are very dry and very sunny. Around about now, the climate shifts towards hot and humid conditions. Along with it comes the storms, usually late afternoon.

I went out for lunch - upon leaving the building it was calm and sunny. Within 15 minutes, the wind picked up as the storm approached. The first wave largely passed Brisbane, but a more severe storm hit around 5pm.

I have uploaded a few shots today showing the wind picking up and the very dark clouds passing over. I applied different effects to them, more for variery. Enjoy Mother Nature's fury!

f365: Day 301

I had a course in the city today which made a nice change - it was on the 24th floor of a building on Edward St, near Central Station.

The views of the city were pretty good so I snapped a quick shot before the start. Applied the usual cross processing effect to make the colours more interesting.

f365: Day 300

Wow! It is day 300 for the year, and day 300 for my photo blog.

We had a terrific day today enjoying the company of friends with an afternoon BBQ and stress testing our new kitchen (it passed with flying colours - the cleanup especially was so easy with all the space and the design of the kitchen).

I took photos of the kitchen early this morning with the 5d Mkii and a tripod. Below are the shots.

f365: Day 299

And he is us worried about Bruce being a drooler (before we took him home)! Check out the dog hair - and this is just after about 30 seconds of brushing.

Bruce is moulting a lot at the moment - we could almost fashion a small furry jacket and sell it (not that we'd need one here).

f365: Day 298

Bowen Hills Station can get fairly busy and it is a connecting point to getr out to the airport.

I use the station quite a lot so it seemed reasonable to include it at least once in this photo project.

Today's shot is a top down view converted to black and white, hopefully highlighting a lot of detail and texture.

f365: Day 297

I almost forgot my photo for today. Jenn has been renovating the baby room so here is a shot in progress. The walls are being painted white, with some turquoise lower halves. We hope to get the ceiling and second coats all completed this weekend!

Just a couple of weeks ago you couldn't move for all the kitchen appliances, food etc!

f365: Day 296

Our Velocity Pet Ambassador (and her two owners) paid the Virgin Village a visit today and I was on duty taking a few photos.

"Pepper" was exceptionally friendly and good natured and loved being the centre of attention. She was taken for a brief tour outside and inside the office.

I got a few good shots of her, including this one of her charging towards the camera.

f365: Day 295

Worked late again tonight, so any chance of snapping a daylight shot went out the window!

However I have taken another partial kitchen shot - today's image is of the large clock we picked up in Chermside in the weekend - it works well against the VJ walls and so far seems accurate.

The time says "time for dinner"!

f365: Day 294

We've decided that Monday night is my dedicated cooking night. Even though I am a learner cook, I am definitely much keener to enhance my culinary skills and try different recipes out.

Tonight I made chicken curry puffs, served with brown rice and a dipping sauce. It was the first time I'd cooked using pastry (note: pastry sheets, not made from scratch - maybe later), and I was fairly happy with the result.

The puffs contained lemon grass, chilli flakes, fish sauce, chicken mince, lime sauce and chilli sauce. Definitely will do this one again.

f365: Day 293

We went down to Chermside this morning to pick up a few items (in between all the renovations!).

My photo today is a dig at our supermarket duopoly. We noticed a big sign outside Coles at Chermside showcasing what a great deal they have on roast chickens at $10 a pop. In small letters underneath stated "was $10.50". So a big song and dance about a 50c reduction ;-). And they wonder why people complain about how expensive groceries are....

It did plant a seed in my head though and I did at numerous times throughout the day feel like a tasty roasted chicken (although have started spit roasting them on our bbq at home)!

f365: Day 292

A very tiring day renovating (again!). We are putting the finishing touches on the kitchen, and Jenn has been very busy preparing the baby room.

I finished off varnishing and adding gloss to the kitchen floorboards so the entire kitchen and dining area is now done. Also cut pieces of skirting boards for the gaps, offloaded a lot of rubbish from under the house (no thanks to the previous owners/tenants that left us with a lot of their furniture under the house when they left!), painted the skirting boards and hung a couple of pictures up!

Today's shot is a close up view of the painted skirting board with part of the kitchen in the background.

f365: Day 291

I was having some quiet reflective time by the Breakfast Creek at lunch time (this feeds into the Brisbane River and tends to get hit hard by flooding during the wet summer season).

A couple of Purple Swamphens were wandering around and I caught a silhouette shot of them, and applied a warming filter. They look almost like Pukekos (the Kiwi equivalent) - in fact I am convinced they are the same type of bird.

f365: Day 290

Another element of the new kitchen is the book and doggie storage in the corner. This sits next to the island and finally we have some consistent storage for our cooking books.

Now I must have a look at them sometime...

f365: Day 289

I left work fairly late today so was wondering what sparked my interest for the daily photo.

I had a bit of waiting time at Roma St Station, but stumbled across this banana vending machine! I guess it is a much healthier option than vending chips and chocolate. We are after all a banana producing state so why not sell them in vending machines also?

f365: Day 288

The dogs have been tired and worn out from just watching us sorting the kitchen out. Their normal routine has been all over the place.

In today's shot it looks like Bruce has just given up and decided to chill out on the veranda.

f365: Day 287

Apologies for another kitchen update, but progress is being made!

We have completed the walk in pantry now - this involved painting (chalk board paint), gap filling, installing brackets, cutting shelves to size (now have my own circular saw), installing the shelves and installing a hanging rail and buckets at the end for the cleaning stuff.

Jenn had a busy day putting everything back and it is pretty much all done now.

Today's shot shows the finished product. Well not quite. We want to lay some floating floorboards at some stage to lift up the floor to the level of the door rail.

f365: Day 286

We managed to get the spice board up last night - it is a metallic plate painted with chalkboard paint and holds all of our spices (IKEA sell these little magnetic containers).

Here is an angle of our new kitchen that shows the spice rack - there is even room at the bottom to write your shopping list in chalk (provided the shopping list is no more than around 10 items!).

It was hot again today which slowed us both down in the middle of the day.

f365: Day 285

Back to the weekend renovations again! After yesterday's hospital procedure, I was fully recovered and up for more action.

Our second home, a.k.a. Bunnings Stafford, siphoned another large sum of money from us. We picked up more bits and pieces including more floor stain and varnish.

We tacked the shelves and brackets in the pantry today and it is almost ready for action, save a missing bracket or two (and shelf).

Our indoor herb garden is ready to go - they are not mounted on the wall yet, but today's shot is a top down basic snapshot of them. Note: have never figured out why my coriander dies so quickly (out of the 12 we bought, it is the saddest looking...).

f365: Day 284

Don't be alarmed about today's shot since as it turns out, all is ok with me. But being a daily photo blog, having a general anaesthetic and an operation became the focus of my day today, and day 284 of the year.

Now for all the squeamish types, stop reading...

Rewind the clock back three weeks ago. If you've been following my blog, you may remember we hired commercial sanders to sand the floor boards. Turns out I may have overdid it somewhat as the next day when I went to the toilet for number ones, but rather than it being a yellow colour, it was pure blood.

Panic set in and Jenn rushed me to Wesley's Hospital's Emergency Department. I had a lot of tests done that day (including a CT scan to check my kidneys and bladder) but luckily everything looked ok.

I saw a urologist a week later and he advised that I have day surgery and a "cystoscopy and a right retrograde pyelogram" examination to be completely sure my internals were ok.

So I spent the day in hospital today, unconscious for an hour while they checked out my bladder for anything untoward (basically they need to check for tumours).

Good news - all is clear! It turns out the strain of using the equipment caused an internal capillary rupture in my bladder (which healed quickly) - this evidently can happen to long distance runners. But best be safe than sorry!

So my advice now is to drink lots of water and keep the pipes flowing. Currently it is not a pleasant experience (as the pipes are "tender"), but things should improve tomorrow.

Anyway, here is a self portrait I snapped of myself just after I came out of my intravenously induced sleep. At that point I hadn't eaten since about 8pm the previous night so was ravenously hungry.

f365: Day 283

I caught up with Nik and Casey tonight, our friends we met down at the dog park about a year ago.

After sushi train for dinner, we saw the movie "Gravity" which was quite enjoyable.

I realised I hadn't taken a shot for the day, so I took an evening quick snapshot of the Brisbane Convention Centre which was still partly illuminated. The centre hosts many events such as basketball events, arts and crafts fairs etc. The building itself is almost 1/2 km long and is located in the centre of South Bank.

f365: Day 282

Another kitchen update.....The next piece of the puzzle slotted in today - the rangehood went in. The rangehood's primary function being extracting all the dodgy cooking smells once I start inventing some culinary creations...!

There are three speed settings - the highest setting is not unlike a 747 lifting off a runway, so we'll probably stick to the lower settings.

f365: Day 281

Found this alphabet mural on the side of a local mechanics near work. Was probably one of the more interesting murals I found on my lunch time walk so it made my shot of the day!

f365: Day 280

Today was Labour Day across most of the nation. It hit around 35C in Brisbane so we spent much of it loafing around inside away from the heat.

A guy came around to do the tiling in the kitchen today. He has done a terrific job - at 72 years of age, he loved what he does, took his time and was very friendly as well. He needs to come back briefly tomorrow to finish off the grouting.

Here is a partial shot of our new kitchen and the "subway" tiles.

f365: Day 279

Jenn and I caught up with the Fawcetts, old family friends of mine (Kay worked with my mother years ago in the railways). They are over here for a few weeks house sitting.

The place they are looking after overlooks the Brisbane River in the riverside suburb of New Farm.

We had a nice day and enjoyed the views while having lunch.

f365: Day 278

The kitchen and dining room floors had our full attention all day. We applied a couple of coats of stain & varnish. After the sanding two week's ago, most of the house has fine dust particles present so we also did some tidying.

So a busy day at home DIY'ing and cleaning. I took these two shots earlier on while we were appling the first coat of stainer. The first image is the vignette effect which blows the colours out, but I kind of like it. The second shot is a more realistic view of the colours!

f365: Day 277

I call the area around our workplace the "Brisbane Ghetto". Lots of empty, disused parking spaces, urban decay etc. Nearby Newstead Park is a quiet spot for lunch, but opposite the infamous Breakfast Creek Hotel is a walkway which runs alongside Breakfast Creek.

There are a few derelict jetties protruding out - one of which I captured for today's shot.