(I laughed so much at that it actually brought tears to my eyes!)

Next time you're in a chat room talking to a supposedly hot girl, remember this video.

This made me laugh out loud, because I've actually complained about this problem...

(And for good measure, here's one about Andrew...)

I stumbled on the Feral Children site and was both horrified and fascinated...

Well, we were offline for a while. There are horrendous bushfires in Victoria and the firefront surrounded the electricity lines that bring in power from New South Wales and which connects Victoria to the rest of the country, and apparently the heat caused the circuit breakers to break.

Normally, it wouldn't be THAT big of a deal because normally Melbourne doesn't need huge amounts of power from NSW, but at the time that this happened, it was a super hot day and people were running a lot of air conditioning units and fans and so on, so the demand for power was extremely high. When the feed from NSW cut out, the city had a blackout.

We, in our home, weren't affected by it, but the host location for the server was (and so was the public transport system; I'm thankful Andrew wasn't at work in the city, because from what we saw on the news, it was pretty chaotic!).

Anyway, we're back now. Fingers crossed that there won't be any further blackouts. The weather has happily cooled down, so the demand is much lower. If they can just get those bushfires under control...

By the way, the area covered by the bushfires is enormous. I'm not good enough at numbers and conversions and finding out the area of other places, but as an estimate, I'd say the area is bigger than Wales and probably roughly the size of maybe... Vermont and New Hampshire combined...

The Tale of a Spam (a feel-good story).

So, yeah, I haven't put much here. I feel really tired, and not really up to much in the way of my usual stunning wit. Hah.

Let's see. On Boxing Day we took a day trip west along the Victorian coast, up to Apollo Bay and back. We went there via the forests and mountains, came back along the coast. Saw a very beautiful waterfall, had a picnic lunch, ate fish and chips for dinner, saw a lot of really nice scenery, thousands of sheep and cows, and lots of hay.

Both the kids started to pick up on a game Andrew and I play when we're driving through the country. When you see hay (bales or rolls, as appropriate), you look and say, "HAY!" and try to get the other person to look. It's a very silly game, and it doesn't really have a scoring system other than being able to laugh at the person who fell for it, but it passes the time. Yes, we're extremely weird people and often easily amused. But the kids liked the game (I don't think they quite got that you're supposed to be able to actually see the hay, though).

Later in the week we went on Puffing Billy. When I say "we" I don't mean "including me". I mean "Zoë, Miranda, Nanna, Grandpop, and Uncle David". Andrew and I were in the car, beating the train to the various stops so we could take pictures. Yes, that's pretty normal (honestly, it is!). And as I was standing there waiting for a steam train with my camera poised, I said to Andrew, "Well, I'm taking pictures of a train. I know I'm a member of this family now for sure!" (Hint: It's full of railfans, including the aforementioned Uncle David).

We also had a picnic lunch that day, so I'm pretty picnicked out. We did get a very cool picnic set from Andrew's other brother, Greg (the non-railfan one), so it was okay to get to use it. Twice.

Today I took Miranda to a birthday party, which I found surprisingly enjoyable. I found I very much like the mother of the little boy whose party it was. The boy and Miranda are in the same class next year and the kids are very good friends, so I hope we'll be able to meet up again at some point again.

Andrew gave me The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker. Yes, it's a coffee table book (not that we have a coffee table). Yes, it's all of the cartoons from the beginning of The New Yorker, some of which have to be on DVD because there are so many of them. I should note that I really love The New Yorker, but it's quite expensive to get a subscription to it here.

The shopping cart on the retail site is slowing coming along. It's all uphill. Very tedious. Quite tiresome.

On the plus side, I've hooked up with some fantastic new suppliers, and I'm going to expand my product line to include a couple of totally new things (you know my fascination with gemstones and stuff? well, that's part of it).

And I'm listening to Weird Al. I just wanted to mention that.

Okay. I guess that's it. My stream of consciousness seems to have dried up. See. Told you I wasn't up to my usual stunning wit. (Sorry, I can't say that with a straight face.)

Well. The bastard who has been dogging me for months in a particular forum on a particular site has been de-registered. Halleluja! (I had nothing to do with it, by the way, but I'm happy all the same.)

And, as an amazing added bonus... Two other particularly troublesome forum members there who were constantly starting fights and making trouble and flaming newbies and just generally being irritating and anger inducing have also been banned from the forums. (Also nothing to do with me, but I'm still chuffed.)

Stupid as it sounds, I'm really extremely pleased by this turn of events. The forums on that site were getting worse and worse and it was getting to where I was thinking I was going to have to leave completely, but, well, I guess I won't now.

So halleuja and praise the admins because they finally did the right thing and started getting rid of the known troublemakers! Woot! Now maybe I can post something intelligent without some random nasty post about how I'm a know it all!