Well, the people at Nicks Wine Merchants/Vintage Direct are the best in the world. They replaced my stolen box of wine under insurance! For free! Huzzah! I’ll definitely order from them again (if my liver doesn’t give out first, that is)

I’ve been robbed!!!!!

I order 15 bottles of wine from Vintage Direct , and according to Fastway, the courier, it was delivered last Wednesday. I wasn’t at home when it was delivered, and according to instructions, the courier left the wine in my garage where no one could see it. Unfortunately, when I got home, the wine wasn’t there I’m not too sure what happened, but someone other than me is enjoying my wine. All but one of the bottles was cheap, but still, I’m a bit ticked off.

grrrrrrrr

P.S. the reason why I put the link for Vintage Direct is because I’m hoping you’ll feel sorry for me and send me more wine.

I got $900 in the mail last week – the government is giving money away to try and get people to restart the economy. The PM strongly recommended people spend the money rather than save it, and I was sorely tempted to buy myself a bottle of Grange or some such totally frivolous thing, but instead I bought a washing machine. I know it’s lame, but after a year and a half, hand washing or paying $4 per load at the laundromat was getting pretty annoying. Since the washing machine was <$600, I still have more than $300 left over to spend. Any suggestions?

I don’t listen to music much anymore because I am addicted to audio books, but Norwegian rocker Ida Maria (pronounced ‘eeda Maria’) kinda struck my fancy:

Scientists have said for quite some time that drinking red wine is good for you. This Newsweek article highlights a benefit I was unaware of:

they found that each glass of red wine consumed a month correlated with a 2 percent lower lung cancer risk.

Since I am a former smoker, you should send me bottles of red wine if you care about me.

This is pretty amazing

As you may have heard, over the past 24 hours Victoria has suffered from the worst bushfires seen in decades. The worst is the King Lake fire north of Melbourne, which has burned over 200,000 hectares (almost 800 square miles). Some of the towns in the area are completely destroyed. The historic town of Marysville has only one building left. Hundreds of homes have been burnt, and at least 65 people have died and the number of deaths is expected to reach over 100. Many of the people that died did so trying to escape – the roads in the areas are littered with burnt cars, but the fires moved too quickly and unpredictably and people got caught.

Luckily, Wodonga isn’t threatened, but there is a fire nearby that is threatening towns such as Beechworth and Yackandandah. They are only 30-40km away and are home to many people that work in Albury-Wodonga, including several people that work at the University. The winds have died down a bit, so hopefully the fires won’t spread as quickly and the towns will be spared.

When I moved to Australia, I knew about the hazards of the fires, but it didn’t seem very real. Part of me wanted to experience a bad fire season, just to see what it was like. I don’t like it very much. It’s sad and horrible. I hope it doesn’t happen again.

I know all I’ve been doing lately is complaining about the weather, but I have to do it again. It hit 45C today (113F). Not only is it hot, it’s windy and dry, so we are having a dust storm too. It’s fantastic. Luckily, Australia’s hottest and longest heat wave is supposed to stop on Monday, and drop down to the high 20’s. I might have to pull out a sweater or something! I can’t wait.

They have revised the forecasts….to be hotter. It’s supposed to be 44 on Friday (111F). Some places in NSW reached 47 today. crazy

I woke up this morning and my laptop was dead. Wouldn’t even POST. It’s only 1.5 years old I removed the hard drive and it’s still OK, thank goodness, because I just spent several days programming and hadn’t backed it up yet.

Thank goodness I bought a little netbook, so I have something to use until I get a new system.