All I have to do now....

..... is put it all back together.

30% and I have finally finished painting the kitchen. We started it weeks ago and should be proudly showing off our efforts by now but a few things came up. There were occasions when simply doing nothing seemed a much better idea than applying emulsion to the walls. Anyway, we applied the last coats t the walls today and this is when I found out that I am probably no more intelligent than a pigeon...

.... let me explain. We have a tall larder fridge and we moved it in to sit along side the island so that we could paint the walls and skirting boards of the aforementioned appliance's aperture. As I have already explained it then lived in this temporary location for a few weeks but it now back in its proper place. The thing is, every time I make 30% a cup of coffee I go to get the milk from where the fridge was rather than where the fridge is.

In other words I have managed to condition myself to go to a location where I expect to received milk in much the same way as a pigeon will peck at a coloured spot in order to receive a few grains of corn. I hasten to add that I have managed to break this conditioning in under 24 hours but it was quite an odd experience to find oneself walking towards a space expecting to grab a carton of semi-skimmed.

Other decorating events. For  brief spell Marauder - it is always Marauder - had a few patches of "Putting Green" on her. That's the feature wall, the rest of the room is Ivory Lace. I didn't want an "accent" Dog so then spent a good few minutes cleaning off the paint. I then discovered that using the dish cloth did not earn 30%'s full approval.

This reminded me of a Fly/Drive holiday we had in the States three years ago. No, not the moaning about using the dish cloth to clean the dog, the fact that the dog was briefly green in places.

As part of our Road Trip we visited Monument valley which is in the Navajo Nation. If you have never been there it's worth a trip but the Navajo Nation has its own ground rules which mean that it is unlike the rest of the USA.

For starters there is no alcohol allowed. Apparently this is an attempt to control the alcoholism that is prevalent in the population. I have a couple of thoughts on this...

... thought number 1; that law is great and will stop people who can't drive and don't have any friends that can drive from drinking. Everyone else will just get in their car and buy it just outside the border. Thought number 2; the Nation ought to concentrate on making the Nation a little more hospitable and encouraging to visitors as they seem to have two potential industries farming and tourism and they don't seem very good at either. It is no wonder that the locals tend to drink.

The end result is that we spend a night in a Trailer Park in a static van that smelt of Horse Piss.

The Valley is a fantastic natural spectacle and worth a visit - just don't try to spend a night in the vicinity until the Navajo Nation get their act together.

What about the dog and the paint - Yes. I'm getting to that. To give you some idea of what it is like in the Nation, they paint a broad, coloured stripe of gloss paint down their dog's back to show that it isn't a stray. Hence the dogs at the Horse Piss Trailer Park were a a shade of aquamarine that matched the caravans. They smelt pretty similar too. The reason for this........

........ apparently a local hobby is shooting strays so painting your dog reduces the chance of it ending up as target practice for the bored and drunk locals.

Only in America.

Auto generating material

You may hove noticed a little counter at the top of this page - yes, that's it, over there on the right - it tells me how many times I have visited this journal in the vain hope that somebody else has found it.

Anyway, if you know my ID and password you can get to a site which tells you all sorts of interesting facts about visitors to this site - well not really interesting unless you are a seriously sad sort of geek - but it tells me where they have logged on in the world, how long they loitered around the journal and what pages they looked at etc.

From this I have learnt the following...

1) Every one in America can speed read (I'll get to this in a minute)

2) Australia and New Zealand are very hard to break in to (perhaps this is why we sent criminals first time around?)

The reason I say that Americans can speed read is because the stat counter thingy tells me how long they have loitered and zero seconds seems to be the average visit for USA readers. I am being generous in assuming that they just get through this stuff very quickly.

I will however take the time to pass on my apologies to the poor individual in Denver, Colorado who accessed this blog via a website related to broken humerus bones. Once can only wonder what he was looking for but you can guess that my theory that IT IS possible to put your elbow in your ear was not it.

You can image some suntanned, stetson wearing guy with the perma-squint as a result of gazing across wide western vistas popping in to an Internet saloon for a quick surf having got his arm in a cast as a result of getting in to a bit of a scrap with a cow or a raccoon or something. He was probably looking for a bit of advice on one armed lassoing or what sort of wildlife can be rendered down to form some form of organic healing salve. What did he get - the ramblings of some sort of nutcase about the roobarb and custard challenge...

and it gets better..... I also found out that an individual in Germany located the "Journal" after a late evening search on Catsuits using Google's Blog Search facility. Heaven only knows what he was looking for or, for that matter, what he was wearing when he opened up the page that chuntered on about Potato and Eddy's scorched earth policy and their habit of sitting on the sofa in their pants. But I'm guessing, based on his quick exit, that this wasn't EXACTLY what he was looking for.