Thunderstorms

Gah. Blogger ATE my last post, just when i was trying for something fast and get back to work, as we've had a rather interrupted day - Thunderstorms. These are not the if 3 days passes and you haven't had one something is wrong storms of the Natal Midlands. I really appreciate not having to turn off and unplug and lose hours and focus. But the storm was close today so I did. And regretted it. The screen did not come on when I rebooted. I got B's screen and got it to work, and ran another shutdown, tried mine - and it worked. But the internet didn't. Panic. This is our lifeline - I need to work, and work a lot, just to try and catch up. Emigrating puts you 20 years back they say... Anyway. Rebooting and jiggling and appeals to Finigle must have worked - because I am back up. It's also our contact with the kids, and I worry.

Got a nice surprise in the post today - a pressie from New Zealand! You shouldn't have guys. Thank you. :-)

Snow forecast for Tassie tonight - I hope my tomato seedlings are OK.

olive oil expeiment - fail

Sometimes things just don't work. I'm already making fiendish plans for a better olive crusher... make that a heavier olive-crusher that can crack the seeds and totally reduce the olives to pulp. We actually manged to get maybe 2 ml of oil out of B's hard work and my heating and spinning (I spun a milk bottle of goo on a 4 metre rope. The rope broke sending the bottle over the fence in a lovely 15 metre flight. It landed, unbroken in a bush. Amazing how low the value of shrubs is here If it had been valuable furniture or a carpet, splat!) There is a sheen of oil on the surface, and the little I gathered off the top with a thin-edged teaspoon is soft, fruity olive oil... but that seems to be about as much is we're going to get.

So tomorrow, to the compost heap. Ah well.

We've had a thunderstorm this evening - a brief one of about 15 minutes. This has some of the nostalgia value for the great almost daily summer storms of the Drakensberg which used to roll and crash around the mountain and forced me to unplug and swear a lot. It seems this is not as common here. That should do wonders for the volume of cursing I do.