An event so close to home it's scary!

I almost could have walked there! Except for the traipsing around with far too much crap. Anyway... here's an idea of how it looked



Much mightiniess was had by all



At the feast aftwards, Mr Tops was there to mull up some wine for us!


sweet, sweet, warm wine....

Anyway... here's an arty shot for you all



and finally here is a warning. Don't move too quickly when people are taking photos in the near-dark. You will lose your head. Largely to the delight of others.

Musicians in the fogs!

Two weekends ago I went to a fabulous feast in the mountains which had mountains of delicious food! Although I took a few photos, not many turned out. Here's a picture of the subtlety (hmmm.... need to check spelling on that one):


P8190047_dis1
Originally uploaded by MrSnerg.


and here's a picture of the fine musicians who helped fill the hall with fabulous sounds while we stomped around "learning" how to "dance":


P8190069_dis2
Originally uploaded by MrSnerg.

Rage. Machine. Inevitable arrangement between them.

Still trying to rage against the machine. The Real Estate agents have come over all negotiable now. I am awaiting their next reply to avoid the going to the CTTT.

NRMA have now sent me the rest of the cheque finalising the last bit of the final stuff of the car claim except I'm not sure where they got the amount and why it doesn't add up or agree with what they said it was.

I also have an assignment due Tuesday. I've kind-of started it. Maybe.

Oh yeah... we also had some fabulous guests staying up from Melbourne. Why are they fabulous? Well for a start they helped us come 2nd in the local pub trivia last night.

Update: Well, the reagents got back to me with a counter-offer. This is getting silly. Do I care? Can I be bothered going to the tribunal? Man this is painful.

Update2: Had enough. It's over with the reagents. Just need to wait for the money to come through. Now to chase up insurance and finish that assignment.

Update3: Well the assignment is handed in on time (yesterday) and I now know where NRMA got their date for their refund from. Need to make some phone calls on that one.

Saint Towbar's Day

Or "How to be a manly man."

First: check you have all the tools. Especially all the fun ones.

After your car is up on the ramps, and you've partly removed the muffler to get to a sheet of metal, you get to drill a hole in it! Yay!


After that you need to remove the rear bumber completely. Which means "Oh crap... I don't have anything to get in to there! What the f&^#$(*^!". Thankfully by then, Dr Scruff had come to help, and point and laugh, so we drove off down to the local purveyor of hardware and found a tube spanner which had better do the trick or we were toast. If it didn't work, I'd have a superfluous hole in my car and have bits everywhere to no avail.

Luckily it did work, giving an interesting new look to the car.



Once you remove those metal caps on both sides, you can see down the chasis. Take a look down my chasis *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink* say no more.



The wires you can see poking through those holes are what is provided to orient some metal blocks that the towbar gets bolted to.


Then there was the wiring. This photo was taken in case we didn't quite get it right and had to go back. The plug, and another one, needed to be pulled apart and all the wires removed and put in to different plugs. Why didn't they just provide the correct sockets the first time?


Thankfully once we wired it all up (and checked it with a multimeter) it all popped together quite quickly, and we barely needed Dr Scruff's big lamp. Of course, I owed him a beer.


The next morning I was very nervous as my car refused to start. Thankfully that turned out to be a one-off, and it's been happy ever since! And I feel like a real man:

"What did you do on the weekend?"
"Fitted a towbar to my car."
"Have you used it yet?"
"No."
"What are you going to tow?"
"That's not important right now. I have one and I did it myself. Well, with some help."

I do have to thank Dr Scruff. Without his help I don't think it would have happened.

p.s. according to the provided documentation the process should take 1hr 45mins total. Including removing the interior and putting it back in twice. We took around 6 hours, excluding the beer.

Maintaining their rage

After the angry call from the RE-agent earlier, I was wondering how my bond was going and how thye were feeling about the whole thing. I hadn't heard a thing since then. I received a nice little letter in the mail last night saying that they were claiming the entire bond. I hear this from the bond board. Surely I need to at least be given some kind of reason or something!?!

I was going to post about being a manly man and fitting a towbar to my car on the weekend, but yesterday (as opposed to victory Sunday, St Towbar's day) really did turn out to be craptacular after that letter. That crazy rollercoaster of life...


*UPDATE* got a response this morning from my please explain email:

"I will be finalising the bond claim for you today.

The bond has been claimed in full and once the amount claimed is ascertained we will refund you any surplus.

You can expect finalisation letter today."

Weird. Just plain weird.

Lingering details

Well I'm still trying to claim the last parts of my car insurance. I received the refund cheque from the RTA, which was a different amount than NRMA thought it would be. Maybe I should keep quiet about those extra few dollars I got. That may have been down to the fact that the plates were returned to the RTA because the car turned up. Anyway, after getting my certificate of "Car no longer exists" from the RTA and faxing that off to the NRMA resolutions department, I got a fax back from NRMA because there's an extra form to fill in which I didn't previously know about. They seem to require my policy number for some reason rather than just my rego plate details with a few signatures all placed neatly on one form. Found a good copy of the form on the website, better than the mangled been through the fax machine one they sent me. Now I have to find my old policy details back again. This time for sure! This should be the last bit of the insurance claim (just over $150 remaining from CTP insurance which had to be refunded in this convoluted fashion).

They sent the angry lady

I got a call from an angry real estate agent about how messy the place is. How it is "filthy" and "unpresentable". She complained about the carpet not being steam cleaned. Well... I told them that! She also complained about only having 4 days to do something about it because someone is moving in then. They would have had 5 if they would have done the inspection when they said they would. Put me in a crappy mood that conversation. Just needed to get that out of the system.