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Jul. 9th, 2023 05:55 pmHaving made a kind of pledge to myself about doomscrolling & ranting about local & global politics here on my Journal, it's had the unexpected by-blow of leaving me without much drive to write about anything at all, really - a day-in, day-out diary of minutiae doesn't have much appeal to me &, as I experienced over on LiveJournal, not much appeal to anyone else either, so I've been lurking, posting comments occasionally, but nothing to really say...
The Pelican Daughters album we finished last year, is in Limbo, as our Label's distribution deal kind of fell apart & we've received occasional e-mails about what little progress there's been in finding an alternative, but so far... it may end up being 40 years since the last album before this one sees any light of day. Not that it's stopped us - we 2 Pelicans convened a couple of weeks ago to start a new track & found we're still full of ideas &, more importantly, still work well together in giving those ideas shape, form & identity. This one even has some guitar on it!!
Long-Suffering Partner & I have continued with our 'Year of doing Stuff' - 2 day car rallies every 2 months, night photography, concerts by Tommy Emmanuel, Max Richter & Damian Rice, the Sydney Good Food & Wine Show, 3 evenings at the Vivid Festival of Lights & Ideas (to give it its full, if slightly pretentious, title), with an upcoming roadtrip to the Compact Array at Narrabri, for an evening of astral photography with some hired lenses & possibly a couple of friends...
Caught up with some old school & work friends over the last few weeks, one of whom was in a local theatre production of Nikolai Erdman's 'The Suicide', which was a lot funnier than the play's title may suggest... & another who's as much of a whiskey aficionado/enthusiast as I am, with the resulting 2-day hangover being evidence of a great night of whiskey, conversation, music & day 2 of the 3rd Ashes Test in England
Work is... well, it's pretty mentally taxing actually. Even on days when I'm not driving around town, measuring & inspecting everything from slumlord apartments, to huge mansions, or half-built dream homes where the stairs haven't been installed, so inspecting the 1st floor is a challenge for my perfectly rational fear of unstable heights, especially the one the other day, where the entire scaffold I had to climb, was shaking & swaying like a 7.5 Richter earthquake. L-SP makes sure my Life Insurance is paid up every year... Otherwise, there are concerns about my Employer looking to expand the business in the middle of a bad year - interest rate rises spooking clients & inflation affecting the cost of absolutely everything!!!. This, of course, places stress on him, which he deals with by assigning me random tasks while I'm in the middle of what I'm actually employed for. I've recently discovered that I can do a lot of my paperwork at home, realising that since the office software is cloud-based, I can log in from here & not have to deal with trivial annoyances
I'm overdue a visit to my former guitar student, who has progressed well beyond the point of needing me for much, but seems to like my company & respect my opinions, so is keen to play me some of his more recent compositions... & I'm quite interested to hear them as well
Enough... Here are some photos taken on the morning of the Winter Solstice. Elizabeth Bay House in eastern Sydney is oriented so that the solstice sunrise shines directly through the front door - whether by accident or design is unknown & hotly debated, if the short presentation we attended on the day is anything to go by. As is so often the case, the original records & plans for the House were lost in a fire, so best to shelve the curiosity & just enjoy the phenomenon...
Clouds delayed the sunrise by a little...
But finally, the shortest day gets going...
And sure enough... the sun blazed straight through the door. Hard to get a clear shot of it, as everyone stood there... this will have to do
The Pelican Daughters album we finished last year, is in Limbo, as our Label's distribution deal kind of fell apart & we've received occasional e-mails about what little progress there's been in finding an alternative, but so far... it may end up being 40 years since the last album before this one sees any light of day. Not that it's stopped us - we 2 Pelicans convened a couple of weeks ago to start a new track & found we're still full of ideas &, more importantly, still work well together in giving those ideas shape, form & identity. This one even has some guitar on it!!
Long-Suffering Partner & I have continued with our 'Year of doing Stuff' - 2 day car rallies every 2 months, night photography, concerts by Tommy Emmanuel, Max Richter & Damian Rice, the Sydney Good Food & Wine Show, 3 evenings at the Vivid Festival of Lights & Ideas (to give it its full, if slightly pretentious, title), with an upcoming roadtrip to the Compact Array at Narrabri, for an evening of astral photography with some hired lenses & possibly a couple of friends...
Caught up with some old school & work friends over the last few weeks, one of whom was in a local theatre production of Nikolai Erdman's 'The Suicide', which was a lot funnier than the play's title may suggest... & another who's as much of a whiskey aficionado/enthusiast as I am, with the resulting 2-day hangover being evidence of a great night of whiskey, conversation, music & day 2 of the 3rd Ashes Test in England
Work is... well, it's pretty mentally taxing actually. Even on days when I'm not driving around town, measuring & inspecting everything from slumlord apartments, to huge mansions, or half-built dream homes where the stairs haven't been installed, so inspecting the 1st floor is a challenge for my perfectly rational fear of unstable heights, especially the one the other day, where the entire scaffold I had to climb, was shaking & swaying like a 7.5 Richter earthquake. L-SP makes sure my Life Insurance is paid up every year... Otherwise, there are concerns about my Employer looking to expand the business in the middle of a bad year - interest rate rises spooking clients & inflation affecting the cost of absolutely everything!!!. This, of course, places stress on him, which he deals with by assigning me random tasks while I'm in the middle of what I'm actually employed for. I've recently discovered that I can do a lot of my paperwork at home, realising that since the office software is cloud-based, I can log in from here & not have to deal with trivial annoyances
I'm overdue a visit to my former guitar student, who has progressed well beyond the point of needing me for much, but seems to like my company & respect my opinions, so is keen to play me some of his more recent compositions... & I'm quite interested to hear them as well
Enough... Here are some photos taken on the morning of the Winter Solstice. Elizabeth Bay House in eastern Sydney is oriented so that the solstice sunrise shines directly through the front door - whether by accident or design is unknown & hotly debated, if the short presentation we attended on the day is anything to go by. As is so often the case, the original records & plans for the House were lost in a fire, so best to shelve the curiosity & just enjoy the phenomenon...
Clouds delayed the sunrise by a little...
But finally, the shortest day gets going...
And sure enough... the sun blazed straight through the door. Hard to get a clear shot of it, as everyone stood there... this will have to do
