The sun is out, defying the weather forecast which was for clearing showers.
I’ve just had a man from the Bureau of Statistics here doing a follow up on our census form. He was someone atypical of who you might expect to be from the Stats Bureau. Tall, dour, interested in explaining to me why the census is so important as if I didn’t know. An older bloke, grey beard, just the sort you could imagine sitting behind a computer looking at numbers.
He was quite a nice fellow, despite his somewhat gloomy intonation. Was worried about the weather too. Asked a few questions I had already answered on the census form but they cross check just to try and get everyone in. Was only here ten minutes so it was no big deal.
Got my letter to the tax office written. I think it’s reasonably good but I am about to take it over to my mother’s house and let her read it. It my not be as good as I think it is! Avoided the inclination to be nasty or smart. Who wants to annoy the tax office and have an asterisk next to your name every time it comes up on a tax office computer? Like most humans I am sure the tax office staff can be nasty when they want to be.
It does annoy me that they seem to have unfettered access to my personal financial details. Then they still get the facts wrong although I’m sure they will never admit it. Anyway, hope this is the last correspondence I need to have with them for a while.
So it has been a bit busier for me than normal this morning doing some personal administration work and entertaining a government public servant. At least I didn’t have to drive over to Queanbeyan. Linda took Monique in and I got to sleep in for a little while so I can’t complain about that.
Just as well too. Our dogs who are always locked in the garage at night started barking about 1.30am. This is very unusual for them. Although they are two very gregarious hounds who like to make a bit of noise during the day when people are about at home, I can’t fault them at night. They are put away in the evenings and we don’t here anymore from them until the next morning when someone decides to let them out.
So it was a bit strange that Pepper would be barking at that time. Not just any bark, his serious, fair dinkum bark. I thought there may be someone hanging around as there has been a spate of car break ins further out in Tuggeranong and although we are in a very good suburb here it is prone to it’s share of delinquency. Linda of course slept right through but I got up and went outside in my dressing gown and soothed the savage beasts. They were agitated but I though after having a look around and not seeing anything that it may have just been a cat passing through our yard that had stirred them up.
I wiped the wet grass off my feet when I got inside as I had mowed the lawn earlier in the day and the cuttings were clinging to my soles in large clumps. It was when I hopped back into bed that I heard Pepper still whining and sniffing under the garage door. I got up again, grabbed my torch and looked out our large bedroom window which overlooks the backyard and suddenly caught a glimpse of a large tan dog skirting along the fence line after obviously bumper sniping around the side of the house.
My first thought was to wonder how Turbo has gotten out of the garage as she is also tan in colour although this animal was obviously bigger than our little staffie I thought in the gloom I might have mistaken her size.
Switching the torchlight to the garage door and seeing that it was very securely closed it soon dawned on me that we had an intruder in our backyard!
I went outside again and worked the torch back and forth trying to pierce the shrubbery. I didn’t want to go down into the depths of the yard which are lower lying and run into a nasty, bloodthirsty beast in the pitch black. Soon the torch caught two eyes glowing from down in the depths of the greenery and I recognised the shape of a rather large dog that resembled a ridgeback or some such breed and knowing from personal experience that such types can be unfriendly decided that discretion was the better part of valour and retreated to the high ground on our secure back deck whilst I decided how we were going to get the darn thing out of our yard!
I kept scanning the yard using the torch like a big searchlight waiting for the enemy to burst from the scrub when I heard the unmistakable sound of a dog jumping over a colourbond fence. Our intruder was gone although if you saw our fences you would wonder how a dog could actually jump them which is a bit of a worry. I hung around for a while and could hear no more noise and after going back to bed stayed awake until our dogs settled down which was really the signal that the danger had passed. It is a bit of a worry though that such a big dog was roaming around jumping fences and nosing in a yard like ours which is quite secure. Don’t know where it came from who it belongs to but will have to be a bit vigilant tonight in case he is on the prowl again. And bring my shovel up onto the back deck! I only noticed this morning that it is leaning on the garage beside the door. It would be the weapon to use against an unfriendly canine in the backyard but it wouldn’t have been much use to me where it is now.
So that’s it for today. Got to go off and do some photocopying at Mum and Dad’s and there is nothing left to do after that except go to work. Thrilling! However the weekend is always welcome and we are almost there. Let the countdown begin!
I’ve just had a man from the Bureau of Statistics here doing a follow up on our census form. He was someone atypical of who you might expect to be from the Stats Bureau. Tall, dour, interested in explaining to me why the census is so important as if I didn’t know. An older bloke, grey beard, just the sort you could imagine sitting behind a computer looking at numbers.
He was quite a nice fellow, despite his somewhat gloomy intonation. Was worried about the weather too. Asked a few questions I had already answered on the census form but they cross check just to try and get everyone in. Was only here ten minutes so it was no big deal.
Got my letter to the tax office written. I think it’s reasonably good but I am about to take it over to my mother’s house and let her read it. It my not be as good as I think it is! Avoided the inclination to be nasty or smart. Who wants to annoy the tax office and have an asterisk next to your name every time it comes up on a tax office computer? Like most humans I am sure the tax office staff can be nasty when they want to be.
It does annoy me that they seem to have unfettered access to my personal financial details. Then they still get the facts wrong although I’m sure they will never admit it. Anyway, hope this is the last correspondence I need to have with them for a while.
So it has been a bit busier for me than normal this morning doing some personal administration work and entertaining a government public servant. At least I didn’t have to drive over to Queanbeyan. Linda took Monique in and I got to sleep in for a little while so I can’t complain about that.
Just as well too. Our dogs who are always locked in the garage at night started barking about 1.30am. This is very unusual for them. Although they are two very gregarious hounds who like to make a bit of noise during the day when people are about at home, I can’t fault them at night. They are put away in the evenings and we don’t here anymore from them until the next morning when someone decides to let them out.
So it was a bit strange that Pepper would be barking at that time. Not just any bark, his serious, fair dinkum bark. I thought there may be someone hanging around as there has been a spate of car break ins further out in Tuggeranong and although we are in a very good suburb here it is prone to it’s share of delinquency. Linda of course slept right through but I got up and went outside in my dressing gown and soothed the savage beasts. They were agitated but I though after having a look around and not seeing anything that it may have just been a cat passing through our yard that had stirred them up.
I wiped the wet grass off my feet when I got inside as I had mowed the lawn earlier in the day and the cuttings were clinging to my soles in large clumps. It was when I hopped back into bed that I heard Pepper still whining and sniffing under the garage door. I got up again, grabbed my torch and looked out our large bedroom window which overlooks the backyard and suddenly caught a glimpse of a large tan dog skirting along the fence line after obviously bumper sniping around the side of the house.
My first thought was to wonder how Turbo has gotten out of the garage as she is also tan in colour although this animal was obviously bigger than our little staffie I thought in the gloom I might have mistaken her size.
Switching the torchlight to the garage door and seeing that it was very securely closed it soon dawned on me that we had an intruder in our backyard!
I went outside again and worked the torch back and forth trying to pierce the shrubbery. I didn’t want to go down into the depths of the yard which are lower lying and run into a nasty, bloodthirsty beast in the pitch black. Soon the torch caught two eyes glowing from down in the depths of the greenery and I recognised the shape of a rather large dog that resembled a ridgeback or some such breed and knowing from personal experience that such types can be unfriendly decided that discretion was the better part of valour and retreated to the high ground on our secure back deck whilst I decided how we were going to get the darn thing out of our yard!
I kept scanning the yard using the torch like a big searchlight waiting for the enemy to burst from the scrub when I heard the unmistakable sound of a dog jumping over a colourbond fence. Our intruder was gone although if you saw our fences you would wonder how a dog could actually jump them which is a bit of a worry. I hung around for a while and could hear no more noise and after going back to bed stayed awake until our dogs settled down which was really the signal that the danger had passed. It is a bit of a worry though that such a big dog was roaming around jumping fences and nosing in a yard like ours which is quite secure. Don’t know where it came from who it belongs to but will have to be a bit vigilant tonight in case he is on the prowl again. And bring my shovel up onto the back deck! I only noticed this morning that it is leaning on the garage beside the door. It would be the weapon to use against an unfriendly canine in the backyard but it wouldn’t have been much use to me where it is now.
So that’s it for today. Got to go off and do some photocopying at Mum and Dad’s and there is nothing left to do after that except go to work. Thrilling! However the weekend is always welcome and we are almost there. Let the countdown begin!
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 