an exercise in percussive maintenance
Author: KokkieH
In case you missed it, this morning I woke up with a river in my driveway. This is the third time since we’ve moved into our apartment that this has happened, but the first time I’m blogging about it.
They say a picture paints a thousand words, so here they come…
I’ve mentioned before that we live next to a river. Well, the river has gone through some…changes since Saturday.
Last week still, it looked something like this:
Saturday we had a fair amount of rain, both here and in the catchment area, and it looked like this:
This morning we were woken by frantic knocking at our door. It looked like this:
Apparently the catchment area received a lot more rain last night and the river overflowed its banks, flooding our access road. Reportedly the guys at disaster management called the fire department to notify us, but the fire department didn’t know where our building was. A comforting thought.
Luckily, we’re all Afrikaners in the building and the saying goes, ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan (a Boer makes a plan). So, we cut the fence of the animal park next door and evacuated the cars that way round. The fire department showed up (eventually) and cut the lock on the access gate to the park and we could get out. Our parking area has been temporarily relocated to the security firm who’s our neighbour on the other side:
In the hour since I’ve taken these pics the water level has risen by about another three inches. Now it would have been too late to evacuate our cars.
I have to get to work now, but I’ll be back later with more updates and more photos. Have a great day. Mine’s turning out to be quite exciting.
It’s time for this week’s Song Title Challenge.
Write a short piece of fiction, around 300 words, using the song title as your story title but don’t listen to the song. You can pick your own genre or use the one suggested to me. Remember to link back to this post so I can find yours.
If you would like to suggest a song title for a future post, you can do so from the challenge page. You can also leave a suggestion on the Facebook page.
This week’s song is I’m Too Sexy by Right Said Fred and the genre is Thriller/Horror. It was suggested by bumblepuppies in response to this post.
Warning: If guys without shirts make you uncomfortable, DON’T watch the video 😉
Continue reading “Song Title Challenge #35: I’m Too Sexy – Right Said Fred”
I suck at social media. I really do.
I’ve been on Twitter for almost a year and a half now. In that time I’ve amassed a grand total of sixty-nine followers. (Suddenly I’m thinking “amassed” is perhaps not the best word to use…) Continue reading “On my digital footprint”
This is not a review. A review, in my mind, seeks to make a balanced evaluation of a (in this case) book, highlighting both strong and weak points and, while it does make a judgement about said book, it leaves the reader to make a choice whether they want to read the book. This is not that. This is a rant about a book that I hate and that I’m probably going to hate for the rest of my life. It doesn’t help that the book is smack-bang in the middle of a series that, up until now, I’ve really enjoyed.
Here’s what happened. Nothing. Seriously. Nothing happens for more than seven-hundred pages (which actually makes a spoiler-warning a bit superfluous, but be warned this post contains significant spoilers regarding the third and fourth books in the Song of Ice and Fire franchise (or the coming fourth season of Game of Thrones for those barbarians among you who only watch the TV show). To skip spoilers, go straight to the last page when you reach the end of this one.)
I’d been taking a break from the books since I finished A Storm of Swords in April last year (the plan was to finish my reading for my Master’s…yeah, that worked out well), but with the fourth season of the TV series looming I reckoned I’d better read the next book so I can stay ahead. (I know the fourth season is still primarily based on book three, but they’ve been weaving in snippets of later books since season three already, as flashbacks don’t work so well on the telly.) I wish I hadn’t.
To start with, over half of the main characters are not even in the book. Mr Martin wrote a nice little note in the back that the book had grown too long and he decided to split it, having one bunch of characters in the one book and the rest of the characters in the next. But he didn’t put any of the interesting characters in this book. Jon Snow, Daenerys, Tyrion and Bran never make an appearance (except the very first chapter from Samwell Tarly’s perspective where Jon Snow makes a quick cameo). And those characters that are there spend most of the book going nowhere and doing nothing.
Continued on Page 2. To avoid spoilers, skip straight to Page 3. Also on Page 3, links to actual reviews on A Feast for Crows.
if all else fails...use a hammer 