Holiday Preparations.

 

 

And…..we’re done!

 

 

Oh wait,  lemme just flip that for you.

Right.  Beer and sh*t tickets.   That ought to do it.

 

Not quite sure what the squirrel has to do with wiping me arse though.  I think he would object?  And possibly bite?  Just wondering.

Pretty sure that would leave a mark.

And this is what happens when boredom starts to rear its ugly head.  Oh Laud have mercy.

 

Actually,  I did do some proper shopping yesterday,  and came across some sort of “deal” on this butter.   It was a “two-fer”,  and if you bought two,  you got a certain price.  The price is irrelevant.  I was just curious why it was called “summer butter”. 

 

 

Now I have to say,  for the most part the folks who work in the Billa up the street can be a bit of a serious bunch,  but when I asked one of the young ladies if I bought this summer butter it meant I could only use it while wearing my shorts,  she did manage to crack a smile,  and I think I might have detected the tiniest bit of laughter.  It was very brief mind you, and she was very quick to reassert her professionalism.  Well,  it could be that I’m being a little bit generous with that term.  She did suggest that wearing shorts could very well be a possibility,  but that perhaps the explanation had more to do with “free range” cows.  Something like that.  You know,  cows that are allowed to be outstanding in their field?  Waka waka.

 

We’ll see what “free range”  butter tastes like.

Can’t wait. 

Actually,  it’ll have to wait,  since I was going to bake up some banana bread today and realised I forgot to buy flippin’ sugar!  Gah!  Oh well,  that’ll be for tomorrow I suppose,  but then it’ll need to go in the freezer as it won’t be much good come Sunday night when we get home.   Silly bunt.  

Either that or I throw out several very ripe banana.  Hate to do that.

 

With it being a holiday and all,  I couldn’t help but notice the lack of warm bodies this morning after I walked Travelling Companion to the parking garage. 

Yup,  dead as a fart.

If you happen to notice that one lonely pigeon up there to the right,  I’d just like to point out that I made sure to kick a wayward bun in his general direction.  When I turned to take a look he/she was pecking away.  That’s me,  a regular St. Francis of Assisi.   Yessir.

OK,  I realise they’re “rats with wings”,  but he was by himself,  and there was sweet bugger all except cigarette butts.  That’s just not right.

By the way,  if you have the conviction to go to that wiki link and get about half way down the page,  you’ll read where he (St. Francis,  not the pigeon)  was “preaching to the birds”?   I think nowadays we’d refer to that as “mental illness”,  but that’s just my somewhat empirical view of these kinds of events.

 

To keep from going the rest of the way out of my gourd,  I figured I’d head out for a bit of a hike down the main drag in these parts.  The closer I got to the ring of course,  the more people there were out.   Mostly tourists,  many of whom quite likely didn’t realise this morning when they got up that all the shops would be closed.  Cafes?  No problem.   Other shopping?  Forget it.

 

This (below) is inside the Museumsquartier.

And no,  that’s not a bunker left over from WW2.  It’s the Museum of Modern Art.   I know we’ve been to the Leopold Museum, which is just to the left,  but I don’t seem to recall going to that one.  Quite often it’s a good idea to have a guide or docent to take you around if you’re visiting a museum of modern art.  Otherwise,  chances are you’re not going to have a clue as to what you’re looking at.  It’s amazing how much more sense it makes if someone explains what the artist is trying to depict.  Or *ahem* what degree of mental illness they may be suffering from.   Do we have a theme going here?

 

Speaking of mental illness….

 

I had this idea that I somehow wanted to make a “collage”  with a few pictures I had taken yesterday.  

I already have a couple programs lying about,  but neither of them were terribly user friendly.   Briefly thought about using “MS Paint”,  but that creates a huge mess.  Then I thought about another one called “HP PhotoSmart”,  which I could probably get rid of,  since I don’t use that retarded camera anymore.  The camera and the software both kinda suck it turns out. 

What it came down to,  was that I had to drink from the “Google well”.    Into the abyss.  (“Drink deep Grasshopper!”)

I downloaded Picasa 3.

We’ll see how that goes.

 

It did seem as though it was “taking over”,  so I was getting a little apprehensive there, but I did manage to get my little collage put together.  That only took an hour. *sigh*  I’m hoping to get a bit more use out of it. 

I’ll be keeping “Paint” since I can do that “Printscreen” thing,  but I think the HP nonsense is going to get the bums rush.  Only so much room in the Inn.

 

 

So,  why the hell did I need a collage?   Well,  because I wanted to stick a bunch of pictures together!   They’re the same,  but different.  And I didn’t want to upload four pictures of pretty much the same thing.  I could have given up on it,  I know.   But I persevered.   It was an hour well spent.  ‘Cause I’m such a busy guy…

 

We have this idea,  that we’d like to install a mini spit air conditioning system of some sort in our house when we get back home.   So yesterday I was watching YouTube videos on that very subject.  Man,  the stuff you can find out on the net!   Holy moly!   I mean,  admittedly there’s a whole whack of cr*p of YouTube,  but it’s amazing what you can find if you’re looking for specific information.

 

Here’s an example.

 

So,  in one of the videos,  and I don’t even recall if it was the one I linked to above,  they showed an installer dude very carefully measuring down from the ceiling when installing the indoor condenser.   Not only that,  but he seemed to be leaving heaps more space between the unit and the ceiling, compared to what we have here in our humble abode. 

This was actually why I was in the closet yesterday,  I was looking for a tape measure.  The beer and ass wipe sort of spoke to me.  And you had to suffer for it…

 

So all of the units installed here in Vienna seem to be at pretty much the same distance down from ceiling.  Give or take.

 

See my collage?  Huh?  Huh?

 

Then there’s this one in the dining room,  that’s only a couple inches from the ceiling!  What?

Hm.

I’m guessing the boys who installed these units here didn’t really measure?   Are we back in “Monkey Land” here?

I know for a fact they all work fine,  so I can gather from this randomness that the distance from the ceiling doesn’t matter a damn.

I’m sure you needed to know that. 

 

Now admittedly I’ll happily hire an air conditioner Dude to do the final purging of the lines after testing with nitrogen,  but judging from what I saw,  muggins here has a pretty good bead on doing this installation himself.   I just have to carefully pick the proper season, since I know there’s going to be some crawling around in a knee wall involved.  I’ve done it before,  I know what it’s like, and it ain’t pretty.

Check back in a couple years.  That’s a pretty vague “long range plan” there,  but that’s all I got.

 

 

One more sleep then it’s off to the UK.

 

Keep cool out there.

 

Thanks for lookin’.

 

now when I hit “publish”,  is Picasa going to mess something up?   Here goes.

.