This morning, while getting ready to go to work, I heard a disturbingly loud “crack” noise.  My first thought was that it had been a car hitting… something, but there wasn’t the telltale crunch noise that accompanies a car accident.

I looked out the computer room (or second bedroom, if you prefer) window to see the wires to our house (from the power pole on the street) flailing madly as though they were a whip and had just been, well, whipped.  As the angle wasn’t good, I rushed to the bedroom window and peered out through the blinds “Rear Window” style.  I saw a red Australia Post van hurriedly bumping and speeding along the nature strip on the opposite side of the road.   I have no idea whether it was involved in the accident or simply trying to avoid it.

As I reversed the car to leave for work, I reversed a bit more and noticed the power pole out the front of the neighbour’s house had a very large crack in it, around a metre from the exposed base.  I went to work and thought nothing of it.

Later in the day, I received a call from Justine — who was at home — to tell me the power was going to be turned off for “a while.”  I explained how to shut down our computers properly and again thought nothing more.

When I arrived home, around three hours later, there were large trucks up and down our street; in front of our house most were concentrated and I had to park around four houses down.  I asked one of the workers how long they expected to be, as I didn’t want our perishables in the fridge to, well, perish.  His answer, “An hour, give or take.”  Give or take what, another few hours?

Around an hour later, no sign of power so Justine and I went out to Grill’d to grab some dinner — we couldn’t use our oven to cook so had to do something, may as well get something we like –  but not before we had to get the guys to move their trucks so we could escape; we followed a truck reversing over 500m down our street.  Upon our return, the workers were still present though it looked like they were beginning to finish up.  Finally our power had returned: the clock read 12:18, indicating the power had been on for 18 minutes.  The initial estimate of “an hour” had been, in fact, two.

The total outage was five or so hours but lucky for us all of our food seems OK (at least after an initial check).  I wonder if there’s an Australia Post van out there with a rather large dent right now.

We were down at Cape Schanck for the day as part of our monthly photowalk, when I commented to Chris that this section of beach reminded me very much of the beach that Cartman’s band, Faith+1 used for the shot of their cover.

As soon as I said that, and we realised the three of us could do the poses (we had our remotes too, which made things significantly easier) in roughly the right spots, we both decided that had to be our 365 days shot for the day.

Chris didn’t want to crop his square but I felt it looked more like the album this way, which is what I was trying to emulate.

Today, for the first time in over two years, we visited the Melbourne Zoo. I’m not surprised to see little has changed, though they are overhauling the seal enclosure now for what seems to be a larger underwater exhibit.

I’m not really a zoo person, but Justine enjoys them so I tagged along while she dictated the path we took and the time spent at each enclosure.

Melbourne Zoo seems to have a habit of making me do dumb things with my camera; last time I forgot to charge my battery and had it on ISO100 all day. This time, I accidentally deleted a bunch (50, 100, I’m not sure) of photos — some of which I thought were pretty good. We revisited some of the better enclosures again to ensure a reasonable number of photos for each was taken, and I still managed to snap around two hundred shots even without the deleted ones.

The amount of space allocated to the elephants is crazy, especially since when we entered their exhibit they were all cooped up in a shed, leaving four or five “paddocks” completely empty while other less popular animals wear grooves into their enclosures’ concrete floors due to boredom.

Over the past few weeks, Justine and I have seen a number of churches advertising Open Days. Now, perhaps I am confused, but isn’t every Sunday supposed to be an open day?

And for that matter, aren’t churches with on-duty clergymen supposed to be open to all who wish to enter? I’m hardly frequent churches, but when we were overseas in Europe we entered plenty of churches, and with the exception of Westminster Abbey in London, they were all free. St Peter’s in Vatican City might not have been, but we entered via the exit — I assume it was free, though.

But I digress, why do churches feel the need to have an Open Day when I thought being open for anyone who needs them was half the point?

Just hanging around after a hard day at work. Boom-tish.

In a bit of a silly mood this afternoon. I’ve had the idea of recreating some famous portraits for a little while so decided this one was a good one to start with.

In case anyone doesn’t know which one I’m trying to recreate, it’s a famous photo of Einstein from the 50s.

While on our monthly photowalk, Dad spotted this large cannon and suggested I stick my head in the barrel for today’s photo. I liked the idea of doing something silly with the cannon but opted for this instead as I thought it more amusing.

Interestingly, I was wearing a t-shirt with a “Wanted” label on the front, which I think adds a bit more to the whole thing.

I also want to get a radio wireless remote for my camera now — I thought I wanted one already, but it’s so useful it is worth it.