The Weather, Getting Lost and Learning Italian.

"He then told me I could keep my knickers on!"  Taken from "Old Age and Villainy".

 




This rather looks like a giant asparagus stem but it's an agave flower spike.  I took this photo a week ago; it's now roughly four times the height and looks as if the flower may not be too far from opening.  I'll take a photo of it when it flowers to let you see what it looks like.  I'm quite curious, too, as I've never been this close to an agave flower.


It's been a lovely warm day on the Gold Coast...supposedly 33° C.  However, we desperately need rain, the fire risk is rated extreme and we receive regular warnings on Facebook and the nightly news to prepare for a bad bushfire season.  The bushfire season officially started yesterday, although the usual start is the end of October.  According to last night's news and weather, September was the hottest month on record and October is set to follow suit.  However, 14 cyclones are predicted to form off the Australian coast with 6 likely to come ashore.  Well, that's the weather dealt with...  

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I am very excited...and a little apprehensive as well...because this week I sent off a submission of  "Old Age and Villainy" to a publisher.  I received a computer generated acknowledgement of receipt of my email, followed about an hour or so later by an email from someone called Marilyn telling me my submission had been sent to the relevant person and I would hear back from them in about 7 to 10 days.  I was rather impressed.  From what I'd heard, it could be up to three months before you heard one way or another, if at all.  After panicking mildly, I pulled myself together and decided not to think of it...well, not too much, anyway.  So far, I've been relatively successful with only a few bouts of feeling excited or feeling trepidation.  Quite good...for me.

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I was invited to lunch at a friend's place yesterday.  I had not been to this area of the Gold Coast before so I carefully studied the street directory and duly arrived at the right road, which happened to be the Gold Coast Highway.  This is one of the main arterials and runs basically the length of the Goldie...about 90 to 100 km, at a guess.  It's also rather busy with a lot of businesses, motels, restaurants, apartment blocks and of course, the accompanying traffic.  I parked in a side street roughly where I thought the numbers would correspond to my friend's address.  I walked up and down a couple of blocks in the hot noonday sun, asked people where No 11 was and no one could help me find it.  Unfortunately, I had left my friend's phone number at home so wasn't even able to ring her to find out where she was! After about three quarters of an hour of this and getting more hot and bothered (literally) by the minute, I headed home.  My first call was to my friend who was concerned I may have had an accident.  To cut a long story short, I was looking for No 11...and it should have been No 111!  Enough said...  We've rescheduled lunch for next week.

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One of my desires has been to learn Italian.  To this end, a few months ago I enrolled in an online course, which I have found very helpful.  However, I felt I also needed conversational Italian as well as learning how to conjugate verbs and which gender applies to what object.  About two months or so ago, I found a day class through the Gold Coast City Council website, duly enrolled and turned up to my first lesson.  The tutor was a native Italian, from Venice actually, and a lovely fellow.  Lucio had so much patience with us...he was just delightful.  Unfortunately at the end of last term, he gave up tutoring as he was going overseas and so far we don't have a replacement.  So it's continuing with the online version for the moment.

Well, that's it for this post.  I have a pork sirloin roast in the oven and it smells divine.  I can't wait for dinner.  Until next time...

Ciao!