Introducing Ralph

Well it isn't news that we have our fair share of wildlife out in our backyard. But a few days ago we had a different visitor a really big lizard with short little legs. We have fed him things like rice, mango, shrimp, eggs, steak, pork and chicken. Needless to say I would say he doesn't like veggies or carbs that much. But he sure likes meat. Usually he shows up just when we are about to go in because the mozzies are getting bad here, but tonight we got a pleasant surprise he was under L's chair with his head poking out. We fed him some chicken which of course he gobbled constantly. He even took it from my hand. This guy doesn't seem to be as scared as the other types of lizards that are around the house. He moves pretty slow and wanders around getting under the chair and table, I don't think he likes the light. We were afraid the other night because he didn't show up but he seems to be pretty regular now. He/she is a welcome site at dinner when we eat outside, which is every night. Here are some pictures we took he is pretty cute the poor guy has very little legs. You probably think that we have overfed him but he was this chubby last week. We worry about the him because he's kinda slow and their are cars just on the other side of the fence which he crawls thru to get to us. See his pics below. If you can't see the pics go to the blog (link below).


The weather is getting a lot hotter lately and the humidity is up. It has been raining and one day we got 100mm. Some people say it can rain for 2 weeks, not sure if that's constant rain of every day for 2 weeks. I guess we'll see.

We also got our power bill which works about to $100 a month and that was without aircon running, just fans and the fridge. It could be an expensive summer (our summer not your summer).

Well I'm in the 2nd week of my part-time job. They said they want me longer than the 4 weeks so that'll be good. The money I earn will be that gets us back to Canada for next June so maybe I'll be able to afford to bring L back as well (haha). I guess not many receptionists are very good at image editing, but I'm still lousy at answering the phone. But it's a lot of fun the people are pretty cool and that's what counts.

Temporarily on hold

Sorry I haven't been in touch lately I have been temping. Well my first job was a receptionist at a TV stations sales office. The phone rang all of a dozen times, it was totally boring. In the reception they had a TV which was playing their TV channel. Well I can honestly say in that one day I heard the same commercial for funeral insurance about 30 times. I eventually found the volume control and turned it down. Now that job only lasted a day so I guess as a receptionist I just didn't have the legs for it (badump bump).

Last week and this week I am at a company, at reception again. The phone ring about 4 times all day. Here I am reformatting word documents, so I've learned a bit about word. But other than that it's pretty boring. But I was smart I brought some of my own things to work on. I can't complain the pay isn't bad for what I'm doing but they get paid really good out here because of the cost of living.

 

Our replacement lily also croaked and we lost the receipt so we couldn't take it back for a replacement so L bought a different plant. We also moved it into a shadier place thinking that maybe the plant was getting too much sun. Well it was also probably too hot for the fish, during the day they would not come to the surface. Now it's moved they frolic all day, every time we walk by they think it's feeding time.

 

Since it's spring here, we are still on Canada seasons in our head, we have noticed many changes with the lizards. Some come out onto the patio at night and do some sort of sideways slithering walking. These guys are just little, about the thickness of a pencil, but it's fun to watch. We still have the geckos on the wall that I love to watch eating all the moths. I think we have another one in the house again but they seem to hide quite well some I'm not going to try to throw this one out. Although I doubt there's much to eat in our place other than sugar ants, which I don't think they eat.

 

But last 2 nights we've had a quite large lizard visit. The other night L fed it some steak and some rice which was completely eaten. Last night it got really brave and walked all around the patio even getting up close to our chairs. I mean it's not a huge lizard, about the thickness of a sausage, but we both had our feet up so it wouldn't eat our toes. Last night we were prepared and we broke up a cooked shrimp. It must have a good nose because it pretty much found them without wandering around. We also fed it mango and some more rice but it didn't eat everything we put out so I gather rice and mango are lower on it's list of favourites or we just over fed it on shrimp. Hopefully we'll see it tonight, maybe we can get a picture.

 

Things are obviously changing, we've had more rain and this morning we came to work in rain, nothing brutal like what is forecast to come but enough to slow traffic down. With the rain things are starting to get a lot greener.

 

With the on coming wet they will be closing the Mindil beach market, which is a market that runs Thursday and Sunday during the dry that has food and stands that sell or sorts of stuff. L has a place she likes to go and get earrings but we now know that the lady that runs the booth will be at some other location on Sunday mornings. If you look at our pictures you'll see some sunset pics we took at Mindil beach. In fact the background to our blog is a picture taken at Mindil (or it was as of this writing).

Holy jumping crocodiles

This past weekend us and some friends of ours, fellow Canadians from Vancouver, drove 1 hour south of Darwin to the Adelaide river to see some jumping crocs. I must admit watching them swim through the water was amazing, they are so graceful. They also are very thoughtful in what they do, which is why sometimes they just won't jump for the meat on the string. They know they won't get it so they won't try. I also got to try on some Australian fashion in a python snake (see pictures), actually snakes aren't slimy at all they don't feel all that bad really, saying that I probably won't rush out and get one to hide under L's side of the bed. Check out the video and the pictures. L got a really good one of the jumping croc.

A while back L bought a water Lilly and we put it in a pot, well after the possums eating it and being transplanted it eventually stopped growing. The other day I had a major light bulb come on, "aren't plants guaranteed ?". Well it seems they are and at Bunnings they have a lifetime guarantee, not sure who's life mine or the plants. So L got a new plant, put it in the pot and now the guppies that a friend of L's gave us, are super happy now. Hopefully it lasts, it has an beautiful flower blooming already. Not sure what killed the last one but hey lifetime guarantee if this one doesn't last they'll see us again and again.

I guess what they call the build-up is upon us, it really doesn't seem all that more humid that it would in Toronto in the dog days of summer, but maybe more is coming. Now that the wet is coming a lot of things are starting to slow or stop. Many of the markets will shut down as well as the Mindil beach market, which we really like to visit every couple of weeks.

The Christmas stuff is in the stores already, they don't really celebrate Halloween here but one store had some Halloween candies. But the price for a dozen was extortion, boy we miss Costco.

The Perils of Paul & Luna:Lizard for lunch

One of my favourite activities here is to watch the Gecko's that sit by our outside lights and eat all sorts of bugs. Now you would figure that they would eat any bug but no they are selective. I have watched them rush up to a bug and then look at it then turn around and scurry away. I figure that moths are high on their diet and if you have a hard shell then you're too hard to digest so they just leave you alone. Well it must be time for lizards to have babies cause I saw one in the house, figuring there isn't much to eat here I have been trying to figure out how to get it outside where it can eat some good. Well one day it was by the front door so I opened it and using my hands convinced him to go outside. I felt pretty good that it would be able to eat better things because really other than ants, which I don't think they eat, there isn't much to eat in here. So the other night after coming back from the garbage run (taking the garbage out), we carry a torch (flashlight) so we can see where we are going, but when we get home I usually shine it on the underside of the eves-trough to see how many of our buddies there are. On the wall I could see that one of them had a rather large moth so I went over to investigate. Well it wasn't a moth it was the little critter I rescued waist deep in one of the big ones mouths. I cursed him that large bugger after I saved this baby so I ran inside grabbed a broom and banged it in front of his head and he coughed little one up and ran away. The little one seemed stunned and looked like he was missing his tail. I don't know how he fared that night but I don't think his chances where that good there was a lot of big geckos out that night. So I felt pretty bad that I had saved him only to have him get 1/2 eaten. But 1/2 hour later who do I see a little gecko crawling around the house. Obviously that one I scared out was not the one that was in the house previously ... or we had more than one in the house. Well this guys staying put if he can find something to eat here then I'll chuck him out when he's too big.

L does a lot of reading here and she goes thru books pretty quick. The other day she said I should collect them all and take them back to the library. She liked to leave them piled on this brown leatherette box we have. It's about 2 foot square. So I pick them up and under the last one there was this huge cockroach flattened by the book. Now I think this death was accidental but he probably figured he was safe hiding on something that was the same color as him. Which is funny because I could see the ants running up to the box but I couldn't see them going anywhere else on the floor. I figured they were running under the couch somewhere. But no they had found it and they were small enough to crawl under the book to do whatever ants do to dead cockroaches.

This weekend we are going to see the jumping crocs. Hopefully they haven't figured out yet how to jump into the boat, pictures and videos to follow unless this is the weekend they figure out how to crawl into a boat. If that's the case obituary to follow.

Here is my favourite lizard whom I call Bender because I think he's always sleeping it off in the morning after a big bender.

This dude is there day and night and is sleeping because at night his eyes are black right now they are brown like his skin.

The Perils of Paul & Luna:Sol e Luna goes on the road

The other night was our pizza Tuesday on Wednesday night and I had Sol e Luna 1/2 set up in the backyard almost ready for a evening of pizza and atmosphere when L said hey we should eat near the water. So we did. We always have these camping chairs in the back of the car so L made some salads we packed a few drinks and off we went to the Nightcliff foreshore (or the shoreline) which is a 2 minute drive from our place. We plunked our chairs right at the waters edge. The reason L wanted to go was that the tide was really high that night. Well one thing I like about Darwin is there are lots of places to just sit and eat and it's never really crowded. Now we have seagulls here but they seem to be watching their weight unlike the fatties we have in Canada. People are always fishing from the shore, although I've never seen anyone catch anything.
Here are some pictures that I've added to the Sol e Luna picture show.



The pictures make it look darker than it was, it's the flash. Well the pizza got cold quickly but that was ok, there was a strong breeze coming off the ocean that's why L is wearing a hoodie. Looks like she's becoming a Darwinian pretty fast feeling the cold which back in Canada we'd regard as great weather.

This past weekend we went to a place called Aquascene here in Darwin. It is a place where you can feed the fish. It was great fun, there were fish everywhere and lots of bread to chuck in. Some you could actually feed by hand and there was this one lonely Monk fish, one of our favourites from diving. Here is a video of L feeding the little critter he sure is cute.

The Perils of Paul & Luna:Crocodile done deal

Well this weekend we saw our "FIRST CROCODILE". How did we see it ? Well we were driving along this dam, which was really a pile of dirt for a road and L looked in the water and there it was. Now it wasn't one of those jumping crocs, more like sitting in the sun waiting for a tourist to come along so I can eat him crocs.
We took some video, see below, and a few pictures, see belower. I must admit that the outback is really a lot of driving. The Ausies sure do contribute to global warming just going out for a little drive, when it comes to the outback because nothing it close. They also have this sneaky way of saying you're there, but you have another 45 minutes before your really there. We drove to a jumping croc place and the sign said "your here" but after a 1/2 hour drive down the dirt road at 20km/h we arrived for the lady to say the last boat left 30 minutes ago.
Good job L saw the other croc and we saved $35 each I guess. Another thing with the outback is the dust. The car was covered in dust inside and out. So thick you could scrape it with your finger.



After the croc sighting we were good and hungry so we went to a different buffet called Seafood on Cullen. It was very busy but we really didn't think it was as good as the Casino. But they had these neat food heater things that were magical, see video.



We also went to this place in Darwin where they have fish feeding. It was pretty cool. Unfortunately you could only get in with them on the boat ramp. which is pretty limiting and the lady was constantly reminding us of box jelly fish that can kill a child in 1 minute. No wonder parents were pushing there kids to the front of the dock. I have some video that I'll try to put up as well but we took so much that I may want to edit it down a little. We saw Henry the Cod and he was ugly and beautiful at the same time. He moved so slow. They gave us bread to feed the fish but Henry only liked fish scraps so he patiently waited for the presenter to throw him a scrap or two. Most of the time the other fish grabbed it before he could come up to the surface to take it. I think Henry didn't like the commotion on the surface it was just crazy. It is a definite recommend and we'll probably go again although it is hot out in the sun. They only do it in high tide and we need to look for a higher tide because yesterdays tide was not as high, kinda low actually. This really impeded feeding them from this other area as the water did not flood this other area to stand at so everyone had to stand at the dock. The place is called Aquascene, I think next time we'll go on a weekday when the kids are in school.



After eating at all these places that just seem to disappoint we tried a new place called Sol é Luna which I believe roughly translates to Luna's shoe. Don't quote me on that cause my Italian/Spanish isn't all that great. Ok so Sol é Luna is really our backyard fancied up with some bamboo citronella lamps, $2 each at Coles, a folding card table, $18 at Bunnings and a $10 table cloth. Who knew it was so cheap to start a restaurant? I think with all the lights and stuff we really almost have created a Caribbean paradise in Australia. The only down side is we had to clear the table ourselves, oh and cook the food, oh and put all the stuff away. But as you can see from the pictures it really looks nice. L says she wants to dine there every night, looks like I'll be washing lots of table clothes.

L's Facebook page is doing really well she is connecting with people from her old jobs back in Canada at York CAS, so if you're not a friend of L's on Facebook then friend her, she's actually got more friends than me now.

I'm working on a NEW combined Perils of Paul & Luna Facebook page I have lots of great ideas but none of them are working out but as soon as it's ready it'll be another thing to ignore haha

The Perils of Paul & Luna:Ants on a tight rope

A quick video of how the ants have used our string lights as their new bridge over our patio. Here they try to move a rather large insect, compared to themsleves that is.