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There's every possibility that the next 24 - 48 hours will see my neighbours and I isolated from convenience by way of flooding. If the Hawkesbury hits 15m, it's around a 3 day wait according to some older locals who've been there, done that.
The first thing I thought of was to ensure my beer supply was sound. The weight of the one remaining keg means I need to bolster supplies.
Funny how a man's mind works at times..
Yeah man, all the best. Keep safe.
Hopefully you've got some cask conditioned english ales in case the power gets cut.
 
Hmmm, that awkward moment when you go to open a mack's beer and the ring comes of with out the cap. And it takes you a moment to think of the bottle opener because you were so not expecting to need it. Guess a pint and a bit of the scotch ale before hand will do that to ya
 
How FUKT are wipper snippers ?!?!!!

Whipper snippers - are rad!

Its winding them that can eat a bowl of dick!


I wanted to launch a sport, call 'Grizzly snipping'

Basically you go up into the woods where grizzly bears live with a whipper snipper.

Sneak up on a bear, You use the the whipper snipper to shave their hair.

Most weight of hair Snipped/by weight wins.

Mauled to death - out.

Could be cool.....

Fedadadah_1.jpg



Edit: For a winning point, you shave/snip the bear like a trimmed poodle style, no mauling - win.
 
gee jyo if you dont see nev soon he will hand you a empty bottle.
 
I wanted to launch a sport, call 'Grizzly snipping'

Basically you go up into the woods where grizzly bears live with a whipper snipper.

Sneak up on a bear, You use the the whipper snipper to shave their hair.

Most weight of hair Snipped/by weight wins.

Mauled to death - out.

Edit: For a winning point, you shave/snip the bear like a trimmed poodle style, no mauling - win.
Nah, been there done that.
n4z11y.jpg

Why don't you try something difficult?
 
Well, it is a happy day at Casa de Bum. Today ends what has easily been the most difficult period of my life.

WARNING: Emo spleen venting of epic proportions from this point on. Feel free to ignore all of it. No real reason for you to read it, I just need to purge.

When my wife and I returned home from our trip to see her family in the US in the middle of December, we arrived to discover that DHS had removed my niece (2 months) and nephew (2 years) from my sister due to drug abuse. First thing we did was to put our hands up to take the kids. So we go to an out of session court hearing and I am granted legal custody of both kids. DHS told us it would only be until a court date on Jan 9 when the kids would be returned. A few days before the court date they tell us "Oh, what we actually meant was that we're going to ask for a 3 month order. Then the kids can go back". At court my sister's lawyer convinces her that she shouldn't accept the order and she'll get the kids back sooner if she fights it. A new court date is set for early February. A week before this court date DHS tell me they think a magistrate will send the kids home so they won't contest it. But they do - they ask for 3 months again. No agreement is reached and another court date is set for March 1st. Leading up to the court date DHS are pursuing the matter very aggressively - talking about making the court date 2 days and talking about calling witnesses, etc. Two days prior they fold for no reason and say they'll send the kids back at court. I do not get excited, "I will believe it when it happens", says I. So court was yesterday, my sister was granted custody again and I've just dropped them home.

Through this period, I've had to allow my sister to visit with the kids. This access has to be supervised. By me. Which means I have to look at that stupid fuckface's stupid, fucked face on a nearly daily basis (well, should have been daily, she got here maybe 3/4 of the time). All the while having to be cordial for the sake of the older boy. Not easy.

I can't quite work out why, but everyone I know completely disappeared during this time. This has been very problematic for me. Most of my mates have kids - they should know how hard it must be to have two kids dumped in your lap like this. Surprisingly, family has also been very quiet through this period (my mum excluded, she's been around a lot of afternoons to help me out which has been great). It has been very difficult for us to go through this almost entirely without support. I'm reasonably close to just cutting them off completely.

The boy has pre-existing behavioural issues. Exacerbated by this situation (being away from his mum and not understanding why) and also having borne witness to the 5 days she spent off her guts on ice and speed (didn't sleep the whole time and ended up seeing demons coming for the kids). So basically he screams (angry screams, not the normal 2yo shit) his guts out all day and wakes up with night-terrors (screaming, naturally) a minimum of 4 times a night but often up to every 40 minutes - ALL ******* NIGHT. He could barely speak when he arrived - we have worked on that and he has almost caught up to where he should be.

The girl is hideous to feed. A quick bottle takes 40 minutes. She just screams and squirms while taking a feed for up to an hour and a half. All the while there's a 2yo to manage as well. When she got here she would wake as often as every 2 hours overnight. We managed to train her to sleep through fairly quickly, thankfully, but not before my wife's boss had to pull her aside and tell her she had to get more sleep (the unspoken "or else" was deafening). So she spent a while sleeping in the loungeroom - which neither of us enjoyed.

Since I've mentioned my wife's job above, now seems like a good point to mention that she is the breadwinner of the household. As such, I've been "Mum" through all of this. The wife was very helpful/supportive but at the end of the day 80% of the job fell to me. Which sucked. I haven't slept longer than 4 hours once since last year - and that was a rare occurrence.

The whole time this has been going on it has been looking like I would have to defer a semester at uni. I am not really in a position to be taking longer to complete my studies (I'm 35 and the clock is ticking, you know?). Through the whole thing I am getting a lot of pressure from a lot of people to get the kids put in foster care so I can go back to uni (in some cases, this is the only form of contact I have had with them during this period). The whole reason we put our hand up in the first place is to keep the kids out of foster care (nothing against foster carers, just that it is widely recognised that the temporal nature of foster care is not great for kids). Thankfully I'm able to go back now.

Speaking of uni, due to a very heavy course load I had been unable to brew last year since late July. While we were in The States I was formulating the recipes for all the brews I was going to madly put down until uni went back. This shit happens and I suddenly find myself with neither the time nor energy to brew. Add to this the fact that I'm not comfortable with getting up to the kids half-cut so I haven't had a drink since last year.

This shall be remedied posthaste!
 
In other news ----

084e12ee.jpg


Next challenge, get this kilo of super freshly packed hops through customs :)
Also managed to grab kohatu and wai-ti.
 
I just need to purge

There, I read it all. Hope you feel better for purging, and that you get your problems sorted soon.

With all due respects to individual public servants, the real job of the Public Service is to make work for the Public Service, to ensure their continued employment. Everything else is subservient to that objective. Once we realise that, everything they do becomes easy to understand.
 
WARNING: Emo spleen venting of epic proportions from this point on. Feel free to ignore all of it. No real reason for you to read it, I just need to purge.

Well done for taking it all on.

Hope your sister is better and it doesn't happen again.
 
Well done Bum, you have my admiration for doing what you did for those two kids, hopefully their mum will get her shit together hey.

cheers

Browndog
 
Hopefully she already has, taking the kids back an all. Onya bum you're a good man for what you did
 
I gotta agree with everyone on that Bum, nice work, the kids are lucky to have such a caring uncle & I applaud your commitment & sense of family mate.
 
While I don't want to sound like the heartless prick who takes this thread in a different direction (and of course kudos Bum, I also read the entire piece...what people forget in their argument about how we are all doomed is that in fact people in general aren't shit, but rather people are malleable and respond to social and cultural and bio-physio-psychological forces in various ways...the trick is finding the one the works best for everyone, and if we think a liberal [in the proper sense, not the name-of-a-party-sense] property-owning unbridled capitalistic representative-democracy is the answer then we have perhaps not quite asked the right question, but acts such as yours demonstrate that there are plenty of people in the world willing to do more than their share, in fact I'll wager there are good doing good things all over the world right now but they aren't newsworthy so we forget about them)....

...political philosophy aside...


...and aside from things being "to good" to be true...

...has anyone noticed that in the foreward to Gordon Strong's Brewing Better Beer the "standing on the shoulders of giants" quote famously made by Isaac Newton is attributed to Einstein?

I hope the book does better with its brewing advice than with its philosopher/scientist references...
 
Bum copping the govt's bum steer? (all puns intended).

Stay positive fella, and I tip my drink to thee and wish you well and a speedy (no not speedie) resolution to the situation.
 

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