There are some great piano basic courses on TouTube. You can get a very decent grounding on Piano for free. Get someone who plays to have a look at your hands after a bit in case your technique needs correcting.

This pathway requires a bit of self discipline, but then again - so does Uni.

Like this?

Im a bit heartbroken. I coulda kept it going way longer than I thought.

It likely had that $10k spent on it to keep it going.

One of these mushrooms looks sus. Did you source them all from a reputable grocer?

After middling success putting a modern take on simple rock beats, they renamed the band to The Wiggles and specialized on childrens entertainment.

Through a combination of record companies wanting nothing to do with them, and a willingness to tour in the wake of the World Trade Center attack when nobody else would, the new band becomes wildly successful and gets to keep all their own money and not share it with a record company.

(True Story)

The types of people we are talking about don’t actually read books, anyway. This is what has always baffled me about these movements. It isn’t like they’re affected by the contents of a book.

Also 30, my guesses were not as lucky.

As I intentionally filter out as much US politics as I can, this has come out of nowhere for me.

Australia has a couple of really simple things baked into its electoral system to resist something wildly unpopular like this from getting in power:

1. Compulsory voting. These MAGA crazies are not and will never be the majority. If everyone had to vote, they’d never get in.
2. Proportional voting. We vote for multiple candidates. If our first choice doesn’t get in, our vote goes to our second choice. Then third etc. we aren’t forced to vote for a lizard just to prevent the worse lizard getting in (it still almost always comes down to two parties, though).

I know these are total non-starters for our American friends. “You can’t make me vote, that’s against the constitution or something”.

We bought some rice bran oil this week. Only tried it with some crumbed chicken last night so far, but it went rather well.

It’s less than half the price of olive oil.

We’ll start with January’s numbat photo.

It’s called “Bronze Plus Assured Hospital and Essential Extras 75”

It’s pretty basic cover I think.

“Kid” is older than 5? Yeah that’s weird.
If we’re talking baby photos though, I’ve got a dozen or so photos of the kids when they were babies/toddlers naked. Not with bits showing, and not shared to social media.

Is that not normal?

This one is tough. I don’t believe I’d have had the strength to do it before I had kids. I really wanted to be a dad and I wanted my “own” kids. The idea of forming a relationship with a single mother was also mega daunting to younger me.

But now that I’ve gone the traditional route, I could absolutely imagine the “other path” to happiness. I can recognise that I’d have loved it had I met my wife and kids as a package and joined the family. I don’t love them because they have my DNA. I love them because they’re my kids.

It’ll depend on the age(s) of the kid(s), but to a kid is under 5, they won’t remember a time before you were in their life. You won’t be an outsider, you’ll just be “dad”.

I’m not sure how, but I’m still down on Medibank under a corporate plan from a company I worked for 20 years ago. It’s something amazing, because despite costing a fortune, nobody has ever come close to matching it. I’ve had multiple Medibank employees tell me over the years not to mess with it because I won’t get that good a deal again.

This amazing deal is just under $250/Mo for the four of us. 😞

I’ve seen a few of these things around, they’re a bit overkill for our mild winter in Perth. I had no idea they were so expensive, though! My youngest wants one - because fashion. I was looking at the Anaconda range, They were in the $60-$100 ballpark (for kids jackets - not sure if adults are the same).

In a past role when I was short staffed and hiring people, I was often lumped with interviewing people on top of my regular duties. It is a lot of extra work. It also took longer than I expected. I was often a bit late getting back to people for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes, candidates had to reschedule. Sometimes, more urgent work came up and I had to do things other than processing the applications. Suddenly, your last interview isn’t Tuesday, but Friday instead.

I was never more than a few days late - the best candidates usually had more than one offer to consider and I’d lose them if I didn’t get back to them. If they told you Wednesday, I’d give them until Monday before giving up.

You gotta understand that most numbat sightings are super fleeting and look like this:

Just setting expectations now. 😃

The Car thing should be your fallback plan to keep you off sleeping on the street. It’s only a step up from that, and certainly not something you should be planning for. YouTube videos make it look a lot more glamorous than it actually is. I slept for a week in a van while I drove around in New Zealand. It was fully kitted out with kitchen, actual bed, power, water, the works! And a week was long enough - I would not have wanted to live like that longer term.

The dodgiest one-bedroom shoebox with a bathroom and toilet would be better than any car.

School holidays. Took the kids to the zoo yesterday. Saw Nellie. Took some photos. Also, bought a 2024 Numbat calendar on clearance for the cute numbat photos in it for $2.

Warning: I may start randomly spamming cute numbat photos at the thread in the coming weeks.