Katy Klein Has a Chat

I always wonder just how far we’ve evolved when I watch chicken behavior and then notice the same behavior in people.

Those of you following the story so far would know that our oldest and most fabulous chicken, Clucksy, had a stroke. More strokes followed and although she’s made a decent recovery since, we now need to lift her onto her perch at night.

Dusty took this recovery time to start residing on top of Clucksy. Not just when she was sitting down either. Should Clucksy be standing upright, Dusty would leap onto her back. Clucksy’s more stationary habits were leading Dusty to be a little senior citizen before her time.

So we decided new chickens were in order and trekked to Bulleen. Basically we pick the chickens based on personality, so in addition to our Australorp and Pekin Bantam, we now have a Sussex and a Wynandotte. Pegs was named for her lovely legs and Megs (or Mega) was the size of a sparrow and had the same markings.

Whenever we bring chickens home I always expect them to jump out of their box and run over to the other chickens. But chickens are like children, in that they need to hang out beside each other first before they start playing nicely together. If you act too eager, like Megs did, you run the risk of losing a couple of feathers.

Luckily in the chicken world everything can be reset within 3 days. Introducing two chickens to two chickens makes it easier for them as any bullying gets divided up. So now they all hang out together and cuddle up together at night. 

Anyway, it occurred to me that integration of new ideas or people isn’t that dissimilar to bringing home new chickens. There is the initial hesitation and then some pecking to establish dominance. Then there is an uneasy truce and finally after three days it’s considered the norm. Of course some people are a tad more mulish than chickens….

I really like operas. Each one is different. Some you see for the music, some have amazing singing, some have laughs and some are all about the action. Some operas even have nudity. All of them are about love. It turns out that I have racked up about eleven operas thus far and hope for far more. But the thing that has intrigued me since my very first opera, is why the heroine has to die.

In the operas I have seen, there have been two where no one dies. These are usually the comic operas like Die Fledermaus and the Barber of Seville. Don Giovanni is the only opera I’ve seen where it’s the guy who gets it (rather oddly by a concrete statue that has come to life).

But overwhelmingly, it’s the chick who has to die for love and the list of dying options is fairly varied. Here’s just a few:

Tosca – by throwing herself off the battlements.

Madame Butterfly – Stabs herself.

La Boheme – Consumption (Tuberculosis).

La Traviata – TB again.

AIDA – sealing herself in a vault so she can be buried alive with her fella. There’s devotion for you.

Lakme – Eating some poisonous Datura leaf.

Turandot – stabbing herself for love.

I haven’t seen Il Travatore and Rigoletto but the chicks in these operas sacrifice themselves to save their lovers. And if that wasn’t enough, one then takes poison from her ring and the other one is mortally wounded.

Maybe we just don’t believe in romance like the old days or maybe RSVP is just so handy we don’t need to go to these extremes to prove ourselves.  But if you really want to impress your fella next Valentines Day ladies you may want to re-think the chocolates and cards and say it with TB!

Weird people wantto talk to me. I’m not sure what it is but I’m like a beacon to them, especially on public transport. It could be because public transport seems to feature higher than normal levels of certain populations. These include the smelly’s, the terrible-music-played-at-full-volume’s, the-unable-to-move-over’s (who put the ‘it’s all about me’ back into PT), the inane-mobile-phone-conversations-at-full-voice’s and the NQRs. It could be that I am particularly lucky but nearly every day I will be sitting next to one of these people. And if the carriage is pretty much empty they will usually sit down right beside me, personal space is for suckers!

Now every time I have had the pleasure of catching a train at Coburg station I have some of the wierdest interactions I have ever had And this is compared with a life time of weird interactions.

The first time I was fortunate to listen to two men discuss the fact that their mate was unlikely to get away with not doing jail time this time around. I think that was for holding up a servo.

The next time I met the mad Need-A-Light lady who when I told her I didn’t smoke said the she hadn’t either until she was 34, it was the kids that made her start, they caused her so much stress!

But yesterday took the cake. Witch-Lady walked out on the platform and I knew my beacon was at full signal. She looked as close as possible to the wicked witches in fairy tales as someone wearing holey trackie dacks could. She was all curled over, with straggly black hair covering her face, hauling some bundles around and used her walking stick to poke the train information button. I was sitting on a 2 metre long bench and she sat down right next to me with not a centimetre to spare. The first thing she did was lift both feet off the ground as if to examine her sneakers, she remained like this for the 7 minutes it took for the train to come along. Upon spying me writing away (please don’t talk to me, please don’t talk to me) she said “I like to write. I like to write so I can look at the words I wrote, they look nice’. As a kid she learnt to write by copying out encyclopedias unless of course she went yabbying with her sister. She was 38 and looked about 60. The conversation pretty much went down hill from there as I tried to appear enthralled by the notes I was writing (’That must be interesting!”).

So if your keen on meeting some interesting people I highly recommend Coburg Station on the inbound platform side.

So I was reading the local paper which is chock full of stories to interest community minded individuals and there was a story on the local Freemasons.  Turns out the Freemasons seemed a little put out by the conspiracy theories in Dan Brown’s latest book and thought they needed to set the record straight about whether they rode goats and secretly controlled the world (not true according to The Leader’s article). They also seem to be having problems recruiting new members which is one problem with your ’secret’ society, very hard to market.

So they had organised an open night at the grand puba masonic lodge and all were welcome to come along. I figured that this chance wouldn’t come up too often so off we went on a Friday night (I know, I know, my social life is sadly lacking).

I have to admit that the open night was pretty interesting. ‘Merv’  was a witty and informative speaker who explained what the Freemasons were all about, the symbology they used and what happens at lodge meetings (apparently a lot of singing and acting out plays to learn about a suitable moral code).  The overall values espoused and their commitment to the community and charitable works was lovely. One sentence in their Freemasonry Victoria newsletter put it as “so that he may live respected and die regretted”. The only Freemason benefits seemed to be 10% off at a certain plumbing company advertised in their newsletter.

I was also impressed by the use of the ceremonial aprons at the meetings. The aprons are less about baking cookies and more about protection of clothing for your working masons, which may be less necessary nowadays. The ceremonial aprons do look marvellous in the photos, although I suspect they would never have been seen in your medieval quarry.

The only disappointing aspect of the evening for me was that women were quite pointedly excluded throughout the night. Quite honestly the fact that women can’t join the Freemasons doesn’t worry me at all since singing and play-acting isn’t really my thing. It was more the fact that the ways in which they left the female attendees out were just unnecessary. They shook hands with my partner but not with me, the information packs were for the male guests and how many male guests were there here tonight? All a tad Grade 6 for me (maybe scared of girl germs?). Which for a society that prides itself on the inclusion of all creeds, faiths and occupations just seemed a little bit false. After all women have been out in the workforce for at least a couple of years now.

I suspect that in there is one good reason that women are excluded though.  Most likely it’s because meetings would never get anywhere because the women would be laughing so hard seeing men wearing aprons and saying that it would be nice if the men could wear them a bit more at home. That and the possibility of women telling each other about the secret handshakes is fairly high.

Every once in a while I like to hit a proper runway fashion show to feel like I still have a chance at being fashionable and Melbourne’s Spring Fashion Week always has a good vibe to it. Whilst being quite stylish, everyone is still welcome, from 16-year old wannabee models to 50- year old wannabee fashionistas.   

There is something so bemusing about catwalk shows.  Twiggy little models, with boobies I would have been disappointed with as a 12-year old, do that weird runway walk. It sort of looks like they are being dragged down the runway by their pelvis whilst simultaneously falling backwards off their high high heels. The boys get to walk fairly normally since non-surprisingly there is no high-heel male shoe to cause them to lope along like newly born foals.  So they just stride on down like they are late for the pub. The boys do seem to fall prey to a little known muscular problem however, which may result from their super big hair. Some of their necks struggle to support the weight of product required for big hair which leads to a hunched look. One of the male models also looked exactly like a pig-faced bat which is very cute on bats, less so on boys.

In some ways attending fashion shows is kind of like car racing, you go because you might see a crash.  I am always expecting one of the super skinny lasses to snap a fetlock .  To date none have, which hasn’t stopped me believing that it’s possible.  We did see a fall last night, there was a collective gasp from the crowd but the model pulled through without any knickers being displayed at all.

The highlight of the night for me was of course the goodie-bag.  We even paid extra for the ‘good’ setas to get one.  Goodie-bags are the adult version of show bags, full of stuff you didn’t really need but is still really cool to have.  The bags had a good range of product sachets which I absolutely love.  There’s something about nice products in teeny tiny containers that just pleases me.

Anyway, I didn’t see any clothes that were for me but since most of the items are unlikely to feature at Target, that’s not surprising. I also think that designing clothes for walking clothes hangers shows very little imagination.  It’s sort of like sticking cut out clothes on paper dolls, it’s two dimensional. Designing clothes that enhance regular women and camouflage their life-trophy flaws on the other hand strikes me as a much better challenge.  And with obesity on the rise, the size 6 figure may be becoming extinct and then what will the designers do?

The next time you are passing through Wesburn (and who doesn’t) I highly recommend that you take your foot off the accelerator, brake sharply and swing into Jillian’s Cafe.  This is the way Road Houses are meant to be; posters on the wall, a good range of classic lollies, Formica tables and most importantly, super-awesome burgers.

 We had been bike riding along the Lilydale-Warbuton Rail Trail so we’d worked up a bit of an appetite. So I thought the Famous Wesi Whoppa burger was an ideal remedy for a calorie deficit. Turns out your Wesi Whoppa is two (count them, two) burgers enclosed in one bun.  Fantastic value at $9 – take that crappy meal deals!

I would have taken one on but then I saw that there was also a ‘Bloke’s Burger’ and a ‘Girly Burger’ (both a value added $8.50).  I was super impressed with the options.  I really like it when food proprietors take the time to put tasty combinations together so that I don’t have to, it shows real pride in what they do.

The Girly Burger did sound fine with chicken, coleslaw, beetroot, pineapple and salad.  But I couldn’t go past the Bloke’s Burger with two patties, two pieces of bacon, two slices of oozy cheese, onion, BBQ sauce and NO SALAD. It took me to the upper limit of pleasantly full (which is one bite short of darn I’ve gone too far).

It’s a good idea to keep the burger carefully encased in it’s wrapping as you’re eating as there is a nice amount of burger juice. Several times when eating the burger I was surprised to find that despite having eaten away steadily I still had a huge handful of burger action, it just kept going. These are not burgers you would eat whilst driving for instance. You need to take the time to appreciate the burger magic.

The place was humming with locals when we were there with the burger cook (could it have been Jillian herself?) keeping us updated with burger progression (Haven’t forgotten ya loves). By the picture on the bag it does appear that Jillian is a bit of a goer so it comes as no surprise that she has produced such fine burgers.

Before you say anything, of course this question makes sense. What I am talking about is those dreams where someone you know has done something to you in a dream. For instance, this morning I woke up to a persistent, annoying and exasperating dream in which my partner not only explained my toilet habits to his co-workers but then refused to apologise for doing it. He then went on to act very rudely indeed and even when I threatened dis-engagement, he didn’t care! At that stage of the dream some tropical fruit cake arrived which was delicious.  But that didn’t make me feel any better when I woke up. I still feel cross that he didn’t say sorry. Unfortunately redress cannot always be pursued in the dream state.

But it’s not their fault I hear you say, it’s happening in your head. But I would suggest there is a reason that it’s happening in your head.  There is obviously a reason why your sub-concious is so annoyed as to make up convoluted stories about the person in question. In reality, most of the times when we are offended by others when awake, it’s not how a comment was given but how we perceived it.

So in a word, Yes, dream offenders should apologise in the morning, preferably with a slice of delicious tropical cake.

So luckily my partner is a computer geek because otherwise I never would have mustered the technical know-how to set up a blog page.  Of course once computer geeks start showing you stuff on the computer they get all excited and babble away not realising they lost you about 14 screens ago. But I’m slowly catching up and the last time we checked my blog page activity I was super excited to find out that people had actually got to my site.  In fact it was coming up pretty high in certain Google searches which made me feel really popular. And I had gone international (i.e four counties outside of Australia).

The interesting part for me was that Google Analytics shows how people get to your site.  You definitely learn a lot from this.  Apparently the Klein spirit level is a type of spitit level and the term ‘crocs avilable in katy’ refers to finding footwear in a place called Katy (who knew that existed). 

I was fairly intrigued by the person who ran a search on Mandytory punishment #25 to life.  Now I’m assuming that they had spelling issues but the question is why would someone be looking up mandatory sentencing periods specifically for over 25 years. I can only guess but this person may have come up with the perfect retirement strategy. Firstly you get to spend everything you earn whilst you’re young and can enjoy it.  Then when you hit about 50, you perform one of the appropriate crimes and off to prison you go, free board and lodging for the rest of your life.  You don’t even need to wait until your retirement age. There’s some minuses of course, you don’t get to buy a caravan and travel around Australia with the rest of the retirees.  But my grandma can tell you (and does every single time I visit) that her retirement home is like being in prison anyway. So you might not lose out too much.

Anyway, definitely something to think about and the way super is performing it’s definitely good to have a back-up plan. In case you are wondering the big three for over 25 year sentences appear to be murder(s), aggravated sexual assauts in company(s) (not sure if this relates to places of work or in social situations) and certain offences under the drug act.  Especially if you have spent some time planning them out (winging it seems to be fine in comparison).

It turns out that like horses and skinny dogs you probably shouldn’t bet on the outcome of  job interviews. You may recall that just before we set sail for Darwin I had racked up two interviews, one of which I thought had gone quite well and the second one I thought had gone remarkably crap.

So it has come as a pleasant surprise to be offered the position from my ‘crap’ interview.  I haven’t heard anything back from the ‘good’ interview so maybe I’m just a bad judge of interview success. In the mean time I had been contacted for a third interview but since they gave me only 24 hours notice and we were in the middle of Kakadu that was never going to happen.  Strangely they called me back a week later to see if I might still be interested in an interview which seems to indicate that the people they had interviewed were fairly dodgey. I’m fairly sure that you wouldn’t go to the effort of lining up an interview panel of four people again unless you had too.  I am also fairly sure that the number of interview panellists does not in any way correspond to making a better choice of candidate.  I was once asked to attend a final interview for a new manager as a courtesy and apparently I was the only person to see that anyone who turns up for an interview wearing a purple velvet jacket is not your winner. I was also the only person not on the panel (another panel of 4). Purple-Velvet-Jacket man turned out to be a terrible manager. It appeared that he may have read a guide to good management somewhere along the line but possibly hadn’t got around to finishing it. He was ‘made redundant’ a year later.

Anyway, it is fairly interesting that I can stuff up an interview but still appear to be the best candidate.  Which makes me wonder what the other candidates were like……..

So my favourite radio station, Joy FM, have been running ads for Misty’s Diner. Being easily influenced I checked out the website and knew instantly that I had to go once I saw the brownie dessert.  

I get very excited whenever I find unknown food items or combinations and I love comfort food. American food is big on the comfort.  With the emphasis on ‘big’. Like most Australians I was constantly enthralled with just how large the meals were when I was in LA.  Two of us managed to split one enormous piece of pizza and still feel entirely satisfied.

Misty’s had menu items such as Carb Coma Platter and Philly Cheese Steak which are possibly not ’slimming’ but gee they sounded good. The Chilli Cheesy Fries sounded like the world’s ultimate hangover cure. You can also get all sorts of American food items such as a bowl of Capt’n Crunch, Cherry Coke and even a deep fried Twinkie.

The Mocha Brownie thick shake was sensational.  I’m not a dunker of cookies into tea (very much against mushy bits in liquids) but having pieces of brownies in my milkshake was awesome. We split the ‘I want what Misty’s Having’ which came out on an authentically American tray.  There were two mini-burgers which you could possibly stick whole into your mouth.  It would be a great challenge but then you might not appreciate just how good they were.

It took us a while to get there but I will definantly be going back. Especially next time I hankering for some dessert.