Vote, vote, vote!

My mind is on voting at present. But not about the US Presidential election, though may I say that has been a bit exciting and the outcome is a huge relief to the entire planet, except for a worrying number of Republican nut jobs in the US. Interesting that Fox News in the US seems to be as vandalistic towards social justice and democratic thought as is the Murdoch press in this country. One commentator described the contest in US politics as being between the "moderates" and the "right wing".  Where has the left wing gone? Where are the Greens? Will Australia lurch crazily to the far right now? Heaven spare us from the mad Abbott.

But I digress. The voting to which I refer to is closer to home. In fact it is very close to home and to my heart. Lian has done a post on her blog in which she invites her readers to vote in a competition to identify the best curvy girl's fashion blog. You may know that Lian's blog was originally created in order to share information and advice about dressing the "plus size" figure, at the request of other women who had read her helpful ideas on various online forums. I regard her blog as a kind of help desk for women who are not friends with their bodies. Which is most of us. It's not too big a stretch to say it also has a larger political purpose, in the sense of empowering and encouraging readers who are often quite vulnerable individuals in the general scheme of things. Her reader feedback constantly reflects positive changes in people as a result of the things she writes. So I am enormously proud of her work here.

Here is a link to her blog in which she invites votes and I do ask that you click through and vote for her.  Because the prize is a trip for two to London. And of course, she wants to take Mae.

http://frocksandfroufrou.com/2012/11/vote-1-lilli-and-mae/

In other news, the rain has followed the plow at Diamond Beach. I therefore fully endorse this once discredited theory, that if you cultivate the land, rain will then fall as a response.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_follows_the_plow It makes perfect sense to me. Why else would there have been a couple of months of dry weather around here, until a couple of days ago when we had the soil cultivated and gentle precipitation followed? Clearly Goyder was wrong. Here is the plowing happening. Grateful thanks to our neighbour Peter. Turns out people have things like tractors in their sheds in this street. Big sheds. Big toys.

And below, plain proof. Rain in the rain gauge the following day. Clearly if "B" follows "A" there must be a causative relationship. You see the logic there? As an aside, this is also known as Coalition Logic, as in: bad thing "X" has happened subsequent to the election of Julia Gillard.  Therefore, bad thing "X" must be Julia Gillard's fault. 

Now, may I just take this moment to draw your attention back to the spelling of that word "plowing". Did it strike you that this word should not exist? That the only correct spelling is "ploughing"? I only mention this because of a past Scrabble challenge that turned on this very point. I put it to you that "plowing" is acceptable. It is also a seven letter word, for the record. Which might have won the game for someone, had it not been challenged. Scrabble is on my mind because Peter is here at present and The Real Game is being played on a board on our table. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I boycott Words With Friends. It encourages the vice of plugging and it allows one to put down ridiculous words that no-one knows the meaning of.

Peter and David have an unusually shaped parcel - it is Rover's original bumper bar and is ready to be shipped off. Has hopefully been sold to a landrover parts supplier in SA. I say hopefully because the money has not appeared in our account yet, so it may still be a scam. 

Its lovely to have Peter here visiting. 

Final shot for today is a pile of flying ant's wings in the screen door channel. Night before last when it rained, there was a veritable plague of these critters hurling themselves against the windows. Thousands of these wings outside the next day, no sign of the critters. I mentioned this to friend Chris, the fount of knowledge about such things as the Goyder Line, the spelling of the word "plow", the existence or otherwise of certain casuarinas, and he tells me they are not flying ants, they are termites! Gaargh! 

On the subject of unwanted wildlife, yesterday Peter discovered his car had been occupied by some kind of gnawing animal with a taste for anticol lozenges and the spines of old books. A trap was set and a little rat was captured! When the trap was released it took off at a great rate, apparently not too damaged. Sigh of relief all round. We have decided it was a bush rat and therefore OK.