Just a quick post to show off my new theme.
Does anything look broken to you?
How is the header showing up in your browser?
The header will probably get changed randomly as I take more photos that I think will suit here.
Anyway – that’s me. The baby just woke up (BLEH) and is whining, Amy and Nathan are out together and my alone time is done. Sniff.
(Nathan did offer to take Isaac too, but Isaac really needed a nap and I figured he would sleep better in the cot, rather than the car.)
So it happened again.
The temperatures soared, the wind picked up and faster than you’d expect, we were surrounded by a thick fog of smoke, unable to see the hills.
As the smoke got thicker, the butterflies in my stomach grew and I brought up the Tas Fire Service (TFS) website to find out where the fires were.
Nothing.
Page cannot be displayed.
I pressed refresh and refresh again, hoping for something, anything, to let me know where the fires are. I’m not in the city, I’m a rural girl and when the smoke starts to hang overhead, I start counting how long it will take to fill up all the water containers on the property. I start thanking my lucky stars that I had water delivered recently and my tanks are still full. I do a quick walk around and a survey, looking at anything that might be flammable that needs damping down.
So as I pressed refresh on the website and nothing was coming up, I got a little worried. The sky was dark and smoke filled and the sun had gone a blood red, the kind of red you only see in bushfire season.
I grabbed the phone book and hunted for the TSF number. It took me three tries to find it, in my worried state. In case anyone is wondering, it is under Tasmania Fire Service (not under Tasmanian Fire Service, nor under FIRE! EEEK HELP!).
I rang and spoke to a computer.
Which told me to please see the website for information on fires.
Fine, except the website, had crashed. Again.
This happened last time we had bushfires in the state, a few weeks back. Their site crashed and the public got a touch irate. But you tell me, wouldn’t you think that they would plan for it and FIX IT before the next lot of bad weather?
Eventually I got through to an operator, after being told to instead, check the website THREE times, and he was lovely (kudos to the TFS, whoever is manning your phones always does a brilliant job). The fires were about 35 km to the west of me and the wind was blowing the smoke straight over.
Hanging up, I could breath a little easier, even as I continued to push refresh on the website, eager for any information I could gather. Mobile phone reception out here in rural Tasmania is patchy at best and nonexistant in many places. I can’t pick up any radio stations here and trying to play them through the live streaming on the computer has, in the past, proved to be more static that radio.
It might be that I’m spoiled, living here in my first world country and getting my news delivered up to the second by twitter and online news sites like the ABC.
But you know what? When that blanket of smoke descends on you and you can’t breath for the smell of burning gum trees, I think you could forgive me for wanting up to the second information on what the fires are doing and which direction they are headed.
So to the TFS, thank you for defending our state from bushfires and thank you for manning your phones with people who don’t get exasperated when yet another Tasmanian, rings and asks about the smoke.
But, we’re living in a technological world now, I would think that you could have sorted out any teething problems with the website by now. Your computer on the other end of the phone lines tells you to check the website no less than three times while you’re pushing buttons, trying to get hold of someone to tell you whether you need to sleep with one eye open tonight.
In this day and age of instant information, I don’t think having your website crash at a critical time is acceptable. Buy more bandwidth. Sort out your servers. Pay someone to recode the website better so that you can update it without it going offline.
Because a page cannot be displayed error, when I can smell the gumtrees burning, it’s just not good enough.
**
Thankyou to ABC radio for providing information on the fires through twitter.
Just jumping in briefly, to point you towards a new study that has shown corn affects some patients dealing with coeliacs and gluten intolerances.
The full study is here – it’s written in medicalese and you will need to register to read it.
A good summary as well as some information about corn and it’s effects can be found here.
Personally I recommend the second link, but beware, if you’re dealing with a gluten intolerance or coeliacs disease, reading that link may leave you with a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, as small things start to add up.
It would explain why Amy reacts to some things, even when I know they are gluten free and artificial colouring free.
Sigh.
(If you’re looking for this morning’s post – that is here.)
Thanks very much to Tiff, who passed these links along to me via The Gluten Free Review
I did tell you on twitter that this wasn’t all that exciting, just exciting for me.
You know what you need to do when life is stressful? You need to add more things to the family, so you don’t have any time to worry about anxiety or panic attacks.
So would you please all welcome Susie, the newest addition to our family.
Please, ignore the fact that my feet are purple in that second photo. I’m a bit EDS-y lately.
Susie’s Mum was a Springer Spaniel x Border Collie and her dad was a purebred Springer Spaniel. This is the closest to a purebred dog I’ve ever owned in my LIFE! Normally I go in for mongrels (like Seven, she’s a terrier x daschund something mix), but Susie needed a home when I needed a puppy, so here she is.
I suspect we’ll have a bunch of OMG puppy stories coming, but for now, she has fit in really well. Seven is following her around, doing nothing but wagging her tail and trying to lick her.
The cats however, they’re not too keen. Both of them still look a little like I plugged them into an electrical outlet. They’re going to be sulky for weeks and I fully expect a display of decapitated birds to be awaiting me when I feed them tomorrow.
Hehe.
This morning I woke up and despite it being a Sunday, I promptly jumped on my partner and sent him to the shop for the newspaper. You see, it’s not every day your blog is mentioned in print and I was a touch excited.
My excitement has, unfortunately, rubbed off on the children, who are alternately bouncing around me, or screeching at me, needing things and whining. Joy.
So!
Hello to any mothers wandering in from the EGuide liftout in the Sunday Tasmanian this morning. I was thrilled when Rebecca emailed me and let me know she was planning on doing an article on Mums who blog. In fact, I may have skipped around the house for the rest of the week.
Anyway, feel free to have a look around, to the right are the archives, for everything I’ve ever written (Warning: it’s a lot of writing), and you can also find my search form, if you’re hoping I’ve written about anything in particular. Up the top on the tabs is my about page and other bits and pieces.
And down the very bottom, is a comment form, where you can leave a comment and say hello!
There is also an orange button you can click on to Subscribe, or you can enter your email address into the form below it to have my posts delivered by email.
Click on the photo to enlarge the article so you can read it yourself (you may have to click again, after the photo comes up to maximise the image).
The other bloggers mentioned are Bad Mommy Moments, Dooce, Three Ring Circus, Life and Love in the Petri Dish, Julia {here be hippogriffs}, Misc Mum, Mommy is Moody and finally, A little pregnant.
Some of my favourite blogs are there!
(See? I’ve made it easy for you, linking everyone else.)