Adventures of An Urban Nomad

Diets – there are thousands of them and it seems there’s a new miracle one coming out every second day. Atkins, Grapefruit, Cleansing, Paleo, Israeli Army – the list is endless. Most involve a significant change to your lifestyle, eating habits and require things like measuring calories, calculating carbs, weighing

One of the biggest challenges about moving away from your normal environment, whether it’s interstate or across the world, is the question “how will we meet new people?” Humans are a herd animal and so have a real, deep, need for other humans. While they invariably annoy us immensely, we

This week I had an appointment with my optometrist and have proof that we are performing miracles. I’ve previously mentioned a little challenge I have with the vision in my left eye. I have a damaged macular which means there’s a noticeable hole in the centre of my vision when

This week I read Dan Brown’s “Inferno”. His writing is fascinating, not only for his storytelling skills, which are substantial, but because he introduces his readers to fascinating aspects of new technology, history and literature. In this latest book his character, Robert Langdon, is back and this time going through

According to William Shakespeare “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” (Romeo and Juliet Act 2 Scene 2). Is that really true? If it was called something really horrible like “Deadly Gangrene” would we consider it’s smell to be so attractive? The smell of rotting flesh is

We are now in the middle of summer. While Sydneysiders enjoy the barmy (yes that’s spelled correctly – as in “barmy army”) weather with temperatures in the high 30s and 40s here in Devonport it’s been cold, wet and windy. That’s my idea of perfect summer weather. This week we’ve

One of the intentions we set when we decided to move to Tasmania was to have a house where we could have people (family and friends) come and stay with us. Before we found our current house we had looked at a number which had quite a few bedrooms –

2016 was quite a roller-coaster ride for Danita and me. After five and a half years of house-sitting we’d had enough, packed up everything and moved to Tasmania. While the move went reasonably smoothly it did take us a lot longer to find somewhere to live than we’d expected and

This week I visited an optometrist. Health checks can often be sobering experiences and this one was no exception. I’ve know for a long time that there is an issue with my left eye – there’s a hole in the centre of my vision. Since it’s my left eye only

Housework – it just never ends. Last Sunday I started the day with a couple of hours of mowing. The mowing isn’t quite so critical this week but by next Sunday it will be. It’s amazing how everything just keeps growing. Mind you, if it didn’t we’d be in big

He said to me: “Go forth and go to the promised land” So we did. But first a bit of background… Back in the pre-Tasmania days when Danita and I were negotiating what “move south” meant I made a promise to her. It was a guarantee that if we moved

For some strange reason whenever we’ve been to Melbourne recently, we ended up in Perth. When we moved from Sydney to Tasmania, we drove to Melbourne, flew to Perth for my mother’s 90th birthday then back to Melbourne to continue on to Devonport. Last week Danita and I attended two

It’s a special feeling when you get to tick something off your bucket list. Recently I bought a new toy, well not actually a toy since it means I now have no excuse not to get a LOT of work done. I bought a ride-on mower. One of the consequences

For five and a half years Danita and I were housesitters. That’s where this blog got its origins. As they say, “What goes around, comes around” and this week we have a housesitter who will be looking after our place (and Sancho, of course) while we do a family trip.

This week’s big news was the US elections. Thankfully that’s now over and we can get back to “normality” (whatever that is) for another two years. Personally, I don’t care who the American President is, because it doesn’t really affect me (OK I’m parochial, I admit it). Also, I became

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about assumptions (When Local Knowledge Is Dangerous). It was based on the premise of “Assume = Makes an ass of you and me”. The situation I described was a perfect example of that adage. Sometimes (very rarely) making an assumption can work out

Some time ago (six years to be precise) I wrote a post about sacred time. It was Sacred Space Sacred Time  in my Cosmic Compass blog You can read it there to find out what I was talking about but the reason for bringing it up now is that last week it

Assume = Makes an ass of you an me and A little knowledge is a dangerous thing No doubt you’ve heard these statements many times. The last couple of weeks have been a perfect example. Prior to moving into the house in Don (see last week’s post, “Is Don. Is

In the 1990’s there was an ad for Don Smallgoods where the tag line was “Is Don. Is Good.” The relevance of this is that Danita and I have now moved to Don, an outer suburb of Devonport. Outer being 10 minutes from the heart of town. Since we keep

There’s a saying “You can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy”. I presume the same thing applies to a boy who’s grown up and spent most of his life in the city ie me. However, I’m not sure it