Phantom Pee-er

Forgot to mention, when we got back from doing the show on Saturday, there was someone weeing on the tree in the nature strip outside our house. Or at least I think there was....I had taken my contact lenses out and so could not see that clearly. There was a spider in the house, that Joe caught in a glass and I took it out to the front garden and there was a lad standing there, with that familiar splishing sound, and he just said "Allo mate". What do you say to that?
Then we saw an even bigger spider, took that outside and the urinating urchin had gone.

Fish Failure II

It said on the packet: kipper fillets.
I said to Joe "no, kippers always have lots of bones" but he said "no, it says filleted"
I've just had the kippers and they had squillions of tiny bones. Pah.
[:(]

1st NTRM show of 2005

Hello,
It was good to be back on JOY last night, it seemed a lot longer than 13 weeks that we had been away. Thanks to everyone that messaged in saying welcome back, and to new listeners too on the internet (hi Cath & TrishTrish in Townsville).
Joe was running around like a mad-thing (that runs around) printing out emails, I got flustered and played the wrong CDs, and Trudi was a sex kitten on heat, pouting and looking gorgeous but not doing much else.
Topics of discussion were geckos and folding underpants.
Songs were Queen vs Outkast, Daffyd (the only gay in the village), NERD, The Ikea Song and S Clubbed to Death.
[dino]

3 Years

3 years ago yesterday we left the UK to make a new life here in Australia. Tomorrow is the 3 year anniversary of living in Melbourne. I remember the flight arriving about 3am, and having to wait at the airport until about 8 cos the hotel would not be able to check us in until then, so we spent hours at sipping drinks and reading The Age.

In 3 years I've bought 1 motorbike, produced 2 radio shows, appeared on 1 TV show, had 4 jobs, travelled to 5 states, bought 1 house, had 0 pets and suffered 482 insect bites.

On another note, wasn't it hot yesterday? We had a power failure at work, so no air con all day, at the end of the day I came home and had to have a cold shower and sit with no clothes on. Even the storyline on Neighbours is hotting up these days. (note: those two facts are unrelated)
[dino]

Testing testing 123… RSS feed.

Just realised that I can use my yahoo desktop to keep track of all of my RSS feeds – geek I know…
If you want to get an RSS feed of this blog just add the following URL to your RSS aggregator and never miss an update again .. lol

http://ntrmonjoy.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Oh and MP… don’t miss the show on Saturday. Listen live on the internet… and second oh..
is the Stephen in Oakley that just won in the JOY Membership prize draw (have a look at the site) , the Steve we know and love for dropping in to the NTRM show last season – hope so!

[joe]

why you should always read ingredients before you buy

ok, now heres a food review. We've just had some Everest Chocolate Pistachio reduced fat gelato. Yumm, not. We give it a NTRM rating of 2 out if 10. It was cold, but didnt' taste of chocolate or pistachio, it did smell of almonds. Joe just checked out the ingredients, they are:

Water (mmm), sugar (always good), milk solids non fat (sounds good so far), milk fat (hang on, weren't they just removed), glucose, invert syrup, cocoa powder (1.5%), pistachio (<1%).

So less than 1% pistachios. No wonder we couldnt taste them. Perhaps it was 0% pistachios, 0 is less than 1 - at least to the nearest whole number?

[dino]
btw, if any company would like us to do a food or restaurant review, we are happily accepting free samples (though they probably won't dare now....)

NTRM restaurant review

St Valentines Day (well, actually the day after), we went to a new restaurant to celebrate: called Waterside and built right on Station Pier in Port Melbourne. We were surprised it was nearly fully booked mid-week, so its obviously a reservations restaurant. A long building with wooden floors, glass walls and a wrap around deck curving at the end, it looks like you are dining on a ship with water views on 3 sides.
It was not cheap, but the food was excellent. I had barra, Joe had linguini with pesto and pinenuts. We finished with dark chocolate tart and creme brule.
The service was also very good, waiting staff doing what they are meant to do. We even had the front door opened for us. And check out the luxury thick paper towels in the bathroom.
It did get quite full later on, and rather noisy, probably due to the minimalist hard furnishings, but overall we recommend it if you want to treat yourselves.
[dino]

One week to go

Yup, next Saturday we're back on air on JOY 94.9. Really must start planning some stuff to do soon. What would you like? Old stuff, new stuff, good music or Nikki Webster? We can bore you all to tears with our tales and tribulations of (attempting) to build a house. Trudi says she has more cooking tips, but we don't have to include those if you don't want. Any other ideas?

[dino]

earth girls are easy

We watched a great movie last night called "Earth Girls Are Easy", with Geena Davis. I bought it from our local dvd library that was selling off old videos for $2. Its very 80's, they all look like early Cindy Lauper (even the men). Joe said it was well worth the $2 that we paid, but would not have paid $2.10 for it...
[dino]

Carnival day take 2.

I hade a great carnival day, hope you enjoyed it if you made it there.
Spent most of my shift on the JOY stall either blowing up balloons, or handing them out. I particularly liked giving them out, gave me an excuse to walk up to anyone and say, ‘you look like you need a JOY balloon' and forcing them to talk and chose a colour or two. Was also great handing them over to the little kids, just to see the look on their faces when you bend down to their height with a dozen or so colourful balloons in your hand and they get to chose the one they wanted.
Of the many many people I walked up to I only had one person say ‘I don’t think so’ in reply to my ‘you look like you need a JOY balloon'. Sad thing is she really did look like she needed something to cheer her up. Oh well going to a happy event don’t always mean you personally need to have taken joviality along with you. What better place to be completely miserable than in the middle of 10,000 happy people. I should have given here a hug.

Oh and cheers to you guys that came and said hello to me, it kind of makes my day that you do that – even though it’s a bit spooky you knowing loads about me and I knowing nothing about you. Allan (Pasco Vale – east enders fan) did we see you there mate, Dino and I saw someone that we though might have been you, I certainly smiled at that person. We were mid-picnic at the time, behind the JOY tent.

BTW Dino made a great picnic pity you didn’t get to share it with us.

Pictures of Carnival day to follow on the JOY site as soon as folk send some pictures to me!!!

[Joe]

Carnival Day

Its the morning of Midsumma Carnival Day, and Joe has gone to help them set up at Joy while I get a picnic together. Trudi will be there too, she just SMSed me from the back of Auntie Mary's Enfield to say that shes had such a makeover that everyone will probably think she's a movie star (Charlie Chaplin...?).

Its been a bit cold (Kitty said) - apparantly the coldest February in Melbourne since time immemorial - but the sun has just come out (!) so hopefully it will be a nice day. Now on with that picnic. Where did I put that fish paste.....
[dino]

Woow other breaking news... lol

Now that we’ve been in our little house for nearly a year.. yea! already. We finally seem to be getting somewhere with builders, they are back off from their long summer holidays and Dino, David (the architect) and I met yesterday with two of the ones that’d put in a sensible (but still significantly more than anticipated L) tender for the work on our house. You though you might hear no more of it on the show; we though we would never see a double glazed curtain wall erected... well we’re all wrong, its now looking like April could well be the month of the build start with a 6- 8 month build time. So plenty of time to bore you all daft with more trials and tribulations as we try to turn our house into a home.

Today we’re off looking at places to rent but we can’t do that till poor Trudi gets back from having her carbuncles sanded. She wants to offer us her ‘boss-eye for two queer guys’ service – one of her new enterprises, despite the fact that we told her that boss-eye isn’t such a good name; she just thinks it means supervisory.

[Nanoo nanoo Joe]

Its official.....

Just had word last night that NTRM will be back on JOY for the Autumn season (from Saturday 26th Feb) same spot, Saturday nights 9pm to 11pm Melbourne Time - or if you are in the UK listening live.... mum..... 10am to midday Saturdays.

Also don't forget to say hello at the JOY stand at Carnival, I'll be working there from 10am to midday and loitering around at other times.


[Joe]

What a drag

Where does the phrase drag queen come from?

According to Connie & Carla (another DVD with the NTRM seal of approval), it is a Shakespearian term to denote 'dressed as girl', when male actors played the part of women. Joe did some research on the web and found a conflicting theory saying that although drag is a theactical term, the acronym was made up later, and it originally came from the feeling of wearing long dresses dragging along the ground, that men were not used to. The queen bit was added later in Elizabethan times, denoting someone acting like royalty, or Joan Collins.
[dino]

um

I've been sitting in on a course all week, learning about Active Directory: one thing that I learnt is that the most downloaded website is not google, or joy, its 'danni's hard drives', a soft adult entertainment site. Joe and I had never heard of it, but we're not soft adults.

The cicadas were out in full force last night. There were some on the grass outside our house, they are so loud it hurts your ears being near them but I could not see what they look like. When we were first in Australia we didnt know what the noise was and thought it was a faulty swimming pool pump.

Last night we saw I Robot (so 2004 I know). I seem to remember it getting bad reviews but we both enjoyed it, so gets the NTRM stamp of approval.
[dino]

How did i miss this, this morning?

Don't know how, but I didn't spot this car under one of the fallen trees this morning.



Tonight Dino tested the new seat hight on Sandridge Beach



[joe]

The morning after the Storm

Decided not to go into the office this morning due to the storm we had last night. I'll go in for the afternoon.
Just back from a look around Garden City and Sandridge beach to see the effects of the storm. Sad to say that the beach road took the worst of it, only two of the old huge pine trees are still standing the rest are down. I feel sad when i see such old trees uprooted out of the ground.
I've taken a few pix, have a look



There are more pictures including a shot of the New lagoon formed by the storm at Sandridge beach

http://www.flickr.com/photos/66514368@N00/

Still its a beautifull day now!

btw, have a look at the pride pictures I put up on the JOY website,

http://www.joy.org.au/gallery/pride05.html

[joe]

and now on 'Not The Real McCoy', some Tina Turner

I can’t stand the rain
Against my window
Bringing back sweet memories
I can’t stand the rain
Against my window
Because he’s not here with me

Hey window pain
Do you remember
How sweet it used to be
When we were together
Everything was so grand
Now that we’re parted
There’s a one sound
That I just can’t stand

Trudi's Household Tip No 632HGS%$^

Don't buy expensive grapes! Make your own by soaking sultanas in grape juice overnight. Make them look authentic by sticking them onto clean dry twigs.