Tonight's dinner will be braised steak and onions. Not out of a can, but out of a casserole dish. The recipe is in the CWA Soups and Stews recipe book. Mine has been marinading for an hour and is presently waiting for the oven to heat up so I can put it in to slowly simmer for another two hours or so. I have thrown in some peas as well, so I get my greens. I would love to have some fluffy mashed spuds, but sadly the potato situation is a bit grim around here at present. I might manage it, but don't hold your breaths. My new client, who lives in a remote community served by one mail plane per week, is going to be difficult to organise a deliver for. I am hoping she will respond to my text and email and let me know which of the various unsatisfactory options she is willing to go with (if any) as I don't feel it would be appropriate to make an expensive choice for her. I will never again complain about the remoteness of my present location, now I have seen where she is living .............

Woohoo, we made it into two figures today and a nice sunny day to boot. The assessor arrived at the crack of dawn as promised and saw the damage, asked me to send photos and wandered off promising to send a builder. Then I popped into town to do some phone calls and returned to find Eric loading the last of the weatherboards onto the back of his ute. A quick exchange of weatherboards for cash was transacted and he went on his way smiling while I went on my way smiling too. I do liked a business deal like that! Funds now deposited securely in the bank, thank you very much!! I had a serious need for junk food which the local junk food purveyor failed to satisfy as they now do chicken strips, not the bits with bones in them which give you that satisfying gnawing experience. And the chips leave a certain something to be desired too. Pity really. If you are going to break your diet, you should at least get some pleasure from it. So tonight's 'dinner;' will be a shake now. wrote several more paragraphs of the job application before deciding I was repeating myself and so retired to reading the book I am presently engrossed in. Getting quite crisp now as the sun approaches the far side of the sky, so its a good thing there was time to cut some more wood as well.

Temps in single figures all day were somewhat mitigated by the lack of wind, but not much. I ventured out to the Market this morning, but even there the stallholders were reduced in number, so I decided to be a tourist in my own town and had a look around. The exhibition at the mill is of interest to locals, with each of the outlying towns spotlighted with a glimpse into their history. Always interesting to learn a few more bits and pieces about the district. Then a wander down to the pancake parlour where i discovered they do take-away coffee!! What a pleasure! So that came home with me, along with the fetta and spinach quiche i bought at the market, which will provide dinner tonight. Some more wood cut up and taken indoors which will hopefully allow the house to become cosy enough to withstand tonights zero degrees comfortably.

Didn't quite make it down to the minus degrees last night, though they seem to be going for another try tonight. Instead it settled for sunny and bitterly cold with a good strong wind straight off whatever snow is lying around on the highlands. Must be a fair bit of it judging by the razor-sharp winds. The promised snowfalls did not eventuate either - sad really as I was quite looking forward to that. Two loads of washing done though, and some work, and the rest of my freezer goods collected from Gordon's. Settling in for a chilly night, so logs in, pjs airing in front of the fire, dinner planned and ready to go on once it is a suitable time, and no intention of going outside again if I can avoid it.

The electricity is back and I am feeling quite smug to have survived two nights without it. Still, it is good to have it back again. The freezer bottom is once again invisible (though I took advantage of the opportunity to defrost it). I am astounded at how little it looks now it is back in the freezer, but how much space it took up when spread across three other people's freezers. Mind you, I still have the two shelves of stuff to collect from Gordon, but even so. I tried to make the storage a little more coherent, so chicken in the back left, pork on the right middle and rear, lamb in the middle and beef toward the front. Though that will probably last until the next frenzied search for the rolled pork belly, or whatever that special recipe calls for. Apart from that, not much was achieved today - the new electrician is excellent and anyone who needs one need only ask me for references. He also has a cute bum as he goes up the ladder (lol). He's based at Claremont so any southerners might be interested to know of his availability. The dog will be pleased to get his electric blanket back, and I am thrilled to have the washing machine back (was running out of clothes and thinking a trip to the laundromat might be required), so all is well with the world at present. Touch Wood.

The bulk of the ice appears to have cleared from the roof, but more is apparently still there as the condensation it is causing is dripping merrily into the loungeroom once more. Half the the hall ceiling is ruined - similarly the loungeroom ceiling (though it, fortunately, has yet to get the treatment). More buckets are piled in the loungeroom and the electricity remains off. The contents of my freezer are distributed between three local households which fortunately had varying degrees of spare space in their freezers. I seem to be the only local with quite this amount of harm, but Vera tells me she had waterfalls in her sunroom and Kyle up the road had fishbowls rather than light fittings. My insurance company (Elders) has been fantastic, actively urging me to pursue a claim and to get various people in (at their expense) to provide quotes for damage. I am only getting the electrician in at this point, because I suspect the damage to the plaster will be more apparent after any ponded water has a chance to soak through as well Fortunately with the hard plastering, once it dries out it should be fine, as long as mildew does not get in. To help avoid that I have left the covers off both manholes so the heat from the fire can go into the roof and speed things up. So today it looks more like this: So from top to bottom we have: the computer sitting on a kitchen chair recharging from the power point that serves the water pump. I realised the cabling for this ran down the side of the house and so should be safe to turn on. It is now turned back off again due to the fire alarm being out of commission at present. Next is the quantity and depth of the ice remaining in the wheelbarrow this morning after about 3 hours of sunshine. The next three are the ceilings showing the damage, which in the hall is primarily staiing, but as you will note there are a number of light fittings in the way of it all The contents of the freezer that had already melted by the time I started distributing stuff this morning. The contents of the fridge which will hopefully be fine if I can turn back on tomorrow (though it occurred to me I might run a cable from the tank stand if I am not permitted to turn on tomorrow.) The last is just the bottom of the freezer (taken more for the insurance company's benefit than anyone else's. Gotta go now as running out of power.

Had a bit more excitement here than is warranted unfortunately. A hail storm hit this afternoon, fortunately after I arrived home earlier than usual from quilting. In minutes the entire neighbourhood was under deep ice that seemed to be struggling to work out if it wanted to be hail or snow. It settled into the internal gulley of the roof with the inevitable results. First a drip drip drip. Then a loud shriek from the hardwired fire alarm. That was continuous until I got the SES out here (in the form of one council employee) who managed to work out how to turn the thing off. Then a call to the insurance to give them a heads up they could expect a claim... and so it went on. Just to make life even more exciting ... last night I was checking who has been watching the blog, which I do from time to time, and found a website that had attached the blog link to itself. So, rather foolishly, I guess, I clicked on it. And was taken to a website showing child pornography. Charming. What is worse, it tried to colonise the computer, opening multiple tabs to show more and more unacceptable images. So shut down and got rid of it, then called the police. We are all told how the police take a dim view of this sort of thing right? How they have international cooperation to stamp it out, right? Well apparently no-one mentioned this to the PC plod who answered the phone. No not him! He first told me he couldn't understand why people maintain blogs in the first place, then told me these website may not be based in Australia (well- who could have thought!) and so the endless litany went on. So I gave up on him and called the Federal police and was asked to call back in the morning. I was getting to the point were a phone call to the Mercury was sounding pretty attractive by this stage! Anyway this morning I gave the police here another chance and called once again. I was bemused to discover that since I live here, the Hobart police would not deal with it, but they told me they would ask Bridgewater police to call me. By around 2 this afternoon I was once again thinking a call to the mercury was in order, but fortunately they police did indeed call back. A female police officer this time who at least had the wit to recognise the issue. She arranged to send around a local officer to have a look at the computer. He came around saw the website, agreed it was nasty, took the serial number of my laptop in case I ever get arrested for looking at sites like this so his report will clear me, and went on his merry way. In the mean time, I have discovered that the Feds have a crime reporting form you can fill in accessible on their website (in case you ever need to know this). Gotta go before the computer goes flat.