FEBRUARY 2006
Tuesday 28 February 2006 *Mistress Hellen's Birthday*
Had a great day today.  Mistress Hellen arranged for us to get cable internet, which will be a great advance for us.  A number of weeks ago our 56k modem just opted out of this life, leaving us hobbling along with the old 28.8k modem.  Now I would have said that it wouldn't have made much difference, but it did.  Suddenly everyone was sending huge mails, and every site seemed to be full of huge graphics.  Mister John kindly lent us his old 56k modem to save our sanity.  Now it's time to join the 21st Century with cable.  *dance dance dance*

Of course she had to give her date of birth with all this arranging, and the person at the optus call centre actually sang happy birthday to her!

So on Thursday, we will be FAST!!  This means I'll be able to find more great music for the show.  Speaking of radio - we've arranged for me to do a long tape tomorrow - a re-record of one that went missing a few years ago.

Later we visited zeRellies, where Mistress Hellen was presented with gifts and we all ate a fine meal and indulged in birthday cake.  A great day, the best birthday that she can remember, she said.

Monday 27 February 2006
During today's show I had two phone calls - both from people who were not listening to the show and were unaware they had reached the studio instead of the office.  They were, however, both ringing about RRR things.  A vast improvement over last week's random caller, who wanted to sell me a new mortgage and had no idea he'd reached a radio station, let alone the on air announcer.

Strange that no listeners rang - I usually have a few calls from listeners, and this is just wonderful.

Meanwhile, great excitement at 2RRR as the new radio transmitter mast thingy was installed.  Mistress Hellen just happened to have her camera with her so she went out and took photos of the event for posterity (and the Technical Director).

Sunday 26 February 2006
Mistress Hellen went off to visit Matthew and Dianna and their cat, Trio.  Trio was one reason why it was best I stayed home.  The cat is nervous around people and is very old, so a bouncing happy beagle such as myself would probably send it over the edge to complete insanity and terror.

It was a pity I couldn't go along, as Matthew and Dianna are good value, and Matthew is also a regular reader of this Diary...*waves to Matthew*.

In Mistress H's absence, I updated the sponsorship play schedule sheet for Natalie at 2RRR.  This is the sheet we programmers use as a guide to which sponsorship announcements we should be playing, and to also record which community announcements and other program promotional announcements we've played.

Last week, during my show, I announced to Natalie that I was bored with playing the same ones each week - so she said "Well Streamer, do you want to help me by updating the list?".  Seemed like a good thing to do - at the time - however, once I sat and started moving things around it was more like just plain hard work!

I really enjoyed the thunderstorm we had later at night - well, not the thunder part, but the lightening show was spectacular.  We went from back door, to front door, and back again just watching the light show and feeling the rain and excitement in the air.  Mistress Hellen loves thunder - and I do not.

Friday 24 February 2006
Had a great romp in the park this morning, caught up with Barney and Flynn and many others.

In the afternoon we went off to Michael's, via zeRellies.  We collected a spared car CD player from Mister Darron and then Michael did his clever car electricals thing and now we can listen to CDs in the car.  On the way home we discovered why it was the spare CD player - it does tend to be very sensitive to bumps in the road - but as Mistress Hellen pointed out - it was free, installed for free and is a vast improvement on no CD player and a cassette player that only played out to one speaker.

Sang very loudly all the way home to some favourite songs.  If you can't get the image of that, think 'Men in Black II' with the dog singing.

During the visit at Michael's I caught up with Cario - who has developed in to quite a solitary and unsociable cat.  He's not much interested in playing.  He did mention he'd been feeling off colour that day, and backed up this claim by vomiting on the carpet.  I pointed out that perhaps he could have dashed outside to do that, but he just shrugged and said it amused him to watch the humans cleaning up after him.

Wednesday 22 February 2006
Now we have dead and dying cockroaches.  Oh, and ants.  One of the cockroaches decided to use my food bowl as its death bed.  Yuk.

Tuesday 21 February 2006
Very early this morning we discovered cockroaches had invaded us.  First two types of ants, now cockroaches - this is just horrible.  I can't even eat cockroaches - they're just not my style.  Time to break out the big guns, or in this case, the can of poison.  Not really the normal procedure in this household, but patience with invading insects has run a bit thin.  Wonder if anyone else in the area is having this problem - must remember to ask Mister John next door if he's had problems.

Visited Jenni and Colin today - except Colin was at work.  Was able to catch up with all my animal friends and some of the humans in that household.  There's a new guinea pig there, to be a friend to Hunter, the existing piggie.  This new one is called Potato and looks like a peeled potato.  Except it was very difficult for any of us to get a good look, because Shadow kept getting in the way and blocking the view.  He's very excited and possessive about his piggie friends.

I realise that new readers of Beagle Diary won't be familiar with who all these names are, so I'm working on a Who's Who of Beagle Diary which will hopefully be ready soon.  In the meantime, Shadow is my canine friend who lives with Colin, Jenni, 3 of the 4 human offspring, Sandy the other dog who wandered in and stayed, Hunter and Potato the guinea pigs, Slipper the rabbit, Puma the cat (black, of course), two budgies (whose names I can never remember as I don't have much to do with them) and a bunch of fish (ditto about the names there).

Monday 20 February 2006
Another GREAT 'Down Memory Lane' - and Mister Macbeth brought more CDs for me to use on the show.  I have such a good time doing this show.

On the way home from 2RRR we stopped at the huge retirement/nursing complex on Victoria Road and Mistress Hellen spoke to people who would display posters advertising the show.

Tonight I finally got around to updating the diary.  It's been overwhelming me for weeks now.  I'm wondering if anyone is really interested in reading about my life.  Going to do a whole lot of backdated entries, and have been warned about revealing way too much about Mistress Hellen's private life.

Thursday 16 February 2006
Off to Parramatta to meet Michael at lunch time.  The parking situation at Parramatta has become a pain, with us no longer being able to park for free on the north side of the river and enjoy a walk to the centre of town.  Now we have to skulk our way through Westfield's car park, hoping no-one objects to my canine presence.  Heaven forbid that I should attempt to venture IN to the shopping area!

This afternoon, while I was planning the show, there was a huge thunderstorm.  Mistress H made me turn off the computer and go watch the rain.  She said there wasn't any point in waiting around for the computer equipment to be fried by extreme electrical activity.

Tuesday 14 February 2006
We are ignoring Valentine's Day.

What IS it about ants?  We have had them regularly invading the house for weeks now.  It's not just the small black ants, but the big orange and black ones too.  When the small black ones go home at night to rest, the orange and black ones arrive.

The worst thing about the large ants isn't that they are large - and therefore seem to be potentially far more painful and aggressive - but that they don't appear to stick to any path.  Whereas small black ants like to map out a path and then have all ants travel along that way, the larger ants meander all over the place, so I can't even plan my way through the kitchen area.

I wish they'd leave my food alone!  We've tried everything to prevent them getting at the food, but I do tend to leave scraps around the bowl, so then they congregate in great numbers where I normally park my paws when I'm eating.  It's not just that - they are spreading out!  It's now common to be assaulted by ants in other rooms - the average afternoon nap is frequently turned in to a fight for survival against ants testing to see if I'm edible!  My ears are NOT FOOD!!!  I also dislike being walked on as if I were some major overpass.

They also seem to regroup very quickly after any application of anti-ant stuff.  I do hope they lose interest soon - even when there's nothing lying around to eat they are there, scouting and mapping the terrain.

I have just been informed I'm not only whining, I'm sounding obsessed - I shall now stop writing about ants.

Monday 13 February 2006
Mister Macbeth brought more goodies for me to use on the show - this time records!  They'll be great - all big band things.  He's so good to me!

2RRR is such an astonishing place to be - and it can depend on who does the programs either side of your program.  I'm very blessed to have Horst before me, and Mister Macbeth after.  I must admit I'm having more fun doing 'Down Memory Lane' that I did doing 'Streamer Never Sleeps' and this is because there are other folk around when I'm at the station, whereas with 'Steamer Never Sleeps' it was the middle of the night and very lonesome.

Thursday 2 February 2006
You know, you could talk to some folk about Health and Safety around the home until your tongue fell out of your head - and they still wouldn't take any notice.  I refer of course to our beloved Mistress Hellen.  Attempting to stem the tide of heat today, she put on the fan, but moved it way too far away from the electrical outlet, resulting in the power cord being above ground level.

Being the safety consious beagle that I am, I said this wasn't a smart idea, but she said she'd be careful.  Of course she wasn't and of course it wasn't just her who felt the pain of the incident.

Yes, she fell over the power cord and the fan fell - on ME!  It then bounced sideways and lay there, making funny grunting noises.  That made three of us making funny grunting noises.  Mistress Hellen and I have both recovered, but the fan now sounds just a little not-quite-right.

The Beagle Diary
A fascinating (perhaps) insight into Streamer's life with and without Mistress Hellen.  The diary is updated frequently.