MARCH 2006
Friday 31 March 2006 - Missus Elizabeth's Birthday!!!
Discovered this morning that our runners from last night are known to one of our human friends from the park.  She agreed it's living dangerously to be running in this park in the dark, and mentioned there's also a lot of things you can fall over and in to on non-moonlit nights.  I'd not thought of that side of things.

Caught up with a lot of my doggie friends and met some new ones.

Off to zeRellies for a Birthday Lunch for Missus Elizabeth.  Matilda doesn't thrive when there's a lot of noise and kerfuffle going on - so she was being very strange today.  One of the visitors had a new car so we all went out to admire it.  I later asked Mistress H why she doesn't get something flash like that and she replied "people with flash new cars tend to leave their beagles at home".  Now I think on it - I'm very fond of the current car anyway.

Thursday 30 March 2006
This morning, while watching the backyard from Command and Observation Post 1, I saw a Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoo sail in and land on the top of one of our trees.  This was very exciting - not a bird I'd like to tangle with at all.  Very unusual to see one here - in all my bird observing days from this observation point, I've never seen one of those come to visit.  Of course, I didn't actually know what sort of bird it was at first - Mistress Hellen came and joined in the observing and she told me its identity.

Tonight while out on our walk, two runners went by us and into the park.  Mistress Hellen and I looked at each other and declared "lunatics living dangerously".  Now don't be thinking it's because the park is full of wild animals, muggers and the like - it's just that it's full of dog poo.  Even during the daylight hours at a walking pace it's often difficult to stay dog poo free.

Wednesday 29 March 2006
What a cheek!  There was a white cat asleep at the bottom of the garden this morning.  Mistress Hellen looked out and said "what's that down there?".  So off we went to investigate - and it put up it's head and just looked at us!  Hrrumph!  I stayed at a distance and she eventually patted it - no no no, I'm not mad at her for that...much.  Although I'm fond of the cats I do know, I'm not fond of the way neighbourhood cats often make themselves at home in this garden - after all, it's MY garden.

Mistress Hellen suggested that if I spent more time out there, like a normal beagle, and less time listening to music and working on the computer, perhaps the local cats would get to know that this was my territory, and not theirs.

Had to download and print the authorisation for Optus to direct debit Mistress Hellen's account for our internet access.  I sat in dismay while this form printed, using a gazillion drops of our precious, rare printer ink.  Why on earth design a form that has a completely coloured/shaded background - when they KNOW people are going to need to print it!!!  Then again, most people don't have very old printers, which necessitates going on safari to track down printer ink.

Tuesday 28 March 2006
Along with window blinds, I've decided that clothes horses and garden hoses are things that, while being incredibly useful, exhibit the most demon possessed behaviour under certain circumstances.  I'm not even going to describe the incident of having the clothes horse collapse on me while it was fully laden with clothing.

Monday 27 March 2006
This morning at 2RRR, Mistress Hellen told Mister Macbeth about our curtain rod accident - and he LAUGHED.  He said that this was a very unusual accident to have and that he'd not heard of anyone else suffering such a blow.  I must admit, by then I was seeing the funny side and couldn't keep from laughing along too. 

I'm still feeling a bit light headed and vague though - and my nose still hurts a lot.  It's been suggested that if my face wasn't covered in fur - I might just have a couple of black eyes on display.  It certainly feels like that.

Oh, the street lights are back on again.

Sunday 26 March 2006
Woke to hear some kerfuffle coming from Mistress Hellen's bedroom.  Wandered in and found her standing on the bed, struggling with the window blind.  She'd woken early and decided to pull down the blind so she could have a sleep in after our very late night - and the blind had done that irritating blind thing - shot right on up and jammed itself and couldn't be pulled down again.

While she was struggling, with me watching on at the bedside, the curtain rail lifted up from its moorings and fell at her - she deflected it rather skillfully, but unfortunately, right on to my head.  Well, the bridge of my nose.

Much yelping and chaos followed.  She's grumpy about the demon possessed blind, I'm grumpy because I'm injured but I refused the offer of a vet visit.

Eventually I settled down, she went back to bed for her sleep in.  I felt very off colour all day, a bit vague and lightheaded.  Tried watching the fish as a soothing amusement, but couldn't cope with them moving around so much.  Slept a lot instead.

During one of my conscious moments today I watched Mistress Hellen and Mister John clear out our gutters.  At one stage Mistress Hellen was crouched on the roof tiles, attempting to reach a more inaccessible bit of the guttering and she announced "this situation has the potential to make the curtain rod incident look quite inconsequential".  All right for HER to say, considering she's not the one who was smashed on the nose by the curtain rod - although I expect falling off a roof would hurt more.

However, she didn't fall off the roof - in fact, she decided that inaccessible parts of guttering could stay uncleaned.

It was rather a fun excercise for me, watching all this climbing of ladders and hurling of decomposing material from great heights.  I especially enjoyed when Mister John dropped the hose to the ground when it was turned on full - and the hose went berserk and everyone was given a shower.  It's been so long since I've seen the hose in use that it was quite a novelty.  I feel compelled to mention that I narrowly missed being clunked in the head by this out of control hose - which would have taken the joy off the situation completely.

Street lights still not working, but considering I feel rather fragile, I'm not thinking of walking out tonight.

Saturday 25 March 2006
Spent more time watching the fish.  In the afternoon we headed off to visit Michael, Courtney and Cario.  The last two and I stayed home while the two adult humans went grocery shopping.  What IS it about them and grocery shopping?  Such sad social lives?

Courtney is building her website, so we had a great time chatting about website things.  Hers is more singing, dancing, flashing and things to push than mine will ever be.

Home very late.  Sang heaps on the way home to Sarah Brightman CDs.  It's so strange having our own music in the car again after over a year of our old cassette player not working.

Street lights still not working - not that we were planning on going walking at 2:30am.

Friday 24 March 2006
Clever Mistress Hellen managed to obtain not one, but two ink cartridges for the printer.  She also brought home fish from zeRellies - as they are getting rid of their fish tank.  This is very exciting.  One really strange thing we now have is a Pictus catfish - which actually makes noises!  It had gotten caught in the fish net and had to be cut free.  It still had remnants of the fishnet attached, so Mistress Hellen daintily and carefully cut the net away.  Every now and then the catfish would make noises!  How outrageous!!!  Frightened the daylights out of me at first.

Our street lights continue to be unlit.  Gave the night walk a miss.  Did some dogaerobics instead.

Had to clean the front of the fishtank as I'd been so engrossed in watching the new arrivals I forgot to not press my nose against the glass.  It's been a while since there's been so much activity in the tank.

Thursday 23 March 2006
Our printer is still without ink, and our area is without street lights. 

Goodness me it is very dark out there - but we, or rather Mistress Hellen, decided that our nightly walk was still on.  Within a block of home she'd walked into a night spinner - whacko right on the face.  Much jumping around and waving arms followed.  I, of course, being short, have no worries about such things.  And the silly thing is - we were actually walking on the road - and the spider was hanging from a telegraph pole.

Rest of walk in unlit area was right in the middle of the road where the chances of encountering low hanging spiders is far less.  Headed straight to the lit area for greater comfort!  If only it was a 'braw bricht moonlit nicht' - but it's not!

Wednesday 22 March 2006 - Neeve's Birthday
Our printer has run out of ink, our ANCIENT printer I should add.  This is not good as I'm unable to print next week's program plan.  No-one seems to stock this ink anymore.  I have sent Mistress Hellen on a mission to obtain some from somewhere.  Also doing some research on the type of printer I want her to buy should it turn out that no ink can be obtained ever again.

Tuesday 21 March 2006
Jenni sent a message saying that Hunter and Potato died on Sunday, due to the heat.  No details yet, I can't think of how that would have happened since the family is quite careful with where the outside enclosure is in regard to the sun.  I didn't really know Potato that well, but I'll miss Hunter and her funny ways.

For those who don't know who Hunter and Potato are - the were the guinea pigs who lived with Colin, Jenni and their offspring.

Sunday 19 March 2006
Visited Chelsea today.  The day was a lot hotter than we expected so while the humans chatted we sat inside with them, rather than romping around outside.

I remember that I'd said I'd write more about my weekend at zeRellies' last weekend.  Not much to report really - just a lot of fun, some great extra food, which isn't normally allowed, and loads of being patted.

Saturday 18 March 2006 - PaulEJ's Birthday!
Mistress H out in the morning, with Dilys, leaving me to watch Mister John perform feats of great dexterity in his yard.  He's such an entertaining HandyMan and a great neighbour.  Very good with pats and ear scratches too!

In the evening Michael arrived and we had a great time - the humans went grocery shopping and came home laughing lots about the silly things that happened in the supermarket.  Then down to business, Mistress H doing computer work to transfer data for Michael, and Michael out in the garage, fixing garden furniture.  Doesn't that sound like domestic bliss?

Mistress Hellen just said I'm to tell you that they are NOT a couple!  Just friends who are talented at things the other one needs.

Anyway, much later, the subject of what time it was came up - Michael declaring it was one time, and Mistress Hellen declaring it couldn't possibly be that late - getting up and pointing to the battery clock in the kitchen and the wind up clock in the dining room to prove her point.

Michael insisted that wasn't the time - and so a quick check of other time keeping equipment in the house revealed that indeed, the clocks in the dining room and kitchen were astonishingly, both at the SAME wrong time - nearly 2 hours behind.  Suddenly discovering it's 2 hours later than you think is a very great shock to the system - especially when it's really after 2am, and not coming up to 12:30!

When Michael said "I didn't get here until just after 8", something dawned on us.  We remembered that just before Michael had arrived, Mistress Hellen noticed our wind up clock had stopped at 8 o'clock - presumably this morning.  So she wound it and set it to the time on the battery clock - which was 6:20pm.

After some confused snufflings it became clear that it was the battery clock that had paused at some time in the afternoon and then regained consciousness, and the wind up clock had not stopped at all!  It had indeed been 8pm - Mistress Hellen merely assumed that, as usual, it had been neglected and not wound.  I remember Mistress H commenting at the time that the clock didn't FEEL like it had needed winding!  Good thing we weren't using the clocks in order to turn up somewhere on time!

Oh dear, it was a very late night!  I felt quite out of sorts after that.

Thursday 16 March 2006
Spent a goodly part of the day putting away all the CDs from yesterday.  I also managed to finish a major part of the review of our CD collection - it's now up to date in regards to the general CDs, but there's still work to do with some CDs that we keep separate.  For example, the ones I use for 'Down Memory Lane'.

Am becoming a bit cross with this random, irregular ant invasion.  One day they'll be absent, bringing great relief to me, and the next - hey ho! they're back.  I just don't like them pinching my food!

Wednesday 15 March 2006
Recorded another eight hour tape at 2RRR today.  This one's called 'Dog Biscuits Volume 2'.  It includes a lot of material from the very first 6 hour tape I recorded.  This tape was removed from 2RRR and retired a number of years ago, but I thought the content was worth using again.

One day soon I shall make the time to publish the playlists of this and the other recently created eight hour tape.

We were both very wary at being in the car this morning, expecting our huntsman friend to suddenly reappear and startle us.  Nothing so far.  We did have a look on a number of occasions yesterday too - but it seems to have completely vanished.  I hope it stays vanished.  It also depends on WHERE it appears, this one chose right above Mistress Hellen's head, which is quite a different effect from it appearing on the other side of the car, or on the outside of the windscreen.

Mistress Hellen has just reminded me that I should split this diary page, as I prefer only one month per page.  I admit I've really gotten out of the habit of maintaining this website.

I also want to put links to sites featuring very old music.  Have started gathering links and am working on altering my Links Page.  So much fun!  So little time!

Tuesday 14 March 2006
Another huntsman incident, this time in the car and fortunately we'd just pulled up outside our destination or the outcome may have appeared on the nightly news.  This one had 5 legs, and again, it wasn't practicing yoga and hiding legs - it had 4 on one side, one on the other.  Another very unlucky huntsman.

So the great chase was on to capture the spider and remove it from the car to a safer place, where it was less likely to inspire traffic chaos by startling Mistress Hellen into leaping out of the driver's seat.  Unfortunately, it completely vanished during a moment when we were regrouping to be more efficient in our capture efforts.

After resigning ourselves to the fact it was not going to be evicted, we had a discussion about how spiders coped if they lost legs.  Did they grow them back - if so, did they grow back one at a time.  Was this perhaps the same huntsman as last week, on the way to having all legs restored.  If so, why grow a new leg on the side that already had 3.  Oh Dear.

Sunday 12 March 2006
What a weekend!  Loads of fun.  Spent a lot of time with Matilda, who is Missus Elizabeth's Lilac Burmese Cat.  Her nose is actually purple!  What a hoot.  Or should that be - what a hooter!

We were both in trouble on a few occasions for making too much noise and for being too energetic in our games.  I like playing with Matilda as she understands the whole 'chase things and bring them back' concept.  Quite strange for a cat.

It's been ages since I've stayed overnight with zeRellies - 6 months - since Mistress Hellen last did her 'no-Streamer' weekend away.

Friday 10 March 2006
I'm off to stay the weekend with zeRellies as Mistress Hellen is going away for a weekend with some friends.  For those who aren't sure what zeRellies is - it's the collective noun for Mistress Hellen's closest relatives.  Get it - zeRellies, THE Relatives.  That includes Missus Elizabeth, Mister Darron, BoyGeoffrey, BoyGraham and BoyNicholas.

Will write later about my weekend.

Thursday 9 March 2006
Another huntsman moved in.  This one had only 4 legs, and no, it wasn't practicing yoga and hiding legs - it had 3 on one side, one on the other.  A very unlucky huntsman, I'd say.  At first we decided it could stay where it was, until it moved to be on top of the front door - clearly a dangerous place for any small living creature.

Out came the fish nets and outside went the spider.  As they are fairly determined creatures, no doubt it will attempt to come back in very soon.  By the way, that's fish nets as in things to catch fish, not some exotic hosiery.  They are invaluable for removing unwanted guests from places.

Wednesday 8 March 2006
Mistress Hellen was out IMPERSONATING me again!  She met someone and told them about the show - said SHE presented it.  She says this makes life easier on everyone, not having to deal with the concept of a talented talking beagle.

Finally finished the planning of another 8 hour tape.  Spent too much time brainstorming what to call it - finally settled on 'Dog Biscuits Volume 2', which neither of us really thought was great - but it will do.

Monday 6 March 2006
After the program today, we washed the car - well, Mistress Hellen did, while I watched on.  This is not a normal activity in this household, it never was, even before water restrictions.  It's just not overly fun anymore either - it used to mean we could play and hose and generally make the task interesting and end up soaking wet.  Oh well - the car does look better without the haze of grime collected some weeks ago after we travelled up Windsor Road in the wet.

*lots of happy tail wagging* - we unearthed some tennis balls from within the car!  We also located one of my collars which I'd been looking for - I'd forgotten that I'd taken it off on the way home from a particularly energetic outing many weeks ago.

Sunday 5 March 2006
Off on an excursion with Mistress Hellen and Missus Elizabeth, but I'm not allowed to reveal why we went out for a bit of a scout around semi-rural places.  Anyway, it was quite fun, we stopped and said hello to some sheep, alpacas and goats.  The sheep had tails - none of us had ever seen tails on sheep before.

Resumed my stocktaking activities in the evening - goodness me!  What a mess!

Saturday 4 March 2006
Stayed at home while Mistress Hellen went off to a 21st Birthday celebration.  It was at Colin and Jenni's and while it would have been good to catch up with all my animal friends, I wasn't keen on being there with loads of other humans that I don't know very well.  Just having an anti-social moment.

I amused myself by beginning the arduous process of stocktaking our CD collection - which hasn't been done for about 2 years.  The recording of 'Dog Biscuits' on Wednesday made it necessary to collect about 80 CDs into one spot for use on the show, and the collection was already in turmoil due to being neglected for so long.

Thursday 2 March 2006
Missus Elizabeth called over with one of the overseas relatives, who is in town very briefly.  Neither she nor Mistress Hellen had met this particular one before - in fact, as Mistress Hellen commented, there aren't many of the relatives that she's met.  Right on their arrival, the Cable Guy arrived too - ahead of schedule.

YaY!  We're now all cabled up and speeding our way on the internet - this is fabulous!

Wednesday 1 March 2006
Last night, while packing the CDs for the re-record of Dog Biscuits, we discovered that there would have to be some changes to the playlist, owing to all our Queen CDs being off with another human and also some songs on the tape were from CDs we'd borrowed.  This led to some fairly frantic reprogramming.  It was very late when we both were finally satisfied that the new playlist was satisfactory.

Woke late, feeling like a chewed dog biscuit.  Very slow getting moving snd so we were late starting our recording session.  Then the usual thing happened, messing up the first announcements on the tape and having to start over.  Ended up way behind schedule, which was sort of OK, since we allow 9 hours for an 8 hour recording session.

Our progress was then halted by the electrical folk needing to cut power to RRR for an hour.  THIS was potentially disasterous as it would put us way behind, and then we'd be in the way of the Radio Training Course folk coming in to do panel time.

So we stopped the tape (fortunately we had warning of this lack of electricity) and went for a walk.  We didn't go for long, which was good, as the power came back on after 35 minutes, so we weren't going to be hounded out by the trainees after all.

When we arrived home, Mistress Hellen announced that she'd need to rearrange the loungeroom tonight, in preparation for the cable installation tomorrow, as she'd wanted to move the desk anyway, and it was best done so the cable point would be installed in the right place.  Well, at least it was her doing the work, I just scampered around and generally got in the way, and whined about the computer not being available.

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