The Docking of the Duck

Ok, to be strictly accurate the Duck docked yesterday. But I never let reality get in the way of alliteration.

I had intended to check the Duck out around sunset yesterday. But somehow I'd wound up in a cinema with a friend, not having had the heart to point out that a) I'd already seen The Hobbit, and b) I wasn't a Hobbit/Lord of the Rings fan in the first place.* So I had to settle for mid-afternoon today - maybe I'll get a chance around sunset tomorrow for a decent shot.

In other news, I am excited that, having wrestled with craptacularly awful internet reception for nearly a year, I believe I am able to actually sit in my house -on an actual chair - and upload a photo.

I don't have to roam around the house, waving the laptop at doors and windows, wriggling my nose in confluence with the phases of the moon.

I don't have to sneak out and sit in the middle of the road in my jimjams in the wee hours of the night (the closer to people's hubcaps, the better).

I don't have to devote 4 hours a night simply trying to getting a strong enough signal, waiting 10 minutes to load every single page and ripping my hair out every time the signal drops out completely mere seconds from completing a download.

It's taken me a few days to track down and rig up a booster (no thanks due to the uselessness of Telstra, where employees in four separate stores simply gaped at me as if I were speaking Swahili instead of asking what I thought was a perfectly reasonable question). Which is why I've not been on blip the past few days. But now I have an additional antenna and booster unit, crucially melded together with a metal baking tray for added conductivity, and from now on I'm up and running, hurrah!!

To everybody who's commented of late, I'm sorry I haven't replied or gone to check out your blips. This will be rectified!
______
*This is where I point out that Tolkien's textbook on Middle English was the set reading in my undergrad Old and Middle English course, and I was completely overawed with his brain. Absolutely take my hat off to him..... except when he threw orcs and goblins into the equation. I don't do orcs.