Jo's Old Site

I was at Luke’s Place in Laidley on the 16th of November when one of the workers there said that she and her husband were bee keepers and she was talking that day about the social bee.

And I joined in on the conversation by saying I heard years ago that a lot of bee keepers are allergic to bees. She then told me how people become allergic: as they get stung so many times and they develop a build up of the bee’s poison in their body that eventually develops into an allergy.

I have three book shelves that were previously full of books, but they are a bit empty now. As I have taken books off the shelves that I thought that I won’t be reading anymore, and only kept the books that I would want to read.

I also updated my Jo’s Reading List Page and deleted the titles that I have now put in containers, and my mum said that she’ll take the books that are in containers to Life Line.

Mum suggested about two weeks ago that I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the 23rd of November which was yesterday and that meant that I didn’t have to go to Luke’s Place and I told the workers that I work with at the library that I wouldn’t be there on the 23rd as I was seeing the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One movie with my mum.

The people at the library that I told this to were all quite happy to let me have a day off and so yesterday mum and I went to Redbank to see the movie, then as we got to Tivoli mum remembered that she hadn’t rang Luke’s Place in Laidley so she pulled over to ring dad and got him to ring them.

Luckily there was still time to ring them.

Anyway we got to Redbank and as there was over an hour before the movie started I went to the Angus and Robertson Bookshop which was a floor below the cinema and mum went back up to K Mart and then after I looked inside the bookshop I waited outside the bookshop as mum told me to wait there.

And when she came back we then went back up on the top floor and mum brought the thick shakes and a couple of doughnuts each and I brought the tickets.

Then while we waited for the movie to start mum said to me “remember when we were in the cinema one other time when it was packed out with school kids?”

She then asked “that was a Harry Potter movie as well wasn’t it?” And I said “yes and I guess it gone on for too long as the cinema that mum and I was in wasn’t packed with school kids. We then saw the movie and I thought it was alright, but they left a lot of things out though I still had a tear in my eye when Dobby died after rescuing Harry and his friends.

This is another Isobelle Carmody book and the sequel to Night Gate and is published by Yearling which is an imprint of Random House Australia Children’s Books.

Also the ISBN number for the second book in the Gateway Trilogy that is called Winter Door is ISBN 978-0-375-83019-8 and in the second book of the series something that is unexplanable is going wrong with the weather. As the weather is though it is always winter and everyone seems down and miserable. And as you have probably guessed Rage has returned back home with her friend called Billy Thunder who has returned back to his dog form and Rage is now being looked after by her uncle.

As her mother hasn’t gotten out of her coma yet, and the doctor wants to transfer Rage’s mother to another hospital however roads are being closed because of the weather. Also Rage is worried that her uncle who is her mother’s brother would go away again.

And as some of her animal friends didn’t come back with her stories are going around. Also a school bully who is a teenage boy called Logan is giving her trouble, but after something happens they become friends. Rage also finds out that she can make herself return to the other world where she finds The Witch Mother and discovers that something similar is going on there too.

Rage then decides that the weather problems in both worlds are somehow connected and then she and her friends follow where the wizard that Rage is related to went as no one knows what had happened to him or why he decided to go by himself.

This book’s author is a lady named Isobelle Carmody and it was originally published by Penguin Books Australia but the story had a different title and it was Billy Thunder And The Night Gate.

But the title got changed to Night Gate because of an arrangement made with Random House Books For Young Readers, and Yearling is a registered trademark of Random House Inc. Also the ISBN numbers for Night Gate is ISBN-13: 978-0-375-83017-4 and ISBN-10: 0-375-83017-0

And in this story a teenage girl called Rage Winnoway is being looked after by her neighbours next door as her mother is in a dangerous coma which was caused by a car accident. Rage also decides to visit her mum so she goes away or runs away taking her dogs with her. But as she gets nearer to the hospital she wonders what she’ll do with her dogs who are her best friends and then shortly after she found out that they were being followed by a goat.

They then came across a bramble gate, and Rage thought she was being tricked as she heard a voice that called itself Firecat and it told her to come through the bramble gate as it promised that the wizard could help her mother come out of her coma but even though she didn’t really believe what Firecat said she did what it suggested and her animals friends followed. 

Then as she was thinking about them being human all of them changed form and they can talk too, though some of them like Bear who is Billy Thunder’s mother resisted the change.

Also to get back to their own world they had to complete the quest to find the wizard that was said could help them but it wasn’t easy as they had to figure out what the riddle meant which was their only clue and though the world they discovered was full of beings to avoid Rage and her friends also found that there was good beings there too. As one of the things that happens is that The Witch Mother and others who attended a meeting helped Rage and her friends find a safe way to go down The River Of No Return.

Libraries are useful for finding books that you like to read and re read and recently I read The Nightgate Trilogy by Isobelle Carmody and I enjoy these books so much I decided to get my own copies of the two books, which are called Night Gate and the Winter Door.

And I also enjoyed The Charlie Bone series by Jenny Nimmo as they are about children that have unusual talents and these kids are related to The Red King.

I also enjoy reading The Charlie Bone books as a mystery is revealed in every book as for instance when Charlie starts attending The Bloor Academy one of his endowed friends tells him that Charlie’s father isn’t dead but lost and Gabrielle was able to tell Charlie this because Charlie gave Gabrielle his father’s tie and since finding out that his father wasn’t dead it made Charlie determined to find him.

My mother told me recently that she was thinking of changing her rottweiler called Dita diet and that she wanted to give her fish. And she pointed out that if she gave Dita Fish For Dogs my mum worked out that she needed to give Dita forty nine cans which would make it far too expensive, and so I suggested to my mother that she should try Dita on California Natural, as I said that they have a dry dog food that is based on fish and sweet potato which she’ll probably find is a far more economical way of feeding bigger and heavier dogs fish.

Also I helped out another person that I talk to when I go to Luke’s Place, and she has a mini fox terrier with a sensitive stomach, and as I noticed when I was in the Plainslands Woolworths Supermarket that Pedigree had a dry dog food that was specifically for dogs with sensitive stomachs I then thought that I must tell this person about it and so I did and she was rather pleased.

I also told her that my mother suggested that she could look info up about feeding dogs with sensitive stomachs on the internet.

When I went to Luke’s Place Lockyer yesterday, which is somewhere where disabled people can go I found out that another person was also doing volunteer work, and yesterday was his first day at the job and what this person has to do is go to the dog pound or whatever they called and walk the dogs. And he came back when it was getting onto twelve and he was so muddy that he had to take his shoes off. Also the supervisor that took him there got the guy to mop out the van as the floor was muddy but I can imagine that he really enjoyed walking the dogs.

Last Tuesday I found out that the supervisors at Luke’s Place have lined me up to teach people to knit. And as far as I know there is one other person apart from myself who wants to learn to knit. And also one of the supervisors wanted to know how to do french knitting or corking and asked me if I knew how to do it and as I said I did I was then telling her how. Then another thing that they are getting me to do is a drawing for a mosaic as apparently they want everyone that is doing work in the community to do one. And I’ve thought of two images and yesterday I thought that perhaps I could join them up, and as I do volunteer work in the Laidley Library one of my drawings is a pile of books on the counter with a computer and I’m thinking of drawing two people to finish off that drawing.

And the other drawing I’m doing is bookshelves that are full of books, and to finish off that drawing I could also draw a trolley and a blue chair as they are the two things I use when I work there.

Also to make the mosaic I will be using bits of cardboard that is coloured in and then I’ll stick them where I have drawn the books and that is all I have decided on and this is for the art show that I recently found out will be again held at Luke’s Place Lockyer on the 6th of September.

The supervisor that took me to the library on Tuesday parked in the supermarket carpark like most of them do, but this person doesn’t bother straightening the van up when she parks. And before I got out I thought this was crooked and when I got out I noticed that the van was parked extremely crooked, however we then went to the library, and when the same supervisor came back for me she was telling me about this guy that was in the carpark that really blew up at her and she said she still hasn’t got any clue to what his problem was?

And I told her maybe it was because the van was parked extremely crooked at the time, and I also told her that she parked it straighter this time but she said no that wasn’t it.

Also as I was telling my parents this they both agree with me that the man blew up at her because of the way she had parked. But the supervisor that took me to the library that day didn’t seem to realize that her crooked parking was causing problems for other people.