TinyBreak

Full credit to the rouge republic of Western Australia on this one. What a friggin sick idea! Wish vicpol had the stones to do this.

Pair of Adidas sneakers for 30 bucks. The adidas stuff aint bad, especially on sale. Still rocking a pair of thsese 2 years on.

If like me you've always wanted in on the cheap coffee ($2 for a regular, $3 for a large and a 50c discount for bringing your own cup OR app scan) but couldn't because of the milk good news! 7/11 now have oat and soy options. Their website even provides locations. $1.50 for a half decent regular oat flat white is a heck of a deal!

If your a little hesitant abut the quality of the coffee I have to say it wasnt bad! is it Barista level? Course not, but its better than passable-but-bland effort maccas baristas manage.

I think I missed the boat on the 30 dollar sneakers, but work setting up a ozbargain account and registering for alerts for the adidas store.

I've got a couple of pairs of sneakers I got for like 30-40 bucks for about 12 months now and they're still going strong! Seems to be really good quality, doesnt look terrible either and if you can get it for under 50 bucks (which they seem to do every few months) its a frigging steal! Theyre socks are pretty great too!

So I'm gonna share a story. In this story I'm a fucking idiot. But I hope that it serves as a warning to someone so they can learn from my dumb mistakes. So I was going out to see some mates the other day in a big state forest near Melbourne.

Decided to take my car (a mid sized AWD SUV) rather than the wife's small FWD sedan. This proved to be a very good choice. Mind you, my car may be awd but its for like a slightly damp soccer field carpark, not what I accidentally forced it into.

I set google maps on car play and off I go.

Traveling into the park with basically no phone coverage everything going fine till suddenly get told to turn off a decent gravel path onto a side road. No warnings or anything, and again maps said go this way. So I did. It looked OK to start with, but by the time I realized I was was in trouble it was too late.

The road degraded to a goat track and I start sliding down it with no chance of turning around and no phone data to be able to reroute anyway. Maps said I was 10 minutes from meet up point so I decided to push on not really having a choice.

Soon enough i come to a patch of very wet deep tyre tracks. so long as I stick to the high ground I'll be fine. You can see where this is going, cant you? Yep. She slid straight off the highground into foot deep giant puddles of mud and immediately got bogged.

Chucked the car in mud mode, managed to reverse 2 feet before I couldn't go any further, put the car back in drive and took off at speed but just got stuck in the same spot again and this time couldn't reverse.

Now I didn't panic. That probably saved me. It woulda been easy to accidentally dig her in. My hear beat about 170bpm, but I got out and as calmly as I could assessed the situation. No phone coverage. I walked ahead a bit to make sure I was ok to proceed assuming I could even get out of this mess. I could. Even better there was a downed tree. I grab some branches and stick them under the wheels as best I can. it took about 15-20 minutes. With a dashboard full of warning lights I jump back in and take off slowly, feel it grab some traction in my best Jeremy Clarkson impression scream "SPEED AND POWER" and fucking launch the SUV out of there.

Slowly I proceed to the meet point passing a proper 4x4 who looked at me with shock and horror on his face. A poor little SUV so far out of its depth it wasn't even funny and an idiot who almost got himself in serious trouble.

I meet at the meeting point and my friends laugh. They approached from another direction and has 0 issues on a smooth gravel road. They all used Google Maps too, it just sent them in a different way for some reason.

So. What did I learn and why am i telling this story? a few key points:

1. If your going bush, even on GOOD roads make sure someone knows where you are
2. If you start to get into trouble: Reverse. Even if you have to reverse 500m! Dont commit to the fuck up assuming it'll get better.
3. Google maps has no concerns about sending you down tracks that even a dirtbike would struggle with 0 warning.

TLDR: I've become one of those "I was just following the GPS" people.

Maybe, just maybe it shouldn't cost close to 10k to even TRY to have a kid through IVF? More like 15k out of pocket costs till the Medicare rebate anyway.

1 in 6 aussie couples will struggle with infertility whilst 1 in 20 kids is born of IVF. https://monashivf.com/one-in-six/

1 in 6 couples. 1 in 20 babies. You can see a fair gap here. Unless your comfortably "middle class", you screwed. yes there are some public clinics with no gap, but the wait times are staggering. If we're worried about falling birth rates FULLY funding IVF and fertility treatments through Medicare is a no brainer.

Once again, someone who gave clear warning signs they were a risk was released into the community and the community has paid the price. When someone tells you who they are, you listen. Unless you're a judge apparently? Why do personal freedoms seem to trump the risk to the greater public?

Lamarre-Condon allegedly killed Davies and Baird with a police gun.

"If officers seek to have approval to store firearms at their home, there are a number of steps to that approval, including that the safe in which the firearm is stored has been independently approved." Asked if she knew whether the accused had an approved gun safe at his home, the Commissioner answered: "I'm actually not aware." She would not confirm whether normal rules had been followed in this case.

Oh you have GOT to be fucking kidding me.

Normally loath to suggest these sorts of thing, but recently discovered maccas has the best coffee in my suburb (C'mon melbourne get your shit together!) so every other day I'm grabbing a coffee. A mate recommended the app. I wouldnt suggest going there to get a deal, but IF your already buying stuff from maccas doing it through the app gets you points you can trade in, jut scored a free medium coffee with a non standard milk! It takes a few purchases to build up the required points, so again not a deal. But if you're doing it anyway may as well get the free stuff from it.

Hey all, been looking at YouTube slow cooker recipies on YouTube and I know meat over here is super expensive, but does anyone know if some of these cheaper cuts exist? Colesworth never seem to have any these days, and I think I’ve only seen gravy beef once at Aldi which I’m guessing is the best thing. Any idea where I’d get something that’s happy to site in the slow cooker for 8 hours that won’t cost me a kidney?

I've started cooking some red lentils in some beef stock, adding them and some breakcrumbs to mince meat to pad the meat out a bit (and hide some extra veg in the meat). With meatballs you cant even tell the difference. What are some of your hacks/tips/tricks?

Looking for some advice. Going camping in winter in vic. Got my eye on the 23Zero swag https://www.snowys.com.au/dual-swag-1100mm Or maybe the Coleman swagger darkroom https://www.snowys.com.au/instant-swagger-3p-darkroom Wondering if anyone’s got any experience or opinions? I’ve got a decent self inflating mat so I wouldn’t need to purchase that. I prefer the idea of the swag for longevity, but the tent for when the little fellas old enough to join me.