Bravery and Tears

Tuesdays are Charlie's day care days and mummy's (alleged) rest day. Normally Tuesday starts with a few tears from Charlie as I wave goodbye and leave him at daycare, which is hard for both of us. But when I get back in the afternoon and he doesn't want to come home yet I know he's having a good time and making friends. However, that all changed this morning. He got himself out of the car, walked into daycare, waited patiently while I smeared him in sunscreen and took my hand and led me out to the sand pit. He then walked over to the toys and turned around to see where I was. I took this opportunity to say I had to go and waved goodbye. He came over for a cuddle and kiss and I handed him over to one of the carers. They were going to get the bucket of scraps to feed the chooks, just like they do every Tuesday. That's when (for me) it all fell apart. Instead of beginning to cry like he normally does, Charlie screwed up his face and went bright red with the effort not to cry and said "Yep, Yep, going get chook bucket". This show of bravery completely undid me. I managed to make it to the car before the tears took over, but then rather than doing all the jobs I have to do downtown, I had to drive home, crying all the way. In fact I can't seem to stop. I feel like a complete idiot and really really proud of Charlie all at the same time. Hopefully sometime today I'll be able to stop crying. Hopefully.

The Age of Miracles is Not Ended

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 8/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

On the other hand ...

UPDATE: And in more maths news ....

England football captain David Beckham has confessed he is befuddled by his six-year-old son Brooklyn's maths homework.

Master Charlie is three today!

Unbelievable as it seems, Charlie is now three. Don't ask me where the time has gone, I'm too busy feeling old. He has done very well out of his aunt and uncle visiting from NZ, in fact he likes them so much he insists on calling them both Harry.

Dial up is too crap to post a photo of him in his blue glitter hat and birthday suit attire he wore to his party last night. That and we forgot to get a copy off uncle "Harry"s camera. Bugger.

Out Of The Mouths of Babes

This has me in tears. Totally made my day, nay, my year.
Fuschia sent me this and i have permission to publish (but don't tell SnowPea).
She will be 8 in a few days....

I took the children to the doctor yesterday. It was actually only for Sophie, but of course Hal was there too. As I was discussing with the doctor the timing of antibiotic eyedrops for Sophie's red eyes and the children were looking at one of those horrid 3D body map pictures, the little princess in question came up to me to tell me something. Not now, was my patient response. Disappointed she went away. After we had left the doctors and were walking down to the chemist (I mean, when do you ever leave the doctors without a prescription for antibiotics.Like, der, NEVER!) I asked Sophie what she had wanted.
Looking up at me, innocent face all full of shiny happiness, she told me "I know what I am going to call my next World of Warcraft character - Rectal Polyp!"

When the kids visit, we put them on a random WOW server and let them have at it. 10 characters all under level 5, but they love it. GodMother....hell no. I think thier GeekMother education is much, much more important.

I don't like sport because...

There is a reason I don't watch a lot of sport. Yes, other than the fact that it's all a bit silly or too violent or just plain boring, it's because the commentators annoy me.

This is always especially true of the Olympics. In one night of viewing the winter olympics It has all come to a head.
If I had to hear the useless figure skating commentator (not the girl, but the other one) use the phrase 'throw down the challenge' one more time... It really was used for 5 competitors in a row.

Then innocently watching the bobsledding (I was feeding Torbenspang at the time and it was better than anything else) and got treated to a delightful bunch of mixed metaphors, my favourite of which was 'You can't give those Germans an inch or they'll chew you up and spit you out"

All I can say is Grrrrrr!

Mind you nothing will beat the swimmimg commentary of 2000 with the delightful utterance "...and Misty Hymen breaks through"
Tee-hee

Well, That Was Nice

even the Canberra bits.

Wandered down south on the weekend for medieval type thangs. We drove down Friday night to Site, set up camp with the whole place to ourselves.
Next morning we found these strange little guys (smaller than a 5 cent piece) I was going to play 'Name That Whacky Araneidae', but 5 minutes of google revealed all.



Jewel (or Spiney) Spider Astracantha minax
either that or when the main invasion force turn up, they are going to be mightly pissed when they realise somebody got the whole size scale wrong...

Somewhere in the wilds between Yass and Canberra there is this Place of Goodness.
Poachers Pantry made us very happy, sat on the veranda, listening and watching the Cockies goof around in the paddock and dined on yummy smoked meats, dips and bread.



I won't bang on about getting lost in Canberra itself, cause its even less interesting in the retelling. Suffice to say we found our way out to Greenway, and spent the arvo lolling about, reading, chatting and drinking Shiraz.




That night back on Site there was meat, beer and laughs. The next morning helped Mouse and Tops, build a cement and rock wall at the base of the sniper clock tower. Note the handiwork...skilled labour.

Stolen from Kate @ Moment to Moment

Too good not to steal...

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, please post a comment with a completely made up and fictional memory of you and me. It can be anything you want - good or bad - but it has to be fake.

When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) by what people don't actually remember about you.

Kate's blog is Moment to Moment @ http://blinkandyoullmissit.typepad.com/momenttomoment

(apologies for not remembering how to do links)

Juicy, My Arse

While trolling through Ebay, cause i'm really bored. Lucky i'm not pregges or i'd popping a few pills just for something to do. I found this, now call me a puritan but JUICY LOVE is about the last thing i want printed across my arse. Ok there are a few less desirable words out there, but i think i'm turning into a grandmother (not a cool one like Rob's, she is 99 and flew to Las Vegas from Santa Barabra last week for 4 days, probably to get lickered up and flirt with boys...) but a grumpy old biddy with 15 cats and laments the decline of society.
Its in the sportswear section, though i am the one whose shorts are held up with a safety pin, which in last nights boxing class came undone while i was flopping around trying to do pushups.
So maybe i need some juicy arse, though somehow i think i will still look less like a tool with safetypinned shorts....

Are you for 86?

Well now, this really is waving the sarcasm banner, but i reckon it's pretty darn good all the same.

Right, start the debate ... Now!

ahhhh the day of flowers!

I was reading Miss Krins post about what's changed for her in the last ten years. It go me thinking about my last ten years and how I've changed.
Because this is an age of sharing your thoughts on the net and now that I have the power (wah-ah-ah) here goes;

• I am no longer at Uni in Brisbane becoming more and more disenchanted with the whole thing. (dropped out halfway through '96)
• I now do admin type stuff for a living instead of all things theatrical.
• I have found the SCA and discovered a love for wearing ginormous dresses.
• I've discovered I can sew aforementioned dresses.
• I managed to find a partner that has lasted longer (way way longer) than 6months.
• I've changed my mind on the whole "I don't want to have children" thing and even succesfully (so far) had a child.
• I've learnt that generally people don't hate you, they just don't care. It sounds quite harsh but it's true. It's a lot nicer to realise that than to be so worried that some random person you see once a year hates you. Most likely they don't know you well enough to have an opinion.
• I've been overseas and want to do it again. Just need MrNws dad to move to another country and fly us over again
• I've felt more sadness and happiness than I think should be allowed.
• I no longer play catch-up with the drinking at parties. I'm also now a remarkably cheap drunk after being pregnant.
• I've become a lot happier about being me.
• I still don't feel like a grown-up despite being in my late late twenties. I'm sure it'll happen after I'm thirty. (yeah right)

That's my musings for the morning.

Harry's most boring incoherent post ever.

Dear Speedy,
I have learned how to make a dessert.
It is Summer Berry Compote with Coniessure(sp?) icecream.
It is possibly the yummiest thing ever.
After Maya Stange, of course.
Oh, and Natalie Portman in EpisodeII after the beasty rips off half her top.
And whoever it was who played Mrs Carpenter the librarian in Buffy whom Giles falls for and then gets killed by Angelus; and used to be a dancer with Prince and was apparently the inspiration for the song 'Raspberry Beret'. The Summer Berry Compote had Raspberries in it (and blueberries and strawberries) but I don't think I'd be putting it on her head. And I could test out how accurate, in the flesh, the superlative "a belly made for melting icecream on" [which was made with reference to that belly dancing pop-star from a few years back] really is. I'm thinking: lots.

I can't think of a title for this post

If anyone wasn't watching the cricket last night and possibly watched *ahem* Ghost Whisperer, I'd ah, really appreciate it if you could put in comments what happened. Thanks. (slinks away highly embarrased by hopeful).

However, for those of you who watched the cricket like me, wasn't Gilchrist on fire! I did wonder if Katich was going to fall over from exhaustion though. He looked pretty well done in at the end. Great century though.

Pig sitting

Tops and I are looking after Meg's guinea pigs for 2 weeks and we haven't managed to kill them yet. Mind you, we still have a few days.

I'm not sure that I can say that there has been much bonding happening, but they do have their appeal. It's sort of like watching brownian motion - watching pigs flee in random directions... or maybe it's a bit like the Heisenburg uncertainty principle - except you can't know where the brain cell is or what it's going to do.

The pigs now recognise us as a source of food. There are many excited squeaks when I get home from work. There are even paws up on the side of the cage to beg for food. Of course, when you actually approach with the food, all pigs scurry away to the far end of the cage in fear.

Mama is the bravest and usually comes out to inspect the food first. Mr Chef is a big wussbag and will always come out last for food. This is probably why he is the smallest. But he makes up for this by grabbing the largest piece of food he can find and then runs back under cover to eat. Lily and Mia have their moments but I haven't seen any noteworthy behaviour from them. The crunching sound as they eat is amazing. They eat with a great dedication to chomping as muhc as they can as fast as they can.

It is most amusing watching guinea pig football. This is a game where there is one piece of vegetable that is highly prized for some reason and you get to see one pig grab the food and dash, only to have it stolen by another pig who runs it to another corner of the cage, etc, etc.

The foods of choice in order appear to be lettuce, carrot, capsicum, tomato and apple. Eggplant and cauliflour were also edible, but there just wasn't the same level of pig frenzy. And grass is always popular.

The pigs have been entertaining in their own way, but I don't think I could bond with an animal I can't pat. Well, you can pat the pigs, but they run and squeal when you try to catch them, struggle lots and then finally go rigid in fear. This makes me feel really guilty.

Amusing to watch, but they only love me when I bring food...

Coming back to haunt me

After blithely stating that if I lost this baby due to an accident I wouldn't hunt down and get medieval on the person involved in the accident (on an LP post), I had time to reflect today on that very topic after we were involved in a very minor car accident this morning. We are all fine. Well the car is looking worse for wear, but the rest of us are all good. Shaken but not stirred.

But it did make me think what if something did happen. Would my views on things being an accident and no one's fault still hold. Just to give you some background - we stopped behind a couple of cars that had stopped ahead of us, the driver behind us couldn't stop in time and hit us and pushed us into the car in front. Low speed, and minor damage to the other two cars, but we being in the middle copped a bit more damage. I was in the passenger seat, and wearing my seatbelt, so I was only thrown forward a bit and didn't get thrown into anything. The airbags didn't deploy so it wasn't serious. Charlie was a bit upset, but possibly because he lost hold of his drink rather than anything else. He seems fine tonight.

The car was still driveable, so after exchanging details we drove home. I had plenty of time to think about how I would feel if anything did happen to bubs, who had gone quiet. Fortunately we had spoken to our midwife who had asked us all the pertinent questions re pain, bleeding etc which were all absent and told us that the baby would be quiet for a while due to the shock, so we weren't panicking. But I did wonder about my earlier stance. Okay it was an accident, the driver of the car that hit us did their best to swerve and stop and avoid hitting us. But what if something had happened to the baby? Would I still feel that it was all an accident or would I want revenge? As I calmed down and the shock abated I decided that I wouldn't hunt them down, but I would be very very angry for a long time. Then I decided that maybe I shouldn't make rash statements on blogs that might come back to haunt me. I shudder to think how many other rash statements might be out there waiting for me.

The Quiet Bunch

Everyone asleep or something...wakey wakey, hands off snakey.
Plug for Anna's blog- Miss E.
For those who don't know her, she is a very cool country vet turning cop. Now thats a tv show idea if i ever heard of one.
Anyway check it out, and somebody post something controversial and/or interesting. Or it will be me ranting about the invisible sky fairy again and we all don't want that, now do we? hmmm
A Cunning Plan has Eye Candy Day....cute boys men to look at.

Alas poor Gowings! I knew him, Mark Foy's

Okay... so I didn't know Mark Foy. Nor Horatio. Nor Yorick. But I certainly knew Gowings. And now he is gone. He was certainly a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. But where is the well-dressed gentleman to shop now? Granted, in today's society he is possibly meant to turn up in his underpants alone; but I want more than that. Where is the gentleman's department store of tomorrow? Where will I find my cut-throat razor, fine wool suit, akubra hat, moustache wax and hacky-sack all in the once place ever again?

I know they had a slighty eclectic collection of goods, but honestly it was the best place a man could go if he wanted to dress well. Or shop for gifts. Camping gear in the same store as beer branded t-shirts along side cufflinks? Surely that was genius! Where did it all go wrong? Why no bail-out package for something which was somewhat of an icon of Sydney? They lasted over 130 years and always seemed to have enough people through the doors. Was there serious mis-management? Fishing through their fiances, the executive director was on $250,000 in the year they lost $13 million dollars (2004).

Still... I need an answer to my question. Where do I shop for these things now? Sure I can browse on the internet for these goods and order them in, but it's just not the same. Trying on suits or browsing for random gifts doesn't work so well over the web. At least not for me. And certianly not for the range of things they had.

I did go in there twice in their last few weeks. It was depressing to see a once great store fall from grace. I was watching as the seething mass of vultures picked through the remains whilst a lone gentleman working at the store was attempting to maintain some decorum. "No, the hats are not on sale". "Would you like to try that on?". "I can help you find your size". He looked like he had worked there for the past fifty years. I wonder what he is doing now.

Your tax dolla at work.

Many of you will remember my endless ranting about the idiocy of the new management at UNSW a few years back, when they decided to completely screw up the only functional campus-wide IT group that the uni had. Don't worry, I'm not going to start in again - heck, they paid me nicely to go away - I just wanted to share the deliciously ironic latest twist.

When they did our restructure they went from something called a "horizontal model" to a "vertical" one. Near as I can tell - once you strip away the BS - the "horizontal model" means that everyone knows how to do their job, but they have to work together to solve problems, and the "vertical model" means that everyone knows how to do a little bit (but only a little bit) of everyones job, but has to take complete responsibility for a given problem. Like that was _ever_ going to work.

Apparently they've decided to have a new restructure. Their new and innovative idea for how to revitalise the university IT is to go with a horizontal model (like we used to have, and we told them over and over was better for the task) rather than the current vertical model (which we told them was shite right from the start.) And the sad thing is, since they're idiots and have no clue and they've squandered half their talent and completely demoralised the rest, they're almost inevitably going to screw this up too. The funniest (and most ironic) thing is, they are probably so blissfully unaware of everything we ever said to them that they don't even realise that they are finally admitting that we were right.

Ah, the sweet sweet smell of vindication...

into the Historical Archives we go...

I've been tidying up. god knows it needs to be done...

stop laughing you lot!

and part of the tidying up involved completely resorting and efficiently compiling a shite-load of photos. yes, back into the folders which have their negs. yes, writing the approximate date of when the photos were taken onto the front of the folder. did you know, sometimes I even write the negative number on the back of the photo?

I'm sure someone else out there does that too.

there's got to be some still lurking around somewhere else (isn't there always?) but for the main part, it's been done. and in doing all the sorting I came across photos of Lemming Tabards Marks I and II. we won't go into the technical details of how Mr Nw's original tabard was the Real Lemming Tabard Mark I and so all the others are actually a number out of whack... it's now a Relic and so therefore is Something Else Altogether.

so for the purposes of historical archiving, and feeling all sentimental when Coz posted all those lovely puffy-panted piccies, and for saying yet again Gosh-darn-aren't-we-triffic, I present:

Lemming Tabards Mark I: Default Mode, circa 1991
(can anyone date this photo more accurately?)

awwww... weren't we all 15 years younger? I think this was the first time Mr Tops fought with us - and became our Knight Councillor (whateverthatis). Coz fought with us too, somewhere there's a photo like this with her in it, wearing her red archer's outfit. and I really didn't remember that Giblet was there all those years ago! Andrew and Two-Eyed Pete were also fighting - there's a group photo of us and Deorc to prove it. this might well have been the year of the Lemming Palanquin, of which only 1 photo exists, and I don't have it. you know, any time you want to carry me on a platform and scatter rosepetals again, just let me know...



Lemming Tabards Mark II: The Puffy-Slashy Years, 1995

a shame we're draped all over the the War Cart, which was as wond'rous a site to behold as our prettiness. also a shame that there were so many photos taken of this 'photo-op', and yet no-one can find any of them... because we looked rather triffic at the time if I do say so myself. also, please to be admiring the most fabulous Lemming Wall, which successfully hid the complete brothel that our campsite was. I mean looked. admit it - our campsite really did look bloody terrible! the Wall was great, and also pretty Mighty, right up until it was used as a shower screen. oh how the Mighty have fallen. and look at how little the Roof-Dood is!



Lemming Tabards Mark III: The Enormous Trousers Era, 2000-

need I say more? I though I'd post another of the new lot just so we can see them all side by side.













when you think about it, the dates mean it's almost time we thought of a new theme, you know. we can do anything...



...but not Viking. ;-)

Bonsai poetry.

We've all done it, I'm sure. Usually without noticing at the time.
Turn a simple enough idea into one line of poetry.
I'm not talkng about witticisms or (heaven forfend) those ubiquitous Successories quotes, but rather a pinch of beauty in the otherwise mundane dross of everyday language.

I was writing an email to a friend whom i met at choral festival last week (think Rowany festival with less excuse for strange clothing, more singing and bigger tents) and reflected that;
Outside the bubble of IV, the rainbow colours blur to a storm cloud.

And I was pretty impressed with myself.

Ob is a champion at it (apart from his I had four espressos with lunch; I can see through time which I'm sure he stole from somewhere else but buggered if i know where) ;
You can't see as far back as merely strange from Mr. Winkle's house with a telescope.

So the call goes out, give me your bonsai poetry, or favourites from elsewhere.
One line only...

'Qing Hell

If you suffer from three left feet and hands like me, you'll take horror-pleasure in the adventures of this chap, who:

at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge last Wednesday lunchtime ... tripped upon his shoelaces, tumbled down a set of stairs and crashed into a set of three, 300-year-old Chinese vases, which had sat happily undisturbed on a windowsill at the bottom of the staircase for a good 40 years.

Stay brave and true comrade, I feel your pain.