See You Next Wednesday
This weekend I have mostly been watching videos.
It rained all Friday, much of Saturday and often on Sunday. With cool, dark weather everywhere I grasped an opportunity to watch too much telly. Dave was gophering at the WIMA AGM, Jimbo was in Queensland, everyone in Sydney was staying there for Andrew's birthday party (not that I was expecting a visit, I mean they had something better to do) and mum was on vacation at the coast. My resources were therefore restricted however, with assistance from Linda and Simon, I watched
Blake's 7,
The Goodies,
Gunsmith Cats,
Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness and
Red Dwarf on video. I saw
Rear Window and
Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks on DVD, and
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers at the cinema, again. (Gosh it's good.) On telly I saw
7 Days,
Compass,
Critical Mass, the English Premier League soccer,
Grass Roots,
The Insiders,
Media Watch,
Southpark,
Sunday Spectrum and Australia play Zimbabwe in the World Cup of cricket. In between times I read two issues of the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer magazine, a
New Scientist, and
Starburst's and
TV Zone's 2002 Yearbooks. That should do.
On Monday, Emily and I ate some cake. I said "Happy birthday, Rob". Emily said "Meow". She has the brain of a cat. Happy birthday, Rob.
Indoor cricket.
Last week we were in fifth place. We played the fourth placed team who were one point ahead of us. With six player against their eight we won, finishing the season in fourth place and leapfrogging into the final series. On Tuesday night we played our semifinal against the team who finished the season in first place, about sixty points ahead of our seventy-odd points. With seven players against their eight we passed their total in the tenth of sixteen overs and won easily. Now we are in the final having just beaten the best team in the grade without our full team. Last week
Dave was expecting to have a fortnight off. (Not that I wasn't also expecting to have a fortnight off; they hit more runs off my bowling than I hit off their's. It's just that he wrote more about it than I did so I wanted to put in a
link to his blog for people who were interested.)
Plants.
The herb garden is going well, if you like thyme. The pennyroyal and selfheal may be starting to spread but the rosemary and oregano varieties are sickly at best. This is disappointing because in my last garden the oregano spread like wildfire (despite having to be dug out from under a pile of grass clippings each fortnight after the lawnmower guy did his thing). On the other hand all six varieties of thyme look vigorous and may begin covering ground soon, which is the point of the exercise after all. The Venus fly trap currently has two leaves about five millimetres long with dead traps, I does not appear to be thriving.
Circoz Us.
I went to see
Circus Oz last night. I enjoyed it, but it was a bit patchy. Sometimes there was something else going on while the equipment was being staged, other times there wasn't, and at times there was but it was on the other side of the ring and didn't have a microphone. On occasion the jugglers could work a dropped ball or club into the routine, occasionally they couldn't. Now and then I couldn't hear the act for the band. Now and again I couldn't see the act for the lighting. Sporadically hats fell off when they shouldn't. On the other hand, they do pretty well for a company their size. Nobody did a bad job, it was better than a rock eistedfodd, and didn't the kiddies love it! I was impressed and entertained and entranced. Favourite performer: Sue Simpson.
"Society is only three meals away from revolution."
Arnold Rimmer* -
Red Dwarf: "
Marooned" (Season 3, Episode 2)
I was scribing for a specification review yesterday, recording the changes to be made for the author. I was writing in pencil because I was using a
pro forma and I knew my notes would gradually transmute from dot points into a mind map which would need to be redrafted for the author to use. After everything from spelling errors to database structures had been reviewed Heather Turland expressed a concern about my notes being in pencil. She proposed that we should repeat the two hour meeting, then and there, so the notes could be made in ink. She did not want to sign the attendance sheet until this was done. And she was serious.
After briefly discussing (i.e. fathoming) her concern she conceded. Not because there is no regulation about scribing in ink. Not because my notes were unintelligible to the author and would have to be rewritten in any case. Not because her signing the attendance sheet was irrelevant. She conceded, in her own words, because it was lunchtime.
* Also attributed to the Romans.
My Top 5 Music Top 5 Lists.
My Top 5 Artists
1. They Might Be Giants
2. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
3. Björk
4. Bob Geldof
5. Cocteau Twins
Special mention: Kate Bush
My Top 5 Albums
1.
Flood - They Might Be Giants
2.
The Wall - Pink Floyd
3.
Crush - Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
4.
The Fine Art of Surfacing - Boomtown Rats
5.
Life's Too Good - Sugarcubes
Special mention:
Complete Madness - Madness
My Top 5 Songs
1.
Do They Know It's Christmas
Band Aid (Bob Geldof/Midge Ure)
2.
Always Something There to Remind Me
Sandy Shaw (Burt Bacharach/Hal David)
3.
Ana Ng
They Might Be Giants
4.
It's Oh So Quiet
Björk (Hans Lang/Bert Reisfeld)
5.
To Sir, With Love
Lulu (Don Black/Marc London)
Special mention:
Believe It or Not (Theme from
The Greatest American Hero) - Joey Scarbury
My Top 5 Instrumentals
1.
Doctor Who - Ron Grainer
2.
Hill Street Blues - Mike Post
3.
Danse Macabre - Camille Saint-Saens
4.
Blake's 7 - Dudley Simpson
5.
The Imperial March - John Williams
Special mention:
Theme From Futurama - Christopher Tyng
My Top 5 Lyrics
1. All my friends are fuck ups,
But they're fun to have around.
You Sound Like Louis Burdett (The Whitlams)
2. I don't want the world,
I just want your half.
Ana Ng (They Might Be Giants)
3. Now I've had to sell the ring,
Just to pay for everything.
Perfect Family (Diana Ah Naid)
4. I wonder if you can pick up my accent on the phone.
London Still (The Waifs)
5. She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly.
Brick (Ben Fold's Five)
Special mention: I know some people are smarter than me, but this is my philosophy: "So what?"
I'm a Blonde (Julie Brown)
What? What do I want?
It's 8:00pm and 33°C and there is still enough sunlight to read a newspaper. I have three rooms and a garage choked with boxes and plastic bags full of books, boxes and bookcases full of clothes, desks covered in computer equipment and half remembered paperwork, and other furniture including some mostly usable beds. My videos are on unfinished wooden bookshelves in the lounge room. The crockery is stored on bookshelves in the kitchen. I am not in a rut, I am in a flux.
At work, in the near future, I will be trained as a Test Co-ordinator. In an unrelated event, during that time, I will be going to Adelaide (or Brisbane) for some weeks to be a System Tester. Meanwhile I will continue to attend Business Analyst Learning Sets and contribute to the BA focus group. After six months I expect to be able to do three jobs, then I will go on long service leave for two months. Viva la flux! It's 8:30pm and 32°C and there is no longer enough sunlight to read a newspaper, but it's not dark.
Emily, Defender of the Universe, turned fifteen recently. She has the brain of a cat. When she grows up she is going to be a panther. Currently she is sleeping. I love my cat.
