17thousand

Only 20 years later...

2009-09-11T23:44:00.006Z

Aproximately 20 years ago I started wearing glasses. Initially it was just for reading the blackboard, but my vision degraded over a year or so until I needed to wear them permanently. I always hated it, but I hated contacts more (couldn't stand poking my finger in my eye - odd, I know). As of Thursday 10/9/2009, it is no longer an issue!

Here is a pic of me on Tuesday (Beth had declared it Pirate Day):

and now this morning:

hmmm, not the most flattering photo, but I direct your attention to the fact that I am NOT gazing vaguely into the distance... It may not seem like much, but it is significant to me!

I have been eagerly waiting for my prescription to stabilise so that I could look into getting lasered. I had my eyes checked last week, and it had now been 3.5 years since my prescription changed (and then not by much). I had not intended to have the lasering done quite so soon, but I lined up a couple of consultations and went to the first Thursday morning. 2 uncomfortable hours later, I was advised I was a suitable candidate for bladeless LASIK. They asked "How soon would you like to have the surgery?", I responded "As soon as possible", they said "How is 2.30pm?"

A few harried phone calls later to check in with my boss and arrange a lift home with my sister and I confirmed the operation. Whipped home, had a bite to eat, looked at my family just in case it was the last time (!) and caught the train back to Parramatta.

I would describe the procedure as "uncomfortable" - as mentioned I hate putting in contacts, and this was significantly worse :) They start by giving you some valium and pre-emptive panadol, give you a few minutes to have the drugs kick in, then take you in to the theatre. I lay down on the rotating bed, and the nurse handed me a couple of stress balls - these came in handy! First my right eye. My eyelids were taped open, and the speculum was inserted to keep my eyelids apart. I had asked earlier what happens if I blink, the response was "well, you can try!" This first part was probably the most uncomfortable. They cut a flap on the surface of the eye in order to expose the cornea. In my case this cut was performed with a laser as well. They attach the cutting head to your eyeball via suction, and the flap takes 30 seconds to cut. The nurse was sounding off every 5 seconds, and it seemed like an enternity. I was supposed to keep both eyes open, and keep looking straight ahead. I found this very difficult and kept closing my other eye, and it would wander a bit - I suspect this was the cause of my discomfort. During this phase, I could not see anything out of the eye being worked on as the device was sitting right on top of my eyeball.

Anyhow, the flap was cut and the device detached from my eye. Next bit was kind of nice in comparisson. A small tool that I have been describing as somewhat like a shepherds crook for a Lego man was used to lift the flap on my eye. This was accompanied by beautiful, cool, flowing water (? - presumably saline or somesuch). Quite weird though - blurry vision... stick thing moving about... flap rolls back... clear-ish yet obviously not quite right vision as my cornea is exposed. The LASIK part of the procedure then commenced. After working for a few years around fibre optics, this just seemed crazy! The laser was very pretty though :) This phase of the procedure was super quick - something like 5 seconds all up, with 3 bursts of the laser. They say it is a "cold laser" and does not cook you, but I swear I could smell something...

Lasering complete, the Lego shepherds crook + cool, cool water is used to replace the flap. The stick comes over your eye again an carefully places the flap back down. Kinda like if you were really anal and applying your rego sticker to your car windscreen... After the shepherds crook, a little thing that looks like a squeegy is used to smooth over the surface of the flap, presumably to remove any bubbles, again, just like your rego sticker. This bit was all kind of nice - no pressure on the eye, no one saying "look at the red light", nice and cool water flowing.

End of procedure for that eye, remove the speculum, remove the tape, tentitavely blink a few times... is that it? They moved on to the left eye, and I think I was slightly more anxious by now. I had been squeezing away at the stress balls like a man possessed. Even trying to come up with funky squeeze patterns to keep myself distracted, but I think I really could have done with a bit more valium ;) Anyway, they kinda had to jam the cutting tool onto my face, squishing my nose. Not really a problem because once it has hold of your eyeball, you ain't going anywhere!

One thing that certainly doesn't make the procedure any more comfortable is the blinding theatre lights that are shining straight in to your eyes. How inconsiderate! I guess the surgen needs some good lighting to see properly, but I thought it was all computer guided these days - maybe some nice candle lighting (and soft music) would be more appropriate!

Anyway, they finished the left eye and I was guided to the chair to have the doctor examine the results. Another bright light shined in your eye - this time through a magnifying glass so the Doc can have a good look. My eyes were feeling quite abused by this stage, so I spent as much time as possible with them shut. The nurse put some protective perspex shells over my eyes, and then some VERY attractive sun shields:

(note this photo was taken just now. I was not in any fit state to consider documenting what had happened at the time, plus if you had tried to use a flash anywhere near my I would have flailed ineffectually, and then sobbed in the corner)

The whole thing from popping the pills to being sat back down in the waiting room took maybe 40 minutes. I rang Tara to check where she was. As luck would have it, she was armed with a disabled sticker due to Millies broken leg, and was able to park immediately out the front. She came up and escorted me down stairs. My eyes were watering like crazy, and I still just wanted to keep my eyes shut. The trip home passed in a blur. We sent the kids out the back to run around, Tara poured me a glass of wine (that's ok with Valium, right?). Very nice wine I might add - I instructed her on where the boxes of wine were kept, and expected her to come back with a Cab Sav. She happened to find my stash of good stuff, and we had an extremely nice limited release Tulloch Hector - an event certainly worth the celebration! Mind you, I only discovered this the next morning when I was able to read the label.

I was feeling kinda drowsy, and was very sensitive to light, so I had a lay down while dinner was sourced from the local fish and chip shop. I thought I had only been in the bedroom for a minute, but it must have been about half an hour and Loz said she had to shake me awake. Ate some food and another glass of very nice wine, and I was cactus. I gave my apologies, and toddled off to bed. I took some pain killers and a sleeping tablet (not affected by alcohol, I am sure!) and passed out. I woke a few times through the night, but was not feeling terribly uncomfortable and was able to drift off again.

As this was all arranged last minute, I had not actually organised time off work. I had to go back out to Parramatta for an 8am checkup, and it was just going to be too difficult to public-transport out there... so I drove. The eyes were still feeling a bit "grainy", and I was still sensitive to light, but it wasn't too bad. I barely had enough time to make use of the coffee facilities in the time it took to have my checkup, and I even made it to work just after 9am!

A slightly eye-weary day at work, but felt no worse than times I have worn contacts (noting my ham-fisted method of insertion). The "eye lubricant" drops are the bomb, and I can't recommend them enough!

So that's about it for the eye story. They feel better day by day. Still a slight blurryness, still a bit sensitive to light, and still a bit of "starbursting", but becoming less and less, and it has only been 2 days after all!

To mix it up a little, here a few pics of the munchkin:

(at Muchos de Mexican with the family. Tara went to town on Beth's hair)

(Beth thought the hair was worthy of a cheesy grin - check out those chompers! Only the eye teeth to go)

(Beth is quite enamoured of Little Puss, and Little Puss no longer seems quite so distressed by Beth!)

The romance

2009-08-05T12:27:00.003Z

It's 10.30 at night. Since I got home from work, I've bathed and fed Beth, done three loads of laundry, done the washing up, washed and re-lanolinised some wool nappy covers, and now I'm back checking my work email. Working motherhood is every bit as romantic as it's cracked up to be - and I am one of the lucky ones, since Grant actually does his share!

I have a playdate with a new mum friend tomorrow, which is exciting. We are going to play with bubbles in the park and eat cake, if I have anything to say about the matter.

Beth's new (or recent) words: cheers (and clinks glasses), apple, hippo, but her favourite and most useful word is MORE! she just doesn't ever specify OF WHAT.

Fountain of happiness

2009-06-21T02:21:00.002Z

This morning we took advantage of reason to live in Concord 654123465.12 and went to the Armory at Newington for breakfast. It's on the Parramatta River (as is pretty much else hereabouts) and is away from the road, so chiclets can run wild to their heart's content, subject of course to the aforementioned river and the two metre drop into same off the wharf.

Beth had a run around before we ate, and did some very nice artwork at the table, including a still life called Lizard with Red Scribbles. Well, OK, the lizard part was a dot to dot I did, but the red scribbles were all Beth. After breakfast they had turned the fountain on, so she had a play in that - video to follow. I will note that after our last experience with the fountain, we had packed a change of clothes, because once bitten twice shy, etc. She did get thoroughly soaked, but unlike last time she didn't end up with gumboots full of water, so I am calling it progress.

I drew a B for her in chalk the other day, and she freaked the hell out of me by saying "buh." She repeated this three times, and also when she picked up her wooden letter B. Fortunately if you write A she also says "buh," so I am not quite as scared.

Grant has visited a childcare near where he works which did not simply blow us off re: potential placements for next year, and in fact seemed very positive we might get a place. Grant says the playground is so cool he wants to go there. It's funny to think of Beth in preschool/childcare, but she enjoys structured activities like gymbaroo and artwork so much that I think she's almost ready. We have been very very lucky to have not needed it before now, especially as we haven't been able to get a place anywhere anyway!

Two molars through, two just cutting. No fun.

Maybe gymbaroo wasn't such a great idea...

2009-06-19T04:13:00.002Z

Beth can now climb up on the dining chairs, and last night when I was making dinner she stood on one of her small chairs to see up on the kitchen bench.

Maybe all that climbing practice at gymbaroo wasn't such a great idea.

Also, for the last two days she has been saying "na" when she needs changing, and patting her nappy on the change table to warn me if it's a poo. Such warnings are always appreciated, especially when one is dealing with teething poo and especially when one has been lured into false confidence by already having changed two pooey nappies in a single day (but wait, there's more...).

In further exciting evacuation related news, yesterday she was having nappy off time on the back verandah while I put washing out. She came over to me and pointed to her crotch, then off to the side of the verandah, where it transpired she had done a massive poo on the floor. Again, good heads up!

Sunset on the shores of the Parramatta, etc

2009-06-18T02:58:00.003Z

You know what is really something? Playing with your baby with shells on a beach on the shores of the Cabarita bay of the Parramatta river, while the sun drops down over the water. It was dark on our side, but the light hit full on the far side of the bay. There were black pumice stones around our feet. We had just jogged for 20 mins (my first jog in months and months and months) to get there. Reason #34235467234 to live in Concord: embarrassing amounts of natural beauty are but a short sweaty uncoordinated jog away. Also: good coffee.

Unrelenting rain is making it rather a drag to get the washing dry, esp. cloth nappies, which are after all designed to absorb moisture and will happily suck it right out of the air if need be. While I'd like to say I'll go for a jog again this afternoon, I am going to be realistic about that NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

Beth has a fairly stubborn cough right now. Being my daughter, she has decided to multitask and is also suffering from cutting 4 molars and 2 canines. Poor bugger. She's an upbeat little soul though, so it really only screws up her sleep, not her attitude.

I always forget the words she can say now, so to add to the list: MORE (mah!), new this week. She asked for more sandwich this morning after playgroup. Astonishing, as she never ever wants more food.

She can also make a few more animal noises, including miao, roar, click her tongue for a horsie ride or a kangaroo, etc. She can make slurping and "yum yum yum" noises to indicate drinking and eating, and pointed at her Spot book (he gets his dinner at the end) the other day and said "yum yum yum." she also tells Mum's dogs to eat the same way. Kind of adorable. She can follow two-step instructions (put that away then come back to Mummy) sometimes. She likes the rain and this morning raced out into it in her PJs and socks, not so great as we are experiencing a sock shortage here.

Work has been busier, which is nice. I have not only met but exceeded budget for most days this month, woohoo! And the only other news is that I can't think of what to cook for dinner.

[EDIT: - some dodgy photos from Grant's phone below]

The mighty Parramatta. Well, Hen and Chicken bay at any rate. Although where we were may be France Bay... not entirely clear.

Definitely Hen and Chicken Bay on the other side:

Smiles - the munchkin loves the outdoors:

She especially loves the outdoors when she gets to wear her raincoat and gumboots:

Beth still loves bike stuff, even though we haven't taken her for a ride since it have been cold:

Oh right, I remember this thing!

2009-06-04T03:27:00.004Z

It ain't fun if you don't get soaked

Hey kids. How've you been?

Beth is now nearly 17 months old. And SUPER CUTE, if I do say so myself:

New raincoat. I want one.

Beth finally outgrew these fabulous cords, and Grant is still in mourning

The Fairy Poopsmith

Lookin' fab

Language has been a two steps forward, one step backward thing. It's interesting to watch. She will master a word and then stop using it completely, viz BUMP, which entered her lexicon 2 months ago, then vanished without a trace, then has been slowly creeping back in over the last few days. So from memory, she can say mum, dad, dog, duck, what's that? (these last four sound the same to the uninitated), bump, cheese, keys (last two sound pretty much the same), Jake (guess the favourite cousin), and sometimes nana, and can make noises for monsters, tigers, elephants, snakes and donkeys.

She's now physically very dextrous, and can now run, sort-of stand on one leg, go up and down shallow steps without holding on to anything, throw a ball quite directionally, kick up to three times in a row for a dribble (already surpassing her mum!). She has been having a lovely time stomping around in puddles in her new raincoat and gumboots, which we got just in the nick of time because it has been freaking rainy in Sydney lately.

Grant takes her to swimming at Olympic Park on Tuesdays which she reportedly loves, Wednesday is her grandma hangout day (which she definitely loves, because she has the loveliest grandmothers in all the land), Thursdays we have finally found the local playgroup where she has a great time, and Friday is gymbaroo day, which she enjoys and which I think she is really getting quite a lot out of, even though we hardly ever do the homework, because we are rebels, y'all.

Otherwise it has been life as usual. Two words of advice: if you are fully breastfeeding your baby, you can eat whatever the hell you want and it will never touch your girlish thighs. Once you start to cut back on the feeds: not so much. Angie warned me but I didn't listen. More exercise or less cake are in my future, and possibly a pedometer revival. Grant is nagging me to do a 7km run in a few months but since I have not to date even run 2km I am not so sure. Speaking of which, Grant and his sister and possibly brother as well as our friend Ro are doing the City2Surf again per Grant's entry, so nag them to train if you happen to run into them.

We are heading back to Newcastle for the long weekend, and I hope everyone else has a similarly relaxing break planned!

How about that then...

2009-05-23T08:28:00.003Z

City 2 Surf is on August 9th. That's about 11 weeks away. Last year I used the training planner from their website to prepare. The planner started 10 weeks out, but I only picked it up 8 weeks out, and went from there. However, I had been using my recently acquired Wii Fit since my birthday, so about 5 or 6 weeks...

This year I intend on doing the full 10 week programme, and had intended to get back into the Wii Fit, but that hasn't happened yet. City 2 Surf training is supposed to start in about a week, so figured I should dust off the Wii Fit and see how I'm going.

It turns out that I have actually lost weight since I last used it months and months and months ago, and I am currently sitting on a nice even 110kg! An easy benchmark to start from, so we'll see how it goes this year. I am actually considering modifying my diet this time (OMG!) but I'm not about to make any rash decisions.

I've also managed to convince my sister to join me, and my brother HAD said he would do it, but he has been strangely silent on the matter of late.

[EDIT] I just read my blog entry from 1st January. What a laugh! I went for a jog that day, broke myself, and haven't been jogging or used the Wii Fit since! I really need a financial/event commitment to get motivated.

Pondering

2009-04-24T02:23:00.003Z

My hobbies include cycling, boozing, and public nudity

Ah, so moving house, a toddler refusing to sleep, and an apparent sudden economic upturn swamping me with work apparently stop me updating this thing. Or actually I forgot it existed. You can see I have many excuses.

I have changed the name of our new place from Temporary Accommodation to Max. Because it is No. 86. Max has a garden plot which is growing self-seeded tomatoes and zucchini at an astonishing rate. I am claiming credit even though all I do is weed it now and then (especially once I worked out that my lovingly tended beans were morning glory. whoops). Max also has me totally addicted to the delights of Concord. If London taught me nothing else, it taught me that in the civilised world one should never be more than 8 minutes walk to a supermarket, after all, and we have TWO within that distance, and two parks even closer. This addiction is unfortunate however, as the only suburb more expensive than Concord West is the mighty Concord. Curse you refined tastes!

Work is reminding me of the days before the GFC (or BFG as my officemate calls it) where I was routinely working on my days off. Still, I MUCH prefer my job when I am run off my feet than when I have time to contemplate my destiny. And anyway, it's a small price to pay for an eight our day - otherwise I would not really see Beth at all on my workdays and that would suck. Well, it might be refreshing for a short period of time but after that it would definitely suck.

Beth is now walking beautifully and has big girl shoes of which she is justifiably proud. She can say mum, dad, bump (favourite word), hello, bye, mmm (for milk), and make elephant, cockatoo, monster and tiger sounds, but her language development seems to have stalled a bit while she works out the walking business.

Beth in her newborn socks. AWWWWWWWWW.

Grant has a new shed which he and his dad are building tomorrow, and hopefully soon the bikes will be (a) more securely stored and (b) further away from little fingers that go unerringly for greasy things.

And other than that I can't think of much more. Beth is down to two or three feeds a day and it seems to be unleashing some long-dormant creative capacity in me, as I am thinking about things the way I did when I actually wrote for fun. Something may yet come out of it, although as I didn't finish my first novel in 10 years there's arguably no hurry at this point. It is also however making me have nightmares about leaving her behind, so maybe my brain and hormones need to have a conference about that.

In short: life is sleepy but good, and several times today I have even thought about opening new empty wordprocessor windows. Not today, but soon!

Oh yeah, and Auckland looks like this:

Albert Park, because Kensington is not the only place in the world where everything is named after Big Al

(Wo)Men in Black on Mt Eden, Rangitoto in back (sob! next time)

Beth can tell you the time

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all, right?

2009-03-22T08:27:00.003Z

So quick update. More to follow when we have time, as to which: see below.

We went to New Zealand and had a lovely time. Beth was an absolute champ, and being on Sydney time in Auckland meant we could have her up until 10pm local time and GO OUT FOR DINNER, WOOHOO! We managed far more than I would have thought possible - Art Gallery, Albert Park, Museum, The Domain (a bit), Mount Eden, Mission Bay/beach (BEST DAY EVER!), Zoo (recommended), Devonport (pissing down raining and not at its best, but nice Hunza Pie), Victoria Park (excellent play equipment) and Victoria Park Markets (LAME) and some drives here and there (visit Clevedon and buy pies from the deli, you will not be sorry) as well as Regan and Jace's wedding and surrounding events (congratulations Regan and Jace! it was a privilege to be there!). We stayed on the main drag into town, which in hindsight was not the world's greatest idea, but it was very convenient to everything.
Beth started walking on the second day we were there, and has now got it down pat, and is very pleased with herself.
Three days after we arrived home, we got a fabulous letter from our real estate agent saying that our landlord was not renewing the lease and we had to be out in three weeks. There are never more than 2 properties available for lease in the area, and if we move Beth drops off the childcare waiting lists we are on. Also, we have moved 6 TIMES IN 2.5 YEARS ALREADY. So, you know, not happy.
We found a new place within a week (nicer than this one but smaller, and still no dishwasher, and alas further from the train station) and the big part of the move is tomorrow. Fortunately it looks like we can get away with only 4 days lease overlap. I am steeling myself for jolly arguments with the current real estate agent about the condition of the property, given that it was absolutely filthy when we moved in and there is no way I am paying for it to be professionally cleaned in view of same. Of course, real estate agent for the new place annouced it would be cleaned and the lawns mowed before we moved in, and when we got the keys it was also filthy (although unlike this one - no rat or mouse poo, so there's that) and the lawns are knee high - all this for a paltry $500/week. Must remember that these people are SCUM. Except Claire, our Newcastle real estate agent, who was lovely.
We've now had so many places that we are running out of acronyms. However, the plan is now to avoid similar horrific events in the future by buying a place, so perhaps we can call the current one Temporary Accommodation.

So that's us, and that's the most recent excuse for not updating. Bye bye, Narnia. We hardly knew ye.

Oh, and...

2009-02-22T01:11:00.002Z

13-months-and-change addendum:

Beth can say "Daddy" (her first word, at 10 months), "Mum" (although usually in the form "mum mum mum mum" and usually when she wants something, eg. boob), "Ta" (when giving something away or asking for it back) and "Bob" (thanks to Nanna!).

I THINK she's also trying to say "Dougie" - Mum's dog's name - as she sort of says "da" repeatedly when she sees him. She also sort-of said "up" the other day, but she hasn't repeated that one so it might have been a fluke.

She can sign "finished" (hands straight up in the air) and "milkies" (one hand opening and closing). She has also used the milkies sign a couple of times when she wants a drink of water, so it might be of more general application! This week she used this sign a few times when we were reading her book about eating, which has a picture of a baby breastfeeding, and we thought she was terribly clever.

Did I mention a tree fell over in our back yard and took most of the clothesline with it? Grand. Landlord is going to cut it up next weekend, or so I am told.

Catalogue of 13 months

2009-02-20T09:50:00.003Z

Beth is now nearly 14 months old. Amazing!

She weighed in at 11.2kg at our nurse visit last week, putting her at the 90th or 95th percentile depending on which charts you use. However, she's had a lot of pain from her teeth over the last week and has been off her tucker and hitting up the mummy buffet something fierce day and night, which has also seemed to add to the sack of potatoes factor as breastmilk is basically a high-carb protein shake (BEEFCAKE! BEEFCAKE!), and we weighed her at 11.5kg a few days after that. Don't know if the extra grams will stick though. She's 78cm, which is 95th or 97th percentile depending on the charts.

Beth has quite the sense of humour these days. Favourite jokes include hiding, stealing daddy's glasses and putting them on mummy, play-biting my chin and Grant's elbow, and any form of peekaboo, especially around the couch. Grant is excellent at ducking down behind it, around the side, and popping up where she least expects it.

She is an excellent climber. She can climb the climbing wall up to the play equipment in the park across the road most but not all times, and can now go down the slippery dip by herself (on her tummy, feet-first). She reliably turns around and goes down steps backwards, and can also do that off our bed, although she has had two mighty tumbles from failing to turn all the way around!

She finds flights of stairs great fun, so it's a lucky thing we don't have any :)

She adores the great outdoors. She can amuse herself for hours in the backyard, poking at dirt and clambering around, with the odd attempt to eat toxic oleander. We have been to various beaches on the Parramatta River lately and seems to get a real kick out of the mud.

And just like Daddy, she LOVES the rain.

The great thing is that our back verandah is so holey that one can experience the rain indoors!

She can't walk by herself yet. However, she can go quite a distance with us just holding one of her hands. She can squat and stand very well with her Donnelly calves, and Auntie Tara taught her a game of down (squat) - up that has really helped with her standing and that she thinks is hilarious.

Grant has been taking her to swimming lessons once a week, and I am told she has a great time, and is also twice the height of the other babies.

She's been having a lovely time with her grandmothers on Wednesdays. She is always very excited to see them. She has been a little sooky and clingy on the first days I have at home with her each week (Thursdays), and usually wants to nurse a lot on that day. However, I am choosing to think of this as a nice thing - as GrandEm says, there is no harm in having a favourite!

And other than that, the only thing I can think of about our lovely big girl is that she never met a peg she didn't like, but she prefers the red ones (and will rip them off the clothesline if it is in reach).

Raspberry proof

2009-02-16T00:17:00.003Z

Observe:
(a) the awesome raspberry technique and
(b) the giant white floppy belly, proving that while I am size 12 now and was size 12 before I was pregnant with Beth, those? Are not the same size 12s! On the plus side, I think the floppiness improves the raspberry results.

I know mothers are supposed to say this kind of thing, but...

2009-02-13T00:27:00.002Z

My daughter can blow the best raspberries (aka zerberts) on PLANET EARTH. Seriously, her technique is immaculate. My tummy is her preferred canvas, which is more flattering than one might think, especially as she generally refuses to raspberry her dad :)

MUMMY FOR THE WIN!

Where's Spot?

2009-02-08T11:26:00.002Z

Beth is OBSESSED with her "Where's Spot?" book. As in wanting it to be read to her three times tonight and still trying to get it back into her hot little clutches after the third go-through obsessed. She is generally a huge fan of reading, and several times a day gets a book out and flips through it herself. Kudos to Grant for this, as he diligently reads to her every night, but I think we both supplied the DNA for the bookworm tendency!

Apparently babies are supposed to have trouble choosing between multiple toys, but Beth is all in favour of dragging toy after toy out of her drawers and playing with them, and was multitasking two musical toys and a trolley today. That would be my DNA, I guess :)

I went grocery shopping twice this weekend, and we had a box delivery of organic veg, but we STILL don't have enough ingredients to assemble an actual meal. That kind of lack of coordination requires real effort to achieve.

Stinking hot all weekend, but we have been getting good use out of the clamshell wading pools, and the cool change has hit just in time for me to ride into work tomorrow. Woohoo!

For the sake of posting

2009-02-07T00:14:00.002Z

It's kind of warm here, and we have gone from playing in a bucket of water in the backyard to keep cool, to filling the shell wading pool to keep cool, to filling one half shell in the morning and the other in the evening, because the morning one is too hot by then. And also full of yoghurt, but that's another story. The afternoon one got full of tuna/potato/cheese ball (recipe below) detritus and an apple, which is another story again.

We have been invaded by an invisible biting bug, possibly as a result of tree lopping across the road. It/they have bitten the crap out of Grant and I and are very very itchy, but Beth seems immune, thank God. I have done 8 loads of washing in 2 days and as much vacuuming as possible (limited, as Beth is mortally afraid of the Dyson). I THINK we are making headway, but it is fairly hard to fight an enemy you can neither see nor identify. Perhaps there are analogies in the middle east. Never get involved in a land war in Asia, or a pest eradication effort against a mystery pest!

Grant and Beth have been going to swim classes on Tuesdays, and I am told she loves it. Grant thought all the other babies were much younger than her, but it turns out that she's just still hulkingly tall. Grant has been riding her over in the WeeRide, which since we are so close to Olympic Park is faster than driving.

Beth has really been working on the walking problem of late. She still can't do walk, but she can stand unassisted for short periods of time, really kicks her legs around a lot, is cruising beautifully, and can "walk" if you hold onto only one of her hands quite well. She's putting less and less weight on things when she leans on them for support. She's not going to win any early mobility awards but we are very impressed with her anyway.

She also religiously goes off any elevated surface backwards, but sometimes sideways and backwards, which doesn't work out so well.

Her new trick is fake sneezing (HILARIOUS), and putting things on her head, including blueberries.

And did I mention she is so beautiful and smart and funny, and we are the luckiest people around?

Work 3 days a week is going pretty well. We have a bit more work on now. The alternating grandmother arrangement is going BRILLIANTLY. Beth has a lovely time on her nanna/Grandem days and is happy as a clam to see them.

Other news: I am riding to work 1 or 2 days per week, which is a 30km round trip. Aren't you impressed with me? It nearly killed me the first two times but I am gradually getting in better shape. I love the new bike, but it's fairly high geared and will be a while until I am strong enough to push its capabilities, I think.

TUNA, POTATO AND CHEESE BALLS
1 cup leftover mashed spud
1 small tin drained tuna, flaked
1 grated carrot
About 1/3 cup grated cheese
1 egg
Pinch salt

Mix together and fry in balls, sausages or patties. For grownups add about 1-2 teaspoons curry powder. Not bad.

How many words?

2009-01-26T07:16:00.002Z

So, if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much for a video? How much for THREE videos? (ok, two of them are from the same event, but meh...)

Here is one of Beth dancining. She turns the stereo on and off, and plays with the volume. Sometimes to startling effect:

The next two are from dinner last night. She was digging her blueberries. The first one is just general super-cuteness:

But in the second one, she does a few of her party tricks, including "Brrrrrr", "Pretend Sneeze", "Clapping", and the infamous "Wear a Blueberry as a Hat". We are very proud:

Ta

2009-01-21T06:18:00.004Z

This is what a fabulous first birthday looks like. We had a great time, Beth charmed the socks off all and sundry, and made out like a bandit in the present stakes (birthday right after Christmas has its downsides, yes, but then there is the fact that your presents come from the SALES and are roughly TWICE AS GOOD as usual). There was also chocolate cake: see cherub face above.

Beth has had a very busy few weeks, mastering cruising, walking with her trolley for amazing distances, the world's fastest proper crawl, going down steps backwards (including a whole flight of steps - heavens!), putting everything on her head, being so helpful when dressing that she's about five seconds off doing it herself, dipping foods in sauces, advanced cockatoo dancing, giving things away when you say "ta" and according to her grandmother, saying "ta" herself (dubious). If anyone doubts that developmental spurts cause sleep regressions, they can come visit at 3am.

She has also been for a number of rides on Daddy's bike, and loves it:

Hello, freedom!

Wurk has picked up again, and I almost had a normal workload the last couple of days, which has been a very welcome change and which I am choosing to regard as an excellent sign, GFC be damned.

I haven't made any exciting New Years' Resolutions because if I did I would break them, but I have signed up to an organic veg delivery service and vowed for Beth's sake to whoah back on the processed foods and the bread with every meal, and I AM GOING TO RIDE TO WORK DAMMIT (just as soon as I've fitted a pannier rack, and lights, and...NO I AM JUST GOING TO DO IT), I WANT to get more writing done, and generally to live life in a more thoughtful, less bare-survival way, and hopefully reduce the faffing about on the Internet. Oh wait.

Birthday girl

2009-01-09T10:21:00.005Z

And Grant managed to bend space and time to get her her birthday presents in time, so now she's the proud owner of a Tonka truck.

We had a nice play in the back yard with it today. I was trying to teach her the "lean on it like a walker" trick, but no dice. She does like pushing it around though.

Also today we passed a pleasant hour or so with a bucket and some bath toys on the lawn. Beth seems to splash a lot more if she's not in the water herself, or it seems like that, anyway. She managed to stand up by herself for a few seconds, too, but hasn't tried it again since. It was a nice day.

Then and now

2009-01-09T10:11:00.003Z

Then:
Now:

Then:
Now:

How all this all began

2009-01-08T00:46:00.006Z

Beth is one today. One! And we forgot to get her birthday present in time. And she and I have spent most of the morning doing housework. Don't tell her any of this on her 21st, please.

How all this began is ...well, it was in England, but that's the grown-up part of the story. Otherwise, this all began with Beth's birth, and that began on 6 January 2008.

About two hours after this photo was taken, in fact.

Beth had been due on the first or the fourth, depending on calculations (in our hospital in the UK, the ultrasound and prenatal wards were at war on the subject), and I was frankly fairly huge and puffed up. It was a really hot day. I had spent it out, including a long walk on the foreshore with Mum and Nanna (Mum kept asking me to check if Nanna's feet were in her wheelchair, but she wouldn't slow down when she asked, and I couldn't move fast enough to get in front to check), and later a milkshake with some old schoolfriends. Melissa insisted that Beth had dropped, and I launched into a tirade about how NOONE WAS TO TELL ME THE BABY WAS IMMINENTLY TO BE BORN BECAUSE CLEARLY SHE WAS NEVER, EVER COMING OUT.

I think we had a roast dinner for tea at Mum's. We went to bed quite late; after 11pm. And I lay down and felt a tiny pop, and immediately started having contractions almost exactly four minutes apart. When we came back to Australia, we had planned to have Beth at the low-intervention Belmont Birthing Centre with Grant's aunt, who is a midwife there, as I wanted someone we knew with us and wanted noone buggering around with my innards. Unfortunately that plan went awry with that tiny pop, as when I went to check in the bathroom, my waters had broken and they were stained swampy green with meconium. This ruled us out of Belmont's policy. Aunt was kind enough to ask us to come out to check if Beth was OK (she was hoping I would against all the odds have a super fast birth before anyone noticed I wasn't supposed to be there), but that meant we had to be admitted to hospital in early labour rather than wait until things were well and truly going as we had intended. That and the meconium also scared the hell out of me, which led to an adrenaline burst, which stalled things. So overnight my contractions grew further and further apart for the next 7 hours and then stopped (while having been close enough together all night to stop me sleeping), and then the real fun started when we were transferred to John Hunter, to a labour ward room that looked like an operating theatre, and
a nice fat drip full of syntocin to "augment" (ie restart) my labour was jammed in my arm and a permanent foetal monitoring belt attached. Thereafter I had contractions about every 2-2.5 minutes, of a lovely nasty back labour kind, as Beth was posterior. I was also chained to the bed with the monitoring equipment and the drip so could do nothing more than stand and shuffle and vocalise and bang my stress balls for pain management. Thankfully my friend the masseuse was with us, and she did very little other than massage my back for the next twenty hours or so. Between Grant coaching me with vocalisation and focus and Deirdre's massage I think we did remarkably well for a syntocin/posterior combination torture treatment. Humorously, after getting me to the maximum syntocin dose, the hospital kept wanting to ramp it up. Because if the maximum dose isn't working, obviously what you need is MORE.

On syntocin, one is supposed to have cervical dilation of 1cm every hour. Because of Beth's posterior presentation, I managed a cm about every 3-4 hours, and I had already been awake since 7ish the day before. Because I was dilating so slowly, I was still technically in pre-labour after having had contractions for 18 hours, which meant that the only pain relief option the hospital would offer was morphine. I remember I was cold and my legs were shaking in a way that felt like shock before I eventually gave in at about 6pm on the 7th, and had a dose of morphine. It brought immediate relief. My legs stopped shaking and I felt much warmer. After that I managed to lie down and dose for an hour or so, but then the contractions were unmanageable again and I had to move around. The midwife showed us a Belmont trick of turning a baby by propping your leg on a chair and pushing your belly against it with a contraction, which was excruciating, but may or may not have helped. A few hours later I had another dose of morphine, which frankly made me off my face without really helping with the pain. This was about 11pm, I think, although I don't remember the passage of time very well. At that point I had finally managed to get to 5cm dilation, which entitled me to get the epidural I had never ever wanted but could not manage without, as I really needed a rest.

The epidural was slightly ballsed up in that it only really worked down my back. They kept topping it up and all it did was give me a numb bum and back of legs while I could still feel the contractions through the front, but as most of the pain was in my back anyway it did help. I had another lie down, and when they came to check me half an hour or so later I was almost fully dilated. I frankly did not believe the doctor when he said this. At this point, everyone was still arguing about whether Beth had fully turned or was still posterior; the consensus was that she had turned kind of sideways. I remember a really weird feeling of quiet expectation, and I asked the midwife what a pushing urge felt like the minute before I had an enormous one. She told me not to push, as they didn't think I was fully dilated, but then she checked again and gave me the go-ahead.

I wanted to turn over rather than push up-hill from sitting, and Grant and Deirdre helped me turn over, even though my legs were quite numb. But pretty soon after that the syntocin drip ran out, and my contractions stalled again. This is not supposed to happen in second stage labour, but my body really, really did not want to be in labour, possibly because I was so alarmed by the hospital environment and because I really had very little to eat (discouraged more than once by midwives but I suppose I wasn't that hungry anyway) and was so tired.

They got the drip and the contractions restarted and rolled me back over to pushing uphill position, citing the epidural as the reason I had to do it that way (in hindsight this really ticks me off, as Grant can lift me over his freaking head, and could have held me in whatever position would have twisted Beth out the best). I think I had a few more pushing urges, but after that they stopped. The midwife asked me when I had last eaten, and I remember thinking "well, now we're f___ed." After that I pushed for about another 2 hours with nothing to help but worn-out contractions and engine fumes. It got to a point where pushing was agonising, like my pelvic bones were jammed somehow; pushing hurt both front and back. I think I was getting nowhere because Beth had failed to turn completely from posterior to anterior (only got halfway) and therefore I was having a lot of trouble pushing her head around the "U bend" at the last minute. Then the midwife basically called it, as I had been pushing for 2.5 hours by then and apparently there is some sort of benchmark for the permitted time for such things. I suppose I was sort of relieved because I didn't have anything left to put into the birth, but it also seemed like permission to quit trying which probably didn't help matters.

Beth's skull was mashed up from enduring such frequent contractions for so long, although the miswife preferred to blame us for this because I had had the temerity to stand for pain relief rather than lying down (!). This meant ventouse was not an option, so forceps were planned. Unfortunately the hospital won't do forceps these days outside an OR, so we had to consent to a C-section before they could try forceps. It took them a while to arrange this, I think, as in the end my second stage went for 4.5 hours before Beth was delivered, and I remember the contractions while that was happening were doozys as the epidural had largely worn off by then. They shaved me (undignified) and gave me something to drink to neutralise my stomach acids in case they had to do the surgery, which made me throw up - nice of them not to warn me about that, I thought. Then they wheeled me into surgery and did a full spinal block anaesthetic which hey, actually worked. They hoiked my legs up into stirrups like in all the tv shows and slung up a sheet so we couldn't see my belly, only the faces of the doctors. It was completely surreal.

They will only do a forceps delivery in fairly perfect conditions due to the risk to the baby. I was pretty sure I was going to end up cut, and after all that time trying! But then the obstetrician and consultant looked down behind the sheet, and they had huge smiles on their faces. "The baby's so low!" on of them said. I had gotten her to +2 station, apparently (which makes me think maybe someone should have given me a lolly and a huge pep talk and got me to have another crack at it, but anyway). Forceps went in; I couldn't really see. Then they asked me to push. For the first time the whole labour, a medical professional complimented my pushing efforts, and a few seconds later she was out. It was 5.50am on Tuesday, 8 January 2008, about thirty hours after the first contraction.

But that was only really the start of the bad part.

They passed her over my chest as if to put her on my chest, but she was pretty grey and not breathing, so they rushed her to the side of the room. It took a long time for her to cry, and it wasn't really the lusty cry you hope to hear. They put her in my arms and she was staring at me, but every time she tried to breathe her lungs were deflating and she was making a horrible squeaking noise.
I was fairly disconnected right then. There was no instant bond. I was really worried for her, but I didn't love her yet. It didn't seem like she was mine, I suppose; for ages, I thought they had just yanked her out of me - "taken birth" - which didn't help the connection, I guess. It wasn't until Grant showed me the photos with the forceps removed that I realised that they had certainly helped, but I had pushed her out.

Beth was taken to the NICU with respiratory distress after only a few minutes with me. I sent Grant with her (and later she had visits from Mum, Deirdre and I think Sue while I was still in recovery), while I was wheeled into the recovery ward and basically left to my own devices for an hour or so (helping my recovery how I wonder?) while everyone rushed around the woman in the screened off bed next door, who I think may have been dying. Mum came in to see me, and Grant brought pictures of the baby, as he had sent Deirdre to sit with her while he came to see me. Beth looked in such bad shape. It felt like my fault. It still does, even though in hindsight and with further reading I know that two major causes of respiratory distress are syntocin and early clamping of the umbilicus, both of which of course were done. And that even though morphine is also a cause of respiratory distress, I had been put in a situation which was not really survivable without it.

Apparently as a special favour, rather than take me straight to the maternity ward, a maternity ward midwife met me in the NICU in my giant hospital bed with my paralysed legs, and I got to see Beth for the first time properly. I couldn't hold her, as she was covered in tubes. She knew my voice though. She turned her head towards me when she heard me, even with all the tubes.

That made me feel a bit better.

Then it was back down to a ward of 5 women who all had their babies with them, while mine was in NICU. Mum made me a cheese sandwich. I still wasn't very hungry, but it was the first thing I'd eaten in days. Aunt Sue helped me express some colostrum, so she could take it up for Beth. I think I slept for about an hour, my first sleep in three days, and then I went back up to the NICU in a wheelchair, as the anesthetic still hadn't properly worn off. I got to feed Beth for the very first time of thousands.

She was a natural, which is just as well, as there was noone there to help us get started.

But after this we had to leave her behind, as once a baby gets into the steely jaws of NICU they will find a reason to hang onto her. In fact, the way I knew I had finally bonded to my beautiful girl was when she was a month or so old and I started bawling my eyes out, because it was suddenly intolerable to me that we had had to leave her, with strangers, a brand new baby who knew nothing of the world except my voice and my smell, stuck in a freaking hospital ward by herself, without the slightest thing to give her comfort.

Beth had had a high lactate reading at birth from the long labour, so was at risk of hypoglaecemia, so even though her blood sugar readings which were all 2.8 or above were considered normal by the maternity ward (above 2.5), they weren't by the NICU (2.9 or above), so she had to stay while I dragged my wounded self up three floors rom the maternity ward to the NICU to feed her every three hours and at one stage every two hours (all while trying to recover from a 30 hour labour on top of a 16 hour day awake), even though it seems to me that the best way to elevate a baby's blood sugar would be to, I don't know, MAKE IT EASY FOR THE MOTHER TO BREASTFEED THE BABY. If I weren't such a stubborn bugger, she would have been on formula; the miracle is that anyone leaves the NICU breastfeeding.

After that, she had borderline bilirubin levels and therefore ended up in a light bed for a day. But finally, finally we were allowed to have her in our room, and a day after that we were the hell out of there, and home at Mum's.

And after that we didn't leave her anywhere by herself, ever, and anyone who has a problem with that can put themselves through all of this before they pass judgement.

Some months later the hospital finally sent me my discharge papers. They look like a train wreck. Meconium staining, augmentation, hypertension (apparently my blood pressure started skyrocketing during labour, so of course they decided to make the situation even more comfortable by adding a blood pressure cuff to the mix), forceps, respiratory distress, hypoglaecemia, jaundice, the whole shebang. And it made me cry, because that "maternal exhaustion" seemed such a glib way of passing off what I had made it through. But I'd do it all again tomorrow, for Beth. And I'll keep cuddling her to make up for it as long as I live.

Damn hot...

2009-01-06T09:07:00.004Z

Seemingly summer has decided to finally make an appearance... and with gusto.

I took Beth to SOPAC for a paddle and to sign up for lessons, but as the security guard so eloquently put it "it's hot, so the queue is 1 1/2 hours long". I went home.

But fortunately I have a bucket and a hose:

Christmas pix

2009-01-04T00:40:00.004Z

A first Christmas* looks roughly like this, I believe:

Christmas morning at Nanna Em's

Christmas afternoon at Nanna Jan's and Poppy's, with rocking cow

With Dougie, looking at Little Puss

The Poopsmith!

Second trip to the beach; world's roughest surf at Bar Beach

And a Mummy's first Christmas looks like this:

Isn't it beautiful? Isn't Grant the best husband ever?

* Christmas = Christmas + ensuing days

Ding a ling

2009-01-02T00:33:00.002Z

We acquired a WeeRide for Beth for Christmas, and she's had a few short jaunts around the yard on it with Grant. She loves it, and will reliably hit the "sleeping pedestal" to indicate "MORE!", but as she HATES her bike helmet, our options for longer trips are limited for the time being.

This brings me to the cute story, however. Grant was putting the WeeRide base crossbar on his bike yesterday in the back yard, and Beth was helping. By way of entertaining her, Grant dinged the bike bell. A few minutes later he heard it ringing again. Beth had worked out how to stretch up to the handlebar and ding away!

She's also managed to extrapolate the operational methods of her now massive collection of Little People toys. Most have a button to press that plays a song, and it's easier to press with a figure seated on it. Grant had taught Beth how to do this with her aeroplane, and yesterday she tried it with a train she had never seen before. Clever clogs.

I think we are heading into slight temper tantrum land as Beth has had a few meltdowns this week for no apparent reason. Breakfast this morning was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. However, I took her across the road to the park (THANK GOD FOR THE PARK) and she perked right up. And started climbing the wallclimbing/ladder thing. Saints preserve us.

Will pop some pix up soon.

A new day

2009-01-01T01:32:00.002Z

Before we go ahead and do a year-in-reflection type thingy, I just need to write this down:
109.7kg.

Adequate, not outstanding, but probably 10kg less than this time last year (and I think about 8kg from my birthday). So I'm happy I have not gone back up to what I was, and particularly as the only real exercise I have been doing is riding to work 3 days a week, but it is time to put some focus back into fitness. Beth will be walking soon, and I will need to be able to keep up!

So starting today, the Wii Fit is coming back out, and I am going to aim to go jogging 3 times a week. Add in the cycle commuting, and that should help me somewhat. Lets see how long it takes to dip below 100kg...

Life's a beach - Christmas #1

2008-12-29T01:08:00.002Z

Beth had her very first Christmas, with a truly impressive present haul, most of which makes loud noise and is trying to teach her the alphabet. She seemed to like it a lot, while the real big hit was of course the cellophane wrap.

I still win the Christmas 2008 smackdown because I got this. Sooooooooooooo pretty, and rather fast even despite my wobbly jelly calves. I am planning to commute to work 2/3 of the time this year when I go up to three days in a probably vain effort to get some regular exercise and regain my former cut legs, oo er. So far I have only managed the Fernleigh track and Memorial Drive though (steep!). I must point out that this present is also evidence that I won the best husband award as well as Christmas 2008, as he not only managed to get this spunky 2008 model instead of the truly hidjus bamboo print 2009 model but also got a handsome discount to boot. And all of this in exchange for a couple of CDs. I love you, Grant! sorry your Christmas present sucked!

We have been hanging out in Newcastle and Beth has had lots of time with her grandparents, and with the cousins and aunties and uncles. She's really enjoyed having so much kid time, so New Year's Resolution #34534 (after buy Grant better presents) is to get her into a playgroup in our new neck of the woods.

Now that Summer has sort of finally hit, we are doing a lot more water stuff. Grant has been taking Beth to the Olympic Park pool, and she had a swim in the Manning River at Wingham, and a paddle at Horshoe Beach on Saturday (in the rain, no less) and yesterday had her first proper beach swim at Bar Beach. We put her down on the sand at the water's edge in her rashy with a naked butt, and she played with the wet sand for a while, then got hit with a wave, looked surprised, and promptly started crawling towards the water for more. There may have been some gleeful squeals, too. She was "swimming" (with our assistance of course) between both of us and really getting the kicking going. In short, she had a lovely time, and so did we. And afterwards we waited by the kiosk for fish and chips for several hours but they were good when they finally showed up. While we waited, Beth had another play in the sand with Susan, and apparently good times were had there too.

If you are after a family restaurant of the sort that provides free balloons and replaces same without being asked when your baby chews them until they pop (question - if she didn't then react to the noise, is this a sign she is a psychopath?), may I recommend the formerly oo er but now meals-come-with-crayons Blue Water Pizza on Queens Wharf in Newcastle? You're welcome!

Holidays with family have been lovely but we are not getting quite as much "nuclear family" time as we are used to, which feels a bit odd. We are heading back to Sydney tomorrow, so I guess then we will go back to the usual routine of cooked breakfasts and daytime naps!

Milestones

2008-12-19T04:59:00.002Z

Today Beth and I managed to get organised enough to go and get Beth's very first PHOTO WITH SANTA! She seemed utterly unfazed by the experience. I however was kind of freaked out by the thought that we would be going through this for years. I am not entirely sure on the lying to offspring about source of gifts thing, not least because really, I am not entirely sure on the whole gifts thing itself. Why can't we just give gifts when we would like to, and more importantly, when we come across something that would be perfect for a person, rather than what I am currently experiencing, aka Christmas 2008: Revenge of Christmas, what with quite a lot of shopping at gunpoint at the last minute.

If I didn't know what to buy you, you are getting a tin of biscuits. You're welcome.

Anyway, the Christmas pix turned out rather well, especially if you ignore the fact that Beth has a tiny bit of apple on her bottom lip in them. I feel that it adds authenticity. Really I am just impressed that with transport to and from the shops and a trip to IKEA as well as Santa and the bookshop, Beth sat on her butt contentedly snacking for 2+ hours without getting narky at all. Well, she did insist I buy her another rattle when I stupidly showed her the one I was getting for Wendy's baby (AWESOME RATTLE, might I add, so I don't really blame her).

On which topic: to date I have been rather smug about the modest amount of toys Beth has. I have only just realised that this is because she has neither had her first Christmas nor her first birthday, and she is about to have one immediately after the other. I suspect this is going to mean HELLO, PLASTIC CRAP! But since she has a marked fondness for plastic crap I will probably get over it in time and let go of my irrational prejudices against petrochemicals and other endocrine disruptors.

Other than the obtaining of biscuits to put in tins and of course the interminable wrapping process, I think I might now be just about finished with Christmas. Since I hadn't even started until Wednesday, the relief is immense.

I have had a reasonable week before Christmas. We haven't had the usual pre-Christmas rush at work at all, which is terrifying, but we're still partying away as if the GFC did not loom rack and ruin over our shoulders. I had a very swank client lunch on Wednesday, which Jan very kindly came down to mind Beth so I could attend. They apparently had a very nice time, but while Beth enjoys a tuna and cream cheese sandwich as much as the next gal, I think my lunch was probably better.

In other news, Beth has spent this week working on proper crawling and on cruising. She's now very solid at standing now. She still holds on to things for support, but doesn't need to lean on them, and can do it with only one hand. She's very pleased with herself and we're very impressed! Her proper crawling is quite slow and wobbly compared to her speedy commando crawl, but she is becoming more proficient and I am making sure to put her on as many uncomfortable surfaces as possible to demonstrate the wisdom of getting one's belly and elbows off the ground.

We're back in Newcastle for ground zero of the festive season and then back in Sydney for some well-earned relaxation time.

Proof of Life

2008-12-16T23:51:00.003Z

When Loz went back to work, I started taking photos of Beth with my phone to keep her in the loop throughout the day. Flicking through the photos, there are some quite cute ones in there. Not the best quality, but ok...

Here are some of my favourites...

UPDATE: for some reason, the right side of the photos have been cropped by Blogger, but you get the idea.

Beth at the top of the jungle jim in the park across the road, chuffed with herself for making it up the "climbing wall":

Trying to break out, or trying to break in?:

Peekaboo! (still one of her favourite games):

Beth falling asleep on the way back from the pool:
Crawling UP ON HER HANDS!:
Just looking so goddamn cute:
Admiring her awesome food platter:

Her first taste of Hungry Jacks ("not food"):
"Well, no, I am not actually asleep!":
"I'm coming to get you...":
Climbing Daddy jungle jim:
Beth tries to share her food...:

At the Donnelly family Christmas party, Beth received this plane from Richard and Carol. I wasn't sure if she would like the noises it makes (she's scared of the barking noises her Lamaze dog makes). Turns out I needn't have worried, she loves it!:

The full gallery can be found here.

You'll note that the severe majority of photos are of food or her eating. This is because it's the only time she is still and secure. The second most common theme is Beth coming to get the camera...

Oh, and there is this little beauty:

Loz had mentioned she had a nice lunch at the cafe, so I had to show her the laksa I got for my lunch...

Anyway, I'm still working through the "proper" photos, sorting and uploading, so hopefully I'll post about those soon.

11 months

2008-12-11T05:34:00.004Z

That's a smile, I swear

Beth is eleven months old. The astute will realise that that is 12 months - 1. In other words, HOLY CRAP. So many people told me in Beth's early weeks (aka nurse-a-thon 2008) that it went by so quickly. I thought they were just trying to say This Too Shall Pass but as it turns out they were just telling the truth. It seems like just yesterday that she smiled for the first time, that she was born (so happy and such a sad time for all of us, stuck in that hospital), that I was pregnant, that we were in England, that we were swanning about bits of Europe with her just a tiny passenger, not even a bump.

And at the same time, it feels like she has been with us forever. We are so proud of her. I should get her birth certificate framed or something because I am WAY more smug about that than the four testamurs now gracing the dining room.

Let's see, recent developments:

Beth babbles "dada" specifically, to Grant. He may have lorded it over me about this for a while, but...
Last weekend, she started babbling "mummum" and almost immediately started doing it specifically, to me. Now I will admit she doesn't do it as often as "dada" and really only does it when she wants something, but since she only previously made the "mum" noise while screaming, I'll take it.
She can now pull up very quickly on just about any object, and has started to lean less. She's also started to cruise along things like her cot, but not very quickly.
She has two new teeth (top outer middle).
We have travelled every weekend for the past 3, and she still hates portacots, probably exacerbated by the teeth.
She is always very excited to see her grandparents, and has now started leaning towards them from me for cuddles.
She is getting way more interested in toys. She gave her Lamaze chime garden a real workout this afternoon, and monkey puppet continues to be a favourite, and she has been looking at her books in her bedroom periodically all day.
Contemporaneously with the above, she is getting much better at entertaining herself, albeit not so much today as the teeth are making her a bit of a sooky pants.
She's hovering around the 10kg mark, which since she was 9kg at 6 months isn't particularly impressive, but she is a freakishly tall 77cm or so.
She has an array of smiles, from winsome to the above, which shows off all six chompers and is usually accompanied by a growl. Don't mess with Beth, peoples; she may bite (OK, she DOES bite, I have a mark still healing).

Off to Newcastle-Wingham-Newcastle this weekend. The Wingham Country Club is being temporarily renamed Wingham House of Donnellys for the occasion. Should be fun!

How have you been?

7 things

2008-11-26T23:57:00.002Z

Apparently I have been tagged for a meme, and while I am unfamiliar with the etiquette, I am informed that this means that I have to write 7 weird/random things about myself. Ahem:

Approximately 10% of people seem to think that I am from the US, the UK or Canada when they first meet me, including a woman in London who, when I said I was from Newcastle (forgetfully), exclaimed: "Oh, I thought you sounded Northern!" Northern?
I have two first class Honours degrees (= three testamurs), a Master of Laws with Distinction (highest UK rank) and the Evatt Medal for the best graduating student from my law school. I missed out on a University Medal in Arts by .4 of a GPA. Oh, and I technically have a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice too, with a bare credit average, but I never bothered picking it up from College of Law, although I might do if we ever run out of toilet paper.
An hour of my professional time will cost you $450 (excluding GST of course), but I'm worth it.
Despite the above, I'm currently proudest of the fact that I can pump 230ml of milk in one pumping session of half an hour (enough to feed my daughter all day). On one view that means Beth's milk costs my wurkplace about a grand a litre, but as I can often bill while pumping it probably evens out.
I've moved five times in two years, twice intercontinentally, twice while heavily pregnant and twice with a young baby. And because of this...
I don't know where my practising certificate is, although I am obliged by law to display it in my office. I also don't know where 90% of our other stuff is, including the Best Coat of All Time and the Best Cookbook of All Time but no doubt they will show up eventually. Did I mention I hate moving, and even though the current place has (huge) defects and is (hugely) expensive I am strongly tempted to stay here forever just to avoid ever packing again?
We currently live across the road from the first house we rented in Sydney. Fortunately it was detonated and replaced with a McMansion, or I might accidentally walk into the wrong house.

Bonus #8 - I am rarely, if ever, the mother I want to be, but fortunately Beth seems to like me anyway.

What the hell is a Meme?

2008-11-26T02:18:00.006Z

Apparently we have been memed. I believe Karen cheated by tagging both Lauren and I, but here's mine anyway. I suspect this will mostly be a revelation of my OCD traits...

Rules: Link the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links. Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I don't believe there are ANY convicts in my family history.
I like to chew my food evenly on both sides of my mouth - you know, 7 chews left side, 7 chews right side, whatever. This has actually become less of an obsession lately.
My front teeth are as sharp as razor blades. They are half-caps. They broke off after being embedded in my parents' (ancient) stereo when I was about 12. Long story, suffice to say my brother was getting revenge. The original teeth were re-attached by a very excited emergency dentist. They were subsequently replaced by caps in 2 different incidents - one involving a eucalyptus lolly, and the other a forward somersault. It is these fake caps that have worn down to razor sharp incisors.
I almost always have a pair of baby socks in my pocket. You never know when Beth's feet will be cold.
I own 5 bikes, including a very sophisticated folding bike and a VERY high end dual suspension mountain bike, and yet the only one I have riden in the last 3 months is the steel single speed.
Beth assures me that my monkey impersonation is both impeccable, and hilarious.
My wife earns more money than me, I work part time and look after our daughter the rest of the week, and there is a chance I will become a full time stay at home dad - and I am more than ok with all of that :)

And now I shall terminate this chain-letter type thing here. Partly on the principle of the thing, but mostly because I don't actually know 7 bloggers...

Not going to win any updating awards, are we?

2008-11-26T00:04:00.005Z

Maybe we were eating mulberries. I confess nothing!

Hi all

Clearly I am the world's least organised person, but in lieu of more regular updates:

wurk has been strangely quiet this week. Too quiet. Clearly they are plotting something.
my Blackberry continues to rule my life, however, even if it is just relaying information on the kind of muffins available in my wurkplace today (not that I ever buy the muffins, but it is important to stay abreast of these kinds of things).
I am probably going to be moving up to 3 days a week in the near future, which might make things at the wurk end a little easier to manage in terms of workflow, I think.
Grant has been riding to work every day since we moved back to Sydney, and has dropped something like 7kg in two months, which is a pretty good effort as well as partially justifying his extensive bike expenditure over the years. Go Grant!
Beth has been very busy in the last month or so, including:

mastering hands and knees. Not crawling properly yet, but probably doesn't feel the need to bother as she goes like the blazes commando-style (of course, commando crawling is pretty harsh on the clothes, but eh)
kneeling unsupported.
pulling up to standing on every available object, which means I get pantsed several times a day. Note so self: no elastic waistbands!
actually allowing us to feed her with a spoon reasonably often, and feeding herself with a spoon pretty well, although she hasn't quite go the hang of which way the spoon needs to face for this to work so wears quite a bit of it.
being a bit more interested in solid foods and a bit less interested in the Mummy Milkbar. In fact, she ate a whole nectarine herself the other day. Put anything in a wrap and she will eat it.
getting more independent! Grant warned me about this from his two days with her this week, but I didn't quite believe him until we went across the road to the park and she promptly crawled away from me like a shot rather than attacking me and nagging to be picked up per usual. She then proceeded to pull up on the fence around the play equipment, then to play in the dirt making "dirt angels" with her arms and generally (a) having fun and (b) getting incredibly dirty. Because there is no (a) without (b) as we all know.
being generally more interested in toys. I bought her a monkey hand puppet last weekend, as she loves it when Grant makes monkey noises at her. Not only does she adore the puppet, and laugh hysterically when Grant gives her "monky kisses" with it, but she took it off Grant and held it up in front of the mirror, faced it at herself, then at Grant, then at the mirror, and looked at its face in the mirror, so clearly she's a genius, or at least a budding puppeteer.
sharing. She keeps offering us pieces of her food. Sometimes she is quite forceful, like when naughty daddy declined to eat her banana in the backyard and therefore had it jammed into his mouth. Possibly a commentary on our slightly less patient moments of feeding her solids, too.
really getting into her books. Grant reads to her every night, and she loves it, especially everyone's favourite daddy-knows-best book "Papa's Song," which I recommend, and her DK "peekaboo" books, ditto.

And now I believe I may need a nap!

Stuff

2008-11-05T04:38:00.003Z

I fear that inertia will destroy this here blog if I don't post about something, so I am going to post about:

(a) Wurk

Wurk has been good lately. I am a month into return-to-office territory for 2 days a week, and while at first I didn't really have enough to do, or when I did get enough to do was getting it too late in the two days to get it done without risking an aneurysm, I have managed to bill 6+ hours a day for the last four days in the office. Which makes me feel well chuffed. Of course, the only reason I am billing that is because I am doing additional work from home while Beth sleeps, but eh, given that my job used to be a 10 hour day and now I'm only working 9-5, it's fair enough.

Wurk gets extra points for being in the silly season, with parties and free lunches right left and centre (so long as they are on Monday or Tuesday, of course).

(b) Beth (who else?)

Beth has been giving her daddy a run for his money this week, as she seems to have decided bottle = evil. While I seem to make about 250ml during the day, based on what I pump at lunch at work, she's currently only taking about 150ml on her days with Grant. This makes her hungry and because she's my daughter, YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE HER HUNGRY.

However, I am hopeful it is just a passing thing, as she has been doing some heavy developmental work this week, including:

pushing up to hands and knees
mastering the gentle art of pushing up to kneeling
trying to pull up to standing
going from kneeling/sitting and from sitting/crawling
feeding herself with a spoon from a bowl (CUTEST THING EVER, she sort of stirs the bowl to get food on the spoon) although I confess to helping with the spoon loading process. I am very glad of this as while she could feed herself with a spoon at 6 months, she lost interest shortly thereafter which made us have to get far too creative with finger food, as she is still a BETH DO IT SELF kind of girl.

I have had a lovely day at home with her so far, although we have done very little other than hang out in the backyard. One of the nicest things about being back at work, apart from the cold hard cash, is how much I enjoy spending time with Beth these days. It doesn't feel like a job anymore!

(c) Grant

I happen to be married to this very sweet (but manly!) man, who changes nappies without a peep (if one disregards the retching noises we have both been prone to since Beth starting hitting the MEAT), will reliably get up at the crack of dawn with Beth if she wakes up early, invents hilarious baby games such as "couch jungle gym" and "face sucker," does the bath and book shift every night - and in addition to it all is a deeply romantic gentleman who never fails to pay nice compliments, even while I am, objectively speaking, a saggy, greasy-haired and mildly chewed up wreck. This life would not be half so fun without him and this parenting caper might be downright scary. HI HONEY!

By the way, Grant has been riding to work every freaking day since he started back 3 days in the office, including when it was 15 and when it was 36. But I might still win, because I once rode home from the city in 42ish temps. Grant has not however been doing any Wii Fit, and FOR SHAME. How am I going to get addicted again if he doesn't first?

(d) Travel

We got brave and took Beth to Brisvegas for Grant's brother's wedding, which was lovely. Travelling with a baby not so lovely, but she did sleep quite well in the Pram of Sleeping +8, just not in the Portacot of Doom.

How have you all been?

YOU!

2008-10-17T00:28:00.004Z

Beth has three new tricks this week - getting onto her hands and knees, pulling up to kneeling, and POINTING LIKE THE EVIL MONKEY FROM "THE FAMILY GUY":

Beth shows off new skillz; Monsieur le Frog observes upside-down

I defy you not to explode at the cuteness.

Oh wait, there is actually a fourth developmental leap that has been around for a bit, as the "hamming it up for the camera" gene has now been activated: see above.

I had my first two-day week at work this week. It was a little easier actually to get work done, I must say, although I think we have a ways to go before I am as useful to my generous employer as I want to be. Beth was less angelic for Grant this week, though, and both evenings after work and for the days I have been with her, she has been frequently declaring her PASSIONATE LOVE FOR THE BOOB. Sometimes this kind of looks like when almost-weaned puppies ram their mother and cause her to fall over so they can feed. Still makes me feel all special, though :)

Back to wurk

2008-10-11T23:29:00.004Z

Beth likes eggs, and lurves Daddy

So last week I returned to economically productive capacity in the formal sense, ie went into the office. And it was grand. There was cake. There was secretarial support of the first order. There were interesting matters and intellectual stimulation and grown-up conversation that did not centre around the feeding and care of Beth. AND I got to leave at 5pm, which I have never ever done before, and no-one questioned this. IT WAS AWESOME!

Beth stayed home with Grant and I have it on good authority, supported by Tara, that she had a lovely time. Adventures were had, I believe:

Grant, unlike me, can take Beth out of the house without packing for arctic expedition

Certainly she seemed very cheerful when I got home, before she saw me and started whingeing to nurse, then affixed herself for the next 2 hours or so. I must say that my return to work was about as stress-free as it could possibly have been - no childcare run or preparation of Beth required; all I had to do was get up, feed her, and leave. And of course after several weeks of silly buggers sleep habits, she slept beautifully for him (or slept "like someone else's baby" as he put it), between being sunny and cheerful and adventurous and fun. Grant said I couldn't have planned a better first day of full-time parenthood for him. He is now addicted and I may yet persuade him to stay home full-time while I go out and slay savage beasts to feed the family. Or actually, both of us working part-time will I think be wonderful, not to mention nice for sanity.

Grant sent me the following two pictures as "proof of life" while I was in the office. I defy anyone not to become all squooshy:

Oh yeah, I'm cute

Mum visited last week to knock the garden into shape, and it is now looking almost neat in some parts. She was visiting on Weds/Thurs, so Friday was my first day home alone with Beth last week, and until I locked us out of the house in the evening, we had a lovely time hanging out in the backyard. She only ate a healthy modicum of dirt, too.

Plus, I like the money.

The only downside of work was lactation-related. Our pumping facilities are a bit abysmal. As in, give that our offices are glass-fronted and therefore unsuitable for the modesty of a good corporate lawyer, I was offered two options for pumping, but #1 which used to be the "family room" for sick kids is now someone's office and also the kitchen for the whole floor, #2 is the sick room with a hidden power point and no desk space to work on while playing cow, and both are, of course, unlockable. This would have been OK if a "do not disturb" sign was efficacious, but I got walked in on in #1 despite do not disturb sign. On the other hand, I used to be shy about pumping despite not minding breastfeeding in public (of course, Beth DOES mind breastfeeding in public), but as I have now had to tell about a million people that I was pumping and have a million others either see me do it or see me dealing with the output, I am pretty well over that. Also, I can now pump while working, which is handy as I would otherwise have difficulty justifying 40 mins out of a shortened workday. But I might try to get a bigger table for the sick room.

In short: I am back. Not bigger and better than before, since I'm now effectively only working a weekend, but it's lovely just the same.

Crawling revisited

2008-10-04T10:12:00.003Z

Also, Beth totally has the commando crawl down pat now. Proof:

The new place has a lot more space for her to crawl around in, so we expect to see the development of very buff crawling muscles indeed shortly.

Full circle

2008-10-04T09:24:00.007Z

Househunt 2008 #2 is finished at last, and we finally have a new pad. We have christened it Narnia, not because it is magical or accessed via a wardrobe, but because of this:

Why yes, that is a lamp-post in the back yard, and no, we don't know why.

Less artistic lamp-post shot:

Jungle baby is coming to get you.

It happens to be across the road from our first Sydney house (or rather the McMansion that now stands where the Fifties Dreamhouse once stood). Which makes it quite cute when our lovely new neighbours welcome us to the 'hood. It also means we have come full circle through some of the world's great places - Concord West (Fifties Dreamhouse), Homebush (All Mod Cons Dreamhouse on Highway to Hell), Notting Hill (Pixieflat), Newcastle (Versatile Solutions for Modern Living Soulless Townhouse), and back to Concord West. We are pleased as punch to be back in the old stomping ground. There's a park across the road, and Bicentennial Park is 15 minutes' walk away. We can walk to Rhodes shopping centre in 30 mins or the Bakehouse Quarter in 15, the local shops (takeaways x 2, cafes x 3 and a decent corner shop), our chiro and the station are only two blocks away, Grant can ride to work in under 40 minutes, and I can train it in in about 35 from door to door barring Unforseen Public Transport Incidents. The location, in other words, is wonderful.

The new house - well, not quite wonderful. It has wooden floors for Beth to wee upon without fear of carpet damage, a yard for her to play in without getting third degree knee grazing unlike the previous courtyard (and she LOVES the backyard - see jungle baby shots above), a HILLS HOIST TO DRY NAPPIES ON IN TRUE AUSTRALIAN STYLE WOOHOO! (ETA: unfortunately not as good as I'd hoped, as it has a tree rammed through it so won't turn), a nonfunctional spa bath for ?, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms. And it has bars on the windows, what with Concord West being a hotbed of crime. You have to watch out for those latte-sipping Concord teenagers with their polite manners, I tell you.

It does not have:
-a dishwasher (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!)
-a remotely logical layout
-a reasonable rent, even after we haggled $20/week off, but that's Sydney for you, I guess
-any proximity whatsoever to my Novocastrian mother's group, alas.

It also clearly did not have previous tenants with any concept of house or garden maintenance, as the yard is overrun with weeds and the cupboards HAD MOUSE POO IN THEM, and the floors were v. grimy, but Jan and Paul, Industrial Cleaners par excellence as well as being very nice parents-in-law to have, came the other day and beat the place into shape. And now I find myself kind of getting to like the place. But not its lack of dishwasher, which is inexcusable. Good shower though.

The room that will be Robert's is still full of boxes, but don't tell him, OK?

Beth really wants to stress that she likes the yard:

Jungle baby is getting closer by the second...

We're missing things Novocastrian but really getting into the swing of the neighbourhood. Today we had yum cha with Vron and Fi at Rhodes, and Beth ate a fair few dumpling fragments. Then we went for a stroll around the strangely named Lake Belvedere in Bicentennial Park, and Beth looked at the duckies:

Beth points out that there is no birdy cuter than the teenaged duckling

And I am back in the office on Tuesday, without a single dry-cleaned suit, thanks to the ^%#! public holiday when I least expected it.

Now to get organised with this whole living-and-returning-to-work caper. Wish us luck. Separate post to follow with our farewell to Newcastle shots!

Where's the cheese?

2008-09-05T00:04:00.005Z

Where's the cheese? (credit: PRC). Here's the cheese:

And after this, the cheese was all over the floor.

As you can see, Beth is mastering the pincer grasp quite nicely, and can "chew" in so far as anyone can chew with two teeth (actually, quite well - she can somehow bite off pieces of toast and apple - impressively sharp gums). However, still not really keen on solid foods except as objects to play with. Leaves, on the other hand, are quite tasty:

We keep trying, because we are stupid that way.

The important thing is that she is SUPER CUTE.

As you know, nothing pleases me so much as a pornographic trade mark dispute, and I got to play with a really neato case of same at work this week, and for a fancy client, to boot. Very entertaining from a legal perspective although quite freaky from any other perspective including basic aesthetics. Grant has been doing a lot more of the heavy lifting baby-wise preparatory to looking after Beth alone two days a week, so I've actually managed to do more than six hours of work this week without sacrificing Beth's every naptime to the cause, which is wonderful. There was a day where I only changed one nappy, even!

Grant engaged in heavy lifting, baby-wise; Beth engaged in daddy tom-tom drums

We're still househunting in Sydney - or rather, I have delegated the househunting in Sydney to those who are occasionally in Sydney - and it has been a bit depressing. Not much around, and all quite expensive. Still, something will show up in the nick of time like always, I should imagine. In the worst case scenario I can ramp up the hours working from home in the short term and potentially slightly delay returning to the office. Not for long though!

On your marks...

2008-08-26T11:10:00.007Z

Well, so much for the regular updates, but we have lots of excuses!

Beth has had a busy couple of weeks with a full itinerary of screeching and so on. She has been trying to figure out the crawling caper, which has made her quite cross and unwiling to be left to play on the floor by herself as she used to. We have been drilling her in mad crawling skillz and as you can see from this, our mutual efforts have finally borne fruit:

This is day 1 of commando crawling. Day 4 is a bit more stylish. No pix yet.

This last week, she has also learned to blow raspberries on herself, us, and various other objects, which I can't find as a milestone in any parenting book but which is nevertheless of course TOTALLY AWESOME.

In another one for the Beth Do It Self books, mashed banana is unacceptable but DIY nana is something she can get on board with:

She also likes DIY celery. And baths:

Oh, and as you can see (if not blinded by the explosive cuteness) Beth has grown more hair. I think she's aiming for a flat top.

The last few weeks have also included her first ever illness (daddy's nasty head cold, and no mummy didn't kill daddy for infecting her, but she did think dark and deadly thoughts), which made her miserable, and a really horrific bout of teething which has also made her miserable, in addition to the learning-to-crawl misery. It has been a fun time where all food has been refused and sleep has returned to its previous very scatty state. But whatever doesn't kill us only makes us really ticked off!

I am back at work which has been quite stimulating and fun, although has slightly detracted from the staring-at-the-wall time available to me. Just as well I am now earning the dough again though, as Queenie the wunderdog is reaching her expensive years and has racked up some decent vet bills of late, poor bear.

In conclusion: we're still here. How have you been?

BETH DO IT SELF!

2008-07-28T06:58:00.003Z

I believe I may have mentioned Beth's recent mastery of the sippy cup, and my impending FREEDOM BABY YEAH! This was clearly a jinx, as yesterday Beth couldn't figure it out at all and this morning she still wasn't drinking much, a slight problem as (a) I wanted my freedom and (b) she seems to need a few tablespoons of water a day to balance out the digestive perils of her rice cereal breakfast. Aside: why is rice, known to cause constipation in grown ups, a recommended first baby food? Are we as a species on crack or what?

In any case, this morning I figured what the hey, and got out one of her bottles from a previous attempt at my freedom which failed, because she never really took to the bottle. Rather than buggering around, she promptly grabbed it from me and fed herself a refreshing drink of water. GO TEAM US.

Photographic proof that (a) Beth can feed herself, (b) we do read to her and (c) our house is a crapheap, per usual.

Provided that she can do it herself, she's up for most feeding methods, or so it seems.

She is not however up for her afternoon nap so I must be off.

Experimental blogging

2008-07-27T11:01:00.002Z

What a fascinating modern age we live in...

Wii Fit week 10. ahem

2008-07-22T09:14:00.004Z

So, I thought last week would be my worst week ever, but I underestimated myself. No Wii Fit AT ALL, and I missed my long run on Sunday... but it's not all bad news.

I did a weigh in today (at least it's only 7 days since the last one):
BMI: 35.02 (down 0.57)
Weight: 119.7kg (down 1.8kg)
Weight loss to date: 7kg

It doesn't seem right, but I guess the jogging is having an effect...

Chalking up the achievements

2008-07-22T07:28:00.002Z

This week has been a big one for Beth, if you are her parents!

new tooth. Grant and I were betting on which it would be, and both bet spectacularly wrongly as instead of an exotic upper tooth she got the same old, same old other bottom middle tooth. Two in a row! Twice the cuteness! Twice the incredibly painful biting power!
new smile, complete with exaggerated squinty eyes. Grant thinks she's trying to smile like me. How's that for a backhanded compliment? She seems to reserve this particular smile for special occasions, so it may be the start of her developing into a prize showpony like her mummy.
first swimming lesson. I was worried that she's be freaked out by it all, but clearly the healthful chlorine vapours of our local pool did the trick because she seemed to have a lovely time swimming with her daddy, and didn't even seem to mind when the teacher was grabbing her now and then to show us how to teach her. She really liked hanging onto the edge of the pool and splashing, and sitting on the edge to jump in. If there is anything more adorable than a little baby butt peeping out of a swim nappy, I don't know what it could be.
and (drumroll) the moment I have been waiting for these many months - putting her feet in her mouth! I could not be prouder.

Solids-wise she's now eating pears, sweet potato, apple, pumpkin, potato and rice cereal. She lets us feed her now and isn't quite as determined to use her own spoon (although does still have one clenched in her fist while eating, and shoves it in her mouth fairly regularly). I thought there could be nothing worse than potato mashed with nothing but water, but actually it's quite tasty. We have had to whoa way back on the rice cereal as it was causing backups in the pipes but everything else seems to be going down well. She hasn't rejected anything yet, but then we're not up to the exciting stuff I suppose!

Wii Fit week 9 - worst week EVA!

2008-07-17T01:28:00.003Z

I did so little Wii during this week it barley even warrants a mention. I think it was like 30min on Monday and Tuesday... and that's it! I also missed a couple of jogs. Very bad week. I think I will cut back a bit on the Wii as my jogging is (theoretically) increasing coming in to the City 2 Surf.

The good news is I have since gotten the jogging back on track.

Anyway, I failed to do a weigh in on Sunday, but I'll use the results from Tuesday (didn't do a work out, just a body test!)

BMI: 35.59 (down 0.73)
Weight: 111.5kg (down 1kg)
Weight loss to date: 5.2kg

So, even though I have done very little exercise, and we had some fantastic food at Alex and Michelle's wedding, I still lost weight! Gotta be happy with that...

My task now is to stay focused on the jogging, and aim for 3 days of Wii per week. I'll modify the routines and make it more of a mixed bag.

Striking while iron is hot

2008-07-17T01:19:00.006Z

In my haste to recount the exciting part of the wedding last weekend (sleep!) I forgot to mention the other parts. Most importantly, Grant has long desired to dance with his daughter at a wedding. I should stress *a* wedding and not *her* wedding. Although I'm sure he wants to do that too. In any case, Beth was getting towards bedtime when the speeches were still in full swing last night, and then the bridal couple had their first waltz while Grant was in the back of the hall, putting Beth to sleep in her pram, or so I thought. But instead Beth and her daddy were doing this far far more fun thing:

Milestone #21374213, dancing at wedding using correct hand on shoulder posture: check

Nothing like starting out teary for a bridal waltz and then getting a dose of my two favourite humans being even more adorable than usual.

As you can see, Beth was having a lovely time, and in such circumstances we are finally learning to say to hell with the rigid bed clock and hello life is for living! Grant went on to make everyone in the room vote him Best Father of All Time by taking it out on the dance floor. The song following the bridal waltz was "A Little Ray of Sunshine," so I think the DJ was getting a bit misty-eyed too. Although possibly not, as Beth's awesome outfit contained no pink so everyone assumed she was a boy.

Jan got the above shot, and also forwarded us this very rare apple, namely the SHOT OF GRANT, LOZ AND BETH TOGETHER PROVING NONE ARE FIGMENTS OF THE OTHER'S IMAGINATION!

The shot also proves the following:
(a) Lee's awesome green jumper still fits Beth;
(b) Grant still looks sharp in a red tie;
(c) I was dressing for the wedding solely with regard to how easy it would be to breastfeed in the outfit rather than visual appeal. One has to have priorities, as you can see from Beth's chubby cheeks;
(d) Beth has my eyebrows;
(e) Yes, Grant still has dimples.

It was a wonderful night.

Stroller of Sleeping +8

2008-07-14T10:29:00.008Z

Ooh, lucky 101st post! Who would have believed we could waste quite so much time :)

Stroller of Sleeping +8

So at the weekend we went to Grant's cousin Anthony's ("oh wait, I mean Alex" - celebrant) wedding in Sydney, which was an exciting occasion but involved a two-hour car trip each way, a late night wedding reception, an overnight stay at a hotel, and a long yum cha the next day, all of which would have been frankly inconceivable adventures with Beth a month ago. So I was slightly anxious about the whole shebang.

But I needn't have worried. Post-babywrangler Beth is a whole different baby. She slept half of the trip down and all of the trip back, waking up only when we drove in the driveway; she slept through the wedding itself in her stroller and more amazingly still slept for almost three hours in a really, really noisy reception, waking only after the dessert course to say hello to the family members present and be a bit weirded out by the noise volume of the Brazilian dancers. It was lovely. All of the people who are usually giving us veiled advice about baby sleeping were instead admiring the Most Awesome Sleeping Baby Ever. I was kind of smug about this because Beth was outsleeping the crap out of the other baby present, who was a Strict Routine child. EAT THAT STRICT ROUTINES! Anyway, this epic snooze was also in her stroller. She then went on to sleep in it for two hours the next day during yum cha, waking at the end of proceedings just in time to smile endearingly at all present.

Clearly the stroller has magical powers, so I am thinking of either buying three more strollers of the same kind (see above for actual real stroller of sleeping) just in case or possibly having this one bronzed in memory of the occasion. I am so so glad Grant's sister encouraged me to give the stroller sleep a whirl weeks ago, because it is FREEDOM, BABY, YEAH!

The only glitch in the whole thing really was the hotel sleep. Beth was reluctant to sleep in the portacot and made this clear. It probably would have been fine within a few minutes, but we didn't want to wake anyone so caved and let her sleep in our bed. Fortunately our bed was HUUUUUUUUGE and she was pretty happy once she got her mummy and daddy cuddles.

She really was an absolute champ all weekend. She couldn't have done much better if she had set out to help my recovery from the Horrific Sydney Trip of March 2008, which included unexplained screaming, nappy blowouts, puking on a train and a few emotional breakdowns at my end, and put me off travelling any further than Charlestown for months. In fact I was so impressed with her terrific attitude all weekend that I felt the need to buy every toy in IKEA for her. She now has sufficient toys to require a box for same. And some of them aren't even improving wooden toys. Some of them are PLASTIC.

In short: awesome weekend. We saw family, we saw friends, and Beth made all and sundry fall in love with her. As they should. No photos - we were too busy having a great time!

A retrospective: 6 months of Beth (Plan B)

2008-07-07T23:50:00.009Z

Grant has been hassling me to do a proper blog entry, and I'm having quite the galloping writer's block, having written nothing other than shopping lists and legal advice since September last year. But our daughter, she is fabulous, and deserving of written acknowledgement on the momentous occasion of her six-month-aversary. So.

1. The advent of Beth

Beth didn't have quite the introduction to the world outside that we had hoped. Instead of being born in a nice birth centre and being caught by her daddy with Auntie Sue helping, followed by a lovely long snooze at home in bed with us to get to know each other, we spent most of a pretty gruelling 30 hour labour in a hospital ward with me chained to a bed with drips and foetal monitors, and when she was finally born she was whisked away to the NICU for 2.5 days. Not much fun for anyone, particularly as Grant and I had been awake for the aforementioned 30 hours and then got no more than 1.5 hours' sleep at a stretch so that I could do three hourly (and then two hourly, yuk!) feeds in the NICU.

So our "getting to know each other" stage had rather more cables, monitors, and doctors and nurses in attendance than anticipated, as well as a lot more being forced to leave Beth behind in a ward with strangers, and everyone was fairly shell-shocked for weeks afterwards. I think we both found it quite hard to put her down for a while there, and even after she was out of the NICU but in the maternity ward with us, we used to steal "secret cuddles" with her when she was supposed to be in her light bed for jaundice.

Beth was born tall but desperately skinny, likely because of the tummy bug from hell that landed me in hospital at 34 weeks. She didn't actually have a butt, just kind of a flat sheet of skin with a little starfish in the middle; I wish we had documentary evidence of this, because it was freaky, and if people could see it they would understand why watching Beth grow a butt still stands out as one of the greatest achievements of the first week or so of her life and one of which I am immensely proud, since *I* provided the butt fuel, after all.

2. Monkey stage

I remember really clearly Grant worrying when we had been home at Mum's for a couple of days that Beth was "all floppy." It took her that long to relax, I suppose, and I can't really blame her, because I think it took me longer!

Somewhat ironically given the NICU's paranoia about blood sugar and reasonably constant attempts to make us put her on formula, Beth lost all of 23gm of her 3068gm birthweight in the first 4 days of life and by the end of her first week had put on 300gm. For the uninitiated, 10% weight loss in the first week is normal; Beth gained that much, purely through the power of the boob. Normal weight gain is 140-250gm/wk; until she was 12 weeks old, Beth never gained less than 300gm/wk. She went from the 25th percentile for weight at birth to the top by 12 weeks, and now is hovering at the top of the charts for weight, height, and giant skull! So she grew that butt pretty quickly.

Beth spent a lot of her newborn "monkey stage" snoozing on chests (preferably daddy's chest) or in slings while we resumed our busy cafe lifestyle.

And lots and lots of time nursing and cuddling, and not a great deal of time alone in bed - well, she had done plenty of that in the NICU. I barely remember most of this stage to be honest. I was too busy clutching Beth, nursing all the live long day, and being a hormonal wreck. Looking back over the photos, she was a whole different creature. It was really quite a challenge getting to know someone who doesn't do much other than tell you when you're not acting up to spec, and since we were falling over ourselves to satisfy her every need and since (shockingly) she is a pretty easy going kiddo, she was barely even crying.

And then she started smiling and it was a whole new ball game, otherwise known as mummy and daddy three-ring-circus of "oh go on, SMILE!" (later repeated to this day to make her laugh, because we are suckers for her laugh).

3. Oh God, real baby time

While I was a wreck, the newborn monkey stage wasn't really that difficult. She used to only wake up once a night, and at 9 weeks old I scoffed at a speaker at my mother's group talking about sleep deprivation, because *I* used to sleep from 11 to 8 or so with only one waking, and clearly all these sleep deprived people were just incompetent parents. HAH.

The next day, I caught the train to Sydney with her for the second time. The first time had been a breeze really; the second time she puked all over me, blew out a nappy on a crowded train so I had to change her ON THE SEAT, cried and cried and refused to feed, and then when we arrived at Vron's, screamed her head off for half an hour until Grant put her in the sling to knock her out. And then the dreaded breast refusal stage started. She went from feeding for an hour at a time, thus consuming my entire day, to refusing to feed other than in short snatches and LYING DOWN IN THE BEDROOM, thus consuming my entire day and breaking my spirit into itty bitty pieces, for SIX WEEKS. This also meant that she went from waking once a night to waking every 2 hours to catch up on missed feeds, thus turning me into Zombie Mummy. It was rather hard to get any medical professionals to pay attention, though, as despite plummeting weight gains she was still cruising at the top of the weight charts.

Did I mention we also moved house at this time? Yeah, we did. Because we are just that kind of crazy.

But in between all of these shenanigans she was a smiling, lovely baby; it's just that for everything from 9 weeks to about 5 months I was too sleep-deprived and worried about her feeding to appreciate too much of it. You may notice there aren't so many photos of this particular stage.

Her favourite toy from about 8 weeks to 4 months was the Ladybird Nightmare floormat/playgym.

It took her a while to coordinate the grabbing and bashing thereof, but she pretty soon got the hang of it and by 3 months Mr Froggy was being beaten up at regular intervals. At 3.5 months Beth repeatedly rolled from her front to her back, but after doing three sets of rolls on two separate occasions, apparently she forgot how for another month or so, or maybe just didn't see the need, because she is very much a tummy baby and why on earth would one want to roll onto one's back when the REAL action is in rolling to one's tummy?

The harder, ab-requiring back to tummy roll was accomplished at 4.5 months. I credit our chiro for this, as until we started going to her when Beth was about four months old, Beth really didn't move her legs much at all - she was apparently pretty locked up in the lumbar spine, probably as a result of her not-so-easy entrance into the world. It's a funny thing to see a chiro adjusting a baby, as most of it involves what looks like modified cuddles and swings. Until very recently, Beth loved this, but lately there has been Neck Work which she has not been too fond of. In any case, since she managed this feat, Beth has happily stayed on her belly in a yogaesque cobra pose for ages and ages at a time, and how it isn't destroying her neck I do not know, because mine gets sort of achy just watching her.

At 5 months she remembered how to roll tummy-to-back and now she does it kind of like a synchronised swimmer, putting her arm back and over quite gracefully. She likes rolling forward and back, but only does it in opposite directions, so rolls on the spot. LUCKY FOR MUMMY AND DADDY, because if she works out how to string two rolls together and cross the floor, the game is up, as we are very much not yet childproofed in these parts. She's also very cleverly worked out how to use a front and back roll to spin around on the spot. Now she has modified her technique to a less wasteful roll-only-to-side approach, and has started walking her hands around a bit. It's amazing how much she can figure out even in only a few days

New favourite toys are her books (esp. "That's Not My Teddy" - mmm, furry, and hilarious, especially when Grant reads it as "That's Not My Daddy - HIS EARS ARE NOT FURRY ENOUGH!"), her Selecta wooden rattle and teething ring, and the best toy of all, her Chime Garden, which I bought on a whim at the DJs sale and which has since amused not only Beth 24/7 but also a friend's five year old! And according to said friend, it plays Schumann, so it's educational, too!

4. In which Mummy finally cracks and some sleep is had

The fact is, though, that sleepwise we had a pretty hard slog from when Beth was about 3 months old on. She rarely napped for longer than 45 minutes, required me to feed her to sleep or one of us to carry her in a sling to sleep, and would often not sleep for much longer than it took to get her to sleep to begin with. She was waking at least 3 times a night for feeds, usually didn't go longer than two hours between feeds, and Grant had to take her in the mornings so that I could sleep in just to survive.

We finally admitted that WE NEEDED HELP and hired the local sleep guru, sleepandsettle.com.au. I was sure this would lead to nonstop screaming and even less sleep, but in fact within a few hours of Natalie's visit, and without much pain at all, Beth was self-settling, sleeping for minimum three-four hour stretches at night (and often 6 or 7 hours, woohoo!), wakes twice a night on a BAD night, and would let Grant put her down to bed. Considering that before this it had routinely taken 40mins-2 hours to get Beth to sleep, this was freaking incredible, and made all the better by the fact that I had had such low expectations to start with.

Now we have a lot more energy to play with Beth, and she has a lot more fun, and seems to be rocketing through her milestones much faster than when she spent most of her time tired or with me trying to put her to sleep. While she was always a pretty cheerful chicken, she's now a lot calmer, to the point where we went from blaming everything on teething a month ago to not actually noticing when she cut her first tooth, even though in hindsight that did explain two mysterious short screaming fits and some rather unusual (for now - used to be standard) short night sleeps. I really enjoy her so much more now, and I think she's sort of reflecting that.

I also get to do really exciting things like GO RIDING ON MY BIKE! I haven't been riding since April last year, but it turns out that riding a bike is like riding a bike.

So I can say as Beth reaches her mighty milestone of six months: this parenthood caper is all kinds of cool. Our daughter is glorious, and every day more and more her own person, but more importantly, she cracks me up.

5. Summary

Amelie-style, things Beth likes: daddy jungle gym; mummy jungle gym; boob if on her terms; Chime Garden; watching the trees in the wind; rolling around, particularly now we have some end-of-roll lino for her to skid around on (super high quality, apparently); sit-ups; nappy-off time (aka "vejayjay time"); bathtime; daddy's silly songs; chewing things, esp if wooden or a spoon; attacking catalogues.

Things Beth isn't so sure about, but thinks she could grow to like: pureed sweet potato.

Dislikes: not so keen on ointment applied to the face, the five minutes before bed, or people other than mummy or daddy cuddling her, although usually prepared to relax about it after a while. Other than that, she's good with just about everything.

We adore, adore, adore our baby girl. It seems impossible that it has only been six months, and equally impossible that she has not always been here.

So that's where we're at. How have you guys been?

Milestones

2008-07-07T06:12:00.006Z

Two milestones to log today!

Beth had a go at solids today. Sure, it made her throw up a little, but she does like playing with the spoon!

So since we hired the baby wrangler and have been a) getting sleep and b) having fun awake times, we haven't been quite so prone to saying "maybe it's teething" and such. In hindsight though, during the last couple of days Beth has had some grumpy moments...

We bought a roll of vinyl for her to practice commando crawling on and she has spent most of this afternoon having fun sliding around:
And I noticed that she was rubbing her gums with both hands - which she hadn't done for a while. I went to put some Bonjela on, and noticed a vicious little spike on the lower gum. That explains a lot!

Our baby girl!

2008-07-06T08:54:00.004Z

It is probably about time someone posts something about Plan B (is she still plan B? Surely Plan B has been executed already?)... Well, here she is:

She is doing super!

I will now spend the next 2 days harassing Loz into doing a 6-months-old post.

Wii Fit Week 7 and Week 8

2008-07-06T07:57:00.005Z

*sigh*

What can I say... not a great couple of weeks. I will start with the good news though.

June was awesome. I am very happy with the volume of training I did during June - only missing 1 day when I should have done Wii Fit. If I can maintain this kind of consistency I will be very happy.

The results of the last 2 weeks, however, were not so great. During week 7, I went out and had a "few" beers with Benski. See the result:
23/6 33 min
24/6 44 min
25/6 -
26/6 36 min
27/6 34 min
28/6 35 min
29/6 32 min

BMI: 36.32 (up .9)
Weight: 113.8kg (up .6kg)
Weight loss to date: 2.9kg

30/6 33 min
1/7 10 min
2/7 -
3/7 -
4/7 37 min
5/7 37 min
6/7 33 min

BMI: 36.32 (down .42)
Weight: 112.5kg (down 1.3kg)
Weight loss to date: 4.2kg

Week 7 also had the most variance is weight - generally it is a slow trend down, but it was spiking all over the place. During week 8 I slacked off a bit. I was kind of feeling a bit run down, and may have been over doing the jogging during week 7. I rode the new cargo bike (blog entry of its own to come!) from Mum and Dad's place into Cooks Hill on the Sunday, which was a bit of a strain, and then did an hour long easy jog on Monday. After this my hamstring was fairly sore, and caused most of the right side of my body to be "out". I have mostly recovered from this, and the 60min jog on Sunday was not too bad at all. I think I am going to have to step up the massages and chiro appointments. Damn jogging. I'll be glad when this bloody event is over.

Apart from this small setback, the jogging has been going fairly well. 5 weeks to go until the Ciy 2 Surf... While I have always been confident of making it to the end (hell, I could walk it in about 2 hours), I would like to jog as much as possible, and maybe make it in under 90 minutes. I have not been doing any hills yet, so that might be a bit of a shock to the system. The next couple of weeks will be a challenge, as we have some events to attend in Sydney on the weekends.

Wii Fit week 6

2008-06-23T07:13:00.002Z

Wow, what a week.
16/6 50 min
17/6 44 min
18/6 -
19/6 -
20/6 44 min
21/6 37 min
22/6 44 min (winter solstice - yay! days getting longer!)

So, Thursday night things were a bit crazy when I got home from work. Beth had been a terror for 2 days, Loz was hanging by a thread! I took her out for a walk in the sling for about an hour to give Loz some breathing space, and to get Beth a little sleep at least.

However, even though I missed a day on the Wii, I am still happy with the results:

BMI: 36.13 (down .45)
Weight: 113.2kg (down 1.4kg)
Weight loss to date: 3.5kg

3.5kg in 6 weeks... eh, not bad, but I am happy with how my body is holding up to the Wii, and the simple fact that I am actually sticking with it.

All this "fitness" is going to my head, and I may have done something silly... I signed up for the City2Surf. Their website has a 10 week training programme. Unfortunately, I had the brilliant idea in the middle of week 3. I did my first decent real world jog on Wednesday night in Sydney - 30 minutes around Bicentennial Park, maybe 4km. It hurt. But not as much as the day after! Thursday morning I had every intention of following it up with an "easy" jog in LCNP, but was feeling a little under the weather, so only managed about 10min. Friday morning I took Beth out in the jogging stroller for 30 minutes (who'd a thought one-handed jogging was difficult?!?!) Sunday is the day for the long jog though - I went out to the end of the breakwater and back home. ~55min (including 2 bubbler stops), ~7.5km...

So, there is hope that I will make the 14km in under 2 hours. If I manage to jog (if you can call what I do "jogging") all the way, I will be very happy. This coming week I will add some hills in the mix, just 'cause it doesn't hurt enough already!

5 weeks down

2008-06-16T06:05:00.004Z

Interesting week this one...

09/6 53 min
10/6 67 min
11/6 - (Sydney)
12/6 43 min
13/6 43 min
14/6 44 min
15/6 65 min

BMI: 36.58 (up 0.1)
Weight: 114.6kg (up 0.3kg)
Weight loss to date: 2.1kg

I didn't go out on Wednesday, so no excessive eating or drinking... and yet I put on a little bit of weight. To give a sneak peak of week 6, it is saying I have dropped over a kilo today, so it could just be a time of day thing... I haven't been particularly strict about when I have been using the Wii - more dependent on Beth's schedule than anything else. I think I will have to do my Sunday weigh-in at the same time each week to make this a bit more valid. It will be interesting to see what the results are this week. It's funny - the weight is coming off slowly (which I am told is a good thing), but it is enough to give me the positive feedback I need to continue being motivated. My belt buckle does up a bit tighter, I'm feeling better, and allegedly my body shape has been changing slightly. I still have not made major modifications to my diet (lets not talk about the chocolate brownies I just made!), so there is definitely room for improvement there.

I'm looking at changing my aerobic component a bit - and doing some more jogging in the Real World. Looking out the window right now, this may be a flawed plan - it has been raining off and on for days with a cutting wind. The Wii has really come into it's own :) Even when it is miserable outside, it doesn't give you an excuse not to use the Wii...

Loz has been a bit more regular using Wii Fit as well - her goal is to do at least 20min each day, and I think she is managing 30min most days. She is also kicking my arse at pretty much everything (except pushups - I ownz the 10 reps pushups!). Apparently her balance is way better than mine, not to mention her timing on the Step game. I've actually threatened to delete her Mii character if she continues to knock me off the score board - there's only so many times you can tolerate your "Best Score" not actually appearing at all.

Wii Fit week 4...

2008-06-10T10:24:00.002Z

Just a short, quick entry, or I'll never get it done!

Here's how the week went:
2/6 54 min
3/6 65 min
4/6 Sydney...
5/6 51 min
6/6 58 min
7/6 53 min
8/6 67 min

And the numbers:
BMI: 36.48 (down .32)
Weight: 114.3kg (down 1kg)
Weight loss to date: 2.4kg

I'm very happy with how much I was able to do this week - particularly getting a session in on Thursday night when I got back from Sydney. I may not be able to do it every week, but I'll aim to do something at least. Also, doing a workout on the Friday definitely gave me more energy.

I guess I am losing weight steadily, but I think I would like it to be a bit faster. That will take a commitment to changing my diet, and I'm not about to kid myself that it will be easy. I really like my food! I've improved my snacking habits, and am eating more fruit, so that is a start... (cutting back on the sourdough may be a challenge.)

Anyway, 4 weeks on an exercise programme is the best I've done, each week I am seeing progress, and I am definitely feeling better for doing the exercise. Besides the Wii, I am taking Beth for a 40min+ walk when I am home, trying to get a ride or two in each week, and we do pretty much all of our local trips on foot, which all helps.

Recording a Milestone...

2008-06-06T06:54:00.002Z

Just as a reference point, Beth rolled over on Tuesday (3rd June). I was on a conference call at the time (working from home) so it was added to the minutes...

We have a backlog of photos to upload, and I have a couple of short video clips I am hoping to put somewhere too. I'll upload them soon, I swear!

Week 3 report

2008-06-01T11:27:00.005Z

*sigh*

Once again this week I was slightly over-indulgent while in Sydney. It's funny - I don't have heaps of time to catch up with friends (ok, fair enough - more than Lauren...), so each week in Sydney I am trying to catch up with different people, and that inevidibly means going out to dinner somewhere. This week it was going to dinner with Spoonboy and Robert. It was a very nice dinner - a newish woodfire pizza place in North Strathfield. Apparently the owner is quite the wine fanatic, and the selection shows it (like I'd know...) In any case, a few pizzas and a bottle of wine later, I was feeling pretty happy! (apart from fearing what the Wii would say - it gets quite sassy at times!)

Here's the breakdown:
26/5 49 min
27/5 30 min
28/5 - Sydney
29/5 - Sydney
30/5 - lazy!
31/5 60 min
01/6 78 min

As you can see, Friday was not great. I was feeling pretty wasted after work (I think it is the drive more than anything), Beth has not been sleeping great, and the chiro appointment took out the morning. Yes, these are just excuses, and I should have worked out on the Wii, I guilted myself into doing extra on the Saturday and Sunday.

The result:
BMI: 36.80 (+.4 over last week)
Weight: 115.3kg (-.2kg over last week)
Weight loss to date: 1.4kg

This week I was trying out something different. Previously, I have been trying to get up ~30 min of mainly aerobic exercise - with a focus on fat loss. I wanted to diversify a bit more, so started playing around with the strength and yoga routines. On Saturday and Sunday I basically went through all routines available, and have now worked out a modified programme. I am still taking Beth for a ~1hr walk each morning (when I am home), so that actually caters a fair bit for the aerobic activity. I am now going to focus the Wii on strength and yoga exercises, and if I need to cut back at all, it will come out of the aerobic stuff. For aerobic, I have a fairly well established set of Boxing, Step, Hula Hoop, and Jogging - which gives me a nice 30 minutes.

I had expected that the Internet would provide me with some detailed exercise routines, but alas it was not to be. Despite the number of blogs proclaiming WiiFit as the new messiah, nobody is detailing their routines. After going through all of the Strength and Yoga exercises (and matching up the recommended pairs) I categorised each by the primary body part they focus on:

Arms
Yoga	Strength
Downward facing dog	Press up
Shoulder stand	Arm + leg lift
Palm tree	Tricep extension
Legs
Sun Salutation	Sideways leg lift
Warrior	Lunge
Chair	Rowing Squat
Standing Knee	Single leg extension
King of the dance (?!)	Single leg extension
Half moon	Single leg twist
Trunk/abs
Tree	Single arm stand
Bridge	Jackknife
Crocodile twist	Jackknife
Cobra	Parallel Stretch
Triangle	Torso & waist twist

So, my aim is to do Arms + Legs one day, trunk/abs the next. I'll pad out with Aerobic exercises on the trunk/abs day if required. I feel the balance routines are more like games (and I do enjoy playing them!) so I'll just pad with them if and when required, or use them for R&R!

I'll start with the trunk/abs tomorrow...

Week 2 report...

2008-05-19T04:31:00.006Z

Shut up! I know this is late!!! The important thing is that I actually DID exercise - not that I was really late in writing about it! Anyway, here's what happened...

Bit of a funny week this one - I spent 3 days instead of 2 in Sydney, so that threw the schedule out a bit. I had every intention of going for a walk/jog in Bicentennial park on the Wednesday evening, but instead it hailed and we had a shitload of rain. I was really bummed about it. I also had a *big* night out with some work friends, and followed up with a *bigger* lunch (albeit minus the alkymahol) on the Friday.

19/5 43 min
20/5 31 min
21/5 - Sydney
22/5 - Sydney
23/5 - Sydney
24/5 55 min
25/5 41 min

And the moment of shame:
BMI: 36.74 (-.06 over last week)
Weight: 115.5kg (+0.5 over last week)
Weight loss to date: 1.2kg

So, not great, but knowing how much I ate and drank in Sydney, I'm not surprised. Even though I am not going to go nuts about altering my diet, just monitoring my weight weekly helps to stay aware of the influence of my daily food intake. I know I think more about what I am eating now - I might not be going for a salad, but I am certainly not upsizing! Lets see how it goes next week... (you wont have to wait long, I'm about to type it up aswell!)

It's ALIVE!!!

2008-05-19T04:08:00.004Z

Ok, so maybe its been a while since we last did some blogging, but we've got a good excuse! Moving country, finding work, finding a home, having a baby... these things take up a lot of time. I am willing to admit 6 months is a LONG time though ;)

Anyway, my reason for starting up this blogging again is largely selfish - I just need a place to write some stuff down. Specifically, to keep a log of exercise. I turned 32 last Monday (12th) and Loz and Beth gave me a Wii and Wii Fit (not sure exactly how much Beth contributed there, but I am grateful none the less!)

So, to commence the Blog of Shame, here are my vital stats as of 12/5/2008:
BMI: 34.1
Weight: 116.7kg

There are other stats in there, but they appear largely useless...

Here's how it will work... I only set up the Wii late on the Monday, so started training on the Tuesday. At the end of each week I'll have a weigh in, and see how it goes!

Now, here are the weeks stats:
12/5 4 min
13/5 62 min
14/5 - (Sydney)
15/5 - (Sydney)
16/5 37 min
17/5 52 min
18/5 64 min

And now the vital stats:
BMI: 36.80
Weight: 115.3kg
Weight loss to date: 1.4kg

The Wii also allows you to log other exercises (walking, cycling, - even things like cooking! I guess anything that has you on your feet and active...) I will be logging walking and cycling activities in there, but wont bother posting them here.

Hopefully I will be able to keep this up (both the exercise, and the Blog!!!)

I also still have a bunch of photos to upload, so I'll see if I can get that sorted this week too.

'Till next time...

Today's events (or lack thereof)

2007-09-24T22:07:00.000Z

So we are deep in packing mode which is not so fun, but tomorrow we are heading to Augill Castle in Cumbria to stay for two nights so that will probably make up for it! We have been busy boxing up the sea-freight send-ahead luggage and working out what we can do without for 10 weeks and how much we need to insure it for. And sleeping in. Happy times.

Today was my last UK prenatal appointment, and somewhat shockingly there was actually Laying Of Hands On the Belly and actual Listening to Heartbeat (for those playing the home game, this is the first time in 25 weeks). Plan B is measuring on target and doing fine, which I haven't been worried about since she started kicking, really - I mean, she kicks hard enough to make my belly move, which seems to imply a certain amount of health and vigour to me so it's somewhat ironic that this reassurance is being benificently provided WHEN I DON'T NEED IT ANYMORE. I weighed in at 75kg which seems slightly odd since I was all of 70kg at 21 weeks and while I am growing, I don't think it's quite at the rate of 1kg+ per week, although stranger things than 5kg weight gain in a month have happened, I suppose.

Tonight we went for a stroll around our 'hood, as we both seem to be cataloguing the things we will miss. It was a beautiful full-moon night, and just as we were passing an old local church (the kind with grand grounds), a fox walked out and looked at us. It didn't seem very frightened - in fact, it was holding itself quite like a domesticated animal, so I didn't recognise it at first - but then it headed back into the churchyard. Quite a sight. England has given us many such, really.

Still, despite the fact that we are both going to miss London terribly, we are really really looking forward to coming home!

Jan and Paul are on a whirlwind tour of Europe this week, and by the time they are done they will have cranked up more European destinations in a week than we have in a year, I think. Busy!

In other news, it is freezing (not like last year's balmy autumn at all), and this sucks as (a) we have packed or sent ahead all our winter gear and (b) none of my former winter gear fits anyway, and damned if I am buying something just for a week's use before heading back to nice warm Oz.

Cornwall

2007-09-24T21:30:00.000Z

Jan and Paul arrived a couple of weeks ago, and we barely let them put their feet on the welcoming soil of Mother England before whisking them off to Cornwall.

We stayed in a very nice B&B in Plymouth. Plymouth is usefully central to Cornwall things generally, but having had the crap bombed out of it in WWII is not so very picturesque for the most part, or rather it features beautiful old buildings with hideous concrete monstrosities next to them. We had a couple of great seafood meals by the harbour there though.

Otherwise we were mostly daytripping. Day 1 was Tintagel, a ruined 12th century castle that actually is very unlikely to have had anything to do with any king called Arthur (who in turn is very unlikely to have existed outside a patchwork of other stories consolidated for propaganda purposes). Originally this straddled the mainland and an island, but is now just bits and pieces. I managed to get to the island section via the suspension bridge and scary steps up the side of the cliff face despite being terrified of heights and it was pretty cool, mostly because of the views of rugged coastline than because of what little was left of the castle complex though. I did get to lean my giant self against an 800 year old wall for a rest - I don't think this was what the builders had in mind. Most importantly, Tintagel is an English Heritage-maintained site which means that as members, Grant and I get to go in free. HA! Excellent.

Day 2 was a masterfully organised circuit of Polperro (old smuggling/fishing village), Castle Pendennis (another 12th century ruined castle, but in rather more sensible a location) and Cotehele (Tudor mansion complex in incredible gardens), then back to Plymouth.

Polperro was something of a tourist trap - you literally ran the gauntlet of Cornish pasty and ice cream shops down very narrow, winding streets - but very pretty, just the same. I suppose some places are tourist traps for a reason. It was quite small so we mostly just had a wander around, a look at the museum and a cup of coffee and then were out of there. We did meet a nice cat, who apparently runs a circuit of all B&Bs and museums and gets fed roughly 50 times a day - and looks it!

Castle Pendennis (also English Heritage = free - HA!) was really quite wonderful, particularly as we were visiting under BRILLIANT blue skies and it has a grand view of the country around Fowey. It is a fairly standard round keep, but well enough preserved that you can climb up around the battlements and see the outline of the inner rooms. Compared to Tintagel, the stairs are very sensible! Pendennis also had quite an impressive moat that is now, like its old walls, chiefly occupied in the sprouting of ferns.

Cotehele is, for a change, neither a ruin nor English Heritage managed (damn - we actually had to pay to get in). It's a grand country house, built between 1485 and 1560 as the main seat of the fabulously wealthy Edcumbes before they moved elsewhere to even fancier accommodations. The house is extraordinary, filled with various Tudor thingamabobs and weaponry, with all the walls bedecked with various priceless antique tapestries that were relocated from elsewhere and CUT TO FIT Cotehele's walls, of all things. But the best part was the garden - formal, informal, and quite jungle-like sections - very wonderful indeed. Case in point: CYCLAMENS WERE GROWING WILD IN THE LAWN. Enough said.

Day 3 we went to the intriguingly named Lost Gardens of Heligan. Part of another grand estate (Tremaynes), they were famous in the 19th century but apparently forgotten in the 20th, with the manor house and property being regularly resumed for military use in the world wars. I don't know that it was ever really "lost" though, as I'm pretty sure people always knew that the several hundred hectares of it were actually there. In any case, the once-elaborate garden had been neglected and left to wrack and ruin when rediscovered in the 1990s (a very capital-R Romantic tale of broken down glasshouses with lone grape vines struggling to survive amidst the brambles), and restoration work has been going on ever since. They specialise in rare breed everything, so in addition to rare plants they have an orchard full of rare chickens and ducks (pecking very happily at the fallen fruit and begging picnickers for scraps), and rare breed goats and cows in the farm paddocks. Quite impressive, and unbelievably huge in scope. In the afternoon we managed a quick trip to St Mawes castle, a military stronghold since Tudor times protecting the south coast and the deepwater harbour of Falmouth, which is, and I speak as a Novocastrian here, a bloody huge harbour, albeit now only hosting cruiseliners from what I could see. This one was a bit of a boy's trip but the castle itself is nice enough. Also I ate some blackberries. Yum. After that we headed to Penzance where we stayed the night in another very nice B&B.

Our final day included ambitious plans to see Bodmin Moor or the Lizard, but instead we only really managed St Michael's Mount before we had to head back to London. St Michael's Mount is an island castle joined at low tide to the mainland near Penzance by a causeway; VERY fast large tides in this part of the world. The castle was rather grand if very uphill; much of it is relatively recent (1850s) so quite liveable. Surrounding the castle is a garden, which I had expected to be miraculous (as it is no doubt, to English eyes - not a rose to be seen) but which was full of the plants typically found in dry coastal Australian gardens - succulents, etc. The overall effect was lovely but really, it is hardly a miracle to manage what every other country with little water and a salt wind has managed for centuries!

Then a LONG drive back to London - 5+ hours, but when you consider that this was to get from the extreme southwest to effectively the other side of the country, not really so bad!

We done went to Paris and Geneva AND I NEVER WANT TO EAT WHITE BREAD AGAIN

2007-09-08T09:11:00.000Z

So, after allowing a whole day post-exams for me to relax and attend the obligatory student party bash, we flew to Paris. Great flight and might I add, France's RER rail network ROCKS. Grant had booked us a hotel room in the Latin Quarter. He thought it was a bit small (little bed, sit down bath only) but actually I really liked the place, chiefly because it had fabric instead of wallpaper, and different patterns thereof in all the rooms, and I tend to fixate on irrelevant details. Also the bed was verrrrrrrry comfortable, and most importantly the hotel was barely two blocks in from the Seine and Notre Dame Cathedral, so basically LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION.

On day one we just wandered around the 'hood, had a nice traditional French dinner (I like the snails), and were treated to very organised street dancing displays.

On day two, we killed ourselves with the cathedral (beautiful), a walk along the river to the Louvre, about 5 hours wandering around the Louvre with me getting increasingly hungry and bitching about it (but oh, wonderful museum, beautiful building, incredible exhibits esp if you skip the Mona Lisa), a walk through the Jardins des Tulieres, a walk along the Champs Elysees, and a squiz at the Arc de Triomphe. Then we took about a million hours to wander around the Latin Quarter looking for a Vietnamese restaurant that was open and had a decent menu as Grant had become fixated on the idea of Vietnamese food - do not believe it when pregnant women are accused of having food cravings; or rather believe it in my case in so far as at that point I was craving FOOD ANY FOOD DAMMIT I DON'T CARE WHAT KIND. We eventually found a place that had no English on the menu - an excellent sign - but somewhat complicating the ordering process was the fact that the menu was in French and Vietnamese AND that the French descriptions were basically "Saigon soup" without any ingredients listed, so I had no idea what anything was. We had some great food though. Downside: guy smoking CIGAR in RESTAURANT. Oh well.

The next day was our anniversary - either first (from wedding) if you ascribe to the setting-the-clock-back theory OR twelfth, if you want to be freaked out. We hiked out to the catacombs, but they didn't want me to go in because of Plan B's ever more obvious bump. So Grant went down to look at the freak bone architecture while I had the world's greatest snooze in a local park. I am still looking back fondly on that snooze. Then we basically gave up on the day, having wiped ourselves out with all the touristing before, and resorted to an afternoon nap before going out for dinner because PARISIAN MOULES FRITES IS MADE OF 100% AWESOME. Having eaten our bodyweights in shellfish, we had a nice stroll around the Eiffel Tour with all its night time illumination glad rags on then gave up on the day.

The next morning, we caught the very spiffy fast train to Geneva. SO much easier than air travel, and we got to see some of the countryside between naps. Pretty cool. Our Geneva-based friends met us at the station and there followed a terrifically enjoyable couple of days of wandering about the city, hanging around their great flat with its wonderful view, playing cards (at which I suck), and generally relaxing. A perfect way to follow up the hectic Parisian trip.

While we were away, Plan B started wriggling and kicking away like a mofo, or should I say I started being aware that Plan B was doing so. Proof of how damned hard she had to kick for me to be sure of it was that as soon as I was sure and asked Grant to feel it, he could. So, have gone from feeling nothing to being shoved internally with no fluttering stage whatsoever. Pretty freaky! In hindsight I could probably feel her for a couple of weeks before that but not many. She's nicely predictable eg if I lie on my back she starts doing this weird volcanic roll thing, I assume to get off my spine, and 10pm onwards is BOOGIE TIME. Clearly she bids fair to follow her father's night owl schedule.

By the way, European chivalry is not dead - in England and France both, gentlemen stand up on the train for the pregnant.

Grant's parents have now arrived in London. It's great to see them, but boy is the pixieflat cosy for 4! They have headed into town today for some sightseeing and a ferry trip to Greenwich; I'm meeting up with some other friends in SoHo later on. We're all heading off on a road trip to Cornwall on Sunday for four days; really looking forward to it!

DONE!

2007-08-30T09:51:00.000Z

Exams done. Farewell party attended and done. Farewell to the books and the bright young things, and HELLO GAY PAREE! Catch you on the flipside.

Exams, visits, and a bellyful of arms and legs

2007-08-23T15:22:00.000Z

Hello from England in late summer, where it is pissing down raining with a princely top of 21 degrees. Fortunately, Mum got a week of really lovely summer weather before we returned to the whinge-worthy stuff going on outside the window now.

Mum arrived the day after exam No.1 and had a bit of a nightmare flight, but recovered pretty well. She only had a few days where she couldn't remember what she'd done. We warmed up with some trips around the lovely surrounds - Kensington Palace Gardens, etc - before graduating to a hike into the city through every beautiful park you could think of, and so on. Actually she must have walked a million miles while here; the problem with our flat is that it is in LONG walking distance of everything you can think of, and it seems a pity not to walk given that it is scenic and extremely flat, so then every adventure has 2 hours of walking added. Oh well.

Mum had been given a list of five hundred places to see by friends and acquaintances, and in fact she did rather well at ticking them off, covering all major galleries and museums in metro London. We also fitted in field trips to Hampton Court, Bath (via Avebury stones - because what better to do with a 6,000 year old stone circle than graze sheep upon same?) and she also went on a solo adventure south to Sissinghurst Castle Garden, former home of Vita Sackville-West. Her pictures looked amazing so I will have to try and get there before we leave. Anyway, she was a very considerate houseguest and made sure to leave me time to study every day, as well as do an exam, which is a pity because I really like excuses not to study! In fact, I was getting much more study done while she was here than I have since because, as is probably obvious to anyone who knows me, I am inherently lazy and need someone standing over me with a big stick to get anything done.

On the subject of exams, exam No. 2 was waaaaaaaaaaay better than No. 1. I didn't spend the next two days freaking out about what I'd failed to put in my answers or anything. If anything, the problem with that one was I was spoiled for choice on question topics, having prepared far too many. Good questions though. You know you are a freak when you are feeling stimulated and challenged and entertained IN AN EXAM. Plan B's increasing bulk meant I had to have a toilet break halfway through, but otherwise a very good exam. Now I just have to get through copyright on Tuesday next week and I am DONE DONE DONE. Slight problem: Notting Hill Carnival with several million attendees expected is happening one block from our house, all long weekend. Conditions for study may not be entirely ideal.

Plan B also had an exam this week; the 21 week anatomical ultrasound. And despite the fact that I was freaked out for roughly two months beforehand (despite having absolutely no reason to be so - I am a walking, talking waste of a low-risk, easy pregnancy) it couldn't have gone better,
really. All baby's bits are exactly where they are supposed to be and doing what they are supposed to do, and we even found out the sex, although people have to beg me if they want me to tell them. The ultrasound tech was much better after the first part, where I was alone waiting with the ultrasound goo stuff all over my belly for Mum and Grant to come in and the tech happily started taking skull measurements from the top (ie no other baby bit visible) until I said..."um, is it alive?" when she promptly started doing a lot more "oo, everything is perfect" stuff. Grant wins awards for his uncanny ability to determine what bit is what (including, according to him, determining sex before it was announced) based on an ultrasound screen, whereas I am forever asking "what's that bit?"

Baby was punching and kicking up a storm which was cool to see, and apparently one of the reasons why I can't feel it is a helpfully anterior placenta, ie baby is punching and kicking the crap out of a nice big cushion on the front side of the uterus, not me directly. Good to know so as not to freak out quite so much as previously. Apparently Plan B will outgrow this soon enough, but I predict that by that point I will go from feeling nothing to being beaten up, if the size of its Donnelly calves were anything to go by.

In conclusion: Plan B is not just a giant bump requiring a total change of wardrobe, it is a baby. I will not however take the step of proving this with the ultrasound pictures because they are somewhat scary looking and might put you off your tucker. And to think that Plan B was so photogenic at 12 weeks!

Grant finishes work today, so I have washed my last business shirt. RAWK! Then we are both unemployed albeit not homeless YET. Post-Tuesday exam we are off to Paris for our anniversary (pregnant and in Paris for our first anniversary is quite a cliche, hey? Unless of course the eleven years beforehand are taken into account), then to Geneva to visit friends, then home for the arrival of Grant's parents. Still busy busy busy!

Oh dear.

2007-08-06T18:13:00.000Z

Well. I had my first exam today and at the time it seemed OK (other than the horror when I realised they weren't asking what I expected them to, cutting me out of a question I wanted to answer and making me do one that was a bit fudgy instead) but in hindsight it was a bit brutal and I'm not sure how well I did, although I did at least write A LOT (3500+ words in 3 hours excluding working, by my calculations).

I am a bit worried because I seemed to be referring to the same things over and over again in different contexts which is not a good sign - makes it look like one doesn't know enough to mount an argument! Anyway, that's partially the fault of the questions, since for part of each of three questions I was answering "how does IP account for...human rights/Locke and Hegel's theories of property/competition" and surprisingly enough (NOT) the parts of IP that protect human rights are those that preserve the common are those that preserve competition in the marketplace, so it was bound to be a bit repetitive. That was only one LONG paragraph of each of my answers though so here's hoping I'm freaking out for no reason.

In conclusion: I know I didn't fail, and I know that if I didn't do well it was my brain's fault, not the absence of study (well, not the absence of study except where I studied the WRONG THING), but I think this one's a merit not a distinction. Which tragically means to have any hope of a coveted LLM with Distinction I have to knock trade marks and copyright out of the park. And frankly, I don't think I'm going to. I hope you will all still love me anyway.

Conclusion 2: Plan B's brain wasn't very helpful at all. I thought for sure it would have some tips about territorial limits on trade marks, but not so.

Mum's here at dawn's crack tomorrow. WOOHOO!

On the subject of rudeness

2007-08-06T10:41:00.001Z

In our neighbourhood, which admittedly has its colourful aspects, it is not rude to: spit on the footpath, have street parties at 2am, open your window so everyone can share your crap R&B (at 2am or otherwise), walk on whatever side of the footpath, walk across the whole footpath three and four abreast so you can keep up your conversation and ram everyone else out of your way, or to disregard traffic signals, including zebra crossings.

It is, however, according to a taxi driver, rude not to thank someone for stopping for you at a zebra crossing (note that as far as I can see my only error was not to thank him; I didn't give him the finger or attack his vehicle). He screamed at me: "Where are your manners?" I answered: "It's a pedestrian crossing." He shouted back: "What's that got to do with anything!"

Oh-kay.

We have actually had similar fun times with cars stopping mid-road for no apparent reason with no signalling whatsoever and then getting cross because we didn't thank them for stopping for us. Because that was obviously what was going on.

Note that I did however give a nod to the guy who not only stopped at the pedestrian crossing when I was walking home but also did so having read that I was approaching same, ie. before I had to throw my body across the road in an effort to get people to pay attention TO THE CLEARLY MARKED, SIGNPOSTED AND FLASHLIGHTED FREAKING ZEBRA CROSSING, because that is rare conduct that should be validated. But clearly from here on in I need to mend my ways and shall be thanking every car who ever stops for me at a zebra or lights crossing for say, three or four cars back, just to be safe, because GOD FORBID SOMEONE SHOULD THINK I WAS RUDE IN A COUNTRY WHERE IT IS NOT RUDE TO SPIT ON THE FOOTPATH. In fact perhaps I should thank everyone I see abiding by the law.

Needless to say, diversion of traffic from the main road (with traffic lights every block) to our nearest cross-street (with pedestrian crossings every 3 blocks or so) today is not going so well.

And now I'm cranky because the stupid taxi driver has now thrown me off my exam game. Does "unwarranted verbal abuse from insane taxi driver" count for special consideration? Really looking forward to going home where people GENERALLY stop at pedestrian crossings and GENERALLY don't expect you to kowtow to them for doing so.

In other news, the good folks at Quorn(tm) have upped the creepy quotient with these: http://quorn.co.uk/CMSPage.aspx?ssbid=67&pid=61. They taste pretty good albeit disconcertingly like the real thing. I am pretty sure they are, in fact, turkey (or people meat).

Thanks for reading, and for not murdering anyone today. I'm expecting you've all engaged in a little white-collar crime but who hasn't?

Chuffed, and also diligently avoiding study

2007-08-03T15:31:00.000Z

I went into town today to meet up with Sarah and Bin for lunch in SoHo. It was very pleasant indeed, although close as we are to the city, a trip into town and back plus lunch will cost one 3 hours plus of study. Which of course made it all the better!

On the way back, a guy stood up on the train to let me sit. CHIVALRY IS NOT DEAD! Only now I'm sort of freaking out, because he did it as soon as I got on the train, I wasn't looking particularly hot and bothered (I didn't think) and I wasn't sticking my gut out. Clearly Plan B at 18 weeks down the road is loud and proud. Also I think I have to acknowledge that the majority of my bump is probably not actually intestine any more. Do bumps grow exponentially or to an asymptotic curve? Enquiring minds want to know.

Were you in the pixieflat at this point, you would discover me reciting the basic principles of EU competition law as it pertains to refusal to licence IP (Renault, Volvo, Magill, Ladbroke, Bronner and IMS - REPRESENT!); the economic justifications of IP law via Coase's Theorem, Pareto and Kaldor-Hicks optimality, Posner, Bentham, Mill and Machlup; and the use of natural rights property justifications of Locke and Hegel to justify IP. Basically what I'm saying is I sound like a crazy person. RUN AND HIDE.

OK, so by way of practice I just put myself through my first fake exam (well, 1/3 exam - a 1 hour paper) in approximately 7 years. And apparently all that GIVE ME THE ANSWER RIGHT NOW when I was a proper lawyer kept me in practice, because I can still do 6-and-change scrawled barely legible pages of essay, or roughly 1000 words, in the magical 55 mins, despite the fact that the question was beyond bizarre and I'm still not quite sure what it was getting at, which as we know is always a really good sign.

And now for a little more pretending to study. 70 hours and counting until Exam No. 1. Eeeeek.

Innit.

2007-08-02T08:35:00.000Z

You may not be aware of this, but instead of a rising inflection at the end of a sentence to indicate a question mark, you can in this fair country just use the word "innit" to denote a question. Example: "Nice day today innit." NO INFLECTION NEEDED. Or, as one estate child said to another yesterday in my hearing (not, it should be noted, the 10 year old sharpening something and chasing an older child with it): "Let's get the bikes, it will be more better innit." OK, so the kid was maybe six, but he used a double comparative, failed to use the subjunctive, and then tacked innit on the end as if he was trying to SPIT IN THE FACE OF EVERYTHING I HOLD DEAR.

I finished my job this week and was given a very nice send-off of doughnuts and flowers. Sweet. The work was far from challenging, but the people were great and I shall miss them. Really looking forward to going back to my proper job in Oz at the moment, but that could be the exam factor. Funnily enough, having a job to go to, not to mention Plan B, does sort of make these the first exams I've ever sat that are totally and completely irrelevant to my future. But the degree was a little on the pricey side so here I sit with my books to justify it. Or really, here I sit writing this to avoid the books, but you get the general idea.

We didn't get up to much at the weekend other than bike maintenance (Grant) and study (me), except that we did stroll to the Church Street markets for the chicken tikka wrap of the Gods. That walk used to seem endless, but really it's incredibly short and completely flat. You really have to love this city. And then we strolled to Goldborne Road for the Portuguese tarts of the Gods, and that was basically it - no dim sum or anything. I'm saving my tourist energy for Mum's visit, which starts Tuesday next. Very exciting! Grant on the other hand is off on his Swiss torture escapade, I mean week-long mountain bike tour, starting sparrow's fart Saturday (I will be sleeping in).

Busy times ahead innit. Now back to the books.

Franny etcetera!

2007-07-25T07:55:00.000Z

So, Franny came to visit us last week, which was lovely. She arrived earlier than planned, on Monday, due to dirty thieving Lisbon scum (I am sure everyone else there is lovely though), and we went to meet her in town. Eurostar is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more convenient than flights in terms of pickup and dropoff but also waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more expensive for that particular trip (Belgium-UK; the real killer is anything crossing the Channel).

Subsequently we got to take her to our local cheapy Thai where I think she got her first vegetable intake in some weeks. On Tuesday I took a day off work and we spent all day hiking around the more charming bits and pieces of the local area - Kensington Palace Gardens, Holland Park, etc. It's always great to do this with someone new, as otherwise I tend to forget that it is all INCREDIBLY SPECTACULAR. The chavs were misbehaving in the quad outside that night, but Franny was too tired and Grant too knocked out on Night Nurse for his awful cold to notice, so that was a plus.

On Wednesday we headed out west on an adventure. First stop was Kew Gardens, aka The Most Expensive Botanical Gardens Ever. Lovely though. Because, our return home being quite imminent at this point, I am getting increasingly homesick, I liked the eucalypt grove best. There are actually gum trees all over the place here, but usually singly and therefore not in sufficient numbers to make that lovely homey smell. They also had a very fancy chilli display in the lily house, which in turn had some very fancy lilies on display, including an amazonica. We spent about 4 hours there all up.

Afterwards we headed further west out to Richmond to have a wander around, climb Richmond Hill (not as hilly as the name would suggest, but nice view over the Thames Valley and a particularly nice part of the Thames, too - too bad there was a Heinz commercial being filmed in front of the best part of the view), and have a stroll in Richmond Park. Richmond Park is where the deer hang out, but it was quite a hot day, and unlike us I think the deer had the good sense to go somewhere quiet and shady! I was glad we went, though, as I've only ever been driven through it before and it isn't really the same - you don't get quite the same sense of how BIG the joint is.

Then we had a very lovely dinner with Jen in Richmond. And then I got a really awful headache/buggered neck thing which put me flat on my back for two days thereafter, thus making me a pretty shit host all things considered. Franny being a trooper managed to get around quite a bit of the city on her own though, so the only thing that really suffered was study. AND WHO CARES ABOUT THAT?

Oh, and on Friday it stormed and rained so hard that the drains started backing up inside. Including the toilet. Awesome. However, gravity prevailed over crap British drainage design and it was all sorted within an hour or so, here. Up north the floods were much much worse, as you may have seen on the news. Supposedly the Thames was supposed to flood this week, but I have my doubts as the rain has slowed up - in any case, might be one of the few advantages of Ladbroke Grove being a good long way away from the water!

Franny left on Saturday morning, and after that Grant and I made the bold decision NOT to go to dim sum for the first time ever. Instead we went to my lecturer's party in one of the private gardens of Notting Hill. It was amazing to see what lies behind the hedges and the locked gates but unfortunately we didn't get to see it for very long, as it bucketed down! Instead we got to see lecturer's lovely flat with view over said lovely garden. It was a very pleasant afternoon, rain notwithstanding; also we were outed as expectant parents by a fellow student who knew to those who didn't (she thought they did, and kindly proposed a toast). The fact that otherwise bright and shiny students didn't apparently notice that I now have a giant bump in front of me is either flattering or raises some concern as to their powers of observation. Anyway, it was nice to get so many good wishes in one hit, upping Plan B's karmic points dramatically no doubt, and also very nice to be spared the effort of telling everyone individually, as my "does not like to make a fuss" phobia is still in full swing.

Saturday night's dinner was the spoils of the Saturday market - fetta, olives, hummus, salad, weird but tasty multigrain bread from Paul's - yum. I kind of love how one can still do the dodgy lawyer-home-at-8.30pm style dinner as a mostly full-time student and get away with it. More time to avoid writing blog entries and bugger around on the Internet! Yay!

On Sunday we went out for breakfast to our local overpriced but relatively tasty joint. It was overpriced but relatively tasty, and also they are of the view that I can eat a kilo of spinach in one hit. We used to go out for breakkie all the time especially in Sydney, but Grant has been doing the honours most weekends for most of our time here. I am a bit cross about the going out for breakfast experience these days given that my favourite breakfast dish of all time - eggs royale, ie. smoked salmon, soft poached eggs and partially-cooked egg sauce (hollandaise) - is off the menu for the time being courtesy of the FOOD NAZIS. If I can't have that, it's kind of hard to muster up enthusiasm for something I could make just as easily myself. Dammit, now I've made myself hanker for eggs royale. Argh.

Then, because we are lazy, we headed the pitifully few train stops out to Hammersmith for a spot of shopping. I am now the proud owner of underpants that fit. Lifechanging. We had a very pleasant stroll beside the river on the Thames River Path (passes just behind Hammersmith, then kinks back down to protect Ladbroke Grove from flooding), then went home for luverly chicken and chips for lunch, English-style. Well, technically if it had been proper English it would of course have been cod but never mind. Regan came over in the evening for pizza and a bracing game of Starbase Jeff, at which I suck and have always sucked and will never ever be anything other than sucky. Regan was victorious in his starbase construction and insists that the trick is to play against two people locked in matrimonial battle. I will see if I can arrange that. Regan has now left us for Switzerland of all places, but we will be over there to visit in about a month, aka THE OTHER SIDE OF EXAMS.

And now back to the study, and the growing of the huge, weirdly itchy/tickly belly. Mum is here in under two weeks - YAY! My first exam is the day before she arrives - boo! And Grant is off for an alpine mountain biking adventure a few days before that - yay or boo, depending on perspective!

Update

2007-07-15T14:07:00.000Z

Roman amphitheatre, St Albans (aka Verulamium)

The public (well OK Robert) demands an update and we shall provide.

First I must note that we are actually having a decent thunderstorm here. Just like home!

Last weekend we spent Saturday (a) at Bayswater dim sum (per usual ritual) and then (b) at Hyde Park at the start of the Tour de France.

It was pretty cool in the sense of being sweltering hot. I managed to see the top of some helmets as they whizzed past and quite a lot of police escorts and assorted support vehicles. The organisers had chosen to couple a particularly disorganised cabling arrangement with this attractive liability-limiting sign:

Which was itself a trip hazard as people were staring at it in puzzlement while staggering over the cables.

On Sunday we decided to get our moderately lazy tourist asses into gear and went to St Albans. In its current incarnation, it's a moderately pretty satellite/commuter town for London. Two thousand years ago, it had a rather grander life as Verulamium, the third largest city in Roman Britain and the one place in the UK you can still see a ruined Roman amphitheatre (above, in all its glory). There are also some ruins of the original city walls, which were built after Boudicca smashed and burned the joint (and Londinium) in the first century AD or thereabouts. After the Romans pulled out, the locals deconstructed the joint for use in their own buildings, hence the fact that most of the older St Albans places are made of flint. It's quite a look actually.

It's polite to refer to this as recycling rather than sacking, and it's nice to know that our ancestors were as environmentally conscious and/or lazy at getting their own damned building materials as this outfit.

The Roman overlords of the town in its heyday clearly had a bit of cash to spend. See rather spiffy mosaic with underfloor heating:

St Albans also has a very classy street market and a belfry constructed around the fifteenth century. Clearly people were both shorter and skinnier then; the stairway up is so narrow that even I had to twist to pass and Grant was basically going up backwards. Possibly a preview of what Plan B is going to be experiencing come January.

St Albans' belfry; observe (a) short doorway and (b) yokel buck-tooth grin and (c) t-shirt, which has now completely given up all hope of covering bump.

Anyway, the belfry managed to combine my fear of heights with my mild claustrophobia very satisfactorily indeed. Good view from the top, too. It used to be a part of a sort of proto-telegraph with signals transferred from the roof to other towers miles away.

St Albans' other jewel is the cathedral, largely made of flint as you might expect. I don't think I've ever seen a bigger church.

The inside was clearly decorated over several different historical periods with a whole lot of available cash and was just beautiful. Very worth a look, especially given that it's a mere hour by train from our flat. Once again, the esteemed guide 25 Best Day Trips from London proves itself to be made of solid gold!

Last week was the usual work/pretend to study deal. Grant made a couple of really nice dinners on the nights I was working, with organic chicken and sustainable organic cod no less.

This weekend we have been hanging around at home mostly. On Friday, Grant's old mountain biking buddy Tyler was in town, and we went out for dinner and to the pub - Prince of Wales, aka Prince of Pubs, natch. This was wonderful actually, as we hadn't been to either the Mexican restaurant or the PoW since the smoking ban came in. The Mexican now not only provides tasty food but also 99% less worries that every breath one takes is damaging one's on-board embryo, and somewhat ironically the beer garden of the PoW has become a smoke-ridden crowded hellhole while the formerly smoky indoors is now a mostly-empty smoke free paradise.

Saturday being yesterday we went into town for TROLLEY DIM SUM!!! (a concept poorly understood in this country but obviously the standard means of offering yum cha in Oz) in Chinatown. It was OK, and nice to see the trolleys like home, but nowhere near as good as Marigold or the other Sydney joints and nowhere near as good as the ordered dim sum at Bayswater, so I guess we should stick with what we know. Then we went a hunting digital TV tuner cards in Tottenham Court Road, then shopping in Oxford Street, unfortunately in the middle of Summer sales. WHOOPS. Grant picked up some jogging shorts (he has started walking/jogging the days he doesn't ride to work) and I gave into necessity and dropped 47 quid on lycra everything. I'm now much more comfortable and have two whole pairs of pants I can wear, and possibly as many as four shirts that don't show overhanging gut! The humorous thing is that when I wear "normal" clothes it isn't obvious that I'm pregnant (just look chunky); when I wear skin tight maternity lycra people offer me fruit juice instead of alcohol and ask solicitous questions about my health. Answer: fine, can I have a beer?

While I am on the subject, boo to Mothercare for selling me jeans previously that appear to lack a basic appreciation for the shape of a pregnant body, specifically it being wider in the middle than at the top and bottom, and of gravity, specifically that clothing will aim for the smallest point and stick there. ONE CANNOT DESIGN JEANS THAT GO AROUND THE BIGGEST POINT OF THE BELLY AND EXPECT A SKINNY ELASTIC TO HOLD THEM UP, MOTHERCARE! Result: elastic cutting person in half through uterus AND pants falling down; quite a double act for a company that specialises in maternity wear. Advice to purveyors of clothing for bumps: one must either go under or over the bump if all one is relying on is a piece of hat elastic. Advice to everyone else: H&M sells decent cheapass lycra for your bump, provided you don't mind a little exploitation of Eastern European/South-East Asian labour.

Last night Bin and Claire were in our neck of the woods visiting a friend, so we all met up in the evening and headed to the Moroccan restaurant in Goldborne Rd, highly recommended as always and damn cheap really. You can stuff yourself with two courses of really decent food for 10 quid; not always true of the W11 postcode.

Aunt Franny is visiting next week, and then Mum is coming in early August. After that we have Grant's parents in early Sept for almost a whole month. Busy. Times. Ahead. It will be so great to see everyone, and show them around our temporary home, though.

Week that was

2007-07-06T17:29:00.000Z

This week we have...ahm, I think there was some £-earning in there, and in my case a half-hearted effort at faking an interest in study. It's easy to get blase, as when I go back through my notes it seems apparent that I have actually done some work this year. of course, the fact that I have forgotten not only having done the work but also any of the content of same is probably not a fantastic sign.

Yesterday I had a mini-study group with a Uni friend who scared the living daylights out of me with pregnancy-related stories. Fortunately, today we had a midwife appointment. Midwife did nothing more than ask a billion questions, could not be persuaded to poke at or listen to anything, but did manage to make me at least feel like extraordinary testing is unnecessary. By extraordinary, we mean the triple or quad screen maternal alphaprotein test done as relatively standard in Australia.

Midwife: There would be no point given your nuchal measurements are so low.
Grant: nods, Loz: has quiet freakout.

Actually I am not so ticked off about it, because in my experience that test frightens more people without cause than it reliably diagnoses, but it is very hard to distinguish between the NHS being wise and sage and sensibly avoiding unnecessary testing and the NHS being a giant cheapskate. That said, while being against unnecessary testing, of course they still want to test for thallassaemia and sickle cell anaemia which is funny because WE ARE THE WRONG COLOUR HUMANS for that.

Midwife's calm attitude did rather help me believe that in all probability, there is still a baby in there which is doing fine. Well, I hope so, as otherwise I am going to have serious problems explaining the bump. Today bought dodgy second-hand copy of a Kitzinger book, where she explains that at 15 weeks one's clothes are likely to be too tight. Clearly, either clothes were looser and more accommodating of bumps in 1997 (I seem to remember pants were higher, which might have helped?) than my tight-jeans wardrobe, or the bump is a high achiever since the jeans were not buttoning by 12 weeks.

The hospital was also funny because the ante-natal clinic and ante-natal ultrasound departments are immediately next to each other but apparently are locked in a battle to the death. Ultrasound insists Plan B is due on 1 January 2008; clinic insists 4 January 2008; I insist they are both wrong, but why would I know, it's not like it was MY OVARY that started the clock ticking on this or anything.

Kudos however to the midwife whose phlebotomy rocks. Cf my last Australian GP who went through the vein and out the other side; I then let said GP do a pap smear, because apparently I cannot be taught. Public service Announcement: do not be letting doctors take blood EVAH; only nurses, pathologists and phlebotomists can be trusted. NHS announcement: swabbing before taking blood makes the needle hurt more and doesn't reduce the risk of infection, ditto swabbing after (NHS: £0.0000002 saved in antiseptic! woohoo! Loz: ummmmmmmmmmmm).

Grant has worked 2x 12 hour day shifts and is currently doing a night shift, proving that he is Well Ard. Tour de France in town tomorrow with time trials through Hyde Park, so we will head there as soon as he wakes up. You may deduce from this that tomorrow I do not intend to be arsed studying, either.

Last night I fed Grant and Regan roast chook dinner and apple crumble in my true housewifely fashion and it was quite tasty if I do say so myself, except that I cannot time a chicken dinner for love or money and only got it on the table at 9pm (which makes no sense - bird, free range and organic, natch, weighed 1.5 kg and went in the oven at 6.30pm; should have been ready at 8; really wasn't). We were up until almost 1am, which is starting to look a bit too much like our regular bedtime.

Therefore today, post-midwife £5 veg thali extravaganza at Hammersmith Sagar, aka We Will Kill You With The Too Much Food (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED OH MY GOD SO GOOD, although a little overwhelming when the courses just keep coming), Grant and I had a nice long nap and now I am sort of swaying snoozily around the flat while trying to do laundry and get my dinner organised. Then I think I might head back to bed with a book. It feels much like the weekends of my former life, where the 6.5 hour sleeps of weekdays would be topped up with binge sleeping at the weekend, only this time I have a much better excuse for being tired. Kitzinger firmly believes that as it is after week 14 I should be feeling more energetic but that may be her second strike WRONG. Of course, I was this tired before Plan B when I didn't get enough damned sleep, so maybe I shouldn't be so hard on poor Kitzinger.

Things liked about England today: the healthcare continues to be free; the Indian food is amazing and cheap; the sun is still amply up until 9pm; the street urchins appear to have been called in for dinner as are temporarily not shrieking; the tube from Hammersmith to Latimer Road (other local station near us) continues to be on time and under-budget and truly the fastest distance between two points; Primark is so cheap I can't work out how they are managing it (presumably third world exploitation), TOUR DE FRANCE IS IN LONDON THIS WEEKEND. Oh, and best of all: Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council have, after two months of deliberations, finally admitted they were wrong to charge us council tax and are giving us £300 quid back. Never mind the fact that when we paid it, it was crippling, and now we're in the money so it's all earmarked for spending on hats, the point is: I FOUGHT THE BUREAUCRACY AND THE BUREAUCRACY LOST LIKE A BIG LOSER. VICTORY IS MINE. Good on Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council for being truly gracious in defeat.

Things I am happy about generally: I have a lovely husband + the vengeful gas of the first trimester appears to have "passed" + can now sleep through the night + pants with elastic are an excellent invention.

Things I ain't so happy about today:

I'm on my third throat infection in a month. I know there is a point to a lowered immune system in pregnancy - and hell, I get the benefit in reduced allergies, all the more appreciated in plane tree season esp. when I can't take antihistamines - but it appears to be the same throat infection! I already beat this! Twice! Where are the antibodies? Why is my throat so determined to have me puffing ventolin prophylactically to avoid bronchial complications forever?
I cannot seem to force my brain to study. It simply isn't scared enough. It keeps getting positive reinforcement when people ask it things it already knows, and seems to be keen on metaphorically inclining on a couch eating grapes waiting for people to tell it how clever it is. Someone ask me a stumper so I can get motivated, here.
We're not at home, and it would be good to be. Soon, though.

All well on the Southern front?

Things wot I have accomplished this week

2007-07-04T09:41:00.000Z

It has been quite a week.

Firstly, THESIS IS IN! I handed it in on Monday, amply assisted by my college, which gave the wrong address for the University of London central hand-in office (or rather, said it was on one street when it was on another street on the other side of the block). Kudos to Grant for judicious application of the format paint function in Word when he printed it out for me on the weekend. The footnotes ended up so perty, all 250 of them. All of this means: total thesis words for the week ZERO. Total thesis words ever likely to be written again unless I get a raging case of PhD fever: ZERO. I am well chuffed. I celebrated by working for ten hours on boring precedent documents.

This week I have also grown SOME MORE FOETUS! Viz:

13 weeks + a day or two. Note to self: next time get arm out of way.

I swear, my back is straight. This is a freaky business. One can comfort oneself with the fact that most of the bump is displaced intestine and related digestive apparatus, but one cannot deny the fact that all of this used to fit in without a bump. On the plus side, I now have an excuse for elasticated pants, or should I say trousers so as not to offend the English. This actually worked out pretty well, because of the 4 pairs of pants (/trousers) I brought over here in the first place, 3 have now died terrible deaths and were going to have to be replaced anyway. Note I still have the comfort of the ref flannel PJ pants (/trousers) Susan bought me ages ago - elasticated AND baggy AND drawstring - GENIUS. First midwife appointment is Friday. At 14 weeks. Who said prenatal care was necessary?

What else have I done this week? Worked some hours, learned some admin procedures for said work. I had to process bills. BILLS! Far be it from me to snob about any scraps thrown my way, but why on earth would you make paralegals process bills? And actually send post? Oh well, beggar/chooser, etc. The other paralegals have however been asking me questions about the finer points of law, and that is pretty cool, as occasionally I even know the answer.

Work-wise it's looking like old work will take me back in November/December, when the real money will roll, accompanied by the real backbreaking hours. Awesome. It's also looking like Grant will have something rather exciting lined up to go back to, in a field he has been interested in for a long while - also very cool.

Grant has been doing extra shifts this week for the slush fund, and is REALLY looking forward to a holiday. So am I, but there's the small matter of three exams between me and any such thing so I am not too eager for the passage of time.

So, check box: thesis.
Not checked boxes: three exams, holiday planning, flat pack-up and transport to Oz, relocation, more work and of course finish growing foetus. I will just be over in the corner here having a bit of a freakout.

How's everybody else?

This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill!

2007-06-21T19:03:00.000Z

To check who is still paying attention, and reward same:

Introducing Plan B, due 1 January 2008 and currently resident in Loz. All limbs present and accounted for. Woohoo! And eek!

Thesis, jobs, etc

2007-06-15T09:37:00.000Z

So, we got back from Iceland on Tuesday night. On Wednesday Rohan and Narelle left around midday, and after that I was deep in thesis wrassling. By Wednesday night I had finished the main body of my thesis (but for editing) at a princely 29,700 words. On Thursday morning, my supervisor, who had previously told me that both he (one examiner) and the external examiner had agreed to the overrun, the Uni's central body was now threatening to rely on the overrun if my mark was borderline to bump it down, which he said he couldn't guarantee that it was not. TWO WEEKS FROM SUBMISSION. Helpful.

Then, when he was reviewing the final draft, he seemed upset about the idea of cutting any of it out and said I shouldn't stress too much about culling words, and that he was sure it was a distinction, not borderline. ARGH.

Anyway, through cosmetic footnote amendments I have carved out 1500; I may be able to lose another 1-1500 through text edits and carving out "my darlings" as they say in literary circles. Either way I am going to be submitting a piece that is more than 10,000 words over a 15,000 word limit and there is nothing I can do at this late juncture to change that, since I need all the bits of the bloody argument to make the point. Such is the price of ambition. Fortunately I have almost reached the "don't care" threshold.

In other very peculiar news, when I first came here my old work tried to line up some part-time jobs for me. None came through, but I had an email out of the blue from one of the firms offering me part-time casual work. They are happy for me to do under 20 hours per week, so I think it will fit nicely around study and force me to be a little more efficient, rather than, you know, writing blog entries instead :) It's trade mark paralegal work, which I can do standing on my head, and it's only 10 quid an hour, but that's 10 quid an hour more than I am getting now (and incidentally, about equivalent to my first lawyer wage with currency conversion - funny eh?). So, my first job interview in 7 years consisted of a very nice law firm partner saying "please say yes" and me responding "what the hey." It will be funny to be a drudge again but probably all I can handle at this stage. We shall see. I start Monday.

Happy birthday to nephew J. We're looking forward to getting home and borrowing you from your mum and dad!

Thesis words added this week: about 1000.
Thesis words subtracted: about 1500.
Thesis words still to subtract according to vague threats from Uni central body which shall be disregarded: 12,000.

Island/Iceland

2007-06-15T08:32:00.000Z

Hallgrimska, Reykjavik, 12:30am

Over the weekend we had a lovely trip to Iceland. A proper trip, even, namely on of the three or four in my entire life for which I've had to pay for accomodation (what the hell are family and friends for anyway?).

We landed just before midnight on Friday at Keflavik, and from there it was a 40 minute bus ride to Reykjavik ("smoky bay"). As a result, we got to see the sun set. After midnight. And it didn't go all the way down; it just sort of sulked over the horizon. This photo of the main cathedral, Hallgrimska, was taken just as we were walking to our guesthouse, pushing 1am. FREAKY. The sun came back up again a little after 3am which wouldn't have been a problem, except that we had no blinds in our room. Funny how quickly you get used to it though.

I must say I did a kickass job of picking the guesthouse. It was opposite a strip joint and two pubs, two blocks back from the harbour and one from the main shopping strip, and our apartment had a jacuzzi, dishwasher, and washing and drying machines, making the place as a whole roughly 98% more attractive, convenient and awesome than the pixieflat. I miss you guesthouse apartment! Oh, but since Reykjavik's water is geothermally heated, things got a little sulfurous when showering/washing up/having any contact whatsoever with hot water. This I do not miss.

On Saturday we had a wander around Reykjavik, which at 300,000 barely counts as a city by back-home standards. It is really quite pretty; all the old houses are made out of corrugated iron, but with elaborate wooden trims. Note to self: bring true gospel of tarting up tin shacks home. The main shopping strip is nice but quite tourist-directed (albeit blessedly without any of the major European/American chains) and really pushing Icelandic lopi jumpers. These are a little too simple for me to spend 80 euro on, given I could make one with my eyes closed for about a quarter of that, but they were interesting to eyeball anyway. I did actually pick up two balls of thin icelandic wool for about 1/5 of what I've seen anything sold in UK, land of "we pretend we don't have sheep so as to force up the prices." Icelandic wool is tough as an old boot, and I imagine would outwear merino by several hundred years. Might be a little rough on the hands, but we'll see!

During our wander, Grant made a new friend at the sculpture garden near Hallgrimska. Then we headed up the tower of the church itself, which is one of the high points of the city. It was great except that (a) I'm terrified of heights and (b) we went up there just before 3pm without realising what happens in a bell tower on the hour. BELL MAKE BIG NOISE.

Later, we went out on a boat for a whale/puffin-watching adventure, which did indeed include sightings of puffins on Puffin Island (shooting fish in a barrel, as that's where the puffins live at this time of year) but only dolphins, no whales around. Unfortunately dolphins appeared to satisfy there "get a cetacean sighting or get another trip free," or so I gathered from the tour guide's repeated discussion of the dolphins several hours after we had last seen them. The dolphins were, in fact, pretty cool - not like bottlenoses at all.

Later, in commemoration of the puffin sighting, my companions ate a puffin. I demurred.

On Sunday we rented a car to better experience the joys of Iceland. It came with a CD to replace those pesky human tour guides. Once we worked out the suggested route out of town it was quite good. The route was the golden circle, which covers Geysir (the Big One after which all geysers are named), Gulfoss (honking waterfall) and a park called Thingvellir (actually it isn't "Th" it's an icelandic character, the same as for the start of Thor's name, but let's not overtax blogger) where the Icelanders formed the first European parliament.

First stop was a nice lava field:

The dirt is quite black; the green stuff is really thing moss, not grass. Quite an alien landscape. At the instructions of our tour guide CD, we then visited this volcanic crater:

Oo er. We of course had to walk down into it; Grant and Rohan then raced each other back up, because they are both youngest children. And people make fun of my only child status. AT LEAST I WASN'T SCARRED FOR LIFE, people.

OK, next stop. Does my public want geysers? I am going to assume the answer is yes.

This isn't Geysir, which is unpredictable and in fact stopped erupting for a few decades before the 2000 earthquake jogged it back into life. It didn't go up while we were there. This is Geysir's little brother, which kindly shows off every 5 minutes or so. And is pretty blinkiy impressive. Of course, this entire area was rank with sulfur. Probably one of the few places on earth one can fart with impunity.

And this beauty is Gulfoss, a really, really big waterfall.

The first drop is about 11m and the second around 20-30 I think. Water flow is 100 cubic metres per second, so of course they wanted to dam it in the early 1900s. Fortunately, reason prevailed. This things puts out an amazing amount of water vapour. Grant and Rohan then spent some time standing on the edge, etc (Iceland has the same hatred of public safety as the UK, and even better, it's got a lot more dangerous things to refuse to protect people from) - see above re: youngest children.

And on to Thingvellir.

Thingvellir is at the rift between the American and Eurasian continental plates, which are moving apart at a rate of 2cm per year and being nicely infilled with LIQUID HOT MAGMA, which we are sort of standing on in this shot. Behind us is one of the continental walls; I think the edge of the American plate. We are also near the supposed site of the Law Rock, where in the early days of the Icelandic parliament, which was pre-script (backward Vikings), the Law Speaker would recite all the laws then in force. Sounds like a fun job, doesn't it?

On Monday we actually got proper sunshine, but were so wiped out from the adventures of the day before that we mostly mosied about the apartment. We went up in the Perlan for another 360 degree of Reykjavik and a visit to a most peculiar saga museum of Icelandic history (sort of history museum crossed with Madame Tussaud's) and had a wander about the harbour, but that was about it.

Tuesday was our last day, and was spent at Iceland's premier tourist trap, the Blue Lagoon hot bathing springs:

I'm cheating - this is outside the Blue Lagoon, but it's also the only part that is blue so we'll go with it. The hot springs are 37-39 degrees, like a toasty warm bath, and very salty, therefore conducive to a nice float. They also have a nice fake waterfall that will hammer your back and shoulders into submission for you, but which is not, I should add, of quite the same magnitude as Gulfoss. It was tremendously relaxing and exactly the best way to end a lovely holiday. PITY WE THEN HAD TO CATCH A PLANE.

And then we came home sweet home.

In short, visit Iceland!

Anticlimax

2007-06-08T09:36:00.000Z

My final class of the ACADEMIC YEAR has been cancelled due to administrative stuffup. Not only does this kind of take the wind out of my sales, but it also represents approximately 92 quid worth of lecture that I paid for and didn't get (even AFTER being generous and allowing them to count my dissertation - which has involved so far maybe 6 meetings total with my supervisor - as a full course load for calculation purposes). This is the second time this has happened in this course, so perhaps I should consider submitting an invoice to Uni for 184 pounds and see what happens. I imagine hilarity would ensue.

In other news, yesterday was the final copyright lecture of the year. We moved the retiring 80 year old copyright giant lecturer to tears with a presentation and then had a celebration with traditional foods students had made/bought and brought along. I went with Anzacs biscuits and they were OK and well received; plus a great excuse to talk history to the three Turkish students who of course know all about the Anzacs. It is quite awesome that the Turkish people are so respectful of what was, after all, a successful repulsion of an invasion force from their perspective. Hasan commented that Gallipoli was the birth of Australia as a nation, and really when you consider that Ataturk went on to lead his people to independence it was sort of Turkey's birth too. The Thai students had baby elephant toys for everyone as a memento. It was quite a lovely event, and a fitting end to a couple of frantic weeks of Uni-related socialising which I am sort of too old for.

Later I had a very pleasant wander around Holland Park in full summer glory yesterday with Bin and Sarah, followed by a very tolerable Thai dinner with said individuals + Grant, Rohan and Narelle. While London is a bit like Sydney 15 years ago in that everything is suddenly and comprehensively Thai, it was a competently executed version and it was nice to have a taste of home. And then there was beer, at the Prince of Wales, which is our unique and wonderful "local" despite being (a) further away from our flat than three other pubs and (b) going under the same name as every second pub in Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Nanna seems to be still doing pretty well after the scary step back in the middle of the week. I am still sort of wishing I was home though, particularly as they seem to be getting some rather spectacular weather!

The fact that my lecture has been cancelled presumably means I have no excuse to stuff about this morning, so I suppose I had better get on with the reading. But do I pick thesis or Global Policy and Economics of IP Law? Decisions, decisions...

Thesis this week: dunno, about 1500 - hard to tell as I was deleting as well as adding. Total is just shy of 30,000. This is where we stick fingers in ears singing LALALA. My supervisor was surprisingly equable about the fact I sent him three revisions of the draft for review in a 36 hour period; but then he clearly wasn't going to read any of it until the end of the week so I guess it didn't matter.
Steps: 29K. Pathetic, but coincidentally about the same length as thesis.

Ow, my pancreas

2007-06-07T09:46:00.000Z

Today I made these for my final copyright class, which required the production of traditional foodstuffs of one's country. I reduced the sugar from one cup to 3/4 and they are still so sweet I am kind of reeling from my taste-test. I study with a bunch of under-25s so here's hoping this doesn't turn them all crazed. Next time I'll pull it back to 1/2 cup and we'll see.

Last night we ate Quorn(tm) sausage rolls and they actually tasted like the real thing, and a quite decent version of the real thing too. In fact the Verisimilitude of the Quorn (tm) is starting to really freak me out. I am convinced that in a few years we are going to see the truth revealed: Quorn is actually not mycoprotein but meat. Possibly people meat.

In other news, Mission: Impossible thesis went rather better than I had hoped. I have only to edit the introduction, whack on a conclusion, and try to edit the thing and I am done.

My last class of the year is tomorrow, as is our trip to Iceland. Exciting!

First weekend of summer #2, Eltham Palace

2007-06-04T09:34:00.000Z

My public demands palaces, and so I shall provide: Eltham Palace, the new bit.

Sunday involved a pleasant if somewhat trackwork-afflicted visit to Eltham Palace with Chantal. Eltham Palace is a rather unusual blend of a 15th century great hall with a 1930s art deco mansion. The result is pure fabulousness, which suggests that sometimes architects and interior designers are totally worth every cent.

The great hall was once part of a place complex where Henry VIII virtually grew up. It was reputed to top Hampton Court in extravagance which is really, really saying something. However, it fell into ruin. Most of the complex was destroyed, and the great hall fell to use as a barn, which obviously makes sense when you consider that it has this ceiling:

The Courtaulds, textile magnates, took the crown lease in the 1930s and had a mansion built abutting the great hall in grand art deco style. Unfortunately we have no pix of the rest of the house - its splendid wood panelling, the inlaid whatsis, the bathroom WITH GOLD PLATE - but trust me, it was tasteful and awesome and led to many thoughts of redecorating.

And all of this is set in some fairly elaborate gardens:

I didn't get my desired snooze in the sun, but otherwise it was fairly perfect, especially as it involved a cream tea.

By the end of the weekend, Grant and I had absorbed roughly 200 times the required vitamin D. It was really the best thing for what otherwise would have been a very stressful and sad weekend, far too far away from family and with Nanna sick. He's a good husband, that one.

On Sunday evening Rohan and Narelle had arrived from the Netherlands, and we had a nice dinner at Fancy Italian with them and Chantal. And then Grant and I went home and dozed our way through the rest of the evening; and today Mum rang to say Nanna was awake and doing well.

All up, great weekend.

And now I have to quite procrastinating and write some damned thesis, I'm afraid.

Photos can be found here.

First weekend of summer #1, Hampstead Heath revisited

2007-06-04T09:15:00.000Z

Stately home of the week: Kenwood House, Hampstead Heath, once home of Lord Justice Mansfield of patent and slavery case fame.

So, this weekend there had been predictions of rain. In fact it turned out to be scorching mid-20s, proper summer weather requiring hats and so on, and really if mid-20s now seem scorching I should probably not go home. Observe proper blue sky. I even had to squint, Australian-style.

On Saturday we had the news about Nanna, and I was a bit of a wreck, so Grant accompanied me to the annual LLM copyright picnic at Hampstead Heath. It was unreasonably beautiful weather, and we hadn't seen the Heath in summer before. The pools were far more inviting than when we visited in late Autumn; but of course even then there were people swimming in them! I might give it a whirl later in summer. However, it is very possible that my well-established Muddy Pool Bottom Phobia would prevent same.

About 20 people from my copyright class/their partners showed up for a picnic lunch and a wander led by our eminently capable tour guides, Professor Sterling and his wife. I was glad I went, particularly as Grant and I always get lost when we try to wander around the Heath, although it seemed kind of unfair to the rest of my family back home who were having a rather less pleasant day. All up we were out and about in the sunshine from noon until about 8pm. Very tiring, but good fun. Also, I think we won the Best Picnic Lunch of the Day award with olive ciabatta, marinated olives, hummus, cold chicken, and eggplant bake, and I am nothing if not competitive.

Photos can be found here.

Oh yeah, and it's not-winter again

2007-06-04T09:07:00.000Z

It's summer, kids. The veg, they do not lie. The street market is full of these goodies.

Eggplant/aubergine consumed single-handedly over the last fortnight: 4. YUMMMMMMMMM. 2 pretties still in the fridge.

Way of cooking eggplant without half a litre of oil:

Chop up 2 eggplant and boil until almost tender. Dump in baking dish. Mix 400gm tin tomatoes, herbs of choice, and a little salt and sugar; pour over eggplant. Bake 30 mins or so at Gas Mark 5 (what has this country done to me?), I guess about 180 C. Then cover with grated cheddar and a bit of parmesan and bake until melted. YUM.

Catching up

2007-06-04T08:32:00.000Z

OK. we are a little behind here, not least because I am technically writing a thesis. Which I have promised myself will be finished this week. It won't, by the way - where would be the fun in achievable goals?

The most important news is that my Nanna had a mild stroke late last week, but is now awake and talking perfectly. AWAKE! Remains to be seen whether her mobility will be affected, but it is such a relief, and she is doing well. I have never wanted to be home more, but have been forbidden from buying a plane ticket just yet.

So, without further ado:

Your weekly castle is...the Tower of London, tourist trap for centuries!

Last weekend we went to the Borough Markets (two quid fifty for asparagus? I don't think so) and hence to the Tower of London with Regan and Jace. Regan masterfully avoided the gigantor queues at the ticket office by buying tickets at the empty group booking stands. Several hundred other people failed to work this trick out. I was incredibly impressed.

We tagged along with a yeoman's tour. Very funny guy. For example, he suggested that when people looked at Cullinan I, the biggest chunk of high quality supercompressed prehistoric leaves, which currently graces the British royal crown [edit: it is actually on the sceptre, its little bro Cullinan II is on the crown] and probably making it weigh half a ton, they should think about whether engagement rings they had been given or had bought were large enough.

Cullinan I, actual size (OK, not actual size).

For the public record, I am quite happy with my Robocop UPHOLD THE LAW ring, except that almost immediately after seeing the pretty diamonds in the Tower, we watched Blood Diamond (decent movie, + Leonardo DiCaprio is not only all grown up but can sort of fake a South African accent, but really damned depressing, particularly if you have ever owned anything made out of diamonds - THE BLOOD IS ON OUR HANDS, PEOPLE!).

The Tower also has nice ravens and such like, along with assorted torture chambers which are now very tastefully displayed.

[edit: there is also a most bizarre "museum" - one of the early styles of displaying weapons and whatnot]

And then we ate pizza. It was a good day.

And on the Sunday, we sat around like giant lumps. Can't remember what we did, in fact.

I had a couple of functions during the week which were fun, and made sure I was just tired enough for the weekend, which was actually fairly brutal in its exercise regime. See next!

[edit: photos can be found here]

Brave New World

2007-05-30T09:13:00.000Z

So, the weather in London is like this:

Cloudy 11°C
SE (11 mph)
Relative Humidity (%): 82,
Pressure (mB): 1004, Falling
(wtih thanks to the BBC).

Which is to say it is FREEZING, making it about the 8th return of winter for the year by my count. But, because it is about to be June, and June is summer, the heating has been switched off by the estate management. I love a culture that applies the inexorable logic of "it is not cold in May" regardless of weather conditions.

So, we have a pretty cold flat, and a whole bunch of useless bank heaters. Fortunately the hot water tank is so poorly insulated that it spills out a decent amount of toasty goodness anyway; UNFORTUNATELY the central boiler (serving at least 6 blocks of flats) is on the blink and the hot water is not, in fact, hot.

We had this problem over the weekend, too, and when I tried to report it as an emergency repair I was told by the estate management that "hot water is not an emergency." This is intriguing to me, because in civilised places such as New South Wales, it's one of the things you can get fixed and force the landlord to pay for regardless of their consent to repair. Given that estate management doesn't supply electricity or gas, and that the water supply itself is presumably handled by the five thousand deregulated water companies, I am a tad confused over what else might in fact be an emergency repair for which the estate is responsible. Godzilla attack? "Oh, no, we're only responsible for Mothra attacks, sorry."

On the plus side, since the hot water problem has now occurred conveniently within office hours, they are apparently trying to fix it as we speak. And in the meantime I have an excuse not to do the washing up. HURRAY.

And now to put on a padded jacket and do the grocery shopping.

The Orange People, Day 5: work

2007-05-28T11:53:00.000Z

I'll actually start from the evening of Day 4...

Met up with work colleagues at Schipol airport - conveniently they caught the plane in that Loz was catching out, so it worked well. From there we headed to the hotel close to the customer meeting, just outside Hicksville, Netherlands (town actually called Zoeterwoude - wow, they have 8000 people living there...) The hotel was a glamourous Holiday Inn (I'm never quite sure what to do with that second bed), which in fact was not too bad. Especially the indoor-tropical theme they had going on:

We headed to the bar, meeting up with the other out-of-towners from the customer and Colt. From there we went on a GPS navigation adventure (including going the wrong way down one-way streets, and being directed through dead-end roads) to sample some of the fine Indonesian cusine. Aparently before the Dutch abandoned their colonies in Indonesia, they did manage to bring back some locals. The food was good if a little strange - I'm guessing the dutch can be blamed for the hard boiled eggs in the satay?

Day 5 proper saw my work colleagues surface a little shady (my hardy Australian composition meant I was fine though) and we headed to the meeting after a generic hotel breakfast.

Note I have not mentioned who the customer is... after the rigmoral of getting through building security (how many companies do you know that have their own luggage x-ray machines and perform a quick background check on visitors?) I presume they are now monitoring my every move, and probably already know the first three boy/girl-friends of everyone that has posted a comment on this site... however, I digress.

We had a tour of their facillities which were all very impressive - it's amazing what a not-for-profit company is capable of... it helps to skim a percentage off every interbank transaction the world over though. Seemingly, the only thing that would stop the place running would be a nuclear blast directly overhead - and even that would only be after the month of diesel runs out and no one wants to deliver more into the fallout zone.

For lunch we were given some of the wonderful dutch "food" - which was just about all my colleagues could bear, so we made a beeline for the airport. A hair-of-the-dog or three later at the airport bar took us to departure time, and as Priority Boarders, we got to wait with other half of the plane that were also Priority Boarders... I tell you, it's just not as exclusive as it used to be!

And that is Holland, only without the redlight district or "cafes"... but we'll leave that to the youngsters!

Grant.

Orange People, Day 4: Amsterdam and airports

2007-05-28T11:14:00.000Z

Multi-storey bike park, Amsterdam. The Dutch like to complain about bike theft, apparently, but they also like to leave their bikes around with no or minimal chaining compared to the big U-clamps common in Sydney and London. Statistical correlation or coincidence? You decide.

This will be a shorty, as Tuesday was my last day in the Netherlands and Grant's last day with Rohan and Narelle, as his work required him to get drunk with some Dutch customers on Tuesday night, and he had a meeting with them on Wednesday.

So, Rohan went to work like a good soldier, and Narelle and Grant and I headed to Amsterdam for a look at the outside of things, since we only had 3 hours or so to work with before we had to head for Schipol airport for my flight home/Grant's meeting with his workmates ahead of the pissup. Pictures here and following, bearing in mind that (a) the bridge opening is in Den Bosch and (b) there are no pictures of the pleasant half hour nap we had in the park next to the guys discussing the thriving market in 'shrooms.

We really didn't have enough time to experience the joys or otherwise of Amsterdam but it was good to see what we saw. Maybe next time we'll get a better crack at it. Until then, fave Netherlands places in order of faveness: the Hague, Utrecht, Den Bosch, Amsterdam.

After that, I had a relatively uneventful flight home to Gatwick and a train trip home that took longer than the flight from the Netherlands. Go Thameslink and the tube!

Steps on holiday: a million, so I promptly ceased walking altogether on our return home.
Thesis words: none in two weeks, and now I'm scared to touch the thing, a slight problem as it's officially due in a month. However, I think I'm only about 2-3000 words from the finish line so a little more procrastination will just help make things more exciting. Right?

Orange People, Day 3: Utrecht

2007-05-28T10:43:00.000Z

For Vron, who is apparently unsatisfied with castle images: me, with world's largest and oddest vegetarian salad. Nothing quite like ordering from a Dutch menu when your only Dutch consists of "thank you, vegetarian, chicken."

On Monday we went on an adventure with Ro and Narelle from Den Bosch to Utrecht, which is only about a 40 minute train trip. As you will see from the educational and informative link, Utrecht is the Netherlands' fourth largest city, with a population of a whopping almost three hundred thousand. Are these Europeans kidding, or what? That's not even a "city" in Australian parlance. TRY COUNTRY TOWN.

Utrecht was actually quite a suprise for me. In addition to the usual canals, of exceptional prettiness in this case, it is quite an old town, viz:

The pointy thing is the tallest clock tower in the Netherlands, or so we were told by the enterprising ladies at the tourist info shop. It has 400+ steps, which unless I am being evacuated from a skyscraper (unfortunately not that rare an occurence) I tend to avoid. I have a good excuse: I'm LAZY. Also, we got to Utrecht a little late and because Hungry Loz had by then taken over, we missed the tower's opening hours in favour of feeding me. A sensible choice on everyone's part might I add, and also one leading to the salad above. Theoretically, if we had gone up said tower we would have enjoyed panoramic views of the flatness as far as the eye can see. Next time? Perhaps after they install a lift?

We took advantage of the terribly pretty canals with a canal ride. We were disappointed at first that the boat had a roof (albeit clear), but then it started pissing down, so good forethought on the part of the canal tourism enterprise. Grant got some pictures of his favourite birds of all time. And a billion other photos of canal-related things, which start around here. Really, I have seen lots of canals at this point, and these were up there.

Then, on the way home, I had a strawberry flavoured milk drink IN A CAN, and later Rohan and Narelle fed us our first meal in several days that wasn't solely comprised of fish and/or accompanied by chips. Very tasty. It was, in short, a good day.

The Orange People, Day 2

2007-05-24T21:09:00.000Z

After a good night's sleep at Sarah's amazingly appointed apartment (we're so jealous!), we surfaced late and went for a quick walk down to the local forest. The light through the foliage was truly amazing - I would love to go back there for a more extensive walk.

After that, Sarah joined us on the trip to Den Bosch to meet up with Rohan and Narelle. Catching the train was a good way to see the countries exceptional flatness. Also note they use mini-canals instead of fences...

After a quick and comfortable jounry, we arrived in Den Bosch and were greeted by all its majesty:

Between the gothic churches, picturesque canals (complete with brand new ducklings!), cute alleyways, and weird-ass sculptures, Den Bosch really is a very pretty little town.

We finished off the evening with dinner in one of the many restaurants... mmmm, chips with mayo!

Grant.

The Orange People, The photos

2007-05-24T20:47:00.000Z

So, I finally got the camera back (see day 5) and have uploaded the photos.

Pics are available here.

Loz also forgot to mention a couple of things, like the exceptionally cool sand sculptures, such as this one:

and some weird stretchy guys:

Grant.

The Orange People, Day 1

2007-05-16T21:50:00.000Z

This past weekend (and Monday and Tuesday) we were in the Netherlands, home of the colour orange, and a country so awesome it has a princess called Maxima, to visit Sarah, Rohan and Narelle. We got up at stupid o'clock or 4:30am on Saturday to get to Stansted in time for check-in for the 7:45 Rotterdam flight with Transavia. Hugely recommend them by the way; they are a low-cost subsidiary of KLM but don't appear to know that low cost is supposed to mean crap service and no accountability. Also, they are cheaper than Easyjet (or were for that route), give all announcements in Dutch first, which is a nice touch, and they only have one check-in counter at Stansted because they have barely anyone catching their flights. SHORT QUEUES. Very much appreciated.

I forgot to get lollies for the pressure change but as it turns out, flying to the Netherlands involves an ascent of maybe 6 feet 3 inches so it was OK. The total flight time to Rotterdam was under 40 minutes. Seems hardly worth the bother! Rotterdam airport is a dinky pine construction seconds away from the town, so getting there after the flight was very easy and cheap (cf: Stansted, a 45 minute fast train from London at the princely sum of 15 quid each, which was almost the price of the airfare). Sarah met us at the train station which, like every train station in the country, was having BIGTIME SERIOUS RENOVATION - EARTHMOVING - TEMPORARY FENCING craziness going on. They must be coming to the end of their fiscal year or something. We then went on a tour of Rotterdam which, given that it was bucketing down rain, hugely windy, and mostly being dug up was something of a non-event. Does havea cool bridge that looks like the Anzac Bridge as well as lots of folks selling the seasonal delicacy, raw baby herring. Sarah assured us the stuff was very tasty or at least edible. Maybe next time.

Inclement weather forced a retreat by train to Sarah's stomping ground, Den Haag/The Hague, seat of European governance/lawmaking and all round cool spot. We had a weird lunch of fried things on the part of Sarah and Grant and vegetable soup on my part. With meatballs in it. The waitress, who had excellent English like every other Dutch person (they switch from Dutch to English when it becomes obvious you are a helpless tourist) was nevertheless operating under a cultural imperative and had no idea why I was suggesting that if you said a soup was vegetable and it had meatballs in it, you should say that too. Her point was basically that it DID have vegetables. Never mind. Den Haag is a beautiful, beautiful city with glorious old palaces and glorious new skyscrapers and generally seemed a cool place.

Sarah has the World's Largest Apartment just out of town, near forests and sand dunes and the North Sea and so on. Lovely place. We were feeling a wee bit tired so I lay down on a couch and woke up two hours later. I am a very exciting visitor.

In the evening, with gale force winds continuing unabated but the skies moderately clear, we walked the 40 mins or so to Scheveningen, Holland's answer to Brighton, on the North Sea, complete with dodgy but very sturdy pier. My usual practice is to run shrieking towards bodies of water and get my hands in them, but given that the beach was basically a sandstorm, it seemed a bad idea. It was also covered with chunks of what looked like styrofoam but later proved to be bits of sea foam dried and hurled by the wind. This was either cool or icky. In any case, I have still not touched the North Sea. This makes me sad.

We had a nice dinner at one of the beach huts they put up in Spring/Summer and then went back to Sarah's to watch EUROVISION 2007. GO SERBIA! Pretty ladies touching each other inappropriately will always win out in my book, especially when coupled with the block voting power of the Balkans and former Soviet satellite states. The UK, with its ambitiously double-entendre laden pop, was soundly thrashed, having no states to vote for it en bloc. That said, Scooch was no Brotherhood of Man.

And then we passed out, ending a 30,000-step, 20-hour day, which also happened to be Grant's 31st birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

More on the rest of our trip later.

The Loveliest Castle In the World (TM)

2007-05-07T08:57:00.000Z

Ooh look, yet another castle! 90% of Leeds Castle. Forgive lack of panoramic lens.

During last week, Narelle and I went to Leeds Castle with very few expectations of what would actually be there. Leeds Castle bills itself as "The Loveliest Castle in the World" which is really a very big call. While I will grant that it has a moat which looks like a glamorous water feature, and while it is otherwise very handsome indeed, I think they may be overstating their case a little. I will get back to you when I have seen the several thousand other castles in the world. I will however acknowledge that their library is fairly swish.

Plus, unlike Kenwood House, the books are real

The castle is on giant grounds, mostly parkland/minor gardens and scads of water features, as the previous owner, Lady Baillie, who was something of a style maven, had a bit of a bird fetish going on. She was in fact the first person to import black swans from Australia, and I got to make squeeing noises when I saw them. THE SWANS OF MY HOMELAND! Sure, they are a little crossbred and have white patches under their wings, and one we saw was definitely seducing a white swan, but still. Proper swans!

Lady Baillie was the granddaughter of one of the richest American industrialists of the day; so rich, in fact, that his grandchildren were still buying fixer-upper castles with the proceeds decades later (don't you just hate it when the previous owners don't do any maintenance work for several centuries?) and then spending squillions on repairing them, as well as on importing exotic birdlife for no apparent reason. And that's squillions of pounds.

Apart from the swans, the other plus side of the bird fetish was falconry. Again, we had no real idea what a falconry display would involve, but I sort of thought it would be along the lines of "this is a falcon, isn't it pretty?"

But actually it was more like this:

This is Bailey, some kind of owl or other, performing tricks for food. He later swooped to command over some schoolchildren. Very funny, and a very beautiful animal. There was also a peregrine falcon showing off mad skillz including catching a lure in midair, and some kind of hawk which was supposed to drop onto a lure "rabbit" being pulled along the grass, but he misjudged the drop and ended up landing behind it and waddling after it on his chickeny legs. FUNNY! Possibly on purpose.

And there were peacocks. And then we had dinner at our new favourite Mexican place. Behold the Rare Sirloin Taco of Grant:

And that is all for Tuesday.

On Friday Narelle and I went to the Spitalfields market, and really I think it's best left for Sundays as there wasn't a lot there. Some interesting things though. Brick Lane was quite dead but I did get enough Indian street food for lunch for just over a quid. BARGAIN!

My study group on Friday afternoon went really well. Everyone seems quite enthusiastic and most had done some preparation work, some quite a lot. I think it will work out for everyone.

Narelle and Rohan left at the weekend and so we had a very quiet one for the first time in ages. It has been really great to have friends around but it didn't suck to just laze about, either! Only now we've tragically run out of bad American telly to watch.

Thesis words added: 1500, all on bits I didn't *want* to add. Beginning to feel like the character from Chabon's "Wonder Boys" - "I can't stop."
Steps: 85,000.
Housework loathed: I haven't cleaned the floors or the bath/sink for TWO WEEKS. The shame.

Yet. Another. Palace.

2007-05-07T08:28:00.000Z

Oh look, another castle! Well, OK, it's a palace, or rather it was formerly Greenwich Palace until it was demolished and replaced with this swank complex, currently in use as a Maritime Museum and College of Music. Note Canary Wharf in background.

OK, so a quick one to catch up on the random other Londony things that have been going on lately.

The weekend before last involved:

very English playing of frisbee in Kensington Palace Gardens. That is actually quite an exhausting way to spend an hour or so, particularly when you have a substandard Woolworths 99p frisbee and have to spend most of the time chasing it. I had a snooze halfway through. Grant pulled a frisbee muscle. Many people slept half-naked in the sun, as you do.
Dim sum! Oh, how I miss trolley yum cha. I may have to go to Marigold quite a bit when we eventually get home.
many many hours of Civilisation III for Grant and Rohan, followed by many hours of beer at the pub watching the Australia v Sri Lanka cricket match (I abstained in favour of a quiet evening home alone for a change, which everyone should be grateful for as nothing happens on the cricket if I am there to see it).
a ferry ride to Greenwich, a tourist must-do that we have been putting off, which basically involves a who's who of London architecture, as narrated by a ferry driver, eg. "the building to the left was designed by an out of work window cleaner". Greenwich itself is just beautiful, plus you can get noodles for under 4 quid, an otherwise unbeatable price. All hail Noodle Time! Greenwich observatory, which is ACTUALLY UP A HILL of all things, has the original clocks designed to solve the longitude problem that had people unexpectedly crashing into coastlines for much of nautical history. It also had a bit of info on Captain Cook which is quite funny; we think of him as being the guy who "discovered" the East Coast of Australia but he was also in the thick of longitude research and was in the neighbourhood to take measurements of the transit of Venus around Tahiti with a view to determining its distance from the sun. An interesting point about Greenwich is that when they say a ceiling is painted, they mean it is bloody well painted.

Comprehensively painted ceiling in Naval Museum, Rohan and I are off on the left.

More shortly!

By Command of My Husband, the weekend before the robbery

2007-05-02T10:11:00.000Z

Being a surrendered wife, I obey my husband's every whim. Now a brief pause while I wipe away my tears of laughter.

Anyway, Grant made an excellent point over the weekend, which was that I had not pointed out all the lovely things that happened the weekend before last, prior to the point where we, you know, got robbed. And then he suggested that I should perhaps do so. And there were many, actually, so I shall do so. Apologies in advance as this is an image-heavy post, but you should all have broadband by now.

On Friday, Rohan and Narelle arrived! Grant went out to the airport to meet them, whereas I sensibly slept in. We had a grossly overpriced breakfast in Westbourne Grove complete with fluorescent eggs, followed by a stroll through the Portobello Road markets, and then headed up to Kensington Palace Gardens for a picnic lunch. Unfortunately this was the only day for sort of months that it wasn't bright and sunshiny, but as you can see we were all happy anyway.

Note my chipmunk expression, Rohan being too cool for school, and Narelle indicating that perhaps enough photos had already been taken (hear, hear). At this point we had lapped Ladbroke Grove/Bayswater twice on top of their long-haul flight the day and night before, so we don't exactly get points for navigation or for being merciful to the tired. They did however immediately start smashing previous pedometer records! Such is life in London.

I can't remember what we did after this. I suppose we must have eaten dinner somewhere? Can anyone remind me?

On Saturday we went for a stroll through the divinely beautiful springtime Holland Park, viz:

They had colour-co-ordinated tulips and those weird fluffy little flowers. Awfully swish. To show the difference, this is a shot of the same spot in February, albeit from a slightly different angle:

God, I love this country.

Following Holland Park, we did a nice hike along Kensington High Street to South Kensington (swank; cf North Kensington where we live), past the V&A to our favourite noodle joint for lunch. Actually after last weekend's Noodle Time in Greenwich, to be reported later, it has been demoted to second favourite, but it is still good and awfully cheap and way closer than Greenwich which may earn it handicap points. Ummm, after that we went to Harrods so that Ro and Narelle could pick up an appropriate Harrods giftie for their brand new niece. I also bought a very nice Harrods apron which was subsequently stolen with the rest of the contents of our bag, but let us not harp on such things! Then, we strolled into Green Park for a bit of a snooze in the sun, followed by Pall Mall, Trafalgar Square, and the back end of SoHo up to Covent Garden. Where we found out that it was St George's Day, with amazing street performers celebrating in style. The star was this gentleman on a ten-foot unicycle on cobblestones:

He subsequently juggled an apple, a machete and a bowling pin while on said unicycle. I continue to be in awe of his prowess.

On Saturday evening we had a quick tapas in SoHo, and then went to a comedy club for a line-up on a German, and English and an Australian comic, as well as a compere who made fun of Grant's name (they can't understand it here unless he says his name is "Grahnt"). The German guy was hysterical, starting his act with a stopwatch around his neck and insisting German people could be funny before saying "OK, let's begin" (click stopwatch). The English guy was a mimic, and a good one, but not so great if you didn't recognise half of the subjects, and the Australian guy was a funny guy with ISSUES. I can only hope he finds peace. Good show all up.

However, it left us wiped out enough that our planned river trip to Greenwich on Sunday got cancelled in favour of a wander to the Natural History Museum. Because who can resist the lure of dinosaurs? It has been approximately 20 years since I last saw a big scary dinosaur skeleton so I was happy - a pleasant way to relive childhood. Afterwards, we had a nice little carb overload experience with lunch, tea and scones at the Orangery in Kensington Palace Gardens, followed by a pub dinner in Bayswater and a robbery.

All in all it was a fun weekend. It's been great to have the band back together, plus the step count topped 100,000 for the first time in months!

Thesis count this week: it's topped 25,000. I figure I'm going to go out in style. 30,000 or bust!
Steps: week before last 104,000 (more than 60km), last week 101,000 (ditto). It's like we have poor Rohan and Narelle on some kind of forced march. They're being troopers about it, though.
Cycling: zip for more than a month. My bad. I'm not riding to uni today, either.

The milk of human kindness, OR, Grant is yet again a victim of his own efficiency

2007-04-24T15:02:00.000Z

So when last I wrote, dastardly foreign types (NOT EVEN COLONIALS!) had stolen our bag, and the police thought we had our own and Buckley's of ever getting it back.

However, as it happened, the very next day a kindly gentleman found the bag and some of its contents (spare camera battery and PASSPORT but not phone and glasses). He called the Australian High Commission and told them he had found the passport and was handing it in to the police. Please take a moment to think kind thoughts about this guy.

Then NOTE that his kindly efforts to spare us administrative torture were in vain, because:

Australian High Commission didn't bother even taking a stab at trying to contact us, even though they could at least have traced us to Jen's address. In fact, we only found out they knew when we went in this morning in person (losing two hours of Grant's handsome hourly rate) and they basically said "oh, that was the one that was getting handed in. Now fork over the cash";
The gentleman's call and apparently the handing in of the goods happened BEFORE I called the police to add the passport to the list but after our initial crime complaint, but the police didn't call me when it was handed in OR today despite having clearly cross-referenced it to the crime report (the one was stuck to the other); and
because of (1) and (2), GRANT HAD ALREADY CANCELLED THE PASSPORT which meant that HE STILL HAD TO PAY FOR A NEW ONE. But he's very efficient, and in fact he was only doing exactly what the High Commission says to do (ie cancel missing passports immediately to avoid identity theft, although how they steal your ID using a photo passport I have no idea) from which you can deduce that the High Commission is HUGE on financially punishing people for following instructions.

There shall be a strongly worded letter, you mark my words, at least as soon as I can find some form of actual contact address hidden in the bowels of their website. As an aside, I think their conduct means they do not deserve Anzac Day off, but they're getting it anyway.

Today, Grant called the British Home Office to get the other side of the bad news, namely visa replacement fees. They said £160 for 4-14 weeks processing JUST TO TRANSFER THEIR EXISTING RECORDED VISA TO THE NEW PASSPORT or £500 for immediate processing. At this point I like to imagine Grant went red in the face, but probably he just stayed his usual polite self. Grant then mentioned that he still had the original, and the response went something
like "oh well, just carry both the passports then. Not a bother."

Note well, Australian High Commission: British Home Office (a) answers phone using actual humans; and (b) does not attempt to profiteer off misfortune of others. I think there is something in that for all of us.

But on the plus side, they keys weren't left with the bag so we did the right thing in changing the locks.

Other news of the weekend: we walked a jetlagged Rohan and Narelle mercilessly around our 'hood, incl. Portobello Markets, every park we could find, Kensington High Street and the west end of the city. Grant will no doubt post pix soon. It was actually a really lovely weekend with a really stinking awful ending. Today Ral and I headed into the National Portrait Gallery, spent five seconds in the National Gallery, and had a wee stroll around the river, before heading home to our respective housewifely duties. Now I am going to do something very exciting, like buy stamps.

That would be the other shoe dropping

2007-04-23T21:17:00.000Z

Many times we have been warned about petty thieves in the UK (which when you think about it is to be expected, given that they were the source of a large chunk of Australian "immigration" at one point). And many times this has proven heavily exaggerated. And so we got cocky; and so I dared to leave a bag slung over the back of my chair between Grant and I and in the back of the dining area of a mostly-empty pub; and so that bag was stolen. Rohan and Narelle had seen some odd looking folks change tables to be nearer us, and who had looked like they were leaving until we sat down, but it wasn't clear until later what had been going on.

The best part? The bag didn't have our wallets in it, or our camera, and I had a spare key to the flat in my pocket. The worst part? It had the following things which are absolutely useless to a thief but really expensive to replace:

mobile phone (now IMEI locked and therefore useless) - only six months old and with all Grant's phone numbers, natch;
door key - which meant the lock had to be replaced, as we both think the aforementioned phone may have had SMS content identifying our address. Super landlord, when I called him to get permission for the lock change, happened to have a spare lock barrel and volunteered to come around within the hour to replace it. Unfortunately, thanks to the door having been designed to withstand a frontal assault from a battering ram - a very likely problem for a bedsit, I think we can agree - and the three point locking mechanism meant he couldn't get it in. Therefore, I had to call a locksmith, and it being a complex change had to pay 82 QUID to get it installed. And that was the CHEAP estimate. Don't get me started on a country in which a 20 minute job can be charged out at 120 QUID; even I didn't charge that much!;
Grant's old prescription sunglasses, which are barely good to Grant anymore, but still damned expensive to buy replacements for. And even so, we thought we were doing all right - were in fact even patting ourselves on the back about how it could have been so much worse - until we realised the final item left in the bag and therefore nicked.
Namely, GRANT'S PASSPORT with WORK VISA. This is great, because not only do they make you pay the ridiculous passport application fee (80 quid) again, they also make you pay a penalty fee (for being ROBBED) *AND* it looks like you have to pay the whole visa application fee again *and* resubmit all the original supporting documents even though you are already in the UK with the kind permission of Her Majesty. I know I am a closet anarchist but this just looks to me like bureaucratic feeding off the misfortune of others. I would NOT like to be in the position of desperately needing the help of the Australian High Commission in this country, let me tell you.

So, my lack of vigilance for half an hour has cost us in excess of GBP250 and climbing fast. That is money we barely clawed back from the edge thanks to Grant working like a DOG last month. It is *more than a tenth of our monthly income*. We have both felt rather weepy about it. It certainly could have been much worse, and it is a cheap enough price at which to learn CONSTANT VIGILANCE, but life is seeming mighty unfair right now. And it seems like if we have to lose so much in cash terms, then someone else should get a corresponding benefit from the crime, but the reality is that all of our stuff would have been chucked in the nearest bin within seconds of the crime and subsequent discovery of the uselessness thereof (and OK, I get a bit of a thrill thinking about that), particularly given the presence of the incriminating passport.

Anyway, we are all fine and unhurt; we lost nothing that could not be replaced relatively easily although at some expense; and we have the cash to clear it without having to live off rice and beans, even though Grant's toy fund will now be sorely depleted. We also now know:

the UK Police pretend to be more helpful than the Australian High Commission, particularly as they actually answer the phone with humans. They took a detailed report. I said "Look, am I right none of this stuff is ever going to show up?" The cop responded "Miracles sometimes happen, but usually not." They are good at looking busy and offering counselling though, and we had already done everything they suggested (IMEI lock, door lock replacement, etc);
the Australian High Commission would sooner leave you in Guantanamo Bay without trial for five years than actually have a human being answer the phone, even if they are going to charge you like a wounded bull for a passport;
a bartender who responds to "My bag's been stolen" with "You should have been more careful" is an idiot, but the day can be saved by a publican who seemed genuinely concerned and helpful about a theft in his establishment (actually, it was a nice pub with good artisan beer and competent food up until that point);
ALWAYS KEEP ALL YOUR LIMBS WOVEN THROUGH YOUR BAG AT ALL TIMES, and preferably set up some kind of perimeter alarm, perhaps with dogs.

Oh yeah, and the bag also had a Harrods apron, a dinged up red drink bottle and a tea infuser with a total street value approaching 50p. ENJOY, GUYS.

More London awesomeness

2007-04-18T20:03:00.000Z

London awesomeness update:

This is really a very good Mexican joint: www.crazyhomieslondon.co.uk/food.html. They accidentally brought out my main (tacos with shrimp, black beans and guacomole, REALLY TASTY) with the entree nachos, which turned out great because for once I didn't finish eating eight hours after Grant "the trick is not to chew" Donnelly. Plus I got to steal his food (chicken enchiladas, rice and beans, also REALLY TASTY) for a change. Crazy Homies, we salute you! However, given that they were jam packed on a Wednesday night at 7pm so that we had to eat at an eeny table in the bar, I don't think we'll chance it on a weekend. I should add they had a chandelier made out of about 10 bendy-arm spring lamps, all with lightbulbs that changed colour, and if that doesn't sell the place to you I don't know what will.
This guy is all over the English stations (well, Capital and BBC1, anyway), on account of his extreme awesomeness: http://www.mikasounds.com/uk.php. He's like Freddy Mercury reborn with a dash of Robbie Williams. I DEFY you not to bop to "Grace Kelly" and "Love Today." Of course, I've also been listening to N.E.R.D. endlessly lately so it may be that London has just given me a higher tolerance for bitches and hos-type music than I previously possessed.
Sunset happened after 8.30pm today. I totally forgive this country for the travesty of 4pm pitch black over winter. I am a little worried about high summer. The way things are heading, the sun will in fact never go down, Iceland-style.
It was another beautiful day today, and I got to spend a decent chunk of it in the pretty park which comprises Russell Square at a nice outdoor study group with some of my fellow students. It went quite well, and seems like it might be useful for everyone concerned. Certainly everyone was keen to meet again next week. We are working through past papers, and it is good to have the ability to bounce ideas off people or even just go through the motions together, as well as something to motivate me in going through said papers in the first place. I must say, past paper work is going better in trade marks now than it did over the Christmas break for copyright, where my efforts to do a past exam question that should have taken 1 hour under exam conditions took about 10. I'm now tracking rather better, although it is still taking me about 1.5 hours per question WITH access to materials I won't have in exams, but it is reassuring to be making some progress. Well, I did one last week as a term assignment that took about 8 hours but as I wrote a 3,500 word treatise on the subject that is sort of forgiveable, I think. Anyway, it was rather nice to hang out with some folks in a study group after spending a largely solitary holidays indoors with the textbooks.
I have wool. WOOL! And I've relearned how to knit "blind" while reading - the talent that produced quite a few jumpers in my undergraduate years with titles like "contracts jumper" - and am knitting a simple openwork shawl while I study. I am pretty chuffed with my newfound ability to knit k2tog without looking, let me tell you, even if it did mean I had to spend about half an hour fixing a bunch of mistakes at the start of this week so I could knit while reading (cleverly, I have already reprogrammed my brain so once again I can't read without knitting). I am on track to finish it just in time for a sweltering summer.
Grant adds the AWESOME point that he is taking Friday off. Sometimes I think of how excited I would be at a whole day off work and then freak out a little, because short of retirement I am unlikely to have this kind of freedom again ever. However, I must say that the study gig is no cakewalk; I get to spend all of my time either studying or feeling guilty for avoiding study, after all. But there is rather more sleeping in, which is also awesome.

I hope all of your weeks are also progressing in a BIG WITH AWESOME fashion.

Summertime, and the living is easy (OR, early spring and the weather is summery)

2007-04-16T19:29:00.000Z

So. It's been 24 C for three days. TWENTY-FOUR! T-shirt weather, in April! It feels kind of summery. Or at least hotter than I remember it being in early spring back home. Global warming is not all bad, as Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame has sagely noted.

Hence,, our usual weekend hikes were rather sweatier than usual. On Saturday, we decided to go to Regent's Park, both for the purposes of chicken tikka wraps in the Church Street markets and to see whether the formal gardens were looking appropriately bling.

They were:

Those are some very, very fancy tulips, indeed (at the end of the main promenade). And just in time to make up for the the fluffy white tree things which are no longer in bloom. The fluffy pink trees have also stepped in to take up the slack.

Regent's Park also has some genuine black swans. They look like home. At the moment, it also has a population of about 100,000 half naked people carpeting the grass, but this seems to be de rigeur for the season.

On the way home by the canal, we came across this tragic casualty.

It was a lovely day, and we both came home with the teeniest stripes of pink skin on our arms, being apparently newfound English people without our former Australian leather hides to protect us - and all after skipping only one summer! Thank God we wore hats. I think I'm going to have to rethink the "sunscreen is for sissies" approach to the Northern Hemisphere.

On Sunday we had grand master plans to do a day trip from every tourist's bible "25 Day Trips From London," with St Albans (Roman ruins) and Rochester (Norman ruins) on the shortlist. However, Thameslink trains were out until 11am and Grant took advantage of my morning weakness - plus the fact that we were both already wilting in the heat at 11am - to suggest that we just hang around locally instead. Hence, we contented ourselves with a circuit of Kensington Palace Gardens (or KPG as Grant now calls it, being jiggy with the language of the young people) and Hyde Park, both of which also had a carpet of half-naked folks (ditto, Princess Di memorial fountain/human cooling device, Hyde Park). People were not, however, hot enough to risk microbial infection swimming in the Serpentine pool thing. Again, another beautiful day even if it was stinking hot, which on the other hand did provide an excuse to spend the rest of the day watching sci-fi DVDs flaked out in bed. By the way, that is totally one of the main advantages of the bedsit way of life.

Another gratuitous flower shot, this from the gigantic wisteria around the corner:

Classy, eh?

Uni-wise I have had a bit of a patchy week. I started and finished my holiday trade mark assignment on Friday which I thought was a reasonable effort. However, it is 3,500 words long - roughly twice the usual limit for this sort of task. I am certainly not going to admit the length to my tutor, since it is his damn fault for not setting a word limit. Anyway, as my thesis demonstrates, I am incapable of producing a short piece on anything. I have been avoiding my copyright assignment since I think it is kind of silly and a waste of time. I would much rather do an essay, but instead I am stuck with the job of cross-referencing international treaties. YAY. I have also been avoiding my thesis for the last fortnight, since I have had more pressing demands on my time, but I always think this is something of a mistake since I end up in chronic self-doubt mode if I don't work on it fairly regularly (as Grant will attest, having heard me moan about it all weekend), plus it takes me a while to get back up to speed when I get back on the job, given that the subject is MAXIMUM EXTREME THEORY, just for fun. I comfort myself with the fact that I THINK my supervisor would have mentioned something somewhere in the last 23,000 words if he thought I was completely off the track or an idiot. However, maybe he just wants to leave it to the last minute to maximise shock value.

Anyway, today I barely managed some futzing around with German copyright law. I'm still not up to speed with copyright and it vexes me. I think I am doing a little better with the other two subjects, the main problem being that they are both more interesting than copyright, which let's face it, would not be hard.

I've organised a study group for this week, and it will be interesting to see how many of the promised attendees actually show. Hopefully it will make it more palatable to get working on the past papers. Exams are in August. It seems like a long time away, especially since I only have 7 weeks of class between now and then and the rest is time off, but it's never too early to panic, right?

In other news, I finally managed to make decent bean burgers yesterday, by dint of actually following the recipe properly instead of stuffing around with it. Who'd a thunk? Alison Holst, I salute you, and your thrifty meal ideas! Also, today proved my housewife street cred by baking an apple cake. It is a bit eggy (how could you let me down, Alison Holst?) but it's OK.

Ro and Ral are arriving shortly. Hurray! More tourist times ahead.

Steps: 85,000 last week (at .6m per step, more than 40km), only about 5,000 for today though.
Thesis: don't touch it, and it can't get longer, right? I don't know. It's kind of like Shroedinger's thesis. If I don't open it to do a word count, it could theoretically have less words.
Bike: zip - my head hangs in shame
Prolix trade mark assignments: ONE.
Vitamin D absorbed through sweet, sweet sun exposure: quite a lot, I think.

5 by 5

2007-04-16T19:12:00.000Z

The intention to ride was always there... It was definitely NOT my intention to leave the bike untouched for months in the hallway!

Lack of financial incentive (a pound each way in the tube didn't hurt enough), cold weather, and the pedometer challenge kept me on public transport, but there was finally some incentive to not catch the tube.

The first was some sort of catastrophe which stopped the train at White City. I had to get out and catch a bus/walk the rest of the way to work. This one was particularly annoying as White City is *almost* close enough for me to walk to - it is actually closer as the crow flies than Holland Park station, but due to motorway and rails I can't get straight there...
To put the distance to White City into context, see the map below. I ride beside the Grand Union Canal for a short stretch, which is kind of nice (much better than cars, anyway!):

The second was Easter Monday. As is tradition, the various rail networks did copious amounts of track work. I was covering shift on the Monday (which subsequently turned out to be unnecesary, but anyway). This meant a 7am start. Unfortunately the trains weren't starting until 9am...

The net result was I finally found out that riding to work takes only 25 minutes. The tube (with walking at either end) takes 40min. Not a very difficult decision! However, I may actually be doing less exercise now than when I was catching the tube. Even worse is the severe drop in steps since riding to work - only 69k steps last week!

Anyway, it is good to be back on the bike, and riding to work 5 days in a row is something I never achieved back home, so I'm pretty chuffed with that. And you can shut up about my commute being only a flat 6km!

Quite a few new photo galleries have been uploaded. Additionally, Marilyn sent us a little Easter parcel which included some developed photos from 2004! It was our trip to Alice Springs with Jason and Alex, and can be found here.

Rohan and Narelle arrive Friday, so I will have to get my liver prepared!

Grant.

A good Friday (and a good Saturday and Sunday)

2007-04-09T20:41:00.000Z

Now do you believe me when I say it's Spring? Note the small blueish flowers in the picture. A woman was testing a toddler on his colours, and asked him what colour they were. He thought about it, and said blue. She said, as if he were stupid: "No, purple!" And OK (a) given his age, near enough would be good enough - what did she want him to say? Indigo? Lilac? and (b) THEY ARE BLUE! THE FLOWERS ARE BLUE, LADY!

As it turns out, Grant is not going to go to hell as he took Good Friday off work. On the other hand, the English service industry is totally going to hell, as the pubs were open not only on Good Friday but also on Easter Sunday. Apparently Jesus Christ died that we might all have a cold one, or in the case of bitters an appealingly coolish but not cold one.

Anyway, on Good Friday I had lunch with Jen in Kensington and went for a nice stroll through the Kensington Palace Gardens in the sunshine afterwards on my way home. There were a lot of half-naked people about for the purposes of Vitamin D absorption. It was AWESOME. On the way home I discovered that the Portobello Road markets were indeed running (of course, it being Good Friday), so Grant and I then had a stroll about and a sit in the Portobello Green, an attractive strip park which runs in the glorious shadow of the A40 Notting Hill overpass. Very pleasant. We had dinner at a fairly decent Moroccan restaurant. TAGINES. And since it was a textbook spring evening, we had a bit of a stroll about afterwards. I managed a mighty 25,000 steps for the day - 12+km.

On Saturday we exploded part of Grant's paypacket at Westbourne Grove and Bayswater in the form of:

a BRAND SPANKING NEW KNIFE AND STEEL (slices, dices and juliennes). We have been getting by with a Woolworths jobbie, and the new knife is so sharp and so beautiful it makes me weep while cooking for reasons other than the housewifery-sucks kind. All foods are as butter unto the Knife of Loz!
ACTUAL WALKING SHOES FOR GRANT WITH A SWOOSH ON THEM, since he had worn through the soles of the last Australian pair. Did we mention we've been doing quite a bit of walking lately?
DIM SUM. We really miss the proper yum cha deal with the little carts and whatnot, but you still get dumplings with dim sum so I guess it's tolerable.

You can see that we've forgotten how to shop properly, since all of the above is either super useful or actually edible. A little bit of a forced break from rampant consumerism Sydney-style has done us good. That said, we're about to explode some more pounds sterling (TREMBLE AT THE POWER OF THE GBP!) at Ground Effect for bike clothes, because the three pairs of knicks and three cycling jerseys I have here just aren't enough.

Plans to hit the movies on Saturday evening stalled especially when Grant rediscovered his addiction to Civilisation III and found himself playing an island with no mineral resources. Harsh.

Sunday we were very slow getting started, but eventually decided to have a bit of a walk to SOUTH OF THE RIVER (gasp!) via Hammersmith. We were a bit worried about lunch facilities, but of course everything was open. We ended up having lunch at an Iranian place in Barnes which was actually really damned good, plus they felt so guilty about the tiniest of waits for the food that they plied us with free desserts and whatnot. Iranian food is much like Lebanese is much like [insert name of Gulf country here] but do not tell them I said so. We went past a set of allotments and a woman seeing us staring longingly through the fence let us in and gave us a tour. It was a very impressive set-up. GBP25/year for a 10x18m plot on good English soil with good English rainfall; I don't think you'd have to buy groceries ever. However, the waiting list is something like 10 years so I guess I don't get to have one, sadly. Probably just as well as I tend to kill or lose to infestation most food crops.

We walked along the Thames River walk via Wandsworth and Putney back over Putney Bridge to Fulham, where we accidentally found another palace. This one is Fulham Palace, home of various bishops; the grounds are a very lackadaisical botanical gardens, and include an 80+ year old wisteria vine and a 500 year old robur ilex or very weird looking oak tree, apparently the oldest in England. You can make that sort of claim here since (a) it's small enough that I'm sure they've found all the oaks by now and (b) they know it's 500 years old because great-great-great (etc) grandpa planted it on June 16 1532 and wrote a little note to that effect in his illuminated diary. Fulham is rather nice, or at least that part is. But it isn't chavvy enough, plus it's dangerously close to south of the river and even has an SW postcode, so clearly we can't live there.

We also abandoned movie plans on Sunday night due to the fact that after a 25,000 step walk (jeebus), we were not about to go to Shepherds Bush and back. It was a lovely walk though, and there was sunshine aplenty, to the point where I actually have a slight different coloured skin line on my neck now. I think my people may call it a tan. I didn't expect to have to wear sunscreen here - they have an actual ozone layer and all - but may have to change my reckless disregard to UV a little.

All up I walked 60,000 steps in 3 days over the weekend. A little under 30km. Those hiking holidays are seeming more doable.

Grant rode to work today for the first time ever. His usual walk to station + train + walk from station commute is 45 mins. By bike it took him 20 mins, or 30 mins including change time, so he's thinking the last 5 months of train commuting may have been a trifle misconceived. I'm trying to convince him to try riding in work clothes but he is resisting due to Perspiration Issues, thus meaning he is spending more time getting changed than actually riding, but who am I to argue?

Thesis words this week: zip. Still working on a way to finish it without adding words.
Steps this week: 4K; last week 95K BWAHAHAHAHA! First time I've beaten Grant in a while.
Cycling ks this week: zip, but Grant has managed a few.

Sunshine, lollipops, springtime, et al

2007-04-05T12:19:00.000Z

It's spring again! 2007 has been very generous with breaking of springs. We must be up to Spring 4 by now, which I believe in Hollywood parlance might be called Spring Returns. Or possibly Son of Spring. In any case, it's sunny, and we've had a new floral attack (tranche 1 is daffodils, followed rapidly by tranche 2: crocuses or is that croci?, tranche 3: magnolias, baby!) which is a weird fluffy white tree thing with no leaves as yet. Very fancy, as if mother nature had decided to arrange a non-stop flower show with lots of variety. Also, the horse chestnut trees, or I THINK that is what they are, are getting their new leaves at last.

There may be something in the crazy N. Hemisphere view that seasons are counted between equinoxes rather than just by months. It doesn't matter so much back home as the weather doesn't really match seasonal patterns anyway, but here it is true that the trees didn't lose their leaves until early December, it didn't get cold until Christmas, and it's only now really getting properly warm and new-leaf spring-y.

And because I can't go for five seconds without thinking about my thesis, I had a meeting with my supervisor this week. He still likes the draft. In fact he apparently likes it even more than last time, which makes me suspicious, because frankly if people refuse to say bad things about my work I kind of assume they are biased or lying or worse still completely incapable of seeing just how awful my thesis really is and how far it is falling short of my completely unrealistic standards of what it should be. For example, I would like people to cry while reading it due to the lyricism of its academic prose, and no-one has done so yet. Possibly they are being distracted by the weight of its 180+ footnotes (still lagging behind - my undergrad Honours thesis for law had nearly 400 footnotes).

However, he does want it to be no longer than 20K words. So I then asked what read as verbose/what could be cut. Whereupon he answered that nothing read as verbose, in fact he liked the way it read, and that nothing could be cut. So what I am looking for is some kind of device that will conceal words from a word count and yet nevertheless enable them to be read. I will let you know how I get on with that.

He also tried to convince me to do a PhD. I explained the few issues there might be with that, including:

Australia is a long way from Queen Mary;
I am about to hop back on that sweet, sweet full-time work bandwagon, with its piled high heaps of cash and its TOTAL ABSENCE OF WEEKEND GUILT FOR NOT STUDYING, and they won't just ask me to write less, they'll PAY me to write less!
I have really had enough studying for the time being. I had my moments of incompetence as a lawyer but most of the time I knew I was good at my job and I knew that because I rarely had to look for the answer, clients paid bills, lawyers sought my advice, and once a month my company gave me a healthy cash injection by way of thanks. I *think* I am OK at this academic caper but it really doesn't have enough constant reassurance for an ego-driven praise junkie like me.

I wouldn't mind doing one in the longer term. We'll see. It would take so long while working full-time that I can't really stand to think about it. I would be lucky to manage it in under 6 years, and the number of times you'd have to refresh research over that period doesn't really bear thinking about.

I didn't get into the US 2-week study program. I have my doubts about the selection criteria used based on people I know who were selected (who are very nice people, but that is not the point). Possibly they don't like my delightful personality or possibly they thought I wouldn't get much out of the program given existing experience with US law or because of my Australian rather than European background, or possibly they went with the others for Reason X. Who knows, but I don't see how they could have selected those they did on the basis of greater knowledge of IP law. For Pete's sake, the copyright lecturer thought I was a copyright lawyer. THAT is how well I can fake it, people. BUT ANYWAY I WILL GET OVER IT.

Grant has been enjoying his week of 9-5 days so much that he is working on Good Friday. I'm sorry, Grant's loved ones, but he's going straight to hell. Various visa-related realisations may however cool his ardour for work a little. These include:

we are about to be actually, for real, financially-solvent British-style, a rather impressive feat considering that last month his efforts paid off in one fell swoop the remaining hefty GBP1,000 left of my student fees AND kept us fed and housed and in copious DVDs, and even more impressive considering that %$! contracting company effectively withheld several weeks' pay last month.
according to my uni, the British consulate apparently accidentally gave me too short a visa - should have been for four months after September, which is more time to sort out plans, and more importantly some time to work up a storm, assuming I can get a job!
we might be able to wriggle something for him to hang off a visa application I file - have to chat to Uni's immigration consultant about that next week. About time I started using the boatload of international student support services that presumably justify the higher fees I pay compared to EU students (wait, let's think about that - most of them are ESL - I speak the language and come from the same legal system - NOW who costs more to support?). I may be able to get them to do most of the legwork on a visa which would be sweeeeeet. And bless the UK, because in between torturing people with overwrought bureaucracy and really really long signage, they do occasionally produce tasty new one-year post-student work visas JUST in time for me to use them.

We don't have any big plans for the weekend other than yum cha/dim sum in Bayswater, probably on Saturday. I'd like to do a day trip but opening hours in regional UK might be chancy at this time of year. Maybe we'll just do the usual stroll about routine. I will miss the usual big Sunday family Easter lunch, but hopefully you'll all save me some for next year.

I'm really missing Queenie this week, not least because of some chicken scraps we had this week that I had to THROW OUT, so if anyone has / can take some photos, send them through.

Happy birthdays for this week to aunts Franny and Susan (in that order) - cards are in the mail :)

Steps this week: embarrassing, not talking about it. I think I would be doing way better if Queenie were here.
Bike kms: ditto
Thesis words: the horror
Actual holiday accomplishments: I worked out how to make a pot pie, but I used bought pastry. Does that count? Also, I performed a loaves and fishes miracle with a chicken (3 dinners - roast dinner, soup, and pot pies; lunch for two - sandwiches).

He made it!

2007-04-02T09:27:00.000Z

So, Grant has survived an epic 2 week journey to self awareness via extreme sleep deprivation aka shiftwork, which culminated in a heroic 72 hour week finishing at 7.30am Sunday - and, being a glutton for punishment, he's back in the office today for the usual 9-5 grind. Did I mention he's done all this while I've been on holidays? Talk about adding insult to injury.

To his credit, evil nightshift Grant did not make an appearance. Not even a single irrational temper tantrum was had.

Anyway, as a result life has been relatively unadventurous around here lately. I spent my first week of holidays doing exactly what I do the rest of the time, ie. reading reading reading until the bleeding of the eyeballs. Oh yeah, and writing writing writing until the bleeding of the fingertips. Thesis has now cracked 22,000 words (for those playing home game: word limit 15,000 words, oops). Thesis supervisor has commented gamely that it's "like a mini M.Phil or PhD" by which I think he means "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP WRITING!" The BEST part is that I have another 3 months to work on the thing, including the rest of April off and half of June.

We did go for a nice stroll around Holland Park and environs yesterday. Spring is indeed in the air. T-shirt weather, which means it will probably snow tomorrow. Highlight of the walk was a small child, 4 tops, scootering towards us on the footpath, with giant crowds everywhere. He said something which I did not think he could possibly have said. However, Grant confirmed it. Yes, the 4 year old in a park in the midst of GBP2.5million houses and tertiary-educated nannies instructed me to "move my f---ing arse." THIS WAS NOT IN THE BROCHURE ABOUT ENGLAND. Furthermore, HE WAS THE ONE SCOOTERING AT ME. If anything, HE should have moved his f---ing arse.

Actually, the nicest part of the walk was the usual admiration of 150 year old palatial mansions that is our usual weekend passtime. There but for the GBP2000/week rent we go.

Not sure what we are doing for Easter break. Grant is trying to work it, because he is an unstoppable machine as several of his underlings have apparently admiringly commented. We might try to fit in a couple of day trips, but I'm not sure that regional England will be open to feed us if we do.

Steps this week: 3500. Shut up, it's only Monday morning! 85Kish last week.
Thesis words this week: 2500 if you count 7 days back. I don't want to talk about it (I'm not TRYING to write a textbook, honest).
Cycle km: none last week. Tch.
Sunshine exposed to and resulting effect on mood: several hours; bouncing off walls. It's good stuff, sun. You forget that back home, what with the fact it wants to give you skin cancer.

Photos uploaded at last

2007-03-29T22:56:00.000Z

So, there is a few weeks of photos that I have finally uploaded...
- Dover
- Jewel Tower
- Chinese New Year
- The big anti war protest (and extras)
- Ravenscourt Park

Work has been pretty full on lately. I started shifts last week - it's been about 4 years since I did shiftwork, and it is even worse than I remembered! It probably wouldn't be too bad if I actually got the extended weekends thing, but I was doing extra shifts to cover people away on training. 48hr week last week, 72 hour week this week... The good news is they want me back on Mon-Fri next week - apparently no-one wants to take up the work I am doing, can't understand why!

There are whispers of a new role for me soon, but it is all cloak-and-dagger stuff at the moment, and I am not about to bank on any of this coming to fruition. It would be very cool if it does - kind of a make or break position, as it were... More on that if/when it happens.

I'm changing Umbrella companies for this contract (an umbrella company is used when contracting to manage the invoicing etc - and I am not allowed to set up my own company). For reference, if anyone is thinking of coming to the UK to do some contracting, do not ever go with Giant Group. They are a bunch of ... hmmm, guess I should save that until AFTER I get my last pay from them! On the plus side, I wont have to deal with them again after next week. Who would have thought dealing with Inland Revenue would be preferential to dealing with, well, anyone?

Anyway, off to bed.

Grant.

17thousand

Only 20 years later...

The romance

Fountain of happiness

Maybe gymbaroo wasn't such a great idea...

Sunset on the shores of the Parramatta, etc

Oh right, I remember this thing!

How about that then...

Pondering

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all, right?

Oh, and...

Catalogue of 13 months

Raspberry proof

I know mothers are supposed to say this kind of thing, but...

Where's Spot?

For the sake of posting

How many words?

Ta

Birthday girl

Then and now

How all this all began

Damn hot...

Christmas pix

Ding a ling

A new day

Life's a beach - Christmas #1

Milestones

Proof of Life

11 months

7 things

What the hell is a Meme?

Not going to win any updating awards, are we?

Stuff

YOU!

Back to wurk

Crawling revisited

Full circle

Where's the cheese?

On your marks...

BETH DO IT SELF!

Experimental blogging

Wii Fit week 10. *ahem*

Chalking up the achievements

Wii Fit week 9 - worst week EVA!

Striking while iron is hot

Stroller of Sleeping +8

A retrospective: 6 months of Beth (Plan B)

Milestones

Our baby girl!

Wii Fit Week 7 and Week 8

Wii Fit week 6

5 weeks down

Wii Fit week 4...

Recording a Milestone...

Week 3 report

Week 2 report...

It's ALIVE!!!

Today's events (or lack thereof)

Cornwall

We done went to Paris and Geneva AND I NEVER WANT TO EAT WHITE BREAD AGAIN

DONE!

Exams, visits, and a bellyful of arms and legs

Oh dear.

On the subject of rudeness

Chuffed, and also diligently avoiding study

Innit.

Franny etcetera!

Update

Week that was

Things wot I have accomplished this week

This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill!

Thesis, jobs, etc

Island/Iceland

Anticlimax

Ow, my pancreas

First weekend of summer #2, Eltham Palace

First weekend of summer #1, Hampstead Heath revisited

Oh yeah, and it's not-winter again

Catching up

Brave New World

Wii Fit week 10. ahem