The Sword of my Grandfather

You know that story about someone who fetches down the sword hanging on the wall and says "This is the sword of my grandfather, exactly the one he had. Oh sure, we had to replace the blade a couple of times, and that's the third handle - but it's definitely his sword."

My 2-year old bike is starting to feel that way. I'm now on my second set of brake cables, my third back tire, my 3 1/2 set of brake pads and have been told that I should really change the drive train and chain by the end of winter. Interestingly, I've become familiar enough with it that my response to this last (along with "How much? Ouch.") was "My baby!" I also found out that the bike I got was at a certain 'price point' at which the parts that can be seen on the outside are good quality name brands, and anything internal is a cheap Taiwanese knock off. Hmm.

In other news, I am pleased with the service I've been getting at my Local Friendly Bike Store, Capital Cycles. I switched there from Pennyfarthing after being fed up with the consistently poor service, and found the new place a big improvement, like for instance: being called if the mechanic feels that servicing will require a large cost for replacement parts, staff explaining what they did to my bike and why as a matter of routine, and staff giving me advice on maintenance and care. And they're generally nice people, too.

Dedication

Another update on 48 Hours:

Nice encode on vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/5035329

or if for whatever reason that doesn't work the rather crappy quality youtube standard clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ciB7RsLDk

Things to be happy about

So anyway, I'm taking this Honours level course on Geoffrey Chaucer, and the first assessment of the year was due about 3 weeks ago. I'd known about it for months and been putting it off as only a master procrastinator can do, and finished with an end result that was really truly apologise-to-the-professor crappy. For which I got an A+! :-) Ahem.
(Seriously, scheduling the 48 Hour Film Festival for the weekend before an essay is due is seriously inconvenient - those organiser guys should totally do something about that.)

Other things to be happy about:
It's sunny.
My sister has been having grief in her dealings with a government department, which seem likely to be almost over, thanks to a snarky letter written by our stepfather. Go snarky stepfathers for the win!
Riding out to Johnsonville with my beloved, and obtaining an electric blanket and draft excluders for the windows in the process. Death to feeling cold!
Did I mention it's sunny?
Further to a previous post, yes, my job is now scheduled to evaporate like morning dew in about 7 weeks. Anyone looking for someone with good writing and analytical skills with a good background knowledge in technical fields is very welcome to get in touch. Plan A, which is to be redeployed at my current place of employment (assuming they find a place for me to go) is currently being investigated, Plan B is to spend 4 months finishing Honours and comes with a warm reception from previous lecturers who all remember me well and are saying welcome back. Will see how it turns out - feeling less depressed about it all, anyhow.

This post is brought to you by a cup of tea and the exclamation mark.

Ho ho ho.

I won half of an award!
Operative bit is "Best Fan Publication, also presented by Russell. The winner is The Girl Who Asked for Wisdom and Other Stories, edited by Catherine and Stephanie Pegg." I feel I should be a bit cagey, after all a live blog transcript isn't exactly official, but still pretty happy.

Bwa Ha. Ha. Um.

So, it's official, I'm now signed up to run a larp at Chimera, called But Nobody Loses An Eye! set at a 3 year old's birthday party. It'll be totally awesome! Now I just have to, er, do something about writing it.

Note to other Wellingtonian Chimera attendees:
Registration for the con is now open at http://nzlarps.org/chimera/2009/register.htm, I'm told that game selection will come a bit later.
If you're on the same flight home as me (7pm), you might want to arrange with Anna the Larp Goddess to trade in your hour of mandatory packing out of the site to an hour of helping in the kitchen or alternate cleanup.

Christmas Holiday Special

You know how when a soap opera is getting ready to close down for the holidays they put in a lot of big dramatic unpleasant events so the the audience will be raring to start watching when it starts up again?

I'm having one.

The restructure fairy has turned up at work and sprinkled her little fairy dust around. They're not reducing head count, but my particular job is one of the ones deemed unnecessary. At this point, I can make a submission about how I think they should do their restructure instead, apply for one of the new jobs being created (seeing some job descriptions would sure be handy for that), wangle a spot elsewhere in Council, or leave. Things could be a lot worse, but yet I'm still feeling very uncertain about the future.

48 Hours Update

Team got 90% of the footage in the can yesterday and I stayed up until about 2.30 doing the rough cut, while Svendelmaus, my fellow gnome, messed around with sounds and backing music.* Really liking what's coming through. (If anyone is interested, we managed to write a script that's valid for 3 of the 48 Hours Approved genres, plus one that isn't. And it works. Go team!) Looking forward to the screening on Thursday.

Am now in Sunday morning lounging in my pyjamas mode, trying to stay awake so I'll sleep alright tonight. Also, there's a builder coming in about 40 minutes to fix a window sill - should probably get dressed for that.

* Day not without frustrations, like working out to get the DOP to cough up the first tape so I could start downloading footage, then having a panic attack trying to work out how to get the camera I'd been given to work and remembering how to use the software and working out why the new import method we were trying to speed up data entry wasn't working. Ah. Good times. Happily, my fellow gnome watched me typing in the shot entries for the second tape, said "That's inefficient!" and whipped up a specialised data entry program that took the job from 30-40 minutes of fiddliness to done-before-someone-has-finished-making-me-tea. Go Svend!