Going Out With A Bang

My regular campaign game just ended, after running almost every week for well over a year (nearly a year and a half maybe?) It really does feel like the end of an era.

It was huge. Ivan originally billed it as a 'troupe-style' game, not quite in the pure Ars Magica sense where people take turns GMing, but we all had multiple characters, and the storylines spread out over many worlds and, through the art of flashbacks and time skipping, an extended period of time. As you can see from the character map below, the phrase 'a cast of thousands' isn't far from it:*

It was a pretty big rollercoaster in terms of play style, too - we went through silly comedy, intense character drama, political machinating, with every now and then a mountain blowing up.** In the end, though, it turned out to be a horror game, which given that the plot had done a lot of meandering surprised us a lot. We realised that the turning point had been when we invented some fun child characters, one of whom was our imaginary pirate friend (with a Sinister Background), who was both totally evil and wanted to eat everyone on the ship, starting with our friends and family, but also really liked us and wanted to be our friends - resolving Cap'n Pi's plotline made for some complete WTF moments. (I hadn't realised that ransoming our family back from the completely real military coup with an imaginary hat could be topped, until today, when we rescued the Guys Who Could Save The World from an armed base by means of a song and dance routine, and a flower.) I think, by the end of the game at least, Cap'n Pi really loved us, and it was us who had to kill him in order to save humanity, by fighting our way to his centre of power and giving him a 'gift', an infophage antivirus that manifested as a treasure chest overflowing with gold. I still feel really sad about this, two hours later. Thank heavens we get to debrief with liquor tomorrow.

Great game, Ivan!


(*) This is actually still incomplete - I realised earlier today that we were still missing some characters like The Bruces, the dirty lawyer, and most of the imaginary characters.
(**) Later in the game this included 30,000 crew spaceships and entire planets. By the end it got big.

Losing the vote

Actually, having it cancelled. Is that a good description? Maybe "from it's mother's womb untimely ripped" is a better phrasing.

To explain, the Region Council of Canterbury (ECan) just got fired so a new bunch of National cronies could be appointed in their place. This process took one day. New elections are going to be who knows when, certainly not this year when the local authority elections are meant to take place. Possibly not ever: the National/Act philosophy seems to be summed up in the phrase: "Keeping Democracy As Far Away From You As Possible."

Yeah, I'm kind of pissed about this.

For your viewing pleasure, some rhetoric from one of the MPs opposed.

Round Trip

Today I had to go to Palmerston North to spend a day talking to some people. Since the office was 50m from the train station, and I refused to drive the work ute offered to me, I took the Overlander train there and back again. Observations: train crew were massively good value,* the food has upgraded to Wishbone meals, and spending an hour waiting for the train at Palmerston North station is very tedious. Had a very productive day, and am now quite thoroughly tired.

G'night.

* I mean, seriously, they weren't just maintaining a cheerful good temper on a 14 1/2 hour round trip that had to stop for an hour part way there because of a serious incident on the line (nothing to do with train or track operation, a people thing) they did it with style, looking out for little old ladies and offering to carry the bags of a mother with a young baby and make calls to check there were rides for people.

Tonight, we shall make Calzone!

From scratch. It was yummy.

There's this thing about me. Baking, I'm fine with, I've been doing it since I was a kid. But anything to do with yeast hits my Advanced Science buttons and I feel like I'm tinkering with a chemistry set wondering when it's going to explode.

No explosions, just tasty tasty goodness.

Amazing Technicolour Dream Bruises. Or Something Like That.

This is the most ghastly looking image. The bruise on my left leg, I think, is from the rail of my bike; the scratches on my right shin are from the pedal.

Also impressive and a bit sorer, this was also from the bike rail (basically got broadsided and got more damage from being tangled in the bike than hitting the ground.)

Least impressive and most sore (although the bruise has developed some since yesterday.) I think this is where I got hit by the van. The sore area is all around the big muscle at the top of my arm (deltoid I think) and has been making raising my arm above a certain point difficult. This has been getting better over the course of the day.

Anyway, if you're going to have a major accident that you lived to talk about, you might as well brag about it, right? Went cycling again today, hopefully will feel less gunshy in a bit. A pox on drivers!

Dear Diary

Today, I got run over.

Collision on the Hutt Rd heading to Kaiwharawhara with an idiot driver coming out a drive who was checking for cars, but not cyclists who might be nefariously cycling along the cyclelane, minding their own business. Suddenly realising that you're lying on the road with your legs tangled in your bike, with oncoming traffic, bleeding, is Not Fun. (Am basically alright, but feeling sore and sorry for myself, with some exciting looking bruises.)

Fortunately, am now at home, showered, pyjamaed, and eating dinner. Pictures of the glorious technicolour bruises and accompanying grazes to follow when I get them off Repton's phone.

Updates

So, first of all, I've rejoined the ranks of the employed, courtesy of a four month (ish) contract with Ontrack, the organisation that owns and maintains the railway tracks. They needed someone in a hurry, and I got a call at Thursday close of business from a recruitment agent I've been dealing with, saying that I had an interview at midday on Friday, and if they like me it starts on Monday. I turned up, guy doing the hiring asked if I'd eaten and we went off to the nearby cafe for an interview. He seems a good guy, seemed to like me, and I do start on Monday. :-)

Secondly, it's the something or other anniversary of when Repton and I started dating and he took me out for a suprise dinner. I knew about the dinner, but he didn't say what we were doing after - as we were going for a walk in between times we looked at the big board advertising the Arts Festival gigs. "Ooh," I said, "Shaolin Kung Fu monks. I went to see them once in Auckland" and burbled a lot about the cool things that Shaolin monks can do involving spears, acrobatics and sharp edges. Then we went to the theatre - yep, Shaolin Kung Fu monks. Except this was a very nontraditional performance, basically an arty minimalist ballet done in kung fu, and awesomely well done. (Although there's a wicked part of me that kept remembering a roleplaying game I was in once where we were putting on a retro minimalist production of Iolanthe, and Nisha Talitha's character kept insisting that "You can have three shades of grey. The fairies are the lightest shade of grey!" These guys also had black and some plywood boxes they had a lot of fun with. Written down, it sounds weird, but it was a seriously cool production.

Thirdly, I got a provisional grade for my St Margaret of Antioch essay, by dint of emailing the alternate marker and asking him. A+ for me, plus lots of nice comments about what I'd done (although he also pointed out a bona fide mistake I'd missed in revision and pointed out some areas I could have done more on.) Which makes the whole thing done and complete - huzzah!

And today, to celebrate, I'm doing a heap of housework like vacuuming out my room that I've been meaning to do for ages. Death to hayfever!

This has been a good day

Am a bit afraid I'll jinx something by talking about it.

A good day.

My Cat has a Cold

She's been sneezing and is now curled up under a blanket looking Sorry and Sad.

She's eating ok and was out and about exploring the linen cupboard earlier, so I'm not too worried, but I do feel sympathetic about the headache I figure she has.

Cooking Stuff

So a couple of days ago, Repton and I were wandering through Moore Wilson's wondering what the difference is between a boutique grocery and a regular supermarket. Then Repton asked how you cook goat meat. I didn't know, so we went home, looked at some recipes, decided that we could do that, and next time he went past the shop he procured some.

It turns out that goat meat isn't good to fry or roast because it shrinks like billy-oh, and most of the recipes out there are for curries or casseroles. I don't have much experience with curries, but casseroles I do, so this is what we went with (adapted from here.)

- some flour (about half a cup?)
- various dried herbs (we had rosemary, thyme and oregano)
- about 500g of goat meat
- two small onions chopped into large chunks (I guess one large would do)
- two cloves of crushed garlic
- one cup chicken stock
- half a cup red wine

Season the flour with the dried herbs and coat the goat chunks in it. Fry briefly to brown it and place in a casserole dish with the onion, garlic, chicken stock and wine. Add some extra rosemary.
Cook at 150 degrees for three hours. (Every hour or so I stirred the mixture.)
Served with basmati rice and grilled capsicums.

It smelt _really_ nice, and tasted pretty good too. We also ended up asking the obvious question of: so how much does it cost to run an oven for three hours, anyway? which Repton worked out from first principles and I looked up on the internet. Turns out to be about a dollar fifty, or less than the cost of the cooking wine, but even so, we made shortbread as well.

My Body Clock is Seriously Messed.

As in, I go to bed at a reasonable hour and find myself wide awake and staring at the ceiling by midnight. Not even a 10km walk today, which should have exhausted me, has done the trick.

(Actually, was pretty wobbly when got home, but dinner and tv watching with a friend fixed that, and now I'm disturbingly wide awake again. Gah!)

I am allergic to bee stings.

Not deathly allergic - no running around with adrenalin shots for me, but still, 30 hours after the fact, I have an extremely swollen, extremely itchy foot which the wonders of modern chemistry are not doing much for. Have given up trying to be staunch about it (not much sleep last night is not helping.) Hijacked Nisha Talitha from the Larp picnic, and we went to Sherlock Holmes instead. It was fun.

Am also trying to rerun my Kapcon game and finding this a very difficult task what with all the people who are interested but can't make particular nights, and the two people who said that they could make a particular night, then changed their minds after I set that night as the date. Am grouchy and wondering if it would be easier just to cancel the thing entirely. [/grumble] Will probably feel better tomorrow morning.

EDIT: Went to the doctor and got a better grade of Better Living Through Chemistry (steroids! woo hoo!). (Haven't worked yet, though.) He laughed when I said I was there about a bee sting, I insulted his typing - it's nice when you get to have a regular doctor, it's much more informal.

EDIT2: Still itchy, but the swelling has gone down a lot. This is a Good Thing. Have spent much of the last few days with my foot ensconced in a bowl of water - would be nice to be able to put it away.

Awake Too Late At Night

Stupid blocked runny nose. Better living through pharmacy is probably helping some, but not enough for comfortable sleeping. :-(

EDIT: Also, when I did go back to bed, my Significant Other decided that I was breathing too loudly and kept poking me until I quietened down (i.e. woke up.) Spent the rest of the night on the couch. Cat happy, me feeling hungover.

The Braggity Post of Bragging

So, I'm back from Kapcon, with the news that the game I sent in to the Scenario Design Contest (with considerable input from my sister Cat) won. This means that we can now truthfully call ourselves Award Winning Writers. Hee hee hee.

OK, normal programming to meet industry guidelines for modesty will now resume. Second day was lots of fun: a restful stint helping run the admin desk in the morning, a PTA pilot where we were reality police, and Cathulu. It's like Chthulu, but you're playing cats, and I killed the main bad guy, despite being an utter coward. (Got lucky on a dice roll when I had his head in a death grip trying to rake his face. But he was a bad person with a three eyed demon cat, so it was OK really.)

Two final notes: that with the typos I'm having to correct I should really give up and go to bed, and the obsevviseness with whtich my cat is begging for attention is getting distrubing.

Good night!

EDIT: Am concluding from the green slime coming out of my nose that I'm officially sick with a virus, instead of the hayfever/dehydration combo I thought I was sporting. Feel a bit better about feeling massively hungover as I'd been trying to drink lots of water and go to sleep at a reasonable time and was annoyed that that wasn't working. Also, drugs for the win!

Huzzah!

I ran my game at Kapcon, The Book Club, and it went really well, thanks to my player group who totally brought the awesome. (I'm still somewhat boggled about how much time we spent talking about the phallic implications of carrots versus the idea of cockleshell as a symbolic Holy Grail. It worked in the game!)

St Margaret Redux

And it's now handed in. One. Two. Three ... Huzzah!!

Feeling a bit spacy right now, owing to disturbed sleep patterns this week, but coping a lot better than expected. Nice weather and getting Repton to come out to Manners Mall and have crepes with me helped a lot.

And I just want to say that the standard Margaret legend offers remissions of sins, a place in heaven, and no children born who are blind, deaf, lame or crazy to anyone who reads or writes a copy of her life. Her and me are like that. :-)

March to Ship

I'm currently staying up late trying to finish off my Margaret of Antioch essay. Eye eye eye. I've been on a Search and Destroy mission for //TODO place holders and trying to tidy up poorly written sections, and have been making progess with one section still to do and a mere handful of placeholders left to roust out. It's also massively overlength (like nearly twice as long as it ought to be.) This is not my fault - every time I pointed at a section and told my supervisor I was thinking of cutting it he said 'No, no, keep it in, I like it.' Bah humbug!

In other news, I have until tomorrow to decide if I'm going to do Masters this year. Pros and cons both ways and I'm being infernally indecisive about it.

EDIT: Finished all the writing about half past midnight, now can't sleep. Double bah humbug! Proof reading tomorrow. Just checked scholarship docs and actually have another 10 days to dither - probably best not to make decisions when I'm tired and stressed about essays. :-)

Surprising Things

So, a couple of weeks ago, Repton and I went to New Plymouth to watch the Fleetwood Mac concert (1) and, as you do, went for a walk up Mt Taranaki. We didn't make it to the top by any means, stopping at the transmitter tower just before the track gets really hard, instead of just really steep, chatted with the unicyclists coming down the path, that kind of thing. I'm not kidding about the unicyclists. One of them even had brakes.

It turns out that they were in the country for the World Unicycling Championships, one event of which, Freestyle Pairs, Repton and I went to see tonight. It was nifty, and pretty scary the amount of skill involved. There were dancer unicyclists, acrobat unicyclists, bishounen unicyclists, Swiss stripper unicylists ... pretty damn awesome. And I'm not kidding about the Swiss stripper unicyclists; there were other teams that took the opportunity to fling off a bit of costume at an artful moment, but these guys really took that idea to heart and were, moreover, wearing suspender socks (who the heck wears those anymore?). Despite my kibbitzing (and discreet leering), their performance was Awesome and they won that section. Good for them etc.

In other tramping news, my Christmas toy was a GPS so I can go geocaching. Dragged Repton out with me to find a couple of caches on Tinakori Hill which, even with getting lost for reading the map wrong at one point, was a pretty awesome walk. Also found a geocoin, which is trying to visit every cache in NZ and has a code deciphering wheel.

(1) Which was awesome by the way.

Corset Photos

Ta da!

And a closer look. I got the silk for this at a fabric sale run by the Mary Potter Hospice, where you can get bits and pieces left over from other projects. So 1m of brocade silk was suprisingly affordable.

As you can see, the lacing was quite loose for my first session. Keira Knightley's opinions in the Pirate movies aside, it was quite comfortable, although it rather encourages good posture and restricts bending over.

Look! Cleavage! (Not something I can usually brag about.) Note that Cat put some little bumble bees and 'moonstone dew drops' as decoration - this is an outer wear fashion corset rather than one that discreetly stays under my ball dress.

The chemise I'm wearing under this is way out of period (made to an Elizabethan smock pattern and quite heavy linen.) My next project is to find some nice floaty lawn or muslin and make a semi-transparent shirt that makes people even more interested in my cleavage. It's a girl thing.

Merry Christmas!

I was woken up by two extremely enthusiastic cats this morning. One of them jumped on my face, the other one brought me tea and had a loud cellphone alarm. Still, I got to try on my new personally tailored pure silk Christmas present corset...

(Pictures to follow)

Wicked Thoughts

I am writing an essay on St Margaret of Antioch.

It probably says bad things about me that I'm trying to subvert the structure of the essay so that I can have Jane Austen-ish puns in the subtitles. ("Pride and Public Exposure," "Sight and Sensibility," that sort of thing. Now, if only I can think one up for the section on the dragon and the devil...)

Adventures in Cookery, part something or other

Today's new recipe was Hungarian Goulash, which to the uninitiated is a kind of casserole/stew made with paprika, black pepper and capsicums. The recipe I used also said to put in tomatoes, but I'm not sure how authentic that's supposed to be. And, er, apparently proper goulash is more like a chunky soup. But anyway, you get the idea.

It was quite nice, but took a while to make, what with having to make a trip to get some stewing steak because we didn't have any, spending rather longer than I'd like trying to get the can of tomatoes open and opting for puree instead (stupid can opener), and generally doing the messing about prefrying the steak, as you do. And the two hour cooking time, although we shortened it a bit because I was getting hungry. On the other hand, the recipe didn't quite use the last of the cooking wine, so I felt duty bound to finish it off while I waited for dinner to cook. I really am a cheap drunk. Whee!

On being a published author

Er, kind of, so long as being a part of a Lulu collection counts.

Got some exam results back

A+s for me! La la la. (Still got a research essay to finish up, mind.)

And so it begins...

Christmas shopping has started. Granted, the first item purchased was of a utilitarian and modest nature, nonetheless - I've Started Being Organised!

Today I went to a book signing by Emma Hart and David Haywood. The former wrote a book called Not Safe For Work which Repton brought home a week or so ago, and he wanted signed since they were in town doing a joint book launch. She showed me her scar. (Read the book to find out why this is important, it's very entertaining. Not the reason why she has a scar, but the book in general.) I also picked up a copy of Haywood's My First Stabbing, which is not actually the book he's launching, but I'd heard about by means of the hilariously funny article of the same name, which someone had linked me to a while ago. Both authors were nice, friendly, and did readings of each other's books and then made each other do readings of their own books. A surprising amount of coercion was required.

Also, I got a long overdue haircut. This turned out quite short, owing to my hairdresser having a funny idea of what "Shoulder length, please" means. It still looks good, but I'm a bit sorry because Cat chopped off most of her hair recently as well, and we've been Cox and Boxing our hair cuts since forever. Eh well.

The Event

And the last of this is done: http://theeventwellington.blogspot.com/2009/11/part-five-robin.html

Bwa ha. Ha.

Cooking

Tonight's new recipe was Vegan Nut Rissoles, via a recipe in the paper. This meant an expedition to get tofu, which really doesn't taste of anything at all. Took quite a while to make - prime offenders are the precooked brown rice (which takes bloody ages to do its thing), and the imminent demise due to non-nonstickiness of our large frypan. And there were lots of rissoles. If we make it again, I'll probably halve the mixture. (And throw veganness to the winds and mix some cubes of cheese in, so there's something solid to chew on.)

Tiki Touring

Yesterday I went for a walk along the Sanctuary fenceline up to the wind turbine. It's an interesting walk, because you spend most of it going uphill through bush, trees, and a steelmesh fence, until right near the top you break out of the bush and see the panorama of south Wellington. This really is a beautiful town to live in.

Also notable is that getting up all that way left me tired (but not exhausted), only 1 hour 10 minutes (less time than I expected), and with absolutely no asthma attacks (yay!) And today, the post walk stiffness isn't in my legs, it's in the muscles stretching across my ribs. Er. Some pilates artifact, maybe?

Other things for yesterday were meandering down to Brooklyn to look at the fabric sale there and going into town to have lunch with Repton. Interestingly, since I started up at Uni again, I no longer have to go into, through, or nearby town everyday, or even every week, and it's taking on a very exotic kind of Field Trip air.

More cooking

Tonight we tried out rice risotto made from scratch. This entailed a shopping expedition to procure a bottle of wine (the first time I've been IDed in ages) and some saffron (which costs how much? Eep.)

The result was a bland looking glop that was really nice. Yum.

I went to visit Cat on the weekend and she made a point of making me deviled sausages and broccoli in cheese sauce, also made without the aid of premade assistance, in part because: "you made me such nice food last time I visited." I suspect there may be some cooking one-uppery in my near future...

Yet More Adventures in Cookery

This time round we tried an onion tart. The recipe book rhapsodized about how nice and sweet white onions are compared to the normal kind. I'm not sure I've ever seen them as a distinct foodstuff in NZ supermarkets, and Wikipedia wasn't very informative, so we used shallots instead. 700 grams of them. (Took a while to peel and chop.)

The result was very oniony, but OK with cheese on top. Overall feeling is that it was OK, but I'm not going to rush to make it again.

I am very pleased with the performance of my kitchen knives after getting them professionally sharpened. Nice Sharpener Guy does dressmaking shears as well. Yay!

The True Tao of the Cheddar Monk

is not the Tao that can be spoken. So you have to blog about it instead.

In other words, I'm taking part in a web competition called the Cheddar Monk Academy which is honouring the second anniversary of the Darths and Droids webcomic. I'll be narrating my quest for spiritual enlightenment, nifty outfits, and free cheese over here.

More Adventures in Cookery

This time, we tried a Thai stir fry, although with some omissions and substitutions (no baby corn or tamarind paste because we couldn't find any, and no bird's eye chilli because we don't like it.) It was nice, but very very hot. Can the members of the audience who actually know how to cook give me some advice? The recipe said to take 7cm of ginger, grated and squeezed, "and the resulting liquid reserved." Does that mean to just put the liquid in? Or just put the ginger in? Or do both? I'm wondering if that was the cause of the very intense flavour...

Evidence Based Decision Making

There's a dating website called OKCupid that, among other things, has had a lot of interest among my social group for its personality quizzes. You know, what's your dating personality, how would you survive in a zombie apocalypse, that kind of thing. They've also realised that they're sitting on an enormous pile of data of people talking about themselves and communicating with each other, and have started publishing statistical analyses. Some of them are pretty funny, others are practical, and still others head into the territory of a bit disturbing. (My gender and ethnicity is apparently one of the most stand-offish when it comes to replying to first messages from people on the site. Er, sorry?) Even with (or because of?) a self-selection bias out the wazoo, these articles are really interesting if you like thinking about what makes people tick.

Carpet Offcuts

Does anyone want some? I've just rehabilitated Macca's scratching post, courtesy of a kind gentleman at Christie Flooring Ltd who gave me some free offcuts, and now I have a superfluity of same. Free to a good home.

Larping News

So, things have been happening in the Larping world.

1. Chimera was awesome. I should probably have written a review at the time, but no matter, I highly recommend it. People who are interested in what it was like, might profitably check out 20/20 this Thursday.

2. Larpers in Wellington are getting organised, which is all good. There's still some paperwork stuff to do, but hopefully that will be cleared out of the way in good order and leave more time to make kit, organise games, go down the pub with agreeable company, and generally have fun pretending to be someone else.

3. As part of this, I'm running a game about a 5-year old's birthday party, But Nobody Loses An Eye! on Sunday, 18 October. I ran this up at Chimera, and it was quite well received, and I hope to see what Wellingtonians will do with it. There are still spaces left, so get in touch for some crazy silly fun.

4. I finally decided what game I want to run at Kapcon this year, The Book Club. It's going to be on the weird/eccentric side, and I'm worried that a) noone will turn up, and b) lots of people will turn up with high expectations and it turns out to be crap. This is pretty normal for me and running games.

Love to all,

Stephanie

Adventures in Cookery

I've been trying to broaden my palette of vegetarian recipes, partly because dairy farming is, as is becoming increasingly apparent, quite environmentally intensive, but also because there's a heap of interesting food that I'm missing out on, especially as most of my officially vegetarian range of meals usually relies heavily on eggs/dairy. Also, I have several friends with lactose or gluten intolerances, so going vegan makes it a bit easier to serve them nice meals.

Anyway, tonight was an experiment into the arcane ways of the Cranks Fast Food recipe book. This has tasty recipes and swears blind that everything can be served up in 30 minutes or less (as far as tonight goes, ha bloody ha, but I digress) which limits the complexity. (Incidentally, I really like the spanakopita and potato rosti recipes it has.) Tonight's try out was Moroccan Potato Pastelles, which involves making a mashed potato and egg mixture, a separate filling with mushrooms, spring onion, egg etc and then wrapping the potato around the filling and frying. (Not yet up to vegan, but at least less milk.)

Everything was going fine until the wrapping the potato around the filling which turned into such a hideously mushy collapsing exercise that I ended up tipping the filling in and mixing it all together. It was pleasant, but the pastelle that survived my clumsiness and was made as directed was jolly nice - a lesson to me to try harder. If anyone reading this is of Moroccan ethnicity, I apologise sincerely for messing up your cultural foodstuffs, but I'm glad I had a go, because it tasted nice.

On pot plants

In the front garden of the property where I live, there's normally a pot of daisies, which I put there. Sometime in the last week, it got stolen. Not the daisies, just the pot - whoever it was took the plant out and left it tucked in by a bush with the roots left to fry in the sun, in a glorious display of thievery, pettiness, and anti-environmentalism. We have horrible neighbours downstairs, and I'm guessing that they or one of their friends probably had something to do with it. Their tenancy runs out in a week and a half! Oh boy!

Death By Chocolate

Is jolly good fun.

Am too hyped to sleep. Off to the secret website!

Because Drivers Are Dicks

OK, not all of them, but the ones that pass with a bare inch to spare between their wing mirror and cyclists certainly are.

There is a cycling safety petition asking for a 1.5m passing distance written into law here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ridestrong/index.html with a press release here: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0909/S00251.htm

Dear Diary

Today, I benchpressed Hazel. My wrists are sore.

Climate Change and the Attack of the Wet Bus Ticket!

So, National and the Maori Party have finally come to an agreement about what they want to do with the Emissions Trading Scheme, which is to make a token nod at climate change mitigation while not actually doing anything that will cause behaviour change in the major emitters. Because that would, like, suck. (For them, anyway.) Instead of polluters being expected to pay the cost of their pollution, and the costs being passed on to the beneficiaries of the pollution, the proposed scheme is focused on how to raise money for Kyoto obligations with minimum impact on the people who are actually causing the problems.

Some key points:
- Agriculture, our biggest emitter, stays out until 2015, two years later than currently legislated, and five years later than everyone else.
- Intensity based allocation. Basically, if you pollute more, it's OK as long as you're also producing more and the average amount of pollution per unit stays the same. How this idea is supposed to combine with the need to reduce national emissions given the drive to always 'grow the economy' is beyond me.
- $25/tonne fixed price option. (Currently, carbon prices are currently estimated at ~$22/tonne, although this is likely to change a lot. NZIER/Infometrics considered scenarios with world prices ranging from $25/tonne to $100 and $200/tonne in their macroeconomic impact report to give an idea of the market range that's being considered.)
- 2 for 1 deal. There is a 'transition phase' until the end of 2012 in which polluters only have to pay for half of their carbon pollution. The rest comes out of the tax take (No Right Turn estimates this at $428.5 million/per year). That would pay for a lot of hospitals and schools. Or tax cuts.

And for fun and games, there's been no attempt at reaching consensus with the other big party, so next time Labour gets in, they'll probably change it. Hopefully, in a meaningful, environmentally friendly way. What's also notable is that, despite this being John Key's latest attempt to sell out the country, it's slipped off the headlines of the major newspapers remarkably quickly - because whining about lightbulb standards and the right to whack one's offspring is so much more interesting.

I doubt that those fellows in government actually care about what I think, but just in case: You Bastards.

The Event

Gosh, it really has been a while since I posted an update. Stuff has been happening, I promise!

Anyway, part four of The Event is mostly up.

Andrew Edward Ross Pegg

My brother recently reminded me that it was the 20th anniversary of our father's death a few days ago. That's almost two thirds of my life; more than that, if you count the years he was dissapeared geographically instead of temporally.

Salute.

My guy is in a cast again

No crutches this time, because it's a broken scaphoid , which means that I'm going to be washing dishes for a month at least. Sigh.

Last night we had The Talk. Actually, two The Talks: one about the weight of his arm and how annoyed I'd be if I get accidentally clipped on the head with it, but the other one was regarding his congenitally cold hands and how to make or adapt a glove to keep his fingers warm. Will update with a progress report...

The Event

Most of part two is up now.

The Child Beating Referendum

I'll be straight about with my prejudices: I don't like Family First.

I don't like the hysterical tone of their press releases, I don't like their consistent painting of children as non-rational chaotic devils, I don't like that their list of instances where s59 has gone out of control turns out to be a series of incidents where concerned neighbours, CYFS workers and police officers took sensible and considered actions to protect young people. I do respect their right to raise their concerns in a civil referendum, and encourage everyone to vote in it. Preferably voting Yes, so FF will have to stop whining about the loss of property rights over their children, but just voting at all is an important thing: it's a public statement about the way you want the next generation to be treated, which makes it a public statement about what you want the future to be.

The Yes Vote campaign has a bunch of reasons on why you should agree with me, but I also note a handy flow chart for people who are as yet undecided.

Shared World Project

So I joined a group writing project called The Event. The premise is that everyone in the writing group tells the story of a character on a regular day, during The Event, and in the days following. It has to be set in Wellington, and we don't decide what The Event is until everyone's written their first piece. Part One is here.

A bit more about Saint Margaret

Y'know, the thing about the study of English Literature, is that the field is pretty damn huge, and people tend to pick periods and trends to specialise in. As an intergenerational note to all the Modernists, Post-Modernists, Post-Structuralists and Post-Colonialists out there, all of whom will find that the books they want to read are either still in print, or in a library in the same city as them - Hah! I sneer in your general direction!

I currently have a loan order in for one of the two microfilms in Australasia of the 1910 reprint of a book first published in 1480(1), and it's a work of criticism on my subject. Not to mention another key reference source published in 68 volumes between 1643 and 1940.

All those people who study books younger than they are - [Yorkshire accent]Luxury!!![/Yorkshire]. Although it's certainly being interesting pushing the limits of what the Vic library service can extract for me...

(1) Mombritius, B. Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum (Paris, 1910).

I Love the Smell of Interloans in the Morning

So today was my last day at work. For various reasons, this has overlapped with my first week at Varsity, and I've been running around a lot over the last two weeks, both trying to get the last thing I was working on done as far as possible and handed over in good order, and get my courses sorted out. I'm currently working on the Chaucer paper that's continued on from the previous semester, started a course on Margaret Mahy and Maurice Gee (at 15-20 students, we're filling out the Honours common room like crazy), and have mostly finished my research proposal for a 489 on St Margaret of Antioch. She got et by a dragon.

Have finished my day by sitting in Cuba Mall for a bit watching people wander round, coming home to cinnamon toast and warm milk with vanilla, and have plans to expedition out to Burgers Wisconsin. Two things are pretty evident about this evening: I'm feeling very deflated and wiped out; I stress eat.

Love to all, etc.

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!

48 Hours

I'm in Jenni's Angels again this year, this time as one of the writers, and assistant editor.

We got Revenge Movie, which we figured is easy to do cornily and hard to do well, and we wanted to do it well. The brainstorming with everyone took ages, and then the writing team: me, Morgue, JenniTalula and Amphigori repaired to my house and motored through into a script that we really liked, and got it finished about 2.30am, far earlier than expected. I've had about 6 hours sleep and am feeling a bit spacy, but not at all too bad - my work for the afternoon is to start downloading the first tape. I'm quite looking forward to it, as I'll get to see what they've created with my night's work. [rubs hands in anticpatory glee]

Oh, the movie? It's a Film Noir Revenge Flick in which FraserByProxy gets beaten up lots. It's sure to be a winner!

My weekend

I haven't updated in absolutely ages. Alas etc.

The main thing is that my Gran is dying. I don't mean that she's been diagnosed with something icky (that was about a year ago), I mean that people are now saying hours or days but not weeks. I spent time with her yesterday and in the few weeks since I last saw her at Easter she has declined rather a lot. One of the things they don't tell you about old people whose bodies are starting to shut down is that their faces get very smooth and lose their wrinkles because the muscles in their faces start relaxing. Anyway, there's not much anyone can do now but keep her warm and pain free and keep her company while she sleeps. There are very many relatives flocking around right now, along with a full time carer called Kelly who is lovely and thinks Gran is neat. And I'm feeling sad, but at the same time all the regular parts of my life are ticking along as well.

Good night all.

Xi Shi

I am now the proud owner of a splendiferously lustworthy doll of Xi Shi, one of the legendary Four Beatiful Women of China. According to the doll's creator, the amazingly talented Catherine, Xi Shi "was sent by the king of one small kingdom to [the king of] another small kingdom as a concubine, with the secret brief of destroying his kingdom through distraction and other secret agent tricks. Once this was accomplished, she ran away with her old handler, ... married him, and lived happily ever after. Moreover, history remembers her as 'that daring and beautiful lady who was very loyal to her country, which she helped greatly' as opposed to less complimentary epithets that [are] applied at times to beautiful women. A very successful lady. (Oh, and her father grew tea.)

Pictures, so that others can envy my good fortune, are below:

(There is a seriously huge amount of detail in this doll, which is fully undressable, with complete hand made jewellery and craft accessories, and several layers of precise and exact detail which the casual viewer wouldn't see but I know are there for added gloriousness.)






Fully assembled lady is here:


Bonus picture of me and Macca, pursuing one of her favourite hobbies:

Huzzah!

In the bookshop I found the new Temeraire book, Victory of Eagles, and I've been spending much of the past two days reading it. It's a good 'un, and includes the entrance of one Arthur Wellesley, known in the book as General Wellesley, and in the real world becomes the 1st Duke of Wellington, and he goes around being pragmatic, efficient, and extremely ruthless. It's a nice change, as in previous books the heroes have been stuck working for bumbling, close-minded and annoying people and get stuck trying to decide where their real duty lies - following incompetent and self-serving orders, or being recalcitrant and achieving something. Wellesley is also causing people to question where their duty lies, but at least by following his orders people know that they'll be looking after Britain. For the greater good?

With all historical novels, there's always a certain tension between one's knowledge of real world events and the alternate version presented by the author - in this case, by the inclusion of dragons as air force and the change in tactics and historical events that would mean. At this point, Novik has completely gone off the map, there is no history book that will tell you what's more or less supposed to happen, as there was in Black Powder War; from now on we get to find out how the Napoleonic Wars are going to turn out when she's ready to tell us and not before. It's very exciting.

My main negative point is this: the proof reading in the edition I read is just plain careless. The spelling is correct - automated spell checkers can give us that at least, but there are many places throughout where words are missing, or shouldn't be there, or the pronouns are messed up. It's annoying having to break out of immersion in order to work out what the writer meant, and I would have expected a professional publisher to do better.

The guns, they go boom.

This afternoon/evening, I took Repton out to be cultured. To be precise, we went to the Summer Symphony at the Basin Reserve, which had the Vector Wellington Orchestra doing their thing, together with a brass band, the Footloose dance company, and some soloists.

It was neat. John lay in the sun reading a book, and I sometimes read a book, sometimes sat and listened, and sometimes went up to the stage to dance. They were playing favourite orchestral tunes from the 19th and 20th C, so things like Nessun Dorma and William Tell and the drinking song from La Traviata, but also the themes from Harry Potter and Indiana Jones, and a famous tango. The conductor/MC was a hoot - in his introductions to each piece he'd be as lurid as possible about the lyrics, or list all the movies it had been used in the soundtrack of - "So this piece, the flower duet from Lakme, has been used in this movie and that movie, and also that really cool British Airways ad, but also most importantly a computer game called Kill Zone 2. Oh yeah, it's technically about two Indian girls picking flowers by a stream, but remember, Kill Zone 2.

And of course, they finished up with the 1812 overture, bringing the brass band back for extra trumpets, having a carillon going behind the orchestra, and a bunch of cannons behind the audience. Oh yeah.

(Sorry for missing your party Adrexia, I'm feeling a bit overstimulated to go and chat with people right now.)

Lo the Mighty Hunter

Macca caught a bird.

We got it out of her mouth and it flew away, hopefully nevermore to hang around our cat infested property. Cats think differently to people, though. We got the bird away from her while we were outside, but she spend a good long while investigating the top of the book case (a temporary resting place in her romp of glory) trying to work out where it had gone.

Today I was a Best Girl

Turned up as crew to Evinshir's Winding City project and spent the day helping out the Assistant Director/Gaffer/Guy Who Knows What He's Doing. He was very kind about explaining what he needed to me and my co-best boy - hopefully, next filming day I'll be able to be a bit more efficient.

Shoot went well - we wrapped over an hour earlier than expected, and fitted another scene in.

Huzzah!

I have finally finished reading The Canterbury Tales. It's only taken me four months (it felt longer.) Next up: The Book of the Duchess and The Parliament of Fowls, both of which are considerably shorter, which is good, because I'm supposed to have them read by this Wednesday. (Honours course on Chaucer starts this week.)

But first, some goofing off. :-)

Internet Blackout

Things I did expect today...

Frogs underneath the waterfront. (They were wearing wetsuits and goggles.)

It was a production of Aristophanes' The Frogs (with, er, updated text) that took atmosphere really really seriously. When Dionysos (played by a guy who was channeling Hugh Laurie as the Prince Regent) headed across the lake in Charon's boat, all the audience were loaded into a train of paddleboats and headed underneath the pier with him. It was very neat. :-)

Things I didn't expect today...

"On behalf of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand Inc. we write to advise that [cat-th-adage and] you have been nominated for the Sir Julius Vogel (SJV) Award for:

Best fan publication: The Girl Who Asked for Wisdom and Other Short Works"

Thank you to whoever made the nomination! :-)

(Cat did all the hard graft on this, my contribution was to let her make free of my hard drive.)

Clicky Boxes!

(This is a brief plug for work.)
The Wellington City Council is in the early engagement phase of a simply enormous document it has to produce called the Long Term Council Community Plan. It's a big deal, because it sets the high level budgets and levels of service for the next three years, and has a lot to do with what things are available and how much the rates next year are going to be. If you're going to talk to the Council anytime in the next three years, this is the best time to do it.

Fortunately, they're trying to make it easy for internet-bunnies, with the provision of a website with Genuine Clicky Boxes, Calculators, and Voting Buttons. (Plus there's Councillor-staffed phonelines, and documents available through the libraries and all that regular stuff.)

Mmm. Hot banana cake.

A couple of days ago, I realised that I was due and past due to give my cat a worming pill.

One towel, two attempts, a strapping young lad, butter, a pill popper, and a lot of hurt feelings all around (except, I think, for the strapping young lad) later, and the job is completed. And no-one's bleeding or has lost an eye or anything!

Have heard a rumour that it's possible to find topical dewormers, much like the defleaing liquid I already use. Really really must investigate.

Banana cake was Repton's first baking excursion that doesn't involve a bread machine. It's very yummy, and I'm sure he'll be keen to do this some more. :-)

Sitting Shiva

At KapCon I ran a live game called Sitting Shiva. Writeup is here.

Back From KapCon

Have just staggered back from KapCon, had a really good time, but Very Tired.

In brief:
- ran a game called Sitting Shiva which didn't suck. Actually, I got very positive comments from the players, along with helpful comments about things to tinker with on reruns. Am really glad that I got a strong set of roleplayers who threw themselves into the concept, even the new guy who had hardly any gaming experience. Will do a proper writeup in a bit, post to Gametime for them that are interested.
- had a jolly good time at the Mafia larp. Set dressing was awesome. Costuming was awesome. My character was awesome. Spent a lot of my time running around scheming on behalf of friends and/or faction members, with occasional business deals on my own account. Helped save my true love from self-inflicted death, and arranged appropriate revenge on the conniving former friend who'd told him I was dead, thus triggering the self-infliction bit. (It got very Romeo & Julietish for a bit, there.) Good times.
- Won something! I got one of the spot prizes at the prize giving. Some kind of miniatures game. I shall treasure it as the First Time I Won Something At Kapcon.
- General happiness of hanging out with people I hadn't seen in ages. Met some new people I like. Found out that a friend of mine has started going out with the cousin of another friend of mine, think this is excellent, everyone should look that happy.

Funny things to look at

One's cat crouching on a sloping bannister, facing downwards, realising that actually her claws are in the wrong direction to stop her inexorable downwards slide. The scrabbling noise was quite amusing, too.

Tonight I played in the first game of the new frisbee league, which is about four months since I last played a game of frisbee, and rather longer since I played outdoors. Asthma much less than feared, lovely sunny evening, friendly people to play with, and am now very stiff as I've done no running in a very long time.

Embarassing Things To Do On Buses

Have your laptop fall from the overhead luggage on to your head. Fortunately, my skull cushioned its fall and it doesn't seem to be damaged.

(No meaningful harm to me, either, just lots of swearing and meeping for sympathy at the time.)

Happy New Year!!!

Visiting Gran

I spent the couple of days before Christmas visiting my New Zealand grandmother. I like visiting Gran, I really do, particularly now that she's on improved medication and is much chirpier and active than during my last visit. But there's this thing that really bugs me. It isn't that she forgets multiple times of day where you've come from and when you're going home - she usually has who I am nailed, which is actually an improvement over much of my extended family, or at least was in the past when I resembled my sister much more closely. It isn't that she's fussy over food, or from time to time will lock her houseguest into the granny flat at the bottom of the house during her just-before-bed shutdown procedures. Oh no no no.

It's sitting watching TV with her in the evenings. I kid you not, she changes channels every five minutes. Just long enough to be somewhat interested in the storyline, but never long enough to actually find out what's happening. Bah!

Christmas Bling

I don't often wear jewellery, but on some occasions it's almost mandatory, such as on Christmas Day having been presented with rose quartz earrings by one's sister:

They make me oddly nostalgic, actually. When we were very young our grandmother, who lived in South Africa, would most often send us presents of semi-precious stones set into bracelets that she'd made herself.

Regarding bling of a very different kind, my sister has also been producing her own limited edition Christmas Book. (Literally producing, as in selecting the material, editing it, and binding it herself.) It comprises a selection of roughly five years of both of our writing output, and she says that I can have a few author's copies to give away on my own account. Would anyone like a copy, of the 'would really be interested' variety, rather than the 'nod politely because they're friends but stash away somewhere and not look at' variety. We appreciate the latter sort, because they're polite, but more interested in providing Xmas goodies to the former. It has a range of material: short stories, poetry, fairy-tals, one short-film script and some essays. Much of it is very good indeed, and the rest of it is by me. :-)

Finally, a complimentary picture of Macca doing Macca type things:

A Day Out

Repton has once again been hurling himself into the grass, this time at a tournament in Christchurch, and I spent my day pottering around having fun.
- going to dancing practice at the Medieval Guild and being a test audience for the play that they'll be performing at the Harcourt Park Joust in January;
- nice lunch at the Aro St cafe with a couple of members of the aforesaid Guild;
- biking around the bays as far as Cog Park - the eponymous giant cog wheel doesn't seem to be back yet, alas;
- wandering around Te Papa - I thought about looking at the colossal squid they have, but the queue was quite long, so I settled for peering at the display case from the partition;
- gelato on the waterfront.

There were many people out swimming, or paddling, or riding tandem bikes, and just generally enjoying the sun. It's been a nice day.

One of the interesting things - at Te Papa they had a 3d animation display of what they thought Big Squid's life was like, which was neat. Here's the thing, I'm quite amblyopic (posh word for saying my brain ignores the input feed from one eye because it has a very different focal depth) and under normal conditions I don't think about things like depth in what I'm seeing. But in some conditions, like in an Imac cinema, or looking at some pictures with technical tricks giving the illusion of perspective, or today at Te Papa, I get the feeling of knowing that things are nearer or farther just by looking at them, I don't have to work it out from size and movement. Is it like that for most people all the time? Gosh.

Move is just about complete bar hanging pictures and making myself laundry bag. Macca the Cat is now officially Allowed Out, although is having problems getting up the nerve to venture outside anytime she thinks that bouncing around staunchly insisting how brave she is might actually result in being exposed to Other Cats Looking At Her. Right now, she knows where the cat door is, and what it is, but is mostly using it as a toy to bang her paws against. No, wait, she's finally wormed through it now. It's unlikely that she'll be out long. Silly cat.

EDIT: And she just faced off one of the neighbour's cats trying to come in. Might have to think about undisabling the cat door magnet and making her wear a collar.

Total cycling distance: 18.8km, spread over about 6 hours with lots of distractions in between.

Oh for Heaven's sake.

"The Government is considering passing a law overriding Eden Park's consent process because of fears it will not be ready for the Rugby World Cup."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/rugby-world-cup/news/article.cfm?c_id=522&objectid=10547881

OK, so in the extremely short time that we've had the new government officially in power they have:
1. Overridden the Pharmaceutical Management Agency of New Zealand's decision making by literally bypassing their provision of pharmaceuticals and making the Ministry of Health do it instead;
2. Shoved through an extremely serious 90 day probation bill under urgency without any select committee scrutiny;
3. Is now talking about passing a law to overrule the Environment Court and High Court, for a rugby game.

I don't care how big a deal the World Cup is, this just isn't on.

Dear John Key, for Christmas, what I'd really like is some due process and accountability in government - you can keep my two front teeth.

Don't Be A Rodney, John Key

http://dontbearodney.blogspot.com/
Psst! Pass it on, etc.

We saw dolphins in the harbour

:-)

My Mother's Cat

Went on a car ride from Hastings to Bridge Pa and back, with a complete stranger (about 9km).

Needless to say, she's at the vet being microchipped as I type.

(Tart.)

Premoving

Repton and I are going to be moving into a new flat by ourselves soon, for which I got the keys yesterday, and as Repton's off heroically hurling himself into the sands of Nelson for the weekend (frisbee tournament), I spent the day doing a premove. Repton's parents came over to help, and we shifted a number of carloads including, but not limited to, a significant quantity of books, a sewing machine, pictures, Uni notes, a violin and a Lundia bookshelf. Also, we spent the afternoon out buying a new fridge and scouting for additional furniture. I don't spend large sums of money often, but occasionally it's nice to, and right now I can not only feel like I'm nobly doing my bit for the economy but whiteware is Really Cheap. Hanging out with Repton's parents has been pretty interesting - among other things they've been gossiping about him, including exactly which kind of household item he has a habit of breaking.

I have to pack some more books tonight, but can't yet face it, so I'm blobbing out watching Guys & Dolls and drinking tea.

Feline reactions to the disruption: Macca has been running around like a mad thing when she isn't being obsessively clingy and waking me up at 6 in the morning; Mort is swaggering around like the pirate cat he is; Prana doesn't appear to have moved all day.

Feeling loved, but a bit squished.

I've been away from home for a week. I got back yesterday to find that Repton and Macca were extremely pleased to see me, but also that there was also a lot less room in the bed to sleep. Also, that Macca, who I had thought doesn't purr, actually does, but she needs to be sitting on your hands before it's noticeable.

I've had better weeks.

I spent Labour Weekend visiting my sister in Palmerston North, which was neat, except that she and her flatmate had travails of their own, so I'm not sure if me being there helped out or made stuff that much harder for them. It's been pretty much downhill from there, though.

I haven't slept properly for several nights, which is making life some kind of zombie hell. This may be related to having lungs full of gunk which I can't quite cough up no matter how much I try.

Two people have tried to pick fights with me. [First person involved has asked me to take the details down and apologise. Bad days are continuing.] and I really DON'T LIKE BEING SHOUTED AT. Like, all kinds of fight/flight triggers and reverting to being a person I don't want to be anymore.

The second was from a former friend who made one too many snippy remarks when I was feeling down. And then I had this sudden realisation that I actually, really, thoroughly, never wanted to talk to him again, about anything. (Straw that broke the camel's back etc.) It's a strangely liberating feeling, actually.

Work is actually not bad, except I'm so tired I've had to periodically hide in the restroom and burst into tears for a couple of minutes. Fortunately, the stuff I'm doing right now doesn't need me to actually talk to people so I'm getting by.

Keeping track of the little things:
- cycling the waterfront on my way home was nice
- today I saw a man wearing a bowler hat and a really swirly black coat
- I'm signed up to do an Honours-level Chaucer course next year. Whee!
ETA: Also a long shower, a hot dinner, and a purring cat. Bliss.

To sleep and better days!

Commando Cookery

Tonight, I surveyed my food options. Some chicken mince, some filo pastry (spanakopita, mmm...), assorted vegetables and some bacon - this looks likes a good time to experiment with chicken filo thingies. My literature search found a whole bunch of recipes, none of which exactly suited the ingredients and patience I had to hand. (Seriously, refrigerating a food processor? I don't even have a food processor.) Sometimes, you just gotta experiment.

What I ended up doing was:
Fry a chopped up onion and the chicken mince.
Add some fresh thyme to the mixture and put aside. (1)
Fry some sliced leek for a bit, add sliced mushrooms and fry until the mushrooms have shrunk. Mix with the chicken.
Cut filo sheets in half, lay down a square and paint with melted butter. Lay down another square and repeat until the stack is five thick.
Pile some chicken stuff on the pastry and wrap it up. (Some of the recipes I used as references suggested sesame seeds, but such I have not in my house.)
Cook at 180 degrees Celcius for a while. (Yes, I know that's vague time. Reference recipes suggested 20 minutes, but in our toaster oven the pastry was definitely cooked at 10. Use your judgement, like.)

The quite tasty results:



(1) Yes, I, cooking noob have a herb garden, a very small one. It started out because I wanted to compost food waste, needed somewhere to bury said pickled remains, and felt guilty about the bare patch of dirt staring at me whenever I walked out the door. So far, all three plants are doing well (now I say "Not dead yet!" whenever I walk past, which is far more hopeful) and I have plans to put in some catnip when the next batch of compost does its thing. I always seem to do things in the wrong order - I suspect that most people would start out wanting a herb garden and going from there, rather than ending up with one and trying to think up things to do with it.

Naked Ninja Hugs

I got one. Oh boy!

Repton has been away doing heroic things hurling himself to the ground and trying to catch errant frisbees. He finally got home in the wee small hours of the morning, skinned into bed, and gave me a massive bear hug. It's nice to feel wanted, is all I can say.

Third person neuter

The English language is changing. Always has been, actually, but the bit I'm interested in right now is how we talk about some arbitrary hypothetical person. Time was, most people would default to say "he," until, quite rightly, it was impressed on people that there's an entirely different gender that would like to get a mention every now and then.

Since then, it's become quite common to use "they," "their" and "them" in a singular sense - while there are citations for that usage in the OED that go back hundreds of years, it wasn't at all common when I was a child and has become very common now. To us, personhood is tied up with gender and we don't like using "it" to describe a human being, that's reserved for animals and babies. All of which leads us to sentences like the following:

"Thou shalt not think that any male over the age of 30 playing with a child that is not their own is a paedophile - some people are just nice." Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, "Thou shalt always kill"

What fascinates me about it is that the "their" isn't necessary - the gender of the hypothetical person has already been identified as male, but it's been used anyway, as far as I can tell as a marker of generality. I've seen this usage in other places as well, and I think it's fascinating.

I has new computer

It arrived today, and is very black and shiny, and I'm still getting used to the typing feel of the keyboard.


Also, I finally finished the pair of gloves I spent the winter making Repton. Crochet is not my strong point, nor is making the same thing twice.
Show the nice people your hands, Repton...



ETA: Transferring data has turned out to be far simpler than I expected - we connected it to the house network and asked it to copy the My Documents folder (which took about three hours). Also some of the applications that I use that have lots of personalised settings turned out to have Import/Export functions. The case is so black and so shiny that for the first time in my life I lust to decorate a computer with sticker art.
Also, big ups to Dell, who not only made it easy to customise what features I wanted, but delivered the computer a full week earlier than promised.

What has Steph been doing for the past three months...

I've been working on the council's latest annual report. It has the financial status of the Council from 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008, erudite and entertaining commentary about what we've been spending your money on, corporate stuff, environmental stuff, and a picture of a naked man on the cover.

You can see a copy on our website, by visiting your local library, or calling up the nice folks in the Planning, Performance & Research team at the council (ie me) and I'll send you a hard copy. Also, there'll be a Summary hitting your mailboxes (if you live in Wellington) Real Soon Now.

Just remember: artistic naked man on cover = council annual report.

Sub Text

This morning, my beloved dressed head to toe in black and bounced off to Kiwi Con. Perhaps he's trying to tell me something...

Gosh, it has been a while since I updated...

There is a cat who looks like a pirate sitting in front of the heater. His name is Mort and he had one of his front teeth removed so that now his top lip curls upward and makes him look sinister. He's come home after a long period of hanging out with people across the road, and also made Prana feel more comfortable about hanging out in the main rooms of the house, making our FTE cat total go up from about 1.95 to very nearly 3.

Work is going well, although a bit quiet this week. The unusual thing that's going on is being invited to paw through people's rubbish on Thursday. (There's a Waste Awareness officer who sits near me several days a week, and she's trying to work out what kinds of things are getting thrown out. She's lovely, just got engaged, and is pleasantly geeky.)

A few weeks ago I went to Chimera, a Larping convention, which was much fun, and got me inspired to run my own small experimental game at KapCon. If it works, it'll be interesting, if it doesn't work, my name might be mud, but oh well.

It is very windy outside.

Look! Fanfic!

There is a cat in my house who is trying to convince me that he's moved in and it would be great if we could hang out together.

His name is Thurber, he (or she) is black and white and missing an eye, and is showing no inclination to go home. Strangely, he's even more needy and attention-junky than Macca, which I surely never thought I'd see. We rang his family but have only gotten the answering machine so far.

Yesterday, someone nearly ran me over

I don't think they were trying to, just careless and not paying attention, which is perhaps more damning. Luckily for me, this was early on my ride home, so I had lots of time to compose a cutting letter to the newspaper in my head. Unluckily, it didn't make the cut, so here it is, reproduced for any self-serving sanctimonious drivers of gas-guzzling behemoths who want to know exactly what I think of them.

Dear Editor,

As I was cycling home along Customhouse Quay on Monday, a car overtook me and immediately turned left. Since I, at least, was paying attention, I was able to stop before colliding, yet I am uncomfortably aware that two seconds difference in timing would have made things very nasty indeed.

I cannot pin this on hooligan boy racers, nor the lapses of old age. No, to judge by the leviathan-like size of the vehicle and the faces of the passengers serenely watching as I narrowly avoided death or injury, the driver was in comfortable middle age - that class of people forever telling the rest of us how 'responsible' they are. Given my reflector vest and bike-lights, I'm unsure how I could make myself more visible short of a pipe band and a spotlight, and I have this comment for the drivers of Wellington: to those memorable individuals who cannot cope with people travelling in straight lines, God help us; for the rest of you, please have a care, I'm breakable.

Regards,

Stephanie Pegg
(Yup, still mad.)

No wonder I'm a happy drunk

See, the thing is, I have a cold. I think I'm over the worst stages, so I'm left with the slightly spaced feeling you get. I also had a doctor's appointment lined up today for unrelated reasons, so I had someone to wail at and get some professional grade sympathy from, some steroids in my foot and a suggestion that I take Nurofen.

Whooeee! I took a pill with lunch and spent most of the trip home giggling. I got a lot of strange looks at the bus stop, and on the bus, and at the garden centre I stopped on the walk home. That's good stuff, man...

(I've never felt the urge to take illegal narcotics, I can get pretty high by legal and non-alcoholic methods just by myself.)

Also, regarding happy happy joy joy moments, I've been watching the early episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura, an anime series that my sister really likes. It's very bouncy stuff. Interestingly, the truly fine and quite tragic fan fiction Cat's been writing based on Cardcaptor Sakura isn't much interested in the characters but is in fact informed by a deep and abiding love for the back story such that it's almost but not quite entirely original fiction. I highly recommend it for all, whether you know the anime or not: http://cat-i-th-adage.livejournal.com/tag/faces+of+the+moon

Checking In

I haven't updated here lately. On the other hand, Things have been Happening.

I have secured a new job with the Wellington City Council as an adviser in the Research, Performance and Planning team. The two people I talked with in the interview were very easy to talk to (interviews going over time is a good sign, I reckon) and my spy inside the council says that my new team is a good lot, so fingers crossed that things go well and all. I start tomorrow morning. I suspect that I'm going to need to upgrade my work wardrobe, mind. [The scruffy part of my soul makes a despairing wail...]

My Gran had her 90th birthday party yesterday, and it was notable by the enormous gathering of the Hay, West and Pegg clans. I met a number of relatives that I see in various orders of frequency: every couple of months, once a year-ish, intermittently every 3-5 years, have never met but know by repute, and never heard of but was hanging about the Vic English and Classics departments at the same time I was and has some of the same friends. That last was a bit of an interesting coincidence.

Gran was looking very chirpy and happy about it all, which is fantastic because she's been quite ill recently. Cat and I stayed over night in Waikanae to hang out with her and give my aunt Helen a bit of a break, which I really enjoyed.

In other news, my ex-defacto-step-father has just gotten married and his new wife (a lady called Cherry who lives in the Philipines) is expecting a baby. I'm feeling all clucky and hoping to be considered an honorary aunt.

Eavesdropping On My Flatmate's Roleplaying Game...

Currently my former flatmate and landlord is auditioning for a BollyPorn movie.
The other players are looking pretty boggled by it all.

The Grey Mouser

Macca caught a mouse. She's been sitting out the back door with her face pressed up to the (locked) cat door saying: "Hey, look, I caught a Mouse. Can I come in? I can show off this Mouse I caught. I'm sorry, I can't talk so clearly right now, what with this Mouse in my mouth."

I think it was just a baby, and it looks suspiciously limp, so hopefully she killed it quickly.

Hanging with the Queens of New Zealand

So my job hunt is ... progressing and I'm getting bored hanging out at home. The obvious solution is to volunteer for something and so I signed up with the Cat Protection League. It's staffed by the kind of people my sister likes to call Queens of New Zealand: sensibly dressed women of indeterminate middle age quietly holding the world together. This morning was no exception - in between washing cat dishes, changing litter boxes, cuddling the residents and all the other things you need to do to keep 50 odd cats living together amicably, I was plied with much tea, fed biscuits and updated on gossip. Quite a lot of fun, actually.

EDIT: If anyone is looking for a large and active cat, they could try visiting the CPL and asking for Crookshanks. They say he's been there for two years and is driving himself crazy pacing around the run. Wanna go ooouuuuu-ouuuuuuut etc.

Wot I Did This Weekend...

It was rather busy.

On Friday I graduated. My sister Cat says I looked super cute, although most of the photos didn't come out so well, so I can't prove it to the disinterested observer. It was pretty standard as graduations go, sore feet, marshalls who have the operation planned out like a war, getting to see professors in their extremely gaudy party clothes. Also, one of mine came up to me just as I was leaving the reception and said lots of nice things which is always good for my ego.

Some pictures that did come out well:



On Saturday morning we had a birthday breakfast with my John, Mum's John, Cat and Ed, which was a lot of fun. I got a good present haul, mostly involving books and homeware stuff (I asked for egg beaters, but also got a nice set of coasters and some kind of weird food processing implement called a Whiz Stick.) I think I've reached an age where I really want to nest, although it might also be the effects of moving house a month ago.

On Saturday afternoon and Sunday I was the assistant editor for a short film entered in the 48 Hours Furious Filmmaking competition. We made a superhero film about quarreling flatmates who haven't realised that they've been fighting the other one as a 4 colour hero/villain for some time now. This was my first go as an editor - on Thursday night I was given a hasty lesson on the editing software and the means to capture and log footage, and apparently exceeded expectations by working out how to insert title cards as placeholders while I was doing a rough cut. And I had the pleasure of seeing some of the shots I selected make it into the final work, although overall it was much changed by the work of the senior editor.

The screening is tonight. Yay!

Vivid Dreaming

One of the unusual things that's been happening this past few months is the strength and intensity of my dreams. Usually, when I'm aware of dreams I'm in what's called the lucid state, where you know that you're asleep and can choose to stay in the dream or wake up. Lately, though, I think the dream is real and sometimes after I've woken have to stop and work out what has really happened. Or, for instance, when my partner has woken me up because I'm snoring, I get surprised that I hadn't heard it, because the transition between the dream and awake was so smooth. Strange.

The One Man Star Wars Trilogy

It's quite fun. With added stormtroopers.