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.

Time Capsule

I've been sorting through old University notes, those dating from the period 1995-1998. I've never been able to bear throwing the physical reminder of all that work away, so they were packed into boxes and have been following me around for the last ten years. I still can't bear to throw them away, but I'd like to squeeze them down to one box so I've been flicking through the files pulling out ephemera - exam papers, assignments, scratch notes, that sort of thing and putting them aside to be recycled. In the process I'm not only glancing at old material and remembering (or not) studying it, but finding old pieces of music, stories I've written, stories other people have written (1), letters, cards and all the bits and pieces you collect.

It's interesting looking back at the person I was then. While there've been some big events between then and now, I think that most of the changes in me as a person were so gradual I didn't really notice them at the time, and I need to look back over a large space of time to see growing up in perspective.

(1) Cat, if by any chance you're missing the originals of your Etherfee Omn stories I have photocopies that you sent me an age ago.

Brrr.

I went down to the Cenotaph for the Dawn Service today. It was quite cold, with a raise of very cold on the bike ride there which is mostly downhill, and I'm glad I went. I was feeling sad for my Grandad and various Great-Uncles, although it's hard to be solemn and melancholy when the person in the crowd next to you is talking loudly about his landlord problems and high rent. [looks quizzical] Now, I'm in the hyper-awake state you get when you've gotten up rather earlier than you're used to, along with rebound warmth from being out in the cold and now inside with the blood rushing back into your hands.

A short piece from the Laurence Binyon poem "For the Fallen" that always gets quoted:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

On Cabbage

I'm moving on the weekend. (Into Repton's and HouseMonkey's house, for them that know where that is, and people that don't can leave a comment here if they'd like my new address.)

In the process I'm trying to do a sort out of all the gear I've accumulated and, out of both tidiness and necessity, getting rid of the things I don't need. Last night was working through my fabric bin taking out the pieces that are too small to work with, or uninteresting and unlikely to strike my fancy for, I dunno, doll-making or whatever. A friend of mine once referred to these kinds of scraps as 'cabbage,' and since that makes me think of the raggedy strips of sliced up cabbage prior to making coleslaw, I think that's a good term. Right now, my whole house is full of cabbage - left over bits and pieces that get left behind after the essential stuff has been packed, like the natural decomposition process of kipple. It's a bit disconcerting, although the cat is treating the whole affair as An Adventure. I'm not sure how she'll feel when the move hits and she's confined to a room to adjust in. Oh well.

But back to the cabbage. My current plan is to load the bag of scraps into one of those clothing bins that cuts old clothes up for rags. If anyone thinks they might use it, instead, like for patchworking, let me know and it's yours.

Looking for work again...

My employer has just announced some major rearrangements in their staffing, and I think that the end result will be me being shuffled out of the picture. Any leads greatly appreciated.

I think their timing could have been a lot better, but oh well.

Dear Diary, This Morning My Cat Went Crazy.

Well, crazy is very likely too harsh a term - I'm pretty sure she was acting logically by her lights.

Sometime in the wee small hours a neighbouring cat tried to get in the cat door which at night is locked. I woke up to hear cats screaming and found Macca planted on the inside of the door staunchly protecting us against all comers, her tail doing an excellent imitation of a bottle brush. Then the outside cat went away and I thought I'd go back to sleep.

Not...really. Macca spent the rest of the morning wanting to go out, wanting to come in, dashing around the house, wanting me to go outside with her, using the litter box over and over again, not going through the cat door but batting at it very loudly, and in other fashions thoroughly marking her territory. So, logical in her way, but very tiring from my point of view.

[yawns]

I have spent -

- the last three hours pinned on the couch by my cat. I made a brief escape half an hour ago to deal with some necessary functions (servicing my tea addiction and so forth), to be promptly pinned as soon as a I sat down again, ran out of ways to waste time on the internet, and have been left with resurrecting some half-finished stories that had gone the way of procrastination and adding bits. I had no idea you were so literarily inclined when I met you, Macca.

Ending the Week on a Win

So, I've made it through the first three weeks at Firstlight.

Progress so far:
- I'm on to real work, albeit needing a fair amount of advice and checking, still.
- I finished the project I was working on for the week. Yay!
- I've been cycling in to work every day, and I've noticed this week that all the extra exercise is starting to pay off in hill-climbing ability. Also, alas, I'm now hungry All The Time. Even keeping a stash of fruit and hot cross buns on my desk is not keeping up. It's like being Repton, darn it.

And in frisbee:
- I got female MVP for our game tonight! Yippee! :-)

Work Update

Well, I survived my first week. I'm basically still in the training phase, but I've been working through the example exercises at a reasonable rate and will hopefully be let loose on real work next week. This afternoon involved shadowing members of my real actual honest-to-god team, rather than friendly members of other teams, which is a good sign for progressing through the system.

The work looks like it will be very interesting, and well suited to someone with an inveterate web browsing habit and good general knowledge. Only this week, I've been reading about conflict diamonds and efforts to stamp out the trade in same, wafer cleaning and handling issues in the semiconductor industry, a pharmacy company's recruiting efforts and NASA's magazine for publishing technical updates. And more semiconductors. There is an unexpectedly high number of semiconductor magazines out there, which is a shame for us, because the field is very very jargony.

For the first few days I was getting dreadfully tired by the end of the day and pretty much collapsing on getting home. My apologies to my nearest and dearest who bore the brunt of fatigue temper tantrums. :-( Anyway, that seems to be getting better as I adjust to office hours after a sustained period of holiday time - if nothing else, I've actually made it ten to twelve without conking out this evening. Also, I've been biking into town everyday apart from Monday and am finding it a useful burst of fresh air and exercise to counter a sedentary occupation. I've noticed that my cycling fitness has improved remarkably since last year - time was I couldn't cope with cycling in two days in a row because I got so tired, now it's just much needed exercise.

The people I'm working with are nice and talking to me, which is another good sign, although this week I've noticed the unavoidable drop in status you get in switching from being the technically knowledgeable old hand to the untrained newbie, despite everyone's efforts to get to know each other. One thing I really like about the place is it's location in Anvil House just across the road from the Michael Fowler Centre. A friend says there used to be bands operating out of the building when she was in her clubbing phase, and with names like "Sonic Machine" and "Squared One" on the directory I suspect this is still the case. It's also within cooee of the Civic Centre and associated buildings, Cuba St, Courtenay Place and the Waterfront, which is making my lunch hours varied and interesting affairs. I do like the architecture in downtown Wellington. It's not that I love each individual building, but they all work well together and the way they're arranged makes an inclusive space particularly friendly to pedestrians. It's just nice to hang out there, really. The closest my old haunts in Auckland got to that chilled out ambience was Aotea Square and the Town Hall, but even with the skateboarders adding some life to the area, it just can't compete - Auckland has a far more linear arrangement that makes me feel like it worships the motorcar. I like Wellington's more clustered arrangement far better.

EDIT: Actually, the names I misremembered are Sonic Mobile and OneSquared and they turn out to be companies selling mobile phone services.

My First Bike Fall.

With picture for the Suppurating Wounds Club (Nasty Bruise Subdivision):


and complimentary picture of Macca, because she's beautiful and happened to be around while I had the camera out:


As bike falls go, I guess it was pretty sedate, involving a nearly stationary bicycle and no other vehicles. Shoe laces are so darn threatening, doncherknow. My laces got caught on the pedal when I tried to dismount and the only way to go by then was down. It's so embarrassing. I'm fine, barring the bruises on leg and ego.

Cerise Magazine

Cerise is a web magazine devoted to woman gamers and is particularly favourable to feminist points of view. Their articles are predominately on video/PC gaming and roleplaying with occasional excursions onto Larping and Wargaming. Also, they now publish articles by me. :-)

Flat Out, Naked.

Actually, Flat Out, Nude (N.U.D.E is the Nelson Ultimate Frisbee club.) They run an annual tournament on Tahuna Beach, which I went to with Repton this weekend.

The short summary:
Saturday - rather soggy, and we staggered back to the motel feeling very staunch. The organisers skipped lunch and one of the rest breaks in order to get people out of the rain as soon as possible, so we played straight through from 9am to 2pm with 10 minute breaks in between each game. I had a lot of fun despite the wet, although I had a Lot of trouble running on the sand and didn't get my hands on the disc very often. There was a pirate party in the evening, which I thought about going to, but decided against because I didn't much feel like being rained on again. In our short dash to a closer restaurant, I did discover that the pirate coat Cat made for me several years ago has quite reasonable waterproofing properties (I'd left my regular coat at the beach by accident.) Our team ended the day fourth out of ten teams.

Sunday - rather nice weather, apparently all the other tournaments in this series have been just as lovely. Had a lot more fun in the warmer weather, and my playing Did Not Suck. Sometimes it was even Anti-Sucky and I did cool things like catching a really long throw and participating in really smooth throwing sequences. No layouts, but I'm finding the idea less daunting after a full on collision with a girl who was going for the disc at the same time as I was. I think she had only a marginal chance of catching it, but was OK for her to call it a foul because I felt guilty about knocking her to the ground. Repton of course played beautifully throughout. We ended the round robin fourth out of ten teams, which meant we had to play two more games, unlike the single placement games for the lazy bums (;-)) who were lower than us in the rankings. The Semis were a lot of fun and hard out, and our final game was scarily close and also very hard out. We ended, as you might have guessed, fourth. (There's something about that number...)

Sunday evening - Trip home sucked - our plane was delayed, and Repton and I spent close on an hour and a half cooling our heels in the airport before the airline staff cracked and shifted us to a different plane. Glad to be back, although my cat has been spending the weekend bonding with my flatmate and doesn't seem to think of me as the centre of her world anymore. (Sigh.) I'm rather stiff, but not as badly as expected and my ankle, which has been giving me problems lately, is a lot less sore than I was worried about, mostly due to mammoth taping efforts on Repton's part. Also, I found the tournament as a whole to be a lot less exhausting than the other ones I've been to, so I guess I must have gained some fitness over the last nine months or so since the last time I played in one.

On the 26th Day of February

My true love sent to me..........

A Google Message with the following text:
"You can google for words like "embarbuttment" for other examples..
Or http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=buttumption&btnG=Search&hl=en ho ho :-)"

Changes.

I'm feeling very transitional right now. Macca the cat is still in her settling in phase, I've just accepted a new job ... even the weather is beginning to turn.

Macca. She's the most assertively friendly cat I've ever met. She's toned it down a little from her first couple of days, when I expect she was partly smooching out of nerves and a desire to bond, but she's still very friendly, and the only cat I know who would plead to be allowed in to a room full of noisy visitors. She's had a cold this week and is still sneezing, but the frequency seems to be dropping off, and it hasn't stopped her eating or made her depressed her or anything. She's started going outside for short periods under supervision - she loses a lot of her street-wise cool when she goes out, being particularly wary of cars driving by, but also unsure of the strange spaces and the more random air movements. Her main exception was on Saturday, when she found a way into the reserve out the back that I didn't know about and we did some unplanned bush bashing. Macca thinks that Trees Are Cool, and will likely be going out that way a lot as soon as I trust her not to get lost. (We ended up going through one of the neighbour's gardens and coming back by the road because I'd had to cross some awfully steep ground while I was trying to catch up with her, which I wasn't going to attempt with a cat in my arms.)

The Job. It's at FirstLightERA and the position title is Information Taxonomist. (Because obscure job titles is where it's at. ;-)) As I understood things from the job interview, they provide an editorial related advertising service to specialist web magazines. This means that someone reading an article in, I dunno, Plumber's Weekly, would see ads on that page that are very specifically relevant to that article, much more relevant than an automated keyword matching service would provide. The team I'm being hired for goes through each publication and makes a taxonomy tree of what sorts of information are presented, so that each individual article can be tagged correctly. Theoretically, the readers win, because the ads can be less obtrusive and will be more relevant to them, and the advertisers and web magazines win, because their ads are more effective per pixel. Anyway, I get a call in about twenty minutes to discuss things like when I start. Fingers crossed etc.

What isn't transitional is my relationship with Repton, which is about to reach it's 2nd anniversary. This is very cool, except for the annoying part of my back brain which likes to poke me when it thinks I might be getting comfortable with something. Stupid back brain. (Sorry, Repton, I'm going through a neurotic phase.)

EDIT: Just had the phone call, I start next Monday.

EDIT2: And in news of the other person going through a big transition right now, I've heard from Fraser's new flatmate that he arrived safely in Auckland, unloaded his gear and is on his way back to return the van.

Macca

Photos!

Round the Bays

This morning I ran the Round the Bays fun run in ~49 minutes (yes, I managed to run the whole way, excepting about 10 metres when I was having my halfway drink.) I'm glad I did it, although unfortunately I've pulled some ligaments in one foot and am hobbling about putting ice on it and so forth. There was a physio at Kilbirnie Park who looked at it and said it would be fine in a couple of days, though. Also saw my aunt Barbara in the park, and she's looking well. She had news about one of my cousins who has just had a baby after 96 hours of labour. Just ... ow.

Macca is doing well, she's wandering around the main part of the house exploring, sneezing and saying "Myeh" a lot, with intermittent lounging on the couch being made much of.

EDIT: The times have now been published. I actually ran the course in 46.01 minutes, from start line to finish line, and was placed 2837th. (It was 6.6km, giving me an average running speed of 8.6 km/hr.)

On Cats

I can remember reading a series of books by C. J. Cherryh about a family of sort of humanoid cats who travelled about their region of space trading. It became a running gag in the books that they'd be forced to deal with an incomprehensible alien (and once a male of their own species) and end up by locking them in the bathroom for want of anywhere else to put them. In a reversal of that running gag, I now have a prisoner of my own locked in the bathroom. Her name is Macca, and she is a 7 year old tabby.

We've only just got back from the SPCA and she's still upset, but coping a lot better than she could be. Photos to follow when she's more settled in.

Wot I Did Today.

In fact, today, I went to Waikanae to visit my Gran, along with Mum who'd come from the other direction. It turned out really nice, although I confess to a certain amount of sleep-short grumpiness this morning when the bus was late and I missed the train connection. Hence, I have walked on the beach, eaten a hot cross bun, listened to some truly hair raising childhood anecdotes from my ancestresses and been plied with money and food.

In other news, I have a job interview on Wednesday for the position of Information Taxonomist, which definitely scores style points for unusual job title. Fingers crossed etc.

Larping tomorrow...er, today.

Almost made my going to bed deadline of midnight, and will now try not to go too far over. All packed and ready for tomorrow. Phew. [crosses fingers]

Here's to Anonymous Gifts.

Gosh. Someone has sent me a copy of The Highwayman with the lovely (and spooky) Charles Keeping illustrations, and I have no idea who, because the package came straight from Amazon with no gift note. Thank you whoever you are!

In other news, I am busy with Larp stuff, mostly sending out character sheets and panicking slightly that a couple of characters haven't been cast yet. I'm sure it will turn out OK (fingers crossed).

Wandering Up To The Fish and Chip Shop in Pyjamas and Slippers.

I think this is a new low in casual attire.

Sometimes, y'see, you get home and shower and there doesn't seem much point in getting back into real clothes. I went to frisbee practice this morning, then cycled with Repton the long way home, from Northland to Karori and back, then down to the waterfront, around the coastline, and turning inland at Island Bay to stagger back home. My fatigue is punishment, I expect, for not getting enough exercise while travelling. Somewhere in the bike ride, I agreed to signing up to the Round the Bays fun run - people with advice on training programs are welcome to stick in their oar, because running is not something I'm particularly good at.

Sorry, burbling a bit, probably dehydrated, enjoyed the ride a lot.

Home, James, And Don't Spare The Horses.

Actually, we took our time.

I got back yesterday from Repton's and my womble up the North Island. Officially, we were off to have Christmas at my mother's house and attend Repton's cousins wedding in Auckland just before New Year's and we decided to be touristy and take our time getting there. Christmas was, well, anyone reading this will have read the earlier updates about Mum being in hospital, which rather damped any making merry activities. The last I talked to her, she was feeling a lot better, although not 100% well yet. We did do things like visiting her in hospital and singing her one carol very quietly, the one that starts "All praise to thee my God this night" which Mum says was always at Evensong when she was a wee young lass and meant a lot to her. Apart from that, Christmas Day was pretty quiet, with the big meal put off from luch to dinner but worked out OK for all of that.

The wedding itself was lovely. I've never been to a Catholic wedding before (excuse me, nuptial mass) so it was interesting seeing how things compare to the Anglican and secular affairs I've been to before. It was a lot more formal than the last wedding I attended (that was a Pirate Do, and at all the important moments everyone said "Arrgh!"), and while it was easy to work out when to stand and sit, there were an awful lot of responses that most of the attendees had pat that I was muttering along to and pretending that I knew what was going on. Also, meeting Repton's family turned out well - they're friendly and nice and easy to talk to, which is all good. I found it interesting, though. Repton is tall and a bloke, is very quiet in most conversations, and is the least visual person I know. Most of his siblings and cousins are tall, but conversely tend to be female, active conversationalists, and study art history and have hobbies like painting and photography. It's like someone set up the genes in the Fouhy family with a divider switch.

Touristy things we did in the meantime:
Shannon: Owlcatraz. If you can stand the awful puns (they just get worse when you go in) it's quite interesting. It started off as a privately owned reserve for studying morporks built by a farmer who had an interest. People started bouncing up asking for tours and it grew from there. Now, it has morporks, German owls (although our guide said that in Europe they're called Little Owls), weka, ostriches, and a selection of unusual livestock - small, large, interesting breeds, that kind of thing.
Taupo: The A. C. Baths. A. C. I found out, stands for Armed Constabulary, the military outpost that was the first Pakeha settlement in the area. There was no such thing as indoor plumbing or an electricity supply to heat bath water at the time, so the soldiers made alternative arrangements with a local hot spring.
Ernest Kemp. A replica of a steam ship that takes people out on the lake to see some interesting carvings in the stone. The carvings are the moko of one of (or the) earliest Maori chief in the region whose name I've forgotten. Alas, we didn't get to go on the Barbary, a sailing ship reportedly once owned by Errol Flynn.
Auckland: Takapuna Beach. A nice long, rather crowded beach where we went with ElvenAlchemist.
Castor Bay. A smaller beach with rocks, a climbing tree and a green sward where we caught up with Yvonne and family.
The Golden Compass. Well, I went to see it, anyway. Repton went for a walk up Mt Albert.
Starfire and Gryphon. Not touristy at all, but our very kind hosts. Although Gryphon started me watching the Sharpe series of movies, damn his eyes, and it's annoying because I've seen the first two and would like to see the rest, and can't, because his collection is still up in Auckland. Grr.
New Year's Eve. Again, not very touristy, we went along to a Hoarde party at which we played board games, chatted, and I was plyed with alcoholic beverages.
Waitomo: St Benedict's Cavern. We went caving of course. St Benedict's is one of the 'adventure' options available. The guides give you a quick lesson on abseiling, you lower yourself into a crevasse in the ground and go to. The worst part was the flies, which were attracted to the light in our helmets and liked to dive bomb our faces, the best bit was the flying fox near the end through St Benedict's Cathedral, the highest point in the cave and truly glorious. Also we stayed on a farm and I bought a very beautiful picture which is hanging on the wall as I speak.
Wanganui: I think Wanganui has to count as our 'nice place, we should spend more time here some other trip' stop. (We were getting tired.) We meant to go out on the river, but weren't very organised about arranging it, so after wandering around for a bit, we ended up in the centre of town where I went to the Sarjent Gallery and Repton explored the area. The exhibit I thought was coolest was an artist who'd decided to work in gorse wood. I expect it's a pig of a thing to work, but the result is a beautiful yellow colour with a dark grain running through it.

And then we came home.

Repton said something interesting on our second to last day: that we'd been travelling together for 10 days straight and hadn't had any arguments. When I think about it, actually there were rather a lot of stress attractors in the mix - driving, sitting in bad traffic, meeting each other's friends/family en masse, a Christmas Day full of worry and drama, and simply being in each other's company continuously for longer than we ever have before. I think we did pretty well, actually.

Happy New Year, all.

Auckland, Ho!

I'm now in Auckland, and will be for several days in case any of the residents would like to get in touch, catch up, or generally socialise. ;-)

Mum is out of hospital and was looking OK when I saw her, although she's on a restricted diet for a while.

Christmas Holiday Special

You know how in soap operas just before the Christmas shutdown they have lots of exciting (and usually bad) stuff happen to people so that the audience will be interested to find out what happens when the show restarts? I had a Christmas Holiday Special a few years ago - lots of people around me were having a lot of drama in their love lives, and from my safe seat of audience I was interested in a sympathetic kind of way. This time round, lots of people are being sick, ill, depressed, or otherwise miserable, and it's pretty sucky. Mum has been admitted to hospital for the second time in three days, and we're off to visit as soon as we know what ward she's going to.

To everybody else who's ill: Get Better. And Happy.
To the people who aren't ill: Merry Christmas.
Actually, to everybody: Merry Christmas.

ETA: Mum's still in hospital, but seemed relatively chirpy when we visited. To add some, she's ill, but as far as anyone's saying, not in danger, and expected home tomorrow. And there's nothing like walking through a hospital on Christmas Day to know that there's always someone with a worse story than yours. Merry Christmas, and to all a good night.

Missing, Presumed ???

I can't find the sugar jar. I saw it this morning, and now it's just ... gone. Did I accidentally tidy it away in the freezer? (I've already checked the fridge.) Did it head off hitchhiking to see the wide world? Did we have a very polite burglar who made sure to lock all the doors behind him?

ETA: In the cupboard with the tea cups. In hindsight, it's surprisingly obvious.

I Have the Sinus Infection That Never Ends...

Or rather, the bally thing just keeps on coming back. My latest visit to the doctor netted me antihistamine tablets, a different kind of nasal spray (which interestingly uses the same active ingredient as my asthma inhaler), a sinus wash and a script for a third round of antibiotics if the above doesn't help after a couple of weeks. I feel like a lily-livered hypochondriac never happier than when laden with pills, except I'm not imagining the symptoms. Bah humbug. Actually, sinus washes are fairly weird to use - they squirt salt water up your nose in a more controlled imitation of dunking your head in the sea, and although most of the liquid runs out just as soon as you squirt it in, I found it took a good five minutes for my nose to stop running.

And in a note of surrealism, here is a music video by a group of fresh-faced, probably mild-mannered, possibly inbred folks singing in praise of a god who, if he exists, strikes me as a deity to be hated, feared and resisted with all one's being. Kind of weird to see this stuff 2000 years after the lynchpin of Christianity stood up and said "Hey, why don't we all try being nice to each other for a change." Scarily, I don't think it's a parody.

La la la.

The dress of awesome pinkness is now finished, down to the last hem, hook, untwisted strap and hat with matching ribbon. And it looks pretty damn good, too. :-)

Windmills in the Mist

Wellington is not an easy city for a novice cyclist.

For firstly, the geography hates us: while there are some fun whizzy bits, you spend far more time trudging up a big hill than enjoying the freewheeling speed. And that's not even counting the days when the wind slams into you like a brick wall and swings you across to the other side of the road in the middle of traffic and makes the uphill bits even more of a misery. A pox on it, I say.

For secondly, the motor traffic is generally unsympathetic. There are far too many drivers of gaz-guzzling behemoths who are crippled by poor depth-perception and the conviction that one inch of clearance is all I really need as they pass me. Bastards. Just remember, you ecological lepers, that in a world with a finite oil reserve my actions keep your monsters on the road just that little bit longer.

For thirdly, there are all those other cyclists. The ones in the skintight sports clothes and the muscly bodies. The ones that glide past me effortlessly with a cheerful wave. The ones that don't have to explain to shopkeepers that they're not having heart attacks, they've just been cycling. I hate them, mostly because I wish I was just like them.

There are, however, a few compensations. Like yesterday, f'r'instance, when I cycled up into the clouds and felt like I was on an island floating away into space. There's this landmark, see, that is up on the horizon everytime I go into town. I've walked down from there a couple of times after Repton and I had walked around the bird sanctuary, but never cycled the distance before, and it's been lurking in my subconscious for a while - I can take you, I was thinking, I'm sure I can. And yes, it turned out that I can. Brooklyn Wind Turbine, you've been ticked off my list.

Statistics:
Maximum elevation: 299m
Minimum elevation: Dunno. My Google-fu is weak. Brooklyn shops or Kingston - I'm not sure which is higher.
Round trip distance: ~11.6km.
Trip time there: ~1 hour.
Trip time home: ~1/2 hour. (One of the attractions of the wind turbine, I confess, was knowing that the trip home would be easier than the trip there, a rare commodity when you live in Kingston.)
Hardest bits: Todman St just out from Brooklyn Shops and the beginning of the narrow road that's dedicated to the wind turbine. That was pedalling so hard the front wheel was jumping off the ground, that was.
Lunch afterwards: Toasted bacon sandwich. Yummy.

Evidence:

I Hate Christmas Shopping...

It makes my feet hurt, I get fed up with dodging people, and on days like today the humidity just makes me want to wilt. Fortunately, all the retail staff I talked with today fully understood my pain and were duly sympathetic - I suspect they'll be less so in two weeks time, however.

Also, it's frustrating when no item in particular leaps out and says "Me, Me, I'm perfect for So-And-So" and I'm fairly tempted to include in all my packages a friendly note instructing the giftees to pretend to like it lest I wail and gnash my teeth upon them. OK, I found some things that I think people will really like, everyone else can just do the pretending part. ;-)

Grinchingly yours,

Stephanie

A Christmas Carol

My sister has just asked me to translate a carol for her from her Medieval songbook. It's quite pretty so I'm passing it on.

Quem pastores laudavere
Quibus angeli dixere
Absit vobis jam timere
Natus est rex gloriae

Ad quem magi ambulabant
Aurum, thus, myrrham portabant
Immolabant, haec sincere
Nato regi gloriae

Christo regi, deo nato
Per Mariam nobis dato
Merito resonet vere
Laus, honor et gloria

The king, the king whom the shepherds praised,
The king with whom the angels spoke,
He is separated from you now, with awe,
The king of glory is born.

To he whom the wise men travelled,
To whom they carried gold, incense and myrhh;
They burned these things with sincerity
To the born king of glory.

To Christ the king, the born God,
Given to us through Mary,
He resounds truly with merit,
To Christ the king: Praise, Honour, Glory.

Translation notes: This poem is holding back the subject to the last line of each stanza as an intensifier. This works well in Latin syntax but less so in English, hence some of the repetitions of 'Christ the king' inserted where there were none before: they aid comprehension and I think add to the poetic effect. The third line of the first stanza I'm not terribly sure about, it doesn't quite seem to fit the rest of the verse and 'timere' could be a form of verb. I'm choosing to translate it as adverbial by comparison with the equivalent line in the other stanzas.

Pronunciation notes: (Cat asked how to pronounce it, with particular reference to 'c's.) Bah humbug. 'c' is the worst of the lot. In the Classical period it's believed to have sounded like a 'k' does now. In the Medieval period it could be like an 's' or like a 'ch' depending on where you live, and that's before you take into account the spelling confusions between 'c' and 't'. I refer you to someone with more knowledge on the subject and suggest you go with the Southern Continental / Church Latin instructions, hence pronouncing 'c' as 'ch' and 'g' as 'j' when coming before most vowel sounds.

Scansion notes: The poetically inclined will have noted that this poem is both rhythmical and rhyming, developments in Latin poetry which were pretty much concurrent with the rise of Christian poetry. Classical Latin poetry is quantitive, the music that comes out of recitation is based on patterns in the length of the vowel sounds, not in patterns of stressed syllables. Rhythmical techniques did exist in part, but were mostly reserved for rhetorical prose. I suspect that one of the drivers in the early days of rhythmical poetry in the Christian Church was its use in singalongs - rather than performance pieces that one speaker presents to a crowd, many of the early hymns were written as group pieces for use during services and to keep people's spirits up in the middle of a purge. Later on, of course, when Latin was only ever learnt as a second language, rhythmical poetry became a lot easier to write than quantitive, it's easier to hear stressed syllables than vowel quantities that you have to look up in a book because nobody pronounces them that way anymore. There were still people writing the latter, but I don't know of any really good pieces.

I Am Making A Dress Of Awesome Pinkness...

Although interestingly, my perception of the colours has changed from "Oh, those look nice" in the fabric shop, to "My word, that's rather intense" when I modelled the partially completed dress whilst wearing a white t-shirt, to "Oh hey, that does look nice" when modelling the more completed dress in bare skin. It's very summery.

Several people have been telling me over the past few months that I ought to watch a comedy series called Black Books. They were right, it totally rocks, although hearing the voice of a mad Irishman shouting in my head as I'm trying to go to sleep is rather worrying.

On Being An Unemployed Bum, Part Two.

Today I had an interview with a recruitment company, which I think went well, and the lady I spoke with said she'd be passing on my application to her client so fingers crossed and so forth.

I did have the slightly amusing experience of meeting ReptonInfinity for lunch afterwards, and having gotten to the cafe first I read a book while I waited. After a few minutes I looked up to find him looming next to me scanning the room, wondering where I was. He's never seen me in work clothes before. It showed.

ReptonInfinity however has now one-upped me in the "The Fire Alarm's Gone Off, And I'm Not Wearing Clothes Fit To Be Seen In" Dither. I'm callow enough to find this extremely amusing. (Sorry. I know that being in a cast sucks.)

EDIT: And apparently the client decided to put the vacancy on hold, just before my CV could be submitted to them. [Sighs]

I feel like I've had a borrowed weekend.

It's not just the cat. Yesterday, I meant to go to frisbee practice and didn't, I went to the library and did some fabric shopping instead. Today, ReptonInfinity meant to go to his training camp and didn't, so we biked around Oriental Parade and Frank Kitts Park and had ice cream instead. (Repton is not so slack as I, he's out due to an injury. :-()

It's been ... nice.

I am borrowing a cat.

His name is Sammy and he normally lives with my brother Edward, who is spending the weekend doing masochistic things involving running in the South Island. Sammy's doing pretty well in settling in, actually. He's graduated from lurking under the bed, through hanging out under the bed but letting people visit with him, to exploring the house, and in fact sat in the living room and watched TV with us this evening. He still wants a lot of reassurance, but seems fine.

Life as an unemployed bum is progressing. I'm sending out job applications and getting depressed about it, and so far there are a couple that I'd really like to get, so fingers crossed that I at least make the short list. I'm walking more than I used to, and it's a good time of year to do so, because there are a lot of flowers out right now. I particularly like the purple daisies, because they're everywhere and they're cheerfully refusing to blend in with anything. I'm also noticing birds more than I usually do. Does anyone know what kind of bird it is that looks mostly like a sparrow, but with a body that's a bit redder, and with a yellow head? I don't think I've ever seen one like that before.

Also, I have now watched Mr Smith Goes To Washington, a movie rather similar in plot to Mr Deeds Goes To Town, which uncoincidentally has the same director and leading lady. They both have lots of funny bits, and happy endings.

Yesterday, as I sat upon the bus...

A gentleman eyed the book I was reading and asked me if I had an English exam coming up. I said no, so he asked why I was reading the book (1) when I didn't have to, and I replied that I liked Jane Austen. Then he said that he'd always found Middle English and the Medieval period difficult to read. I said the book was written in the early 19th century. He said "Oh" and ceased to converse thereafter.


(1) Penguin Classics have this sober design of a period picture over a narrow white strip and a wide black strip, with very formal san serif fonts. It looks very dignified is all I'm saying.

On Being An Unemployed Bum...

This morning I had my last exam, which I think went well, although I was finding that I was pretty tired. (I didn't sleep well last night, for no particularly good reason.) On the other hand, I'm now free, free as a bird (or will be until I find my next job) and it's quite disorientating. I'm thoroughly used to the idea of holidays having set time limits and for there to always be somewhere something that I need to be doing, and someplace that I need to be. Right now, I don't. I haven't been in this position since the first half of the 90s, when I had long hot summer holidays and afternoons of hanging out after school. I'll let you all know how it turns out.

In other news, I hate the Student Health Service with a white hot passion, and will henceforth attempt to fill out the numerous forms that go into applying for aegrotat only if I think I'm dying. It involves lots of fluffing around talking to people who tell you different information and make you hang around their office for ages and come in for multiple appointments in which you say pretty much the same thing all over again, but you have to turn up for the sake of their precious damn forms. Bah! (I had a cold last week for my last exam and applied for an Impaired Performance Certificate. I suspect now that my exam would have gone better if I hadn't been stressed out by all the fluffing around.)

Dear Diary...

On the weekend I went to NAAMA, one of the biggest re-enactment camps in the country.

There was hanging about:





There was fighting:



There was a fort:


Which was fun to play in:


But then we burned it down:


Also, I visited my sister Catherine and met Spider the Zombie Cat, who is missing much fur on his rear half, but is slowly growing it back under Cat's care:


(He's on stress leave from his previous home which had two noisy children and a dog. I suspect sometimes that he's pulling a Blighty to avoid having to go back.)

(I have more photos on Facebook for those who can see them.)

Last Essay.

All done and handed in.

I somehow managed to pick the three hour period of today in which the weather was soaking wet to swim into town to hand it in. I feel that the Gods of Academia are punishing me for my lateness or something. :-(

I Love The Smell Of Clean Washing In The Evening...

Particularly when it's been line dried on a nice sunny day like today.

As a study break, this evening I watched a movie called Music & Lyrics, which is light and silly and fun. It has a spoof 80s pop music video in it, but I feel they let the side down on that one. They just didn't get the hair big enough.

The Last Class

Today I had my last class as a BA undergraduate. It was oddly anti-climactic, actually, probably because I have some exams to get through before I cease to be a student altogether. Also, I have to work on my Last Essay, which is going to be about Janus, God of the Gates, which epithet I find aesthetically appealing given the timing.

Also today, I finally finished the dreadful Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence. It's very highly thought of, and I hate it bitterly. I only kept reading out of bloody-mindedness, and I feel that any book which requires you to read the first three chapters twice, the Introduction and look it up on Wikipedia before you have an idea of what's going on has some essential problems. That, and every now and then I felt like I was reading what the Eye of Argon could have been if Jim Theis had been able to spell. F'r'instance:

Gudrun was as if numbed in her mind by the sense of indomitable soft weight of the man, bearing down into the living body of the horse: the strong, indomitable thighs of the blond man clenching the palpitating body of the mare into pure control; a sort of soft white magnetic domination from the loins and thighs and calves, enclosing and encompassing the mare heavily into unutterable subordination, soft blood-subordination, terrible.
D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2000), p113.

Note the use of the word 'loins.' It's Lawrence's favourite word, and I mean favourite, and I'll grant that many men have nice bottoms to look at, but if it's eye candy he's interested in, he could stand to give us a slightly broader view of men's other nice features also. Bah humbug.

On Frisbee

A number of people I know are off this weekend playing in the Ultimate Frisbee Indoor Nationals. I just head from ReptonInfinity. He says his team won three out of four games and he's going to have an ice bath. I think that means he's having fun.

In other news, I've been fairly depressed lately but life seems to be looking up. Sorry for being a wet blanket and all.

A Toast

This has been a very strange weekend, the normal parts of which would have made an interesting diary entry in themselves, but have rather subsumed themselves into the good news and the bad news.

The good news was visiting Ayla, the very new daughter of some friends, who is cute and sweet and very Awwwww-worthy.

The bad news is finding out that Steve Hodgson, a good friend, has suddenly died of a heart attack. Steve was one of those really neat guys that form a place in your psyche that belongs to them and them only. He was cuddly and kind, and would occasionally giggle at a particularly good joke. He was one of the most lethal people I know, all with a twinkle in his eye. He was technically very knowledgeable, and liked passing his knowledge on. He was exceptionally good at helping people overcome what they had thought were their limits, and helping them find out that their limits weren't nearly so bad after all. He looked out for people. He was one of a small group of people who knew my father, and a big link with the past feels broken. As I write this, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that he isn't around any more.

Anyway. Ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses and drink to old friends gone too soon, and new friends to whom everything is new and exciting.

I Have Done A Dreadful Thing.

First off, a big Happy Birthday to Ed and Fraser who both celebrated their natal days yesterday.

On the other hand, since I gave a little music box to Fraser, and he's been playing it intermittently all day, I'm beginning to wonder about the wisdom of my actions.

Babe

My cat Babe has just died.

She'd been having a little trouble eating for a while, and a lot of trouble eating recently, and it turned out to be a cancerous growth underneath her tongue, for which the long term prognosis from treatment was virtually non-existant. The vet was very nice about it - he let me sit with her for a while alone before he put her to sleep, and after, and gave me lots of tissues and things. I know that this was the best thing for her, but I still feel really bad about it.

She was both the sweetest and most stubborn cat I've ever known. I inherited her from a flatmate about eight years ago, and through that she turned from an incommunicative scaredy-cat to one that thought that cuddles, and play, and purring was the only way to go. She's been the most constant thing in my life through three moves, a new city, a new job, and giving up that job to go to University again, and she took all that disruption in her stride. She's taken her various health problems, the most serious of which was blindness, also in her stride, and despite everything has always managed to be happy about life.

The funniest thing I ever saw her do was claw open a bag of catnip on my bed. I found her a little while later sprawled in approved Take Me Now position, with little green leaves spread all over her and the bedspread. The second funniest thing was when she fell in a fish pond - she was the most dignified bedraggled cat I've ever seen. She used to decide that it was time we went out into the garden, she used to decide that it was time we went to bed, and when she'd decided these things she'd jump up and run to the door everytime I got up, and keep on doing it until I followed her. She had the most delicate paws. Since I've been home I keep expecting her to wheeze into the room and expect a cuddle, or thump down the stairs after me because she wants me to let her out the back door.

Catherine once said of her that she was like a dreadfully polite old lady who yet managed to indicate to Cat that she was less than the chewing gum beneath her shoe. She also said this: To My Sister's Cat. She liked sitting on computer keyboards and boxes. She liked sleeping next to something warm. She liked to purr.

Repatterning.

I have this Thing about posture. Basically, I've had trouble standing up fully straight for, well, as long as I can remember, and it's been bugging me for, not as long as I can remember, but certainly since early adolescence when all that self-critical self-examination kicks in. In my case, this wasn't helped by my mother's well meaning bullying about seeing physios and doing exercises to help straighten out - basically I, and I think my sister Cat, got stronger bodies but serious emotional issues out of the experience. To the couple of people I know who have Things about eating and food, yeah, I get it. I don't give a toss about breast size, don't mind (much) if I have a stomach and bum that aren't the flat feminine ideal currently prevalent, but I really really mind having a curvy spine. I also get the whole suite of self-destructive behaviours that go along with having a Thing, in my case slouching, or sagging, or not getting any exercise, all of which would help the thing that I have a Thing about.

I have a tendency to go through phases of trying to help myself out, and letting it slide, and I'm currently in the upslope of the former, brought on by my mother getting bad arthritis in her feet. I tend to inherit body type stuff from her, so I went to see a podiatrist for advice on preventative measures, and instead of examining my feet (well, he did a little) he gave me this big big talking to about using my abdominal muscles to support the rest of me, and walking more softly (hey, sore ankles are linked to a tendency to stamp when walking. Go figure!), and yet a new set of exercises which he said would make the postural stuff easier.

I have to admit that the guy has a point. I had some very weird days when I was trying to start the whole suck-tummy-in-thing, walk-softly-without-losing-all-forward-acceleration-thing, sit/stand-up-straight-thing and everything else in my body was complaining about being out of wack, but things seem to have settled down and I'm noticing more flexibility and definitely more airflow, which is cool. But it's still a bother having to remind myself of what I ought to be changing all the time - some advice I was given for meditation once was that the mind is like a cat tied by a string, the cat will keep wandering, so you have to notice that it's gone walkabout and gently draw it back by the string to where you want and sit it down quietly, and then again and again and again until the cat settles down. And so my example is sitting on an hour long flight, with an hour previous in the waiting room because the plane was delayed, with my back straight and my feet well-balanced on the floor spending the entire time thinking about how much I just wanted to sag. Stupid cat. Stupid string.

Love to all.

Commonplace Book

There is an obvious danger in the business of examining a labyrinthine world such as that of the Confessions from the kind of perspective I have assumed. Any optic one chooses risks setting certain features into a prominence that may turn out to have been exaggerated; it may at the same time minimize the importance of features which, examined through a wider lens, turn out to be far more prominent than the narrower vision could allow. Every scholar fears the moment when he may have become prisoner to a point of view he has cultivated far too long than was good for his objectivity. And yet, his only therapy is to present the findings that his point of view enabled him to uncover, even at the risk of being premature. Others, then, may succeed in widening his vision before it is too late. In presenting his findings, he must (for sweet clarity's sake if for nothing else) suppress the ever-nagging temptation to resort to the subjunctive: "If my view of the matter be correct, then it would follow that Augustine means this." But the indicative mood, habitual in English exposition, tends to convey an air of greater confidence than the writer himself often enjoys: give me a scholar and he will know what I mean. My hopes are that whatever features of the Confessions' landscape I may have left in the shade were not deliberately ignored, or half-consciously excluded, because their message positively militated against the thesis propounded here, and that the Augustinian scholar will be sensitive to the number of hesitant subjuntives that still tremble behind my regular use of the indicative mood.

O'Connell, Robert J. St Augustine's Confessions: The Odyssey of Soul, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969, pp viii-xi.

Well it made me laugh. I know the feeling.

Exams all done

La la la.

Now I just have to write this Augustine essay and go to a party. Christine Franzen, who is lovely, is giving a party for her Old English students to celebrate the end of the exam. And she brought around apple and St Swithin's cream for good luck this morning before we all started.

I'm on the downhill slope gaining speed. :-)

(Oh, and pack for a work trip up to Auckland. To all the people in Auckland [waves], I'll be there for two and a half weeks from Wedensday evening, catching up would be cool.)

The Phone Is Dead. Long Live The Phone!

I am now in mobile communication again, having gone out to buy a replacement phone in my post exam celebration phase. It has a light. And takes photos. And will hopefully not forget what time it is anytime I should acidentally jar it, all of which are features which my old phone did not have. The shop assistant at Vodaphone was weird though. He had this thing about not meeting my eyes, and seemed in general not particularly interested in selling me anything. Seriously, ReptonInfinity who had come along with me did most of this guy's selling for him.

In other news, has anyone had the experience of studying really hard for an exam and then realising just before it starts that they ought to have been studying for a different exam entirely? I just have - I twigged halfway through yesterday that it wasn't Old English today, it was Latin. So Stupid! Argggh! And it isn't like people don't tell me these things anyway. In the aftermath, and despite the panic, I think I did OK. There were some bits that I didn't do as well as I'd wanted to, but I remembered a lot more of the course work than I was afraid I would. Phew. And now I'm well ahead in study for Old English on Monday. Now that's a relief.

Hang on, my new phone has just rung from the other room...

RIP Phone

My cell phone has died. Or at least it's refusing to charge despite all my efforts, and it isn't a nice enough phone to worry about repairing. (And I never liked it much anyway.)

I'll get a new one, probably next week when I don't have exams over my head, in the meantime don't try to call me except on the landline.

Cold Enough To...

So on the weekend I went up to Rotorua with ReptonInfinity and a nice American chap called Sam who hitched along for the ride so that Repton and Sam could go to the Brass Monkey frisbee tournament. It turns out that Brass Monkey is for Repton what SF conventions and NAAMAs are for me - he goes every year, hangs out with the same group of people from all over the country (with some new additions), and they all have a bunch of traditions about what they do, like always going to the same Backpackers, and counting the seconds for a new person to figure out how the lock to the hot pool works.

On Saturday, the two of us were straight out tourists and went to visit a thermal area called Waimangu, which over a hundred years ago held the eighth natural wonder of the world, the Pink and White Terraces, and now has lots of cool landmarks and features left over from the explosion of Tarawera in 1886. What I thought coolest, (well not coolest literally) was the lake that looked like someone had dug out a footpath around it. In fact, they hadn't, but the lake fluctuated in water level a lot, and the silica rich water had built up the ledge just as high as its overflow level. Also, we found out the joys of off-season tourism - a 4km walk, and no-one in sight until we got to the boat jetty. Also we did gondolas and luges at the Skyline Skyrides place, which had nice views and whizzing around fast and that.

On Sunday, I started off as a proper groupie and watched Repton being a black ninja spider out on the field for a while on a Very Cold Day before losing groupie status and buggering off to a cafe to get warm and do some study. Yes, there are people that enjoy running around all day in the cold and wet, but I'm not one of them. I think it's highly relevant that all the players got a scarf with their registrations. Last year it was wooly socks and the year before beanies. Not a co-incidence. :-)

I think we all enjoyed ourselves...

So there was this guy...

...called Sejanus. He did pretty well for himself, in 1st C AD terms, came from a poor family (with some decent breeding), was liked by his boss Tiberius (the emperor), got a lot of power and prestige, had it off with the emperor's daughter-in-law even. Good going for a small-town hick. Then it all went wrong and he crashed and burned. And everybody hated him then, if they hadn't hated him already, and lots of historians said really nasty things about him, especially a chap called Cornelius Tacitus.

Then the Middle Ages happened, and people pretty much forgot about Tacitus, and Sejanus, until some guy called Boccacio found an old manuscript and thought that old Cornelius was pretty cool. Soon, lots of people thought that Tacitus was pretty cool. Not Sejanus, though. They really really hated him. Lots. Even when they'd changed their minds from Tiberius being a shifty dissembler to being a cool and cunning planner, they still hated Sejanus. You could even go to prison for suggesting that someone, like perhaps the King of England's country-bred pretty-boy favourite, was just like Sejanus. Lots of hatred, and even more comments about the thunder of heaven's rage crashing down on those pesky social climbers. Sounds like a lot of rage. But hey, this is the Renaissance by now, and there's lots of political stuff going on that no-one can do anything about, maybe it makes people feel better to have a nice simple villain to rage at. And they can even point out how he died, horribly, so they can feel all righteous about the existing social order. Gosh.

2000 words, somewhat less eloquently expressed, all handed in. Yay! (I am such a hack.)

Another project to hand in tomorrow, another due in two weeks which I've...kind of started, and then all I have to worry about is exams. Phew. It's not so much that I'm on the downhill stretch as that I can see the top of the hill. To all the students who have made it to the end of the semester in somewhat better order: I hate you I hate you I hate you.* That's the favourite phrase of my Latin teacher. Clearly, I'm learning something here. :-)

(*) The fact that many of my woes are entirely self-inflicted is entirely beside the point.

EDITED TO ADD: The Old English project is now done and being printed. My, it's a wonderful view from the top of the hill...

Now I Have A Bicycle. Ho. Ho. Ho.

So for my birthday, Mum gave me a certain sum of money and told me to buy something I wanted with it. Directly I repaired to Pennyfarthings the Bike Shop, with ReptonInfinity as technical advisor, and got myself a bike.

It's very shiny, and has front suspension, and lots of gears, and lights, and a pannier rack, and a Cool Helmet as opposed to a plain old boring one. It's all good, in fact, except for getting home up Brooklyn Hill. I needed lots of rest stops, and in fact, just after Brooklyn walked part of the way because my legs had given out, my lungs had given out, and my arms were pretty shaky as well. Zooming down the lesser hills up around the Ridgeway was lots of fun to make up for it, though, and Repton says that the distance up Brooklyn I can get without a break is a good measure of how fit I am, so I'll keep plugging away at it.

To harp on a theme, in case anyone hasn't gotten the news that I'm having a birthday party tomorrow, you're invited, assuming that you know me well enough to know my address (or my email address to ask what the physical one is. :->) It's from 7pm until whenever.

Cheers all,

Stephanie

The 48

So the reason I've been mostly incommunicado this weekend is my excursion into the 48 Hour Film Competition, with my team the Flying Monkeys. We had to make a movie in 48 hours with the following random elements:

Character : Jerry/Gerri Reed, a hypochondriac
Prop: A rope
Dialogue : "What do you call that?"

We made a serious War movie, with serious issues, in Lego. Will load it into YouTube after the whole business with heats and finals and stuff is done.

Medieval Manuscripts

The National Library of New Zealand has a medieval manuscript collection. Most of them are gifts plus the odd rare purchase, and sadly the library isn't really sure what to do with them - they don't have enough volumes in any one area to form a decent research library, so often they're stored away in a climate controlled room or occasionally brought out for display.

On the other hand, if you're lucky, one of your lecturers will arrange a class visit and you can go in and drool over them, admire the pictures, and even read them. (They're actually unrestricted books, so anyone can go in and read them, usually visiting scholars or people from Vic.)

The stars of the collection are both by Boethius, De Consolationes Philosophiae and De Musica, the first of which is very famous, and the second of which has ancient musical theory combined with a work by Guido of Arezzo who invented the current musical notation system. Very cool.

Things to be surprised about:
1. Exactly how small and how neatly scribes can write when they put their minds to it.
2. What good nick the manuscripts are in. Vellum is really tough and it holds its edges well. Interestingly, this is why some fragments have survived, they were cut up and used in the binding for printed volumes.

Never trust anyone over thirty...

Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday to me-eeeee (and Cat)
Happy birthday to me!

(Ahem. Moving right along.)

I have discovered...

That my mother, at the tender age of sixteen, once dated a Dutchman named Arnaut Groenevelt, whom she met at a ballroom dancing class. As the days and weeks passed in her pursuit of the Foxtrot and the Maxina, the length of her skirt migrated upwards from a demure knee length to the heady heights of the 60s undie-huggers. My grandmother no doubt noticed but, to the immense gratitude of my mother, did not comment.

That I should have a relative who dated someone with such an interesting name is, I feel, an instant source of family prestige. I have been to Palmerston and back this weekend for a family dinner, which was fun, but I'm fair exhausted from hanging out on buses so much. I should really go to bed now. G'night.

I Feel Really Awful

Take your pick as to what's a cause and what's a symptom:
- crashing with a cold yesterday afternoon, right when I thought I'd finally gotten rid of it.
- not enough sleep for the third night running, along with the joys of the Mysterious 1am Impossible To Sleep Through Beep that nevertheless took me 40 minutes to track down
- crying all the time
- being angry all the time
- picking fights with a friend and even when I know I ought to be sorry, somehow I can't make myself feel that way
- bursting into tears when Mum called to see how I was
- bursting into tears when Cat called to cheer me up
- thanking whatever powers may exist that I have a cat that likes company and emergency cuddly toys

Catherine has just suggested hiring myself out as a zombie or vampire. The idea has some merit. And now my nose has started running and my room is out of tissues. @#^$$#

Alter Egos

Well not actually. Just that I got a random message from someone living in Michigan who happens to have the same name, and happens to have a daughter called Catherine (actually Kathryn, but close enough for government work.) [Waves]

Babe

My cat's new favourite spot to perch is a box of books in my room. I have no idea why: it isn't the nearest she can get to the heater, there is no sun beam handily situated there, and I challenge any feline bum to find books more comfortable than carpet or a cushion. Go figure.

Review: The Company

Easter has just been and, in the dollop of free time preserved by my assiduous refusal to go to things, I did a certain amount of movie watching. My local video shop is the estimable Aro Video Shop, and so there was a wide selection of 'thinky' movies available, and I ended up with the serious art world's answer to Center Stage: The Company.

Happy escapism, this is not. It's about the Joffrey Ballet Company of Chicago, except it isn't set inside the company, it's starring the company. It shows glimpses of the working and personal lives of the company members over a period of time, roughly the amount of time it takes to produce a new ballet from the first meeting with the choreographer to the first night, with frequent interspersements of the performances that the company is working on in the meantime. It's not at all linear - the fragile threads of story that you end up seeing are built out of a mosaic of small private moments, often of people you don't know the name of, and will never know the endings of. The mosaic style of movie (or book), I confess I find quite tiring to watch, all the information comes out of small details and you need to pay constant attention to keep track of what's happening. It was also filmed in an uncomfortable manner. There were lots of long and medium shots with very few closeups, often dark lighting, or shots looking straight at the stage lights, the view was frequently obscured by other people and various furniture, and I realised after a while that we never got to see anyone's eyes or feel that the people filmed were looking at us, which added to the uncomfortableness of it. As with other works that are built as a mosaic, somewhere between a third and two thirds of the movie I found I was wondering why I was still watching.

In this movie, the answer is the dancing. It's absolutely gorgeous. There are no body doubles or camera tricks to make people look better than they are, this is pure unadulterated magical movement, and the nett result of the camera and lighting weirdness is the closest experience to actually being at a live performance that I've seen. The company has a wide repertoire, from the opening (to an electronic soundtrack) of dancers in a weirdly abstract sequence with the rustle of long ribbons and the pat of the dancers' feet as the main sounds heard, to the excursions into classical ballet, exquisite solo pieces, and the final production number of the Giant's Mouth, it's all wonderful. Often the dancing pieces appear without comment or explanation, simply as the performance that the company is working on just then, often we are shown the progression from rehearsal into final performance.

Just lovely.

Walking the Skyline

Ooooooooow.

I just got back from walking the Skyline track with John. We didn't do the whole track, just the part from the Northland Cemetary to Mt Kau Kau then down to the train station in Khandallah, so there's a section around Karori and Makara that I haven't seen yet. I had a good time, but I'm rather tired now.

Statistics:
Length of full track: 12km
Length we walked: Dunno, exactly. 9ish? 10?
Time: Four and a quarter hours.
Hardest part: Walking up onto the track from the cemetary to Johnston Hill. There weren't any horrendously steep bits, it just kept on going and going and going. The section after that was a nice undulating amble over the top ridge of someone's farm, though, so it helped for getting my breath back.
Steepest gradient: Near Mt Kau Kau, but we were going down hill for those bits.
Difference in fitness between John and me: Lots.
Easter egg encounters: A victory egg at the top of Mt Kau Kau, and an egg encountered in passing that someone had left on a survey marker at the top of Mt Johnston. A libation for Easter, maybe?
New Foodstuffs 1: Kellog's All-Bran Baked Bars. Yummy, filling, and full of things that are actually good for you! (Bran and molasses, and things like that.)
New Foodstuffs 2: Nashis. A kind of fruit with a flavour and texture sort of like a cross between an apple and a pear. First bite was sweet and kinda bland, but with interesting tart flavours coming through near the centre of the nashi.
Highest point: Mt Kau Kau at 445m.
Second highest point: Johnston Hill at 360m.
View: Absolutely stunning. It's another reminder, actually, of how compact Wellington is. I don't know of many capital cities where you could stand in sight of the port on one side, and someone's farm on t'other, all at the same time.
The bacon sandwiches we had when we staggered home: Priceless

On Oral Presentations...

Today I had to give a presentation to my class on the play we've been studying, by a chap called Plautus, called Amphitruo, which is about Jupiter and Mercury disguising themselves as human and arranging an elaborate scheme that allows Jupiter to have it off with the general Amphitruo's lovely and virtuous wife, Alcumena. I hadn't actually picked the topic of my talk with any care, just seen out of a list of suggestions the title "Roman Comedy / Roman Construct" that had a recommended reading on 'Roman street theatre' and figured, "Hey, it'll be something to do with how Romans put on plays, that'll be interesting."

I should have chosen with more attention. The reading turned out to be about triumphs and Scipio swanning around implying that he was a quasi-Jupiter, and I ended up going rather off the beaten track and heading into the surreal world of grotesque realism and whether Alcumena was a stand-in for Juno in the play. It's always worrying when your lecturer suddenly sits up and pays extra close attention to what you say. (Hoping I pulled it off.)

On Suicidal Birds...

About 40 minutes ago, a wax-eye flew straight into the window and landed with an enormous thump. When I peered out, it was still twitching, at which point I had a huge dither fit and ended up calling half a dozen people and their dog for advice. Well, maybe not that many, but I wasn't sure whether it was better to kill it or leave it and hope it gets better. Fortunately, the SPCA came through with a positive answer and said to stash it in a dark place for a while until it gets over the shock of the affair. It's gone from limp and looking like it had broken its neck, to sitting/hunching up, to sitting all the way up on its legs. Still shivering, though.

ETA: 5.40pm And it's rather bedraggled, but just flew off looking reasonably happy about the state of affairs. I found it rather disturbing that Babe, blind as she is, chose that particular moment to sniff around in the bushes and hauled her inside, though.

Commonplace Book

A Martian Sends A Postcard Home
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings -

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside -
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves -
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

-- Craig Raine
(http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/131.html)

For Lucy, who asks good questions.

Phew.

I have just completed the first of my class assessments, an oral presentation on religious poetry in the Middle Ages. It was actually quite interesting to research - the rise of rhythmical verse over the Classical quantitive variety (ie all about vowel lengths) and when people started sticking music to it, and what the Franciscans did and so forth, but I'm very glad it's over, I spent most of my weekend fuming over it, with occasional breaks to translate Aldhelm and Bede as my regular homework.

I'd love to say I have a life now, but sadly I have a passage analysis, another oral presentation, a class test and a draft edition of a an Old English Psalm, all coming due in the next two weeks. I'll say Hi, when it's all over...

Winter is coming

Late dawn, early sunset, and a chill in the air.
I was quite glad it rained yesterday, actually, the grass needed it, and the air feels clearer.

Free to a Good Home

Today I did a purge of my bookshelves, and have two boxes of books that I'm unlikely to want to read again, along with a couple of inadvertant duplicates. I can't be bothered posting a list, but anyone who visits is welcome to fossick and take happy finds home.

A Blog With A Cat In It.

Yesterday I got home around 8.30 and wondered where the heck my cat was (she's usually camped out in my room or the living room and was unusually not in sight.) Then it occurred to me that I hadn't seen her when I left the house earlier in the day which was a little worrying. It turned out that she'd gone into the back garden and been stuck there for around 8 or 9 hours because the gate had swung shut in the wind and she can't jump over it anymore. She was sitting in a corner of the garden in the dark, very meekly, when I came out to find her. Poor Babe. Resignation is one of her virtues, but I could wish that she doesn't need it quite so often.

On a slightly more optimistic note, I've started giving her cod liver oil, and not only is her coat looking less scruffy, but she seems to be moving less stiffly as well.

There are three printers in the library,

and none of them are working. I must be back at Uni. :-(

First Week Back At Uni

And I've spent enough time on campus to long for the halcyon days of summer when there aren't all those pesky students hanging about getting in the way. It's mainly first years I think, they have things they need to queue for and they get lost easily.

Apart from that things are going well enough. Im having a bit of a problem in Latin right now in that translations are taking ages and I'm not understanding things as well as I want to, which will hopefully come right soon when I get into the right mindset again. Old English is in fact going better than expected - the three week swot before the class started has paid off, and Christine (the lecturer) is really nice. She seems to have given me and the other couple of newbies temporary immunity from being called on in class. I have slightly more news on the Mystery of the Head - other members of the class tell me that it's all in the Life of St Edmund, which they translated last year, so when I get through reading it, I'll update people on the story.

And Alasdair came down from Northland to have lunch with me today. This was something we did practically every week last year, when we were both on campus at the same time. Felt just like home.