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.