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Monday, December 8th, 2003
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11:47 pm - That was the week that was
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The party last week was cool, though we peaked a bit early and did not manage to achieve the outrageous crush we got last time.
I skived off work early and went to the LotR parade, got a few OK snaps though my camera let me down again. The rechargeable batteries always seem a bit lame and consequently there is an annoying shutter lag. Will add cropping and getting the pics up on the web to my increasingly long list of things to do! Anway it was quite an amazing experience and really one can get so hung up on taking the pictures that the experience is lost. Went home and watched the extended Two Towers to get a bit in the mood. A couple of things in the movie jar but overall it is an exceptional film. Jackson has a cool and clinical eye, so the overall experience is sometomes strangely soulless, I wish the hobbits had not been dumbed down so, though it probably made commercial sense to make them a bit toony.
Add to list buy a new camera when I get some spare gelt.
I feel I have been frantically busy all week and that I have somehow magically forgotten everything I have done. But when I think back all I really did was watch Ali G in the house and fiddle with things. All the busy-ness has been at work where I have been trying to get a product description out within a week and fend off project managers, which is why I feel exhausted. I have been sucked dry by corporate vampires.
All day Saturday I did nothing but laundry and PS2 (Ratchet & Clank II). Sunday was the Thorndon Fair and Kerry & Rachel also came to dinner for steak & kidney pie and strawberiies and ice-cream, not all at once which would be rather dada-ish.
Today after a monumentally restless night I rose at 5.15am and flew to Auckland for an all day workshop. And rather ineptly lost my glasses in a taxi, leaving me to try and co-host a requirements workshop in a pair of sunglasses all day, whilst nipping out every available break to try and get in touch with the cab driver. Some days are just downright tricky to deal with.
current mood:  indescribable
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| Thursday, November 27th, 2003
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9:53 pm - Living with uncertainty
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I'm reading a book called Reckoning with Risk which will 'change the attentive reader's way of looking at the world'. It defines risk and the different ways it can be presented, and through smart use of examples exposes some of the assumptions made by the unwary, the ignorant or the innumerate. Very interesting despite the apparent dryness of the subject matter, the examples are helpful and entertaining. Here are a couple of simple ones I liked.
A US weather forecaster announces there is a 50% chance of rain on Saturday and a 50% chance of rain on Sunday, therefore a 100% chance of rain over the weekend.
A little girl was upset to learn her father had consented to her receiving an injection with a 1 in 10,000 risk of causing a serious allergic reaction. She insisted on seeing the doctor so she could ask him what number he was on.
There is a 60% chance that my bed-time reading will result in a swift descent into the Land of Nod. (Note that single-event probablities are never provable).
zzzzzzzz
current mood:  contemplative
current music: PC hum
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| Tuesday, November 25th, 2003
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11:11 pm - I can see the floor
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I have just cleared the floor in the spare room and hoovered all the disgusting crud off it. Also scrubbed the mould off the window sills and cleaned the inside of the windows. This is a momentous day.
current mood: Cleansed
current music: GHP: Jacko Under Pressure
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| Monday, November 24th, 2003
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11:00 pm - Rest and recreation
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We had a great time on Saturday night at Logan Brown's, celebrating Robin's birthday. The bar there is fascinating, it has a seawater aquarium embedded in it, complete with animals, including a blue starfish and a small crayfish. The barman made me a reasonable Mojito cocktail, nearly as good as the one I had in Anise.
In a highball glass muddle (crush with a wooden pestle/spoon) several mint leaves, half a
lime and two tablespoons of sugar syrup (or four teaspoons of sugar). Fill the glass with
ice, add one and a quarter oz of white rum ( three year old Cuban for stylists) and top with
club soda and a garnish of mint. Heaven.
Sunday I ordered eight Bowie tickets through Ticketek for Valentines Day next year, which is co-incidentally the same date Magenta has planned for her baby shower (!)
Later Craig & MaryClare, and Andrew came round from the Wairarapa to join Victoria and us for our fortnightly bastardised C & S session. Together we hacked blasted and bashed the bejesus out of a cockatrice, a sorceress and a magician in a chrysalis, all under the beady eye of our GM Craig Mabon. Osric, our troll, was bitten on the fifteens by the cockatrice, fifteen being the private parts...oh how we laughed, and even more when a clerical miracle "Laying on of Hands" was applied to the afflicted area. Next session we plan a diversion with Call of Cthulu - sanity checks obligatory.
I weeded the garden for some 4 hours when they left, oh my aching back. Laurie cooked a very tasty lasagne and green salad, served with a bonking great red for dinner.
Monday back at the orifice and a visit to The Playground, who have the best selection of board games in Wellington and are getting me in the Settlers of Catan card game.
Tonight we had a bash at Laurie's old office and threw out lots of crap. The mission is to move my computer out of the living room and in there before Saturday (quite ambitious considering the state of both rooms).
current mood:  productive
current music: Tech TV
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| Sunday, November 23rd, 2003
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12:48 am - Swing low, sweet chariot...
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Coming for to carry us home!
Sweet indeed.
current mood:  jubilant
current music: Holst's Planets Suite: Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity
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| Saturday, November 22nd, 2003
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1:12 pm - fun & games
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Yesterday I picked up a parcel from Amazon - a book on making memory boxes. The examples are all very nice and genteel, but it's the techniques I'm more interested in. Had a chicken lunch meal with Rip at Roti Chanai, it can't be beat for $6.50, being a thali type meal of four small bowls of various curries, rice and a roti. Yum yum.
Off to see my hairdresser Kat at Pearl at 5pm, who does her best with not the most forgiving of materials. Back home and I find Tony has come round in the hope of some board gaming, somewhere I got mixed up and thought it was at my place this month when in fact it is at Simon's. Fortunately Tony was the only person I misinformed. So we all had a bash at Robo Rally, some with more luck than others, and yay I won. Then Tony & I played the two handed Strarship Catan, which is like a bastard offspring of Settlers, a Beetle Drive and Elite.
Nah not really!
Starship Catan game components
We declared a draw sometime before 2 am and I staggered off to bed and oblivion.
current mood: fading already
current music: rustle of newspapers
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| Thursday, November 20th, 2003
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9:15 pm - Weird dream
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This is the dream I had just before I jumped out of bed in such a state this morning. I thought it was pleasingly weird.
There were lots of alien people in the Sharpies driveway, next door to our house, they were all indigo coloured and you could see the scarlet red rims of their eyes. Their land cruiser had broken down and they had pushed it into the drive to get it off the road. They knocked on the door to tell Sharpie what they'd done, but the door was instead opened by David Beckham, dressed in a football strip in the All Black's colours. I laughed so hard because these were the only people in the world that would not recognise him.
current mood: dreamy
current music: Footie: ABs vs France for Bronze
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9:15 pm - Overslept!
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Today I was supposed to wake up at 5.05am, alas the alarm went off one minute after I got up at 5.44, 6 minutes before I was due to be picked up by my work buddies...I wasted at least a minute jumping around the bedroom freaking out, then dashed into the bathroom, dragged a flannel across the more obvious areas of my body and jumped into my clothes. Good job I had already packed my bag and got my shit together the previous night.
The day was OK and I enjoyed meeting people I had only previously seen as shadowy figures on on audio conference. As I am a sad bastardette I enjoyed the talk on the Enterprise Architecture Infrastructure and its relationship to the eTOM model, and even managed to suppress my usual chant of ee-i-ee-i-oh whenever the EAI was mentioned. The hardened old cynics amongst us all agreed that the latest solution to world hunger was doomed to go down the great enterprise gurgler just like all the previous ones we had heard about ha ha then it was time to move on to the get together BBQ in Mt Albert. The sausages ran out a bit quick but the wine flowed on and the petanque balls clunked away on the gentle sward. Some eight hours had passed and I was still not starting to hum, I am starting to believe my own assertions that I do not exude any odour more offensive than attar of roses and ylang ylang.
I have worked out what I did with the alarm, whilst wildly jabbing little buttons before bed last night to set the alarm, I also set the delay on the timer to 40 minutes. There's a useful lesson there that will no doubt be soon forgot.
Too late I realised what my first journal entry should have been - "Wrote my first journal entry today". Hardly original I'm sure, but pleasingly self-referential, and isn't that what it's all about?
Obviously have not sorted out the picture thing properly as the default seems to have changed. Hmmm.
current mood:  tired
current music: TV: A Game of Two Halves
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| Wednesday, November 19th, 2003
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8:45 pm - Hello world
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This is my first LJ post and I am really not sure just how it will all happen.
Tomorrow I fly to Auckland for a team meeting with my colleagues. We're scattered around NZ and its our first chance to meet up. I'm feeling distinctly unmotivated and have no idea what I will say in my obligatory introductory talk. I plan to try and be discreet and keep my cynical thoughts to myself. My big gob may have different ideas.
A busy week-end ahead, with a hair appointment for a cut and colour on Friday night, a meal out with Robin and Alan and other friends at Logan Brown's up Cuba Street to celebrate Robin's birthday on Saturday night, finally roleplaying on Sunday with my witchy character Agnutte and her trusty familiar Grimkin.
Next Saturday Laurie and I are hosting Laurie and Ross's 90th birthday party. That is their collective age BTW! The theme is Stars on 45 for anyone who can remember those dreadful drum machine specials from the late 1970s. Dress funky and get on down. Must put together a playlist...
current mood: puzzled
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