Anotherblog

News

There are some kinds of news that are globally interesting but individually distant – scientific advances, world politics, and the like. I don’t usually write about these kind of things because, well, I don’t usually have much to add that others haven’t. I tend to stick with more personal kind of news. Things that have directly affected me. The sphere of interest for these items is probably pretty small, but that’s OK.

For example: Veronica is, as of yesterday, three months pregnant. She is very sick of having morning/afternoon/all-day sickness and is greatly looking forward to phase 2 of the pregnancy.
This is wonderful news for us, and it’s been very difficult not blabbing since we found out just before christmas. It’s funny to think that while this is a huge, life-changing event on a personal level, on the broader scheme of things, this is a very normal and happens to people all the time.

Anyway. Wooooooo! Also, a quick message for when you’re old enough to read this: Greetings from Dad-of-the-past! I hope you’ve finished your homework, and have cleaned your room, ’cause reading weblog entries from years and years ago is clearly an act of stupendous procrastination :-)
By the way, the previous sentence contained a “smiley”. This is an archaic punctuation expression from before you were were born.

Also! Have you ever heard of the “iPad”? Is that still around? It was announced a few weeks ago, so that’d be about six months before you were born. When *I* was born, six months previously, people had just landed on the moon for the first time. Also, I should note that the US just cancelled their new land-on-the-moon plans.

And now I’m talking about globally interesting events, and I finally have a reason.

Rudder

I was putting chlorine in the pool this morning and decided to clean the filter while I was at it. I opened up the filter lid, and Rudder, our large Eastern Water Dragon, was sitting inside. Fair enough. It’s done that before.
This time was different, though. There were a couple of under water filter intake/outflow pipes, and Rudder’s head was jammed into one of those. Rudder wasn’t moving.
I poked him/her. Nothing. Rudder was dead.
Both Von and I were very fond of Rudder, and it was quite upsetting to see that he/she might have died because of us (well, because of the swimming pool filter system – but still, something we have control over.)
I gave Von the bad news, put on some rubber gloves, and pulled Rudder’s body out of the filter. His/her head was really jammed into the pipe. It was weird. I couldn’t figure out how it had happened – I hadn’t noticed any suction coming from those pipes ever before. I finally managed to extract the head when suddenly, HOLY CRAP RUDDER WRIGGLED OUT OF MY HANDS, leaped into the pool, and started swimming around indignantly.

Which was a rather exciting morning for both of us, I think.

Ducks

Yesterday we discovered a large piece of wood lying next to the pool fence gate. It precisely fits under the gate and stops ducks from waddling through.
The ducks *can* fly, of course. However, they haven’t been visiting as often. I suppose if they’re going to have to fly anyway, our pool isn’t more convenient than the neighbour’s one any more.
Pool is now clean, except for a floating fine white powdery substance that I suspect is duck related.

Houseguest

Our houseguest David L. has been so quiet that occasionally I’ve forgotten he’s around, and it’s just as well Von reminded me the other day about clothes.

Anyway. The ducks has a wonderful time last night splashing and quacking and pooping and dammit, where’s that pool cover? Time to get another quote.

Coffee

Sometimes when I’m drinking coffee I remember when I didn’t like coffee. I’d never really tried it properly, but I used to love flavoured milks, except for iced coffee. Sometimes the taste of the coffee (which I am drinking right now) makes me remember that dislike, how I used to be, and for a brief moment I wonder how much of an illusion my current liking for coffee is. I could quite easily rally around that memory and declare that I don’t like coffee. It would almost be true. The feeling of like/dislike becomes shallow and arbitary.

Then the coffee kicks in. Yum!

Mezzacotta Cafe, house guest, piano recital

We did the menu choice for our Mezzacotta cafe dinner on Friday night, and much to our surprise, the first menu the website served us turned out to be edible, challenging, and interesting. And the dinner on Saturday night was a great success. There will be more on this topic later, once the Cars short film is done and I have a chance to look at the reams of footage we recorded for the cafe dinner. Highlights include the surprisingly delicious combination of peach, maple syrup and ham, the even greater surprise of merangue with Hokkien noodles, and learning a valuable lesson about deep frying and setting things on fire.

Meanwhile, we have a houseguest David L. for a few weeks. He arrived yesterday, and proved to be extremely quiet getting up in the morning. Either that, or the separation between upstairs and downstairs is gratifyingly insulating.

Mr. Irrgang gave a piano recital on Sunday, just to complete our amazingly busy weekend. It was very good – he played an ambitious program that included some Chopin, Liszt and a very charismatic Bartok piece, along with a set by Scriabin, the life story of whom gave me a (fairly obvious and previously explored) idea for a Call of Cthulhu adventure.

2010

It’s 2010, and the future is now, and ducks are still pooping in my pool. The little ducklings have grown up and are as large as their mother, though they still huddle close.

Both of the large Eastern Water Dragons are shedding skins, and both have now lost substantial parts of their tails (Ducks?), although the one-who-is-not-Rudder is beginning to grow back his/hers. Photos when I can get close enough.

Meanwhile, on the human side, Von and I are enjoying air conditioning and home cooking. We had a pleasant New Year’s party with the Irregulars after getting back from our Melbourne holiday (Melbourne is so hot right now). Turns out you can see the city fireworks from the road outside our place, though it’s not a view you’d queue to see.

Tonight is another Irregular party, this time to do a Mezzacotta Cafe dinner. We’re actually just doing the Menu selection tonight, and the planning for tomorrow’s soiree. We’re also filming the whole thing. Our “Star Wars Uncut” clips have attracted interest from some documentary film-makers (along with many other clips from Star Wars Uncut) – I’ve signed a couple of release forms for The People vs George Lucas, so our efforts might appear there, giving my actors an actual Bacon Number. Which would be fairly awesome, if our stuff makes it to the final cut.

Also: did more Cars filming yesterday at lunchtime. Gotta finish it by February.

Cloudy with a chance of flying mountains

Von and I saw “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” and “Avatar” on the weekend, for a 3D overload. They were both excellent. Here, let me do a comparison:

More spectacular: Avatar
More touching: Cloudy
More thrilling: Avatar
More funny: Cloudy
More beautiful: Avatar
More enjoyable: Cloudy

But really, I can thoroughly recommend both of them. Thanks to Iain for the recommendation of “Cloudy” – a real surprise hit!

Filming

We had a wonderful long weekend with Evan, in which we shot Cars footage, played tennis, played board games, took him to my work’s christmas party, and hung around and chatted. It was over too quickly. I reckon we shot at least half of the remaining necessary footage for the clip. A few more hours of filming with the guys at work, and I should be all set.

Also directed and shot another Star Wars Uncut segment on Friday night, in the garage:

Scene 307.

Finally, the A/C is working very well, hooray. Oh, and we had ducks in the swimming pool on Saturday: a mother and seven ducklings. Charming! And we saw “Nine”, which was OK, and Zombieland, which was good fun.

Air conditioning

I was having an interesting chat with one of the guys at work the other day, in which he was expositing the possible virtues of running an air-conditioner off DC power. He went into quite a bit of detail. Solar power provides DC, which normally goes through an inverter but wouldn’t need to do so for things that work with DC power anyway. And Air Conditioner units can work from DC power.
Now I’m not sure whether he was pulling a huge, elaborate prank with his A/C DC.

Anyway, we’re getting air conditioning installed at home on Thursday. And not a moment too soon.