29. Do a cross-country race with a deep creek crossing
This was the WA Marathon Club's 16km "King of the Mountain" run from Helena Valley to Fred Jacoby Park in Mundaring State Forest. Luckily I didn't learn about the creek crossings until I was on the bus to the start. As it was, when I woke to heavy rain at 6am I only convinced myself to go because ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
sarren was staying over and was expecting me not to be there when she got up, and I'd gone to bed early the night before specifically so I could go.
There were seven creek crossings, the first of which was just under breast height on me and maybe 10-12m across. Aaargh! I was running with someone at that point and just followed her in, which was good as I'm sure I would otherwise have wibbled and dithered much more. I don't even like to get in the water in the summer! Then it was straight up a steep hill with heavy, waterlogged shoes. Each time most of the water worked its way out of my shoes, there would be another creek crossing, but none as deep as the first. At least I didn't have to swim, like some people who got lost did. All the markers washed away in last night's rain.
It was the most scenic run I've ever done and I'm definitely up for more interesting venues. The forest beats running along the river in the city any day. And light rain is actually perfect for running, since you never get that hot uncomfortable feeling (just a milder wet, uncomfortable feeling). juffles, if you're reading this and have the information handy, would you tell me the altitude difference between Helena Valley primary school and Fred Jacoby Park? I'd heard it was mostly uphill, but there was quite a bit of down, too, and I'd like to know whether I mostly ran up or not. One way or another I was proud of myself for getting out of bed and doing it, and for hardly noticing the 16km amidst my concern about getting in the water!
Then I changed clothes in the car (I'd brought everything except a different pair of shoes!), and went straight to:
30. Play a laser game at Darkzone in Northbridge with sarren, dragonfly8, Bunny and about 25 other people, mostly under 12!
There's just no doubt that it's fun to run around and shoot at people in a maze in the dark, and my enjoyment was significantly enhanced by hearing things like "Red Base is under attack!" at regular intervals. I wondered whether pre-20th century people would have enjoyed it just the same, or whether the phasors and flashing lights and bases are a post-Star Wars kind of experience that's now in our collective consciousness but would seem strange without enough context. I also wondered whether the urge to shoot at things is a basic human characteristic or whether it's mostly cultural. I'm guessing it's pretty primal? But maybe in a few hundred years games like this, and violent video games, will seem as barbaric as what went on in Roman arenas does to us.
It was easy to register a hit on both other people and the bases, and I thought the eight-second downtime when you were hit by someone else was exactly right. In the second game I decided to take a break from running around and just stood with my back to a corner in a fairly central area, and shot everyone not on my team who came into view on either level! It was very satisfying and energy-efficient.
It was however a bit scary to discover how hard it is not to shoot people on your own team. With real weapons, this would be a serious problem!
It was kind of fun to play a game on equal footing with six-year-olds. I was most impressed with three young boys who decided to defend the Yellow Base against all comers in our second game. I managed to shoot them all and take out the base once, but it was hard work! Since attack seems like more fun than defence, I thought they had a very mature and cooperative approach.
27 - Go to an event at the Burswood Dome - Simon & Garfunkel on 2 July
I bought tickets as a mother's day present for Mom. I thought it might be kind of sad, since they're now 67 and I doubted they would sound much like they did in their younger years, but they did and it wasn't!
Garfunkel talked about how they'd met doing a school play of Alice in Wonderland when they were 11 years old. He said he'd followed Paul "down the rabbit hole, into Wonderland and through the 55 years of their friendship." They joked a little about their years of not speaking to each other.
Highlights included Garfunkel singing "Bright Eyes" (not a S&G song — they each did a few from their solo careers) and interesting renditions of "Homeward Bound" and "Mrs Robinson" using their musicians to liven things up enormously with saxophone and other solos.
Photo taken by a colleague who had expensive seats: ( Photo )
The venue, however, is absolutely terrible and it's embarrassing that the city doesn't have anything better to offer. It's ugly, it's freezing and it must be tremendously unsafe considering how long it takes to get people in and out. We took snacks and stayed in our seats for 20 minutes afterwards to avoid the crush.
28 - Feed something through the night
The something was an alpaca cria that was positioned wrong, the vet had to deliver and which then couldn't stand. The vet wasn't hopeful that it would make it, but suggested I feed it every two hours for a couple of days. I've never understood how parents of young children can drag themselves out of bed multiple times a night, but managed it for one night by sleeping in my clothes on the couch so I could just roll to my feet every time the alarm went off. That seemed a whole order of magnitude easier than actually having to get out of bed. Sadly, by 4am it was pretty clear it was going downhill fast and the vet put it down the next morning. That makes a 100% death rate so far this year, and I got to repeat New Thing 23 and bury another cria. sarren sat up with me until the middle of the night last night to show me all five episodes of S3 Torchwood. I loved it, despite not being a regular Torchwood fan. For me it was all about ( spoiler )
I've been kind of shut down with stress and unhappiness over work issues recently, but change is happening, and I think there's at least a 60% chance it's for the better. If not, well, I'd almost decided to resign anyway and there are always other things to do in life. I got to thoroughly exercise the part of me that likes conflict last week.
25 - Play in a balloon pit
At black_samvara and maharetr's joint birthday party. I arrived after one of those stressful, unhappy days at work and was promptly put into a room created from the back patio and some heavy plastic, and filled six feet deep with balloons! You flail around and make noise and bump into other people you can't see and some balloons pop and it's all very colourful and therapeutic. Then you blow up balloons to pay the "balloon tax" to replace the ones that popped, and tie them off with an ingenuous, home-designed balloon-tier. Then there were dozens of kinds of desserts. Now that's my sort of party.
26 - Join in my workmates' Lotto syndicate
Just once, for last night's $90 million draw, and mostly as a team-building activity as a gesture of goodwill! I normally hassle them about their regular weekly participation, quoting statistics about the likelihood of winning and the better uses to which the money could be put. NB: we didn't win.
We're now halfway through the year and I'm up to 26 things, which is right on schedule. I'd say the best thing I've done so far (ignoring things I can't easily repeat, like the dog-sledding and riding in the snow) is learn to make wholemeal sourdough bread and bagels. I've baked almost every week since and they're now a regular part of my diet.
I ran the Perth Half Marathon very slowly in 2 hours 10 minutes the week after my 25km run, which is slower than when I did it in 2006, but still earned me the nice medal!
Today I had a full "postural assessment" with a sports physiotherapist. Nothing in particular hurt, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to do myself any damage by continuing to run 20kms+. I mentioned that my right hip, but never my left one, is sometimes a bit sore if I increase my distances over what I'm used to. She looked at me from behind, got very enthusiastic about some distortion and asked if she could bring a student in to look, as it was so interesting! Once she pointed out the problem, I could immediately see what she meant — I can't stand with my hips level. The right one pushes forward all the time and I can't bring it back without a lot of conscious effort. Amazing that something so obvious once pointed out could have totally escaped my notice. I wonder how much this relates to my driving posture, or to sitting in front of a computer with my right leg more often crossed over my left than the other way around. I have exercises and another appointment booked!
Third leg down and I'll be getting a nice medal at the club awards dinner later in the year. (For completing the series, not for winning anything! This is the only chance slow people like me have to get a medal.)
Today's 25km was the furthest I've ever run, and the longest at 2 hours 36 minutes (6.25min/km pace). It was a mostly flat course along the Swan River from Burswood, over the railway bridge parallel to the Windan Bridge, along the river through Maylands, under the Garratt Road Bridge and into Bayswater before turning around and repeating in reverse!
I wasn't sure during the week if doing the run was a good idea — my left foot felt bruised and my right hip hurt some, maybe from compensating for my foot. My sister gave me a massage last night that mostly consisted of poking and prodding me in the behind and had me do some stretches, which seemed to help my hip a lot. Happily, my foot also felt fine this morning. I obviously need to incorporate more stretching and perhaps massage into my training.
The first 500m felt great. If you're reasonably fit and you go slowly enough, running is no trouble at all and it was a beautiful still sunny cool morning in one of the city's more picturesque locations. I checked my speed at every 2.5km marker and made sure I wasn't going any faster than 6 minute kms plus a little.
The next 12km to the turn-around felt pretty good and I was smiling at and saying hello to people coming the other way. That's a very busy path on a Sunday morning, with people out riding bikes, walking dogs, flying kites and model planes and herding children. There's plenty to look at and I was especially interested in the revegetation that's been done along the river.
For the first time ever, I'd taken some food with me: seven little soft jube candies that I carried in a plastic bag in my pocket. (I know it's not a good idea to try something new during your event, but I hadn't got around to buying the candy before.) I ended up eating four of them and it added a bit of interest to the proceedings. Every so often I'd take out the bag, select a flavour and colour, and nibble away in tiny bites as I went. I couldn't tell if they made any difference, but possibly they gave me a bit more energy and in any case they were fun to eat. I considered buying some of those specialist gels, but couldn't bring myself to pay $6 for a small packet of sugary sludge. If I work up to longer distances, maybe I'll have to give them a try, or at least carry some normal foodstuff that has some salt as well as sugar.
At 15km, I thought, 10kms more is a long way to go, but on the other hand I've run 10km many times and it's not that big a deal. I was running behind three men in their 50s, two with what I'd call seriously non-athletic conformation that keeps them from being very fast, and another who makes running look easy, but for whatever reason doesn't exert himself too much. I amused myself watching his legs and footfalls for several kms — it's nice to watch anyone make something look effortless. I told him afterwards how good he looked and he seemed very pleased!
I'd been focusing on my time in 2 1/2 km (approx 15 minute) segments and not paying much attention to the cumulative total, and I was amazed when I looked at my watch approaching the 17.5km mark and it said 1 hour 44. Had I really been running for an hour and 44 minutes already? The time goes slowly at first, but it builds up impressively.
At 20km my legs were starting to hurt, and at 21km (the furthest distance I'd done before) they were sore enough I decided to slow down quite a bit. (That isn't very sore, it's just that I have a low tolerance for pain when doing recreational activities or anything else!) But it wasn't far by then, so I just kept moving along, alternating between landing on the balls of my feet only, which I usually find easier though slower, and the first 2/3 of my feet. It was a little discouraging that neither method afforded any relief by that stage, but you can't expect anything to be easy if it's your first time. I was going slowly enough by then that I didn't need to breathe very hard, so I was fairly comfortable except for my legs, which are a rather important part of the running experience. I was out of energy to smile at anybody, but I was reminding myself that I should be enjoying the moment, since this was the reason I'd trained (albeit lightly) for the last 2 1/2 months. It does make you feel alive, to be out there moving along.
And then it was done! I think I beat about five people home, too. I'll be very interested to see how I feel tomorrow and Tuesday — I expect pretty stiff and sore! If I pull up well, the Perth Half Marathon (21.1km) is next Sunday and they have nice finishers' medals, so I might enter that and just do it slowly as a training run. Otherwise, next up is the Marathon Club's "King of the Mountain" run from Helena Valley to Mundaring in July, then the very hilly City to Surf half marathon at the end of August, then the Fremantle half marathon in September. The trick now is not to stop, like always seems to happen. I figure if I have an interesting calendar of events in front of me, I might keep going. I really like the way I feel and look when I can do these distances.
This morning was the 15km leg of my club's "Road Running Championship". I started off faster than I could maintain, but came in at 1:26:04 with 5km splits of 27:45, 29:00 and 29:30, an average of just under 5.75 minute kilometres. Not my "sekrit goal time", but good enough, and I hope it didn't take too much out of me, since the 25km is next weekend! I was glad to have an excuse to go slowly towards the end. It was a flat course along the river from UWA to Tawarri Function Centre in Dalkeith, then back towards the city, under the Narrows Bridge and then back to UWA.
Afterwards I went for brunch with some friends from the club, who told me they're planning to run the Disneyworld Florida marathon in January 2011 and suggested I join them. They explained that there's a half marathon (21.1km) on the Saturday and a marathon (42.2km) on the Sunday. If you run the half, you get a Donald Duck medal. If you run the full, you get a Mickey Mouse medal. But if you run both, you also get a Goofy medal! They figure if they're going all that way, they definitely want to bring home Goofy medals. They've done quite a few marathons before and aren't daunted by the prospect of 63km+ in one weekend.
On my recent training runs I've been toying with the idea of continuing to increase my distances and aiming for the Rottnest Marathon in October, but given that July/August/September is very busy for me with both my accounting work and my property, I think I've shelved that idea. The Perth Marathon is in one month, and that's much too soon. However, January might be a good time to aim for, since October/November/December isn't so busy for me. Something to think about for next year, anyway.
I'm feeling about as physically well as I ever have in my life and hope I can keep that up at least until next Sunday! I've been trying to eat better than usual, by cutting out most sugar and also adding some "health food" type ingredients like flaxseed oil, lecithin granules and chlorophyll to my everyday diet, which is now based around the 100% wholemeal sourdough bagels I make every week! I've dropped 3kg back to what I think of as my ideal weight (admittedly probably too skinny for some people's tastes) and I think that's improved my running almost as much as the training has.
I've also been pleased to discover over the last few weekends that I don't find it mentally difficult to go out and run 20km by myself. Until recently I thought an hour or so was the most I could do without getting bored. (I don't have an iPod or want one, since I want to be completely aware of my surroundings and any potential dangers.) It's nice to find I'm not so boring that I can't keep myself amused for a few hours on my feet. That's how I feel right now, anyway — we'll see how I go once the novelty of these longer distances wears off!
My main slashgropers birthday present was the Boston Legal Season 5 DVDs.
A whole storyline with wonderful Alan/Denny content was taken out of episode 11, "Juiced".
( More )
Perhaps strangely, I've got this old without ever having to do this before. The dog I grew up with died when I was living on the other side of the country.
However, today it was a 9-day-old cria.
It was born to Minnie (in the icon) last Monday and seemed to be doing very well indeed at three days old, but it then become apparent that food was going in but not coming out the other end. This isn't an uncommon problem in crias and I had every expectation that a visit from the vet would fix it. It didn't, and neither did the next or the next or the treatments she had me give it in between, and the university vet hospital couldn't suggest anything else to try. It was getting progressively more uncomfortable and we decided this morning that it was time to stop hoping for improvement.
Fortunately the rain we had two weeks ago meant I was able to dig a hole. I think it should have been deeper, but I hit the hard clay layer and couldn't go any further.
It's especially sad because my mother, who owns Minnie, is overseas. I held off emailing her about the birth until I was pretty sure the cria was going to be fine (I know now not to jump to conclusions after three days), and now have to write and say it isn't and we won't be needing the name she chose.
At least there's no better place to cry than alone in a greening paddock surrounded by trees and sky!
This morning was the first and easiest leg of my club's "Road Running Championship", a 10km run at Canning River Regional Park in Wilson. I've been training very slowly (up to 7 minute kilometres) in my attempt to build up to 25km by the middle of June, and wasn't sure how I'd go trying to run a bit more briskly. I started out near someone I thought would run about 5.5 minute kms and decided to follow him for as long as I could, and came in at 54:53 without too much trouble or even attempting to speed up towards the end. Considering my best time ever for 10kms is 52 minutes and I only started training again at the end of March, I'm very pleased and still smiling. He was pleased too and said he hadn't run under 55 minutes in a year, but was inspired to try a bit harder with me pushing him along from behind. isiscolo, it seems you're right about running slowly!
Next up: 15km on June 7 and then the big one, 25km on June 14. My recent work dramas have actually helped me a lot with my training, since they've given me plenty to think about while I've been plodding along, alone with my thoughts. I think things at work are nearly resolved, so the 20km training run I have planned for next Sunday might feel kind of long!
I had a stressful week that saw me lose a lot of sleep and quite a lot of weight due to some major work interpersonal issues I decided to bring to a head, but I also did some new things. And I ran longer (though not further) today than I ever have and it didn't feel too hard, so it hasn't all been bad. One good thing about having a lot of drama going on is that you have plenty to occupy your thoughts while running for two hours and twelve minutes! Thanks to advice from imkalena and rabbit1080 last week, I didn't get blisters today, either.
21 - Make Bagels
Sourdough bagels, since I need to regularly use my nice new sourdough starter. The fun thing about bagels is that you boil them for a few minutes before baking them, which gives them their distinctive texture.
( Bagel photos )
22 - Go to the local Iron Festival
This is run yearly in a nearby town that has an iron foundry and I've always meant to get to it to see what goes on. There are iron-themed displays and competitions and your usual things-for-sale stalls set up around the oval (sports ground). The iron sculpture art show was quite impressive and there was a dragon I particularly liked, but unfortunately photography wasn't allowed. I bought a little jar of black pepper from a stall and some native plants. If our 134-year-record May dry spell ever breaks, maybe I'll be able to plant them!
( Photos )
A rice cooker is one of the few kitchen appliances I use much and mine broke a while ago, so I went to an electrical goods store this week to replace it.
When I entered the store I saw a large poster promoting the chance to win a car if you bought a Sunbeam appliance. It had a picture of a little red car and said in large white letters: THIS CAR NEEDS A MOTHER.
This car needs a mother! I felt a surge of sympathy for the poor little motherless car and walked on purposefully to the rice cookers, thinking, "I must buy a Sunbeam appliance!" Not because I had any real hope of winning the car, since I know enough about probability to never hope to win anything. Besides, it's the kind of car my mother wouldn't drive if I wrapped it up with a bow and gave it to her, and I don't like it either. But I didn't like to think of it not having a mother! Needs and mother are powerful words. So, I now have a nice new Sunbeam rice cooker.
I also bought one of those surge protector powerboards for my computer and associated items, since mine was seriously bent out of shape recently when the window pane somehow fell out of the window and landed on the plug. Those things are really expensive and seem to have gone up a lot since I bought the one I had before. It was so much more than I was planning to spend that I overcame my reticence and asked the salesperson if she could possibly give me a $10 discount since I was buying two reasonably pricey items. She looked at me doubtfully, called up the wholesale prices on the computer, frowned some more and then said, "We can take $40 off" as if this wouldn't be good enough. That was nearly 20% off! It was the first time I'd bought anything like that since the "downturn" and maybe this is the norm now, but I was amazed they would throw away so much of their profit margin like that, when I would have been happy with $10 and very happy with $15 off.
(Maybe some of you get $40 off every time you buy anything, but I grew up thinking the price was the price and you either paid it or didn't buy it.)
My big property purchase for this year is new water troughs for the alpaca paddocks, to replace the ones that alternately go dry and overflow. I ordered them this week, and with my $40 saving in mind, asked if any discount was available since I was buying three $370 troughs (which then need to be installed at considerable additional expense). The guy talked to the supplier and came back with: $7 off per trough! A rather smaller percentage than was available on electrical items. Still, better than nothing.
I'm still following my ultra-basic half marathon running program and was pleased that this morning's 15km felt easier than last Sunday's 13km. Having a set program makes it relatively easy. There's no deciding what to do or when to do it, you just do what the piece of paper says. Once you commit to following a program, there are really no other decisions to be made, no debating whether to run today or not — you're going to do what it says, and that's it! 25kms still seems rather daunting, but it's getting more likely.
My sister took a sourdough bread-making class last year, has been churning out three loaves a week of delicious organic varieties ever since, and offered to show me the ropes today. I thought sourdough was just a relatively labour-intensive breadmaking option you might choose because you like the flavour, but apparently there are real health benefits. The raising agent in sourdough is the naturally occurring yeast in flour, plus lactic bacteria which cause a secondary fermentation process and give the bread its distinctive taste. High-quality flour is mixed with water and left to ferment — that's it, nothing else is added. The bacteria help to digest the phytic acid in grains before the bread is eaten, increasing the absorption of nutrients. It's lower GI than breads made with added yeast, and can be eaten by some people who are gluten intolerant.
I was particularly interested to hear that the woman who ran the class found that regularly eating sourdough bread caused her sugar cravings to disappear. I'm on a bit of a health kick as I try to get fit for a 25km race next month, and I'll be testing that out! Plus, it's chewy and delicious and keeps longer than most other breads.
Once your flour and water mixture is fermenting away, which takes several days, it will keep indefinitely if you feed it with additional flour and water (sister explained that if you don't, it "gets hungry and dies"). Some bakers use the same starter for years, using some but also adding to it with each baking. You keep it in the fridge, and take it out the night before you want to use it and let it become bubbly and active. The recipe we made today used 2 cups of this fermenting rye flour starter mixture, 4 cups of wholemeal flour, 3 cups of white high-protein baker's flour, 2 cups of cornmeal, 2 cups of oats, water and a little salt. My sister buys all her flours in bulk from Organic on Charles and packed me off there on my way home.
The dough had to rise for 6 hours before baking, so I took it home with me and have just taken it out of the oven and eaten three slices. Yum.
( Photo )
Under a strict interpretation of my rules I perhaps shouldn't count this, since I saw Bob Downe as part of a hens' night in Melbourne in 1997 and I also went to some fundraiser comedy night with bardiegrub and shortblack a few years ago, but this was the first time I'd actively decided to attend a comedy performance without some ulterior motive (other than to do a New Thing). I've long been convinced that I don't much like comedy — I want to be moved rather than amused. I went on my own since I thought there was a fair chance I'd hate it and I wanted to feel free to do so without being anti-social (the Bob Downe evening was excruciating). However, as victorian_tweed predicted, this show turned out to be perhaps the best possible comedy option for me: a lot of his material was about religion from an atheist's perspective, and his song at the end made me cry!
He comes across as a modest, intelligent, articulate person with what I think of as particularly Australian kind of self-deprecating humour, which is on display in this song from an earlier tour: Rock & Roll Nerd. He thanked the audience for coming out to see him on a Tuesday night, too, which made me like him immediately even though I didn't find some of his early numbers particularly funny. He got me on board with a "love song" to his wife, whom he met at 17, called If I Didn't Have You. I thought it was genuinely funny and also true. He said he'd had some criticism on it before and thought he should point out that his wife has a similar sense of humour, which he illustrated with a story about how she didn't want him to check on their sleeping newborn before they started watching a movie, because if the baby was dead, it was dead, and they might as well enjoy the movie before they found out. (When I relayed this story to my sister, she said that sounded like someone who doesn't know as much as they should about how to resuscitate.)
I (predictably) enjoyed the anti-religion stuff and his nine-minute poem "Storm", about a dinner party debate with a woman who was into homeopathy and auras. "Isn't this enough? Just this...world? Just this beautiful, complex, wonderfully unfathomable, natural world? How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap man-made myths and monsters?"
His final song, the one that made me cry, wasn't meant to be funny and was about enjoying Christmas in a secular, family-oriented way: White Wine in the Sun.
At the time I'd say I only enjoyed some of it, but looking back I think it was an overall win and I've definitely had fun watching his YouTube clips for the last hour. I hope he goes on to be even more successful!
ETA: Interesting interview on the slight differences between Australian and English audiences. I like his Australian accent — it's the kind I long to hear when I'm overseas. He grew up in Perth and went to the same school as my brother-in-law.
Or more correctly, Rebel Empire fight choreography training.
I saw the performance at Swancon and couldn't resist going along to learn the basics of how to wield a lightsabre. Getting to repeatedly consensually attack a complete stranger with a plastic pipe in a set pattern was brilliant! What could be more fun? *g*
I'm quite in awe of what kae_dash and his team of instructors have created in a short time. The two hour training session consisted of:
12. Make my own hand cream/lip balm from beeswax. I need to perfect my recipe, but want to keep doing this. My sister and brother-in-law keep bees, so I have a steady supply of beeswax.
13. Stay overnight at Swancon: three nights out of four. This is much better than driving home late and provides an excellent opportunity for in-depth conversations with your roommate! I hadn't previously been able to get my head around the concept of paying for accommodation in my own city.
14. Play a game in the gaming room at Swancon. (Zooloretto, with psycho_tabby, bigjobbies and two people I hadn't met before.) This was quite fun and I'd probably find it even more enjoyable if there weren't all sorts of other things going on at the same time. I might go along to the boardgame association one day. I find I can't get "Wasabi" out of my mind and want to give it a try!
15. Play air hockey, with rabbit1080, while all dressed up!
16. Attend Glamfest, the gay & lesbian film festival. I was surprised that the audience for the two gay films I went to was 98% male (and much less surprised that the audience for the lesbian romance was all female).
17. Go to a fencing workshop. This mostly convinced me that I will continue to pay someone to do all my fencing for me, but I did learn how to tie some different knots in wire. I was most impressed by the men who could effortlessly break off the unwanted ends of wire with their bare hands. It was held at an 8,000 acre property just outside York that's been farmed by the same family for six generations!
I don't have the long history of Swancons that many of you do, but this one seemed very well run and enjoyable to me. Many thanks to the committee.
My top 10 from the past four days:
1. Seeing aliens and people in long cloaks with lightsabres at the Masquerade. My interest in SF/F doesn't go much beyond Star Wars (and the original Battlestar Galactica), but I quietly hunger to visit the bar in Mos Eisley spaceport. Part of the reason I don't read/watch more SF is that I want it to be real and I don't like to run up against the fact that it's not. Or if it is, I can't physically go to those places. Saturday night was about as close as I'm going to get, and it was pretty good.
2. mikey_ob's boardgame presentation, which had just the right amount of detail, was very well organised and delivered with plenty of enthusiasm! I now know 100% more about modern boardgames than I did before. It was a GREAT overview.
3. The first 10 minutes in particular of the Rebel Empire fight choreography demonstration, when all the Jedi and Sith and other creatures were in the room at once. Magic! If that's what they're like after less than a year of training, I can't wait to see what they become. As soon as I got home today I looked up the details of their training sessions. You're supposed to bring "Clothes you can move in, bottle of water, sweat towel, lightsabre (which must be approved by the instructor)". Check to the first three, big question mark to the fourth. Where does one purchase an approved lightsabre?? I'll have to find out.
4. Richard Morgan's guest of honour speech, for his very negative comments on religion. I want to live in a world where more people are willing to publicly say what he said. I'll be listening to the podcast to refresh my memory on exactly how he phrased it.
5. The free food! I was thrilled with the free fruit, candy and tea & coffee (especially the herbal tea selection), plus the hot finger food at the Masquerade.
6. The Geek Sing-along, especially the song about the computer that would still be going after everyone else was dead — can anybody point me to it?
7. Playing a board game — Zooloretto — in the gaming room. Thanks to bigjobbies for creating a very welcoming space. I'm not much of a game fan, since I'd rather just talk to people than have to learn rules and follow what's going on in the game, but I enjoyed the experience!
8. Some good meals at inexpensive restaurants with various people. That must be the very best location in Perth for reasonably priced food. I was concerned about how much it would cost to eat out for that many meals, but it came to much less than I was expecting. The best of several excellent meals I had was self-assembled rice paper rolls with fresh vegetables and prawns served on sugar cane skewers at the Viet Hoa.
9. Working outdoors and going home to feed animals on Saturday, and spending Sunday morning at my running club with a rather different demographic. I had a very good time, but there's no way I could spend four days sitting around inside. One thing I don't like at all about fandom is the extremely sedentary lifestyle that seems to be not just accepted but the norm. Kudos to kae_dash and company for demonstrating an alternative way to be a fan!
10. Playing air hockey in evening dress with rabbit1080 at the Masquerade.
Plus special mention to:
11. The repeated 3am alarm clock incidents in my room, which crossed the line from entirely bad to memorably funny on the third night. It's a real worry that the combined talents of me and bardiegrub weren't enough to prevent a fairly traumatic event on the first night happening over and over. I'm blaming her since she was closer to the clock!
I was surprised at how quickly the time seemed to go. I went to fewer panels and had fewer conversations with people than I expected to, and I'm not sure where the time went instead.
Came home and sent 1) a thank you to the con hotel, and 2) a complaint to Amazon. You can send them email using this form, or sign in first. I received a response, albeit an unsatisfactory one, within a couple of hours. Haven't received a response to my second email to them yet!
This has been pretty widely publicised, but in case you've missed it:
The government will be giving most taxpayers who earn less than $100,000 a cash tax refund, paid directly to your bank account, if you've lodged your 2007-08 tax return before 30 June 2009.
If you're behind with your tax returns, now is definitely the time to catch up!
The amount of the payment depends on your income but is pretty generous:
$900 if your taxable income is up to and including $80,000
$600 if your taxable income is between $80,001 and $90,000, and
$250 if your taxable income is between $90,001 and $100,000.
If you've already lodged your 2007-08 return like you're supposed to, you should receive this money between 8 April and 16 May.
(I think this is a horrible idea, personally, and that the money should be going into community development and infrastructure projects with long-term benefit. However, it's there on offer and you might as well make sure you get your share.)
I've finally just about got my life back together after letting what's supposed to be a part-time job take it over for a while. Note to self: don't do that again. I'm behind on my New Things and will be catching up soon!
As a bit of a present to myself and a reminder of my realigned priorities, I'm planning to run my club's "Road Running Championship" in May and June, assuming I can coax my recalcitrant left big toe joint to participate. You just have to complete three particular club events, of 10km, 15km and 25km. Since I've never done more than half marathon distance (21.1km), it's a little bit of a challenge, especially since I haven't run further than 5km this year, but doesn't seem too daunting. Running is very much something you do for yourself and that's what I want at the moment. I've pulled out the low-mileage, three-day-a-week half marathon program I used in 2006 and have checked off the first two runs!
Unlike the last time I did much running, I'm determined to not let the horse riding go by the wayside either. Here's some pictures I had someone take after I got back from Sweden, to send to some work colleagues over there who have horses. Fun as the riding in the snow was, I'm glad I don't have to deal with it on a daily basis!
( Horse pictures plus obligatory bonus kangaroos )
I'm still loving Boston Legal. I think that's a record length of time for that new-fandom feeling for me. Can't wait for Season 5 (look at that gorgeous cover!) to be released in early May.
And one more thing that's making me happy is this statement from vito_excalibur in a ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
metafandomed post a few weeks ago:
Here is the price I pay socially, as a hippie, as an LJer, as a fangirl: people don't respect me.
Here is what I buy with it: I don't have to act respectable.
Replace hippie with "single" and "woman who doesn't like children" and "doesn't even work full time" and that's me. What a freeing, joyous thing it is not to have to act respectable!
I worked 42 of the 58 hours between Monday morning and Wednesday evening, spent another hour sitting up at 4am writing out accounting entries to try to understand something, finally got home last night after being away since Sunday afternoon (financial report lodged, hooray!), and then spent this morning at a fire awareness workshop held in a nearby town.
The latter probably affected me more since I was short on sleep.
I really liked the main emphasis of the workshop, which is that you must be fully prepared and you cannot expect emergency services to be able to help you, or even provide up-to-the-minute information. The entire shire has only nine firefighting units (which they called "appliances") and in a major fire there won't be enough to go around. You must know what to do, keep your property or house fire-ready and make your own decisions. This is a very high fire risk area and they stressed that it's not a matter of if, but when.
I've always thought I would just GO in case of a major fire and I still think so, but they pointed out that "evacuation is mayhem" and carries with it its own dangers, among them lack of visibility, fallen trees, livestock on the roads and people trying to move large animals. As everyone probably knows, you have to decide to go early, or stay.
This story made me have to go sit in my car at the break to get my crying out of my system: ( Distressing story )
I don't actually think I'd find it very hard to decide to leave my animals, though that might sound callous to many of you. I don't think the fear and pain of an animal caught in a fire compares to a person's fear and pain in the same situation, plus their loved ones' grief afterwards. Realistically I couldn't do anything for them in case of a fire that approached rapidly.
I didn't realise that most houses that burn aren't lost in the fire front itself, but from embers up to 8 hours later. If you decide to go and aren't allowed back, no one will be around to protect your home from that. They pointed out that defending your home may mean up to twelve hours of constant physical activity and showed a video of a poor little animated person going endlessly up and down from their roof cavity to around the house to extinguish spot fires.
Part of the session was on house fires that can happen anywhere and of which heaters are a major cause. It made me wonder whether some of you, especially those of you with children, have home fire plans. It can take only two minutes from an ember appearing to total combustion in a room, and the more flammable material you have in the house, the less time you'll have. If you lock your doors or windows with keys from the inside, can you find your keys in the dark to get out? Do your children know what to do if you're incapacitated? Young children apparently easily sleep through smoke alarms.
Anyone who drives out of the city in this state could get caught in a fire, so here are the steps for what to do if you're caught in a vehicle:( Steps )
There also was some interesting debate about the conflict between managing land for environmental purposes (leave fallen wood to provide animal habitats, etc) and managing fire risk (get rid of any excess flammable material!) and the inconsistent laws which require you to maintain firebreaks with no vegetation at all on your own property right next to state-owned land where you're supposed to leave all vegetation and debris exactly as it is.
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