Just a wee story I’d like to remember:
While having a conversation with an Australian about New Zealand’s complete lack of native animals (you may not have noticed that NZ has some native birds, but no animals) when the conversation naturally turned to the similar lack of dangerous creatures. No sharks, no crocodiles, no snakes, less spiders, no scary ants… much safer. A nearby rubbernecking kiwi (who shall remain nameless and, for the record, is not blonde does not have blonde hair) piped up saying “we have pigeons!”, which are neither native nor particularly dangerous. Good one Jaz.
Ben McConnell hypothesizes that having brilliant thoughts in the shower has something to do with bathroom design. Although I agree 100% with the notion that thoughts are clearer when ceilings are higher (or nonexistent), I think it might be simpler than that.
My feeling on this is that as you’re standing there naked and wet you can’t race off and action the first thought you have (no doubt getting distracted by another anyway). Taking a shower also presumably consumes very little brain power; there’s usually no-one else around, no email, no mess, so you are free to think without boundaries.
I actually have a magna doodle on the wall in my shower so that I can draw pictures or write down my ideas as I have them. Inevitably it gets used for entertaining diagrammatical conversation with other shower users, but from time to time it has saved me from forgetfulness.
I have always loved climbing things. I think its my father’s fault. I recall that he used to put lollies in trees when I was a young’n. The truth is I prefer fruit to lollies anyway, but now I prefer a challenge to what comes naturally (thanks Dad).
Anyway, spent the weekend at a lodge with Trent and bunch of awesome people for his 30th birthday. What a great idea. So of course we scaled this waterfall at great personal risk. It was a lot slipperier than it looks.
So from the pit of despair I have risen to triumph over the bad bad rabbit. At home today with a cold I planned to do a whole days work but 30 minutes into it our apartment dwelling thee month old rabbit, Floppy, decided to chew through my laptop power cable. That reduced my work day down to 1hr (battery). Nobody has a new adapter in stock, and buying from Trademe would take days, so I went to Dick Smith and bought some pliers and heat shrink tubing and fixed the laptop and phone charger. Next I’ll fix the lamp.
The rabbit will not win. Also got a plastic cover for the bed. NO MORE POOS.
Today’s Indulgence section of The Dominion Post Weekend newspaper has a double page spread about my parents’ house, Toad Hall in Otaki. Although it is a great article with a lot of good photos, it highlights once again that you never can tell what is actually going to end up in print, even after talking to the journo and the photographer and hearing their enthusiasm etc. The angle of the article often changes. Photos you were hoping to see don’t make it. Some of the facts are pulled right out of the thin air, and some of the photo captions are clearly invented upon basic inspection of the photo itself. All in all though, a nice article with very good coverage of Susan Claire, my mother’s quilting and country patchwork patterns business, and a mention of my father’s hi-fi and audio equipment business, Mayfield Audio.
Unrelated to the article, but nearby to the house.. a few weeks ago Tim and I went canoeing down the Otaki River for 4 hours. Left me absolutely exhausted, but what great afternoon. Nearly drowned about 15 minutes into it, but after that I had a great time. I really like rivers, beaches too, but rivers more.
Yesterday my little (taller) brother Matthew started his own freelance graphics and photography company. He rang me to find out what to put on an invoice. The invoice is the first thing he did (well, other than study photography for years, compile a portfolio and contemplate setting himself up multiple times). Of course, sending an invoice is every company’s core business really. Its pretty much the one thing that all service businesses have in common.
Anyways, Matthew is very talented in design and photography so I can’t wait to see more of his work. Here’s an old image I just found.
For a long time now I have treated Sunday as Project Day. A lot of people do this actually, its the day around home that you embark on some project, most times you won’t finish it, and quite often its not a very big project. Putting up a new shelf in the kitchen, planting some herbs, building a lego robot, doing a painting… all qualify as long as they aren’t your normal work.
I have been thinking that I’d like to build a web application to manage and prioritise my list of Sunday Projects. Then, naturally I thought it could track anybody’s list of projects, and people could sign up and provide advice or feedback on others’ ideas; like “don’t use [blah] brand of [blah] to fix that [blah] because its no good.” or “make sure you put your herbs in a sunny spot that doesn’t get much wind or the dirt will dry out too quickly.” or whatever. And then I thought it might be cool if people could volunteer to help each other out on their Sunday Projects. Might be a fun way to meet people AND get stuff done.
So some day, some Sunday, maybe I’ll sit down and make my wonderful web application.
I wrote and illustrated a story book in an evening a little while ago. It was actually a lot of fun, I enjoyed the creativity. The style of the story is inspired by my memory of a short story book I read several years ago in Unity Books. I can’t remember who wrote it or what it was called, but I really liked the simplicity of the story and the way it drew you in with a combination of enticing wee sentences and intriguing illustrations. I hope you like my adaptation to my own scenario.
It’s actually a true story believe it or not…
This morning I joined Tim, Tim and Tom on their morning swim at Oriental Bay. What a great way to start the day, I’m still energised. Sitting here drinking my delicious earl grey blue flower tea while the daily buzz goes on around me, I’ve been getting through my massive list of very-important-things-to-do at what seems like an astonishing pace. Or maybe it was the wheatgrass shot that we had afterwards?
So today I came to the office to do a bunch of hugely important things (you know its important when you spend Sunday doing it). I’m still doing the first one: Set up a blog and post on it (nearly done..). In the process of course I had to research what sort of blog I wanted, finally sign up for digg and del.icio.us, get the script.aculo.us stuff so I can have a play with that, read a whole bunch of other blogs, etc. So most of a day later, here it is. Now of course I’ll be needing a new phone so that I can post from it. Maybe that will be next Sunday’s mission.