just to watch February 27, 2007  

The seeds we planted in our first raised bed a couple of weeks ago have started to sprout. It's all very exciting. So far, early germinators are the cabbages (in profusion), some of the carrots, and what I'm fairly sure is one of the corn seedlings. Not sure how much of a crop of some of that we'll get before the end of the autumn, but the cabbages and carrots should do OK through into the winter. Rebecca is particularly excited to see her seeds growing up - though for some reason she thinks that they're all going to be Venus flytraps. Some of which will then turn into carrots, which (shouted excitedly) we can eat!!!! So that's good then.

Now I'm just waiting for my order from the NZCPS seedbank to arrive. A few native Drosera, some Sarracenia hybrids and yer standard Dionaea; should come up nicely. I've sent the order off, now I'm just waiting for the stuff to arrive. Actually, between that and a 44t chainring that I got off TradeMe the other day (the big and middle rings on my MTB are getting well worn - after five years of use in a variety of weathers, I'm not surprised), I've been checking the post box pretty assiduously when I get home each day.

Went around to Mike & Hayley's place on Sunday afternoon, to see wee Genevieve. She's a very cute wee thing - stayed resolutely asleep for most of the time that we were there. She even stayed kipped out when Rebecca had a hold of her. I was standing up and holding her, and Rebecca kept coming up and asking me to crouch down so she could give Genevieve a kiss. All most cute, and bodes well for the imminent production of a sibling for R. Heather spent a lot of time holding Genevieve and looking clucky - to which the only thing I could say was "here's one I prepared earlier", gesturing towards her belly (27 weeks today). Mike and Hayley are looking pretty well on it (though Mike didn't seem to be looking forward to his return to the workforce this week), and Livia seemed pretty happy as a big sister. Power to all.

The weather has finally come right. After a relatively ropey Christmas/New Year's period, February has been excellent. Daytime temperatures are still hitting the early 20s, which is quite nice. It's a bit full-on if you go for a fast walk at lunch, but otherwise it's really good. I think Rebecca has worn shoes maybe one day in the last month - and that's because we couldn't find her jandals that day. Our last power bill was about fifteen bucks. Vive le decent weather!

I composted a mouse the other day. Of course, I killed it first.

high-pitched giggling February 20, 2007  

On the way home the other night, I had what's technically known as an Accidental Ingestion of Airborne Protein - an AIAP, which coincidentally is the noise you make when it happens. Or, as our American comrades term it, I swallowed a bug. I was speeding up to pass a couple of other cyclists, I was breathing hard through my mouth, and the next thing I knew I felt the damn thing bounce off the back of my throat. Cue frantic coughing, spluttering and then (when I realised that I wasn't about to cough it back up in a hurry) deep swigs of water to at least wash it down. All this without actually stopping riding, of course. It's not the most fun thing in the world, but at least it didn't sting me on the way down (which is really, really unpleasant).

Listening to: Tiga's essential mix from the end of last year. Excellent rolling electronica; from minimalist workouts, to full on bleep freak wig-outs, to hands-in-air feelgood anthems. Well worth a listen; Tiga gives good track himself, but is an accomplished and smooth DJ. And he's from Montreal, too, so he gets bonus points for being Canadian.

You know when you just started in the workforce, and annoying old people would moan about how it was weird to be working with people who hadn't been born when the White Album came out? Well, now we're working with people who weren't born when Straight Outta Compton came out, man. Talk about your odd realisations.

The main reason that I talk so much about cycling - apart from the whole "obsessional" thing, obviously - is that it's while I'm cycling around that most of the amusing things happen to me. I make a point of not talking about work on this site (well, the occasional major vent about poorly-defined styles, but that's not culpable), we have a fairly typical home life, and cycling is where things tend to happen to me. Many people don't cycle (but should!), so may not know about the nitty-gritty ins-and-outs of the daily pedal. Plus, cycling has everything you need for a compelling narrative: it's laden with the possibility of humour (grown man puts on skin-tight lycra), drama (dangers of riding in traffic), and sex appeal (other people in aforementioned skin-tight lycra). I'm surprised there isn't a cycling soap opera, to be honest. 'Coronation Wheel', 'The Young and the Clipless', 'Socks and the Cycle', that sort of thing.

We've been having a bit of a Child of the Earth schtick going on recently. I spent a fair bit of the weekend cashing up an old compost heap and carefully moving it around the house next to the raised beds that I knocked up last weekend. The raised beds are made of the scraps of old 2x4 that I got off my aunt and uncle a few weeks ago - a morning with a drill and some wood screws later, we had some nice frames for the soil. Having dragged the frames into place (they're not fixed to the soil - they just lie loose, enabling fine-tuning in the position of the raised beds), I spent a fair bit of the weekend filling them with compost, vermicast, and some topsoil from the back/top of Mum's place. I'm still a couple of inches from the top on the larger bed, but the smaller one was full enough for us to plant out a few seeds. Rebecca thought this was great: she's been agitating to plant out the seeds for the last week. We spent a happy half hour carefully opening packets, deciding where to put the seed, and then scattering it. Rebecca particularly enjoyed scattering the seed - our carrots should come up as a series of neat rows interspersed with blotchlike patches where someone got too enthusiastic. A particular favorite was the planting of beans; the pinkish stuff on the beans (to prevent them going off, I assume) made them look rather like the magic beans in her copy of Jack and the Beanstalk. So sowing those was the absolute business. Of course, there was some discussion the next morning when the garden was not full of gigantic beanstalks leading up to magical lands populated with ogres - particularly in light of my unwise declaration a month or so ago that Jack and the Beanstalk was actually a story about me when I was a kid.

That's the great thing about toddlers: old enough to understand what you're saying, young enough to believe it. The other day I told Rebecca that I'd gotten so wet riding in to work, that I found fish in my socks. She accepted this unquestioningly. This rocks.

worldwide resurgence February 19, 2007  

For various reasons, we were just having a discussion about how you hire a wet nurse. I think your best bet is an ad in the newspaper that says:

LACTATING?
NEED CASH?

brand new combine harvester February 14, 2007  

Begob, but there's a lot of reproduction around at the mo. Congratulations to all who've just had kids - no less than three sets of our friends have just acquired new bundles of high-maintenance joy. Fletcher, Esme, and Genevieve: welcome to the world, and good luck with it.

Righto kids. The weather's finally broken good, with reasonable temperatures and not too much rain. With a bit of luck, it should all hold for the next few weeks - and there's a feast of two-wheeled fun to have out there.

First off is Bike Week. See if you can get your workplace to sign up for the Bikewise Business Battle; even if not, dust off the old Healing 10-speed and ride in to Civic Square between 7-9am on the 28th February for a free breakfast on Bike to Work day. Or if you fancy a nice morning out with the family, bring the kids along for the City Cycle Challenge on Sunday the 25th (10am at Frank Kitts park). Roll it!

And then, on a spectating tip, the a weekend or two later - the Womens' Trust House Cycle Classic. Looks to be a scorching field; some good racing through the Wairarapa, finishing with a hard & fast crit around Petone. Worth turning out for to see the hefty international field.

I had a job offer the other day. I was mowing the lawn up at Mum's place, and a family in an SUV pulled up beside me. The bloke behind the wheel leaned out and asked hopefully if I was a gardener. "Nah, it's my Mum's place" I replied, and he drove off looking disappointed. Honestly - hasn't he seen Desperate Housewives? Or Lady Chatterley's Lover? Or, come to that, any number of mucky books and movies? I'd have turned up, mowed the lawn a bit, and his wife would have been all over me like an explosion in a suburban frustration factory. Anyway, it's nice to know that I've got possible alternative careers open to me. Gardening, I mean.

I am currently suffering from a mild case of intimate chafing due to worn bike shorts. The way you get around this is by applying a mild unguent to the appropriate areas, to soothe the skin and prevent additional friction. Last night, after hopping out of the shower, I grabbed the tube of Savlon from where it's normally kept on the bathroom unit... and discovered just in time that Rebecca had swapped it with a tube of her toothpaste. The two tubes are the same size and colour; but for sharp eyes, I could have ended up considerably more intimately minty-fresh than normal.

See? And people say that cycling isn't funny.

Excellent article by Ben Goldacre in the Guardian the other day, explaining in simple terms why "Dr" Gillian McKeith is Evil. It picks up on a number of points made more generally by Michael Pollan in this excellent article in the New York Times about nutrition and "nutritionism". Both articles are worth reading - the Guardian one uses Gillian McKeith as an exemplar of why pop nutritionism is often actively harmful, while the NYT one is more general (but well researched and in depth for all that).

Apparantly the Wurzels are part of a musical genre known as 'scrumpy and western'. Bless.

twitchy February 12, 2007  

Congrats to Michael, Hayley and Livia, on the arrival yesterday of little Genevieve. Nice one - she's a cutie.

Things you don't want to hear from someone performing acupuncture on you: "Oops, hit a vein." Things that you really don't want to happen immediately afterwards: a minor earthquake. Thankfully, needles weren't going in during the latter.

rain hammering down February 09, 2007  

As I rode home in blazing sunshine this afternoon, contemplating how pleasant the 25C temperature with slight balmy breezes was, I spared a thought for my poor compatriots still stuck back in the UK. I am reliably informed that ten feet of snow has descended upon the entire country, that wolves have been seen roaming the streets of Westminster, and that some families stranded inside by the snow have already been resorting to cannibalism. Just remember: if you're stuck inside in the UK under a heavy coating of snow, there is an alternative.

Blimey 'eck. I've just discovered that a page I wrote in the late 90s has been ripped off. I found this while casually googling to see which carnivorous plants are considered noxious weeds in NZ (answer: Utricularia gibba and Drosera capensis). A quick google for "carnivorous plant" noxious weed includes in the results page both Lee's Botanic Gardens and my NZ carnivorous plant page. The text is in white on the bottom of the LBG main page - highlight it and you can see it. It looks like it's been clumsily edited to form the basis of a blurb about CPs native to Florida, but that someone gave up halfway through. Bit annoying to have my text stolen like that. Still, bienvenue le interweb, innit?

So for the first time in my life, I can issue a justified legal threat to someone. Fear me, mortals!

Of course, this is nowhere near as bad as the time that pictures of me ended up on a gay German piercing fetish website. But that's another story.

What I've been reading recently: the humanure composting book. Yes, it's a book about composting human excrement. But even if you don't want to give that a go (and, just so Heather doesn't worry, I don't), it's a fascinating read for the general how-to of composting. The written style is engaging, the subject matter darkly fascinating, and the actual advice about building and maintaining compost heaps is well worth reading. The "humanure" composting technique the author recommends basically involves composting the waste in a standard compost heap, so the general composting stuff is very authoritative. Worth a look. Also good for the section on grey water recycling (which is my other recent interest).

Over at my aunt and uncle's place at the weekend, I picked up a load of surplus 2x4s that they had lying around. My uncle is an inveterate fiddler - he always likes playing with things to get them just right. In this case, that extended to them remodelling the house that they built themselves less than six years ago. As part of this, they had a large pile of spare lumber - heat treated to preserve it so no dodgy chemicals. Excellent. I spent a happy hour or two with a wrecker's bar removing old nails from the wood, and then Rob (uncle) merrily deployed the industrial-strength mitre saw and sized everything nicely. So we've got a stack of lengths of 2x4 in the garage, sized to make a couple of smallish raised beds, for free. Result. I'm a happy Jack. So part of the plan for the weekend is to build and creosote the frameworks, and then look at options for getting a metre or two of topsoil. I may also cruise around the Ohiro Valley looking for cheap horse manure. Fun!

Mildly more serious: the Wellington City Council are currently accepting submissions for the next revision of the mountainbiking access plan. If you're at all interested in cycling around Wellington, consider making a submission. If nothing else, I'd like to get Seton Nossiter Park legally rideable.

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