home again home again jiggidy jig May 27, 2007  

Heather and Maggie are home again. As I write this, Heather is kipping out in our bedroom and Maggie is kipping out on top of Gran in front of the telly. Rebecca is also kipped out. It's a scene of serious domestic bliss, especially when taken in conjunction with having a leg of lamb for dinner.

Fat Cyclist has a really worthwhile take on the recent, shocking revelations that basically every professional cyclist in the mid 90s was on drugs (which won't be much of a revelation to anyone who read Willy Voet's book - the surprise was that people like Erik Zabel, Rolf Aldag, and Bjarne fucking Riis - who, let's recall, won the tour in '96, which is during his admitted doping period - have now admitted it). He ignores it. And concentrates on the things that matter: things that happen when you've found that your wife has metastatic breast cancer. Worth reading for renewed faith in human nature.

day 3 May 25, 2007  

I am, as I'm sure you'll all understand, really fucking tired and have minimal free time. I'm either at the hospital with H and M (by the way, they're now out at Kenepuru Hospital in Porirua - much nicer than town, if you're in the market for somewhere to give birth I'd recommend it unreservedly), at home wrangling R, or asleep. Or drinking, which I now do again. Yay! However, the PC is in the spare bedroom, which is where Liz and George (Heather's parents) are staying, so I tend to only have about an hour a night to do stuff. So sorry for being really, really behind on replying to the congratulation emails. Rest assured, I'm assiduously printing them out and taking them in to H, who is feeling greatly cheered and much less cut off from the world for knowing that so many people - some of whom I'm pretty sure I've never met - have sent in good wishes. Ta to all, and I promise we'll write back to you at some point.

More pictures of Margaret up on flickr again.

BTW, the TVs in the maternity ward at Kenepuru all get Al-Jazeera. No, I'm not joking. And I've just improved the quality of the reading material in the waiting rooms by taking in all my back issues of Spoke, so if you're wondering why they've got quality NZ MTB magazines in the middle of the back issues of Women's Weekly, that's it.

Why don't more companies do this sort of thing: Crumpler are running a Beer For Bags scheme. Turn up to them at a particular time with the right type and amount of beer, and they give you a free bag. It's totally genius. Are you listening to this, Cactus?

Damn, having mentioned Cactus, I now have to link to their story about what happens when one of their packs spends 3 months in a mild acid bath and then becomes part of a volcanic lahar. Nifty!

Margaret Williams Elder May 22, 2007  

Ladies and gentlemen: Margaret Williams Elder, born at 9:28am by c-section. Weight a smidgeon under 8 pounds. Mother and daughter both doing well. Loads of photos now up on flickr.

Heather and Margaret are on Ward 12 of Wellington Hospital until around Thursday, and then probably at Kenepuru until around Sunday - ring or text if you'd like to drop past.

I am, of course, unutterably proud and happy. And Rebecca seems pretty chuffed too.

the next thing you read will be May 21, 2007  

So this time tomorrow - if all goes to schedule, about twelve hours after I post this, actually - we'll have a new baby. I'll say this for c-sections, they let you schedule your leave pretty neatly. As Heather's pointed out, it's pretty odd not having the transition of labour to take you through from not-having-a-baby to having-a-baby. That said, labour can often come at basically no notice, and be over with pretty quick - we're just spoiled (!) from having had such a long labour last time that we had ages and ages to get used to the idea that we were going to imminently have a baby. And then, of course, the idea that "imminently" in that case meant a day or two. Anyway. This time tomorrow, we should once again be used to the comforting squirm of a newborn baby held against the shoulder. Frankly, I can't stop grinning like a loon.

So watch this space tomorrow for an announcement and some photos. Anyone running a book on sex, birth weight etc please cut me in for some of the action.

Rebecca has been primed on what's about to happen. Well, she's known for ages what's about to happen, so we've primed her on when. She was dispatched off to nursery this morning with instructions to tell everyone that she was going to have a little brother or sister tomorrow. We'll send her off on Thursday with a photo of the wee 'un that she can wave at people. We also went off on Saturday and bought a Peter Rabbit stuffed toy for her to give the baby - she kept getting distracted and urging us that the baby would really, really like a bright pink bicycle, giant plush panda, etc.

Sticking with the baby name theme, this is what e-Government is all about: online baby name stats from Births, Deaths and Marriages. Handy, that. I'll provide a handy tip for any betting pools out there by saying that one name from our shortlist appears on this page; but that it's not "Caleb".

Heather also made an interesting point last night: all the female members of the Klezmer Rebs who have children have a daughter called Rebecca. Oy vey!

Basically, Hamlet is The Lion King. Only with fewer lions.

Righto, off to make myself a packed lunch for tomorrow. I'm taking Heart of Darkness in case we have to wait ages at the hospital; I think a sausage sandwich will round it off perfectly. See you on the other side of parenthood (mark II)!

curse this north wind May 14, 2007  

Down into single figures now. Another eight days (a week tomorrow) until the baby arrives. We have one or two more minor things on the to-do list, none of which are vital - mounting the drier in the laundry, that sort of thing. I've even got the telly working (well, working well enough to be getting on with).

I'd just like to apologise for the lack of humorous baby names. Prior to Rebecca's birth, we spent rather a lot of time coming up with funny names - see the sidebar on Rebecca's page. This time, we've been debating the matter again, but haven't been formalised enough to set up a feed to share the love with everyone. Rest assured that we've had a lot of silly idea names, but we're just not sharing them as much this time. Looking back on the silly ones last time, I notice that a couple of them (Prudence and Darwin) were serious contenders this time.

Anyway, Liz (Heather's mum) bowled up today, so we've got the onsite childminding sorted. Roll on Tuesday week...

Very interesting article by Charles Stross on predictions for the future, and where he thinks we're all going. Well worth a read.

And in a minor addendum to my Potterine related musings recently - I can't believe that it took me until I'd read the fifth book twice before I realised that "Grimmauld Place" is just a corruption of "Grim Auld [old] Place". Then again, it took me until I'd seen all three series of Black Books twice before I realised that the main characters' surnames were Black and Bianco [White] (well, and Katzenjammer, but you get the idea - I miss out on obvious thematic thingies).

I was amused to see Whitcoulls in J'ville mall are indeed advertising the new Harry Potter as "Pre-order to guarantee availability!". So someone's clearly worried that they might run out. More seriously, I suppose there's a chance that the initial stock might sell out, and you might be the last kid on the playground to read it, leading to that fun feature of human discourse where other people deliberately spoil the surprise.

I honestly don't know what to say about the Ivan Basso revelations. On the one hand, even as a Basso supporter, I can't say I'm particularly surprised to find that he was blood doping. However, you've got to think that his excuses are pretty poor. "I was getting ready to do it, but then they pulled me out of the race before I could, so I didn't really do it" is pretty low-grade. It's the sort of thing 4-year olds claim when you catch them trying to wallop siblings: "But I missed, so it's OK!". Honestly.

Mountainbiking does funny things to people. One of my coworkers has spent the last day at work cornering people and showing them the bruises from her monumental stack a week ago.

not as bad as some May 07, 2007  

OK, having thought about it a bit more, here's my take on what's going to happen in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Text redacted in white; select to read. You know, in case you're planning on reading the final book, but haven't quite got around to reading the last couple of ones yet.

I'm not a gambling man, but I'd be very surprised if that doesn't turn out to be what happens. And, of course, Darth Vader being Harry's father.

It's funny the things you find out. Growing up, I'd always assumed that macrocarpa was a native tree, as it has pretty iconic status in NZ - it's very popular as a windbreak on farms, for instance. I'd recently vaguely realised that it's a cypress, and thus probably isn't a native, but I've only just found out that it's actually from California. And not only that - it's half the parentage of the Hedge of Death, leylandii. So it's a short stop from that gert big thing on my uncle's farm that the magpies nest in, to murder in Berkshire. Funny old world.

Horticultural musings sparked slightly by a reminder of something I found out a while back (though I don't think I mentioned it here) - one of my favorite plants (well, one that I've grown rather a lot), Drosera capensis, is listed by Biosecurity NZ as a pest plant - meaning that it's banned from sale, propagation, and distribution. It's a bit odd to think that the large pot of plants I had back in the UK would get me into trouble back over here (although it's no worse than the ban on Koi carp); but D. capensis is a bit notorious for romping away, and some idiot apparantly planted some out in the wild up Auckland way - with the result that it's outcompeting the native sundews. Nice one whichever twerp did that one.

I've been working from home a bit recently, as Rebecca's sick and Heather is tiring easily and can get exhausted after hours of dealing with a stroppy, feverish, high-volume-mucus-producing toddler. This means that I'm doing a fair bit of work - paper markup, revisions, etc - at the kitchen table while Rebecca sits on the couch and watches Piglet's Big Movie. It's interesting how little this is affecting my productivity. Sure, having kids telly blaring is a bit distracting, but it's not actually that different from having the office Warcraft fanatics loudly discussing last night's raids or whatever they do while pretending to be elves. If you can tune out the one, you can tune out the other.

yahoo sirius May 03, 2007  

One of those days for congratulations. First of all, a heartfelt "Happy birthday" to my lovely wife. I won't get more specific than that.

Next, many congratulations to Carla and Ceri for the arrival of wee Lias. Given that Carla is one of the smaller people I know (I'd have her non-pregnant weight picked at just slightly over half of my own), I'm not surprised that she was eventually delivered of a healthy 9 pound 8 baby by C-section.

Of course, the main contentious issue about the birth process is the soundtrack. As you may recall, we spent a lot of time prior to Rebecca's birth making tapes to play during labour/childbirth. As you can take the girl out of West Auckland, but not vice versa, the musical selection drew heavily on the heavy metal/shouty things end of the spectrum, with the goal being to have the baby born to the melodic sounds of The Darkness. This did not happen. Instead, the baby was born to the sounds of Dido, this being the surgical team's choice. We weren't chuffed, but had more important things to worry about. This time, we've learned our lesson and will be providing Heather with an iPod preloaded with Deep Purple's Greatest Hits.

One advantage to having been floored by this bloody cold is that I've had a lot of time to read. So I've been putting it to good use by re-reading all the Harry Potter books in sequence. They're fun, undemanding, and it's interesting to re-read them with an eye to the known plot twists. Going through, I'm finding a lot of support for my theory as regards the potential denouement of the final book. The only thing that worries me is that it's kind of obvious. Sure, it's thematically satisfying, but that makes me think that maybe she'll go for something else. It's hard to see what else she could come out with that would provide a good ending for the book itself and neatly tie-up the themes developed throughout the entire series. That said, I'm prepared to be surprised.

I've not yet ordered a copy of the final Harry Potter book. I mean, why bother? The only real reason to advance order one would be if you could get it at a discount, which I'm not convinced will happen. I seem to recall finally cracking close to the release day last time, when Amazon was flogging the books as loss leaders for about five quid and free delivery - I doubt we'll be seeing a repeat of that this time, unfortunately. Borders have it for about $31 (twelve quid at the mo) on preorder; I may crack. Because, you know, otherwise they might run out and I might never get to read the book. Ahem.

Rather liked today's quote from A Word A Day:

The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic.

James Marston Fitch

hiatus due to mucus May 01, 2007  

Blurgh. I've been pretty floored for the past few days due to a bad cold that went south and became a nasty chest infection. A couple of days off work, a lot of time coughing up vile humours, and much less fun than you'd think. I've put the time between coughing so hard my lungs feel like sandpaper in useful pursuits - painting Rebecca's chest of drawers (which is my old chest of drawers from when I was a kid), for instance. It's amazing what you can do when you're really able to only work in short bursts.

Three weeks until C-day. Or rather, at most three weeks until C-day. Fingers crossed!

Having had the chest infection, I've been giving cycling a swerve recently and taking the bus. I've been surprised by how blatantly some people read over your shoulder. I even had someone admit it the other day and ask me what it was that I was reading. Brave New World, as it happened.

Well, it looks like I might not be supporting Discovery Channel for this tour after all, as Ivan Basso has just left the team. Blimey! Basso's still under suspicion from last year's Operation Puerto, and would probably not have been able to ride the tour. Harsh, though. I'll be watching that one closely.

In other cycling news: Urban Cyclist have just published their first issue. Good stuff and worth a read. This is the sort of publishing the internet was built for.

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