Saturday, November 3, 2007

Becstarr : yAY ErkoBeserko~

Went to check out Erko Beserko, the Erskineville PS fair. There was plenty of music and small children bopping unselfconsciously, and the general enjoyable chaos of a big jumble of people. We drank homemade cumquat cordial for $1 a large cup (bamboo recyclable, if you please!) and ate homemade vietnamese rice-paper rolls in the Devonshire tea area. Ran into ex-flattie and brother-in-sin Luke, back from London and hanging out with his Dad. Bought parsley, pansies and beautiful native violets that the kids had made pots for. Wandered home past a moving sale, where we scored a big truck with horse carrier for Elroy (J's nephew)'s Xmas present.

YL - pub, beer, communist porn

Interesting week. So this is what it's like to have a normal social life. Evolution & progression is interesting and positive. Or as Bec would say ... it's "positive progression propagatational proposals".

And while we contemplate the magnitude of "Red&Blue Productions", I offer you Porn=Communism as fodder for our Communist Porn production plans. Eg. Naked girls climbing over giant missiles in another parade extravaganza for Kim Jong-il. "He didn't come, he didn't come!" (Quote from documentary on North Korea.)

Dan - weekly update

Did too much work this week; Wednesday went and saw 30 days and 30 nights and Daywatch with Dave & Nick & Paul & Brian (from Jens work) and Brian's friend. Got home late and spent the rest of the week tired. Gave a presentation at the eResearch Forum. Gave out PDAs for PDA project friday. Got to sleep in today, which was absolutely delightful. Now it's a day of hanging round with kids who will get progressively crankier about being stuck inside (Atty is currently systematically squashing his sister, Elora has mastered crawling and is working hard on cruising, and Dante is trying to break the world record for TV watched in a single day.

Evelyn - Damn German Germs

I forgot to mention - when Christina and Peter left, they left behind some kind of nasty German cold. Second day off work - still feeling miserable!

Friday, November 2, 2007

Anna : Beach experiment ... failed

The "Beach Before Work" plan this morning was a bit of a bust ... weather poor, water still too cold to swim, hangover smoothie seemed to suck my will to live and the bus trip back took 30 minutes longer than expected so I was late to work. That plus a heavy week at the gym makes a convincing argument to spend tomorrow in bed.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Becstarr : Wrapping

Finishing touches on cases. Avoiding looking at the wrap-up for my other project (maybe tomorrow?). LMS planning meeting, more calendaring (I take over on Monday). Only just made it to 5, to be picked up by Dave and whisked off to the magical land of Haberfield babysitting and Henrietta the Great Go-Getter, then Vietnamese dinner and planning moving.

falsedan - happy birthday

Woken up by cake and tickets to see Amon Tobin on the 15th and a jar of crunchy peanut butter… winning combination!

Anna : Good Work

Big gym week, trying out new program (with a focus on working the backs of my shoulders to try and stop the clicks that have started happening over the last few weeks), 2 hard sessions at boxing and some yoga. Taking the evening off to go home, do some cleaning, lounge about the house and do some reading. Blog worthy? Eh :P

Gone bush

Am in Wagga for work. Nice town. Long drive down this way (took the inland road through Cowra and Young), and it hasn't rained since I was last here in May. Everything is very dry, crispy and brown. Patterson's Curse is flourishing. My meeting went well.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Becstarr : A spring in my step

Went to a workshop / focus group to help the City of Sydney council and UNSW's Faculty of the Built Environment plan their next Watershed workshop series, and build an education tool for other local councils. It was a great evening! Brainstorming and discussing with a bunch of other people with similar questions and priorities was an unexpected amount of fun.

Anna : Dress Stress

Have worn my new dress to work today and already have "dress stress". Taking deep breaths and trying to chill ...



In other news, finished Anne of Green Gables last night. What a fantastic book! I highly recommend the Librivox audio recording, I think it was this one.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Evelyn - visitors :)

Christina and Peter are visiting! And despite Peter's awful cold, he's keeping up tourist-wise admirably.

Shoshe: Still here

I went to Spirit and Opportunity's second (Mars year) birthday party! :) It was very cool. We had carrot cake, cider and champagne, and the folks at JPL had cake and organic milk (apparently they weren't allowed to have alcohol). The rovers didn't get anything special for their birthdays as far as I know, but one of the models in the MER conference room had an "I am 2" badge, which was very cute.

Our friend Owen from Sydney visited us this weekend, which was awesome. My parents were up to, for my mom's art opening in a "nearby" town (2 hours away). On Saturday we went to my classmate's pumpkin carving party, and Owen carved his first pumpkin. B's becoming a pumpkin carving pro :) I finished grading my students' papers over the weekend, but didn't get any other work done :(

And on Friday night, we watched Stephen Colbert perform live.

Anna : Working Through An Energy Crash

Having trouble getting stuff done at work today. Sending off mail but no one replies. Going to have to work on getting over my phone fear and start ringing people I think.

Procrastination of course is it's own reward. Flickr account back up and running and now hosting some great stills from the shoot on the weekend.

Big news of the day of course is that the beach water temp has hit 20 degrees! Sounds like it's time to reinstate pre-work swims!
Today I remembered about this blog and finally caught up on some (but not all) pressing internet-work.

Shannon: Halloween weekend fun

Dancing on Friday at Sanctuary was awesome. Then 3:00am bacon and eggs followed by a nice sleep in. Unfortunately our friends' two year old daughter's birthday party, followed by exhaustion and rain combined to make us pike on the Parade of Lost Souls this year, so we stayed home and learnt how to play Halo 3 online. Sunday was a good "catching up on shit day". Built a bookcase, wrote some cards and emails, made my first beef bourguinone and tidied up a bit.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Kit: Saddle Weary

Went up to Barrington River over the weekend for white water kayaking. 0.45m water level, grade 1-2 rapids. 17km in 7 hours on the first day - as a result of many beachings on top of rocks, and feeble struggles to get off them. 7km in 4 hours on the 2nd day. I have 'saddle sores' from sitting down for so long. Cannot believe how tired I was on Saturday night (I haven't been so in the past) - is 8.45 pm an acceptable time to go to bed?

Anna : aannnnddd action!

A weekend of filming! First film since "Hamlet : The Game Show" in 2003, "Hide & Seek" is the tale of a girl playing hide and seek with herself starring Nicole as "The Girl" (I think I may call her "Maya" in the credits). The whole weekend went really well, a few mini emergencies, a late start compounded by the start of daylight savings and lots of watching the sky for rain that never came. The footage is looking awesome and I'm feeling re-enthused about film making!

falsedan - watch your step

Went to the Tate Modern last night to look at the crack, watched Meshes of the Afternoon again, then stayed in the shop until closing time. Spent all of Aija's money on beer at riverside pubs—one of the places has Cooper's Green!

YL - interesting weeks

Well some weeks are more or less the daily grind towards a far flung goal. Other weeks are puntuated by interesting events that cause you to think and evolve as a person.

The last 2 weeks have been interesting. I was pleased to turn 30. It was wonderful to be able to share that time in your life when you feel that things are going well and that you are finally yourself again with friends. I havent seen the actual present yet guys, but how can it not be awesome? It's bunnies!

Conversation at the pub on Fri with SJ and Bec always enlightening. =) There is just so much life experience in this group that we have here!

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Becstarr : Blobbers

Inspired by Jen's post a while ago, tried to make potato stamps of jellyfish. They were LAME! I might have to get Atticus to show me how it's done.

Also big family brunch out at Epping to farewell Rach, who by now must be in Africa!

Jaime - Partying down

Went out last night to Halloween at Sanctuary last night. Danced for 4 hours. Apparently "Smells like Teen Spirit" was the song of this generation in Vancouver as the whole place exploded with furious dancing and moshing. I'll post pics and video on flickr and daily motion later on (full blog to follow).