I don’t really feel I’m living life in the fast lane at the moment. Having clawed my way round the ’50 track’ rule CD Baby has (by a laborious process of amalgamating tracks), I am finally at the uploading stage for the Sonnets. Ah, joy, I thought, clicking the button after selecting all the tracks, now it’s almost over.
Oh no. Not yet. After a couple of minutes looking at the upload, I realised (on rough calculation) it would take approximately 26 hours of uploading to get all the tracks on. It’s going at about 1meg per minute.
Well, if it takes 26 hours, that’s what it’s going to take, I told myself. You can leave it running overnight, on the off-peak time for the internet too, it’ll only take a couple of nights.
So I left it running last night and this morning… find it’s uploaded about three tracks and stopped. Ah, of course. The site times out and logs you off after a while. Great. So I have to sit here with the damn thing running in the background for the foreseeable future.
In the meantime I reckoned I’d start making the samples for the new YouTube channel I’ll make for it. About 10% of the total should be fine but I might even go as far as 20% (that would be close to 30 sonnets). They don’t take too long to put together once I’ve got the template done. However, Microsoft Movie Maker being what it is, it has currently (of course) crashed. Each time it does this one has to open it up again, itself a process that takes a fair amount of time.
As you can see I’m still head-first into this nonsense: I SO want to be free of it and go and do something else… but the goal for this year is to finish projects before moving on, so I’m really battling this one out. It WILL be a seamless, integrated, showcasing-and-selling bonanza of internet activity. Oh yes. Maybe when I’m 50, at this rate.
Meanwhile, talking of projects, the Mr was telling me yesterday about the grant he wants to apply for. Sweet heavens above. I don’t understand most of it, but there were terms like ‘plating up a million plates’ ‘… something about building up a library of … inserts? (We’re talking DNA here, obviously). He went into some detail, most of which presented itself to my mind in visions of the poor Mr stuck in his office for months solid without food or water until he’d pippetted and plated stacks and stacks and stacks of plates, piled up all around him like the washing-up in the cartoon version of ‘The Sword in the Stone’. Beard getting longer and the Mr getting wafer-thin. Apparently it’s not going to be him doing the work as such – they’d get some other people for it. Sounds amazing but somewhat scary.
The Littles seems nicely back on track now what she’s got her beloved Mr Pollock back, all happy and bouncy. (That's her being happy and bouncy, can't vouch for what Mr Pollock's up to). Had Jaymie over for a play yesterday, she’s not in the same class any more but it was a nice sort of keep-in-touch ploy. I’ve got to get back into the habit of inviting kids round on a regular basis. We’ve been a bit slack since school started again. They had a good time.
Guggh… slightly losing the will to live. I’ve just been through the SECOND audio selling site, set up an account, done the rigmarole and find that you can only upload 50 tracks on this one. As the Sonnets are 154 tracks long it’s too short. ‘Course I can send in a CD but it’s a bit of a pain. So CD Baby (the site) is sidelined for the moment. Well, at least it was better than Createspace, which only pays royalties in the form of US dollar cheques. What the hell use is that to me? I just wish they’d tell you these things before you fill in all the gumph and give them your details. So tedious.
Meanwhile. The website (the Sonnets one) now has pictures for ALL the pages. 154 of them. All the links should be in place – ‘course I can’t actually click and check these until the site goes live, so I’ll have to wait to find out. No point in going live until I have something to sell, obviously, hence the eagerness to get the damn tracks off my computer and onto the net. Ready to be moving on, here.
Boy. People seem to have the perception that the Sonnets are a bit stuffy, perhaps… but some of them… dear me. One sort of accepts it in verbal form but once you try and put illustrations to them, dear oh dear. Well I don’t want it to be an X-rated site, after all. One of them was so lewd I just couldn’t think what picture would be appropriate, so finally opted for one of a half-peeled (large) banana and a couple of apples. Best I could do.
Ahem. The Mr had his first employee walk in the door today. It’s officially her first day tomorrow but today I think they were doing miscellaneous paperwork. Not bad going considering he still doesn’t actually have a lab. Apparently it’s getting pretty crowded in Pete’s lab but there will be a couple of people leaving next week… However, it is officially coming into the Tight period. Now till the lab’s done: about mid May, I think they were saying. Always knew it was going to happen, and here we are. Let’s hope the Mr has hired reasonably slim people. Perhaps I should cut down on his lunchtime sandwiches.
Talking of which, we actually managed to finish off the sandwiches from the Littles’s party before they went off. Extraordinary how little those kids ate. Despite the Scooby Snacks game. Probably too busy larking around. Oh, well, all the crisps went, of course. They always do. And there wasn’t a sweet left standing.
Major meltdown today when I went to pick the Littles up. Seems (to cut a long story short – took me a long while to get at the facts) that, basically, things didn’t go to plan on the school schedule and this just didn’t agree with her. It was meant to be ‘Sprinkler Day’ where they come to school in mufti and swimsuits, and the authorities turn on sprinklers for a couple of hours in the afternoon and the kids run around. This is due to year 2 to 6 being off on the annual Swimming Carnival. So Kindy and Year 1 get sprinklers and general mayhem. Only, it was unusually grey today and actually raining – she went to school in a jumper (oh shit I just realised, she never brought it back. Still, it has her name sewn in, surely it’s got to come back). So they didn’t do the sprinklers today. Not only that but she had a different teacher, who didn’t do EXACTLY as Mr Pollock would normally have done. Catastrophic. There were screams and tears, snot everywhere. Seems she’d been holding it in until I made an appearance and then all hell broke loose. Ah well. We went off to swimming (very late for it, due to all sorts of snotty running around) and she seemed to cheer up remarkably.
Talking of swimming, we decided to call it quits for a while. It’s just SO crowded in the pool at the moment, I thought perhaps for this term we could just go to the baths and do some practice. Once autumn sets in and swimming becomes less popular perhaps it’ll be more conducive to her learning. It’s not bad at the moment but I’ve definitely got the feeling that a quieter atmosphere would be a much better investment of time, effort and money. In the meantime, I’ve promised to try and look out drama classes for her instead. Would do her a world of good.
I think that’s about it.
…. I was going to start looking up the next potential MP3 distributor but confess I just don’t have the energy at the moment. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow. The end is so close and yet still so far away, it’s infuriating. I’m going to bed.
You know it was a good party when the next morning you find plastic animals in a tupperware box in the fridge, and sequins on the shower wall. We didn’t even have it at home, either.
Lara’s 6th on birthday party on Saturday was probably the best party we’ve ever thrown. Seems daft to say it of a kids’ party but levels of enjoyment were pretty stratospheric. Even the adults seemed to hang around and have a good time – though I didn’t get to talk to anyone much at all, of course. Far too busy entertaining the kids.
We kicked off at high noon. Onlyjust managed to set up (more or less) even though we’d got there at just gone 11 AND Anna very kindly turned up to help us. She sat there blowing up balloons with the newly-discovered technique of the electric pump, sterling job of it. Also despite my having come in on Friday and set up the lights and tables and so on. Just laying out the food and putting the drinks in the coolers, setting up the stereo,few last-minute glitches when I realised that (despite supposedly having checked things out) that we needed an Australian socket divider… AND there was a slight glitch which I only realised about 30 minutes into the party: I’d put a whole load of soft drinks into a fridge upstairs the day before, but now that room was locked and there was no-one to let us in! Suddenly remembered when I saw the kids drowning in orange squash and not much else. Luckily I had the number of the lady who rented the place out and she was there in ten minutes. Boy those kids were hot.
In her leopard dress before the party, and a rare snap of a quiet moment explaining the next game... someone opened the doors to let the smoke out and the light in at this point...
Presents still everywhere, ogling them all with Lillian while we did clean-up afterwards
That was the sum total of the mishaps. I did the kids’ entertainment, and Ian looked after everything else: food, drinks, talking to parents and dealing with miscellaneous kids’ requests. They played games, danced, and were absolutely mesmerised by the disco fog – wow that was a success. So much of a success that I finally had to unplug it because I couldn’t see where any of them were. Glad I only got a 400 watt one – nearly laid hands on a 1000 watt monster, god knows what they would have done with that, we would probably still be searching for them. The place looked stunning, what with the disco lights and the lasers and the fog and the balloons and the bubbles. Loads of the kids dressed up (theme: ‘jungle disco’), although many of the boys ended up in just shorts and not much else apart from a generous covering of sweat.
Some games were particularly successful – it’s always interesting to see what takes their fancy and what doesn’t. ‘Stuck in the Mud’ seemed very well-appreciated. Here I put a gorilla mask on Ian, and he chased them round the place to ‘tag them. Once you got ‘tagged’ you had to stand still with legs apart until you got ‘unstuck’ by someone crawling under your legs. I missed a lot of this one because it happened just when the woman came to let me into the studio upstairs but I saw some real honest-to-goodness serious running and screaming going on there: I think the gorilla mask was pretty effective. What with the dark and the smoke n’all.
Then there was the surprisingly popular ‘Sardines’. Actually they didn’t play this quite as you’re meant to. It’s meant to be hide-and-seek in sort of reverse: one person hides and everyone else looks for them. If you find them you’re meant to hide with them quietly. As it was they immediately dragged them back en masse and we hid again and again, but great success. I pumped up the fog for that one.
‘Limbo’ naturally made an appearance. Another one where I had to go off to do something and when I came back the kids had taken over from the adults I’d left in charge and had the bar almost touching the floor… it had turned into a sort of ‘who’s the thinnest’ contest and they were crawling along underneath it very happily. Didn’t quite realise until then just how many of those kids are extraordinarily skinny. You’d hardly imagine a ferret could get under the gap they left.
The piñata was possibly the shortest-lived piñata in the history of all bashings: they saw it being put up and immediately formed an orderly line, eager the whack the crap out of it. Only two little girls got to take the baseball bat to it (and that’s at two whacks each) before it gave up the ghost and splatted 3kg of sweets all over the floor. It was Lillian who bashed it open and she was so surprised at the unprecedented success she quite forgot to dive in as the mass of children swarmed around her. There was, however, a small hiatus after that as kids took their gains into corners and came out very sticky about ten minutes later.
Another good one was ‘Centipedes’. You get into lines and bend down, extend one hand to the person behind you from between your legs, and take the hand of the person in front of you with the other. Then you race. Once again, it didn’t quite go to plan – the whole competitive thing sort of escaped them and besides trying to separate them into groups was like getting your fingers unstuck from messing around with Superglue. They ended up doing ‘Centipedes’ over and over again, just one long line like a manic Conga running round and round the hall at increasing velocity.
Likewise, there was (what I thought was) a very simple game of ‘Scooby Snacks’. This was party designed to ensure that the kids noticed the food and got something into them: they do tend to get carried away. All you do is form two lines, and run to the table in a relay. You grab a ‘scooby snack’ of your choice, and run back to the linenext one. First team to get all Scooby snacks eaten wins. Well, first time off they didn’t get it at all: I yelled “Scooby Snacks!” and the whole lot surged forward and had a snack. Good job the tables were long. After about five minutes we gave it another go, and this time they sort of managed and got the jist of it. It was very amusing to see them get carried away, though. Quite a few of them entirely forgot what was happening the moment they got to the table, and just stood there cramming their faces while everyone was yelling: ‘come back, come back!’. It also didn’t seem to matter that the other kids had just watched their friends do it, once they got to the table they often seemed to fall into exactly the same trap. Still, they all seemed to enjoy it. Got their attention for a bit of food, and after a while I declared it a last Scooby Snack for everyone and left them to it as the tables disappeared.
Cake and Happy Birthday wound up the events, of course. Lara stood there smirking and utterly chuffed as 30-odd friends stood round and sang her Happy Birthday and blew out her candles very happily. The cake itself did sterling work, and despite the number of people seemed more than ample for them… we came back with over half of it. Well I suppose it really was quite large. There’s a single grainy picture somewhere, I’ll try and get it posted.
Talking of pictures… ahem. Sorry. Ian tried, but he was just too busy, and it wasn’t to be thought of as far as I was concerned. There are about five rather blurry shots, I’ll put them up but it was just impossible. There really wasn’t a second to spare. You’ll just have to take my word for it that it was spectacular.
Once they’d all left (with their bags of two giant cookies each), Anna once again kindly stayed back and helped up clean the place up, endlessly sweeping up the debris of popped balloons, cups and plates, party poppers, squashed sweets and the odd discarded item of clothing. Meanwhile Lara and Lillian went through the presents and opened every single one… without anyone looking, so unfortunately we now have no idea who gave her what. I shall have to send out an email and/or ask everyone because they were all absolutely wonderful, and she really wants to know who gave her what now. It’ll take a while to find out. I can safely say she has never, in her life, got that volume of presents. Damn, I don’t know ANYONE who’s got that many presents, ever! It’s still like a toyshop in the sitting room, I have no idea where they’re all going to go. Can’t believe how lavish everyone was, you should see some of that stuff.
It took a while for all the excitement to die down after we got home. I think we were al still pumped up for a long time, and didn’t go to bed all that early on Saturday but SUNDAY – woah. Really hit then. Lara retired before 7, and by I picked myself up from the sofa where I’d been falling asleep and went off to bed. The Mr wasn’t far behind at all.
And so, with a lurch, we’re trying to get back into the groove again. She turned six with a helluva bang, though.
Finished up Lara's birthday party costume: theme, 'jungle disco'. Avid readers will recall there were no suitable hire-or-buy options, so we ended up with a meter of leopard-print fabric and some tulle.
Well, it's done. A completely insane article of clothing with a rabid personality disorder: can't decide whether it's a Tarzan outfit, a ballgown or a tutu. She loves it.
We had rain yesterday, RAIN. Currently an almost-chilly 18 degrees. OK it's 6:30 in the morning but it makes a change from the usual 32 degrees by the same time for the rest of this sweltering month. It's been a solid 43 degrees for several days now. We were thinking we'd have to start spreading towels on the sofas before we sat down on them. No doubt the heat will come back but a respite even for a few hours is bliss.
Talking of hot, we went to a little wedding-celebration thing at the Botanical Gardens on Saturday. It was in a shaded place but after all, outside... and 43 degrees. One of Pete's lab people, Xiao (that's the bride). In true bridal fashion she seemed to be absolutely fine and merely glowed: heat didn't seem to touch her; but the rest of us were shedding cupfuls of sweat by the minute and draping ourselves around the place in various ungainly postures.
The kids played a continual game of pelting each other with ice from the drinks-coolers. After three hours of this they were pretty wet. Lara stripped down to her birthday suit for the trip home in the car. Not that we told her to. Just got to the the car park and she promptly disrobed. Sat down naked on the car seat with something more gleeful an expression than would strictly be necessary, under the circumstances.
On the way back we listened to the rest of the 'Beyonce' CD we'd just borrowed from the library. Oh yes, Beyonce. She specifically wanted a track on it called 'all the single ladies' for her party. We tracked the one available library copy of this CD for Hamilton library online, and pounced on it. Well. I'll put that track on for her but frankly I think that's going to be the extent of my investigation work on Beyonce Knowles.
I had a marvellous time on Sunday morning. Ian chivalrously took Lara to Nippers (as usual) and I had the whole morning to myself. While they splashed and paddled surfboards, I tidied and worked on my website and all those things that Mrs generally likes to do.
In the afternoon Anna called and said would we like to come over and sit in the air conditioning for a while, so we did. The Mr took a well-deserved break and sat and watched some cricket at home. I sat there and chatted while the Littles played Lego and DS with Lillian (we took ours so that they could hook up and play together, one on each DS – no tears this time).
I also came home with a pair of scales. Every time I go over there I seem to walk off with some piece of household equipment: last time it was a picnic table. Invariably Anna has at least two of everything because she's got all her mum's stuff she inherited. She's now whittling away at her possessions because of the move to Tasmania (hopefully) coming up. Did I tell you about our scales? (oh the thrill). We've been without for a while ever since ours packed up with a groan of 'one at a time, please' and displayed weight no more. I finally got down to K-Mart the other day and bought a shiny new set, all nice and sleek and digital. Never clapped eyes on anything less accurate. Step on, step off, step on, and it'll give you any number of varied readings within about a 2.5km radius. So it's back in its box, ready for the return pile.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
I spent some time installing stat counters on all my blogs and websites: just six websites (including one unpublished) but some of them have a inordinately high page count. It took a while. Having installed them, I checked up on the summary page, and found that within the last ten seconds the Pie had just clicked onto Upsidedown 2 and clocked right off again in disgust. Visit duration 0 seconds. Wow, speedy clicking fingers. I mean 1 second would be impressive enough but 0 is verging on Matrix skills. I bet she's got one of those black leather coats stashed away somewhere.
Busy busy busy past few days. Don't know where it went. I've been heads-down what with forging ahead with the Shakespeare site and preparations for the party – every day there's something else. We're now in possession of all the equipment for the 'disco' part of it: two lights (one laser, one revolving spots), one fog machine, 4.5 litres of fog juice, and an extra large bottle of bubble mix to put in the bubble machine. Unfortunately it seems I can't plug the mic into our stereo system, so I'll just have to yell really loudly. Should come naturally. I've hijacked a load of CDs from the libraries and downloaded into itunes.
Oh, and I've also got to make the Littles her costume. As the theme is 'jungle disco', we tried to find something and we went to the hire shop but nothing quite answered. So we went and got some leopard-like fabric and some tulle instead, and I'm going to put together a fluffy skirt and some skimpy top. It'd better be skimpy because the material is furry... she's not going to want too much of that wrapped round her in this heat.
Lara's been enjoying being back at school. Possibly not least because it's air-conditioned in her classroom – unheard of bliss, when I'm sitting in the study up there sweating like a spitted pig revolving rapidly over a barbecue. Started back up at gym again, too. Lillian's not going this term but she seems to be Ok with it.
The local balloon emporium 'ballonaway' is on the way to the gym, so we stopped by there. Oh yes. Five minutes later came out with a pack of 100 modelling balloons. These are the proper, long ones, no nonsense there. Boy, am I going to have fun with 100 modelling balloons! Thought I'd make up a load of animals and give them out as part of the 'goodybag' scenario. They always like those things, don't they. Looks fun, too.
Ian was looking over some word puzzle she'd brought home from school yesterday. One of those 'find the word' puzzles, you know, solid block of letters and you circle words you find in it. He's standing there looking and nodding approvingly, then suddenly jumps with a:
“WHAT?? Why did you circle 'feck'? I'm sure that wasn't on your wordlist!”
I tell you, there's some Irish blood in there somehow.
Dear god that was hot. At the current time of 5 a.m. it's 27 degrees. A neighbouring cricket just woke me up and it wasn't a long walk to the computer, because I slept on the sitting room floor last night, spread-eagled flat on the living-room carpet with no more ceremony than two pillows. Too hot upstairs, though the Mr elected to stay up there. It was 43 degrees yesterday, I think I heard – frankly it felt like more. Was 32 by 8:30 in the morning. Had the whole pizza-oven effect going on when you stepped outside.
Went for my laps yesterday, first time back swimming in nearly two months, felt a bit puffed. Tried to get it done as quickly as possible to get out of the sun. One lenght of 50 meters takes about 30 seconds, and during the actual lap your head doesn't get completely submerged – it's only at the turn that the very top of your head goes under. Each time I noticed how pleasant it was to have the water cool one down: in the intervening 30 seconds it had become so hot.
Someone promised rain today – I sure hope they're right.
Two days of school down the hatch, and boy I've been steaming away (figuratively as well as literally). Actually it's mostly been hammering away at my Sonnets project – I want to get that one done and dusted during the next two months. The recording is nearly finished (was just having trouble with three last ones yesterday), now I'll check them all over and whack them over to Amazon. 'Nuther day or so on that. Then of course there's the website... it's now got the full complement of 154+ pages (one for each sonnet) and if I give it an hour each day for a couple of weeks I should be able to get the pics in each one. It's just that with so many pages even creating the links for the initial index page took an hour yesterday. Still, once it's done it should look pretty respectable. I imagine within a few months of release it'll start netting some traffic – how many of those will actually buy the recording's another matter but it might be better than nothing.
Littles seems to have settled into school pretty nicely. They were all rather quiet on the first day, I suspect maybe zonked out. She managed to hand out her invites to both classes, so the RSVPs for the party are starting to come in. Might take her to a costume shop this afternoon. She's sitting next to Ruby, and is (as we knew she would be) in Mr Pollock's class. Already brought home the first 'sign urgently' thing from the school... sports day with consent form needed for tomorrow and they send out the notifications today. I wonder how many children will turn up to school in normal school uniform tomorrow. Quite a few, I bet. Those newsletters don't make it home on quite a few occasions.
On Monday afternoon Sophie came round with her sisters (and mum) and they said Really sorry can't make it to the party but would you like to come to the beach with us this afternoon? So she did. Seemed to have a great time and got back at about 6. Nearly went face-first into her roast lamb dinner she was so tired by the end of it all.
Yesterday was swimming lesson. Gosh, what terrible swimming. It was one of those days where everything they've ever learned seems to be jettisoned into outer space. Still, I guess we all have days like that. Maybe next time she won't look like a fly drowning in a glass of wine.
The Mr is much better. He's still got a bit of a sore throat but by Monday he was almost-fine and went to work. Today no doubt he'll be slightly underslept due to the heat but what can one do. Move into a house with air conditioning, that's what.
… I've just had to move off the sofa. The sweat was trickling into crevasses from the contact with laptop and leather and being too ticklish. It's all of 5:30 a.m. now. I really hate to think what the day's going to bring.
