nz minus approx 11 / j minus approx 18…

happy dance — i would so love to be doing my happy dance, but no, not yet…

now? no, not yet…

hey, cool — the mathematics & science center in central virginia asked if they could use my toy robot as an illustration for some educational material they’re developing on robotics…

okay, now — still freaked out & stressed out of my tiny little brain, but yes, some brief happy dancing is in order…

nz minus approx 12 / j minus approx 19…

early showers, then fine — woo! made it to work in this morning’s 45 minute window of bright sunshine… cue the pouring rain… again…

so, so, so, so much to do — do-de-do…

you do it yourself — you do, & that’s what really hurts…

nz minus x / j minus y…

oops — i think i miscalculated the whole countdown thing from the outset (which i admit doesn’t bode well for me making my flight)… it used to be i just got the times wrong — now i’m getting confused with the dates as well… (wow, it’s lucky my job doesn’t involve figures, right? uh…) mebbe i might have to head out to the airport a couple of days beforehand & sleep there…

[resets counter via slap upside the head…]

nz minus 13 / j minus 20… (or thereabouts…)

wet wet wet — the rain’s supposed to be clearing any day now, but it continues to drizzle (with the occasional heavy shower interspersed for a bit of variety)… although, to be fair, we are getting flashes of blue sky today…

i did but see him passing by — his royal daveness has been & gone… touched down monday night, breakfast in the city on tuesday morning (at snappahead — no, really) before h.r.d. headed off to his meeting & an afternoon flight back north… he’ll be back for a couple of days just before i head off on my trip… whenever that is…

weird head — my head is in such a weird place right now… very busy at work trying to finish off a couple of projects & get some sort of plan sorted out & put in place for the weeks i’m away… of course, what i’d rather be doing is staring off into space, thinking little happy thoughts about tokyo… [mmmm, tokyo… stares off into space…] uh, but that just ain’t gonna cut it…

korea move — keri’s been awarded an asialink fellowship! she’ll be resident at sogang university in seoul for four months from september next year…

nz minus 16 / j minus 23…

bachelor pad — keri’s gone to katoomba this weekend to do yoga… she’ll be back on sunday, which doesn’t leave me all that much time in which to not take out the rubbish & not do the dishes & actively strew clothes everywhere… but, you know, obviously i’ll being doing my best…

drowned — got totally soaked on the ride home last night, solid rain from camperdown all the way to coogee… & it’s been raining/drizzling pretty much all day today… hardly feels like spr/ummer…

missed it — in the (what passes for) excitement of getting patted on the head (for doing a halfway reasonable/competent job on developing a proof of concept system at work), i completely missed the announcement of the new 20-inch iMac… but you’d have to think it has my attention now…

happy birthday, linda!

nz minus 17 / j minus 24… (&
linda’s birthday minus 1, &
his royal davenesseses’ visit minus 2…
happening all it is, yes…)

saru mo ki kara ochiru — even monkeys fall from trees…

that’s some tidy work — congratulations to el davebot on this, the most auspicious occasion of his passing of the test for his motorcycle licence! hmmm… wasn’t having a motorcycle licence meant to be a prerequisite for something or other? ah well, better late than never… (congrats, too, on the very nicely done text-based rendition of song two… da-da da-da-da da-da-da-da woohoo indeed…)

nz minus 18 / j minus 25…

royal tour — his royal daveness is coming to visit!

misty weirdness — all misty & weird in the eastern suburbs this morning, although it burnt away pretty quickly…

what the? aw, fuckity.

dance dance dance — went & saw two pieces by lucy guerin at the opera house studio with keri & catherine last night… melt was very, very good, incorporating amazing sound & motion graphics… the ends of things seemed slightly patchy & unfocussed by comparison, struggling after a narrative that the work never really managed to grasp…

did i mention i’m going to japan?

p.s. japan!

p.p.s. & new zealand.

p.p.p.s. woo!

a whim away — so i was trying to get organised to go to new zealand in december, but really i was thinking i’d rather go to japan & my nz organisation kinda wasn’t happening, &, well, one moment of genius & a corresponding mad plan later & i’m flying into wellington in early december, touring around with keri for a week or so then flying out of auckland to narita in mid-december for three weeks in japan (hopefully i’ll make it beyond the confines of the airport this time…)

think you’re pretty clever, don’t you boy? radiohead tickets arrived last week…

hmas university of sydney — the car i was assigned from the pool for my trip to canberra way back whenever turned out to be a station wagon the size of an aircraft carrier… so, i did what anyone would do in that situation — threw my bike in the back & set the cruise controls for the heart of the sun…

canberrable — had a good time while i was out there, caught up with everyone, went to the pub, watched some dvds, went for a couple of rides…

i’m a reasonable man get off my case — came back to sydney & lasted two days then fell in a bit of a heap… spent a couple of days in bed doing the whole mildly teary existential thing… just a minor spot of exhaustion, i’d pretty much regrouped by sunday…

am/pm — of course, i’m already copping a ribbing about checking departure times… i mean, sheesh, a guy misses a flight or two…

day two, post-demo — whilst still in no position to be making any claims to have serenely & majestically mastered filemaker fu, the system i’ve been developing was well received at the demo i gave on wednesday… my hitherto insane stress levels have now (mostly) dissipated, & i’m simply left with the usual metric shitload of things that need to be done before we can move from prototype to version one…

road trippy — i’ve meetings at ANU on monday, so i’m heading to the nation’s capital for the weekend…

stressed out — of my tiny little brain…

repeat quietly to self — it’s not an insurmountable problem, it really is an opportunity… it’s not an insurmountable, crash ’n’ burn problem, it really is an opportunity… it’s not an insurmountable, crash ’n’ burn, hang your head in shame & find yourself living on the streets muttering quietly to yourself kinda problem, it really is an opportunity…

c’mon party people — throw your hands in the air like you just don’t care… now, take a few deep breaths, put your hands back on the keyboard & do this thing…

alrighty then — opportunity grasped… homelessness avoided… some inadvertent muttering to self occuring regardless…

head, spinning — & not in a good sense… goddamn there’s suddenly a lot to do…

bright-eyed & ouchy-tailed — didn’t scrub up too badly this morning… my knees are a little sore, but nothing too serious, & yeah, on the whole, feeling fine…

radiohead tickets! finally managed to get through & make a booking… it took approximately forever, & i strongly suspect the allegedly “best available” seats may well require the use of oxygen masks, but still…

documental as anything — another couple of hundred pages of filemaker documentation just arrived for my learning pleasure… i’ve been teetering on the cusp between knowing conceptually what i wanna do but not knowing enough about filemaker to actually implement for a few days now… this should finally push me over the edge, one way or the other…

in which a cyclist discovers hitherto unsuspected levels of fitness — my goal was to do this morning’s sydney to the gong ride in under four hours, & i’m very happy (in a nerdy cyclist kinda way) to announce that my time for the eighty-eight kilometres of the ride itself was three hours & fifty-five minutes at an average speed of twenty-two point five kilometres/hour… i officially declare this to be Not Too Shabby…

& while i was at it — i did the round trip to the start & back from the finish on the bike (easier to do when the finish is in sutherland)… total distance was one hundred & thirty point one kilometres, a new personal record for my biggest ever day in the saddle… & oh, my aching arse… no, really. aching. arse. total time in the saddle, six hours & ten minutes, average speed for the day twenty-one point one kilometres/hour…

did i mention my aching arse? but! my legs feel surprisingly good, & i got into some totally weird zone & made it over the hills in the national park without any dramas… just completely nailed them, even the one at otford that’s approximately vertical… & now that i have a hydration pack, i didn’t have to stop for water & rode the whole thing without a break… i guess it’s amazing what an extra twelve months of reasonably solid riding will do…

celebrity smack down — adam spencer (who happens to be a fellow cycle commuter) was lording around at the start line with the number one entrant’s bib pinned to his shirt & getting interviewed over the p.a., yadda yadda… as luck would have it, i got through the line to get my card stamped & hit the course at the same time adam started… which was also the last time i saw him all day… totally smoked him… thanks for coming, mr spencer… although i must admit he rides a rather nice trek road bike… (well, for a road bike, it’s kinda nice…) not a bad day out in the end — two new personal bests & Officially Faster than adam spencer… (almost the last thing i heard over the p.a. as i was heading home from the finish — adam spencer is still out on the course somewhere, but we’ll be talking to him as soon as he arrives…)

same but different — so yeah, the new course wasn’t too bad, although it managed the geographically improbable feat of being mainly uphill on the way out & mainly uphill on the way back… & you definitely end up with more of a sense of achievement when you ride from one city to another, as opposed to riding halfway to another city then sweeping around to finish in a park you rode past on the way outta town… i was talking to paul (some guy from newcastle) on the way back & he was doing the we shoulda just turned right when we went past the first time routine…

less coast, more climbing — it’s a shame the coast road to wollongong is closed, because it’s really a nice ride… the alternate route turned right just after bald hill lookout & took us up a very bloody long hill back through the park before joining the old princes highway & heading back to sutherland…

do i really wanna go to parramatta? so now i hafta decide whether or not to do the rta cycle sydney on the thirtieth… i probably will, although it was kinda crap last year… mebbe if i get there earlier it might not suck quite so badly… & i guess if cyclists keep turning up en mass for these kinds of things this city might one day decide to build a half-decent network of bike paths…