Survived.

Yep.

The car-parking gig was a bit of a disaster, due to me being Extra Stoopid at the time I agreed to do it. See, they needed Cub Scout Parents on three shifts: Thursday evening, Friday morning, and Saturday morning.

When they showed me the timetable, I knew there were gonna be problems. Thursday night - orchestra practice for the boys in Launceston. Friday morning - Younger Son's first violin exam in Launceston. But Saturday morning? I knew there was something askew, but standing there outside the Scout hall, looking another desperate Cub Scout Dad in the eye, I could not cudgel the answer out of my brain.

It wasn't until Friday night, after the orchestra practice (yes, there was one Friday night too) that I remembered. Natalie was the doc on call Friday night. And the on-call system meant she was on call until roughly 0830 Saturday morning. But I'd agreed to be parking cars from 0700!

A quick round of desperate negotiations with Wonderneighbour Anna gave us a crappy but functional solution: I got the kids up and breakfasted with me at 0630. And if Natalie got called before 0830, she was gonna dump the kids at Anna's place, and make the run. Wonderneighbour Anna has five of her own kids... she generally takes the attitude that two or three more don't make much difference. She is, in fact, a Wonderneighbour indeed.

However, when I got down to the show-ring it became apparent that things weren't as tight as expected. Most of the horsey people were already parked and in place, apparently having encamped in the ring. It was kind of weird watching them emerge from tents, brushing their teeth and tending to their horses all at once. Anyway, I had a quick talk with the parking kommandant, and he was cool with having only two Cub Scout parents on duty for the morning. I did volunteer to come back once Natalie was back on deck for the kids, but they waved me off. So I did get the morning more or less loose.

Made it to the birthday barbie for Tiarne, which was nice. But I had to split early to get to the concert.

Man. That concert. Who arranges a concert that includes superjunior orchestras and choirs such that the concert doesn't end until ten thirty at night? Seems a bit much to me. Certainly, I wouldn't have organised it so the grand finale included all the orchestras. I'd have let the poor little buggers go at the interval. But I suppose that wouldn't keep bums on seats. In any case, the Mau-Mau couldn't hack it. By interval, she was a bag of shit -- climbing all over the place, crying... too tired to function. No amount of bribery or cajoling would help. She's four years old, and she needs to sleep. So I took her home. We made it home at about nine thirty, and she was in bed and unconscious within fifteen minutes.

Nat and the boys didn't get home until a quarter to midnight.

We were a bit trashed the next day, yep. But the Show Must Go On. Natalie had a visitor who needed to talk medical stuff. And at about that time, Mad Neighbour Mike turned up full of vim and ire, with a bunch of steam to blow off for various reasons. I poured him a strong Gin and Curacao, and listened to him steam for a while until he was operating at a human level again. It was the only decent thing to do... he really was having a bad day.

Meanwhile, Medical Student Grace arrived on cue. Miss DisGrace is an old Briz writing friend who has now become a medical student and a John Flynn scholar, so it's a pleasure to play host. The kids kind of swarmed her, as they do, but she recovered nicely, and dealt handily with a good dinner. Tragically, she doesn't drink -- so although I used a cup or so of Marlborough sav blanc to cook up a handful of scallops for her, it was necessary for me to finish the rest of the wine.

I don't think she's quite mastered this 'daylight savings' stuff yet, though. It's ten o'clock here, which is 0900 Brizneyland time, and so far as I know, she's still unconscious in the guest room. Or maybe dead. The poor thing has had to change her diet lately for various medical reasons, and perhaps has been somewhat deprived... possibly the scallops on croutons followed by fresh chinese-style chicken soup rounded off with the leftover honey mascarpone ice cream has simply overwhelmed her metabolism, and she's quietly decomposing up there. I hope not. That would be embarrassing.

And in other news: it's raining ever so lightly. Looks like yet another goddam day I'm not going to run the whippersnipper through the overgrown garden area. Oh well. Maybe I can write instead?

Yet Another Weekend Harpooned

Today, I took the Mau-Mau to daycare. Then I took the boys to the Scottsdale Show, which was a bit of a waste because at 0900 in the morning, bugger-all was happening there. So why did I take them?

Well, I'm a Cub Scout parent now. And the Cub Scouts are getting a chunk of cash to supply people to oversee parking in the show-ring itself. Which means Cub Scout parents get dragooned into the job. I'm on from 0700 tomorrow morning, so I figured I'd better find out what the score was before I got thrown in the deep end.

The boys and I wandered 'round the place until I managed to catch up with "Bilge" Bennett, another Cub Scout Parent who was cheerfully handling the gate to the ring proper. He pointed out "Puss" Hadley, responsible for the actual organising of cars and floats and stuff, and I introduced myself so hopefully tomorrow at sparrowfart they'll know where I'm supposed to stand so I can help sort out the "jumpers" from the "hacks" and the "ponies". (I expect that means something in Horsie Person Talk. But it doesn't mean much to me.)

After the visit to the Show, we made it home for a while. Did a bit of laundry and cleaning, answered some emails. Then I packed up the boys and their instruments, and we drove to Launceston.

Younger Son had his very first violin exam today. We had a bite of lunch first, and then rather desperately wandered around one of Launceston's steeper suburbs in search of the St Cecelia School of Music, which eventually materialised. Of course, nobody was actually there. But then Younger Son's teacher arrived, which was good, because while we'd remembered to bring his orchestra music, d'you think we'd brought the music for the actual exam?

Yeah. As if.

Happily, another student was also doing the same exam, and she actually did have all her music, so Younger Son was spared. Mind you, he insisted loudly that he could do it from memory, and from what I've seen, I suspect he was right.

So, the exam finished. We trundled off and bought some new arrows, and a powerful, water-resistant, rechargeable LED torch for my Dad for Xmas. I've been using a 5-watt rechargeable LED maglite-ish thing for years now, and it's fantastic. Reliable, bright as hell... can't fault it. Dad will appreciate it, because in Far North Queensland, having a good, reliable torch at night when you go out is the difference between stepping OVER a Death Adder, and stepping ON it.

After that, we grabbed another bite to eat, and then stopped at the martial arts store to pick up a few bits for the ju-jitsu club. Some tough new rebreakable boards - and it turned out there were some nice rubber knives on special. The students will be pleased: I've been cutting knife silhouettes out of old rubber thongs and spraying them silver...

Then it was time for orchestra practice, involving both the boys. And then, of course, we sped home.

To find we're the only ones here. Natalie is on call tonight, and hasn't made it home yet. Meanwhile, the Mau-Mau has been collected from daycare by Mighty Neighbour Anna (mother of the Mau-Mau's best friend Microblonde) and is doubtless swanning about the delights of the Scottsdale Show even as I write. She'll be delivered here when they're done with her, and I'll get the thankless job of bathing her and stuffing her into her bed.

And when will Natalie get home? Who knows?

Meanwhile, while I'm handling cars tomorrow, Natalie and the kids will go to YET ANOTHER goddam orchestra practice. Yippee. And when they're done, no doubt Natalie will take the boys for a proper visit to the show. But come the evening, we'll ALL be going to the mandatory Orchestra performance...

...but before that, there's a birthday barbecue invite from Tiarne of the Coolshiters. And since I'm gonna be in Launceston later anyhow, I'm damn' well going to go to this one. I've had to skip out on the last couple of barbecues because of Overloaded Weekend Syndrome. Not gonna do it again. I rather LIKE the Coolshiters, and the opportunity to spend a bit of social time with 'em is a Good Thing. At least this is one bit of the weekend I'm going to enjoy.

See, all of that is only Saturday. On Sunday, the live-in medical student arrives to take up her month of Tasmanian Exile. Grace is an old friend from the Briz daze, so I expect she won't be too horrified by the shambolic state of Chez Flinthart, but there will indeed be some work involved in bringing the place up to code for even the most relaxed of guests...

...so as you can see, there's another weekend harpooned, gaffed, flensed, and packaged for the Japanese McDonalds market.

The Invasion From Planet Sag

Dave Sag and I shared a flat a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Neither of us had any real civilisation, or frankly, even house-breaking, at the time. Suffice it to say that a decent number of Mr Birmingham's more horrendous anecdotes in HDWAFIHH originated from houses lived in by Dave, or myself, or both of us at once. But Dave began a life of globe-trotting degeneracy back in the early nineties, about the time when I started the slow crawl towards something like respectability, and we didn't really cross paths a whole lot after that.

And so it was with just the tiniest hint of trepidation that I discovered he was on a driving tour of Tas, with someone of the female persuasion by the name of Caroline. Dave + driving tour + unknown female person has been, in the past, a recipe for disaster. (Ask him sometime about Mercedes-Benz timing chains.) What, I wondered, would this icon of my moderately misspent youth mean to my children here in rural Taz?

Well, we found out pretty quickly. True to form, Sag & Co rocked up about a half hour late, which meant I had to dash off and collect Younger Son from the bus stop pretty much just as their car was pulling in the drive. I duly delegated Elder Son to show 'em where the toilet and the teakettle were to be found, and with no more greeting than a "Hi, Dave!" I scarpered.

Eight minutes later, when I returned with the Younger Son, the Elder Son had already adopted Dave and Caroline both. But mostly Dave, because all of a sudden, Elder Son was hearing oddball stories about his father's time in Briz.

We had a damned good evening. It had been too long between drinks, for sure. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed talking and arguing with Mr Sag. He has a protean intelligence, and a curiosity much like mine: he's interested in nearly everything. It's good to be able to run wild in a conversation, cutting back and forth across topics and ideas, not having to slow down for the other end of the game to catch up.

Caroline was a fine surprise too. I don't think I officially knew Dave got married. (I know. It's on his 'Facebook' page. Like I pay attention to that. I mean, knowing that Facebook is designed to hoover out data for advertising purposes, I pretty much lied in every detail there. And I always assumed most of my friends did too...) Caroline was articulate, funny, thoughtful, and cute, too. Very disturbing indeed, if you know Dave... she's waaayyy too good for you, dude. (But then I can hardly talk!)

They brought along some very fine Pepperberry Gin, and we fought off the vicious afternoon heat with some gin drinkies. Then we dropped the boys at Scouts, did a whirlwind drive through of Scottsdale, and returned for the Cookfest: Chili and Basil Scallops on Croutons; thick-cut, rare, smoky charcoal-grilled scotch fillet steak with my favourite salad of smoky grilled veg, and finally, home-made leatherwood honey mascarpone ice cream.

Mmmm. And we did the wine thing nicely too -- a decent bubbly to go with the scallops (thank you, Clover Hill) and a good, solid red to support the steak. And port after the ice cream.

Through it all, the boys sat wide-eared, soaking up stories about late-night fence climbing entries to swimming pools, and hamfisted attempts to make off with Ronald McDonald statues, and stolen police lights/sirens, and university scavenger hunts thwarted, and rugby-playing transexual computer programmers now become Freelance Mathematicians For Hire... by the time the boys had to go to bed, they were thoroughly rapt. I can see that it's going to be difficult trying to convince them that their dad is a decent, law-abiding, mild-mannered citizen after this.

Nice evening, though. I wasn't entirely sure I'd be able to say this, but -- it was totally excellent catching up with Mr Sag again, and I'm already looking forward to the next Sag/Mills Tasmania expedition.

Well, Crap! Who Punched The Big Red Summer Button?

I had a window of opportunity this morning from roughly 0800 to 1200. In that time, the boys were off to school, and Natalie was here to keep the Mau-Mau under control. Therefore, I brought out the old reliable Honda mower, and started it up.

I really don't understand the prejudice against your simple, four-stroke push-along lawnmower. Sure, I'm hardly going to use it to clear the paddocks. But for the back yard and the orchard, I really don't need a big, expensive ride-on job. And it would take a hell of a ride-on to handle the remaining thirty or so acres that need to be slashed regularly, so I've got a small but enthusiastic tractor for that job.

Anyhow. I fueled up the Honda, checked the oil and the air filter, yanked the cord a couple of times, and it purred nicely. Great! Time to bring the yard back under control...

... but what the fuck happened to my nice, cool morning? By ten o'clock this morning, it was 24C in the shade -- and there was precious little shade on my damned back yard.

At this point, every mainlander who reads this is thinking something rude. To which I must reply: get stuffed. 24 is unseasonably hot, and the direct sun in Tasmania lacks a lot of useful ozone filtration that most of you are used to. I really didn't enjoy hauling that mower around the place at all.

Through the day, the temperature crept upward. By 1430 it peaked at 29C, which isn't just unseasonable, but unacceptable, thanks. I loaded the kids up on ice treats once they got home from school, and we kept our lilywhite asses indoors for the remainder of the nasty, hot, bright afternoon.

Things are better now. It's about 15C outside, which is pretty much the perfect temperature so far as I'm concerned. Next time I tackle that goddam yard, I'll be mowing at night.

It's due to be another warm one tomorrow, apparently, with the faint possibility of thundery showers -- and a 75% chance of Dave Sag sometime after 1500, if all goes to plan.

I haven't seen Dave in quite some time. This should be entertaining.

Another Weekend Shattered...

Natalie's away -- incipient Igoritis of the spine and all -- in Hobart, doing Big Medicine Stuff. Fair enough, too. Like any group of professionals, doctors need to keep their knowledge current, and make sure their skills stay up to date. I just hate it when the Big Medicine Stuff weekends happen at difficult times, such as right now.

Actually, Natalie's back is improving, which is fortunate. I remembered that I'd bought a TENS unit a few years back to take care of a muscle strain that wasn't resolving itself properly. (Okay -- it was a groin muscle, and the goddam strain lasted six goddam months.) Zapping an electric current through your skin may sound a dubious sort of measure, and it's true that nobody seems entirely comfortable with the science behind it as yet, but it works. That muscle strain of mine went away in under two weeks of TENS treatment, and I've had no further problems there.

The application of the TENS unit to Natalie's back has coincided with a sharp uptick in the rate of improvement. It was getting better before, but very very slowly. Once we got the electricity into it, the improvements happened almost hourly. She's well enough now to successfully drive her bucket-seat, low-slung Honda to Hobart and still function at the other end. Compared with a couple days ago, that's positively miraculous.

Unfortunately, this is also the weekend of the big Harley-Davidson owners' rally here in Tas. That's not so bad in itself, although it gets a bit tiresome listening to all those thumping great hogs charging around the hills. But along with the Harley mob came Roz and Steve and their youngster, whom we shall call "K". K and Elder Son were great friends when Roz and Steve lived down here in Taz, so there was much excitement over the prospect of a reunion.

Aha. But with the HOG rally came a stonking great concert for the Harley crowd, culminating in a late night performance by St Jimmy Barnes of the Concrete Tonsils. And thus came the dreaded suggestion of 'The Sleepover'.

...like I could say "no."

So the kids and I tidied the house yesterday, and that went well. Very well. I was impressed by the boys efforts, so I promised 'em we'd find something nifty when we went shopping. Then we went to the car -- and the rear tyre was flat.

Well, fuck.

I've never changed a tyre on the Terrakhan before. Just finding the tools was a job and a half. Locating the barely-adequate jack and tyre iron didn't take long, but finding the special rod to slide into the body of the car to unwind the device that lowers the spare tyre which hangs under the back of the car body took the owner's manual and about forty minutes of car-emptying, swearing, searching, seat-folding and carpet-lifting.

Okay. Tools assembled. Spare tyre duly extracted. Time to jack up the... oh shit.

Ever tried to jack a high-wheel-base vehicle using a compact hydraulic jack with no more than 15cm (six inches) of travel? Seriously: fifteen centimetres of lift, no more. Bloody lucky the tyre died on the concrete pad in the garage. If it had been roadside, I'd have been totally fucked. As it is, I grabbed a wooden chock and then spent fifteen minutes poking around under the car, finding the one and only point on the frame that would actually allow the tyre to clear the ground using no more than fifteen cm of lift...

Of course, once all that was done it was gravy, sure. But by that time, there was no more wiggle room for shopping. Roz arrived with young K, and it was Game On.

We let the kids wear themselves out for a while, then loaded everybody in the now-repaired Terrakhan, went down to Scottsdale and bought some essentials -- pizza makings, a big watermelon, some telescoping aluminium walking sticks for the boys (that was their choice. They wanted the damned things. They were cheap, so what do I care? Weird kids.) and some gin, some curacao and some ice.

Roz stuck around for a cool drink -- just long enough for Feral Rob to show up. Feral Rob is the father of Elder Son's best friend, who we shall call "J", and sure enough, J was in the car too. Happily, there was also a six-pack of Stella Artois. Feral Rob is a man of great and civilised spirit.

K, J, Elder Son, Younger Son and the Mau-Mau tore around outside in the afternoon sun while Rob and I put a dent in the Stella. Finally, the Feral clan had to go, though, so it was back to just me, and a pack of kids.

I put Plan P into action: first, lots of home-made pizza. Second: baths for all kids, and pyjamas. Third: reinstall the big screen and the digital projector in the loft over the garage, and make a fuckload of popcorn.

The kids ate pizza, bathed, pyjamaed, and then rocked out to "The Tale of Despereaux" on the old mattresses in the loft. It wasn't a bad gig, and I was enjoying it too -- at least, right up until Younger Son decided that his tummy hurt.

Younger Son's digestion has been a bit dodgy of late, and this time was a bit worse than usual. I had just time to grab a large, mostly-empty popcorn bowl and shove it under his face before he got started. Now, the Younger Son is a stocky, surprisingly muscular little gobshite, and unlike most kids of six-going-on-seven, he has serious goddam abdominal muscles. Every gym trainer, every doctor who's ever examined him, practically everyone who's ever lifted him up -- everyone notices. It's odd.

And when he's puking, it's unfortunate -- because all that abdominal muscle just tightens up into one huge spasm. He gets range, and power, and by god he gets vocal volume. Sounds like he's trying to gargle a chainsaw. Despereaux definitely came off second best, even in full digital surround-sound.

Yech.

Happily, it was a one-chuck event. Once he'd divested himself of watermelon, ginger beer, home-made pizza and popcorn, Younger Son was quite happy to brush his teeth and get on with the film.

I took the Mau-Mau down to her bed when the film ended, but as it was a treat for the boys, I let them choose another film. They went with "The Revenge Of The Pink Panther" (the real one, with Peter Sellers) and I left them to it. After all, I could easily hear them from my bedroom, and I didn't want the Mau-Mau to be alone in the house, even when she was sleeping.

The original plan was for the boys to camp out in the loft, on the mattresses with the sleeping bags and all -- but they chickened out, so when Clouseau had finally thwarted poor old Dreyfus once again, they trooped down and set up in the boys room.

Of course, being as how it's summertime down here, there was no goddam hope of a lie-in, no matter how late they were awake. 0630: the sun's well up, and the thump-thump-thump of clumsy sub-teen feet is all over the house... sigh.

Gonna be a long, hot day today. I've already loaded 'em up on pancakes and watermelon. They've played the Wii on the big screen for a couple hours, but it's too hot up there now, so they're left to their own devices. I can't let that go on too long, though... so I'm cutting this short.

Natalie gets back maybe 1930 tonight. Roz and Steve will -- theoretically -- come to collect their spawn sometime before that. So... I've got maybe eight hours to go.

Wish me luck.

This Is Really Stretching Coincidence

So there's a theory out there which says basically that the Large Hadron Collider is causing ripples through time to prevent the discovery of the Higgs Boson - that the future is sabotaging the present to prevent the real-world-physics equivalent of a divide-by-zero error. Seriously: there are people who think this is truly, actually, mathematically the case, viz:

"In a bizarre sci-fi theory, Danish physicist DrHolger Bech Nielsen and Dr Masao Ninomiya from Japan claim the LHC startup has been delayed due to nature trying to prevent it from finding the elusive Higgs boson, or "God particle".

They say their maths proves that nature will "ripple backward through time" to stop the LHC before it can create the God particle, like a time traveller who goes back in time to kill his grandfather"

There's another reference to this idea here, from the usually sane New Scientist magazine. It's not the first time that science has suggested that quantum effects can move backwards as well as forwards in time. In fact, I believe it's an accepted part of certain quantum models. But nobody's really put forward any real-world cases for it actually doing anything... until now.

That Large Hadron Collider thing, on the border of France and Switzerland - the one everybody was worried might create a mini black hole last year before some kind of helium coolant leak shut the fucker down for nearly a year, that one? Well, they got it up and running again. And they're getting set to go, baby go. Except that all of a sudden, there's been another technical glitch, and they've had to bring it back down for a while.

And what was the glitch this time?

Well, apparently a bird dropped a large chunk of baguette onto some of the exposed workings of the machinery on the surface. Really. Here's another reference: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/05/lhc_bread_bomb_dump_incident/

I don't know about you, but that whole time-ripples-hiding-the-Higgs-Boson thing is starting to look like maybe we should give it some more serious consideration.

The Reviewer's Burden...

I read a Dan Brown Novel.

I wish I hadn't.

Go and read the review, and bask in your good fortune at not having to read the book yourself.