Is anyone local to us willing and able to look after Agent Weasel for us tomorrow evening from about 4.30pm till 2am?

Our regular babysitters are unavailable, sadly.

Deal includes takeaways for dinner and full access to the DVD collection and Internet, and we'll pay for your time.

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Enough with the anvils, already.

And it's really short. Karl took to me with a No. 3 comb on the clippers.

While DH was taking pictures of me, we decided to take one of the Safety Hat too.

( Pictures back here )

Agent Weasel is off at Adventure Camp with her school, so DH and I decided to go out for dinner and a movie.

Dinner was at the South East Asian Restaurant, and was very good and _very_ reasonably priced. I had Beef Rendang for the first time ever and really liked it.

The movie was _Julie and Julia_, which I really liked. Julia Child was such an amazing person! I'll have to see if I can get my grubby mitts on a copy of _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_.

Got a bunch of stuff done this weekend, buying new running shoes for Agent Weasel, who's off on adventure camp for three days next week. (That's in addition to the new tramping boots and the sleeping bag to replace the one that's being held together by duct tape. And the new school shirt. Adolescents are expensive.)

There was also much laundry, two really nice dinners, homework, cinnamon yogurt-raisin muffins, checking out a new book/CD/DVD/coffee place, Bill Bailey and a new musical discovery -- check out Fanfare Ciocarlia, who do the best, craziest cover of Born to be Wild that I've ever heard. (And if you're wondering where you've heard it before, it was in Borat.) Aaaaand you need to hear their cover of the James Bond theme. Fortunately they're both available at the link, so go clicky.

Go on! Clicky! Shoo! Seriously. You'll thank me.

Maybe.

Aaaand last but certainly not least, the Safety Hat is about two rounds away from starting the decreases for the top. Yay!

In the end I bought two balls of safety orange and one each of safety yellow, safe-ish green, safe-ish pink and bright lipstick red.

Have cast on and started a simple ribbed cap in the safety orange -- it'll keep my head safe when I'm walking to work on dark mornings. First time I've used double-pointed needles, and it wasn't very traumatic at all (I only had to restart twice).

Once this is done I'll look into Jayne hats. Yes I will.

To buy a ball or two of Safety Orange 8-ply acrylic. And yes, I'm really looking for an excuse, rather than a reason...

I refuse to knit acrylic into socks (stinky feet, yo), but I really really want safety orange yarn...

Any suggestions for what I can make out of it?

Well, Her Weaselness is 11 1/2 now, taller than me, and in rude health. Here's what she's been up to recently.

Her Science Fair project won her a bunch of awards, which was great (and we were so proud), but it's the aftermath that's been interesting.

Within 24 hours of posting the news on LJ I'd had e-mail from one of the high mucky-mucks of the Python Software Foundation suggesting she might like to present a paper at Kiwi PyCon, the Python Community conference last weekend in Christchurch. We had a look at the website and discovered that the deadline for submissions was a week previously. So we asked the Agent whether she'd be interested in going, and when she said she was, we e-mailed and asked if we could submit late.

We got a lovely e-mail back from one of the organising committee saying that there were other options besides a formal submission, and settled on a 45-minute Open Spaces session, which is more informal and relaxed than Giving A Paper.

Within 24 hours of that, we got e-mail from one of the editors of Python Magazine asking if she'd be willing to write up her Science Fair project for an article. After I picked myself up off the floor I asked her if she'd be interested. She squeaked and then said "Okay!"

So she wrote a 1000-word article for them called "Python Goes to the Fair" which should, all going well, be in the next issue.

If this weren't enough to squee about, she will

get paid

get her article published exactly as she wrote it -- the editors didn't think any alterations needed to be made _at all_.

Once we'd all recovered from that, it was time to actually GO to Kiwi PyCon! Which the three of us did (DH and the Weasel as formal delegates and me as Logistical Support for the other two, in case DH needed time out, a supermarket run was needed, etc).

It was well worth it. We all learned a lot (even me, sitting in the back of the room knitting), and got to talk to some really interesting people.

(The Weasel and I also got to play with the OLPC XO, and I'll freely admit I fell in love with it. I need to download Sugar and have a play.)

The Open Spaces talks were cut to 30 minutes in length because there turned out to be six really good topics rather than the previously-scheduled four, but that worked out well. The Weasel's mini-presentation went really well. Not only did she speak to the group like she was born to it, she was asked good questions and had some good answers, and, even better -- was given some ideas for how she could expand her research in future years.

So that was a total and utter win. Sadly we probably won't be able to get to the next one, which is in the Bay of Islands, but we'll certainly keep our ear to the ground.

In other news, the Weasel has also been achieving well at school, being the recipient of four more colours (including a second Citizenship, for helping out with the school's 75th Jubilee), and being the only Year 7 to get a Distinction for her Oral Communication exam.

Go the Weasel! We're so proud of her we could almost pop.

I've been getting more than my fair share of toxic earworms recently.

Some examples:

Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen
The Pina Colada Song
I've Never Been To Me (bleah)

That kind of thing.

So!

What are YOUR suggestions for the most toxic earworm EVAR???

C'mon, let me have it!

DH doesn't usually make macros of photos he's taken. He decided to with this one, and I'm glad.

Every public holiday, and for several weeks over Christmas, Radio New Zealand put on a programme called Matinee Idle.

It's one of the few radio programmes that we will schedule time to listen to, because it's always interesting and often very, very funny. We hear songs we thought we'd never hear (and some we end up wishing we'd never heard) and always have a lot of fun.

It's on rite nao, and if you want to listen in, go to Radio New Zealand and click on Listen Live, then choose National Programme. You won't regret it.

Burgen have put out a range of GF breads that are really, really good. They have white, fruit spice, corn and poppy and (something I forget) and linseed. OMG good.

On the flip side, Nice'n'Natural nut bars "new and improved" recipe has wheat in it. Fuckers. Pam's nut bars say "traces of gluten" but have no gluten-bearing ingredients in them.

An instant pick-me-up for those dark days.

I was in Knit World today (buying yarn for another project, but let's not go there and say we did) and picked up a leaflet asking for peggy squares to make into blankets for Samoa. I picked one up and plan to make a strip of 10 squares of different colours (just join on the next colour rather than knitting 10 squares and sewing them up).

Leaflet text and pattern follow:

Knit World are currently running a nationwide appeal to knit peggy squares to make blankets for those in Samoa affected by the recent tsunami.

Lavea’i Trust Inc have organised a container to Samoa at the end of October. We are trying to get as many blankets knitted during this time [as we can].

If you can help make peggy squares or help sew them up we would really appreciate it.

To make a 20cm x 20cm peggy square:

Using Double Knit yarn and 5.00mm needles cast on 35 stitches and knit in garter stitch for 20cm. Cast off leaving a long length of yarn to sew up.

If you are knitting more than one peggy square why don’t you knit a long strip to help us save on sewing up.

Peggy Squares can be dropped off at any Knit World shop.

Thank you so much for helping!

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My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
micheinnz goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Winston Peters.
glasshopper gives you 15 orange tropical-flavoured gummy bats.
jexia gives you 6 mottled green coconut-flavoured gummy worms.
lutramania tricks you! You lose 18 pieces of candy!
mordecai5 gives you 2 mauve grapefruit-flavoured gummy worms.
octopusgrrl tricks you! You lose 4 pieces of candy!
pleiadeslion gives you 10 red-orange tropical-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
saluqi tricks you! You get a block of wood.
submarine_bells tricks you! You get a toothbrush.
trixieleitz gives you 10 red grapefruit-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
wcg tricks you! You get an eraser.
micheinnz ends up with 21 pieces of candy, a block of wood, a toothbrush, and an eraser.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

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Haven't done one of these in a while.

( Forty things... )

Knitting the Alien Illusion scarf from Stitch'n'Bitch. The needles I'm using are too bendy and not slippy enough. I hate having to buy duplicates of things I already have, but these damn needles are getting me down. Grrr.

Am home from epic road trip.

More later.