Cheap Therapy

• A relaxing weekend in Mandurah
• Planning an interstate trip
• Wrangling FileMaker, MySQL, PHP, qpopper and postfix.
• Bilby getting much more talkative. Many more words and signs (miming juicing an orange to indicate she wanted OJ!) Long involved soliloquies, if only I could understand what she was actually saying…
• Colds all round Mounds of tissues
• Car serviced.
• Got a call from my ISP claiming I was DoSing someone. Oops (No, it was not a virus)
• Most excellent engagement party with many good friends.
• Baked a Jaffa Marble Cake and a vegan Apple and Almond cake (I was out of walnuts).
• Got a ladder for my birthday. Used it to clean the gutters.
• Got many birthday wishes from people, thankyou, it meant a lot.
• Had a close friend ring up on my birthday to ask me how to send a break from telnet. This was good for the amusement value of him forgetting my birthday at least.
• Watered trace elements into the plants.
• Saw Da Vinci’s machines. Had forgotten how much of it was weapons research.
• Indian buffet.
• Saw Dr. Jones.
• Read Moondust.

Anyone got any good cake recipes they can recommend from experience? Bonus points if they a) use apples, and/or b) are vegan.

It’s not a cake, it’s a South Australian Heritage Icon.

Saturday morning we headed off to The Amazing Race, organised in honour of a friend’s 40th birthday. Complete with initial “Amazing Race” style running to the starting line (apparently on the real show they film it a couple of times to do the closeups!). Then it was digging around in the sandpit, throwing balls into a bucket, and off to the train station and in to the Art Gallery to do some impromptu sculpture, out to Subiaco to find the café for lunch, off to either The Roundhouse or (as we did) catch the Ferry to South Perth to construct either a waist high tower (fortunately Bilby has a low waist :), or a kite (we did both, with a low degree of success :).
After that we caught the ferry back, hunted some statuary and then caught the train back to the car. Along the way we had to collect photos of various objects, and a treasure hunt list of actual objects.
We debriefed and tallied the scores. Apparently a few innocent bystanders had asked “Where are the cameras?”. Then it was time for pizza, birthday cake and three rounds of Dark Zone laser games (for me at least). It’s hard to play with 10kg of child on your arm, especially if she’s sticking her hand over the laser, but she seemed to enjoy it. Then it was time to stagger to the car, barely able to walk.

If you’re an expat or just hankering for a taste of the Netherlands, check out www.dutchfood.com.au. Also some Indonesian sauces there as well.

• Using Google Sketchup to model some housing development and investigate overshadowing. Pretty awesome once you get the hang of it. Write submission
• Probably no WWDC this year
• A birthday dinner for Becc with fine food and company
• A week without students. Meaning lots of things getting done while they’re not around
• Get to see Cygnet for the first time
• A long weekend. ANZAC day. Bless ‘em.
• A picnic in a smaller park than anticipated. But my first time walking both Puggle and Bilby there. Reminder, Bilby is heavy enough I need the stroller
• AppleScripty pythony Dilberty goodness
• Car test driving. Kia Grand Carnival and Toyota Tarago (Last week the Volkswagen Passat Wagon, Subaru Liberty and the Tarago). See a separate post somewhat later
• Games at Kylie’s. Happy Birthday! This time I prove I can lose at Super Scrabble as well as Scrabble

Check out lunchinabox.net for cool food storage ideas. via BoingBoing.

• Jen’s birthday dinner. Spiderwick Chronicles (glad I didn’t bring Puggle, there were some bits that scared me).
• A long weekend in Mandurah. Many dogs to pat. St Bernards are big! Mandurah’s newspapers are filled with a) complaints about mosquitoes (you’d think they’d have thought of that before they moved to an estuarine area), b) discussion about the art at the train station (if it inspires discussion, it’s probably art).
• Made random casserole with chook thighs, leeks, shallots, bacon, corn, cauliflower, and 1L chook stock. Was pretty good.
• Missed many people who were in town. That’s what you get when you book leave in advance. Sorry folks!
• Played with Sketchup and Google Earth to prepare a submisison on a development application. Requires more playing, could be fun…
• Bilby is into books. Does seem to look at them upside down a lot though.
• Discovered the Puggle standard opening (Move all your pawns to the third row).
• Lose weight, annoy your gallbladder. Pained sigh.
• Car shopping. It is cheaper to spend $1000 on new car seats than have to spend an extra $10,000 on a car Build and driving quality varies.
• 40th Anniversary of the cub pack I vaguely remember attending
• Family MacGeeks at the park, conveniently overlapping the end of Swancon at the park. Lens envy. Much thanks to Toby, Skip and David for their culinary efforts. Let Puggle roam free for a bit, at least until in the distance he’s noticed standing on the middle of the island with his pants around his knees. He was distracted by ducks.
• World domination planning continues

We wandered down to Cottesloe to see the last day of Sculptures by the Sea. It had obviously been too long since I’d been to the beach. I found it very relaxing to paddle my feet in the water, even though there was hot sun at 6pm in the afternoon (well, 5pm real time). Cottesloe beach has fond memories for me , going there with Mum or Gran to swim, and a few times to fish, generally unsuccessfully (I remember the old concrete boardwalk before it fell over in a storm, and the sea water swimming pool). To round the day off there was a twinpole conveniently split between Puggle and Bilby. I think my favourites were the snake, the sundial or the peapod tree at the end of the groyne. I asked Puggle which sculptures he liked the best, and he said “the elephants”. Of course, they weren’t actually part of the art exhibit, they were the garden ornaments outside the Indiana Teahouse.

• Software goes live. Nobody dies. Yay!
• MacGeeks at Agni. Mmm.. Curry.
• iPhone SDK amongst other things
• More busage plus walking. More weight loss.
• Lay my hands on an OLPC XO
• Finish Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe
• Mum’s birthday, book club.
• Music night, we have a band (of sorts :). Violin, guitar, and whatever else Bilby and Puggle pick up.
• Take Bilby shopping for the first time although she’s too tired to enjoy it.
• Bilby takes a fall She seems less fazed by it than I am.
• Jamie’s Sausages and 1kg of cherry tomatoes, followed by another mulberry pie thanks to our tree. Now if only the mango tree was as productive!
• Looking forward to the dentist on Monday