trying something just cos someone you like likes to do it

So dancing is a lot of fun, and it seems to be an important part of my life, the way basketball, tennis, climbing, skiing, doing a PhD and being in bands have all been. But when I dance, I dance with people I know from dancing. Only rarely can I dance with a friend, someone I already know. Elisabeth and Linda are two marvellous examples of this. So I was chatting with one of my favourite people in the world the other day, when, completely unprompted, I received the following shiny message:

I'll come dancing with you in melbourne, but you have to understand I do it under sufferance
[me: if you do it, you get massive brownie points!]
you can make me do it but you can't make me enjoy it. ok you can make me enjoy but you can't make me want to enjoy it. ok, you can make me want to enjoy it but i'd find it weird.

Man, I feel so loved! This totally made my day! The only sad part is that I want my other favourite person to say the same thing...

I'M GOING TO THE SNOW TOMORROW!!!!!!

http://www.mtbuller.com.au/Winter/Snow-Report/Snowcams


Spending two nights on Mt Buller with my parents and the kids to do some sight-seeing, snow-creature construction, tobogganing and obviously snowball flinging. I haven't been skiing for about 12 years so I'm hoping to fit in at least a half-day somewhere. I'm so excited.

And then - next week - Anna and Sacha* and Steph and Gustav are coming to visit to do some 4WDing and canoeing and drinking in the spa.

And then - week after - we're taking the kids on their first plane ride up to the Gold Coast to do some theme parking.

And then - week after - we're going to stay at Chris and Lauren's place up in Ipswich to do some sight-seeing and gossiping and drinking.

* excused for reasons of having housewarmings.

Oh my god I'm going to the snow tomorrow I have to pack!

5k to 10k

Hard to believe it was only 4 months ago that I shared my joy at making it to 5k. Today I went out and ran 10k non-stop... well.. probably more like 11, I wasn't measuring it exactly. Got some great tunes from the freeway to 10k and the motion traxx podcasts, and they got me to 10k without too much trouble!

Now that I work in the city, I've joined the army of people who run around the domain/opera house area at lunch. I think most tourists who are out there assume that there's some event on, but it's just like that every day.

Now I feel like I should have registered for the city to surf this weekend - it's only 14km. Oh well.

look ma no hands

wow, this one totally snuck up on me. When I started riding a bike here in Reykjavík, I started trying to ride no-hands, like we always used to do when we were kids. So that's about 2 years ago I started trying, and it was really hard. But, riding home from the swimming pool the other night at about 3am (night-swimming, yay!), I realised I was talking to my friend and I was just riding along no handed, without even realising it! Woo-hoo! How great when a long-term project like that finally bears fruit! :D

Woot!

This week I've shot a shot gun, driven a 4wd over some insane obstacles, gone out into the forest in Rob's Land-rover to use my chain-saw to get a couple of trailer loads of wood (there was SO much mud), played poker and did some plumbing on the sprinkler system.

The country can be fun! Expecially when the slabs of Becks cost $49.

(BTW, that's the new, hipper, country way to spell. There's a guy here who says 'arkse' every time he means 'ask'. Isn't it endearing?)

It's the return of Sink Cat

Pepper-sink-cat circa February 2010:

Pepper-sink-cat cat circa May 2010:

Found things!!

Ooh! Ooh!

I found my pocket knife! Once again I can smugly walk about with a pair of blades, some little but remarkably effective pliers/wire cutters, an assortment of screwdrivers, a can opener and, importantly, a bottle opener on my person, ready to whip out and solve people's problem that they didn't know they had and lecture them that a pocket knife is "usually the WORST tool for the job, but you can normally get something done well enough while everyone else is still looking for the right tool. Ah! There you go! Finished. You can put those scissors away, we didn't need them after all!"

Hooray!

Oh! And I found the camera! Which means that I can take a video of Ella on the climbing wall - she's actually really very good at it when she doesn't know that she can't do it. Because she's so little just about every hold is a clear 1 or inches out of her reach and she has to stretch from full tip-toes to the very tips of her fingers then quickly transfer her weight. It just reinforces for me that kids are natural climbers: they do little tricks and moves that grown adults take months to learn.

Oh! And yes! The camera was with my work phone - for which I have been in deep shit for not being able to find this week. I'm very happy to have found that.