The Event Continues

Photos of monsters?

Hey, you! Yes, you. Do you have photos of monsters you've taken? Are they made of win? Would you be willing to give them to me to use in a book of The Event? It doesn't matter if the background is not ideal - we can photoshop in scenes from around Wellington later. If you've taken photos of sea monsters in front of a green screen that'd be ideal. Also if you have photos of Wellington locations we could use as backgrounds for the monsters that'd be cool :-) - The waterfront - The bucket fountain - Any inconic Wellington locations - Storm clouds over the harbour - rocks at the shore

The marvellous CG

The Exquisite Corspe that Hix put us on to has lead to us getting back in touch with Chris, who is writing some hilarious (and spooky) short fiction on his blog: DadCo - an awesome proof for a pamphlet for DadCo.

Who are we and what do we do, we make plastic lawn furniture. We make round white plastic tables and plastic chairs in sets of four which come with. There’s a whole in the middle of the table and we make “sun-brellas” which go in the whole. They come in three colours. White with yellow and purple stripes, White with yellow and blue stripes, White with yellow and orange stripes. That’s all we do. We make them in Hamilton and we send them up as far as Auckland and down as far as Tokoroa. We used to make BBQs but the contractors we had for the gas tanks were useless, it was a nightmare. & also safety regulations.

You are incorrigible - a children's story about a boy at a train station and NOTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY. Problems with our elephants - a report from the zoo about some odd elephant goings on.

Eventful Monday

 Phew, yesterday was crazy. We had an extra early morning with Dom (who it must be said is not usually one for sleep-ins), and had to take the zombie-like bleary eyed looking after him in two shifts. He ended up waking up from his morning nap about the time he usually goes down for a nap and it kind of left me feeling like the whole day was slightly out of whack.

We were busy though and went for two rompy walks (one to the park to feed ducks, another to Kotuku park and playground). We saw swans, pukeko, a sun-bathing kotuku and a pair of dappled greys being ridden down towards the beach. Of course Dom was most excited by the various dogs that we spotted and an affectionate neighbourhood Siamese cat who sauntered over to the buggy to purr loudly and demand fusses from us.

Then there was an exciting email. It seems that my brilliant hubby is going to have an article he wrote published towards the end of the year. I was super impressed at how speedy their response was and how glowing the acceptance email was. (Man, I want an acceptance letter – not just for the obvious glee at getting published and paid for writing, but to see if they often include praise of your writing as well).

It eerily followed on from a dream I had not long after Matt sent the article off. In my dream, he had it accepted but was then insisting on sending the magazine a picture of a cartoon dragon he had drawn (it didn’t look dissimilar to Trogdor). I tried to tell him not to, that dragons had nothing to do with the article but he was adamanet that the magazine would think it was cool. I was unaccountably really upset and worried by this in the dream.

I now seem to recall that I was the one who told Matt to write the article back in the holidays and suggested the magazine to send it to (and found the correct email address). I vaguely remember him promising to buy his wife a pressie with the money if it was accepted but maybe that was in the dream rather than real life. Such a promise is somewhat wishful thinking but it is at least more plausible than the cartoon dragon incident.

At the end of the busy day, we decided to have an early dinner and it was just as well. For at the exact moment that Matt was taking Dom out of his high chair, there was a power cut. There was just enough light to stumble around and find things but it was still somewhat inconvenient. It turns out baby-proofing your home so that there are no matches anywhere in reach of young hands actually is a bit of a pain in a dark power cut.

Luckily, we located torches and then could find matches as well. I was worried that Dom would be freaked out by the whole situation but he thought it was fantastic. We went out onto the street to check it wasn’t just our house and he loved watching the headlights of the cars driving by. We set up a bright lantern in the lounge and Matt and I performed a cabaret of song and dance for Dom. He thought it was great but I doubt many would share his opinion. We have no plans to start touring with our act at this stage and I think everyone should be grateful of that.

It turns out playing with various toys by torch and lantern light is just as fun for little toddlers.

The power came back on after a while. We breathed a sigh of relief and I went to switch on a heater in the bedroom as it was getting cold. I was just remarking that “I love electricity” when the power went out again. I believe it went out when I was exactly half-way through the word electricity.

Important life lesson. Never say ‘I love electricity’ after a power cut. It angers the gods of all things electric and they take your power away again.

It was now close to Dom’s bedtime. We chose to forego the usual bath and went straight to the bedroom. We let him watch an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba on the laptop while we all snuggled on the bed under the duvet. Even the cat came and joined us.

I was beginning to give up hope of the power coming back on after a while. We had ourselves warmly set up in the bedroom with enough light to read by and started to settle Dom down to sleep. He went to sleep a little later than usual but was wonderfully behaved throughout so that’s a bonus. The power came on a while after he went to sleep so we even got to watch a bit of TV and have nice evening with heaters, lights, clocks, hot drinks and various other benefits of modern living.

It really made me appreciate the many creature comforts that we have these days. While they may not be essential to survival, they sure make winter nights more pleasant.

I love electri… you know what I mean.

Week's writing

6486 / 15000 words. 43% done! 1180 words this week, plus 478 words of The Event. Not a huge amount but on track!

Ice cream cookie sandwich

 Ice cream is delicious. Chocolate chip cookies are also full of deliciousness. So naturally I was pretty excited when I saw that you can buy Chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches. We bought one for Dom (on the grounds that he would probably only want a couple of bites then we could have the rest - which didn't exactly go to plan.)

Unfortunately, Dom was rather keen on his ice cream sandwich.

There appeared to be little hope of him ever giving it up.

Fortunately, he did at least stop munching for a second so I got to sample a quick bite or two of stolen ice cream goodness.

However, I have to say it did not meet my high expectations. The ice cream was yummy and creamy but the cookie was dry and lack flavour. Obviously many biscuits don't stand up well to being frozen but I still expected it to be moister and more cookie doughish.

It got me thinking as to what would be the perfect cookie to create an ice cream sandwich. The cookie would have to be reasonably soft or else all the ice cream would squish out the sides whenever you bit into it. Entirely chocolate coated biscuits would leave you with melted chocolatey fingers.

I suppose a cookie time cookie would be great but they're huge. Eating two of those with a slab of ice cream between them would probably be more than I could manage.

Maybe it requires freshly baked choc chip cookies? I don't know I'm struggling to think of a packet biscuit you can buy that isn't unsuitable for ice cream sandwich purposes.

Such are deep and complex dilemmas are the things I grieve over on long winter nights...

Event Update

My part two is up. So are Jenni's Part Two and Debbie's Part Two. I am loving The Event. So much fun!

Half way to week's quota

5937 / 15000 words. 40% done! If I do some more during Dom's nap tomorrow I should meet the week's total nicely. Been doing some marking in the evenings, procrastinating on other nights. Not a great start to the term writing-wise but still on track for my modest goal. Now to write the next bit of The Event!

Space Cadets

Debbie mentioned in a comment over on Jenni's blog that one of the things we've been enjoying this week is panel shows. QI is one of our favourite shows and this week we've been dipping our TV watching toes in 2 shows - Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Space Cadets. Bill Bailey is a common element of both, as is the unimportant nature of the questions. Really, it's all about cracking jokes (in the case of Space Cadets) and taking the piss out of panelists (on Buzzcocks). By far the best thing about Buzzcocks is the ruthless mockery of the guests by the host. It's especially good when other members of the panel join in. We've only seen one episode of Space Cadets so far and it was a fun, geeky distraction. Bill Bailey and Craig Charles are the team captains with Greg Proops as the host in a sci-fi quiz. There were possibly more questions in this show than in the episodes of Buzzcocks we watched, though there was a similar amount of mucking about making the funnies. It's not brilliantly funny but the first show did feature a very good-natured William Shatner as a guest and had enough giggles to keep us watching. We've grabbed the next 6 eps from Youtube and will watch them over the next week or so :-)

The Event Kicks Off

Debbie has organised a group writing thingy which has so far been a lot of fun. It's called The Event and will see five writers following five characters through a life-changing event in Wellington. The writers involved are Steph, Jenni, Chris, Debbie and myself. OK, so I probably don't need to link to my blog from a post on my blog, but I wanted my name to be a link too. Each of the five of us are going to write 5 short pieces of fiction following our respective protagonists. The characters may well meet up, interact, kill each other, whatever, so we'll be trying to play nice (where nice means giving each other room to move and have fun, not actually being nice to the characters). The first installment from each of us is up in one big post over on The Event's blog. Future entries will probably be of the one-bit-of-writing-per-post type. Probably. We haven't collectively decided what the event is actually going to be. I may be pushing for an alien invasion. Or talking cats. Or a plague that makes people slowly melt into organic stew. Hopefully the rest of the group have some good ideas ;-)

Last day of the Holidays

 Well, the holidays are nearly over but they have been wonderful. Amazingly neither Matt or myself got sick as usually happens on any winter holiday so we've been able to pack in a lot of fun into every day. The weather has also been fantastic (well, cold but not raining most days) so we've been able to go out for lots of walks which is great.

I've think these holidays can chiefly be remembered for the plentiful walks to parks and playgrounds, and that fact that I have been baking (and of course eating) muffins obsessively throughout the two weeks.

Matt and I have both managed to squeeze a productive amount of writing into everyday except the middle Sunday so that's good too, and the whole family got haircuts.

Photo Highlights:

Dom helpfully modelled a stylish Tutu that Giffy had made.

Dom enjoyed his visits to Kotuku park and playground. Lots of stones and bark to grab as souvenirs...

... or to throw into the water.

Climbing up the slide is always fun.

Dom and his dad walk around Kotuku park towards the playground.

The ducks at the park got so used to our daily visits that they started spotting across from the other side of the park and race over to meet us. Dom enjoys their rowdy quacky greetings.

Another daily ritual is stump walking. Dom steps up and down over every tree stump. Lots of fun.

Te Papa

 

On Friday we went to Te Papa and meet up with Angelo and his parents for a fun (and action packed) visit. Two busy little chaps equals a fast and active romp around but we snapped a few pictures that weren't a complete blur of toddler zooming past.



Climbing up stairs is fun.



So is climbing up the ramp.



Looking out the glass overbridge at the water.



Dom with his Dad at Te Papa.



Huge white light circle on the ground. Very cool.



The boys chill with their dads in the Discovery centre.



Playing with giant lego. Far more interesting that the ice cream in the bottom left corner.



Chompy-chomp on giant lego.



Dom is not one to be intimidated by large birds.



Dom has to be held back from crawling all over the giant squid.



Dom next to a big rock...



... inevitably leads to Dom trying to chomp the big rock.



A rare photo in which Dom is in focus and the background is blurry.

One more day to go

5306 / 15000 words. 35% done! Tomorrow is the last day of the holidays. So far I've written 10, 523 words this holidays. I have marking to do tomorrow (I made a start today but haven't done much) but will try to do a little more writing. Then it's term time with the modest goal of about 1000 words a week :-)

Operation Monarch Rescue

 
 
 
 

Two days ago we spotted 15 monarch butterflies in the park on our morning walk. Yesterday there were still a number of butterflies flitting about in the park and one sad little fellow stuck in the water. Dominic rather enjoyed watching the attempt to remove the butterfly from the water and give it a fighting chance, and the mission was a success (in that the butterfly was removed from the water without me falling in).



Slightly bedragled but not drownded, the butterfly was carefully placed on the grass in the sunshine to dry out.

The view from our lounge

 

Up before 5am today

5005 / 15000 words. 33% done! Tidied during Dom's nap rather than writing, so have done an evening writing session. Good practice for next week :-)

Off to work I go

4270 / 15000 words. 28% done! Now to collect marking.

Om nom nom

 

Time running short

I think I'm going to have to do some marking in the next few days which is going to slow down my writing considerably. Well, it's going to force me to write in the evenings when Dom's asleep, at least. His naps are about 90 - 120 minutes long, which is a great amount of time to have a cup of tea, clean up the morning's dishes and mess, maybe put a load of washing on, and get a solid 45 minutes writing done. If I want to get an hour of marking in during each of his naps for the rest of the week that's going to push writing back into the evening. On the plus side I think I work faster in general when there's something I want to do when I'm finished. This week it'll be spending time with Debbie in the evenings and watching The Shield season 4. It's a very compelling show! So I think if I can squeeze in a productive half hour each evening I should still be able to make some good progress, even if I am marking during Dom's naps.

3698 / 15000 words. 25% done!

Incremental progress

2965 / 15000 words. 20% done! Spent yesterday reading Kiki, visiting family, and recovering from our expedition, so did zero writing. One of my goals for Term 3 is to try to do *some* writing every day, even if it's only ten minutes. Little bits add up to good progress pretty quickly, and I'll be aiming to write for more extended periods during Dom's weekend naps. Season 4 of The Shield is very compelling - we ended up staying up past 10pm last night to finish an epidose. Past 10pm! Wild crazy partying, for sure :-)

Operation Bathblocks

For the grandmothers :-) 

Operation Bathblocks from Matt Cowens on Vimeo.