fred_mouse

Writing this up on day 3, having a leisurely morning, with the goal to go to Kew Gardens this arvo.

This was our 'go into the city centre to see the sights' day, with the goal to at least see some of the well known ones, and meander. It started off as a low pain day, and went into the screaming into the void levels of discomfort much earlier than expected, so it was significantly truncated, but eh, at least I got to see some this time. On the previous trip, I think I might have taken a train through, but didn't stop.

( not as much of a list as it might be )

 Have survived the dance school end-of-year concert weekend for another year. This year, it was also coupled with youngest's choir end of year concerts. Dress rehearsals for the dance on Saturday, starting at 9:40am for middlest and 10:15 am for youngest; end of dress rehearsal was 3pm. Need to work out how to deal with conflicting issues for next year - kids are neither supposed to go outside, nor eat inside, and as a result middlest had not eaten in hours, and fainted on stage towards the end of the dress rehearsal. A little disturbing!

Eldest, artisanat, and I attended the late afternoon performance - everything looked good, although I note that middlest was being quite cautious in some of the positioning, particularly for the piece with the afore-mentioned fainting. 

I was then back stage on Sunday for the afternoon performance. Which was sadly, at exactly the same time one of youngest's concerts was, so they went to the dance concert, and not the choir concert. From there, headed to the Perth Concert Hall, to drop youngest off for the prep for the last of the concerts. I wandered up the street to sit at a Dome coffee shop. Sadly, they have a whole *two* gluten free items available - chicken soup, and almond and orange cake. Over the course of an hour or so had both, sharing the latter with artisanat, after he met me in town. 

Relearnt about nausea as a warning for 'are you breathing properly'. Timing was such that I should have been taking my preventer at about the point that I started feeling quite nauseous (more so as I ate more of the food, which didn't make sense given the sensation of 'haven't eaten enough' nausea). Walked back to the car (where my rescue inhaler was. I'm sure I left the house with one in my bag, but couldn't find it. There were, sadly, not two in the car, so I've put it somewhere else), felt much better after a couple of lungfuls of ventolin. Then headed up town to meet up with ariaflame, who was coming along to the concert. 

Seats for this concert - D rw, but up against the wall. Fortunately, on the side that youngest spent most of their time on. Interesting that in the performing choirs, where there must be 12 y olds, very hard to spot any that look that young. 

It has been an excessively busy few weeks, and I have been horrid lax at keeping track. It is quite possible that some of this has already been noted, but meh.

( long-winded *and* overly detailed... )

life has been sufficiently busy that I lay down on the couch after dinner last night, woke up and relocated myself to bed, and then woke around 6:30am this morning. I feel better for it, but worse for the list of Things that didn't get touched that I wanted to at least see progress on. *sigh*

Weekend was consumed by dancing - middlest's dancing school end of year concert weekend. Originally planned car-pooling on Saturday morning fell apart when Termagant and I discovered that the dress rehearsal schedules for our kids did not in fact overlap at all. So, artisanat, youngest, and I dropped middlest at Penhros, and headed up the hill to the Kalamunda markets. Interesting, but I think we spent no money (not even on lunch), which is a shame because I had been hoping to pick up a present or three while I was there. Back down the hill, collect middlest, home, lunch, off to Termagant and family's to play kid swap (we went early, taking the dancers, they came a little later, while we sat in the foyer and waited. And waited. Turned out they had broken down on the freeway, and jogged the rest of the way there - the SMS on this topic came through yesterday, a little late to be useful. But we got to see the concert, so all was fine). By the end of the concert, all were exhausted. artisanat did running around of various people so that ten people got home using 1 seven-seater car, as well as collecting owls from the car repair place. Something was done about dinner, but at this remove I haven't the faintest idea what. 

Sunday was two more concerts - I was back stage for the first one, and then ended up watching the second. 

And then back to a 'nearly the end of term' type week. Monday night we were at termagent and owls' for the monthly Indian takeaway meal, Tuesday board gaming, yesterday as mentioned above. In the meantime at work, S and I found an error in the data that necessitated rerunning sections of the analysis, which ended up taking ~2 hours (the first bit took 1.5 hours, the rest all just fit together. One of the advantages of having written all the models out in a script to cut and paste from!), and then finished the last of the analysis required for her thesis. Which leaves me working my way back through abandoned tasks. *urgh*

The last few days have been very busy, but despite this, I'm doing okay (yes, alright, for a value of okay that has me slouched on the bed because my body has Had Enough).

so far, since Friday, I/we have
( (umm, this got long. dot points behind cut!) )

last Tuesday, one of our regular gaming group, D, brought along a laptop with an open source dance game, and a dance mat. I'm easily hooked by such things, and had a great time, and now I *want* one. The game itself is quite easily obtained (go here) for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux, and there are many many many songs that can be downloaded, at least some of which I recognise (Roxette! umm, there was another one, but I've forgotten what it was now).

The stumbling block is getting a dance pad. Which really, is the important bit for the real enjoyment of the game. D pointed out that I need to get a pad with a USB connector, or be willing to modify it appropriately. Unfortunately, it looks like that is going to be quite the effort - EB Games only has them for the Wii (and has incompetent staff, who continued to say 'for which system' after I pointed out I wanted a USB connector), somewhere else I went only had one for the PS2. We ventured into JB HiFi, but it was late on the Saturday afternoon, and we got distracted by the box sets, and didn't actually find any dance mats (which might not have been there anyway). So, if anyone *knows* where I might be able to find such a thing (preferably in Perth, but I'm willing to consider online purchase) I'd really appreciate it!

* thanks, devinjay, for a phrase that makes me smile, every time!