Cocktails with the Rude Mechanical

Started this post more than a week ago and forgot to finish it. So here it is - old news, but never mind!
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Saturday 24 Feb I received a surprise visit from the Rude Mechanical (previously one of the Tree Frog Carers, but they've managed to shirk that duty) who is currently touring schools in Victoria as a Mathamagician.

I do enjoy having visitors from the 'Berra and showing them around my haunts. More challenging having a guy visit though, because usually I'd take visitors shoe shopping and to lovely, spunky and cute shops. He kindly followed me around Brunswick St as I went shopping for Lan and then we took a little trip to my work so he could check out the competition.

We returned to Brunswick St sans car and went to a cocktail bar named Ginger. I'm a big fan of cocktails, and this bar had a huge menu full of them. I'm not all that good at making decisions at the best of times, so put my faith in the bar tender. I asked for something fruity, as long as there wasn't any melon flavour in it. "Don't worry babe, we don't stock Midori"

So we ordered some tasty pizzas and settled in to drink out yummy cocktails. When a bar lets you run a tab, it can get too easy to just keep drinking because you don't really know how much you are spending. We managed to get out with only a $120 bill, which I was quite pleased with.

It was one of those nights where you realise just how many people you know, and how many you don't actually keep in contact with anymore (sometimes for a good reason!). The Mechanical and I talked about almost every single person we've both worked with over the years - so many! I love gossip. It was a most enjoyable evening.

Science Fair Project

Feeling like the All-American child today as I began yet another science fair type project on the weekend for work.

I am currently in the process of de-calcifying a bone by storing it in vinegar for two weeks. The aim is to get rid of all the calcium and be left with a bendy bone. This is then to become a prop in the 'Sporty Science' show that I have help re-write with the Physics-educator-type-man I work with.

*quietly chortles at the fact that I, who hate sport and am quite squishy, and a portly gentleman have developed a show all about sport and the importance of exercise*

The butcher looked at me very strangely when I said I needed a full bone, about 15cm long that I was going to do a science experiment with to demonstrate at a museum. I hastily bought some other meat too to compensate for my weird request.

Tthe bone had meaty bits still on it, but I couldn't boil it off or the bone would be too brittle and turn to mush in the vinegar, so I've left the meat bits on.

I'm supposed to change the vinegar every day, but I left it for two days at work over the weekend. So far, so good, so gross.

As you can see, the bits of meat have gone nice and bleachy, and there's a nice glob of fat at the top that has gone gelatinous. The vinegar was a brown colour this morning and looked really quite disgusting. Now it is in nice, clean vinegar, which I'm sure will be gross again in a day or so. The worst part is having to touch it to try to get some of the goop and meat off it. Bleargh.

If this fails miserably I'm going to stick it in come hydrochloric acid.

Gene Pool

For all the Darwinists (is that a word?) out there, here is a way to watch natural slection and evolution in front of your eyes! Through Gene Pool (www.swimbots.com) you can watch little swimbots seeking food and mates.

They seek mates based on colour, size and distribution of body pieces - although you can control their preferences to see what effect this has on the population. The resulting offspring have half of each parents' DNA.

They swim using a bit of pendulum based physics, so some are very awkward swimmers, some can't swim at all and some are really good but have bad directional movement.

I've cultured a few different pools and it is interesting to see a dominant species emerge each time (usually they are the better direcitonal swimmers) who out-live the others. You can put barriers in place to create mini populations iwhtin the one pool. Although sometimes they all die out.

One of the 'pond' choices you are given is where the swimbots are phenotypically the same, but when they begin mating you start to see some different shapes and colours emerging.

Darwin aside, it is a little bit fun playing God. You can pick up swimbots and food pieces and move them around. You can help them mate with each other by putting them on top of each other (although one has to be 'in love' with the other), you can clone them and you can kill them. The power! The smiting! Although there's no creative control, so yet again intelligent design loses out (oh the tragedy).

PS - Blogger is being an arse and not letting me use the spell checker or other tools so apologies for any dodginess. Gah! Not even letting me preview!

Wedding Dress Revisted

This week I got to do something that not many people get to do. I wore my wedding dress to work!

Tuesday evening was the launch of a new exhibition, the theme of which was Academy Awards. It said dress to impress on the invite, so I did.

Initially I was worried that I'd be too dressed up, and although (in my opinion) I had the best dress on, there were other gals in lovely formal gear too.

It was a lot of fun, and I loved peoples' reactions when they complimented me on my dress and I'd reply that it was my wedding dress. I guess not many people expect red wedding dresses (with bustle and all). Lots of challenges with people stepping on bits of my little train (which I tried my hardest to hold up) but the dress isn't any worse off than it was after the wedding.

I danced so much at our wedding that there's a small tear worn in the lining and the bottom of the dress. This doesn't really bother me as I had such a great time. Luckily it is red with black lining so that all the dirt doesn't show. Perhaps I should be more precious about my dress? I'd rather enjoy it though!

Brief Encounters of the Alby Kind

Just spent an hour at the airport (and $15 of parking) having lunch with Alby who was in Melbs for a few hours on a connecting flight back to Perth.

Was very invigorating - caught up on lots of goss, ate sushi and most importantly got a love heart chocolate. Yummy!!

Was a good thing to do on a day when I was feeling grumpy with work. I think the grumpiness is mostly due to me not wanting to learn/present more shows and being eternally annoyed at being in an operational job. On the other hand the people are awesome, the work quite easy and interesting.

Alby was a fabulous distraction.

Seven Year Itch? No thanks.

As much as I love Marilyn's movies, I'm not finding myself suffering from the seven year itch. Last week husband and I had our seventh anniversary of 'going out' (as my cousin put it).

We had been out wine tasting at Fed Square in celebration of Miss C from work submitting her PhD thesis. Husband, Miss M (from work) and I then traipsed out to dinner in China Town (I say traipse and Miss M and I were rather squiffy from drinking, no, not drinking, I mean tasting, lots of wine).

On our way to dinner husband and I both realised that it was our anniversary. Seven years! Phew! And husband got to celebrate it by watching me and my mates get pissed (he had volunteered to drive).

The only itch I'm feeling at the moment is from a mozzie bite.

Good lap top, good lap top...

I'm sitting here stroking a very old lap top, making soothing noises and being encouraging in the hope that it will open and play a video I've been struggling to load onto it.

It doesn't have a LAN port and doesn't recognise thumb drives, so I've had to burn numerous CDs trying to get this file to play.

The video I've downloaded is a 1940s Superman cartoon. It is in Google Video format, and I haven't been able to hook the lap top up to the internet. That would be futile anyway as Google Video only works on Windows 2000/XP and the lap top is in Windows 98.

So I've been given a CD of klmcodec thingies and someone has kindly managed to turn it form a .gvi to a .avi which (along with the codec) should allow me to show the movie.

I'm writing this as I wait for the lap top to load the codec, restart itself, blah blah blah. I have no idea what I'm doing to I figure patting the laptop can only help.

*waits*

*pats machine*

Hurrah! Has rebooted itself and I can open it in Media Player! yay yay yay! Now lets just hope it projects into an outdoor theatre well...

Beach Baby

Who knew that when you live in a coastal city you can visit the beach? What is all that about? Actually, I don't care what it's about - I love it!

Husband and I finally decided to go to the beach on the weekend. It was bloody bewdiful! We went to Williamstown beach, which is near where I work, because I already knew how to get there (which just makes life easier and less stressful).

The water was lovely, although no waves to speak of. I'm told that you have to choose between decent waves (on the open beaches) and pleasant temperature water (in the bay). We opted for nice temperature.

It was really weird because it felt like we were on holidays. Being able to visit the beach within 40mins or so is just not in my head as something that is doable. I've been landlocked for my whole life, and I've always loved the beach (I'll be retiring to Potato Point one day!), and now I can go whenever I want!

Awesome. I really like this town.

Update on Mini-Mike

Mini-Mike has so totally got the best hair of all his friends. I also think he is the most smartly dressed (pipe-cleaners are so last season). The accidental mo-hawk is coming along very nicely. He's having a little holiday under a window today to get a bit of sunlight.

Millers Blog

Welcome to the new Millers Blog, brought to you by the blonde brother-in-law of 'Berra.

He's a big softie really (who else would put up with tiny kittens suckling on his nose whilst trying to sleep?) so don't let the motorbikes and crazy axe-thingy worry you.

Seeing as it is Miller's Blog, do I get to call you Milsy now? Shell would make a great Paris...

Death by Centrifugal Force?

Thanks to this site.

Hairy Nosed Mini-Mike?

My alfalfa 'Mini-Mike' has started growing his hair out of his face. Mostly his nose. Not a great pic, but you can see the roots coming out of the bottom of his nose. I'm looking forward to how it progresses from here!


I've added goggly eyes, and now he's looking permanently surprised.


He also has a new little friend, who I've yet to name. He is sporting a very lovely maroon bow-tie.

Christian Flying Fish

I hate dickheads on the road. Particularly the ones who, when a lane of traffic is merging onto the freeway in peak hour, they drive out of the left freeway lane, into the merging lane, and then fly out onto the emergency lane just to get a few cars in front. I Hate Them. And yes, I've had a whinge about them before.

Today, the particular tosser in question had one of those Christian fishes stuck onto his car. Not just one of the stickers on the window, but a shiny metallic one stuck on the car body which means they probably paid a bit of money for it, and love it so much they are willing to stick it onto the car's paint-work.

My problem is this - if you are a Christian, and so much so that you buy a metallic fishie to stick onto your car, doesn't that mean you are all about obeying God's laws, being a good person etc., so shouldn't you respect the road rules as well? Dickheads who drive like that are a danger to themselves and others, and I'm pretty sure killing people through reckless driving is not 'OK' with God.

Grr. I hate stupid drivers.

Plus I got stuck next to the organic waste recycling plant again when the traffic was stopped, so I was already in a less than fabulous mood.

Also, cos school has finally gone back *breathes a sigh of relief* there was lots more traffic on the road, which means I'm going to have to start actually getting up when my alarm goes off so that I can get to work in a slightly more timely fashion.