The lesser mabinogion

…and Heaven is The Pancake Parlour as far as Caitlin is concerned.

I took her there for dinner tonight – not exactly the most nutritional dinner, but I at least _tried_ to get her to have a salad or a savoury pancake first, but no – she wanted pancakes with strawberries…

She spent most of her meal making sounds that have no right to be coming from the mouth of a seven year old.
She then announced that the Pancake Parlour was Heaven, and then decided that she wanted to live there. Then her inner capitalist came out and she decided that she was going to buy it…or at least would do if she happened to actually have any money.
And wasn’t seven.
Whether or not you can follow the chain of thinking and come to the conclusion that she was considering purchasing the Christian Afterlife is an exercise for the reader. Personally I think the answer is “Yes, but only if there’s pancakes and strawberries’.
She was also rather impressed with the Alice in Wonderland artwork that appears on the kids section of the menu, and on the walls in one section of the restaurant, as she has just finished reading Alice in Wonderland, and is nearly finished with Through the Looking Glass (a feat which is rather remarkable, especially considering the speed at which she read it, and the fact that she was able to tell us exactly what was happening at each point in the story. She was even able to recognise the scenes painted on the walls at the Pancake Parlour, and tell me exactly what was happening at that point. I’m seriously considering giving her The Hobbit to try very soon).

I stuck to my usual (though “usual” is relative – I haven’t been to the Pancake Parlour for nearly a year now – though Tessa and I used to go far more often than we should have) of a Crepe Escape (crepes with melted cheese and ham, and a slice of pineapple), followed by a Hotball (a scoop of vanilla ice cream with a wafer and almonds, and a little jug of hot chocolate sauce) and a Cappuccino.

By the time we got home, it was technically half an hour after her bedtime, but I’d promised her that we could go through my Nightwish and Within Temptation collection and put togther a compilation CD she could take home.
I really hadn’t expected Monday’s efforts to pay off so soon ;). Before we left for dinner, I asked her what we should listen to in the car – to which she exclaimed “Nightwish!” and jumped around a bit…hehe.
So we started going through the CDs and picking tracks, and one compilation CD turned in to two, and half an hour past her bedtime turned in to two hours past her bedtime, after which she started losing the battle to keep her eyes open, and agreed that it was probably time she headed to bed.
She ended up selecting pretty much all of Century Child (except Slaying the Dreamer), and likewise with Once (all except The Siren), along with the tracks Over The Hills and Far Away, Beauty and the Beast, Walking In the Air, and Wishmaster. Of Within Temptation she picked Mother Earth, Restless, Ice Queen, Our Farewell (a song which incidentally accompanies a video eulogy to a kitten on on their Mother Earth DVD that completely destroyed me each of the first few times I watched it), Never Ending Story and Running Up That Hill.

I had Caitlin today, and have her tonight because Emma is at SCA events – I spent the night round at their place last night since I visit on Friday nights anyway, and needed to be round early in the morning to pick Caitlin up.

Emma spent the night attempting to finish a dress she’d been working on all week in time for today. She tried it on in order to get the hem right and it was rather impressive
I sat up with her watching videos until 1am while she finished it….urk.

This morning after dropping Emma off at her destination, I headed back to my place with Caitlin so I could have a quick shower before taking her to her swimming lesson.
To my delight I discovered that the prints I had ordered through Big Photo had arrived – I’d ordered a few copies of the picture of Caitlin with myGuitar that I had constructed with the aid of Paintshop Pro a while ago, along with a few random photos from my October trip back to New Zealand. I’d done so mostly to test out the service, and also because I wanted a good quality print of that picture.

So after the swimming lesson and lunch, Caitlin and I went in search of picture frames, and I now have a very nice 20cmx25cm print of that photo hanging on my wall – it looks rather impressive.

Anyway, it’s now way past _my_ bedtime, and if that’s more than enough random, disjointed rambling from me for now…..

just spent an hour or so in the bath with a book and glass or two of port.
warm and fuzzy inside and out….
time for bed…

It’s 3:30am. I’m awake, and I can’t get back to sleep.
It’s frustrating, but there’s no point in getting angry about it. That just makes it harder.
It’s 4:00am. I finally drift off again.

It’s 4:59am. I’m awake, but I’m supposed to be. I get up and turn off my alarm. I may be awake, but that doesn’t mean I can handle sudden loud noises yet.

It’s 5:30am. It’s dark, it’s 3 degrees, and there’s a full moon. I’m on my way to the airport.

It’s 6:30am. I’m sitting in the departure lounge, filling in time waiting for my slightly delayed flight by wasting money on expensive airport wireless and working on the Conflux site.

It’s 7:30am. I’m in the air somewhere between Canberra and Sydney. I’m reading The Grinding House by Kaaron Warren. I’m rather disturbed.

It’s 8:30am. I’m walking up to the front doors of our Sydney office. It occurs to me that I forgot to get a receipt from the taxi driver. Bugger.

It’s 9:30am. I’m standing alone in the smokers area downstairs in the carpark with a cigarette and a large, not-quite-warm-enough, not-quite-strong-enough cappuccino.

It’s 10:30am. Over a small, not-quite-warm-enough, not-quite-strong-enough cappuccino, my boss is telling me that the person we hired to help me in the task of taking over the maintenance and development one of our biggest products can’t start until September.

It’s 11:30am. I’m being briefed about a project I’ll be looking after whilst two of my colleagues go to a conference in the ‘States – the purpose of this trip. I had assumed I was just going to be someone that could be called on in the unlikely event of a problem while they were away.
I was wrong.
There is still development to do, fairly urgent development.
Guess who gets to do it

It’s 12:30pm. I’m attempting to head down to the cafeteria for lunch, but I am waylaid by the project manager for The Project That Will Not Die. (Otherwise known as The Project That Stole March). The customer wants something we told them they couldn’t have.
They really want it.
They want to know when we can have it done – this thing we said they could not have.

It’s 1:30pm. I have finally managed to have my lunch, and am having another smoke down stairs, having finally escaped from the last people I intended to have lunch with.

It’s 2:30pm. I’m answering an email that was forwarded to me for reasons that I am destined not to understand. I’m trying to find the best way to say “I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.” in point form.

It’s 3:30pm. I’m standing around with the others discussing important things like drinking butterscotch schnapps from a stein, and the size of American fast food softdrinks.

It’s 3:31pm. It occurs to me that I should be packing up and ordering a cab right about now.

It’s 4:30pm. I’m sitting in the departure lounge filling in time before my flight by fiddling with the Conflux site some more. I passed on the overpriced wireless access this time.

It’s 5:30pm. I’m in the air somewhere between Sydney and Canberra. I’m reading The Grinding House. I’m still rather disturbed.
However, I also have some crackers and cheese, a glass of red, and an attractive blonde sitting next to me. Sometimes I wish the Canberra – Sydney flight took a little longer.

It’s 6:00pm. It’s dark, it’s 2 degrees and there’s a full moon. I’m on my way home.

It’s 7:19pm. The heater is on, I have a cup of tea, and that’s all I have to say for now.

You know, I always intend to post something here. I even spend time thinking about what I could post, and start going through it in my head. But in the end, I never get round to it. Probably because I’m managing to keep myself relatively busy, and when I’m not busy, I’m reading or working on music, or playing Morrowind.
There are a few things I want to mention though, so hopefully I’ll find myself an hour or so at some point when I can actually put them down.

I’m getting a little tired of going to parties and being ignored or avoided for the whole night by the only person I really know….it kind of makes me wonder why I was invited in the first place.