It's been a long time since I posted here. First, I moved to livejournal, and then on to dreamwidth, where I can still be found (as of writing, April 2012) as fred_mouse. I'm not going to update this site, but unless google delete it, it can sit around until I get the next 'update or lose it' email.  ¶ 10:22 am

  I've discovered that there is nothing like the internet for making me realise how little I'm aware of, just how large the big scary world is, and how obvious my ignorance can sometimes be. The story? I was looking for the lyrics for "Hine ma tov". The first 'oh wow' moment was looking at the lyrics written for spanish readers (oh, my, that's different, why's that different, huh, oh, right, the whole page isn't in english, duh). The second was reading the advertisments on the page that I'm actually borrowing them from. It had never occurred to me that there would be Jewish specific online dating agencies. This suggests to me that there are a whole swag of possible target markets out there for such services. However, I've done the sane thing, and gone back to trying to learn "Hine ma tov" instead of investigating further...  ¶ 1:15 pm

  more on the CV...
Of course, what I wasn't thinking about when I was writing up my CV is that _one_ of the people who was going to see it is a friend. It also didn't occur to me that she was going to show it to other people (duh!). It turns out that it was some of the little 'throw away' bits that she commented on. Stuff that I've done that doesn't actually relate to the job in question, but I decided to leave in, as it was less hassle, and gives some idea of what I've been doing in parts of the last ten years (you know, the bits between getting my degrees). The world never ceases to amaze me, and hey, you know, I like it!  ¶ 3:00 pm

  maths, music, and other borderline art/science ideas

I was thinking about the Dragon Singer series (Anne McCaffrey - Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums), and why I really like them. This started because I picked them for our bookclub as the book for June, and I was trying to work out _why_ I find them so good. I think it is because in the field of science fiction/fantasy, there is so little stuff written where there is music. Actually, I think what I mean here is so little where there are _musicians_. At present, I can only think of two authors that make really good use of musicians (as opposed to random background music) - Anne McCaffrey and Charles de Lint. And for me, it is really only the former who communicates to me that wonder that I find in music.

I was trying to work out whether music could be considered a science, and therefore whether more science fiction involving music could be widely encouraged. There is certainly a science to music in some aspects, but the rules are often broken, which is rarely the case in say, physics (the unbeatable speed of sound being one case of breaking the 'rules' that I can think of). And then I sidetracked myself into a consideration of the comparison between music and mathematics, and realised that I react to both in the same way - in my head both are on a borderline somewhere between 'science' and 'art' - I don't really treat either music or math as either of those, and yet I work on them both as both. If that makes any sense. Now to go away and try and work out what it is I'm trying to get at here. I had thought that writing it down would help, but I'm just as confused about it now as when I started writing. If I work it out, and if I remember, I'll post about it later.  ¶ 2:51 pm

  CV

I'm currently in the process of updating my CV, and I'm finding it very confronting. It is not so much ignoring things that I'm not so proud of up (I've no qualms about not listing the grade on my psych honours, for example), but trying to put things in that I am proud of, without sounding like a twat. I don't like saying what I do, but I know perfectly well that these are complete strangers, who won't just *see* what it is I do, that I have to tell them, but aiiii. I have to keep stopping and going and doing something else for a few seconds (which unfortunately was raiding the pantry, but I've now put a bowl of lillypillies where I can get to them), just to cover the anxiety...  ¶ 2:00 pm

  bought a balloon pump today. Slower than blowing them up by mouth (at least the first few balloons), but without the associated head spin/ache. The funny thing about it is that youngest child is insisting on calling it a pumpkin. She keeps saying 'I put balloon on pumpkin'. Everytime I correct her (hah! I should know better), she smiles, copies me, and then goes back to saying what she will.

And today's terrifying observation: the number of women in the shopping centre with small babies who look too old to be parents, and yet, somehow don't look like grandparents. Why is this a worry? I'm in my mid-thirties, I shouldn't be thinking women with small babies look old, I'm not that much younger than I'd expect them to be. So are these women all exceptional? Or is my self-image so scrambled that I've no idea how old _I_ look, and therefore my reference is wrong?  ¶ 1:03 pm

  family crap
yesterday was my mothers birthday. It made me kind of miserable and grumpy, and today I'm just pissed off with her.

For those who don't know, my mother and I had one of _those_ fights on my eighteenth birthday. Three years ago I found her address, and went and introduced my kids to her. I left her all my contact details, and told her the next step was hers. Last year, after not having heard from her, I put a family photo in a birthday card and put it in her letter box, with all of our new contact details. I got a lovely phone call from the person who had bought her house a year before, who said that as far as she knows, my mother went to New Zealand.

My mother stole my family from me*, and now, in a way, she's doing it to my kids. Her family fractured when her parents died, and I don't have any contact with my aunts/uncles/cousins, so there is a great blank there that I've no idea how to fill. Most of the year, I ignore it. Today, I resent it.

So, anyone out there who encounters Clare Robertson, (although how you'll pick mine from many others of the same name), please tell her she has a grand-daughter. And I won't be so petty as to keep her out of my family, if she wants to be in touch. She just has to tell me what it is I'm not supposed to do....

grouch. grump. resent resent resent.

* That's how it feels. In reality, she stole me from my fathers family, but that's a short and boring story.  ¶ 1:17 pm