.Bard

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Originally uploaded by bugeyedmonster

The dogs rather like kerri

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Originally uploaded by bugeyedmonster

I do so love flickr

I now have Playstation thumb. Ow.

Bandage Bear - Til We Meet Again!, originally uploaded by bugeyedmonster.

If I ever try to tell anyone that I won't miss Sydney when we go, or don't miss Sydney after we're gone, it's total bullshit.

This was the view from the train station this afternoon on the way home from work.

Fucking love this city.

Cracker Comedy 2008, originally uploaded by bugeyedmonster.

It's a rather a long story, but, yes, we're still in Sydney, and probably will be for a couple of months anyway.

However! I helped Lifetime hire my replacement last month, so they really want me to leave. Well.. They've actually given me a finish date of April 11th. So, I had to figure out what to do. I'm certainly not going to take another full time gig for a couple of months, and short contracts (3 months or less) are a right pain to find.

So, I called my good mate Con (a good mate through my even better mate Jim, who always looks after me). Within two days, Con had me sorted out as a freelance web developer doing work for a group for whom he helped bring in so much work that they're now forced to recruit freelance help.

It's a nice circle of altruism and capitalism. I like the mix.

So, here's the first of hopefully many additions to my new portfolio as web developer. I'm working for a group called affected, who seem to have rather a lot of work coming up, which is great for me. It remains to be seen whether this will be enough to pay the bills 'til we leave, but it's certainly a good start.

I'd like to point out for posterity, by the way, that I was developer num ber FOUR on this project, and had nothing to do with the design. They just needed to get the fucker out the door, and that's what I do -- I fucking SHIP. I started on the project last Friday, and it went live yesterday (Wednesday). Yeah baby.

I'm not sure who's responsible for this..., originally uploaded by Kelly Sue.

Found on flickr. Just HAD to post this..

Not much more to say than that. Riley's gone. He had a very happy life, and he'll be missed by many. There's not much more you can ask for.

I had a bloody good weep this morning, and I've been teetering on the verge ever since.

He was a great dog.

Ok, so there's pretty equal shares of "funked up", "break shit" and "wtf" in here.. but hey.. get your own list if you don't like it

Happy weekend

"Of Two Minds About the Filibuster" by Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)

More Harper's fodder, but stay with me for a minute.

As if we needed any more reason for concern with regards to the state of the "Democracy" in the USA.. This is the sort of stuff that will make even the most apathetic of us want to SCREAM (I'm the first to raise my hand in this regard).

Scott Horton once again impresses me. His closing paragraph here sums up the thing so well, in particular his use of "constitutional vandalism" to describe the practices being employed by the GOP in the Senate.

I quite often say, half-jokingly, that democracy is outmoded, and clearly destined to fail. I don't really want to be right, though..

So, obviously, there's no "favoritism" with parenting (other than of the daily kind whereby on a given day one of them just makes life so cool that you HAVE to make them the favorite for the day). Well, not any that any parent will admit to. However -- and, believe me, my mother can and will bear witness to this -- there really is something so very special about the "baby" in the family (yes, I know that's a terrible way to refer to a 19 year old, and that I'll probably rot in a special hell just for that, but I'm 32 and my mom still does it.. not that I'm aspiring to become my mother.. hm). Therefore, I feel justified writing about her when I've never taken the time to write about any of the kids here (wow, I'm a shit parent! yay!). But, I digress..

Emily FINALLY came back from the UK about a month ago, after more than a year's absence. This was, perhaps, the most anticipated moment of our collective life as a family EVER. Honestly, the buzz around the house built up for those last few weeks 'til you could barely get through it to get in the door. Personally, I was nervous. You just never know what you're going to get when someone's been gone for a year. Obviously, when it's one of your kids, you know they'll be the same person you love, but the accumulated little differences of a year can be surprisingly jarring -- particularly, or possibly mostly, in one's imagination. I was sure there'd be some sort of.. I don't know. Not exactly awkwardness, but something funny while she and we felt our way around and found a way to put her back in our lives, and vice versa.. Then I drove the airport, waited in the car park for Kerri to retrieve her, saw her, and the next thing I knew I was out of the car running across that car park like a freak, and bear hugging her with tears coming down my face. Seriously. Your kids will make you do scary shit. Perhaps not-so-surprisingly, she turns out to be roughly the same "little girl" she's always been.. Just much more well-travelled.

I'm so happy she's back. Besides the obvious "having the baby back home" stuff, there's all sorts of Emily stuff too. She frequently stays out all night and winds up with a friend or three crashing all over her bedroom, which is strangely endearing, for instance. There's practical stuff, as in the fact that she's the only one of the three kids who seems to have any natural acumen for cleanliness, which appears to have been heightened by her time sharing a house with strangers.

It's not only Kerri and I who are happy to have her back. One thing about all three of our kids is that they're social butterflies on a scale that Kerri and I could never imagine ourselves. I like this. I'm glad that in the relatively short time I've been with the kids I didn't manage to turn them into anti-social geek hermits like me. In Em's case, it seems as though half the city was anxiously awaiting her return. Case in point: she arrived home on a Saturday, and by Thursday she had started her new full-time job -- selling computers, yeah baby -- in the city with some friends of hers.

There's so much I could write about how happy I am to have her home. Kerri and I regularly relate to each other how we can't seem to keep our hands off her. It's as though we need to keep reassuring ourselves of her physical presence. Hug, hug, fix collar as convenient excuse, hug, kiss on the cheek when she leaves the house, hug hug hug hug hug. It's disgusting. I'm sure it will wear off, but until then, she handles it awfully well. Maybe we'll stop when we reach her threshold and starts punching us in defense.