What a day!  Thanks to some timely pep talking and really good coaching from sjkasabi my paper is finished enough for me to stop until early tomorrow.

I "just" have to fix up my references, write up a missing paragraph or two and incorporate any changes from my reviewers and all by lunchtime tomorrow.

Sometime I'll also work out how worried I am about going over the nominal 3000 word limit - by about 1000 words.

Next!  The presentation!

And then!  Getting up in front of people!  (Which I'm looking forward to actually, I like that sort of thing)

******

And in garden news, I've decided to abandon the cabbages and devote my little patch of garden to salad leaves and a perpetual spinach plant.  If I don't fall over after dinner I might make a start and plant some seedling trays - just need to find some potting mix.

*****

Oh yes!  What's the current advice for dealing with an email from your ISP with a letter accusing you of illegal downloading?

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Study suggests climate change can create volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

Study finds significant cosmic ray effect on clouds:

"The evidence has piled up, first for the link between cosmic rays and low-level clouds and then, by experiment and observation, for the mechanism involving aerosols. All these consistent scientific results illustrate that the current climate models used to predict future climate are lacking important parts of the physics.

The paper (pdf).

Study of English temperatures (the longest-maintained series in the world) shows English summers were slightly cooler in the C20th than in the C18th.

About 1% of land ice is in glaciers, 10% in Greenland and 89% in Antarctica, which just had its lowest level of summer ice melt since measurement began. Headlines will not follow.

Story on the BBC admits that there is a genuine scientific debate over global warming.

Reaching agreement that the climate models need more work.

An intelligent post and debate about geo-engineering possibilities and using temperature tax/subsidies.

Looking at the cost of solar versus coal.

Having some fun with frustration about delay in disaster:

In this headline on a New York Times story about the difficulties confronting people alarmed about global warming, note the word "plateau." It dismisses the unpleasant -- to some people -- fact that global warming is maddeningly (to the same people) slow to vindicate their apocalyptic warnings about it.
The "difficulty" -- the "intricate challenge," the Times says -- is "building momentum" for carbon reduction "when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years." That was in the Times's first paragraph.
In the fifth paragraph, a "few years" became "the next decade or so," according to Mojib Latif, a German "prize-winning climate and ocean scientist" who campaigns constantly to promote policies combating global warming. Actually, Latif has said he anticipates "maybe even two" decades in which temperatures cool. But stay with the Times's "decade or so." By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere "plateau," not warming's apogee, the Times assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and that warming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume.

NZ poll shows people suffering global warming fatigue. Brits are not much concerned about climate change, according to a poll. The care factor is falling in Oz as well. (But if one does care, it makes one even more a member of the moral elite.)

About the “evil” of cheap fixes:

Part of the genius of Marxism, and a reason for its enduring appeal, is that it fed man's neurotic fear of social catastrophe while providing an avenue for moral transcendence.

Is making kindergarten kids fearful about the future child abuse?

The late Aaron Wildavsky once noted that if you are “Minister for the Environment” pretty soon you are “Minister for Everything”. Climate change pushes that along nicely:

Hold that thought: “They deal with every aspect of our life.” Did you know every aspect of your life was being negotiated at Copenhagen? …
“The environment” is the most ingenious cover story for Big Government ever devised. You float a rumour that George W. Bush is checking up on what library books you’re reading, and everyone goes bananas. But announce that a government monitoring device has been placed in every citizen’s trash can in the cause of “saving the planet,” and the world loves you.

Whatever the cause, left-progressivism always seems to end up the in same place: trying to control ever more aspects of people’s lives. Controlling what you can say, what you are allowed to believe, preferring public to private transport, controlling land use, use of property, preferring rationing water (with its “approved” and “unapproved” uses, good people versus bad people structure) to pricing it properly, etc. Of course, if it is not for people’s good, but for the planet’s good, then the level of “justified” control is even greater.

Calling an Observer columnist on his climate-change human hatred.

Clive James on the virtue of scepticism:

Since then, a sceptical attitude has been less likely to get you burned at the stake, but it's notable how the issue of man-made global warming has lately been giving rise to a use of language hard to distinguish from heresy-hunting in the fine old style by which the cost of voicing a doubt was to fry in your own fat.
Whether or not you believe that the earth might have been getting warmer lately, if you are sceptical about whether mankind is the cause of it, the scepticism can be enough to get you called a denialist.
It's a nasty word to be called, denialist, because it calls up the spectacle of a fanatic denying the Holocaust. In my homeland, Australia, there are some prominent intellectuals who are quite ready to say that any sceptic about man-made global warming is doing even worse than denying the Holocaust, because this time the whole of the human race stands to be obliterated.
Really they should know better, because the two events are not remotely comparable. The Holocaust actually happened. The destruction of the earth by man-made global warming hasn't happened yet, ….
Sceptics, say the believers, don't care about the future of the human race. But being sceptical has always been one of the best ways of caring about the future of the human race. For example, it was from scepticism that modern medicine emerged, questioning the common belief that diseases were caused by magic, or could be cured by it.

George Monbiot is outraged.

Al Gore is going for the spiritual angle in his Inconvenient Truth sequel. Since we now have a legal ruling: environmentalism (climate change specifically) is akin to a religion, Al may be on a winner.

 My last day in the US has started - I'm headed out for brunch fairly soon.

Have to repack poppet window

Have to check that declarable items are all in the same suitcase

Have to organise my carry on bag

Have to check I have no snacks left stashed in my handbag......

Have to check in to airport THREE hours before my flight - what's with that! Thank goodness for Qantas Club (or Sakura Lounge actually - in SFO they share....)

pretty sure there was a pass today.

I am not the only client my home-care worker has who doesn't want workers coming in when they have colds or influenza (or anything likely to be contagious). When you have chronic medical problems and you're sick to start with, and maybe you're on a truckload of things that effect your immune system, it's a reasonable request.

My home-care worker is recovering from a cold. A few days ago, when the cold was in full swing, she was supposed to visit a client who has also said she doesn't want contagious people coming in.

When she told her boss that she was unwell with a cold, her boss advised her to tell the client in question that she had hayfever. I believe she did not, and took time off instead.

~~~

I don't remember the outcome, but I also know she had trouble getting time off to get the Swine 'flu vaccine. Health care people like her are considered one of the most important groups to get vaccinated.

I am in a bind here. This sucks beyond belief but I do not want to get this woman in trouble. If I speak up, she'll be in for it. And *she* isn't the one behaving badly.

My usual organised self doesn't seem to be home. She is hiding behind the goo that has invaded my head and throat. Ya, I seem to be a bit sick. blarchrch ch ch.

One amusing consequence- I am drinking half a glass of sweet viscous, probably highly alcoholic wine. This was poured off the partially defrosted bottle of wine that was frozen accidentally. I thought last night that a glass with dinner would be good- then forgot that I had put a bottle in the freezer.... Thankfully it was a corked bottle- but not anymore! Suppose I should wait for the rest to fully defrost before I have anymore. Otherwise I will have drunk a bottle's worth of alcohol without planning to.

Tomorrow I shall probably stay home and cough to myself. Wonder if I will get spots like young R?

Abbotsford types- sadly you should assume I won't be in Ballarat on the weekend. If I have enough of a miraculous recovery in time I will let you know.

Disturbing aspects of the Arendt-Heidegger connection:

I would perhaps modify this to say she internalized the purported universalism of Germanic high culture with its disdain for parochialism. A parochialism she identified with, in her own case, her Jewishness, something she felt ashamed of on intellectual grounds, so primitive, this tribal allegiance in the presence of intellects who supposedly transcended tribalism (or at least all tribes except the Teutonic).
One can still hear this Arendtian shame about ethnicity these days. So parochial! One can hear the echo of Arendt's fear of being judged as "merely Jewish" in some, not all, of those Jews so eager to dissociate themselves from the parochial concerns of other Jews for Israel. The desire for universalist approval makes them so disdainful of any "ethnic" fellow feeling. After all, to such unfettered spirits, it's so banal.

About Ayn Rand:

Stated premises, however, rarely get us all the way down to the bottom of a philosophy. Even when we think we’ve reached bedrock, there’s almost always a secret subbasement blasted out somewhere underneath. William James once argued that every philosophic system sets out to conceal, first of all, the philosopher’s own temperament: that pre-rational bundle of preferences that urges him to hop on whatever logic-train seems to be already heading in his general direction. This creates, as James put it, “a certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest of all our premises is never mentioned … What the system pretends to be is a picture of the great universe of God. What it is—and oh so flagrantly!—is the revelation of how intensely odd the personal flavor of some fellow creature is.”
No one would have been angrier about this claim, and no one confirms its truth more profoundly, than Ayn Rand.

Debating whether libertarians should care about cultural restrictions on libety:

But if the constraints on freedom of association suddenly become social rather than bureaucratic—if the neighborhood decides it does not want black residents, or the extended family decides it cannot tolerate gay sons—we do not experience a net expansion of freedom. If a black man who cannot hold employment by law is unfree, so too is a black man who cannot hold employment because social custom decrees that no one will hire him. If a gay couple that cannot legally marry is being wronged, so too is a couple that must stay closeted to avoid social ostracism. A woman who has to choose between purdah and exile from her village is not living a free life, even if no one has bothered to codify the rules in an Important Book and call them “laws.” …
Property rights are more than the conclusion of an academic argument; they are themselves a matter of culture. … A drop-dead argument for the authority of these constraints may exist in pure reason, but they are meaningless without a broadly shared sense of their legitimacy. Absent friendly social forces, property rights are an impotent abstraction. …
Some of the most effective centers of resistance to state power over the centuries, after all, have been nonindividualistic institutions such as labor unions, churches, guilds, and extended families. Conversely, when libertarians attack these organs of civil society in the name of freedom, they may only succeed in empowering the state—not always, but sometimes. …
Our moral imperfections are our last guarantee of liberty against the benevolent system builders who would have all men and women speak with one voice and assent to one idea. Cultures of liberty tend to be bric-a-brac, full of unresolved tensions between competing ideas. Freedom does not depend upon universalizing the “right”—or left—values. It’s the other way around: A clash of values is what makes even mental liberty possible. …
human beings acquire a respect for individual rights and a consciousness of their individuality. We aren’t born knowing that prosperity flows from property rights; indeed, it’s somewhat counterintuitive. And we aren’t born knowing that it’s dangerous to defer unthinkingly to your peers.
… They tried to convince the locals that they had been Catholics in spirit all along. Every evangelist on earth knows his task is to find connections between old, entrenched beliefs and whatever newfangled doctrine he is looking to sell.

About Darwinian natural law reasoning and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Despite radical differences in ethical judgments, Westermarck concludes, "the general uniformity of human nature accounts for the great similarities which characterize the moral ideas of mankind." Such uniformity must exist, he argues, because despite individual and social variation, human beings belong to the same animal species and therefore display similarities in their mental constitution. Thus, Westermarck's ethical theory does not promote nihilism or irrationalism, for he sees the moral emotions that constitute the basis for his ethics as manifesting the natural propensities of a universal human nature. This appeal to the natural human inclinations makes his account of ethics a restatement of natural law reasoning, but one rooted in an empirical Darwinian science of human nature.
… Morsink interprets human rights as corresponding to the "transcultural species-wide capabilities normally inherent in human beings" (IHR, 38). He relies on Martha Nussbaum's "capabilities approach" to justice. She identifies ten "central human capabilities" of which the fulfillment constitute full human flourishing: 1. life, 2. bodily health, 3. bodily integrity, 4. senses, imagination, thought, 5. emotions, 6. practical reason, 7. affiliation, 8. other species, 9. play, 10. control over one's environment. Morsink shows how the articles of the Universal Declaration correlate to Nussbaum's ten capabilities and argues that we should read the Universal Declaration as saying that all human beings have equal rights to develop the ten human functional capabilities. …
One common way in which the moral sense is blunted or blinded is through xenophobia--the natural human disposition to care more for those close to us than for strangers, to distinguish friends and enemies, those in our group and those outside. In extreme cases--as with Nazi Germany--some human beings are dehumanized and thus treated as outside the circle of human sympathy.

Wow - where did the time go?

Tomorrow evening I fly home - so today was doing errands and starting to organise getting stuff home.

Post office to ship home all my carousel pieces and Resonant Kiss. US Customs forms on large boxes require significant detail - yes I put some of my uni notes and books in one box - how many? asked the USPS clerk - umm, can't remember - estimate she says..... okay three and some odd sheets of paper.....

You put clothes in this box ? Yes. What type of clothes? Ummm, there were tops in one and a skirt in another box. You have to write down which is in which box..... OK - if Australian customs opens on of these boxes and I wrote skirt on the outside and its the box with two tops in it wrapped around a resin figurine, does that mean I get in trouble?

And no more surface mail - I had to send it by air...... more expensive.

We got back and I realised I wasn't going to fit all my clothes back in the suitcase and stay under 23 kg (it weighed 29kg and I hadn't put my toiletries in yet). But this is the US - I get two bags in my luggage allowance (plus an extra bag because I'm Qantas Club). So - purchase of one el cheapo suitcase later - I have split my clothing (and a few more books) between two bags - both weigh under 23kg - all is good. My Poppet Window is my third piece of luggage...

It was at this point when feeling quite smug about how it was all going that I realised that Poppet Window is wood! Wood which I was about to try to take into Australia..... I had to open the box it was in, to check if it was completely painted or if there was raw wood anywhere....

The Window itself, is completely painted - the poppet painting (which is inserted into the window frame like a photo into a photo frame) is only painted on one side. Tonight I have to deface my lovely Lisa Snellings artwork and paint the back of the painting so the wood is completely covered... its a piece of balsa wood or thin plywood - might check the Customs site and see what it says about wood, but I suspect I will be pulling out Paul's shield paints and covering the back of the piece.

Tonight - we are watching a football game, tomorrow is brunch with Terzian, laze around for the rest of the day and head to the airport for check in by 7.50pm..... at a dedicated Qantas Club checkin - unfortunately I can't buy an upgrade with points - I have the points, its just that my ticket class (the cheapest of cheap tickets) is non-upgradeable.... sigh .... business would have been nice, even premium economy....

On what feels like attempt 57, but is probably more like 5 or 6 I finally managed to boot with the new hard drive. Go me! Now I just need to remember how to adjust partition size without messing things up too much. At least I now have lots of room in the data partition and can probably move some things to make room in the C partition. Yay for hard drive space. I do wish the shop's stock had not been limited to a 150G drive, 350 was what I was aiming at, but I think it will take me a bit of time to fill the 100G or so extra space I now have. Now I can play with my other new toy, the cassette and vinyl ripping gadget. It is the season for new toys for me. 8-> If only I didn't have to go to work and had time to play with them all.

edit: partition magic for the win. Yay for more room for stuff!

Tonight was lots of fun - we headed over to visit Eilis.

Krista cooked us a fabulous dinner of roast chicken and vegetables (asparagus, peas, roast squash, roast sweet potato and mashed potato for those that could).

I got to visit with Eilis and Laetitia, met Krista (think we've met before, we weren't sure) and Corwyn (don't know if that's how he spells it) and Krista's little boy. Met the dog whose name starts with a T (and gave him pats) and of course met Beauregarde - an adorable cat who was kind enough to let me pet him (I miss my boys).

I also saw the refurbished chains of state for the West Kingdom - I donated money to the fundraising effort and got to see the back of one of the roses is now inscribed with Duchess Lochac. Felt all warm and fuzzy when I saw that.

And got home to find that my Poppet Window has arrived - the parcel was waiting at Linda's for me. Have to email Lisa and let her know it arrived. I plan on taking it on the plane with me. But now its time for bed - still recovering from Disneyland's energy expenditure.

The business has suffered from a drop in marketing efforts: October was very busy but November is relatively light, so income may be a bit tight over summer. Hence, I am available for summer work, if anyone has some.

Paul Keating thinks Canberra was a great mistake. (“A good sheep run ruined” in Rex Connor’s words.)

Sticking up for cities and suburbs.

About the postal voting system in Oz.

Polling at the time showed overwhelming public support (pdf) (61% to 23%) for the Howard Government’s NT intervention.

Current polling shows people are basically happy with the level of human rights protection in Oz (64% think it adequately or well protected, only 7% disagree). The push to take power from Parliaments and give to judges (aka for a Bill of Rights) does not have a lot to work with.

Online survey finds that economic liberals show more variety of opinion than self-identifying social democrats. About the left sensibility.

Sen. Brandeis on the liberal and conservative strains in the Liberal Party.

Screaming about how other people get things wrong is a bit undermined if accuracy turns out to be not your thing.

The Rudd Government is finding out about supply and demand the nasty way: reducing the strength of the border controls has increased the potential profitability of people smuggling leaving the government with all sorts of problems. This year’s death toll from this display of “compassion” currently stands at 54.

Arguing that Rudd is looking to be even worse than Whitlam as PM:

FOR more than 30 years the Whitlam government has been the -- unsurpassable -- benchmark for bad government in Australia.
With its uniquely disastrous blend of ideology, arrogance, poor administrative process and fiscal extravagance and simple ineptitude. …
Arguably Rudd has already seized from Fraser -- or Keating as prime minister -- the claim to be the "worst since Whitlam", but there's a case to be made that he's on the way to, or has already become, the first to be "worse than".
That's a big, big call.
So what's the basis of my call? …
The $43billion National Broadband Network and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
That is, of course, $43bn give or take the odd $10bn or $20bn. …
So why is this worse than everything that Whitlam threw at us? From disastrously inept ministerial governance and -- the real -- Connor and Khemlani, and on to the numbing 46 per cent increase in spending in the 1974 budget?
Well, the approach to the NBN makes everything in the Whitlam period look almost like a model of good governance.
Here we have a government prepared to spend $43bn on the 21st century national infrastructure project without having embarked on the most basic cost-benefit assessment.
And without having the slightest idea of what the most basic metrics could be or would have to be to make any sense of it. The very uncertainty of the figure is most damning of all.
Or perhaps the failure to ask even the most basic question of all -- is there any need for it? Beyond either the childish tantrum: Kevin wants, wants, wants an NBN now. Or the adolescent indulgence: well, everyone just has to have an NBN.
That's the big-picture absurdity, before you even begin to start on the process. Process?
What process?
Exactly.
The evidence extracted from Connor II -- sorry, Con-roy -- is that there was no formal departmental and cabinet process. Indeed it was an eerily similar "good idea at the time" between minister and prime minister replay of some of the original Connor and Whitlam extravaganzas. Further, it wasn't just process failure at the "good idea" level.
We embarked on a year-long exercise to tender for a $12bn FTTN -- fibre-to-the-node -- network; only to suddenly, and I do mean suddenly, announce we would instead build a $43bn (sic) FTTH -- fibre-to-the-home -- one. And launch an assault on a company, Telstra, which however well intentioned and even arguably necessary in the "national interest", was extraordinary and unprecedented. All without any discussion, far less assessment.
The best you could say about all this is that it was truly Whitlamistic. Both the Business Council and, even more tellingly, the Productivity Commission have utterly eviscerated the government's failure to do any assessment.

.

So that's where he went last night!

Saturday morning, montjoye and I drove to Canberra, the first long run with the new Lrenzo-mobile. The long trip seemed to do it some good, though the transmission sticks a little.

montjoye stayed with A&P while I stayed with politas. The R&J cocktail party was lots of fun. Amongst many good things, saw Amber there, who I had not seen for quite some time.

Did not leave the cocktail party, having arrived at 8pm, until about 2.15am (partly because I had been parked in).

Sunday morning, went to the 11am yum cha organised by kirieldp. Torg, TonyP, RichardL, sui001, vikingrose, Maria and I were on the same table. So, very geeky and heaps of fun.

Sunday afternoon, went from yum cha to drinks with a mate at All Bar Nun at O'Connor shops. The two of us having solved various problems of the universe, I went from there to miladyred's apartment, who cooked me a lovely pea&ham soup (variant) and scone dinner and brought me up to date on various things, in her very nice-to-people way.

I was thinking of then visiting vonne & padrin, but I was just too tired, so went straight back to politas's place. He was actually in, so we got to talk to each other, mostly while watching Earthsea. (Full of bad acting and unnecessary changes from the original story, but I like Danny Glover's portrayal of Ogion the Silent.)

Then to bed, where I was bad and finished the copy of Seduction in Death miladyred had kindly given me (she had two copies) before going to sleep.

Monday morning, montjoye and I drove back to Melbourne.

A great trip, which left both montjoye and I in very good moods.

I'm baaack. Tired, no brain and wilting in the heat. So in brief:

-we had a fantastic weekend.
-drive down and back was pleasant and the right sort of boring.
-ipod string worked a treat so we had music
-all agreed the party was grand. I had such a good time that 6 hrs of party seemed to go past in about 20min.
-twas Faaabulous to see everybody. Sydney peeps, Canberra peeps, visiting from Geneva peeps, peeps I haven't seen much in years. Lovely stuff
-a big thanks to my hosts. great, welcoming and fab as usual. As accommodating as accommodating things, and showed me the Blackadder millenium special which i didn't even know existed.
-bonus extra hangings out with R+J. lovely
-purchasing of much specialty produce, beer, jam, coffee, mustard, various smoked meats. We proved we could still find our way through Albury the old way, enabling a visit to Butts Smokehouse.
-finished pink/green sock #2
-arrived home to great heat and crispy plants
-also to a newly finished north fence! I am so glad I expected collateral damage because there was.
-now to stay awake for the return of budge and hope that this cough is leftover cat exposure or pollen effect and not lurgy.

probably more detail on some of the above later.

Day 3 at Disney was well Day 3 and could have been a massively long day - opened at 8am (we didn't ge there for that though) and the Park was open until midnight (and then the extra hour in Main Street for my shopping convenience).

I didn't really get into my stride though - I think it was the whole California Adventure thing - I leave Disneyland and it breaks the flow.... We had dinner over in CA - at a Trattoria, the wine was nice, they had rice noodles and a plain tomato based pasta sauce for me - so I had something warm for dinner, that was good. So day 3 was breakfast at the Park, then the tricking me into going to CA thing (see previous post) and then I escaped back to the real Park. I hung out there for most of the afternoon, and the others joined me as arranged at a later point. At 4.30pm we headed back over into CA for dinner (we had a 5pm reservation) and after dinner, and then watching everyone else eat icecream, we shopped a little. Then Linda and Paul headed back to the hotel, Ellen and I headed back to the real Park.

Ellen went off to take photos and I wandered, did a few rides, and generally tried to avoid Fantasmic and the crowds gathering on Main Street for the fireworks. I was really tired, and decided at 9.40pm that I really needed to head back to the hotel. So once the fireworks were finsihed, thats what I did.

I packed once I got back and then got into bed. I beat Ellen back to our room - which surprised both of us I think. But like I said I never really got into the swing of the day. I think it is official that I don't have much time for CA - it interferes with my true purpose of getting my fix of DIsneyland  - sufficient to last until my next visit (which won't be for a few more years now)....

This morning, Ellen and I headed over at 8am for opening and hit a ride or two before meeting the others for breakfast - Jungle Curise (our skipper was quite good, and interacted really well with some of the younger passengers) and then ducked into Indiana Jones because the line was so short. Then breakfast, then Star Tours then Buzzz lightyear, and a full circuit on the train. A little shopping and it was time to go....

Trip back to San Jose was uneventful - we went the scenic road and of course it was wasted on me - I fell asleep and missing a good two or three hours of the scenery... oops. But my hosts know I do that sort of thing :)

But its late, I had a fun trip to DIsneyland, even though its never long enough, I never have enough money and I always run out of energy. I think maybe I need to have a day off int he middle - so get my four day pass, do two days, spend a day lazing around the hotel pool, then do my second two days, go back and sleep at the hotel on the final night then drive back to San Jose via the wine country - pace myself and NOOOOO CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE :)-

Yes my charming hosts, well one of them anyway, reads my LJ but I think she knows that I don't have much time for CA - I much prefer pure unadultered Disneyland........

But before I sleep, some birthdays - little_foxy, aumtattoo, my big brother, my charming host Linda, Ms A for a few days time (I'll be on a plane) and anyone else I have forgotten in my tiredness.....

I have postcards, havent written them yet and failed totally in my quest to post them from Disneyland.'Tomorrow.....

This weekend we traveled to perts North to attend the fabulous Cocktail party. The weather was perfect, the frocks lovely and the company fantastic. I had a great time and we went to bed at 4am. 8-> So lovely to catch up with so many old friends I don't get to see very often these days. 8->

Then on Sunday we went to Yum cha with the lovely Kiriel and many other people so the catching up continued. Venue slightly odd, but the food was decent and the price quite reasonable. Then a lazy afternoon continuing to admire the on-going improvements R&J are making to their house. I love having such talented and inspiring friends. I just wish I had that much industry and talent.

I would have liked to drop in at the party for Fruitbat and co but lack of sleep was catching up and it was a bit late when we got back, so we just went home.

All excited about the new car! We get it today! Yay for us. 8->

Thank you to everyone who sent well wishes to Freya. She has an antibiotic resistant bladder/kidney infection, so as soon as her lab results come back she will be on some specific antibiotics. She has been eating better for a few days, although she threw up again tonight.

We had a lovely weekend- some wonderful visitors and a lovely cocktail party. I think that quatrefoil has a bit of a crush on Kevin Mcleod- when he described a room as having a 'stygian gloom' on 'Grand Designs' she was rather excitable! Hermes was all over Hunydd, and after they lelt, he collapsed on the couch and snored!