New starts

In the unlikely event that anyone at all is still checking in here, I've started blogging again after the almost-12-months break here.

Updates will undoubtedly be slow and less-than-regular.

And very belated thanks to everyone for reading Mrs Hardly while she was around.

the concussion nearly knocked the boys off their ponies.

Poor Fenton is quite ill with a cold, I fear I am getting his illness too, so am guzzling down the echinacea and vitamin C in a probably fruitless attempt to prevent it taking hold.



In terribly exciting news - I have almost completed the dreaded report that I have been putting off (read: far too busy) since the beginning of the year, but which had a deadline of Friday, which I managed to extend until Monday (and of which I am now going to have to extend until Wednesday because I need Professorial input, and he is off lecturing aka warping young minds). The relief is completely, utterly, deliciously amazing!



We're currently participating in the annual harldy viewing of Eurovision (as an aside, wasn't 2005 supposed to be Terry Wogan's last?). Either I'm getting old, am ill, or this year's contest is utterly boring (well, except for the winners).



Perhaps next week I can get around to making that list o' stuff I mentioned previously, and return to the wonders of The Year 2000.



Oh, and sadly, Nancy did not have her braces removed (personal crisis of the Dentist's). Surprisingly she took it rather well. The appointment has been re-made for Tuesday - bits crossed for no crisis.



I think my breaker gif may be a little too large/intense - rework may be required.

"we'd better tie him on," joe panted as he pulled some rope from his pockets.

So, I had this cunning idea of making a list of all of those projects which have fallen by the wayside and decide which would be worth pursuing and which best abandoning - I figured if I had realistic projects it would stop me feeling so grumpish and overwhelmed.

I began by finally buying photo paper and printing out some photographs of my babies to decorate my miserable little cubicle (something I had been telling myself I'd do for months now). So that was one thing down - without even writing the list!

But then I went to work today and golly, so very much work, so very much stress. I have about 5 projects (projects which would ordinarily take a week each) due on Friday, which would be fine if I did not also have a couple of half day meetings scheduled for this week.

How on earth do people in high powered / demanding roles cope with this sort of thing and not go completely mental? And still manage to be widely read and cook fabulous meals and have wonderfully interesting lives (and are not insane at all). I totally marvel at it.

I think I need a plan.

And some more lists.

And some deep breaths.

And a plan.



In other news, Nancy allegedly has her braces removed tomorrow.


<edited to add> and a new breaker gif crossed off the imaginary list.



well, until I tire of it...

"come on. we'll give him a good massage," frank suggested.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is your all stations to Bondi Junction service, the next station will be Wolli Creek ... on behalf of Cityrail, I'd like to wish you a pleasant evening and to all the mothers on board, "Happy Mothers' Day"."
5.20pm all stations to Bondi Junction train from Hurstville

Ahhh, Mothers Day - one of those manufactured gift-giving occasions that I'm totally contemptuous of, but which my children insist on celebrating¹. And might I say that I did rather nicely out of the occasion.



From Nancy (purchased with her hard earned dosh):


From Bess (made by her own wee hand!):


From Joe/Frank (drawn by his own wee hand - I adore small boys drawings):





¹When Nancy asked what I would like for a gift, my response was, "for you to do your homework & keep your room clean", but strangely, she wasn't terribly keen on the idea.

he taught them a few icelandic words, which, if muttered repetitively, would fool any foreigner.

It's a babies weekend here in Hardly land, as a consequence I am sitting on the couch using the Frankenlaptop (which, you may recall, Fenton created after cobbling two dead laptops together).

Frankenlaptop is rather light on anything other than essential software (mozilla and office) and because I am too lazy to actually locate our photoshop software, I decided to give some FOSS a bash and download the very unfortunately named GIMP. So far it works an absolute treat - for what I want it to do, which admittedly isn't terribly complicated.

Given that I am using a computer where I can actually view all of the trackers on my blog (I had completely forgotten I had so many trackers, how vain I must appear!), I thought I'd share the most recent list of keywords:



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Fenton is currently in Noo York - a first visit for him (needless to say I have not been there either - because I've not been anywhere at all¹) & he is quietly enthusiastic about it, he even went so far as to say he wouldn't mind returning (which is high praise indeed). He is armed with a rather sizeable make-up shopping list for Nancy (prices are around half of those here) and a request for The Rockford Files Season 1 on DVD for me, because I simply cannot get enough of cool 70s television.

8<----------

I've been feeling rather unsettled and out of sorts lately, I feel as though I'm not achieving a great deal and am beating myself up a little (well, okay, a lot) about it. Primarily - the projects (both at work & at home) in my head which I never begin, the "stuff" I stockpile "just in case" for aforesaid projects, the exercise I promise myself I will undertake, the exotic things I plan to cook.

Essentially I think I need to give myself a good mental shake & a good talking to and to throw some stuff away (I know I will feel better if I divest myself of these things - oh golly, I sound like a member of the insidious flylady cult²)

8<----------

I think I need to develop something a little more sophisticated than my rather lame ascii scissors as a breaker between topics.

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¹I'm not one of these totally aggravating types who proclaim, "Oh, I haven't been anywhere" and follow up with an, "but I found travelling in <name of remote exotic locale #1> so much more rewarding than <name of remote exotic locale #2> or <name of remote exotic locale #4378>" - I truly haven't been anywhere at all (thus exploding any misconceptions you may have held of Mrs Hardly: world traveller).

²This has to be the most wacked out thing ever (you need to scroll down to the testimonial for the full horror.

"chet, have you gone wacky?" joe asked.

Today I totally lost my mind and provided The Professor with the Biggest Clue Ever to how to locate my blog.

I'm not too worried if he does, he is infintely less of a pompous twit than he was when he first joined Marie Celeste and think he would respect my privacy.

However, I doubt that he will end up here, because he lacks the m4d observational sk1llz of world renowned detective, Fenton Hardy.

I said that he might find it if he searched for the best series of books ever. On at least two occasions, within his hearing, I have spoken of the total coolness of the wacky antics of Joe, Frank, Chet, Biff, Aunt Gertrude, Mr Hardy, Mrs Hardy, Tony Prito and those random friends who make an occasional appearance. But I am fairly certain that this didn't even register on the radar.

So, in the unlikely event that he actually visits: "Hi Professor".

<edited to add> Actually, it may not be as easy as I thought it would be, I'm on page 3 of a technorati seach, and I gave up at page 8 of google.

"i'll bet he's been drugged!" joe cried out. "holy toledo!"

The Year 2000: A Framework for the speculation on the next thirty-three years.

Mrs Hardly's way cool blog project - Part 1

Note: I had orginally planned to approach this project in a fairly methodical way, carefully summarising each chapter and tossing in some commentary. However, after attempting to read the introduction and first chapter, I'm not sure that careful summaries are the best approach, so the project will be done in a fairly ad hoc fashion - I'll pick out the best bits and omit the boring, because the less essay-like this ends up - the better. This may mean the project is rather shorter than I'd anticipated, because there seems to be a very large amount of The Boring contained within the 425+ pages.

The intro, by Daniel Bell, "Chairman of the Commission on the Year 2000, American Academy of Arts & Sciences", begins intriguingly - he talks about a series of books called "Today and Tomorrow", published by Keegan Paul / E P Dutton in the 1920s. These actually sound incredibly cool and I'd love to get my hands on some of them. Bell obviously doesn't think they are anywhere remotely as cool as I do, he is quite contemptuous of the majority of the volumes, because they are "fanciful", have a "puckish" tone and "lack seriousness". He goes so far as to label the volumes on society as "feeble" and is particularly scathing about JFC Fuller's Atlantis, America and the future, where Fuller predicts the US will be plunged into a religious war in the distant future, which Bell obviously thinks ridiculous. Hmmmmm, who is feeble now Mr Bell?

This goes on for many, many pages and really, I've not experienced such a high level of, what can only be described as, bitchiness in such a scholarly work before, and as we all know, I love me some snark and I never, ever thought that I would find anything to be too snarky¹. Thank gods Mr Bitchy has only written the introduction, because if this was his book it would be consigned, mostly unread, to a Charity Shop somewhere in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney quicker than you could say "Mr Bell, you are a real tool". And I really hope that Herman and The Wiener are not the same pompous, loathesome dickheads that Mr Bitchy appears to be or this project will come to a rather abrupt conclusion.

Anyway, the point of the bitchiness is soon obvious. Because, you see, all previous predictions of the future have been flawed and wrong, for they lack the benefit of Sophisticated New Methodologies - like statistical time-series and modelling and controls and a whole lot of other stuff which I am going to spare you from and this all makes me rather hate statistics (and I generally think statistics rock) and I am beginning rather loathe Mr Bitchy.

I am very glad when the introduction ends - Mr Bitchy uses Machiavelli's argument that half men's lives are ruled by chance and the other by the men themselves to conclude that the Sophisticated New Methodologies will endeavour to have chance more or less omitted from the what-rules-men's-lives equation.

While reading, I'm thinking, all the while, that I really should cast caution to the wind and tell The Professor the URL of my blog, because he lives for this shit. But I realise that this would probably be a Really Bad Idea (however I might gift the book to him when I am done).

Next up: the actual book (where I hope there is some decent content).

¹Yes, I'm aware of the irony of snarking about something being too snarky, but hey, this is a blog, not something that purports to be a scholarly vision of the future and wants to be taken seriously.