Me, my elf and I

Today K found an envelope in the Christmas tree with a letter made with letters cut out from a newspaper. The letter said:

To the H Family
A naughty christmas elf hid some of your presents in the laundry cupboard
Signed: A good christmas elf

So, we checked out the cupboards and found three presents. When we unwrapped them there were lollies for H, lollies for K and a lovely beautiful bright green frisbee for me. Now the letter didn't explain who the presents were from but I have my suspicions, the writing and the absence of a fourth present all point to the incriminatingly smug D. I have to agree with him when he says "What a clever way to sneak in late Christmas presents."

Mellow and hollow but crisp

OK, I'm not blogging very often at the moment and as I have only 1hr 28 mins of battery for the next two days I'm not going to write anything much now.

I'm intending to write an entry about schema in sports, maybe one on the concept of marital insurance, post some pictures H & K have taken on my phone and update you on my life in general.

Meanwhile I hope that you're having a happy Xmas and are planning a merry new year.

We are the champions

Last week my Ultimate Frisbee team Happy Creature played Jason V's Team and they beat us by nearly 20 points. This week when I found out we were playing them again I felt demoralised. But we had a fabulous game. Everyone put in an astonishing effort. Our captain, SK, seemed to have an extra couple of feet of reach to call on. The final score was Jason V's Team 11, Happy Creature 7. Reducing the margin to 4 points feels like a great victory and if that wasn't enough their team named me female MVP.

I may have a BMI close to 40, run like a penguin with a face a beetroot would be proud of but today I am a sports star. I am expecting to be asked for celebrity endorsements any moment.

Weighing up reality

Wandering around the library today it occurred to me to divide the world into subjects on which there are more fictional instances than real and vice versa. Dragons, fairies, serial killers and princesses fall in the first category. Toilet breaks, sexual encounters, computers and even, I think, first love fall in the second (there are 6 billion people on the planet).

Which leaves me wondering - what occurs in fiction close to the same amount that it occurs in real life?

Driving the light fantastic

A long time ago, before either of us could drive, I had a conversation with my sister about good drivers in which she said that people who drive like they are part of an overall flow are nice to drive with. I have only been driving about a year and during that time I've thought of this from time to time. I've tried to use the metaphor of a river but it hasn't clicked for me.

The metaphor that does work for me is one of dancing, city driving is like boogieing in a crowd. Both driving and dancing involve physical movement which has elements of both constraint and freedom, both are better when done smoothly and, in both, crashing into others is a bad thing. The main constraint in driving is the road, the main constraint in dancing is the music, both are easier if the constraints are familiar.

My niece, I, likes to drive back from gym a particular way because she likes the shape of it. The sweep of the curves her way is a graceful dance.

Proof that geeks have inherited the earth

Monty Python is everywhere: I turn on the TV and Michael Palin appears, I turn on my PC and the Wikipedia article on the programming language Python is open (to assuage the curiosity aroused by this xkcd). Although should confess I haven't been able to look at Michael Palin the same way since he told Rove he'd turn gay for David Attenborough - docu-RPS haunts my imagination.

Wordlessly

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