Electric sheep

Last night I hosted a toy library working bee at my house. Early this morning I was part of a futuristic SWAT team with Barack Obama, Sigourney Weaver and some other tall thin famous people. In our shuttle we donned helmets and leather superhero suits as we prepared to take on someone with seriously overdue toys.

In the little bumpy car

My ideal car for our current requirements is:

1. automatic
2. second hand
3. a people-mover (comfortably seats 6 with room for baggage)
4. environmentally friendly (e.g. a hybrid)
5. painted metallic purple, colour-shifting purple/green or with a mural

Unfortunately environmentally friendly doesn't currently go with either second hand or a people-mover.

At the moment we have a Honda Odyssey people-mover and even though we mostly don't need the extra capacity sometimes it is wonderful. Someone on our street has got a Toyota Prius and I'd like to be as green as the Jones's.

Happy birthday to me

I had a lovely birthday.

I lay in bed all morning and read The Wailing Wind by Tony Hillerman. Tony Hillerman writes gentle detective stories and his main characters work for the Navajo Tribal Police. Like many of the books I like, his stories contain interesting stuff about another cultural and some theology. It is why I read Orson Scott Card, and the appeal of the excellent and awful books The Sparrow and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell.

I also had a nice lunch with D, got appropriately hassled by my workmates, had a cake made with help from H & K, went out to dinner with I and E at a restaurant I haven't been to before which was very good - Siem Reap, and kissed two perfectly soft sleeping cheeks before going to bed.

At the age of 36 she realised that she could ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair if she felt like it. (Although my dream trip is actually to go to Antarctica and I plan to do that one day.)

I can dream of being cool

One of my dreams is to visit Antarctica.

I've been to the glaciers in the South Island and they were fascinating, impressive and beautiful.

I worry about the ethics of going as a tourist to somewhere I do not want polluted by tourists.

I know some people who went on an 'ecotour' but their report didn't cheer me. They said that there were troughs of disinfectant to step through to wash their boots when they went on the ice and subantarctic islands but it was very cold and sometimes there were queues so some people would just walk past the troughs. And people went much closer than they were supposed to to take good photos of the birds (which don't care about people).

Then I think well at least I would be conscientious and maybe that would take a place away from some egg tromping, infection spreading lout.

And imagine the ice and the penguins and the phenomenal otherworldliness of it all.

One day, one day I'll go.