My brush with fame

Vicki and I just spent a fun evening being cultured - we decided to attend Literature Live with Neil Gaiman. He's in the UK to promote his new book, The Graveyard Book.

After being introduced, Neil highlighted a dilemma that many people may have had - Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm had a gig next door at the same time as Neil's talk. To ensure we didn't miss out (and become bitter and twisted in our old age), he invited them to perform the shortest gig ever! Neil Gaiman had his own 'warm up bands'!

The evening started with Paul and Storm singing Live - a song about building the perfect woman - Frankenstein-style: "Hard work and science are what I have to give, and all I'm asking in return is that you live.."

This was followed by Jonathan Coulton who sang a very catchy tune Skullcrusher Mountain: "I’m so into you
But I’m way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I’m crazy
I’m not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You’d see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn’t kill you yet"

Finally Neil read some of the book to us (Chapter 3) - he even used the right voices! The father sounds like Berk from Trapdoor (you know, the plasticine dude on tv). After the reading, there was a question and answer session - Neil's answers were honest and amusing and not arrogant. It makes me even happier to read his books. He even answered the silly girl who obviously didn't know much about him and asked the question he's probably answered millions of times already.."I've been reading American Gods...(insert list of books), why do you choose to incorporate fantasy..?" (or something like this). My favourite Q&A was "What do you think of your Sandman being used by boys to get the girlfriends in to comics?".. "I'm happy to have one of the first sexually transmitted comics!"

Anyway, there were book signings afterwards, so I had to get my new copy of the Graveyard Book signed. :-) I even got a photo (in the typical dayna-selfportrait style). He was great about it too - just told me that the signature in the book will be slightly wobbly because he couldn't see (due to the flash - it IS bright).

And now I've updated the Bandwagon within 2 hrs of getting home - this is a new record for me! An event with photos up on the same day!! woohoo! (Can you tell I'm excited by my brush with fame?)

wow what a surprise!!!

well I won a scholarship in English...$1,000 to spend on anything to do with English so I've decided to buy a new laptop.

BellyWatch: Week 27

This weekend Cheryl officially entered her third trimester. We took some photos. It may look like she's really pushing her stomach out, but that's just how her back is.

So I guess we're officially in count-down mode now.. it's no longer "27 weeks in", now it's "13 weeks left". We've still got a fair bit to do - the most pressing of which is to organise a car seat from the RAA, or we wont be able to take the baby home. But apart from that we have supplies to buy, not to mention furniture.. we've ordered a cot, but we've still got to find a little chest of drawers or bookshelf or something to put a change-table on top of.. and of course the change table itself.

Such fun :) Time for a trip to Ikea methinks.

We did buy a pram on the weekend. A friend was recommending the brand when they found one on eBay that was actually being sold in Adelaide. I sent a message through to the seller saying we'd like to have a look, and she gave me a call - turns out she lives about 5 minutes away from us.

So we headed over there for a bit of a look, had a practice pushing it around, opening and closing it to make sure it was all easy enough, and then bought it from her straight away. It's a nice little pram, a Peg Perego Pliko P3.. they retail for around $600 - $700.. I was a bit taken aback with the cost of prams to be honest... But yeah, second-hand we got a good deal. It obviously sits back for a baby as well as being upright for a toddler, and our friends said theirs has lasted several years.

Cheryl took another video while I was at Iaido on Sunday, this one is even freakier than the last. Check it out at my website

Time 4 me to update!!!!

Hi everyone, well on friday 2 weeks ago i got an email from one the editors from 'The LOOP' which is part of the 'Addy'. She wanted me to write some articals for her, so i did...Yay so now i have a part-time job.
I also have an assignment to do on Lodon so if you have any good spots that you think other people might like let me know.

Delightful deception

As you all know, Dee threw Glenn a surprise 30th birthday party last weekend. I was in on it from the start and Glenn didn't suspect a thing!

I went to London last Thursday - I had my end of year appraisal on Friday, so I checked that I could stay over with G&D. This wasn't unusual, I'd popped down to London for work before and Glenn is used to me staying over. What he didn't know was that I'd requested my appraisal for Friday so that I could be there for the weekend. heheheh...

I'd been in London a few weeks ago to see Toby - an Aussie who was only in the UK for a few days. We'd gone to Camden Market and I'd spied some cool Xmas pressies for you lot. I decided Saturday would be a good day to go get them (since I'm away all of November) and Glenn agreed to come along (as we were hoping). We headed off around lunch time. Dee had gone to "get Glenn's present" - she was really getting things organised for the party.

Once we were out of the way, Dee, Tina, Chris and Colleen got to work making the party-house - helium balloons, nibbles, all the important things. Glenn and I had a fab time wandering around the market, buying presents (I even got Glenn's pressies while we were out), eating tasty curries and looking at lots of interesting things. Eventually, we headed back towards the flat, stopping at St Pancras station for 'high tea'. Yes, we had an English tea (tea and scones) in a French cafe for an Aussie birthday. How multicultural. While we were eating, I got a call from Dee that it was all set to go - Glenn didn't even question why I got the call and not him (we said his phone had no reception - he didn't even check..heheh.. trusting brother).

We made it back and "Surprise"!!

I missed out on the birthday cake cos I had to go and get Bruce from the train station - he had his appraisal on Monday, so he came and stayed at G&D's too. It was a fun night - there are MANY photos here. It seemed like Glenn had a good time, made better by the surprise. Yay us for not letting him know. *grin*

On Sunday, after a pancake breakfast, Bruce and I went to the Science Museum - we like to play with all the hands-on exhibits. I had fun taking photos of the thermal imaging camera. :-) The weekend passed far too quickly and on Monday Bruce headed to work and I caught the train back to Manchester.

This weekend, I'm staying at home - it seems like ages since I've done that for one reason or another. Tomorrow morning I'm catching up with Vicki, Steven, Angelika and James for brunch and Killer Bunnies. Then tomorrow afternoon I head over to Wirral where I'll be working for most of next week. *phew* I'm looking forward to having a holiday!

Happy Brothday Birther

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GLENNK!

Happy Birthday Dad!

HAPPY 60th!!!

Hope you've had a splendid day.
(with lots of unlicensed dancing)

Lots of love and hugz

MST3K and the Sci-Fi London Oktoberfest

This weekend I attended an all-night film festival for the Sci-fi London Oktoberfest -- about 10 hours of icecream, red-bull and the hilarity of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (MST3K). On the programme it's listed as "Seriously funny {stuff}!", and it really was.

I arrived at the Odeon West End (near Picadilly Circus) at about 23:15 ... and then found out I was in the wrong place! Not sure how that happened, but suddenly the benefit of having Google Maps on a phone became very apparent -- even I could find my way, despite both my own lack of a directional sense and London's winding, Celtic roads.

So I wasn't too late. I met Allen "Conky" there; he gave me my (half-price) ticket and we wandered into the cinema.

Extremely comfy chairs! Free tea, coffee, icecream and red-bull! A couple of guys from EA (the games company) showing off their new XBOX 360 game (and a guy dressed up as the main character, how funny is that?!). I wasn't sure what to expect, but £15 for at least 4 movies I was ready to enjoy myself. So how happy I was when the organisers handed out "showbags" on the way in -- a bunch of DVDs (including a metal-cased special edition Voltron!), some badges, t-shirt transfers, little "build your own X-fighter" toys.

Even better for one attendee -- he got the "lucky" seat and ended up with a brand-new XBOX 360 and a bunch of games (all courtesy of Play.com -- thanks!).

So I was already in a merry mood when the movies started, and they turned out to be really, really funny. Take a bunch of bad, bad movies -- including the Worst Movie of All Time, "Plan 9 from Outer-space" -- and add a commentary by a couple of funny guys (actually one guy and two robots). The hours flew by, and before I knew it it was 9am!

We stumbled out of the cinema into broad daylight, squinting, dazed and confused. Whether it was the all-night laughs or the red-bull cola, I felt fine! A little bit dopey but certainly not tired, so I walked home and woke Dee (heh heh), trying to convince her to come outside and go do something!

About 5 minutes later I was asleep.

However, after 5 or 6 hours sleep I woke again, had a snack and went to see some comedians at The Comedy Pub with some friends and friends of friends (Joyce, Luke, Heather and Wayne). They were so funny too! Hard to remember the jokes; harder still to actually deliver them. After comedy we had a late dinner in China Town (I almost ordered pigeon, but settled on chilli and bean chicken).

Sunday we cleaned up the house, did the paperwork, and had a delicious dinner courtesy of Colleen (our housemate) who was really just cooking for her little brother :-).

Painting and Belly Watching

Hey all,

Just a bit of an update. We've started painting the baby's room.. you now all know the gender, so I don't mind showing you the colours :) We've got a light blue for most of it, and then a feature wall in a nice bright green. You can see photos of the progress here. The plan is to finish it off tomorrow, on our public holiday (huzzah!).. assuming I don't sleep in until 12 like I did this morning ;)



We also took a few photos of Cheryl for the week 24 BellyWatch. You can see them here.

We've been looking around for a cot and all the trimmings for the last couple of weeks.. we thought we had found the perfect one at Toys R Us (on sale no less), but unfortunately they don't deliver as far as Morphett Vale and we had no way of getting it from the city to our place.. and the local Toys R Us doesn't have it. Ah well, back to the drawing board. Assuming we can get the painting finished this weekend all we have planned for next weekend is steam-cleaning the carpet so we should have some time to look.

My general plan is to have the room all completely finished before you guys all visit in December, so we have a bit of time still.