Swandives

Some days are better than others. Today wasn’t one of the good ones. I found out that my father has cancer in his lung. I don’t know what kind of cancer it is - he goes into hospital for tests on the 23rd. And to be honest, I don’t really know how I feel. In part because I don’t have all the details. Mum wasn’t going to tell me until they knew for sure, except my sister (quite rightly) said she’d want to know if she was me. I spoke to Dad too, but he was a bit short on details.

I have a headache.

UPDATE 17/12/08: I feel I should add a postscript to this post as it’s pretty dire and in the end it wasn’t cancer! It’s quite a drawn-out story but that’s the good news. The process did uncover other issues that have since overshadowed this post somewhat. It will no doubt become a much bigger issue with time and when it does I’m sure various details will appear here. What is it they say about life not being meant to be easy?

If you’ve ever spent any time around Neutral Bay in Sydney, chances are you have had a least one drunken late night at the Pickled Possum. There’s often a lot of talk about how Sydney lacks funky little bars and I do agree that in that respect, Melbourne has it in spades. But the Pickled Possum is something special. To begin with, it only opens when …well, it seems when they feel like it. It’s grungy amidst the upper North Shore yuppiness. You drink with the owners. And it’s karaoke for goodness sake! It’s also darned good fun, and if you don’t believe me, check out the reviews on Eatability. Without a doubt the best user-generated content around I reckon. Classic stuff.

UPDATE 30/09/2008: It’s has CLOSED! The Pickled Possum is no more. I went past it the other day and it’s in the process of becoming a Thai restaurant or something equally ubiquitous. What a shame!

UPDATE: 23/10/2008: I went past the other day and it’s still good! Woohoo. Open three nights a week from btw 8-8.30pm till late. Great stuff.

Image via WikipediaCue the Twilight Zone music: something weird is happening. I posted a minor rant about my disappointment with Weight Watchers and it mysteriously disappeared. The WW faeries came and took it away - if only they could do the same for the extra 8 kg of lard that’s hanging around right now. But thank you for all your ideas and comments - they’ve been filed away where I will put them to good use.

Yesterday I ran 4 km and then did a pump class. I was a wee bit weary by the end of it all. But I’ve entered the City to Surf so it’s training, here we come. I wasn’t going to enter because with only a few weeks left, it’s unlikely that I’ll get the 14 km even at my snaily pace, but I had a mini epiphany - I don’t actually have to run the entire way. Hell, most people don’t run the entire way. And all of a sudden, the C2S stopped being this painful chore and started being potentially fun. So that’s the plan, anyway.

Of course, this comes in the first year that C2S offers timing chips, so I’ll know exactly how slow I am. I am very happy about the chips and it’s providing extra incentive to train but why in the very year when I decide to be zen about my time and walking? Oh well. There’s always next year.

… in other news, a truly weird moment watching the news on the tele tonight. Actually, I was listening, not watching. It was all about the wildfires in California, which are pretty dire by the sounds of things. Too many fires, not enough resources to fight them all, forcing fire fighters to pick and choose and leave some to burn. The news coverage switched to the obligatory pollie news grab, and all of a sudden I was listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring a state of emergency and ordering the National Guard to assist in the efforts.

It was a surreal moment because my first reaction was to think, “Why doesn’t Arnie just put the fires out?”. He saved the world countless times - he even saved Mars, for goodness sake! A few fires should be a doddle, right? A few moments later common sense kicked in: “D’uh Swannie, this is real life we’re talking about, not some movie.” Oh yeah. Right. Darn.

There’s nothing like putting on 8 kgs in as many weeks to provide motivation for pounding the pavement. Yes, you read it correctly. Eight in eight. Sadly, I’m not even really exaggerating. Our bathroom scales began lying to me and all of a sudden, my jeans don’t fit. It takes months of hard work to lose 8 kg, but apparently that ‘moment on the lips’ cliche is entirely true. Needless to say, the scales have been retired in favour of a new, accurate set.

So I’m back to running. I tried to motivate myself a few weeks ago to get back into it, to no avail. But the aforementioned weight gain worked like a charm and I’ve just completed 5 km. I’m also considering going to Weight Watchers as I am obviously in need of help.

Many (indeed, I would venture to say most) women have body issues - and many look in the mirror and see something larger than reality. But I look in the mirror and see the same thing, regardless of whether I’m hefty or svelt. You may be wondering, ‘how can she put on all that weight and not notice?’. I have asked myself the same thing. But I don’t notice. I feel like some freakshow. I should add that, apart from a prediliction for chocolate, I haven’t been stuffing my face. But for some reason food just doesn’t seem to taste as good as it used to, and I guess I’ve been overcompensating by eating more in the hope I’ll recapture yumminess.

Sad but true. Here’s a snapshot from Akismet livestats with, gasp, 22 hours to go for the day!

* 6,375,115,334 spams caught so far
* 551,189 so far today
* 89% of all comments are spam

That’s right - 89% of all comments are spam. How awful is that?! Worse is that spam comments obviously work, else that figure wouldn’t be so high. And what I find so malignant about it all is that it drowns out the real conversations. In that respect, spam really does live up to its namesake, a la the Monty Python skit.

Akismet’s tracking shows exponential growth in spam since it began tracking in 2005 and while stats can always be argued (such as the increases in efficiency of weeding out comments since the service began, the level to which the stats are tied to Wordpress and so on), the trend is hard to ignore. Real comments (which Akismet calls ‘ham’) are also growing, but nowhere near spam levels.

I’m putting it out there, in the hope that universe will provide (or already provides, and I just need to be made aware it exists):

Please sir, I want a universal status updater.

What’s a universal status updater? Well, I don’t know if I’m having a ‘the future is now’ moment here, but it’s a little application that allows you to automatically update the status on all your social networks without having to log into each one and do it manually. I don’t even use Twitter and without even noticing, I suddenly have five statuses that need regular feeding:

• Live Messenger
• Facebook
• MediaConnect
• LinkedIn
• MySpace (ok, so I don’t use this one regularly, but it’s there nonetheless)

Wouldn’t it be good if you could just enter your status once and have it update everywhere automatically? OK, there are some issues, such as ‘do I want my FB status, which is largely social, to also appear on my professional LinkedIn profile’? But you can get around that by only using it for universal status updates, and going in for the manual update on sites if you don’t want everybody in the universe to know what you’re doing.

There must already be something like this out in the world. Whatsit called and does it work? Anyone…anyone…Bueller….

If not, we can call it USU. Sit USU sit - good dog!

UPDATE: If you do use Twitter and want to publish your Facebook status on the service, I suggest the method outlined by Jeff Sandquist from Microsoft. It’s only one way tho; you can’t use Twitter to update Facebook, from what I understand. 

UPDATE2: And the Twitter app lets you use Twitter to update FB.  I must admit, I’m a teeny bit scared of using it, coz it seems to be an all-or-nothing approach, but I’ll be brave and jump right in shall I? Of course, it’s not a USU but it’s fun to play around with.

This was taken on a road between the Snowy towns of Khancoban and Cabramurra in NSW. It’s a bit out of the way - not even Google maps has it listed. The road is closed during winter and was closed for two days after this video was taken. As you can tell, we were starting to become a little worried by when we shot this, as we only have a little VW Golf and weren’t carrying chains. It was April, for goodness sake! We went past a few vehicles parked on the side of the road - we can only assume their owners were taking refuge in a mountain hut somewhere - and National Parks and Wildlife spent the next day pulling cars out that had become trapped. It was quite exciting and I love snow but I was very glad to get below the snow line.

I promised stories from holidays and failed to deliver, so the beloved has stepped into the gap. Enjoy!

Guest columnist: My husband

Holiday reminiscing (as promised by George but not delivered): What my wife finds so amazing about snow I’ll never understand. Maybe it’s an Australian thing. You know, ‘oooooh it’s a hot hot hot country – ohmigod it’s something cold and wet … freezin’ cold and wet …’

Thus we have the hysterical scenes of George pirouetting around a completely deserted ski resort’s car park as the snow came down. Later we drove back in it as it got deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and the car decided going up hills was really a chance to over-rev and slide sideways across the road. The fact, my wife spent most of the time hanging out of the car whoo-hooing and taking pics and shooting video while I slowly wet my pants is testimony to the power snow has over her.

There is a video of this massively dangerous traverse from the end of hell knows where to the other (closer to Khancoban) end of somewhere a little safer. Oddly, the local lyrebirds seemed equally sexed up by the snow and were running around with flakes on their butts. They were single. I mean there were no other lyrebirds sprinting across the road going “Oh baby, I love the snow on your butt.” Which goes to prove that snow ain’t sexy, at least when it comes to lyrebirds. Actually, it isn’t really sexy at all if you think about it because, according to George, if you go skiing you are so buggered by the end of the day you don’t feel like it.

Anyway, there was a lot of snow – all through the holiday there was snow. I fancy though that George was close to her snow limit and up to her neck in it when we attempted to walk to the summit of Mt Kosciusko from Charlotte’s Pass – a mere 18km round trip. Hell, I was going to run it but it was bloody slush, mush and snow – see what I mean … snow gets in the way. Soooo, there we were tramping along and the snow goes from underfoot to over ankle to up to knees and the wind is blowing straight into our faces, the temperature is dropping the further we go and the wind chill is minus enough to freeze your pee (okay, slight exaggeration, close to that). By the time we got to the hut at the 6km mark even a minister from Forbes who is about the most experienced mountaineer I’ve ever met – it got me wondering what he found on the mountain tops he’s reached … you know sightings and the like … you can see heaven on a clear day, maybe – was tucked away inside boiling stock cubes and preparing to go back down. That’s how bad it was. George at this stage was a little pooped and definitely snowed under (I’ve been saving that one for a month now). The man from Forbes (a bit like the one from the Snowy River only he didn’t have a horse but a mountain bike he left at the 5km mark because he couldn’t push it – yet alone ride it) delivered her a piping hot cup of stock and she perked up enough to demolish lunch (pre-packed) and venture back down again. By this stage the weather was closing in, visibility was close to ground zero and the weak summer sun (watery is the term we Brits use for it) had turned the lower snow to a muddy slush. Charming. All in all though it was fun – in a sado-masochistic kind of way. The only remaining question is: did the Japanese couple who were going up at 2.30pm ever make it down? And where did the ranger who left his 4WD at the 4.5km mark go?

On the way back to our swanky digs in Guthega, George opined perhaps she’d had enough snow. True! I’m telling it like it is! Sadly, by the next day she’d recovered enough to still gush at the snow on several peaks as we trekked along a 3km track for a bit of trout fish in the upper regions of the Snowy River. But really Aussies, what is it about snow? You truly are a weird lot. Oh, that’s been said before hasn’t it.
BTW: There are other stories to tell – like how I caught the biggest trout on this trip (for once) but I’ll save that for another chapter. For now, I’m strapping on my skis and jumping to the safety of Geemuses where we never talk about snow. Ever.

If there was ever a laugh out loud moment on the interwebs, it was this comment from the live stream on Big Brother. Attributed to Rebecca and Bridget - I kid you not, it’s word for word. Hilarious!

Our passion is bikini modelling”

I’m sure many blokes will be stoked. And, you need a passion in life. It’s very admirable.

Have you noticed that when it comes to giving to charity these days, it’s not just about giving money? Somewhere along the line, it became about making some weird novelty statement. A quick list:

• World’s Greatest Shave
• Movember
• Red Nose Day
• Biggest Morning Tea
• Loud Shirt Day

Call me old fashioned, but I much prefer to do my giving anonymously, rather than proclaiming it for all the world to see.