queneva

Small things that make life easier and more pleasant:

• sewing loops on face cloths and attaching hooks for them in the shower
• using a crockery bowl to collect kitchen compostables rather than the plastic containers which used to absorb ickiness
• putting hooks for bathrobes on the insides of the bedroom and bathroom doors

In the light of the setting sun the houses on the hills around turn tan and pink and terracotta, reminding me of Italy.
Makes me smile, both for what's here and for memories of other wheres.

Change seldom comes from revelations. Change comes with small choices, made often.
With ongoing conversation and thoughtful patterns of living more than from the retreat to sort it all out.

Even in the wind and sun, and under feline indignities, the roses bloom.
They're not unblemished, but they still smell sweet.

I'm looking for a knife.

I'd like to replace a knife that Beloved remembers very fondly from his youth, but which he doesn't have all the details about. Help and ideas welcome. (I'm especially looking at basalsurge here. Others please chime in, too.)

Beloved thinks the knife was originally used as a deer skinning knife. It seems to have worked as a general utility knife as well, being used at one time to chop down a small tree to make a stretcher.

The blade was about 5 inches and laminated. It took a wicked edge but/and could be bent sideways and would keep the bend (this freaks me a bit) and could be bent back easily.

The grip was stacked leather, with metal guard and pommel extension.

After all this time he's not entirely sure of the blade configuration. This is the nearest I've found to what he recalls of the overall format of the knife, but he's not entirely sure about the clip point and the sharp point that creates makes me doubtful about it as a skinning knife: http://www.youwantit2.com/HATTORI1700ANEW.jpg

There's a similar semi-clip at http://www.youwantit2.com/HATTORI1700B_1.jpg. These images (and their related drop-point) are from http://www.youwantit2.com/HATTORI.html

I'm looking for any ideas, particularly about the type of blade that would fit the descriptions "laminated", "excellent edge" and "stays bent". Maybe something like the Mora blades described at http://www.ragweedforge.com/BladeCatalog.html#f-blades

While looking I've found some Fällkniven knives that trigger my personal "want" response surprisingly deeply. I don't need a hunting knife, but it's interesting to observe and ponder the response to certain configurations of sharp and curving steel. I am generally in the market for an archetypical "knife", but I'm in no hurry.

The clematis over the fence is flowering. White-pink froth, which makes me smile. Caught a glimpse through the book-room window and decided there was a reason for that window after all.

Beloved has persuaded me to free up the 1.5-ish linear metres of bookshelf space currently devoted to a rather elderly -- but not antique -- Encyclopaedia Britannica. This is quite traumatic for me: just as some people are crazy cat people, I'm a crazy book person. I was trying to think about who might offer a home to old and un-cute books, since the idea of destroying them makes me twitch, but it might be the reasonable response here.

Had a second migrainous experience last week with a similar pattern to the previous one: numbness, visual disturbance, headache. Luckily I kept words this time; I was only a little slow accessing them. Also much less stressful now I have a label. Thanks to those who replied last time saying you had similar migraines; it helped to know it's a kind of normal.

On the GP's quick assessment test I report as not depressed, a bit anxious, and really quite stressed. GP's hypothesis is that the migraines are associated with stress. I can do a little more about work, but not a lot. That means most of my manage-things-better space comes from lifestyle stuff, including more exercise and streamlining my stressors. I'm working on it.

Also need to write up some ideas on:
- Othering, and the way a new government has to define itself as not what went before
- Left brain, right brain, and what it's like to lose bits of right-side sensation along with words
- "What's a good life?" revisited. 

Some days you have plans for an evening and instead end up spending five hours in accident and emergency.

I have words back, a headache, and no brain scan. Most likely a new-to-me migraine variant.

Blech. 

In other news -- oh, rapture! -- I've discovered that the Mecca counter at Kirks stocks Serge Lutens' export range of perfumes. No Sarrasins or Iris Silver Mist, alas, but I'm exploring all sorts of other things. Again finding that I don't necessarily like what I think I'll like from the reviews, so sometimes it's easier to go in cold. Currently finding Daim Blond and Louve okay-but-I-woldn't-buy-them and quite enchanted with Fleurs d'Oranger and Datura Noir.

Yes, perfume is a silly hobby. But when I figured out that I prefered nosing whisky to drinking it, perfume seemed a logical next step in the progression of expensive adulterated alcohols. 

I hold the tree in mind, see
the flow from root to bud

each branching possibility
laden with ghost flowers and fruit

we prune some branches
that others may grow strong 

there should be some rite for this
some way to mark the change

something to enter in
your family Bible
store with our grandmothers' rings
the things
that we as oldest hold
in failed trust for the future

instead
a day off work
a puncture wound
the knowledge this makes sense

and an ache
where a dream used to be 

" I inherited a desk-top sand-garden at work. Used to groom it with a fork. Then someone dropped it. The material world is transient."

Beloved and I have been married 13 years. Which means that in one form or other we've been together 18 years. Still happy.

Yesterday we switched the pointers on work's main website, dragging it into the modern age. This is only the most visible part of a refresh which has been going since February. Over the next month we'll wind up this project phase and kick off something more BAU about updating content now that we've had the main part of our reorganisation and the business is working out what it does (and no longer does) and therefore what we should be telling the world we do.

This is quite a big deal for me. I took this job knowing the main site was a doer-upper, and thinking I'd be able to get stuck in. Instead, getting approval and resourcing took a year, and I've been project manager -- and tech lead for some key project strands -- as well as keeping my normal Web Team Leader job going. I've learnt that while some people have ego invested in their cars or houses, I have ego invested in the sites I run. Getting the main LandTransport one into prize-winning condition took two makeovers over about five years, and by the end I'd forgotten what it felt like to cringe about a site you're responsible for but not able to change. I know the things that still need work on this site, but I'm remarkably relieved that it's at least decent now.

We've had a glimpse of spring, which has also provided a much-needed morale boost. The garden is stirring. I've been pulling out the weeds which have overtaken some sections over winter. The roses I planted a month ago are showing leaf-buds now. Last week I finally found a place to plant the unexpected rose -- Reine des Violettes -- which had been heeled in in a pot. We'll see how it does. I've been brutal with the rosemary and hyssop which took over the herb garden, although there's more brutality still to come. I've also started stripping the ivy off the fence again. I'm building up to having another chat to the neighbour, but haven't quite got there.

Also, while doing gardening, I managed to do something to the bit at the join of my ribs and sternum, which gets inflamed from time to time and causes nasty chest pain. At first I thought I'd breathed in too much ivy dust, but no. The problem glories in the name costochondritis, I've been diagnosed with it by two doctors for two separate incidents in the last 15 years, and realising what it is is quite relaxing compared with the "argh, heart or lung stuff, argh" possiblities. But annoying.

I might actually have energy soon to look around and do stuff that's outside home and work and EVE. Intriguing possibility. 

Time for another catch-up:

Old friends: Went to Winter Weekend. Lovely to catch up with old friends with whom I can just... hang out. Conversation, knitting, some films, too much food and beautiful weather. Very pleasant. Miraculously managed to catch up on some sleep while I was there.

New friends: While my EVE-Online addiction is in decline, I've been enjoying hanging out with the people in my corporations. Quite a lot. Especially the small, boutique corp of cynical old EVE-players who are now using EVE as an excuse... sorry, an "opportunity" to spend time with other congenial people. To the point where I'm setting my alarm clock on Sunday morning to catch up with them across scattered timezones, and having long discussions about art, politics, philosophy, culture and cultural history, historic furniture, gliding, dog tags, um... lots of stuff. It's got elements of wide-ranging conversation and stunningly in-depth discussion and ambient hanging out. Enlivening and challenging, and sometimes simply comforting; I really appreciated the listening ears when I was secularising the prayer of remembrance for Jan, and the pictures of cute animals when I had a dark few weeks afterwards. I found myself grinning and describing one person as an intellectual incubus the other day, disturbing my hours of sleep and implanting fertile ideas.

Boring colds: In a winter where it seems half my friends and colleagues have had flu -- much of it most likely swine flu, since at one point that was estimated to be 90% of all flu cases here -- this week I've had... a cold. I'm not complaining: I can't afford to be sick just now and the cold is annoying but mild enough that I could mostly pretend I was functional.

Work: Last Monday we heard the results of the next phase of our restructuring. My team will be picked up and moved to a new directorate. The phase after that is going to be the really interesting one where I expect there'll be some consideration of which functions belong with web-in-comms. Last Wednesday my manager resigned. On Friday morning he learned that he wouldn't be required in the office after the end of the day. He's leaving a contract here (early) to become permanent CTO at a rather larger arm of government up the road. Interesting times. We're in lockdown phase prepping to launch a new site skin and code, so things are focused.

RIP conditioner: Back when I first experimented with having my hair dyed -- 2001 or 2002 -- I got some fancy foaming leave-in "color-lock" conditioner. I used it for a bit, and then gave up on professional hair colour when each time it made the skin on the backs of my ears peel. From time to time, though, I've pulled out the conditioner and used it, sometimes for months at a stretch. While clearing out the bathroom cabinet earlier this year I found it again, and decided to use it rather than biffing it still loaded. And I've once again used it... and used it, and used it. It's been like a bag of holding that somehow seems to contain more than could possible fit into its space. Today I finally finished it. Here's to Joico Color Endurance Color Lock, circa 2001/2002.

I'm thinking of writing more about friendship, but I'm not sure that I have much new to offer. Many of you will know what it's like to find groups of geeks-like-us and feel like you've come home to a shared culture. Combine that with an element of amateur anthropology when talking to geeks-like-us with very different life experiences and I'm enchanted. It's the pillow talk without the sex: that deep but sometimes patchy discovery of others. Given my monogamous state, that's an excellent thing.

 Interesting FAQ here about the Department of Internal Affairs' voluntary internet filtering scheme for NZ ISPs. Oddly reminiscent of Australia. http://thomasbeagle.net/

Jan's funeral went well. Tears, laughter, lots of stories. She was too damned young, but after what the cancer had done to her it was also a relief.

The women in my family speak well.

My role was a bit tricky for me. I arrived to find that I was already in the programme as leading the family prayer of remembrance and thanksgiving for Jan's life. (I'd said I wasn't allergic to the idea as long as they didn't make me sing. Solo singing at funerals I'm involved in isn't my happy place.) I then transcribed the last such family prayer and spent a day reworking it into something that was (a) relevant to Jan and (b) secular. (Well, secular except for the fact that it still led into the Lord's prayer.)  I started out really quite uncomfortable with the prospect, and managed to pull together something that touched all the needed bases, which I felt comfortable delivering, and which went down well.

I also managed to catch up with everyone except my grandmother, and that was an oversight of "argh, I've been talking through the only timeslot that was free".

I hope the weekend has fine weather. Some of the many, many plants Jan was growing to landscape her lifestyle block were given away. I now have an assortment of flaxes to help secure the cliff and a tarata which might grow into the space vacated by a recently-dead small tree.

Quite separately I also have two Jacques Cartier Portland roses on order. Since the soil here isn't good for roses I'll be trying to grow them in pots: I chose this rose after a recommendation for just this role. Now I need to find Big Pots and the ingredients for the recommended mix. I have fascinating instructions which begin "If you've ever grown dope, then basically treat roses in pots about the same way". I have, however, never grown dope. I'm now reading up on pot cultivation.

Was at Te Papa yesterday having a behind-the-scenes tour of the Maori collection. One of the collection managers who was acting as a guide mentioned that they'd recently had the French rugby team through, and one of the questions that had been asked through their translators -- by the sound of it out of the blue and with a certain amount of "hurr, hurr" -- was "So did they have homosexuality in the old times?"

Something was amiss in the culture of that team, and while Mathieu Bastareaud is being sacrificed on the altar of international relations I'm not at all convinced that that was the heart of the problem.

... for the thoughts.

The funeral will be on Tuesday.  I'm trying hard to get some work done, but my mind is elsewhere. Work says to take what time I need, but also gives me hard and time-dependent things to achieve (and sick team-members, so it's harder to delegate). And I'm balancing being tough and effective with the growing realisation that I'm actually fairly upset about this. (Over-analytical, as always. Doesn't mean the feeling's not there, just that I'm observing it as well as feeling it.) 

My earliest concept of family includes Jan. I was born into a household of Mum, Dad and Jan, who was then 13. Mum and Uncle Garth were her guardians. She went to school at Epsom Girls', knitted me a hot-water-bottle cover out of carpet wool (which I still have), moved into the flat downstairs, was there when I first learnt to use a sewing machine, was just part of it all.

Jan dropped out of university -- marine biology wasn't her thing -- and did her training in commercial sewing and the fashion business with Kevin Berkhan. She started her own business making and selling wedding dresses in central Auckland, which has continued through the decades.

I was a flower girl at Jan's wedding.  Spent a lot of time with Jan and Graeme during my mid-teens. While still under-age myself I modelled wedding and bridesmaid dresses both in live fashion shows and in photo shoots for bridal magazines (believe it or not). I also got completely over the wedding thing.

Jan's shop was my city base when I was studying at Auckland. Ulf and I got married in her upstairs living room, surrounded by family, with everything done and made by family and friends. We were comfortable together. Think of her like an older sister with enough of an age gap that we didn't fight.

Jan loved making things and growing things. She was a capable businesswoman who wanted a comfortable living rather than a business empire. She'd worked with divas in the fashion business and decided that that wasn't her. In recent years she'd done the polytech certicate course in horticulture, and dreamed that once her youngest finished school she'd retire to the lifestyle block she and Graeme had bought south of Auckland.

Jan died this afternoon. We'd all known since February that her melanoma had spread widely and it or something derived from it would kill her. She survived longer than we'd been led to expect. It's not been awful, but it's not been easy. Having known for so long that this was happening, much of the grieving is already done.

I'll leave this public for a while before locking it. I'll be out of town for a few days, but I won't know which few days until I know when the funeral will be.

Music's part of who I am. 

I've been going though a difficult time with music lately. I still reflexively think of myself as an Early Music aficionado, but the truth is that it first became work and then it became more often irritating than inspiring. I don't want to talk about that too much, because I hope to trick the joy into coming to visit again sometime, and this is definitely not a comment on the people who've kindly tried to lure me back into singing. Voices have become stressy, demanding. When I do listen to them I want something that tells me a story in its expressiveness and imperfections. Quite a different approach.

What I have been enjoying lately has been instrumental. I'm currently playing a collection of interpretations of Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel, interspersed with other pieces including Für Alina. I find it peaceful -- repetitive and soothing -- like rocking.

When I first encountered Pärt  -- sight-singing a rather challenging Mass back in the days when my sight-singing was almost up to it -- I wasn't an immediate fan. I'm glad I stumbled on his other works.

Since a comment in my last post seems to have aroused some interest...

My combat character's alliance killed a very large and expensive ship a couple of weeks ago. The ship kill was a perfectly valid con within the game, executed with style and finesse on a player who seems to have been far too innocent for the sort of ship they were flying. The whole "you shouldn't trust my alliance-mates because they'll gleefully lie to you" thing doesn't sit too comfortably with me, but social engineering is definitely a layer of the game. A significant number of people were attracted to EVE by reports of some of the long-term infiltrations in the early years of the game. You, too, can play a spy, a spymaster, a con-artist, a scammer, a pirate (honourable or not) or a cold killer. (I actually find some of this really interesting but I'm mostly too lazy for it. I haven't yet found something I want to achieve enough to make it worth the hassle.)

The ship kill was mostly fine. Interest and incredulity as the story broke and the call to arms went out. "Trap or treat?" discussion with increasing tension as one of our members kept the mark on the line. Adrenaline-fuelled jubilation as we hooked the mark, got the tackle and all went in for the kill.

Inside your ship is the pod that protects the pilot, supported in special goo against the accelerations of space travel. When a ship is killed, the pod is released, and is like a small, fast, defenseless ship. Pods are fairly hard to lock and hold, but they die easily if you can shoot at them.

Killing a pod means you kill the body that the pilot was using at the time. We all have access to clones so that's not permanent death, but it's an inconvenience, an expense (sometimes considerable) and an indignity. The pilot's corpse will then hang in space and can be collected and kept or traded.

The ship kill was mostly fine: the pod kill was different. I think this is what happened. Sometime, as we pounded through the ship's defences, the mark logged off, leaving us to deliver the death-blow to their unresponsive ship. If a player logs off while they're engaged in a fight, their ship remains where it was. When the ship died the pod automatically warped away to a random place. Then, because the player wasn't guiding it, the pod stayed there, immobile and seemingly abandoned, while we tracked it down and gathered the fleet around it.

So there we were, high on the recent fight and our power as a pack, surrounding this pod. And there was a pause. My main role in this type of work is as a tackler -- I hold things down while more powerful ships hit them. And going through my mind was a half-remembered comment in an article about the Ambury Park gang rape in Auckland in 1986. One of the participants had been convicted for maybe six years, 'although' all parties agreed that his 'only' role had been to restrain the woman. "It's a long time," someone said, "for holding someone's leg."

Sometime in the process the mark logged back on. Sometime we tackled. We took the pod. We also took the hit to our security status.

It's common to talk about the power-play of combats and sovereignty in terms of rape. We raped them: they raped us: that player was butt-hurt.

There's no subtlety or hidden layering. Merely "killing" seems cleaner and less satisfying, somehow -- it obliterates the person too quickly. "Rape" seems to involve a more personal exertion of power, an "I can do this to you and keep doing this to you". There's this messy, potent blend of power and acknowledgment of that power and a group dynamic that makes it damned hard to back down, and...

It's just a game. But there are things I think I understand more now. More viscerally. How it can come to pass. Some sense of what it feels like. That I want a different way to manage things next time, and I'm not yet sure what that will be.

The talk afterwards was freewheeling and offensive and went on and on. There were calls to tone it down. One alliance-mate logged off in anger and later posted to the forum that "Rape jokes are not cool". That view was supported by management. There were discussions at various levels. It's officially not okay, and there's still a sense in some sectors that other people are too sensitive.

I find this group of people fascinating. There are some I'd like to have long conversations with, and some I wouldn't really want anywhere near people I like. Sometimes it seems like something I want to get more involved with (I'd been going to record some propaganda for the cause the weekend this all happened). Other times I wonder how much longer I'll stay.

As a final comment, sometimes it's harder to act on an issue where awareness has been raised. It becomes too touchy a subject, and what would previously have been seen as taking a personal stand comes to seem like you're following a party line.

Thanks to Stephanie's gentle reminders about coming around to her place for a craft afternoon I've finished one of my craft UFOs: the mobius scarf in mistake stitch that I asked about grafting here quite some time ago. After three attempts, the grafting actually looks quite good on one side, and the other side is at least finished. Darned the ends in tonight, and it's done.

I'm slowly learning about capitalism from my spaceships game.

I still haven't written up the experience in the game the other weekend of "this is a symbolic gang rape we're engaging in". I'm not sure any longer whether I will. It was... sobering and educational. Is this something I want to understand?

And work is work. The urgent, high-level "drop everything to do this" project hasn't got itself organised yet, so I'm continuing with business as usual on my real project, with my team, and on our restructure. Too many things to do, and still too much confusion about who should have a say in each of them.

All this talk of Kenwoods....

My mother's Kenwood has the white glass bowl. Anything else seems to lack the solidity necessary for Christmas cakes and dough.

But you've definitely got me thinking.  

I know some of you love your food processors. Please share the goodness and recommendations.

The food processor Beloved and I received for our wedding over 12 years ago is dying. Well actually, the food processor part still probably works because we've not made great use of it, but the plastic blender thingy is cracked from much use over the years, and I don't hold out much hope for replacing it.

And I'm in the mood for food processor porn, even if I don't end up buying  one.