Visitors

We've had quite a few visitors in the past week, mainly friends from work, but last night we received our most interesting visitor - a cat.

It introduced itself to B2 while he was down checking the mail by rubbing itself up against his legs and purring, in true cat fashion. It then followed him through the block of units, up two flights of stairs, and - when he wasn't quick enough to shut the door - into the house.

Whereupon it wandered around sniffing everything and rubbing itself up against everyone. A very sweet and friendly cat, not to mention totally self-confident - as is the case with all cats I guess.

After a little bit of this we ushered it back out into the hallway and back down the stairs. It was clearly a well loved cat, very sleek and with a quite pretty collar that completely failed to have any identifying markings, so we don't know what the cat's name was. It did have a bell though. So we didn't feel to bad about ushering it into the hall, figuring it had a happy home to go to. Hope it comes to visit again sometime.

City2Surf

I've only participated in the City To Surf twice, though I've also supported it as a St John member several times. But today I walked it, and I had a great time.

The day started out with a bit of a hiccup - I forgot my sunglasses and had left my hat at home because Sun Herald were giving out free hats, and I didn't feel in need of two. However, by the time we arrived at Hyde Park (8:30 am) they had already run out of hats (shame on you, Sun Herald! Shame on you, all those people who took more than their fair due in hats!) and, being a beautiful bright sunny day, I was already starting to get a headache from the glare.

So, a big THANK-YOU to the Krispy Kreme donut City To Surf organisers, who gave me one of their spare hats. I don't actually like Krispy Kreme donuts, but thank-you anyway. You saved me from having a miserable, headachy day.


Me looking very happy because I have my husband and a wonderful, glare-reducing hat.

We met Ray's friends Tim (who I'd met once before), Gaurav (who was very impressed that I knew how to spell his name in Hindi - I've been taking lessons) and Michiko, a Japanese diplomat.

I'm also quite happy because I beat Ray and Bhautik to the finish line (but then Ray pushed in front of me to get his time card, how rude). My official time was 193.48, but once the back-of-the-pack start time comes off that, it should be well under my target time of 3 hours. Yay!

More photos are here, thanks to B2 - he was the official photographer of the day.

Baby things

No, I'm not pregnant, just in case anyone is wondering :P I seem to get asked that a lot by friends/family. Maybe we've just been married too long, and everyone is keenly looking out for any sign of a bun in the oven.

Anyway, I'm not, but my sister is, and she's had her baby shower yesterday. Cue a trip to the baby things section of the local department store.

What a range of options! I expected the dozens of variations on the theme of bib, dummy and educational toy. I expected the blankets, and the jumper suits, and even the bottles and nappy pins. But the sheer number of gadgets available to new parents is just amazing, and would satisfy almost any geek - though I suppose the worst ones would be tempted to build their own bottle warmer or steriliser and baby monitor.

Even a simple stroller is no longer so simple - there are different styles depending on where you're going with the thing, there are all the accessories to go with it - special bag attachments and rain covers, the only thing I don't remember seeing were the fluffy dice.

It's just absolutely incredible how much thought and gadgetry goes into the first year or so of a person's life.

And yet, somehow, at the baby shower, it was still all blankets and bibs and jumpersuits :)

I've moved! (again)

Hello to anybody keen enough to still be checking my blog :) Two months since I last updated - a new record.

Moved out of the dog-hair infested house last weekend, and my allergies improved almost overnight, so I'm very happy. It's also good to have our own place again - even if you can barely move at the moment for all of the boxes that are still everywhere. It never seems to cease - you empty one lot of boxes, and that just makes room for several more to be opened and emptied out. And all this in the 2-3 conscious hours I manage to spend at home each day.

B2 isn't able to help much, though he does his best. Being more than 6 weeks overdue in finishing his PhD write-up, sometimes I'm more of a widow than ever. Still, I can't complain too much - as I write this, he's doing the after-dinner washing up.

Not much longer to go either. I've stopped asking how much he's done/still got to go - it just makes one or the other of us stressed. Tip for any who spend any sort of time interacting with PhD students. Never ask them how long they've got to go, it's like asking a woman how old she is or how much she weighs. I suppose once he does finish I'll need to change the name of this blog ;)