WMC's diary pages, 2003.

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See-also: http://www.wmc.care4free.net/diary/.

February 2003

Sat 1st

D in with us o/night, but won't settle so sent back. Lie in till 9, M swiftly retreats to bed. B'fast: no milk but paper.

Snow is melting: but enough to build tall thin snowman. G&E round; E stays inside except for brief outing to chill toes. Then build igloo in little field: I've always wanted to do that.

12: into town for anti-war demo: paths passable. Good crowd: Rick est 1000 but feels like more. Marion brings banner, I have tent poles; meet Martin, Nick, Tom (with Lucia & Mary; & Ed is helping organise); & allotment Geoff. Good march.

After: quick green coffee; cb1 (the us has lost another shuttle; will they abandon silly manned flight & do science instead?); arj.

Home, stopping to photo sunset, & melting lines of s'men on rec, about 5. Med back soon after, having been shopping w/rose: what with all comms cut off, we had been getting low.

Dinner; D's piano; marble runs; the whizzing duck; baths.

Fit first shelf into place under stairs: hurrah.

Sun 2nd

Back from S school (no B & N sick) we see B in car. Me: perhaps they're off to stoatland. D: no, there's no such place. Me: but it'd be good if there was. D: its only you that likes stoats & weasels & ferrets.

D drags me out to play in last-of-snow, & we roll giant s'balls in field.

After lunch E sleeps, I go for walk with D. Stream rages, go other way, visit gas gun. D walks (& wants to) despite rain. I wear my rblt's. Play in snowmelt run-off stream; D cuts new waterfall. Grey sky.

Home. E sleeps. Phone Sam: not in. Some iwd with D: we're in the severed hand, & puzzled.

Soir: work on scar talk, then iwd, then cut pics cd for tom.

Mon 3rd

Leave early & M takes childs so I can get in time to check talk for:

Scar: tpi / Soi vs sst: kwok&comiso, 98/ledley&huang 97/ re-open sharp & m-o / nvl: snow drift / nvl: ppn-weighted inversion t / d n h sexton, ao paper.

Tues 4th

Soir: iwd. Final battle? Isair/Madae: anyway keep getting utterly stuffed. Gets dull.

Wed 5th

Sun. To *E* of tree: herald of spring. Frost.

Drive to rec: fp to bas; smoko; p+r; walk through town. Pool quiet at 12. Arj: olive bread. Cb1: M resolutely awake, sleeps as soon as we walk off.

Boxes rs: 23x40x30 9"x16x12 hxdxw etc.

Bus back (search out ray on sun to stand in by bus stop); walk. E sleeps on. Drive home, meet MD just at house, D wearing oversize refl tabard from visit to bus depot. Give/lend M's keyboard to Penny/Chloe.

More woodwork.

Spend much of evening at long-delayed task of rebuilding portege linux side: happily ltmodem is fine. Also house tidying. & no iwd! M is at pub.

Thurs 6th

Work till 2.30 since no room for yoga. Get inv diags working, & t corrs for jck/nvl.

Home. Paper & coffee, then tidy/clear spare room: done.

Pick up D from hc. From outside, sounds of running around. Inside, fun, a game D & others invented. D v sad to leave before its over. Mumpy & grumpy but Mrs B charms him in piano.

8: to N to talk swings. Back past 9; M+J have arrived.

Fri 7th

End up working till 5 trying to get ppn-wei-t working lbl. & fail.

Home: D is at S's, M is cooking E peas omlette, Mfd+J entertain E. I go get D 6.30 & he of course would rather stay.

Soir: communal cook & eat. Discussion of Iraq grows heated, despite a united disbelief of our govt.

Sat 8th

Lie-in.

10.15: cycle to town with M. Get me a new fleece (why isn't there one exactly like the old one, only new?) from Countryside in new arcade. & have coffee. Drop books at oxfam & check m+s for new shorts (no) while M picks new glasses. Home just pre 1 via invite N swim.

Home: E toddles to see me. Quick lunch then Imp with N too for regular sat swim, though H the originator is long gone. Adam (& O) arrives later. We stay in past 3 - D & N race, D wins, N sad. They race again, same result, more sad. N: I want to *win*.

Out: they play in newly discovered pgnd on site. Home (via N's: N can come play with us). D & N to treehouse with biccies. Take N back 7.

Soir: after dins, relax with Et Light. Bed: D has slept in ours, how cute. But too wriggley: return him.

Sun 9th

DE up with Mfd+J again, how kind.

To Duxford 11.45 with B, E & Mfd+J. H1, play, then lunch. Then Am hangar, which I've always found instructive if overbearing. But I'd always assumed them truthful, if selective. But then the info panel for the blackbird says '...to look deep into hostile countries without entering their airspace...'. Oh yeah? So why did it need to fly so fast? To get them home for tea? By contrast, the U2 panel says 'over the territory of the USSR... although it was against int law'.

Just after writing this, while contemplating the mission-symbols on a b-52 (poorly lit for photos) I talk to an 'explainer' who writes some of the captions (not that one) & expls that they are written by dux (not u.s.) & he thinks they tend to self-censor.

H5 (craft in restore) pronounced dull; h4 (b.o.b) better.

Don't go till 4, with D & B still keen. B stays with us through sorbet making (machine from mj) till 6.30.

D wants iwd again; I oblige. Get stuffed x5 again but idea: stay clear of action & wait for their protection spells to wear off. This begins to work. D to bed. 2 more iters cracks it: madae's ironskins fade; lightning & swords damage her to badly wounded; they retreat to pool; we follow; more attack (esp we charm a slayer knight of xvim) & they get ripped by the mythal & we have won!

But, a disappointing game cf bg: too linear & (I think) too short (I only got to l17). & improved invisible trivialises many fights. Plus the game cheats, eg: invisible people get attacked.

Mon 10th

Work / informal yoga / work.

See DE briefly before their bed. D has been bad in piano. Mfd+J off (having thoughtfully made us soup!).

Soir: M yoga, I sort out pers web (lycos requires passive (pasv) ftp, ie -p) & do some gp agenting.

Tues 11th

DE to school (finally fix their hacksaw), via forgetting E's socks etc. Grey. Work: more ppn-w-t, & aice doc. J club on gulf stream paper.

Home 2.30. Paper & coffee, then time for pickup. Get smiley (but smelly) E & watch as D runs off with B. Home! E plays, I tidy, then convert palm notes to web (re-write txt2html.pl lost in hack) back to Sept: I am far behind! Suddenly its past 6 (which means E has played quietly & happily); feed E somewhat; M back .30; D returned 7. I attempt to re-win the game for him but die; piano; bed-by-m.

Soir: bath; swings.

Wed 12th

M off early for conf call. D constructs 'fun tent' in l'room from blanket on sofa stretched to nappy-nippa on the floor.

DE to school: early since D wants to be 1st but we're not. Tomorrow. Stay for 1/2 h for 'road safety walk' holding on to D & (the wizard of re) Albi.

Bonus work since M'a has E in comp mon. 1 to town: cb1/arj. Back to school 3.30 & we all walk home together. E&G come to play briefly. M drags all off to w/rose & I get peace: choose to use it adding photos to sep/oct 2002; then wikipedia'ing.

Soir: rest; misc; woodwork; petition text.

Thurs 13th

Clear day. M early again; we too are early to school - first - to D's great happiness.

Work: ships pos takes up am: re-formatting ch's files. Informal yoga.

Home: sit in garden to read paper & lunch. Quiet.

Inside: decide to fix dripping hw feed tank, since drip rate (to front of house) has been inc, to about 1/sec. Struggle: to find right tank; to fit spanners into space; to work out what to remove; to replace & retighten (jets of water as I turn on under sink, run up, discover jets, run down, turn off; & rept). But finally it is done, it seems.

Sat 15th

My lie in. D wants me up: I hear a trick. I go downstairs & a 'laughing policeman' is set off, & moves. From F, of course. D marches around in time.

Then I am off to march: start early, 10, to see start & hopefully meet Tom.

Parliament Sq: meet, or at least say hi to, Brian. Walk towards w'loo bridge: surreal: no traffic. London is much better so. Drumming & (many, fluttering, clustered, effective) banners approach over br: mostly greenpeace, but also 'sex workers unite' banner, & the black crows (literally) of class war. This turns out to be a sort of pre-march heading off to assemble. Head off towards Russel Sq.

Lots of people with banners, many diy. Air of purposeful movement. Pass several marches off to join in. One has superb giant am eagle, claws clutching a globe, wings outstretched 20' wide, beak bloodied.

I stick a Quaker doc to my pack.

Starbucks on kingsway: 'babylon is falling'. To Russel Sq: no Tom. Hmm. Phone: get Ed on 3rd attempt: they are on embankment, having failed to get to rs. Head that way, via Traf Sq. Follow thin trickle going against flow. I think today started earlier, & prob wasn't delayed by police.

3-awaiting tlc; watching march go by: inspiring. Sit up on wall, videoing snapshots of banners; moved down by police once. Many gp banners, but not ours.

Police specialist photographers carry D1's & sony pc-x's with the super-large battery.

4: tail of march. & I'm desperate for a wee, & v cold: red lion.

Stay or home? Prob best to return.

Home 5ish, report back on march. Eagerly watch news: 750k police, 2m organisers. I'd go for police figure. Good.

Sun 16th

My up day; E shouts us up; bfast. D (& somewhat E) watch kids tv till 11. I get a coffee break then M to town to buy jumper.

We go out into cold sun to play with spinner. Lose 1 rotor in tree almost immeatiately; retrieve; lose again, permanently. Now just 1. Hide & seek. Explore. Chase round pillars.

ME leave 4. We do misc (play Magic Hat; D keen to play: tries hard to puzzle out his words & usually does.

F is oddly jingoistic watching the rugby Eng vs Fr. Put tapes 4, 5 (spring: bees, ma's b'day, rec opening, e learning to crawl, m+j visit) to tape.

Mon 17th

A civilised awakening: D comes in at 7.30 but then goes down for brek.

F up 9ish, & we head off bright & early at 9.30.

To mus, first nat his as I feel we need a ch (has D ever been here? He says Y, with M). Look around, D alternating 'can we go to the sci mus now?' with dragging me back to see diff things. Cafe break then more; find a siberian weasel!

Sci mus. Wander. D likes big pistons on early steam pumps. Upstairs: farming. Down: launch pad. Deep blue cafe: service, but +10%. Listen to woman next to us explain, carefully but of course wrongly, the old urban myth that coriolis makes plug water go clockwise. Or counter-c: I can never remember. Pattern pod: penrose tiling. 4: still sci mus, D in grain elevator struggling to get a place. Oddly enough, half term is crowded... 4.30: time to go: back to nat his (via earth entrance) to pick up sac, D complaining about our speed. Then on... & miss train by about 2 mins. No great matter: stop for drink & get 5:45, even 2 seats together. D tired.

M picks us up (how kind).

Soir: bath. Quiet. M goes to see Mrs B re D's piano: down to 1/week.

Tues 18th

I have kids am till m+j arrive. Rush in for journal club at 1: but no, its Michiel vdB at 4. New nodes arrived: but won't boot...

Back home briefly.

Curry soir, Maharaja: Hugh's joke: 'doctor, I've got a steering wheel down my pants... & its driving me nuts!'.

Wed 19th

Frost. M+J still here; M off early, I laze.

Work, briefly, then catch (just) 12.15 to london for rms: find tlc/hkr/jgm/nvl on train. Sun. Walk there, via - all together now - mornington crescent (at least tom & I do; others follow hkr's map & arrive later).

VdB: - histogram of warming trends - dot-plot of t from sondes: cf vostok, mawson - interpreting sfc potential t - aao composites high/low for sfc pot t, ppn. Bentley - dodgy periodicities in palmer deep record

Walk back again, pleasantly. Miss 6.15, get sandwiches, find jck on platform.

Back just in time to cycle straight to pub.

Thurs 20th

M works am so I miss yoga which annoys me. Play 'whatever next' with D: this goes better after I take E to M'a.

Its a lovely day: ground frozen but air warm in the sun. Walk with D (I have to drag him out but he likes it when we are). Clouds of bees, though only a few from 'old'. Ford stream, turn R for a change. Find fallen tree. Cross over into field-with-perm-walk. Sit on bench in sun.

D: have you noticed, in winter its sunny & warm, & in summer its cold'. It seems like that on days like today.

Have lunch/picnic outside on bench. M back after 2. I go to work (more frustration with new nodes). Home, briefly, before out to gp at pennys: well attended.

Fri 21st

A lovely day, but I'm inside: M at home, so I declare it a work day. M takes car in for service & handbrake, & to have them stuff up the apparently simple task of programming up a new key.

I work till 7: get ready for monday; & try (fail again) to get new cluster nodes working. Plus swings.

Soir: laze. So 10.30-11.15 we're clearing up DE's mess & hoovering. I need self discipline to do this all earlier: how?

Sat 22nd

Fog, mist. Shrieks (of joy) from downstairs.

Petition: get first 12 sigs. No one refuses; many enthusiastic.

Lunch: M off to work with the san's; we sit out. Sun. Birds tweet. D plays in sandpit.

Soir: get wireless working between M & desktop NT: use 802.11b adhoc. But: the card crashes xp! & won't work on my w98.

Sun 23rd

Another grey start to what turns into a lovely day.

Andy collects D to cinema 12. Me to allot: begin rescuing strawb patch, & dig up j arts which I've forgotten all winter. Still, they endure.

E to sleep 2: M & I sit inside & read in last of indoor sun: Divine Endurance.

Soir: cook j arts, which caramelize well.

Install pcmcia-cs & wlan-ng but not properly config.

Gp web.

Mon 24th

Tigger:

Helene: adbvh (4.5): New o topo (overflows) / visc 2000 m2/s / etc: comparable cm3. All phys into hadgem1.

5.3 probs outstanding.

5.4 is running.

Ice vel field from ssmi: margaret nearly there. Nb: avg to mon *then* regrid?

Am: div by area calc delta? Also: 'abs'ing of divu in ridge_ice.

Tues 25th

Work: fix new nodes (tagging). Home; sit out. Pick up D; aquire B too. They play out a bit (inclined to quarrel & fight), come in to eat biccies upstairs; computer; etc. But they disagree.

M back 6+, by which time I've cooked for them & E: inst pot & peas & out-of-date sos (which they dislike).

Soir: fix wireless, hurrah! Its the prism2_ignorevcc=1 that does it.

Realise I've had little time recently: half term was busy.

Wed 26th

My day with E. D to school, remembering to take his boots (D: oh! I intended to draw a pic to remind me). Home with E, who wants to play out: in the sandpit. Happily I've left the chair out o/night, with a book on it, so I sit in the sun as E toddles.

To p+r through sunshine (via bas smoko (E quiet; Kathy comments on E's curls) & p/copy petition). Pool 12-1. Arj. Cb1: E sleeps quite readily & I get a nice rest too. Leave 2.30, with E still asleep. Walk back, E wakes on bus, walk back pleasantly. Stop at school: M & D are in classroom which is mounting an exhibition of work, which D shows us. He also introduces us to guinea pigs, Mars & unknown.

Leave E with M; cycle back on her bike. Then off to distribute petition to pc members by hand since I'm so late.

Back. Sit, coffee. Med to D's piano: I route & put in shelf #2.

7: to 'trustees' meeting (ie effectively pc). Present petition, but debate later. Meeting moves onto pavillion, which is nit-picking its way into making it impossible for clubs to take over pavillion proj. They cannot let go. To be fair, its complex to hand over.

But for the swings, a pleasant surprise: they decide to call for an independant inspection, which makes sense.

Thurs 27th

Work/yoga/some work.

Then: home? town? Well, I went yesterday, so... home. And quiet. Feeling still too busy and rushed: there are lots to do at work, and the paradoxical problem of *too many* nodes not too few... sigh.

Woodwork: front support to bottom shelf. Good.

M back 6-ish; I'm cooking jarts/pots/sos; as soon as we've eaten I head upn for a nice quiet bath with "uncle tungsten", a somewhat odd book: more of a basic chemistry/history lesson with a few errors.

Soir: hack first draft of GCMs page for wikipedia. Can I remember... Planck's law? Oops, no: Stefan-Boltzmann. No wonder my T was coming out at 10^6.

Fri 28th

Work. Bitty: process journal pages; try to start off a wind-stress-corrected run (which involved re-writing a version of pp2ss.pl to be able to read fields with no recls); talking to Tom re tropical-corrections. And so on. Deliberately don't leave too late and get home by 2:30, in time for a quiet lunch (inside; the weather has changed).

Pick up E, a fraction late. D is to go to Sams (a happy co-incidence: 2 girls cancelled with S), so after saying goodbye E and I return home and do little. M is (oddly enough) working over her hours again.

Notes on E: she burbles quite a lot now, some words are emerging (l-na for banana, for example). She is (or tries to be) helpful: handing me my sandals in the morning; passing me bowls to wash up; holding up her arms or legs for coats or shoes to be put on. And she is very curly haired, to the extent that strangers comment on it... And she sometimes plays quietly & lets me write!

M back pre-6. I to Sam to pick up D & am rewarded with glass of wine. Sam lends D his Buzz.

Soir: email/news. Tidy wiki on cl models. M does claudius mail...


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