angharad_gam

 The world is feeling pretty awful and scary this evening, but this made me laugh until I couldn't breathe:
wtffanfiction.tumblr.com/post/58751946361/lube

(Edited to add: this is pretty NSFW btw - just in case)

 I am generally pretty happy about the public transport in Adelaide,  especially since there's  bus route about 500m from  my house that goes direct into the city (and back again) every 15 mins during rush hour. However, if I have one complaint it's that the bus that supposedly leaves the city at 5:25pm frequently either doesn't show, or arrives so late it might as well be the 5:40 bus anyway. You would think I would have learned by now to not bother showing up until 5:40, but I  tend to leave work when I have run out of either brain or things to do for the day, rather than at a specific time, so it's not unusual for me to turn up in the vain hope that the bus will also do so. After all, 15 minutes is not really that long to wait if it doesn't  (unless it's 42C out of course). They have recently installed those 'real-time' electronic signs at my bus stop in the city and it has only further highlighted the liminal nature of the 5:25 bus. This is what happened the other day:

Angharad arrives at bus stop a bit early for the 5:25. Sign states it is 8 minutes away.
Wait 7 minutes. Sign states bus is 1 minute away.
Wait 5 minutes, during which time the two buses listed as arriving after my bus come and go. Sign still states bus is one minute away.
Bus dissappears from sign.
Next bus appears at bottom of sign. Sign states this bus is 11 minutes away.
Wait 5 minutes. Sign now states 5:40 bus is 6 minutes away.
5:25 bus appears at top of sign. Sign states it is two minutes away. 
Wait 1 minute. Sign now states one bus is 1 minute away and another bus is 5 minutes away.
Wait 1 minute. Bus listed as arriving after my bus shows up. Sign states one bus is 1 minute away and another bus is 4 minutes away.
Bus actually shows up!

 ...and it was moderately amusing, and since I am currently sitting in an airport departure lounge,  trying not to spend all my travel allowance on books I thought I would have a go.

The idea is that you type the starting phrase into your phone's message software and then see what the predictive text throws up. You can keep going withe predictive text as long as you like I guess. I've done short and slightly longer versions of each...

Phrase 1: "I am the god of"
Short result: I am the god of the morning
Long result: I am the god of the morning by the sound of torrential rain 

Phrase 2: "I woke up worried"
Short result: I woke up worried about the warden 
Long result: I woke up worried about the warden the power of the morning 

Which suggests that a) I text about mornings a lot b) I have been playing too much Dragon Age (the warden is the player character in one of those games) and c) I may be slightly concerned about my new role as god of the morning.

Actually, I just now noticed that I tend to select the right most of the two initial suggestions my predictive text makes. If I choose the other one, I woke up worried about the vomiting, which makes a lot more sense. Still the god of the morning though...

Word is insisting that I change 'X came to slowly' to 'X came too slowly'.
Which really changes the meaning quite substantially...

I'm stealing this idea from John Scalzi, because it took my fancy.

1. Spent 22 hours in labour. And 70 mins in labour (different babies)
2. Grew a tooth with the crown pointing backwards into my mouth
3. Read a paper on quantum field theory written in French by a Russian (in the original French, naturally)
4. Cooked for 150 people. More than once.
5. Danced the pavane in the carpark of a roadhouse in Nhill at 3am
6. Walked for two days on a sprained ankle to get out of the Flinders Rangers where I had sprained said ankle.
7. Coughed all the way through a speech by someone who later became premier of South Australia
8. Gotten stuck on a bus because a man on a seat in front of me had a heart attack
9. Worn a small figurine of a man made from a broken capacitor in my hair - as a matter of habit
10. Had a needle inserted into my breast to suck out pus.

Hmmm...I could do this all night. Other things that nearly made the list: dated a Young Liberal, gone without a haircut for 11 years, made marzipan pastries from scratch (including pastry) in a tent whilst up to my ankles in mud, been inside an unmanned underground power station, discovered I am related to Emmeline Pankhurst, contaminated myself with radiation.

Just now I meant to type 'bringing on an early dusk' and what I actually got was 'brining on an early duck'.

Mmmmm salty duck....

Liam just got up and said:
"That was a really unusual nightmare. It was all about Mario and DOSBox."

Wrong I tell you...

So I went to bed last night utterly exhausted after four hours sleep the night before and three hours of talking at work (I had a new staff member I had to show the ropes, and talking is exhausting to us introverts). And at 3:15am the phone rang. I sat up with visions of parents in hospital running through my head, while Andy flailed zombie-like at the alarm clock.
'Hello' says I.
"Bruce? Is that you?" says a voice on the other end of the line.
"I think you have the wrong number," I say.
Phone hangs up.
It's 3:15am, I think. 3:15am!
We lie down and pass out again.

Sometime later Ashwyn gets in bed with us.  The radio is not going, but it seems kind of lighter than normal, so I check the time. It is an hour after the alarm normally goes off. Andy had switched it off in the night. I leap out of bed and rush about like the proverbial chook.

Now my brain hurts.
Still I suppose it's a good thing Ashwyn is not a slug-a-bed like his siblings (or his parents!) or I would have been late to work.

In other news Ashwyn almost knocked out another of his teeth the other day. For those who are unaware, Ashwyn knocked out one of his front teeth when he was thirteen months old. He wandered out into the garden and managed to find a place where he could fall onto a screw sticking out of an old piece of wood. There was a good reason we used to call him Danger Baby. That child couldn't fall over without landing on a corner. Anyway, the dentist wouldn't put it back in, and he's had a distinctly piratical gap ever since. The other day he was apparently trying to get into a tupperware tub which had some cookies in it. He couldn't pry the lid off with his fingers, so he decided he would try it with his teeth. And all he pried loose was one of his teeth.

Given he is nearly six he was probably close to losing it anyway, but it looked rather alarming the next day. I think the gum was just a bit bruised, because it seems ok now, and we called the dentist and they didn't seem particularly disturbed, so we'll just wait for it to fall out I suppose.

It's throw things at the telly time on QandA tonight and no mistake.

Some amusing links to take my mind off it:

http://xkcd.com/1114/

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/03/avengers-hawkeye-archery