Double X Chromosomes

I wonder how my life is strange - how people I hardly ever see have formed a bond with me and I with them. My neices, for instance: I've hardly ever seen them or know them at all - yet they will seek me out and I will come to where they are and it's as if we've had this relationship for years.

And I suppose we have - but it's not one of regular meetings - it's one of seldoms but meaningfuls, or something.

I have 8 nieces - I'm lucky that way.

Tonight I had dinner with one of them - Gena - she's moving to Melbourne and we caught up and shared food and talked as if we knew each other all the time when in fact we've only met 3 or 4 times and even then, that was years ago.

But they are all smart and beautiful, my nieces. So many girls in my family and all wonderful to a woman.

Today is one of those days I count myself extremely lucky to belong to the family I do.

My children and their cousins are among the very best people I have ever met in my life - and you know I have met some very wonderful people so compare away and know how fortunate I am.

The drama that you get wound up in today are the storys of tomorrow's contented ending. It's a long row, so keep rowing.

I bask like a nurse shark in my gene pool.

30DMC - a movie that makes you feel sad

I'm a grizzler - I cry at movies - sometimes ones you wouldn't even expect a person ought to cry at. So to me, most movies make me sad.

I always cry watching Two Weeks Notice. I balled in the first part of UP. I can't watch movies such as Schindler's LIst, Sophie's Choice or Boy in Striped Pajamas - I just don't have the capacity to cope at all.

My mother always said (and she was completely right) I was and continue to be: too soft.

That's why I stick to zombie movies, horror and science fiction classics - I hardly ever cry at those.

If I had to answer this question - I would say the movie that makes me sad would have to be .. not a movie.. but a trailer to a movie that I won't be able to watch is The Lottery - this makes me weep.

Wednesday Links

This week's theme (because sometimes there is a pathway my puddling has followed) is Engineering Wonders.

• The Falkirk Wheel - check out the wheel in action in the video below.
• A Bucket-wheel excavator. The Largest Bucket Wheel Excavator in the world is built by Krupp - here are a few specs to give you an idea of how flippin' big it is:
  • Stands over 95 metres tall.
  • Is over 215 metres long (2.5 football fields).
  • Weighs over 45,500 tons.
  • Cost $100 million USD, took 5 years to design and manufacture and 5 years to assemble.
  • Only requires 5 people to operate.
  • The Bucket Wheel is over 70 feet in diameter with 20 buckets.
  • Each bucket can hold over 15 cubic metres of material.
  • A 6-foot man can stand up inside one of the buckets.
  • It moves on 12 crawlers (each is 3.6 metres wide, 2.4 metres high and 14 metres long).
  • 8 in front and 4 in back.
  • Has a maximum speed of 10m/min.
  • It can remove over 76,455 cubic metres of overburden each day
• The Millau Viaduct.
• The Constellation Program.
• The making of one of my favourite songs of all time: I'm not in love by 10cc. I listened to this on repeat 11 hours straight and still didn't tire of it. I flipping love it. Take a listen.

Like sands through the hour glass

Don't freak out: I'm not blogging every day. I am just waiting for my washing to dry.

Work continues to be weird and is getting in the way of me thinking about other stuff. I don't mean thinking about stuff other than work while I'm at work - I mean thinking about stuff that isn't anything to do with work before and after work.

How many times did I say 'work' in that runny old sentence?

When I say 'work is weird' it is as if I think it's going to switch back to not being weird - which may be a dangerous assumption to make. Maybe work isn't weird - maybe it's just changed and I have to get with the programme - even if the programme isn't necessarily on my preferred channel.

That sentence caused me to sigh.

It's not you, it's me - I am not ready to settle for a monogamous work relationship. I need to sow my work oats; see more offices; test drive different office equipment before I decide on The One.

Okay, maybe it's not work that is getting weird.

30DMC - Day Three : a movie that makes you really happy

I've been thinking about this on the way home - pondering on public transport. You have a go (you can just do it sitting here, you don't have to get on a tram or anything) and see if you found it difficult to select a movie that makes you happy. I came up with a couple: Back to the Future, Burn After Reading, Predator (I'm into threesomes at the moment) - thinking "I am happy to see those movies" but do they actually make me feel happy?

Two movies make me really happy:

1. The Fantastic Mister Fox makes me cussin' happy, and
2. The Last of the Mohicans - a great story - falls smack dab into this catagory as well (carve out a quiet 90 minutes and enjoy this 1936 version that hurtles along at a cracking pace).

30DMC : Day 02 - The most underrated movie

Last of the Mohicans is easily the most underrated movie.

Guys think it's a chick-flick and girls think it's too gory.

But it has something for everyone: from the loin-cloth frolicks in the evergreen forests pre-colonised Americas, to the French canon-ball assaults on the English troops - it's a love story between unlikely couples; a war movie of inevitable ends; it's a high road to fanciful history - Last of the Mohicans is easily the most underrated movie of the last 25 years.

Storytellers

Meanwhile, in other news: today we had "Speakers' Bureau". This is a group of people who spend a year becoming confident, articulate, engaging public speakers.

Most of the time I spend with this group I wonder about myself. I wonder about the idea I have of what I could be and the fact it is always bogged down in the mire of what I actually am.

The fanciful idea that I could, in any way, be able to talk with any sense and/or sensibility to a group of people beyond the voices in my own head is brought to reality on days like today. I don't enjoy it; I'm not good at it; I have no idea why I keep banging on and subjecting my audience to the unprepared ramblings of the mad woman I am becoming.

I can tick off all the reasons why I fail because, like most of my ilk, I know exactly where I'm going wrong which proves I am a theorist. I have no right to try and continue to not do: Yoda can go fuck himself - I am living in a world where I cannot bridge the gap between knowing what to do and doing it.

Fortune smiles on me and continues to surround me with good people and honestly, that's the only way I get by. Cos Lord only knows: months upon months of practice with speaking in front of real people and I'm just getting worse.