Day 1.133: It's a wind-up

I was playing a game with the girls - we were all having fun. Exile #2 suddenly said from the kitchen, "Is [E5N1] with you?", "No...?" It had been suspiciously quiet for a while. Of course, he was in one of his favourite places - the downstairs 'bathroom'. He had already unwound a whole roll of 'bathroom tissue' and was now enjoying playing in the conveniently situated water-play area.

We normally keep the door closed - but not everyone is careful every time.

I remember Exile #3 and a friend unwinding a roll of toilet paper (we were in the UK then) and the subsequent jokes about exclusive hand-rolled paper. Actually rolling it up (even to this standard) is quite a tricky task and, if I was being paid the minimum wage to do it, would make this quite a valuable commodity. I think Exile #4 must have skipped this particular activity - one out of three is not too bad I suppose.

Day 1.132: Morning play-time

Some mornings (like this yesterday) I get to spend some nice time with the kids playing while we wait for the school bus. It's a really nice time and Exile #2 gets to get ready without company.

This morning I virtually carried Exile #3 out to the possibly-illegally waiting bus with her shoes on the wrong feet and no coat.

It's not all our fault - there are significant up-stream fluctuations that mean we are always guessing about when it will come - fortunately we more often get it wrong in the direction of making time to play than in missing it (or very close calls like this morning).

Day 1.131: Every vote counted?

Just over a week ago I decided that a joke was worth more than my pride and on a whiteboard in our office on which some key sporting events had appeared to add to the all-important squash ladder - the Premiership, the Stanley Cup and today's Champions League final- I added an event close to my own heart also occurring today.

Like the Stanley Cup entry, it was still not clear at the time who would compete in the final, but we learned a week ago that this would be the archetypal David vs Goliath David battle. I am talking of course about the American Idol Season 7 Finale. Like the upcoming presidential elections we did not get to vote in this - although to be fair that is only because we got the engaged tone every time we tried.

The competition this year was very high quality and rather than trimming out the bad singers (with a few exceptions) it was a process of waiting for the talented ones to choke, stumble, choose terrible songs or otherwise self-destruct. It started before the live shows (and before we started watching with any regularity) with Josiah Leming - who stayed up all night trying to decide how to throw-away his sure-fire pass to the next stage of the competition. When the live shows started, we loved David Cook and Brooke White, but Brooke in turn proved herself not cut out for the competition by psyching herself out week by week and producing more and more shaky performances. Sad though we were to lose her, it was a relief in some ways to think that she could finally relax.

In the end, the from-day-one favourite-to-win David Archuleta met the Exiles' favourite David Cook in the final. In most of these competitions the interesting ones turn out to be a bit lacking in talent and rightly (but disappointingly) fall by the wayside. This year - the interesting one won. Hooray! (also, Simon Cowell got it wrong - for once).

Even though my vote didn't help the winner - the 50 million others that he received helped him squeak through! Some of you heard it here first (maybe!).

Day 1.130: Bugged - Screened

We have become people who never answer the phone. This is not completely true of course - but not a bad approximation. The reason? Rampant tele-sales and charity calls.

The charity calls are the worst - they give you their blurb followed by "So, [my name said like I'm your friend], can we count on your support this year?". "No I'm afraid not, sorry." "We're not asking for much [another sincere name check], think of the [sick-children/victims of crime/other genuinely needy bunch]...". "No, thank you. Goodbye."

It's not that I don't care about these groups. It's not that I'm not willing to give to charity. Far from it. But don't cold-call me at home in the evening. I'm not buying. Whatever it is. I'm not buying.

Now, unless I'm fooled by your caller-ID, I'm not even answering.

Wow, I've been ranting a lot recently - sorry. As you can see E5N1 is on his feet at the slightest provocation, but still showing little sign of actually walking. He has developed a wickedly fast crawl though and his standing-up means that he is trashing a whole new level of the house. I said to Exile #2 today that he is going to be trouble. "What do you mean 'going to be'?" Fair point. He's already trouble, but just so cute with it.

Day 1.129: Round and round

At work today I was involved in a multi-recipient email discussion that went, from my point of view, one email too far. As if to push the point home, the day started and ended with discussions of another email discussion and subsequent meeting about a matter of disagreement amongst the parents at the school - so this is by no means a preserve solely of the work-place.

I suppose that many of us have read warnings about email - how it seems like a throw-away spoken-word type of medium, but the words we write are probably as permanent as anything is these days. This two-fold nature is certainly part of the problem. What someone writes in haste can be studied at leisure, picked apart and thrown back at the originator in what sometimes becomes a personal attack. On the other hand, the quick off-the-cuff nature of it allows us to communicate often and in a relaxed way - and the permanence means that we do not have to interrupt what someone is doing to talk to them there and then - unlike a phone call. The other problem is the lack of non-verbal cues of course - no amount of emoticonating :-p can substitute for tone-of-voice and looking someone in the eye. All of this is only made worse by cross-cultural issues - which affect most of my conversations these days.

Ah well, hopefully tomorrow will not see a continuation of the vicious cycle that started today. Here are the girls and their friend going round and round in a no more constructive, but altogether more enjoyable way yesterday.