Infinite State Automaton

Well, I reached a new low point in my life. A land of horror that I thought I would never come across.

Too sick. To play. Computer games.

A lot has happened!

So, where to begin.

Ah, not a good place to begin, but a fun story I wanted to share. One day (about five minutes ago) I was sitting on Rusty's bed drinking cola. Cola has special and mysterious effects on me ever since I got over the cola addiction from 1995-2003. Suck some of that down and POW I'm a different man. We're talking almost Pop-Eye here. It's cured headaches, lethargy, and temporarily staved off the evil hiccups for now, too. Well, after I disturbed Rusty's online friend (Rusty went away to buy dinner. His lady friend left the keyboard. So of course I wrote some messages to her. The usual stuff like "hay there is a spider in your room! Oh noes its hiding! No wait it's getting more of its friends OH MY GOD THEY'RE IN YOUR BED" and then a few more of the more surreal things like "If you set fire to your bed, make sure to keep your escape route clear. Also, it's OK to get one last nap while the mattress is burning for old times sake." But then Rusty came back. Sigh) I said, "So, I am going to pour this cola on your bed. Then you will have to sleep in my bed tonight. How will this story end?" to which Rusty replied "This story has no beginning." Well, conversations like this - between brothers - are much more for the benefit of some unfortunate person who happens to over hear, but there was nobody around so I decided to share it all with you.

Ok. So what DID happen?

Well, it started with hiccups on Friday evening at 5 pm! We had all gone down to the local bar to have drinks with Lyn E, who was having her eight 22nd birthday. I was still recovering from the flu, so I only had something light - just a glass of coke - and the moment the sacred liquid touched my lips, POW. Hiccups.

I stayed pretty late with Lyn E, Frances, and Tony and they tried to invite me to their dancing classes. It's a pretty good idea and I would like to do it, just as soon as I get myself organised and have time for it. I spoke a lot before about wanting to get better at house work and cooking and I have made no progress - my excuse so far is omg blah sick, but an adult would do it so I should too. Well I am a little hard on myself, I did some washing and cleaning that normally I wouldn't do, but it's nowhere near where I want it to be yet.

The flu was leaving me fatigued and with no appetite. I didn't want to eat. I could just manage to drink water, and some various fruit drinks. I managed a smoothie, but that was about it. So I spent most of that time going to bed very early, so tired, and then I woke up Saturday and still had hiccups.

I can't really remember much of the weekend. I think I spent nearly all of it in bed sulking, kind of like what I did the weekend before it. I must have done some work though. I also had a lot of fun playing WoW with Ves. We got to do some crazy battles in Nagrand, and also finally Mana Tombs! We finally got the pants we wanted from Shaffer, but tragedy! Mal already had better ones than those. Then we went to fight at Nagrand, got so many tokens and tragedy! Mal already had better belt and pants :/ So annoying! I should learn to look up where all the good item improvements are for him and make a plan to get them.

Well, Sunday evening I visited Rusty for his birthday. We were going to go tank shopping (because we both need a heck of a lot more tanks for Warhammer Apocalypse. I used to have the biggest armor section in the state, but moving house so many times and people buying pieces means suddenly my armor section is not up to the task of fighting against multiple opponents anymore. Most of the time it was Rusty and Sky versus everybody else (And we would win!). We have different battle strategies that complement each other surprisingly well. He likes to run up and hit things. I like to run up and shoot things. In the world of 40k, these kinds of strategies are very effective when used togther.) but he was in hospital so instead I brought him KFC and a whole truckload of lollies. I also got him some super rare forgeworld Terminator shoulder pads. Hmm, we should get some of the pictures of these things up on line so you guys can finally see what the zoik I am rabbiting on about.

Anyway, the nurses were giggling so much about my hiccups that they told me to go down to emergency and get them looked at. Emergency? For hiccups? Well...since the ward was boring, Rusty and I went down and spent a few hours in Triage. We met Ben, an old friend of mine from a supermarket, and his girlfriend who had bad migraines. After a few hours my hiccups went away, so we packed up. As I was starting to walk home, my hiccups came back, only, this time really badly. They started to chain together 5-10 at a time, and I couldn't breathe. My arms started to go numb and my chest was hurting. I couldn't talk properly to the service station attendant. So I turned around and went back to hospital for another few hours in Triage, but again the hiccups went away after a few hours. So I went home again, and omg, possum! It was sitting in the side of the road drinking water from a puddle. It looked up and saw me and said, "OMG, human!" and jumped in to the tree. Now, it thought it was hiding real well. Actually it was hiding at about my chest height, so I thought, "I wish I had a camera so I could take a picture for Nozomi." Then I remembered! I had a mobile phone camera. So I carefully took a video of the possum. After the film ran out, she decided I wasn't paying enough attention to her, so she ran off. Well, she sure was cute! But....then my hiccups came back O_o

So Monday was a bad day.
I was hiccuping and coughing all morning and annoying my workmates. I felt so embarassed. Eventually I got to the doctors at 2pm and the doctor said, "Well, I have no idea. Try this medicine, sometime it helps." It was Largactil. He also said I would be trashed all Monday night and Tuesday because of it, so, that was the end of work that day. I don't really remember much of Tuesday at all.

Today my hiccups were gone when I woke up so I got dressed and went to work super early! I had been planning to go to the hospital so there would be no triage delay, so I got to work at 7:20 am! It's only an hour and 40 minutes early, hmm! My boss is sure to be impressed.

But then the hiccups came back at about 9:30 am. Ahhh...so I had to go to the hospital after all. Well the triage at Modbury said 7 hours but I got looked at in four. They took some blood, gave me an injection, and gave me an xray. The nurses were very cute! They tried to scare me into losing the hiccups, but unfortunately it didn't work. Eventually a kind elderly women told me that she had a sure fire hiccup cure. Well, by now I would try anything! So she held my nose and a cup of water and I drank it while using my hands to block up my ears. Success! Unfortunately they came back as soon as I left the hospital, and I couldn't get it to work again for me later...

So that gets me to now. I'm glad Rusty is out of hospital, I missed him. I'm sick of being a big sulk, always being 'uuuu I have flu or hiccups' and just want to get better and be more cheerful. There's lots of fun things I want to do and being in bed sick is really boring.

On my way back from the hospital after visiting Rusty and getting my hiccups looked at (72 hour hiccups is just silly) I was attacked! I managed to get the attacker on video though. I'll write more when I'm not at work.
But you have to download it :/

I must precede all of this before I forget with this: For some reason I can't log in to facebook. I can't even access the parts to search to find other people or even verify my account still exists. I've had no response from the facebook unit at this point except for an automated 'zounds! Check the help section!' which I did, and the help section said 'e-mail us about it!'. So. I'll try again later today.

I have been sick the last few days. In all likelihood I picked it up from one of the many thousands of children (there was supposed to be close to twenty thousand) that came past the UniSA booth where I was demonstrating the virtual reality equipment, but I choose to blame William because he exhibited the same symptoms as I did. This kind of logic causes a problem for me very shortly as you will see.

I spent most of the weekend sulking and useless in bed. Shane was terrific, checking to make sure I was still alive, occasionally bringing me panadol and coke or other little things, and even cooking me dinner Sunday night. He shuffled me out of bed a few times to drag his zombie brother around for various things, like going to the airport to farewell Julia, doing some shopping, doing some laundry, etc and so on. He's a good kid.

Monday I was still feeling pretty crap. I am terribly hungry all of the time but have no appetite. If I sit down and concentrate I can eat but it takes a long time and I am really only eating about a third of what I normally eat. Now, I eat too much normally, so maybe this is a good thing! I haven't had a custard tart in...well...ages! But it means I have no energy so when I drove home Monday night I was fatigued and decided to take a nap in my car. I didn't get home til 8pm and when I did, Shane was sick with the same thing I had. It looks like I had passed the bug on to him.

Well, for a guy like me being sick isn't really a problem. Of course I whine and complain because I am a child and want sympathy. Shane doesn't whine or complain. The only time Shane ever complained, ever, without someone first asking 'How do you feel?' was the time when he muttered, "oh, my hip hurts." A little later the doctors discovered he had septic arthritis and every step must have been blinding agony for him. For a kid that grew up in a world of pain, whose playmates and friends and then best mates and girlfriends who have almost all died now from cystic fibrosis, or juvenile cancer, luikemia, or some other terrible juvenile disease, to complain because your leg hurts? How could you even say it, in a place where every room was filled with a families own private tragedies, where simply walking from the entrance of the Womens and Children's Hospital to your brothers room showed you countless glimpses into other peoples lives tinged with sorrow and anger. 'My leg hurts'...."My leg is amputated because of gangrene." "I am paralysed from waist down because I have a brain tumor." "I am mentally disabled." "I am going to die in six months." When your world is already filled with so much pain, a little more is nothing to cry about.

Children in long term medical care are different. They see the world with different eyes. They understand things differently. Something like 'the value of life' has a different meaning.

At 11:40pm Monday night, Shane came in to my room. If I had of been fully awake, I would have picked up the laser gun Dani sent me and shot him repeatedly - I often sneak in to his room at night and do it anyway - to ask me to call an ambulance for him. So I did! Meanwhile, he stood there bent over double trying to breathe. It sounded probably how bagpipes would come out if you tried to play them underwater. Afterwards, Shane said I could go back to sleep, and he staggered off back to his room. Still barely conscious, I mumbled to him to close the door. After a moment I realised, "Oh, I just called an ambulance for him, perhaps I should at least pretend to care some," but by then he had closed the door. So I got up and flagged down the ambulance and then he was gone.

Well, he has been in intensive care since Monday night and is still there now, Wednesday morning. He was really sick. I don't understand the medical terminology so well, but mum who is a nurse said that the carbon dioxide levels in his blood were very high (which is bad).

Mum stayed at my house last night. We drank champagne. I had a very small amount since anything slightly acidic is like drinking nails right now, and she cooked me dinner. All morning she has been doing housework. How could I have been so slack? I never noticed it properly at home, I think. But now I am noting what she is doing, and how she is doing it, and......just by being organised, she is getting so much done in such a short time it's amazing. I always thought...something like this would take a whole day, so, I wouldn't do it very often. But mum has cleaned the kitchen, cleaned my room, done a load of washing, cleaned up a chunk of the loungeroom, called dad, called Shane, organised my bills, and all of that in the three hours this morning. Next up we are going to get my car rego and buy new pillows for my bed. I made an appointment for a haircut this evening, too. I wonder if I'll make it? And right now she is organising Shane's bathroom bag kit thing, shaving gear, underarm deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, so many things...I wouldn't have thought of it.

She also cooked an excellent meal with four ingredients (and chicken! I've never cooked chicken before) in fifteen minutes that looked superb. Mum made all of it look so simple, so easy. Of course I know it isn't. But so many things, so little time...she did all of it.

So I watched and tried to learn.

Why didn't I do it as a kid? I don't understand. I learned all the things Dad showed me. I can cut down a tree. I can mow the lawn. I can use almost any tool. I can do simple plumbing, I know how to make things out of wood and steel. I know first aid. I am skilled with rope, knots, tents, bushcraft...and I'm REALLY good with lighting fires. But I'm terrible at cleaning and cooking. Mum tried to show me when I was a kid. I can remember it. Is my mind really that different now? Why didn't I learn it? Ironing, washing, vacuuming, wiping, dusting, sewing, mopping...all these things are just as important as knowing how to use a hammer or how to remove a wasp hive from your door frame (don't use a hammer). How could I have lived so long and not know how to do it all? Basic, sustained housekeeping? It really is unacceptable. I made some small changes because of Anna's good suggestions, but it's not enough.

Well, there is a fierce determination behind my mothers operation. I can see it is not an easy thing in what she does. She's really organised. Super organised. It's how she can do so many things all at once. And she's been doing it for a long, long time. She said a lot of other things last night about the differences between the gender when they are 'looking after' someone, and also some of her experiences as a midwife. I can't expect to be perfect overnight. But I saw how much she did in such a short time and how much of an improvement she made.

I guess I'm ashamed about it, really. For so long I laughed and made some joke about it, but it's not really funny at all, is it?

Today was staff photos.

Despite my best efforts (to the point that I actually made an appointment. An APPOINTMENT. Usually I just stroll in and these people make time for me. This used to be because my awake hours where I could do things was generally the down time for everybody else. But now there's huge competition for those precious few hours after work is done and the shops closing) I still didn't get a hair cut.

This is rather tragic as my hair has become long and dangerous. Small birds have been known to attempt to set up a nest, only to be devoured by the teeming horde of spiders already living there.

This was compounded by the weird angle that the photos had to be taken on. I had to sort of stand side on and look at the camera. Some people, ah, looked really quite...scary. On the other hand, I just look like I was out in the sun for too long. And I have a slightly creepy grin.

So, it's down to three choices:

Camera- Person-Had-The-Shakes-Sky

Actually -I-have-a-splitting-headache-could-you-please-hurry-this-up-before-I-destroy-everything-Sky

Or

I -am-not-filling-my-pants-with-urine-honest-Sky.

Choices, choices.

I'm kind of thinking of the not-peeing-my-pants-Sky, but I also kind of like the faint hint of Doom in the my-world-is-pain-Sky.

If you want to photoshop in a better picture - you know, I always wanted a MacGuyver hair style, or a Magnum PI moustache - I'll see if I can get it posted up on the staff notice board instead.

Hmm. Drinking this MacDonalds coke has made my headache go away. I wonder what it can mean.

Tonight I am at my friend Drew's house. We occasionally get together and play Unreal Tournament. Drew has a friend whose real name eludes me, but goes through the game as "Jedillama", whom I most often encounter with the text message, "Sky_Paladin was gunned down without pity or regret by Jedillama" or "Jedillama is on a killing spree." That guy is invincible. The only time I can take him down is if I am wrapped in a tank.

Also, tonight I am having my first martini.

Drew should know better. One pair of shoes in the floor Sky picture belong to him.

Right now they are using their fel Linux loving powers to do some kind of penguin voodoo magic "which isn't working terribly well for some reason." Oh ho ho. It is because my virtuous Windows machine is fighting the good fight for justice, freedom, and...ah....well...I would like some more coke.

Ok. Time to go. Bye!

I'm looking at the things that seem to be happening in my life - the things that involve other people, friendships, relationships...it seems like a lot of the stuff that happened ten years ago is starting to come around again. Situations that I have been in before. Things that I have done before. Choices that I made the 'safe' choice and did nothing and now they are happening again.

Some of it is good. Old friends I haven't seen for a long time are suddenly appearing out of the wood work all at once. None of it is bad, except...now I am wondering if I made the right decisions the first time.

I think doing something for the sake of stubborness is the worst kind of foolishness. For example - for a long time I did not drink alcohol. I didn't have any real reason not to, except just this general feeling it would be a bad idea. I tried to justify it first by backing it up with religion, then by always wanting to be the responsible person, but the truth was I was afraid that if I got drunk I would do something stupid and lose the new friends that I had. But that was a good reason. Even though later I did try some alcohol and I did some very silly things, that isn't the point. The reason wasn't, "I am not going to drink alcohol because I have never tried it before." Some other Christians say that drinking alchohol is bad, and so they never touch it; and that if they ever did it it would somehow ruin all the times in their life before it and that it would make them bad. I think it's ok to say 'No I don't want to do this because I am afraid of it' but 'no I don't want to do this because if I do, it will invalidate my decisions not to previously' is a poor reason.

I didn't know it, but my mother was very proud of me for not drinking alcohol at all. This was not the reason I didn't drink; it was the fear that I would lose control. I was afraid of what I might do to myself or other people.

I am looking at the events slowly building up around me and - although different faces, different names - things seem eerily familiar. Will I make the same decisions I made in the past? Well, I am older now, and my feelings and motives are different.

Dana would say, "This is your opportunity to fix the mistakes you made in your past." That I could somehow undo the things that I regret by achieving my goals in these new circumstances. However these things that are happening were not mistakes. They were situations where my life could have taken a different turn, followed a slightly different path. Choices. Choices where, there was no 'the right thing' or better or worse. Choices like...what is my favourite colour?

Choices, choices.

In Groundhog Day, the man had to get the best ending of the day to break out of the endless cycle. Now, I am not comparing myself to that, and I certainly do not have infinite time. I already made my choice, and I am seeing how the pieces line up against it. The last time, I didn't stick to my decision and my world crumbled.

Was it a warning, an opportunity for lessons to be learned? Or is this just a cooincidence, and I am reading too much in to it? That by thinking like this, I am seeing extra links that do not actually exist.

Am I a fool for ignoring the signs, or a fool for seeking signs?

Every night before I go to bed, I have a number of things that I do. One of these things is make sure that there are no monsters under my bed. My plan as a child was always to have so much garbage under there, that it was impossible for any monster to fit. When I was in China, a street merchant sold me a tai-chi sword for the princely sum of 20 yuan. It converted out to about four American dollars. This epic weapon travelled wrapped up in a newspaper with me for one month across all of China, from the beautiful majestic cliffs of the Three Gorges river, through the perilous mountain tops and bamboo forests, on the tightly packed train for three days. Where I went, it went, where I slept, it rested, always by my side, together to victory.

On my return to Australia, a terrible thing happened. The air crew wouldn't allow me to take the sword on to the plane. It had to go on as stowage. I wept as the sword was taken away because I feared for its safety, and my fears were founded. When I next saw it, the haft of the weapon had been severed from the blade - cut clean so that it couldn't be used to strike someone.

And so it was for years, merely a costume prop for various exhibitions, sometimes held together by as little as masking tape or even super glue.

Until one day, deep in the bowels in the Womens and Children's Hospital, an ancient dwarf weaponsmith took the fractured parts of this courageous sword, and mended them together once more. As I lifted the completed weapon to test its cut against the rays of light that streamed in through the dust covered windowsill, the smith said to me, "The spirit of the sword lives strong, but the body is broken. Never more can it strike mortal flesh or a solid thing." I knew then on this day that the weapon had been transformed from a common thing, a mere trinket, in to a legendary force of destruction; a demon killing sword, the bane of evil.

To this day, the sword rests by my bed, ever vigilant to smite the darkest creatures that dare try to take place under my bed. That is, if there was room for them...

After I make sure my base is safe, I check my e-mails, visit the various web sites, and then drink half a glass of rum to help me sleep. Well, no, not really. Rum doesn't help me sleep. It helps me find the floor, yes, and what a comfortable floor it is, but sleep isn't necessarily what I do there. In fact it's a good day if I don't drown on my own saliva. If you find Sky passed out on the ground, please be kind and roll him on his side. Thank you.

Well it's almost one am and I am getting up at 7:30 am. Why? Well, that's a good question. I don't know why. So, I'll set my alarm to 8. That's a much better idea.

Tomorrow my dad is getting out of hospital after having had surgery on his spine. I don't know the exact details, mum who is a nurse and knows important medical words like 'morphine;' could probably clarify. Actually, that reminds me.

Mum said something like, "Actually I worked on a career to be an IT professional." HOW DID YOU WIND UP AS A MIDWIFE? Can I look forward to it? Oh, here is an awkward story to share with you all. It starts well: My mother graduated from Nursing, and then went back and did another year (right?) to become a Midwife. So we went to attend the midwife graduation ceremony. As you probably know, different faculties have different colored robes and stuff. An odd thing, only women had become midwifes this year. This minor detail isn't important right now.

After the ceremony, we took lots of pictures of mum in her flash Graduate Midwife robes. Maybe she has some online? You can put them up here if you like. Well, I had to return the robes and hat and colors to the University office. It seemed like a good idea to wear it, after all, since everyone else was walking around in their Graduate gear and it would be fun to see what I would look like when I, too, am a graduate one day.

So imagine the looks of horror on the faces of the people who knew what the colours for the midwife graduate robes were when they saw a boy walking around in the same colours. Yes. So, I, ah, took the robes off. Mmmm. Awkward? Yes. Awkward is a very good word.

Fortunately my younger brother Matthew was present and I was able to make him wear/carry them and he was blissfully unaware of what I had done to him.

So, please give details for dads situation...?

Well, as far as I understand it, he's doing well but the next couple of weeks will be frustrating because he has very limited mobility. For a person who always seems to be working on a project and is very active, I think it will be very frustrating for him. Although I can easily spend all day reading a book or playing a game or...ah...just laying in bed sleeping, I guess...I don't think that is the kind of thing dad can do. I think this will be the hardest thing for him, actually relaxing and being patient enough to let the treatment work. I hope it will be ok.

Dani pointed out correctly that I had left 'Baker' in my profile when I am, in fact, not a baker! I still don't have a proper job description. On my pay form it says 'Software Developer: Professional.' Apparently they had to hire me as a professional (and not academic staff) because otherwise I would have to submit academic papers. They don't want me to write papers because I'm not a qualified professional. I think you can see where this is going. I thought it would be easy to say, 'Well, I am a computer scientist' but the rest of the faculty say 'No, you are an engineer'.

SO...

On Friday I demonstrated my program to the DSTO.

I have been afraid for the last four, five years, that I wasn't good enough. I found programming hard. Nothing worked like I wanted it to. I had found myself wondering, "Is this the right career for me?" Whenever I was in a conversation about computers with just about anyone, I felt entirely out of my area. I have been really quite scared of this jump from being a student to being a person who writes programs that are, well, paid for instead of being marked. I was afraid I would make a mistake, that they would discover how little I really knew about it, and they would get rid of me. I expected a long path of repeated failure while I slowly learned more about it until some day in my mid 30's I'd land a job good enough to get me through life.

So I didn't expect people to look at my program on Friday and go "OH MY GOD! THAT IS INCREDIBLE! YOU DID ALL OF THIS IN TWO WEEKS?". To say it was a good response is an understatement. All day long I had been wringing my hands nervously and unable to sit still because I was frightened about what would happen. What if the program crashed? What if the user didn't like it? What if the program somehow dialled into a foreign country and started downloading confidential data to them? All manner of things could have gone wrong. I was really nervous about it. Well, I worked hard on the program. I stayed late quite a few nights of the week to make sure it got done properly, and I was still putting polish on it half an hour before we sent it out. The system I wrote...ah...here is the thing about computer programming. There are bugs. A bug is a logical error, when a human says to a computer, "OK, please put a sign up on the wall to say "No trespassing" and the computer does this, but the sign is upside down. The job is done but it's not done right. You find bugs by deliberately trying to break your program, making it 'bulletproof'. You test it again and again and again to make sure it does the right thing.

My program isn't bulletproof. I pulled it entirely apart Wednesday night and wrote it again from scratch, using the algorithms I had written, and reassembling it all day Thursday, and adding 50% extra functionality Friday morning. It's not tested. It's not tested. I know my program logic. I know there are errors in it. Big errors. Really big errors. Things like...if you press the buttons in a certain sequence, the computer says "Yup! I'm going to eat all of your memory now" and the only way out is to wait for the blue screen to come up and go 'zomg u broke me'.

Well, anyway.

I know what I wrote isn't particularly special or amazing. My algorithms that I wrote in a few hours are not scientific breakthroughs. But the people who saw the program reacted like it was. It was a really good feeling for me. As I was driving home I was thinking about the events of the day and realising, "I know how to do this." Yeah. I know how to do it.

So, I am a computer scientist now.

In other big news, Taren learned how to make arcanite bars and Malachiel bought his first piece of pvp gear, the Grand Marshall's Scaled Gauntlets. He can't actually wear them for another two levels, but I reached 100 Alterac Valley tokens so I had to spend them on something (because it doesn't go over 100 and otherwise it is a waste).

I ate a whole 250g of Roses chocolates today.

I wrote a letter to Anna today, and part of it I had so much fun writing that I thought I should include here also.

"Well, there were supposed to be red backs here, but I never saw any. We
did get a lot of huntsman spiders though, mostly medium sized and a few
large ones, and also snakes. We encountered a lot of spiders. Here's a
thing...spiders like to hide under bark. Bark lives on trees. There
were lots of trees in Hatherleigh. So spiders....everywhere. The
knowledge that they were all completely harmless did a lot to relax you.
However this illusion was instantly shattered the moment when one day
one of the big ones decided it was going to have a piece of Warren for
lunch, which it did. One of the things we would regularly do would be
find a tree that looked like it could be a threat to the house and/or
old and could fall and hurt someone, and cut it down. Then we would cut
it up into 30cm or so sections and stack it up neatly, clear up the
branches, and burn all the excess tinder. The log stack would stay
there for a few months until it had dried out enough that it could be
burned, whereupon it would be carted down to our woodshed and later, I
would bring it up to the house so that we could have a fire during the
bitterly cold winter months.
Of course you will say "Omg Sky....-1, -2 degrees is cold? You are
weak." Yes. Yes I am weak. Anyway, one day Warren and I were picking
up these logs when suddenly I heard Warren yelling and then screaming
and screaming. I immediately thought, oh, he has found a snake again.
A while ago, we were taking the logs away when, oh surprise, it's a
tiger snake. Tiger snakes = angry + aggressive to humans + poisonous =
very dangerous. Roger destroyed it with generous application of rake to
head. Mum is frightened of snakes, to the point where even a picture of
a snake is enough to reduce her to a quivering wreck. Anyway, this time
it was a spider, only it wasn't on a log, it was on Warren's hand,
biting him every three or four seconds. You know, just sitting
there...hmm, this hand is delicious *bite*.....oh, still good! I'll try
some more *bite*. Warren was just kind of standing there screaming
every time it bit him, his hand outstretched and his whole body shaking.
So Dad and I just kind of stood there for a few seconds while it bit him
a few more times, until Dad eventually stepped forward and flicked it
off with his fingers. It scurried off back to the log pile and tried to
hide, but it's evil red eyes could clearly be seen through its dark
miasma of pure hate (with a hint of contentedness. People hands are
tasty). So, this was a new thing. We had always been told huntsman
spiders wouldn't bite someone. I had seen people playing with them,
videos of people training them as pets. Now I had seen with my own eyes
one happily taking nips of my brother. This story takes a far more
interesting turn much later when Dad is cutting up a tree and disturbs a
huntsmans nest, and a few baby spiders - no more than two centimetres
across - surge towards him. Then the whole bark falls away and SEVERAL
MILLION SPIDERS, in a thick sea of eight legged wrath, charges towards
us, and we all remembered "Oh that's right, these guys will bite when
they are angry. Retreat!!"

So, Warren is lucky. The spider is not poisonous. It's no worse than a
bee sting, except, he has eight of them on his hand and it swells up.
Some ice and disinfectant and he's all good. So then Roger says to me,
"OK, please take the rest of the wood to the shed."

So I returned to the wood pile. There are eight pieces of wood left.
It should be an easy job except, I can't see the spider anymore.

Where did he go?

Obviously, he is hiding somewhere, waiting to attack.
He knows I know he is there. He's hiding. Watching. Waiting for his
moment. He is black, black as the night, and the dry she-oak logs,
darkened by the soft rain, conceal him as well as thick fog might. It's
quiet. Totally quiet. Even the birds, sensing this show down, this
final battle between good and evil the centre stage of even their world
right now, silent. The wind dies down. The plaintive cries of baby
lambs, warped over the landscape from distant farms, add an unnatural,
haunting atmosphere. Overhead, vultures circle. They know only one can
walk away from this.

But then I hear it.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap ta-
There.

The spider is so big he makes a noise when he moves. I can't see him,
but I can tell from the sound...there.
He's on top of the log my hand is just about to touch. I can see his
little muscles, straining in anticipation, his thick, cat like fangs
whirling, saliva dribbling like molten wax, his eight hungry eyes all
focused on my left hand as he mentally goes through exactly how he will
cook it up.

So he doesn't see my right hand bring the log I had just put away down
over his filthy body, splattering him into a billion juicy pieces.

The world explodes into sound. The birds are jubilant, the wind picks
up and howls a crescendo of triumph to match my victorious shout of
relief, but then suddenly -
IT WAS A DIFFERENT SPIDER.

There, sitting on the log I just just picked up, is ANOTHER spider. In
an instant I realise my mistake - the spider I have just crushed is
dark, dark grey, an innocent victim, just standing there, but rushing
towards me now is the true evil, the ancient enemy that -

There's no time. As I let go of the log, he jumps, I step back, his
eight legs spread wide, eyes full of revenge for his mate I have cut
down in revenge for his brother...and misses, falling on the ground. I
am wearing boots. Stomp. The end.

I pick up the logs and take them to the shed.

I loved Hatherleigh so much."

A few minutes ago I called Dani on her phone and disturbed her and her charges. I gave Devlan some good ideas. I wonder how many kilograms of chocolate cake an eight year old can eat.

Tonight Rusty and I are enjoying some good old times with the old Transformers game while I wait for my washing to finish. We're running through the old levels with the most powerful characters with an emphasis on super aggressive behaviour, with the best melee minicons on. This is the stupid way to play it - it's almost impossible to get anywhere. But it's a whole new playing experience. It's a sad thing that this game that is so old could be better than the new Transformers game, but there it is.

In response to Mum:

The thing with China? Oh, it was a positive experience. At the time I whined and complained because it interfered with my plans to be with Dana asap. But really, the one semester it held me back is largely eclipsed by the years I managed to hold myself back through failing so many subjects.

So don't worry about it. My whining was largely because I was immature and selfish. It was a good thing, and a really great experience. I wish that I had used that time more effectively than I had.

I worked hard today. It's been like it all week. Tomorrow is wine tasting. I'm looking forward to it. It's "Mission Accomplished" if I don't get photographed nude, covering myself with only a poorly shaved monkey stolen from the zoo, and see the picture drawn into the moon with a high powered lazer.

I can't possibly fail.