Month: November 2006

27 on the 27th — Selected pics

There were other photos and other people at the party, but I’m tired, don’t have a web gallery, don’t have much bandwidth, and will not be finishing NanoWrimo in time. You’re lucky you’re getting anything at all you ungrateful lot.

Dave — looking magestic. At least, that’s what I told him to do before I took the photo. Apparently he wants a copy of this to put on his online dating profile.
Help yourself.

The definitive 27 on the 27th photo. If you weren’t in this photo, then you aren’t cool enough to be on the blog unless you were magestic, like Dave, or…

… willing to have your ear photographed — like Jaco.

Thanks everyone who could make it. For those of you who couldn’t, you missed out on the tale of the “hutbacked whale” and it’s sea-cabbage hunting expeditions.

Nanowrimo Update

Okay, so things aren’t exactly looking optimal.
I laugh in the face of unattainable word counts!

Fear not fans! Writing continues steadily, if not at the blistering pace required to meet certain self-imposed deadlines. There will be a silly novel. It’ll just take a while longer.

In other news, Angie celebrated her birthday yesterday in style — pics should be forthcoming. Complain if there aren’t any before the end of the week.

Peugeot 206 — she is broken

If you read this here, and you feel I should have contacted you personally about these events, keep in mind that phoning a lot of people may not have been high on my priority list.

You may phone me, if you feel so inclined, but it isn’t really necessary. Everyone is well and relatively unharmed. No hospitalisation was necessary, although airbags did deploy.

Angie would seem to be quite accident prone. On Friday night I let her go off on her own again, and on her way back from visiting Jaco, she drove the Peugeot into a lamppost.

Admittedly, this omits some of the details regarding the accident. The details appear to be:

  • Angie brakes to avoid abruptly stopped vehicle.
    • Braking will clearly fail to prevent a collision.
  • Angie swerves around the stopped vehicle, but overcompensates and mounts the curb in the middle of the dual carriageway that is Beyers Naude.
    • Mounting the curb throws her upward in her seat, causing an impact with the ceiling of the Peugeot she was driving.
      • Head impacting car ceiling causes mild concussion
  • Not really remembering what happens next, Angie takes the car:
    • ploughing through a small billboard
    • smacking into a lamppost
  • Hitting the lamppost causes:
    • Airbags to deploy
    • Crumple-zones to crumple
    • Engine block to go away
  • Angie regains consciousness, and gets out of the car, unscathed, except for:
    • Cut on her thumb
    • Whiplash
    • Lower-back pain

I’m not certain whether I ever complained about the plastic dipstick these Peugeots come with, and how they tend to break off and fall into the engine block.
The French, although incompetent in designing the simpler parts of the vehicle, do seem to have got the safety features sorted out.

As a result, her physical injuries are practically negligible. Of this I am very thankful .
The assessor seems to believe that the car is likely to be written off — a result of combining the effect of the mileage and the engine damage.
Meditating on impermanence is pretty easy with respect to French cars. I’m thinking that I’d have more trouble applying these handy Buddhist principles if Angie’s impermanence had suddenly become more real that night.

Angie took herself to the doctor who has fitted her out with a neck-brace. Two week sentence. Angie has already started complaining about it. It’s itchy and scratchy, and hot and sticky. I think by the end of the two weeks, it will also be stinky.

At one time I had a bucket-bean dog. Now I have a bucket-angie wife. Perhaps I’ll post a picture, of both so that my loyal readers can make a comparison. I’ll probably need to get permission for that, though.

Nano update

Vaguely feel like I can win now. This weekend has been mildly successful. Not marvellously successful, but better than the previous weekend. I should have written many many many more words to make up for reduced output during the week. At least I wrote over 2000 words per day on Saturday and Sunday — which proves it’s possible, and not really that difficult. Except, it did take longer than the spare time I have during the week.

If every day was a weekend, 50,000 words in a month would be a doddle. It’s not and it’s not.

My ‘required run-rate’ (to use a cricketing analogy) has creeped up just above 6 runs an over (i.e. 2000 words per day). Not overly taxing yet, but still quite a long chase since I’m not even half-way through the innings yet. If I can keep it at this rate though, I should win easily. But if the rate keeps on creeping up and lurks around 8 runs an over too soon, then I’m sunk. I suppose at least I can’t lose any wickets — but I can lose morale.

Writing quality has already started to deteriorate somewhat. When before I may have been meticulous about spelling and punctuation, I’ve noticed that I’ve been writing vast paragraphs with no regard for whitespace whatsoever. Typos abound. Commas are forgotten. This strategy is likely to be perfected next weekend when the working week takes its toll on my nanowrimo output.

I feel like this post sounds a little like Gaz’s progress reports on his various self-improvement endeavours. Think I see a little better where you were coming from, dude.