What a day

First, David Hicks finally pleaded guilty to a crime that didn't exist at the time he is supposed to have committed it - giving the US kangaroo military court exactly what it wanted, but most likely ensuring he'll actually get to see his kids again one day.

Our esteemed government, of course, cautiously welcomed the news. The ever-eloquent and concise Minister for Foreign Affairs had this to say:

"First of all there was the view that Hicks clearly couldn't have done anything wrong, and we hate the Americans and all of that," he said.

"There were people who thought David Hicks should just be strung up, he was obviously a horror.

"And there were people in the middle, which is where I was, really. My view was always that the legal process had just taken far too long."

Umm, gosh, that's insightful.

Then Ratzinger, sorry Pope Benedict, decided to pull Catholicism back into the Dark Ages, stating that hell is, in fact, a real and terrifying place awaiting all those who "shut their hearts to [God's] love."

I had thought Catholics were getting better, but it seems I was wrong. Ratzinger is leading his (ever reducing) global congregation to new lows of simplistic doctrine, promoting division between religions and preaching hellfire and brimstone for all who flout "God's laws".

Being the only bona fide representative of the Catholic God here on earth, I can't imagine what Ratzinger has to gain from all this...

And lastly, 3rd Pea seems to have come down with her first cold.

Her nose is blocked, her eyes are gunky, and she's not at all at peace with the world this evening.

We managed to clear her nose, somewhat at least, by dripping saline into her nostrils and sucking it (and the muck) out with an aspirator. Not a process that any of us enjoyed, but judging by the volume of (the usually placid) 3rd Pea's screams, she had the least fun of all.

We finally managed to get her to sleep and she's snuggled semi-peacefully in C's arms in bed while I'm polishing off the remnants of a long-cold dinner.

Hopefully her nose stays clear, otherwise it's going to be a long night.

A picture of perfect peace

Just thought I'd share that with you at 5.30 4.30 in the morning.

The end of daylight savings is always confusing for us. Frequently our computer is the only one in the house that knows what's happening. One year we spent half the next day wondering what was wrong with it, only to realise later that the problem was us, not the machine.

Happy first day of the rest of the year.

Pill stops cow burps and helps save the planet

This is utterly ridiculous.

SERIOUSLY!

Stopping cows from burping will stop climate change? Surely just not eating the cows makes so much more sense than preventing them from burping while they live their short, miserable lives leading to a grisly and painful death and your local supermarket.

If you give half a toss about the climate one of the easiest things you can do is stop eating meat. If we look at the impact of any single action we can take to protect our environment, adopting a vegan diet clearly has the most beneficial consequences. A vegan lifestyle uses less resources (particularly water, but also energy and land) and emits far less carbon than that of a meat eater.

There can really be no dispute about this. Facts are facts, it's the will that is missing from the majority of the populace. And willful ignorance aims to keep it that way.

That might sound harsh, and sorry for that. I just can't understand why anyone would choose the (perceived) pleasure of carnivorous gastronomy over the easiest way to protect our planet for future generations (possibly even ours).

Having 3rd Pea has really put this into perspective for me. I've been a committed ecotarian for a while now, but becoming a dad is bringing the militant out in me (not attractive, (I know).

Besides, vegan food is just so delicious. I defy anyone to come and eat at our place and leave thinking veganism means compromising on gastronomic delights.

You think they love you...

...then they go and do this


all over your favourite track pants.

It's lucky she's amazingly cute...

By popular demand

I wasn't going to subject you to any more Lily photos so soon, but there have been requests. So I thought: who am I to deny people the pleasure of seeing our little munchkin?

First, let's start with the 'sleep series'. Lily is a pretty good sleeper, particularly straight after a feed, but I do wish that more of this was getting down in the early hours of the morning...





Next, we have a couple of photos of Lily just after being bathed. She also happens to be looking particularly serious. I think that she is contemplating the meaning of life... or at least when she she is going to have her next feed.



And, finally, here is Lily in motion.

I hope that you are all well. We are both still blissfully in love with our little bundle - but also fairly exhausted and in awe of the responsibility that we have taken on. Hopefully I will find the time to actually write a real post one of these days...

wind

Gas, colic... call it what you like. It's my new enemy and I'm out to destroy it.

Poor 3rd Pea has been up most of the night with tummy pains and the looks of pain on her beautiful face are enough to break my heart.

Does 3rd Pea support the Iraq invasion?

Okay, so she doesn't know anything about it, but when I told her today was the anniversary, she did this:



That's right little Pea - fist in the air, like the millions of others around the world wanting this ludicrous occupation to end.

More 3rd Pea photos

Before you all get sick and tired of 3rd Pea photos, I thought I'd squeeze a few more in.

Here she is all wrapped up, with her ever-present little Dr Evil finger ready for action.



We have tons of clothes (waaay too many), but most of them are a little on the big size at the moment. Still, we tried to put something smaller on her earlier and she wasn't overly happy about it (belly button is still a little raw), so we'll stick with the big ones for now.



Sleeping like an angel. Let's hope she keeps it up...



And this last one isn't particularly flattering, but it just about sums up how I imagine she must be feeling right now. Kind of a mix of curiosity and WTF!

Finally...

After an eternity of waiting (and a rather lengthy labour) 3rd Pea (otherwise known as L) is here.


C and L are doing fine. C will be back blogging in a couple of days. But it might take a little longer for L to get touch typing down pat.

Thanks to everyone (online and off) who have sent messages of support and congratulations.

Welcome to the World L. We can't wait to start showing it to you.

Skyfire and Photoshop

Tonight was the annual Canberra Skyfire. A "fireworks extravaganza" set to music, or something. I haven't been since I was about 16, so am not really qualified to speak about it.

Needless to say we didn't go, but we could hear the whole thing from our apartment (the whole thing lasting about 30 minutes or thereabouts) and I headed into the corridor to see what was seeable.

This shot was taken from the 5th floor window near the lifts. I like the way you can see the traffic and the fireworks, partly shielded by someone's balcony.

A little photoshoping on the flares themselves and it was as good as being there. Sort of.

Have a happy Sunday.

Meet Mr. Eggplant

At the markets this morning we found this wonderful eggplant. It might be somewhat gender biased of me, but it does look like a Mr. Eggplant, doesn't it?

Funny thing is that, no matter what it looks like, or how much we come to love Mr. Eggplant, in loo of 3rd Pea (who just won't come out with either threats or enticements), He is still going to end up like all the stray eggplants we find and bring home...



Poked full of holes, shoved in the oven, baked, and turned into baba ganoush!

Gosh, I feel a bit like the witch in Hansel & Gretel...

How did I miss this?

The Economist reports that Côte d'Ivoire's civil war may well be over.

Excellent. One entrenched African conflict down, (enter ludicrously high number here) to go.

Oh, and 3rd Pea is still happily ensconced and shows no signs of making a grand entrance any time soon.

Still no 3rd Pea

Just thought that I would let you know in case anyone is as impatient as all the people that have been calling and emailing to ask us whether or not we have had our baby yet.

We do, of course, intend to tell people once it has actually happened. Still, I guess they think it is worth checking just in case.

To be fair, P. had to promise to stop calling me to ask if I was in labour yet and I keep asking the little person in my tummy when they are going to come out - so I guess we are all guilty of being a little impatient.

It could still be another week and a half though...

In the meantime, here is my Mum with my brother just after I was born. Don't you think that she looks like she is about 12 years old?


Freaky.

I wonder if this is how it feels to be American?

GANGS of youths armed with sticks and rocks were roaming Dili last night chanting "Down with Australians".

Sigh, it's a complicated world.

No sign of 3rd Pea yet...

Book Magazine Book - Issue 15

I first heard about the Book Magazine Book project over at Ampersand Duck's blog and then was reminded of it when I read Zoe's post about her page a few weeks ago. So, because I love all things 'book' (especially handmade ones), I decided to put up my hand to join in. And then I completed forgot about it...

Then on Friday last week, P. came home from work and handed me a parcel from the mail box. I was baffled as to what it could be until we opened it to find two little moleskin books inside and a page of instructions. And then I got excited - something to do while I wait for this stubborn little munchkin to arrive!




The theme of this issue (Issue 15) is "Truth and Lies" - with one book set aside for each. I wasn't entirely sure what to do and so I did a bit of a search online for inspiration and ended up creating a Flixr group to encourage people to post their photos of the project to the one spot. In the process I did find a few images and posts, but none of them really helped me to decide what I should do.

Anyway, I am not sure whether or not I am finished or whether I will keep working on these, but here is what I have done to start with:




Yes, that cartoon is from 101 Uses for a John Howard. I hope that he doesn't mind me using a copy - it just seemed to fit in so well with the theme.

Sunday perspectives

The view from our balcony is quite lovely; if you can edit out the buildings and concentrate on the mountains and sky.

Our view of sky is constantly changing each hour of the day, so I thought I'd give you some idea of what we get to see all the time.

8am.

A sign that winter is on its way. Low lying clouds always make me feel a chill, no matter what the temperature outside.

2pm.

Clear and blue afternoon sky, not a cloud in sight. And the heat was intense - something like 35c.

7.30pm.

One of my favourite things about Canberra are the nearly-always beautiful sunsets. Looking due west we get the full benefit and today was no exception.

Oh, and no sign of 3rd Pea yet, in case you're wondering.

No 3rd Pea tosay [sic]

Just in case you thought we were only interested in grammar-bashing rev heads. This one is from a craft shop.

Okay, so it's not grammar, but C and I thought it was rather hilarious when we saw it earlier today. Luckily C had her nifty new camera phone with her so we could share the mirth.

On a more somber note, we saw several shops in the bright new Canberra Centre that were closed till further notice due to flood damage.

Oh, and no, there's still no sign of 3rd Pea.

Where are you little one? Pappa wants snuggles...

All roads lead to... Mall?

C was having some Braxton Hicks last night (see link in her post below for more info on them) so we went for an evening walk to see if we could turn them in to something a little more serious - to no avail, unfortunately.

On the way back to our place I really looked at the street sign at the end of our street for the first time. I've obviously looked at it before, of course, but never really paid attention (as we're pretty familiar with the area and basically know where we are going, most of the time).

Anyway, it struck me that the options for leaving our place, if you stick to those indicated as available from the signage, are pretty grim:

Woden does have a better supermarket than the one closest to us, but that's about all. Don't even get me started on Queanbeyan - though it is one of the most marginal seats in the country (and it's a shame one would actually have to move there to make a difference on that front). And the only interesting thing about Cooma is that it's close to the snow.

Going in the other direction we have Yass (umm, drawing a blank here) and Goulburn - which has a jail (though we're getting our very own soon!) and the Big Merino (a giant concrete sheep with a dodgy gift shop/café in between its legs).

Of course, there are always the other two cardinal directions, which lead us to Belconnen (and an even scarier mall than the one in Woden) and the City Centre (with its new and super-dooper giant mall).

So in three out of four directions we have shopping malls and scary towns and the fourth just has a scary town or two.

Ah, I love Canberra.

AARGH

I am impatient.

Yesterday I scrubbed all of our walls and cupboard doors clean, read every feed in my bloglines account, reorganised our computer and paper files, stewed peaches, cleaned the desk, cooked lunch (scrambled tofu and olive bread), ate lunch while refreshing bloglines several times in case there were any new posts, created new boxes for storing our wrapping paper, cards & ribbon, had a swim, washed my hair (rare event), made some final edits to a chapter of my thesis and emailed it to my supervisor, ate dinner (yummy chili made by P), had Braxton-Hicks contractions, had a walk to see if they would increase, gave up, went to bed.

Why can't they just give me a date rather than this whole approximate 'some time in the next two weeks' thing? If I knew when it was going to happen, I could plan my time accordingly and be less impatient.

One more thing: what on earth am I going to do with myself today? (Leaving the house doesn't feature highly on my wish list, BTW - I am over waddling slowly in public and talking to people about how big I am or when I am due).

If only we hadn't already cleaned out all of the cupboards...

Well I'm convinced

It's not about dumbing down, it's about quality up, that's the key.

- Labor's Education spokesman, Stephen Smith.

[From here]