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Online study
I’d guess it’s almost certain that Greek mythology gets some attention at least a couple of times during our school years and I was no exception. I don’t really recall at what stages we covered it but it was visited on several occasions while growing up. I remember in college we read  the Odyssey during our Western Civ class, although I’m not certain if it was the full thing or just a part of it. I do remember it was hard to read and I didn’t get a lot out of it. The prose stories seemed okay to me but reading the verse was a different story.
I’m currently doing a course on Greek and Roman mythology on Coursera and reading the Odyssey again, in verse. It’s a far different experience to come to it out of my own choice. The translation by Fagles is the one used in the class so I am using that too. It seems to work for me as I’ve been able to read it quite well so far. I still haven’t go into the major part of the story but I am remembering more of what I read this time around. There are some other texts being used that I probably haven’t read before from the source, like Metamorphosis by Ovid. That’s still a few weeks away but I hope I can be as comfortable with the translation there as I am with this one.
Lego Lover is also doing the course with me, although he is more auditing it than anything and mostly watching the videos and doing some of the readings. The pace is a bit fast for him so we may have to do it outside the time frame of the online class. I think the class archive stays up for quite some time so that should be quite doable for him.
I’m now mostly limiting myself to just one online course at a time as it gets a bit too difficult to do more than one and get much out of it. Earlier this year I was signed up for several and only completed one of them so fewer commitments is obviously better.
Later this year I’m doing a philosophy of science course through the University of Edinburgh. I did the beginning philosophy course last year and enjoyed it and hope this delves further into the topics of a couple of the presenters for that class.
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The not so super Supanova
It’s been a year full of pop culture conventions for Game Fanatic so far. He attended WaiCon in early March with me and it was pretty interesting but well-organised. This was a local production done by the WA anime fan group. Not long after that I saw mention of OzComicon, something Game Fanatic was totally unaware of…This happened to be at the end of March. It was a bit soon after the first one, but was a more general pop culture thing done by the Australian branch of Comicon in the US. This was its first time in Perth, though, so perhaps the scheduling next year will be more suitable. In June the past several years, we’ve had the Supanova Pop Culture show. In past years this was put on at the Claremont Showgrounds exhibition hall, a pretty old venue that has considerable limitations for an event this size. Game Fanatic and the Scientist went last year and it was pretty rough going with the crush of people. The venue was too small and they both said it was poorly organised.
This weekend was the annual event and it was my turn to take Game Fanatic. We’d made plans to meet up with a friend and her daughter while there….it was a first time for both of them. Anyway, the venue was changed to the Perth Convention Centre, the same place the other two cons have been held. It’s a much larger space and we saw how well the other cons handled space. Well, it obviously wasn’t meant to be enjoyable unless you liked being crushed between people and moving at a snail’s pace. The line just to get in was quite long, although apparently this is pretty normal for the larger shows. I don’t have so much complaint about this but they could have organised the line a bit instead of leaving it to snake around the outside area and all the way across the bridge over a main street in Perth. Fortunately the line did move pretty quickly and soon we were able to line up to buy tickets. In all, I’d guess we spent half an hour just getting in. The place was already pretty packed and was likely be be worse as the day went on thanks to the predicted severe storms coming through. In the end the storms weren’t that much of an issue although there were periods of some heavy rain.
The main problems were the bottlenecks in the crowds everywhere but worst around the entrance/exit. It was hard to get around and took so long we lost track of time. We had wanted to see a couple of the panels but missed out on them and then they were closed off as being too full. I was mostly interested in seeing John Barrowman from Doctor Who and Torchwood…alas it wasn’t meant to happen, I guess. In the end, none of us enjoyed it that much. It wasn’t easy to get a good look at costumes and there were plenty of them around. I think we saw much more from outside the main hall. I think they could have spread out events a bit more than they did and made good use of the theatre for the panels instead of being curtained off inside the main hall.
Game Fanatic was far more disappointed than I was…this was the second one in a row to be so packed full and he’s not keen to go back next year unless there are better changes to the organisation. Perhaps they crowds were far more than they expected, though, so their larger venue seemed like it would be okay. I’m really glad it will be several months before the next big event.
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It was twenty years ago today…
I misrepresent the fact when I say twenty years ago today as this was true on the 4th of June.
More correctly, it was twenty years ago this month that I first step foot on the continent and country of Australia as I arrived in Sydney, wearing a red shirt I remember was once a favorite. It was only just still fitting me as I was already five months pregnant with Game Fanatic. It was short-sleeved, which wasn’t exactly ideal for the early days of winter, but it was comfortable for travel. I don’t really recall much of that first stop now but we took another plane to Adelaide where there were only about four terminals. It was much smaller than I might have imagined, even for 1994. We then flew from Adelaide to Perth and arrived on a rainy, cool day at Perth domestic airport. There were a bunch of people at the airport to greet us, mostly people I’d never met before.
I will say now that making a move to the other side of the world is quite a big deal and can be quite stressful. Add the fact I was pregnant with my first child and had certain family members trying to keep me home, and it was much more so. The one aspect of those first days I remember well was how much it rained and rained. But then the sun would come out and we’d see rainbows. It was a pretty regular occurrence that first middle of the year winter and it still happens reasonably often during the rainy winters here. I was very homesick at the start but I think that kind of disappeared in October when Game Fanatic entered our lives. I really didn’t have time for any of that homesick business and managed to get through his first six months in a bit of a blur. I do remember some of it but not all. I had to get a driver’s license a few months after he was born as the Scientist had procured a job and it was pretty useful to be able to drive places rather than depend on assistance from family or do without car travel. It wasn’t really that hard once I started driving as it was all essentially opposite to the way I had driven in the US, right down to the steering wheel on the opposite side of the car. I got my license and I remember one time I was driving  and had the baby in the backseat but had put a plastic rocker chair from a swing in the front and the police stopped me…I think it appeared I had the baby in the front seat but once they saw him firmly buckled into his seat in the back, they waved me on. At least I assume that’s why I was stopped and waved on.
It took quite a few years before I felt like this was home. Well, it’s not totally home because the US is still my native home and always will be. But I did eventually feel settled here and got my citizenship in late 1999 before travelling home the first time with the kids in early 2000. And now it’s twenty years later and it seems so long ago and yet not so long ago either that I arrived here.
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Reaching into the memory bank…
Well, that’s what is seems like at times. Last night I was chatting to my mom on Skype and we somehow we got onto a discussion about something or other that brought up the of friend of another family’s daughter. At the time my mom mentioned her as the younger brother of that guy I used to ride up to college with. Hmm…I drew a complete blank at this although she did remember the guy’s name was Brad. Eventually we worked out who she was talking about but I really didn’t remember riding to college with this guy. The discussion seemed to try to unlock some door in my memory, though, as today, I do have a relatively vague recollection of this happening. I remember enough to know that this guy must have been three years older than me as I’m sure this only happened freshman year. I honestly have no memory of the actual rides back and forth, positive or negative. This wasn’t someone I knew particularly well but I must have known him enough not to be have a memory of riding with some strange person. It’s just interesting how I didn’t remember this at all, then some memory of it seemed to leak out into my consciousness. I have a better recall of bus rides back and forth from Greensboro to Charlotte….but I then don’t really recall how I got to the bus station in Greensboro so I can only assume it must have been close to campus as I don’t think I had to make arrangements to get there each time. Or maybe I did and that memory is still locked away.
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That darned honeysuckle
A couple weeks ago our neighbors knocked on the door and the dogs went bonkers, of course. I didn’t hear the knock but did see one of them walking back down the driveway. The Scientist went to investigate and returned to say our orange honeysuckle plant was weighing down the shade cloth they had between the fence and their house. This is the plant that I have cut back to nothing several times and it always comes back. We hadn’t done anything with it in ages and it had grown up and over the fence again. It was bigger and stronger than ever. I immediately set about cutting it back with the Scientist joining me when he wasn’t working. Between us we got almost all of it off the shade cloth. I continued on a couple days later and removed lots more of it. I also managed to clear a huge space on the ground where it had been. There are still some strong roots that will need more tools to remove though.
Meanwhile, two large piles of cuttings appeared near the fence and sat there for a couple weeks. We’ve had several days without rain and the forecast is for rain from Tuesday onwards. I decided to work on shredding some of the green waste before it got wet again. This didn’t work as well as I’d like but I did manage to get through the better part of one of the piles. There have been other cutting from shrubs and trees, dried along the periphery of the yard so I used some of those branches. After a few hours of work, I found I had one box filled with shredded plant waste. Those piles took up considerable space but the shredded material fit quite neatly into the big box our food processor came in.
One of our goals is to clear the honeysuckle completely, along with other weeds and yard trash, enough so that we can have a patio installed outside. We’ve only lived here nineteen years but still have no covered area outside. I’m hoping we can complete this before the end of our winter. With so much cleared away, it actually looks like there is quite a bit of space there. Here’s hoping we stick to our goals this time.
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Naps
I was just reading a meme on my Facebook feed about naps and it triggered a memory.
When I was about four and/or five, my mom worked as a real estate agent and we were looked after by a woman named Mrs. McGarrity, who looked after quite a number of kids in her home. I don’t recall how many there were but each day after lunch we were supposed to lie down on the floor for a nap. There seemed quite a few of them aside from me and my two brothers, so I’m guessing there might have ten or more kids there. Anyway, when it came time for a nap, I would never sleep and she used to get highly annoyed. Thinking a bit more about it, I think she spent that time watching her soapies and instead of sleeping, I was watching what she was watching. :) Anyway, I remember she eventually got fed up and put me into a bedroom with the door closed. I don’t know what she expected I would do but I didn’t nap there either. I remember I used to get up and walk around the bed and look out the window. I’m not sure if this happened just once or if if became a regular thing.
That’s mostly what I remember about going there, aside from a vague memory of all us kids playing out in the backyard. We only went there for a year or so. When I started school, my mom stopped working and stayed home with my brothers.
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Strange dreams
I’ve had some pretty bizarre dreams the past few days, many disturbing and some quite interesting.
I don’t recall the dream from two nights ago very well now but it seemed to revolve around a few family members who have already died. At one point in the dream my grandmother appeared, or I should say her presence was noted. The strange part of the dream was I was focused on the top of the line electric toothbrush she had in her bathroom. Whatever it was, it had all the bells and whistles included. I honestly couldn’t say anything specific about it though. Anyway, what’s particularly odd about the association is my grandmother had worn dentures for most of the years I knew her and thus didn’t use a toothbrush. That one was odd, bizarre but not bothersome.
In another point of the dream I was engaged in a conversation with a cousin who died several years ago. She was only three years older than me and she was 39 when she died so I guess that was about thirteen years ago. First of all it is weird to think that much time has passed since then. Anyway, Â we were talking and I mentioned to her that I missed both her parents, who have also died. They both died a few years after she died, so that was kind of weird. But within the dream I also said to her that she had also died, before her parents. So I was talking to a dead person within my dream. And it wasn’t like talking to a ghost or anything like that. She appeared quite substantial and it seemed almost normal to be speaking to her. That one was rather disturbing and I do wonder what triggered all that.
Last night was a different sort of disturbing with me falling asleep and immediately going into not so much a dream as an assault of disturbing images. I couldn’t say what they were but each time this happened I woke myself up. I must have not been quite asleep when the “dream” would start. I had other disturbances to my sleep, unrelated to dreams. I had a cough that started up and wouldn’t settle down so I got up and got a drink of water, sat up for a little while, then returned to bed. At another point, one of the dogs woke me and seemed to want to go out but then she didn’t. I don’t think I had much proper sleep for several hours.
Then towards the end of my sleep, I had a totally different sort of dream. It was a perfectly normal dream at the beginning with some normal sort of happenings mixed in with a few oddities, as happens often. At some point though, it seemed to shift into some sort of fantasy story, of the young adult/ older child sort, with children or teenagers involved in some sort of tasks. It seemed to progress quite nicely until there were obstacles place along the way by some less pleasant sort of character(s). Eventually I started to wake and couldn’t sustain what was happening so that was essentially the end of it. I must admit to liking this last dream far more than any of the others.
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Wet, wet, wet
NOTE: This was meant to be posted last week but I didn’t finish it. Too much time has passed so I have posted it as it appeared last.
I seem to recall a group called that here in Australia, possibly a one-hit wonder, or perhaps more than that. I am pretty sure I don’t know any of their other music though.
I will just comment, not complain, that we’ve had rain pretty regularly this month and I am in no rush to send it packing at this point in time. That said, the winter (aka weedy) grass is growing tall throughout our yard and when we do get a new lawnmower, it will be electric. Would be good to have that cut down when it dries out for a day or two. It certainly is nice to have the rain around here and we haven’t even had anything dramatic so far. We have had threats of storms but it’s been pretty benign where we live…although not so great in other areas of the state.
I don’t know if there’s an association of any sort, but we’ve had our power go off twice in a week recently. I know this is pretty common for many areas but here we almost never have anything more than a brownout or the power flickering off for a moment or two. This seems rather a remarkable coincidence and I can’t help wondering the causes of the outages. We probably will never know but it is curious. Only the first outage was after dark so the effects weren’t too troublesome for us.
Last week the Scientist and I marked our 21st wedding anniversary. It was a really nice day and the the stormy weather that had earlier been predicted never eventuated. In fact, it was rather warm that day, and we managed to walk around to some of our favourite places without the need of any extra clothes. We even did  a repeat climb of the DNA tower in King’s Park around sunset. It’s really nice to have our kids now old enough we can go out and do our own thing instead of dragging them along or including them in our plans.
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Winter grass, cool weather and other stuff
After months of dry weather, we finally got a bit of rain late last month. I was a bit concerned it was going to flood after so much time but we lucked out and it was a fairly steady, and mostly light rain that fell over the course of a day or two. There has been a bit more rainfall since, Â just enough to avoid having to water on our watering days. Tomorrow we are due for a cold front to come through with some heavy rain…will wait and see what happens on that but I don’t mind a rainy day once in a while, even though it will affect a couple things happening. Curiously, the rain must have come at just the right time as we now have winter grass (weed grass) popping up through our yard. It seems to be a lot more widespread for early May than I remember in the past…or maybe we just had that much moisture to start it growing by now.
Similarly, the weather has only recently cooled off much from summer temperatures. It seemed like we went straight from summer to winter within a week or so. None of this gradual seasonal change for us here in Perth. We haven’t closed our windows totally yet but it will likely happen in the next two or three weeks. With the cooler weather, I have noticed joint pain has suddenly ramped up quite a bit and it seems possible I will need to resort to taking some sort of anti-inflammatory medication soon.
After procrastinating about it for months…well, maybe years if you consider it’s been sitting idle for years…I finally got my bicycle into a local shop for repair and service last week. It was a strange thing to be riding after so long but it was a nice strange. That is, it was nice until the wobbles of the bike became evident. Fortunately I had a dual use path to ride on most of the way there so didn’t have the stress of road riding a bike that was not in ideal shape. It seems at least one of the wheels is buckled and it’s not certain what will need to be fixed up to run properly again. In many ways the bike is still in decent shape, at least compared to a lot of other bikes that have sat in sheds for years…it has a bit of rust on the handlebars but much of the main frame is looking okay. Still, it wasn’t a terribly expensive bike even though it wasn’t cheap when bought ten years ago, and if costs to bring it up to speed are too much, I will think seriously about replacing rather than repair.
For the first time ever, I got a flu shot yesterday. I have never felt much need for them in the past but there have been reports that the current flu strains have affected my age group, bringing down even quite healthy individuals. Apparently due to my diabetes diagnosis, I get flu shots for free so I will consider making this an annual thing. Game Fanatic had one last week and Lego Lover gets one tomorrow. He’s obviously not looking forward to this as he doesn’t like needles of any sort. I have gotten some cream from the pharmacy to help numb the area…which it now occurs to me might be a bit tricky since we often have a long wait to see his doctor…I may phone ahead to see if he is running on time or not before heading out.
Our family went to see a movie for the first time in a few years last week. We were all interested in seeing the Lego Movie and had hoped to catch it soon after it started. Both Game Fanatic and I were sick for a couple weeks or more so we delayed it…finally were all well and able to go. And it was really good. There was much to be enjoyed by both adults and kids in the movie and Lego Lover was abuzz for hours after we saw it. I suspect there may be a few new sets being added to his collection soon, which is a bit of a surprise as he’s mostly been buying Transformers toys and the occasional Lego Hero Factory set in the last couple of years.
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Paid to walk
Last week I did five four-hour shifts where I walked through buildings on a local university campus to count people in rooms. Every half hour, I would stop at each room on my route and check the number of people in the room. Many of the rooms were almost always empty and many were used quite regularly. I found the numbers started dropping as the week wore on though. By Friday most of the rooms were empty or nearly so. It was slow going at the beginning of the week though. The person I followed up from was late getting back and so I started late. Then I got to the buildings and found I didn’t have the map I needed. Fortunately the supervisor rushed to return it to me. It took about three rounds before I was caught up and I found I was going pretty much straight through the shift. On Tuesday I no longer required a map, except to provide codes for some of the doors, and by Friday I was getting through the route in just under 20 minutes at times.
The work was fairly mindless after I got used to it but it was physically taxing. I had bought some new cross trainers a couple of weeks ago and I must say they worked quite well for me. Even when my feet were sore in the morning, they shoes seemed to support me well enough they didn’t hurt when I got started. But by the last three rounds, my feet were always tired and I found my pace slowed down quite a bit. Still I managed to go back the following days and do it all again. But I must admit to being happy to be done with that right now. The cumulative effect of the entire week left me feeling pretty run down by the weekend and only today am I feeling renewed energy. I was going to exercise yesterday but decided it might be good to take a break, especially considering how much exercise I’d had through the week. I used an app on my old phone and it tracked about 11 kms over the four hours, which would have been about the same through the week. I will return to my exercise routine today, though, as I am feeling much better than I have in days. I was expecting to do another week of this at a different campus the week after next but it seems I won’t be after all due to some mix up either on my part or someone else. I’d have liked to have had the extra money but my feet are feeling relieved to have the break. :)