No TV Fortnight

I just realized that I haven’t watched any TV for two weeks! Well, apart from incidentally at the gym or the pub. And I don’t find it to be unacceptable.

After the hunt

Photograph of the remains of a noisy miner (bird) after being eaten by Artemis the cat

I decided not to publish a high-resolution version of this photograph. This morning one of our cats, Artemis, proudly brought us a Noisy Miner chick which she’d just hunted. After she’d played with it a while I decided to grab my phone to photograph her victory. But by the time I’d done that, this is all that remained.

Good heavens, I’m blogging about the pets!

I think I’d better migrate to Cincinnati immediately.

That said, it’s interesting that she left the claws. I don’t like eating chicken’s feet either.

Dive right in!

Like all sensible and rational people, I base my entire life on mass-market Astrology:

So you feel like you’re in over your head? Good! Believe it or not, this is how you’ll learn to swim — longer, faster and farther than you’ve ever done before — metaphorically speaking, that is. Dive in.

Today’s advice seems, in the clear light of a Tuesday morning, strangely compelling. My desk is piled with work, but there’s a certain clarity of focus about what’s important and what’s not. I’m diving in… I’ll report back at day’s end.

Iron Anniversary, but not Improved Real Estate

Yesterday, 6 May 2007, ’Pong and I celebrated our 6th anniversary — though this is a family publication so I can’t explain how we celebrated, exactly. Just congratulate us, people, and leave the details be!

Six years makes it our Iron Anniversary — but no, Snarky Platypus, I did not buy ’Pong an iron!

As an aside, check out this list of wedding anniversaries. [Update 7 March 2015: This link seems to have been broken for years, so you’ll have to take my word for it.]

Sure, the traditional ones are there, like paper for the first anniversary, cotton for 2 years, through iron for 6 to the familiar silver for 25 and gold for 50 and so on. But whoever wrote the “modern” gift suggestions is clearly on weirder drugs than I am…

“Desk sets” for the 7th anniversary? “Musical instruments” for 24th? “Conveyances (e.g. automobiles)” for 32nd? “Original poetry tribute” for 46th? And the one which takes the biscuit for me: can you actually imagine someone celebrating 42 years of wedded bliss with their “Improved Real Estate Anniversary”?