stephbg | On small furry animals, skewers and lawyers (Reply)

One Small Furry Animal
Was kept amused for several minutes on the train platform this morning observing a mouse. Fortunately for the mouse I'd just had breakfast.

A sloping bank runs along the side of the rails opposite the platform, and is reinforced with irregular chunks of limestone. This creates a perfect mouse maze over 50m long and 5m wide. Ish. Don't quote me.

I wasn't quite sure what the mouse's goals were (but then, who is?) but it scurried about on an apparently random path around the rocks until it eventually reached the bottom. It then scampered over to the rails and disappeared from view, being much shorter than the rail.

A very large train approached. Where was the mouse? Would the mouse survive? Who was its real mother? Would its shady financial dealings be finally revealed? Was it falling in love with a bad mouse who would only break its heart? Stay tuned.

Evidently alerted by the vibrations, the mouse scooted out of the way with mere seconds to spare. Perhaps it was a teenaged mouse and thus bereft of common sense, but to give it credit it did appear to survive. Next time it could be hit by something worse than a fine >:-|

*waves fist at irresponsible young thugs*

Through the Beer Glass
I've seen a lot of broken glass since the weekend, on the road, footpaths and carparks. Someone lost an entire six pack of beer on Leige St outside the Nookie Hotel. Oh the humanity.

Keep Clear My Arse
Having observed with interest the recent installation of a passenger "keep clear" area on the Perth train station platform, I was disappointed but unsurprised to see it being completely ignored this afternoon.

Swimming In It
Happy to report I got back in the pool this afternoon for a careful 600m. A bit puffy possibly due to an earlier throat swelling incident at the office. I'm beginning to suspect that 4-5 hours in my office causes my throat to collapse. How inconvenient. It also seems to frighten the hell out of the architects next door. I thought they were tougher than that.

Back in the pool, a nice and possibly Canadian fellow swimmer said that I had good technique and swam "straight as a skewer". However, various bits of my anatomy started muttering about seeking legal representation unless I ceased and desisted immediately, so I was forced to call it a halt and limp pathetically out of the water.

More conference postery goodness
You may not be excited to your marrow by mine feasibility studies in particular or mineral processing forecasting and budgeting in general, but it is my task right now to make these things the new black. Apparently.

However, I am not a copy writer, and while everyone in the office agrees that "An Audit Trail You Can Bank On" is a deeply cheesy headline, no-one has improved on it so far. I haven't even mentioned "The Audit Trailblazer" to anyone yet. Something tells me that's going too far. Seeking alternative mining/accounting puns, preferably with a subtle anti-spreadsheet/VBA macro subtext. On my desk, 8:00AM tomorrow!

P.S. Australian audience therefore wit is permitted.

Swan Connery
Got further exercise today by running official errands to Tactics and Tim's White Dwarf Books (who just today took delivery of the US hardcover edition of Elizabeth Moon's latest, yay!). Tick.

Ditmars
Started to look through the Ditmar package so I can vote sensibly this year. My reading habits tend to lag. There's certainly a variety of styles in there, and I haven't even finished the novellas yet. Many thanks to the persons responsible for the package and for

mynxii for taking the poisoned chalice.

Cat news
Cally is responding well to the latest round of antibiotics, as indicated by her increasingly energetic efforts to avoid aforementioned antibiotics.