Vicarious Thoughts

Apparently, that’s what we did today. After a rather frustrating morning, Sam and I went off to get away from it all for a few hours and I drove us to Pryce’s Rahui (Reserve) which is managed by Forest & Bird.
Either the grass has been growing super quick or I suspect we were the first visitors there in at least a week as the main gate required effort to open and close it against the grass and the 10 second drive to the picnic area reminded me of trying to do the lawns when the grass is taller than the lawnmower. The ground on the track was still a little muddy in places but was solid enough that Sam’s dainty weight didn’t make much of a dint in it and I was able to manoeuvre around it with little effort.
There are three tracks all linked to each other. The blue track is the shortest one I feel and we didn’t go on that one today. The red is meant to be the same length as the blue (20 minutes each) and follows for the most part the same track as the yellow which is the longest at apparently 1 hour long. I can’t tell you the times we did because we did the red and yellow tracks in a rather unconventional sequence. One day we’ll do it normally I guess.
We hung/hanged out in the picnic area for a good hour either side of the walk and so had a chance to get the full benefit of the local bird life. I saw a pair of Eastern Rosellas, heard and saw in the distance the squawking of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos, the almost baaing sound of Paradise Ducks overhead, saw Kereru doing acrobatics (flying up at a steep-ish angle and then “stalling” causing them to swoop waaay down low) and oh how I love the sound of them thumping along overhead, Tui’s skipping through the air (as a friend recently described it, which makes me smile), the call of the Shining Cuckoo, the cheerful flitting and squeaking of the Fantail, Seagulls (sorry no better description) flying in to check out the nearby newly tilled/ploughed paddocks, Yellow Hammers singing away (I can’t think of a good way of describing their call), the friendly sound (to me anyway) of the Kingfisher, and I know I have missed some birds off the list (like the Magpie – grrr I don’t like those birds, and the Thrush nesting at head-height right by the track and who I startled as much as they startled me.
Sorry no pictures this time. I decided to enjoy where I was firsthand for a change :)

I’m too chicken to write about most of the stuff that’s going through my brain at the moment. I haven’t made much progress on the NaNoWriMo front either yet – but my plan is to knock this blogpost out of the pack and then hunker down with some music blasting in my ears and churn out some pages. On the upside, I’ve got my characters talking now!

By the way, if you’re looking for “normal” character names I’ve found Seventh Sanctum to be helpful. The site has a whole bunch of different generators and you can kill quite a bit of time checking them all out (ask me how I know).

Something else I thought I’d mention is a Firefox add-on called LeechBlock. This is a really useful and powerful tool for people who procrastinate by killing time on the web. Let’s say you have discovered another webcomic recently and you have a compulsion to start from the very first strip all the way to the current one so you don’t miss out on any of the in-jokes and understand the back story. With LeechBlock installed you can restrict your access to the site to only a certain number of hours on certain days. One of my friends has done the opposite and restricted her web access so that she can only visit a number of websites that are related to her work activities. Obviously there are ways to circumvent the restrictions you’re putting in place but – the very act of circumventing can help you get back on track by realising the level you have stooped to to procrastinate. In which case, you should ask yourself – If I want to procrastinate so badly, I should really be cleaning the toilet/fridge/oven/freezer/(insert your worst chore ever) instead. At least that way you can say you did something productive – just not what you should have been doing.

I’d decided at the very last minute that I was going to attempt to do the official NaBloPoMo this year and yesterday I signed up and started my first NaNoWriMo!
I will admit that I didn’t achieve the daily goal yesterday for NaNoWriMo, that it seems unlikely that I will be writing over 2000 words in less than an hour tonight, and that I am currently stuck in a scene where I don’t know what comes next. I guess this is the downside to starting at the last minute and just starting writing rather than having some kind of idea about the story and background information related to it.
I will also admit that I am really tired – the ups and downs of the day (mainly spent out and about) has been really draining and I am looking forward to sleep whereas normally sleep is something that happens cause the body needs to recharge and my brain finds this need annoying. :)

Okay, I’m off to see how many words I can churn out from the comfort of the bed before the pillows beckon and to shrug off the guilt from writing such a no-content on only Day 2 of 30! :)

20. fly a kite

Today, we headed down to the park today with two kites. One is a very cheap kite reminiscent of the one I remember from when I flew my first kite (and wound up chasing after in an overgrown field) and required a little tweaking before it would fly and a inexpensive and better quality kite made of ripstop with oversewn seams and pockets.

I had forgotten how exhilarating it is to fly a kite! The ripstop kite was definitely my hands-down favourite of the two and was the easier to launch (just hold onto the string close to the kite and let it out as the wind catches the kite). We strung some expensive, what I’m guessing is, builder’s string that got put in the basket on a hardware shopping expedition by a certain small person and that worked well and only caused a bit of drag when I let the string right out.
The last kite I flew was a big (1.5m long?) box kite I made from scratch for our school’s kite day way back when I was 12ish. Today brought back the memory of the pride and excitement of getting something in the air.
Sam had a great time too – though she found the fact you can crash a kite by out chasing it a little frustrating. She did really well though – not only handling the ripstop kite with relative ease but also managing to keep the plastic kite up in the air for a really long time (way longer than I can recall from when I was her age anyway).
After some time she decided the nearby playground held more enticement than the kites and I had a 1/2 hour of fun by myself with the ripstop kite.
I definitely want to try out a stunt kite now and I know we’ll be back to the park with kites in the near future!

Been feeling low today and not much has helped – killing an evening playing Lord of the Rings online helped me forget for a while but having quit for the night (see me practising moderation! :) I’m back to feeling low.
So I’m taking a night off from blogging whilst still trying to achieve my goal of blogging everyday this week.

I’ve randomly chosen (or rather picked the first link that jumped out) a site from my rss feeds.

Paper Toys is a website with free downloads that you can print and assemble for free. There’s a nice range of items including famous buildings like, the Empire State Building, Sydney Opera House, Taj Mahal, and the Eiffel Tower. They also have various modes of transport (cars, buses, trains, aircraft), christmas themed items, and crowns (and a tiara). All in all, quite a cool site. (via Freely Educate)

I was going through my RSS feed tonight looking for inspiration for a post and I realised there were a lot of small tips I’d tagged to read up on. A lot are from Lifehacker which is a brilliant site (and which I’ve probably gushed about before)

This first idea is to use 3 ring binders and Zip sealable binder pockets (via Lifehacker) to store small items (in this case; capacitors, resistors and other electronic components) – something so simple and yet I’d never considered using anything but paper and clearfile pockets in a binder! This reminds me that fishing stores (and places that sell knock-off fishing supplies) sell wallets (often with custom space binder rings) with sealable pockets for storing tackle in – so if you’re not interested in making your own binder, or can’t find zip sealable binder pockets (or if they’re horrendously expensive) maybe this is another option to explore.

Here is a use for the humble office binder clip – as a way to stack bottles in your fridge – many a time I have cursed my inability to stack bottles in a pyramid as the bottom layer rolls out from underneath the top layer(s) – and now I shall curse no more (well, about this situation anyhow).

And finally, here is a cheaper alternative to the Jiffy Peat Pellets I’ve mentioned in an earlier post – the Toilet Roll Seed Starter! (via Parent Hacks)

New Zealand Forest & Bird launched their annual Bird of the Year competition during the recent 2010 Conservation Week.

The Forest & Bird blog has been publishing messages from each competing bird’s campaign manager and there are some interesting tidbits of information like; did you know the Grey Warbler is the weight of two 20c coins or that to be classified as a Native bird you need to have flown to New Zealand under your own steam and to have set up a family here, like our newest Natives, the Barn Owls in Northland, have recently accomplished.

This is a great opportunity to have a bit of fun and can easily be expanded into a classroom or homeschool exercise on campaigning for your own candidate for Bird of the Year! Nothing like a bit of healthy competition to get the research muscles moving and then a bit of creative writing to persuade your audience that your choice is the Bird of the Year!

Voting closes on 13th October at 5pm. So don’t miss out!

Oh, and my pick for this year? The Morepork, or Ruru, for it’s stealthy flight, sharp hearing, and excellent night vision.

Image borrowed from The Nobles in New Zealand blog.

Craft

I know I could manage this kind of craft project easily and I know my girly-girl would love the results from this
Scrunch Fabric Flower Pom Pom Headband Tutorial. So, I grabbed some supplies for this project and a few others this past weekend and now, all I need to do is track down (and probably clean) my husband’s glue gun :)
This Skirt with Built-in Shorts (via Craftzine) looks like the perfect summer clothing idea for my daughter. The fabric used looks kinda familiar to some fabric we almost bought from Spotlight the other day (though it was in more gaudy colours).

Kitchen Stuff

Five Minutes a Day for Fresh-Baked Bread gives you instructions on a way to make a week’s worth of no-knead bread dough that keeps in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. Sounds interesting and the photo looks Mmmm … Yummy!

These Thick Chewy Homemade Granola Bars (via ParentHack) remind me so much of the homemade muesli bars (as we call them in my neck of the woods) my mum used to make when I was a kid so what can I do but try to make them. The instructions, explanations, and photos are super great to boot! :)

Well the week was pretty up and down and we ended up being out and about for the majority of 4 days out of the week. On top of that, 2 of the days we were home were pretty hard going.
As a result, I’m not unhappy with my progress for the week. So here are the final graphs:

20 Items up on Sella : Only got 1 item ready for photos and then photos taken. *sigh* I do love to procrastinate apparently.
[progpress title=”” goal=”20″ current=”0″ previous=”0″ label=”items”]

Listen to 10 Podcasts each day: No excuses here – don’t know what I was thinking, though I admit to watching quite a lot of TV shows this past week.
[progpress title=”” goal=”70″ current=”0″ previous=”0″ label=”podcasts”]

Complete 5 items of mending: Completed 1 item and realised I need to prep the mending before sitting down to do it. Totally failed at mending an item I didn’t count – looks dreadful!
[progpress title=”” goal=”5″ current=”1″ previous=”0″ label=”items”]

Finish Playful Parenting book: Didn’t pick this book up this week.
[progpress title=”” goal=”295″ current=”58″ previous=”0″ label=”pages”]

Finish The 4-Hour Work Week book: Not too bad considering this was only two short sessions worth.
[progpress title=”” goal=”292″ current=”148″ previous=”0″ label=”pages”]

Cook a meal each day: 5 days out of 7 is great considering we were out 4 of 7 days (though I did cheat and count the night all I did was the oven part of pizzas my husband prepped!). On the Yay! front, I finally made sushi with the new plastic gadget we got from the $3 Japan Shop in Auckland and I think it is a slightly faster and much tidier way of making sushi. Yum!
[progpress title=”” goal=”7″ current=”5″ previous=”0″ label=”days”]

Blogpost every day: Not impressed with myself over this particular one and I have some ideas on how to improve this particular stat.
[progpress title=”” goal=”7″ current=”1″ previous=”0″ label=”days”]

Work on planner: Turned out to be only 15 pages and knocked them out in 2 short sessions. Yay!
[progpress title=”” goal=”15″ current=”15″ previous=”0″ label=”pages”]

So the downside with using ProgressFly for this purpose is that either I lose the stats each week and reuse the progress meters, or I could create new meters each week (often for repeating goals) which seems a bit wasteful (to me anyhow). I also am a bit uncomfortable with the fact the meters show the same amounts on each blogpost. However, what I could do is update the posts and make them static amounts.
The alternative I can see is a different wordpress plugin called Tally Graph which I’ll trial this week (eventually I’ll settle into a routine I’m comfortable with). This uses custom fields to record data and then generate graphs. The upside is that updating can be done via a blogpost, and the downside is the updating has to be done via a blogpost. :D By that I mean tracking daily progress and starting and ending points would be straightforward, but that this relies on me posting updates daily. I’m also interested (seeing as I haven’t used custom fields in quite a long time) in seeing how the custom fields appear on each blogpost and so I have had a play on this post.

Finally, the public goals for this week are (and will seem familiar):

20 Items up on Sella

Listen to an average of 10 Podcasts each day – goal being 70

Complete 5 items of mending

Finish Playful Parenting book – currently 58/295 pages

Finish The 4-Hour Work Week book – currently 148/292 pages

Cook dinner each day – except Monday which was a delicious roast put on by husband

Blogpost every day

Work on planner – another 15 pages to complete another month of the planner

So there we go – a day late, a dollar short but finally written! :)

Edit 2011-03-22: Moved onto a different progress bar plugin called ProgPress which is more static and so, overcomes the problems/concerns I had above.

Without further ado (considering this is already 5 days late :P) I present my third and final attempt at …

101 in 1001

The Mission:
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).
Started: 16 Sep 2010
Finish: 13 Jun 2013
Days Left:
Completed: 0/101

1. attend a lecture or seminar
2. be confident doing medium difficulty digital image manipulation
3. be confident using my digital slr
4. be confident using our telescopes
5. be familiar with the location of the countries of the world
6. become fluent in a new programming language
7. buy a bike
8. buy a longterm item of furniture
9. buy/create and maintain a bonsai
10. create a painting and hang it up
11. create a recipe binder and/or book
12. decorate a cake that I can be proud of
13. enjoy a sunrise
14. enter a photography contest
15. entice birds to our garden
16. expand my recipe repertoire
17. fill a journal
18. fill a sketchbook
19. finish cross-stitch and frame it
20. fly a kite
21. gather together a complete emergency kit
22. get a stable vegetable garden going
23. get cpr certificate
24. get to grips with my family history
25. get first aid certificate
26. give geocaching a go
27. give meditation a proper chance
28. go antiquing (I know! I’m sounding old!!)
29. go camping
30. go hiking
31. go horse riding
32. go indoor rock climbing
33. go kayaking
34. go on a bike ride
35. go on holiday somewhere i’ve never been before
36. go on the train
37. go to a driving range
38. go to a play
39. go to an anzac dawn service
40. go to an art gallery
41. go to an orchestra concert
42. go to something on opening or release day
43. go to the beach and build a sandcastle
44. go to a quiz night
45. grow some mushrooms
46. have a traditional picnic under a tree
47. identify a bad habit and work to eliminate it
48. join a new face-to-face social group
49. knit something
50. learn how to draw
51. learn needlepoint
52. learn to bake specialty breads from scratch
53. learn to identify native trees and plants
54. learn to crochet
55. learn to play chess
56. learn to recognise the southern constellations
57. learn to sightread music
58. learn to weave flax
59. make a bag
60. make a habit of getting a haircut
61. make a scrapbook
62. make a snowman
63. make clothes for myself
64. make clothes for my daughter
65. make greeting cards
66. make regular exercise a habit
67. memorise a poem
68. memorise origami designs
69. participate in a book club
70. participate in a crafting challenge
71. participate in a mailed swap
72. participate in nablopomo
73. participate in postcrossing
74. participate in a sh1ft project
75. participate in the 365 project
76. purchase some art work
77. read non-fiction books
78. record daily gratitudes
79. relearn calligraphy
80. research and grow a herb
81. send handwritten letters to people
82. solve the rubic’s cube
83. sort my photos into albums
84. spend a day at a botanic gardens
85. spend a day going to garage sales
86. take a walk in the rain
87. take up an additional charitable work
88. take up archery
89. try out podcasting
90. try out vblogging
91. visit an observatory
92. visit the wellington zoo
93. watch movies from list
94. work up to blogging regularly
95. replace this with a task at day 101 (26/12/2010)
96. replace this with a task at day 101 (26/12/2010)
97. replace this with a task at day 334 (16/08/2011)
98. replace this with a task at day 334 (16/08/2011)
99. replace this with a task at day 500 (29/01/2012)
100. replace this with a task at day 668 (15/07/2012)
101. replace this with a task at day 668 (15/07/2012)

Each week I will do an update and expand on one task at a time so that each task becomes achievable through a measurable goal. This has not been done in advance due to some of the tasks having a reasonable amount of complexity. Other peoples lists I have observed often have a higher proportion of items which are to have a reasonable amount of money spent to achieve them and I have tried to minimise this without compromising the idea behind the list – hence the greater complexity of some of the tasks.
I guess that makes this task a bonus task :)