followup Wednesday, 30 March 2011 link

A few people have asked on Twitter how I know that the bike messenger who complimented me was German. There were three subtle clues:

1. He had a German accent.
2. He told me that he'd had his tattoos (heavy blackwork, not dissimilar to mine) done in Germany.
3. Despite being a bike messenger, he was obeying the road rules. Specifically, he was waiting at a red light.

I think you'll agree that point 3 is definitive.

Well, he could have been Austrian, I suppose.

  six finger typing Tuesday, 29 March 2011 link

There needs to be a word for the sort of injury that is painful enough that one wants sympathy, yet was acquired in an act of sufficient idiocy that one does not want to confess to it. I obtained such an injury yesterday, when I went from idly wondering why my front wheel was making an intermittant clicking noise, to realising that it might be the magnet for my bike computer knocking something as the wheel rotated, to unthinkingly reaching down to try and brush it back into place. While riding. Since I was only doing about 10kph at the time (slowing down, coming up to a set of lights), I thought I'd get away with it. I've done stupider things on a bike, but this was pretty stellar: thankfully, I only lost some skin and got badly bruised fingers. Very painful, very dumb.

Immediately after doing it, I thought of two things:

• My daughter's reaction to watching a crocodile break Steve Irwin's rib: "He's so tough! It broke his rib and he's OK! I bet if you broke your rib, you'd DIE, daddy!"
• The line about 20 seconds after this from the wonderful Churchill: The Hollywood Years, a movie I unreservedly recommend to anyone.

So today, I'm discovering that I type quite hard. Or rather, that I hit the return key with a flourish; when I'm touch-typing, it's fine, but when I'm reading email or something and I hit the return key hard, it jars my fingers and hurts like the devil. I also had quite a bit of trouble putting a ring on one of the mangled fingers. Ah well, I'll think a bit harder next time.

Still, a bike messenger complimented me on my tattoos yesterday, so the commute could have been worse. And I'm pretty sure he wasn't doing it ironically, as he was German.

  blood, guts, heads Thursday, 24 March 2011 link

R turned seven last week. How did this happen? Two blinks of my eye ago I was holding an annoyed neonate while my wife suffered extensive blood loss, now I'm having to sit in the room while she watches Crocodile Hunter videos on YouTube in case she clicks on something inappropriate. It's astonishing how this stuff gets away on you.

Hobbit production has just started. This has two main consequences, from my perspective:

• It's impossible to get a park anywhere near work.
• I now have to step around the lone fan who has installed herself in a vigil outside Stone St Studios when I go to the supermarket at lunchtime.

No, seriously. Someone's been sitting outside Stone St Studios for the last few days. We're about to organise a sweepstake on how long she keeps it up; I believe it's supposed to be around an 12-month shoot, and we're heading into winter, so it could get very interesting.

Meanwhile, M's big schtick recently has been injuring herself. She's astonishingly gung-ho, so this isn't unusual, but she's branching out from her traditional scabbed knees and scraped hands. On Saturday, in the sugar-fuelled aftermath of R's birthday party, we took them down to have a play at the school playground to run some energy off. After ten minutes, M took the traditional minor fall; which turned out more major than first assessed. She must have come down hard and banged the back of her head on something pointy, as she ended up with a 2cm cut bleeding freely right at the back of her skull. A bit of examination revealed that the cut may not be long, but it was certainly deep - it gaped open when pulled, revealing more the inside of my three-year-old daughter's head than I really want to ever see. So we ended up spending another Saturday afternoon in Wellington Hospital's casualty dept; then another Saturday evening. A total of 5 1/2 hours later, we got seen by a very nice nurse who superglued M's head back together. No, really. I was gutted. I've got superglue. I've got a vice that could fit her head. I could totally have done that at home, man.