doing something right Friday, 21 October 2011 link

How other people perceive you is a funny thing.

Work party last Saturday. Spent an hour getting down + getting funky / throwing shapes on the dancefloor (ironic 90s raver flashback mode). In the days since, two separate people have felt the need to tell one of my team members that they saw "your team leader dancing". Clearly, I am giving the impression at work of a dour, humourless, non-dancing person. This amuses me no end. And that spitting sound you're hearing right now is all my UK friends as they read this paragraph, many of whom will remember the work Christmas party in around 2004, when at one point during the evening I decided to remove my shirt and leap onto the dance floor, on the basis that I was channeling the spirit of Robbie Williams.

On the other hand, this afternoon at nursery, one of the teachers was telling a story about a monster. Introducing the monster, she paused, and asked the children: "Now, can anyone think of something big and hairy?" M (aged 4) leaps up and yells "MY DADDY!!!! AND HE HAS TATTOOS ON HIS BODY!!!!"

So I'm probably ahead on the game.

  i am very much not that sort of person Thursday, 6 October 2011 link

The other day, we had underfloor insulation put in.

Always start a story with a bang, I always say.

Anyway, we had insulation installed. In preparation, I spent Monday night moving a lot of boxes out from under the house. One of them was labelled, simply, "Star Wars Stuff". In a childish hand. My childish hand, in fact. Trembling, I looked at the box. Could it be? And opened it. Yes, it was. All my Star Wars toys from childhood - probably my most valued possessions age 5-11 inclusive. A little dusty, but all there. Awesome.

I took the box upstairs and spent a happy half hour rediscovering a key element to my childhood. Nostalgia was committed. There's the Han Solo figure I got at Hamleys when I was five; there's the Admiral Ackbar that I didn't get for Christmas in 1984 and screamed for an hour until my parents agreed to go and get it on Boxing Day. Ah. Memories.

And then I thought, well, what do I do with the damn things now? Back under the house? Flog 'em on TradeMe? Preserve my childhood memories in aspic so I can revisit this again in twenty years?

Nah. I don't want to be that person. So: "Hey kids! Look what I found under the house! You can play with them as a bedtime activity!" It's like in that movie, I forget the name: toys are made to be played with. They're items with a purpose: fuelling kids' imaginations. They've done mine; time for the next lot to get their turn.

And that is why a vintage 1981 Princess Leia figure is tucked up next to a Bratz doll in a toy bed on Maggie's dresser.