Melissa’s Stages of Contemplation

“This is the way it is going to be.”

Sometimes making that decision is the hardest part of achieving something.

It’s certainly the way I work.

If I don’t say something, don’t decide to make it happen, it won’t. It’s vague, nebulous, an Idea rather than a Plan. And nothing is likely to ever come of it.

Two years ago, around March 2006, I made a Decision. Essen in 2008. Actually, I waffled a little, and said “Essen in 2008, but by 2009 would be acceptable.”

Guess what? It’s happening.

Both years.

(These days, it is more appropriately known as OMGESSEN!)

I would bet dollars to donuts that that trip would not be happening – in either year – if I had not made that decision two years ago.

Now, being more than occasionally cynical, I do not go overboard on the Power of Positive Thinking. There are plenty of things that you cannot make happen just by making a decision. If that were possible, I would have won the lottery several times already. But for things that are within our control – or almost within our control – we can make them happen by letting ourselves see them as possible.

IDEA -> RESEARCH -> PLAN -> REALITY

A simple decision like the decision to travel – that’s as much commitment as it is anything else. By committing to make it happen, by writing it down and calling it a Plan, I made it happen. Not the way I expected to make it happen, but it is happening nevertheless. It is now a Reality (with lots of delicious Plans and assorted Research and Ideas associated with it).

So that’s what a Plan is to me: a commitment to try to make something happen – to do my best, to work towards it. It’s not a guarantee, because nothing is a guarantee. It might not happen, it might move or change, or I may decide that I don’t want to follow it anymore. Any of those decisions are OK, as long as they are MY plans that I am changing. I’ve even been known to negotiate.

My Plans don’t always have timeframes. Some of them are a little bit nebulous, at least in terms of the When. That’s usually a function of not seeing a way to make them happen – and maybe not trusting myself to find a way to make them happen within whatever timeframe I might set. These are the Plans that aren’t firmed up yet, and they may lie dormant for years without having that timeframe applied. Some have been around for sixteen years, but I still haven’t given up on them. They won’t happen, though, until I add the timeframe to the Plan.

Some (some might say most) may be Grand Plans – plans that require other things to fall into place before my Grand Plan can take effect. They’re OK too – and are no less genuine and Planny for it.

I like making Plans. I like bouncing Ideas around, sifting through them to find the one(s) that might make a good Plan. I like the idea that we can change things, do things differently, try something new. I’m happy to filter the Ideas, recognising that some are worse than others. I’m even happy to tinker with the small-p plans that really fit in the category of Research, emoting about how much fun they would be while secretly or not-so-secretly recognising that they may not ever happen.

But once something becomes a Plan – even if it is a Plan that has to be shelved, for a time – I have an emotional connection to it, and a commitment to making it happen. And maybe that is what distinguishes the Plan from any of Melissa’s Other Stages of Contemplation.

French class

I went to French class tonight. Which was almost certainly incredibly dumb, because I feel like something has chewed me up and spat me out, then run me over and squashed me.

I am not sure whether it is me or the panadeine (paracetamol & codeine) so tomorrow I will try to go painkiller-free or at least scale down to normal paracetamol.

Anyway. Feeling craptastic & oddly weepy. Nearly started bawling in the middle of French class, for absolutely no reason.

But it was also good to go, because I do not like to feel that I am missing out on things. And tonight we did a lot of grammar:

• reflexive verbs
• imperatives
• imperative reflexive verbs
• mandatory (’il faut’)
• mandatory nots (’il ne faut pas’)

We also did talking about our day. Here is what I wrote (with errors still, I am sure - sigh)

D’habitude au jours de la semaine, je me lève à 7h30.

Je prends une douche et je m’habille. Je lis mes mails.

À 7h50, je réveille mes enfants.

Elles s’habillent et prenens leur petit déjeuner.

À neuf heurs moins quart, nous partons à l’école.

Ensuite je rentre à la maison et je prends le petit déjeuner.

Je travaille chez mois mais parfois je vais en tram au bureau.

Je prends le déjeuner vers 13h.

À 15h30, il faut chercher mes enfants et nous revenons à la maison.

Nous jouons et les enfants regardent la télé.

Je cuisine et nous mangeons vers 18h30, si mon mari est arrivée.

À 7h30, mes enfants vont se coucher. Ma petite fille n’aime pas dormir, donc je dois rester avec elle vers une où deux heures. C’est fou.

Ensuite, je chat avec mes amis et je travaille deux heures. Je me couche à 1h, et je m’endors tout de suite. Je suis très, très épuisée.

I know there are errors, but I am reasonably pleased that I have learned that much already this year.

And now? bedtime. Even though it is not 1h. I am feeling pretty nauseous.

Last indelicate post

… I promise …

(well, I promise to try, anyway)

I think I mentioned a while ago that I was getting an IUD fitted, more for health reasons than for contraception although that is a convenient side benefit.

I had to collect it from the hospital pharmacy on my way in yesterday.

It came in the most enormous package - I’d estimate about 40cm x 12 cm x 2.5 cm. Although the IUD itself is teeny tiny (I think about 7.5cm or so?)

Anyway, it gave rise to inappropriate giggles when I commented, quite accidentally:

OMG look at the enormous box they put that IUD in.

Ooops.

Works for me

My motto for the day? Only post trivialities.

Let’s see if it works.

Going in

Apparently I *am* a bit stressed.

:little sniffle:

The anaesthetist rang last night to confirm everything. My favourite moment:

Me: So what time would I expect to be going home?
Anaesthetist: Well, it depends how much you are vomiting.

Note: Not ‘whether’. ‘How much’.

Running away with the plans

Give me an inch and I start to rely on it. Also, I am easily distracted to formulate grand plans that only have a very remote chance of coming true.

Take our conversation over afternoon tea today, for example.

Biggie: I really really want to go to (expensive private school).

Me: Well, darling, we haven’t made a decision yet. You see, that would cost nearly $20,000 a year, and there might be ways our family could use that money better. For example, if we could save $20,000 a year, we could go overseas on holiday every 2 years.

Biggie: Oooo

Me: Precisely. And I still haven’t given up hope of an extended stay in Germany at some time.

Fraser: Well, if you do that, you’d be doing it with just you and the girls. I’d just come over at the end for the travel.

Me and Biggie: Done.

Fraser now maintains that there was a “you have to save up the money before you go” clause. Which is reasonable.

I would so totally do that, in a flash. Of course it would be better for us all to go, but if that’s not an option I will take what I can get. The issue would be that I wouldn’t really be able to work if I had both the kids (unless I could get them into OMG SCHOOL!), unless I had some work-at-home projects coming over from here - so I’d need to save something to cover loss of earnings, as well.

Melissa’s new savings target: $20,000 by February. Then, we’d go in April/May. Airfares are already budgeted under ‘holiday’ for later in the year, food costs are already budgeted under ‘living costs’. Additional costs would be accommodation and side trips. Also loss of earnings - but we’d already planned for my earnings to take a dip over the next couple of years, so that may not be such a drama.

Odds of it happening: Low, especially given trip to Essen (Otherwise known as OMGESSEN!) this year.

But I’ve been thinking about it all night Short attention spans are The Best.

Mothers’ Day

Happy Mothers’ Day to all the mothers who read this

My mothers’ day was busy but fun. It started at 8am with a quick jump in the shower and then dressed and out the door, headed for the Mothers’ Day Classic run and walk. I was doing the walk.

I arrived and met my friends at 8.45 as arranged, then discovered that I needed to pick up my walker tag at the main rally area, some way back. Headed off there, got labelled, came back - around 1.5 km before we’d started. We milled around, listened to some guest speakers, then started walking.

Now to say the walk was amazing is an understatement. I didn’t take my camera, but there was literally a sea of people. I heard that there were over 28,000 pre-registrations for the three events (4km run, 8km run, 4km walk) and  there were still people registering today. Many of them chose to wear signs declaring ‘I am walking for’ - and we found it terribly moving to read so many of them - young girls walking for their mum ‘who is in heaven’, older women walking for the daughters, so many walking for friends, sisters, cousins …

Having done it this year, I think I can safely say that I will be back each year that I can, and encouraging others to participate as well.

Home again by 11.30 or so, having walked around 7 km in total, and Fraser and the girls had Mothers’ Day gifts for me. Now I am very grateful to them for taking time to choose beautiful gifts for me … but some of them gave me a chuckle. One day, the school will start selling USB-rechargeable batteries at the Mothers’ Day stall, but until then … well … here’s the list.

• Book - The meaning of Tingo (from Fraser) - weird meanings of obscure words.
• Book - Why I love my Mummy (from Eleanor, chosen by Fraser) - with a space at the end for her to write her own reasons
• Pack of plain grey-lead pencils in a pink box (from Eleanor, chosen at the school stall) - she has already started to use them
• Chocolate (from Eleanor, chosen at the school stall, since “misplaced”) (I am guessing, in her tummy)
• Ceramic bowl with 6 pieces of rock candy (Claudia, chosen @ school)
• An APRON!!! It’s frilly, and ties around the waste. And it has a border with flowers on it. (Claudia, school)
• (my favourite - in a perverse and twisted and horribly ungrateful way) A pale aqua satin-covered padded coathanger, with lace sewn onto it as well.
• A soap with a mermaid painted onto it.

I guess I raked it in, huh. I just have to think of what can do justice to the coathanger.

They love getting the chance to shop for me.

Weekend Gaming

We had a turnout of one for game night on Friday - which is not nearly as tragic as it sounds.

We kicked off with The End of the Triumvirate, the perfect 3-player game and one that we’d been wanting to try. Vince was Caesar, I was Pompey and Fraser was Crassus.

Vince - errm, Caesar - and I spent the first couple of turns fighting with one another, which wasn’t a great way to approach the game as it turned out - it distracted us while Fraser got on with the things he was meant to be doing. Vince won the first election and I won the second (because Fraser neutralised one of Vince’s consuls to stop him winning it), but meanwhile Fraser was sneaking ahead on both competency tracks. If he hadn’t won when he did, Vince would have won by forcing himself to become consul again. I worked on land areas but didn’t really get anywhere.

We all enjoyed the game, and would like to try it again now that we know how it worked. I found that there was a little more direct conflict than I really like, but not so much that I disliked the game. It just took a little getting used to.

Result: Fraser (Crassus) won

Next off the shelf was On the Underground. The tiredness bug hit me not long after we started playing this, so I had to stretch and even sneak off to the bathroom to wash my face a few times.

This was only my second play of On the Underground, and I’m still not quite sure what to make of the game. I enjoy it, and would love to play it with some friends who lived in London for a while, but the game seems to end very abruptly. I wonder whether I need to re-read the rules.

Results: Vince (Grey) 53, Fraser (Green) 52, Melissa (Pink!) 57.

On Saturday, we had a special gaming date organised. Richard brought his copy of the FFG Britannia over for us to play. I own the older Avalon Hill edition, and played it quite a bit when I was at Uni (I think it was the first game I ever bought myself), but haven’t played it for *mumble* years. To the extent that I thought it was a 5/6/7 player game which played optimally with 6, rather than a 3-5 player game with a 4-player sweet spot. Blush.

We picked tribes by colours: Richard took the Romans etc (yellow), Vince the Welsh (Green), Fraser the Belgae (Blue) and I took the Brigantes (Red). After the initial bout of Yellow Fever (shades of Pandemic), we all took a fairly relentless, although to some extent futile, stand against the Bad Roman People. The Welsh did particularly well here, as Richard headed North towards Scotland and mostly ignored the territory to the West.

Highlights of the game, as noted by me:

• Turn 1. Fraser (Belgae) submitted to the Romans, then unsubmitted and smacked them.
• Turn 2. Melissa (Brigantes) submitted to the Romans. This enabled the Brigantes to survive to pull in 26 VP in the last two scoring rounds.
• Turn 4: A misreading of the info track saw me bring the Saxons in from the ?North Sea? and take York, briefly. This screwed up both me and Richard, but probably was to Fraser’s and Vince’s advantage.
• Turn 5: Saxons take lots of land, Irish take Dyfed.
• Lots of eliminations (of which I kept track). I think I was slightly ahead at the end, having eliminated the Romano-British, the Belgae and the Jutes (what can I say, I was an equal opportunity eliminator) while Richard took out the Caledonians and the Picts.
• Turn 11 or so: I built two cute Saxon huts.
• Turn 14: I elect me Queen. Mwahahahahaha. Henceforth known as Queen Harold-in-a-dress.
• Turn 15: Fraser overruns me and leaves me with a total of 1 saxon on the board. TOTAL. Ouch. There is, however, no King.
• Turn 16: Fraser gets to be King, having previously taken out Queen Harold-in-a-dress.

Results:

Richard (Yellow) Romans 69 + Romano-British 2 + Scots 54 + Dubliners 27 + Norwegians 30 = 182
Vince (Green) Welsh 97 + Caledonians 42 + Danes 68 + Jutes 26 = 233
Fraser (Blue) Belgae 36 + Picts 18 + Angles 108 + Normans 62 = 224
Melissa (Red) Brigantes 61 + Irish 32 + Norse 50 + Saxons 96 = 239

*yay*

It was an interesting game, because we all played quite aggressively - it was rare that someone with more than 2 tribespeople would hole up and grow, we mostly wanted to steal territory. We were even aggressive in the risks we took, often attacking 1:1. Very few leaders (with the exception of Harald and Harold) were captured.

Sometimes when we take out an old favourite, it is a disappointment - the nostalgia is better than the reality. To my relief, I didn’t find that with Britannia - it was still a great game, albeit quite different than the games I usually choose. (Do I reveal myself to be a wimp when I say that to me this is a wargame? It’s certainly the closest I get.). I doubt it’s something I’ll play often though - we played from 5:50 till right on midnight, albeit with a 45 minute dinner break. Obviously it would be faster if we played it again, but I don’t see it coming in significantly under the advertised 4 hours.

One thing that worked well this weekend was specifically organising people to come over to play a heavier/longer game. Given that our Friday night games tend to be more casual, I’ve been thinking that we need to start using the public gaming sessions better - set something up in advance, then make sure we play it. As it is, we tend to rock up, see what’s lying around, maybe pick something up and try it, often play filler or lighter games with anyone who’s not already picked up something big. It’s not the same.

Next month is Albury, so the new plan will start in July. Anyone want to teach me Age of Steam?

Corporate blogging

I was doing some reading on corporate blogging for a client and came across this interesting snippet - a comment from Dell that despite all their outreach efforts, 20% of posters remain negative.

That seems very high to me. I guess you have to be pretty engaged with a business to bother posting to a corporate site - and negative engagement is often the most pervasive kind - but still.

Gadgets

OMG how cool are these! USB-powered rechargeable batteries!

Note: Deal of the day website. Item will vanish in approximately 14.5 hours. I may try to find the permalink at  some stage.

Note2: No, I did not buy them. But I was tempted.