Today we did some shopping. We got a nice pair of joggers for Sienna and some socks.
Next we went to Target and bought some new pyjamas. There was a four piece set - one short and one long pants and two tops - with a discount 30% off!
I got a couple of good shirts too.
We had a real nice Christmas. Sienna got a Minnie Mouse watch, a couple of balls, a kite, a scooter, some clothes, a princess bag and suitcase and wand and tiara.
I got two pairs of pyjamas, a book and other stuff.
Tomorrow we might visit some relatives Sienna has not met yet. It will benice for her to see some of her cousins.
Archive for December, 2006I wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a fantastic, wonderful New Year! MSNBC has an interesting article on an Italian study on alcoholism. While the obvious notion of overconsumption of alcohol being detrimental to one’s health is supported, apparently drinking it in moderation can actually extend your lifespan. A study on over 1 million drinkers and 94,000 deaths yielded the results: “According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol — up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women — reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18 percent, the team reports in the Archives of Internal Medicine.”
Also good news: “According to the BBC they are going to make a number of their shows available on the Azureus network. A number of old favorites will be available such as Red Dwarf, Doctor Who and even Little Britain.” “This news is a little late, but on November 20th WarGames 2: The Dead Code began filming in Montreal. (I only became aware of the new production when I read that MGM is suing the rightful owner of WarGames.com for his domain name.) The film will be produced and distributed by MGM — distributor of the original WarGames — and directed by Stewart Gillard, director of such gems as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3. Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, the team behind the original film, are not involved. The plot revolves around a hacker breaking into a terrorism-simulation computer.” A new scientific study suggests that people who frequently experience positive emotions are less likely to catch colds. Psychologist Sheldon Cohen and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University interviewed 193 healthy adults daily for two weeks and recorded the positive and negative emotions they had experienced each day. The researchers then exposed the volunteers to a cold or a flu virus. Those with “generally positive outlooks” reported fewer cold symptoms. From the article: “‘We need to take more seriously the possibility that a positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk,’ Cohen says… Although a positive emotional style bore no relation to whether participants became infected, it protected against the emergence of cold symptoms. For instance, among people infected by the influenza virus… 28 percent who often reported positive emotions developed coughs, congestion, and other cold symptoms, as compared with… 41 percent who rarely reported positive emotions.”
On the __ of Christmas my true love gave to me: Check out the animated clip on You Tube Classic! Apparently they are getting signed up to do a South Park type cartoon based on the characters singing this song! Brisbane-based Ashwin Segkar (a video game developer at New Farm) is releasing his album “Boymongoose, Christmas in Asia Minor” through Rocking Horse Records. I finally bought Sienna’s present thanks to Lisa’s suggestion. Yesterday morning we went to Mr Toys Toyworld at the local shopping centre and let her go nuts. She rode on a pink pony which made noises if you squeezed it’s ear, rode on a few bikes and cars but found a nice blue scooter which she rode all around the shop asking “Daddy! Can we buy this one??”. So, I bought it. $39.99! Bargain! I also found a kite there (at the shops right near my place where I should have looked first! heh!). $9.99 for that one, so if she’s not interested it’s no great loss. I was tempted to get a stunt kite for myself but I think I’d be busy helping her fly her own kite and not have time for mine. Maybe when she’s older and can control her own kite. I’ve wanted one since flying one about 15 years ago at my cousin’s place. Now I just need to find something for mum and dad! Well.. a few more days to go so plenty of shopping time. While in Crazy Clark’s Saturday night I found a DVD for $10 about “How to make money playing Texas Holdem Poker”. So I bought it heh! I picked up Sienna this morning and we headed out to Ipswich Museum to see the Creepy Crawlies exhibition for kids.
We had a blast of a time! They had a bug and a butterfly walking around..
And a GIANT BUTTERFLY on stilts!
Unfortunately, the kids were rather worried about this giant butterfly and once we were back inside the museum Sienna was pleased he was too tall to come in. But that didn’t stop him walking right up to the window and looking in at the kids. There was a big bug the kids could climb up into and back out his mouth. Sienna went on that about 20 times until I had to pull her off it
A girl was making fun balloon shapes for the kids. Sienna got a bug, although she says it’s not a bug, it’s a turtle. We were the last ones in line and after that they weren’t making any more.
Sienna and I made our own bug badge. Sienna was really pleased with it.
We finished up after 12ish and grabbed some Red Rooster meals and ate them on the way home. Right now we have a thunderstorm outside but as yet not much in the way of rain. My fingers are crossed. Last night I was in the Queensland Poker Events Grand Final Poker Tournament. I arrived at 5pm and had some food. I asked the girl at the counter what “Salt and Vinegar Chicken” was about. She said “It’s yummy.. it’s got..”. I said “Oh I don’t care what’s in it.. just so long as it’s yummy” A few of my friends from IJs club turned up so I chatted to them until Signup began at 6pm. I lined up about 2 mins past 6pm and the line was already out the front door. Took me 15 mins to get to sign up. I was given Table 3 and went back to my friends, telling them they’d better sign up soon. They went off and I found another friend to chat to until they were finished. We went in at 7pm and played. You will be able to read a more detailed report on my Poker Blog later today or tomorrow. Suffice to say I got a table with a friend of mine from IJs. We had been assigned a table by the hosts and were the only two from IJs there, so it was great we got to sit together and talk. She didn’t last long in the game, though. Not long after the break she was out so went to watch her mum and sister play at opposite ends of the room. I finished 32nd out of 220 people. If I reached 30 I would have won a carton of XXXX beer. Oh well, I would have had to carry it home on the bus and train, so not too bad I missed out. Anyways.. it’s XXXX after all so no great loss lol! I got my card holder token and a copy of Bluff Australia magazine. I stayed to watch some friends finish playing then headed off at 10pm to catch a bus and train to get home at 11:15pm
Had a few restless nights with a distinct lack of sleep. I bought some DEEP SLEEP valerian tablets and that seems to knock me out and last night I finally got some decent sleep. Tonight I printed out some more photos of friends for my Friends Wall. It’s looking good. I’ve been spending the last couple of days designing a front page webpage for my friend, Striker. He is updating a site he maintains so I suggested helping out. I’ve got most of the design done, but I’m no Graphic Design artist so someone else may have to take over ‘prettying it up’. The programming is solid, though. (PHP). Spent last night recovering a friend’s ‘hacked’ phpBB. I might have to upgrade it by hand if we can’t get the Control Panel type login to work. It wasn’t a big hack. More of a basic SQL injection. That version of phpBB lets you set the Forum Topic Description to anything, so injecting it with a small amount of HTML with a new layer 1000 x 1100 is enough to obliterate a page and annoy people. I just deleted it and put plain text back in. That’s the second time I’ve recovered their board from hacking. I wonder if phpBB3 will ever come out? I wonder if anyone cares? phpBB ain’t brilliant but it’s the best of the worst. You can check my Poker Blog for info on last Sunday’s game. It was wikkid! I didn’t go tonight as I’m still tired from the last few nights and wanted to do more design work for Striker. Darn guy hasn’t been on the last couple of nights so I can’t show him the work I did. I might go to IJs Thursday night for the last ever QPE game there. Usually I go to GRSL instead but I don’t do so well at APL games and have more friends at QPE. QPE may even end up hosting at GRSL so I’m keeping my fingers crossed as it’s down the road from where I live. Save a 20 min drive and instead have a 6min one. Hmm.. so much for ‘not much to say’…. Haven’t bought any presents yet. Have to shop for parents and Sienna soon. Lisa suggested taking her to Toyworld (her = Sienna, not her = Lisa) and let her go wild playing with toys then buy the ones she likes. Might be a good idea. I really wanted to get her a kite to play with but nobody stocks them any more. I’ve since seen Stacey’s blog photos and see she got one for Katie so they are around somewhere. I don’t get to say that often enough, but let’s hope it continues. I had to turn up to one of our client’s office and show some people around. It turns out there was two of my friends from Sydney and one from the Gold Coast branch so we had a great catchup chat. I showed them around then they had to go see someone else. I went off and did some work and met them out the front at 12:30pm and we all went off for lunch. We met up at a Thai restaurant. They didn’t have anywhere to sit downstairs as the place was packed so we were taken upstairs where they have the low low tables which you sit crosslegged on the floor at. We cracked our knees and sat down for a chat and a munch on prawn chips while we waited. I ordered a Seafood Laksa. I should have asked for a super hot and spicy one but didn’t, so I just got a mild one. Blah! D’oh! They must have figured we were inexperienced Westerners as they also gave us a fork and spoon each and headed off. One of the guys chased the waiter down and got a handful of chopsticks. We also had a couple of guys from the Brisbane office whom used to work down the Gold Coast tag along and have lunch with us so it was a pretty relaxed and fun lunch chatting and catching up with everyone. I had made sandwiches to take with me so kept them for dinner once I got home then went out to Poker, as usual. Check my Poker Blog (link on the left) to read about the game. I picked up Sienna on Friday evening and took her to kindy for the Christmas party. We ate some food that people brought and she got me to play in the sand pit with her. After a while we all went inside and Santa came and gave all the kids a present. Sienna got a nice book from Santa and was way happy. Saturday morning we got up and went to swimming lessons. Sienna had a ball and we got the usual sausage sandwich for her after-swim breakfast. We went to the local shopping centre to see Dora the Explorer in the flesh (well .. felt or something). They had Dora, Santa & Mrs Clause and….. er….. Ronald McDonald (!?!) Don’t ask me how he fits into this line-up! They had photos with the icons but the lineup was out the door before we even arrived so we didn’t bother staying long. Instead we went downstairs and Sienna had a ride on the Merry go Round with another girl whose dad didn’t bring a $2 coin. I didn’t either but bought a ham and mayo scroll at the bakery just to get some change. We bought a few groceries and headed back home again. Sienna had a nap for a few hours while I played online Poker. I was doing really well. I went All-In a couple of times and jumped my play money up from $2,000 at one stage to over $27,000! Before the game finished Sienna had woken up and was wandering around the house looking for something to do, so I bet on a few hands I didn’t think would win and lost my money. I got out at 299th place out of over 4,400 players. Sweet. One hand I got was AA and The Flop was AQQ. I sure collected a lot of dosh that time! It was 5.50pm and we quickly jumped into the car and drove to the local shopping centre again and watched OPEN SEASON at the cinema. Sienna loved the popcorn and Sunkist orange fizzy drink (plus the bag of Choccettes I had to take off her before she scoffed the lot!!). We came back home and watched some episodes of The Mickey Mouse Club and went to bed. Sunday we took easier and just played games and watched some more Mickey Mouse until it was time to head off. I dropped her home about half an hour earlier than usual and came home to clean up the house. Sienna isn’t too keen on the vacuum cleaner so I didn’t want to upset her. I cleaned up the house and headed out to a night of Texas Hold’em Poker. I had a fantastic night as well. I made it to the Final Table and ended up coming 6th. (Would have been 5th but they had the Wild Card — a random player already gone out whom gets called back for another go with a few thousand dollars). This should have helped my position in the Top 15 go back up again. Since I made the Top 15 players for Sunday nights I am playing in the Grand Final Texas Hold’em Poker game to win a trip to Crown Casino. Depending on how other people went I could be at #3 on the Top 15. I hope they update the Leaderboard webpage soon so I can be certain. One girl playing at my table was #3 previously. She was on my table the last two Sundays which is funny because she hasn’t been on one of my tables for the whole season until then. I’m friends with her and her husband so we have a chat most weekends. Strangely enough neither of them has done very well in the last 3-4 weeks playing poker either. But we had a fantastic night Sunday. A guy sitting to my right was 2 points behind her in the Top 15 Leaderboard and was hoping she would go out of the game before him so he could get more points and move up to #3. He was so adamant and kept on going on about it so much we were all barracking for her. In the end they both went All-In at the same time and lost to someone else. So they went out at the same time and got the exact same number of extra points. So, he is STILL 2 points behind her in the Leaderboard!! Classic!! Last night I just stayed home and caught up on some TV. I watched a couple of episodes of Mythbusters (first on SBS then the Discovery Channel) and a show hosted by William Shatner called “How techies saved the world”. It was about how many inventors came up with ideas for their inventions from watching Star Trek. eg. The Motorola employee whom invented the first mobile phone, a NASA employee whom created satellites, etc and named them “Enterprise” and “Voyager” and a surgeon working on devices to irradiate cancer growths (tumors) without surgery with precise lasers aiming directly into the tumor. Fascinating show. Tonight I went to the movies again to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and I have to say it’s the funniest show I’ve seen in a LONG time! I’m definitely buying this one on DVD when it comes out. Friggin’ HIGH-LARIOUS! Go watch it now.. stop reading this blog! It’s almost finished anyway.. just run out and watch BORAT! You know you want to! |
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