margin of error

In the upcoming election, the ACT party are polling below the margin of error and are at significant risk of disappearing from Parliament completely. I'm no ACT supporter and will not be disheartened in any way if this occurs, though there is a definite parallel with this blog. My guess is the number of posts this month falls below the margin of error and is not statistically different from “no posts”.

Time to roll out the excuses. Ahh, the pressure. Ahh, the stress. Finally, though, I'm having an evening of insomnia. As I'm following what psychologists insist on calling “good sleep hygiene” (i.e. don't stay in bed if you're not falling asleep...), for once your viewing needs are being catered for. Seriously though, we'll need to re-open those discussions with SKY because if babbage.tv was pay-per-view I'd definitely be a lot more attentive to all our friends' update needs here. Couldn't guarantee quality, only quantity. Would that be a problem?  : )

We still have not moved into our house, despite being 11 days past the possession date. There is complicated legal argy-bargy going on, which will no doubt one day be merely in the past. For now, it means I am still spending an extra ten hours a week commuting. (Not ten hours total, ten hours more.) That's a whole lotta blogging right there. Meanwhile Bronwyn's organising up a storm now she's finished at School, though today she caught cabin fever from a pile of outstanding marking. She's finally polished that off and is, temporarily, free. Pity about the back pain, relative immobility, and fatigue that also comes with pregnancy. But the entertainment value alone of the internal concrete mixer must make up for it. Huh. Life.

bumper crop

Not much time to explain this image right now, but after my earlier post last month we thought you might like to make a comparison...

Guess I've got less of an excuse, though?

lowest ebb

There has never before been a month, as far as I know, where I've got to the 13th without blogging. However, the sign that we'd truly reached the lowest ebb was on the 5th when due to sheer neglect of my responsibilities the http://babbage.tv domain registration expired, sunk like the Titanic, and took our site and our email service down with it. I mean come on, they could at least have sent me a reminder email, or two. Err... Well... Hmm.

We've a good excuse however, because the baby's arrived! (As you can see, full head of hair...) OK, to tell the truth, this is actually a rather more long-standing member of the family, but Duncan couldn't fit the snazzipants and we wanted to try them out on someone. :) A “dry run”, so to speak.

It's less than a week now to settlement on our new house, all going well with the Code of Compliance certificate. I am dreaming of the daily return commute dropping from 3.5 hours to just over 1... or at least I would be dreaming, if I could just get more sleep. This has to have been the greatest training for our new baby-related schedule though, and after a brief reprieve in the new house I expect I'll be getting up at a number starting with a five once again... Ah well.

Meanwhile we're gradually collecting the necessary other equipment, including the nappies featured above, some disposables for the first six weeks, a cot, and the other paraphenalia apparently required. I may have had a hunch it was a girl before, but seeing how much stuff the baby seems to require I'm now convinced it is a female! We are further motivated by the arrival of the baby of someone in our antenatal group, a month early. For us, that would only be a few weeks away. Time to get moving...