London was fun, met some nice people.

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Another one of those nights, with cat on head, sweaty sick child snoring in one’s ear, wife hogging covers. Finally wake up before alarm, wrecked, check clock there in dark: six o’clock! I’m a half hour late! Why didn’t the alarm go off? Pretty tired for six, but I’ll be able to function, I think. Run downstairs, go to bathroom, start to make coffee in kitchen, look at wall clock: 12.30 at night. I’d gotten the big hand mixed up with the little hand in the dark.

Five hours left to sleep! What a wonderful feeling!

Feel as you will about the Bloggies (weblog awards), it’s voting time again. As a good Internet citizen, here are a few voting recommendations:
1. Best site for unintentional humor: the weblog review.
2. Site nominated in the most categories, don’t ask me why: the fact that – unbeknownst to Wil – I am currently working on a script for a Wil Wheaton vehicle, sort of a silent B/W Creature of the Black Lagoon remake, with Wil cast as a Creature (heavily pierced with fishing lures) who falls in love with a girl prevents me from voting for him in this category, since it would look like a conflict of interests. So vote your conscience in this category.
3. Go there now. It’s your democratic duty.

Father: When playing the harp, maybe if you try sticking your tongue out a little during the hard parts, it would help you concentrate.
Daughter: [in a snide, yet off-handed manner] I’m not a cellist.

Made a useful discovery last night: Gamma falls asleep faster if I’m practicing cello at her bedtime. I used to miss practices because we thought it would keep her awake. That bodes well for the future. Likewise, while practicing a tune last night, I occasionally heard notes that sounded like *cello* and not *strangling warthog*.

Anything interesting happening in London this weekend?

Still getting used to the new currency, and I don’t think I’m the only one. You still see people letting the cashier pick out the money they have to pay; and you hear stories about customers tipping way too much or not enough. All this will pass with time. Problems with the bills being too big for my wallet (they are slightly larger than the old Austrian money) will also pass once I buy a new billfold. Currently, my largest problem is that I am amassing huge quantities of coins, making my pockets bulge and my wallet hard to fit into my pocket. I thought at first that this was due to poor planning and design of the coins and their denominations, but now I think this too will pass; when the Euro was introduced, stores were prohibited by law from rounding up their prices, in order to prevent a wave of inflation resulting from the Euro. This naturally causes odd prices like 17.234 euros etc, because it is a rare Austrian shopkeeper who will voluntarily round down. As soon as it is legal to increase prices again, we’ll get nice round numbers and the change problem will be solved.

Alpha was in Japan this past week. She comes home tonight, and not a minute too soon. The week started out well, the in-laws took care of the kids and cooked and minded the cats while I worked. Everything went well. Even the weekend wasn’t so bad, really. I mean, we were all tired and cranky by then. And the cats didn’t do anything especially bad or gross. And the oldest daughter Beta even cleaned out the litter boxes when I told her to. And when I did finally flip out because I was, mostly, simply tired, and tired of the kids bickering, and tired of being *ignored* by the kids when I told them stuff, or getting snotty answers, and when, after lecturing Beta on some damn thing I of course can’t remember anymore and she said “Now I can understand why mom breaks a coffee cup sometimes” and I said, “So can I, it makes you feel!” [smashing first coffee cup onto kitchen floor] “So damn much better!” [smashing second cup onto kitchen floor] I had enough self-control to smash the cheap cups. At this point, Gamma, 4, said, “You’re not supposed to break the coffee cups.” Beta said nothing for a while, but we were getting along again within an hour.

Neither I nor my wife grew up in a house where crockery was regularly broken on purpose, but we have learned to enjoy the practice. Self-control is a good thing, but anything can be overdone, and if you’re going to go bug-eyed crazy now and then, breaking a cheap cup is a harmless way to do it.