Yesterday, it seemed like it was going to rain just enough to be annoying for walking to the shops down the road (but not for the dams, more rain is good for dams), so I decided to drive to Carousel and let the kids have a play at the playground before grabbing snacks and doing the top up shopping.

Heading toward Albany Hwy, the first wacky thing to be encountered was a huge line of cars stuck behind boom gates at the train station.  The Perth train was idling at the platform looking in no hurry to go anywhere.  I eventually inched my way to the intersection as other cars started peeling off in different directions at the intersection.  Watching a transit worker guiding the two cars that were sitting before the boom gates, I figured the boom gates weren't going to be rising any time soon and decided to cut across to Old Fremantle Rd and head to Albany Hwy there.

I've been lusting after one of these since shortly after they first came out.  This year, I finally had to retire my beloved Intuos3, partly because it was getting laggy and jittery in its old age after much use (it was a wedding present, wedding was 6 years ago), and partly because my toddler walked off with the pen and I haven't seen it since.  Following was angst over whether I should take the cheap simple upgrade to the Intuos4 or splash out and be broke for a while getting a Cintiq.

Seeing as it was a "milestone" birthday (3 decades!), Josh, my parents and my sister pooled together and threw some money at me so I could acquisition the 12" Cintiq.

Self portrait.  Don't be fooled by my expression, I have none (literally, haven't done face morphs yet, I am just in t-pose and the mouth is slightly open because it's easier to model and pick points when they're not just about overlapping as happens with closed mouths).  I also have no hair to speak of, need a bump map on my lips, my earrings, tattoos and minute freckle splash are missing, and I'm not convinced my eyes are that accurate (I was however too lazy to go look in the mirror for that long).  I am wearing my favourite shirt (which has an odd red border around the top which I need to figure out how to get rid of) and my pants of power (which look dodgy, but I kind of figured out how to do camo :).

Earlier today, we went on a mini road trip to Mundaring to visit The Naked Butcher, on the offchance that they had meat I could eat.  As it is round the back of the small shopping complex it's in, we managed to completely miss it and ended up in Sawyer's Valley before we realised we'd gone too far and doubled back.

I got Yet Another Email urging people "fighting" for marriage equality to inundate politicians with messages of support for same sex marriage.

I fail at comprehending why this is an issue.

We are in a country that supposedly has a secular government, supposedly is big on giving a "fair go", supposedly tolerant of all "race, colour and creed".  It's also supposedly progressive thinking.

What we appear to have is a government that rolls over when religious groups and big businesses cry, throws money at people who want it and ignore the ones that need it, is cited globally as being racist, and cannot accept the fact that sometimes boys fall in love with boys and girls fall in love with girls.

I am a terrible mother.

For my big two, I did a "12 months of..." for their first birthdays.  My poor, neglected third child missed out.  So I decided to make up with a 24 Months of Cub for his second birthday.  He's been 2 for a bit over a month and I still haven't done it.  Didn't even do a write up like I did with Tao and Ru (hers got lost when the last reseller host ate technonaturalist and set my other sites back to June 2010).

So I better get on with it :)

And just for the whinging prudes and the more conservative types (there is a difference), the first two are semi/nude shots so either scroll past them quickly or don't read.

We hit up the Perth Zoo today, and I finally got around to getting the zoo membership passes.  So now we can visit regularly without it costing an arm and a leg! We inadvertantly stayed there the whole day too.  Maybe it was the cart.  I've been avoiding going on the "adult and kids' prices" days because it's always packed out, on the other days it's fine and we can always get a cart.  Then the kids can hitch rides whenever they're feeling a bit tired and we don't end up walking over half the zoo before they're complaining of being tired.

The zoo visit was a zoo visit, the kids loved every minute of it, and the mother in law and I were tired out pulling them around in a cart.  One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a mutant hibiscus (I have no idea what it actually was, that's what it looked like to me) and a numbat which apparently didn't come out much.  The numbat not only came out, it quite happily traipsed around the place completely not minding our presence.

It's the end of an era, ending a chapter of my life, or something equally dramatic.

After many years of operation, I finally pulled the plug on #bitz_n_peeces.  I wasn't sure if I'd feel emo about it, or if it would be just another thing.  I'm feeling a little from column A, a little from column B.  I'm a little sad that it's come to an end, but ending it was not a bad thing.

Earlier this morning, Tali and I headed out to Lumen Christi for the TrackWest Open Day.  We did a few tracks instructed by a trainer.  First time tracking the poor pup was confused as he had me plus the trainer handling, and new equipment, long lead and harness, but he found Tao sitting behind a chair in the middle of the wide open oval with no drama after a hesitant start.

Apparently he came after me in the next few tracks with much more enthusiasm and didn't notice the harness.

So it was fun, and I'm interested.

I appreciate the fact that you seem to think you're doing the environment a huge favour by not proliferating your genes all over the place, what with the human species hitting 6 or 7 billion and climbing at a rate of knots despite countries claiming declining and aging populations and their respective governments desperately trying to bribe people to breed.

I find it great that if you don't want kids, that you're not bowing to the ridiculous traditions of society to get married and have them anyway because it's something to do on some checklist that someone seems to have invented as a measure of a "successful" life.