Hard though this may be to believe, I sometimes underestimate the sheer well-bred-ness of the horses I grew up around. We all knew Ralvon Ilk was royalty, and Wellworth Morning Star and Finewood Lefire, but at the time I failed to appreciate that my own Arab horse Alfie’s milk-white half-nephew Tristram Apparition was Australian champion Arabian stallion in 1984.

Alfie’s family is still in the ribbons. His jet-black great grand-nephew, River Oak Tabu, was three times reserve champion on the East Coast.

Here’s Bellboy’s father Aethon looking exactly like our pony.

Poldark is by the same sire. (You only call them half-siblings if they are out of the same mare.) Poldark famously won a supreme championship in open company, and his son Zakah Zahara is a world champion endurance horse.

So, you know, it was nice.

[09:19] mizchalmers: o noez
[09:19] FurHordinge: ohez?
[09:19] mizchalmers: we forgot to have a windoze 7 launch party
[09:19] FurHordinge: zomg!
[09:20] mizchalmers: *fake laugh* what do you use the new features for, my husband jeremy???
[09:21] FurHordinge: oh, it’s so easy! if I want the screen to go blue, I just do this!
[09:21] mizchalmers: here is our friend token minority! she has this to say! “…”
[09:22] FurHordinge: look, Female is showing off her recipe database and pictures of the kids!
[09:23] mizchalmers: teehee!
[09:23] FurHordinge: and Male is watching his DVD of explosions again!
[09:23] mizchalmers: (resignedly) oh, male!
[09:24] FurHordinge: (I propose we make a family movie for all the family: Exploding Princesses Talking About Their Feelings)
[09:25] FurHordinge: (And Ponies!)

[11:07] mizchalmers: of course the seminal Exploding Princesses Talk About Their Feelings (And Ponies) film is LadyHawke

Bit better, although I can’t walk up the hill from Safeway without getting out of breath. McKenze has the girls. Pleased with myself for roasting butternut squash for soup and changing cat litter. (Separate operations with thorough hand washing between.)

Beebs is so awesome when I am sick. She just snuggles up to me and purrs and purrs and purrs.

So sick. Jeremy is in Tokyo and I have manflu – fatigue, muscle pain, headache, cough and debilitating self-pity. I stumbled out of bed and made it to Nervous Dog where we found Katherine, Claire’s friend from Mandarin camp, and her mom Michelle. Katherine took up wushu after Claire’s demo at Mandarin camp, so Michelle walked both girls over to the studio. Then Salome arrived, took charge of Julia and sent me home to bed.

All of it unplanned. Reminds me why I work so hard to live where I do. Thank you neighbours; you are beyond price. I sleep now.

We bought the girls’ alarm clocks and imposed new structure on bedtime and the morning routine in the hopes of getting more shuteye, because we are all a bit psychotic from sleep dep.

Apparently the clocks gain quite a lot of time, because this morning they went off forty minutes early.

Results:

MORNING SCHEDULE

7:00am Wake up and sofa snuggle
7:10am Get dressed for school
7:15am Breakfast, one episode of TV
7:45am Put on shoes
7:50am Brush teeth and hair
8:00am OUT THE DOOR, ON THE BUS

EVENING SCHEDULE

3:00pm Home from school
5:30pm Homework
6:00pm Besos y abrazos por Blanca
6:30pm Piano practice
6:45pm Dinner and one episode of TV
7:05pm Dessert
7:15pm Put pyjamas on
7:20pm Brush teeth
7:30pm BEDTIME

To support the project, aimed primarily at More Sleep For Everyone, Jeremy got a frog alarm clock for Claire and bees for Jules.

…we’ll see how this works out.

Fish tacos. Lemos Farm. Spork. Don Reed’s East 14th. A nice day.

Events have conspired to endow hyper-topicality upon Light Industrial, my scandalous kiss-and-tell expose of the two weeks I spent working in Australian television in 1993.

This is nice and all, but on the whole I would prefer for Australian television to stop being so hideously embarrassing…