The curate's egg

Today was a mixed bag. On the good side, I woke up my children in the house which is always a better way to start a day. Miss S declared that she had a "sore tummy" that catch all phrase to describe that all is not right with the world. I sometimes wonder what my boss would say when grilling me on some unfinished task if I said "but, Alan, I have a sore tummy". Another good thing was going to have afternoon tea on the terrace of the National Library with my friend and work colleague, M. We also discussed a lot of business while we were doing it but it was pleasant to be out in the afternoon sunshine. I had a pot of earl grey tea and a piece of coconut and raspberry cake which was delicious. We talked about how tiresome some of our male colleagues are and how it gets in the way of just getting on with our jobs. Also good was cancelling a meeting tomorrow which would have involved a lot of the above tiresome men droning on about how marvellous they were. Extra good was a telephone call with a colleague in Singapore who was amazingly helpful and gave me lots of good ideas to discuss with one of my clients. We were talking about public health outbreaks and how technology can support management of them and she was telling me about some research which pulled together data on things like orange juice sales in the cafeteria, number of calls made to medical centres, absenteeism rates and sewage output (eeewh) to predict outbreaks of flu 24 hours ahead of other monitoring means. Of course, what you do with that data - how do you issue public health alerts, how do you manage peaks in service loads (everyone wants to make doctor's appointments, etc) are much more difficult policy issues. And what was really great was how open she was with her expertise and her willingness to help. I met someone today that I last saw on the other side of a piano at a posh English wedding reception in Hampshire in 1992. The person who was getting married that day sadly died a couple of years later but I recall the reception as being very 4 Weddings like with excellent french champagne, quail's eggs with celery salt and little chequerboard sandwiches with smoked salmon and caviar in a marquee in the garden of some beautiful house in a picturesque village. The bride was a florist and there were the most divine blue and white flowers everywhere. Anyway, this man was visiting our office in Australia which is another one of those small, small world stories. He looked the same as he had 12 years ago. I hope I looked better since at the time I was very pregnant with a shocking short hair cut. My company intranet phone book allows you to add your photograph to your entry. My pal, H, and I are conducting an informal survey on the physical profile of senior executives in our company. Our hypothesis is that no senior male execs have facial hair and that they are all tall and beefy (ex athletes). For women, the profile is more to do with body size - no-one over a size 12 (which I think is size 8-10 for any Americans). No really bad things but some tedious posturing which wasted some time and treacle-like response times on my computer today. Tonight we watched McLeod's Daughters. I've been maintaining that this is Saddle Club for grown-ups and blow me if Miss S didn't tonight spot that the newly returned love interest vet is none other than Max the stable owner from Saddle Club. We are, of course, only watching it for the horses just like I have to take Miss S and Miss I to see Hidalgo on Friday so we can admire the horses. I've seen some trailers and have to say that as attractive as he was as the broody and magnificent Aragon, Viggo Mortensen looks pretty weedy in this movie. Hope the horses are good. Happy Birthday to my sister, Diane.