House (part 2)
Everything's organised and then... the vendor doesn't want to sell. She's just had a falling out with her brother and wants to stay in the house rather than sell it. Real estate agent is currently trying to convince her that after all this hard work she really does want to sell, possibly with an extended settlement period so she can't stay there in the short-term. (Extended settlement period is even better for me, so I don't mind if that happens.)

Fire training
Lots of fun. Got to put out fires and go through smoke-tunnels and play with fire extinguishers and watch videos and wear hard-hats and special clothing. Cool stuff. I want to do extra courses if possible.

House
No word back from the real estate agents as to how negotiations are going. This is very annoying.

Work
Same company, different name. Discovered that Kathryn makes excellent coffee. Thanks Kat.

Health
Feeling a bit under the weather, I'm afraid. Sore throat and aching muscles. Think I may have picked up the bug that's been floating around the office.

Bike
My bike isn't feeling very well at all. The rear wheel has partially detached itself from the axle. Alas this is one of the things I don't have the tools to fix on my own, so I'll probably be purchasing appropriate tools and materials to fix it over the weekend. (Either that or I'll go the easy way and drop it into a bike-shop for repairs.)

Blooper of the Week
Every week at work during our Friday staff meeting we have an agenda item titled "Blooper of the Week". This item is to acknowledge the most amusing blooper of that week, and involves the handover of a large black dunce-hat.

The blooper this week must go to our CEO. After finally clinching a major deal, John spent five hours at the pub, and proceeded to celebrate by throwing food from the 8th floor balcony at passers-by. Apparently he managed to hit (or almost hit) a few of the cleaning staff, and the police have been called by the car-park guard (who thinks there are 'kids on the roof causing trouble').

Work
Ian was a real sweetie and brought me a large, shiny, complex-looking bug, marked with "XXX". Ian knows that 90% of the bugs I have to chase have "XXX - May cause problems" written in the code nearby the actual bug, and has decided to celebrate this with me in his own special way. I hope to pass the bug on when somebody else becomes bug-boy.

Life
Been very busy. Gwen (Jacinta's sister and our housemate) is now engaged. I've probably been playing a little more ADOM than normal, and this has affected my usual hobbies of writing in my diary and getting my Diplomacy moves in on time. The weather has been polishing up quite nicely here in Melbourne, and I've been spending more time in the garden. I'm once again reminded how much I'd like some more land to grow things.

Finance::Quote drives artwork
A few bugfixes and minor releases because of that. The most interesting thing to eventuate is the use of Finance::Quote to drive a dynamic art piece, the write-up of which can be found here. The "stock-puppets" dynamically change depending upon the mood of various world markets, and to be honest I'm quite happy about this use of the module. :)

Work
Scott is away skiing and so I've been fielding most of his work as well as mine. This has made me incredibly busy during work hours.

My discussions with Dan about me moving to a nine-day fortnight seem to have broken down, and I'm rather dissapointed by this. Admittedly this is partially because we've both been so busy, but the attitude seems to have gone from "should not be a problem" to "we need you too much". *sigh*

Weekend
What a great weekend. Beautiful weather, warm sunlight and blue skies, which is unusual for winter. Spent a lot of time in the garden, used much compost, mulched many things, admired our earthworms, and planted more than a dozen sunroots. Made a yummy dandelion ommelette for breakfast, and the excess sunroot and silverbeet that was growing made quite a nice curry. I'm looking forward to spring and the growing things that come with it.