Snippets

Lauren attended her interview with the principal of Kloof Junior Primary last week. It was surprisingly intense, especially as I was expecting something along the lines of Robyn's interview two years ago. The new (acting) head took a much more rigourous approach to it. Lauren did really well in turns of academic ability and the teacher seemed to run out of things to ask her, but on the other hand was incredibly, painfully, shy. She could hardly bear to look at the woman and had both her hands permanently in her mouth the entire time. This shyness is hardly ever apparent because in her little life she only really interacts with people with whom she feels totally, sit-in-the-lap, comfortable. I could see the head was a bit perplexed - on the one hand here was this very bright and quick little kid, on the other hand the terrible, almost incapacitating shyness.

I also took Lauren with me to Robyn's assembly on Thursday morning to try and help her see the place as less terrifying. The parents of the grade two recorder players were invited to hear them play. I was amazed how good they sounded. Robyn really seems to love music, and also drama, and it is lovely to see her do well at the things she loves. Lauren, on the other hand, spent a good part of the assembly hiding her face in my lap.

Speaking of Robyn, and drama, she is currently so much into character for the production they are working on at her Friday class, that she is having what she calls 'day-mares'. The production features some mysterious bloodied-mouthed wild beast and it is freaking her out. The drama teacher is making it up as she goes along, so we don't even know the outcome yet. Robyn is really disturbed by it. She loves her drama so much I hope she doesn't get put off by how intense she finds it.

Peter and I went up to the 'Berg for Friday and Friday night for the annual office conference, and jointly won a Geeky Logic award for this white board snippet captured and immortalised in an email thread earlier this year.

Hi,

Ever felt like you are not sure what the technical architects are talking about. Well see if the code below makes sense:

After looking at the above we don't either...

Picture was taken today at a technical architects desk near you...

- DBA's

Peter: Actually an apps person wrote this ....


Someone else: A technical architect wannabe

Peter: No sure if you have insult/complemented me, Lisa or both of us but I am going to take it as a complement :-)


Somone else again:

It makes perfect sense... :) Its a simple if/elsif/else statement....

If a technical architect wrote it, i would be something like

(blah:stuff?(blah2:stuff2?rest));

nice and simple 1 liner

The kids stayed with Peter's folks on Friday night and then on Saturday we picked them up and went straight back down to Kloof for Lauren's school's sponsored walk. Since Lauren is now in the Grade 0 group (the oldest group) she stayed the night, along with the rest of the class (there are about nine kids in her group) and totally loved it - they had lots of fun with movies, pancakes, games and marshmallows.

A lot more sobering than all of this was the fact that the reality of chemo has suddenly hit my friend quite hard. She had cut her hair extremely short (almost shaved her head really) after the first dose of chemo three weeks ago, in preparation for the likely hair loss. Nothing quite prepared her for how it would feel when her remaining hair fell out, frighteningly quickly, last week. I wish I could do more to help. Yesterday was round 2 of the chemo, so she's feeling awful again.