Today, while I was at work:
- Katy took the children to visit a friend at the other end of town and got utterly soaked on the way back. Apparently this involved hail stones and possibly thunder and lightning (according to K). They got a bit lost cutting through a housing estate but discovered a playground near our house. Katy’s plan to do a map to get to the friend’s house may be well received ready for next time.
- J and K had a how-large-can-I-write competition while doing the writing for Badgers about tarantulas and boa constrictors respectively. I learned that boa constrictors give birth to live young (unlike most snakes) and a tarantula bite is no worse than a wasp sting. There may be pictures tomorrow before I whisk them off after work.
- A child sized accordion arrived courtesy of Freecycle. I love Freecycle. This thing is missing a couple of the buttons (as opposed to piano keys) but seems able to produce a racket fairly easily even for L. I need to talk to Dave and/or Beardie about controlling the racket in a harmonious way.
- Maths and English.
I came home and Katy said that we had just got an email that the 2 goldfish on Freecycle are ours, so I’m picking them up tomorrow from work. J, K and L experimented with dangling a skipping rope down through the bannisters on the landing into the hall and then trying to pull each things / people back up. Lifting J wasn’t too successful, but a plastic bag holding books, a shoe and other essentials worked OK.
Tea was a team effort. L chopped up some (cooked) spaghetti left over from yesterday. K grated some cheese with a bit of my help, and J cracked some eggs. I turned them into a cheese and spaghetti omelette of which I managed to not make too much of a pig’s ear. Grammar pedant, moi? 
Yesterday I had a 3.5 hour phone meeting with some German customers. For much of the first hour I browsed the web as someone else was doing the talking, but it was me for the last 2.5 hours. In the browsing I discovered a couple of nice web sites: groovy web site accessories and a way of getting even more images back from a web search. Oh, and an efficient way to compute the convex hull of a set of points, which I often find myself thinking would come in handy when changing nappies or doing the washing up ;).