Great, another long weekend. Which means 3 days of finding ways to fill  the days. Thank goodness for free-to-air sport. Rugby's on now, and F1 quali will start soon

Went to Webjam just now. It was okay. It was mainly the Web Directions crowd, which meant that i didn't know anyone. I did offer and give a ride to a stranger to the airport though. What was his name again? ....Chris I think.

Think I'll embark on household chores tomorrow. Lots to do - I just don't feel inclined to do any of it. Spider season is here, so I'll need to spray the outdoor pesticide. The weeds are out in full force. Garage is in a mess. Downstairs is in a mess.  Need to pack the spare mattresses away from the last time they were used. Restore furniture to appropriate spots. (Remnants of the last time I had house guests) Lots of things to throw out. Oh, and I just remembered the car! *groan* And the usual laundry and cooking

Bah @ long weekends! I have no excuse to not do all the things I've been avoiding for one reason or another
 

Oh, and the plan is to stay awake till 3 am so that I can all  my sis and wish her a happy birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMAN!

Oooooh it's a Birthday Sunday. My mother in law, lovely lady, and my brother whom I've just found out is going to be a dad.

I will be an uncle.....my first niece or nephew.

(What's the collective noun for nieces and nephews?)

Congrats to your bro!! (need gift ideas?)

Hahaha

No. THANK YOU!

Whatever I get it will be blue or pink....

Just got off the phone with sis... woke her up - oops

September is a 'bad' month. Many many birthdays. My theory - parents tend to celebrate the New Year too well

C'mon JR, take a chance.... buy something green

or orange

Orange is good.... orange and yellow is better

Get some of the Tangler baby stuff! hahahaah

Tangler's loot department should sell ropes and/or shoelaces in Tangler colours

Ooooh.... Tangler laces.... and shoes!

(she says wearing the Tangler tee right now)

@ SK: "ropes" ???  Er.....?

He's being practical... ever so often there will come a situation which will warrant tying the kid down

Collective noun for nephews, nieces - Brats?

Disgusting!

I mean.....GOATS!?

Actually, it's niblings

Brats? - No I was being serious, is there a collective noun?

That sounds strange.... like a food item

Goats?? Whatever are you on about?

"ever so often there will come a situation which will warrant tying the kid down"

"Nibling(s)" is not a real word.

So sez the Meriam dictionary, and I'd provide the link, except it threw up stupid malware ads which scared me

Trying to find another souce

Nothing in Chambers, nothing in Webster's, nothing in Macquarie, nothing in the OED. Only found in on line, urban and slang dictionaries, nothing recognized.

I was just about to pull out my trusty OED

yep, nothing

That's odd... funny that english wouldn't have it

I'm glad.... I really didn't like 'niblings'

According to AskOxford:

Is there a word like 'siblings' for nephews and nieces collectively?

No, though it would be very useful. In fact nephew used to be used regardless of sex, but this usage is long extinct. Older use of the word cousin for a range of blood relations would have encompassed nephews and nieces, but no specific term is now available.

Someone forgot about it didn't they?

I didn't intend ropes as a baby-related gift, just something that Tangler could sell on the basis that you can tangle them up.

On that basis you should also be selling headphones and christmas lights

(I didn't think you were... in fact, I had correctly assumed what you were referring to... But I couldn't help it. The mental image of gifting a parent orange ropes was too good to pass)

wow it is a long weekend?  I didn't even know that till just now, my head has been in the clouds!

Didn't you just have three days off?  I don't think you get the weekend off too.....

haha no worries I will still be at work on monday, I can't stay away, just hope others will be there too

Re collective noun for ankle-biters... the English language is very deficient in descriptive words for familial relations...

note that some other languages are much more specific in individual terms (eg. Chinese has different character sets to distinguish even between such  sibling relationships as second (elder) sister and second (younger) sister! ) than English.  As English went the route of phrases to describe this type of difference, It is also not surprising that it never 'bothered' to develop single words for collectives of wider familial spread.

re Niblings: according to the BBC, a group of Somerset junior school children started a movement in 2004 to get the word added to the OED.... I also can't find any indication that its been picked up by anything other than urban slang dictionaries on the web..

ahhhh I was wondering abt that

Yeah, English is very deficient sometimes. We've got more specific names for each person in Hindi as well, and i suspect many other languages. Except it doesn't help when you can't keep track of their meanings... when my mother uses em, she always has to end up explaining 'your uncle's wife' brother's etc etc'

Actually, I've just realised that once mother (and the rest of the generation) dies, the rest of us won't have any idea about our extended familial relations (unless we went back to India and our cousins managed to continue keeping track)

Somehow every one in India (the family i mean) are able to keep up. I'd need a whole social networking site just for that purpose!! I can't even remember how many aunts I have on my father's side... and who they are and where they are! [uncles I can keep track of - they didn't have to 'leave the family' when they got married]

@dek: all families ultimately fracture in this way, if they didn't we would all know each other, considering we are all descended from an estimated forty East African women, and they from an estimated 7 earlier female hominids.

My granddad's big on family history, has his family (possibly my gran's family too) traced back to something like the 1400s

Sounds fascinating. And like a lot of work and some solid dedication to go back that far.

My maternal aunt, who recently retired, has taken up researching the family history (I believe she has also bought some sort of software package for it) and so far she's found that we as a family (on that side) are a huge global nexus, but with very little depth. That's to say we only seem to go back 4 generations - to her paternal grandparents. And on her mother's side she can't find anything beyond her mother. But that might be the war.

When my grandmother came to Singapore that one and only time, we sat her down and made her recite the family tree. She was able to go back 6 or 7 generations. Unfortunately, we lost the book we wrote it in, and then she died before we could pick her brains again. There goes the history.

Couldn't be a better demonstration of the drawbacks of oral history (and bad record keeping)

Well, if you were doing oral history the proper way, and had memorised all of what she told you then there wouldn't have been a book to lose 

Heh... good point...

Except I think by this point, it should be known to all that I can barely remember what day it is

One side of my family has roots in Wales... and once the first Jones/Evans (and one or two others) appeared it seemed that we were possibly related (through marriages of cousins etc) to half the population or at least to the resident families in each of the areas my online looking took us.... Most of the areas have fairly good records back further than we have gone, but are still mostly only really accessible by going to the Churches in the region and examining birth/death/marriage/baptismal records to back up the census data - something I'm unlikely to be able to muster up the time/resources to do

Oh, I probably should have mentioned how impossible it would be to try a records search for my family (apart from the obvious - they weren't too big on keeping records. Most of them don't even know their exact birth dates)

Everyone has the same surname. So when my mother married my father, she didn't have to change her name.... Couple that with common first names, and India's population, and I give up!

So i've barely finished a percentage of what I needed to get done... I blame it on rugby and F1

Time to start now, except I've been sitting here for the past 15 mins trying to decide which task I should tackle first

haha, that is okay I was suppose to finish a paper this weekend that is due tomorrow but the beach beckoned me too much  Look like it will be a long night for Kaz

Far out.... how hot is it today?!?!?!

Not a good day to attempt cleaning up the house

At least downstairs looks less like a barn and more like a living room now

You have a long weekend this weekend??? ah, lucky you...

You don't??

nope... Not in Victoria

Oh.., yeah the states celebrate Labour day at different times

Far out.... how hot is it today?!?!?!

Not a good day to attempt cleaning up the house

Hahahaha, any excuse.

I remember that Brissie's was a month or two ago

yeah

You guys getting a heat wave too?

(I'd predicted a bad summer a month ago)

yeah... its a hot one today

can't breathe man...

It's the hot wind too

yeah that is what kills me is that hot wind, wind is suppose to cool you off!  Not warm you up!

yeah.... what a drastic change from yesterday eh?

At least it was still cool wind... and my house felt like it was air conditioned

Anyways, enough slacking.

Up next - mopping!

*groan*

good luck!

putting stuff away - check

vacuum - check

mop - check

dishes - check

laundry - check

dusting - check

Damn! I feel accomplished today!!

Now gotta go get carspace keys, come back and start on kitchen and upstairs

GAH!!

When you done, you want to come clean my place???

Are you doing all that without any eating?????

Yeah, I tend to forget to eat when I'm in a cleaning frenzy... thanks for the reminder!

@pseudyx You're on your own mate.... the only thing I clean for others - cars. That I even offer to do hehehe

Dek loves evenings like these - when there's a change of wind and the heat of the day dissipates

*off to dine under the stars*

Another bloody weekend. I'm already bored, and it's only Friday night

Crap. The last long weekend in Qld for the year is June.

First Monday

I'm watching the new version of Carrie.

I remember the old version of Carrie well.... Excellent movie.

(turns out it was also an my introduction to 'womanhood')
 

No no, it's not a long weekend. I just continued in here, since I have nothing new to say, but its about weekends

(Hang on, I'll edit the title)

I had to turn Carrie over. Said Horror etc. Young one is awake.

ahhh... yeah, save em from the horror - of a crap movie

He's watching Secret Window

That's a good show. I've watched it 3-4 times.

What's he doing up at this hour anyways??

He was in bed when I got home tonight. Got up at about 11pm and said "What's for breakfast ?"

HAHAHAHA Are you serious??

I was thinking earlier this evening of a similar story Marty once related
 

Nows he's had the hide to ask me what I'm doing

ROFL!

What a character!

At least he's keeping me entertained
 

His favourite word at the moment is fuckers

I'd love to hear him say it... but still

Yesterday I said "Bye bye naughty."

He said "Bye bye bum bum."

and got a laugh out of me

so he took the ball and said "Bye bye fuckers"

hahahaha!

Naughty fella