Dramatis persona*

helenhead Helen Chick

I've always wanted a bumper sticker that said "I'm a female, LDS/Mormon, Scout leading, geocaching, piano-playing, bicycling, mathematics educator with a PhD in maths ... and I VOTE"!

I think this makes me a minority group of cardinality 1!

* Since there's only one of me and "personae" is plural (I think), I've gone with dramatis persona.
December 2024
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Just big enough

On the final day of the camp we went back up to the ski village (hauntingly empty) in search of some decent snow drifts. There really wasn’t much on offer but we managed to find a couple of patches of snow that were just big enough and slopy enough for the Scouts to go tobogganing and […]

Singing at sea

With restrictions on the size of gatherings easing, but with awareness that choirs might be at higher risk of spreading the coronavirus amongst their singers, the TSOChorus has been continuing online rehearsals, but also starting to have some small outdoor gatherings of people, in spaces big enough to keep a reasonable distance between choristers. As yet, […]

A short walk marginally ruined

They say that golf is a good walk ruined. Mini-golf involves a shorter journey but, in the absence of competence in its players, is similarly not a particularly stellar walking experience either. However, it was the end of the school holidays and I’d determined that a fun afternoon with the youngsters was in order and the […]

One year on …

It’s a little hard to believe that it has been a year since my friend Lisa’s death and since her children came to live with me. There have been some things to figure out, but I think we’ve been doing okay, and out of what were—and still are—sad circumstances, they have brought additional joy into my […]

12 of 12, April 2020

Today is the first 12th that has fallen during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

Church ceased having meetings across the world even before we started getting restrictions on large gatherings in Australia (we haven’t had services since before March 15th). Just before things stopped I was called to be the ward music chairperson, so, in these strange times, […]

Wet and wild canyoning

As a thank you gift for services rendered, one of my now-graduated PhD students very kindly gave me a voucher to go canyoning in the Cradle Mountain area. The original plan was to do Dove Canyon, but heavy rainfall in the day or so preceding the planned trip meant that the location was changed to Machinery […]

Pontoon party

It has become something of a tradition that one of our last Scout nights for the year be a “pontoon party”, held down at Sandy Bay Beach. There is a pontoon moored just off the beach, and the kids enjoy jumping from it and pfaffing around in “Bob” and the kayaks.

At one stage I had a […]

Bruny Island bike hike

Two of our older Scouts planned a three day bike hike on Bruny Island. I had originally planned to attend the whole thing, but a bunch of other commitments needed my attention and so I only made it to the first day. I supplied the support vehicle and so boarded the ferry first, and was able […]

Going to the football

Lisa was an avid supporter of the Hawthorn Football Club, a Victorian-based AFL team which occasionally plays matches in Tasmania. We had the opportunity to go and see a game in Launceston today, with Lisa’s nephew joining us for the occasion. Josh and Imogen already had their own supporters’ gear, while I borrowed one of Lisa’s […]

Creative Prompt #4 – Burn it all

This week’s Lee Sargent “creative prompt” is “Burn It All”. I struggled to come up with a good idea for this, and I didn’t have the time to experiment with some of the artistic thoughts that passed through my mind which I knew would be challenging to implement. Instead, I ended up cheating a bit: this is […]