I am not going to claim that there is no inherent creepiness in the story ("little girls? Hell yeah, we ALL find 'em sexy"); it's just that I am finding that what adds that special, fresh layer of Ultra-Rich Full-Cream Creepy is the fact that it is read by Jeremy Irons, whose accent is, more or less, identical to that of Alan Rickman. As we sit in the car listening to the story, all I hear is Professor Snape talking about how much he likes little girls.

Sweet dreams, children.

The same car-pooling friend (Art) and I were also given the task - well, maybe semi-volunteered for the task - of running the company's next Social Club trivia night. This turned out to be a lot more work than I could have possibly imagined, and we really had no idea how hard to make the questions. Is this question about Persepolis easy or impossible? Then there were the PowerPoint slides to keep in mind - a slide for every question with some video clips inserted here and there, not to mention the initial template design - and worksheets to write up and design, plus the little bonus rounds for people to play, along with the 40 questions that formed the two main rounds ... it was a big job, and we were terrified that after all our effort in practically begging people to come, it would be all wrong and people would have a terrible time.

It sounded easy until I realised that we would be standing up in front of the company presenting it, so quality control really started eating into my time, as though Time were some sort of tasty barbecued snack. Time is a sausage and Quality Control is some sort of ... carnivore.

At every step, something went wrong. The person who was going to present the trivia night for us pulled out last week because it was his birthday on the night and he had just found out he was to be taken out for a 'surprise' dinner. One of the other people who was going to help us also had to pull out on the day. The PowerPoint slides with video in them wouldn't play (the flash drive was called "F" on my home computer and "G" on the work computer, so none of the videos, which PowerPoint links to rather than embeds, were being recognised because OMG WHERE DID THEY GO I CAN'T FIND THEM THERE IS NO F DRIVE ANY MORE). Everybody had something else they had to do on the night itself, so we nearly had to cancel. The TechDude who was supposed to arrange for us to have a company laptop on the night (to plug into the AV system) was down in Melbourne on business, so we had to borrow a colleague's laptop. That laptop didn't recognise my USB flash drive, which had the entire Trivia Night prssentation on it. We nearly forgot to give out sheets for people to write their answers on (I had to run back to my computer and create one five minutes before Round 1 was due to start).

I started to ponder the likelihood that the phrase "couldn't organise a fart in a jacuzzi" would be the epitaph chiselled into my gravestone.

However, it went smashingly well. Everybody had a great time and we received much kudos for having such a good range of questions and activities. It was a nice, short evening and we left them wanting more, which is surely the aim of any presentation.

Sorry, but there is no punchline here. I am just kind of buzzing from the minor triumph so I had to blurt it out and tell the world about it because that is what this whole "web log" doohickey is about, right?

The Pigeon is sitting behind me asking me to say something nice about him. He is a fun person with a knack for playing with words in a way that amuses me, and he has lovely hair.

He also wants his computer back, so adieu for now! I'm off to do some X-treme knitting.