Well blow me down, Google’s been around for TEN YEARS! Did NOT realise it had been that long. Wow.

They’ve done a cool timeline of their history. Would love to have one of these on the go for Xero. We’ve kind of got one, but it was a pretty serious one for our first Annual Report.

Would be cool to have one like Google’s with little stories or definitions along the way of quirks or traits that make us who we are. Like when Rod was on the business show on TV the morning of our IPO – watched that on one of our old videos the other day. Cool.

We like shopping for our nieces (or other baby/kid friends) at Borders. They’re pretty helpful to people like us with nice big signs showing books for age ranges. If you’re not up with the play on the latest ‘reader series’ for a particular child or know their favourites it can be quite daunting trying to choose something age-appropriate.

Yesterday’s plan was to get a book for Sarah, who’s turning 4, that features a penguin. Well. There actually wasn’t a section for 4-8 year olds, and we figured that 4 is no longer a toddler, and board books are for babies so we were at a bit of a loss. We know that Pingu is on the right track so went to the ‘Characters’ section but couldn’t find Pingu anywhere amongst stories of Maisie, Miffy, Thomas and friends.

So we headed to the ‘picture books’ bit. It soon became apparent that there we books about every kind of animal except penguins! We even sectioned up the shelves and systematically scanned, calling out to each other the animals we found – at one stage I was crawling along the floor reading out the animals I came across in books along the bottom shelf (god only knows what the other shoppers thought of us) but honestly, no penguins? Dogs, cats, dinosours, gruffalos (what?), wombats, giraffes, bears (lots of bears), tigers, wild things, alligators, bunnies, possums, monkeys, fish, kiwi, ducklings, mice, elephants and a potty (!!). We did find one adventure story about a penguin at sea but it was a bit scary and then the Mister stumbled upon this fantastic book – which we read aloud to each other to test it out, yes in the store where everyone could hear.

How big is a million? We figure it’s got penguins in it AND is educational so hopefully can’t go wrong. And the poster in the back which supposedly has a million stars on it is actually amazing, even through an adult’s eyes.

I’m here, I’m here. My throat tickle became some kind of mild throat thing but due to the rigorous regime of Lemsip and vitamin C and water, I actually only ended up thick-headed and miserable for one morning. I just felt quite exhausted all week but still managed to work (kept away from the office because there’s nothing worse than sitting there with people coughing and blowing their noses around you), even though it was only at half speed. Am almost 100% again now.

Gotham was decided less ‘batty’ when we were there for breakfast yesterday. Apparently a bunch of batman lawyers stomped in for a visit and said that they had to tone down all the bat stuff because they were breaching copyright or something. So the bat light has gone, the batman photo show, the bits of batman merchandise and the batman and friends-themed table numbers. I think there’s still a wee sign saying ‘Batman is currently in: Austin, Texas’. Hmmmm, seems a bit rank really.