Monday, January 26, 2009

 

It's all about audience participation...

Fortunately it isn't. I'm quite happy to add my twopenn'orth to the Internet anyway. But one does wonder, sometimes.

Anyway, let's throw a few more bits into the ether.

Fishtank now up and running. Four fish celebrated their new home by swimming upside down and were promptly euthanised in a fit of pique. The others seem to be recovering slowly. I'm waiting to put the sixth coat of paint on the new fireplace thing that the TV is going to be hanging on. It's very black, and so are Sputnik's paws.

A chap called Lee who doesn't use vowels or carriage returns in his emails and called me "hun" (I had to get Son to translate that bit) is supposedly turning up with a van and enough hefty people to shift the old tank in a couple of hours' time. If he turns up with a car and a girlfriend I shall laugh hollowly and let then try to move it a couple of inches. I am slighly cynical because the first two people who contacted me via Freecycle obviously hadn't thought about transport at all, despite the fact that I outlined what was needed in the original posting. One of them seemed to be intending to carry it home. 25 stone, this thing weighs. The other one wanted the tank because she didn't have any money for one. Which is fine if you want to put it on the floor and keep a couple of frogs in it, but anything else is going to need several hundred pounds worth of stuff to go with it. Maybe she was hoping to freecycle them. Freecycle is a great idea but it does seem to be populated almost entirely by people who decide they'll take something on a whim and then don't tell you when they decide it's too much bother to collect it.

For some reason shifting 100 gallons of water and then intensive painting seems to have done me no harm whatsoever. Haven't so much as looked at a paracetamol since last week.

"Being Human" was a bit heavy on the exposition but otherwise refreshingly unannoying, which is promising.

I had better go back to work, since I'm typing this on the work laptop instead of examining some draft legislation very careful.

Doing a bit of light editing (I know, I ought to leave it alone really, but ch 33 was a bit vague). I keep having to remind myself of universes; I nearly edited the reference to "hours" earlier in this email out.

Appetite is just about completely back so I now need to stop eating all the high calorie stuff I've been dutifully sampling for the last few weeks or I shall put all 18 pounds back on again in a blink.

Enough. Work!

 

It's all about audience participation...

Fortunately it isn't. I'm quite happy to add my twopenn'orth to the Internet anyway. But one does wonder, sometimes.

Anyway, let's throw a few more bits into the ether.

Fishtank now up and running. Four fish celebrated their new home by swimming upside down and were promptly euthanised in a fit of pique. The others seem to be recovering slowly. I'm waiting to put the sixth coat of paint on the new fireplace thing that the TV is going to be hanging on. It's very black, and so are Sputnik's paws.

A chap called Lee who doesn't use vowels or carriage returns in his emails and called me "hun" (I had to get Son to translate that bit) is supposedly turning up with a van and enough hefty people to shift the old tank in a couple of hours' time. If he turns up with a car and a girlfriend I shall laugh hollowly and let then try to move it a couple of inches. I am slighly cynical because the first two people who contacted me via Freecycle obviously hadn't thought about transport at all, despite the fact that I outlined what was needed in the original posting. One of them seemed to be intending to carry it home. 25 stone, this thing weighs. The other one wanted the tank because she didn't have any money for one. Which is fine if you want to put it on the floor and keep a couple of frogs in it, but anything else is going to need several hundred pounds worth of stuff to go with it. Maybe she was hoping to freecycle them. Freecycle is a great idea but it does seem to be populated almost entirely by people who decide they'll take something on a whim and then don't tell you when they decide it's too much bother to collect it.

For some reason shifting 100 gallons of water and then intensive painting seems to have done me no harm whatsoever. Haven't so much as looked at a paracetamol since last week.

"Being Human" was a bit heavy on the exposition but otherwise refreshingly unannoying, which is promising.

I had better go back to work, since I'm typing this on the work laptop instead of examining some draft legislation very careful.

Doing a bit of light editing (I know, I ought to leave it alone really, but ch 33 was a bit vague). I keep having to remind myself of universes; I nearly edited the reference to "hours" earlier in this email out.

Appetite is just about completely back so I now need to stop eating all the high calorie stuff I've been dutifully sampling for the last few weeks or I shall put all 18 pounds back on again in a blink.

Enough. Work!

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

 

A working laptop!

This doesn't sound very exciting, but it's taken over 6 months to achieve. And now I can

(oooohh, Dear John B just sang a gratuitous keychange- how exciting! Everything about that man just thrills me.)

Yes, where was I? Now I can work from home properly without resorting to writing things down on bits of paper and giving them to people. though since I had to go into Stratford to get it sorted out yesterday I am in a hellish amount of pain today and not doing any work as a result.

No other news. The fishtank is still sitting on the floor. I'm a bit hungrier. I've had to rewrite Ch 1 because my annoyingly perceptive beta reader has pointed out that carriages are distinctly un-medieval. Robin Hood S3 is still failing to arrive. Nikniks are fast asleep, a rather pleasant state in which they aren't destroying anything.

(More keychanges!!!)

Saturday, January 17, 2009

 

Unsettled

Unsettled is very much what I am at the moment. Medical stuff, getting back to work stuff, revamping the living room stuff (including my new fishtank which is still on the floor because I haven't found anyone to pick it up yet, and everything else piled up in heaps), mortgage stuff (they've started sending me little reminders but all the paperwork is buried somewhere), general financial stuff and a complete failure to get back to normal after writing stuff. I've got symptoms of hypomania and symptoms of depression and symptoms of anxiety all muddled up together (it's called a mixed state and I very rarely have them thankfully) , I can't keep awake during the day and can't sleep at night, can't read a book but I can dance my way through a couple of Scissor Sister albums, no trouble. Still no appetite. All a bit odd really and very unsettling in itself. Got an appointment with the psych in a week or so I think but the date and time are written down on a piece of paper somewhere and that's buried too. Wish I could get lost in writing again but finished is finished. Wrote a fic a couple of days ago but it's not the same. Tempted to get out the whiskey for a bit of self medication but I do know better than that.

Guess it will settle in time, or get worse and someone will feed me anti-psychotics and I'll go to sleep for a week or so. Right now it's 11:30 pm and I'm recharging my phone and will probably then go out for a walk in the driving rain with the iPod. Thinking too intensely feels much better when walking at the same time; it all settles to a rhythm. Doing a lot of walking at the moment. The tricky bit is turning round to come home again. I might do the route via the towpath and then the park which is four miles or so and at least goes round in a loop so I don't have to decide to come back. Back too sore to take a bag so it's water bottle under coat and some change for a taxi in my pocket. something in this room is going beep every few minutes and I don't know what- it isn't my phone. Whatever it is will presumably run out of battery in due course and shut up. Guess I'd better wake up Beloved for long enough to let him know I'm going out; he's due up at 5am to go to Croydon tomorrow morning but I'll be back long before then.

Update- it's now 1am and I got distracted by some Spike/Xander fics so didn't go walking. beatnik is curled up on my lap purring like hell. I think I might be able to sleep now so I will go and try.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

 

Why is it

that lots of intelligent, useful and witty posts on "Comment is Free" go virtually unnoticed but one sentence of grammatical correction that anyone with a dictionary could have made gets heaped with recommendations?

People are very odd. Beatnik is sitting in front of the computer waiting to be patted on the head, which would be more likely to happen if he hadn't ripped the lounge and computer room carpets up just a few minutes ago.

I am struggling with paedophilia at the moment; not personally, more in a dealing with the concept of the written fiction sort of way. Circumstances have arisen where I am pretty much required to come to some conclusions and the only one I've reached so far is that I don't really want to read any (more) of it.

It is an interesting exercise in being on the other side of the "yes, it's well written and intelligent and I can see where you're coming from but I really don't want to read it because I am so much not enjoying it" conversation and has enabled me to have a little more empathy for you annoying sods out there who are still firmly refusing to read Invictus. Although, as you can see, not that much.

Monday, January 12, 2009

 

Bleaugh

Specialist he say something musculo-skeletal and probably due to degeneration of the spine. The prospects of improvement seem a little on the low side and there is precisely nothing they can do about it. Keep active and avoid things that hurt (that will be cars, trains, computer desks, game tables, bicycles, kayaks and anything else that requires an angle of less than about 60 degrees between legs and torso, plus too much walking around.)

And the weight loss is probably psychological, which I can believe. Back to my poor shrink with that one.

Not as bad news as it could be but not particularly cheerful. I will be hoping that it just gets better, as these things sometimes do, and in the meantime work on getting set up for working at home properly.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

 

I can draw my own conclusions, thank you

Wusses.

I'm off to buy a fishtank today. It went like this;

Can we have a fantastically expensive HD LCD TV? It will create lots of space in the living room

No
No
No

Oh look, I'm not dying and just a little bit high. What the hell, yes.

That frees up an alcove. We could put a new fishtank in there, get rid of the old one and have lots of new space in the games room (as well as fish that can actually be observed regularly and a tank small enough that I can actually maintain it regularly without the whole water butt thing.)

And while we're at it, there will be more space by the window. What we really need is another sofa so that people need only cuddle up to guests when they want to and we are not continually moving cats in order to sit down.

Are we furniture shopping then? Son wants a new futon mattress because his smells of cat quite strongly.

And if we have space in the games room, the junk can come down from Son's room and he'll have room for a wardrobe. Which is more luxury than a person who overslept and missed one of his real proper actual AS level exams yesterday really deserves.

That will be the rest of the savings for real emergencies which are absolutely not to be spent on anything else gone. I think I'm spending our way out of recession singlehanded. So far we have removed the horrible tiles in the fireplace and the wood behind them, only to find a mess of brickwork and old back boiler, so the plan is to cover it all up again and stick the TV on the front. There have been long and so far fruitless discussions about what happens to all the myriad silver boxes sitting under the TV which are not conveniently flat (or at least not in the right dimension. I wonder if one could stick them all on end?)

Stomach is feeling rather better. Appetite is occasionally surfacing a bit- I had really nice sausage and black pudding on toast the other day but yesterday ate a small roll and some rich tea biscuits in total. Weight loss barely perceptible. I went for a many mile walk along the frozen canal last night- one of the few advantages to living next to a city is that when it's vaguely foggy it never gets dark enough to need a torch. Difficult to judge the depth of the mud though. I saw some sleepy ducks and heard a barn owl but otherwise encountered neither man nor beast.

Right. Off to do some of the sorely neglected washing and tidying. Getting out of writing mode is proving extremely difficult. I've done some real work though, which is gratifying if not nearly as compelling.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

 

Invictus

The second draft is complete- I could carry on reading through and changing a couple of words in each chapter forever but I think this is probably a sensible place to stop.

If by any remote chance anyone wants to read it just let me have an email address and I will send (zipped .rtf by default but alternatives no doubt available).

It's a bit odd, and rather full of violence, sex and swearing. I'm rather baffled by it, to be honest, but very fond of it as well. I have no idea what anyone else might make of it at all.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

 

So here we are again

Apparently some people still have an irrational and dare one say slightly elitist objection to Facebook so I have been told to blog more.

Things.
1) Got lots of sleep and pain has gone away for a bit so I'm in a good mood. Even managed some breakfast (it being lunchtime. I can eat at lunchtime better than the rest of the day.)
2) B-in-l kindly presented Battlestar Galactica (the boardgame) to the family so I have to do some rule learning.
3) Matt Smith played Jim in Ruby in the Smoke better than Pullman wrote him, which has to be a good sign. And he's less pretty than Tennant which is also probably good. I'm undistressed.
4) Second draft of book probably between 2 and 4 weeks, at which point I have to let someone read it.
5) Given how much of New Year I spend on codeine, I think getting back to work is still a way away. Which at least means the book can get finished.
6) Still nothing from the hospital. Waiting for the results of a CT scan on the 12/12. Not very impressed.
7) New Year was extremely good. So was Christmas, bringing as it did both Llama Duck and a Darth Vader lightsaber.
8) There is an increasingly strong smell in this room which means that I should leave the Mac and search for the kitten indiscretions.
9) I rather enjoyed the Christmas Special. No, scrap that. I definitely enjoyed the Christmas Special.
10) I still have Nick's pyjama bottoms.
11) When someone changes their Facebook status from "married" to "its complicated" I have no idea whether etiquette allows one to send a polite query or not.

That will do. There may be longer and more coherent thoughts in due course, but at the moment that bit of my brain is still juggling scenes and thinking about Dominion decks, often simultaneously.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?