scribbling damselfly

There's a new Doctor in town, LiveJournal is facing some kind of apocalypse, a hesitant missionary knocked on my door last night to tell me about God but actually excused himself for interrupting my dinner and departed without my needing to shoo him away (and I wasn't even wearing my scary face!), I've been spending far too much of my time tracking down freeware for Mac OS X as part of the switch, and my part of Australia seems to be melting.

I think that about sums it up.

Oh, yes, and I've been reading through Tessa's 7 Wishes stories. Have you read them? I don't know that anyone who reads my blog doesn't already read Tess's, but on the off-chance you missed these wondrous little tales, do yourself a favour. Bookmark that table of contents, and hie thee hence when you're feeling in the need of some whimsy. It's like reading T.S. Eliot, if Eliot were the kind of writer who found the wonder in the world instead of the despair.

Pledged is duly rechapterised, and I'm celebrating by … starting another project straight away.

Yeah, it's not particularly smart, there's this little thing called downtime which I hear is really effective in guarding against burnout… but this project (untitled, like all my new projects, which makes blogging about them tricksome at best) is a short story, and contracted, so I kinda hafta start it now. If I want to, you know, eat. No biggie.

I also have one (contracted) novel outline, one short story collection critique, and one (uncontracted) (for now) novel outline that needs doing sooner rather than later. It's a good thing I don't have a dayjob at the moment. When I quit the baby mines, everyone was saying things like, "Oh, wow! Two months off work. Think of all the sleeping in you'll be able to do!" I always smiled and nodded, but in my head I was replying, "Actually, I was thinking if I got up early every day, I'd be able to squeeze in even more writing!"

It's a sickness. Really.

Here, to distract you, have some links:

• National Geographic's Best News Photos of 2008
• National Geographic's Best Science Stories — which includes real Rodents Of Unusual Size
• The Year's Weirdest Animals — and people ask writers where they get their ideas

I keep losing days. Today is Monday, apparently, but I'm pretty sure yesterday was Saturday. This means I'm either going insane, becoming ever more inattentive, Sunday was totally and utterly exactly the same as Saturday and thus they blurred into the one day in my memory… or Sunday just vanished out the calendar.

I'm betting on the last one. For sure.

My inattentiveness and the sameness of my days would have nothing to do with the deathmarch status of the revisions, nosiree, why do you ask?

In other truly momentous news, yesterday (er, Saturday?), Spawn greeted Brutus with the phrase "Hey, Brutus!"¹

Wiktory! My work here is done.

1. For those who are curious, yes, I do actually call them Spawn and Brutus in person as well as on the blog, although expediency sometimes forces me to revert to their real christened names instead. Not often, though.

"Has Apple bought the bloody Greek pantheon now?" (Me)

"I'm only hanging out with you so your girlfriend thinks you're a child person. You owe me." (From an 8yo)

"Meow likes ball!" (No prizes for guessing that one was Spawn. She used to call the cats by their name, but would always get them mixed up. She now refers to the cats individually and collectively as Meow. Much simpler.)

"I did warn you that you might find an Apple frustrating."

The reformat has hit a snag. Of the "machine won't boot at all any more" variety. Er…oops?

It was all going so well, until I made the apparently foolish mistake of updating the system drivers, as microsoft requested. I should have known better, eh? I didn't realise it was possible to achieve the blue screen of death on a fresh, uncorrupted install. Not only did I achieve the blue screen of death, I've taken it a step further and trapped the desktop in a pre-boot failing cycle. I suspect this is because XP triggered an automatic restart after installing one driver, not quite realising it had simultaneously moved on to installing the next driver and wasn't finished that yet.

So I have admitted defeat: a new computer it is.

And because I don't want to fight with Microsoft any more (Vista? No thanks!), and because I don't quite trust myself with Linux yet (I'd probably spend all my time tweaking system configurations instead of, you know, writing)… there is a brand new MacBook on her way to me.

My chronic inability to make a swift (or any) decision continues apace, so no MacBook yet. Tune in tomorrow for more procrastination!

Today I posted the first couple of books for the competition winners, and the post office staff were very excited to realise they knew someone who had written a book. They were much LESS excited to realise I had secured a proper publishing deal and the books would be available in regular book stores. Apparently self-publishing, according to my local post office staff, is much, much harder and shows true grit and artistic dedication.

Also, and this is truly momentous news, today marks the start of the last week at the baby mines. Three shifts to go, people!

I'm nose-deep in the final stretch of the current round of edits¹ on Pledged, and it's a good thing that my A&U sent me my author's copies of Shdadow Queen because I kid you not, I can't remember the story. Oh, I know the gist, but the details, the details are killing me. I have no idea which of the myriad details of the myriad versions made it into the final published copy. Is this normal? It's probably normal. Let's at least all pretend it's normal.

In other news, my listening history on Last.FM is really taking a beating now that I can't have iTunes running. Plus, it's really quiet-like, and hard to concentrate. Also, and here's a sign of just how much I'd come to rely on iTunes for my music, I'm currently not coping with the fact that my CD player only plays one CD at a time. That's only 50-70 minutes of music, and then I have to physically get up and change the CD. Oh, the humanity!

1. For those keeping track at home, or attempting to, this would be what I call the gamma draft, or the draft which, when completed, can be shown to my editor

What is it about cafes? Are they pathologically incapable of hiring staff who can spell? I've stopped counting the crimes against apostrophes (its/it's usually takes a real beating in a cafe menu), but this one was new to me:

do you think perhaps they meant renowned? because being renowned is very different from being known, forgotten, then re-known

It's time for that always fun not-quite-a-meme, analysing the search terms that brought people to the site.

STOP 0×0000007e (or some variant thereof)

Ah, the dreaded blue screen of death. Sorry, people, I can't help you on this one, other than to say I share your pain. This is the BSoD error I'm getting lately, but I haven't figured out the source yet. Initially I suspected iTunes, since it started happening shortly after the installation of iTunes 8, but a rollback to iTunes 7 hasn't fixed the problem. The Microsoft website tells me it has something to do with an unhandled thread, and the second parameter should tell me everything. (It doesn't. YMMV.)

i scoff at myself

Welcome to my world. I do this regularly. I do not actually advise this practice too often, however; it can quickly spiral out of all control. Apparently I'm not as funny as I think.

chippolatas

How this got you to my website, I truly don't know. I don't even know what chippolatas are. Who talked about chippolatas on my blog?

parts of a damselfly

You won't find many scientific descriptions of damselfly anatomy round these parts, I'm sorry. I'd suggest a more specific search term, actually: <em>damselfly anatomy</em> might get you what you want.

marxist superhero

Oh yes, that's me. Truly. (Okay, tongue firmly in cheek, yes. Still.)

what is spider season in australia?

Ha! The answer to this, my friends, is ALL YEAR LONG. Doesn't matter what time of year, there's a spider in Australia that's active, and dangerous. That's the way we roll round these parts.

The slightly more complicated answer is that in mating season, some spiders become a little more nomadic, and thus a lot more common — funnel webs in particular, which I'm guessing is what led you here. White tails aren't common where I am, but they're another one to keep an eye on, although there are rumours that it's not actually the white tail causing all those necrotic wounds, it just happens to be blamed for them. Don't know. The trick is not to get bitten at all.

The even more complicated answer is that that enormous spider in your house which looks like it could chew your leg off while you're asleep is only a huntsman and really isn't interested in you so much as a nice, dry place out of the rain. It's the teeny ones you need to worry about. And the funnel webs.

how to add up hours

No idea how this got you here, but it's something the girls at work have an awful lot of trouble with. I'm guessing it's something to do with the mental jag between operating in base-six instead of base-ten.

novels set in bhutan

There's not so many of these, at least not that I know of. There's "A Stray Dog", a story about a stray dog in Bhutan from the dog's point of view, and there's "A Baby In A Backpack To Bhutan".

There's also a movie, called "Travellers & Magicians", which is not only set in Bhutan but is made by the Bhutanese — I can highly recommend that.

Yesterday, I'm driving home, and the mobile rings. Being responsible, I pulled over to the side of the road before attempting to answer it, by which time the phone had stopped ringing.

And while I'm busy with the phone, the passenger door opens, and I look up to see a little old lady clambering into the car.

Fortunately, my life experiences to date have equipped me with the perfect skill for dealing with this particular circumstance. I pasted on a smile and, feeling very Arthur Dent, managed to greet her with, "Er…hello?"

"You're early," she replied cheerfully. "And you're driving a different car."

"Ah. In fact, ma'am, I think I'm not the person you're waiting for," I suggested.

She peered at me, blinked, and said, "Oh! Oh, no, you're not!"

After which she promptly started clambering (in the slow and hesitant mannerism of the old and frail) out of the car.