scribbling damselfly

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.

Some little while ago (by which I mean I forget precisely when), my cousin travelled to Africa, and spent some time volunteering at an orphanage. These are two of my absolute favourite photos of her time helping out at the Kilimani Nursery.

Is it the shorts? Is it the single shoe? Is it the way he has his hands folded? Or is it the sublime expression on his face?

I utterly adore this image

These are the sorts of photos which make me spend all my money on travelling, sooner or later.

I'm feeling somewhat whimsical and philosophical this morning, so, a discussion question: love at first sight — does it exist?

Me, like all good fence-sitters, I can't quite decide — but if pressed I would have to say nope, it's wishful thinking and retrospective and hindsight.

I've certainly seen and experienced "like at first sight" (which is no small thing, I think), and there are people I've met who became family in that very first instant, even if I didn't always know it at the time. (I can be inattentive at the best of times. It's a feature, I tell you, not a flaw.)

Discuss, muse, theorise… basically have at it. Challenge me. Give me stuffs to ponder.

Or, alternatively, my cousin is on the look-out for stories of when you were away from home (100-200 words, moral or lesson optional). So if you find the concept of love at first sight far too boring, tell me one of your travel stories. Bonus points for those who can combine the two! (And by bonus points I mean, er, you win nothing particular.)

It turns out that hiking in high altitude actually does expand your capacity. I know, shocking news, isn't it? In a strange twist of fate that had most everyone I know gaping at me, I left the car at home and walked to work. In the end it only took ten minutes longer than driving, because driving involves three sets of traffic lights (or more precisely two sets of traffic lights, one of them twice) and hunting for a park and walking back, all of which makes it a highly inefficient process. Except when raining. I strongly suspect my new-found athleticism will not extend to rainy days, and not just because I cannot arrive at work looking like a drowned rat.

In other news, I am already planning my next trip OS (I'm told by reliable, if not always reputable, sources it's the only real cure for post-travel funk). So far I'm thinking the Inca Trail, but Mongolia is high on the list as well. What say you?

If money were no object, what would be at the top of your list?

I date my friendship with J from the moment I pointed out this sign, pinned to the wall of the bank in Bhutan's national capital, Thimphu:¹

Some things, you simply have to share, after all.

And in a country decorated extensively by renderings, in paint and wood, of male genitalia… well, there's simply no way to ignore the phrase's many meanings.

1. Please forgive the poor quality of the photo. I was laughing too hard to keep my hands steady and had the flash turned off in an attempt to be discreet.

Oy vey. Whose grand idea was it to start back in on the wordcount the same day I started back at the dayjob?

If you peer into the burning lake, you may be able to see the pinnacle of the drowned temple, which is what you see the tour guide and driver doing here:

I can't put my finger on precisely why, but I absolutely love this picture.

Spent today attempting to knock out something approaching an outline for the next novel, since the draft and revision process of Pledged was grisly enough to make me swear I would never write a novel without an outline again.

Sadly, my outlining skills are rusty to non-existent, and so far all I have are random questions and mysterious notes to myself. Including the notation Pterodactyl!, which I scrawled to myself while away. Perhaps it was the thin mountain air, perhaps it was J, whose suggestions for my plots rank up there with Tess's or Spawn's for shock and amusement value, perhaps it was a combination of both with a touch of sleep-deprivation thrown in for good measure.

Either way, don't blame me if pterodactyls turn up in this book.

Ah, the post-travel funk. I knew it would hit sooner or later. A vague but nagging ache from the freckle biopsy today suddenly has me feeling vicious and uncharitable.

Where are my mountains? Where are my Himalayan children and my stray dogs cheerfully escorting me on my way?

This is a snap of the main street of Paro (which is not the capital of Bhutan, but does sport the country's only airport). The dogs of Bhutan are an interesting breed — they all have stiff, brushy tails which curl over at the top. They are, one and all, strays. Given the rabies problem in the country, they are probably all infected. But they're cheeful little sods, with very little aggression, and they take their escort duties very seriously, picking up passersby and walking them wherever they should wish to wander. We picked up one dog on the first morning of our trek, a second dog that night, and no less than five dogs on the second evening. By the end of the trek I think we had more dogs than people.

The other thing they take seriously is their night-time barking competitions. The dogs organise themselves in packs, and send up a rousing chorus looooong into the night. After that kind of exertion, sleeping during the day is an absolute necessity. But in a median strip…?

I appear to have returned home ravenous.

It's true that I ate three square meals a day while away, and I did not shirk on the oily or fatty substances (hey, it gets cold over that way, and we had a lot of walking to do! Although I did draw the line at eating potato-sized chunks of pure pork fat with no actual meat attached), but it only took a day or so for my travelmates to start referring to small portions as "Deb-sized", and I managed to lose weight in the process. Yet here I am, and I cannot seem to stuff enough down my throat.

I met these three boys beside a soccer field in Jakar, Bumthang. They were part of the gang of boys who taught me how to play marbles using a technique which is quite possibly a fast-track to carpal tunnel syndrome, and who explained to me that any slope without ice on it was "not very high, after all."

Home again, and after the Himalayan foothills everything seems so very … flat. Quite literally.

While I was away, I wrote a scant few paragraphs on a short story, and nothing more. Instead, I concentrated on stopping my head from spinning and sliding around inside my skull in the thin mountain air. I received a proposal from an eleven year old boy (he's going to be a doctor when he grows up); trekked through the Black Mountains accompanied by an ever-growing pack of friendly stray dogs, ponies with bells, and a horseman in a red cap mad to have his photo taken at every opportunity; played marbles with Bhutanese schoolboys¹; taught a pack of children how to say "Hello'ello'ello!" and how to play Giant's Treasure; saw more penises painted on the walls of buildings than I could count; saw yak in the wild, and takin in a reserve; helped string some prayer flags across a mountain pass; wore a kira (and subsequently figured out why the Bhutanese women don't gain weight — the belts on those things are close to corsetry); climbed up and down a multitude of stairways which shiphands might look at as being too bloody steep, thank you very much; rode a pony up to the mind-boggling Tiger's Nest monastery; choked on various incarnations of ema-datse — and did I mention hiked in the Himalayan foothills?

The only reason I didn't hold the entire group up was because a more experienced hiker very kindly came down with altitude sickness to slow our pace for me.

1. badly — their technique is tricky!