I do not like the alarm going off at 7am (although this morning I woke up at 6:49), but I do very much like being up in the morning and getting exercise. Dang nab it. :)

I got 1400 words before lunch and was very pleased with myself. Then I came back from lunch, sat down to start the next scene, and realized I had no idea what to do with it. A look at the synopsis suggested I’d completely screwed up the scene I’d written before lunch, so I had to throw out half of what I’d written and do it all over. *sigh* So I wrote about 3K today, only 2K of which counted. Argh. (On the other hand, at least I noticed after about six pages, instead of sixty, which would have been much, *much* worse.)

I keep thinking I have things to blog about, and then forgetting whatever the topic was when I sit down to actually blog. Actually now that I think about it, that happens a lot when I’m writing a book, doesn’t it?

The Road Home: miles to Isengard: 13.4
ytd km swum: 49.5
ytd wordcount: 272,000

(x-posted from the essential kit)

So, yeah, that's about where I am.

I woke up at like... 4:30 this morning trying to figure out how to best fit Morla's new tank into my new living room because the tank he needs (turtles get bigger and need stupidly expensive tanks when they do) doesn't fit in the place I wanted to put it and I need to figure out how to build him a new basking area in this larger tank because the set up I had before is /not/ going to cut it.

I'm thinking either rocks or paving stones might work.

And let me tell you, I had to buy a dolly to get the freaking tank into the house. It is heavy and I will be incapable of getting it up on the stand by myself, but that doesn't matter because I don't know where I want to put it yet. *flail*

Yes, I am about to the point where I think everything sucks and nothing will work and I hate the world. Which is, usually, just before everything workds out in the end. My room, except for clothes and bedding, is packed. The bathroom, except for things we're using, is packed. The kitchen.... Well. Yeah. That needs to be packed.

To do list:
- Decide where the turtle tank goes
- Set up turtle tank
- Move Morla
- Move information off of old desk tops onto storage, figure out what to do with old desktops
- Pack
- Pack
- Pack
- Pack
- Make sure cleaning service is set up to come and clean the old place
- Make sure Goodwill or who ever is coming to pick up the things we're donating. (Two fish tanks, a loveseat, two bags of my clothing, a clock radio, ice cream maker?) If anyone wants to take these things off our hands, speak up now and show up some time this week to take it away.
- Pack
- Pack
- Christmas
- Work On Call
- Movers come
- Work
- Clean Old Place
- Install Cable, TV and Fridge and Washer/Dryer

End of Moving Stress

Ooooo!

@BlueLightCinema: A few new movies coming on Friday! Fantastic Mr. Fox, Ninja Assassin, and The Men Who Stare at Goats www.bluelightcinemas.com for details!

I wanna see Ninja Assassin. :) And I've heard Fantastic Mr. Fox is better than it has any right to be.
 

That was fun.

Last night, instead of having a Smorgaschord rehearsal, Mia invited us over for an evening of Beatles Rock Band. I hadn't played any of those games before, but recognized the whole Dance Dance Revolution kind of game play. The singing was much too easy, and it didn't really matter whether you got the notes or the words right. But the drumming, ah, there was the fun and challenge. I whammed on the pads, stomped the foot pedal, and even hit some of the beats properly. Earlier that afternoon, I'd been feeling a bit off, but hanging out with friends and playing silly games drove all the icky feelings away.

Thanks, Mia, Jim, and Valerie, for hosting a fine evening's play.

She's out of theatre, and my sister has spoken to her.

It's possibly not helped things that she (my Mum, not my sister Dorcas) went off this morning without her (Dorcas, not my Mum), having arranged a lift with a neighbour. When Dorcas heard the stair lift going this morning (the house is upside down, with Mum's bedroom on the lower floor, the front door is on the upper floor), she threw her clothes on, only to discover that Mum had scarpered before she finished getting dressed.

Let's hope this will help with both the fainting and the recent strong tendency to forget things almost immediately.

Last night I went home and changed, then Laura and I drove out to the airport. We waited for about fifteen minutes at the security gate before Ben arrived, bundled in his heavy green coat and wearing a grin that split his face. He's taller now - taller than me, anyway - and still skinny as a rail.

We stopped at Georgie Porgies to pick up dinner, then watched the new Star Trek movie while we ate. After that we got Ben settled in and went to bed while he did stuff in the living room with his laptop. And I think he went to bed before our lights were off.

We have no evening plans for the rest of the week. I'm going to try to get out a few hours early tomorrow, so we should have a nice long relaxing Christmas and Ben's birthday around the house.

Whee!

Abandoned cars this morning in Basingstoke
From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/6860344/Transport-chaos-blizzards-bring-Britain-to-standstill-as-more-snow-on-way.html:

People living in the Home Counties, Wiltshire, the Chilterns and the Cotswolds have been warned to expect a blanket of fresh snow this morning, with severe weather warnings in place across Wales, the Midlands, and the east and south of England,

"With these levels of snow its really very difficult to keep routes open and it's likely that motorways will be forced to close some lanes," said a Met Office spokesman.

"It's going to be a tough drive to work, and just as bad for people using public transport."

Forecasters fear that their original prediction of one or two inches of snow last night may have been an underestimate, and warned that much of the South East may see more than four inches.

Temperatures could drop to as low as 21F (-6C) in some parts of the country, the Met Office said.

Drivers tried to navigate through snow in Alexandria, Va.
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/21/AR2009122100558.html:

Millions of East Coast commuters returned to work Monday over slick roads and icy sidewalks after a weekend winter storm dropped record snowfall, interrupted holiday shopping and stranded travelers.

The storm yielded record snowfall totals at several locations. The 16 inches recorded Saturday at Reagan National Airport outside Washington was the most ever for a December day. Philadelphia, which recorded 23.2 inches, had its second-largest snowfall since it began keeping records in 1884.

Snow brings high-tech Dutch to their knees
From http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/europe-disrupted-snow:

In Amsterdam, some people were using skis to get around this weekend, children had gone to the attic to get their sledges and snowmen popped up throughout the Netherlands. The onset of winter brought with it fun and lots of beautiful views. However, between 10 and 23 centimetres of snow fell throughout the country and this was enough to disrupt daily life.

The whole of Europe has been hit by the worst snow for four years. Spain especially has been surprised by unusually thick snow and has issued a warning about severe cold. The weather is not just affecting mountainous and northern Europe. A temperature of –36.4º Celsius was recorded in the German Alps on Sunday, but central Italy was not much warmer at –25º.

I was surprised to receive this distressing message just now, ostensibly from one of my cousins:

( Read more... )

There are numerous clues here to indicate that the message is a fake, the first being that it was sent to me at all - if one of my Irish cousins was really stuck in Manchester, there are at least a dozen other mutual relatives whom it would be more sensible to contact than me. Note also the complete lack of corroborating details (name of hotel, identification of embassy, salutation of recipient). Also my cousin is, as far as I know, unlikely to need to make a research trip to Manchester.

Assuming that my cousin's email address has been hacked, it would be rather pointless to reply to the scam artist - or are these emails simply sent as harassment, without the expectation of pecuniary gain? I have alerted my aunt and my cousin's sister, since they all live in the same town, and suggested that the Gardai also be alerted. Though I guess there is a good chance that the hacker lives a long way outside their jurisdiction.

Edited to add [ten hours later, sorry, I've been busy] the message originated from 41.217.65.4 which is an IP address registered to Zoom Mobile, a telcom company in, surprise surprise, Nigeria.

My mother is going into hospital today for an operation. She's having a pacemaker fitted, and we're hoping it will address the tendency to faint that she's recently had.

( My twitters for the day )
 

Those of you who know about my completed but unpublished novels will know I’ve got Queen of Souls, a Persephone and Hades story on the queue to be edited into queryable shape. So it should surprise none of you that I’m quite interested in checking out Frayed Tapestry, by my fellow Drollerie author Imogen Howson. In fact, as the cool kids like to say, her post for this month’s Drollerie Blog Tour, on the topic of dangerous writing, is Relevant to My Interests indeed.

Check it out, folks! Here’s what Imogen’s got to say.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

I really need to get a new camera -- I used it when I was at the White House Friday and feel like I'm finally fed up with the quality of pictures that it takes and the lag time that it takes between taking one shot and being able to take the next shot. And it still makes a funny noise when the lens comes out when you turn it on. It's just frustrating to use and makes me not want to use it. It was an alright little camera for a while, but now it's just annoying.

I've been reading various reports and things. I think I'm going to get a Canon PowerShot, either an SD1100 or S90. The line has gotten good reviews from both the NYT reviewer (it's one of three products he liked enough to buy for his family in 2009) and Consumer Reports. Possibly, may go with the SD1200 IS because it's (theoretically) a later model and may be easier to find.

Am waiting until after Christmas, though, because I *hate* going in to the stores this time of year, even if I could make it to the stores today, and there isn't really time tomorrow, and I leave Wednesday.

On this, the darkest day of the year, I offer you hope.

After all, you could be in Barrow fending off an invasion of Vampires for another half a month. (*weeps at the errors in that movie*)

But most of all, I want to remind you guys that you rock. If you're reading this, you have my gratitude. If you've ever commented, you have my undying love. You are a gathering of massively talented, big-hearted, fabulous-looking people who deserve every good thing that has ever happened to you, and I hope that the return of the sunlight brings you prosperity, success and love beyond your wildest dreams.

I hope that your holidays of choice are guilt-free and decadent, filled with the people who mean the most to you.

Thank you for the cards and virtual cookies! I have failed again to get Christmas cards out, but know that you are in my thoughts and forgive me my laziness.

If there is snow where you are, my suggestion to you is to go start a snowball fight with strangers and then have hot chocolate with candy canes.

And for the love of heaven, don't try to go shopping.

(I tried, yesterday, and barely made it home with all my limbs attached...)

PS: If you're in the Southern hemisphere, this still all applies. Except for the vampires.

supply captain is having a 20% off sale on everything thru 12/30. they've got pretty good prices on their paracord anyways, so if you're looking to stock up on 1000' rolls of neon yellow or whatever, you might want to check it out.

i'm still trying to figure out if i need a few 100' hanks, so i'm not stepping up yet to try and share shipping costs for local folks.

Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

Today I want to talk about PDF pricing, after seeing my friend Matt react poorly to the pricing of the recently released Dr. Who RPG PDF. (Don’t take this post as an attempt to jump on Cubicle 7’s case. As I’ve said before, I like the guys at Cubicle 7, and there are things I like about another game of theirs – Starblazer Adventures — that I’ve talked about before on Deadly Fredly. Heck, I was almost a part of the Dr. Who RPG project, and helped with their initial pitch to the BBC, but ducked out early on due to other time demands. This is a convenient and recent example, is all.)

PDF pricing with this product in particular is an interestingly sticky one. The physical product is going to manifest as a boxed set, so the PDF can’t bring along any physical components for the ride (though the only hint as to what those comprise is listed as “tokens” on the PDF listing). So things are already a little off the usual track here. Based on the markdown indicated on DriveThru, I’d surmise that the boxed set comes in at $60, and the PDF is showing as $35. That’s about 58% of the physical price for the PDF. Looking at Cubicle 7’s other “straight up gaming book” products, since DWRPG is their only boxed set so far, it looks like they trend towards pricing their PDFs as 70% of the cover price, so one could surmise that the math here is $60 = $50 of books (there are three in the box looks like) + $10 components (the box itself, the tokens), and thus 70% of $50 = $35.

For Matt, $35 is an abnormally high price to pay for a PDF, at least in this case. It’s a price he is deciding not to pay, at least at this time. I think Matt’s perceptions here match my own as a consumer, so I want to dig into that, and then talk about how my perceptions as a consumer affect the pricing decisions I make as a publisher.

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend was relaxing. No rushing around from place to place, no frantic dashing through the sales to find just the right thing and acquire it before greedy shoppers stole it away. We watched some Stargate on Friday night, I did shopping and ran errands on Saturday (including acquiring a pretty decent Christmas present for Ben, which I've been working on for a month and finally all came together), then spent the evening watching Veronica Mars. Sunday was a little more of the same, including cleaning and preparing for Ben's arrival. Laura wasn't feeling well, so I went to see Cold with Glenn and Rachel and then joined them for dinner. And now it's Monday.

Cold was darkly humorous and only a touch depressing; it's the funniest show I've seen at DreamTheatre, though I wouldn't necessarily call it a comedy. (The video is amusing, and - if you've seen the show - tells you a bit about the characters.) I really enjoyed it. They also had their new season listed, which includes some one-acts, three more greek tragedies, and some German folktales. I'll tell you, though, if I had stayed in theater in Chicago this is a troupe I would have liked to get involved with.

Ben is on his way back to Milwaukee, though he's trapped in Toronto for eight hours or so. (He caught his flight in Halifax, but the departure was delayed and customs slowed him down. So he missed his connecting flight.) We'll get him tonight instead of this morning, which will probably work out fine. Though then I have to decide if I'm going to fight or not...

We have no real plans for any other evening this week. Of course, Ben's birthday (and Christmas Eve) are the 24th, and Christmas Day is the 25th. So those days will be spent at home. Otherwise, who knows.

Right. Conference call coming up. Off to work!

thinks to do:

- go to the butcher for a roast beast
- get stuff to make marshmallow creme (eggs, corn syrup…)
- write one trillion words (or at least 2500)
- maybe bake something nice
- try to remember the other things I’m forgetting, which are myriad
- like wrapping some presents
- and putting the ones we’re not wrapping under the tree
- and probably other stuff

!!! Holy crap! I finished my entire outward-bound journey on the Eowyn Challenge/Walk to Rivendell! That’s 4757 miles! Granted, I’ve been doing that walk since March of 2003, but I’d originally anticipated it would take me until 2011 to finish it (let’s hear it for living in Ireland without a car!). Wow! Hoo hoo, I’m all excited! How cool!

Now to walk back again. :) The road home is only 1625 miles (the road out splits several times as the party breaks up and they all take different paths), and then there’s the journey to Grey Havens, but sheesh, I might be done with the whole Lord of the Rings walk by the end of 2011! What’ll I do /then/? (Bilbo’s journey from THE HOBBIT, probably, but after that I’m going to have to leave Middle Earth and find somewhere else to walk…)

Woo hoo, go me! *does a little dance*!

miles to Minas Tirith: 120
The Road Home: miles to Isengard: 6.1
ytd km swum: 48.5
ytd wordcount: 267,000

(x-posted from the essential kit)

This was pressed on me by the infamous quarsan, and his efforts have been duly rewarded; I really enjoyed it. It is a fairly short novel, told in fragmentary, disjointed style (150 chapters in 135 pages) about the narrator's investigation of the disappearance of the head waiter of his favourite Indian restaurant. He spends a lot of time stuck down a well, in hospital, and musing on the precise nature of the vindaloo, the biryani and other Indian recipes. It is a real classic of surreal style, very funny in places. Interested to note that it was originally published in blog format earlier this year; the hard copy costs €10 and comes from amazon.de among other places.