The nameless one

Currently pondering cat names as this little cutie came home with me this morning.



After all the various cat dramas, it's lovely to finally have another feline member of the household. So far orange cat doesn't seem too fussed by strange cat smells or noises coming from the bathroom and the new girl seems pretty relaxed (if not outright keen to explore beyond her current bathroom hangout). So hopefully they're going to be good friends eventually.

The new girl is teeny (she's about 9-11 months old but nowhere near as big as Tabasco and he's not a huge cat) and smoochy and playful. She's an RSPCA cat and has already had a litter just after she came into the shelter (far too young...please desex your pets!)

Looks like I'll be having a fairly quiet week at home mostly while we integrate the household. Good time to write and spin and tackle the pile of tax paperwork looking at me balefully from the kitchen table.

Merry Christmas

I feel like I should write an inspiring Christmas post but it's been a long and tiring year in some ways and I had sad news re my expected kitten (the upshot of which is that he won't be my kitten and I'll be looking elsewhere for another kitten/cat next week) this week and the orange cat has had a few extra yowly nights because it's been cold and I'm kind of just plain tired.

So I will keep things simple and just wish everyone a lovely, relaxing, safe holiday season!

May you have loved ones and happiness, good food and drink, naps and belly laughs, hugs and good times, inspiration and passion and the odd dream coming true! 2011 onwards and upwards we come!

Finishing

The revisions are done! Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in the land. Or, alternatively, Numfar do the dance of joy!

Finishing a book is always a very very good feeling, no matter what draft it is. (For the record, we're on draft 5 of Shadow Kin, so far. Hopefully that number won't go much higher and there will only be line edits, copy edits and galleys to go.)

So hopefully that good feeling will carry me through fighting the crowds to do some Christmas shopping this morning! Then there will be rescuing of my house from it's current revision in full swing way too messy status!

Then I have to haul my brain back (or forward?) to Book 3. Whose hero is going to be lots of fun (In theory...you never quite know what they're going to do once they're given free rein on blank pages belonging to them!)

But for now I shall just bask in being done, done, done!

Gadgeting

I'm a light sleeper. Light sleeping and the orange cat are not always the best combination (to be honest, they're not EVER the best combination it's a bit worse lately as he's still being "I'm lonely" yowly more than usual lately).

Anyway, to combat this, I've been falling asleep with my iPod and headphones listening to audiobooks (which necessitates much remembering of where one actually was up to when one lies down as generally I fall asleep after just a few minutes and wake up hours later in the book lol), or music or some BrainSync tracks. Now, I have mutant ears and cannot wear ear buds, as they fall out as soon as I breathe or even think about moving, so I've got fairly slim old fashioned band over the top of the head head phones but even with my memory foam pillow, they're still not the greatest things to sleep in (not to mention moving around while sleeping is shredding the foam covers like nothing on earth).

So today, when an ad for SleepPhones popped up somewhere I was randomly surfing on the web, I thought "WANT!" and ordered some. And now I'm also lusting after the summer RunPhones version as they might be a bit cooler for summer sleeping plus good for exercising without headphones falling off (plus I tend to wear a headband anyway on the elliptical, so why not combine the two?). But I shall wait and see what I think of the SleepPhones first. But if anyone else out there is like me and likes to drown out the night noises (I'm thinking these will be good for hotel rooms too) I thought you might like to know about them.

I shall report back once they've arrived. US types can by them at ThinkGeek but TG has pretty expensive OS shipping, so for me, buying them direct from the website was cheaper (only $5 or so shipping). I wish more US sites would offer a basic shipping offer. Lots of us would be happy to wear the slower times delivery times and increased risk of something going astray, I'm sure vs being asked to pay more than the cost of the item in shipping as seems to happen quite a bit!

Things I'm lusting after...December edition

While I'm in revision and pre-Christmas work craziness...a selection of the desirable things whirring around my brain:

1. More hours in the day (for writing, for spinning, for knitting, for sleeping, for...everything really)
2. Fibre (of the spinning kind)
3. A DSLR camera
4. For my kitten to arrive (two and a bit weeks left in kitten countdown)
5. Summer clothes (no idea what I wore last summer because there is NOTHING in my wardrobe)
6. A gardener to transform the backyard
7. A portable airconditioner
8. The new teeny mac book air (so pretty, so far down the list of things I need)
9. To be past the point in revisions where I have no idea if the book is any good at all any more
10. For Melbourne to decide what season it might be
11. For everyone to be safe and happy and relaxed for the holidays
12. For the necessary winning lottery tickets and magical powers for all of the above to come true!

November contest winner

Sorry, this is a bit late but the winner of the November contest is Tez Miller, so Tez, email me and I'll get the book out to you!

Given that December is the month of much craziness, not to mention revision finishing, which may yet equal not a lot of blogging, I'm going to skip the contest this month and bring it back in January, so stay tuned in 2011.

A study in orange

We were talking about bucket lists/life lists at my crit group yesterday, which got me thinking about some of the things I want to do. Learn more about photography is one of them (along with buy a digital SLR). But given I've just paid for cat palaces and a new spinning wheel, the camera yen has to wait. I do have both a point and shoot canon and a fancier does more stuff without being an SLR Panasonic Lumix camera. The Canon and the iPhone tend to get reached for because they're either handy or little. The Panasonic does take better shots than the Canon but it eats its battery really fast plus the battery tends to die if you leave it out of use for a while. (to which I am applying the brilliant solution of buying some extra batteries!). But I shall have to pull it out and play with it some more to satisfy the photography yen for now.

Today, for a giggle, I bought the iPhone Hipstamatic app which makes your photos look like old film camera photos from the seventies etc which is fun.

So today I played around with that, and the recharged Panasonic and the orange cat being the nearest subject, I present...a study in felinus orangus.

First, felinus orangus hipster







And second, felinus orangus more really toastus these days, in close up









There were lots of other things on my list...the question is how does one get the time and/or money to do some of them??? Who's got something they'd love to learn/try/take up?