Too quickly it goes

David Eddings passed away. Sadness.

I can still remember reading Pawn of Prophecy for the first time in high school. Adored it. I'd always liked fantasy but this I really liked. It felt more real than things like Lord of the Rings. There were still exotic names and monsters and magic but the people were cranky and sarcastic and funny and there was some actual romance (well, okay, really just hints in Pawn but still). I can remember waiting impatiently for each new book to come out through the Belgariad and the Mallorean, spending my carefully hoarded pocket money. It took a long time for new books to trickle through to the our local newsagent (the only source of books in town). I still have those books. And the Sparhawk trilogies. And others. I re-read the Belgariad and the Malloreon at least once a year, they've become comfort books even though, now, as a writer myself the experience is a little different.

So I'll say, thank you, Mr. Eddings for many many happy hours of reading lost in your worlds and hopefully wherever you've gone is full of magic.

Dear Mel's brain

When you are all tired and sleepy do not let Mel think she should futz with her blog template because you will make her delete half the code, not notice and then save. When she does notice she will nearly have cardiac arrest. If she has cardiac arrest, things will not be good for you.

Luckily you have your anal side which meant you at least had a relatively recent copy of the template code so she could fix things with some tweaking.

Here endeth the lesson.

PS Mel's brain apologises to anyone whose link has dropped off the sidebars. Let her know and she'll put you back!

A reiteration to the orange cat and the grey cat

As previously discussed - dead mice = ick and gross and ewww and you'd been fed, you feline fiends.

Headless mice do not make mama happy and you are even more too old to be engaging in such behaviour as you were the first time.

Trust me, I will think more highly of your clever catness without the hunting trophies.

Murphy's law

I have been taking my baby steps back into exercise. Walked on the weekend on both days. Went back to pilates on Monday (which was an exercise in 'ow I used to be able to do this much more easily'). Have been eating healthily and stocked up the fridge with good things.

Which of course means it is the perfect time for my fridge to stage a dying swan act. It's was a bit warm a few weeks back so I turned the temp up a little. But then it decided to turn itself into the antarctic and freeze half it's contents. The temp dial wasn't much interested in turning back to regular fridge temps either. So I'd decided it was time for the fridge doctor. Then my safety switch started tripping. By a process of elimination and brilliant deduction we figured it was the fridge. But I was hoping I could nurse it along until Friday when the fridge doctor was coming. Tonight I got home and the safety switch had gone again (though not long before I'd gotten home given everything still seemed quite cold in the fridge). I re-set the switch. It tripped about four times in the next fifteen minutes. At which point I admitted defeat and unplugged the fridge. I prefer for my house not to burn down and for me not to be electrocuted. Call me crazy. So of course, I've just had to throw out everything perishable in my fridge. Gah.

So the fridge gets this because it's only eight years old which is too young to be throwing tantrums:


more animals

Hopefully the fridge doctor will be able to fix whatever is wrong on Friday. A new fridge isn't exactly what I was hoping to buy this month! At least if it was iced up inside like he thought, it should've all melted by then....

Vale

Paul Newman has left us at the age of 83. I remember seeing The Sting and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when I was younger and being pretty taken with both Paul and Robert Redford. And I've liked them both ever since. Paul was a great actor, had gorgeous blue eyes, a long and happy marriage in Hollywood, followed his passions and gave away lots of money to good causes. That's a good life though I'm sad it's over.

Vale Mr Newman.

This about sums it up

more cat pictures

I haz a justifiable cranky cos I came home this morning from errands to find this lying in the road.



Which is approximately one third of my beautiful tree which now looks like this...



Instead of this:



I hope the rest of it will survive and yes, discussions are occurring to determine who did it but wah! I love my tree! Is pretty. And just blossoming. That grinding sound you hear is my teeth gnashing.

Argh

I'm still in Singapore. Of course, they made us wait until after midnight until they cancelled the flight. Supposed to be leaving midday. We'll see. I've had less than four hours sleep, no communication from qantas (had to talk to the work people to find out what time my flight actually was, the hotel told us 9am when we checked in, hence my getting up at 6.30 or so after going to sleep after two but it's now midday) and at this point my opinion of airlines, singapore and life in general is unfit to print.

I shall return once I'm home, on a time zone that isn't some weird hybrid of australian/germany/singapore and less cranky. It may take a while!!

Unfair

It seems to me that when you are on a very restricted diet and at least attempt to be organised and spend the weekend cooking enough dinners and lunches made from stuff you can eat to freeze and get you through the week, that the universe should cut you some slack and not arrange for you to somehow miss the fact that your freezer door is not shut properly thereby turning all your hard work into little dishes of 'come and get your food poisoning here' by the time you get home!!!

Unfair. And cranky making. Bah humbug.

PS I know this is really my fault but still...bah humbug.

Helping out

Today is my official writing day off. Just as well because I am mostly brain dead from the heat.

So I have no metrics but I do have this - Terry Pratchett has donated $1 million to Alzheimers research and there's a campaign for the fans to match his donation.

Terry is one of my all time favourite authors and Alzheimers is a horrible disease, so if you can spare a $1 or 2, think about donating.

Read about it here.

Retrograded

I have been awol and I blame Mercury and it’s annoying retrogradiness. I wish the damned planet would just face the right way all the time. There have been suicidal computer monitors and parking tickets and sickness and broken-into cars.

I am basically cranky and not fit to blog. So I’ll be the one staying in bed until the 17th when the stupid planet stops its contrariness. Most likely sucking down Loretta Chase and Crusie and Bujold and all my cheer-yourself books. After I finish The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne which is most excellent (go buy it if you love good historicals).

And now I shall sign off before something else blows up.

Rain, rain go away

I know we NEED the rain. I know we're having a drought. But we do not need several weeks rain in several hours and I do NOT need soggy from underneath carpets.

Just when I was all happy to be finally finished work and on holiday, I drive home (which took forever thanks to the RAIN), walk into my house and think, hmmm, what are those weird dark patches on my carpet?

Sogginess, that's what. I know there are people with much worse damage and hey, I don't really like my carpet but still, I didn't want to spend Christmas dealing with insurance and the council. I wanted relaxing. And writing. Sigh. And grumble. And where's the wine?

PS At least the books are all dry and the computer works!

Sad

Madeleine L'Engle has passed away. I adored A Wrinkle in Time when I read it as a kid (and indeed through many re-readings). Sadness. Vale Madeleine, I hope whatever is on the other side of your wrinkle in time is wonderful.

Not right

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny spring (though technically it's still winter) day. The kind that fills you with righteous spring cleaning fever (because apparently what happens when you have flu for a week and then spend the next week with no energy at night once you've made it through work is that your house turns into some sort of toxic waste dump crossed with landfill).

But the cleaning did not happen, because other too sad things did (i will miss you little gorgeous, fluffy, wriggling, couch-sitting, barking up a storm pupster).

And now today, it's all grey and gloomy. Which is not good cleaning weather (don't ask me why). It will be, however, begood, eat a lot of yum cha for Freya's birthday weather.

But first I have to write. And hopefully it will be something fun to chase away the weird dreams about demons I was having all night (which included such gems as someone being hit by a truck and being in pieces - but still talking which should've been a big 'she's a demon' clue - and then while we watched growing black stringy things that connected all the bits back up and climbing up and trying to catch us all once she was back to full demon strength. Ick. And others who the wizards (my dreams are nothing if not adventure packed and strange - Jack Sparrow was one of the wizards) had contained kept pulling lame tricks to try and get us to set them free and then when thwarted would scream and spit fire and stuff. Gross. If the demons in the book I'm thinking about are like that then I'm not sure I want to meet them.