Author: PeterMBall
Journal

You know it’s too damn hot when…

It’s been rather hot here in Brisbane, and my flat has a nasty tendency to be one of the warmest places I’ve found in the city unless the breezes’ treat me favourably (of late, they haven’t). I don’t know the exact temperatures, but I do know that I burned myself with *shampoo* when I had my shower this morning – not badly or anything, my palm just had this mild sunburn like sting all day, but still…overheated shampoo. Being scalded by the “cold” water in my taps I’ve learned to prepare for, but this is a first for the hair-care products. I can’t wait for winter.

PeterMBall 01/01/2009
Journal

I’m back

…though I’m still in the process of picking up speed now that the holiday season is over (New Years doesn’t count, I’ll be hammering away at the PhD deadline, but I hope everyone else has a good time). I think I managed to get most of the angst about the exegetical process out of my system over the holiday, so now I can actually do productive things like formulate a plan and write things out. In case you’re wondering, those are the hand-knitted bananas in pyjamas bed-socks my grandmother gave me for Christmas. And while a sweet gift, the cognitive dissonance gives me a headache every time I try to work out the logic of it – I consider them yet another reminder that many people in the world think in a very different way than I do.

PeterMBall 30/12/2008
Journal

Well, I’m off.

Okay, folks, I’m off to the Gold Coast for Christmas, Library books, and several long hours of locking myself in a room and being antisocial while working on my exegesis. This will actually be a nice change from locking myself in my flat and being antisocial while reorganising everything I own (a job that was finished yesterday, and so I am now organised). I’ll be back some time after boxing day and, hopefully, resume regular blogging then.

PeterMBall 23/12/2008
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Burroughs sells athletic shoes, Lydon sells us butter

I never actually thought I’d see a commercial that generated more cognitive dissonance and fear that the end of times are upon us than this one: But this comes pretty damn close:

PeterMBall 19/12/2008
Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

Mental Reset – Day Three

I have but to rearrange the folder archive of my writing files (to better distinguish between “do now” projects and “percolating for ideas” projects) and tidy up some boxes, then the study is done. Not complete, for there are still projects that remain long-term on the organising front (filing cabinet, wardrobe full of crap), but done enough that I know what needs to happen on all front. I have, however, sorted through seventeen decks of playing cards and tossed those that are no longer complete. I also found a movie ticket for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film that I felt the need to archive once upon a time. No, not the recent one; I’m talking about the first one. Both the ongoing projects list and the very next thing that needs doing lists are getting out of control, but I should be able to burn through the majority of the entries over the weekend. Still,  I move onward to

PeterMBall 19/12/2008
Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

Continuing the mental Cntr-Alt-Del

It’s day two of the great purge-and-reset, and I’m yet to get out of the office. Twelve straight hours of sorting files and making mental notes on projects yesterday (which proved surprisingly exhausting) and I’m finally down to the last box of lost papers/books and a two-drawer desk-caddy that’s got loose papers in it. I figure I’ll have the study finished tonight, then it’s on to the bedroom. Oh, the things that have been tossed out over the last twenty-four hours. I’ve made seven trips to the bin thus far, each time loaded up with an arm-full of paperwork I no longer need, and what remains is still a pile large enough to animate and give sage advice to fraggles should it so desire. Among the many things tossed out: tax records from 1995; hard-copy of seven chapters from a fantasy novel draft I’m pretty sure I didn’t write – I think it’s Sean’s, from back before I spooked him

PeterMBall 18/12/2008
Works in Progress

Doctorate and stuff.

Just got my latest creative project draft from the associate supervisor (aka our gatekeeper, since he’s the one coming at the work fresh and without two years of living with the stories). It looks like I’m correcting formatting and doing some minor line-edits, with a few spots that need a little more clarity. The rest is largely a thumbs up and an “it’s all good and it’ll earn the degree; now finish your exegesis.” Plus the possibility of teaching work is back on the cards after a long absence, so I may be eating something other than two minute noodles come march. Now I’m going back to the to-do list from hell.

PeterMBall 17/12/2008
Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

Because ambivalence wasn’t working for me…

So last night I ran down the list: – Feeling like there’s too much to do, yet doing nothing of note? Check. – Spawning new projects I just have to do because “they’re so damn cool” instead of finishing old projects? Check – Not sleeping? Check. – Avoiding blog-posting? Check. – Resurgence of interest in both wrestling and gaming, with a hyper-focus on my favourite wrestling-sim that often supersedes sleep and food*? Yeah, that’s there too; check. Yep, all the signs are there and my customary ambivalence in the face of things that stress me out remains ineffective. It’s time to hit the big old mental reset button and start reworking my to-do list from the ground up. I’ve given myself permission to do nothing but get my life in order for the next four or five days, ransacking the house room-by-room and establishing a workable model for getting done all the stuff I want done. A physical and mental

PeterMBall 17/12/2008
Journal

Quick Posting from the Trenches

At the QWC online promotion seminar, which is very cool but hitting a lull now that folks are learning to set-up wordpress and I already know. After lunch we return to the learning off stuff, but until then: A belated public congratulations to the most awesome Jason Fischer (he of the zombie camels and much other coolness) whose newborn son has arrived in the wide world of late. Do not discover the Middleman series the day before you have to get up at seven am to go to a workshop. It virtually guarantees you’ll get no sleep. That said, I’ve not been this eager to see the next episode of something since, oh, Season Two of the new Doctor Who. Or Buffy. No writing of note lately; it’s too damn hot. But I heard back from the supervisor, who says very complimentary things about the first story in the thesis collection And since it needs to go here somewhere, it appears I

PeterMBall 16/12/2008
Journal

Bacon

One of my neighbors is cooking bacon. There is nowhere in my flat I can go to escape it. Any minute now, I’m going to break down and go to the shops.

PeterMBall 11/12/2008
Journal

For the record: peanut butter soup is awesome.

2013 Update: I Need Your Help If you’re reading this in your RSS feed, please let me know in the comments. It’d also be really helpful if you could let me know which RSS reader you’re using and/or which RSS for the site you’re following – it seems my attempts to spring-clean some old posts have resulted in said posts going out as if they’re new, and I’m trying to rectify the problem.  Also, for the record, Laura Goodin’s Peanut Butter Soup Recipe is still awesome five years on, and she posted it on her blog a few years back.  I figured that, if anything, was sufficient reason to use an edit this post as a means of doing this test. Thanks in advance, folks, and I now return you to the thoughts of Peter M. Ball from 2008… Yesterday I thought I was meant to be at a QWC workshop, only to discover that I had the dates mixed

PeterMBall 10/12/2008
Gaming

Doom is coming to Arkham in the form of a 16 year old goth girl…

Not an actual writing post; I’m going to indulge my inner game geek for a moment. Consider yourself warned (unless you have no idea what I’m talking about, in which case check this out and consider yourself informed). Chris Slee has just posted his summary of the last four sessions of my CSI: Arkham campaign over on his site, which serves as a pretty good summary of “what I did with my weekend” really. My inner geek is so damn happy with this campaign, it has to be said. Especially last night’s session. The post-title is stolen from Chris’s write-up; probably a far better summary of the game of anything I can come up with and, since I remain too lazy to do proper write-ups of my sessions these days, I’m just going to point you over there if you have an interest in such things (much as I did for session one).

PeterMBall 08/12/2008

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