Random Observations

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This is my four hundred and eighteenth post to this blog, which I guess means we’re on the downhill slope towards five hundred blog entries (whereupon I probably turn into a pumpkin).

The last few days have settled into a comfortable kind of routine – I get home from the dayjob, I don’t turn on the internet, I read a book until five o’clock or so, then I eat dinner and force myself to write 1000 words before I go to sleep. My brain’s resisting the latter – last night I wrote the first five hundred words with ease, then scrambled for the last four hundred or so for hours before admitting defeat and collapsing into bed.

Tonight there is teaching, which means I’ll have to forgo the reading, and the 1000 words will be an even bigger challenge. It needs to be done, because at this point 1000 words a day is pretty much the line between me and wholesale insanity, and I’d prefer not to be going into guilt-induced craziness as the year progresses. I am far too fond of drama, after all, and I really need to get over that.

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In my spare time, at the dayjob, I’m trying to figure out how to sculpt a horse out of paperclips. Not a terribly good horse, for I’m not that artistically inclined, but something that’s satisfyingly horse-like. I’m currently struggling with the tail.

So if anyone knows any good sculpting-horses-out-of-paperclip type tips, I’d be happy to learn them.

And now that I typed that, man, I really miss working from home. At least there my time-filling exercises were things like cleaning the bathroom or baking cupcakes.

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I did make chili last night, and it was quite good. Unfortunately, I left out the bacon. Fortunately, this means I’ll be eating bacon and eggs for lunch today, which is one of those side-effects that make me happy.

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I’m listening to the Prodigy a lot this week, which is kinda weird. It’s been years since I last plot-danced to Voodoo People. We’re talkin’ the fricken’ nineties.

I would imbed the video, but apparently that doesn’t work for this site anymore (which means, I suppose, there’s a redesign in the works somewhere in the future). I guess you’ll just have to make do do-do do doo, do do-do do-do sounds yourself, then whisper the words magic-people-voodoo-people yourself to get the right effect. Or you can follow a link.

This probably wont be my new author photo

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Somehow people neglected to mention that I was having a truly dire bad hair day yesterday. I managed to ignore it myself, right up until I got home from tutorials, caught sight of my reflection, and thought “hmmm, that’s not a look I want to continue with, is it?”

For a while now I’ve been aware that I’m hitting the decision point where I either shave my head again, or settle in for the process of growing my hair out. These are, by and large, the only real options with my hair – genetics have essentially eliminated all other possibilities due to a weird series of cowlicks and a tendency towards ringlets.

I used to think it came from my mother’s side of the family, largely because my dad has maintained the same hairstyle since I was, like, four, but after his brief experimentation with forgoing the regular haircut earlier this year I learned that it may well have been the male half of my DNA that’s causing problems.

Still, either way, I’m destined for either short-haired spikes or long-haired scruffiness. They’re the only two approaches that have ever really worked for me (for a certain value of “works” which mostly includes being better than the alternatives), and I’m still not entirely sure which I want to head towards.

Expect I will flip a coin over the weekend.

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Two good days of writing in a row. Not great writing, but that’s fine, I’m writing first drafts and they don’t have to be great. But good writing, stuff that feels like it’s heading in a direction I like, rather than being written for the sake of writing wordcount.

Either way, I suspect I’m done with my attack of distemper. If I’ve been scaring you off with the attack of the grumpy pants this week, it’s probably safe to return.

Probably.

You know, like, 90% safe. Or maybe 85%, if we’re giving ourselves a buffer.

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I am behind on email again. This, too, will be rectified over the weekend.

And I really need to start remembering to bring a snack to the Dayjob on Fridays, because the sprint from the dayjob offices to the university tutorial room doesn’t exactly leave time for eating. This is how bad habits start forming, much like the late finish on Thursday nights is turning into a bugger it, I’ll just eat take-out habit on the way home.

My life, I tell you, the glamour and wonder.

See you all monday.

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‘Tis a busy type of day today, so I’m going to just ramble on about things for the breif period I’ll be home between the first dayjob and the second. Plus there are several workmen helpfully digging up the road out the front of my house, ostensibly to lay down something or other involving pipes large enough to crawl through, which inevitably means my power or my internet or my phone line will go out at some point in the very near future.

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On the list of conversations I never expected to have with my father, the one that starts with do you have any Warhammer 40k novels I could borrow? is pretty damn high on the list. I also never expected the answer to be yes, but you can’t borrow them right now, but you can have the short story anthologies if you like. Yet, somehow, we had that conversation yesterday, and my copies of Tales of the Heresy and Let the Galaxy Burn are bundled together so I can hand them over next time I see him. He can have the novels in April, after I’m done reading them and making notes for the next interview I’m doing for Auscon.

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I threw out a lot of words yesterday. It started with all 2,311 that I wrote in Tuesday’s write-club and ended with the 8,000 or so words that I’d put together for the great-lovecraftian-ghoul-swashbuckley-wahoo! novel draft since the beginning of the month. Instantly all the Sturm und Drang of the last few days went away, and I could finally figure out how to write things that I didn’t actively dislike while I was writing them. They may not be great, but the out-of-control feeling that’s accompanied the act of writing seems to have abated a little.

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A happy birthday for the Galactic Suburbia crew, who just had their celebration to mark one year of podcasting. I’ve been listening less regularly these days, primarily because the dayjob eats time that I used to spend drinking coffee and pondering the state of SF, but I still make a point of catching up with GS when the opportunity presents itself. I recommend listening to the current episode with cake nearby, otherwise you may find yourself pausing the podcast to bake.

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I’ve started a new undertaking – reading the entirety of Federico Lorca’s The Poet in New York aloud, a few poems at a time. I’d forgotten how much I liked Lorca’s poetry – the last time I read him was back in, gods, 1999 or so, back when I was doing my honours thesis in poetics. After I’m done I’ve got his essay, In Search of Duende, to keep me company, but I suspect it’ll be a week or two until I finally get around to it.

These are the kinds of things you do, when you don’t have a television to amuse yourself in the evenings when the writing’s done.