moving on

liam arrives tomorrow.

this will be my last post for weeks and weeks.

i'm losing the nanowrimo - i'm about 5,000 words down.

i'll not have to work again for 6 weeks (and then some, depending on how fast we get work in wellington).

we went to guy fawks fireworks on monday - they were really amazing. there were some that toally filled the sky - your whole field of vision. excellent.

damien called on sunday - we hung out in the park for a while.

on saturday, jeremy (who works with askea) invited us to a barbecue. it was so much fun + so much meaty goodness. we're somewhat lacking in our weekly meat content. we talked, ate, drank, played halo3 and watched kung fu hustle - it was a lot of fun. we got home at 3am. :)

not a whole lot else.

bye everyone - i'll miss you lots. hopefully i won't spend too long without updating, but if our travels so far are anything to go bye it will be about once or twice a month. :sheepish:

nanowrimo time

i started the nanowrimo yesterday. i got 1,786 words written last night. go me! i'm not sure how well it will work out once we go camping. but i'll bring my a4 pad and pencil along anyway.

work is wierd - there's been no one in the call centre since wednesday - just me, helping out with occasional calls and the clean-up. it's a nice change from call, call, call though. i'm sorting stationary at the moment. well, technically - i'm on a break, but it's a break from sorting stationary.

yea - nanowrimo. my idea this year is to form a story from the dreams i have every night of the month. it takes all the strain out of thinking up a plot - i've got my imagination working for me, without all the brain work - excellent. and the adventure's shaping up well, too. escape from a lab in chapter one, run in with a ghost in chapter 2. brilliant!
or not so good - i had a terrible nightmare last night, where a boy was standing outside my window and then ghosted through it and jumped on top of me - i was so scared. and i couldn't convince myself it was a dream, so i lay in bed going "i seriously hope this is a dream. i'm pretty sure it is, but i'm still terrified"

so now i'm off to nanowrimo.org to update my word count.

awh, bye

last post for a while, i guess. i may be able to get on tomorrow or friday. not sure. i'm working 9 to 5 tomorrow. that will be really wierd. i've gotten used to working 12 to 8. i'll have to be up at 7:45am. gosh - that seems so early, but i get up at 8:30 anyway every morning.

i can't wait to go camping. it's going to be fun.

ooh - and there's a big fireworks display for guy falks day. that should be fun. that's on monday - anyone who can should watch v for vendetta. that's what i did last year on the 5th of november. silly, i know, but still fun.

i really don't have much to say. i went to the park today for a while. it's so beautiful. and i saw a swarm of bees hanging out in a tree. it was gross - they were hanging out by a big lump - all crawling all over eachother, like some kind of single item that moved and buzzed and was gross.

also - happy halloween, everyone. it's not even like halloween over here. so terrible. ah well.

garrett and seregil

i'm doing something i've never done before: i finished the "luck in the shadows" series and went back and am re-reading the first book. i totally fell in love with seregil (the main character), and today i just realized that he's awfully like garrett from the thief series of games.

yea - reading these books has made me start thinking about my zarkia story again. i figure that i can't call my main character zarkia anymore, because i've splattered her name all over the net and anyone who reads my books and then googles her name will hit this journal and my email addresses and stuff - that could be a bad thing. but i can't think of a better name for her. i was thinking tarlia, but that's a name of a person on livejournal who i respect, so i wouldn't steal her name.

i've been thinking about "the fall" recently too - fixing azrynn's character and her and zachery's friendship. and i've developed a mad theology too. making up gods is really fun. azrynn's curse of choice is "by the traveller," heh heh! and then there's all kinds of fun like "holey bag end" (notice the pun) and "may dust choke your journey" and a pleasant farewell "may your steps pass lightly" and stuff.

so this post got nicely off the point of garrett and seregil, but if you haven't read the books or played the game you won't really get what i'm saying; and if you have you don't need me to go on. so yea.

Halloween Spooks

I can't believe it's halloween. it's 24degrees here and summery - not at all conducive to scary evenings and frightening yourself in the dark. terrible.

anyway, i got my october genrechallenge finished, and up. you can read it on my website or on deviantArt.

this may be my last post for a while. i'm not sure if i'll get a chance tomorrow - work's been really busy.

in news: we washed our car on saturday. it's a really nice colour when you finally get to see it under all the dust. we went for a walk in the port hills too + saw a mountain bike race. this weekend has been set aside for cleaning the house and getting organized for moving out.

i have a job until friday and then i become unemployed. ah well.

i really don't have much to say. i can't wait to leave christchurch. not 'cause it's a bad city - just 'cause travelling is more fun and there's no responsibilities to rent or work when you're on the move. god - i'm never going to be able to settle down. oh well.

right so - that's all i want to say. bye.

the weekend was so good. on friday we went to gore beach - it wasn't as good as i'd expected... not much walking and it was cold + cloudy. so we left soon and on a whim decided to head down the coast to another beach, called motunau beach. it was amazing. the sun had come back out and it shone down on the smooth sand. tall, layered cliffs bordered the beach, and it was striped with bits of smooth, hard-packed sand and really fun rocks. me and askea had a laugh leaping from rock to rock and i figured out how coordination works - look where you want to go and let your body act, rather than just reacting to where your foot just happens to come down. whey!!
so that was amazing. i really really didn't want to go home. on the way back we stopped at the brew moon cafe - a wonderfully hippish place. i had a ginger beer and askea had a smoothie. it was lovely. we sat on a car-bench. it was a really old 1920s car - well rust bucket, but had been torn apart and the axles formed the support for a table and the bench went along side. it was mad.

then on sunday we returned to mt thomas forest and got to 1023m.

awh - didn't get to finish. bye

i'm wierd

i remember what i wanted to say on wednesday. i'm a coward of the worst sort. every-so-often something happens to illuminate my fault and i get to thinking about my flaws. so the other day in work i sent someone an email, but i wasn't 100% sure that what i had written was correct. but i was too lazy to go check it with anyone and i ended up deliberating for about half an hour before i sent it, because i didn't want my name to be on the email, in case i got in trouble for being wrong. i just hate thinking that i might be held responsible for something.
i'm so wierd. then i was talking to penelope_stone about it and we came to the conclusion that it all comes down to perfectionism and not wanting to ever be wrong.

there's a lovely smell of tomato soup in here. i've not had tomato soup in ages and ages - it reminds me of the kitchen in churchview back when i was 15 or something.

i've not a whole lot else to say. the house was freezing this morning, it was way warmer outside so i went to the park and wrote for a bit. it was good, but my hands got really cold and i can't type so well now.

ok, i'll just go.

blood? who needs it - we've got goodfellas, american style pizzas

i had something to say this morning, but i can't remember it now - damn. it's been really windy here all day - i didn't feel like battling it all the way into work, so i got the bus. and then in work it's been lashing against the windows and howling through the cracks.

i had a silly man on the phone today. he clearly didn't want to speak to me, so he was all like "i can't hear you. hello?" and stuff. so i rang him back and asked "can you hear me" his answer was "no i can't" and he hung up. he could just have said he was busy or something. but i found it really funny.

i havn't really much else to say. i don't think my horror story is turning out as scary as it could be. i remember writing some of the scenes in "the fall" and being totally grossed out at my decriptions of some of the things. i think i've lost my gory touch - noooo!

ah well. i'll go now.

A Festival of Russian Ballet

Saturday night's ballet was a treat. Carmina Burana preformed in full by amazingly talented dancers - and not just ponsy, proper ballet, either - it was so modern. They mixed in bits of break-dancing and acrobatics. It was so cool - and funny too. They did a drinking scene from carmina burana and one guy did this cool drunken style - so fabulous.

Bolero was chilling too. So other-worldly. They wore mostly black - with bits of white / gold rimming their flowing costumes and the music just kept crescendoing, up and up and the dance got more and more elabourate, twirling and leaping and falling. It was very cool.

I'd totally go and see them again if they were playing. Carmina Burana was well worth the wait to see - like 4 years or something... i don't know, ever since i stole the cd of davidnarby. but i do see now why it's never preformed on it's own. it is way too short. it was just one act of three that they did.

yea - it was really brilliant.
the rest of the weekend was ok. we had a lazy day sunday - stayed in bed reading 'til 2ish then went to the park with some stale bread and fed the ducks. they are vicious to each other - nipping and flapping around to get the most bread.

i'm reading really good books too. about a thief - called luck in the shadows, by lynn felwing or something.

dreams are weird

incedentally (i think this is a fake word, ugh - like action. i got this stupid email from an ignorant person the other day and they asked me to action something for them. i was like: you want me to what? action is a noun, not a verb - my heart went out to the poor abused word), i got shot in my dream last night - in the back. it was really sore and i went into shock. it was odd.

i didn't die though - or maybe i did, but these 2 guys (who remind me of the lone gunmen from the x-files, they were young hippie / conspiracy theorists type people) saved me by jumping me into another dimension.

library adventures

i broke yesterday - i was weak and went on to vodafone's moblie shop thing and bought prince of persia: two thrones, the mobile phone edition. it's fun. it lacks the great sound track of the real game, but the characters are still fun and the graphics are good.

today, i went to the library to get out some new books. of the five i got 2 weeks ago, i have one left. so new books are: the next in barbara hamley's dragon series and The Night Watch - the book that inspired the film. It's a translation - i've never read one of them before.

yes - the adventure part of all this. I got up lazily this morning and then remembered that i had planned to go to the library, so i rushed breakfast and ran out to catch the number 60 up to shirley. as i was turning out onto the road i saw the bus coming and sprinted for the bus stop, which was about 50 meters up. the bus passed me, but he stopped and let me on. yeay!

so that was all fine, i got to the library, got my books and headed for the bus stop back home. 10 minutes later the bus arrived and i got on, but to my horror i didn't have my bus card. i didn't have time to go back to the library and search, because i had to get home to make lunch for work. so i payed 2.50, got on the bus and totally searched though all my pockets. but no bus card anywhere. with shaking fingers, i texted penelope_stone my loss and bemoaned my card all the way home. i had just topped up by $20 and it costs $5 to get a new card.

when i got home i rang the library - their preppy french hold music making me feel better, and the girl dealing with me was so nice (and new - she cut me off trying to put me through to shirley library) and eventually i got on to a lady who said my card was safe in lost and found. yeay! so now i'm happy - i get to collect it tomorrow.

so that was my adventure. not all that serious, but still.

russian ballet tomorrow evening. that should be amazing. carmina burana. wooo!

whee

the dude came to inspect our house today. it was fine - he said it was clean, yeay. we got a moving-out check list too. one of the things we have to do is get the carpets professionally cleaned (and we have to have a receipt to prove it). that's annoying, cause it's probably going to cost a fortune.

i'm really glad i write in the morning. i was managing to freak myself out today with my story. because the way i write, is to immerse myself in the feelings i'm trying to write about and then i describe how i feel, so in order to capture even a little of the scariness, i have to make myself scared. and it's amazingly easy, even with the sun streaming through the air outside. but it's stil fun. i just hope i manage to capture even a little of my fear to make my story good.

not a whole tonne else. work's been so busy, calls all day as well as envelope stuffing and labeling to do and emails and trying to procrastinate ringing back a person you know is going to bite your head off. (well - i rang that guy back, he wasn't so bad.)

yea.

a post in 7 minutes

today has been busy in work, so i don't have much time - just the end of my lunch break.

the weekend was good - we sat in hot spa pools in the pouring rain on sunday and cleaned the house on saturday. we also did the gardening - and planted pretend trees in the garden. they were spriggs we cut off another tree, but i think they are dying.

as for sunday - we made it to hamner. it's a cute alpine village. the hot springs were good, though. it was nice to sit in the freezing cold rain protected against the elements by the warm water.

my horror story frightens me... at night when i'm thinking about fun things to add to it, invariably i end up pulling my covers over my head and convincing myself that there are no evil creatures hanging out in my room.

not a whole tonne else. i have a meeting with our property manager tomorrow - a pre-vacate meeting. hopefully they won't say anything wierd like you're trapped with this house for the rest of your life, now give me millions of dollars. hmmm. i'm wierd.

anyway - i have to go now. got lots of works to do. blah

and now i have the police visiting

remember last week i mentioned that there had been a shooting near our house? well today, two police-women called to our door and wanted to get a statement from me. god - police make me so nervous and the police here carry guns. ahh. so they must have thought i was a complete wierdo, because first off our house has very little furniture, there are balloons all over our sitting room floor and i didn't have the heaters on ('cause i'd been in my room) so it was really cold.
then when they actually started asking questions i couldn't remember what age penelope_stone is. then they asked what we were doing from 7 to 10 and i said at home, but the fact is that i was still in work until 8 escaped me and when i corrected myself one of them gave me this look that kind of said "boy, are you ever suspicious". so i felt kind of bad. but well. i can't help that thoughts run and flee when under pressure and my tongue is left to make things up as it feels fit. so yea, i hope i don't get in trouble now. police-people are like the antithesis of me - they stand for everything real and concrete in the world, everything that means nothing to me. but anyway.

in other news, i felt a tremor this morning. it was nothing really - my bed shook gently for about 15 seconds, but my heart did have time to start pounding and my brain got to wondering if it was going to get worse. and it wasn't my imagination because claire said she felt it too.

i have an idea for my october horror story. it should be fun. thanks to davidnarby for the spark of inspiration. it starts with an abandoned coal mine and devolves from there. whey, lots of blood and guts and scary stuff. but not people melting because that's just too scary.

you need lightning before a tornado

that was the thought that went through my head as i got the bus into work today. why couldn't it have hit me last night? the wind lashed around our house, whipping the trees and driving the sleet horizontally across the yard beside our house. bit's of leaves and planks of wood flying across the window. it came up our of nothing; the sky had been clear and calm when i walked home last evening. then lying in bed, reading, the wind just slammed against the window announcing its presence in a freakishly tornado/hurricane-like way.
and just as i considered running into penelope_stone for moral support against the terrifying wind, she came into me and jumped into my bed. for her to be afraid of the wind is a very bad sign. we freaked out a bit and packed emergency bags (with warm clothes and important documents).

thankfully the house didn't blow away and everything was ok this morning. hailstones had turned the ground white as i left for work, so donning hat, scarf, coat and gloves, i braved the elements for the 2 minutes it took me to walk to the bus stop and took the bus into work.

the sun is shining now, but i think it's cold out.

not much else to say - we are having a pig-out day in work. everyone brought in some food and we've been nibbling all day - i made choc-chip cookies. yummy. i'm so full of junk now though. and i ate dinner too - well, half 'cause i wanted to eat something substantial.

yesterday, penelope_stone mentioned el capitan in yeosemite. so today i went looking up youtube vids of it. climbers are scary. scary people. i watched a speed run of "el cap" and then one of some other dude doing some other impossibly tall rock face. it looks so deadly - i really don't get why people enjoy doing this.

not really any other news. 's genre this month is horror. i have some fun gory thoughts running through my head. i want something scary too, though - not just gory. hmmm. i got back to book 3 of my trilogy too, this morning. i'm fleshing out characters at the moment, characters that should have been fleshed out in book 2, but weren't since it was very spur of the moment writing. i find that twilight is a very shallow character - she needs lots more depth + she's going to feature as one of the main characters in this book.

i'm really enjoying anne bishop's black jewels trilogy. she has some annoyances of style, but her characters are so much fun.

yea... i don't really have much else to say. i'll just go now.

of coalmines and capoeira

More countryside travelling this weekend. On saturday we hiked around rakaia gorge - 15kms of a winding trail - up, down and around the gorge. the sights were quite good - all turquoise blue water, green trees and fields and snowcapped mountains rising over everything. the trail dove into small patches of trees - all light green with new growth - small trees, fern, bushes, the odd pine. and the coolest thing? a coalmine. it was just like something from oblivion - all it needed was the goblin decorations surrounding the entrance - skulls and torches and the stink of rotting meat. excellent. it's the coolest thing i had ever seen (as demonstrated by my reaction: penelope_stonewow!. me: what? [a pause as i look up] me: woah - that's the coolest thing i've ever seen!) while it looked something like a cave, it was just so much more - it had a metal gate locking in the darkness and the evil... it reeked of adventure - it was cool. (and slightly scary - i wouldn't want to go exploring in there)

so then on sunday penelope_stone dragged me to a free dance workshop - capoeira, which is a brazillian kind of fighting dancing thing. it was ok - i didn't really enjoy it because i'm just too inflexible. and my muscles are killing me today. i can hardly walk.

today is a bank holiday in australia, so work is really quiet. i've been using the time to research our trip across america. i think we'll go to arizona / sedona / grand canyon, then LA for disneyland and napa valley, then to san fransisco, then yeosemite, then yellowstone, then the western rockies, then miniapolis, chicago, niagra falls, NY, boston. all in one month. it should be fun.

not a whole lot, really

i wrote a short piece of humour. you can read it on dA if you want: macgillicuddy. I also put it on my website. wow - a website update, that hasn't happened in forever.

me and penelope_stone are heading for the hills on sunday. penelope_stone thinks it will be fun to go on a 5 hour walk 'round in a circle. she really dosn't know what torture she's signed herself up for.

she has also decided that we are going fight-dancing on saturday. i'm quite sure i'll be abysmally atrocious at it. oh well.

we tried to ring home last night, but got no reply... i guess thursday mornings are a bad time, they always were busy.

i don't really know what to say.

The Library

I went to the library this morning, on the bus, via a diversion because some hammer-wielding man had been killed by the police just down the road from where we live... and i thought it was a quiet neighborhood, away from the rough areas. the police shot him and are now in trouble. and i'd just noted how last night was the full moon and people were due a little craziness. i didn't think it would lead to a killing.

anyway - the library. i went to shirley (which is, in my opinion a vastly superior library) and browsed around for a half an hour, after which time i left with five books. i could have left with eight, but i curtailed my enthusiasm.

i took out the next two of anne bishop's blood trilogy, the first two of barbara hambley's dragon 5ology and the plucker by brom. the plucker - i've been dying to get my hands on this book since i heard it was coming out. i love brom so much, he is such a fabulous artist (i secretly want him to do the covers of my books when i get them published).

they also had the third book of robin hobb's assassin trilogy - i've wanted to read that for a while, i just never get around to it. i also looked for neil gaiman's neverwhere, but they didn't have that one either. i saw trudy canavan's magical series too, but figured i had enough books.

it only took me 3 days to read daughter of the blood, though... so i figure this lot will keep me going about 2 weeks.

wierd things happen to your brain during your period

i had the oddest thing happen in my dream last night. i had been captured by some evil people who'd been chasing me (they used knock-out gas or something). once i saw the smoke billowing from them, i dropped to the ground, thinking "smoke rises". anyway... then, while i was lying on the floor waiting to go unconscious, they gave me a form to fill in. the only bit of it i can remember was the field that said "stage of cycle" or something like that, and i wrote BLOOD - in caps, like that.
then i woke up this morning, went to the bathroom and sure enough, my period had started.


so yea... oddness.

i have my story for finished. i just have to type it up. i still suck at typing stuff up - i just go so slowly + my brain likes to invent words that arn't on the page and go off adding in extra stuff. my story's pushing 2,000 words as it is. i must go check what the absolute word-count limit is. [edit: sweet, no limit.]

not a whole lot else to say. i would like some food right now, dinner's not for another hour and ten minutes. i have rice, plain fried. kinda dull and not really filling, but well. i wanted to buy an egg this morning, but they don't sell single eggs and i couldn't afford six. :shrug: anyone know anything cheap that works well as a filler / flavour for staples?

ah well.

stardust

we went to see stardust yesterday. the weather was drizzly and miserable and perfect for a trip to the cinema. the film was amazing. it was one of the best movies i've seen in a long time. it was so happy and magical and adventurous.

we went to mt thomas forest on saturday too. in contrast to sunday, the weather was warm, sunny and summery. the forest was beautiful too. even though a lot of the trees had this wierd black moss growing on them, killing them. it smelled like vinegar.

there's something about work that kills my ability to make good posts. blah.

the grand adventures of zan and kej - part: the third

zan is turning into a really grumpy, grumbly, sullen, angsty and otherwise unpleasant person. yeay. i love messing with my character's personalities. and the fun part will be her getting over it as the story progresses. meanwhile, i get to have lots of fun with them having arguments and stuff.
god - it's probably going to be torture. i hate when people argue in reality, but i guess that's cause i don't know what the outcome is going to be. people who are annoyed at each other are liable to do anything... including murder. (yea... i'm just a little messed up, just a small bit though.)
ah well. it will be good to write zan and kej again. there is something special about them. zachery is amazingly cool, but zan and kej are ... i don't know. i guess i modelled them a little close to myself, so it's like i'm in the story or something.

so it's the weekend. i think me and penelope_stone are heading to a forest on saturday. we're going out with the people from my work tonight. that should be fun. i totally want to go see stardust aswell. it came out on thursday + we have a voucher for reading cinema (tickets for $9.50, not sat night). hopefully it will be cool.

not much else. i'm also working on my story for . humour is the genre for this month, and while my idea isn't side-splitting or anything, it's not anything serious. ah well.

i don't think i have any other news. i'll just go now.

p.s - i came across this name today: "dragan barbaric" isn't it just the coolest name ever? and it's a real name. amazing!

the end of the fall

wow.

i'm so excited right now. i just finished my novel and i don't have anyone to shout and scream in jubilation at. waaaa.
i have no idea what the final word count is, because the last few chapters have been hand written in 2 different a4 pads which are a world apart from each other. But i figure it's somewhere around 115,000 words. maybe a bit less. it took an age and a half to finish. i've been working on the last 2 chapters since february - i just didn't have a good ending. but i'm happy with the way it did end. it leads into book 2 nicely.

god... to think it all started as my Nano last year. almost a whole year working on it. i was doing the planning and outlining at this time last year. amazing.

anyway. it's done now, though it still needs a whole tonne of re-writing and re-plotting and Azrynn needs an upgrade in characteristics and stuff, but i'm happy. i'm looking forward to getting home (not 'til april 08) and starting work on the editing.

meanwhile, i'm starting to work on the outline and characters of book 3 of the trilogy. wooo!!

just so much to write

i don't even know where to start. the weekend was really good, cruising around in the car, seeing the sights, shouting "pull over at the next lay-by", enjoying the views... staying in the city is so uninspiring, just a few miles outside christchurch the countryside really rears up - volcanic hills dotted with groves of trees, or sheep, or brown, parched-looking grass; like something from the national geographic. the beauty of it all was mesmerizing, like something from a dream. especially the road to akaroa. it curved and twisted around, up and over the hills, each turn bringing a new sight, each new sight better than the last. makes our trip well worth it. i had begun to wonder about the fabled beauty of NZ, but it is there after-all.

snow patrol on saturday night played a brilliant set too. iain archer supported them; he looked completely different to what i expected. he sings like brian adams. wierd.

yea... i don't really know what else to say.

Stolen from lordkilljoy and irirshmadcat
1. Go to http://www.careercruising.com
2. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
3. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
4. Post the first ten results

1.Computer Programmer
2.Special Effects Technician
3.Technical Writer
4.Multimedia Developer
5.Costume Designer
6.Makeup Artist
7.Computer Support Person
8.Business Systems Analyst
9.Critic
10.Comedian

11.Writer
13.Web Developer
20.Video Game Developer
23.Sound Technician
35.Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
36.Animator
38.Printing Press Operator

i just wanted to include the others 'cause it's funny seeing where the things i'm actually interested in coming near-last on the list.

snow patrol tomorrow

woooo - jennifer from work is going too, we'll have so much fun.

i got over my minor bout of depression, it was hormonal, i realized this morning. i'm back to my bouncy self again. it's really shocking having the difference in mood highlighted so dramatically. i can see why controls are used in scientific experiments - using work as the control - everything is so brighter when i'm good.

there's supposed to be a thunderstorm today, the clouds look interesting, lightening would totally rock. it was 19degrees as i was walking into work today. so hot.

we're going driving around the port hills tomorrow before the concert. that should be fun, getting to see the sights from on high and all.

i don't really have much else to say. i'm really struggling with the end of "the fall". zachery's just been though so much at this stage that i'm finding it hard to do new and inventive things to him. i'm at the final confrontation (all the fighting is done with) and the antogonist is cutting all the strings between them. i'm struggling not to make him sound like some corny james bond villan.
ah well.

right so, i'll go now.

ps - it's lashing outside. we're all watching the weather. lorraine wants to get a shot of the lightening.

oowww

i hurt today. my throat is really dry and raspy and sending painful pings to my left ear. i've been drinking honey and lemon all day in the hopes it may do something, but its fleeting relief wanes as the cup empties. i think i need something like potter's cough mixture or something, 'cause it's not really a sore throat i have, it's more like a throat gone dry from a tickely cough. :shrug: i know not.
i think there's some kind of evil thing going around in work. everyone seems to be coughing today... or maybe it's just random throat-clearing.

we're getting our car today. : ) that should be cool.

i think summer here is going to be really warm. it's equivalent to early march, and already the sun is so hot. i walked up to shirley library this morning in a tshirt-over-long-sleeved-top and i was roasting. though, the blue sky is balmy. it's just so beautiful.

we got a car

happy birthday davidnarby

big news this week. we bought a car on sunday. wooo!! it's a nissan primera, 1990. a little old, but it goes well. penelope_stone was supposed to collect it today, but it's not going to be ready 'til tomorrow (there were a few things had to be done to it, grooming, fixing a few cosmetic issues and stuff).

it's so cool, though. we'll be able to go away on the weekends and see so much stuff. i can't wait.

snow patrol this weekend, that should be fun. they rocked in glastonbury, so hopefully they'll be good. iain archer is supporting; i hope he plays summer jets.

work is depressing me. it's just the same thing all the time, saying the same thing to most people who ring up - everyone wants to go to austraila. the few people who want america or europe really brighten my day. i've been here 2 weeks and i'm sick of saying "no, sorry we don't have anything available in [insert name of aussy resort] over christmas.
buh - anyway.

dinner, yum

i had the most delicious dinner today. penelope_stone cooked potatoes last night and i fried them this morning with ketchup, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, herbs, chili and oil. it was so yummy + spicy and well flavoured. mmm. i just wish i had more.

ah well - my stomach is being wierd at the moment, though. it hurts when i'm hungry and hurts when i eat. blah. oh well, i'm sure it will go away soon.

i don't have much else to say. so i'll just go.

(it has taken me an hour to post this entry, haaaaah)

oh yea - i totally forgot to say: we are going to see the russian ballet perform carmina burana. i can't wait. it's on in october, that will be so cool. i've never been to a ballet before, it should be good. well, hopefully.
yep.

the weekend

i think my stomach is wierd. it was kinda sore yesterday and i woke this morning with it jabbing pain every-so-often. it's killed my appetite, though. not good. i get to shake in work and stuff.

anyway - the weekend was good - we went to see the bourne ultimatum on saturday. it was so amazingly cool. the cinematography was breathtaking - some of the action scenes were just so intense.

we went to the beach too - walked from southshore to new brighton. we had a nice picnic in the dunes too. wonderful + then we went home and had roast chicken - yummy.

my birthday

i rushed home from work yesterday 'cause i knew askea had a present waiting for me, and we were ringing home as well, so needless to say i was quite excited leaving work.
but i wasn't prepared for balloons and our fun fairy lights in the dark. askea'd got me a cake too (well, it was a choc swiss roll) and she put candles on it. it was really nice. all very simple, but touching :) she got me 2 really cute little kitty teddybears.
bad res. phone pic follows:

arn't they just the cutest!

so that was fun. we're going to see the bourne ultimatum on saturday as well. i can't wait. the review on rotten tomatoes was really good, and anyone who went to see it said it was really good.

i don't really know what else to say. i went to the library today and got out two books called vellum, and ink. i just got them 'cause the titles are so cool. i hope they are good - they seem different and i've been on a big quest for "different" fantasy reading material. The Lies of Locke Lamora was really good - something like nothing i'd ever read before. There are not enough books out there with thieves as the main character. I really love the legend of nightfall too - that was about an assassin. I really have to get to writing so that i can get my assassin character out there. heh, yea.

anyway, i'm going to go now - only 50 minutes left in work.

i've not posted in ages

so time passed, yet i don't have much to write about.
really what i want to say is that lunar eclipses are freaky. i'd never seen one before and there was one last night at 10:30 - a perfect opportunity, really, or so i would have thought. good weather, clear, warm-ish. but no, the one night i wanted it to be clear it was cloudy. and freezing. but anyway, enough of complaining. i did manage to see the moon close to totality and that was enough to freak me out. it looks so unnatural seeing a dark red moon hanging in the sky, too dim to illuminate anything. the wind clacked through winter-bare branches and whistled through the wires around our house. with the dark, cold and wind, the broken red moon was enough to scare me back inside quite quickly.
but i'm glad i saw it. i've never managed to witness one before, so it was an experience. i'm thinking the next one that comes around on a warm summer's night i'll watch in full - lie outside for 4hours and freak out as the moon shrivels and then feel relief as it fills back to normal again.

i'm at work now; it's quiet. what am i doing, you ask? working as a "reservations consultant" at a timeshare exchange company. confused? i was too when i took the job. it took a couple of hours to grasp just exactly what i'd be doing, but the basics are that i search for hotels around the world for people to stay in. it's good enough work, not too stressful and there's a good bunch of people working here.

i work from 12pm to 8pm, so i have mornings for writing. all good - i've finally got around to writing the end of "the fall" (aka my zachery story i was writing last year). i had to actually figure out how the ending was going to go first, but i got that done and started on the actual writing yesterday - i have about 800 words so far. i'd like to get about 6,000 or 10,000 for the end, though. but i'm not sure that that will happen. i also have the problem that the 1st and 2nd books are blending into eachother too much. i don't know where to just cut and stop writing. because i could go all the way up until zachery sees zan, but that really has no place in book1.
oh well - i'll figure that out when i get there. yes.

life in NZ is going well. we travel to places around christchurch on the weekends, well places that the buses go to anyway.

yea, i've not much else to say. i'm going to go clean my screen now - it's really dirty.

stuffs

i have 4 minutes and in those 4 i'm just going to say that i'm still alive, i hate waking early in the morning and i really really want a job in the IT side of admin. i really don't want to be a receptionist.

apart from jobs, stuff is going well - we're having fun on the weekends and reading tonnes (due to no tv) going to the cinema a fair bit - film festival - woo. go see tales of earthsea if you like studio gibli stuff.

thank god for libraries and the beach and cheap buses and i wish i had a pc, but not too badly.

anyway,
write later.

wheee, stuff. woo woo. i mean, snowboarding, a job and other miscellaney

so... we got chairs. :) that, however, happens to be the least of what has happened over the last week or 2 or however long it's been.

we went snowboarding. it rocked! i am now obsessed, it's the most fun i've had since archery. so in one year i've found 2 sports i like. go me. i can't wait to go snowboarding again, but since i have a dwindling bank account, that's not going to happen any time soon.

good news looms, though. coverstaff rang and they have a job for me and askea. askea (being the poxy one that she is) may have a job for a few weeks / months (the company is recruiting and it will depend on how long it takes for them to find someone). humble me gets a job for 3 days and then to sit at home wondering about money for snowboarding some more. not that i've not been trying. i've applied to 4 different places. none have getten back to me yet, though. ah well - 'tis early yet. (as i was writing this otago university library got back to me saying it was a permanent position, blah).

also, the christchurch film festival starts in 2 weeks and they have a mad animation program. i want to go to 5 things, one being the first venture of Gorou Miyazaki (yup, son of legend Hayao Miyazaki). That is one i absolutely don't want to miss. It's called Tales of Earthsea, based on LeGuin's works. So hmmm. Askea also wants to go see Snow Patrol - tickets are 79 / 89 dollars. That's kind of a lot. But Iain Archer is supporting them and i quite like him.

what else is new... the figure skating from my last post never happened. we went to see harry potter - i liked it, but prisoner of azkaban is still my fav. me, askea, simone and brian went playing crazy golf yesterday. that was a whole tonne of fun. the course was indoors and each area was themed. it was fun. and hard. i lost terribly, with a sore 46 over par. simone won at 10 over. ah well - it's the fun that matters, right? right...? well, i'm smiling anyway.

i think that's about everything. i think my stomach dosn't know what to do with the sudden shock of winter. i'm hungry all the time and recently my stomach has been a bit wierd. i think we had some gone-off yoghurt and i ate a bit of that without knowing. anyway. i have to consciously limit the amount of food i eat, cause at the moment, i have dinner and an hour later i'm back in the kitchen looking for something filling. i'm definitely getting enough, cause i'm not all shakey and food-deprived all the time.

anyway.
i'm going to go now. i'll add more if i think of anything i've forgotten later. (i still have 1hr 17 mins on here)

settling down while down under

does new zealand fall into the "down under" category of countries, or is that just australia?
anyway. we now live in christchurch and will be here until the start of october. we have a nice little flat just outside the city, with 2 rooms, a large kitchen and a sitting room. no furniture, but we got beds for $10 and a small bedside table (serving as a dining table) for $9. however, no place here has central heating and it gets very cold at night, especially now, when the weather is bad (it was -6 the other night).

so we have a house sorted, now we need jobs. letting a recruitment agency do the searching for you seems to be the way to go, but i'm afraid they will take all our pay in commission. hopefully we'll make enough to live a bit well. i'd hate not to be able to see the country because i couldn't afford it. and everything here is expensive. except the bus. with a bus card it's 1.90 for 2 hours travel or 3.80 for a whole day on as many busses as you like. tuesday is cheap cinema day (9.50 - usually 15), and there are cheap places to do grocery shopping. chairs are very expensive - we have none and have been eating dinner kneeling on the ground. i can't wait to get chairs!

we met some great people at the hostel we stayed in for the first week and have plans to go skating and snowboarding with them. there are figure skating lessons on tuesday evenings. knowing how to figure skate would be so cool. knowing how to skate at all would be cool.

we went out with simone and brian on friday night to sample the nightly festivities hereabouts. it's funny going into irish pubs in a forign country. they seem just like normal pubs - like any ol' place you'd stroll into in ireland. it's wierd. we tried out a karaoke bar too - much fun being on stage and blaring queen's "i want to break free" into a mic while people dance and sing beyond the stage. the sunday after, we had a lovely picnic in the park, sitting on a sheet beside the river, teasing the ducks with morsles of food, and playing bachi ball after lunch. much fun. the day rounded off with a stroll through the sunday arts market and back to our chairless home for hot chocolate and many games of zigity and cards. very much fun.

yes indeed. it's so hard to chronicle everything when internet access is so sporadic. mostly we spend our days looking for cheap furniture and remembering stuff we need to buy for our house. it's all very drab and normal and not really as much fun as you think it will be when you are 10 and have daydreams of moving to your own house (which will be bright and full of colour and warm). it is rather disillusioning to find out that you have so many bland walls in your house and arn't allowed to spice them up with posters or anything. "no blu tak" the contract says. yea, way to make a place utterly depressing. no furniture and no fun things on the walls. but we found fairy lights in cash converters for $15 and stuck them over the doorframes, where noone will ever need to know there was blu tak (it's not even blue - it's white). and there was a sale on kids' bedspreads in one of the shops here, so we both have bright duvet covers.

ok, i've definitley written enough now. i'm going to go.

tokyo, oh tokyo

ahh, tokyo. well, it certainly was an eye-opener and that's for sure. japan, while retaining all it's charm and uniqueness has fallen a notch in my list of places to absolutely return to. the main reason was the language barrier. i wouldn't have thought it would be such a problem, but it was. we tried to go shopping one day and got utterly depressed because we couldn't find any shops - the city just wasn't accessable like KL or singapore. and the people have this aloofness that shuns any attempt to communicate.

but apart from that, the place is cool and it was brilliant to see places that i've seen be decimated in animes (tokyo tower and the diet building for instance). tokyo tower was a little let-down; the diet building wasn't.
and the coolest thing about the whole place: tokyo disneyland! yes. it was so brilliant. we spent a whole day there - 13 hours going on rides and wandering around looking at all the mad disney stuff. i still have all the songs in my head - so good.

the hostel we stayed in was a nice place to stay for a few days. we had a room (more of a partition in a room) to ourselves, which worked out very well, we had enough space and privacy - compared to the people in the "dorm" (aka, outside of our partition). they all were just on bunks squashed in together into a space smaller than an irish bedroom. it had character, though + was quite japanese (that is to say small and cramped - all the towns were like that: as many houses squashed in together as possible; and no green to be seen anywhere - that was quite depressing after the amazing trees of south-east asia).
but we were close to the train lines and the trip into tokyo centre took only 20minutes. a note to any girl planning a trip to tokyo and wanting to buy cheap clothes: head to the subnade shopping centre under shinjuku station.

now it's on to winter. i've not had enough of summer. south-east asian weather is not like summer, it's just like hot. japanese summer was like summer and i feel i will dearly miss it - cool breezes, bright blue skys, warm sun, hanging out in a dark green canopy-ed park, watching the sun flicker through the trees. damn, i:m seriously going to miss that. at least it'll be past the shortest day; i have lenghtening evenings to count away 'til happy weather again. buhh. anyway - i'll have snow - i guess that's a consolation, right?

i must say: i'm really tired now. i feel like i could sleep for a month + my feet pain me all the time. i go to bed with them hurting and the moment i step down on them the next morning they hurt again. i need a holiday!!! heh he! no.

ever onwards

i'm in singapore now - the airport actually, just about to board a plane to tokyo. i am one happy bunny right now.

gotta go - time's up here.

crusing the beaches of malaysia

i must apologise to people who read my journal and who i also email. but it's just too much effort to write about the same events twice.

malaysia's going well. the perhentian islands were quite stunning, but not as good as railay beach in thailand. the best thing was the crystal clear water. we went snorkeling (snorkel - who invented this word? it is hilarious) and saw so many colourful tropical fish - big and small - the major highlight was seeing "nemo fish" (clownfish) peeping out from their anenemies (well, nemo can't spell it ethier). anyway - it was good. we're on the move again - heading south down the coast to another beach - this one reads really well. "situated on the south china sea"... "wind sculpted sand dunes" (rock on - dunes: i've been dying for some dunes to play in) ... "crashing surf" - it sounds amazing.

yea - i'm just after a huge dinner of indian thali (lots of samples of different dishes) and am very full and satisfied and not having racing brain waves. i ate shark for dinner last night. we decided to treat ourselves to a beach barbecue, and the choice was king fish, shark or barracuda. shark is nice enough, as fish goes. i'm not a huge fish person and it tasted a bit like soul. the sauce they had with it was wonderful, though.

so yea - that's my major news. getting buses around malaysia is trying. no one is very helpful (taxi drivers are like flies) and finding the local bus is hard. they have "express buses" which are like luxury coaches and cost a bomb. well - it's still only 8 euros or whatever, but the local buses are like 2, or something. and since we are budget backpackers, the difference means a nice dinner or food grabbed off a stall on the side of a street. that food gets really dull really fast. you can only eat rice and chicken so many nights in a row before you get bored of it.

yes - i guess i filled out this post well.
i really need a travel icon.

onwards to malaysia

ug, wierd o key here, so some wrds won't cme out.

we've reached malaysia, all safe and sound. the weather here is really hot - it feels as hot as india. thankfully it's not as humid as thailand. the heat i can bear, but the humidity - not at all.

we spent the last 3 days lounging about on the most perfect beach i have ever seen. fine golden sand, green turquise sea, mangroves and palms grwing up beyond the sand. the water was beautifully warm - i wanted to stay in it all the time. and of course, i built the obligatry sand castle. it was more of a fort, really. o_O

anyway. the trip has been going wonderfully. we have more lounging about on tropical beaches ahead, and some fun romps in natinal parks and KL and singapore to see. it should be fun.

bye.

babmoo rafting? yes please

ahh, thailand of the technology - look, i actually get to write more than once a week, amazing.

sooo... what's been happening? we headed north on a 17 hour train ride to chiang mai. sleeper trains are the way to travel. you wake up in your destination refreshed and ready for sightseeing. yea - we've been doing a lot of that. walking everywhere, my feet don't know what's hit them. i crash every night at about 10pm. not that that means much when askea drags me out of bed at 6 or 7. well... it's not that bad.
anyway, enough ranting.

chaing mai is a small city, nicely contained with most of the sights within an easy distance of eachother. so we spent the first day taking in 3 wats (temples) and i must say: if you've seen one wat, you've seen them all. they are beautiful, and interesting, but ultimately it's like visiting every parish church in ireland. anyway.
the other day in chaing mai was an adventure of small proportion. we booked a trip elephant riding, trekking and bamboo rafting. elephants are cute and lazy, trekking is gross and sweaty in this weather, but bamboo rafting - now that is something to write home about. it's just about the most fun i've had on our trip so far. i laughed the whole way down the river. excellent.
you sit onto this long narrow raft, held together by some rope and stuff and hold on as the river sweeps you downstream; around rocks, along bushes, into swells - brilliant stuff. we almost capsized at one point - the raft tilted dangerously over on its side, but the rafter dude straightened us and all was well again. we went just after a night's rainfall too - so the river was swollen, adding to the adventure value. brilliant. the only problem was that it didn't last long enough. ah well.

we're off to "the bridge over the river kwai" tomorrow, after going to see the grand palace. then onwards to the famed beaches of thailand. i can't really wait to get to the sea. i miss salty air. i actually bought a bikini too. me owning a bikini - there must be something wrong! anyway - it's a nice one, i feel somewhat comfortable in it.

right so.

thailand rocks!!

hello again,

first - i have to mention that i'm on a somewhat wierd keyboard. so sorry for any typos.

thank god we are out of india is all i can say. i totally couldn't wait to leave. it is such a horrible country. well - beutiful country, bbut way too much stress. we spent our first day in thailand wandering all over bangkok and looking at it's huge mall - mbk (8 floor chock full of stuff - there's a whole floor just for mobile phones).
we walked down kao san (the insane backpackers street) and got a bus to saim square. walked to the train station and got a boat home. yes, that did take the whole day. it's been fad.
thailand is a huge mix of everything from smells to people to experiences. it dosn't have the chaos of india and is way easier to settle into.

we're going to go see spiderman tomorrow afternoon. i can't wait :) we looked at the cinema lobby and it looks amazing.

i totally can't think of anything else to say. i've been up for 48 hours and it shows a bit. i'll try and get online for a bit in chaing mai.
i need sleep.

india: the short and dirty

it's really wierd, checking my journal on a computer in a forign country. emailing people wasn't so bad, but this is such a normal thing - i just checked my messages and was like "i only ever do this at home". odd. it's strange to think that i won't have a home for a year. not a real one.
it's funny the places you find to feel "safe" while away from familiar territory. airports and while in a car / plane are the only places i feel are familiar to me these days. it's a bit stressful, really, not having anywhere to ground yourself - i find my eyes welling up and my throat constricting at random intervals, but it passes quickly and everything is good again. i was just saying to penelope_stone how the good bits are amazing and how the bad bits are annoying, but quickly forgotten when things are going well.
i'd hate to have something really bad happen. i don't really think i could handle it.

so yea - this is a copy of the email i sent to everyone.


we're in Dharmshala now, with the monks and the Tibetans. one annoying thing about India is the Indians. everyone else is quite nice, but the Indians are such a pain.

we had a bit of an adventure when we arrived here (in India i mean). our hostel had no booking for us and so we were homeless in Delhi, in a cab that didn't know where the Tibetan enclave was. he brought us to a travel agents instead, which told us that every hostel in Delhi was booked out because of Indian holidays.
anyway - we ended up spending e1000 on an all inclusive tour, which has been working out very well, but wasn't really what we wanted. although, i would hate to have to deal with Indians at every stop, because this way we just get in a car, go to our next destination and check into our hotel when we get there.

so, apart from the people, India is a beautiful place. the Himalayas are amazingly beautiful. Delhi, while hot, has it's charm. there are tonnes of trees everywhere, a pleasant change from the fields and ditches of Ireland. i don't have pics, cause they are all on Askea's camera.

yep - so much has happened, and i have a wonderful journal that i'm writing in every day, but i'm just too lazy to take it out of my bag and type up.

the start of the travels

so this is my last night in my own bed for a year. not that this thought saddens me, i've never had a very comfortable mattress.

my hair is 7mm long.



yea.

it's really wierd. when the wind blows through it, it feels like ants are crawling on my head. it is really gross and icky. i see penelope_stone and i get a minor shock to see her hair so short. i suppose it must be the same for her.

i can't find the lid to a luchbox, the lunchbox i have my electronic things in. i can't think of much to say. we went to freakscene last night. mr. fadd played terrible music. as liam commented, it was like listening to daytime radio. i'm a bit tired now, though.

i had my last night of archery. my last arrow was an 8 pointer, heh. not bad. i'll miss it, i think. i'll have to find a club in new zealand.

i'm going on an airplane tomorrow! woooooo! i love airplanes, they are so cool. weeee.

goodbye so. my next post will be from asia. waaaa - how cool is that?! :) :) eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

almost gone

i think my luck for this month has been really bad. usually, i'm such a lucky person, everything works out perfectly, but recently things have been going a bit squewy. my application for a credit card got refused, my stomach has been paining me, and today, top of the bill, i failed my driving test. i just hope everything sorts itself out before friday. i'd hate to think my bags will get stolen, the hostel will have no record of our booking and we'll be kidnapped and ransomed in delhi, all because my natural luck has run out.
not that i think it has - it just likes to stay balanced. usually everything is good but when it turns, everything crashes. ah well.

i'm trying to pack - it's dull. i still have to finish my novel. i don't think that is going to happen at this stage. i could do it tomorrow, i guess. maybe.

only 2 days left at home. god, that's a little scary. then out into the big world, with no anchor back to what i know as real; everything different and new and scary. really scary. but fun. an adventure. wooo! something to really write about at last. no more inane blather about work, or college, or random page-filler that no one really wants to know about. fluf that is forgotten as soon as read. no. this will be decent. :roll eyes: yea right!

anyway. it's a little dark in here, so i will go.

i feel occasional pangs of remorse

yes - i'm aware how long it has been since i posted last. nothing has really happened since then. well, it has really.

we are getting organized for our trip. we did a practice pack last weekend - i'm seriously considering bringing only one pair of pants and only a few different tops.

our indian visas came through yesterday and arrived today. i have my first stamp on my passport. wheee!!

i'm having serious trouble with my driving test. it got re-scheduled to the 8th of may and i need it within 6 days. i really don't think that is going to happen. it will have been such a waste of time and money (and emotion) if i don't get my test before i leave, cause i can't see myself doing it after i return.

in one week i'll be on the road to dublin. wooo! i booked our hostel in delhi - i hope it's nice. it's 6km from the city centre. i don't mind - it's in the tibeten enclave, away from the worst of the touts and beggars and stuff.

why do people not accept that as a writer i can't spell some words? like responce and availible. is it not ok to master grammar if you have a few (hundred) words that you can't spell? oh well. i still have 2000 words (about) to write to finish my novel. it's the very last scene and i don't quite know (still) how to work it out. another battle is fine and all, but that will be three in a row. is it a bit much to end the book in a flair of magic and swords and stuff? meh.

i'm up to ep9 of heroes. the "wow" factor has waned but it is still very good. hiro is my favourite character. and peter. and isacc. he looks better as a junkie - clean hair dosn't suit him.

mmm, what else. i got the 3d houses finished. i should put them up on dA. if i think about it when i go home. they are ok. they have some problems, but it took waaay too long to render them for me to go back and fix them. the biggest one took 11 hours to render. the quality is really good.

right so. i guess i'll go now. i've filled up enough of people's friends' pages.

things about work and travel

today in work i sat and waited for the phone to ring or an email to come in while listening to japanese talk radio. it was cool. i actually understood 4 or 5 of the words. there were 2 girls on the program, though and they just laughed fakely all the time. it was awful, bit still - i got to brush up on my nihongo.
work's a bit wierd. i walked down to douglas at lunch today and i was feeling totally depressed. I think it's the house or something - it just dosn't have a good vibe to it. or maybe it's the doctor's energy contaminating the rest of the place. after lunch i wasn't feeling so bad - i was on my own and listening to the radio and messing with a spreadsheet eva asked me to do. hopefully tomorrow will be better.

i got more injections, so now i have hepatitis a and b, tetanus and rabies floating around inside me. wonderful! oh well - now i can ogle the monkeys of india without being paranoid of them biting me.

i'm so tired and i have to go work on the 3d houses. i just want to go to bed. blah. i'm going to go now.

100,032

wahhhhh! see that? 100,032. wow! it's taken long enough. it only took one month to get to 50,000 and three to get to 100,000. god. it has been a total struggle. Scene 1 and 2 of chapter 14 are both about 600 words. oh well. there's always the re-write.
now i'm onto the great fun of the devils' council.

yeay

so that went well. i'm now going on to scene 4 of chapter 13. most of ch 13 is wonderfully exciting. actually, all the rest of the book is wonderfully exciting. i have a feeling there will be some difficult dialogue scenes ahead, but irshemesh is about to enter stage front + i can't wait to have fun writing him. this morning i was thinking about him and it struck me that he is a little like zakath from david eddings' books. i always loved zakath. he was so infinitely cool. him and his cat. only irshemesh dosn't have the angst. yeay.

so yea. things are good. i totally can't wait for shivering isles to come out. i'll only have a month to play it when it does. and it's been said that the main quest is quite long, so i have worries that i won't get it finished. though it only took me about a month to do the oblivion main quest (and that was with a whole heap of side-tracking to go collecting flowers and kill people and steal things). so yea. i'll be buying that the day it comes out :)

more on writing - yes it is my life

do you want to know something funny? page 111 of my novel is home to scene 1 of chapter 11, i just thought that was a bit mad! and yes - i have divided my novel into scenes, just to make the writing less of a struggle, cause i can aim for 2 scenes a day as opposed to a certain number of words or pages or whatever.

i really havn't much else to say. i have a craving to play oblivion, cause i think i've found a fix to my game (my main save is a bit broken - one of the essential characters is missing).

i'm also quite looking forward to a game (an mmorpg - shock horror) called aion. it looks really beautiful and is about angels and demons. though i'll probably not buy it, because i really can't afford monthly subscription fees. oh, yes. and the fact that i will probably be in new zealand when it comes out. there are so many good games due out this year and i'm going to miss them all - waaaaaaa.

writing news

buh - writing is going badly today. i've gotten to this bit where Zachery's "mother" (she's not his real mother) is having a crisis of conscience and i don't know how to get this across, especially when writing from Zachery's point of view. so yea. i may just sum up the action and move on. i really have to move on. i have this tight schedule that, if i manage to stick to it, has me finishing the novel by the middle of february. i really don't want to be stuck at it for much longer than that.

as an aside - i am on 74,542 words (of an estimated 124,000) and 106 pages. go me! buh - i'm never going to be finished by the middle of feb.

101 pages

see that title? yea? good. that is now the length of my novel, of which the working title is beginning to stick and i am considering calling "The Fall". perhaps that is a bit ambiguous, though. random young person (i say young because it's the kind of thing that used happen to me when i was younger) goes into a book shop and thinks "'The Fall' wow, cool book about autumn, let me look at it. awh, wait. this isn't about autumn, it's just some crummy fantasy about a stupid angel. god, who wants to read that crud." yea, so then they go and say to their friends "that ria one, the one with the fall book, is a total sell out. i mean, angels. god. who'd buy that?"

heh heh. i am currently laughing at myself. better than a minute ago. some random person called to the door and rang the chimes for about 10 minutes. i huddled in my room hoping for a) daddy to realize someone was at the door and go open it b)mammy to wake up and check it out c) the person to go away. number c happened, but not for ages and in that time i was deeply considering turning off my lights and hiding in my bed. i'm such a weirdo. i'm scared of people at the door. god, like. i really just hate people who bang on the door for ages, though - and those really persistent ones who then get their car keys and tap at the windows. whuuuu :shudder: those people drive me under the table for ages and ages.

heh - yea. enough ranting. i got to 101 pages today. i was so happy. and the part i'm on is so exciting too. it's all downhill for poor zachery from today + this makes me incredibly happy for some sadistic reason. i just love when misfortune befalls my characters. it's when you really get to see what they are made of - in zachery's case, hatred and anger. wooo!! whey for evilness! yeay. i wonder will "my great public" have a problem reading about the bad guy? well, he's not really bad - just very much a product of the events in his life and quite misguided about they way his life is turning out.

i can't wait to go to asia. we are going to have so much fun. i find myself dreaming about india these nights. in other random news - i'm listening to "saturday night wrist", "so divided" and "the eraser" these days and really enjoying them. it sorta makes me hopeful for good music for 2007 and beyond.

yes.

i'm going to go now. bye.