First sunburn of 2012

It is official. The sun here is very strong. I got pretty burned across one shoulder while wandering around the ostridge festival today.

The festival was fun. We got to see a very silly ostridge race, pet a bunch of animals, watch a dog-jumping-into-water show, a monkey show, and eat some ostridge. Nom nom nom.

I don't know what else to say... I think I'm a bit tired. I might go a lie on the hammock.

storm's a-comin'

The weather are giving storm warnings for the end of this week, and it's really starting to get going now. It's windy and kinda cold out (cold being 17 degrees). They are giving bad winds for tomorrow too, and snow up on the mountains. Ooohhhh. At the moment I'm sitting here and every so often the wind slams into the building, and the window rattles a bit and the door shakes a little, and it's slightly unnerving. River and I just went out for a walk in it, and all I wanted was to get back inside again - I think River was feeling rather energised by the wind, though - she was mad hyper.

We went to the balloon festival last weekend - we went in the evening for the glow event. It was amazing - wandering among all these colourful hot air balloons that lit up every so often with jets of fire. Every so often a guy on a loudspeaker would do a countdown and all the balloons would light up at the same time. It looked incredible. And when that was over, there were fireworks. And they were some of the best fireworks I've seen. There were ones up in the sky and ones closer to the ground and the whole thing was pretty spectacular.

In other news, I've knitted a hat and a half, 2 pairs of gloves, a pair of socks and am working on another thing (it's a surprise). I'm pretty proud of everything - except the half a hat... don't know why I'm not so enthusiastic about it but it's just not gelling with me.

I don't have much other news.

speed speed speed

today, i hit 40km/h on my bike. it was cool :) that's almost the speed limit - i'll bet with a good wind behind me i could totally make 50. i had a good cycle today, though maybe i pushed myself a bit hard. i was pretty wrecked when i got home - all buzzy eared. i don't think this is such a good thing, but i recovered quickly. so according to my bike computer today, i did 7.4kms in 24 minutes at an average of 19km/h. my normal average is about 17 (or 14 if i'm just cycling to the village).

anyway - the 40km/h thing - i was going down the only hill in my journey (actually there is another hill, but it's the downslope of a bridge and isn't long enough for me to get up much speed and the road slopes up again straight after), it's like this pathetic hill, though... more of a slope, really. i mean, gravity was helping, but only a little.

in other news, i had a good weekend in cork. the street performance festival was good fun and the weather held up for it. it's on in dublin this weekend, and i might go along again. there were a few acts that i didn't get to see in cork that seemed good.

the bamboo out on the balcony has two new shoots coming up... at least i hope it is bamboo shoots, it could be some sort of random weed, because it is outside, but these stalks look serious, not like weeds which are weedy (which is why we call weedy things weedy). yea...

we watched speed racer last night. i really quite enjoyed it. just so long as you didn't question anything it was a fun movie, i liked the effects and the colours and the characters.
ooh - over the weekend i watched a film called push. i'd been iffy about it, not having heard anything about it, but i enjoyed it too. i liked the setting and the character powers. i'd classify it as an urban sci-fi - sorta gritty camerawork mixed with elements that you won't find in a normal action flick, but which arn't like aliens and spaceships and stuff. or maybe urban fantasy would be more like it... because there was really nothing to make it science-y, but a bit to make it fantasy-ish.

yea, i think that's all. got to get back to writing now.

me and yoshi went sunbathing today

we took yoshi to the vet yesterday evening. i just got too worried about him. his colour has steadily turned more and more brown and yesterday even his stomach was a pale shade of brown. so i bought him a hot water bottle and we drove him over to leixlip to see the vet. the visit was good. she proclaimed him well, and that he is probably about to shed, which is causing his skin to change colour. but she's going to test his poo as well and get back to us if anything turns up. hopefully it won't. but it's such a relief to know that there is nothing fatal wrong with him.
i need to learn how not to worry. i tried so hard not to worry yesterday - and even managed to convince myself that i wasn't worried, but it was all an intricate self-deception. once we came out of the vet, i knew i had actually been really worried. i felt one hundred million times better. peace of mind is such a good thing.

i went into the mind, body, spirit festival on sunday. it was good - loads of things to look at. i got some turkish apple tea, a little angel wind-chime and a book: "the animal healer." it's interesting to read - all about dealing with animals in a way that is least stressful for them.

ugh - i just closed down firefox by accident. i'm so glad Lj has a post-backup thing. ok - the reason why i closed firefox is because i was going messing around with some photos in photoshop - making them post-worthy.






the pic of yoshi has had some major cosmetic surgery done to it. i removed a branch and a wire and made the colours more tonally unified (aka, hid the brown skin on his back). but this is a slightly old pic and it wasn't nearly as bad then.

tiredy post

yoshi ate 6 crickets today. that's a personal record. he was very off-colour today though. i worried about him, but he perked up quite a bit after he ate... jumping off his branch into his pool of water, splashing around for a few minutes, climbing back up onto the branch again until a few minutes later when he plopped back into the water again. repeat about 4 or 5 times. it was cute to watch, and good to see him so lively.

i'm thinking of heading into the mind body spirit festival tomorrow for a bit... i missed the one in cork and it would be good to look around and see what the atmosphere is like.

recently lordkilljoy got me a really cute bear-hat-thing. it's white and fluffy with cute black ears and big cutie eyes at the front. it's really adorable - i love it :) i should post up a picture.

i'm really tired. i should go to bed. yep - i'm spacing out here, i'm so tired.

random points of life

"Last updated 3 days ago." ooh - how did that happen? i'd like to say it was because i was just so busy doing world-building, but that would be a lie. i'm using liquid story binder (which tracks the amount of time you spend with it's window open) and i write for only half the time i spend in front of my computer. on some day last week i had my computer on (supposedly writing) from 12pm to 9pm and i only had story binder open for 4.5 hours. that's really bad :/ i should try harder to motivate myself.

i do have an excuse for today, though. it was the first day of the mind, body, spirit festival and i spent the whole day in the city hall randomly wandering around the stalls. it was fun. it's good to just wander and look at shiny crystals and flick through hippy books and hang around my parent's stall.

i got started on my genrechallenge for this month. i'd like to get it written kinda fast, so that i can spend longer on editing. i did no (or minimal) editing for last month's one.

my cd drive decided to work for me last night and i stayed up until 1am playing oblivion. it was so much fun. my non-fighting / merchant character now owns the manor in skingrad. it's such a pretty place to live :)

ooh - i saw a church hall for sale in the news paper the other day. if i had quarter of a million i would totally buy it. it's always been my dream to live in a converted castle or church. that would rock like total coolness.

i have a telelphone interview on wednesday. i should care more about it, but i just don't. i've lost all confidence in society.

lots of news about lots of stuff

my editing of zan / kej goes on. every day i say "i can get this finished today" and everyday i close having more to do. at this stage i'm just reading it out loud (thanks for that suggestion leinsterbard) to make sure everything sounds good - no repeated words and commas in the right place and stuff. i've tagged a few paragraphs for an overhaul, but just haven’t the willpower to go at them yet. i'm waiting for inspiration. i'm a firm believer that no idea should be a struggle, you just have to wait for the inspiration. of course sometimes it takes forever to get here. anyway. i'm also half way through the plot outline / synopsis for my novel. it also needs a name, probably something with "fall" in the title. zan / kej also needs a title. ah well.

ps - listening to really loud music and singing along does not help with editing.