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.