I’m going dark for a little while, to give myself a chance to catch up on the todo list of doom, work out which projects need kept and which need abandoned and to give myself room to work on the things that are important to me.
To do that, I need to work out which are more important than others 
I know it’s not what a lot of you ‘want’ from me, but to be honest, I’m always pretty quiet last month and then blab like a loon this month - I thought I’d give y’all a change.
I’ve been working on and off these past few days on themes for everyone. I don’t mind publishing MY OWN without testing (and when I say ‘my own’ I mean a design I’ve found and tested) but the other three I’m devving at the moment are now off for rigorous testing.
Anyway - http://spirit-tome.com (and http://ardentwriter.com and http://semiskimmedcola.com and http://languagedump.com to name just three all redirect to there at present too). The great thing about it is it’s everything I do - in convenient places. All that would make it better is being able to pull in stuff to each of the categories and have running feeds from the sites relating to those categories. Guess what my next big coding project is?
Quick update.
I passed out last night - at 8:30. According to my beloved, I was exhibiting signs of an aphasia (hence the title). I switched hands as well, writing backwards and forwards with both my left and right hand. I was laughing at the cat, when all she was doing was miaowing. Apparently one of the few words I could say was ‘Kitteh’.
One of my biggest ‘writerly’ problems at the moment is lack of time. And refusal to cut my losses to make up for that lack of time, and clear space.
I spent an hour today, explaining to a very stubborn person, that the network rules were not made to piss her off, and that, no, contrary to her supossition, she was not the only person in the world on said network.
The bit I *really* don’t get is why these people claim to be ’so successful’ and can ‘really screw me over’ and yet, give a crap about somewhere they think is so tiny that they are entitled to walk all over us little people.
Though, I hate to admit it, but he’s almost the same height as me.
Anyway - my eldest is nine today (6th). He’s this clown-like, mental wee thing that loves Games Workshop (and I have to say, thanks to Doc, for letting him take it up - though my wallet doesn’t feel like saying ‘thank you’ most of the time!), tactical games, painting models and horsing around with the Scouts. He’s really turning into a tween, rather than a child.
And it’s hard to look at him without thinking of the tiny baby - but I can’t quite work out how not to burst into tears when I do.
Later on this evening, I’m going to be making a potentially life changing post (I just need to get the rest of the work done first!). I don’t think some of you are going to be particularly shocked by it - but some of you might….and for that, before anyone gets upset and accuses me of deliberately misleading them, I didn’t. My pen names, have, up until this point, been neccisary.
That said, I’m not owning to all of them. I’ve quit one position entirely that required me to keep the pen name secret - which sucks, cause I can’t even list the books on my site, and it was my biggest ‘name’.
First day of school, so the kids have photos taken (naturally!), so whilst the camera is out, and being used, I thought I’d take advantage of it and spend some time getting photos of the cat doing her ‘casual’ thing. Which may involve sitting on my bed with her, writing, till she falls asleep in some cute pose, or similarly, having the camera handy downstairs.
I’ll be back later with the results.
So, in a fit of organisation, I’ve signed up for University, I’ve finished my university paperwork, for my fundings, bursaries ‘etc’, and I’ve enrolled in all eight classes I wanted to take. There *is* a ninth that I need to speak to the Uni about, and find out when I’d be expected to pay for it, before I enroll in it, but so far I’m all set.
I’m on the core 200 course (writing, rewriting and showcasing), 201 (poetry) and 202 (prose), along with two psych courses that I need to do to enroll in forrensic psych next year (which is also where the third ‘missing’ one comes in. Had I planned it better, I might have done one of the courses last year, but that didn’t actually occur to me till later.
Kushie is…Kushie basically.
We’ve had her for close to 12 weeks, I think. We got her on the 21st of June, and ever since then, we’ve had one vet visit after another. We’ve had her microchipped, and she’s had more antibiotics than I have in the lst year just since moving in with us. She’s almost at the end of her steroid dose, and we have, at last, managed to get her vaccinated, much to her ‘disgust’. Well partially.
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X-posted to Semiskimmedcola, Kai’s personal blog, and Kai’s livejournal |
Yesterday morning I got one of those ‘rude awakenings’. It’s been a slow week, the kids are home, and the cat is wheezy (she might have cat athsma - she might have an allergy to dust of all things - which is really bad in our house cause it’s constantly dusty - no matter how often I dust. So next cunning plan is to get rid of as much of the clutter as possible, so that if I need to dust, every day, I can without it taking me hours.
For one - I really need to start asking people for more proof.
Of things in general.
For two. I’m going to see John Barrowman at the Festival in Cheltenham. I’ve recently discovered the person(s) I’ve been exchanging emails with, over the course of the last year aren’t who they claim they are (like an hour ago) - my beloved managed to talk me into looking at the ‘better’ side of it (i.e I’ve had thier hosting company look into thier site, terminate thier account, send information to the people they were inpersonating, which means, though I’m being a bitch, I’m protecting other people), and will be writing articles about this, because - y’know, if I had a tattoo that says ‘naieve’ I’d feel much better, cause I’d be labelled that way.
I’m actually fairly numb to be honest. That’s a year that I’ve wasted on getting to know people, that they claimed to be someone they are not. It’s *kinda* the story of the internet, but this has really put me through the wringer.
*spoilers*
This last week we’ve chilled, we’ve cleaned, we’ve played Sins of a Solar Empire. I really miss the kids, but they’re having a blast. They’ve been to Loudon Castle, Leith Water World, and are going to the zoo and doing lots of fun stuff with thier dad. The smallest is behaving fairly well - which is great.
So we’ve got some great stuff lined up for the rest of the week.
I’ve spent the last two of the last five days commuting - introducing the cat to family members (she was kinda funny when we spent time with Gregor dog (a border terrier) cause she fuzzed up and growled but didn’t actually do anything. Mom likes her, Dave’s dad likes her - everyone likes her.
We dropped the kids off - we spent time with lots of freinds - we spent more time with lots of freinds (waves to everyone!) went to a great meal, a brilliant show (Otis Lee Crenshaw) and spent time just chilling. The drive home was surprisingly easy - Kushie only yowled cause her mat in her cage was wet and slept most of the way back.
I started using this very cool app last night called ‘RescueTime‘. Basically, you download a little piece of software and every half an hour, it transmits the things you’ve been doing (in general terms, like the websites you visited, the software you’re using ‘etc’ back to the web, where you can categorise, align, and generally spend time seeing when you…spend time.
After I got over the privacy issues (cause, it’s watching me!) and the fact that tagging takes 10 minutes out of every three hours or so (though I’m thinking that’ll be a transient thing cause there’s only so much I need to tag and the rest can go in ‘NOS’) and so far, I’ve learned that I spend WAAAAY too much time in my email. We’re looking at an hour already today because I just wasn’t disciplined enough to say ‘all right, lets close this sucker’. Part of it is that my todo/task list is in there too, but mostly, I’m just hugely undisciplined when it comes to my email.
And those in the surrounding areas of course
My beloved, the kids and I are commuting up to the Burgh on the 2nd of August (Saturday). We probably won’t be available to hang out till at least Sunday night/Monday as we’ve just gotten engaged and both of our families want to see us to do various family things.
We’re only up till Wednesday, when we commute back to Cheltenham (with no kids!) whilst they stay with thier dad. So we’ve got Sunday evening, Monday and Tuesday to see people. We don’t want to spend the night in a pub if at all possible, but if it’s the only way to see people en-masse, that’s ok.
Spirit-tome - a writer's blog