rotheche

I should stop relying on Loudtwitter and the occasional photo and start actually blogging a bit.  The last 'real' post of mine was way the hell back on 8 March; everything since then has been either tweets or a photo.

So, how are things going?

Work's been busy - some of the things I've been doing:

• Leave for a while, when husband went overseas.  A lot of non-constructive sloth while he was gone.
• Kinglake assignment.  I worked for a couple of weeks in Kinglake, one of the areas worst affected by the Black Saturday bushfires.  Still incredibly ambivalent about the experience.
• Went to Canberra to cover our radio network's awards - a lot of coverage work in a few days.  Still processing the video from it, but nearly done.

Study (the Cert IV Professional Writing and Editing) is going along well.  Completed the first two assignments in Lit for Writers and got a pass* in the first, assuming a pass in the second.  Got a pass in the half of my first Industry Overview assignment, haven't got the second half back yet.  Got the third Lit for Writers assignment done, just waiting to hand it in on 20 May; tomorrow night, I will do some final revision of the second Industry Overview assignment prior to handing it in on 14 May.  Particularly pleased with the third Lit assignment, I hope it'll get good marks.

What else...the Nikon that I was using has gone back, and I miss it badly; I will be buying a DSLR this year, I hope, and a Nikon is leading at the moment.  If I could find a D40X, I'd love it.

Went to see Mum and Dad for Mum's birthday:  Good trip, but short.

There's not much else happening, actually.


*For the first bit this year, we were only 'pass/fail' - or, more accurately, competent proved or not proved.  No 'degrees' of pass, like distinction, high distinction etc.  That changes from hereon out.

Work
Has been flat out.  We have new staff on, so I'm doing some extra.  Very tired, rather stressful.  The fires that started not long after the last weekly update don't help, to say the least...

The training course that was going to run end of March/into April has been postponed, probably May now.  If it's been put off, that means it'll probably be a three-week trip instead of two.

Blackberry arrived.  Cool gadget, but it's so goddamned easy to just check office email... damn.

AFL season starts up in a few weeks - end of March.  I'll probably run the office footy tipping comp again.

Leave is coming up soon.  Husband's going travelling to the US for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary, I'm taking that time off work but not going to the US (money for tickets).  Wish I was, but will use the time to work on the novel.

Fires
Yeah, should mention them, much as I try not to think about them too much.  Still burning.  450,000ha (1.1 million acres), 1800+ homes destroyed, 7000+ people homeless.  181 known dead - that's 'known'.  There are more bodies out there.  At least 200 is predicted, maybe 300.

One man's been charged with lighting the Churchill fire - that one killed over 20 people.  He's said to be in 'a fragile mental state'.

Yeah.

Study
Had two classes, one in each unit I'm doing this year.  Got the first assignment in Literature for Writers due on 4 March; the first one for Industry Overview is due on 16 April, so that's got a bit of time.  Needs more research, though.

Photography
Photos on Flickr since the last update:

• Magpie
• Brown bird
• Smoke panorama
• Chinese lion
• Conservatory
• Statue
• Fernery pool
• Moonset

Right now
Right now, I'm sitting here on a non-smoky morning, with a load of laundry going, drinking a coffee.  It's Valentine's Day, and husband has said he's taking me out for dinner tonight, my choice on where.  I'm contemplating either the Japanese restaurant in town, the Thai place or the Indian place.  Soon, I'll drag out the Wii and play some tennis, and the Wii Fit and do some work there, find out how much weight I've put on through not doing much exercise in the last fortnight - heat and stress and tiredness.  Will be going back to the gym from Monday.

Posted via email from rotheche's posterous

It's been a bit of time since I actually posted, huh?  All those photos, not many words.

Well, I'm still around.  NaNoWriMo failed miserably this year; barely over 20k words.  Which, given last year's performance, is disappointing.  Next year, I will be back.

Let's see, what else is going on...work's ticking over nicely, I've decided I love online shopping because I've done half my Christmas shopping without going near a store; we're hosting family for a few days over Christmas this year.  Cats are nuts, as always.  The photo-a-day thing is fun, and challenging.

I'm hoping desperately that a manuscript development program I've applied for comes through, and will find out about that in the next few days.

We're planning to go overseas for the in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary early next year.

I'm looking at trying to do some form of study next year.  I was talking to someone who seems to get a new certificate/diploma/whathaveyou every three weeks, and I'm feeling like I've been a slug in that regard.  Difficult to organise, though.

I think that's about it for now.

Got a phone call from the dealership - our car will be there either late this week or early next, most likely this week.  This is about a week earlier than we thought, which is great news :)

Work has been chaotic since I got back - very glad for the week off, but the return has been messy.  Was at work from around 0645 to 1915 Monday, and today I worked at home from 0730 til 1130, and then 1200 til 1730.  Frantic.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better, or I'll be taking next week off... :D

What else?  Let's see, got most of the X Files seasons 7, 8 and 9 watched over the holiday; still got a few of the final eps to go.  I've grown to quite like John Doggett as a character, actually.  I never saw these eps when they went to air originally; I was living in kind of a broadcast black spot for much of the latter half of the show's life.  So I missed a lot of stuff along the way, and Doggett was one of them.

Right, so we bought a new car.

Test drove the Yaris first; I liked it, husband didn't like it as much, but it set a mark for the Mazda to beat. We worked out a price that we were happy with too.

Then off to the Mazda dealership, and we took out a 2. At first, husband - who is over 6 feet tall - didn't think that he'd be able to drive it comfortably (with his height and long legs, this is a real consideration), but I still wanted to take it out for a spin, just in case. Long story short, we both loved it - small, but much better handling and performance than the Yaris. Nippy and light, and it ran out to about 110kph in third gear without sounding like it was screaming - it was working, but not in pain, if you know what I mean.

The best price we could get, though, was about a thousand more than the Yaris. Didn't put it out of our price range, but made it tighter.

So we went away to talk about it, and decide if we liked it that much more than the Yaris, and we did, so after lunch we went back to say yes.

The rep we'd been talking to was out, though - so I amused myself while he was gone by taking a second-hand Mazda MX-5* that they had for sale out for a test drive.

Oh, baby, where you been all my life? *grin*

This one was a few years old, and thus was the old 1.8 litre, not the current 2.0 litre model. Doesn't sound like a big engine, but it's only a small car, so it's kind of a 'precision over brute force' thing, and I like that. Certainly felt powerful enough, and it handled as sweetly as anything I've ever driven - I had tremendous fun driving it, and hated to hand it back after just ten minutes behind the wheel. We're going to be buying one of those in the future... :D

I wouldn't mind taking the RX-8 they had there out for a run, either, but no chance of buying that - insurance on rotaries is murderous. The Mazda will cost up to around $400pa to insure, depending on how much excess we're willing to carry, the MX-5 runs about $450, $460pa - the RX-8, close to $800pa, mostly because of the rotary engine. So that's probably not sustainable.

(MInd you, husband was stunned by the relative cheapness of car insurance in Australia - it's much cheaper to insure a car here.)

So, my Motoring Master Plan is this; we get the Mazda2 now. Nice little car, not terribly practical for more than two people though - not a lot of leg room back there. Over the next few months, we save like nothing on earth, because the current car - the Verada** - is on its last legs (it's done a sterling job, and covered a huge amount of kilometres for us - it's just that it's old and soon in need of a new engine, which is probably not a good investment, because the body's showing its age too); with the knowledge that we saved $5,000 in seven months (with just me working - and husband's got a job now, so the money will come easier), we should be able to put together a decent amount to buy a good second-hand car, something that will take four passengers, for when we need that capacity. And then, in a few years' time, when we're ready to trade in the 2, we trade it for an MX-5 :D

---

Oh, and something else: husband surprised me with an anniversary gift. An iPod! *squee!* I'd long thought of buying one, but could never justify it - so he went ahead and did it for me. Said I'd been supporting him financially since he arrived in Australia (insert long discussion here about how it's not all about finances, and he supported me in lots of other ways that are more important), and he wanted to do something nice for me. So I'm busily transferring all that music from CDs to mp3, and loading it all on my nice shiny new iPod Classic :)



*USers know it as the Miata.
**Diamante to USers, I think.

1. Dinner tonight will be oven-baked salmon (salmon wrapped in foil with sliced tomato, chopped chives and a little oil) accompanied by baked potatoes and steamed green vegies, plus some toasted Turkish bread.

2. Perth trip has been confirmed, finally; one day travel there, four days of teaching, one day of travel back.  That's in August.

3. I want another goldfish.  The tank is currently empty.

4. I really need a decent night's sleep.

5. I'm taking next week off work.  We're not going anywhere, but we will be shopping for a new car.  We may go completely nuts and buy a really-honest-to-god-never-had-another-owner Yaris, even.  Apart from that, I'm planning on sleeping in and lazing around and working on Blood Red, and not much else.

6. We're talking about a weekend trip to Sydney - got enough flier miles that we can get a free return trip to Sydney each.  Maybe we'll go to Taronga Park Zoo or something like that.

Gawd, but I'm tired.

The trip to Sydney, for some reason, has left me particularly ratty, and I don't know why.  Okay, flight delays, Qantas playing hide and seek with the luggage and so on probably didn't help, but I'm tired above and beyond the call.

Good thing is, the next trip isn't until next month.  Mid-late August - over to Perth.  And that will be a slower sort of trip - because it's a four-hour flight, I won't be working then flying on the one day, so it'll be a bit more relaxed, I hope.

Footy tipping this weekend...hmm. St Kilda should be able to take out Carlton tonight, but they (St Kilda) have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory a few times so far.  The other two dicey ones are the Kangas, a bit, and Richmond on Sunday afternoon.  I'm biting my nails on that one - they're playing West Coast at Subiaco (in WA, so Richmond are travelling).  Granted, the Weagles are way lower on the ladder than the Tiges, but I still just have a slightly wibbly feeling...

Husband is working this weekend, so I'm planning on indulging myself in the sort of horror movies that I love but he hates.  Dark Water, and another one whose name temporarily escapes me because I'm tired and stupid.  I'll watch one on Saturday, one on Sunday.  I may even go so far as to watch East West 101 again - that's another show on the 'I love it but he hates it' list.

Got home Thursday afternoon from one trip to the north coast of NSW (review of the new website at work).  Interesting - we covered a lot of ground, and have a lot of work to do.

Tuesday afternoon, I take off on another trip - this time to Sydney, for a digital storytelling workshop, and a Final Cut Pro workshop.  Fly Tuesday afternoon, first workshop on Wednesday, second on Thursday morning, fly home Thursday afternoon.  And hopefully do it all without acquiring another head cold - I'm still getting over this one!

What else is going on... let's see, the footy tipping is wandering along like it usually does; I'm back in a tie for second, with the first placed person being about seven points clear of the field, and pretty much uncatchable, it seems.  At this stage, I'll be happy if I can keep my second place.

Work's going well, although the travelling plays havoc with my schedule - still have to keep up with the regular stuff while being on the road, which meant that, last week, I had a day and a half to do an entire week's work.  Did it, but it left me feeling like exhausted.  This week's trip will mean doing the whole week's work in three days, which still blows, but not as badly as last week.  Hopefully on Wednesday night, I'll have a broadband connection at the hotel, and some time to work.  That'll help a lot.  And I'm still apparently scheduled for a trip to Perth; it's still not confirmed though.

But mostly, I just want to get over this cold.  Friday night, I went to bed at 9.30pm, didn't wake up until 11.30am the next day - 14 hours of sleep.  And I was still exhausted all day - all I did was cook dinner and watch DVDs, and by 9pm I was still exhausted.  Went to bed at 10pm last night, woke up at 10.30am, and I feel less tired today, at least - maybe I'm getting over it.  I hope so.  Husband wants to go see a movie today, I just want to curl up on the couch with a laptop or a book and do nothing.

Husband got a job!  Husband got a job!

Well, as good as; he's got a week's trial, starting Monday morning.  Three days' training, and then two days of work; at the end of it, he should be hired.  YAY!

To put this in perspective, he gave up his job and family and friends to move to Australia to be with me - in part because we decided that his skill set would be more portable than mine (no radio stations in his town in the US, and I doubt if I'd have gotten a gig with my accent anyway).  So he gave up a lot to come here, thinking it would be if not easy then at least not impossible to get a new job.

Think again.  When you emigrate to Australia on a spouse visa, you spend your first two years on a temporary visa, before exchanging it for a permanent one.  That 'temporary' thing puts a lot of employers off; they think that you're going to disappear in a few months, or that you're not legally allowed to work (on a spouse temporary visa, working is quite legal).  So nobody hired him.

Then, when he got his permanent residency, he had this bloody great gap on his employment history, and two years of kicks in the teeth.

I'm so proud of him for not giving up, and so pleased that he's got this.

(And I now get to see him in a suit every day, and man, he looks hot in a suit.)

I made soup last night.  Leftover roast beef and vegies, vegie stock, some herbs and spices and cooked it for 45 minutes or so.  Turned out fine - soup is the usual fate for leftover roast beef and the like around here, so I have lots of practice.

It's been raining here for the last day or two, on and off, which is fantastic.  It doesn't rain often enough.

Didn't sleep well last night.  Tired and moderately grouchy.  Don't wanna go to work tomorrow, wanna go to the zoo.

Looks like I have some time off coming up :)

I've got nearly four weeks' leave racked up now, and will have six by year's end, so I'm planning on taking a week off towards the end of July.  The training trip that was supposed to be on from 4 August has been delayed until October, so I can do that now.

I don't know what we'll do; hopefully get away for a few days, at least, as well as some concentrated schlepping around home and sleeping in, and good things like that.  Just don't know what or where, specifically.  Around this time last year, we went away, but we had a batch of frequent flier points that got us up to the Gold Coast for free.  Eh, something will turn up, I'm sure :)

*yawn*  Tired.  Bullet-point time.

• I don't know why, but I'm still not sleeping all that well.  Schlepping around tired is beginning to wear on me.
• I ended up getting a perfect round in last week's football tipping - only just, though.  Fremantle nearly pulled it off.  Still in second place.
• Work's going on as it usually does.
• Going to meet with a cop tomorrow, to talk about some detail for Blood Red.  I don't think the poor bloke knows what he's in for; I have about eight pages of notes that I need to ask him.
• We're going to the zoo in Melbourne this weekend.  We'll go down Saturday morning, go to the zoo, and then come back again, via the Krispy Kreme store in Collins Street.
• I'm contemplating finding a game butcher in Bendigo; I want to have a try at cooking venison.
• Still plodding through my reread of the whole of the Wheel of Time series; I'm up to Winter's Heart, and remembering why I wanted to throw books at Robert Jordan.
• I'm losing weight again; after being slack, I'm back on the Xenical (lipase inhibitor) and losing about 1/2 kilo a week.

...but given how disorganised I am, maybe that's a good thing.

No footy tipping this week as the AFL is running it's Vic vs All Stars hero tribute match.  However, I'm in second, three points behind the leader.  I have hopes of at least getting closer over coming weeks.

It may be autumn here, but it's a beautiful day; not a cloud in the sky, warm sunshine, hardly a breeze.  The cats are sitting by the front door, staring in fascination at the myriad small birds that are hunting for grass seeds or insects or worms in the front yard; I'm enjoying the sunshine coming through the windows.

And I'm enjoying the peace and quiet too.  I'm on my own for the next few hours (game day for husband), and alone-time is a rare thing for me.  So I'm going to watch a DVD (Rosemary's Baby), and maybe start watching East West 101, another DVD (Australian TV series).  I'll toast some Italian bread and cut up some cheese to serve with it for lunch, and just sort of luxuriate in the quiet (except for the soundtrack of Rosemary's Baby).  Ah, life.

I haven't actually posted here since returning from the training course - got back eight days ago, so naughty me.

The course went well, all things considered; lots of rain (which, since we're still drought-struck down here in Victoria, was marvellous), plenty of wildlife sightings (tawny frogmouths, echidna, many beautiful spiders), good people.  The course got good comments from the students - a few things we need to tweak, but generally, overwhelmingly positive.  They were a good bunch and I'm looking forward to seeing what they turn out.

I'm going travelling again shortly - Wednesday through to Friday this week - to Sydney, for our awards and forum.  Travel on Wednesday, set up for the online outside broadcast (multiple laptops, still cameras, video camera, audio recording etc).  Cocktail party that night, god help me, followed by dinner out with the ed group (the people I work with/for - I do ed group work, but I'm still located in a radio station), which I'm looking forward to.  Then forum/online OB all day Thursday, followed by awards ceremony Thursday night - more online OB, but I'm nominated as well*.  Then a bit more forum/online OB on Friday before tearing down our OB stuff and heading home on Friday afternoon.

So that'll be a busy couple of days.

More travel coming up; potentially a conference in June, and then likely another training course at which I'll actually be one of the trainers instead of student-wrangler, in August.

The footy tipping: well, this week's kind of sucking.  Had St Kilda won, I'd have gotten one point closer to the leader, and one point clear of the other person with whom I'm tied for second.  However, St Kilda didn't win.  Never trust Port Adelaide, I'm telling you; they start out the season looking like they'll be about as much use as a chocolate teapot, and then they start winning.

So what does that mean?  The leader (DLl) will likely get a four-point jump on me, the person with whom I was tied for second (JAG) will go to being second on her own, and I'll be in third.

Not great but, eh, things could be worse.  Back in round five, we have a bigger bottleneck for second - three-way tie between me, JAG and TD - and TD forgot to put his tips in.  That means you get the lowest score for the round minus one - so, a couple of folks scored three, and that meant that TD got 2 for the round.  So he went from second down to eighth in one round.  Ouch.

In book news, I finished - finally - the detailed editing of Blood Red last night.  It's been through several drafts already.

1st draft (the NaNoWriMo model, very rough, huge plot holes, but written in 27 days): 66K words, plus Wellspring (related novella), 18K words
2nd draft (very fast re-do/edit, fixing some of the broader plot holes, while I had the solutions still fresh in my head, incorporating about 5K words from Wellspring): 81K words
3rd draft (another pretty fast re-do/edit, begun right after the last one, fixing more of the problems and doing some stylistic stuff as well): 90K

Bear in mind, I finished the first draft and Wellspring in November 2007, finished the third draft early in January.

So after the third draft, I printed out Blood Red, and let it sit on my desk, not touching it, until partway through March, when I started going through it with a fine-toothed comb**.  There's not a page of the manuscript without notes and corrections scribbled all over it.  I mean that literally.  And I also have six pages of notes and research questions and suchlike to follow up before I really start the fourth draft.

Once I'm done with that, it goes to a manuscript assessment service, and hopefully they say it's got potential.  From there...who knows?  Okay, I'll probably end up like so many others, with novels in the drawer, never getting published...but I can try.



*Don't get excited.  I'm not; I never win these things
**In one of those things that really bothers me (like people misusing 'to all intents and purposes' as 'to all intensive purposes'), I recently saw that rendered as 'a fine tooth-comb', which brought up some interesting mental images

Got home from work today and promptly flaked out; I sat down to read for a while and naptime more or less grabbed me and wrestled me to the ground and hit me over the head.  Oops.

So I might get an hour or so of writing in tonight, but I also have to go into Castlemaine to do some work - photos of the annual show (think county fair) - rides in motion with the lights on, fireworks, that sort of thing.  Just photos tonight; I'll go back tomorrow and do some recording to put together a package for work on Monday morning.

More writing tomorrow, and more show work as well.

Then, Tuesday, I have a day off work; bless Melbourne Cup day!

Originally posted on rotheche.vox.com

I'm kind of at a loose end.  I have things that must be done, but they can't be started yet, and there's nothing I can do to make them start.

What's driving me up the wall is one of them should be started - indeed, halfway done.  I hate being held up by someone else's procrastination.

The other one I'm more sanguine about; NaNoWriMo.  It'll start on 1 November, no earlier, and there's nothing I can do to speed that up, so I'm okay with waiting on that one.

I got a hold of No Plot?  No Problem!, kind of a NaNo guide book by Chris Baty, who originally started NaNo.  It's a good read, and I'll read it (or at least the intro bit and the 'week one' section) again, just before NaNo starts.  Not that I'm overly confident about reaching the 50,000 word goal, but I'm planning on really hitting hard during the first week at least, and hopefully the first two; up early in the morning to get an extra hour or two's writing time in, doing another hour in the evening as well.  If I can do 2,500 words a day in the first two weeks, that's 35,000 words done before the in-laws arrive; I'm still hoping to get some writing done while they're here by getting up early, so I hope having visitors won't derail the whole thing.

Filler ideas for the novel

• Recipes - Rayne*, my female character likes to cook and, if Patricia Cornwell can publish the Kay Scarpetta cookbook, Rayne can give some recipes
  
• Oddball customers and incidents at the video store where she works
• Excerpts from the novel she's trying to write.  Not in 30 days, though
  
• Cat troubles - my male character has three cats (oddly enough, two of them resemble my own cats, Hash and Scrubs; I'm not sure about the third cat yet)
• The balcony garden that Rayne is trying to get going.  Basil, tomato plants, mint varieties, rosemary, coriander, oregano
• Adjective abuse - if things get really desperate, then characters will no longer just say things.  They'll say them slowly, loudly, quietly.  They'll close doors firmly, walk swiftly or slowly.  I may only be able to keep that up for a chapter or two, though *grin*
  

I'm expecting it to be a pretty crappy novel, actually.  And, since I'm usually hagridden by a very strict internal editor - my first draft of anything except Vox/LJ posts usually incorporates the second draft because I tend to write a page and then rewrite it - I"m actually feeling a kind of liberation in telling myself, "Look, it's gonna be crap.  It can't be anything else, being speed-written in 30 days.  Just get it written, and then get the quality in the rewrite."

* 'Rayne' was unexpected as a name.  She's taller than I expected too, 5'8".  It's funny how characters make themselves known to you.  I do wish the male character would introduce himself, though.  Maybe he's not a vampire after all....

Originally posted on rotheche.vox.com

Busy sort of day here for a Saturday.

Up early - that's a relative term. I don't usually get out of bed until at least 10am on Saturdays, but today I think I was up before 9. So for me, that's early.

I went into town and did a bit of shopping. Hit the nursery first, and got a ton of potting mix and some shadecloth to line the shopping trolley, plus some gardening tools. Then went by the supermarket and got some groceries: fresh bread, some ham that I'll bake for dinner tonight, a chocolate cheesecake for dessert, and some cat food.

Came back home and packed all the groceries away, then got gardening on and off throughout the day. First, I lined the grocery cart and filled it - about 90 litres of dirt in the main body of the cart, ten litres in the basket/child seat area, which I lined with coconut fibre. Two 'heritage' tomato seedlings in there (they don't grow as big, in any dimension, as modern tomatoes), plus a few snow pea seedlings. The child seat area has parsley planted in it now.

The old half wine barrel that had a dead lime tree in it now has a modern tomato plant, some broccoli, and some gourmet lettuce mix.

And we cleaned out an old pot that was around the front of the house and filled it with fresh potting mix, and put the strawberry seedling in that.

I have no idea how these are all going to take off, but I'm quite proud of myself for trying to grow vegies and such; I've never done it before, so I hope at least some of them survive.

The carrots, mint and rosemary from the last planting - the ones in the old lemon tree half-wine barrel - are still growing well, and look healthy, so at the very least we should end up with baby carrots by mid-December.

Now I just have to work out what to do with the leftover 90 litres of potting mix. I over-catered!

Originally posted on rotheche.vox.com

... call our favourite local steakhouse, Happy Jack's, because my folks are going to Melbourne this weekend, and coming back via our place on Sunday night.  We'll take them to dinner at Happy Jack's - great steaks there.  Apart from that, I'll sleep in, read some, cook something for dinner, play some GuildWars, probably watch some Firefly or X Files on DVD, play with the cats.  Tough, tough day.

Okay, now that tomorrow's today, I can check things off the list.

Steakhouse is closed tomorrow night.  Still haven't found out if we're going to have the folks staying tomorrow night, though.  Sleep in didn't really happen, reading some did start, but got distracted by a cleaning up frenzy that descended without notice, but has had some value - the CD collection now looks like it's organised, rather than like a bomb hit it.

No GuildWars so far.

No Firefly or X Files either, since the DVD player has decided to pack it in - when you play a DVD, it produces an ominous whirring, vibrating, jet-engine sort of sound.  This isn't a sound it's supposed to make.  So, along with phoning the steakhouse, I also phoned the warranty phone number, since the player's only four months old.  Answering machine.  Figures.

*sigh*

So hopefully they'll call back Monday to arrange repair or replacement.

Dinner tonight's apt to just be scrambled eggs and toast; I hadn't really planned to cook anything complex, and the cleaning frenzy has burned some energy.

Originally posted on rotheche.vox.com

20 Years Ago, I...
... looking at my final exams in high school, which were going to be starting in six weeks or so.  This was causing me a certain amount of panic, because I hadn't actually done any study by that stage.  I never actually did that much in the way of revision/homework/study, since I have a chronic case of lazy at things like that.  I got marks that put me at the higher end of the 'average' range; if I'd actually done some work, I might have actually had some good marks.

Mind you, after I got my first job, I don't think anyone ever looked at my HSC marks again.  The marks I got were enough to get me accepted to university, not that I ended up going.

15 Years Ago, I...
... had chucked in my first job (in the public service) and had gone to radio school, and was in my first radio job, working at 2NM, Muswellbrook.

10 Years Ago, I...
... was still in commercial radio, but I'd moved on from New South Wales to South Australia, and then on to Victoria. By this time, I'd been an announcer, a copywriter, a journo (not a good one), and a program director for the first time (again, not a good one.  The second time I had a go at the role, I did much better - see, I do learn from mistakes.  Sometimes, at least).

5 Years Ago, I...
... had just made the move from commercial radio to the ABC, where I'm working now, as a producer.  It was the first time in my radio career that I wasn't on air - and that suited me fine.  I still have no inclination to go back on air on a regular basis; I'm much happier doing what I'm doing now, and I think I'm better value to the organisation this way.

Also five years ago, I had just begun talking to the man who would later become my husband.  Guess which one I think is the highlight *grin*

2 Years Ago, I...
... had switched from producing radio to being a half-and-half between radio and online, and started to get into photography as a serious hobby.

1 Year Ago, I...
... was changing to being a full-time online producer and field reporter.

So Far This Year, I've...
... picked out new fish for the tank, bought at least two coffee makers (they keep breaking), bought a new car (new to us, at least), gone on holiday to the Gold Coast, done three online outside broadcasts, lost (and kept off) roughly 19 kilos.  Kept busy, you could say.

Yesterday, I...
... went to work, did lots of work, went to another local animal shelter for a story, put in a leave form for when the in-laws are here in late November, came home, cooked dinner (chicken patties with vegies for my husband, chicken patties in burgers for me), finished up reading Archangel by Robert Harris, did some work on my reading website.

Today, I...
... went to work, did some grocery shopping on the way home, picked up Serenity on DVD, plus some X Files DVDs too, procrastinated on going to the gym, did a bit of work on the DragonRiders website, started reading Bag of Bones by Stephen King.  I'm not cooking dinner; my husband's going to go into town to pick up some fish and chips.

Tomorrow, I'll...
... call our favourite local steakhouse, Happy Jack's, because my folks are going to Melbourne this weekend, and coming back via our place on Sunday night.  We'll take them to dinner at Happy Jack's - great steaks there.  Apart from that, I'll sleep in, read some, cook something for dinner, play some GuildWars, probably watch some Firefly or X Files on DVD, play with the cats.  Tough, tough day.

Originally posted on rotheche.vox.com

I had actually braced myself for cleaning up the library to take all weekend, or at least all day today.

But here it is, 3pm, and not only have we done with the library, down to sweeping and dusting and putting out some stuff that I've had in boxes for ages (crystal/stone display, f'rinstance), but I've gone through four boxes in the walk-in robe and got three boxes of stuff to chuck out.  Two boxes left in there, plus some assorted bags, but they can wait.  One of the boxes is stuffed with stuffed toys, mostly in good condition, so they'll go to St Vinnies/recycle store, and the rest of it is either for the trash or recycle store or to keep.  We're going to get a skip bin delivered, chuck all the chuckable and have the skip bin taken away again.

But, for now, I'm just gloating about the library.  It looks great in there - the fiction is all in alpha-order, the non-fiction is divided up into its different categories (art, history, play scripts, real life crime, biography), there's a separate shelf for the comics, divided up into the superhero category and the Calvin & Hobbes/Gary Larson stuff.  It's organised.

Not that it's complete - I'm going to pick up another full-sized shelf (that'll be the seventh), and it'll become the video shelf; what it currently a most overloaded video shelf, a little half-sized thing, will become the 'software and computer bits' shelf.  And that will about fill up the room, except for one corner that we're reserving for a good stereo, to be installed with remote speakers out in the living room, so the sound quality's good but the machinery's hidden.  The only other thing we need in there is carpet.  Like the rest of the house except the laundry and bathroom, the floor is bare concrete.  It's one reason that the house is such a cold place in winter on the down side - on the up side, it stays beautifully cool in summer, we've no need for air conditioning.

The living room has one giant 'mat' - it's an offcut of carpet that covers most of the floor.  Since we rent, we can't really lay carpet properly, but we can put down big offcuts, y'see.  Another offcut for the library will take the chill out of the air in there, which will be great.  It's the one room in the house that gets virtually no sun all day, all year round.  It only gets a bit first thing in the morning, when the sun has no real warmth to it, so it never really gets warm in there.  But if we lay down a bit of carpet, that should fix it.

But yay for a clean and tidy library, with books easily located!  Now I just have to update the librarything catalogue - and keep it updated!

Originally posted on rotheche.vox.com