Member Posts

so much joy you can give

Beast is out this morning for a Leads rehearsal.

So I took myself up the road for breakfast—an excellent bacon sandwich with coffee and orange juice. I am not sure why the bacon sandwich is accompanied by a pot of Doritos, but they are appreciated.

Along the road is a two-storey inflatable Father Christmas. Made me smile.

A double decker came down the road as I walked up it. Instead of the usual bus number and destination, the LED display on the front read Merry Christmas from [Bus company], with a snowman. This made me grin. No idea what manner of bus it was, as the usual ones that come down this road are single deckers.

And after breakfast, when I had wandered into Aldi for some mange touts and some chocolate to augment my nephew's Christmas gift, I found a Biggles omnibus on the charity table. So I now own four Biggles books in one giant volume. I first encountered Biggles when visiting my Nana as a child: for some reason she owned Spitfire Parade, a collection which may for all I know have been short stories*. After that I was hooked and acquired many more, though I gave them away long ago. Still. Biggles! To read! Possibly. When I have finished my Yuletide story.

* Edit: it was!

Entry tags:

Random Life Update

My therapist suggested I might be burning myself out working too doggedly on a game lately, I was dubious but whenever I feel stuck I've instituted a policy of taking a break not just until I feel up to working again, but until I have felt up to working on a different creative project for a while first. And the positive effects on my mental health and creativity, both generally and even regarding my game, have been significant!

And also it SUCKS. I have this straightforward option for immediate You Did A Thing dopamine right there and have to IGNORE it and find some other more vague, complex source. Excruciating! Especially since all creativity for me has to work around long stretches of Being Too Ill To Do Anything.

So yeah, after much thought about what creative thing I could be doing this time...I am writing this post haha.

Anyway. Life is not too bad! Had a bunch of annoying health stuff, nothing serious just tiring, but despite that I am successfully if intermittently working on a game! It's a remastered version of a game I released 7 years ago, because I'd run out of energy rather than being entirely satisfied with it. So I am happy to see something much closer to my original vision coming together. But making games is so sloooow it is taking forevver, even with the vast majority of it already done.

Also we got a benchtop dishwasher and it's been really good. We have to hand fill it with water because there was no way to get the plumbing to work, and it's too small to handle everything, but it still makes washing the dishes overall way less exhausting.

I'm currently playing the otome (romance) game Nor9 for the switch and it's pretty good, and am still having fun in Jack Jeanne fandom. A friend dragged me into Twisted Wonderland aka "what if there was a magic school full of hot boys inspired by the villains from various Disney properties" which is more fun than it has any right to be, I am not playing the game (gacha + phone game = no) but the plotty videos are on youtube and the ongoing anime is pretty good.

HMMM I feel there was something else but this will do!

Entry tags:

nonsense

there are oceans and rivers enough

Beast and I were watching 'Madam President' earlier today, and they mentioned having a warship offload a bunch of refugees to a Camp in New Mexico.

"Does New Mexico have a coastline?" said I, dubiously.

It does not. Beast and I had a brief argument on this point, as he was maintaining that Mexico has two coastlines, which it does, but New Mexico? Not the same thing.

So... warship? I mean, how?

(I realise this is an old reference. We are watching on DVDs loaned by Bun. (Still, I'm kinda wondering why none of the Americans in the room where it was made noticed the problem. Or is there a known pipeline from the Atlantic—or the Gulf of wherever—to New Mexico? (Okay now I am imagining a couple of hundred refugees trekking miserably through an actual pipeline, a less glamorous Anatevka march.)))

you don't climb that ladder you're just the rung

It was Long-Tailed Tits day today! There were about eight of them—they are very hard to count—at the feeders today. Very sociable diners, all clustering together. So cute!

*

Have been trying to help our Boy prep for a job interview again. He has many good examples of where he has been an Excellent and Useful employee, but he is not at all fluent at expressing them.

*fingers crossed*

*

Concert last night at one of the localmost churches, which is a very pleasant place in which to sing. We sounded good. It was nice.

another day older

Yesterday I shovelled two tons of sand.

I just thought you should know.

gotta write the verse til you get to the chorus

Dear Becky

No, I don't want you to update my website and maximise my sales. Do you in fact know what my website is for? What exactly it is that I am selling? Didn't think so.

Yours, irritably,
Pen

*

Last night I thought I was incubating—had incubated, indeed—the most horrendous cold. I was miserable! I cancelled this morning's yoga and prepared to battle with Vicks and tissues.

This evening I'm... more or less fine. I do emit an occasional mighty sneeze, and I don't think I can manage any top notes, but otherwise, I'm good. It's nice, but rather baffling.

Spent Sunday at a mixed chorus rehearsal, which was interesting and useful although possibly less fun than I had anticipated. We had a drama chap come to work with us on our performance. He choreographed a number of carefully-thought-out moves, but I had hoped he would work with us on conveying emotions through body language or learning to make our faces work harder for us, or something. Still. It was a useful start on a more disciplined presentation of our song.

Now we just have to remember it all.

*

I think my procrastination skills are faltering a bit, which is just as well as I have a Yuletide story to write and Christmas stuff to organise. I have made a start on the Yuletide thing, which is flowing reasonably well, so far, but it's fairly canon-y at present and I shall flounder far more once I am further adrift. Meanwhile I have also found myself writing a Romance of a not-fannish kind, unless it be a rather remote tribute to Georgette Heyer. Sentences keep forming themselves in my mind when I am trying to go to sleep. So far I have not resorted to phone or notebook to deal with them, as I more or less trust myself to be able to say what I want to say, but argh! Months and months without the ability to write so much as a sentence of fiction, and now, abundance! And I'm sooooo indolent. Sigh.

*

Christmas will be getting under way for me this coming weekend. Well, no, that is not strictly true, of course, I have parcels arriving daily and even went shopping yesterday in Jarrolds Food Hall, always a pleasure. I approve of Norfolk Stuff. And they have a Chocolate Library. Anyway, do sign up for a card from me, on my previous post! I like sending cards out, despite the eyewatering costs of postage.

But this weekend is the chorus concert at the local church, just up the road. It is the traditional start to my chorus's Christmas season, except last year when somebody at the church managed to double book and we ended up not going there. Grump. As mentioned above, I may not be able to hit the high notes, but there are few of these as I only sing Tenor on one song with the women's chorus. (Oddly, I managed an F# on Sunday in brief rehearsal with my quartet, though my voice was feeling the strain at Eb earlier.) I am arming myself with a handful of very short Christmas poems, as I'll probably be doing some of the MC's duties.

*

I seem to have developed an alternative personality for Reddit. Rather more astringent than I am here, where I am myself, and also, rather wittier. Hmm.

Back to the story with the deadline.

Entry tags:

christmas card list

it's Christmas Time!

Well, now. Serves me right for not perusing my Dreamwidth reading page more regularly—I feel sure I would have been prompted to ask for Christmas card addresses by now. Still, better late than never: if you would like a card from me at Chrimbletide, please put your name and address in comments, which are screened. If you'd particularly appreciate a religious card, do say so, and if you'd particularly hate one, say also.

Entry tags:

australia,
life

Curious what the scam is with a real estate "letter" we got

There was an obviously computer-printed "hand-written" letter in our letter box from someone claiming to want to buy houses in "your suburb" which emphasised multiple times that the house can be in any condition and that they're not a real estate agent.

So they're obviously targeting easily-fooled people who want to sell their run-down houses but find the process scary and are vulnerable to the promise of some random stranger just giving them a big pile of cash as quickly and easily as possible.

Now that itself could be the scam: offer unfairly low prices and know your target is unlikely to complain. But idk it feels like part of a scam scam not just a sincere if shady attempt to actually buy people's houses. I tried looking up real estate scams but it's all about scams aimed at people buying houses, which makes sense, since that's the more natural situation where you can take people's money and run.

I guess it could be one of those nigerian prince type scams: Offer a high price for the house, well above market value, make the seller think they're the one taking advantage of a dumbass woman, but oh no she needs a little deposit first to handle some unexpected fees, if you could just help out with a tiny proportion now she'll be able to pay the full amount any day now...

Either way, I reported it to consumer protection, since they might be able to do something with the phone number.