Saturday, 29 January 2011

30 Day blog challenge: Day... aw hell, who cares...whatever...

like i said - i'm only doing this post so i get to go through 2010's posts to do the year in blog quotes (with apologies for the raggedy layout - blogger's being a shitforbrains).  this is entirely for my own amusement, and i don't expect you to stay awake for it.  in fact...  here - have a pillow.

january

well - never thought i'd be doing this. it's all Neil Gaiman's fault.
---


...the notion of being able to give my brain a good fettle is appealing. Y'know, like at the times when I've got thoughts buzzing around my head like a fly in a dark bedroom in summer (i can NEVER sleep when those little bastards get in!).

february

Soundtrack to this post is Empire by Kasabian, btw. Currently Apnoea. I love that song, despite its puzzling clubness. And a tiny part of that is because apnoea really does take one's breath away, and i kind of associate this with the rush of utter bliss of dancing in a club and one of your favourites comes on, and you're *already* in amongst that heaving, sweating animal on the dancefloor, and damn, it feels GOOD!!!
---


honestly, i have noooo idea what the neighbours thought as the shrieks of unrestrained joy came echoing through the ridiculously thin wall separating our bathroom from theirs....

march

Then...the raffle.
When he read out one of my tickets - 606 - I...yes...guess what I did?
The entire room heard it. 200 people - including my hero - heard me squeak with excitement.
I didn't however, have time to die of embarrassment, as a split-second before I could, he looked at me with amused approval, and said "Good squeak!" I could have died on the spot, and gone to the next life (or to the mud) content that this one had been worth it.
---


well, well, dear reader.  if you were on Twitter this afternoon, round about threeish (BST), you may have seen this:
RRRRRAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! AT LAST! AT LAST! AT LAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES! YES, YOU BITCH!!! YOU DIDN'T DEFEAT ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and, shortly after, this:
*************************EPIC HAPPYDANCE**********************************
that was the sound of me finally, FINALLY!!! finishing the typing up of the bloody WIP.
 
april

or maybe i'm just an inveterate chatterbox with a stationary fetish?...
---
yup, you heard right, dear reader. i am a grandma.  at thirty-three years old.  sheesh!  thanks, guys - way to go! *headsmack*
 ---
the only trouble with Harborough is that it's so popular (also, people have been climbing there since the 1800's), many of the holds have been polished to glassy smoothness.  friction?  what's that?  had to be sooo careful!
 ---
dear reader, it hath arrived!  the new bike is in da house, and poor Trob is no more. :o(

may

i have absolutely no idea what this is, other than that it turned up in my head late one night, sometime last week...


 ---
i just got my book in the post!!!


 ---
just as an aside, it occurs to me to wonder if that's where i keep my story silt, between the shores of sleeping and waking...? 


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It may not seem like a big deal but, to me, it’s the signal that, in the words of The Dooberies, summer’s on it’s way. We have a saying in this part of the world:
Ne’er shed a clout*
‘Till May be out
(*clothing)
Meaning: don’t discard yer woollies ‘till you see the blossom on the Maytree (hawthorn). Even then, it’s not an absolute guide, since the sun’s just gone in, and I’ve had to slip me cardi back on – the breeze is still pretty cold. But I care not. I care not. Because the warms are nearly here, and I miss being able to expose my skin to the bliss of the sun’s rays.

june

sadly, i think i'm possibly too old to become any kind of computer/communications geek now, and my mathematical understanding is most assuredly not up to the job.  but i have such a huge admiration for geeks of *every* stripe - not just the electronic ones.  if there's any sort of justice around, never mind the meek inheriting the earth - i think the geeks should.

july

Fucking hormones.
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i keep hitting walls with "OK, smartass, what happens next, then?" scrawled all over them in dripping red paint.
but it's coming.  the working title is utterly crap, and there's already a lot that needs poking, but i still have a connection with it, and ideas for what happens later (without any idea of how i'm going to get from here to there), but it's coming.... :)

august

*checks pic folders for Stuff I Have Done Recently*


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And the concept was always guaranteed to get my attention, having spent so many hours as a child pondering the differences between dreams and reality, and how one could really, *really* tell one from the other. And if that telling would be right. So glad it really *isn't* just me. And the guy who played Eames? Hot damn! *thud* 


---
we hadn't been there ten minutes before the guy on the pitch next to us was taking pictures of his kids giving the VeeDub wave and saying "Duuuuude!" in their really tiny little voices.  sooooo cute!


 ---
seriously - how many places could this door lead to?  on this plane or any other?


september

there's been a thought washing around in my head this week, and it's this:  i wonder if those ancient greek dudes were really on to something...?  believe it or not, this was prompted by my having my lip pierced.

october

in case you're wondering, Talulah isn't an all-terrain vehicle, there's a dirt road that leads right through the heart of the forest.  the potholes in said road, however, had me gritting my teeth and screwing my eyes shut waiting for the crunch of a grounding.  thankfully, hubby managed to avoid the deepest ones.


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ladies and gentlemen, i take great pleasure in introducing you to Max The Cat.  


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Twenty five hours to go. And I have no plot, no characters, no setting, no idea. Fuck yeah! Bring it on, NaNoWriMo!!! :D
P.S. Wish me luck, dear reader, i'm gonna need it... ;)
XXX



november

(no posts due to NaNoWriMo)

december

so there you have it.  thirty days of slog, and here i am.  the proud author of my THIRD NOVEL!!!
i can hardly believe it, but i've done it again, and i'm a winner again! :D


---
i was quite pleased that the results were at least readable. i tweeted them (with apologies for how depressing the second one was), and got some generous replies from some very nice people (if you're reading this, thank you all!).  also an injunction never to apologise for having created something.  which was lovely, and made me smile.


--- 
hmph.  bah bloody humbug.  oh, well - at least we'll get to see friends we don't see nearly often enough.
although, to be fair to myself, i *did* in fact manage to aquire, wrap and post presents for my brother, sister-in-law and niece in astonishingly good time this year.  was actually quite proud of this achievement (despite the fact that the parcel also contained sis-in-law's birthday present which should have reached her by the 5th of november... *facepalm*) 
---


soooo...  whilst fighting the cat for posession of my lap and trying to prevent him from treading all over the keyboard, i was perusing the blog of the lady who has been Drabbling so marvellously all over the comments of my previous post (hi Liz! *waves*).  I saw that she was doing a thirty day blog challenge. (...uh...  what happened to that, BTW - xmas get in the way...? *sympathy*), and I thought it might be a somewhat interesting exercise.  i mean - i know hardly anybody ever reads this poor wittering, but perhaps i'll learn something about myself...?  (N.B. added edit:  er....not really, no....)

---
so christmas is over.  all of the rushing around is done, the presents have been given and received, too much food has been consumed, and life is beginning to show signs of returning to normal.

Thursday, 27 January 2011

30 Day blog challenge: Fail

nope - i'm grumpy and hormonal, and i'm not gonna do it, dammit!  anyway - what kind of poor, tortured soul wants to know about my day, week or month in great detail?  what are you, some kind of masochist??? 0.o  the only reason i'm planning on doing tomorrow's post is that it will give me a chance to nick an idea from @abivandenberg and do the year in blog quotes....

for now, here's another picture - this time of my favourite type of cloud:


Quote from Captain Daniel, "Flying to the north of Dresden last August (on the way to Prague), we had to deviate around this Cumulonimbus, as we were just passing, it became bathed in the setting sun." 
© Daniel Hunn.
 
(lifted from the website of The Cloud Appreciation Society)

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

30 Day blog challenge: Day 25 - Your day, in great detail

it. was. a. bitch.

i have been sporadically taking notes throughout the day, in order to facilitate the writing of this post.  sadly, however, i am buggered, banjaxed and otherwise bolloxed.

no post today, i'm afraid - haven't got the energy.

instead, here is a picture of something beautiful:


you're welcome.

Monday, 24 January 2011

30 Day blog challenge: Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy

*checks watch*

it's definitely day 24, right?

right

sooo...  how about the dfferent types of climbing?  there's a bit of a visual glossary at the bottom, if all the equipment confuses you.  ...it still confuses the hell out of me, sometimes... there are several other types of climbing, but these are, i think, the three main types...

Trad



traditional, obviously.  this is the type of climbing you're most likely to be familliar with.  it's the type that requires all sorts of curious and arcane equipment, such as nuts, friends or cams, quickdraws, rope, karabiners or krabs, straps, tape, harness, rock shoes, chalk bags, hexes, helmets, belay (pronounced bee-lay) devices, and about a million other curious and exciting-looking bits and bobs.  doing it properly costs a bleedin' fortune, mate.  it's done on rock that has cracks, fissures and pockets in which to lodge your cams, hexes and nuts...
*pause for juvenile sniggering*
...and is tricky.  you put your safety equipment in as you go, and this takes practice and experience.  if you cock up the placement of a nut, for example...
*pauses for more juvenile sniggering*
...when your second comes up and puts strain on it, it can pop out of the rock and whack you painfully in the head, or other parts.  same goes for hexes (which are really more like giant nuts than anything else) and cams.  also, if you fall, you want to be goddamned sure that shit's in there nice and tight.  a fall is terrifying enough, believe me, without "unzipping" your nuts (yeah, yeah yeah - when you've finished.....jeez - how old are you?) all the way down the rockface.

Sport



this requires much, much less equipment than trad.  simply rope, harness, quickdraws, rock shoes, belay device, chalk bag, and a helmet, if you've got any sense.  this type of climbing is done on much smoother rock walls with few or no places to put safety equipment.  on a sport climb, you clip a quickdraw to the eyebolts already drilled into the rock (by your friendly local or national climbing or mountaineering organisation), and then run your rope through the other end of the quickdraw as you go.  it will have an extra-strong loop or clip at the top, called a lower-off point. (and if you've seen the movie 127 hours - awesome, BTW - this is the piece of metal he kisses towards the end) when you reach that, you clip the rope through it, and then get lowered down, collecting your quickdraws alng the way (or leaving them in place for your second to collect when they climb up).

Free



this, as far as i'm concerned, is the preserve of nutters.

using no equipment other than a chalkbag and some rock shoes, you climb your chosen route with nothing to arrest your fall, should you slip. *shudder*

some people like to do it naked, too.

Glossary

 rock shoes.  these have a soft upper, sticky, smooth rubber soles, and generally a pointed toe (to allow you to get easier putchase in those tiny, tricky cracks

 on the left are cams or "friends" - these can be squeezed to close the head, and then inserted into the crack where the head expands and (hopefully) grips the rock.  top right are karabiners, or "krabs".  these are hugely useful things which clip the various parts of your climbing rig together.  bottom right are nuts.  these are carefully shaped nuggets of metal which can be inserted into cracks and then, by virtue of their odd shape, wedged tight.  the wire on the end allows you to clip a krab to it, and then run your rope through the krab.  bottom middle is a nut key.  one of my best friends on a trad climb (since i'm usually the second - hubby being a better climber).  this marvellous and wonderful little device allows you to lever a nut out from a crack if it has become wedged.  absolutely invaluable!
 quickdraws.  these allow for quick and (relatively) easy clipping on to various bits of kit.

 belay devices come in many weird and wonderful shapes.  this is the bit that the second uses to hold the rope taut without getting rope burn should the climber fall.  it's a sort of friction lock, working on the pulley principle.  i can hold hubby's weight with three fingers using one of these.

the chalk bag.  this hangs from the harness, or a belt.  it can hold loose chalk or, as in the picture, a chalk ball.  this is loose chalk held inside a mesh which is released when you squeeze the ball.  generally insisted on by indoor climbing walls as, if you fall, the chalk doesn't explode everywhere.

And Finally...

i urge you to watch this video.  it will blow your mind.  takes a while to load, but it's worth it...



Sunday, 23 January 2011

30 Day blog challenge: Day 23 — A recipe

dammit!  i cocked up - day 21 should have been a recipe, not a website! *headdesk*

very well, then - i shall recipe-ize now.  i'm a reluctant and hit-and-miss cook, but occasionally i add a dish to my limited repetoire.  here's one i invented not too long ago, and it's well tasty.  had it yesterday, in fact.

chilli-chorizo-noodle-thingy - serves two

ingredients:

one jar Napolina chilli & tomato pasta sauce.
enough noodles for two (or four if you do what i do and give the chickens the leftover noodles) you can use any pasta you like, but i prefer noodles - better taste and texture.  and i can't cook pasta very well, all right?
about 5-6 inches of chorizo (approx 1 inch thick)
about 200g mushrooms (i use chestnut mushrooms)
a couple of smallish onions
grated chese to taste (i use gruyere)
all ingredient quantities are approximate - experiment with quantities
a couple of pasta bowls

method:
  1. chop the onions, mushrooms and chorizo, chuck 'em in a pan with a bit of oil, and simmer on a low heat until the juices have mixed and the onion is more-or-less transparent
  2. toss in the jar of sauce (rinse out the jar with a little water and chuck that in too), and mix it all up.
  3. allow to simmer whilst you cook the noodles
  4. dump the noodles in the pasta bowls with the tomatoey/mushroomy/chorizoey/oniony stuff on top.
  5. sprinkle a bit of grated cheese on top to taste
  6. scoff with "om nom nom" noises
ded simple, and ded tasty - just the way i like it. ^_^

Saturday, 22 January 2011

30 Day blog challenge: Day 21 - a website & Day 22 - a YouTube video

i seem to have spent most of this challenge not quite sticking to the rules in one way or another.  but it's my blog, and i can do what i like.  so there. *pouts*

actually, i was knackered last night, and just couldn't face going through all of the rigmarole of blogging (i think i've explained before somewhere this month what a pain in the ass it is to just get online, so i won't go over it again), and besides, i was busy putting a face-mask on, wearing jammies, watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and cuddling wih an equally knackered hubby.

so.

two posts for the price of one.

first: a website.

i played with the idea of linking to Neil Gaiman's Website, since it was sort of my introduction to the wider wonderful weirdness of the web, but that's too obvious.  another i looked at is the cheezburger network, because i like to laugh, and i'm guaranteed a chuckle from there.  but everybody's seen that website in one form or another.  i mean, everybody knows what a LOLcat is, right?

so how about xkcd?  it's (quote) "a webcomic of romace, sarcasm, math and language".  basically, it's mostly stick figures making whimsical jokes.  i admit to not getting all of the jokes, since a lot of them depend on the reader being a cleverer and more familliar with popular culture and technology than i.  but i get most on some level, and it's endearingly and unashamedly geeky.  click on the "random" button to get a fairly wide selection of cartoons about a surprisingly wide range of topics (though physics and technology are heavily favoured).  although there's a pretty good selection here, too. *chuckle*

and today's offering: a YouTube Video.

aw, c'mooooon - there's f**kin' billions of these things!

the most recent one i watched was for Amanda Palmer's awesome new single:  Map Of Tasmania. 

geographical / cultural note:  "map of Tasmania" is an Australian euphemism for female pubic hair, as the island of Tasmania is vaguely triangular in shape....  (hence the catcall: "Hey, love - show us yer map of Tasmania!")  i love the song, and the video - as well as looking great - made me LMAO.

enjoy! :oD


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Thursday, 20 January 2011

30 Day blog challenge: Day 20 — A hobby of yours

this could be tricky...

i don't really have any hobbies, as such.  well - i don't really think about the things i do as hobbies, anyway.

i think i might have to cheat again...

first and foremost, of course, is reading, but that's less of a hobby and more of a way of life.  i'm sure it's that way for many of those who might read this post, since most will follow the link i post on Twitter, and most of my Twitterati are writers of one stripe or another.  if anyone else comes across this...  

hi!  say hello, whydontcha?  i'm quite friendly, you know. :o)

i suppose i've had quite a few hobbies at one time or another in my life - but nothing i do constantly.  i have a butterfly mind (read: short attention span and limited staying power).  amongst the activities i do or have done in the past, and in no particular order, are:
  • making greeting cards
  • origami
  • macrame
  • knitting
  • making friendship bracelets
  • climbing
  • writing
  • aikido (though that is one i will never be going back to - faaaaaar  too active XP)
  • writing out the lyrics to my favourite Iron Maiden songs (that one was a loooong time ago - before the interwebz, even! )
  • ...er...does listening to music count?  probably not...
  • dancing    (not just ballroom - i used to do ballet.  i admit to giving it up aged seven, but it still counts, right...?)
 there are probably more, but i'm buggered if i can remember them at the moment.  and i haven't forgotten (even though i haven't been in months) that i said one day i might write about the different kinds of climbing, and what each entails (in the case of free climbing, f'r instance, utter madness...)

as you can probably tell from the list, i have the urge to be creative, or at least make/create stuff.  sadly, i'm hampered by a lack of creativity, and my tendency to be easily dist....  oooh!  shiny thing! O_O

do you have any hobbies, dear reader?  care to share...?

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