The Book of Na'Lon

I have had another busy day. Started with a bit of writing chat via text with Viala (who had a writing snag that needed desnagging) on the bus to the hospital to have my foot x-rayed. It's not got any signs of stress-fractures, hooray! Then picked up my parcel (delivered yesterday while we were out) of Na'Quis's and my internet shopping from the other day. Work - sorted out a few things, sent of the emails I prepared yesterday, met with two reps from McGraw-Hill who talked about some resources that sound rather intriguing. Had a lovely coffee with Versatile (who helped with the Athena application), and who gave me advice about how to investigate changing schools for Na'Quis as and when we move to Brum. Versatile also made the 'mistake' of asking me about my (novel) writing and so I burbled at length and with great enthusiasm...

The photo is colour inspired. The three items of clothing which arrived for me in the parcel (and which I am very pleased with) are all in similar shades which I really like, but which don't go with each other. I liked the idea of recording this.

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P.S. I can't stand the new look LiveJournal. Probably will get used to it out of necessity. Bah.

The Marquis asked me to post a quick post on lj about a novel competition on Richard and Judy, in case anyone is interested out there.

From what I recall it's a four A4 pages double-spaced synopsis and a first chapter, winner get's a 50k book contract.

Maybe there's more info available on the web?

Anyway... hope this is what the Marquis had in mind.

So I didn't get much at all of what I had intended done today, but the Marquis and I went foodshopping and spent lots of money at the second-hand bookshop which is MUCH bigger than I'd realised. It has catacombs full of sheet music amongst other things.

Did lots of emithering with Pellegrina -- we are sort of nearing an end of 'Midnight snack', where 'sort of' is the operative word. But hey, we're having fun.

There was also summat else un-related to Pellegrina's and my writing that I had to write and send off today to meet a deadline. I managed to cobble something okay together, but it's not one of my most sparkley offerings.

Oh yes, and Pellegrina and I did our weekly stint on the phone to each other. It's so nice to talk about such varied topics and ideas. I almost always feel invigorated by our chats, except when we're both of us mopey, when it just feels nice to know that someone else cares, too.

The Marquis and I had the last bottle of the Norman cidre we bought at the food fair at Easter tonight. It was very nice and very bubbly -- nearly uncorked itself. Pity we will miss the next food fair, as we'll have moved to Wolves by then...

I have finally this evening started my yoghurt making endeavour. I have had my yoghurt maker since before we moved house in August 2002. I have also bought many cartons of UHT milk and live yoghurt, to actually try making some. A few weeks ago I finally bought the thermometer to go with the whole mess. Because if you heat the milk to more than 45 degrees C, the heat kills of the bacteria in the yoghurt... By bedtime i should know whether tonight's attempt was successful.

Apart from yoghurt making and more laundry, I have been in creative writing land all day. This in principle should have been a good thing, but I am not making much headway. TK is difficult -- got a space action scene to write anf that's tough. The emither started yesterday is shaping up to be quite grim and tough. An old idea has re-impinged itself on my brain: will have to decide what to do about that. Oh, and it's my turn to draft the next section of GoN-WiP.

On the positive side... Pellegrina and I wrapped up Chapter 2 today, and the Marquis has read it and seems to have enjoyed it :-). Now we just need to get our website sorted out...

It's been beautiful and sunny for much of the day and I even managed to site in my class this afternoon with my jumper off, without freezing. Roll on warmth. I have had enough of winter.

This morning I got involved (impromptu) in this recruitment day at my college, because Ceejay needed someone who could bend over and attach electrodes to volunteers ankles for our polygraph demonstration. It was quite a nice thing to be involved in and I got free lunch out of it. Just sandwiches, but hey, don't knock it.

In the afternoon I went to a session about the portfolio for my PGC in Learning and Teaching in HE. Pedagogist was being his usual woolly self, but fortunately my favourite tutor, Athena came along for the second half of the session and we had some very productive discussions about our action research projects. Mine is going to be about the way my research methodology and statistics course have worked this semester after I redesigned them over the summer. The issue I am particularly interested in is how the students have felt about their level of involvement in the course and the effects that the course design (letting students decide upon the questions to investigate and putting research projects together from those with guidance from the tutors) has had upon their motivation. I actually look forward to reading up upon a lot of this stuff.

Now I am back at home and dithering about whether to type up some stuff for a potential publication I want to send of for consideration, or whether to get back to Ta'Kiri. the_marquis and I had a very fruitful discussion this morning about some story logistics, which I still needed to think through before launching into ch 15.

Oh, and pellegrina has managed to hand Ch 1 of our WiP to a bonafide test-reader... Looking forward to the feedback.

It turns out you can train Cuban crocodiles much in the same way you can train a dog. The dragon in me is pleased with this discovery. But crocs are probably a bit more dangerous than dogs nevertheless.

( In other news )

... about what I could write an entry about. I feel like making an entry, but don't particularly feel that I have anything pertinent to say... But heck... the subtitle to this Journal is 'inane ramblings'.

Been being quite slack this last week. Deliberately, in a sort of experiment not to get too wound up by things. It's kind of in keeping with odd lenten fast this year. I decided to give up ranting about certain things that annoy me. I haven't entirely managed, but I have been more or less keeping to it. (Quite please about that).

The one thing that I haven't been slack about is the obsessive-compulsive bout of B5 game fic writing that I have been engaged in over the last couple of weeks. I've worked quite hard on this and enjoyed writing most of it. Been on and off the phone to Pellegrina about some of this writing, cause it was sparked off by our joint project.

Tonight, however, I'll have to actually get some comments written on the now marked pieces of student work that have been the bane of my existence for the last couple of weeks. Sigh... I'd rather continue with some of the writing. Maybe when I have done some comments???

Didn't want to go to work today :-(. But went anyway, and got not an awful lot done. At least I didn't have to go to Lancaster.

However, I managed to get myself roped into some post-work badminton by Fred, Marxist and the Marquis. It was fun and now I ache very badly.

Sorted out some of the double marking with Ceejay. Ceejay also told me a lovely story about her terrible Teenager being really chuffed that her mum is pregnant. I thought it was a nice story, because Ceejay was worried that Teenager would be embarrassed instead.

The Marquis and I got 200 points in University Challenge tonight. Which is the best we've done in a while.

( On the Soapy Place )

Anyway, now I am going to go to bed, and tomorrow, I will approach life and work with a more productive attitude, I hope! I shall make a little list... Not done that in a while.