New house!

Front of house

I’m all moved into my new house! It’s finally all furnished and filled with my crap stuff.

People have been asking me for pictures, so here they are! Before and after (the moving process) shots.

The thumbnails go through to big pictures, so be warned if you click through! Ignore the dates on them – Mum has yet to sort out the date feature on her camera and it decided it was February all on its own.

Office - before

Office - after

The first room is supposed to be the dining room, but I wanted/needed an office space for writing (and, okay, playing games on the PC).

It has my old desk in there at the moment, but there’s a new one turning up sometimes this week – I ordered it yesterday. Somehow, I managed to need more space than the old desk could provide!

On the plus side, I managed to get all my bookcases in there. They are now filled with varying levels of geekiness.

Lounge - before

Lounge - after

Lounge next – not much to say about that. Have couches and telly and lovely speakers. All hooked up for movies and music streaming.

Needs a rug, I think. I haven’t hung any pictures up yet, but will do soon. (That’s my mum in the first picture, in case you were wondering.)

Bedroom - before

Bedroom - after

The bedroom is a good size – I got lucky there. Managed to squeeze in a decent-sized bed and enough furniture to hide all my clothes.

There’s a huge built-in wardrobe, which helps. Now all I have to do is keep it tidy. Wonder how long that will last!

Kitchen

Bathroom

The kitchen is a comfy little place, with everything I need (including a coffee machine you can’t see in this pic.

And yes, okay, more geekery. Shush. They’re handy shelves and I had to put something there!

The bathroom is a bathroom. ‘Nuff said. Water’s hot, towels are fluffy, and it’s just a stumble from the bedroom. The loo is separate – oddly, attached to the back of the house, so I have to go out the kitchen door to get to it. A little weird, but the kind of weird I’m willing to put up with.

Back yard

There is a curious back yard to this place – lots of fronds and trees, with a gazebo and a washing line hidden in there. This pic is of the gazebo side. I have yet to furnish it; that’ll wait until the spring when it becomes interesting and useful (and warmer).

So there you go! A little tour around my new place. Still some work to do on it, but it’s comfortable enough to be going on with. I’m happy with it. 🙂

A leader is me!

I have been itching to put this post up for a couple of weeks, but I haven’t been able to. I will prefix this with: *boing*.

Out of the blue, I got called into my manager’s office to talk about the extra duties I do for the team (I’m the QAR for the documentation team, as well as a writer). I was a bit nervous – I had no idea if there was something wrong, if I had screwed something up, or what. When I went in, there was my manager and my team leader, waiting for me.

The first thing they told me is that my team leader is pregnant (this is why I haven’t been able to say anything about this before now – it hadn’t been announced to the team). I was still incredibly puzzled, and they moved on to why they had called me in to the meeting.

I’ve been working my way up towards the next grade of writer, and had been hoping to get bumped up to the next level (senior) at the next performance review. They told me that I was definitely being given the promotion (the reviews are due at the end of July).

But on top of that, they want me to take on the team leader role too. When the current one goes off for maternity leave in mid-November, I’ll take over her position and be in charge of a team of eight writers.

Holy shit. I’ve never had two promotions in one meeting before. And they said, “Go away and think about it, and let us know if you want it.” It was all I could do not to say, “OKAY YES PLS K THX BBAI,” right there. I went away and came back to my manager the next day to say, “Yes, I would love to take on the team leader position, thank you.”

So there you go. I’m excited and intimidated, and have a lot to learn. Can’t wait to get my teeth into it. Also looking forward to a very tasty pay-bump too, thankyouverymuch. Of course, I’ll be taking over the role officially in the middle of NaNoWriMo, but hopefully that won’t be too traumatic.

As I said earlier: *BOING* 😀

Moving Stage 1: Complete

It’s been a hell of a week, and now it’s Monday and the start of a shiny new one. Wow. So, what have I done so far?

Last Monday, I picked up the keys to my new house. Measured up and ordered essential furniture, made sure the roof and walls were all still attached. On Tuesday, I went back to the house after work and went through the entry checklist, so that I won’t be blamed for all the broken/damaged stuff that was already there, when I leave.

Wednesday, collapse. Thursday, late night shopping, went down to the electronics store to order appliances. Sorted out TV (omg pretty), washing machine (omg grown up), microwave, coffee machine… all the essentials. Spent way more money than I was planning to (the sales guy made a joke about the TV being worth more than my car, and I looked him in the eye and said, “Actually, it is,” and then we all laughed), but I’m still skating within my budget. Just.

Friday, I worked from home so that I could get a head start on digging out my stuff from storage. Cleared off one desk in my room and got my furniture-type bits loaded onto my friend’s dad’s ute (nothing more valuable than knowing someone who has a ute). Loaded up all the boxes I hadn’t unpacked after emigrating from the UK – I managed to fill three cars and the rest of the ute’s bed, and that’s just the stuff I’m not actively using right now. Drove over to the house, vomited stuff from vehicles into the house, said thankyouthankyou to everyone, went home, collapsed.

Saturday, was back over at the new house to receive my furniture delivery. At 6:30am. Joy. On the plus side, they delivered my whole order, instead of just the parts they had in stock when I placed the order (I was expecting to wait another week or two for the rest). Spent the whole day assembling furniture, unpacking boxes, and shifting things towards where they should be living. My lovely helper friend cleaned the kitchen out for me, so that is nice and sparkly. Late in the afternoon, I decided to finally unwrap the sofas and discovered they needed to have their feet screwed on. Note: when you’re tired from a day full of wrangling heavy things, don’t try to screw sofa feet on. Gave up, went home, collapsed.

Sunday, took my folks over to the new house to fix all the crap that turned out to be broken the previous day. Dad fixed the feet on the couch (yes, I know now), attached the mirror to the new dresser (I really wasn’t going to touch that after the sofa incident), and removed the half-screw that was sticking out of one of the bed’s feet (which has put a bloody great scratch in the floor). Mum fixed the curtains that she had given me that turned out to be about a foot different in length, though she swears they came from the same packet. Figured out how to make the water come out of the rainwater tank. Went home, slept like log.

Today, bought my kitten a scratching post. Somehow have to figure out how I’m going to wrestle that all the way home. But I can’t forget the little fuzzy, now can I? She can has new things too.

So there we go. The first stage of the move is done. This week, I have the phone line being connected on Wednesday (which means I won’t get any internet service until next week), late night shopping for essentials on Thursday, and then back to the new house on Saturday to finish the bulk of the unpacking, organising, and cleaning. Also need to sort out a gardener at some point to tame the forest I have for a garden (preferably with a chainsaw, or possibly a herd of hungry, obedient goats). It’s possible I might get some sleep in there too.

Official moving-in looks like it’ll be on the first weekend in July. I’m hoping to have a housewarming the weekend after that, which will be nicely timed with the week I have booked off work. I can see a lot of sleeping and relaxing going on that week, and not a hell of a lot else.

I am looking forward to getting in there and getting on with things. Can’t wait until this shifting phase is over.

The good news is that I am keeping up with my writing, even with all of this going on. I managed to get enough Apocalypse Blog posts written last week to cover the weekend, which meant I didn’t have to worry about it (except for putting the posts up, which I almost forgot last night! Whoops). If I can keep doing that, my moving shenanigans (I just like that word) shouldn’t interfere with my daily posting record. I even managed to get the opening of my novel reworked recently, so that’s looking good.

Progress achieved. Colour me tired but happy.

Moving confirmed!

My house has been confirmed – I have an appointment tomorrow to sign the lease. Soon, I will be a real grown-up with a (rented) house all of my own! Whoo!

Moving itself is going to be a piecemeal affair. I won’t be able to do any real moving of stuff until Friday, and I have yet to order furniture (mostly because I need to get in and take measurements first – another job for tomorrow). So it’s not going to be a sudden heave-ho over to the new place, but more of a gradual sliding in that general direction.

I’ll move properly once all the essentials are in place – bed, sofa, telly, internet connection. The usual things. Luckily, I’m not in a particular rush to be over there and have time to sort these things out. 

With luck, it won’t interrupt my usual writing activities too much. The new house is much closer to the city – 20 minutes on the train rather than an hour – which will be much better for my health and use of time. It will, however, bite deeply into my daily writing time – I don’t know how much I’ll be able to write on the train, if at all. 

So, once I move, there will be an adjustment period. I want to build up a buffer of Apocalypse Blog posts before that happens, so that I there is no interruption of service, but my available time to do that is severely limited. We shall see! Fingers crossed, huh?

I promise my faithful readers that I will do what I can to keep the story rolling while my life shifts around in the background. Still lots more to come there. 

Speaking of readers, I have a post to do about that soon. Watch this space!

New look coming soon!

I’ve grown tired of the light-on-black look on this blog, so I’ve been looking at alternatives. I am fond of the fiery, but it’s time for a change. Something brighter and more ‘professional’, I think. 

So, after some searching and code-wrangling, I have put together a shiny new thing on a test site. Any suggestions? Have I missed anything? Augh, help.

Nightowl strikes again

Been a weird day. I haven’t been getting great sleep this week, so I went to bed early last night. My brain wouldn’t shut down, though.

See, this short story I’ve been trying to write for the past couple of weeks has been bothering me. It just wasn’t working. I had written about a page of it – 600 words, maybe – and it ground to a stop on me. After leaving it alone for a few days, apart from random ponderings when I wasn’t writing on the train, I realised what the problem was. The main character just didn’t feel right. She’s an amalgamation of a couple of characters I have played around with for years, but her pieces just didn’t fit together right (which is ironic, considering the central issue of the story – it’s all about her and her pieces, but unfortunately not in this way). I think I was trying to do a bit too much with her.

So I jiggled her around a bit. Took out one of those two old characters, melded her into something a bit different (so that she isn’t batshit crazy like the other chickie she’s based on), and came out with something that should work better now. Fingers crossed.

I’ve been meaning to get back to writing this story for days, but Sunday was a bust (thank you, CFS) and AB takes up my writing time during the week. Last night, in the vain attempts to lull my brain into drifting so I could go to sleep, I kept getting snatches of scenery for this story. I both love and hate it when that happens.

I gave up on sleeping and grabbed my little netbook, and wrote for an hour. One of the other things that was wrong with my first pass at the story was that I had glossed over one of the most important parts of the character’s tale. So I went back and reworked that, and it’s now sitting at about 1200 words. Unfinished (it looks like it’s going to turn out to be about 4,000 words), but it’s getting there.

The best part is that I went to sleep fairly quickly after that.

I’ve always been good at night-writing. Words seem to come easily then, but my health and schedule won’t really allow for it. It’s a frustrating conundrum.

Perhaps I should try to work in an hour of writing before I sleep every night. The problem with that is that sometimes I’m too tired to be creative – it’s a delicate balance between enervated wordsmithing and exhaustion-driven drivel. Hmm. Maybe I’ll just make a point of making myself write something if I am too brain-busy to sleep. If it’s crap, I can always delete it in the morning.

I’ve been doing more reviews of creative work lately, too. Been getting back into the critique board on the Accentuate Writers Forum, and that’s been fun, actually. I like to keep my hand in, but I’m not sure how much I can keep that up. I generally use it as a break when I should be doing something else, so my presence there is pretty erratic.

I do keep kicking myself about the Writing Tips things, too. I am even getting a list of ideas for it! Must get started on the dialogue stuff soon. I’d like to aim for one post a fortnight, but I’ll see how I go.

I have put out feelers about the guest posting on AB, too. I need to work out the details of that and how it’s going to work. I just realised that I’ll have to work out a statement about publishing rights for it. Oh, joy. Shouldn’t be too hard, though.

How did my list get so long? Ahhh. I need to start writing this stuff down somewhere (other than buried in these blogposts), if only so I can cross stuff off. Possibly with a little dance.

HUZZAH

My folks’ house in the UK has now been sold. It’s complete: exchanged and paid for. We can has moneys.

I can’t say how much of a relief this is. I’ve been supporting my folks on savings and my salary for the past few months, which has made things very hand-to-mouth. The past month has been barely scraping through (my savings all gone), and it was past the time when what I was bringing in just wasn’t going to cover it. It’s been stressful to say the least, and we all danced about a bit when we had the confirmation that it was all, finally, at last, done.

Now, all my debts in the UK are paid off. I don’t have to worry about sending money back there any more. And I can buy things again. Oh, shopping, I have missed you. 

We went out for a celebratory dinner last night. I can’t drink because of the wicked antibiotics I’m on, so I drove and let the parents get tipsy. They deserve it. It’s so nice to see them unwind properly. 

Today, we’re off for a bit of shopping (I’m hoping that I can stay upright long enough to make the most of it). I am going to look into getting a mini notebook for writing purposes, and possibly something else nice and shiny. We shall seeeee. After that, popcorn and Watchmen are on the cards. I might not be well enough to shop properly, but I can cope with sitting in a dark room watching a movie well enough. 😉

This weekend hasn’t been the most writey, but damn we all needed it. Today’s AB post is all ready and scheduled up, and tomorrow’s will be written when I get the chance. Maybe later tonight.

It’s all good.

Good news

There hasn’t been a lot of this lately! So I thought I’d post some of the better news from the past few days.

The new battery for my laptop has arrived! I’ve been cycling it to calibrate it properly, and it has been so nice to see the readout track the charge right down to 0% (it hasn’t been able to get below 50% for months!). Just one more cycle to complete, and then I should be set. 

There is an end in sight for our current financial situation at home. I won’t bore you with the details, but the end of a lot of stress and waiting might be coming soon. I have my fingers crossed.

The antibiotics are kicking in. I had an awful weekend, all told, but the medicine is starting to work. I’m breathing a bit easier, and I can lie down without coughing every five minutes now. Which means I can sleep. Oh, such luxury. This morning I woke up early and thought I’d settle down for another half an hour… and then woke up three hours later. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to sleep in such stretches.

Visited the doctor today and he said I’d turned the corner. It isn’t going to be a quick recovery, but at least I’m on the upslope now. Slow and steady, huh? Got another chest x-ray on Friday to see how the old lungs are doing, and then we go from there. It isn’t looking too likely that I’ll be back at work next week, but hopefully I won’t be off too much longer.

I’m feeling more alert. I think the sleep is helping. I’d like to get down to some writing soon (it itches, it does!), and as I posted up the last of my pre-written Apocalypse Blog posts today, I’d better get cracking! I have so much in my head to cover. And god knows being couch-bound is getting really boring now (I’ve watched almost every DVD I own, with the specials).

 I got a card through the post today. My workmates had put it together from a Cheezburger picture and sent it with a bar of chocolate for me. How adorable is that? Bless ’em. I have the best team ever.

So! Pushing on. Getting there slowly.

Coughing Fun

My breathing has been getting worse, enough that I barely dare to sleep. I can hear it crackling in my mouth, and the air isn’t shaped right when I exhale.

It got bad enough that I went to the hospital last night. I’m no lung expert, and wasn’t going to take chances (not to mention that the whole idea of sleeping and getting too short of breath was scaring the shit out of me), so I went to get help. We wound up sitting in emergency for over an hour and a half, and the doctor said I wasn’t sick enough to admit. He was very nice, just didn’t think I was bad enough to warrant being in hospital.

I need to wait for the antibiotics to kick in, he said. Right! Okay. Should take another day or so. It’s not being a fun day. I’m exhausted, because I got about two hours of sleep, and every time I sit any way but bolt upright, I have a coughing fit.

Bleah. Hopefully I’ll be able to lie down enough to sleep tonight. If I can get half a brain, I need to sort out today’s AB post too. Right. Must get onto that.

Thunk

Sometime during the night, a truck snuck into my room and ran me over. That’s what it feels like. The doc tells me that I have a fever and a viral chest infection. Joy! 

So I took today off work, and tomorrow isn’t looking likely either. I’m on painkillers and liquids and cough medicine, and generally trying not to wish that I could just curl up and die.

I managed to get together enough brainpower to write out an AB post tonight, though I won’t make any promises as to the quality of it. If I can do one a day, that should keep me up to date enough. It’s really hard to focus at the moment, though. I just hope that next week’s posts don’t completely suck as a result. 

The really awkward thing is that it’s my novelling group’s meeting tomorrow night, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to get to that. It’s only our second meeting, and while I don’t really need to ‘run’ things as much as I do with the other group, it does require some guidance so we don’t just talk about other stuff all night. 

I plan to be around on Yahoo and MSN so that I can contribute, if people there have laptops on and will talk to me. Otherwise, I’ll just miss it this month, which is okay. It happens. Honestly, I’m relishing the chance for a break. I can put my feet up for a bit and not feel guilty about the million things I’m not doing.

I have been thinking for a while that I’ve taken too much on this year. Which I suspected when I laid out my plans for 2009, but you gotta aim high, y’know? I think I’m going to give Script Frenzy a miss this time around – I’d love to do it, but I really don’t think that I’ll have the time or inclination. It’s only a month away and I’m pushed just keeping up with AB. 

Oh well. I’m doing all right with the stuff I have going at the moment. I’ve ordered a new battery for the laptop, so hopefully that issue will be solved soon. Now all I need to do is kick this chest infection, and I’ll be good. Yes. Or at least just as frazzled as I was yesterday. 😉

Be well, everyone. Be weller than me! I’m going to collapse and try to get some sleep now.