No writing yesterday. Went out to dinner and a movie instead.

Tuesday night went to see Fareham Town away to Hayling United. They play on a college pitch and use the college's tiny canteen as a clubhouse, so they lack some of the facilities you get at most clubs in the league - if you want an alcoholic drink it's a choice of Carlsberg or Worthington - but their two catering staff are friendly, and they do a tasty burger (albeit without onions) and a good cup of Bovril, both very welcome on a chilly night like this one. On the pitch, Hayling battled hard and were good value for the 1-1 draw but it was frustrating not to see Fareham convert their technical skill into a win.

Portsmouth fireworks on Wednesday. Indulged in a foot long hot dog as soon as I arrived, drawing approval from the guy serving. Unforgivably, none of the sweet stalls were selling treacle toffee - if some enterprising person were to make lots of the stuff, pitch up at the bonfire and sell it, they'd make a mint - so I had to settle for some nutty crunch fudge. Bumped into Alex from Hawks Ladies with some of her mates by the food stall; she asked if I was coming to Shanklin on Sunday, and said some of the others were coming down later, but I never saw them. I found a decent vantage point and waited there while, on the other side of the field by the Wave 105 roadshow, kids enjoyed themselves to a couple of local singers and the tribute band Take That 2. When the bonfire was lit it felt good, and nostalgic, to get that Bonfire Night smell in my nostrils. The firework show was spectacular, a real riot of colour with plenty of rockets and the odd bang.

At the office yesterday Demelza found an old box of After Eights in the cupboard and passed them round, urging us to eat them all since they'd go off if they were left much longer. We all took the plunge except the dieting Sue, but most stopped at one so I ended up with half a dozen. They tasted not bad to me. In the evening went to Ferneham Hall to see the Gosport Amateur Operatic Society do Blitz!, a lesser known Lionel Bart musical about the intertwined fortunes of two East End families during the Blitz. Very poignant, though with lots of rollicking gor-blimey 1940s Cockney humour along the way. Mother and daughter Jenny and Nicola Matthews were fantastic as on-stage mother and daughter Mrs Blitzstein and Carrie, while Lou Skinner was a stand-out as cheerful, spirited Cockney sparrow Elsie. I stopped for a quick chat with Lou afterwards; in contrast to her stage costume, the overalls of the WW2 female munitions worker (which she pulled off in one hilarious scene, in protest at an air raid warden insisting that no-one was allowed into their houses), post-show in the bar she was looking very elegant and attractive *<3*

This morning brought revelations from two celebrating people: Val has a promotion, while Demelza announced that she's getting married next month. The old wives' tale about things 'happening in threes' led several colleagues to speculate on 'what's going to be the third?'. They settled on deciding that our syndicate was going to win the jackpot on the Euro Millions tonight. Well, dreams are free... Meanwhile Simon found the Swiss chocs left over from our meeting with Cleo and passed them round, much to Demelza's joy.

About a month ago, I started writing a story for a friend as a gift. I finally finished it tonight. Now I need to edit it -- writing on the iPhone is a pain in the ass.

Time spent writing: 1:20
Cumulative: 6:45

Boyfriend: dumped my ass last night

Psych meds: out for the last few weeks

Finances: catastrophic

Depression: hasn't been this bad since I was hospitalized

Suicidal urges: rampant

Reasons to live: amazing friends, South Park, masturbation, hot showers, unread books, the possibility of tomorrow

Is it so very wrong that I think the perfect, ideal pick-up line, the one that would work on me irresistably, is:
"Does this rag smell like cloroform to you?"

Wrote some Fantasy Football previews.

Time spent writing: 1:00
Cumulative: 5:25

I shared some albums at my comm recently, and I'm linking to some below. If you wanna check out the other albums available at this entry, feel free to join sexy_mood_music and do so. If not, please do enjoy what I'm offering here. Also, if you snag something, a comment would be greatly appreciated! :)

[Remember to change 'hxxp' to 'http' for each link!]

Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope [Limited Edition]
Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras from the Illinois Album

I've got "113 Feet" down to 7970 words. Someone better buy this damn story before I go insane from cutting out any more details. At 12,000 words, it was a much better story in terms of plot and details, but I admit that at 8000 the writing itself is better.

That's the problem, though: you have to balance good writing with good storytelling. I always would rather write more and edit later, but it kills me sometimes to have to take out those little details that make the characters that much more real.

Time spent writing: 0:55
Cumulative: 4:25

Stolen from interactiveleaf
Alexander the Great and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Day
http://everything2.net/title/Alexander+the+Great+and+the+Terrible%252C+Horrible%252C+No-Good+Very+Bad+Day
Here are the opening paragraphs:

I left the battle with blood in my helmet and now there's blood in my hair and when I got out of my armor this afternoon I tripped on a dead soldier and by mistake I dropped my sword in the catapult while the thing was launching and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.

At dinner Aristotle found a fat juicy rabbit in the tall overgrown grass and Demetrius found a striking young buck in the tall overgrown grass but in my tall overgrown grass all I found was tall overgrown grass.

I think I'll move to Carthage.

In the march my bodyguard told Homer to have the left flank. Plato and Hephestus were told to take the right flank. I said I was being scrunched. I said I was being smushed. I said if I don't get a place on a flank I am going to be homicidal. No one even saluted.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.

I just did some of the most difficult editing I've ever done. I completely rewrote huge chunks of "113 Feet" and got it down to 8193 words. Tomorrow night I'm going to try to squeeze it down to 7999, which will let me submit it to publications that take up to 8000 words. I think parts of it are better, and I know the writing is tighter, but I had to sacrifice a lot of scenes I really liked.

Time spent writing: 2:10
Cumulative: 3:30

Hotel in space set to open in 2012
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091102/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_space_hotel

I wish Papa Heinlein were alive to see this...

Book View Café, the Internet's only professional author cooperative, announces the creation of Book View Press. Book View Press will expand the Café authors' mission of bringing the best online fiction to the readers by bringing new work ready-to-read on the most popular ebook devices, including the Amazon Kindle, the Sony eReader and a variety of cell phones.


Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls

“Fasten your seatbelts and brace your tentacles. These all-star tales of epic wonder from the genre’s masters will sizzle through your mind like a spaceship on re-entry burn.”

— David Williams
Author of The Burning Sky

Aliens, technology, humanity, exploration, loss, transformation, and a title only the Internet’s original author’s cooperative could imagine.

An anthology of classic and favorite science fiction stories by the BVC authors, never before gathered in a single collection, Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls is the premier title from Book View Press.


Vonda N. McIntyre — Brenda W. Clough — Katharine Kerr
Judith Tarr — P.R. Frost — Pati Nagle — Madeleine Robins
Nancy Jane Moore — Sarah Zettel — Amy Sterling Casil
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff — Jennifer Stevenson — Sylvia Kelso

Ready to read on the Kindle, Sony eReader, B&N Nook, iPhone and most other ebook readers and smart phones (with reader app.)

Available formats: PDF, EPUB, MOBI, .prc, .lit, .lrf

http://www.bookviewcafe.com/

This anthology features TWO Judith Tarr stories, so get your copy now!

To start Onhoniwrino, I preloaded a week or so of blog posts on one of my blogs so there would be something new each day. Saves me a lot of time to just knock out a bunch in a row.

Time spent writing: 1:20
Cumulative: 1:20

Well then. I suppose I should listen to my other half more, huh? I've been trying, believe it or not, but it's not been easy for me.

Researchers found that gratitude predicted better self-reported sleep quality, as well as duration of sleep, and less 'sleep latency' (the amount of time it takes to fall asleep after the lights have gone out) and daytime dysfunction. The relationship between gratitude and each of these variables was mediated by the thoughts people had before falling asleep: more positive before-sleep thoughts and less negative ones. All of these results were found to be unrelated to personality traits, including neuroticism, (which one might expect to affect sleep quality and ability to fall asleep). - Elizabeth Scott, MS

Source

"Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."
--Samuel Beckett

Christmas is coming, my dears, so may I recommend something that would make a wonderful gift, either for yourself or your loved ones?

The 20th anniversary edition of Judith Tarr's brilliant book A Wind in Cairo is the perfect gift for any readers on your list. The new edition has a gorgeous new cover, bonus material, and a new introduction.

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/a-wind-in-cairo/5524136

This edition was a labor of love for many people, and it far exceeds even our high expectations. Those of you who are familiar with Judy's work know that any book of hers is a treasure and a treat...this one, I think, is one of her very best.

Please, my dears...go buy yourself a copy of this book. It's a great introduction to Judy's work, and a story that will stay with you long after you turn the last page. Buy copies for all of your friends, and support a wonderful author and great human being in the process. I swear, you won't regret it. (Also available as an e-book!)

A Wind in Cairo by Judith Tarr

THE PRINCE: Spoiled, reckless, heedless of any wants or needs but his own, sentenced to a terrible fate for his sins against man, woman, and God

THE STALLION: Equally spoiled, equally reckless, bound until death to a bitter servitude

THE TURK'S HEIR: Fiercest of rivals, most devoted of enemies, whose armor hides a secret

Come into the world of the Arabian Nights, where magic and mystery meet; where justice lays a sinner low, and the magic of the heart turns hate to love.

Includes the full text of the original Bantam edition, slightly revised, with a new introduction and a bonus short story.

I hate First tugboating Bus Hampshire, the tugboating useless tugboats.

At Fareham bus station this morning Hazel, the guy we meet there and I stood waiting for the 6.40 bus...and waited and waited. At 6.55 someone finally told us that the bus was coming and had been delayed by a faulty transponder. That had Hazel wondering what a transponder was; our friend replied "You're not supposed to know what it is." He had an alternative theory : the driver of the bus woke up late, and wasn't going to take the bus out till he'd had his morning coffee.

I typed a tweet into my mobile phone to say I was fed up standing around like a suet pudding, but the predictive text system didn't have the word 'suet'. It offered me a choice of 'stev' or 'queu'. What kind of a dictionary doesn't have 'suet'??

Just as we were starting to wonder if the bus was getting merged into the 7.10 service (which would have been no use to our friend as it doesn't go to Whiteley where he works) our bus turned up on the hour.

Hazel and arrived at work 20 minutes late, but there was more to come on the way home. I had enough hours in the bank to knock off at lunch time; the 12.01 bus was delayed because of traffic congestion at Segensworth, so arrived at Fareham too late for the 12.15 82 bus home. The 12.35 simply never turned up, despite someone spreading a rumour ten minutes late that it was 'on its way'. Nobody from First Bus bothered to tell us about the cancellation, let alone give us an explanation, so none of us 15 or so people had the option of taking alternative routes - we were all simply left hanging, to cram onto the 12.55 bus. I was pissed off and hungry when we started to move. At least the chip shop was still open when we finally made it to the White Hart.

To Westleigh Park last night for the girls' Portsmouth Cup tie with QK Southampton. On the sidelines was Billie, who took a knock on Sunday - "I hate watching football," she lamented.

"Thought you two might have had a night in in the warm with Arsenal v Liverpool," I said to her and Becky.

"Bah! Who are Arsenal and Liverpool?" Becky grinned. "When we can be watching Havant Ladies."

The girls made the trip worth their while, cruising past the opposition (who, in fairness to them, are three divisions lower) 8-0. Jodie and Telé gave us a nice farewell present before they left for Australia today, chipping in two goals each, and it was good to see new girl Becki (not to be confused with Becky the WAG) score on her debut. Young Katie played her first game for several weeks, put in a very lively performance on the left wing and was unlucky not to get on the scoresheet.

All through the match, somewhere nearby fireworks went off. Please, wait until the right bloody week.

Had just arrived in my section of the office at 6.55 this morning when the intermittent alarm sounded - stand by to evacuate. "In one door and out the other," one guy said, while others reminded us "It's only standby." The short bursts rang for several minutes then stopped. Half an hour later a mechanised voice read over the tannoy that an investigation had showed it to be a false alarm.

The owls are not what they seem.

Hawks v Welling at Westleigh Park last night. Met Steph in the clubhouse over a pre-match Kopparberg. Bumped into Mark in the queue for the tea hut and Malc and Aly on the way round to the stand. H&W's team performance was much improved and it was a pretty exciting game. Hawks were 2-1 up thanks to a cracking long range shot from Simpemba early on and a 69th-minute beauty from Simpemba...until sloppy defending allowed Welling to get an equaliser right at the end of normal time. The ref played five minutes added on but although Hawks threw everything forward we had to settle for a point.

Back to the clubhouse to catch the closing minutes of Reading v Leicester, but there was no solace there - the Royals were 1-0 down and never looked like equalising.

Home, and hit the hay straight away to be up at 4.30 again this morning.

Today we had two meetings of over an hour's length each with Cleo, our medical expert from London, for us to discuss, and her to explain, some of the finer nuances of the work. They were good constructive sessions, there was coffee and biscuits laid on, and as Cleo had recently visited Geneva (when she mentioned it, I dropped into the conversation that I have a friend there who's a minor Swiss celebrity) she'd brought a big bag of Lindt chocolates for us all, including, joy of joys, peanut butter-filled ones.