Sexy Lady

If you like this comic there are more at Scandinavia and the World

I've just heard about Anything That Loves, which is a comic book that's just come out about being bi. I was surprised to realise that it's not just straight people who can be anti-bi, apparently gay people (who I'd have thought would know what it's like to suffer from other people's prejudice) can be firmly anti-bi too. It seems that we like to divide the world neatly into pairs of categories and if you don't fit one then you must fit the other. But reality is more complicated than that.

I do wish people wouldn't try to put us all into boxes. The only thing that should be in a box is a cat and that's because they like to be there.

Fun With Science

Just a couple of pictures that I thought were worth sharing.

And finally, I love this avatar used by one of the talented people on Ravelry. It took me a few moments to get it the first time I saw it*.

*If you don't get it, try googling for the scientific symbol for Potassium. Hint: it isn't P.

Reading With A Vengeance

I found an interesting blog that comments on books chapter by chapter and the posts on Fifty Shades of Grey are keeping me amused.

Ana tells us for the third time this chapter that Grey is, in fact, still sleeping. Riveting. I kind of wish I could join him, because at least then we’d both be unconscious.

I did try reading Fifty Shades but to me it reads like really bad fan-fiction. Strange that.

Customer Service FTW!

Dear John Lewis,

Thank you so much for my new television. It's everything I'd hoped for and more - oh, sorry, wait. You didn't make it you just delivered it. Well, thank you for delivering it. Eventually.

I know your delivery drivers are very busy, so getting a phone call at 8.20pm to say they wouldn't be delivering by 9pm was fine. We'd only been waiting since 2pm with the furniture all out of place to make their job easier when they arrived, so no worries there. I was very happy to be given a reason for the delay and "unforeseen circumstances" really clarified things for me. And of course I had the phone call from customer services to look forward to.

Which didn't actually happen, but hey! You're busy people! I understand that. So my three or four (or was it five?) phone calls to find out when our set would be delivered were obviously necessary. And you did give me another delivery date, four days after the first one. Result!

It would have been nice to get the set within the time you specified but the men did come to pick up our old one on time. Punctual or what! And it was only a few hours later that they actually managed to arrive with the telly we were waiting for. How cool is that!

So it's all good and of course an apology is not needed which is just as well really seeing as how we didn't get one.*

Looking on your FaceBook page for the last few months you seem to have a lot of angry people whose deliveries were not on time and who were fobbed off by customer services. All I can say is, what a grumpy lot. Why would anyone expect to get their goods on the day they were promised just because they'd already paid for them?

Sadly we won't be buying anything from you again unless we can pick it up and bring it home ourselves but no hard feelings, eh?

Respectfully,

Fairy Hedgehog


 *A few days later I got a phone call from John Lewis; someone had drawn their attention to this blog so they were phoning to apologise.

Which laptop?

My Acer TravelMate is dying - James managed to get Windows to work on it again after it completely stopped booting up but all my data has vanished. It's a good job he backed it all up for me recently!

I loved it for it's light weight, long battery life, cool running, and matt screen but the hard drive had to be replaced just before the first year warranty ran out, and a year later it looks like it's gone again.

I think it's time to replace it but I don't know what with. What I really want is the same again but with a hard drive that doesn't die after a year.

Caption competition

Halloween came and went then I got a tummy bug, so last week was a write-off. Inspiration has fled; I'm trying to get out invitations to my birthday party, buy Xmas presents, get ready for my winter skiing holiday, get my new glasses sorted so that I can see through them, and edit 50k words for Nanowrimo.

None out of five isn't bad. Is it?

As I'm feeling uninspired, I thought I'd turn to you folks for inspiration. How about a caption for today's photo?

Are you ready?

Nanowrimo starts tomorrow. Are your pencils all sharpened, your notebooks at the ready, your laptop battery charged, your wordcount spreadsheets updated? Do you have snacks and coffee and chocolate to hand? Most importantly of all, do you have an outline?

Actually, skip that last one. You don't need to know where your story is going when you start writing; some of us only find out what the story is by writing it.

If you get stuck, Brian Klems has some suggestions for what to write next:

If you find yourself at a loss for what to write next, come up with a way to make things worse, let the characters respond naturally to what’s happening, write a scene that fulfills a promise you made earlier in the book, or work on a scene you know readers will expect based on your genre and the story you’ve told so far. 

 (from 6 Secrets of Writing a Novel Without an Outline)

Brian Klems suggests an organic way of working that I feel comfortable with but the article also gives you a lot of things to think of all at once when trying to write and I'm not sure I can do that. While I'm thinking up stories what seems to work best for me is trying to come up with the story I most want to read. Mind you, sometimes the characters just won't co-operate (I'm going to be editing a novel this month where the main character refused to fall for the attractive woman I'd set up for her and insisted on falling for a character who was supposed to be a minor annoyance).

For anyone doing Nano this year: I'm here to cheer you on. The purple bar is calling your name, just make sure you've got enough chocolate in to fuel your writing. Oh, is it only me that runs on chocolate then?

King Rufus

We found the dog bed in a charity shop and it looked the right size for our cats so we brought it home. I rather liked the gold edging; I thought it gave the bed that throne ambiance that every cat should have.

Both cats sniffed at it then left it alone.

I wasn't going to be defeated so I had a cunning plan. I put the bed on the settee and sat on it like a cushion. Then after a while I went and cooked dinner. When I came back, Rufus had as usual taken my seat and was ensconced in the bed. I picked it up by the edges and put it on the floor and hey presto! Suddenly he can't be separated from it.

Just sometimes I think I'm cleverer than that cat.

Clocks go back

If you're in the UK, don't forget the clocks go back tonight. And if you want something to cheer you up while thinking about the long, dark evenings ahead, you might want to revisit this old post.

Nearly November

Just eight days to go till the start of Nanowrimo.

I've written seven 50k stories and one of 24k during previous Nanowrimos and they all languish unedited. I think it's time to change that so this year I'm not going to be nanoing, I'm going to be editing.

It's going to be hard because, hey, 50,000 words! That's a lot of words to edit! And also I love seeing my word count going up during Nano and I won't be doing that this year. I won't get a purple bar either. So maybe I won't stay motivated but I think it's worth a try.

Nano is a huge effort and a huge achievement - well it has been for me, anyway. It feels strange to be not quite part of it this year.

I shall still go to the booze- meet-ups though.