The Sound of One Girl Napping

Ouch. Bad pun. (And I haven’t even read the book.)

Yes, it’s been awfully quiet around here lately. That’s because I’ve been feeling fairly awful. I’ve been plagued for weeks by some post-viral thing which has so far eluded explanation. I’ve already reduced two doctors to thinking it might be psychosomatic, and hope that when I see a specialist next week I don’t make it a hat trick.

So currently I’m not doing much of anything, aside from reading a simply enormous volume of Trollope which I hope will keep me reading long enough to make some slow headway through my review backlog before adding to it. (And making my cringe-inducing way through my first reading of last year’s NaNoWriMo first draft ... I am determined that this year I will edit it, but it’s a truly daunting prospect.)

I’ll post when I post.

Hallelujah! I Hope...

It’s alive! My desktop computer, that is. It’s been fitted with new and more capacious memory which Robbie the Computer Guy assures me will stop those pesky blue screens.

(Well, unless it’s not the memory but the motherboard, in which case it’ll need more bits taken out and replaced.)

Still, the wretched thing seems to like Robbie - it actually loaded Windows for him, which is more than it would do for me - so maybe now it will behave. Certainly Firefox has stopped hanging, so that must be a good sign. Edited to add: It wasn’t the memory ... or at least not only the memory. But it took two and a half hours to crash this time, and it restarted afterwards, so it’s definitely improving.

Hello from the Laptop!

Because my desktop computer is currently unavailable. As in, possibly a few steps away from the Great Silicon Chip in the Sky. Or, since I’m an atheist, the council’s next Kerbside Cleanup. I’m hoping the computer guy can make sense of the jumble of letters and exclamation marks it presents whenever I switch it on.

(Ironic, really. I’m a stickler for correct English, and my computer now won’t spell a single word properly. Of all the ways to go kaput, it had to choose that.)

Fortunately, I have my laptop. Even better, Blogger’s start page has finally decided to load, and Firefox on this computer doesn’t crash. So I have a functional internet connection for the first time in what feels like ages.

And I had every last file backed up. I learnt my lesson on that when the last desktop died.

Library Loot

In the Woods - Tana French
The Fool's Tale - Nicole Galland
Lustrum - Robert Harris
White is for Witching - Helen Oyeyemi

We have fiction! My last few Library Loots have been heavy on the fact, but this week I finally had a good hunt through the fiction section. (Well, last week, actually. But Friday night my computer was driving me nuts - hopefully someone at the Tech Support Forums can help me sort out the mess. And last night I was at the Queensland Ballet’s version of Swan Lake. Russia, Rasputin, Romanovs ... I was a little sceptical when I read the program but it worked out quite well.)

And I now have almost a complete list for the Historical Fiction Challenge. I’d hoped to find something set in ancient Rome and something else mediaeval, and the library obliged beautifully.

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire and Marg.

Eight Absolutely Impossible Things

Today’s my 26^th birthday, which got me thinking. Or rather, yesterday’s arrival of a card from my father did. Sure, books are great, and I won’t turn down a nice pair of earrings. But if I could have anything for my 27^th ... if some really generous genie came along ... what would I choose?

In no particular order:

1. For my father to acquire taste in birthday cards. This year’s was a particularly awful piece of frou-frou floral hideousness. I think I preferred Christmas, when he forgot me.

2. The ability to cook things more complicated than stir-fry without needing a recipe in front of me. How do the contestants on MasterChef Australia do it? And why is it that I can list every British monarch since the Norman Conquest but can’t remember how to make pancakes?

3. The magical vanishing of all additional structures in the yard next door. First, they put up a whacking great double garage. Then they put a carport in front of it. Now they’ve gone and enclosed the carport, so when you look south from our place all you can see is an ocean of cream steel.

4. More hours in the day!

5. Legs long enough that I no longer have to cut great swathes of fabric off the bottoms of jeans, skirts, dresses, etc. And I’d want this extension to take place without my gaining so much as a gram of extra weight, so they’d be not only longer, but thinner.

6. The ability to draw people. I’m okay with inanimate objects, but for some reason portraiture defeats me. Not good when you’re feeling artistically ambitious and want to produce a drawing of those upcoming NaNoWriMo characters who’ve taken over your imagination.

7. Clichéd but worthy: World peace.

8. A meerkat in the garden. They’re so cute!

Blogger 1, Spider 0?

Back in February, I posted about the chaos created by the coming to life of my worst nightmare, i.e. walking into my bedroom one night, closing the door, and finding a huntsman spider on the back of it. My arachnophobia decreed that everything be removed from the room in order to prove it was spider-free, which to my immense relief it was. Since I didn’t actually kill the wretched thing, I assumed it had escaped. Now, though, it appears that that was not the case.

It died.

At the bottom of my knitting basket.

Or a spider did. This evening I emptied nearly everything out of it to chase stray crochet hooks and double-points, and noticed an odd brown thing in one corner. A closer, and fortunately only visual, inspection showed it to be a rather dessicated huntsman. So then I was obliged to - very gingerly - remove all the remaining stuff and tip the corpse into the bin, and heroically resist the urge to sterilise everything. (Typical bloody huntsman - thoroughly toes-up and still causing trouble.)

Since the possibility of there having been, at various times, two huntsmen in there is too awful to contemplate, I’ve elected to believe the one that vanished in February took a stroll over something coated with surface spray and then crept away to die.

Under all my yarn! I don’t know whether to be more relieved that it removed itself from this world, or irked by its choice of where to do so.

Knitting up a Maelstrom

It’s not unknown for me to question my sanity. Happens quite a bit, in fact, generally when I’m about to haul home too many books. Or sign up for another reading challenge.

This time, though, I really must be nuts. My knitting history consists of three scarves, a sweater, a short-sleeved pullover, two pairs of socks and a roll-up needle holder. So when you can count your non-rectangular projects on one hand, what’s the logical thing to do next?

Set out to design your own pattern, of course.

Never mind that my attempts to draft dressmaking patterns invariably end in frustration and failure. Or that maths never was my strong suit. I have a skein of blue merino, a firm idea of what I want it to look like come winter, and an abundant excess of optimism. On the other hand ... I have no real plan beyond sketching, measuring, and hoping that the numbers crunch correctly. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to wear the end result before it gets too cold this autumn to do so.

If I’m unlucky - or just plain inept - I’ll still be working on it when I’m 30.

Spider 1, Blogger 0

After removing almost everything from my bedroom in pursuit of an alarmingly large spider, I have had to concede defeat. The wretched thing escaped! Probably retreated outside after the asphyxiating quantities of insecticide I sprayed in there killed off anything that might have served as food.

For which I am profoundly thankful. I had no desire to see it again, even in order to kill it.

Another plus: the place is now sparkling clean. The carpet has been shampooed. The windowsills have been cleaned (geckoes are cute, but they’re also messy). The mattress has been turned (partly as an excuse to check beneath it). The window frame around the air conditioner contains more silicone than Katie Price, and no longer contains a spider-sized gap. And if there was a Guinness World Record for Messiest Window-Sealing Job, I’d have it nailed.

(Lecture to self: See where procrastinating over home maintenance gets you? Mopping up water when the rain comes from the wrong angle, AND hunting large hairy things with too many legs.)

Now I just have to lug all my stuff back from the spare room, and try not to have nightmares.

Spring Cleaning

I, the girl who has fridge magnets which read “A mind is a terrible thing to waste on housework” and “You can touch the dust, but please don’t write in it” am embarking on a thorough spring-clean. (Well, summer, really. But it’s nearly spring in the northern hemisphere.) And it’s all because of a spider. Specifically, a huntsman. A largish huntsman. On the back of my bedroom door.

(Huntsman, n. All-too-common Australian spider. Technically harmless but potentially terrifying. Available in sizes ranging from tiny to titanic. Possessed of the ability to squeeze into spaces you wouldn’t think could accommodate a silverfish. Capable of continuing to stagger about after being half-drowned in fly spray. And the thing in the world of which I am most paralysingly phobic.)

Fortunately, it ran away from me when I shrieked and allowed me to escape to spend a nervous night in the spare room. Unfortunately, it has since disappeared, and I don’t trust it to have gone back outside. Hence the clean-out. Monday evening I doused the door- and window-frames in surface spray, which turned out to be truly noxious and rendered the room untenable. This necessitated the removal for airing of anything which might have absorbed the stink (very quickly, while armed with a sturdy broom and telling myself, They’re nocturnal. They’re nocturnal. They’re nocturnal).

Then I took the opportunity to vacuum. And then I thought, This carpet really needs shampooing. The skirting boards could do with a wash. I should probably empty the chest of drawers so I can drag it forward and dust and surface-spray the back (then give the place another 48-hour airing). And the crooked cupboard in the corner - the one I found on moving in and appropriated to become the Leaning Tower of Stuff - needs to go. The more so as the damn thing is probably hiding behind it.

Ah, paranoia. Under the right circumstances, such a powerful motivating force. I know I’ll never be able to rest easy in that room until I’ve proved to myself that it’s spider-free, so I might as well scrub the place to within an inch of its life while I’m at it. I suspect the spare room will resemble a junk shop by the time I’m ready to put everything back where it belongs, but at least I’ll be able to sleep without worrying about unwanted bedfellows.

And, wannabe novelist that I am, I’ve been taking great care to note all my reactions to the unfolding crisis in case they’ll come in handy in a plot somewhere!

Mohawk Trail (a.k.a. Blatant Showing Off)

Yes, it's been a little quiet around here lately ... it was my mother's birthday earlier this week (she was 48 again - if she keeps that up much longer I'll have to start lying about my age!) Anyway, I decided to whip up a replacement for a woefully shabby cushion cover, and displayed my usual impeccable judgement by falling in love with a fabulously complicated pattern, with lots of curves and 176 little triangles.

Hence it took every moment I could spare and quite a few I couldn't, because did I mention that I prefer my patchwork by hand? (Hmm ... as I write this I'm beginning to have a few doubts about my sanity!) On the bright side, I did get it done on time, and without once sitting up all night, dozing off during the day, or accidentally sewing it to my clothes. And the end result is gorgeous ... so much so that I couldn't resist blogging about it:

Not bad for only the second bit of quilting I've ever done! Needless to say, Mum loved it.

Birthday Loot!

People know me so well...

Nothing takes the sting out of hitting the quarter-century mark like

BOOKS! Especially when someone else throws in a $50 Borders gift card. After several days dithering over what to look for, I took care of that today. Which wasn’t quite so much fun as it sounds; books here are so expensive it was damn hard work stretching that $50 to cover...

... three books. Being a lover of book sales it’s been years since I last looked at full-price volumes, and it was a nasty shock. I’m cheering myself up by admiring the view of my new acquisitions stacked on the shelf under the coffee table, with the Gaskell on top. It was booklust at first sight when I found that.

I couldn’t resist Circle of Sisters, either - a biography of the comparatively poor Macdonald sisters who between them were married to or mother of a famous writer, a famous painter, a President of the Royal Academy, and a prime minister. It’s going to pull double duty as fascinating reading and Victorian-era Nanowrimo research. Looks like the TBR box on the bookshelves will have to wait...

A Good Excuse

Yes, there’s been a certain dearth of posts around here lately ... but it’s all been in the name of a good cause. (Good from my perspective, at least.) I have finally finished knitting the sweater I’ve had in progress for longer than I can estimate offhand. (We're talking months here.) I took more and more time away from reading and writing just to get it over with.

It’s a plain black version of this pattern and the sleeves/upper back gave me hell. The first attempt was too wide, the second too narrow, the third had to be partially unravelled when I failed to maintain the correct tension on sleeve #2 ... and let’s not forget the lovely evening I snapped one of the plastic needles I was using. Into four pieces. While all but five of the stitches were still on it. (You can imagine the fun I had sorting that one out.)

So having sworn off plastic needles for good, I’m now back to doing nice easy knitting: lace-pattern socks.

And, of course, staring at a monstrous list of books I haven’t reviewed yet....

Excuses and Two Quizzes

Nearly two weeks without posting! And I can only blame my ISP for some of that, since I’ve been reconnected for nearly a week. I’ve gotten a bit out of the habit of writing, and found it easy to be distracted by other things: Reading; sewing; starting to knit a shawl when the temperature was hovering unseasonably around the mid-twenties; draping myself in front of the aircon when the temperature spiked to 40. Fortunately I’ve got plenty of time to drag myself back into the habit of reviewing; I’m now into not one but TWO Chunkster Challenge books; it will be a while before either of those are finished!

But if I haven’t been writing, I have at least been keeping up my blog reading, and found these two quizzes. The first came from Book-a-Rama:

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Literature Nerd   Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and its eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works. It's okay. I understand.
Artistic Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Social Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Drama Nerd
Anime Nerd
Musician
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

No surprises there! And from Reading Adventures:

You Belong in Paris

Stylish and expressive, you were meant for Paris. The art, the fashion, the wine! Whether you're enjoying the cafe life or a beautiful park... You'll love living in the most chic place on earth.

What City Do You Belong In?

*Sigh* ... if only I wasn’t so linguistically challenged! (Read: a complete dunce at foreign languages.)

Booking Through Thursday: But, Enough About Books

Okay, even I can’t read ALL the time, so I’m guessing that you folks might voluntarily shut the covers from time to time as well… What else do you do with your leisure to pass the time? Walk the dog? Knit? Run marathons? Construct grandfather clocks? Collect eggshells?

I have to admit ... not a great deal. I’d like to be able to say learning to make my own clothes, but the sewing machine died on Tuesday. I’ve been known to dabble in all sorts of creative endeavours - painting, drawing, embroidery, knitting, crochet, jewellery-making, etc, but not much lately. (Although I must remember to hunt up some shawl patterns before it starts turning cool.) I do (or try to do) the puzzles in the Courier-Mail every day. I do watch television, but I usually read while doing so; and starting tonight (technically now last night) I make the occasional valiant attempt to make sense of Lost. And I’m starting my preparations for this year’s NaNoWriMo.

A Year and a Day

I had intended to do a one-year-on post, but last night I was far too busy ploughing through the final chapters of Doomsday Book to switch on the computer, much less write anything. I started this blog with the one aim of slowing my headlong rush through book after book, and at the same time increasing the amount of thought I gave to what I read. And it worked: at last count I’ve read only 127 books this year, well down on last year’s staggering 179. By year’s end that will be the lowest recorded reading total since the 128 of 2004. (Though I don’t think that’s due only to the blog; I read several truly enormous books this year - The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, Cross Stitch, Dragonfly in Amber, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - as well as spending a lot of time crocheting an afghan.)

What I hadn’t foreseen was the welcome feeling of not being the only one with a passion for everything with pages and a TBR pile that’s barely under control. I like the writing, and the reading of other people’s blogs, and the myriad opportunities to add to my already considerable Wanted list. And challenges! I also discovered the joy of committing - and over-committing - to reading challenges. (Speaking of which: cross your fingers that I can finish my challenge reading by the end of the month.)

I’ve learnt a lot, too. Like not spacing out challenge books over the whole length of that challenge, thereby ending up with a succession of end-of-challenge rushes. And the importance of keeping up-to-date with my blog reading; and with my backing-up in case the next thing to die in my computer is something more serious than just the motherboard. I also know now to never, ever get behind on reviews before Christmas. I’m going to be spending much of what remains of this month chained to the computer, catching up. I like to think that I would have been done by now - mostly - if my mother hadn’t decided to give everyone handpainted candles this year. Handpainted by me, that is. And the designs turned out to be, as my designs invariably are, triumphs of artistic ambition over time management. Then I felt obliged to do something equally time-consuming for her, so ... five days, nineteen posts, plus memes and reviews for books not yet finished. Wish me luck.

I already have plans in mind for my second year of blogging. Successful and timely completion of all challenges; keeping on top of reviews and learning to write faster; more networking; and perhaps the running of a challenge of my own if I can find something that someone else hasn’t thought of first. And I WILL compile an online catalogue of all my books so that if the roof ever does come off in a storm I’ll know what needs to be replaced. But surely even I couldn’t be that unlucky....

I'm Back - Briefly

On Sunday night, feeling quite pleased with myself for being about to post a TBR Challenge review nearly a whole week before the end of the month, I made my almost-nightly trip to the computer. I switched it on at the wall, switched on the tower ... and nothing happened. At least nothing that was meant to; the light that should have been green flashed orange in time to a loud, oscillating hum.

My standard procedure when faced with computer trouble - switch it off and try again – didn’t work, so I was obliged to retreat and call in the professionals. Thinking that of all the times to crash, it had to choose the week before the start of midsemesters, I assessed the situation. The uni’s own website isn’t counted as downloads, so I can still check emails and unit websites despite being over quota ... that printing for Plant Biotech can be done at uni ... Aaggh! I CAN’T BLOG!!

This awful thought was swiftly followed by one almost as bad: I had all my reading records - every book read, genre by genre, since 2004 - on that computer - and I had totally neglected to back them up. Most files, yes; just not those files. There was no chance of my being able to reconstruct them from memory, not even if I piled them all into one list. I’d have no statistics to compare this year’s to. Three years of reading would be lost forever.

Or not. On Wednesday I was assured that it was the motherboard and so most likely not - pardon the pun - a terminal case. And, the memory would remain intact. So to my great delight, I arrived home this afternoon to find that the computer guy (henceforth to be known as Saint Robbie) had not only returned my computer in fully-functioning condition, but, as a bonus, had updated the firewall, installed a new floppy drive with the USB port at the front, and souped it up with a faster processor.

Needless to say, everything that wasn’t backed up before is backed up now.

That review of Rebecca is up at last, but the rest of the backlog will have to wait; I’ll be too busy studying to write (though not quite too busy to read!).

Monday Madness

Okay, that’s it. Call up the nice men in white coats and send them to take me away. Or perhaps they could just confiscate my library card and ban me from so much as hearing about any more challenges for a while? Yeah, that would do.

In case you can’t tell from that, I went to the library today. (And I had to walk down wet streets to get there! That’s right, we’ve actually had RAIN. A whole 38mm; our first in two months.) But I digress. Before the city library, I was in my uni library, doing a spot of blog-surfing that happened to include Carl’s. And ... he’s launching the R.I.P. II Challenge! I immediately began thinking desperately of all the reasons I shouldn’t sign up: so many challenges already, thirty-four books still in the TBR box and only five months till the next BookFest, uni, plus all the extra-curricular hours I’m obliged to spend locked in battle with a certain protein-viewing program. (Don’t let the blog fool you; when it comes to anything remotely advanced, computers tend to hate me.)

And then I got to the city library. And - ooh ... look what I borrowed . . . Nocturnes by John Connolly and The Shape-changer’s Wife by Sharon Shinn. Ideal for R.I.P. II - what a coincidence! I wonder how that could have happened....

Confession time: that was far from all I borrowed. There was also: A Sentimental Murder (more true crime, a case from the eighteenth century this time); Ella Minnow Pea (on my Wanted list since I read Lynne’s review; The Maltese Falcon (how have I never read this?); Down Under - I can’t wait to read Bryson’s take on my native country; and How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints) - should be hilarious. And that’s on top of all the books I already have checked out. So I am now in possession not only of a truly formidable TBR pile, but a library borrowing slip literally as long as my arm.

If I actually do sign up for R.I.P., I should definitely be certified.

But I have the comfort of knowing I’m not the only nut around town; I took a shortcut through Anzac Square en route to Central and discovered they they’ve reversed the directions of the escalators - again. That’s the fourth time that I know of, and the second in a week. What would possess anyone to do that?

And in totally un-book-related news: yesterday Mum found out she’s going to be a great-aunt and promptly dove head-first into strenuous and valiant denial. One of her sisters will be a grandmother, the rest will be great-aunts, her brother will be a great-uncle, but she ... no, no, definitely not.... It’s raised an interesting question. When the baby arrives, it will be my first cousin once removed - but what will I be to it?

The Weird, the Woeful, and the (Maybe) Wonderful

How’s this for a list of recent coincidences:

- In close succession, I read The Secret Adversary and My Brilliant Career, both featuring a character with the unusual name of Julius.
- Simultaneously I read Swift’s Journal to Stella and My Brilliant Career (whose author’s unused first name was Stella).
- On Wednesday morning, my lecture included some words of warning to any broke attendees contemplating signing up for clinical drug trials to earn extra cash. On the way home I picked up a copy of the free city tabloid mX - and on page 3 was an ad asking for volunteers for a clinical drug trial.
- Also in the mX, to my great delight, was a books page (the existence of which I never knew of before, as last semester Wednesday was my day off). It consisted mostly of an interview with John Connolly, whose The Book of Lost Things I recently read, and which I had returned to the library only that day.
- Finally, Wednesday evening I stumbled across this post. Which was interesting timing as, earlier, I had discovered that the city library has installed a sculpture at the top of the escalators. I can’t find any online photos, so you’ll have to use your imagination: a cone, maybe three feet across and four-and-a-half feet high, made entirely of books. Specifically, paperback books sans covers. Sure, it’s been designated art and is perfectly suited to its location, but all I could think was that if those books were intact and loose, they could have been read and looked after and enjoyed. Instead, they’re ruined.

Art or sacrilege: what do you think?

That’s the weird; the woeful is my punctuality in posting (or lack thereof). I had planned to keep perfectly up-to-date with my challenges, but my July reviews all arrived in August. But I did finish the books in July . . . I’m resolved, now, that I will NOT leave it until the last week of the month to pick up my challenge books; in fact, I plan to start my first one tomorrow. No, really. Honest. Which is actually another coincidence: it’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Milan Kundera was quoted in last night’s episode of Criminal Minds.

And the wonderful ... ish. Yesterday I opened the letterbox and found an envelope bearing the logo of my university (a rare event, and one which inevitably makes me think, What did I forget to do?). As it turned out, nothing; it was, in fact, an invitation to join the Golden Key International Honour Society, for students in the top 15%. I think my mother was more excited than I was:

‘Well - what does it say?’
‘I haven’t read it all yet - I only just opened it!’

Okay, okay, so it’s pretty good. It’s just that when you’re used to receiving academic accolades of one kind or another, top 15% doesn’t sound particularly thrilling; plus it gets old. I’ll probably sign up just for the boost it will give my post-graduation job-hunting, but I’m worried that the mention of a society will mislead potential employers into thinking it implies some kind of social life. Which it won’t; the activities of my university’s chapter seem to be all liberally fuelled by alcohol, and I have so little tolerance for the stuff that just the fumes give me a headache. But since said chapter’s website reminds potential members that employers just love to know applicants have a life outside the lab and the library (oh dear ...) it’s perhaps a false impression I need to make. No matter how much it stinks that I should have to do so.

Finally, I’ve had one of those out-of-nowhere brainwaves that I’m occasionally blessed(?) with, and a long-buried idea for a murder mystery has been resurrected. My villain had thumbed his nose at his creator by committing the perfect crime and getting away scot-free; but I think I have now outsmarted him. The problem is that I am sadly afflicted with an imagination bigger than my capabilities. I may have a hard time finding ideas; but once a good one’s planted in my brain, it tends to grow. A lot. Suddenly a straightforward whodunit morphs into a monster with three corpses, two time periods, and a mad wife in the country cottage. And a ghost. All in a foreign country I can’t afford a research trip to.

Good thing I love a challenge.

The Post-Mystery Mysteries and Sundry Other News

I got through quite a few books over the holidays, and a lot of those were mysteries. And they raised some interesting questions. Not just who and how and why but: how do you review a mystery without revealing anything crucial to the plot? And should series of mystery novels which aren’t really sequential be shelved in alphabetical or chronological order? The latter question is largely inconsequential, but solving the first was hard. When a mystery only has 200-odd pages, there’s not a lot you can say without hinting at the identity of the corpse/s or the killer, or contributing to the process of elimination by mentioning characters in such a way as to show that they’re not the corpse or the killer. But it does make for an interesting writing challenge.

For the most part, these holidays have exemplified a saying I came across in a book recently and now can’t remember where: “If not for bad luck, she’d have no luck at all”. It really hasn’t been my fortnight-and-a-half. (Though it could have been worse; that stubborn cold could have struck during exams.) I’ve managed to hit a personal best - er, worst - in library fines and now owe the BCC $7.80; and am now crossing my fingers that they’ll have another amnesty where fines are waived in exchange for a can of food to donate to charity. It started on the day I had planned to take The Looking-Glass Wars back. My mother and I decided to hit Toowong together, and on reaching the station were told by the stationmaster that he had no idea when the next inbound train would be arriving or how far it would go when it did. Apparently - and unbelievably - a construction worker further up the line had dropped a piece of concrete onto the overhead wires. So we were obliged to retreat and try again the next day (when the train was on time but occupied by a loudly and volubly whingeing Pom). Also apparently and unbelievably, I assumed either that The Blue Room and Skylight Confessions weren’t due back that day, or they’d been renewed. BIG mistake; they were, and they hadn’t. But by the time I realised this I was laid up with the aforementioned cold and not up to doing anything more strenuous than turning the next page. When I finally did manage to make the trip to the city, I walked to the station to get the nine-thirty train and ended up turning round and walking straight back home. It is never a good sign when you see a train stopped across the level crossing and all three emergency services in attendance. I felt sorry for the passengers who were stranded in the suburban middle of nowhere for an hour and a half, and sorrier for the train driver and the people who had to clean up the mess. I did manage to get to the city - and for free - when the couple of ancient charter buses finally departed at ten-thirty, and then spent the return journey being plagued with questions about the morning’s incident by a pair of brats. Almost worth it, though, to give their harried father forty minutes of peace. But judging by yesterday’s expedition to the Gold Coast, the public transport hoodoo is over. I actually managed to get a seat on the so-called ‘Bombay Express’; a proper seat, too, not the luggage rack like last time. And the bus back to the station showed up early for perhaps the first time ever.

Even without Queensland Rail, winter holidays aren’t fun because they always bring a birthday with them. I’m not a fan of birthdays; just another reminder of how much time has passed in which I’ve achieved precisely zero. Plus the realisation of just how few people have remembered. I’m trying to look on the bright side: not getting a card from my grandmother means not having to look at proof that in twenty-three years she still hasn’t bothered learning to spell my name. I did, to my delight, discover that I am predictable enough to receive the latest Stephanie Plum; by the time my mother and I had both read it the house had heard more laughter in three days that it normally would in three weeks.

Now on to the good news. All the wishes of good luck I received before my exams must have worked, because I got straight High Distinctions, with my lowest mark 88% and my highest a whopping 99%. (Don’t ask me how I pulled that one off, because I have absolutely no idea.) And I am at last noticing an appreciable dent in the level of books in my TBR box.

My first class is tomorrow morning, so I’ve come up with a little wish list for the semester:

- Another set of straight HDs.
- Graduation in an academic gown that doesn’t make me look like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia. (Mental note to self: go to Lincraft and get some double-sided tape.)
- A job at the end of it. And not one of the killing-time-behind-the-checkout-at-Woolies variety.
- No more overdue books!
- Complete and utter ignorance of all things related to the seventh Harry Potter.
- Library availability of the first Harry Potter.
- No more near-freezing nights; at least not before the mornings when I have to catch a train at quarter to seven.
- No breakdowns, suicides, accidents or power outages on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday mornings or Thursday afternoons. (Delays on the way home I can live with.)
- Punctual completion of all reading challenge books, a perennially up-to-date blog, and an (almost) empty TBR box. Well, empty until the next Bookfest, that is.

I’d better get busy reading Swift, or that last will be shot in a week!

Let the Catch-Up Begin!

Finally my exams are over - and yes, I went through all the question papers with my red pen! - and, now that I’ve finished all the newspapers and associated puzzles that went uncompleted, I can get back to reading and reviewing. I’ve got a ton of both; five days left in the month and I still have to read a book each for the Banned Book, Non-Fiction 5, and TBR Challenges. I’m two reviews in arrears. Plus I have to finish Persuasion. And my library books (only three this time). My TBR box is still overflowing. And I have scarcely so much as looked at a blog in about two weeks. There’s enough to keep me going all holidays and then some, and that’s without all the non-book things on my to do list.

So it’s perhaps fortunate that the weather forecast for the next few days is miserable (by Brisbane standards, at least, which is still nearly double the temperature of my hometown). I actually sort of miss Canberra’s freezing winters; at least when the temperature’s in single figures there’s no hesitation over whether or not to put the heater on. When it’s mid-to-high teens you feel a little guilty about running up the power bill, meaning that ever since winter arrived my mother and I have taken to wearing woolly jumpers and scarves indoors. But this does create a perfect excuse to snuggle under my newly-completed afghan with a good book (or a laptop). It also creates the worrying thought that I might actually be acclimatising to the subtropics, and if I stay here much longer I’ll start thinking it’s cooling down whenever it drops below 25.

It occurs to me that the simple solution to all this would be to a. buy fewer books, and b. join fewer challenges. But where would be the fun in that?