Friday, 7 November 2008
Just Letting You Know
There are things that I wish to say about the Proposition 8 vote that was held in California this week. I've been working on a post all day but the more I wrote the more issues that I came up against that I couldn't ignore. I really want to do a coherent post and what I have right now is all over the place. I'll continue to work on it and hopefully I will produce something over the weekend that's worthy of being read.
Thursday, 6 November 2008
And More Importantly...
At 10am, forty two years ago, as the bells for Mass were tolling in the distance, I was born. Weighing in at eight and a half pounds, I was my mother's heaviest baby, the fifth in a brood of seven. Apparently I was born in about 20 minutes. Prompt and considerate from an early age - Jane Hannan had arrived. Since that moment I have pretty much been late for everything and almost guaranteed to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. So I started off enthusiastic but lost momentum quickly.
Aha! This explains so much! (NaNo is goin' slow!)
Anyhoo Happy Birthday to me.
Aha! This explains so much! (NaNo is goin' slow!)
Anyhoo Happy Birthday to me.
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Yes We Can!
What a rallying statement. I thought that the speech was inspiring and moving. I cried. I watched the results come in for as long as my eyes would permit me. Once Ohio came in and I was fairly confident of the result I nodded off at about 3.15 GMT. At 6.30 when I woke up I caught up on the three hours I missed. The BBC called it as soon as Washington State came in. I wish I had been able to stay awake.The first speech I watched was John McCain's concession speech which I thought was wonderful. He conceded with amazing grace and dignity. A fellow blogger commented that "the guy has class" and I have to say I thought that was one classy speech. That said I couldn't be happier with the result.
Thank you America. I hope that the next four years see a change in global politics, greater cooperation and a peaceful solution to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a hell of a weight to have on your shoulders - but if anybody can I believe that Barack Obama can.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
November 4th
November 4th. November 4th. That date's important for some reason. It's my friend's birthday... but no that's not it.... there's something else...
Oh yeah! The fate of the world is being decided today. In the USA.
I know that sounds a bit OTT but let's face it it's true. Whatever the voters in the US decide today has huge and far-reaching effects on the rest of us.
On November 6th 2000 I went to sleep thinking I'd had a good birthday. The candidate I most wanted to win, Al Gore, had won and the world had been saved from George W Bush. I slept well that night. I was more than a little suprised the next morning to discover that nobody knew what was going on.
What would have happened if those Florida voters had been permitted to vote - if those dodgy ballots with their hanging chads were capable of being read?…All the exit polls said Gore. In the end it came down to just over 500 votes and we got Bush. Maybe I'm naive but I'm sure that post 9/11 the Iraqi preemptive invasion would not have taken place. The world may have looked very different today.
So I'd just like to encourage those of you who can, to exercise your right to vote. Because every vote counts and polls can be wrong. I wouldn't presume to tell you how to vote just please, if it is your right to do so, then please do.
Oh yeah! The fate of the world is being decided today. In the USA.
I know that sounds a bit OTT but let's face it it's true. Whatever the voters in the US decide today has huge and far-reaching effects on the rest of us.
On November 6th 2000 I went to sleep thinking I'd had a good birthday. The candidate I most wanted to win, Al Gore, had won and the world had been saved from George W Bush. I slept well that night. I was more than a little suprised the next morning to discover that nobody knew what was going on.
What would have happened if those Florida voters had been permitted to vote - if those dodgy ballots with their hanging chads were capable of being read?…All the exit polls said Gore. In the end it came down to just over 500 votes and we got Bush. Maybe I'm naive but I'm sure that post 9/11 the Iraqi preemptive invasion would not have taken place. The world may have looked very different today.
So I'd just like to encourage those of you who can, to exercise your right to vote. Because every vote counts and polls can be wrong. I wouldn't presume to tell you how to vote just please, if it is your right to do so, then please do.
Monday, 3 November 2008
What a Beepin' Racket!
Everything beeps.
Recently I was laying in bed about to drop off to sleep when the dishwasher started beeping. "I'm finished" is what it was telling me but honestly I got the message the first time - it really didn't have to keep it up for 15 minutes. By that time I was experiencing the anticipation of the beep and that was keeping me awake. When at last it didn't come I began to relax and nod off again only to be woken by a different beep - this time much more insistent - from the washing machine. It was behind two sets of closed doors and had I not been awake it wouldn't have bothered me but even though it was distant it bugged me till I got up.
Then I really was awake. As I lay in my bed busy not sleeping I began to think about the insidiousness of the electronic beep. It's all around us - reminding us, cajoling us, keeping us on our toes.
The first thing I hear in the morning is an alarm going off in my daughter's room which, despite the fact that it is right next to her, she ignores. Occasionally she will turn it off but normally only after I've shouted like a demon to "turn that ***sted thing off!"
By that time I'm attuned to the other alarm (of Big Son) going off. His one has a snooze function and also a beep that becomes louder and more annoying the longer you ignore it - up until it's a continuous tone. He normally sleep through it.
My two older children get up earlier than me as they have to leave to catch a bus. It's a busy time downstairs as Hubby and older kids make lunches and breakfast and the microwave is busy making porridge and softening butter. It beeps for a good half hour off and on. Big Son's digital watch beeps every half hour to keep him focussed on the time and Daughter then has an alarm on her phone to remind her when it's 8am so that she doesn't miss the bus. If there are any text messages to be sent there is endless beeping and buzzing too until at last at about 8.05 quiet returns. Small Son and I manage to get ourselves sorted without recourse to a single beeping thing before we head out the door.
Driving through town there are something like seven sets of traffic lights, each with a pedestrian crossing, which beep when the green man (WALK sign) is showing. It's very seldom a drive around isn't interrupted by sirens (even in my little backwater). You pop into the shop on the way to work and the tills beep, the bar-code readers beep, the card readers beep, the ATM beeps as if objecting to you withdrawing your own cash and when you get back to your car the remote control central locking beeps at you.
By the time I have arrived into work to sixteen hyperactive four/five year-olds I am already on edge from the cacophonous world around me.
Craving quiet and solitude I revel in the walks I have with the dog in the clean country air. Is it any wonder then that I scream with fury at the air force chinooks that regularly pass across this green and pleasant land (probably taking Prince Wills to another party).
Everything we own these days is on keypads (phones, alarm systems, remotes) and every one of the beeps to let you know that you've pressed a button. The piece de resistance is when I come to make the dinner at night. We don't have any gas in my village so my hob is an electric halogen hob. It is completely flat. All the controls are touch sensitive and, you guessed it, every time it is touched it beeps. If your vegetables boil over and hot water gets on these controls it screeches an error message at you. Beep! Beep! Beep! Bloody Bloody BEEEEEEEEEEEP!
By the end of the day I'm frazzled. I put on the dishwasher and go to bed. With any luck I'll already be asleep by the time it starts to beep.
Recently I was laying in bed about to drop off to sleep when the dishwasher started beeping. "I'm finished" is what it was telling me but honestly I got the message the first time - it really didn't have to keep it up for 15 minutes. By that time I was experiencing the anticipation of the beep and that was keeping me awake. When at last it didn't come I began to relax and nod off again only to be woken by a different beep - this time much more insistent - from the washing machine. It was behind two sets of closed doors and had I not been awake it wouldn't have bothered me but even though it was distant it bugged me till I got up.
Then I really was awake. As I lay in my bed busy not sleeping I began to think about the insidiousness of the electronic beep. It's all around us - reminding us, cajoling us, keeping us on our toes.
The first thing I hear in the morning is an alarm going off in my daughter's room which, despite the fact that it is right next to her, she ignores. Occasionally she will turn it off but normally only after I've shouted like a demon to "turn that ***sted thing off!"
By that time I'm attuned to the other alarm (of Big Son) going off. His one has a snooze function and also a beep that becomes louder and more annoying the longer you ignore it - up until it's a continuous tone. He normally sleep through it.
My two older children get up earlier than me as they have to leave to catch a bus. It's a busy time downstairs as Hubby and older kids make lunches and breakfast and the microwave is busy making porridge and softening butter. It beeps for a good half hour off and on. Big Son's digital watch beeps every half hour to keep him focussed on the time and Daughter then has an alarm on her phone to remind her when it's 8am so that she doesn't miss the bus. If there are any text messages to be sent there is endless beeping and buzzing too until at last at about 8.05 quiet returns. Small Son and I manage to get ourselves sorted without recourse to a single beeping thing before we head out the door.
Driving through town there are something like seven sets of traffic lights, each with a pedestrian crossing, which beep when the green man (WALK sign) is showing. It's very seldom a drive around isn't interrupted by sirens (even in my little backwater). You pop into the shop on the way to work and the tills beep, the bar-code readers beep, the card readers beep, the ATM beeps as if objecting to you withdrawing your own cash and when you get back to your car the remote control central locking beeps at you.
By the time I have arrived into work to sixteen hyperactive four/five year-olds I am already on edge from the cacophonous world around me.
Craving quiet and solitude I revel in the walks I have with the dog in the clean country air. Is it any wonder then that I scream with fury at the air force chinooks that regularly pass across this green and pleasant land (probably taking Prince Wills to another party).
Everything we own these days is on keypads (phones, alarm systems, remotes) and every one of the beeps to let you know that you've pressed a button. The piece de resistance is when I come to make the dinner at night. We don't have any gas in my village so my hob is an electric halogen hob. It is completely flat. All the controls are touch sensitive and, you guessed it, every time it is touched it beeps. If your vegetables boil over and hot water gets on these controls it screeches an error message at you. Beep! Beep! Beep! Bloody Bloody BEEEEEEEEEEEP!
By the end of the day I'm frazzled. I put on the dishwasher and go to bed. With any luck I'll already be asleep by the time it starts to beep.
Sunday, 2 November 2008
In which JaneyV is Reverting to Type
One day in and I'm already behind. Story of my life. I'm supposed to do 2000 words a day and yesterday I did 1268. I thought I'd done 2268 so I stopped because I was trying to pace myself. (And the dog needed a walk and it was getting dark (It starts to get dark at 4pm now)). Turns out I need to practise my subtraction.
So today I need to do a minimum of 2732 words (I double checked this time) in order to catch up.
Better get on with it.
So today I need to do a minimum of 2732 words (I double checked this time) in order to catch up.
Better get on with it.
Saturday, 1 November 2008
NaNaNaNaNaNo or Blo
So November seems to be a month for crazy people forgetting they have lives and setting themselves ridiculous challenges. Last year, along with a friend, I did NaBloWriMo where I studiously blogged every day in November. I remember the writing got very thin around the third week and there was even the odd evening where I was desperate for my bed, it was ten to midnight and I still dragged myself in to that freezing cold back room in the house we were renting in order to get some words down that day. We did have another friend who started with us but gave up far too easily (dig,dig)! So when my friend emailed me about doing it again - I completely ignored the email. Sorry. But I did give it due consideration (only I then never fed back to you).
The reason why I didn't immediately go "YEAY - count me in!" was because I was thinking about NaNoWriMo. This little cookie challenges the mentally unstable to write an entire novel in the month of November. 50,000 words in one month. And no - you are not allowed to write the same word 50,000 times. Variation in words is important. The idea is to get the words and ideas on the page - to go for quantity NOT quality. This is is very important for me because The Project (which is what I have erstwhile nicknamed my Work In Progress (or WIP)) has faltered so very often because I was looking for perfection in my first draft and kept editing as I went along. The upshot of this is that I have dumped (I think) five beginnings to my book. (The total trashed word count is somewhere around 80 or 90,000 over those 5 starts - a book's-worth in fact). Frankly they were crap and I am happy to have gone for the start I currently have, but that's not the point. The point is that the story, the plot and the characters have never progressed further than that point because I was too busy being picky. I am now desperate to finish it. NaNoWriMo essentially gives me permission to go past the dodgy bits so I can get the meat and two veg of the thing down. I can then go back and trim the fat and add the intricate and delicate sauces later.
Now my novel is for older teens (say 14+) and the main character is Poppy - hence the wordcounter in the sidebar is labelled Poppy's Progress (I have a habit of mistyping her name so unfortunately she may occasionally end up being Poopy - this has nothing to do with how I feel about her, it's purely because the 'O' and 'P' are next to each other on the keyboard). I am going for about 80,000 words at a maximum of which I have already written about 20K. For the mathematically slow if you that actually means that I've challenged myself to write 60,000 words this month.
BWAHA -HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA! HA!
And to blog every day.
Have I bitten off more than I can chew? Absofragginlutely! But my goal is progress - getting past this hump and developing my story. Getting finished would just be the start - the real sweating will be in the editing but that will be another challenge again.
So there you have it. I haven't officially signed up for either. Being 20K in already is a bit of a cheat see and the blogging thing is just a ruse to keep me focussed on the novel thing. But I am psyched up and ready for it. I hope that you will tune in and cheer me on. I'd like to thank Natalie who is taking this month off from writing (seriously - that's going to be a big challenge for her - she's a writing cyborg) and who has kindly lent me her prolific Muse to shoo me along. And if you want to see how my blogging friends are doing in their efforts why not check out Aerin, Pete, Ello and Precie (who like me is doing her own version). Good luck to us.
We're all mad.
The reason why I didn't immediately go "YEAY - count me in!" was because I was thinking about NaNoWriMo. This little cookie challenges the mentally unstable to write an entire novel in the month of November. 50,000 words in one month. And no - you are not allowed to write the same word 50,000 times. Variation in words is important. The idea is to get the words and ideas on the page - to go for quantity NOT quality. This is is very important for me because The Project (which is what I have erstwhile nicknamed my Work In Progress (or WIP)) has faltered so very often because I was looking for perfection in my first draft and kept editing as I went along. The upshot of this is that I have dumped (I think) five beginnings to my book. (The total trashed word count is somewhere around 80 or 90,000 over those 5 starts - a book's-worth in fact). Frankly they were crap and I am happy to have gone for the start I currently have, but that's not the point. The point is that the story, the plot and the characters have never progressed further than that point because I was too busy being picky. I am now desperate to finish it. NaNoWriMo essentially gives me permission to go past the dodgy bits so I can get the meat and two veg of the thing down. I can then go back and trim the fat and add the intricate and delicate sauces later.
Now my novel is for older teens (say 14+) and the main character is Poppy - hence the wordcounter in the sidebar is labelled Poppy's Progress (I have a habit of mistyping her name so unfortunately she may occasionally end up being Poopy - this has nothing to do with how I feel about her, it's purely because the 'O' and 'P' are next to each other on the keyboard). I am going for about 80,000 words at a maximum of which I have already written about 20K. For the mathematically slow if you that actually means that I've challenged myself to write 60,000 words this month.
BWAHA -HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA! HA!
And to blog every day.
Have I bitten off more than I can chew? Absofragginlutely! But my goal is progress - getting past this hump and developing my story. Getting finished would just be the start - the real sweating will be in the editing but that will be another challenge again.
So there you have it. I haven't officially signed up for either. Being 20K in already is a bit of a cheat see and the blogging thing is just a ruse to keep me focussed on the novel thing. But I am psyched up and ready for it. I hope that you will tune in and cheer me on. I'd like to thank Natalie who is taking this month off from writing (seriously - that's going to be a big challenge for her - she's a writing cyborg) and who has kindly lent me her prolific Muse to shoo me along. And if you want to see how my blogging friends are doing in their efforts why not check out Aerin, Pete, Ello and Precie (who like me is doing her own version). Good luck to us.
We're all mad.
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