Spectacular amounts of fail are occurring around me at present. Firstly, I burnt myself on my iron. I swear it was lurking about behind me, waiting for the chance to strike. And by "chance to strike" I mean "waiting for me to move my arm stupidly". Damned inanimate objects, taking advantage of my natural clumsiness.

Secondly, I have inherited the nasty cold/virus-type thing that was being passed around by the staff in the revue item. Huzzah! Now I know what my day has been missing: a throat full of razors and a general feeling of bleh, why am I at work?

Thirdly, our final night at said revue was a wonderful disaster. People forgot lines; other people couldn't turn up because they were too sick; we missed cues and got moves wrong... and we laughed all the way through it. And yet, it was still fun and we didn't really care at all.

Therefore, I declare it a success. In a faily kind of way.

Finally, I happen to be in need of luck and/or good wishes later this morning, so if you have any to spare, please send them my way.

Oh, I did a very crazy thing. Very crazy indeed. It goes a little like this:

* The school at which I work puts on an annual revue-type thing.

* There's always a staff item in said revue-type thing.

* I am a member of staff.

And this year, for some insanity-driven reason, I decided that I should take those last two points and draw some sort of logical conclusion from them. Oh yes, the shy, self-conscious person decided it would be an idea of sorts to stand on a stage in front of actual people and perform a dance routine. Not on my own, admittedly; I haven't quite reached that level of crazy.

Opening night was last night. And you know what? Some sort of miracle occurred in which the only part of me that was nervous was my knees. It was quite annoying, really, considering I rather rely on them to stand up and move about and so on. But I went and had a firm chat with them and they got over it, which is convenient when you understand that I was put in the very front row and needed to look at least partially co-ordinated.

I still can't believe I wasn't nervous. Seriously, I used to have panic attacks before doing two minute oral presentations at school. But no - there I was, standing in the wings as we waited for our cue and I wasn't afflicted by nervousness at all. Not even in my knees.

Speaking of crazy things I've done recently, why not have a look at this video in which I confess to another?



I promise never to do that again. Ever.

(stefeny wrote about her thoughts on Twilight fanfiction in response to this video. You can find it here.)

There are two main problems with the Samsung MX-20.  Firstly, it claims to film in genuine 16:9 widescreen; secondly, it declares itself to be YouTube friendly.  It is neither.  It is so, so neither.  It's so neither that it almost makes me laugh out of slightly-crazed frustration.

It does film in 16:9 widescreen.  Unfortunately, it doesn't export in said aspect ratio.  In fact, this is a common problem with the camera, as I found out much later.

I wasn't even game to introduce it to YouTube.

Actually, there are three problems with the Samsung MX-20 and the third would be the TYPO ON THE BOX.  Hassle is not spelt "hassel".  No, really it's not.

I was going to purchase the Canon mini-DV cam, but the Samsung was sitting there, all red and shiny and designed to record on memory cards, rather than mini-DV tape...  And then I got around $50 off, due to its being on special and being the display stock (and the last one in red).  So even though I had intended to buy the Canon - on my dad's expert advice, no less - I went ahead and followed the shiny.

And tonight, it's going back to the store, to be replaced for the Canon.

So while I thought I was going to shoot this week's vlog on my shiny new camera, I ended up with my webcam again.  And all of the footage I took over the weekend?  In useless, squished-up 4:3 instead of widescreen.  GAH.  I wanted my writing week video to be extra special, dammit.

Anyway, here it is for you all.  Writing week: Why do we write?  Watch the video to find out!



Incidentally, why do you write?

I am sunburnt in interesting ways. Not for me the effortless tan. Oh no. And for some reason, I can't even manage an all-over burn.

No.

Instead, I have funny burnt patches and equally funny unburnt patches. And I was wearing sunscreen, too, so I'm not entirely sure how this burning occurred. Nevertheless, it did and I'm vaguely irritated by it. Not to worry, though; it will all have faded back to my standard scary white by next week.

Today was the day of the swimming carnival at my work and I was one of the photographers. It was quite a fun day, really. And usually the photographer manages to escape most of the photos, but people kept taking my camera away and turning it directly on me. Ack.

Still, I'm sure I looked fetching in my bright red singlet top, not-quite-matching skirt, Coke cap and red cape.

Yes, red cape.

Well hey - I'm in red house, so I might as well support it by dressing strangely. In public. Even my sunburn ensured I was completely co-ordinated with my red outfit. And a bonus, I have sunburn on my feet that follows the pattern of my cute red shoes.

Before I go to find some more aloe vera, I shall leave you all with my fivedotnerds video for this week. Enjoy!

It was 43°C here today. That's 109.4°F, if you prefer. Today, there's a possibility it may reach 45°C. Or 113°F. Now, I quite like the heat but even I think that's pushing it.

On top of this, I was greeted by a strange, fan-like sound when I arrived home yesterday. Turns out the central heating system had decided to blow air through the vents. Not hot air, thankfully, but it was doing this in defiance of the fact that it was turned off. And all of my glares and threats had absolutely no impact on it, the cursed thing.

Turning it off at the mains worked somewhat better, even though it meant we were apparently risking the overheat switching on (according to the instruction book). Which, by the way, is the stupidest instruction book ever. Nowhere does it say, Oh, hey, if your fan comes on randomly, it's because of this or even OMG, your fan came on even though it's switched off?? PANIC! YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! OF CENTRAL HEATING.

At least the air-con behaves more maturely.

And in a rampant break with tradition, I actually posted my vlog on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday. This is what returning to work does to you: it completely screws up your schedule. And here it is...



I'm deadly serious about the questions, too. Please ask me some! Ask me questions about writing so I can answer them in future blogs! Ask me hundreds! You can either do it there or here, I don't mind. I would love it above all things to be able to talk about writing and maybe to help some people out along the way.

I hope you all enjoy it (even though it's filmed from a really horrible angle... :|).

And now, I am off to work.

I feel like writing an ode to my back.  Somebody stop me.  Quickly.

It wouldn’t be a nice ode, though.  It would be more like the spiteful little one I wrote to the photocopier at my old work when we finally replaced it with something that actually worked.  But odes seem to be my response to situations such as these: when you can’t actually take your problem outside and beat it to death with a 2x4, write an ode about it instead.

Ah, my back - how I hate it so.  We’ve never been best friends; never shared secrets with each other; never wanted to spend any sort of meaningful time together... which makes things a little difficult, if you think about it.  Every now and then, when it thinks I’m getting a little too complacent about the fact that I have a spine and it allows me to keep myself reasonably vertical, it likes to pull out an attack.  For instance, I’ll be sitting at my computer, innocently typing away, only to flinch when my spine jabs at me.

That’s fun.

Then I’ll wake up the next day with a resentful ache in my lower back that doesn’t go away no matter what I do.  And I try everything, believe me.  Yoga classes have nothing on me when I’m trying to find a position that might relieve some of the pain.

But I’m sort of used to it, for better or worse, so I try to ignore it... which is when my back decides to throw a hissy fit.  It’ll wait until I'm doing something completely innocuous, such as walking down the passage, and then it’ll... well, I don't actually know what it does but yesterday it did it about halfway up my back and it felt the way I’d imagine it would if someone jabbed some sort of cattle prod in your spine and turned it up to the highest setting.  Gah!  Nothing.  Helped.  Not standing still, not bending over - nothing.  Oh, and don't think of taking any deep breaths, because that just makes things worse.

That was all kinds of wonderful.

Why yes, I did stay home from work yesterday.  Why yes, this does mean I’m currently on the second day of a five day weekend.  And yes, that does mean I needed a medical certificate, because who’s going to believe I wasn’t just lying to secure a five day weekend if I don’t have something to prove I was actually in pain?

Nobody in their right mind, that’s who.

The doctor across the road is closed one morning of the week - guess which one it is?  That’s right - yesterday morning!  I got to hang around the house until 2pm, or rather, 1:55pm, which was when I left so I could an appointment as early as possible.  There were only two people ahead of me, which seemed promising... right up until the first guy went in and didn’t come out for another fifty minutes.

Waiting room chairs = not comfortable.

Having the ability to distract yourself by writing slightly naughty fic whilst waiting = good.

And that’s the saga of my back, although I did forget to mention the habit the doctor has of jabbing his thumbs into sides of my spine to make sure that's where the problem really is.

On the up side, at least I missed out on the staff photos at work yesterday.

You know you’ve been far too involved in internet matters when you step outside at midday and are incredibly surprised to discover that the suburbs around you are blanketed in smoke.

And I face a window when I sit at my computer, but I still didn’t notice.  Although I could blame that tree sitting right there, blocking the view.  Curse you, tree!  If it weren’t for you, I might have been noticing things!

Or not.  Probably not, actually.  Considering I was doing about six things at once and constantly getting side-tracked...

But there I was, when I finally left the house, standing by the side of the road, staring up at the sky in amazement. I mean, it was clear and blue just hours ago when I’d hung the washing out. The strangest thing was the fact that I couldn’t actually smell any smoke.  Surely you should be able to smell smoke when the sun is being blocked out by it? Or maybe I just have an incredibly useless sense of smell.

But there you go - Melbourne, blanketed in smoke.  It’s a little alarming, really.  Especially if, like me, you’d been watching the predictions of how the bushfires are all going to gang up and go off and bully quite significant areas of the state.  After which, they will presumably turn their sights on Melbourne.

Oh, I do so like a good panic.