What a difference a decade makes

Ten years ago, getting passport photos done meant I walked into the Post Office and asked for them. I stood against the wall, stared at the camera, paid my money, collected the photos and I was done.

I tried that two days ago. The process was the same but the results weren't.

Getting passport photos today means I need to have my eyebrows and eyelashes tinted and wear a foundation to even my skin tone. I even have to brush my hair - something I usually only do at night before bed.

I don't usually pay into the vanity shit for women, but then I've always been a reasonably good looking woman (and it's amazing what a difference smiling makes to your face). Now I'm seeing signs of aging. There's some grey coming in: not enough to colour my hair but enough to notice. My eyebrows were hit first, oddly enough. I also have sagging skin under my eyes that's a different colour to the rest of my face - hence the need for foundation. It's disheartening.

I don't mind getting older. I really like the person I am now and know I wouldn't be that person without all my life experiences. But I don't want to LOOK it.

Father's Day

I always get a Father's Day present. I know it seems strange because I also get a Mother's Day present. Yes, it's double-dipping, but I've done both jobs for so long I think I deserve the recognition for it.

Tomorrow is Father's Day here and Lauren gave me my present tonight.

F111 during afterburn

Tonight was the annual Riverfire celebration. Basically it's an hour of fireworks along the river that bisects the city. Before and after we have an F111 fly over and afterburn. It's a spectacular sight and this year was the last year for the F111s before they're retired from active service. Lauren rang at 5pm to see what my plans for the evening were.

The fireworks.

"Want to come up to Mt Gravatt and watch the fireworks from there?"

"Sure, sounds fun. What time?"

"I'll meet you at the bottom of the mountain at 6."

That's right. The bottom of the mountain. The road was closed off for the night as Mt Gravatt is a popular place to go to view the fireworks over the city. It's far enough away from the city so we can see the whole show without the interference of the bends in the river or the crowds. We can't hear the music either but that's not such a big problem. We get the birds' eye view. But it's nearly 2km from the road closure up to the top, and with the road closed we had to walk.

It took us nearly half an hour to walk up to the top. We were more interested in chatting so we just took our time and enjoyed the evening. The view from the top is spectacular with the city laid out all around us. Spring has just begun so the breeze was cool with a promise of rain later. Cool here in Queensland means that about half the people up there with us needed long sleeved shirts but mostly short sleeves were fine, even at night.

Afterwards we started the walk down again. Someone in the crowd called out 'shortcut' and, like sheep, we all followed a narrow, barely visible path down the mountain in the pitch black. The path was so steep it was like walking down a very steep flight of steps, only there weren't any steps, just slippery grass and gravel. And did I mention it was night time and dark?

Of course I can't ever suffer in silence.

Me: "We'll never find our way out. We'll still be wandering around the bush in three days."

Lauren: "You didn't bring any water with you, did you?"

Me: "No, but I know how to gather the dew from leaves in the morning."

Lauren: "Oh good. We'll be fine then."

Me: "They'll probably find our bodies next week."

Lauren: "No. With so many of us going missing at the same time, they'll find us before then."

You can't argue with that logic. It took less than 15 minutes to reach the road again.

Just to put it in perspective Mt Gravatt is a popular destination for walkers, runners and cyclists, and it's surrounded by suburbia. I've walked up there fairly often myself and have used the shortcut - in the daylight. It feels different at night because there's no perspective on distance or direction. And there were kids in the group I could scare. Couldn't miss that opportunity!

To dragon or not

I have a pet dragon. Not a tangible one, one in my book. She's based on a little pewter dragon a friend gave me years ago. She's portly and naive and unaware of her own strength, but totally aware of her appeal. She eats amber and grows exponentially. Her interactions with my characters provide humour in dire situations. I want to keep her.

The problem is she doesn't seem to have a role to play. In my head she's important and the four main characters can't achieve their goal without her but it's not coming through one way or the other. At the moment she's a little light relief, popping up at unusual moments and then disappearing just as suddenly, only to come back again when all the people seem to be doing is travelling on a long journey. She nearly drowns a couple of them - by accident, of course - and deafens and kills a whole heap of bad guys but mostly she's used to get my characters out of situations they can't get out of themselves and, therefore, probably weakening them. At the end of the book she has a major role to play but none of that is clear until right at the end (which I haven't written yet because I haven't worked it out).

Judging on the feedback, she's not working the way I wanted her to at all. All the critiques so far have said 'get rid of her' and 'she's detracting from the story', 'has no purpose'. So now I have a dilemma. Do I go back and write her out of the story completely so my characters can find their own way forward and save themselves, or do I go back and change her character so she ups the ante, so she makes life just that bit more difficult for everyone and no one knows if she's a good guy or a bad guy until right at the end?

I'll have to spend some time on the weekend plotting out both scenarios to see which one will travel the best.

The way writing works

I've always known my mind works differently when I'm writing but I had a graphic reminder of that today.

Last night I was working on my story - the one I've been trying to finish since Christmas. I'm so close I don't know why I don't just write it and be done with it - until the editing starts, of course. Anyway I had all my characters in a huge cavern, just finished a battle and killed lots of people. Then in an off-hand way, one of the characters says something to the others. Another character spins around and says, "You know the second verse of the Pledge!"

Nothing unusual in that. My response though was to throw my hands in the air and exclaim, "Oh no, there's another verse to the Pledge? I didn't know that. Now I have to write it and find out what it says."

That didn't surprise me - I often have similar sorts of things happen when I'm writing. I don't plan ahead very well; I'm more of a reactor than a proactor, if that makes sense.

The graphic reminder I mentioned before came when I was relating this to a couple of people at work. If the looks on their faces could be translated into actions I would be languishing in a 19th Century mental asylum by now. :)

I've written the second verse of the poem. It's second draft at the moment. I need to do some more work on it but it's good enough for me to continue with the story the way it is. I won't post it here - I have no illusions as to my talent as a poet no matter how much I enjoy playing with rhyming patterns and syllabic rhythms. I write really BAD poetry.

Retreat

A couple of weeks ago I went on a retreat with one of my writers' groups. It was brilliant. Half of us arrived during the day and the rest in the evening of Friday. When we entered the apartment, it became 2015 and we were in character.

I don't expect a lot to change in my life in just five years. I'll have finished my Grad Cert, hopefully finished my PhD as well and, with a bit of luck and more persistence than I've shown so far, have a book accepted for publication. That's it. I was absolutely fascinated to hear the five year plans of the other writers in the group. They ranged from having two books on the NY Times bestseller list simultaneously, to making a success of a new small business to having multiple books published with local (ie Australian) publishers to becoming totally self-sustaining as far as providing food and energy for the household. Brilliant.

One of the activities we did was a creative collage exercise. A few weeks before we spent a day at a cemetary and chose some people as a focus for a short story. The collage was to help us flesh out those characters and put them in situations that could build into story. It's been a long time since I've spent a couple of hours cutting out pictures and sticking them on cardboard. It's very soothing.

This is the result of my efforts. I didn't use all the pictures I cut out but I've kept them and will use them for other stories.

When I came home, I put the collage on the dining table and left it there for a few days. Every one who came to visit stopped at the table and examined the board. Every one of them came up with their own explanation of who the people were and how they related to each other. The only thing these stories had in commone was the fact that every one of them picked the same person as the villian!

A reason to travel

I've thought about travelling overseas for years. I even made a list of must-see places. Antarctica, Nova Scotia, Hadrian's Wall, Tintagel Castle and Marakesh are all on that list. I've planned itineraries and chosen hotels, picked the best time of year to go and checked that I have enough leave accrued to do it. But, except for a week in Fiji in 1993, I've never actually gone anywhere. I look at the cost and decide I have a better way to spend that money - a way that would leave me something concrete to show for it at the end of it.

Last week that all changed. I finally found a reason to travel. I found the one thing that has spurred me into applying for the leave, although I haven't actually booked flights yet. I've seen my boss and have tacit approval for the leave and I've told my colleagues and students to expect me to be away at that time. I'm going. It's decided.

And I'm going to a place I've never had the slightest interest in even visiting. Singapore.

Sure Singapore is an interesting place, if for no other reason than Changi prison is there, but I don't like crowds and have never wanted to travel in Asia or anywhere else that's crowded - think of the population of Antarctica, my number one place to visit. So what is it about Singapore that has me almost on the plane right now? Sad to say, it's a conference. I know, my students have already told me I'm more than a little strange. But the keynote speakers are the 'bees knees' in their field, I've read a lot of their work and I desperately need to hear them speak.

Who is it? No one any of my friends would know, but that's just because they're all in different fields to me. Professor Carol Kuhlthau and Associate Professor Ross Todd. Yes, it's them; world leaders in the field of information literacy and guided inquiry learning. I'm so excited I can't sleep, and the conference isn't until November.

My new Kindle

I just bought a Kindle and I've been so excited I'm showing everyone I know. I bought the 6" one because I didn't want anything larger than an A5 size book to carry around and it's the perfect size. I've spent the last two days doing very little other than playing with my new toy. So far, for the most part, it does exactly what I expected it to do. I can see me carrying it everywhere and using it all the time. I love the screen. It's small but I can change the size of the text and it's much easier to stay focused on than a computer screen.

It's been an interesting experience so far. Of course, only having it for a couple of days, some of the problems I've had could just be me not knowing how to use it properly yet.

1. My first attempt to buy the Kindle met with a message saying Amazon didn't ship to Australia. I found that odd because I'd done the research and Australia was definitely on the Kindle shipping list. It turned out I had to go into a specific International section to buy it (you can probably tell I rarely buy things like this). Once I got that, it was super-easy. The eight day shipping time turned out to be three days so it all came as a pleasant surprise.
2. I'd like to be able to choose which songs I want to play as I read. As far as I can find out so far from the user guide, the Kindle simply plays the songs from the first one downloaded to the last, picking up where it left off at last use. That's fine most of the time but I play music to suit my mood and I can't do that with the Kindle. I guess I'll still have to carry my iPod with me.
3. I'd like to be able to see the comments I add to the books I'm reading when I'm actually in the book. I can see where there is a comment but I haven't worked out how to see the comment at the same time the page is opened, like a footnote or something. It seems to just open a new screen to show the comment then flips back to the page. I'll play with that feature some more.
4. The text to speech function malfunctioned tonight. For about an hour it wouldn't play at all, just gave me (eventually) an error message then suddenly it decided to work and played from the first page I tried to play at the beginning of the evening, even though I was by then in a completely different book. I had to just let it play through until it caught up with where I was. Hopefully that won't happen again.
5. The battery doesn't last as long as all the advertising material said it would. I've had it three days and have already had to recharge it and the battery is back to half-charged now. I'll have to recharge again tomorrow. Perhaps I'm just doing a lot more reading than expected. I'm on holidays so I'm spending around eight hours a day reading.
6. When I first researched the Kindle I decided I probably wouldn't be downloading books directly to it but by the time I actually bought it I'd forgotten why. I worked it out yesterday when I was out and decided to try the direct access to the Kindle store. It was really easy to operate and shopping in the store was very convenient. I bought two books then, when I got home, checked my bank account. With the download charges, those two books ended up more expensive than buying two paper books. In the future I'll stick to my other methods of buying books and download them to the Kindle from my computer. It's good to know I have the connectivity if I need it but I'll certainly try not to need it often.

Overall, I'm really happy with it. I've been wanting one for absolutely ages. I had wanted to buy an e-reader in Australia because I like to try before I buy and I like to know I have access to people in case of a warranty claim. Unfortunately the only one I could find didn't have half the features the Kindle offers. I just hope nothing goes wrong with it because getting it fixed is going to be problematic.