biiiiiillllllssss

In quick succession I've had rates, house insurance, electricity, phone, internet, car insurance, car registration and annual professional memberships.  I'm glad I'd worked out what most of it would cost and worked out how much per month to put aside in an offset account.  I feel like I'm bleeding money but at least I have it to bleed.  On the flip side, I have money sitting there waiting for the deck contractor to get back on deck (slight pun intended) from his broken elbow.  I also need to replace the gutters, which are leaking and dripping daily down the fascia behind the cladding and likely producing dry rot , but I might wait a couple of months or so until bank accounts stop hemorrhaging.  Annnd then it will be christmas.

Related to bills, my electricity looks awful until I look at the average figures and realise I'm only using 2/3 of the electricity of households the same size as mine.
I also now have enough information to decide which water plan to be on.   I use only 1/7 the allowed water of the std plan.  But this is just enough that if I switched to the water saver plan I would only save 1/7 of the cost of the water bill over a year.  I think I'd rather pay that and put in a more complete garden sprinkler system.  I'd probably save more on a well planned veg. garden & citrus trees over the year.

woo hoo 3 months since I went dark!

Phew, glad thats over

I just finished the busiest work week of my year.  Teaching about 35 contact hours and having to do all the support stuff around it for an intensive subject.  At the same time I had to finalise marks for a previous subject - 5pm Friday deadline - I got it in at 5:45pm, but the woman I was sending it to was also working late to finish them.  Everything else everyone wanted me to deal with got a "talk to the hand".  I have about 5 different groups who will be demanding my attention next week, 3 of which have already filled up Tuesday.  On top of that, I'll be putting out any fires in the rest of the intensive (taught by someone else) as there are some hardware issues that will need dealing with.  Monday is a public holiday , but I'll be in at work by 8am anyway to start on them as the students are turning up at 9 - no public holiday for any of us.  I do plan to skive off and go to the show though as soon as I can get away.   Expensive entry, rides and show bags, dust, crowds, infectious aerosols and surfaces.  Mmm, my reward for being a diligent subject coordinator.

Greener pastures include wildstar

I spent all my in game earned money and an hour and a 1/2 installing a flight of stairs and an upper story floor in my rocket house last night.  Need to game more to build more.

reminiscing

The other day while reading something that mentioned goblins, I had a mental flash of a cartoony image of hunched over goblins running around low rocky terrain.  With it came a feeling of enjoyment and fun.  I had to think for a minute why I got such an emotional response to a random memory & realised it was an MMORPG view.  Then I had to think a bit more about which one it was.  Which made me realise I've played more than I think.  Ah, LOTRO.  I had so much fun finding new locations and new cultures in them.  I should go back and play a little more, but I got to a very grindy section and greener pastures beckoned.

Its also just a bit interesting that in all the years of LOTRO, thats the goblin scene engraved in my mind.  Maybe I was eating chocolate at the time.

My relaxing holiday

I took the short week off last week with plans to do some work around the house and computer gaming.  I ended up doing very little gaming as I enjoyed the house work so much.  I did get the been there done that achievment on GW2 finished.

So, what did I do?

1.  Oiled a table
2.  Sanded and varnished the walls of my parents veranda
3.  Smashed up about a metre of the old wash house concrete floor in the back yard.
4.  Pulled up metal pipes from various places in the yard and dug around another 2 to get the angle grinder in to cut them
5.  Dug down and found the old plastic drain pipe in the front yard and identified it will have to come
6.  Scraped back the font door and sanded about 1/2 of one side down to wood (lovely silky oak grain)
7. Baked a cake
8.  Chopped up some roots with a hatchett
9. installed 1/2 the irrigation system
10. Set my parents up with an NBN contract
11. Selected some paints and put test patches on my back veranda in anticipation of painting it when its rebuilt






2.  Thanks to Andrea for mentioning that she did this with a block of concrete in her yard, thus stimulating me to have a go.  I think mine will be easier overall - no metal reinforcing and its thin and crumbly (except where its reinforced with big rocks)

5.  I think the footpath section will require a digger.  Doing it by hand will result in a long slow process where there is a gaping hole in the footpath that someone could fall into and sue me.

7.  Mmmm delicious, I adapted a boiled fruitcake recipe to have walnuts, cherries and dates instead of mixed fruit

8.  Now to install the other 1/2 (other side of the driveway, attached to the front hose instead of the back)

content free

I got online and changed the settings on my blog due to what looks like spambot comments - though it could just be someone doing weird and bizzare comments....Chris?

Then I realised this year I've blogged once per month.  So here is April.

Nothing to say, just letting you know I'm still alive.

Wait,
I can hear something...whats that purple glow...Its full of stars!

Crash, bang, rattle.................................

..Message ends.

A quick (relatively) author calculation

After Andrea listed her female authors, I muttered foolishly that I should do the same as I've just reshelved all my books  (see below , and yes that is Jar Jar)...and now I feel just slightly pressured.

So since I have a database listing all my authors and books (or at least the physical ones.-I also own 2 different e readers that I'm not counting books on), I downloaded it to excel and deleted all non-female authors using the following (slightly flawed) criteria;

Obvious male names - remove (so females writing as males are gone - males writing as females are kept - unless of course I happen to remember these details)
any unclear names - google search - only keep if it states they are female somewhere... who is JJ Fortune by the way?
Keep any dual authors where one is female.

In doing this I realised my database is a little out of date.  I'm sure I've updated it, but somehow some data is gone. I wonder how out of date it really is.   More pressure to stick it all on Goodreads with a barcode scanner.  Except I'd have to pull them all down again.

Also note that not ALL of my fiction is Science/fantasy....just 99%+  and I've included it all.

So based on the above limitations;  I have 876 novels (see I know I was into the 900's last time I updated a pile) of which 457 are written or co-written by women  That's just over 52%

Whats the proportion of females to males on the planet? 

I considered uploading all the books as well as authors.....too big... authors only...all 117:

Josephine Angelini

Amanda Ashby

Kage Baker

Margaret Ball

Lorna Baxter

Hilari Bell

Holly Black

Laura Black

Alexandra Bracken

Kristin Britain

Karen Brooks

Mary Brown

Lois McMaster Bujold

Frances Hod. Burnett

Trudi Canavan

Diane Carey

Gail Carriger

Carmen Carter

Kristin Cashore

Kylie Chan

Cassandra Clare

Jan Clarke

Jo Clayton

Suzanne Collins

Dawn Cook

Susan Cooper

A.C. Crispin

Mary Janice Davidson

Gail Dayton

Monica Dickens

J.M. Dillard

Nancy & Fran Dorer

Diane Duane

Rosemary Edghill

Jennifer Estep

Lynn Flewelling

Kate Forsyth

Sally Gardner

Claudia Grey

Laurell K. Hamilton

Charlaine Harris

Zenna Henderson

Georgette Heyer

Andrea K Host

Tanya Huff

Eva Ibbotson

N.K. Jemisin

Kij et al Johnson

Diana Wynne Jones

Julie Kagawa

Sylvia Kelso

Celine Kiernan

Caro King

Angela Knight et al

Mercedes Lackey

Louise Lawrence

Ursula Le Guin

Sharon & Steve Lee & Miller

Madeleine L'engle

Joan Lennon

Shariann Lewitt

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Johanna Lindsay

Holly Lisle

Elizabeth A. Lynn

Melissa Marr

Ann Maxwell

Katie Maxwell

Anne McCaffrey

Vonda McIntire

Patricia A. McKillip

Robin McKinley

Stephanie Meyer

K.E. Mills

V.E. Mitchell

Elizabeth Moon

Lyda Morehouse

Rebecca Neason

Lisanne Norman

Andre Norton

Naomi Novik

Jody Lynn Nye

Robin D. Owens

Tamora Pierce

Elizabeth Pope

Alis A. Rasmussen

Tansey RaynerRobert

Mickey Zucker Reichert

Jennifer Roberson

Veronica Roth

Jane Routley

J.K. Rowling

Lynsay Sands

Pamela Sargent

Elizabeth Scarborough

Lisa Shearin

Josepha Sherman

Kathleen Sky

Joan Slonczewski

Maria Snyder

Midori Snyder

Zilpha Snyder

Wen Spencer

Anne SpencerParry

Meagan Spooner

Caroline Stevermer

Tricia Sullivan

Sheri S. Tepper

Kate Thompson

Carrie Vaughn

Catherine Webb

Cherry Wilder

Liz Williams

Susan Wright

Janny Wurts

Sarah Zettel

Marion ZimmerBradley

mmm Bacon

I bought a bed which has finally arrived.  Its hand made and each piece has the serial number of the bed on it somewhere so everything fits the right way round.  Jacobean reproduction mahogany 4 poster.  Its not all together yet but I'll add a photo when I've finished putting the top on and have a mattress on it.

So, why the bacon heading?  I thought the delivery guy had eaten a bacon sandwich, the wafting of bacon was profound.  Then I thought the neighbour must be cooking bacon.  Then I realized, for some reason, to me at least, Mahogany smells like bacon.

Mmm bacon bed.  I fully expect to get lots of bacon cravings sleeping in it.

filing

I have a new bookcase (read garage put together shelving 2100 high by 1800 wide by 400 deep).  I thought I'd put books on it A-F, G-L, M-R and then S-Z.  Surely they'd average out to roughly the same volume per shelf...well maybe not the M-R shelf - how bad could it be though.

So far, with about 5 boxes of books to go, A-F is 2.5 layers deep, while G-L is only 1 1/3.
M - R is just under 2 deep, but I have yet to unpack the 2 boxes labeled McCaffrey and and Pratchett.  I forsee having to put 1/2 of M on the shelf above and QR on the shelf below.

Then I expect I'll be considering buying another shelf.  If I adjust them all I can fit one more in.  I hope the house supports can take the load :)