Gillian Polack's Blog, page 306

Halfway there

Should I tell you all that the question thread open till Sunday is the last until after AussieCon? No, for that would be a useful thing to do and I'm not in a useful mode. Not even for myself. I start things and leave them half finished and then start them again and then leave them more half-finished. Like the washing in my machine. Let me just get it to the next stage of never-finishedness and I'll be right back. (allergies require extra laundry completed at unexpected moments and the ...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-08T22:28:00

I'm back in the land of historical food for a few days. I've two deadlines (one for page count and the other for emeting with the food artist) for the Conflux cookbook. This is when we work out teh shape of the thing and just what goes into it. I was hoping the bulk of the work would happen after AussieCon and, indeed, had planned other work for the next few days, but life gets in the way of such plans.

After spending 3 hours on the Jane Austen period food, I'm positive my waistline grew by...

Question thread

I forgot to blog yesterday and today. Things are just a bit busy. Nice-busy, with lots of interesting people to see (mainly writers) and lots of interesting things to do (mainly writing).

Also, I keep bugging Lara about astronomy. Does anyone want to keep Lara company and be asked annoying questions by me? I am totally full of annoying questions (and lots of other things) and very happy to share them.

I guess that means it's time to even things up. Open question thread here. Till Sunday....

Workshops and other teaching

It's ages since I've updated where I'll be and what I'll be doing, and this next 4 months has some particularly cool stuff happening. How it can be cool when I'm the one teaching, is because the subject matter is simply amazing. Also the locations. I may not have a great deal of teaching this next little while, but the awesomeness will make up for the lack of quantity.

First up is the ACT Library Service. They're running a program for National Science Week. I'm running three workshops (2 f...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-04T18:05:00

I took most of the afternoon off, spending it with fellow Dr Who fans. I met coral crochet pink dalek, failed miserably in a quiz (names of episodes? what are they?), watched much Dr Who and ate the right kind of jelly babies. The Dr Who fans are such a nice mob!

I returned to a note from my supervisor. A good note. One that will keep me very busy in the immediate future. He may just have tapped a little hole in my brick wall. The next two days will see me anxiously trying to peer through...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-03T21:07:00

Nicole's booklaunch was lovely. Lots and lots of books sold. Lots and lots of family and friends listened to the speeches and to Nicole's reading. And I got to see a bunch of friends for good luck.

PS Thank you, Elizabeth and Matthew for the lifts thither and yon.

gillpolack @ 2010-07-03T11:08:00

Yesterday was an unwell day. It wasn't an unhappy day, thanks to friends (and especially to a very cuddly friend who drew me a marvellously squiggly serpent), it was simply an unwell day. So today I slept in and am currently brunching. Today is Nicole Murphy's booklaunch, you see, and I refuse to let such an auspicious day be unwell.

It's three degrees outside, but the bookshop will be warm and full of happy people. So many people have been barracking for Nicole. We've seen the early draf...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-02T12:04:00

If we're really lucky it will reach five degrees today. me, I'm haning out for all my neighbours to come home from work. When they do that, all their heaters will go on and my poor heater won't have to struggle so reach even 16 degrees inside.

Today is unusal for Canberra. Normally we have bright sunny days and so, even when there's black ice and frost everywhere overnight, the days are pleasant. Today, however, is not pleasant. I'm wearing my fluffy slippers and dreaming of hot weather. ...

gillpolack @ 2010-07-01T22:55:00

Today is a day when I had vast amounts of intelligent thoughts and then I had a nap. When I woke up, my vast amounts of intelligent thoughts had all evaporated into dreams. Instead of trying to be clever again, I spent chunks of time finding out that I just don't think in the right direction to design headquarters inside a cave system. I want a map and I want to know how much living and working space each person needs and how one person will impact upon another and what to do with water and...

gillpolack @ 2010-06-30T13:41:00

I have useful information for today. Readers of my writing (both fiction and non-fiction) have roughly the same profile. They're 75% more likely to be female than male (only 66% more likely with the articles) and they're about 85% more likely to be over 35.

This wonderful data doesn't take into account what you're reading now, because I don't have numbers to crunch for LJ. It doesn't take into account my book reviews, either. Or most of my articles. Or 2/3 of my short stories. Or the r...