Sunday Update

I have finally finished uploading all of my photos from my visit to Tasmania – here is the link to the slideshow. Looking back, it was a wonderful holiday – very scenic. I think we picked the right time of year to go, as the autumn colours were stunning. I’d like to go back again around the same time next year for a longer period of time. The only think I found really disappointing was the lack of snow – apparently it snowed two days after we left!

Last weekend I went to the Adelaide Zoo, using my membership card for the first time. The weather was nice and the animals were fairly active. I managed to see the giraffes being fed and the Macaw free-flight. I also went to the new Envirodome – they have smaller creatures in there and my favourites were the chameleons and the sea horses.  The new panda exhibit was looking great. I went around the zoo twice and then afterward went shopping in the city. It’s so nice having the zoo so close to the CBD – I had an excellent day. I am thinking of repeating it next weekend, weather permitting. I also want to go to the SA Museum and the Art Gallery – I used to visit often when I was a uni student and now I haven’t been there in a long time.

Work has been very busy – we are coming to the end of another assessment period. Exams are next week, followed by report writing. 3 weeks to go until the holidays!

I have been doing a little bit of writing. I have managed to put a couple of my stories onto my phone so I can read it like an ebook – I also have the ability to write in a notebook on my phone, which I can then email. So, whenever I have a bit of spare time, I am now either reading or working on either SR, CR or J. This will also come in handy when NaNoWriMo comes around this year!

Photos

I am spending the Easter weekend cleaning, importing music to iTunes and eating chocolate. I went outside yesterday and took some photos in the garden – the first is one of our Chinese Lantern plants, the second is my mum’s water pump and the last is my herb garden, which is situated in an old bathtub. I used my new tripod to take the photos and I am very happy with the results so far. I have also done a little bit of writing although most of my time has been spent reading through to catch up to where I am in the editing process.

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Quick Update + Photos

We’ve just finished the assessment period for term 1 and are in the midst of report writing. Hopefully I will be online more after that! My birthday on Friday was great. On Saturday, Mum and I went out and took some photos at the wetlands at Salisbury and then of the horses up in the hills that I visit. Saturday night I went out for dinner with my family, my sister’s boyfriend and my friend K. On Sunday, I relaxed. I did a little bit of shopping and processed some of my photos.

I have opened up a shop at Cafepress.com to sell my photos and some of my graphic designs on clothing, homewares and the like – the link is on the right hand side. I am planning on uploading more images soon.

I still haven’t made much time from writing although my head has felt in a fog since the weekend – too much staying up late, I think. We have two and a bit weeks until the holidays and I am looking forward to the break… I just have to get through marking and reports first :p

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Sunday

I went into town yesterday and purchased some new books. I took my usual walk through the university and managed to get some nice photos – I think playing with my camera is really starting to pay off. I have spent a good part of last night and today reading – in the past 32 hours, I have read:

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
• Restless Spirit by Susan Brocker
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

I have also read a good portion of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling and also a good portion of Dreams Made Flesh by Anne Bishop. I have to recommend The Hunger Games – I read it in one long sitting with a couple of very short breaks to hang the washing out and order dinner and can’t wait for the sequels.

In other news, I have been trying to work on getting at least one more chapter of my 2008 NaNo novel for my friend K to read – she loved the first couple of pages that I gave her and said she thought it was better than SR. Not bad for a first draft!

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Wednesday

I have been very busy these past couple of weeks and have been neglecting to write very much on my blog.

Last Wednesday, I went to the Adelaide Zoo for the day. I arrived in Adelaide early so I could get a full-day car park. After walking up through the university of Adelaide to Rundle Mall for batteries, I ate breakfast and then walked back to the zoo in time for opening at 9:30. I was at the zoo until about 2pm at which point my feet decided they’d had enough and that it was time to head home.

More photos at Flickr (will open in new window)

On Monday I went to a Mandatory Notification session in town. It was at the University of Adelaide in the Pulteney Tower building – my first time in there upstairs. After we finished, I walked back through the Uni. It felt so good to be in town again, although the day was very warm.

Yesterday was VERY hot 41C (107F) or thereabouts. Fortunately it cooled down today. I have spent the past two days hibernating under the air conditioner, uploading the zoo photos (there were 99 in total, though I took over 700) and working on my novel.

I was all set to make drastic changes to SR in the last week or so but managed to end up with the same effect with just a few smaller changes. I have pretty firmly decided that I want to work through to the end of my current draft, then do one more draft before I try sending it to a publisher. I have some very good feedback from a few friends who are reading as I write and I am keeping a list of things that may require changing. I also need to develop some characters who aren’t so well-developed.

I have also been working on Jewel, a fantasy story that has been in my life about as long as SR. The beginning of the novel is pretty set but the middle is wandering back and forth – it is very much unplanned at the moment. I am just writing scenes as they come to me. The current draft of Jewel is markedly different from the first few drafts I wrote, which were very much coloured by TV shows that I was a fan of at the time.

In other good news, I have already read seven (excellent) books this year. Home for Christmas, All I Want for Christmas and Gabriel’s Angel are romance novels by Nora Roberts – I had a 3 in one book and read it in one sitting. The other four books are Young Adult: Nobody’s Prize by Esther Friesner; Out of the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst; Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr and Dragon’s Keep by Janet Lee Carey.

Tomorrow I am going into the city with my friend K. I need to get a print copy of my academic transcript. I also want to go to the Oxfam Shop, Dymocks (my favourite bookstore) and maybe through some of the shops. I am planning to take my camera. On Friday afternoon I am thinking about going to the Adelaide Zoo – they will be open until 8:30pm and I have never been there so late in the day before. I’ve heard it is very good so late in the day.

~ Jewel

Monday Musings…

Happy New Year! It seems hard to believe that we are already 5 days into 2009. I know January is going to fly by, especially since I am back at work on January 22. I have been taking the first few days of the year very easily. Our cooler than normal December has morphed into what feels like a normal January. It is quite warm today, especially out in the sun.

I have finally finished reuploading all of my Flickr photos. Now I just have to sort them properly into Sets and Collections.I have quite a few new photos too – I have spent the past week playing with my camera. There are some nice shots of flowers from my garden, some pictures of horses (the herd at Nyroca I often take photos of, as well as some new horses near Kersbrook) and some photos I took while I was at the beach on Saturday afternoon. I have also decided to attempt to take a photo for each day this year. I am going to chronicle this at my Just Add Ink Photoblog. I will also put a button on the sidebar.

On Thursday and Friday I spent quite a bit of time in my new garden. I now have two flower gardens, a wheelbarrow that I have planted with flowers and I will soon have a herb garden in an old bath that we are recycling. I also have a mini herb pot with mint, chocolate mint, basil and coriander. I am slowly putting peastraw down on the garden beds and tonight will have to water because the plants are looking thirsty.

I have also spent some time working on SR while waiting for my photos to upload. I am supposed to be working on Chapters Seven and Eight but while I was going back over Chapter One, I realised that I had a few major problems with the plotline early in the novel. I was going to use an entirely new beginning to Chapter One that I had already written as an alternate beginning but I think I’ve come up with a solution now (and besides, I love the current version). I have also attempted to ‘even out’ my chapters, as I had some that were 13 pages alongside others of 30 pages. I’m still working on that, as I am planning to add one or two new scenes earlier on.

~Jewel

Making Progress

204 photos down, 313 to go.

I am trying to get all of photos posted back online to Flickr before the end of 2008. I took them down a week or so ago because I came across some old photos that I decided I wanted to post and I wanted my photostream in chronological order. I am up to photos from October this year, so I am making good progress. I may even be able to get them all done tomorrow.

While waiting for my photos to load I have working on SR and reading through some of my other, older stories. Jewel, DG, Skyrider and Pirate Gold to name a few. I have a short story that I am fiddling with, titled “Becoming” – I’ve tried changing it into first-person but I am not happy with it. If I can get it to work the way I want, I will post it.

As for doing fun stuff these holidays, I went out to lunch today at my favourite restaurant and I am hoping to make it to the Adelaide Zoo this week to have a nice day out and get some photos. I hope the weather – and the animals – cooperate!

Here is one of my favourite photos – one of the meerkats at Adelaide Zoo!

Merry Christmas Eve!

It’s Christmas Eve here in Australia. I thought I would post this now because I don’t know if I will get a chance to do so tomorrow. The photo uploading to Flickr is going well; I am uploading Photo #121 as I type. 192 to go.  Nearly halfway there. You can see the photos that I’ve uploaded by clicking on the badge on the right hand side of the blog.

Tonight I cooked chicken for lunch tomorrow (we are having a cold lunch) and then my family and I went looking at Christmas Lights. I spent most of the time playing with the settings on my camera, in particular the effect of a long shutter speed when focusing on something whilst in a moving car. I got some okay results and a few great ones, although I accidentally deleted a couple of shots I really liked.

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Work In Progress

I am currently reuploading my photos to Flickr, so that’s why photos are currently down.

I went through my photo collection on the weekend, organising and found a whole heap of old photos that I didn’t realise I had. I wanted them on my photostream in chronological order, so down everything came, so it could go up in the right order.

I hope to have most of them done by the end of today, or perhaps tomorrow. 22 are done, 289 to go.

Photos

Over the last two days I have been driving through the Adelaide Hills looking for some good photo opportunities. There is a spot about twenty minutes from my house where horses often graze. More often that not they aren’t there when I want them to be (ie, when the weather is the nicest) but I was very lucky yesterday, especially when some of them came down to the fence to greet me and pose for photos. Today’s attempt at taking horse photos was not as good because the main group were out of sight but I did get some nice flower shots instead.