Tasmania – Day 5

Today was our first full day in Hobart. We left our accommodation and drove to the Cadbury Factory but decided that we didn’t want to pay the $7.50 entrance fee just to enter the shop (we didn’t have time to stick around and do the tour). After that we drove to Mount Wellington, which was shrouded in cloud. We drove to the summit and spent a few minutes up in the clouds – very cold and wet… we didn’t see much, either  

Our next stop was the Cascade Brewery and I spent a while walking around the gardens. Some of the flowers they had were quite beautiful – the honey bees here are huge and much fatter than the ones at home. I want to plant some of the plants in my garden at home… the colours were stunning.

After the Brewery, we drove to Hobart and into the commercial district for lunch at Constitution Dock. I don’t eat fish, so I ate plain potato wedges with sour cream. We separated after that; Dad went to take photos, my sister went shopping on her own and mum and I went together.

Tonight we went out to dinner at the Casino. We went to a buffet restaurant. It was nice – very small but the food was lovely and the service was quite good too. Now we are back watching the football – go Port Adelaide!

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Tasmania – Day 4

Today we drove from Cradle Mountain to Hobart. We left early and drove via Deloraine, taking the scenic trip. It was a nice drive although it seemed quite long – that said, we stopped a couple of times for morning tea and lunch. The sunshine of the previous days had changed to overcast skies – which meant wispy clouds  were drifting across the mountains and most of the water we saw was grey to reflect the sky. We also stopped at Liffey Falls which was quite spectacular – the photos are below. We have three days in Hobart now – still planning exactly what we are going to do but shopping is definitely on the agenda

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Playing Catch Up

Holidays are over and it’s back to work. I wrote a post on the weekend but either my computer chewed it up or WordPress was having hiccups because it promptly disappeared and I couldn’t get it back.

I had a pretty eventful last week of holidays. The first two days were reasonably restful. On the Monday, I stayed home and worked on SR, trying to get as much as possible finished. My sister was also home all day, sick. On Tuesday, I went out with my friend K. We went driving through the Adelaide Hills, climbed  one of the King of the Mountain climbs for the Tour Down Under in my zippy yellow car, saw some young thoroughbreds at Lindsay Park Stud and then had lunch at a nice pub.

Wednesday morning at 2:46, I woke up feeling very ill… I was sick all of Wednesday with gastro. The only ‘good’ thing about it was that I managed to watch most of the inauguration of Barack Obama, though I missed the swearing in itself.

On Thursday, still feeling a bit under the weather, I went back for my first day of school with the rest of our staff – the students didn’t start back until Tuesday the 27th. I am teaching English, ESL, Australian Studies, Legal Studies and the Personal Learning Plan. Both Thursday and Friday was a rush of gtting things in order for the first day back and in truth I am still getting organised, although most of the hard work is done. I am teaching mainly Grade 10 and my classes have been wonderful so far.

I kept my weekend pretty quiet – I was feeling sick still right up until Monday, although it was mainly loss of appetite, which I could handle. I did a little bit of work in my garden, although a lot of that will probably take a beating – we’ve had three days of HOT weather including two days of 44C weather (114F), so a lot of my younger plants are dead or dying. Because of the water restrictions, I can’t give them another long soaking with my hose until Saturday and I can only carry so many buckets or watering cans of water.

~ Jewel

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

Terrific Tuesday

I had a quiet weekend – I mainly worked on SR. I am trying to write the scene where my main characters have their very first kiss. It was very slow to write but is almost done. I just have to write the beginning of the scene and then some aftermath. I have also been trying to thread the last pieces of Chapter 7 together. I had actually thought it was finished but then I realised that I had to move the kissing scene into a new setting in Chapter 8 to make it flow better. I also played around with the sequel a little bit – mainly for character development, more than anything else.

Yesterday morning I went into work for a couple of hours and then out to lunch with a colleague. After that, we drove to Wooldridges Educational Superstore at Edwardstown to have a look. It was my second visit there and once again, I was very impressed (an purchased waaay too much!) I am going into work again tomorrow morning. I am currently shifting from one desk to another one on the other side of the room, so I need to sort through everything while I have the luxury of time. I suspect next year is going to a mad dash from start to finish.

More tomorrow – possibly some pictures.

Wicked Wednesday!

I am so glad we are past the middle of the week! I had two meetings on Monday, an epic Tuesday with two very frustrating classes, followed by an after-school event (our Year 12 graduation ceremony) at which I was the official photographer. Today I have battled with a migraine all day but I managed to make it through without having to go home. Tomorrow and Friday shouldn’t be so difficult, although we are in a busy period assessment-wise, so you never know.

I have finally finished Chapter 7 of SR and am printing it while I write this to give to two of the teachers at school. I start my 50,000 word novel for NaNoWriMo on Saturday, which I am looking forward to, although I am also rather terrified. At the least, it will give me a chance to work on something new and stretch those creative impulses.

The weather wasn’t as hot as I expected on the weekend, so I didn’t have the air-conditioning cranked up but I did manage to keep myself hydrated – I went through almost 2 litres of orange juice on Saturday alone. I also managed somehow to eat way too much junk food – I think this weekend I will have to try to eat a bit healthier.

Jewel

Updates & Photos

Finally the end of a very busy week. I stayed up late last night uploading photos to Flickr and the weather has been quite warm today, so tonight I am tired. The weather tomorrow is meant to be 38C (100F). I plan on having the air-conditioner running, my glass topped up with Coke or Orange Juice all day and do as little as possible.I may work on one of my stories, or maybe on my outline for NaNoWriMo.

Photos at my Flickr

Quick Update

Just a quick update because I am about to leave for work.

• Still waiting to hear about my job.

• Jess has been sick but is better now.

• Chapter 7 is still slow but I haven’t had much time to write. Maybe on Saturday.

• I am going to the Royal Adelaide Show on Sunday and will be taking lots of photos.

Welcome to September and Spring!

Saturday Morning, Overcast and Cold

I had a busy day yesterday. I worked on my computer in the morning and then I went out for lunch with one of my colleagues. We had a good time catching up (and I had a delicious Spaghetti).  Afterward I went shopping and bought two more DS games that were on special ($24 each, that’s half price!) and a new CD and a single. I am currently obsessed with Viva La Vida by Coldplay and have probably listened to it over a hundred times already. It is a beautiful song.

I have done some more work on SR, including some work on Chapter 6 which is now giving me a little bit of trouble (not as much as Chapter 4). I realised that I’d written something which didn’t make sense so I need to fix it before I give the chapter out to my beta readers again. I’m also working on better showing the relationships between the characters. Next is Chapter 7, which is already half-written and is where I am really starting to move into the newer material.

I should probably mention that I have been working on SR since 1999, when I was in Year 10 in High School. It is coming to life so beautifully and has come a long way – I still have the first draft, which was handwritten in a blue book with golden stars – from the early scenes I wrote. In the years that have passed since I began writing, I have finished high school, been to uni, been unemployed, a telemarketer, a sales assistant, back to uni and finally now a teacher. My students say “how boring” when I tell them I come home in the evening to work on my novel but that doesn’t bother me. I enjoy it. That’s all that matters.

~ Jewel

Rush, Rush, Rush

It’s been one of those weeks when I am so busy, both at work and at home, that I haven’t had time to work on my novel or write on my blog, although somehow I’ve managed to keep up to date with most things I keep an eye on online. We are at the change of semester at work and so I have some marking to finish off this weekend before I begin reports. On the home front, I will be unpacking boxes this weekend in an attempt to finalise the renovations to my room and I also have a whole lot of writing to do.

The weather has been nice and cooperative: it was nice and sunny on Tuesday but by this afternoon we had a little bit of rain which may continue into the weekend. When I was driving to work on Thursday, there was fog over the Ag yards and the Oval, which made me wish I had my camera handy. I was running very early and it was a very pretty way to start the day.

Speaking of photos, I haven’t taken any this week. I may take a walk on the weekend, depending on the weather and also on how much time I have available once I fit in grocery shopping, box moving, unpacking and writing.

I bought new toys (a tennis ball each) for Jess and Jemma this week. They both adored them, although at first Jess was looking at the tennis ball as if to say “Uh, hello… that is NOT a squeaky ball!” She did play with it though, which is almost unusual for her.

I am hoping that with the two week break approaching, I will be able to finish and post a short story online. I will have to see because I also would like to spend some time working on my main novel and also one of the fantasy stories that I have been looking at every now and then. We’ll see.

Jewel