Author: Gerry

Smoke from Australia

It’s very dark now and has been too dark for an summer afternoon. The cooler of the light has been slowly darkening from a general “it’s too dark for this time of day” to “it has a noticeable yellow tinge/colour” and now it’s a dark orange colour!!

It’s due to all of the smoke from the fires in Australia of course. Given how bad it is I’m just pleased that I’m not in Australia.

“Starve Acre” by Jonathan Buckley

I’m going to try to keep track of some of the books I am reading. At the moment it’s a horror book called “Starve Acre” by Jonathan Buckley. It is very, very good so far and I’m pleased I decided to randomly grab it when I spotted it as it’s well written and an interesting story!

It’s a small book with a short page count, so it’s definitely more of a novella rather than a full novel. I don’t think the plot would have coped with being padded out to being a longer story though, but the novella length means the writer was able to go into enough extra detail to make it more interesting. A lot of the story much happens, with short sections of actual action as such, which might have gotten old with a longer book.

It does come from a private publishing company, Eden Book Society, who only publishes horror novellas and all of the authors are published under a pseudonym. If the quality of the writing and story in this book is anything to go by I am going to have to keep a close eye for other books published by them!

Otis

My eldest niece had named their new puppy Otis. (I am assuming they named him after the dog in The Adventures of Milo and Otis despite the fact that the dog in the movie is a pug and their Otis is a Beagle). He is rather hard to take photos of as he’s very energetic and all over the place, I have tried but I’m currently not that happy with the results… Especially given that you can’t see his face clearly in any of the photos I have taken so far.

New cellphone

I got a new smartphone a few weeks ago and I’m still playing around with it; this post is really just a test post to make sure I cam post here feom my phone with zero problems more than anything else 😊 I’ve been to upgrade to a smartphone for ages but have been putting it off because I wanted to get a decent phone rather than one of the cheapest ones.

It’s been great so far, though some of the apps are annoying to use. And I don’t like typing out lots of text uaing the small keyboard, as I keep hitting the letter next to the letter I mean to hit!

Christmas Decorations :)

Some of the houses on my street have started putting up their Christmas decorations by now, though most will look a lot nicer when it’s dark of course and you can actually see the lights. One of the houses which was sold earlier this year has put really complicated, for my street, decorations up in one of their trees and they have even included the branches that hang over the footpath!

They’re detailed enough that I think that they’d be as interested in daylight as they will be after dark, as it would hard to make out some of the details when it’s night. I guess, depending on how their lights are of course. It’s still a bit too early to go around and have a look at the houses after dark, as I like leaving them until closer to Christmas in case I miss anyone who puts their decorations up later on in the month.


This is the first house’s decoration I’ve seen on my street, or in the local neighbor hood that is even remotely close to the Franklin Road Christmas lights, which I don’t mind given how much traffic they get every year! (I also think the pressure to keep up with the neighbors with those sorts of displays would be awful, not that I’m anywhere near the road which makes it a moot point 🙂 ).

Bad few months

I do feel as if I’m going backwards at the moment and that I haven’t manged to accomplish anything much over the last couple of months 🙁 I’m actually more upset that I’m going to miss the annual Nat Con here in Auckland over Easter more than anything else! (Which is Conclave 3 of course, but I’m assume everyone who reads this post either already knows that or isn’t interested in science fiction conventions 🙂 ).

I’ve been applying for new jobs as they come up recently but obviously haven’t gotten anything yet.

The only thing I actually feel on top of is getting my nephews birthday presents under control already. I ended up getting him the Catwoman bike Lego set and the Riddler Lego set – I got him a small one one with a Batman figure and a second one with the Joker figure for Christmas so these will add a significant number of the Batman Lego figures to his collection 🙂