Know what my resolution last year was? To floss. It was probably the most achievable resolution I’ve ever set, and indeed, I achieved it. I established a habit which had escaped me through ten or more years of vaguely feeling it should be a habit.

Sadly, I can’t think of anything as absolutely simple and achievable for the upcoming year. I can think of plenty of things I’d like to do. Exercise, for example, that perennial resolution. Well, the taxi in the morning plan works brilliantly, so I don’t see that as being so much of a difficulty. Not quite sure utilizing somebody else’s arrival on the doorstep to make myself get up and exercise exactly counts as resolutionary type behavior, though. Smart, yes, resolutionary, eh, not so much.

Other things I’d like to do, without any particular expectation of *doing* them:

- study Spanish
- finish redesigning kitsnaps and turn it into a commercial site
- figure out how to advertise photography, for that matter
- draw a bit
- eat better (regular exercise tends to make me want to eat better, so the taxi scheme will probably actually help achieve that one)
- start practicing the tin whistle again, now that I’ve thoroughly forgotten anything I’d managed to learn :)
- oh yeah, also learn to knit a little more
- and make at least one of the long coats I have a pattern for

Thing is, though, none of that is stuff I feel like making a resolution about. It just all falls under “it’d be nice,” which is fine. It’s not like resolutions are a critical part of modern life, though if I could think of one as anti-climactic but useful as flossing, I’d probably make it. :)

Anybody out there in readerland made any good resolutions?

currently: tired

If you’ve got a couple dollars to spare, help a family keep their home. There’s probably no way to officially keep track, but if you donate money and want to send me a private email telling me how much you’ve donated, I’ll send my latest book or a book of your choice or a comic or … something … (fudge?) to the highest donor off my friends list. My email is cemurphyauthor@gmail.com, and if you put, uh, “home donation” in the subject line then I’ll be able to keep track easily. (hat-tip to for the link!)

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you Statesiders!

currently: hopeful

I was reading Greg Rucka’s blog yesterday and there was an entry about pursuing dreams and their fragility, and the comments discussed some things about facing reality vs pursuing dreams. It all got me to thinking. And now this is getting to be a very long entry, so I’m going to put it behind a cut tag to spare the flist….

Read the rest of this entry…

Is it just me, or does nothing happen when you go plug numbers into the Zokutou word counter these days?

Last year a World Wildlife Fund event called Earth Hour got Sydney, Australia to turn out many, if not all, of its lights for an hour at 8pm on March 31st, to “to deliver a message about the need for action on global warming.” This year, Earth Hour is going global on March 29, and invites everybody to turn off the lights for an hour at 8pm local time around the world.

I remember this happening last year, and I thought it was cool then and I think it’s cool now. I read some articles the next day where there were interviews with people who’d gone out to watch the city from a distance, and I remember one family who were kind of surprised that it didn’t all go dark at once, but that it faded out, and a little disappointed that it didn’t go entirely dark. Still, the site says, “…more than 2.2 million people participat[ed] in an effort that darkened icons such as the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and resulted in a ten per cent drop in energy usage – double what had been predicted.” That’s fairly awesome.

I’m going to be in Dublin being a GoH at P-Con on March 29th. Not sure I can convince the hotel to turn off the lights, but it’d be neat if Dublin was participating at all.

This is also neat: my…ok, I think he’s actually my second cousin or something, since he’s my cousin’s kid, but in the interests of generational tidiness, my nephew, Duke, got to meet Barack Obama yesterday and had his picture taken with him:

I think I may have just fallen one step further down the “not maintaining my own server email/photo gallery/etc, because this is a new computer and it hasn’t got the Gallery Remote software set up on it, and it was just so much easier to upload the photo to the Picasa gallery. Damn. I used to have geek cred, man. Stupid Picasa gallery wouldn’t do what I wanted, I ended up uploading it to my own gallery anyway. Pptltltlbht.

(…actually, downloading Picasa and waiting for it to drag in all the thousands of photos I’ve taken took a lot longer than it would’ve to download GR, but I need Picasa to resize the photo, so I’m kinda screwed. Watching it pull in all these photos, and realizing a lot of them are really pretty *good*, really surprises me. I don’t know why, but pretty much every time I look at my own photographic work I’m surprised at the quality.)

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! ZOMG! I just got two boxes full of HOUSE OF CARDS in the mail! ZOMG! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I am SO HAPPY to have gotten this book! After last year’s absolutely hell revision process on it, and finishing not so very long ago at all in the scheme of things, having it *in my hands* is maybe the most exciting book I’ve held since URBAN SHAMAN came out. Wow, wow, wow, YAY!

Quick! Speak unto me the reason you, yes, *you*, should recieve a shiny new author-signed copy of HOUSE OF CARDS, to be sent out on Monday, and I’ll send a handful out to the best answers! :)

currently: bouncy