…we love you, gumtree dot com!

So I’ve already announced the fabulous Mark Saul Band news about the gig that we’re doing for the Edinburgh Hogmanay, yay and hip hip huzzah! We’re quite looking forward to it, and now that we’re down to the final 4 weeks before the boys arrive, I’m getting all excited.

But I believe that I neglected to mention the other musical associations in my life just now.

See, before the gig with Mark was confirmed, I was starting to get the feeling that it wasn’t going to happen, and I was missing playing music terribly. I’ve had noone to play with except a brief – but very enjoyable – sojourn with Hayley Clare’s band during the festival. And a month is not enough, I need something more regular.

So on I hopped to Gumtree.com. See, Gumtree is rapidly becoming my mecca for all my miscellaneous needs. It’s my miscellaneous mecca – I like that, reckon I might use it somewhere. I go there to gawk at for-sale ads for kittens. I go there to snoop around for a potential flat for my scheduled move in January. I sometimes even go there to dream about one day moving to London and all the jobs that might be there waiting for me (as if I could ever leave Edinburgh though – I love this place too much). And just a few weeks ago, I went there to see if anyone in Edinburgh might have been in need of a violinst of my stellar abilities [sic].

There were a few potentials, but only one of them had a MySpace site – an aptly named young singer/songwriter called Rusty Gunson (the rather grave looking fellow on the left). I dutifully visited Rusty’s MySpace, not expecting much.

Boy, was I in for a pleasant surprise.

I’ve listened to so many baaaad MySpace bands and singers, for it’s usually the hang-out of poorly mixed music, and more often than not, poorly arranged and performed as well. (This definition of course does not apply to Mark Saul’s MySpace site, or any of those associated with my disgustingly talented older brother)

Of course, I could just be a musical snob.

However, despite my MySpace snobbery I’ll be the first to admit that to every rule, there is an exception. And Rusty Gunson is most definitely the exception. You need to listen to this guy. Click here for some ear-candy. I’m not going to gush here in public about the quality of his music – it really does speak for itself.

He’s got me on fiddle, and another wonderful musician – Clare – playing cello. And we get to wallow in rich double string harmonies with the vocals.

I swear, I’d forgotten how much I’ve missed playing with other stringed instruments until now.

So thankyou, Gumtree, for helping my musical life back into the land of the living!

November is supposed to be a bit of a “calm before storm” month. Things are supposed to be relatively placid, before the big run up to christmas and the New Year. I guess that’s why so many people decide to plan their events, set project goals, and have babies in November. And you know what this does? It makes November almost crazier than December.

D’you have any idea how hard it is to plan a birthday celebration in November? Not only are you competing with all the OTHER November babies (damned Scorpios – there’s not enough room on this planet for all of us) for the four prime birthday celebratory weekend slots, but you’re also trying to juggle your schedule around all the parties, gigs, and generally ludicrously fun stuff that’s available for do-age in November.

And then add into the equation the National Novel Writing Month, and you’ve got yourself one helluva busy time.

What’s that?

What do you mean, “what’s National Novel Writing Month?” It’s only, like, THE biggest event in the writers calendar. Who cares who gets the Pulitzer Prize? Who cares who the Booker, Hugo or Nebula Prizes go to? Nobel Prize for literature? Feh!

The National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo to the cool kids – yep, that’s me) is a month where you challenge yourself to write a Novel. In a month. Hence, y’know, “Novel Writing Month”. The goal is to get to 50,000 words by the end of November, using any dirty wordcount tricks you know of. Superfluous adjectives? Do it! Crappy verbose dialogue? You bet!

There’s a website and a forum that you can sign up to, and an mailing list to subscribe to, and pep-talks from famous authors to coax you up along the way. Last weekend there was an email in my inbox from one of my very favorite authors, Neil Gaiman (who wrote and executively produced that stunning movie, Stardust – that movie deserves its own blog entry. Patience, children.)

And Neil said some wonderful things to us, and I am again inspired to write write WRITE!

I may have mentioned in a previous entry that I’ve been playing a bit of World of Warcraft (just a bit!) and this has been my inspiration. Well, World of Warcraft, and Justin Long the actor. I cast him in my book. Why? Cause he’s cute, and cause I can! *wicked grin*

(An aside – if you’re wondering at any point as to why I’m dwelling at all on my obsession with playing video games, then I should make mention of the fact that this blog was brought to you by our friendly sponsors… Click the links to find out who )

The story’s a tawdry romance about two people who play waaaay too much WoW – romances involve copious superfluous adjectives, and boost the word count through the roof! Here’s what I mean:

“Her eyes shone huge with a blue so deep it was almost violet. And when she’d raised those eyes to his with that tiny smile on her lips, he felt time stop and stretch out into eternity in that one moment. That one glance had him fascinated with the ruby fullness of her lips, and the smoky eyeshadow which made her eyes smoulder with promises he could never hope to deserve.”

-Charlotte’s as yet unnamed tawdry romance novel

But writing a novel is hard. You gotta keep at it, day after day. This month though, I’ve been making sure I keep up with my “research” – in order to get more inspiration about WoW, I have to PLAY it of course!

Through WoW (and to a certain extent, through the inimitable Zelda) I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just an addictive type. I’ve always been slightly obsessed with playing computer games. And if there’s no computer around – like that marathon train ride Ubiquitous Jessie and I took through China, we’ll inevitably find some card game to play (UNO was our game of choice then, but bring on the computerized UNO, I say – is that really sad of me?)

Aaanyway, they give us a word-count-schedule, which it’s ideal to stick to. The goal is 1,667 words, every day, for the month of November. Yes, it would have been ideal indeed if I’d just stuck to that word count. Cause then I’d not have been a whopping 22,000+ words behind schedule. We should have written 30,000 by last weekend. I’m on just over 8k. I’ve come to the conclusion that all research and no writing makes Charlotte a Not-Very-Prolific-Writer. So no more “research” unless I really need it.

Honest.

So why, you ask, am I blogging to you, lovely reader, rather than just writing?

Ciao.

… and how they make their money

A colleague and I were talking the other day about printer cartridges. Cause in case you’ve not noticed, they’re EXPENSIVE. A full set of toner cartridges in cyan, magenta, yellow and black can often cost more than the printer itself!

I wanna know, can someone please please PLEASE tell me – WHY are printer cartridges SO expensive? What’s so special about printer ink, that it costs the price of a mini-break to Paris to buy a set of four? Is it because they underprice the actual printer units and then try to recoup costs by making the ink cartridge prices astronomical?

Even if you go to places which tout themselves as “cheap”, the price still boggles my mind! Sometimes you can buy generic ink cartridges for most printers but even those are expensive! For our work printer, a Samsung CLP 550n, to buy a set of 4 cartridges costs more than £308!! And that’s almost what we paid for the printer!

Though to be fair, we got the printer 6 months ago and it’s been doing a pretty heavy job, and we’ve not had to replace any cartridges yet…

If you’re into this kind of thing!

OK, so it seems to me that every time I visit Ubiquitous Jess in London, she seems to have some new sort of light fitting or snazzed up item for the flat that she just bought with her beau. She has a pink (yes, PINK!) chandelier, AAAAAND a black one too.

Well, when I came across this site for chandeliers and other lighting intallations, I had to think of her… This site is amazing – their collection of fine art lamps make me want to swoon, and go out to get a mortgage I really can’t afford…

And in a land filled with Ikea lighting dullness, the way is lit (if you’ll please pardon the terrible pun) by designers like George Kovacs and Forecast. I fear if I’m not careful, I might turn into a tragic lighting geek. I already spent a good 2 years of my life being a bead-geek, but at least beads are affordable for students. Lighting could become an expensive hobby – I doubt many students would be able to afford much in the Kichler collection for example, but hey, a girl can dream can’t she?

In other news, I’ve become hooked on Ugly Betty, Edinburgh is still intensely beautiful, and it recently has become even more so by the arrival of m’darling Mads, an old friend from high school who’s moved to Auld Reekie for the next two years. She and I have a little agreement – every fortnight I get to give her a wee lesson in The Way Of The Computer Geek – aka Teh Internetz 4 Dumeez (though Mads is anything but a dumee!) – and in return she gets to take me out on the town. It’s a fair split, cause Mads is not so much into Teh Internetz, and I’m not so much into going out on the town. So we’re contributing to expanding each others’ comfort zones.

Or something.

Here’s one for the pirate fans – I’m talking to you, Mark Saul!

OK, so I found this cool site which sells party supplies, and I don’t think I’ve seen a website like it! Makes me wish I had kids so that I could throw them a killer party!

You can get bulk supplies, like bead necklaces by the gross (ie a dozen dozen – 144!). You can also get magnificently bushy stick-on moustaches. But I think that my fave would have to be the poirate hat and wig (pictured on the right). Makes me think of that fabulous gig we had last summer at the Pirates & Fairies party at Solfest… Happy sigh, them’s be the days…

I do believe, however, that this November, my final birthday in my 20s (eek!) I may need to get some of this poirate gear, and have a big poirate bash with m’mates… *does celebratory poirate jig* What’s more, I found this coupon company (thanks to my sponsors!) that offers free shipping from the US on orders over $60! (And that’s not the only party supplies store on the coupon site (am I starting to sound like a Demtel Ad? (can I use this many parentheses? (Why not?!)))) Arrr, it’s a steal!

Oh, one other thing before I sign off – my delightful parents came for a lightning visit last week, we had an entirely marvellous time visiting relatives (I have a humourous wee vid of me and my crazy second cousins here in Edinburgh, which I shall post on YouTube in due course), and my mum has posted some pics of her adventures on her blog, here. There’s a wonderful one of my godmother and me in a stunning greenhouse full of flowers, and some magnificent Wiltshire countryside vistas.

Online dating – the way of the future? Or just really, really sad?

So I’ve been single again now for almost a year, and every now and then, I think to myself, “yeah, it’d be nice to have a man in my life who’s not a work colleague”.

But I’ve only been on one date during that time, and that was… shall we say one date was enough? Sweet guy, I s’pose, but that kind of puppydog intensity just makes me nervous. Not to mention that we had absolutely nothing in common. I met that boy in a pub, and I was drunk enough to give out my number.

But I’m not one to go out much, and when I do, I’m much more interested in having a good time with my girlfriends (who are an intensely interesting and amusing bunch) than I am in picking up. And no, I’m not gay. Except if it was Claudia Black. Or perhaps Katee Sackhoff (aka Starbuck) from Battlestar Galactica.

So how do you meet boys these days, if you don’t go out? The answer that so many people are turning to these days is found not in the personals section of the newspaper, but on thousands of dating sites, some free, some claiming to be free, and some charging anywhere from “a decent amount” to “a kings ransom”.

Now, I’ve had experience with online dating before. I’ve had dates from RSVP.com in Melbourne, met some lovely guys, but not had the kind of success that I’ve heard other people having (ie buying houses together, getting married – if you class that as “success”). I’m signed on to a few now, but most of the ones which are any good, cost money. In fact I’ve only seen one free one which had decent design, and of course, it’s in the US. But here’s the thing. If an online dating site’s free, then the person it will attract will be the person who’s not really interested in really finding a partner – they usually just sign up for the blague, and then end up stringing you along with endless excuses, acting interested EVEN when I give up sending them emails, but then not following through with the promise of meeting up for drinks (you know who you are, boys). What’s that all about?

Stupid boys.

Aaaaanyway. Am going out tonight with the girls (and Ubiquitous Jessie is coming up from London for some Edinburgh Fun) and I have decided that it being St Paddy’s Day weekend, I’m going to at least be receptive to the idea of men on the radar.

One last thing that struck me as odd – I just thought I’d mention something interesting about the graphics on this US site, which makes me wonder about racial divides in America (or perceived racial divides). There are four pictures of couples up the top – a caucasian couple, an arab/indian couple, an asian couple, and a black couple. No racial mixing. Just blatant photographic apartheid. There’s a LOT of mixed race couples here in the UK, and an increasing number in Australia. US readers, help me out – is there an unspoken disapproval of mixed race couples in the US, or is this site just creating boxes where none exist?

Why do they kill all the good ones?

I got sent this link to a wee online version of Deal Or No Deal, a gameshow which I’ve honestly never seen before, but through various bits of pop culture I know it has something to do with brief cases and long drawn out telephone calls.

It made me all nostalgic for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a masterpiece of television which went the way of Firefly – put on “hiatus” (ie more than likely cancelled). All I know of the aformentioned gameshow, I know from Studio 60 – cause they had the host of the show on S60’s show within a show (is that too complicated?), and did a spoof for Deal or No Deal.

I loved Studio 60. I truly loved everything about it. I loved the characters. I loved the snappy dialogue, written to perfection by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame. The show featured some of those things which made the West Wing so great.

There was that feeling that they were dealing with something important – and yes, I do feel that those who make television have a moral responsibility which should be taken seriously. Anyone who mewls about the characters taking this TV show too seriously obviously can’t grasp the fact that entertainment television is viewed by far more people than educational television. Therefore, don’t those in entertainment have a certain responsibility to make something which might make society a better place through their influence?

Also making a reappearence was Sorkin’s trademark walking-and-talking dialogue – something that doesn’t happen enough in shows of lesser ilk, but happens more often in shows which are well drawn, like Firefly.

And the whole Matt-Danny thing? Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry (above) were absolute gold together as the best-friends who become director and writer of the show within the show. Sorkin really captured the energy between the two characters, then Whitford & Perry stitched it all together. Gold. *sigh*

So while you’re waiting with anticipation for the next brilliant TV show to be cancelled (how long before Heroes gets it? Oh no, wait – It’s comic-book style, earlier in the evening and is considerably less complicated than S60) wander on over here and be diverted for at LEAST 2 minutes…

Thinking of buying a place? Look no further than Golden Valley, Arizona!

So my “sponsor” (as they prefer to be known) has sent me another link to talk about, for some realtor in Arizona. Kinda hard to talk about a dreadfully designed website, selling just a few products, but here I go.

Kingman Town & Country Realtor, in Mohave County, Arizona, seems to sell properties “of all sizes”, but the only property they have listed on their own domain is something that looks like something out of a roadside scene in From Dusk Till Dawn – check out the photo:

This realtor has possibly the worst website I’ve seen for a professional firm. Ever. Even the property management firm I worked for in Edinburgh had a better website, and their technical development was in about the Jurassic Age. This strikes me as a pity, cause you’d think that it’d actually be kinda fun to look – ranch properties in Arizona…

Oop, OK, so I found some more listings, just on another domain. Gawd, sometimes I wish that I was living in Arizona, just for house prices – there’s a 3 bedroom house there for around £25,000. You can’t even buy a GARAGE in Edinburgh for that amount!

I’ve been hankering after buying my own place for a while now. I feel like I’m at an age where it should be done, but my salary is certainly not at a point where it COULD be done, at least not in this town. Edinburgh property prices are through the roof, and it doesn’t help that the banks are willing to loan more and more, which pushes the prices higher and higher. Sometimes I think I’d move back to Melbourne just for a nice house all of my very own.

I so want a cat, and a garden. My very own small garden which I can make my own, and a cat to hide amongst the foliage. My bedroom has to do for now (practically every surface not at ground level is covered in potplants), though my flatmate won’t stand for a cat. This realtor and his cheap-by-Edinburgh-standards properties is making me want to move to Arizona…

*sigh*

Every time I hear the word “sauna”, I always think of my mum, and her story about when my folks were visiting Finland before any of their kids were born. As she tells it (and Finnish readers, forgive me if I take creative licence here), rather than the fast car or big house or flashy computer being the status symbol, the Finnish way to show prosperity is to have a nice hot sauna.

And to boast about the fact. And to compare the heat of your sauna to others’ saunas.

I was sent the link to this outfit, Taps4Less, which makes all kinds of bathroom fittings etc. They have weird designer taps of all kinds of whacky shapes:

But they also sell self-contained saunas – check it out!

Now I just need to convince my flatmate that we need one! Might not be that hard, considering how we’re feeling the cold in Edinburgh at the moment…