Accurate budgeting (by alaric)

If you are paid monthly, then it makes sense to work on a monthly budget. Many expenses are paid monthly, so this works out quite nicely.

However, some things are paid quarterly, or even yearly. If those things are big enough that they can't just disappear into the noise of your monthly budget, you need to budget for a share of them each month, and put that money aside somewhere to save up for the annual costs.

And some things are paid weekly, or (worse) every four weeks. We used to have a self-storage room that cost us about two hundred pounds every four weeks, which was a royal pain as sometimes this meant we paid £200 a month, and sometimes £400. It was hard to lose THAT in the noise.

So, I decided to write some software to work all this out for me.

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Benign Polyp Gone (by sarah)

Alaric's fleshy lump is gone from his scalp - they used elctro-quatrazitiation which will leave a small scar but hey it's in his hair and even if he lost all his hair it wouldn't really show. there is a black, burn/scab thing there at the moment and there was a line of scabby blood from it yesterday evening which scared poor Jeany :/

But it is smaller than the lump was! It was apparently a benign polyp which my family thinks is haliourous as we call each other polyp (as in colonial organisms re: biology and not swellings and lesions re: medical).

I'm applying eye cream of all things too it as it is the best stuff to stop infection of which there is a bit of a risk as they couldn't put a dressing on it - I assume this is not large though or they'd have shaved him or asked us to shave him again.

It is a big relief 🙂 I think I was more worried about it than him.

Lump Removal (by sarah)

Alaric is going in for his lump removal today - it is only minor surgery so shouldn't be too bad. He is also on the more fierce fungal killing medicine which is making him a little under the weather - still I think he'll feel much better once all of this is over!

Plus strange fleshy lumps on your scalp need to go!

NaNo Madness and its Cohorts (by sarah)

I am planning on doing NaNoWriMo again this year - this is National Novel Writing Month - the challenge? To write 50, 000 words in a month - what is being termed a novel but I would consider a novella!

I did this last year and finished with more than 60 K words and met some great people who became my friends 🙂 Local and internationally. Unfortunatly I have already missed the launch parties but hope to be able to get along to a few write-ins (meet ups in coffee shops where you appear with laptops and dare each other to write or alternatively just chat!).

I plan to finish/continue the story I started last year which is slightly cheating but as I view this as my writing goal for the month - I think that's ok. You can follow my progress on Purple Monster - were I keep all my notes, reviews of research material, and raw as I write them chapters of the story! I often bung in the odd writing tip or link to an interesting article. There are a few flash fictions that are based in The Punks universe though at a slightly earlier time period, these can be found on Magenta Monster.

I was going to carry on writing the story all the way through last year but even towards the end of November last year I started having issues with simply not knowing enough about the time period half the novel is set in - ie Tudor England. I have spent alot of time reading history books and I got away with taking over our LoveFilm queue for half the year where I got out all the films and documentories based in the time period I could find. (And yes I know the films are not accurate but sometimes they give you something to go and research!).

As I am also using some alternative tech in the story I have been researching this too - namely optronics and what large scale social computing would be like if centralised and not the internet. Half the story is set in the near future and is basically cyber punk so I have been reading my way through the cyber punk novels we have in the house.

I want to beat last years word count 🙂 But being pregnant and stuff means that this may be tricky - I am however still going to try.

The other challenge I am doing is PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) which I also did last year - this makes a nice counter balance to the Nano for me. And as I have had a great reaction from Jean from stories that came out of this and the picture book writing week - I am definatly doing this again! I am keeping track of all this stuff on Orange Monster if anyone is interested!

I am also doing the rewrite of a novel I hope to submit to the Terry Pratchette Prize so all in all that is a lot of work and I am aware I probably will not get it all done especially with my hands acting up the way they are - but I can but try. And at the end of the day anything I get done is a bonus 🙂