HOUSEKEEPING

Prompted by comments on the Message Board (See, I pay attention!), I'm undertaking a few things to try and get this blog a little more interactive and widely read. So I've activated comments for each post, which gives you the option of commenting upon each individual thing I say or joining the wide-ranging (and mostly bearing little resemblance to anything that's happening on the front page: It's alive, I tell you, alive! in my best Colin Clive voice) conversation on the board.

I've also posted the board on Technorati, which people tell me is about as popular a blog search engine as there is. If you go waaaaaay down to the bottom of the page you'll find a button and link. If anybody knows anywhere else to register to get a few more warm bodies reading these humble offerings, feel free to tell me. Use the new comments function, even :)

What I'd like to do is to set up a tags function for each post a la LiveJournal, so that people can search the entries by subject, but so far, that's defeating me. If anybody has any information or expertise I lack (if! HA!) feel free to let me know how I can go about it.

REVIEWS!

Many thanks to Stephanie Coxon and Martin Livings for pointing these out:

Oz Horrorscope review Ticonderoga Issue 8, commenting upon the strong heart within my story Fade.

Tangent Online also reviews the issue, according both ears and the tail to Fade for its unusual structure and calling it a "powerful reading experience". Oh, if you insist :)

I'll update the reviews page of the Batthome website when I have the chance to include them.


THE MOVIE BIZ AND MY PART IN IT

Producer Matt's notes on the first draft of The Memory of Breathing came back yesterday, with a good guide as to how I should be able to take the 42 minute short and turn it into a feature-length script. We may have an executive producer on board soon, which will be brilliant as it'll give us a real run at getting some money together. Of course, he'd like to see the script, so Matt's almost apologetic "Do you think you can get it done in four weeks?" is no problem at all. Noooo problem. Nope, not a problem, uh-uh, no problem, noooo....

Four weeks, you say?

Actually, his notes are so clear and concise it's really only a matter of putting them into action. Still, the words of doom have been uttered (Is there a chance we can work some sort of silver lining into the ending?) so that alone might take, oh I don't know, the rest of my natural life to work out...

TOTE THAT TOTEY THING, LIFT THAT BRICK.....

It's big gardening days at the Batthome at the moment, my friends. What with the change in weather, I was out back on the weekend, digging away like a big diggy thing. I've cleared an area next to the patio, formerly a brick barbecue and crazy paving abomination (what the hell were they thinking?), and dug it out to create a sun garden; Aiden's Japanese garden by his bedroom is the proud recipient of a big hole and soakwell; and the dead area next to the letterbox that was once a garden (allegedly), and is now a broken pile of half-grown sticks sprouting leaves, was divested of its crappy brick border.

The really fun part, of course, is going to Bunnings and buying things :) Like the hanging bird feeder I've put up outside our bedroom window, and the hatchet I'll be using this weekend in my stump-uprooting efforts. Oh, and the piping for the soakwells; and trellis, and... well, you get the idea. At one stage last weekend, all 4 kids were with me, helping (or in the case of the littlies, "helping". Parents will know the difference), and it was brilliant: a sunny afternoon, everyone dirty, laughing, and heading back in for dinner and baths with a real sense of satisfaction.

The boys are away this weekend, so I'm planning to have the sun garden edged and filled with soil; connect the pipes from soakwell to downpipe in Aiden's garden and backfill the hole; start digging out the dead letterbox area in preparation for the rock garden I have planned; and I may even get around to levering the stump out of Aiden's section so I can get his pond and fountain sorted out. The brilliant thing about Clarkson is that the whole coast is built upon a sandstone base, so large rocks can be found in the bushlands near any of the main roads, where the excavators have simply tipped them away from the road site and left them. It's simply a matter of spotting one in the size you need, throwing (grunting with effort as you lift the bastard over the edge of the boot, letting go, and collapsing) it in the boot, and bringing it home. The rock garden is going to need a bunch of large stones for its initial layer, so this is a definite (and infintely cheaper than a garden centre) plus.

You may have noticed that with the onset of spring, I'm getting in touch with my inner gardener again... Luscious certainly has. For no reason at all she came home last night and presented me with a nice, thick, browseable book on Australian garden styles and plants. We have a Christmas family do at our place on the weekend before Brianmas this year, so I've set that as my deadline to have the entire front and back gardens set up as I want them. The advent of clear days is giving me the opportunity to really see the change in possibilities for the crappy, ignored-and-ugly gardens the last owner had left us when we moved in. It'll be good to see them how they should be. I'm spending mass hours out there at the moment, and finish each weekend in a heck of a lot of pain, but the results will be worth it.

Which reminds me, I really have to ring the chiropractor today and make an appointment for next week :)

Song of the moment: Marseille The Angels