The Inner Child Keeps on Growing

1. I have a telephone interview for the job at OUP on Wednesday! I've no real expections that this will go anywhere, but it's the most positive response I've had for a while. Inevitably I've been having occasional panics about the job hunting. I'm trying to remain as positive as I can but I just wish I was finding more jobs I can apply to. There's an awful lot that it just isn't worth starting with. I am, however, trying to train myself into not feeling that I have to have 100% of the requirements in the advert to apply. I did try applying to something that I fit 90% of, but the one requirement I didn't have (someone with SQL Server skills was) a deal-breaker, unfortunately. Onward.

2. Related to that, it's my last full week in the old job next week! This notice period really has gone very fast. I only went into the office one day last week, the rest of the time I've essentially been on Gardening Leave; I have been going through emails and documents and making sure that anything that might be useful to someone else is filed where they could get at it. I've also been taking the opportunity to grab some documents I wrote so that I can put together a sort of portfolio of my work.

3. I've finally got around to sorting my review blog out. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'd decided to cancel the hosted site as I wasn't updating it often to justify the cost (especially now.) So the blog is back to http://bookzombieblog.wordpress.com from today. It's in a fairly bland basic layout at the moment but I'll probably tweak that later.

4. We've started a rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently - currently about a third of the way through season 2 (my favourite season overall) - and really enjoying it. There'll probably be a post about this on the review blog at some point, but there really are some things it does very well. Of course with nearly 20 years (gulp!) hindsight there are things that really don't work for me as well; for example Xander's continuous lusting after Buffy in the first couple of seasons gets really creepy really quickly, but also Willow's yearning after Xander starts to feel increasingly problematical (he's no more obliged to fall in love with her than Buffy is to fall in love with him.) Also the passage of time has made it so much more noticeable how incredibly whitethis show is.

5. As friends who also read P.'s LJ will know, her mum is not well at the moment. She had a (fairly minor) operation but there have been some complications that have meant she hasn't recovered as quickly as was hoped. P.'s dad is struggling to cope (he's not young and has had his own health issues), so P. and her sister have been organising spending some time helping out once her mum gets out of hospital. Alas, our parents are getting to the age where they need a bit more help than they used to...

I seem to be in one of those 'not posting very much' moods again at the moment - just to reassure anyone who might be concerned!

So what's been happening? Work is toddling along okay - getting some good feedback still at the moment but waiting to find out what the new CTO wants to do with the department.

Rehearsals are going okay, if a little chaotic. We started back after the summer break last week and there seems to still be lot of people missing. Also we'd just managed to get the final part cast (The Ghost of Christmas Present) and one of the other guys had to drop out, so we are now short a Scrooge's Nephew. Sigh.

This year's Clarke Award books have started arriving, so obviously I can't talk about that! Except to comment that 600-page hardbacks are tough on the arms...

John & Yvonne Meaney came to visit at the weekend which was lovely - we realised that we hadn't seen them for almost a year. It did mean that we didn't end up going to bed until half three in morning on Sunday! While they were over we did watch Watchmen for the first time (I avoided it in the cinema on the grounds that I was frankly fed up with hearing about it by the time it came out.) For much of the time I mainly enjoyed it but in an effort to be respectful of the text it just went on for too long. Also some of the casting could have been better (they needed a much more charismatic actor for Ozymandias for a kick-off) - having said that the guy playing Rorschach was even scaryier with the mask off then when it was on! An interesting, but flawed, adaption.