Reporting in...

Well what can I say?

My feet seem to have hardly hit the ground since getting back from my little trip OS. Work has been crazily busy, we have a new show opening this weekend which has kept everything hopping, there is a restructure on the wind and some of my key team members have decided to up and leave. But all of this will leave me with an opportunity to appoint my own team, which could be a BIG FKN POSITIVE (as Havock would say).

There have been some very tempting jobs in other cities that I would like to throw my hat in the ring for but at present we are only looking at the possibility of work here in Melbourne or in Brisbane, and not much is coming up in either place.

Not that there is a real problem here, the people upstairs like what I do, the bulk of people here are pretty good to deal with, most of my team are really good at what they do and we work well together. But the bureaucracy here can drive me absolutely nuts and it is really de-motivating. I get to the stage where I just find it hard to be bothered fighting the same battles again and again...

On the home front we have been spending a lot of time at home, pottering around in our funny little garden and trying to get our heads around some sort of renovation plan for the shopfront. My dad has given us a basic design which will work, but hasn't gotten back to us with the next stage, which is what we need so that we can have some serious talks with builders. Admittedly he has been slightly busy, my folks have sold their bright new house, he got made redundant and his dog died - although that all sounds very dramatic - the house was built as an investment and he felt lucky to get an extra year with the job in the post GFC climate, but he was very sad about the dog - a gorgeous very loyal weimaranar...

So hopefully I will see something on paper (it is all pen and ink with him, none of this CAD stuff) within a couple of weeks, just in time for Christmas.

Saw Barnes for a curry lunch a couple of weeks ago and have been hoping to catch up with him and Havock for some sort of boozy lunch in the next fortnight. Made all sorts of plans for movies as well - Skyline looked pretty good, I have heard good things about Monsters and actually heard excellent reviews of a little Israeli movie called Lebanon (which is all set within an MBT) - so will have to pick and choose which one I actually can get to...  It would be good to hear what you guys think?

The other thing which has been sucking up some late night time has been that damned Sins of a Solar Empire game that Orin used to rave about, I installed it on the almost dysfunctional laptop at home and it works quite well, but it is nearly as bad as Civilization IV at roaching away the hours.

On the book front I picked up a copy of Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks which has been fantastic so far, like all of his sci-fi books that I have read. I have to say I was amazed to read in Murph's blog that he couldn't be bothered reading any of Banks' sci-fi novels as I think he is awesome. All I can think is that maybe Murph picked up one of his 'literary' novels instead, they have a very different tone and style. Either that or he thinks that 'The Culture' at the centre of most of the books is too leftie and commie for him.

But I do think that he should reconsider... but we all know that isn't very likely with Mr Murphy once he has made up his mind...

Here is a little exceprt from this one that I liked.

"Battle stations? she asked.
Demeisen looked pained. "Terribly old expression. From so long ago ships had crews. Or crews that weren't just along for the ride. But yes."
"Anything I can do?"
He smiled. "My dear girl, in Culture history alone it has been about nine thousand years since a human, marvellous though they are in so many other ways, could do anything useful in a serious, big-guns space battle other than admire the pretty explosions... or in some cases contribute to them."
"Contribute?"
"Chemicals; colours. You know."