The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

Saturday 13th was the date when the usually annual Astrorest was held at the local university.

It is strange that I have barely darkened the door of the place since I bought my ill fated plane ticket for my long ago cancelled Amsterdam Adventure at a travel agent there back in March 2020. That was just days before the whole Covid thing blew up around the world and did not blow over but like a juggernaut  just got bigger and bigger.


From an absence of almost 18 months, I turned up there 2 days in a row.

( Dark Stars )

It's October and spring is well and truly in the air. Aside from the return of the sizzling stinking hot weather which usually arrives some time in late November, there's plenty of things to look forward to this time of year.

The flowers are blooming like crazy and the pecan trees have finally come out with their first leaves. All those nuts I planted several months ago have also come to life.
Even the acorns gathered from the serpentine spiritual home in Eden Vale have survived several summers and are now on their second sets of new leaves.

This was also the time of looking forward to visiting the Festival of Country Gardens down south. That had been a ritual for a good 12 years but has been off the agenda since 2013.
Slinking in the gardens and the squiggling frenzy that is Nanowrimo have been associated in the serpentine mind for a long time. There will be special cause for nostalgia this November since the days and dates exactly match 2009 when I signed up for the insane venture for the first time.

This year there's so many workshops and events in assorted libraries that I will be too busy to indulge in too much reminiscing about 'the good old days' but I have dusted off the old Dark Grimoire tarot deck in memory of 2009.

Then there's also Halloween to look forward to. It's sort of silly being in the middle of spring but nowhere near as ridiculous as Christmas where the media and retailers insist that we are in the middle of winter.
Instead of carving creepy pumpkin lanterns, will be planting giant pumpkin seeds and looking around to see who has got the spookiest party and looking to find the creepiest adornments for the Lair.
The Mexican Day of the Dead festival has become a big thing here in the last few years.

But one thing above all has marked the real return of spring, boom and bloom in this wide brown land. Monday 14th September was the day the Mad Monk got dumped and the grown ups got back into government.

The honeymoon will not last for long but it is such a pleasant change no longer hearing endless snark, fear mongering and three word slogans.

Still trying to find the appropriate 3 word slogan to carve on the Mad Monk's political tombstone. I think it would be fun to invite his ghost to the serpent's Halloween party along with his pet rottweiler - Eric Abetz - the Terror from Tasmania.

Actually the pair of them would make great characters for November's adventures as card carrying members of a crazy Cthulhu worshipping nihilistic death cult.

But it's time to slink off into the darkness. Got to be out and about early tomorrow for the Tuesday day job.

Izzie hasn’t been doing much slinking in Cyberia of late. Been lots of distractions these days. The biggest two were due to the temptations of Coursera. (a kind of online candy store for compulsive learners)

The final exam for the Introduction to Mathematical Thinking Course was due on the first weekend of May and the rest of the week was spent doing peer assessment stuff. It seems crazy to spend hours and hours per week doing crazy maths stuff when there was no incentive other than simply learning new stuff and giving the old grey cells a bit of a workout. But that is a tale for another day.
Then the wickedly wonderful and totally irrational Dan Ariely’s course also had its final exam two weeks later. But this time you had to get more than 85% to even get a certificate! Turns out there was a method to this madness. It’s hard to believe that you can have so much fun and learn lots of interesting and useful stuff at the same time.

Even letting the students take the weekly quizzes up to 15 times before the deadline had an ulterior motive. Each time the questions were different so you couldn’t completely game the score. And every attempt meant thinking about the material and learning it almost by osmosis.
Got 88.4 which has been the Izzie’s best score so far for any course. Lots of folks missed out by less than two percent and some as low as 0.2 which would be most painful indeed. It’s almost like things were set up that way to get the biggest rise out of the lab rats especially after the topics on loss aversion and regret with the example of missing a plane by 2 minutes making you feel much worse than missing it by 2 hours. Some sadists even did studies on silver medalists at the Olympics. While the bronze medal winners were grinning the silvers were almost always miserable. For them second place really meant they were the first losers

All those lectures about tweeking people’s decisions in the direction you want by fiddling with defaults, setting arbitrary anchor points and decoy options should come in useful when putting on the evil overlord Designer of Dystopia hat.

It’s been strange since then to have no assignments, problem sets or quizzes due. Been making the most of the spare time to catch up on the goblin stuff. Today was the weekly 3 hour taxation class. It’s now official that the final exam is on Thursday 6th June - a truly evil date. And unlike the others this course was not free and is a serpent passport to a real job.

There’s been such a feast of decadence in the last weeks and not even mentioned the juiciest morsels. Weeks ago went on a random walk in Cyberia following the trail of the Snowflake Guy. In an attempt to stay away from the temptation of the Amazonian jungle and adopting a new policy of minimalism figured that the first stop would be some online library catalogues in search of his Dummies guide to writing.

Old fashioned Izzie likes to have a proper paper and ink tome as it is so portable and it somehow seems easier to remember stuff in books than when it is written on a computer screen. So while it was possible to borrow an ebook incarnation decided to go for the old fashioned version instead. But the one hard copy was out on loan so would have to wait for it to be returned. The Izzie is good at delayed gratification and the reservation notice arrived on Monday saying that the precious was available and ready to be picked up. Already taken a sneak peek or two and it looks most addictive and interesting indeed

Such perfect timing. Tomorrow the serpent will be slinking down to Eden Vale. Will be staying in a spooky old hotel. Managed to snaffle one of the two cheapie rooms which just happen to be overlooking the old balcony. It's not quite the Hilbert Hotel but here's hoping it will provide infinite inspiration anyway
It’s the perfect place to go searching for story seeds. So a box of Zombies and Randy Ingermanson’s “Writing Fiction for Dummies” should provide plenty of ideas. It’s also the perfect excuse for another fix of doom, gloom and dystopian drama. It’s a whole year since devouring the delicious “Hunger Games” and it’s time for a second helping.

After all those times passing the nanowrimo 50,000 word finish line but never actually completing a story, it is time to change all that. It’s just another manifestation of that bad hoarding habit

Aside from the local library it’s pretty much an internet dead zone down there. Well at least it is for some one who does not have a smart phone or a bright shiny tablet. Will eventually indulge in such a decadent toy but not quite yet. Not least because the choice is so overwhelming. Less than 6 months after buying an eenie weenie baby netbook the first ipad got launched. It was a much more elegant and user friendly device than the netbook. Could not justify buying such a toy then and evern less so lately and now some four years later there are some tablets on the market much less than half the price of the ipad. If there’s one of these gadgets that can convert serpent squiggles into legible text then it would be very difficult to resist

Must slink off to the snooze basket. Got to be up early to catch the train down south.

Izzie will be slinking down south tomorrow so will be most unlikely to have much access to Cyberia. Might snaffle some 30 minutes online time at the local library

Bad luck that so much fun is on this week end on the north side of Dursleyville including all sorts of Mexican ghoulishness. Zapata's zombie nachos were very tasty. Saturday is the annual Pride 'Mardi Gras' Parade along with a collection of hot rods and hearses at the piazza.
There were zombie marches last weekend but only found out about all this fun stuff on Monday. Here's hoping such macabre delights become a regular feature on the calendar

Thanks to the old toad will most likely not be paying the annual visit next November and the Grand European Alchemical Adventure is definitely off the agenda

Got together a nice little word stash to last another two days. Will be doing lots of old fashioned pen and paper squiggling anyway but at least there's no need to feel guilty about three days of not slaving over a hot keyboard