The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

The Witching Hour for the Goblins of Oz fast approaches. At the stroke of midnight a bright shiny new Financial Year begins. Just the perfect excuse for a certain serpent to dust off the cobwebs and make a squeaky clean new start.

It is the ideal time to do a Scrooge makeover. This involves an unusual but very useful ritual observed for many many moons now. The habit of recording every single cent spent encourages mindfulness with money. But there are other side effects. The easiest way to do this is to replay the day's activities at the end of the day and write down all transactions in the order they occur.
As well as remembering the day's events it means that months or even years later I can look at the list for a given day and remember it in remarkable detail.
It also means never being sucked in by all those scary so called financial advisors telling folks that they'll need tons of loot in retirement and then offering some dodgy get rich scheme to get there.

Since squiggling in the Scrooge book is an almost daily ritual, it is also the obvious place for putting appointments, interesting events, names and addresses and a whole bunch of assorted notes.

Had tried many times to use another diary devoted to all this other stuff but it always falls by the wayside.
The local cheapskate shop had a stash of 2014/2015 diaries last week. Some of them were A5 size with one day to a page. One week for two pages is simply not enough space. When some of the daily diaries were mistakenly marked with the $3 price tag reserved for the weekly version, it was a temptation too great to resist. There's a section of each page devoted to appointments and even a to do list at the top for each day with space for ten things and nice little ticky boxes for each one.

So today was a most auspicious occasion for the big switch. Just to get into the spirit of things, even devoted the first blank pages to listing a bunch of "New Year's Resolutions" all devoted to goblin business.

Also been busy setting up a new Scrivener file for July Camp Nano and playing around with Evernote. Very happy to find that it is possible to write notes and save as you go offline. It solves the problem of not being able to copy and paste using the tablet. It's even possible to take pictures and store them as notes or to draw scrawling scribbles. It would be wonderful if the software could actually decipher serpent squiggles since one finger typing is such a pain.
Since there seems to be not an advert to be seen, still trying to work out how Evernote manages to make money. Here's guessing some folks sign up for the premium service. Not sure what extras they get since the basic version seems to have lots of useful fun stuff.

Maybe they have secret sponsors at the CIA and NSA.

In any case it is still a never ending source of amazement all the useful free stuff that is out there these days. MOOCs, books and apps are just the tip of the online iceberg. So many toys. So little time.

So here we are neer the end of the first day of this new year. So far so good in spite of being rather hot and also setting the very bad precedent of being the first time working on January 1st and 2nd since 2002. Working 6.5 hours and spending not a single cent - maybe it's a good start. Hard to know at this early stage. Even managed to spend just over an hour walking although doing exercise and getting rid of several spare tyres are nowhere to be seen on the serpent list of New Year's resolutions

Due to being at work today meaning that there would be no opportunity for a long snooze to start the year, decided to tweek the usual New Year's eve routine.
Normally like to get up reasonably early, water the weeds and catch the bus to Fremantle to visit Dymocks bookstore for the annual 20% off everything sale followed by a visit to the old lunatic asylum then off to Cottesloe for coffee crawls and sunset by the beach

So instead of being out and about around 8 or 9am, did not leave the Lair until midday and first paid a visit to Petunia in order to leave over work clothes and some bottles for the midnight feast
Ended up staying 90 minutes or so rather than the 30 originally planned. Hit the road just after 2pm and the grand plan was a quick peek in that bookstore before heading off to the Cottesloe cafes for the last squiggles of the year at 3.30pm
But in spite of the offering in store being sadly lacking and outrageously expensive, still managed to waste the best part of one hour in there before finally catching the bus.
The Oz zloty is now above parity with the US greenback but that still does not stop the local bookstores charging twice the marked US price.
The Fremantle store usually has a wide selection of strange new age stuff and tarot decks. But not yesterday. The fugly plain vanilla Rider Waite decks were a ridiculous $33 for the basic version with no books or accessories of any kind and the bright shiny Tarot of Vampyres was a disgraceful $$49.95. Even with the 20% discount it would still be cheaper to buy one single solitary kit from Amazon (postage included) and nothing else and have a reasonable amount of change left over. For the full $50 you could get two of them from Amazon
And as most folks do not order one single item but a bunch of things to reduce postage costs per item, it's little wonder that the Oz book stores are doing so badly.
Even with the 10% GST, there's no excuse at all for such outrageous prices

In the end, did not get to the cafe strip until 5pm and everything was closing. Most annoying indeed but no one to blame but a slow sluggish serpent who spent too much time farting around in book stores looking for nonexistent bargains

So went straight for the beach. It was hot but not horrid and there was a cooling sea breeze. It was wonderful walking along the shore watching the waves and seeing the sun slowly moving towards the horizon
Sunset was seriously strange. There was not a single visible cloud about but there was a very strange almost invisible mist on the horizon. The sun became orange, then reddish pink and the bit directly over the horizon just faded into oblivion leaving the top section still glowing brightly
Then it too became all fuzzy and disappeared. Very different to the usual large yellow glowing ball of light that sinks slowly with the top of the circle being the last part to disappear

Picked up a little stone lying on the beach to squiggle some spirals and the number 2010 three times and watched as the waves came in and then eventually one would be large enough to wash away all the foot prints and serpent squiggles
In keeping with the planned theme for the new year, did not put this special stone in a pocket for posterity but tossed it back into the water.
While then emptying a shopping bag of the sand that had blown into it, a copy of a local magazine - Nova fell out and the wind picked it up and blew it further up the sand. Was not fast enough to catch it and watched it flying in the breeze. Felt bad for being a litter bug but it is paper and will eventually decay into something useful


There really is something enchanting and hypnotic about watching the waves especially just around sunset. Spent so long down on the sand that there was no time left for a picnic so the bottle remained unopened and the bag of nibblies uneaten.
Another lesson learned - no need for a bottle and a pile of stuff for a picnic. The most important thing is the sun, the wind, the waves and the sand and the ability to remain in the present moment.

Apparently the latest end of year ritual in New York is to write down all the things you want out of your life for the following year and put the paper in some huge shredder. Such a cute idea but it is most likely nowhere near as magical as squiggling them in the sand and watching the waves reduced them to meaningless bumps in the wet sand

Due to weather and other circumstances, missed out on most of the serpent astronomical rituals involving this particular beach. It was particularly upsetting to not be able to go there for the solstice just over a week ago.
It really is a most powerful place for recharging the batteries and putting one's place in the world in proper perspective.


Then got to sleep in the tent over at Petunia's place. It was lovely, cool and breezy. Got up at 5 the morning to be greeted by the itsiest bitsiest curliest crescent moon.
But went back for another snooze even though sunrise was hardly more than 20 minutes away. Izzie is a nostalgic creature preferring to say goodbye to the last sunset of the old year and to bury it properly rather than to send out the welcome party for the first sunrise of the new year


After the next few days of 40s if the forecasters get it right, will be well and truly tired of the nasty big yellow beast in the sky before the first week of the new year has bit the dust