The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

Izzie does New Year’s Resolutions a little bit different than most folks.

Several years ago an old Scrooge ritual of sitting down at the end of every day and accounting for every single silver sickle spent that day got tweeked a bit
Taking advantage of a common feature of most diaries, I also added the activities corresponding to each hour in the appointment section and smily or grumpy faces to correspond to my mood at the time.
Not being a lawyer, I was quite content with 30 minute increments

So this exercise was basically a ten minute reflection on the day.
Instead of the usual thing that folks do of creating a budget and a to do list, this was more a record of the reality than wishful thinking.

Some diaries have more space than others. 2016 was a big fat juicy diary recycled from 2011 and there was even space to add 3 things to be happy about, 1 grumpy moment, 1 thing achieved and 1 thing learnt

( Meanderings and musings )

Izzie’s been busy being a bright shiny serpent with a fresh set of scales for the new year. So far so good.
Having noticed that so many otherwise wonderful days were totally tainted by returning to the Lair and then attempting unsuccessfully to go slinking in Cyberia, figured that the best way out of a hole is to stop digging.
All Cyberia stuff such as daily Duolingo lessons, reading emails and lurking on Twitter can be done on the phone and the ancient old computer is now only for occasions where proper squiggling is required like replying to emails or posting on Dreamwidth.

Turned this infernal Big Mac computer off on New Year’s Eve and it had stayed that way until earlier this evening. It has been well behaved so far. Maybe the downtime has done it some good.
So the plus side is a refreshing absence of spinning beachballs, but the downside is going for so many days without a proper keyboard.

It was a bad start for the goal of writing 200 words per day every day for this month. Not so much because I wasn’t writing them but because they are on old fashioned pen and paper, then they don’t really count.

Rather than an assortment of grand goals that end up in the bin before the first week of the year is over, figured that it would be better to have a couple of small ones and stick to them and to then piggy back some new habits on the back of old ones.

Sorting out the serpent sack has been on the To Do list for a long time. So by making a tiny tweak so that every time before leaving the room, I need to sort 3 things - either toss them or put them where they belong AND also doing the same before hitting Twitter, this tiny change has proved more productive than any number of grand plans

Of course the goal of spending lots less time lurking on Twitter has failed miserably.

It seemed so easily doable until the visit to an old historical graveyard on New Year’s Eve which pretty much coincided with the story blowing up about Mr Fishnet Stockings Downer and his drunken adventures in a bar with Pappy Tadpoles (also known as George Papadopolous)
Then there was the button measuring contest followed by a very nasty divorce with Boozer Bannon.
And now they are all going nuclear with the lawyers.

Had been thinking that Racket Man would have at most 6 months before the Greedy Oligarch Party would get pissed off with him. Now they got their Swamp Fill Bill signed, sealed and delivered, once they get custody of this tax baby, they can happily file for divorce because Don the Con has pretty much outlived his usefulness.
The way the shit show on steroids has blown up in just the last few days, six months is looking like a very long time indeed

It’s popcorn and champagne time as the Shit Show on steroids hits the road. Managed to be very good though and be in bed before midnight every day this week except Tuesday when the temptation proved to be too unbearable

So Sybil Serpent now says that Donald is going to get Trumped by the Tower Card this year. The house of cards will blow up like a bubble of bitcoins and they will all be eating tulips.
All the chaos and sowing of division and distrust is going to blow up in his fat orange face.

While the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow, the Zeitgeist can move in an instant.
And a horde of rampaging rats abandoning the sinking ship move even faster still.

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.