The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

Silly serpent Izzie is completely zonked.
An hour or so at the keyboard has sort of restored a bit of serpent insanity but still not quite recovered from four hours of utter stupidity

There were two social events on this evening to tempt the Izzie. One was a Meetup writers group who have the good taste to chose Tarts Cafe on Lake Street as their unofficial headquarters and the other was a sort of discussion group on the topic of "What makes us want more?" at Fast Eddy's in Morley where it is necessary for carless creatures to navigate their way through the labyrinth of horrors that is Galleria Shopping Centre to get there

It should have been pretty obvious which was the better option. But the devil as usual is in the detail. Still not gotten around to registering to join this writers' group and there's the minor matter of a waiting list for the other group. So it is very bad form indeed to say you are going and decide not to without cancelling so that some one else can take your place
Such flakiness is a trait that Izzie simply loathes and despises. So it's either cancel by Tuesday to give some one else in the queue a chance or to turn up

The topic was interesting so it was just too tempting to go. Before that had spent the afternoon between the peaceful green gardens of the museum cafe and the State library's outdoor reading room. After all there was the important question to be answered after several days absence
"What would Jeronimus do?"

Had a wonderful hour or so in the museum garden doing some serious plotting and planning. The so called star of the story has been seriously sidelined and it is time to make amends. Even at this late stage it is not yet too late for her 15 minutes of fame
Aiming for 66,600 words this nano but just in case reaching the first deadline of 50,00 induces serious slacking and procrastination, it would be a good idea to start on the end and work backwards. The bad habit of big holes in the last third of the story needs to be cured once and for all and this is the year to do it

The very last card in the sequence of 88 is The Fool. Not any old fool but the Dark Grimoire incarnation. Izzie just cannot resist any opportunity to introduce a strange loop

Added to this some significant corporate restructuring, this hour or so should be good for several thousand words later in the evening.
Those murdering mutineers at Batavia's Graveyard also had a few suggestions of their own for a bit of drama.
So all was well in Nanoland until the fateful decision to board the 66 bus to Morley just after 5pm. Got stuck in serious traffic jams and was almost tempted to just get off and go on a coffee crawl instead or visit Veggie Mama. Anything but the claustrophobic hell hole of a bus going nowhere in a hurry
And then the arrival at the Minotaur's maze. Within two minutes of navigating past hordes of humans, conspicuous consumers and rampaging rug rats, the Izzie was already a blubbering wreck

It was an introvert's worst nightmare. All the noise and light and crowds. It's late November. Silly of Izzie to expect a monastery instead of mayhem.
The meeting was quite interesting but was simply not in a state to enjoy it. Swore yet again to never darken the door of that infernal hell hole and this time the serpent is serious

The bus goes very near Tarts cafe on the way back. Just to rub salt into the serpent war wounds.

A quick shower to wash off the shopping goblins and a glass of red started to slowly take effect. the clickety clack of the keyboard also helped
Will be back at the museum again tomorrow afternoon and there will be no side trips to witness The Shopping Games

The evil goblins at the day job have been harassing the serpent who has not been ticking the boxes properly. The cheap critters have now introduced e-learning so they can get us to waste our own time doing their ridiculous quantities of mandatory training. Oh of course they said we would get paid for time logged in on their ridiculous site. In fact, they went one better than that. The new boss who started in March and is the spitting image of Shane Warne and with a Warnie ego to match even claimed that the first module only takes 15 minutes but we would get paid a full hour. That was the carrot - the stick was that not doing this online training would result in suspension from duties. All cleverly times for the week before Easter
Needless to say - not only did no one get paid the one hour as promised - they didn't even fork out for the fifteen minutes. And it's not like they didn't know. They even present you with a stupid certificate as proof of completion but apparently not proof enough for the cheap and nasty goblins in the pay office

They informed the serpent today that she is overdue on the stupid food handling unit and had very kindly printed out a paper version assuming that the serpent is a Luddite creature without access to computers or Cyberia.
Had a peek at this infernal waste of trees and figured it might be easier to do the damned thing online. Silly silly serpent
The elearning site belongs to a company owned by one of the most infernally evil bastards of this and the last century. They are literally getting the Fox to look after the hen house.

So surprise surprise - visited this infernal site run by News Corporation and had to endure a bunch of mission statements and a smiling smirking greeting from the big bad Megatherion Boss himself - smug little bastard that he is.
Got tossed out four times so it took ages to finish the infernal thing as Rupert Murdoch and his minions are obviously too cheap and nasty to have technology that lets you pick up from last time but forces you to run the gauntlet from the beginning each time.

But since then, God knows what sorts of Cyberian transmitted diseases the Big Mac or the ancient usb dongle have picked up. It keeps tossing us out and it took the best part of 30 minutes to get online this time. Could get tossed out again any minute
So it's basically a quick squiggle to let the serpent's associates know that any absences or exile is not due to being abducted by aliens or worse but simply an infestation of foxie monsters and other feral beasties doing mean and nasty things to the Portkey

It just might be time to start shopping around as $30 per month for 3gb is ridiculously expensive these days - especially as the last four months or so not even got much past 700mb per month

So time to slink off into the wilderness. Who knows when the critters will let the serpent through the pearly gates of Cyberia again