The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

So the last day of September is nearly over. It’s been a strange month. It got off to a rather bad beginning with the serpent bag snatch. But soon things returned to their usual abnormal state.
There’s been quite a few Buy Nothing Days this month. Two were due to inviting the Dursleys over for dinner and others from simple lack of silver sickles.

But a few observations have been confirmed beyond all reasonable doubt. In the old days of Goblin servitude, one of the Izzie rituals was to visit a cafe on the bus route and use the 2 hour return ticket to get there and back. The Zoo is also on the same route and often got added to the agenda. That was one of the good things of a 7-1 shift. It sort of sucked having to get up so early for work but meant that there was still a whole afternoon available to do interesting things.

So I soon came to the conclusion that some munchies and the chance to catch up on the newspapers was quite a source of enjoyment and I could then slink off happily back to the Lair and potter around in the garden for the rest of the day. For some strange reason it seemed so much easier to get stuff done at the end of the day than reserving a morning off for lurking around the Lair and then going out for the rest of the day.

Then there’s the endless assortment of online courses which are still for free. The evening hours are devoted to those. So I soon came to the conclusion that this serpent is a simple creature at heart. No need to go far or wide on grand adventures. Just a few hours of sunshine, a coffee and the papers and a good book to read at bus stops and visits to Cyberia in the evening seemed to be the main ingredients for contentment.

So with this knowledge in mind, been lurking around the Lair more frequently and smelling the weeds. The 3 pecan trees planted back in May and June have finally unfurled their first buds. For the last month had been worried that two of them were duds but they have come to life in the last week. Since May I have planted 10 trees which must be a record. All of them now have new leaves. Of course keeping them alive over summer is the real trick. It can get as hot as hell here.

But the biggest and most beautiful event was the pumpkin moon on Monday. Did a practise run the day before at the most sacred site in the city. Even resorted to using a compass app in order to know the exact location of the bad moon rising. Still the critter sneaked past unnoticed as a ghostly blob that I noticed about 10 minutes after it came up. It was still 40 minutes before sunset so it was going to be a bit tricky to catch. Next day it would be 15 minutes after sunset so the odds were far more in the serpent’s favour.
For the first time ever managed to catch the top of the circle on the horizon. It was a bright shade of red which slowly turned to pink and then orange like a giant pumpkin.
The park was full of picnickers who were gasping and gawking at the unexpected gorgeousness except for the groups of Chinese folks who just like the Izzie had made it their mission to be there as it is by far the best spot in the city to spot full moon rises (between March and September anyway)

Some silly bimbo was rabbiting on about some magical Blood Moon which we will not see again until 2030 something. As far as a certain serpent has observed, just pick a moonrise between 15 and 40 minutes after sunset and you are likely to get an amazing kaleidoscope of colours. Earlier than that and it is a vague pale pink blob and later it comes up like a big fat yellow lump of cheddar. (Just consulted the Oracle of Google and apparently Blood Moon does not refer to the moon appearing in a dark shade of red but rather is something to do with groups of lunar eclipses and this one was the last of a set of 4 so she was right after all)

On a list of 3 things to be happy about over the last 30 days, that multicoloured moon is way at the top. Been full moon watching for more than 10 years now and this was one of the most beautiful ever.

Izzie must be a most mad and masochistic creature. Not sufficient to be engaged in a battle with a toxic toad, the serpent refused to abandon her Camp Nano plans to devote resources to the war of words at work. On the one hand it was rather draining but on the other the determination to continue was a way to stop her meddling in sacred territory. To chicken out would have been to let her win. She had to make do with second best by taking over half of the 54,000 word count.

But there’s more. This serpent is a glutton for punishment. A certain cat introduced Izzie to a feast of freebies in what can only be described as Hogwarts for wannabee geek and freaks. No magical ability whatsoever is required just the desire to learn stuff for the sake of it.
Still not quite worked out the business model of this most marvelous Magical Academy

This is no fluffy bunny new age stuff but seems to be proper courses with real homework and very well structured lesson and course materials.

Managed not to be too greedy and signed up for only four courses. But one just happened to start during the last week of Camp Nano

Lazy Izzie figures that it should be no problem at all to slack off until Monday 3rd September and then do a big catch up. Skimmed through the slides and pdf files and was surprised to discover how much of it seemed to be indecipherable gibberish that made sense only to geeks or geniuses. Turned out that the lecturer’s spoken comments on the course videos were the key to decoding all those creepy mathematical magical formulae.

( The Dinosaur Code )

In the meantime, there’s lectures to watch and puzzles to solve. Still waiting for the Eureka moment where all the pieces of the jigsaw finally fall into place
It is so so true what a certain Cat has observed. The very fact that some new stuff to be learned is ‘insanely challenging’ is precisely what makes the end reward so great if one can persevere and finally put two and two together.

And it's not like Izzie will ever use this stuff. It is maybe a harmless way of harnessing the hunting and hoarding instinct.

*slinks off to sign up for more hairy scary courses^