4 Things

1) This morning I introduced a friend to the glory that is Hark, A Vagrant, which is kind of like XKCD for literature and history nerds instead of math-geeks. I mention this purely because I just assume everyone reads these things, but every now and then I’ll be all “the hippos will always be hungry; they will never be satisfied” and people will be all “WTF Peter? That makes no sense.”

2) A fairly neat review of Twelfth Planet Press’s Sprawl anthology, which was released at Worldcon and contains new short stories by me and Angela Slatter and LL Hannett and many other awesome folks. In an odd moment of synchronicity, my contributor copy arrived in the mail yesterday too. Should you want your own copy, you can go order one on the TPP website.

3) I suspect being eaten by sabre-tooth tigers would be mildly uncomfortable. And no, you do not context for that.

4) I find myself, post-worldcon, staring at a somewhat impressive pile of credit card debt that I’m not happy about. This is complicated by the fact that I didn’t actually use my credit card for much at Worldcon – I just have various leaks in my budget that tend to add up over time. After spending yesterday going through a year of statements and bank records, the three biggest leaks are: certain kinds of grocery shopping; fuel; books. The first two are mostly a problem because I’m very bad at saying “no, I can’t afford that” when, in truth, I truly can’t afford to do things. The latter is a problem because, well, books are my comfort zone. And it’s really hard to say “no” when I’m in a bookshop. I have a plan for paying off my credit card. Given that I’m unemployed and live alone, it’s a two year plan. Part of it involves saying “no” a lot more than I currently do.

Sadly, the first thing I’ve taken off of my list of things I’d like to do, despite the fact that I can barely afford them is any form of Con or travel until the credit card debt is defeated.