  Yippay,  hurripee!  I've been selected to be on the 2005 Emerging Writer's Festival program advisory committee,  which not only means that I will be recommending wondrous beings whom what would be grouse ta be innit,  but I'll get to meet billions and trillions of other writers and werdsmiths and creative types,  and see it all come together in Melbourne in March 2005.
 Many thanks to urlLink Adam Ford for the info and the gentle push,  and congratulations to urlLink Dave of the notorious Metal City for also being selected!  How fucking YAY is that?  I am fibrillating with excitement.  In other outstanding news,  in two Fridays time I shall be collecting my eroded soul from the Corporate Cage that has become the stain of my existence,
 scraping the remnants of my being from this desk of inanity,  and exiting,  stage left,  to pursue an equally mundane but much more highly paid and flexible position at my other job in market research,  where I intend to work but three days a week as a casual,  giving myself a five day weekend every week [
that made sense when I wrote it but as much as I would like to believe in an eight- day week it's unfortunately still only six.  Thanks Nick]  and the ability to choose when and if I work at all.  Sick pay and holiday pay have ceased to be relevant.  My priority is having time for doing the things I want to do.
 I feel like I have opened a window that I had thought was jammed shut but it was just a bit sticky from a cordial spill years ago and only needed a tiny bit of coaxing,  and now I've nearly tumbled through to the other side which I had never noticed is made entirely of chocolate.  Purple chocolate.  Purple chocolate that sings like Ani di Franco and is really good in bed.  Speaking of good in bed. well,
 more on that later.  Right now I have some celebrating to do.  Don't you love it when everything is up?  It's all white teeth and love songs.  It's bubble baths and tongue kisses.  Rolly puppies with huge feet and tamari almonds and that guy you have a crush on and new undies and clean sheets and pina coladas and lizards.
 I love a lizard.  Glorious things.  Do you Yahoo!  urlLink New and Improved Yahoo!  Mail -  100MB free storage!
