Ok, so, cleaning up took nearly a year, but boy what a busy year it was.

Therefore I’ll hope you’ll forgive me when I explain the delay. In the last year I became unemployed, pregnant and hypertensive. Oh the thrills of morning sickness, but I’d do it again. I was delivered of a beautiful baby girl on 27 January 2011. She is nearly five months old and able to do some entertaining and eating almost on her own. We started rice cereal yesterday and that was an adventure. She was named after two of the strongest, most willful and bull headed, stubborn women I could think of. And she is showing that she’ll be just like the women she was named for.

Our second contributor, Nicholas McRae, was busy in his own right. He has been published. I am so very proud of him and glad I was able to support him in his goals. His book, Piggy Moto: All Star Boar Band, was released to Podiobooks.com back in April and the dead tree edition will be released later this month at Anthrocon and is available for pre-order here. He truly is a brilliant storyteller and I hope he only has success in this and all his further endeavors in writing.

I think you can call that time well wasted.

Well my darling crickets, as you can see I still have some clean up to do, but I hope to have this place back up and running in a week. June twentieth seems like a good time to start things new. Besides, you spend a year almost confined to your home you see a lot of really good, and even more really, really bad, movies and television shows. And we won’t even get into the books yet.

So you’ll see some changes around here and I hope you’ll join me for the ride. In the mean time, remember, if you’re going to waste time, waste it well.

Wow!  A lot of dust and dead crickets.  I’ll be cleaning and tidying over the next week, getting things ship shape and Bristol fashion before we get started again.

Meanwhile, thought for the day, I already felt old knowing that the people who were born when Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone came out are teenagers this year, but the Empire Strikes Back is thirty years old.  Now I really feel old.

I’ll see you all soon.

And this time from JC Hutchins!  He’s gearing up for the release of his novel Personal Effects: Dark Arts podcast prequel Sword of Blood and you can learn a bit more about it here.  Share, enjoy, have fun and please help continue the support of our podcast novelists.

With lots of thanks to The Vault of Horror I have to say this is the coolest thing I’ve seen all week and boy did I need it.

Buzz on over here and I think you’ll giggle a bit too.

Having spent a good portion of the day listening to Metamor City and trying to catch up… particularly since I had to start it over again… I can’t say that I’m not listening to podcasts anymore.  Just not listening to them at work.

Why?  Because two of my many favorite podcasters are totally NOT safe for work.  As can be discovered here in this brilliant advertisement for the upcoming Parsec Awards.  Poor Hutch.

Let’s keep supporting the podcasters, nominate your favorite qualifying podcast for a Parsec today!

Woke up this morning and found out in my news feeds that JC Hutchins’ 7th Son saga has been optioned by Warner Bros for production.  This just seriously tickles me pink.  The podcasts were captivating and imaginative and I was always curious as to how they would turn out on the big screen.

Optioned is not a promise of production though.  We need to keep supporting Hutchins work if we want to see 7th Son brought to life on film.  I know once Personal Effects – Dark Arts comes out I’ll be ordering my copy, and I’m still anxiously awaiting my chance to buy 7th Son in novel form.

So our hats are off to you JC, and we look forward to more of your work.

I’m sure it’s going to echo around here.  Empty as it has become.  I’ve got hundreds of little half posts and I’ve just not finished them.  I think I may try little “shout outs” for lack of better terms.

Been reading.  Heavily.  Majorly.  About everything else is back burner.  All my podcasts are not safe for work and we can’t wear a headphone since we’re on headsets.  So I turn to the next best thing and those are my books.

In the last months I’ve read every Blood book Anne Bishop’s written, including her new one, The Shadow Queen.  Excellent read, was well worth the money, but I’m actually looking forward to getting away from the SaDiablo family eventually.

Ripped through the Kushiel saga; all six books that Jacqueline Carey has put out so far.  Her new one is due out this summer and I’m rather looking forward to it.  She has a mystery out too, but I haven’t been able to get my hands on it… yet.

My accomplishment though… is getting my husband reading.  He tore through every RA Salvatore book I owned, eating the words written about Drizzet like they were candy.  And pouted when he ran out of books.  We just got The Lone Drow and The Two Swords in today, which made him happy.  In the meantime he’s also read through Anne Bishop’s Sebastian and Belladonna and said she needed to lay off the Blood books and get some more from that world written.  I’ve also entangled him into the world of Harry Dresden.  Next I think we’ll tackle some Tee Morris or Mur Lafferty.

Ah yes, speaking of the podcasters….  I ordered my copy of my favorite Scott Sigler book The Rookie.  Have you?  If you haven’t, don’t make my mistake and be in such a hurry to make sure you get a copy that you forget to ask him to sign it.  I feel like crying at this point.  Hopefully he’ll be buzzing through Texas again once it’s out.

And while we’re on the subject of the podcasters, JC Hutchins’ Personal Effects – Dark Arts is coming out this summer too.  I’m in a hurry to get my hands on that one too.

Reading…  reading…  ah yes…  Twilight.  The whole fugging series and I blame two of my favorite co-workers.  I have to admit I wasn’t expecting the story to be as enjoyable and as engrossing as I found it to be.  I’ve gone through it twice now in less than thirty days.  The film wasn’t bad…  hurried…  but not bad at all.  Fantastic soundtrack.

I think I’m running out of dust now.  Think I’ll see if I can’t clear up the cobwebs and get some more posts up soon.  For now, if you’re going to waste time… waste it well.

PS Big thanks to Joe Cottonwood for the autographed copy of Clear Heart.  Have burned through it twice too.

Today is a great day to be an American.  It’s a time where we have the most important power of choice.

Whether you cast your vote for McCain or Obama or someone else doesn’t matter, what matters is that you vote.  That you express your opinion on who needs to lead this great nation of ours.  Today we get to help make change happen.

The only real statement I’ll make here is for my friends in California.  Please vote NO on Prop 8. The world is discriminating enough, we don’t need to make it any worse.

Go vote, I promise you that it is time very well wasted.

I envy the podcasters, the writers, the people with the gumption and drive who can keep up with a 40 hour a week job and then add another 40 plus hours to it for the entertainment of their fans and the sole pleasure of creating.  People who take moments out of their already jam packed schedule and post updates that are more than recycled drivel.  I envy them because try as I might, I just don’t have that drive.  I envy them, call it a sin, a deadly one at that, but there it is.

If you haven’t gotten the gist of my intent yet, let me spell it out plainly.  It’s been two weeks since there’s been a post on the site at all, and even longer since it was something meaningful and not random movie trivia.  I simply don’t have the drive for it anymore, not while I’m working 40 hours a week and being out of the house for at least 10 hours a day for five of seven days.  And those last two, the only thing I want to do is kick back with a book, a podcast, some new music and not think about work, of any kind.

Am I shutting down completely?  No, not at all.  I’ll still be throwing the random, brilliant and blatant advertisements up for my favorite podcasters, but I make no promise of a schedule.  I’m on pins and needles with anticipation for Personal Effects Dark Art and still have at least a nine month wait – I think.  Then there’s Contagious due out this winter and whatever Mur, Nathan, Tee, Pip, Edward, Nick and many others have up their sleeves.

Time Well Wasted was my job while I didn’t have paying employment, now it’s just too much for me.  Through it I have gotten to know and do things for some fantastic people with brilliant stories to tell.  These would be the podcasters I follow around like some random rabid fangirl.  And while I’m not pulling the plug completely on the site, I’m pulling in the focus and will continue to write about the podcasting community in my own time.  I’ll still be following these people like the random, rabid fangirl that I am, what can I say, feed me a good story and I’m addicted.

As for the rest of it, I’ll post what things I have lingering in my drafts over the next week and we’ll see what happens from there.  In the meantime, there’s not much more to say.  I want to thank everyone, from the bottom of my heart, for reading and enjoying the site, for letting me be part of their advertisement régime, and for producing some fantastic content.  It’s my hope that I might still be welcome when I ask if I can help them out with a bit of advertisement and review, and maybe a hug or two if I can ever get to one of their events.

More than anything, and I’m not trying to separate anyone from anyone else, I owe a heartfelt thank you to JC Hutchins and his amazing fans for helping me and my family out during our hardship this summer.

Like I said before, I’m not completely shutting down, I think to do so would break my heart, so I hope you won’t remove us from your feeds.  I’ll still be around on Twitter and I’ll post there when something pops up here.  I just can’t promise a regular posting schedule anymore and for that I apologize.

So stay tuned…  I may post something brilliant at any time.