The PDF of the proofs has been returned and are out of my hands, assuming nothing goes wrong and I have to print the pages out and courier them or something. And I handed them in only half an hour past when I wanted them gone. (Also, two and a half days before deadline. Go team me.)
I’m going to get up and walk away, have a drink, and then try to do something with the pile of paper in the folder marked ‘Hearthcraft’ that’s sitting on my writing desk.
Hello internet-world. There hasn’t been much going on, other than trying to keep up with the same old same old.
I can tell you with great joy and pride that Misspelled, the anthology in which not one but two of my dearest friends have had short stories published, is now available for purchase and consumption. Apparently they have a copy for me as thanks for editing the stories, but I’m going to go out and buy one anyway, because buying stuff your friends have written is cool. Heaven knows enough people have done it for me.
I finally got the new MP3 player yesterday, so I can distract my mind enough to fall asleep promptly again. I loaded it up with the scores I would wear out if they were on cassette or LP, and a bunch of different versions of the Bach solo cello suites. Because I am lame and predictable, that’s why. (My falling-asleep music, my playlists.) I wanted one in blue, but all they had in stock at the time was black and pink. I did not get the pink.
First thing this morning, Sparky trotted into my office to grab the metronome. He wanted to bring it to the potty with him. If I thought it was loud in my office yesterday, it was a hundred times worse in the tiled echo-chamber known as the bathroom.
We had our annual toy-themed vernal equinox ritual led by the inimitable t! Monday night, and it was terrific as always. This one featured a sandbag toss after a snow-melting/spring-coming meditation. Tuesday’s weather was stupefyingly warm, almost seasonal, and scads of snow melted. Sparky, HRH, and I were on the back deck without coats playing in the sun before dinner and HRH said, “Geez, we should have had t! do that ritual weeks ago!”
On Monday I proofread the pregnancy book from the intro through to the end of Chapter Seven. Stetted a bunch of my punctuation edits, left others in (I opted for consistency within the same invocation, as opposed to consistency throughout all invocations. You will never know the difference, gentle readers.), found more errors, changed my mind about others. I even edited my comments (yes! because I need more work!). The proofs will go back today come what may, hopefully by lunch so that I can sit down and go through the printout of the hearthcraft book and start scribbling all over it. Because that deadline is coming ever-closer, and I’m very uncomfortable/unhappy with where things stand. And I’ve been away from it for a week doing the proofs, and there was the Easter trip to see the parental units. Maybe that will help; a bit of distance is usually a good thing.
Bad fibro day so far, though. I can’t feel or control my hands and feet very well. So of course I want fondant Easter eggs and a latte, which will only make things worse with the sugar and caffeine.
Guess who’s discovered the old-fashioned mechanical metronome?
Yes, the boy is home with me today. I think I need Tylenol.
(Not that it’s been a bad day – not at all. It’s just… loud. And clicky.)
Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
The Angel Riots by Ibi Kaslik
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler
No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong
The Art of Detection by Laurie R. King
Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Spirit by Deborah Kesten
The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon by W.O. Mitchell
A Genius in the Family by Hilary and Piers du Pré (reread)
A Grave Talent by Laurie R. King
Atonement by Ian McEwan
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
Atonement: The middle of the novel lost me. It was well-written, I just didn’t enjoy it. Much preferred the first and third sections. I can see why it was made into a film, and now I’m mildly interested in seeing what the film is like.
No Humans Involved: Finally, a chance to see Jeremy away from the pack! This book also helped me like Jaime a lot more than I previously have.
A Grave Talent and Art of Detection: I read these voraciously. I enjoy King’s Mary Russell series, so it’s just taken me a while to get around to the Kate Martinelli books. But now that I have, hurrah. Yes, I know I missed reading a few between the first and most recent titles; the latter was the only one my local bookstore had when I’d finished reading Mousme‘s loan of A Grave Talent.
Er, yes. That’s about it. They were books; I read them and enjoyed them to various degrees. Not much to say other than that.
Stupid page proofs.
I’m going to STET all the punctuation corrections I did. I think. Maybe. Well, I’ll take it on a case-by-case basis.
I’m catching other errors on the second go-through. I wish inconsistencies in phrasing through rituals etc. had been caught in copy-edits. I wish they’d been more stringent. This will teach me to crow about an easy copy-edit review.
I want these gone, gone, gone by tomorrow. I need the time to finish the other book, you know, the one that needs to be handed in in a week or so?
I wasn’t online yesterday so I missed the bone marrow registry/Heal Emru reminder blog-a-thon date, but better late than never, especially in a case like this.
I’ve said it before, but I’m saying it again: it’s quick, easy, and you’ll likely never get called. But if you do, you’ll be giving up a day or so of your life to save someone else’s.
Here’s the pertinent point: ethnic minorities are woefully under-represented in the registry, so if you’re of Ashkenazi, South Asian, East Asian, Pacific Islander, Aboriginal, Caribbean, African or mixed ethnic heritage — among many others — it’s even more important that you add your information to the registry to provide a wider pool from which a matching sample may be drawn. If you’re tested in regards to a relative, make sure to say that you want to be on the unrelated donor registry as well.
Emru was diagnosed with leukaemia in mid-December of 2007. As is typical of their enormous hearts and giving souls, Emru and his sister Tamu have taken this opportunity to work on behalf of everyone who needs a bone marrow transplant. The web site may be called Heal Emru, but it’s about people everywhere with cancer or sickle cell anaemia who are suffering daily while they wait and pray for a matching donor to be found. The excellent web site features clear FAQs, contact info for registries all over the world, information on how to register, copies of interviews they’ve given in print and audio media as well as related interviews or articles, and flyers and other images to print out and use wherever you can. The web site now exists in French as well as English.
It’s not just Emru. It’s every single person out there, hoping that a match will be found so that they can go on living.
Drop by your local blood clinic and talk to them about the process. It’s important. It’s such a small thing on your part, but someone else’s life and well-being, and the lives of their family and friends and colleagues.
The impact you can make is beyond measuring.
This morning, I drove home from dropping the boy off in white-out conditions. It’s cruel, after a lovely warm and sunny weekend. Wasn’t this supposed to be rain? The first few flakes began falling and the boy said, “Why the snow?” “I don’t know,” I replied. “I think we should tell it to go away.” From the back seat there came a very clear and deliberate, “SNOW, GO AWAY!”
Thank goodness for a lovely recording of The Lark Ascending on CBC that played on my way home. I always think of Pasley when I hear it. Otherwise I’m so irritated by the CBC these days. They’re disbanding the CBC Radio Orchestra — the last surviving radio orchestra in North America — and they’re changing the Radio 2 format yet again so that it’s no longer going to be a mainly classical station. Over the past few years they’ve slowly revamped it to feature more jazz and folk and so forth, with which I’ve not been thrilled but have tolerated (although the radio gets turned off at 6 on the dot because I cannot stand what the evening programming has become). Now, however, they’re formally announcing that they’re going to go more mainstream, and cancelling the existing shows. This was done to net a larger audience, but it’s backfiring already: the backlash has been dreadful, and they’re going to lose droves of current listeners (like me, hello, who’s been a faithful listener for decades). If they did market research, they certainly didn’t think of asking their current audience what they thought of the idea. I’ve been meaning to write about this since they announced it and I just haven’t been able to bring myself to put my resentment about this dilution of content and commitment to culture into words. This isn’t what I wanted to say, either, but I have to say something at some point.
I am stiff and achy and want to be in the better mood I was in this past weekend.