Category Archives: Words Words Words

Grawr

I’ve had three virtual baskets of second-hand and new research books waiting for me at on-line retailers since early December. I couldn’t order them because we didn’t have the money at the time.

Today I skipped about paying bills with merry abandon, and then I went to confirm and place the book orders.

All but one of the second-hand ones had sold. And they sold within the last two weeks, too, because I checked at the beginning of January when I went back to writing the hearthcraft book, to make sure they were still there.

This makes me cranky. I’ve used an hour and a half of time trying to track down affordable replacement copies. I’ve given up in three cases; I’m waiting to hear shipping quotes from two sellers on eBay for another.

Life would be so much simpler if I wrote about things about which libraries carried books, so I could just borrow my research material instead of trying to find it in odd corners of the world.

On the other hand, now I also get to place orders for gifts, which were also put on hold for a while. So there is much pleasure in that.

Outrageous Fortune

That lovely USD advance cheque? I lost $50 on the exchange rate.

ARGH!

There’s a huge psychological difference between $X000 and $X000 – $50; it takes that number in the thousands column and knocks it down a whole step, making it feel like a thousand less when it’s really not. I depend on that extra fifty to couple of hundred dollars the exchange rate brings me on my small to medium-sized US cheques to spoil myself with a book or a sweater or something. Stupid exchange rate, bouncing above and below parity. When I looked the day before I got the cheque — which makes it two days ago now — the exchange rate would have made me a hundred-ish dollars. Boo.

But I found two Easter Creme Eggs on my desk when I came home just now, so all is well again.

And I read this on Metaquotes, too, and it made me laugh:

Klingon Kittens

They have a very tribblish trilling noise. But they wrestle all the time, like Klingons on leave. OMG, My house has been invaded by Klingon Tribbles! “We are mighty kitten warriors! purr purrr purrrr! Bring us more kitten blood wine while we wrestle and do other adorable warrior things.”

I wonder what Klingon is for “Today is a good day to — oooohhhhh string!”

A Sparkly Happy Day For The Author

Not only did my advance cheque arrive this morning (YAY! — insert cartwheeling and planning of many cheques to be written and bills to be paid here), but my editor just e-mailed me to say that Pagan Pregnancy got a short write-up in the latest Publisher’s Weekly as a forthcoming title. Nothing huge, just a mention and a synopsis, but it’s there and that is a very good thing.

Meer Meer Meer

I give up; this afternoon has been a write-off, as I was afraid it would be. There are now 20,052 words in the MS. I’m tired and achy and I need to lie down for half an hour before I go get the boy. I have no idea what to do for dinner; my dinner-from-nothing mojo has been exhausted.

It’s orchestra again tonight, and I have no idea how it got to be Wednesday. The cello hasn’t even come out of its case.

Growl

HRH and I just spent an hour and a half at the bank, closing HRH’s accounts and our joint account, and opening new ones and bringing our info up to date. Or, in his case, changing the info back from the false info to which the identity thief had changed it.

Words cannot describe how furious we are. Once again, we break our backs trying to make a living and doing things by the rules, and once again someone who thinks they don’t have to work tries to take it away from us and screw things up.

The good news: No money was taken. (One wonders if they thought it wasn’t worth it: there was $9 in the primarily compromised account. We’re thankful this happened a few days before the first paycheque of the year was auto-deposited.) Several applications for credit cards and attempts to do phone banking were what triggered the security freeze and the call to us, once the security department called up my profile as the other name on the joint account and compared addresses. The bank officer thinks it was a case of identity theft to set up money-laundering accounts, possibly through mail theft to get HRH’s info. His SIN wasn’t compromised. So other than losing a few hours yesterday calling institutions to freeze the automatic withdrawals that come out of the joint account, talking to Services Canada about what to do if the SIN was stolen, and the hour and a half this morning doing paperwork and updates, the only thing that has been lost is yet more faith in mankind, some hours of sleep, and decent moods.

Our bank people rock. They jumped all over this, and the security department is dealing with the tracing of the thief. I hope to all the gods they nail the bastard. Because we know we’re not the only ones to have been hit, and no one should get away with this kind of thing. Ever.

Pagan Book Meme

Via The Sacred Space, a few months ago, to be honest. I’ve only just found the draft and finished writing the post. I am work-avoiding, you see.

How many Pagan oriented books do I have?

Lots. At last count I had around four hundred; there’s bound to be more. I’ve been weeding books out lately, to pass on to a local Wiccan lending library.

What’s the last Pagan book I read?

Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane. A lot of my pagan books focus on religious subjects and cross-path study. If you were expecting something a little more ‘traditionally’ Neopagan, the last book of that kind was John Michael Greer’s The Druidry Handbook. (It occurs to me that I should get back to posting my pagan book reviews on-line, once they’ve been published in print.)

What’s the last Pagan book I bought?

The Eliade, I think. I’m pretty sure, anyhow. The Greer had been on my shelf for a few months.

List three Pagan titles with special or personal significance.

Oy. Well, there’s Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon, which demonstrated to me that there were people who could examine modern Wiccan and associated paths with a serious academic approach, instead of the superficial revisionist histories or fawning sycophantic blinkered versions you usually find. Grey Cat’s Deepening Witchcraft was thought-provoking and personally revelatory for me when it came out. And John and Caitlin Matthews’ The Western Way duology did a lot of good things for my perception of land and ancestry when I read it a few years ago.

If you were to write a Pagan book, what would the title be?

Heh. I’m not bothering to answer this one; the publisher changes all my titles anyway…