Nodame Cantabile vols 6-9 by Tomoko Ninomiya
The Violin Maker by John Marchese
Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge
For A Few Demons More by Kim Harrison
Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett
Druid’s Sword by Sara Douglass
Uglies by Scott Westerfield
The Fall of the Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman
Heart of Gold by Sharon Shinn
The Highs and Lows of Being Mia by Meg Cabot
Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers
Nodame Cantabile vols 2-5 by Tomoko Ninomiya
Storm Front by Jim Butcher (reread)
Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
Category Archives: Diary
La La La: Free Association Brought To You By Caffeine
I give up. No matter how I try, I can’t get the basic font to change on this template, or get the sidebar to begin below the header space.
Also? Two cappuccinos = bad. Focus? What is focus? La la la!
Have to sort through the basement to find a box to send baby gifts out to new parents, now that I know the baby’s name. And yet I can’t even face that because there’s too much caffeine in my system.
I am very very tired of my doorbell being rung by delivery people asking for the woman downstairs. The conversation always goes something like this:
Today’s Cute Delivery Man: [name of downstairs tenant]?
A: [annoyed sigh] No. She’s downstairs.
TCDM: [checks address on forms] This is [my address]?
A: Yes. But she is at [my address]-A. The bottom doorbell outside.
TCDM: [checks forms again] Oh. She didn’t specify that.
A: She never does.
TCDM: I’m really sorry to have disturbed you.
A: [with sympathy] That’s all right. It’s not your fault. Just please, update your records.
Because I’m sick and tired of being her door attendant, and of the doorbell waking the boy from this nap, or it interrupting my train of thought while working. I’m also tired of being disappointed that I am not getting surprise presents handed to me by mailpersons. I should be getting consolation prizes for being inconvenienced.
HRH and I are heading out to the registration bureau at lunch today, he to do the car thing and I to do the Medicare thing. Because yes, I am an idiot, for when I got both the Medicare renewal form and the driver’s license renewal form in the mail the same week, I looked at the rules on the driver’s license form (“to be done in the ten days before your birthday”) and somehow applied them to the Medicare renewal as well. Except when I looked at that form today, it said DEADLINE = MAY 13, which is not in fact within the next ten days at all but somewhere in the far distant past. So let’s just all hope that nothing happens that would require the use of my Medicare card in the next eight weeks. (I seem to remember this happening to other people and the card actually arriving within three weeks, so my fingers are crossed. I hope I don’t get a snarky teller at the bureau, though, or so help me, all my irritation at the downstairs tenant will burst forth.)
Too hot; too humid. The forecast assures me the general temperature will be dropping within the next two days to about ten degrees cooler.
In the past two days I have read For A Few Demons More (thanks Blade), Fly By Night, and Hat Full of Sky (which you may borrow if you like, Jan, as you enjoyed Wee Free Men so much). I’m not sure how I managed all of it, but I did.
Argh
So that contract that was supposed to begin on June 22 at the latest has been bumped to the end of June. This means that I could have actually applied/bid for another contract elsewhere that began mid-June and went to mid-July or could have ended earlier, depending on if I bid for all or only part of it.
This is the part of freelancing that I detest. When someone makes sure you’re free at a specific time and then the project gets delayed thanks to the third party you’re both waiting on, it’s hard to stay Zen.
Liam and I took the bus out on a trip this morning and he is now the proud owner of a leopard molly, a silver molly, and a black molly. Let’s see if their lifespan is directly proportional to their higher price. Also, I am not allowed to look at birds in shops anymore. They keep falling in love with me, and I keep falling in love with them. I would have walked out with three sun conures and a Quaker parrot today if I’d had the money and the space in which to keep them, and the time to give them the attention they require.
Weekend Roundup
I’m pretty out of it today. I’m fighting a bad sinus cold, and the medication I’m taking for it is making me feel loopy. Apart from that the weekend, though fun, pretty much wiped me out.
I’m very glad HRH and made it out to the museum to see the Once Upon a Time Disney exhibit on Friday night, even if we only got there 45 minutes before the museum closed. “You know we close at nine?” the kind attendant said as I bought our tickets. “Yes, but this is the only time we can be here before it ends,” I said. HRH and I go through exhibits at exactly the same speed, plus there really weren’t too many other people in our way, so it was the perfect time to have gone and the precise amount of time needed. I think we’d have appreciated another half-hour to go back and look at things that really interested us, but we got what we needed out of the visit. It was terrific to see the various European art influences on Disney design.
Saturday morning we went to an old friend’s wedding, and if I hadn’t had the wedding I’d had, I would have chosen to have this one. It was a perfect day with lovely weather, in a lovely location, with around fifty people in attendance, excellent food, and wonderful company. We had to leave before dessert, but such is the compromise when one has a child with his own social schedule.
We got home, changed, grabbed the boy, thanked Grandma for playing with him while we were out, and headed over for the last half of Arthur’s birthday party. It was great to unexpectedly see some people I hadn’t seen in a few months (and further proof, if it was necessary, that the world is a Very Small Place), and of course, fete the birthday boy. (Every kid needs his own pirate ship!)
Sunday I woke up with the cold worse than it had been and managed to slog through the morning while preparing for the Midsummer rit that afternoon. Said rit came off excellently, and was perfectly timed with Liam’s nap. Liam joined us afterwards for melon and Cool Whip and homemade lemonade, all of which was delicious. Then we headed over to the in-laws’, and moments after walking into the house the weekend and the cold caught up with me. I effectively passed out, unable to do more than utter monosyllabic words, watch Liam play, or eat more than three bites of dinner. Once home we put Liam to bed, I took more medication, and passed out at eight o’clock.
Theoretically I should be embarking on the first day of a four-week contract, but there’s been no communication from the company despite a prompt from me last Friday, so I suppose today is a bonus day. Good thing; I can’t really focus on much. I may try to work on my own stuff later; I may just crash and read.
Pandora Update
Total word count, The Moments of Being Pandora: 68,604
New words today: 3,144
One entire chapter done in a full day of writing. See, this is what I can do when I have consecutive days in which to work, instead of a day on and a day off, which requires me to use valuable writing time to get back into the right headspace. Four more to go, plus an in-between and a conclusion. 80K is coming up awfully fast.
I went out this morning and cut a rose off my Alba tea rose bush (which was white last year but a very pale pink this year) plus a handful of blossoming lavender, and put them in my little Caithness vase on my desk The scent is so strong I had to open my window to diffuse it. Great weather, by the way; it can stay not-humid and on the cool side for as long as it likes. It was cool enough to wear socks today.
Busy weekend ahead: HRH and I have plans to catch at least an hour of a museum exhibit tonight, then two engagements tomorrow, then a ritual and a belated father’s day family thing on Sunday.
Pandora Update
I now have an icon for the posts focusing on the Pandora book.
Total word count, The Moments of Being Pandora: 63,562
New words today: 1,392
I slacked. Well, I thought a lot, because the story’s at a point where I have to make certain decisions about the conclusion and Why People Did Things, and Are They Really Evil Or Is All This Just The Way The Universe Works (leaning towards the latter, actually, teaching my teenagers-on-the-verge-of-adulthood a Lesson that is satisfying in one way while being slightly unsatisfying in another) and once my internet connection had been restored I did some research, and then spent way too much time clicking through to various places I didn’t really need to click through to. The laundry’s done, though. Forgot to put the dishwasher on again, however. I’ll go do that now.
But I did slack. If I hadn’t kept wandering off I could have done more than this. Now when I sit down again I’ll be basically at the same place: exposition handled by a new character explaining his past and revealing that he’s not a Bad Guy (but his actions have led to something Bad happening), before my protagonists can act. Or come up with a possible plan to act upon, first. I hate this part of a story; picking through the potential paths I could take and trying to figure out which one would work best is not fun at all for me. I prefer it when my characters just go ahead and do things true to their personalities, and I discover the story as they go. Now comes careful plotting and pulling together of plot threads and pinning down certain things, and it’s been stalling me for months. Oh, I have the general outline, but it’s the tiny things that get the story from A to B to C that are frustrating me now. The details all need to be considered in order for it to work properly.
Home Again
We’re home, we’re alive, the cats are alive, all must be well.
It wasn’t exactly a relaxing weekend, but it was an important one. Liam slept dreadfully over the weekend, as did we. The drive home was awful thanks to that lack of sleep and the unyielding sun and humidity. We took Liam to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum on Father’s Day to see the planes fly and taxi around (who are we kidding, it was so we could see the Avro Lanc flying again — and fly it did without incident, unlike the last time I saw it out) which he absolutely adored; much more exciting than walking through the hangar looking at the parked aircraft. He caught ten minutes of sleep in the car then refused lunch and a real nap. Then his fifteen-month-old cousin (a useful catch-all term for the daughter of my own cousin) came over and they played together, providing several opportunities for laughter and photos. It was such a great afternoon, the lack of sleep and food aside. And it meant a lot to all of us for him to finally meet his great-grandmother.
As soon as we got home he was completely back on schedule — food, naps, bedtimes and wake-up times. Yesterday was a quiet snuggly day with books and movies, and today he’s off at daycare so I can get some more writing done before the next contract lands on my desk, as it’s scheduled to sometime before the end of the week.
I’m not feeling terribly communicative these days; it might have something to do with the huge pile of stuff that needs to get done and the lack of time in which to do it (or the computer programs that keep unhelpfully crashing, which are delaying some of the tasks). Nor did the Bell technician accidentally terminating my phone line this morning while fixing the downstairs tenant’s line help (then leaving for another job before coming back to fix it), or the refusal of my computer/modem/router/ISP to get back in harness when the line was restored. It made my scheduled research difficult, to say the least. So I did laundry instead.
Other than that, life in general and things are kind of there. And it’s orchestra tonight; only a week and a half till the concert on July 1.