Category Archives: Diary

Good Deed Done

When we got back from Angrignon Park last night (mosquito-bitten but content) we discovered a note on our door. The couple who owned the kitten got her back safe and sound. She had spent most of the day curled up on a pair of my husband’s jeans, napping and purring. The man who came to pick her up said that there was something pretty special about her, and I have to agree.

So: a good deed. And I got to cuddle a tiny kitten again.

I finished HPOTP last night. Harry’s not a kid any more; no sir. If/when they make this film, it will be phenomenal to watch. I’ll have to read it again, but not for a week or so. To give myself a complete change of pace, I read Mort by Terry Pratchett. Next? Not sure; likely more academic stuff on Norse history and society.

Kitten Love

I spent the day outside yesterday, from sunrise to welcome the Summer Solstice, to teaching my class outside, to a farewell picnic with good friends. It was glorious. I also received an early birthday present from Ceri, who’s heading off to Halifax for two months: a lovely lap desk with a tilting top, pencil trays, and a basket for books and such on each side. It’s the absolutely perfect height to rest my laptop on. I was so touched.

I woke up this morning around four AM, thinking I heard a cat in heat outside. I drowsed on and off for a couple of hours, hearing the cat, then fell asleep until a knock on our door just past eight woke me up. My husband answered it, and found our concierge with a tiny beige and grey mackerel kitten in his hands.

“This yours?” he asked. “It’s been out in the hall for hours, crying.”

When we told him no, he knocked on other doors to try to find where it belonged, but no one answered. He came back to ask for a bit of kitten food; he was going to put it in an empty room downstairs and lock it until he came back tonight, but I said, “Well, it’s so young; why don’t we keep it in the bedroom if you’re not going to be home? We have an extra litter box, and bowls, and I’ll be home all day so if someone sees your sign they can come knock right then. I’m sure they’re frantic.”

Well, after a stern warning that under no circumstances was I to fall in love with this kitten, my husband allowed her in. It’s now been five hours, and no one’s come to claim her. She’s adorable. She must have slipped out when someone came home late, or left really early. She’s fearless, and not upset at all. Mind you, if I’d been alone in a hallway for hours, crying, I’d be in love with whoever gave me water and pats too.

And I’m just over halfway through Order of the Phoenix. I can’t help reading it; it’s so smoothly written, and things lead from one to another… but I so want to make it last.

The Fun Part Of Selling Oneself

I’ve just spent four hours designing a business card and a brochure for my writing services.

Damn, but I sound professional. I mean, I read my brochure, and I’d hire me. I need to tweak it a bit, though – I think I’ll end up creating two versions, one for companies and one for individuals, so I can target my audience better rather than referring to one here and another there.

The best part? It has continuity with my web site and my web log through the use of colour and the owl motif.

The almost-as-best part: this counts as writing. t! challenged me to write an opinion piece today, but I think this rather slips in under the creative writing wire. Hire me! I’m confident, capable, and I can help you. The tricky part? Telling people they need help without making them think they’ve been accused of being incompetent.

Downs and Ups

Yesterday was good and bad for many reasons, most of which I will not go into. I will summarise it all by mentioning the following highlights:

~ I work with the best gang of people any woman could work with. Anyone who gives me loonies to put into a parking meter so that I can keep hanging around on my day off, simply because I slept horribly and felt cranky but didn’t want to be alone, is automatically nominated to demi-deity status in my world. Brenda, Tamu: you rock. And Dimitri, thanks for the tissues.

~ My husband finally got paid for the freelance work he did at Easter, which came right after I learned that my own little source of freelance income has indefinitely been put on hold, right on the verge of a nice new project to which I was looking forward to devoting ten to twenty hours a week. The gods taketh away, and the gods giveth.

~ I had chocolate mousse cake for dessert last night. Mmm.

~ And finally, at orchestra, I pulled off the Haydn with some sort of semi-capable style, and then proceeded to sight-read the Mozart with panache and 98% accuracy. Go me. For someone who hates Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and refuses to listen to it, I knew it pretty well. Then again, Mozart is so annoyingly perfect that I could have closed my eyes and played the cello line by prediction alone and still hit it dead on.

Looking at the writing I’ve been posting over at Owldaughter – Read, I’ve realised that I haven’t written short fiction in about eight years. As I’ll have more free time on my hands, I’ve decided to challenge myself to write one short story per week. I need to work on my ability to tell a story in 1,200 to 1,800 words alone. Besides, when I’ve finished a short story, it can be mailed off in submission somewhere, and maybe someday someone will even accept one.

At Tamu’s direction, I’ll also be working up a proposal for both my non-fiction work on alternative spirituality, as well as And By Many Other Names. I received a lecture on the necessity of selling oneself, a topic about which I’ve expressed my dismal and ineffectual flounderings before. She made it sound easier. Baby steps.

I see that I forgot to mention that I’m convinced the designs for the seagulls in Finding Nemo were lifted straight from Nick Park’s brain. Consider it done.

Phrase of the day about which to chortle: The obligation to tell long stories is more terrible than you might imagine. Even Scheherazade might stumble. And she was a far better word whore than I. From Caitlin R. Kiernan, of course.

Today

By the end of the afternoon I was in a full-out Mood: irritable, on the verge of angry tears for no reason, and the attention span of a cat I won’t mention out of respect to Catdom. So when my husband got home I told him that I wanted to go out, right now. I could see him try to sort through our options: it was five-thirty on a Monday night. Then I made an executive decision and told him that we were going to see Finding Nemo. And off we went.

Before we did, though, I stopped by the bank, put in the thirty-dollar cheque Champlain College had sent me for my guest lecturing services, and bought highlighters and a new blank notebook for research, because I’m two pages away from finishing the one I’ve got. That plus the definitely suspicious lack of highlighters in this house had certainly contributed to my Mood. So — a little bit of disposable income, plus new toys. Much better already.

Finding Nemo is a brilliant film. It’s a laugh-out-loud sort of movie, and laugh is what the adults in the audience — who outnumbered the kids — did with great frequency. I loved the designs, and I loved all the characters, although my favourites were the turtles (which should come as no surprise to those who have known me forever; I adore turtles. They just make me laugh, for some reason. These turtles in particular were designed to make people laugh, so I laughed twice as hard.). And I have come to a conclusion: Roman is a seagull with fur.

We also saw trailers for the next three upcoming animated films: Sinbad (which, of course, my husband is already swooning about), Brother Bear (which had our interest right away for its use of totems and shamanism — Disney, who’d’ve thunk it? and please don’t let them mess it up, but they probably will); and, of course, The Incredibles. Pixar does superheroes. Can it get any better?

Today

My husband wrenched his back somehow, so his plans for the day fell apart. To cheer him up, I told him he could take me out to the West Island to dig through second-hand bookstores. He countered with getting home-made ice cream. It was a deal.

I didn’t find any of the out-of-print books that I’m looking for – I’d rather find them around here than buy them second-hand over the Internet – but I did find three mysteries I’ve been reluctant to buy new that are on my to-read list. That plus the peanut butter-chocolate ice cream made it all worthwhile.