Monthly Archives: August 2003

Dutiful Daughter

Here I am, in Toronto. My parents were in mock miff that there was no new blog post this morning, so here. Never let it be said that I don’t fulfil my parents’ expectations.

A nice, uneventful trip from Mtl to T.O. last night; for once, it wasn’t raining. The OPP were out in force, though, as it’s a holiday weekend and the end of the month, so it took us a bit longer to get here than usual. A spectacular sunset and a fingernail’s curve of a glowing moon made up for it, though.

I had a cafe mocha for the first time on the way. Nice, but I’ll save it for days when I want coffee instead of cappucchino. It’s not quite as sweet.

Apparently my mother made deliberate mention of my “alternative religious choice” when my grandmother was down last week. She noticed a book on reincarnation my mother was reading and it turns out that she’s a firm believer in the phenomenon. It seemed like the appropriate time to bring up the deep dark family secret, so Mum began to explain the whole living with awareness thing until finally she just used the W-word. My grandmother seemed quite interested in the whole concept and agreed with several of the principles. Apparently “the Sight” has cropped up in the family line before. Go figure. That’s something I never would have known about if that particular book of my mother’s hadn’t been on the coffee table. So there — the deep dark family secret is out, and its turns out not to be such a dark subject after all.

Lovely weather down here – sunny with cloudy periods, a nice twenty-ish degrees… and absolutely no schedule to stick to. Lovely, I tell you.

Book Stuff

I got free books in the mail today!

Okay, I have to write reviews on them, but they’re free books! I love this job! (Freelance writing, that is.)

Friends are at the Toronto WorldCon this weekend (affectionately known as TorCon), revelling in the total immersion of things speculative. The irony of the situation is that I, too, will be in Toronto this weekend. Just not at TorCon. Alas.

(I should get Ceri back for being In The Presence of Neil Gaiman Without Me by writing a single story for her which contains all four assigned story points I haven’t yet addressed. Ha.)

To The Moon, Lepidopterae!

Eeeeeee!

Today is the day I mail my press packet to the U.S. publisher. There’s a confidentiality agreement on its way, so they must be serious enough about wanting me. The butterflies in my tummy today, however, are almost worse — no, they are worse — than the day I sent off my CV and cover letter. I’m currently running on nervous-excited adrenaline.

No, I’m good. I’m fine. I have a black folder, my business cards, a small photo, and I’ve selected excellent samples of my writing. It’s a good cross-section of first-person, academic, analytical, and educational styles. I have my colour services pamphlet that I drew up some time back. The writing will be printed out professionally tonight, then into the folder it will go, along with a hard copy of my CV, a one-page summary of my experience (I’ll just rewrite my awesome cover letter!), and a hand-written note telling my contact that I�m actually ten years older than my photo makes me look. (Seriously. Well, no; the picture makes me look twenty-four. I’m thirty-two. So eight years older.)

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I’m excited!

If I could harness these butterflies, I could probably reach the moon.

Welcome Back!

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Honoured Others:

I am overjoyed to introduce the new version of Courts of Chaos!

Long dormant, while The Lazy Mage toiled with little tolerance for compromise behind the scenes and under cover of dark HTML, the new Courts rise with shining promise for the future.

Welcome back!

(By the way, that electrician never showed up yesterday. Anyone for a round of kneecapping with blunt objects?)

Status Check

Since my mother addressed an e-mail to her Darling Lost Daughter this morning, methinks ’tis time for another Update.

Status: Warm. I think I have pulse, too. That’s good, right?

Detailed Status: I lost my sense of humour somewhere along the way a couple of days ago. If found, please return it; it’s lonely. Also, I am moving into An Anti-Social Phase (TM). It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that after two weeks of a wonderful high, I’m cocooning.

Good Things: My hair is behaving. The humidity has broken.

Bad Things: My cats are insane and pains in the neck. Especially the one who thinks the waterbowl is her personal playground.

Synchronicitous Events: I had a wonderful history of the qabala class on Saturday afternoon led by one of my students. While I know the basics of the qabala, I knew nothing about the history of the thing. A day later, I was reading a book which took a side trip and addressed qabala history, both mystical and factual. It was nice to (a) refresh the info I learned on Saturday, and (b) feel smug because I already knew it.

Irritating Events: You may remember the day over a month ago when my radiators were finally torn from their moorings after an earlier false start. Guess what? The electric heaters were scheduled to go in a couple of weeks ago; the electrician never showed up. Today, he was scheduled to show up first thing in the morning. If you check the time stamp, it’s just past eleven. I’m staying home today instead of going in to work just so that the electrician can do his thing. If he does not show up again, I Will Have Blood For This.

Something You Ought To Have Guessed: I picked up The Two Towers DVD yesterday. I know, I know; we’ll own the extended edition too. But not for another three months or so, and we only saw this one twice in the theatres.

More Something You Ought To Have Guessed: I will so be in attendance for the nine-hour LOTR extended marathon in theatres this December. Join me?

Overheard on the Radio News: Mars is “just 56 million miles away.” It’s all relative, you know?

I’m immersed in writing stories and reviews for the next three days. Then I’m in Toronto for Labour Day weekend, visiting my parents. Combined with my Anti-Social Phase (TM), this means you won’t hear a lot from me. Unless, of course, something happens for which I must rant or rejoice.

Studio!

My husband has finally moved into his studio space, and while I’m grateful, I’m sure he’s even more relieved. We got to unpack a couple of his boxes that hadn’t been opened since our move six months ago, and lo and behold, in one of them I found a tiny box of my things too. It held copies of press releases I’d written, articles, things like that. In amongst them, though, I found an old file box of business cards left over from my F/SF bookselling days, and I opened them and sorted through them, just for kicks. I found some odd stuff.

Like William Gibson’s fax number scribbled on a slip of paper.

And Cory Doctorow’s Charles Atlas-style business card.

And Forrest J Ackerman’s full-color photocard.

All in all, it was an interesting trip down memory lane. Besides, it was a terrific lesson on how-not-to-design-a-business-card. The majority of them were disastrous from a marketing point of view – no charisma whatsoever.

I’m thrilled, thrilled, thrilled that my husband is now officially Set Up in his artist space. I’m equally overjoyed that he’s decided to spend at least an hour every other day working there to relax. I love being there too, so this might be an answer to those restless evenings were we can’t settle down but have no real idea of what we want to do. I’ll grab my laptop, he’ll grab his sketchbook, and off we’ll go.

Make no mistake – we know exactly how lucky we are.