Monthly Archives: January 2004

Housing Grumbles

As if substandard heaters aren’t enough, the electrical upgrade the landlord did around the time we moved in wasn’t sufficient to handle all the new electrical heaters going at once. Our power blew yesterday, and our heaters were offline for about twelve hours.

More excitingness included a half dozen emergency vehicles blocking off our street yesterday and brown-outs. I know Hydro-Quebec’s system is stressed when the temperature drops like this, but these problems aren’t general, they’re limited to our building, or ours plus the building on each side. The tenants have all decided to make a list of Things To Be Addressed and send it in a registered letter to the landlord. I know the heat is a big issue, but for me, the most annoying day-to-day problem is the front door. It’s a split door — the doorway is wide, and has two doors hung in it. Problem is, they’re each narrower than your average door, and the left one is always locked. When I leave with my cello over my shoulder, I have to struggle to pull the door open, hold it open because the spring closing is aggressively set, wriggle through and immediately run down the five steps while the door slams shut because there’s no landing on the other side. The door isn’t even wide enough to get a laundry basket through without turning sideways.

Sure, fine, you might say; it’s not so bad. Right. Except that locked left-hand door is highly illegal, because any emergency crew trying to get in won’t be able to fit. They’re lovely doors. I’d hate to see them get hacked down. Worse, if there’s a fire inside, it’s not a legally safe exit. We’ve got about fifty people in this building; the thought of all of them trying to jam through that narrow door is just ugly. (Fire escapes? What fire escapes? We discovered last summer that they lead right back into the basement of the building.)

Wow, I didn’t mean to go on a minor rant like that. I like this apartment a lot, I really do. One always discovers good things and bad things throughout a stay somewhere, though.

Good things yesterday involved the beginning of a new game (with lots of sugar! Yay meringues!), and getting long-awaited info to appreciative parties including friends, students, a newsletter co-ordinator, and the US acquisitions editor.

And today… home-baked cookies!

Joy of Socks

Remember those electric heaters that were installed last summer? The ones we haven’t really tested yet because it hasn’t been cold enough?

Guess what. Yep. They’re next to useless when the temperature goes below minus ten Celsius.

Have I mentioned that it’s numbingly cold here in Montreal recently? As in minus thirty-nine-ish?

I have recently rediscovered the joys of wearing socks to bed. Last night I wore full pyjamas plus a flannel button-up nightgown over them. Over the past five years I have grown used to not feeling cold; my husband, the portable furnace that he is, usually makes up for any lack of warmth in the air. And yet, even he’s finding the apartment cold these days. Even more than my multiple layers of clothing, this fact is proof to me that the heaters are substandard and the landlords were cutting costs.

Let’s see – spring is in, oh, seventy days or so?

Double The Fun

After witnessing my side of a phone call from Boston yesterday afternoon, Ceri and t! tried to convince me that I’d been offered not one new job, but two. Deep in the state of stun, I tried to argue to the contrary, but they eventually swayed me.

Today’s phone call with the acquisitions editor of the publishing company for which I freelance just sealed it. Yep. One definite new contract to be signed, making me the official imprint specialist. The other… well, let’s just say that in two weeks I need to have a rough draft for a proposal, vision statement, and sales pitch for a new series of books featuring inspirational real-life stories, that would be mine, all mine, to call for and collect submissions, accept or reject those submissions, collate, edit, and hand the product over to them for publication. Editor. Not consultant. Editor.

This second job is different. It assumes that I’m, er, a freelance editor for hire.

Which means that I am.

When did I become what I wanted to be? I must have missed the memo.

Hmm

Yesterday was one of those frustrating days where I spent hours and hours editing three different projects, and only finished one of them. I hate days like that; I feel like I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing. Yeah, yeah; I know that I invested x hours of work that brought me that much closer to the finish line; but I didn’t hit that finish line. So I’m goal-oriented. Sue me.

I re-read Balsamic Moon last night. Anything that makes me laugh out loud at parts has definite potential. I’d done my first edit, which usually consists of spelling and prettifying the obviously awkward prose, and as usual, I missed things which I’ll have to pick up on the second edit which should be late this month or early next month. It needs a bit of expansion, and a fleshed-out ending as opposed to the current two-page final chapter and single page of summarized postscript (hey, it was the evening of November 30, and I hated the novel by that point; I passed 50K and that was all that counted at the time), but all in all, it’s a solid piece of work with definite potential.

I’ve discovered that lately, all I want to read is occult-based fiction, and there’s not a heck of a lot out there that I haven’t already read. The obvious answer is that I’ll just have to write it, which is fine, as I’ve already started with my two NaNo novels. And the more published crap that I read, the more hope I have that my stuff is marketable. The dreck out there is really lowering the bar.

The kittens are bouncing off walls this morning. It’s a full moon tomorrow; evidently they’re celebrating early!

Out Of Whack

One of the worst things about the holidays is one’s perception and understanding of how the week is structured gets all messed up.

For example: today I am firmly convinced that it is Monday. I keep thinking that I have nothing scheduled for tonight. This misperception is further supported by the fact that a new gaming group gathered yesterday, and has chosen Sunday nights to meet. If we meet on Sundays, yesterday must have been Sunday, and today, perforce, must be Monday.

In fact, today is Friday, and I teach a class tonight.

The crazy thing is I thought that it was Monday last Tuesday as well. As Monday technically signals the beginning of my weekend, this suggests to me that I’ve been working too much. Freelance writers don’t get paid vacations, however. Nor do freelance teachers. And in the midst of rearranging and end-of-year cleaning I still have to fit in a final edit of three chapters given to me over a week ago by the publisher, a first edit of a new teaching workbook, and those three book reviews, all before Monday, as well as teaching four three-hour classes.

No rest for the weary. So naturally, I am work-avoiding by blogging and doing web work.

Rewriting Shortcuts

I moved a whack of books around last week, putting my music and art books up front in the bay window alcove (you know, where I actually play the cello) and bringing my Craft books into the office (you know, where I write/edit Craft-related stuff and have an altar). It makes a heck of a lot more sense. I also somehow ended up with an empty shelf and a half left over when all was said and done. I’m not questioning that particular miracle, because I might wake up and discover that it was all a dream. When HRH came home that day he looked at it and remarked that I’d better buy more more books to fill them, because they look awful. I have a wonderful husband. He may mock me, but he mocks me with words I can twist to my own ends.

Anywhats. Point is, I moved the books. I evidently still haven’t updated the shortcut in my mind, however, because when I need a Craft reference I’m still getting up from the computer and walking through the living room, all the way into the front alcove, only to stand and blink at the case of music texts. Then I kick myself and walk all the way back into the office. I moved things to make life easier and more efficient. So far, I’ve succeeded only in confusing myself and making myself feel stupid.

Things will improve.

I’m currently twisting my husband’s mind by playing the Matrix Revolutions score, Tori Amos’ Tales of a Librarian, Radio Sunnydale, the Metallica-playing cellos of Apocalyptica, and the Return of the King score on random. I can hear the radical shifting of gears his brain makes when the shuffle function engages. For some reason, though, the player is inordinately fond of RotK, which is partly disappointing, and partly amusing, because it really lulls HRH into a sense of complacency subsequently exploded by something antithetical.