cottage kitsch

Blech, woke up sick.

Must research and upload my daily Market Watch column, but then am going back to bed. Meanwhile, here is some cottage kitsch for your amusement:




I think JBR bought this at some charity auction. Like most cottage kitsch that no one can find a practical purpose for, it got stuck up on the wall to be admired and ridiculed.





Psychedelic-looking mushrooms on the kitchen cupboards, probably stuck there in the seventies. How groooovy....

May 2004 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal

cottage

Rosewood flute I bought at Hobgoblin Music in the UK
several years ago when Urban Tapestry performed at Didgeri-Douze.


Looks like power and phone lines are fine, hence this cottage Blathering.

Quiet day. Napped, played my rosewood flute, did some reading (Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card), worked on my novel (added over 1000 words without ViaVoice, yay), sauna and lake dip. There were FOUR spiders in the outhouse this morning, though none as big as last time.

I've been sadly neglecting my wooden flute. Even pre-tendinitis, I wasn't playing it nearly enough. Must find some Urban Tapestry songs to use it for. At present I play the songs in my Irish pennywhistle book as well as just noodling improvised tunes. It has a different sound from my metal flute...somewhat more melancholy, and I like how the upper range sounds better on my rosewood than the metal. Since there are no levers and I haven't yet mastered accidentals with half-holing technique properly yet, I can only play in D or related keys, but that covers a lot of Celtic music. :-)

Playing it reminded me of the wonderful time I had in England, the friends I made and got to see again, the great music. Made me all nostalgic and wanting to go back someday, hopefully sooner than later. Have to ramp up my freelance income again first.

Was amused by all the cat and WonderDebbie comments, by the way.

Going back to reading now. Please don't send me big files; we only have a dial-up here, thanks. I'm also staying offline most of this weekend, so will be holding off on most e-mail until next week.



Cloudy cottage morning.

May 2004 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal

chocolate cherry martinis and neurotic cats

Gaming a couple of weeks ago.


Happy birthday to Lyanne Quirt!

Sent off another article. One more digital photography article to go, plus the short story (plus my novel project(s), of course). Starting next week, I'm going to start sending out more magazine queries.

I think I'll mainly be targeting higher-paying markets from now on. This will likely mean fewer acceptances, but I'm hoping the payoff should be worth it. That's the theory, anyway. :-) I'll be spending the extra time on my fiction projects.

Had a good Urban Tapestry practice with Allison and Jodi last night, running through our playlist for our concert at Confluence. Allison's and John's cat, Eddie, was schmoozing up to Jodi; it was pretty amusing. Eddie was definitely in a needy mood...in the middle of going through songs, we'd be interrupted by odd sounds which ended up being Eddie climbing into the Coke can box, Eddie gnawing on the end of a plastic watering can, Eddie trying to climb up a bookshelf for no apparent reason. What is it with cats? Most of the time they seem standoffish and self-respecting, other times they go all spazzy and neurotic. Comments from you cat people out there welcome: I honestly want to know. Am I right in observing this is NORMAL in cats? And if so, how do you cat owners stay sane??



Our friend Vartan.


Most of today's photos are from a Friday gaming session a couple of weeks ago (corrected info, heh...I orginally said "last Friday's gaming session" and got Reid into trouble; see Blatherchat) and Vartan's martini-making session on the Saturday. My first martini! As far as I can tell, anything poured into a martini glass is a martini. There doesn't really seem to be one common type of alcohol. To you booze-drinkers out there: am I correct?



Chocolate cherry martini recipe (see next photo for results).


I don't tend to drink a lot of alcohol...maybe the equivalent of a glass of wine a week. Several reasons: it's an expensive habit, I don't like the taste of beer, and I have a pretty low alcohol tolerance. When I reach my tolerance level, I don't get funny and entertaining, I fall asleep. Very boring.

I tend to like "girlydrinks" (Adam English was the first one I've heard use this term, and now I can't think of them any other way)...you know, the sweet kind with paper umbrellas and silly names. I'm fond of plum wine on the rocks, some kinds of hot sake, and an addictive chocolate/cream liqueur that Rand introduced to Urban Tapestry years ago.



Vartan made me my first martini. Yum.


To those going to Balticon and Marcon this weekend: have fun! Wish I could be at both conventions.

And here's a frightening photo from my friend Reid, who says: "Feeling left out in the PhotoShopped-Debbie arena, I thought I would give you my contribution..."

May 2004 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal

Jeff, was sagst du?

Saw Shrek 2 last night with Jeff; both of us liked it at least as much as the first one. I have to see it again...I know I missed a ton of "little stuff" like subtle visual in-jokes. -Love- Puss'n'Boots. :-) My physiotherapist is kicking me out after the next two sessions, augh! She says I'm ready to do the exercises on my own, that I don't need her anymore. I feel like a little kid grabbing her mother's apron strings, refusing to be pried off. My reason is somewhat superstitious: I've quit physio twice before, had setbacks soon after. Yes, I know, coincidental. But my recovery's going so well this time that I don't want to do anything to jinx it. Just need to be careful, not be stupid. So I've decided to really tackle my bugaboo in my German studies head-on: GERMAN VERB CONJUGATIONS, starting with the present tense of regular, irregular and modal verbs. I'm making flashcards and also bought a German verb drill book at the University of Toronto bookstore. Thanks to my friend John Chew for this suggestion. Four months until we go to Vienna. ich sage du sagst Sie sagen er sagt sie sagt es sagt man sagt wir sagen ihr sagt Sie sagen sie sagen Wish me luck. And Allison, too...she's going to be learning German as well, yay! We have quite a few German filk friends to practice on (I have my friends Anita and Scott, too), plus Paul Kwinn is studying the language. Hmm...maybe we'll be seeing some badly-accented but well-intended German filk songs spring into existence over the next few years, who knows? I had fun singing a German filk song with Dave Weingart earlier this year...and his accent is waaaaaaaaaaay better than mine. FYI, "Jeff, was sagst du?" means "Jeff, what are you saying?" Working on the short story today; it's my turn (got Michelle's file this morning). Deadline looming! Urban Tapestry practice with Allison and Jodi tonight. We've worked out a tentative playlist for our July Confluence concert in Pittsburgh, and need to go through the songs. I'm bringing my flute. Hey, and I've started TUNING MY HARP! May not sound like much, but I haven't touched my harp in over a year. Tuning itself is pretty hard on wimpy tendons like mine, so I'm doing a few of the strings at a time. Also played guitar for a wee bit last night, did a VERY wee bit of songwriting. So hard to hold back, but one of my previous setbacks was caused by too much guitar playing too early. I've been checking out the lilacs in the Toronto Music Garden during some of my runs. I *love* the scent of fresh lilacs. If I had a zillion dollars, I'd have a bunch of fresh lilacs in a vase every day. Or better yet, buy a house with a lilac bush just outside my bedroom window. May 2004 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal

fiction writing

Drawing I made in Corel Painter (for TFFH)


Worked on my novel yesterday. Still recovering from tendinitis, and was a bit frustrated at having to interrupt my writing every 15-20 minutes for a break because my arms were getting tired/sore. Easier to do this for nonfiction than fiction, I find. BUT I'm writing again. :-)

I find I'm best able to focus on fiction-writing when I'm completely offline, so I worked in a library part of yesterday afternoon. No cellphone, no e-mail, no Internet. When it was time to take an arm break, I'd read a book for a bit. Going to do the same today...Trying to get in the habit of spending part of each day doing some fiction writing, some nonfiction writing/queries/research.

Although my "arm point quota" each day is gradually increasing and I do expect to be fully healed eventually, I'm still far more limited than I was pre-tendinitis. One good side effect is that I'm far more conscious of how I write; it's more important to get it right the first time. One bad effect is that it's more of a challenge to edit.

Picked up a "Return of the King" DVD yesterday at HMV; it came with a Gollum holographic card which is kind of cool. Hung out at Parki's last night and watched some of the special features. I agree with Allison; it's pretty clear that they're saving the best extra stuff for the extended version.

I don't care; this DVD will keep me happy until the extended version comes out. I'm such a sap...even some of the short clips from the movie in the special features were getting me teary-eyed. In the theatre, of course, I was bawling. (e.g. Samwise to Frodo: "Don't go where I can't follow!")

Oh lordy. Must remember to buy some more tissues before watching the movie again.

May 2004 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal