Transition

Jeff and I got back from the cottage (and a canoe trip) late last night. Whenever we go up north for more than a few days, it's always a bit of a culture shock when we come back to the city. In some ways, it reminds me of how I feel when I step from a darkened theatre after seeing a good movie, back into the chaos of light and noise. On the other hand, I always return with a renewed appreciation for high-speed access and flush toilets.

Today's goal: unpack, do laundry, and attempt to catch up on the mountain of e-mail that's accumulated over the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to get into my admin page to update my publishing news column for WritersMarket.com, probably because of a site revamp last week; I've let the people at WritersMarket.com know, so hopefully the problem should be fixed soon.



Just before we left for the cottage, by the way, I sent off my rewritten manuscript. As I mentioned a while back, a publishing house expressed interest (but not enough for a contract yet) and I've been working with one of the editors there. I'm grateful for the one-on-one critique discussions, and learned a great deal that I'll be able to apply to my other writing projects.

Anyway, the ball is back in their court, and I'm crossing my fingers very, very hard. Whatever happens, I'm happier with the mss now; it's stronger and more likely to find a publisher...hopefully sooner than later. Wish me luck, eh? Meanwhile, I'm excited about plunging into my next fiction project.



This time I plan to a lot more outlining (probably via Scrivener) before I start writing. The novel I just sent off was originally written for NaNoWriMo, but I did only cursory outlining; I could have saved myself several rewrites if I had taken the time to do more detailed background and plot outlining first. I know some authors can write books without much of an outline; I'm just not one of them. :-)





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Hummingbird thoughts

I've been taking hundreds of photos every day. Deleting most of them, but I'm learning lots about my new Canon Rebel XTi and its various lenses. The photos on this page were taken with the Canon 70-300 lens.



I've always been fascinated by hummingbirds. We get Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds at the cottage, where these tiny birds are as nasty (to each other) as they are gorgeous.




I'm assuming this one is a female Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, but I welcome corrections:




All these photos were taken without a tripod. I just waited around until the birds got used to me (about 10-15 minutes); I had to change out of my red sweatshirt because they kept coming up to ME and hovering way too close for me to get a shot with the telephoto. :-)



There's something zen-like about waiting for a good bird/animal shot that may or may not happen. Unlike a building or landscape, your subject won't hold still for you and may not show up at all. And yet the waiting itself (at least for me) is part of the enjoyment, I find, forcing me to slow down and enjoy one moment at a time instead of always multitasking and rushing around. Even if I don't get my shot, I still come out of the experience feeling more relaxed.

What about the rest of you bird/animal photographers?



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How to make winter ice candles (Cottage Visit Part 2)

Happy birthday to my sweetie-pie of a husband, Jeff! The photo above was taken by one of our nieces this past weekend at the cottage, when Jeff posed with a childhood toy he called Flatmouse. Flatmouse, by the way, will be featured in one of my sister's upcoming books.

And hey, I've been Booklust-ed! Thanks to Patricia Storms for the kind words.

But back to making winter ice candles for our nieces; Jeff learned how to do this from our friend, Jeff Latto. First, he poured water into pails and left them outside to freeze overnight. This was enough time for the water to freeze on top and around the edges.

The next morning, he hammered holes in the top of each:



In the background, you can see the water hole that Jeff and our nieces chopped through the ice.

After making the holes, Jeff turned the buckets upside down and emptied out the water. Then he put each pail in a larger bucket of hot water just long enough to loosen the ice so that he could take the candles out. Here's what they looked like:



That night, he placed candles inside each and lit them. The effect was pretty magical:



Interesting to note how the middle ice candle had clearer and thinner ice; it was made in a bigger pail, which probably accounts for the difference.

I did some surfing online about ice candles. Looks like you can also use a tin can or small plastic cup to create the inside space where the candle fits: Ice Candles: Family Education. Or use a balloon instead of a pail to make smaller round candles: Winter Ice Candles. The latter site also suggests using a plastic one-gallon ice cream bucket instead of a pail.

Anyway, Jeff's ice candles turned out wonderfully; I recommend this as a fun family outdoor activity.

We celebrated Jeff's birthday at the cottage. Because of the impracticality of lugging a cake across the lake, my nieces improvised one out of Two-Bite Brownies and icing instead:




Jeff just turned 44, in case you're wondering about the arrangement of candles.

A great weekend, with lots of outdoor and indoor activities. I recently had a conversation with a friend about the value of purposely NOT being comfortable from time to time. We all tend to take comfort for granted, I think. As a result, we're more likely to get upset or whine about small discomforts and inconveniences. I'm talking about minor discomfort here, not physical pain. Exerting oneself, for example (as in physical exercise!), or getting temporarily wet or cold or too hot.

I find that too MUCH comfort sometimes makes me lazy, too. While this is fine for purposely lazy days, I feel that there's also a danger of letting a need for comfort keep you from doing interesting or challenging or useful things.



Which is why I purposely make myself uncomfortable sometimes. This can be anything from taking a brisk walk in less-than-optimal conditions or going to the gym (especially when I'm more inclined to sit at home where it's cozy and warm) to going camping or winter cottaging or working in the garden or walking in the rain in my sandals.

It certainly helps make me better appreciate what I have. The first thing I wanted to do when Jeff and I got home from the cottage, for example, was to take a hot shower. And it felt INCREDIBLY AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL. The best hot shower I ever had was the shower I took after a 10-day canoe trip on the Nahanni River where the closest you ever got to washing was dunking your head in glacier-fed waters. A lot of involuntary yelling was usually involved.

I briefly considered using this method to enhance my enjoyment of chocolate (e.g. going without chocolate for x days) but y'know, some sacrifices are just too great.

;-)


Ruth and me. Photo by one of my nieces.

Link O' The Day

(Thanks to my friend Ray)

XKCD: A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language: I loooove this comic, and spent too much time going through the archives yesterday (curse you, Ray!). I also identified way too much with this strip.



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Winter cottage visit (part 1)

This past weekend, Jeff and I went to the cottage with my sister and her family. Visiting the cottage in winter is a more complicated process than during the summer. The lake is frozen, for example, which means we can't use the motorboat. Instead, we have to lug sleds (with all our food and gear) across the ice...a trek that can take anywhere from 40 minutes to well over an hour. Some trips are easier than others; it depends on the condition of the ice, the temperature, and the weather. Last March, I posted about a particularly slushy trip across.

This past weekend wasn't as bad, although it got pretty slushy in places, as you can see from the photo below:



The weekend was also colder than some others, which meant that the slush froze quickly. A little bit of slush would cling to the bottom of sleds and snowshoes and then freeze. Then more slush would collect, freeze, and so on. In only a matter of minutes, you felt as if you were pulling a beached whale. You'd stop, paintstakingly scrape off all the ice, start pulling...and the next time you hit a slushy spot, the process would start again.

Here is a close-up of some frozen slush on the bottom of my sisters snow shoe:



One of our niece's snowpants:



I am determined to find a more comfortable way of pulling the sleds for our next winter visit. I still have nasty-looking bruises from where the thin rope cut into me; I'm going to look for more comfortable straps, ideally padded. Partway across the lake, I was really struggling, so my heroic brother-in-law Kaarel took some of my load and took it on his sled. Thank you, Kaarel!

Here's a photo I took shortly after we set off across the lake. I turned around and took this photo of my sled, with Kaarel standing behind ready to pull his own sled. You can just see my sister Ruth peering over Kaarel's shoulder:



This photo shows part of our tracks across the lake. Our origin point: the other side of the bay on the far shore of the lake; you can just see the entrance to the bay about 2/3 way across the photo with the dip in the horizon:



My sister Ruth, hanging out on the cottage deck:



I just found out, by the way, that Ruth is a finalist for the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award this year!

But back to the cottage...

In the photo below, Jeff and one of our nieces chop a hole through the lake for water. We boiled the water for drinking as well as using it for washing dishes:



The trick was that it was so cold that the water froze over quickly, so they had to chop through the ice each time we needed to get more water. We kept several containers of water inside the cottage for daily use.

Having limited water made us much more conscious about how many dishes we used during the day. I pre-cooked several meals in advance to cut down on both the amount of cooking needed as well as the number of pots to be washed. Plus we didn't know until we actually GOT to the cottage whether or not we'd have power; so often, ice-laden electric wires get pulled down during the winter.

If that happened, we'd heat up food and water over the wood stove or camp stove. Our nieces were actually hoping for a power outage because it would make the trip more of an adventure. :-) Sadly (for them, anyway), we did have power.

Still, it was definitely more exciting than a regular cottage visit. There's no running water, after all. No bugs! You can walk on the lake! Plus there was a rim of ice around the toilet seat in the outhouse when we arrived. :-D

My nieces had great fun on this trip, and can't wait to go back.

More pics...

On Saturday, Jeff built an outdoor fire on the snow above the fire pit. As the snow melted, the logs sank lower:



My appetite whetted by the trek across the ice, I prepare to eat Jeff's brains:



Photo by one of my nieces.

Tomorrow: birthdays and ice candles!



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