Pointless Wanking
One of my Clarion West instructors Connie Willis signs her latest book for me.
Since the beginning of the year I've been trying to get this story revised and ready to submit. It's a long one and has given me an extra amount of headache since the very first draft.
That one was set aside for a little rest and I started preparing a different story for submitting. This one was a lot more fun which was a refreshing surprise. I thought maybe I was always going to find revisions agonizing.
My point is that I've been putting almost all of my free time into these stories and I'm starting to feel a bit frazzled on everything else. As soon I get them both submitted I'm taking a day to do maintenance which includes house things, yard work, errands and probably the taxes, also the millions of photos and duplicates I have in various unlabled folders and the 50 URLs I have saved in a folder in my desktop to look at later. Why do I do this to myself?
I can't help it. I saved them, now I have to look.
I did finally get a few more of those old photos scanned and will share later this week.
posted by Pamela at 5:17 PM
Sunday, February 07, 2010
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The Most Depressing Sundries Shop in the World
When we moved into the new office building about 18 months ago, among the first thing we did was check out the restaurant and the sundries market.After moving we went to the restaurant bar for happy hour. It smelled like beer and had the ambiance of a bar in an airport hotel. We decided never to go there again. It later went out of business. It's like a haunted restaurant now because all the stuff is still in there, including the hard liquor, and occasionally there will be a light on and a few chairs moved around, but no people.
We also only went into the sundries market one time. Co-worker smokes. She didn't have his brand. She didn't have his back-up brand. We never never went in there again.
The sundries market was tiny and didn't even have good candy. The whole place reeked of despair. There was a 50-ish lady who is the only person I ever saw working in there and she never smiled. It wasn't like she was a person who doesn't smile much, it was like she was about 5 minutes a way from swallowing a box of paper clips to end it all.
One day the place was locked up and there was a big sign that the business license was expired. But she returned. And she seemed to be trying. There was a sign that she now sold coffee. Two sizes. Small and large. There was a sign they now served Chinese food.
Our law clerk last summer bought soda from there even after I told him it was the most depressing sundries shop in the world.
I didn't even like to walk past it. I always thought it was too bad they didn't get some charming person in there and paint the walls and sell yummy baked goods.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed a sign that they had new management. I saw two new people working in there. Bummer lady is gone. They wear bright green smocks and it looks they have colorful signs up and a big display of sandwiches.
I don't know for sure because I still can't bring myself to go in there.
posted by Pamela at 1:25 PM
Friday, February 05, 2010
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News on the Radio
Today's my mother-in-law's birthday.
I had a good week but I woke up at 2:30am this morning and I'm completely droopy right now. I had an epic post planned but the scanner decided to go crazy on me so we'll have to look forward to it later.
Here's one of the shots from the Europe trip. I wrote on the back, "Arc D'Triumph Aug 78." I love the cars.
Tonight's update is that I sold another story, "Estelle Makes the Casino Run," which will be available online on June 1st. The table of contents is here: Innsmouth Free Press.
I'm excited to see my name turn up in one of my Google vanity alerts from something other than my own blog.
posted by Pamela at 10:23 PM
Thursday, February 04, 2010
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The Simple Life Ain't So Simple
At last, all my major responsibilities for the week are over. Comcast has been and and gone. The guy seemed slightly taken aback when I ran out to the truck and thanked him.Now I've got a little free time and I think I'm going to squander part of it by sitting on the couch and watching one of my shows.
Today was writer's group and I usually bake a treat. When I know I'm going to be busy I usually buy cookie dough or brownie mix to make it easy. This week I was mesmerized by the pictures of layer cakes on the cake mix boxes and threw a mix in my cart. Of course, later I realized that made no sense. That I wasn't going to pour the mix in a bowl and pull a frosted layer cake out of the oven.
I thought I could make it a bundt cake and drizzle something over the top. I hollered at Kira and Amanda for help and Amanda recommended a basic ganache and explained how to do it.
I made the cake last night but I waited until this morning at the last minute to do the topping. I needed to bathe before the meeting and the chocolate wasn't melting so I finally put it in my improvised double boiler and put it on low and jumped in the shower. When I returned it was all melty and I very delicately attempted to drizzle it on my cake.
PLOP. PLOP.
I used a spatula to smear it around. I wasn't sure whether this was a disaster or not. It's not a great photo. I still need a "make your food look pretty on your blog" tutorial. It tasted fantastic and everyone loved it. That's good enough for me.
On Tuesday I had a smoked bacon cheeseburger and fries that ruined my digestive system for 24 hours but was so totally worth it.
posted by Pamela at 2:44 PM
Saturday, January 30, 2010
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Fuk-Ola-Dola
Patti with surprise appearance by Severus Snape. (Peter Buck)
When I started this post almost two hours ago, it was going to be about seeing Patti Smith talk about her new memoir this week. But we've had a minor clusterfuk in the meanwhile so I'm going to write about that instead.
Here's Hannah's review of Patti in Seattle. The first time I met Hannah was at a soccer game. The second time I met Hannah was at a Patti Smith show. If the third time we met it was at a Star Wars convention, we would have had to get married. But she's not a Star Wars fanatic. But she loves to read and is a fiction librarian which is even better. But we already married other people.
Here's Bob's review of Patti in Portland.
Onto today's surprise adventure.
We have this giant hedge between our house and the house next door. Today we had someone come over to prune our trees and whack back the hedge.
A couple of hours ago he knocked on the door to let me know that he'd accidentally cut the phone line to the house next door. Okay! Crap!
I got on the horn and sat through the phone tree from hell, did a song and dance to get the repair department. "No not my phone, the phone next door," and so forth like this. They told me there was no record of them having a landline.
Yay! They won't be inconvenienced.
The phone company made an appointment to come fix it anyway and I put a note on the neighbor's door letting them know what was happening.
Could it possibly be that easy?
No. Neighbor comes over and thanks me for the note but informs me she has no cable and no internet. And she's not happy. And who can blame her? Who wants to come home from work and find you have no cable because of your stupid neighbors?
So now I have to get on the horn with Comcast and go through another phone tree. [Hint: when the phonebot asks you to explain the problem yell at it. It'll transfer you to a person.] More back and forth and when can they come? Monday. Yikes! Please don't make me go to angry neighbor's house and tell her she has to wait until Monday. More back and forth. The best they can do is tomorrow.
Then back to the phone company's phone tree to cancel that service call.
Then over to neighbor's with more apologies and explanation.
Then pour a glass of wine.
Let's just hope the repair goes as planned. The guy said "there is no way on earth someone won't be there to repair it tomorrow."
posted by Pamela at 4:40 PM
Friday, January 29, 2010
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Work That Cowl Neck Baby
Another photo from Germany. Look at my Mom's giant purse. That's my sister exiting the WC. Me and my bitchin feathered hair are holding my Kodak camera which must be the source of the old packet of random photos of castles and lakes with no people or interesting things to look at that I have in my photo box.
Here's a journal entry from that trip, exactly as in original:
Sunday August 20th
Today we went to a old ruined castle. The walls were thick and high. There was a wonderful view of the Rhine River. We crossed the border and went to Heidleburg. Heidleberg is a wonderful little city where we stayed in a nice hotel with featherbeds and a nice big bathroom. We took a short walk to the train station. That night we went to a famous resteraunt and had a good meal.
You can really get a sense of my early genius. I'm grateful we didn't lose that detail about the hotel bathroom.
In the process of my regular Sunday afternoon taking stock of things I noticed that I have a crazy busy week coming up. Posting will be cranky if at all.
posted by Pamela at 7:11 PM
Sunday, January 24, 2010
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Flower Power
I just realized that I didn't crop those the way I intended. Oh well.
I haven't bought any new dahlia bulbs for two years because i already have so many and I'd shifted my attention to more spring bulbs. Last summer I noticed I'd lost a bunch of my dinner plate dahlias, probably during the winter wonderland of December 08, so I grabbed highlighter and post-its when my catalog showed up. I'm going to be restrained but will buy more than just replacing my dinner plate collection. There are a bunch of new ones but the bulbs are up to $23 a piece. Yikes. I'm a lazy gardener. I don't need luxury flowers to fret about.
This morning I saw an unfamiliar cat jumping around in the backyard and I realized it had a mouse. I leaned up on the kitchen counter and yelled, "Bob! There's a cat and mouse in our yard." That made the cat look at me and the mouse tottered around in the grass. The cat went back to bashing on the mouse and Bob came in and said, "Yeah, there is a mouse." So then the cat looked at us again and after a long pause the mouse scampered under the deck. The cat jumped around the deck but couldn't get at the mouse. We laughed. That mouse better not start a family anywhere inside this house.