Robin McKinley's Blog, page 193

Pale green Monday

 

I've spent most of the day having a stomachache.  It's not even an interesting stomachache.  Just your plain dull garden variety unnnh* stomachache.  Now tonight was going to be my first official goofing-off, I mean text-alternative, Monday, so I can more perfectly** focus on PEGASUS one more day in the week.***  And Blogmom and I were going to produce something magnificent and compelling . . . and then Blogmom was hijacked to more urgent matters†, trailing promises to have magnificence and ...

Bitten by a sea monster

 

I have this fabulous lamp.  Actually I have two of them.*  They sit on the windowsill beside the kitchen table at the cottage and they amuse me very much.  When I spend evenings at the cottage** I put one on the table before I pull the curtains to shed light on my computer screen.  This is a perfectly serviceable system.  Unfortunately I am a halfwit.***  The lamp tends to sit between me and the kitchen radio on the other side of the table.  I was (laudably) paying close attention to what I ...

Guest blog by blondviolinist

 

 Practicing

            "I like to play, but I don't like to practice." I've heard those words a lot, and they always make me smile. They also give me an urge to throw the speaker into the nearest creek. What do they think practicing is? Not playing their instrument? If you are serious about music, you are going to spend more time playing your instrument in the "practice room" than performing in public. The better your practice techniques, the more fun you will have while you practice, and...

The middle of the night

 

 Oh for pity's sake it's the middle of the night already and I still have to write a blog entry.  I haven't eaten supper yet either.  It can't be that late if I haven't eaten supper yet.

            Yes it can.

            My days usually do kind of flash by but for the next five days I am under the colossal, the description-beggaring strain of having to wash my own salad and chop my own hellhound chicken.*  Peter is in Scotland for these five days;  he has a proper author gig at the...

Limbo

 

I had a really good day on PEGASUS yesterday.*  Today I've had a bloody awful one—the kind of day when it takes you an hour to write a sentence and then it's the wrong sentence.**  Yesterday I reached the end of part one*** which is roughly the halfway point, and is also the point at which things start going a little ropey—the point at which I had to go into super-galvanised, never mind continuity now,† we have a deadline mode, last time through.  ††  So I was thinking okay, great, I'm now...

Carnival of the Animals III

Guest post by Blogmom and the Mods.

Special ferret and ferret deity edition.

jmeadows

Austin in a box

Real Name: Austin
Naming rationale: Named after the city I grew up in.
Occupation: King.
Distinguishing features: Chocolate brown with a mask and hood between his eyes.
Species: Ferret!
Brief bio: Austin is the king of ferrets. He learned how to fight against Suzi when he was a kit, and began the process of proving his dominance over the other ferrets as they arrived. Once you know he's boss, he's...

Tra la la etc revisited

 

I looove my voice lessons.  I am pathetic.  I am insane.  Yeah, okay, so what else is new?

            After last week's lesson when I was cracking on nearly every frelling note, I've been thinking, this isn't just nerves, this is the fact that this part of my body has been three quarters asleep for the last fifty-seven years* . . . I mean, sure, I talk, but I've always preferred words on paper, I don't hang out and I'm terrible at chat.**  This means that after an hour on the phone to...

Okay . . . *

 

. . . We're on.  I've heard from my editor;  she says it's still worth a shot at the autumn '10 list for PEGASUS and how fast do I think I can do the rewrites—?  Unh.  I won't actually know till I have.  She hasn't yet given me (or Merrilee) the uber-final, drop dead, drop dead or drop dead, deadline when it has to go into copyediting—if it's going into copyediting for next autumn—it'll be November, but November is four weeks long.  If it's the beginning of November I'm in more trouble than ...

Another Sunday evening *

 

 I dug the geranium up and put it in a pot.  A small pot.  The kind of pot you can bring indoors.  With its six hundred and forty-six friends.  Including quite a few geraniums, foresightfully planted in small portable pots to begin with.  Last year after much grief, effort and cardboard boxes, I lost the geranium in that location after all;  this year I'll probably lose the new one to the shock of the transfer. . . .  and it'll be a mild winter so I should have left it in situ and...

Carnival of the Animals II

Guest post by Blogmom and the Mods.

Most images click through to a larger size.

Karanga Honolulu (aka Lulu)

Name: Karanga Honolulu (aka "Lulu")

Breed: Welsh Section B

Colour: Black roan

Age: 5 yrs

Favourite trick: Escaping the "Jenny Craig" paddock!

Favourite food: Anything edible.

Dreams of: Becoming a Dressage pony. ("Goofing off" is high on the list too.)

Surprised the owner by: Being one of the few equids who does NOT "go off their nut" when they see an alpaca for the first time.

b_twin_1

Zoe

...