Robin McKinley's Blog, page 201

Silly Day

 

I've been ordering Christmas presents.*  It doesn't get much sillier in August.  I say nothing about the likelihood of any of them getting packed up and sent off to arrive in time for Christmas however.**  The first few years I was living in England I used to get things posted west by the end of October.***  That was a long time ago.  I'm doing well these days to have stuff wrapped and labelled and ready to be taken away if someone shows up in person.  But I wasn't ringing bells six hours a day

Guest post by Peter

Aunts

Does one need an excuse to blog about one's aunts?  Can I assume that enough of you had aunts who one way or another loomed large in your childhoods for you to be interested in mine?  Let's hope.

Perhaps a woman needs to have been an elder sister to become a classic, bloggable aunt, accustomed from an early age to having younger siblings to admonish and direct.  Twenty odd years ago I was a having lunch at a major family gathering.  Facing me across the table were three young women of the ne

Silly Cannon MIDI file

Here is it.  Many thanks to NotLonely!

Silly Cannon (MIDI format)

Should automatically play with Quicktime on most systems.

Audible

I should have posted this last night when I first saw it, but I was not functioning at a very high level last night.  

NotLonely has sent us a midi-d version of the Silly Canon.

[image error] Attachment: Black Bear.MID

(Size: 3.96KB, Downloaded 18 time(s))

. . . Of course the crucial question is whether the link will copy and paste from the forum.  If it won't, I'll ask Blogmom to do it up for the front page.

Yaay Notlonely.  Thank you!

 

 

 

 

Articulateness not guaranteed.

 

Starting with use of the word 'articulateness.'

I am shattered.  I think this happens even to normal people without mysterious auto-immune malfunctions:  you get through the hairy scary bit and then disintegrate.*   Yesterday was hairy.  Today has been a haze, not of small spidery galumphing monsters**, but of fuzzy grey exhaustion.  I must have hurtled the hellhounds or they'd be dancing on the table and getting in the way of the computer.  And there's an empty Green & Black's wrapper lying at

Undesirable new experiences

 

A few days ago I was out with hellhounds just before twilight and realised that not all the drama of what I was seeing was a result of that long late golden light.  Some of it was happening in my eyes. 

            I have for some years now had what I think are called ophthalmic migraines:  you get the weird visual disturbances without the headache.*  So while whatever was happening now was a little more intense than usual I didn't think a whole lot about it.  It sparkled and shimmied, it was on

Return of the Web Site, or

 

. . . I can't make 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Web Site Doom' work somehow.  (The Jewel of the Web Site?  The Web Site of the Nile?  X-Multigendered:  the Last Web Site?)

            Anyway.  http://robinmckinley.com/etc /  Some of my old web site has returned.  And since it hasn't been available for a year or so I figure it's a good enough excuse to take a night off.  At least a few of you will be glad to read the bits you've emailed me wistfully about missing.* 

            The speeches ar

Another New Experience

 

I don't need new experiences.  In my more rational moments I don't even want new experiences.*  I would like to sit around comfortably in the company of some** old experiences*** and chill.  I would like, for example, to lower the several foot-and-a-half high† stacks of newspapers and magazines that seem to have accumulated on and around not one but two kitchen tables†.  I would like to watch the several operas I have recorded off Sky Arts††.  I would like to need only two hours of sleep a nigh

Kent

 

I rang Kent tonight:  Kent Treble Bob Minor.  I rang it badly, and I rang it with a minder* whispering sweet nothings in my ear** . . . but I rang it.  This is another of those moments, like ringing Stedman for the first time–ringing it as opposed to being dragged through it by Wild Robert with a mad gleam in his eye—when the world pauses, and you descend, as from a trolley car, and get on another trolley and trundle off*** into a whole new world/public transport route.   

            I rang Ken

The problem with Sundays

 

The problem with Sundays, as I have no doubt complained here before, is that I blast out of bed at the crack of 8 a.m., stumble around groping for glasses, teapot, tea, and clothing, in that order,* bolt for the tower, ring like fury for forty-five minutes and . . . collapse.  It's 9:30 a.m. and I've had it for the day.  And today is one of those Sundays that I am very glad I was not ringing a quarter peal for the evening service.** 

            Vicky asked me today if I'd suffered any ill effec