Bryce Moore's Blog, page 290

What I Did on My Summer Vacation: July 24 (Last One--with Pics!)

And so we come to the end of my summer vacation series for this year. It's taken me long enough, I know. Sorry about the pauses in between posts. There's just been too much else that I wanted to blog about.



On our final day in London, we binged on museums: the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, to be specific. Free and fantastic. TRC in particular really liked the Natural History Museum. It's a gorgeous old building, and they've done a great job converting it into a modern museum space. (Except for the dinosaur wing, which was way. too. crowded.) Here are some parting pics:






The Natural History Museum has this cool program, where you can go to the front desk and check out Explorer Kits for the kids. They come with backpacks loaded with activities, a helmet, and binoculars, and they were quite the hit with the kidlets.





Don't be a dodo.





The room's even more impressive in person.





One last explorer action shot.





The outside of the Natural History Museum





Space explorers





Last bus ride





Quite possibly TRC's favorite part of the trip. Riding a double decker bus was WAY high on his priority list.

Amazon, Netflix and Libraries

NOTE: This entry was written for my Library Blog, and I'm reprinting it here for your reading pleasure. Check out my library blog for more info on the goings on of a small academic library. Now with daily posts!



There have been rumblings this week that Amazon is considering starting a book rental service similar to Netflix (except with books, not movies--obviously). They would use the Kindle as a delivery device, and people (perhaps Amazon Prime subscribers) could get a number of books delivered each month to their Kindle at no extra cost.



On the surface, I suppose this sounds like a cool idea. Books delivered to you at home for a low cost. But the more I think about it . . .



Isn't this what libraries kind of do already? Except charging money for it instead of doing it for free?



I'm all for technological progress, but to me, having a company step in to start doing what's already being done very well--for free--seems a bit much.



Of course, the reason this is all muddied so much is that eBooks are changing the way we approach books. Libraries have been lending movies for a long time, and I didn't get my hackles up when Netflix started doing the same--that seemed to me an extension of video stores, not an encroachment on libraries. So what's the difference?



The difference is that books aren't movies, for one thing. The way licenses work is very different. When an author writes a book, she sells certain rights to that book to a publisher. North American rights, movie rights, eBook rights--whatever rights are involved in the deal. If the author was smart (or had a good agent), she retained all other rights for herself. In other words, if it ain't sold specifically in the contract, those rights are still hers.



The right to rent books? Um . . . I'm guessing that's not really in any contract.



But, you say, where was the right for libraries to lend print books for free?



Here's where things get messy. Library books have been governed by the right of first sale for a really long time, meaning that once an item is bought, the purchaser of that item is allowed to do whatever the heck he wants with it. Resell it, lend it to a friend, etc. However, on the digital side of things, software isn't usually sold. It's licensed, and the copyright laws for licensed products are a whole other kettle of pickles. eBooks are sort of kind of books and sort of kind of software. They're in a no man's land that's really murky right now. (Note: I'm not a lawyer. I might be getting some of the finer points of this wrong, but the general gist is there.)



Until our lovely judicial system works out what exactly an eBook is and how it should be dealt with, there's going to continue to be a lot of confusion in this arena. And that judicial system isn't going to be able to wrangle with the problem until there are some law suits. (Don't you love the way our country operates sometimes?) Maybe Congress would address the problem before then, but something tells me they're too busy yelling at each other to get much done in the copyright arena right now.



Which is really too bad. eBooks are the wave of the future, and it would be nice to have some clarity. But for now, we'll continue to have a variety of readers, with a variety of formats, with a variety of approaches to making money, with a whole lot of confusion. What's a lowly library to do? Press forward the best it can, and yell loudly when boneheads like Amazon try to poach our territory.



Thoughts?

September 12th: Getting Over September 11th

At this point, everyone and his sister has written something about the September 11th anniversary, and I'm not really sure if I have much to add to the mix. But since I'm so darned opinionated, I just can't not say anything at all. So here goes. My thoughts are sort of scattered, so forgive me if this is a tad disjointed. I've got a lot of concepts whizzing around in my head, fighting to get out. We'll just see what order they come in.



When examined with 10 years of hindsight, I don't think the events on 9/11 are really as far reaching and fundamentally life-altering as pundits like to paint them. Tragedies happen every day. As my Facebook circle of friends gets ever bigger, one thing becomes more and more clear: awful things happen to good people all the time.



I don't mean to disparage the events of 9/11 at all. It was an awful day that I'll remember for my entire life. For a while, I wasn't sure if people I knew had been killed that day. I first heard about the first plane crash as I was on my way to read gas meters for the day. I was listening to my favorite early morning radio show at the time, and they made some jokes about a plane crashing into the Twin Towers. At first I just thought they were being their usual irreverent selves, but then I realized a plane had actually crashed into one of the Twin Towers. Like everyone else, my first thought was that it was a small plane. I switched over to AM to listen to news radio.



It wasn't a small plane.



I remember sitting on the couch that evening, watching the news with my wife, and wondering if the world was ever going to be the same again.



Almost 3,000 people died that day. Almost 9,000 were injured. But as far as long-reaching effects are concerned, it wasn't the effects of 9/11 that changed the world. It was the effects of 9/12. The way we (as a individuals, communities, a nation, and a world) responded to what had happened.



After all, we've had worse disasters, both as a nation and as a globe. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 claimed as many as 12,000 Americans. The San Francisco earthquake in 1906 took as many as 6,000. The Haiti earthquake killed over 300,000 people. The tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed 240,000.



What was 9/11?



19 terrorists using box cutters to hijack 4 planes and turn them into weapons. Prior to 9/11, hijackings were all about leverage. Using hostages to make certain demands. Or blowing planes up to make political statements. Using the planes as weapons? That was a one time approach to terrorism that will be hard to pull off again. The days of plane passengers passively sitting back and waiting for the terrorists to do whatever they feel like are over.



There was terrorism before 9/11. While at BYU, I did a semester in Jerusalem, where bombings were a regular enough occasion that it was hard to walk through the city without seeing big honking guns on soldiers peppered throughout the area. 9/11 forced America to do something it had successfully avoided up to that point: realize that we're vulnerable to the same forces at play elsewhere in the world. It forced the world to realize that terrorist attacks could go far beyond tens and hundreds of casualties.



9/11 was the world waking up from a dream and realizing it was living in a nightmare. But it was a nightmare that had been brewing for years and decades previous to 9/11.



One thing that I'm realizing more and more is that tragedy and poor choices don't work like they do in the movies. There's no big alarm that goes off. No menacing sound that plays in the background. Everything doesn't go into slow motion or become sepia-toned.



Life goes on.



We're living in what's being called the Great Recession today. Life goes on, just like I'm sure it went on in the Great Depression. Just like it went on under Communism in Eastern Europe. Just like it goes on in Sudan or other war torn countries.



Like I said: awful, terrible things happen every day. All over the world. 9/11 made us realize we Americans didn't live in a sheltered bubble, immune to some of those terrible things.



Events like 9/11 serve as marking points in global history not because of what happened during those events, but rather because of how we all respond to those events. The war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, taking off our shoes when we go through metal detectors at the airport, the state of the economy, the Bush/Kerry election, the Obama/McCain election, Sarah Palin--none of these and countless other events were the result of the terrorists' actions on 9/11.



They were the result of the choices we made to deal with those actions.



To me, overemphasizing the events on 9/11 is akin to trying to avoid personal responsibility for one's actions. It would be oh so nice if the bad choices I make in life could all be someone else's fault. And some people choose to behave that way. They live in a constant state of "if only _________ hadn't _________," then I'd be happy. To me, that's a sure fire way to never be happy.



Again, terrible things happen every day. To many people. And if you wait long enough, they will happen to you, too. That's not pessimism speaking, folks. Them's the facts. You can make all the "right" decisions, and tragedy will still strike. Expect it. Count on it. But don't let that rule your life. Don't spend so much time brooding on those tragedies (whether past or future) that you let the rest of your life slip away.



People like to bring up the fact that we as a nation are more divided than ever now. That the days of joining together as a nation the way we joined together after 9/11 are over and done with. But do they forget how bitterly divided the nation was after the Bush/Gore elections? I'd like to think that we as a nation are still as we have been, are, and will be: united in a dream of a better country and a better world. The exact specifics of that dream may be argued, but the ultimate goal is the same.



19 terrorists are not representative of the human race. I believe that men and women are fundamentally good, as a whole. 9/12 proved that for me. We came together in a way we hadn't for decades, and if and when tragedy strikes again--as it will--those of us who remain will continue to come together and support one another. Yes, other tragedies have come about due to the choices of 9/12. But tragedies will come about no matter what choices we make. We have to make the best decisions we can, and then live with the consequences.



To me, that concept is liberating. For better or worse, the effects of 9/11 have--for the most part--been determined by the choices we made, not by the actions of those 19 terrorists. I think that same principle can be applied on an individual level as well: when tragedy comes, we need to remember that the bigger effect of that tragedy will be determined by how we choose to deal with it, because ten years after that personal tragedy, I can almost guarantee you that you'll be able to look back at your life and see that how you are now is much more dependent on what you did with the cards you were dealt than on what the cards were to begin with.



That's all I have to say about that for today. It's far more preachy than I'd like to be typically, but 9/11 has me in a bit of a funk, and I often write to get myself out of those funks. Thanks for coming along for the ride.



Happy September 12th.

Update on the Stairs

Like most construction projects, building a set of stairs has proved to be much more complicated than I initially thought--even taking into account the fact that I initially thought it would be much more complicated than I was initially thinking, if that makes sense. I mean, how hard could it be? You cut a hole for the stairs, make some risers, nail 'em up, and slap a "Finished" sticker on them, right?

Wrong.

There are all these other nasty little surprises in store for you. Surprises like clearance for your head. You can't just cut a hole in the wall--you need a hole in the ceiling, too. And in the ceiling, there are these fun things called joists, which generally do a good job making sure your house doesn't fall down--except when you decide to cut one into pieces. We had the hole all cut in the wall (and in the floor of the garage attic, since we needed some place for the stairs to go, after all), when we discovered this ginormous, ancient 4x4 beam running the length of the ceiling. It's at this point that I probably would have given up. So there was a hole in my wall. No big deal. It could stay like that quite happily for a year or two, right? But that's why I'm working with a friend who Knows What He's Doing.

He cut the beam.

The house didn't fall in on itself, I'm happy to report. Something about "load bearing" something something something. I clearly know what I'm talking about.

Beyond holes in ceilings, there's other things involved in stair building. Walls for the stairs, for one thing. And cutting the treads the right size. And wiring it for lights, because otherwise you might get eaten by a Grue, as we all know. Oh--and there was practically every single wire in the house that happened to go right through the same spot where the stairs needed to go, and that meant rewiring.

A lot of rewiring.

While Denisa was supposed to be working online. She had a fifteen minute break, in which we had to cut the power to two different breakers, cut the wires on those breakers, splice in some extra wire to each line, fasten them together safely, and then turn the power back on.

Making sure not to die in the process.

Who said home construction was boring? I'm happy to say that we pulled it off, and Denisa didn't miss (much) work.

And while I'm listing Problems, have any of you ever tried to make something level in an 1841 farmhouse? It ain't easy. In any case, the treads to the stairs are now officially up, and I actually walked up them last night. Nothing collapsed. The definition of success. I do think that I'm trying to do too much, between this, and work, and all my other responsibilities. I woke up with a splitting headache. Feels sinusy. I'm in bed today. The stairs can wait until tomorrow. Or the next day. Or next year. (And did I mention that next week I have to take two trips to Bangor and a trip to Augusta? I'm a busy bee.)

Enough blogging. I'm going to go back to sleep.

Are You Ready for Some (BYU) Football?

Football time is here, and if you've been following my blog for a while, you know what a junkie I am for college football. (Professional football doesn't have the same feel to me. It's too . . . professional. Part of what draws me to college sports is how each team needs to constantly fight to rebuild itself year after year. Building a "legacy" or simply buying a good team is much more difficult. Of course, don't get me started on the recent string of college football scandals.)



For better or worse, a good chunk of my attention is devoted to following BYU football for the months of September, October, November, and (hopefully) a bit of late December/Early January. It all kicked off with a far too close for comfort win over Ole Miss last Saturday, and this week we have Texas. Here are some rambling thoughts I have about the season this year:




Independence--Nothing but good news, as far as I'm concerned. Almost all of our games are on ESPN or ESPN 2 this year, and the one that isn't can be streamed on BYUTV for free. Nice. I was reminded of how awful the alternative could be when I heard rumblings for a while that the BYU/Texas game might be moved to Texas's Longhorn Network. Uh . . . the same network that is available practically nowhere? Yeah. That network. This supposedly wonder-dunder network made by the big moneybags in Texas, and it's practically nonexistent outside of the Texas area. That sort of setup would be terrible for me as a BYU fan. I love love love that the team is more concerned with visibility than it is with the bottom line dollar amount.
Big XII Fiasco--I am so done with all the conference realignments. Of course, that doesn't mean that I don't follow this all very closely anyway, but I've been really disappointed with how much money and prestige in football has come to dominate all of college sports. There's no loyalty whatsoever when it comes to college football conferences in the past year or two. Long time rivalries are getting torn up as teams play a big game of musical chairs. What does this have to do with the betterment of the sport? Very disappointing. I remember when the WAC had 16 teams. That lasted what--3 years? Who's to say the same thing won't happen with a super conference? In any conference, there will be the elite top half of the conference, and the not as elite bottom half. If the top half suddenly gets a whole lot of money waving at them, I think we've all seen what happens. Blech.
BYU/Utah--That said, I have to say that I'm kind of relieved BYU and Utah are in different conferences now. (Or, one in a conference and one independent). The rivalry was getting beyond ugly when I left the state, and can't imagine it improved much in the time since. Outright hatred of anyone is never a good thing, and that's what it was beginning to feel like. I'm a Yankee fan living in the middle of Red Sox Nation, and I get my share of ribbing and jibes (and give them right back), but it honestly has never really felt mean spirited to me in the same way that Utah/BYU fans could get. (This might be because I'm not an obnoxious Yankee fan, and my friends aren't obnoxious Red Sox fans. For the most part. Wink wink.) BYU and Utah got bloody and yucky. Sports is supposed to be fun, and that wasn't. So I'm glad they're still playing, and I'm sure the rivalry will still be there, but I'm hoping this all cools it down some. People in Utah--has it worked?
Ole Miss game--Way closer than it should have been. We could move the ball at will--until we got close to their end zone, where we kept getting magnetically shoved away. Not cool. Our defense did great, but our offense had way too many jitters, which has left me a nervous wreck looking at this week's schedule. Texas? At Texas? Our offense better get its act together, or we're sunk. That said, I think it's interesting that Texas is in about the same position we're in in some ways. New coaches, new schemes--lots of new players for them. Hopefully it all balances out. With the beginning of each football season, it takes four or five weeks until you really know what your team is like. Maybe that supposed marshmallow team from week one is actually a dominant force. Maybe the #13 team you beat in week 2 is actually awful. So . . . we'll wait and see.


That's all I have time for right now. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery? Rise and shout, people!

Writing Update (and a Pigs in Space/Star Wars Mashup)

[image error] It's been a while since I updated ya'll on my writing. No time like the present, right? At this point, I basically have three major efforts that I'm working on actively.




Vodnik--The book's been officially accepted by my editor, and it's gone on to the copy edit stage. It's also being read by some culture specialists to ensure my handling of Roma culture is done properly. I expect to take another pass at the book toward the end of this month. That will mainly be focused on fixing the details. Misspelled words, consistency of description (did a character's eye color change?)--as well as fixing any cultural issues that might be brought up. I know the book is currently being designed (meaning what the interior and exterior of the book will look like--fonts, any maps, cover, layout, etc.). I've seen a rough draft of the cover, and it should be pretty darn cool. I can't wait to share it with everybody. Vodnik is still on course for publication in spring 2012. That's in about a half year!
Tarnhelm--The first draft is done. My writing group is finishing reading it, which should be done by the end of this month, give or take a week. At that point, there's a laundry list of Things I Want to Change in the book. Having written it in between Vodnik edits, I feel like the tone is too uneven in spots. There are some plot points that I forgot I'd written, which obviously is a problem. I'm very much a drafter--I like to barrel through the first draft and get everything on paper, then go back afterward and start tweaking. So I'll give Tarnhelm a read through in a few weeks and figure out how to change what needs changing. At this point, however, I haven't yet identified any drastic changes that need to be ironed out. (Then again, my writing group hasn't gotten to the climax yet . . .) I'll revise the book, then look for beta readers to read it all at once--a very different sort of feedback than I get from writing group, where it's spread out chapter by chapter over months.
Weaver of Dreams--In the meantime, I've returned to this, the third book I ever wrote. I'm rereading the manuscript, red pen in hand, mainly to evaluate if I think the book is worth a hard revision. It's been a while since I picked it up--probably about eight years or so at least. I've already found some areas that need a lot of work. (For example, the book has two main viewpoint characters. In my desire to make their voices sound different, I decided that one of them would never use contractions. Not one of my smartest artistic choices over the years. That can and will be fixed.) So far, I've been really happy to see that the book is holding up fairly well. Then again, I'm only 30 pages in to a 200+ page book. There are some foundational problems I've come across (the set up of the big picture plot, for example), but nothing that looks too bleak. We'll see what the other 170 pages hold in store . . . I'm shooting to have this read through done by the end of the month, so that I can transition from it over to the Vodnik copy edit, and from that over to the Tarnhelm revision, and from that over to the (hoped for) Weaver of Dreams revision, at which point I'll hop back to Tarnhelm to do the third draft.


Clear as mud? That should take me through the end of this year. I've got some ideas for new books that I want to write, as well. They're percolating in the back of my mind, hopefully improving with age.




So there you have it--probably more information about my upcoming books than you ever really wanted to know. For those of you who have hung around this long, allow me to reward you with the promised Pigs in Space/Star Wars Mashup (because you haven't lived until you've seen C-3PO tap dance):

First Day of School

It's been interesting to see the flood of "First Day of School" pictures that have swept Facebook in the past few weeks--both on a "they start HOW early?" level and on a "crazy how much has changed" level. What I  mean to say is that so much of our lives is now documented in a way people years ago never would have dreamed of. Some of this might well be because we've spread so far out, as families and friends. I know one reason I post pics of the fam is that I want my extended family and friends to all be able to see what's happening with me and mine. I've got friends on multiple continents, all over this country. If people want to know what's going on, I want to let them.



Of course, one of the reasons I have friends all over this country and on multiple continents is because of the same tools I use to keep them all up to date. Before social networking, I was a complete failure when it came to staying connected. It wasn't that I didn't like my old friends. It was that I was terrible at remembering to write them all. Now, I can update one spot, and anyone who wants to can go there to read that update.



If you don't know what's happening in my life anymore, that's no longer my fault. What a relief. :-)



So anyway, my son is now a second grader, and he's gone back to school. Thanks to Facebook, I see just how widespread this phenomenon is. I see all of your pictures, and they're cute and all--but they don't really mean a lot to me. (Heartless, I know.) But MY pictures of MY children--surely everyone and their brother spends hours marveling at one wonderful offspring I have. :-)



In any case, TRC is another year older. DC is more than a little envious that he gets to go to school and she doesn't, but she starts preschool this year, and she's really looking forward to that. And now I have tons of other things to get done (I'm a busy man, ya know), so without further ado, I give you the Requisite Pictures:

(WARNING: RANT AHEAD) Oh Goody. Time for Another Stupid Facebook Meme

Hey everybody. I've got a great idea. Stop falling for lousy Facebook mass emails and subsequently spamming my Facebook feed with idiotic "let's fool the men" status updates that do nothing more than irritate me.



Sorry.



I'm a bit testy today, aren't I? Well, this is the third year of this asinine breast cancer "awareness" drive that irks me more and more each passing year. And at the risk of irritating many of my friends (who have already posted the "I'm _______ weeks and craving _______" status update), I'm going to detail just why this meme seems to get under my skin so much. Nothing against you people who have already posted the update. This is about the MEME not YOU. Got that? The MEME. Not. You. I still love all of you, even if you've taken off five years of my life out of sheer aggravation that so many of you fall for this tripe.



(In case you were wondering, here's the wording of the email making the rounds. The email that takes all of 5 seconds to find with a Google search:)

Ok pretty ladies, it's that time of year again, in support of breast cancer awareness!! So we all remember last years game of writing your bra color as your status?…..or the way we like to have our handbag handy? Remember last year so many people took part that it made national news and, the constant updating of status reminded everyone why we're doing this and helped raise awareness!! Do NOT tell any males what the status' mean, keep them guessing!! And please copy and paste (in a message )this to all your female friends to see if we can make a bigger fuss this year than last year!!! I did my part… now YOUR turn ! Go on ladies…and let's have all the males guessing! .. It's time to confuse the men again (not that its really that hard to do  ) Everyone knows it makes their brains work wonders on what we're talking about!! The idea is to choose the month you were born and the day you were born. Pass this on to the girls only and lets see how far it reaches around. The last one about the bra went round all over the world. So you'll write… I'm (your birth month) weeks and I'm craving (your birth date)!!! as your status. Example: Feb 14th is: I'm 2 weeks and craving Chocolate mints!! (***Followed by a grid that lists what candy bar to list for which day of the month***)

But first, a public service announcement. Cancer is an awful, terrible, horrifying thing that affects everyone on this planet, and doing anything we can to prevent it and find a cure for it is time well spent in my book. I've had friends and family members die from cancer of various types. I know full well the damage it can do and just how serious it is. Breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer--____ cancer. Any kind.



So this isn't an anti-cancer awareness rant. It's a particularly phony approach that some chucklehead came up with that's really getting my goat. Let me count the ways:




I feel like this sort of meme is extremely sexist, in more ways than one. You have the "don't tell men--it'll make them so curious." Tee hee hee! I feel like this reduces women to nothing more than a bunch of tittering junior high school girls. You're powerful, capable women, able to raise awareness for whatever you want by . . . gee . . . let me think . . . actually raising awareness for it? Coming together in a common effort, exploring your ideas with well-worded, reasoned arguments, using every tool in your rhetorical arsenal to persuade your audience that they need to PAY ATTENTION. Instead, you listen to some random email that says "It's time to confuse the men again (not that it's really that hard to do)" smiley face. What if I were to turn this around? What if this email said something like "Yo guys! You know how broads are so stupid? How about we make those dumb chicks wild, wondering about what our status updates mean." How's that sound to you? A little inappropriate, maybe? Some of you are probably already sharpening pitchforks to stab me just for using that sort of language at all. Sexism cuts both ways.
This does nothing to promote breast cancer awareness. It promotes awareness of a stupid meme that plays upon a innate desire we all have to want to try and contribute something to a solution of a complex problem. It's just as bad as those inane "99.5% of people won't repost this, because they're all heartless troglodytes who beat puppies" Facebook statuses that I detest almost as much as this one. If you want to promote a cause, promote a cause. Don't promote a meme. Take some time out of your life, raise awareness of something. Donate some money. Or better yet, donate some real time. Because you know what? Taking five seconds out of your life to tell the world where you put your handbag, what color bra you're wearing, or what your birth date is isn't going to amount to a whole lot of good in the long run.
This meme doesn't seem to originate by anyone with one shred of credibility. October is breast cancer awareness month. So why is it that this meme has popped up now--at the beginning of September? And one of the rounds before came in January? Every time I see a bunch of my friends following one of these memes, I get ticked off at whoever started it. I could sit around and come up with something like this, then let it loose in the wild. People do this all the time. That's why Snopes was invented, practically--to let people know when the issue they're dealing with is real or not. To let you know that the "virus" you're warning everyone about isn't actually a virus. It's a spam email some poor schmuck wrote to try and trick people into doing stupid things, just so they could sit back and laugh about what idiots we all are. 
This particular meme seems to be rather ill-thought-out, even if it's written by someone slightly reputable. October is also when Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness day is celebrated. So let me get this straight . . . we're promoting "breast cancer awareness" by using status updates that make it sound like we're all pregnant? Genius.


I could go on, but I don't really feel like wasting another second of my life on this drivel. Until next year, or eight months from now, or whenever another one of these rears its ugly head.




Rant over. Go ahead and hate me now. Fill up my comments with things like "You're missing the point, Bryce" or "See--you're promoting breast cancer awareness, and it's all because of this witty, wonderful meme" or whatever other argument you think will convince me.




Just know this. Every time somebody reposts a meme like this, a baby kitty gets clubbed in the head, and then someone uses that baby kitty to choke a manatee, and someone uses that manatee to kill a blue whale, and someone sells that blue whale corpse to the Big Fat Cats in Washington, who magically turn it into greenhouse gases, higher unemployment statistics, and birthday presents for Barack Obama AND George W. Bush.




So go ahead. Repost your meme, you kitty hating animal. But you're not going to convince me.




And while you're at it, I've waited until now to let you know that unless you link this post on your Facebook wall, you're going to have bad luck for the next fifteen years. And you don't want THAT do you? A man named Joe McFarkle read this post and didn't link it. He ended up getting eaten by rabid chipmunks the very next day. And don't get me started about what happened to little Susie Jiffleberry. Let's just say it wasn't an open casket.




Let's all have a moment of silence for Susie Jiffleberry. 




It's Friday, folks. I'm going to go do my best to forget this post ever happened.

Hiking Tumbledown (Pictures!)

Sorry for the late post today: I took the day off for one last hurrah of summer vacation with the fam before school starts up on Tuesday. We went with some friends on a five mile hike (round trip). On the way to the spot, I realized that this was the first real hike I've been on in Maine, which is kind of surprising. It felt like I'd been on more. (Well, I've been on some really teeny ones, but this was the first serious one.)



We ended up going up the Brook Trail of Tumbledown Mountain. Absolutely gorgeous trail, though it's pretty boulder-y in spots. At the top of the mountain, there's a great little pond, and there were more wild blueberries than I've ever seen. Picking them was as easy as picking high bush berries at a farm. Also cranberries by the handful. So we picked berries, had lunch, I got to practice some fly fishing, and we had all had a great time.



TRC was fantastic--the kid has enough energy to power a small city, if we could somehow harness it properly. DC had a good time, too--though she ended up doing most of the hike on my friend's shoulders. Anyway--I've got to go get some chores done, but as a gift to you, here's some pics of the hike:

Stairway to Heaven

Or "Stairway to My Garage's Attic." Whichever you prefer. That's right, folks: it's been far too long since I had some good home renovation posts on this blog, and it's time to change that.



Yesterday, a friend and I sawed into a wall in a room between my kitchen and garage. There's now a gaping hole there, some unexposed wires, some two by fours, and plenty of sawdust. But soon, there'll be a staircase there. The plan is that this staircase will tie in that attic space to the main part of the house better. Ultimately, my home office will go up there, so I can write in peace. It'll also be the site of a master bedroom, a loft, a walk-in closet, a huge wall of windows, and a second bathroom.



Of course, that's all probably years down the road. It depends on how well my books sell. So if you want to see my attic done sooner, everybody please buy my books. (This means you.)



In related news, I've finished the first draft of Tarnhelm, my YA noir fantasy. Pretty pleased with it for now, but I'm going to let it sit for a month, then give it a good round of edits, followed by getting some beta readers on it. (There'll be a call for readers coming.) So that's exciting.



And no fear--I'll keep you all up to date on my staircase's progress. Hopefully it's not too long of a project. (Famous last words--I still have to finish scraping, sanding and painting part of the garage from last year. I've been waiting for cooler weather . . .)