C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 47

Memorial Dance Scholarship Fund

My mom was a dancer, and we’ve decided to offer a dance scholarship in her name, as a memorial. We’ve set up a GoFundMe page, the Rosie Murphy Dance Scholarship Fund, and if you’re inclined or inspired in any way to donate a little to the fund, my family and I would be profoundly grateful.

Our immediate goal is to secure $2500: enough funds to create a five year scholarship. Our longer term goal is to create a scholarship in perpetuity, which is possible if we can get $15,000 into our invest...

a fabulous coat & the ruin of two families

Yesterday over on Facebook I posted a link to an utterly fabulous 1940s bomber-style womens’ jacket. Things almost immediately got out of control as my dear friend Leah Moore loved it as much as I did:

Leah: That is just gorgeous. I would marry that jacket.

Catie: I would show up at the altar and object because I saw it first and loved it more.

Leah: Oh damn!

Leah: With high waist trousers and a killer haircut….oh man…

Catie: actually i would show up at the altar and you would look so fabulo...

Informed vs Sane: Fight!

I’ve spent most of the past several years a lot more checked out of the news cycle than I think I should be, because so much of it is toxic or religious wars in politics and I simply have not had the emotional bandwidth to deal with it.

I *hate* that. I grew up in a very political family and I feel like it’s my duty to be informed and aware and able to formulate an intelligent opinion.

I also grew up in an era when the news cycle wasn’t a hyper-excited 24 hour freak-fest desperate to get vie...

Picoreview: Donegal

I was invited last week to see the Abbey Theatre‘s new play, Donegal, which is billed as a light-hearted play with music.

I think the Irish have a different idea of what constitutes ‘light-hearted’ than I do.

I mean, nobody dies in it, and there are moments that are funny, so I think that’s why it qualifies as ‘light-hearted’. But the play is about an Irish country-western star whose peak has passed, her son who left Ireland to very successfully pursue his own country-western career in Americ...

No Mo Wri Mo

Up until a few days ago I was still entertaining the notion that somehow, sure, I was going to pull Nanowrimo out of the hat and participate. I’m not sure I thought that was a realistic goal, but I was hanging on to it anyway.

I’ve come to my senses. Most of the reason I’ve come to my senses, probably, is that my editor got the revision letter for REDEEMER back to me, and given that the book is now pushing 2 years late (*cringe*) that kinda has to take priority. And I’m GOOD with that, that’s...

we need to talk about sugar

And when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘I’, and when I say ‘talk’ I mean ‘write this down, maybe it’ll make more of an impression’.

Years ago after having a spectacularly bad hangover (that’s all I get, is spectacularly bad hangovers, which is why I basically don’t drink. I’m not reserved enough as a human being to require the inhibition-loosening aspects of alcohol and I stay hung over for *days*) I wrote down all of my symptoms to clarify to myself why I shouldn’t do that. I haven’t drunk to excess sin...

Octocon 2016

So Octocon was great fun. I went into it tired (because i was an IDIOT and i got a new phone on THURSDAY and i couldn’t get it to update properly and i stayed up until TWO IN THE MORNING getting it working right, the day before a weekend-long convention started!) and had a panel Friday night so I had to be vaguely functional through that, and more or less was.

It was a weekend of selfies because I didn’t have the camera with me a lot because I couldn’t find the purse that more or less went wi...

so very very very many thinks

– buy better sugar
– make fudge make MORE fudge if there’s time
– shower
– pincurl hair
– pack M&M
– pack RAVEN HEART
– pack CHANCE
– pack fudge
– pack jam
– pack dress
– pack shoes
– pack nylons
– pack sturdy underwear :)
– finish laundry
– fold laundry
– put laundry away if we’re really ambitious
– finish setting up phone
– eat something
– chop up more crabapples
– put the frozen ones into bags so i have room to freeze the new ones
– everything i’m forgetting, all by 1:45pm

The post so very...

apples apples everywhere

We picked apples on Sunday. This warped panorama does not do justice to the numbers of apples currently residing in our entryway:

The bag in the back corner, and the white box, which is like 23′ or something, are also full of apples. There are So Many Apples. There’s a fairly large bag already missing, too, as I sent one home with my sister.

A friend just dropped by and took away the small box next to the plant pots and the black bag at the foot of the photo, which made a small but visible d...

a hard time gathering myself

I’ve been having a hard time gathering myself to blog. Part of it is that I’ve been very busy (I got everything on the last post’s to do list done and a great deal more), and part of it is that I’m very tired. It’s been a terribly emotional year and as I’ve said to a few people, we’re not really so much scraping the bottom of the barrel as trying to claw our way back up to its great height.

So this is what I’ve been doing instead of blogging:

Last week I designed new business cards, got the...