C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 13

Well, the Scottish Fool brought me a bird…

A live bird. A relatively unscathed bird. He laid it on my new bedspread…which I had had the foresight to cover with a blanket.

I gathered up the offering and carefully set it in the Japanese maple outside, so it could recover from the experience.

Our bird charts say hermit thrush or European starling. It looked a lot like the thrush, though I’ve never seen one in the flesh. Long beak, speckled front, brown wings. And very glad to hop off. It seemed quite strong in its departure.

I think I want to wash that blanket.

Word from Threadbender….

She and her parents are sheltering in one of the towns people go to for shelter—she lives there; and they and the entire apartment complex have barbecue units, a lot of charcoal and drinking water, and plans to cook up everything in their fridge and freezers in the courtyard, so it’s about as good a situation for this sort of thing as you can get. The hurricane eye was due to pass directly over, but now seems more aimed at the western coast, where hopefully they have built for storms. Hopefully this will just get up and move on…

Remember Smokecon? The skies are like that. We’re getting smoke from everywhere…

We have also started the kitchen remodel, our living room is full of all the kitchen stuff, and our carpenter is stuck in a massive traffic jam on I-90, with a lot of sirens. Someone is having a much worse morning, so let us be sorry for that person and just keep shifting boxes…..

We are back from Bubonicon…and the eclipse.

I came back with the convention cold, so I have been using up Kleenex and sleeping a lot; and then Norton pitched a fit and wanted to be reinstalled. So after Jane bravely battled Norton to a standstill, I have my computer back.

I’m still a bit under the weather, but I did go out for a lovely FREE Swinging Doors steak dinner (they do this for birthdays!) and well, the cat bite—Shu, the rascal resented being grabbed after the really sketchy hotel room in Butte, which he swears was last occupied by a werewolf…he (Shu, that is) nailed my arm in the dark as I was trying to extricate him from the footwell of the car as we were urgently trying to get underway to make the eclipse…which was glorious! More on that later! The following day, I did get medical treatment, which put me on doxycycline, which means NO dairy, no eggs, milk, cheese (half my normal diet) and NO sunshine while taking it. But it’s healing well, mostly: I just have these vampire marks. And Shu was very sorry. He spent two days trying to suck up to me before I had to part company to go off to the con and leave Jane in charge of the cats. Spent a lovely while with Ready, ReadyGuy, Bret and his very nice friend, and Serge and Sue, et al, and ran into Vic Milan, Steve Donaldson, and other longtime writer associates; George (RR) wasn’t there—toured after worldcon and is exhausted; but nice time had by all. I was still very glad to get back to Jane (the con hotel didn’t have pets) and head home—with kitchen remodel pending; and we stopped by Mesa Verde, saw many things worth coming back to check out, and made it home past a hotel fire in Kellogg ID and all sorts of smoke, some 28 separate fires in our area, but we’re well, and the air is only slightly bad…

I am concerned for you all down south, and was following the story such as I could in the hotel, bad, bad situation, and I hope all of you are safe, dry, and well.

Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit…

We are going to manage to catch this. There are a number of programs on streaming tv regarding new finds of terra cotta courtiers, etc. Interesting stuff! Look up: Xian tombs.

ancestry.com is having a pretty good sale on its dna tests…

ends Aug 15. The typical ancestry.com test is autosomal, looking at a number of areas. Helps if you can build even a rudimentary tree, which would entail a membership (you can choose several levels of access, starting with US-only for US residents.)

News: Emergence is going to come out in January instead of April.

Just got the news from Betsy.

Oh joy! oh rapture! It’s the first day of August and smoke is coming in…

Wildfires are ablaze…a seasonal affliction.

And a wind shift is going to bring us the smoke.

Those of you at the Spokane Worldcon may remember the Bloody Sun and the fact you couldn’t find Mt. Spokane or its neighbors…or see the building down the street. That’s the worst it ever was. But even smoke you can’t see can have its effect. Running noses, itching eyes, and general worthlessness. Glug.

We don’t have tornadoes of any size, we rarely have earthquakes, and fire management and the fact we DO have seasonal fires means our towns and cities stay safe, but glug, again—glug.

Jane is in final pass on Alliance Rising.

We’re real close to sending it in. I think we’ve got a really good story.

Progress on the kitchen remodel

We found a carpenter, we have ordered the floor. Empire slate It is grey and a fairly darkish grey with rusty bits. Really rotten picture.

Cabinets resemble redwood.

Appliances are graphite grey.

Countertop will be black.

Thinking about a copper-tone sink and faucet.

Thinking about a copper backsplash.

If we do the thinking-abouts, it’s going to have a steampunk vibe.