C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 183

anybody have experience with ipad—a reader is having download troubles…

I'd like to be able to answer him. He got the file down onto his computer (mac, perhaps)—and we're thinking it's because it's a huge zipped file. Don't know if he's unzipped it. The IPad couldn't download it. He's using Safari.

Anybody know what format is best for the IPad? Hints, clues, worldly wisdom?

Breakfast in the rain…

Of the many pleasures of our garden, the gentle NW spring days are one of the greatest. It rains…but this morning we threw towels onto the fabric seats of our patio set and had breakfast (softboiled egg in spaceman-with-helmet egg cup) on our flower plates with our little fat-kitteh salt shaker and beverage of our choice.

Wabash was in bloom—snow white, blue-veined, with an indigo fall and white beard, my father's alltime favorite iris, and mine—and the new rhododendron (starts pink, goes...

The wonderful rain suit…

Any of you who garden or work in the yard, pen, or camp in the woods, lakeshore, or beach—let me tell you the wonders of a two piece rain suit, which you can find in the hunter's section of Walmart, Cabelo's, or any such place. I wear a size 14, women's clothes, and find a Men's Large does quite nicely for fitting, though bulkily, over anything I'm wearing and with the elastic waist, staying put. It has a side ankle vent so you can get it on and off with heavy footgear; it has protected...

Today was Gardening Monday…

…and I ran the pond vac, which is a back-breaking sort of thing: you have to wait 20 seconds for it to void the collection chamber and come on again, and when it starts, the tip of the wand drops 2″, which can bring it down among pebbles (insta-clog!) or the water lilies if you don't pose for it like a pool player over a cue and brace the thing so it won't dip…

I have cleaned the pond filter about 12 times today, sometimes 2x in 30 minutes, as we stir up the bottom with the hose and let the...

My cooking scale gets here Thursday…

It has a flat surface, a bowl, a tare weight compensation, and is not expensive.

I am contemplating a rice cooker. It is the ONLY thing that would give me the patience to cope with brown rice.

the wonders of weight loss if you're female and hypothyroid.

I sat down with one of those WebMD diet calculation programs and ran what Jane and I eat, daily. It throws a snit fit if you don't admit to a snack: wrong. We don't. Period. So it made me say we have a fruit snack when we, in fact, have nada, zip, NOTHING. We have one boiled egg at breakfast, a cup of granola with low carb, lowfat, or synthetic milk at noon, I may or may not have one skinny no-sugar latte, depending on whether I'm skating or gardening, Jane has only water, and we have...

We are 10 members short of 900!

Yay us! And this is after I've booted a few spammers!

We luvs our real members. And those of you who don't comment often, do feel free—this is far from a closed club. This is a bright and lively group—civil, too!—and capable of solving most of the world's problems if the people in charge would only take our advice!

Spokane drivers…

http://www.krem.com/news/Truck-crashes-through-red-light-camera-gets-stuck-on-sidewalk-94581374.html

……strike again.

This is a sidewalk and a busy one at that.

These traffic cams cost about 300,000 each.

Spokane is a city where if you are driving a truck you do want to pay attention to the height limits posted on bridges, but there is none on our sidewalks.

Not only that, that bridge is the main rail link leading between the Havana Street yards and the rails for Oregon (Portland, Salem, etc...

Pardon us while we have a cry-fest…

It's going to freeze tonight. Those of you who know what we've been doing, planting flowers and shrubs and the like, we are just floored. We got a huge tub and put the water hyacinth in it. We hauled in all the plants that aren't in the ground. Another major weather wave with high wind and moisture (it's going to snow a few hundred feet uphill from us) with what they are calling a real toad-strangler out about 100 miles from us and coming this way.

Jane's back is still too iffy to lift stuff, ...

re the graph: it's one of those erase/write periods..

I write and I erase the outline. We're in a transitional scene, which is pretty well crossing maps, so there's about as much put in as taken out, so that's why the graph doesn't advance appreciably. We are now into the main action of the book.

Todd Lockwood is doing the cover for the next book to come out. He and I turn out to be at opposite ends of the state, both fanatic backyard gardeners.

Jane's back took another spasm last night, but the fact it's now in line means she thinks it's going...