C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 63

eat, drink, and be merry…well, time to pay the piper and diet, actually.

I’d been flirting with 169 before we began to feed ourselves with pizza because we were working so hard…

then the party, and the cake…followed by a long convention, being wined and dined by DAW, and oh, too many calories.

I’d made it to 175 before the wedding. At my worst, I hit, on return from the con, about 181, but I’m back, two days later, to 176, so not so bad, me! The rest is going to be good behavior for a couple of weeks.

The peonies (which bloom at different times) are still blooming, the azalea and two rhodies are holding out, and the iris are blooming, one of our best flowers…there’s a lot of it.

I’m back at work, making good headway.

And we’ve got the house in such good order, a little tidying up is not onerous.

I can say we’re absolutely happy to get on with life and work, and we’re trying to make some permanent adjustments in the house to make the house-keeping a lot easier. We now have actual silverware (well, stainless) that matches, we have everything in such good order even the oven is clean. And we are not going to lose that state of affairs without putting it back the way it oughter be.

Just back from Miscon.

We treated it as a relaxacon, mostly, and just did a few panels. We had a chance to see old friends, and new—my publishers were there, and so was Todd Lockwood, who does the Foreigner covers, so we sat down and planned the upcoming one…

The kittehs love this hotel: beside a very full creek, with the wind blowing through trees, and a very comfy sized con, too. We ate way too much, and we only hope a couple of weeks will diet off what we just put on!

The strangeness of over-indulgence…

Y’know Jane and I have devolved, this spring, from diet to just ‘being pretty careful about what we eat’ —and going back on the diet any time we pile on a pound or two.

Well, the wedding was a wee bit indulgent. Wine, champagne—that’s ok: there’s a limit after which you’ll stop. [One hopes!] But cake, icing, tortillas and barbecue, roasted chicken, nachos, etc…especially the cake and tortillas…well, we overate. And outright refined sugar is as foreign to our diets as it was to, well, all of humanity until the 1700′s.

Buttercream icing. Raspberry filling in chocolate cake…

Oh, my.

So, well, I’ve had a very iffy tummy all day Sunday, Monday… Tuesday I declared I wanted to go to Hong Kong Express for lunch. This is a tiny restaurant, a lot resembling a doublewide trailer, that serves dim sum and the best Chinese menu in town, as we see it, probably the best I’ve ever had. The seating is about 10 benches and two long tables and wine service is a glass-doored fridge standing in the dining room. That sort of place.

I had a plateful of the all-you can eat, with iced tea—and was cured. Iffy tummy was happy. And remains so.

What was it in the balance achieved? I have no idea. But I feel a whole lot better!

It was a very good day…

We’re so tired today we can scarcely function, but we had a great time, the weather cooperated, the garden was in bloom, and Jane has pictures of the cake and the garden.

Day of extreme effort—-Jane (who hates mud)—

—got the stream and lotus pond finished. And I (who hate shopping) went and made the massive grocery run (well, massive for us) and got it all done.

We are exhausted. But it all works! And I found everything I needed.

Hanneke sent us a Christmas package, which just arrived!

It’s a little, a very tiny Aladdin’s lamp, and some silk, a small package from the Netherlands…and some customs agent had plastered a label right over the zip code. So it took time getting to Spokane. And then it lay there because the label also had messed up the address.

Two nights ago I had a call from the post office, 8 or 9 pm, asking if we were expecting a package from the Netherlands, and stating they had one that was about to be returned as undeliverable.

Well, it turns out one of our readers works in the post office, saw the names, and pulled the package, which is how I ended up getting the phone call to confirm an address, and how the Christmas package got here after Easter and Mother’s Day!

So we are both surprised and happy to have it!

Jane’s email ate pictures!

From Jane: You can still join the virtual party on Saturday. Just send a photo of your smiling mug to authors@closed-circle.net and I’ll put you in the slideshow. For those who have already sent a pic…please note, if you haven’t gotten a response from me, I didn’t get it. I just killed a whole bunch of emails and I have no idea how I did it. I’m not even tired or stressed. I just had a bunch of stuff highlighted to delete, and instead of deleting, it opened a bunch and when I tried to close out and delete them, it just churned and churned…I reopened, and most of my msgs were gone. Byebye. ARGH!!!!!! Not in the trash been, not nowhere.

I’m going out to the garden and flinging dirt….

Blue skies and still cold out there….

But next Saturday is forecast to be partly cloudy and a high of 72. Crossing fingers this is the case. We could also do with mild wind.

Today…

The mudroom. The catch-all for all the construction, the spare pumps, the tool chest and the dreaded black drawered cabinet that was supposedly for office stuff, but that was (being metal) just the thing for odd bits of the sprinkler system, staplers, glue, wiring thingies, and sandpaper.

One was tempted to turn a hose on the place and let fly…

I tell you this backyard wedding is the thing for getting round-tuits done.

But it’s going to be a lot nicer: we had Too Much Stuff in there, and we hope, since the place has been a mess since the Great Bathroom Remodel, which is now done—we can keep it nice.

The cats are getting suspicious. They’re behaving quite well, all things considered, and staying close to the food, just in case…

Jane undertook to make some tablecloths. You would think this would be a smooth operation. Nothing is simple when it involves a hem-rolling foot. You would also think the Pfaff site would have an how-to that included how to start the operation, ie, how to insert the fabric into the not-very-intuitively made curves of the foot that will thereafter fold the fabric double along the edge it is stitching. Oh, no, nothing about how you get the fabric folded into it or the fact that it requires some guidance. All the manufacturer gives you is a happy-happy video of the thing well along, stitching a rolled edge. Big help that is.

Jane had a brilliant idea—send us pix—so you can be on the guest book table.

From Jane:

We just had this wonderful idea! We were going to set up a table with a “guest book” that Wiishu will man (basically a single sheet of paper :D) and put pics of all our in absentia family on it. Thinking last night of all the people we’d love to have invited and just couldn’t, we had this great idea: pictures!

If you would like to “attend” the wedding just send a nice big image file of your smiling face to authors(at)closed-circle(dot)net. Please put “wedding pic” as the subject and include your full name in the email (along with a message, if you wish). I’ll put them all into a slideshow on the ipad, with your name, and prop the ipad on the table along with Wiishu and the guest sheet!

These can be from any time, any place. Our friendships, like our love, are timeless.