Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

When last we heard from our intrepid thumb-monkey, Hurricane Irene was on her way…

Irene dumped a lot of rain on us. We were very, very lucky in that we only lost power overnight Saturday. Cable/internet was out until Tuesday though, which is more frustrating when everyone in the house works from home. Homes less than a mile from us were still without power at the end of the week and lots of the side roads were closed while utility and clean-up crews dealt with downed poles, lines and trees. The latest inundation of rain this week has not been helping and we’ve had some intermittent power outages. The ground has surpassed the super-saturation point and the little creeks are now rather enthusiastic rivers. I’m glad my little Clubman is a heavy car because there have been some rather large puddles in our way of late! Still, very, very lucky.

For Labor Day weekend, we hopped up to the Poconos. Last-minute travel on a holiday weekend means last-minute room availability. We stayed at a resort with an indoor water park, which was more fun than I expected it to be given I’m not allowed to go on water slides right now. There was this awesome Rube Goldberg machine apparatus with 2 water slides attached. You could climb all over, squirt water from, etc. Every 5 minutes or so, the enormous bucket up top would fill to a tipping point and dump a ton of water onto everyone below. Just awesome. There was also some impressive shopping done at the outlets. And general hanging out. The bed was terrible, unfortunately, so I probably came home more tired than I should have. Despite that, it was a lovely way to spend the weekend. From the web research to find an inn or resort with rooms to the actual experience, I’m left with the impression that most resorts in the Poconos were last redecorated in the late 80s.

Work has been busy – I feel like I’m staring down the inevitable feeling of “never going to ever catch up again.” There have been too many days of barely keeping up – being sick after Pennsic, internet outages forcing me to work from Starbux, etc – so I’m considering declaring it a wash and starting over with a clear conscience. Perhaps as soon as I get one more thing caught up…

We did pick over the bones of our local Borders the other night. The employees still seemed really pleasant given their impending unemployment. Everything was 70-90% off with an additional 15% taken off at the end if you bought more than 6 items. We didn’t have any trouble hitting that goal. I found a couple books for gifts, some entertaining silliness and a few books on topics I’m vaguely interested in but couldn’t justify without the deep discount. The Fop found more (he picked through the SciFi/Fantasy section, which I skipped) and we ended up leaving with a big box of books that we paid, overall, 23-24% of full retail for. Not bad. Of course, the savings is less impressive when you consider that most of the books are available from Amazon or the like for a deep discount. Still, some quick comparisons show us paying about half what we would have if we’d bought the books on Amazon. Now I just need to find more time to read.

Oh and…

Dear Apple,
My iPhone 3g is now 3 years old. I love it dearly but it’s really slowing down and starting to fail. Please hurry up and announce whatever it is you’re coming out with next so I can pre-order it.

Dear AT&T,
It’s been 2 weeks since Hurricane Irene. Please fix your stupid cell towers. Trust me, the crappy coverage I get at my house is even crappier when one or more of your nearby towers is malfunctioning. I’m a patient customer and all, but you are now having an impact on my stress levels.

This weekend was not as productive as I’d hoped… in part because I’m not as energetic as I think I am and we needed to work on the basement in the old house. I did get some pressing errands done. Laundry is on-going. I dumped a bunch of coffee in my keyboard, and while most of the keyboard works… I’ll be picking up a new one tomorrow because the top row of number keys all the way across to the “-” key is not working. The numbers I can mostly substitute with the number pad, but underscore, the at sign, percentages, all those good characters? Not as quick a compensation. Not to mention parentheses and exclamation points both of which I’d like to use here… I clearly started this post BEFORE the keys decided to go on strike. And I’m addicted to tabbed browsing and moving among tabs by hitting command+number, which has made for a very strange day of waiting for tabs to switch, getting irritated that all my browsers are so slow and then realizing it’s just that my number keys are borked. Le sigh.

Sadly, it was good coffee wasted too.

books, hurricane, iphone, random, retail therapy, technology, travel, weather

Bonus music today! Random Acts of Culture! The Opera Company of Philadelphia and many area choirs got together to sing in Macy’s. The organ featured in the event is the Wannamaker Organ, a National Historical Landmark and an impressive 101 year old instrument with 28,500 pipes. I love events like this and I’m reminded that I miss singing.

Tasha is snoring as she sleeps in the sunbeam on my desk. Even though she’s no longer technically a kitten (and never was, according to Monster Cat), I still think of her snoring as “little kitten snores” and, of course, adorable. The other two tails… er.. cats are sacked out on the chair.

Yesterday, I survived the grocery store! I went over early afternoon thinking that it would be less chaotic. I’m sure it was less chaotic than it will be today but the store was still rather packed. Lines were short at checkout at least! But I have everything I need to make pies and such for the holiday.

I have a rather serious book problem. Putting a book down is difficult, even if it’s not a terribly good book. I found a new feature to using an iPad as an eReader last night: the battery can run out and kick you out of your book thus making you go to sleep by 3 a.m. I think, perhaps, I should never start reading on my iPad unless there’s less than 20% of the battery power left. Sure, a real book doesn’t run out of power and cut you off in the middle of a page… but I think I might need the harsh cut-off to stop reading sometimes.

I’m not sure why I resist the holiday season up until Thanksgiving every year. I try to deny the inevitable and then, when I finally accept the holidays are upon me, it feels like there’s so little time left between “now” and the end of the year. I’m starting to consider what I’ll be baking for holiday gifts and feeling like I’m already behind. Some of that feeling is legitimate since I need to take at least 2 quick trips down to the office in VA before Xmas.

Lastly, if you are offended by the TSA’s latest, ineffective and intrusive security measure, please consider signing the ACLU’s privacy rights petition. There are better, more effective security methods out there. Let’s train TSA personnel to interview people (such as they do in Israel), let’s pay them a little more, and let’s stop taking off our shoes. I guess I’m lucky we haven’t had a “bra bomber” yet, but I’m thoroughly uninterested in being groped by a stranger or scanned by potentially unsafe technology. No, I won’t be flying this year.

books, cats, ereader, holidays, ipad, random, travel

I finished a pre-release memoir last night about a girl who stumbles through the sports betting world.

The cautionary tale is not to avoid gamblers and bookies. It’s not even that such activity is to be avoided. In fact the cautionary tale was more personal than that: Don’t write a crappy memoir.

I’m sure this memoir pitched like a charm – the exciting life and bad decisions of a girl coming of age among professional gamblers, bookies and other people one might consider of a “questionable element.” The blurb provided by Goodreads.com even made it sound exciting and engaging. (Disclaimer: I was provided this book free of charge through Goodreads.com in advance of the publication date in exchange for writing a review on Goodreads.com.) The best thing I can say about it is that the grammar and writing were at an acceptable level.

Alas, I found it dull. And I have no picked it apart to figure out why, what bugged me and why I feel this book fell short. The result is a set of rules for myself and my future memoir writing exercises.

Don’t misplace your voice among all the interesting people in your memoir.

The author forgot her own voice in and around the in-depth descriptions of each of her major and minor characters. She provided so much back-story and side-story that was, sadly, not interesting enough to be there in such volume, that her own story was lost. I didn’t relate to her and at times I didn’t even believe her. So much exposition, so little storytelling.

Don’t have inaction be the driving force in your memoir unless something really exciting or horrible happens due to said inaction.

Also, her story is just not that interesting. She made bad decisions, but they’re not spectacularly bad, but it seemed that more often the author ended up where she was through inaction and passivity rather than a bad decision or any other participation in her own life. Just like we don’t care about your story if you’re incredibly lucky and fall into barrels of gold doubloons and that’s all there is, I think a reader wants more from a narrator than a meandering and muddling through life.*

*The exception might be made for brilliant, painfully beautiful prose describing the meandering, muddling and inactivity…

Don’t use flashbacks without an obvious reason. Or a subtle reason. Or a reason your reader can divine using runes, an astrological chart and a compass.

Yes, yes, I know she just had to fit in the stories from the time in her life when she was an escort and ran her own porn site. It would have been nice if they’d tied into anything else we were reading about at the time. Even a fake line or two about looking at the Vegas showgirls and flashing back to it would have helped. So while the writing was sound enough, the construction and flow of the story was somewhat lacking.

Don’t immerse your readers in a world without teaching them more about it.

This book could have had more detail about sports betting. I actually have uncharitable thoughts about the author’s intelligence because she describes having a hard time grasping the concepts and ultimately never goes into the details I craved. Maybe my expectations were too high for the book, but I really thought I’d learn more than a little of the lingo.

Don’t write a memoir if all the exciting, life-changing events happen to someone else.

I felt supreme apathy towards the narrator in this book. I always knew she’d muddle through and, by way of her inaction, end up with something to sustain her unambitious life. I worried about her professional gambler, her bookie and even some of the colleagues far more. I was interested in their lives. These other people were the driving forces of the book, not the author. She was bounced about in their wakes.

This book would have been great if it had been deliberately written as a series of stories about the author’s mentors in the gambling world. Unfortunately, it was written as a memoir in a narrative voice that was not strong or interesting enough to carry the stories she was trying to tell. The exposition and back-story weakened the immediacy of the action and just made the book plod on forever.

Perhaps I had the wrong expectations going into this book. Perhaps I am unsympathetic to unambitious narrators. Either way, the uncorrected pre-publication copy is in my recycle box. Harsh? Yes, but unintentionally. I won’t be recommending it to anyone and can’t resell it as a used book, so what else is there? Ultimately “apathy” is my primary feeling towards the book and, in an effort to gain something from the experience, I now have my list of what not to do when I someday, full of folly, write my own memoir.

Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling by Beth Raymer will be published June 2nd.

books, memoir

“You will submit to my authority as a fierce kitten, you ridiculous excuse for a toy,” snarls Tasha.

Kittens grow. Abby’s growth has out-paced Tasha’s. We think Abby is more likely to become the solid, 14 pound tiger while Tasha maintains a more lithe runner’s build like a cheetah. We’re finally starting to see some more social-with-thumb-monkey’s behavior as well. Mostly, though, Tenny is their first true love. Of course.

Autumn has come early down here it seems. A pair of nor’easters are swinging through this weekend and the weather is a positively delightful bright gray with temperatures in the 40s. It’s going to warm up the end of next week but I may not be picking roses on Thanksgiving this year like I was last year. The roses are still going, especially the one out front… sometimes I think no one told my roses when they’re supposed to stop blooming. But if temperatures stay lower in the coming weeks, they’ll stop being so enthusiastic. I’m okay with that. It’s terribly pleasant to have some fall weather and some bright gray to set of what little foliage show we get down here. The Almanac promises a harsh winter. I’m perhaps a little too enthusiastic about that.

This week felt productive. I’m chasing a few things, working on some projects and generally getting things done. I also had a minor incident with a book mid-week that kept me up all night. I really shouldn’t read in bed. On the Edge (The Edge, Book 1) was the perpetrator this week – I got reading and just couldn’t talk myself into stopping until I’d finished the book… at 5:30 a.m. Yes, my name is Carla and I have a book problem.

“Why yes, I have grown since those first pictures, and you can tell, but isn’t it impolite to comment on a lady’s size? I’m a delicate flower of beauty and grace,” Abby protests around the strands of toy.

autumn, bengals, books, kittens, photographs, weather

I took over 5,000 (that’s Five Thousand) photographs last year. Many of them were of Monster Cat, of course. I briefly toyed with the idea of putting together a montage of favorites, either of Tennyson or other subjects, and found myself daunted by the sheer number of photographs to review. Instead, here’s a photograph I never got around to posting.

It’s been a party week with New Year’s Eve at at Thomas & Marion‘s and then a lovely housewarming party at Wendy‘s last night. Serious fun on both occasions.

I waited in line today. Outside of Best Buy. I got there 15 minutes before the store opened and was still 25th or so in line. I wouldn’t even wait in line to get my iPhone, but today I waited in line and was rewarded with a Wii Fit. So far, it’s fun and I’m starting to get the hang of it. Sledding games are totally fun when you can play them with your butt!

I just finished reading my book of the year!* The Conjurer (Martha Beale Mysteries) by Cordelia Frances Biddle. I enjoyed it great deal for several reasons! I only noticed one typo – which either means there weren’t more or I was too engaged in the book to notice. Both options are good signs given the lack of editing running rampant lately. If you’re interested in mid-19th century mystery novels or richly detailed portraits of places in time, I recommend this book! Plus there’s murder, intrigue and psychics all depicted in glorious 1842 detail. Martha Beale, our protagonist, starts the book as a meek and weak girl of the day and gradually and believably grows over the course of the story into a stronger woman without becoming an unbelievable anachronism of the modern woman. I need to pick up the sequel, Deception’s Daughter (Martha Beale Mysteries), because I’m curious to see if Martha will continue to evolve over the course of time.

*Okay, so maybe I got a head start on this one… preloaded a bit of the reading in 2008… but still, hurray!

books, parties, photography, reading, the conjurer, wii, wii fit

So, not feeling well this afternoon, I went back to bed around 2:30 complete with pajamas. I read for a bit, because I’m incredibly hooked on my current book. Then I read for a while longer, despite not being able to actually keep my eyes focused for very long. Finally I put the book down and slept until 7:30 or so. I can’t say it felt like great sleep but it was good enough sleep. I got up and had popcorn for dinner. Now I’m contemplating going back to bed soon. Maybe I’ll watch an episode of something on my computer just to give the useless Tylenol a chance to kick in. I want to finish my book! There are 2 more in the series! I just have to be careful the next couple nights not to stay up too late reading it.

That is all… tired now.

health, sleep, reading

There’s nothing like a busy week to make Friday arrive startlingly quickly. Between work craziness and cooking experiments, I’m both surprised and relieved that it’s Friday already! By the way, you can use white chocolate bits instead of semi-sweet in Never Fail Fudge with no problems. butterscotch bits don’t melt as nicely though. And don’t use old chocolate chips – they muck up the whole “never fail” part of the recipe.

Unfortunately, I do not have any snow. While there is snow in the forecast this weekend, it is bookended by rain. This positively sucks. However, at least I am assured of some snow next week when I head up north. If nothing else, my dad will put a snowball in the freezer for me if it looks like the snow is going to melt away. I page through my pictures of snow from years ago and get rather homesick. I don’t think I’ve taken any photos this month. It’s been pretty busy, I guess, but it still seems strange.

The primary elections continue to scare and amuse me. Fred Thompson appears to have woken up finally in Wednesday’s debate in Iowa. He’s really quite witty, but maybe he prepped his lines first. Huckabee and Ron Paul are still nutty. But I’m tired of lawyers, which doesn’t leave me a lot of options with either party. I hate the concept of “elect-ability” in our modern, marketing-driven democracy. I also have become wise or cynical enough that I can see the lies inherent in the system. I need to figure out if I need to pick/register for a party in advance in PA to vote in the primaries. Currently I’m registered as an independent – not only does it leave me blissfully unaffiliated, it means I get less junk mail.

In other news, I’m a sucker for the year-end lists in review. NPR had a book list from independent booksellers on Morning Edition. So many lovely books on the list! Which of course, leads me to remind myself that purchasing books does not mean I am purchasing the time to read them. Ah, the folly!

books, cooking, never fail fudge, politics, primaries, rain, snow, weather, work,