Snow Date

What went before:  Yesterday was not a good day.  Nuff said.

Monday, grey and cold. Snow showers in the forecast.

Went to bed early; got up to the 6:45 alarm. Breakfast was a blueberry muffin and some English Cheddar. First cup of tea is to hand.

Today’s Plan insomuch as it can be said to be a plan is to finish my cup of tea, do my duty to the cats, fill a Yeti with yet more hot tea and go camp out at the Verizon store until it’s time to go to the dentist. I do have to let an InfoDump out into the cyberlanes today, but that will be AD — After Dentist.

So, do I understand this correctly — there’s another John Carter movie (cleverly titled JOHN CARTER 2)? Thirteen years after the original “mega-flop”? The ways of The Mouse are mysterious, indeed.

What’s your Plan for Monday?

In Which the Writer is NOT Writing

What Went Before:  Last night, as part of the curriculum of Not Writing, I watched a show on PBS Passport called SAFE HARBORS, which is a tour of 65 Maine lighthouses (I note here that this is not all of the lighthouses in Maine, and also that I’ve been to/seen a surprising number of them).  I urge everyone to find this show and watch it (I’m told it’s soon to come to YouTube).  It’s not a documentary, there’s no narration, only music and these incredible, incredible views of the lighthouses.

Moving on to!

Friday. Chilly, lots of puffy white clouds moving fast across a mostly blue sky.

Tea brewing. Breakfast will be cottage cheese, corn flat (I’ve forgotten what they’re called — Thomas’ Toaster something. As a substitute for corn bread, it’s not. Next time, I’ll make my own. — and grapes. Lunch — I guess fish and — something.

I see there are as many as half-a-dozen folks admitting to having read Diviner’s Bow — thank you and I hope you had fun. Do remember the spoiler space, and to drop a review at Goodreads or other venue of your choice.

Regarding the spoiler space, I am going to vary. It has been the authors’ policy not to be involved in those discussions, merely releasing messages after a scan for politeness &c. This time, I have a Question Regarding Craft that you, the readers of this particular work, can help me with. So, I’ll be posing my question in the spoiler discussion, and I thank all participants in advance for your patience and your assistance.

Today is another No-I-Am-NOT-Writing Day. This is kind of hardcore, but I’ve got to get my brain back, and the best thing I know to do is Do Other Things. If the weather were more clement, I’d go for a drive, but I think that’s off the table. *looks out window at the wind shaking the crab apple tree* Yeah. Off the table.

What I will be doing is taking down the wreath, which has started to lose needles, and changing out the 2024 moon phase calendar for the 2025. Also, there’s rumors of the June royalties in the bank, so I’ll be doing some cash juggling.

I read an interesting article last night about the Five of Cups, which is typically rendered as a Card of Loss. In traditional decks, the image is of a figure and five cups, three of which are overturned; two remaining upright. The figure is focused on the overturned cups — thus the loss. However, the two unregarded cups, still full, sitting behind the figure, hint that all, perhaps, is *not* lost.

It will surprise no one here to learn that my favorite tarot deck is not a traditional deck, but the Halloween Tarot, which I find both joyful and accessible. In this deck, the suits are Pumpkins (Pentacles), Ghosts (Cups), Bats (Swords), and Imps (Wands).

The Five of Ghosts, then: a central figure, gazing downward, clearly disconcerted or sad; there is a bucket on the ground directly behind him. Around the figure are five ghosts, hovering in a sky with five stars. The ghosts are also disconcerted, following the central figure’s downward gaze. The black cat (which appears in all of the cards in this deck) is in the foreground, looking at the ghosts.

I was at first somewhat alarmed. Playful my deck might be, but it stringently adheres to the Language of the Tarot, and this card varied and not in a good way. It seemed to withhold the promise of those two, unspilled, cups, not only going against the Language, but the spirit of the deck itself.

So, I sat with the card for a while, and it came to me, finally, that one of the ghosts was not focused on the disaster, whatever it was. It was focused on the figure, and its arms were outstretched, as if it would offer comfort. And then, of course, there’s the bucket, sitting quietly — empty or full, but not spilled. The Language remains pure, and the card remains true to itself and the deck.

So, that.

What’s surprised you recently?

Wake-up cat census:

 

Oh Monday mornin’ you gave me no warnin’ of what was to be

Monday. Sunny and cold.

Breakfast was two scrambled eggs with cheese, onion, and rice inclusions, toast with strawberry jam. Finishing up the first mug of tea.

I have a long list of phone calls to make today, and have already made one. I also need to go outside and make sure the dryer vent is clear. Oh. And hardboil some eggs. I have a lot of eggs, for some reason. Good thing I like hardboiled egg sandwiches.

I also have an appointment with the chiropractor, and I need to stop at the pharmacy/grocery, to pick up meds and the classic A Couple of Things.

I quit just in time yesterday, folded up on the couch under a blanket, with tea and graham crackers to hand. Read some more of Magpie Murders, shifted ahead, and saw that Mr. Horowitz was going to make me read Alan’s WHOLE DAMN BOOK (absent the last chapter) before we got back to Susan, and decided, as I once similarly decided for Harlan Ellison, that Mr. Horowitz was not going to make me do that, and put the book away. I then thought I’d read the Rivers of London novella that I’d been holding in reserve.

Except, I fell asleep. This was *not* Peter’s fault; I hadn’t even opened the book.

Woke a little while later and decided to explore Roku, since I had found the lighthouse show I’ve been trying to track down on Maine Public TV in the December guide, which meant that I had to find if Roku would show me, well, television.

In fact, it will. I watched a short documentary on Sequin Light Station in Phippsburg (not the new show I want to see), which was very interesting, indeed. Especially that tram system up the sheer cliff from sea level to Light level, all in the service of delivering the vast quantities of wood required by the fog-horn, which was steam-powered.

Having proved that I could, indeed, watch Maine Public on Roku, I doodled around on my tablet and somehow came up with the Muppet Show featuring Harry Belafonte, which I was pleased to watch.

Then, I opened up Masquerades of Spring, to get in some reading — only to find that I couldn’t focus my eyes sufficiently to do so. Yeah, well, I’d known I was tired, now didn’t I?

I made a couple notes for that short story my brain thinks it would like to write, and about 9:30 threw in the towel and went to bed.

I occurs to me that I may need to lay in some audiobooks, so I’m not staring at screens 24/7. Ack.

interrupted here by an incoming phone call from the local hospital. “Hello! May I speak to Steven?” / “You may not. Steven died in February.” / “I’m so sorry. Good-bye.”

That’s about it on the Cat Farm News Channel.

How’s everybody doing today?

Today’s blog title brought to you by the Mamas and the Papas, “Monday, Monday.”

Six for Gold

Saturday. Sunny and cold.

Breakfast was rice cakes and cream cheese with the last of the grapes. Kettle on for second cup of tea. Lunch with be Leftover Feast. Except for the apple pie. The apple pie is long gone.

Stayed up late last night to watch the last three episodes of Magpie Murders. For some reason, I had thought that there were only five episodes, and I had made a commitment to the cats that we would learn whodunit before we went to bed.

In the end — well done, all! I liked Mr. Horowitz’ commentary, and his description of, having written what must be a very tight book, needing to unravel and re-knit it into another sort of sweater entirely.

I did sort of blink at Mr. Horowitz’ comment, which I may have read, not heard, that when he started writing books, there was no Amazon, no internet, no computers.

Well . . . yeah. I wrote my first (second, third, fourth …) short story on a manual typewriter; we wrote Agent of Change on an electric typewriter. There were, of course, computers in existence at that time, but they were behemoths that were housed in their own substantial wing and bathed in freezing cold air. There was also an internet — Steve used to do card creation on the proto-internet, back in his curation days (note the juxtaposition: he was creating cards to go into a physical card catalog on the internet).

Anyhow, I’ve had Magpie Murders in my TBR pile for a while, so that’s queued up for next read, now that I’ve finished Salvage Right. I don’t usually see the movie first and then read the book, so this will be interesting.

My next door neighbor dropped me a note this morning, offering snow removal assistance, which I’ve accepted. I s’pose I’ll call the guy I thought I hired on Monday and ask if he’s still on.

I really don’t understand the people who say, “Yes! I will do this thing, for which you will pay me!” who then never show up, never phone, just — poof! Why on earth would you say yes if you have no intention of doing the thing? Surely, it’s much less hassle to just say, “Nope, sorry. Can’t do it.” Then everybody’s on the same square, no one’s aggrieved, and your karmic load isn’t disbalanced.

So! Today, is Change Out Computers Day! Always an exciting event. This also means that I may be scarce for a bit. Please talk among yourselves.

What’re you doing that’s exciting today?