Monday, February 08, 2010
Vacation is just around the corner....
It's our last week before Winter break and I know the kids (and E) are really looking forward to it. Okay...me too. We're going to Long Beach on the Washington coast for a few days. Duncan will probably suffer Xbox Live withdrawal but it's good for him to be oppressed with family things once in a while. Max is even going with us. He'll love running along the beach and sniffing all of the interesting items that wash up on the beach. In the meantime we need to get through this week at work and school. Wish me luck....
Tamara
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Sunday, February 07, 2010
More Fun!
Sorry for the late update, but to be honest Tamara and I got so busy with house, kids and cooking that we spaced tonight, hence late update.
Here it is, please enjoy!
Elisa
posted by E - 8:21 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Saturday, February 06, 2010
Our Decadent Lifestyle
The house officially goes back on the market tomorrow so our day has been spent cleaning. I've mopped all of the floors with the exception of the main bathroom. The computer room still needs a tidy. The kitchen cabinets need to be cleared off again. Add to those some minor tidying in each of the bedrooms and we'll be ready to go through the routine of keeping our beds made and everything picked up for those random potential home buyer visits.
We still haven't decided where to put the darn gerbil cage. Currently he's sitting on a coffee table. The cats have long since gotten over their fascination with the strange smelling moving thing and mostly ignore him. He's a hearty little thing and has defied all expectations by living well beyond his years. He's had what appear to be a few minor strokes, but always manages to be revived with an application of applesauce. Weird, huh?
I'm fresh out of babbling. Not a lot to read tonight. Keep your fingers crossed for more tomorrow. We're off to get some books at the library. Yay!
Tamara
posted by Tamara - 3:50 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Friday, February 05, 2010
TGIF
Why did this week feel extra loooong? Well it's coming to an end and we have a fun-filled cleaning weekend ahead. Yes, the sign is up, the lock box is on the door and now all we need to do is the final scrub, dust and put away of crap. Hence, almost ready.
Of course, now is when we need luck. Got any? Send good thoughts for selling this house please.
Otherwise here is your update...please enjoy it and the weekend!
Peace, Health and Happiness.
Elisa
posted by E - 5:16 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Thursday, February 04, 2010
Kids
I'm heartily sick of my children. Yes, I still love them. Yes, I do realize I'm incredibly lucky to have two healthy and reasonably intelligent offspring. But if I have to deal with another school based issue this week I'm going to scream.
Is it bad to say I'm happy they're with their Dad tonight?
Enjoy your updates while I enjoy my somewhat stress-free evening.
Tamara
posted by Tamara - 4:32 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Went the day well??
I have absolutely no idea what to chat about tonight. Not a clue. It was an ok day at work. Nothing went wrong. It was an ok journey to and from work (if a trifle damp). I didn't go to the supermarket so there was no chaos caused there either. I have broken anything, not bones, not china, not appliances. Today has been perfectly calm, predictable, quiet. I don't know what's wrong with me. Oh Lord, I'm not becoming...boring...am I??
Nah - it won't last.
You know, it's weird. I hate chaos. I love order. So much so that some message boards on the web drive me to distraction with their lack of order and others are too disorganised for me to even consider reading. I love TWoP because it is so very ordered. I love order at home. My cds are sorted alphabetically and by type. My books are alphabetical within subjects. My clothes are carefully sorted in different drawers.
And yet my life is chaos personified.
There are days when I'm not safe to be let out in charge of a pair of feet, let alone complex machinery. The work I do is precise. The painting is perfect. Clean and exact. I can paint a straight line down the length of a window-frame and not get a speck on the glass. There won't be any on the floor or furniture. If I paint a skirting-board you won't need to lift the carpet - it won't get a drop on it. But me... oh blimey... my painter's whites will look like a Jackson Pollock canvas. My hands will need white spirit to get them clean and I'll have freckles all the colours of the rainbow. I'm a paint version of that Peanuts character, Pigpen. I've only got to look at a tin of paint and it'll leap up and splatter me.
The rest of my life is the same. That neat stack of loo rolls the assistant just finished?? Don't let me near it!! The pile of tins?? Oh no. If I pass with 3 metres of it it'll be over. It it can be fallen off, fallen over, fallen into, dropped, cracked, broken or slipped on. I'll be first in the queue to fall, drop or break.
Maybe I shouldn't grumble that the day was quiet. Maybe I should savour it. Treasure it before tomorrow's inevitable storm. I'll do that. I'll have a nice cuppa and sit here contemplating the peace.
See you next week. Goodnight and may your god/s go with you
Ze
posted by zero2aries - 1:48 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Nothing but grumbles
I don't have much luck with computers. Maybe I should give up and get a wax tablet & bone stylus. My laptop's working great now. But this past week the cable has crashed. Twice. Once county-wide for 12 hours and once locally (the next day) for a day-and-a-half. So no tv and no internet. And there was I, on a deadline. I couldn't meet it. I couldn't get the story sent in time. OK, maybe I shouldn't leave it until the last minute to send submissions - but with the laptop seizing up on me I couldn't get it written and edited ready until the last minute. On well. It was crap anyway. It's just I hate letting people down when I've said I'll submit. (No snickering up there in the back row, thank you!!).
Actually it's being one of those weeks. You know - the sort when all you want to do is grumble. The weather sucks, it makes my shoulder ache. My football team seems to have gone south for winter and left its Spitting Image puppets to play instead. And I've mislaid a library book, which is now a month overdue and racking up fines like nobody's business. I start feeling right sorry for myself.
And then I get a bulletin from Medecins sans Frontieres about the situation in Haiti. And I realise how bloody lucky I am.
And what was with those idiots?? Did they really think they had the right to kidnap a bunch of kids?? That they could rip them away from their families, smuggle them out of the country and it would be all right?? I hope Haiti locks them up for a very long time. And their lawyer is grumbling "There is no air conditioning, no electricity. It is very disturbing." WTF?? Talk about coming from privilege. Did he not notice that they've had a devastating earthquake?? Did he somehow fail to perceive that the whole bloody country is without those things!!
Every time I think my faith in humanity has reached rock-bottom some idiot will come along and prove me wrong.
Ze
posted by zero2aries - 1:51 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Monday, February 01, 2010
Ramble from phair
Phair stopped by once again...enjoy!People who send out alarming news and then fall silent about the eventual outcome are among the most annoying type of animal inhabiting our modern world. Oh, they have every colorful excuse for the lack of updates. And, they are filled with good intentions and deep remorse. Still, they leave the folks they worried worrying longer than strictly necessary.
My friends, I am a card carrying member of that exact breed of annoying animal.
All the way back to last April, I sent out an email and posted a ramble about my vision. I awoke one morning to find a change in my right eye. There was a dark, liquid like haze shaped in a large circle in the dead center of my visual field. It formed a perfect ring around a blind spot I had been told was a un-repairable scratch of unknown origin on the cornea.
My Mom went blind so I didn't screw around with this. I raced over to the nice folks at our local Mass Eye and Ear satellite. The emergency covering eye doc that evening told me I needed an appointment with the retina specialist, try not to worry too much in between then and when I got to see him, and there was no immediate active disease. The retina guy several days later diagnosed Central Serous Retinopathy. He explained it was like a cold (head cold not shiver cold) in one eye which usually ran a course of three or four months and went away on it's own. There was no treatment unless it lingered.
Mine lingered.
Okay, the retina specialist saw me more this summer than my family. The condition was not changing. Good that it was not worsening. Bad that it was not just healing.
Treatment time.
Laser beams! On the first Friday in November, the retina guy injected a chemical into my veins which was super sensitive to ultraviolent light. Then he flashed a laser for less then sixty second at the spot we wanted to fix.
Done.
I mean done. It worked instantly. Well, instantly in a relative sense. Once the flashing after effects from having a light shine in your eye faded, my vision was 100%. The unrepairable blind spot was actually the source of the problem and it healed. The retina guy didn't think that would happen. During our last follow up visit, the usually dour man grinned at me and said, "we got really lucky." "No," I told him. "I got you to treat me."
So, my disastrous year of 2009 drew to a soft close. 2010 has started busy with family illness and a birth of a grand niece; Lucy. Work that pays the bills blows but my writing is going strong. My website hit IT problems in the last quarter of 2009 but I hope they are on the way to resolution for all of 2010. My vision is clear and my health is good and that, my friends, is a lot more than some people can say. To paraphrase the retina specialist, I got lucky, really lucky.
Phair, take all the luck you can! May a bit more follow you around. Have a great night y'all, enjoy the updates!
Elisa
posted by E - 4:07 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Sunday, January 31, 2010
Weekend Wrap Up
Tamara and I are tired, but the house is closer. I still have a few things to get done but have a few weeknights to accomplish it all. Tonight you have a lot to read, but first a few announcements from Bedazzled Ink.The ebook edition of Skulls & Crossbones: Tales of Women Pirates, edited by Andi Marquette and R. G. Emanuelle, has slipped out of the harbor and set sail. The print version will be hoisting sails shortly.
Raise the sails! Adjust the thrusters! Prepare to embark on courageous adventures on water, land, and sky. From Viking battles of revenge and high sea betrayal, to modern-day piracy and space banditry, these twenty tales conjure up our inner pirate. Join the crews of women pirates who triumph in victory, face the gallows, and become unlikely heroes-women who follow the code of the Skull & Crossbones.
The Tales:
"Ladgarda" by Christine Rains - "The Gallows" by Jove Belle - "Valkyry" by Rakelle Valencia - "Lost Treasure" by R. G. Emanuelle - "The Hangman's Dance" by Jane Fletcher - "The Furies" by Rajan Khanna - "Devil's Bargain" by Andi Marquette - "Fifty Octaves Deep" by Alice Godwin - "HMS Nefarious," by Rod Santos - "Pirate Wannabe" by Aubrie Dionne - "Road Pirate Wanted" by Victoria Oldham - "The Brahmapur Buccaneer" by Matthew Fryer - "The Kindness of Strangers" Vicki Stevenson - "Resolution 1838" by David Brookes - "The After" by Carrie Vaccaro Nelkin -"Captain, Hook, and Mr. Shrike" by Cat Conley - "A Perfect Life" by Elaine Burnes - "Stardance" by Trace Miller - "The Passenger" by Megan Magill - "Pipettes for the Pirate" by Holly Ellingwood
Ramble over to Bedazzled Book Peddler for the ebook:
bedazzledink.com/bbp/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=36
For more information visit:
bedazzledink.com/?page_id=214
##
DEV AND CASSIE are back for more devilish fun with their demons tagging along for the ride in Hell for the Holidays by K. Simpson, the third book of the Devil's Workshop series. The print edition is now available.
Devlin Kerry and Cassandra Wolfe lead very complicated lives. They're in advertising, they're a couple, and they each have a personal demon. They decide to cap off a perfectly hellish year by spending Thanksgiving with the Wolfes and Christmas with the Kerrys. Between their crazy demons and even crazier families, Dev and Cassie are reminded that there's no place like hell, um, home for the holidays.
You can buy the ebook at the Bedazzled Book Peddler:
bedazzledink.com/bbp/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=34
Learn more about Hell for the Holidays and read an excerpt at:
bedazzledink.com/?page_id=588
Don't forget to check out the first two books of the Devil's Workshop series.
Several Devils (bedazzledink.com/?page_id=220) and The Average of Deviance (bedazzledink.com/?page_id=222).
##
IN THE MOOD for some bloodthirsty fun? The print edition of Knight Predator by Jordan Falconer is now available.
Carlisle Crowley is a striking, beautiful vampire hell-bent on living her undead life to the fullest. The last thing she needs hanging around her is Bronwyn Hunter, a seventeen-year-old love-struck human girl. As Crowley struggles to reconcile her blood-thirsty instincts with her human past, Bronwyn proves to be an insightful and steadfast ally. When Crowley's dark and mysterious past comes back to haunt her, the pair embark on a journey of self discovery that tests their relationship to the limit.
You can buy the ebook at Bedazzled Book Peddler:
bedazzledink.com/bbp/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=35
Learn more about Knight Predator and read an excerpt at:
bedazzledink.com/?page_id=207
Back to your updates...enjoy!
Elisa
posted by E - 5:41 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Saturday, January 30, 2010
Busy Saturday
We managed to pack more stuff away and we even removed a bookcase. We're done for today but have more to look forward to tomorrow. Yay.
Y'all enjoy the updates.
Tamara
posted by Tamara - 4:14 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Friday, January 29, 2010
TGIF
Even when the weekend is filled with work to be done at the house it seems better than work to be done at work...why is that? So the weekend is upon us and Tamara and I will spend it "prepping" the house once again to put on this wonderful real estate market. We both are excited...not.
Other than that, same old same old.
Peace, Health and Happiness. Oh, and enjoy your updates!
Elisa
posted by E - 5:56 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Thursday, January 28, 2010
Plenty to Read
Have at it.
Tamara
posted by Tamara - 4:03 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Wheee
I am not entirely sober. I'm not drunk you understand. I couldn't type this if I were. But I'm not quite sober either. I had the day off work today as an online Australian friend is in England for a bit. And she came to spend a day here, in not-so-sunny-at-the-moment Devon. I met her early this afternoon and showed her around the city. Lots of history here. (City was founded in 80CE). We saw Roman walls and the Norman Castle. The remains of a 12th century bridge, the cathedral, dozens of mediaeval churches, Tudor houses and a narrow cobbled street that was once the main route into the city. Then we had dinner (a fine - if over-priced - Italian restaurant).
Then we went to the pub. I introduced her to real cider. As in stronger and more alcoholic than beer. Cloudy - and not only are there bits in it but the big bits chase and kill the little bits. That sort of cider. She liked it.
We moved on to the Australian themed pub. She wasn't impressed. We watched football on the big-screen tv and she persuaded me to try Toohey's. She was even less impressed. It was crap and apparently nothing like real Australian Toohey's. Then we tried VB. It was just like real Australian VB. Good stuff. She thought the barman (another real Aussie) was cute. I wouldn't know... *g* We stayed drinking and chatting 'til late. Which is why I'm not quite sober. And incapable of being serious.
It's a shame because today is Holocaust Memorial Day and I really wanted to talk to you all about things like that. About the way humans still slaughter each other, about Rwanda and Cambodia and Bosnia. And about the thought processes the city council went through that convinced them that the best way to remember millions of people being beaten and starved to death was a memorial banquet in the guildhall.
But I'm not sober enough for that. So I'll just say - spare a moment today to remember the victims of genocide. And pray we learn not to do it again.
Enjoy your updates. See you next week. Goodnight and may your God/s go with you.
Ze
posted by zero2aries - 3:36 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
I'm Brilliant
Well maybe not exactly brilliant - but I'm not too bad, generally. And I'm lucky (sometimes). Anyway - I DID IT!! I fixed my laptop. Ok - it took me most of Sunday but I did it. Eventually I figured out what I was doing and realised I didn't need the three pages of DOS commands the book suggested. In fact I only needed half a page. Once I realised that it only took me a further half-hour.
Before I started I did go through one of those full of doubts and "don't try this at home, kiddies" moments, and I thought very seriously about whether it was a good idea - letting me loose on things that can be royally screwed-up is never really a smart option. And two good friends who are very computer-savvy emailed me with dire warnings of what could go wrong. And I know they were right - I could have destroyed the hard-drive beyond all fixing - but I reckoned it was useless anyway if it couldn't be fixed, so what did I have to lose.
And I fixed it!!
I'm dead chuffed.
Ze
posted by zero2aries - 1:59 PM -- Email this post: Link to this entry
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