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Both Dreamwidth and I are running very slowly.

Spent much of the day finishing Carriger's book Soulless. It does resolve eventually, of course, and without losing the thread of silly that runs through the entire thing. We shall have to see whether I can resist reading the others.

And, since DW is being intractible, I shall to bed. Vegetarian dinner was quite a success. We had an Italian-inspired meal of spinach-lentil soup followed by baked polenta with cheese and marinara sauce. Both turned out very well.

Just watched the 25th anniversary production of Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera at the Albert Hall. It's fantastic, a tremendous job. Don't pass up a chance to see the DVD if you can, and even if you've already seen the older movie production.

The original 1909 book by Gaston Leroux was a sort of nine day wonder and I don't think the author ever produced anything else with anywhere near the success. It was made into silent film, stage play, several movie versions, and at least two musicals. The silent film and the 1943 movie are well worth seeing, and, frankly, I think the original book is the best since all the other versions have to leave out a great amount of detail. But if you can only see one, this latest recording contains both the best musical renditions and one of the most effective adaptations I have experienced.

Weather here is chilly, and clear, though we are supposed to move into clouds and snow later tomorrow. Winter hasn't quite given up yet, but with temperatures well above freezing in the daytime, the snow can't hang around for long.

Excuse: I felt so cold and uncomfortable by the time I got out of work.

Consequence: I forgot to stop on the way home and get a valentine card as I'd intended.

Probably not a disaster, but it's irritating nonetheless. Guess I have to get into the kitchen early tomorrow and make pink heart-shaped pancakes. ;p Fortunately I've promised him artwork but it won't be done by tomorrow.

It snowed more today, but with little accumulation. Things were nonetheless very slick and slippery for driving home this evening. Felt all afternoon as if I might be getting some bug or other, but now most of that seems to have passed.

Reading William Horwood's Duncton Wood, a long dystopic novel about moles, a bit similar to Watership Down but darker so far. This after having finished Mercedes Lackey's Changes yesterday, the latest in her long Valdemar series. It was OK, but the number of typographical errors and missing or disarranged words was distracting. I've noticed this tendency in her books before. I wonder if she refuses to let an outsider do any copy editing or proofing.

I see the FWA is going ahead with the plan to set up a series of awards in furry literature. While I agree that a juried system will be a good contrast with the Ursa Majors, which are entirely based on popular votes, having watched much of the early discussion I fear that in an attempt to be all inclusive they will make the Coyotl Awards just as ineffectual as the Ursas have become. Porn, porn and more porn does not provide a template for literary growth, any more than a diet of nothing but bacon provides the requirements of healthy nutrition.

Ah well, what I think doesn't matter.

(Not muddy.) Not as warm either, and it was mostly cloudy all day. Boo.

Long draggy day filled with boring cataloging, interlibrary loan, the usual stuff.

Thinking about things I should do, like get out the Argos suit and go over it, figure out what repairs and improvements it needs. Or work on finishing that novel from Nano last November. Or more laundry. Or cleaning off my desk. But I'm not going to do any of them. I'm going to get a blanket and snuggle in it and read. I have three different novels partly read and I need to finish one so I feel like I've accomplished something. ;p

Crazy duck has passed day 120 with the egg a day plan. Still delivering them.

It's cold out again, with possible freezing rain. Maybe they'll miss the forecast in the other direction and we'll have an ice storm. Nah, that's just wishful thinking.

...the behinder I get.

That's how it felt today anyway.

Why does it take five hours to run a map update on a Garmin GPS unit?

Expecting a slow day, I started the update on my desktop machine at work this morning. Of course two large book shipmets arrived immediately after that and I had to scrounge another machine to do cataloging work on.

Meanwhile Gary was baking cookies. All day! That's a heckuva lot of cookies. Most will be given away, but still...

Unseasonably warm, all the snow is gone. Chances of more by Christmas seem slim, though it is supposed to get unpleasantly cold again by tomorrow.

Just about all the shopping that will get done has been done. Hope the stuff that I ordered will arrive in time. One more trip needed, but shouldn't be too difficult. But for now, to bed, I think.

Oh, one other interesting thing. A book requested through interlibrary loan arrived today. Scott Trostel's history of the Detroit Toledo & Ironton Railroad, supplied by Indiana State University and not required back until the end of January. Fascinating, almost 400 pages of text and photographs telling how a small railroad in a limited territory was nonetheless an innovator and leader in many respects, and particularly so under the administration of Henry Ford (who ran it in the 1920s.) Looking forward to reading most of it if not all.

Well at least it's nearly done. Work was, well, work. Except for one thing. I had a stack of kids' books to catalog among other things, and in them there were two of Ursula Vernon's Dragonbreath stories. I ended up reading all of the Curse of the Were-Wiener at lunch. It's hilarious, full of subtle jokes (many of which will probably go right over the target audience's collective heads, but OK.) Who knew that getting bitten by a Transylvanian were-wiener could turn you into a (gasp) minion? Or that the only cure would be to find and "take out" the alpha-wiener?

Said solution requiring both an end run around the "lunchroom ladies" in their hairnets, and also plumbing the coldest depths of the cafeteria's cold storage lockers. So much better than Captain Underpants or even Walter the Farting Dog. Keep up the good work, Ursula. Of course the illustrations are a stitch too. Even if you don't have an Igor on hand to take that stitch for you.

Remember the hibiscus I showed you last week? Well, we had a heavy downpour on Saturday for just a short time, but I'm told the rain knocked all the flowers off. You'd never know it. Today it had six blossoms open and more on the way.

Now I'm gonna go outside and see if I can catch a glimpse of the Sturgeon moon as it rises.

Useful work accomplished this weekend: zero.

Successes at satisfying others: several.

Cooking and chauffeuring accomplished. Choral premier performance attended, and it was quite nice. A traditional mass in Latin and English, the usual nine segments, for mixed choir, organ, and violoncello. The cellist was superb, the organist (also the composer) outdid himself, and the choir was not bad either, especially considering that they had only six rehearsals and none were professionals.

Made pasta casserole last night with whole wheat mostaccioli and our own home made hot Italian sausage. This morning, fresh blueberry muffins using our own frozen blueberries from last year, and tonight I served corned beef and cabbage in honor of St. Paddy's, with potatoes, carrots, asparagus, applesauce, and Gary's home made rye bread. That made a hit. The beef, carrots, and potatoes were cooked for 11 hours in a slow cooker, using beer for liquid. Fork tender, fragrant, and tasty.

Finished up a novel I was reading, The Darling Buds of May by H. E. Bates (1958.) Alex said my writing reminded him of this, though he was more likely thinking of the television serial that was based on the original books. However, I enjoyed the book and I more or less agree with his point. Bates' story of a cheerful and overly friendly English country family surrounded by eccentric neighbors does have something in common with my own domestic style, though I'd say this author is more prone to slapstick humor and less likely to be as subtle and layered as I at least try to be in my own writing. It's certainly funny and very English, and I recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind a leisurely stroll through the "medder" with pauses to smell the buttercups and listen to the cuckoos and nightingales, punctuated by incredibly heavy drinking, eating (with lots of ketchup,) moderately sublimated sexuality, learning to "use your loaf," and a cast of characters who are, for the most part, extreme caricatures.

First, happy card-companies-confectioners-and-florists-get-rich day to all of you. Or, as someone pointed out, tomorrow is cheap-chocolate-on-sale day.

Last week, noted and notorious publisher Alex F. Vance issued an invitation for furry writers to participate in an online clinic to be held over Ustream on Saturday evening (or early Sunday morning for the European folks.) I submitted a page of dialog as candidate material and he accepted it.

In all, seven writers had samples of their work read and discussed over a three hour period. Participants included Alex, Skip Ruddertail, Tango-Mutt, Buck Hopper, PS Lion, Cybercoyote, Sulartenem, and Siphedious as well as myself. The entire session ran three hours and was both interesting and entertaining. Alex edited the audio track and has posted it in several segments here.

We were scattered across the face of the earth from Indonesia and Australia to Europe to both coasts of North America, but thanks to Skype and Ustream Alex was able to pull it all together so everyone could have a say and hear what the others thought. It was great fun, and I recommend the audio tracks to anyone interested in furry writing, or just writing in general.

The schedule for this weekend looks much too busy and over-booked. Gary will be gone all day tomorrow for the University of Chicago Folkfest. I have a guild meeting, plus will have to cover all the animal duties for the day, do the weekly grocery shopping and plan supper for the evening. Then Alex Vance put out a request for writing excerpts that he could read and discuss during a ustream presentation tomorrow and I impetuously sent him one. If I want to see and hear what he says, I'll need to get online with a working connection (possible sometimes) in order to do so, and at the precise correct time.

Sunday doesn't look much better, what with Gary having choir in the morning and a rehearsal for much of the afternoon. That's normally one of my days for animal chores, and the temperature is predicted to approach 40F, well above freezing. That means that all this snow is going to start melting, fast. Fast melt in turn poses a risk of floods and puddles held back by snow or ice dams. Two years ago, this same sort of situation gave us significant flooding in one of the barns.

The library is having a major book sale on Saturday as well, but I won't be going. I really don't need more books. That said, I did "rescue" some small cookbooks from it this afternoon, and something interesting that I've not seen before: a metaphor dictionary. This is a sort of hybrid between a thesaurus and a dictionary of quotations. So if you look under a concept or word, "sleep" for example, you will find famous (and not so famous) quotes that contain metaphors for the idea you seek. If nothing else, it should be good for finding epigraphs to put onto stories, I guess.

Sleep that knits up the ravel'd sleeve of care, the death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast.
--Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 2, scene 2.

The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release.
--Philip Sidney, "Sonnet 39"

Turn back the sheets, I'm heading for the arms of Morpheus.
--Mae West, Klondike Annie

Two in a row every week is hard to take. Wednesday is my fault, as usual, due to working until the library closes. Thursday now is Gary's day due to a class that doesn't get out until 8:45 and then he has to drive home from Dekalb. At least I kept myself organized enough to have dinner ready the minute he arrived, as he does for me on Wednesday.

Searching for my various reference books on the Angevin and Plantagenet kings, so far only found about half of them. Some were in storage out in the barns, which is always tricky. I seem to have misplaced Norah Lofts' novel, The Lute Player, which is of course fictional but contains a lot of relevant material just the same. Guess I'd better find a cheap used copy somewhere. Shouldn't be hard, it was a best seller and book club selection back in the early 1950s.

I need to check my portable word processing machines and make sure I have one in working order with new batteries before Monday. Right now I'm pondering characters and what species to assign them. I'm inclined to make wolves of the German and Austrian nobility, and felines of the British royals. They ought to be lions by tradition and heraldry, but I don't know that Britain or France ever actually had lions in historic times. Was there any native large cat in Britain? Or is the house cat the biggest that was ever there? The French king, being a cousin to the English/Norman, ought to be feline as well, though I'd rather like to make him into a fox. On the other paw, fox seems right for Saladin and the Turks as they were called. Maybe they should be fennec foxes while the French are red foxes?

I've just about decided to use familiar diminutives for all of them, so Richard will become Ricky, Eleanor will be Ellie, John will be Johnny, and the the Holy Roman Emperor Henry will be Hank. ;p This is going to be full of anachronisms and utter nonsense anyway, and is intended to be just silly and fun rather than anything serious. I expect to make bilingual puns and quote from authors who won't be born for centuries. We'll probably throw in ideas and scenery from Malory to Cervantes to Shakespeare. I expect Richard to be visited by at least one ghost, probably one of his ancestors, though wouldn't it be twisted to send his great-great-grand nephew Edward II to warn him of something?

Don't mind me, I'm just pondering possibilities. The book will need an introduction from the author in which I twist around the usual disclaimers. Something like "The characters in this work of fiction may in fact resemble real historical characters, and if they do so it is entirely intentional. However, there is not a word of truth in any of the events or situations that are depicted. It's all in fun, and intended to be taken that way. The author, being himself a distant descendant of several of the major figures, believes that he is entitled to make fun of them. If he is not offended, why should you be?"

Temperature is hovering just above freezing outside at the moment. I fully expect it to get well below that before the night's out. Probably the catalpa trees will finally let go of their leaves. It's usually rather like someone pulled a rip cord. Catalpa leaves are very large, and when they all fall from a large tree at once, the pile of leaves can be waist deep until the wind starts moving them away.