This being Monday, I am at Favorite Thing Ever, telling you all about how much I love a good feature article, especially if it’s by Pamela Coloff, and how this is entirely Snuffy‘s fault.
Kelly, meanwhile, posted a recent piece on Mika, musical love child of George Michael and Freddy Mercury, and kormantic sings the praises of a band called Flight of the Conchords.
In the spirit of being grateful, I offer this deep thought: be glad you don’t have one of these on you!
Kelly gets invited to a lot of wine-themed gatherings at this time of year, by people hoping she’ll mention their products in her Chatelaine column, and I’ve gotten to tag along once or twice. They are fun, bubbly crowd scenes, and the food is amazing.
Thursday, though, was the first time I got invited to a full-bore, five-course tasting dinner–and the host was the maker of my favorite beer–Innis & Gunn Oak-Aged Beer from Scotland. I have been looking forward to going to CinCin for this for weeks!
As you can probably deduce from their name, Innis & Gunn age their lovely, lovely beer in bourbon, Scotch, rum, and other boozy-type oak casks. We first encountered its wonders, improbably enough, at a Real Canadian Superstore liquor outlet in Airdrie, Alberta. The 20-something at the cash register raved about it… with cause, as it turned out. From then on, it has been the beer I actually make a point of getting and drinking on my 3-4 “Must have Beer Now!” days of the year.
The way these dinners work, it turns out, is they bring out each course of the meal, and the chef tells you what he’s made. Then one of the drinks experts explains which beer is paired with the food, and why. Then your brain explodes with the yum. They’re opulent affairs. The appetizer was salmon and beet root salad with a foamy beer zabaglione, and the main course was venison with chocolate sauce. Dessert was panna cotta, paired with the Canadian Rye cask beer–which was the sharpest of the bunch, and less a fave of mine. I lost my heart, on the other hand, to the Highland Cask beer, which was the drinking equivalent of a perfect day at the circus. It is a limited edition, alas! They won’t make it again. Fortunately, their Rum Cask is almost as mind-blowing, and is about to be available in Canada, hopefully forever.
This whole thing was hosted by the master brewer and owner of the company, Dougal Sharp, and I ended up sitting next to him and a young woman who was dressed like a librarian. It was a disguise, it turns out, as she’s actually something of a sporty adventuress: a helicopter-skiing, white-water rafting, hiking, biking, hunting, fishing rough and tumble woman from the Okanagan. The two of us asked Dougal many questions about beer making, and I’m thinking my next book has to feature some of the lore. Luckily, I have a planet on the drafting board that has infinite room for passionate little subcultures.
It was a delicious, extravagant and tipsy evening, and a great kick-off to the holiday weekend.
A question for the local folk–we buy Amore raw meat for the cats, and Sophie’s Pet Palace is currently out. Anyone know who else stocks it? Baby needs his quail!
And a shiny bug, in case you think it’s all spiders and stormclouds here this pre-Hallowe’en season.
Getting the new novel drafted and getting out for a walk every single day, whenever it’s somewhat nice out, have been my big priorities this month, with the effect here in the blog that there’ve been a lot of word count posts and “Weather fine, lots of spiders” entries. I have a few Journey interviews out, awaiting answers and of course I’ve had the Favorite Thing Ever and Quantum Leap stuff on the go, keeping me busy. It’s all very pleasant, and I’ve enjoyed sharing my Sunburst excitement with you all.
On which theme: Indigo Springs is the featured novel at Jim Hines’ site, as part of his First Novel Friday feature. It’s mirrored on LJ, here.
I have spent some of my remaining copious spare time trying to get the Out in Harmony facebook fan page to automatically load notes from the main choir website. It’s supposed to, and it says it is, but it always loads up everything and then stops. In the meantime, I’m manually cross-posting. (My own page loads notes from WordPress to Livejournal to Facebook quite happily, so there’s a little bucket brigade of data, and I played with getting the choir an LJ too, to see if it would help. But my site comes with more bells and whistles than the choir’s, and that includes the widget that kicks off the whole sequence.)
Choir itself has been a blast from the recent past. We are mostly relearning pieces I know for a twentieth anniversary / greatest hits concert, and this means singing a lot of my favorite songs.
Autumn has also brought myriad shifts on a number of fronts. Our digital TV provider upgraded our gadgetry Monday, which meant two days of disruption to both me and Kelly followed by an incremental (but worthwhile) improvement in service. I’m sifting through my eating practices in search of a similar tiny shift toward better nutrition. I’ve taken the arcade game off my iTouch in favor of spending my mental downtime listening to CBC Podcasts, watching TED Talks, and playing word games and Sudoku. Mental composting, I hope.
I’ve bought new shoes, a nice dress, and the best winter tights ever. I’ve had the fireplace tuned, I’ve made sure our travel and medical insurance is renewing, and I’ve thought about (but neglected, so far, to follow through on) taking the bedroom apart and hoovering out every last speck of dust. I’ve planted some fall bulbs, but haven’t yet put pansies atop them. Small, gratifying combing of the life-in-progress. I am glad to have had the energy–thank you, August vacation!–the focus and the help from K in achieving them.
And I’m not the only one savoring the excellence of fall on the coast:
Tuesday’s words on THE RAIN GARDEN came to 1,454, bringing me to a total of 38K and change, and to the last scene. One or two more writing sessions should do it, and then what I’ll have is this skeletal draft in need of a new title, some research, and much overall fleshing. In the meantime, I’m very pleased with the bones.
I’ve been madly chasing a number of projects and events this week. TOR.COM is hosting a series of Quantum Leap rewatch posts, by me–the first of them is on the pilot, Genesis, and can be found here. Meanwhile, the Tor/Forge newsletter is crowing about Indigo Springs winning the Sunburst Award. All of the books on the short list were TOR books, so they have extra cause to be proud.
And here’s a sign of fall, for you all:
