Cat TV and other pleasures

I am writing this in the cafe where I do most of my novel-writing, on a damp Friday morning. Vancouver has just had a week of fog in the mornings, with chilly sun and blue skies in the afternoons after it burned off. We’re trending back to warmth and downpour now. It’s one of the things I love about winter in the Pacific Northwest. It’s usually chilly but gorgeous *or* rainy but warm. The silver lining is always very apparent.

What’s more, she bragged, we’ll have flowers soon. The snow drops are over an inch high in places, and I’ve seen crocuses breaking the ground here and there.

(Edited to add: since I drafted this post, it’s busted out sunny and warm. Bask, Vancouver, while it lasts!)

Part of the winter entertainment at our house has been feeding birds. We have two ‘window cafe’ bird feeders suction-cupped to our windows. As they are also meant to amuse the cats, we call them cat cable and I’ve named the window feeders BBC1 and BBC2 as a result. The hummingbird feeder (which hasn’t had any visitors yet as far as I know) is ITV.

The seed feeders have had starlings, chickadees, bushtits, goldfinches and one downy woodpecker. They swoop in about a meter from our dining room table to grab seeds and run for it. It’s all I can do not to spend my days slack-jawed in the kitchen, staring fixedly at the thing.
bushtits at bbc 2

My class “Writing the Fantastic” has opened its virtual doors and I am getting to know a (mostly) new group of feisty and enthusiastic new writers. This is an intermediate workshop, open to both novelists and short fiction writers. Next quarter, I’ll be teaching Novel Writing 2 again . . . I don’t know about summer courses, but they’ll let me know soon.

And speaking of novels, I shall be starting mine–the third in the trilogy I sold to TOR last year–next week. Or possibly tomorrow. I was going to keep working on the outline until after Kelly and I go to Victoria next weekend, but I think I’ve gotten as far with planning as I can, and I’m keen to get into the first scene.

The Victoria trip is for Gottacon, and as I mentioned last week, I’m especially excited about it because it’s my first Guest of Honor gig. Eeee!

I love Victoria; I went last year to go sailing as research for the trilogy, which has a lot of old fashioned sailing ships in it. Kelly hasn’t been in ages–when her parents moved to the Island, we started going to Nanaimo, Parksville and Qualicum–so we are very much looking forward to it. We’ll have dinner at Clive’s Classic Lounge, home of the grilled cheese sandwich cocktail.

Weird Sked and long weekends

My work and play rhythms have been shifting around a lot lately; I moved one of my regular commitments from Thursday to Wednesday, and have returned to doing yoga a few evenings a week (hatha, at Open Door), after a long stretch of not. Kelly had some deadlines that made it worthwhile for us both to work all day last Saturday, and then to take off Friday the 18th. This worked out nicely because we had a date that night to celebrate the 24th anniversary of the not-legal wedding. (Which, we figure, is also the 25th anniversary of our having met as adults.)

California Academy of Sciences (Actual anniversary is today! Monday the 21st!)

Between holidays, K catching a cold, and the deadlines, we haven’t had a five-day, nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday work week since before we went to Nevada. And in the midst of it Kelly and I were somehow having so much fun cooking in the early part of this year–making favorite old recipes and fun new things–that we’ve packed our freezer to bursting.

I could probably do nothing but thaw delicious homemade things for dinner for three weeks or more.

Some of that culinary activity passed for thinking about the new novel: chopping veggies and wool-gathering are very compatible activities, for me. Some of it was about not yet having much to do for my latest UCLA Writers’ Extension Program course… I’ve been setting up the virtual classroom for Writing the Fantastic, but the class actually opens to students on Wednesday. Some was also about internet time wasteage… “I should find a new recipe for X, holy yum this looks amazing… must make must make cooking explosion!!!

In any case, it has been a pleasant, productive and relaxing few weeks.

Cities I have seen – the Pinboard

I am filled with love for Pinterest. I can’t help myself: sticking things up on walls so I can see them is pretty much my preferred way of remembering things. (As opposed to, you know, actually remembering them.) And though I tend to ‘do’ Pinterest with what I think of as downtime, it’s remarkably productive for downtime. All those pretty nature pictures, especially the nudibranches, really are research for the current trilogy. And the writing essays, and the book covers–it’s just handy to have this particular bunch of virtual baskets.

So one of the boards I’ve been assembling is simply a list of cities I’ve traveled to. What’s been fun about this is I keep remembering other places I’ve been. I wouldn’t say I’m very well traveled, but this makes me realize how lucky I have been.

The board is here.

Please do tell me all about your favorite pinboard!

Down Memory Lane in Nevada

Kelly, Barb and I spent the holiday season in Reno, Nevada, visiting my relations and touring Kelly around some of the significant-to-me places from childhood. This, for example, is the view from my grandparents’ front window:

The Grandparents' Ranch

We went out to the ranch in Yerington on December 24th – my aunt had basically kicked us out of the house so she could make bird and ham and other holiday feast items without meddling from the rest of us.

One site on my must-see list is the now-flooded Anaconda Copper Mine. So peaceful-looking, no? So very contaminated, I’m afraid.

Anaconda Copper Mine

I also wanted to revisit a piece of playground equipment that looms large in my memory.
Rocket Slide
Though Barb doesn’t remember the rocketslide, she was nevertheless able to find it (Yerington is that small) and she took these two of me regressing to the age of six.
Rocket Slide

Grandma grimace and consumer therapy

My grandmother’s health has gotten steadily worse this past year, and she has just been moved into a new care facility in Stony Plain. I had to do a little surfing Tuesday to determine whether it was a hospice–nope–and I am glad she’s getting more care, whatever that more happens to be. (In point of fact, the place is run by the Good Samaritans Society, who also ran the facility in Hinton where K’s dad spent his final year. So there’s a bit of familiarity there at least.)

I am blessed to be forty four and still have a grandma–and such a fantastic one at that!–but the fact that I’m grateful doesn’t keep me from greedily wanting more Joan. That said, she’s ninety-one and the last time I saw her, her lot in life seemed deeply uncomfortable. So the news of this latest development brings with it some sadness, a little effort toward accepting the inevitable, and hope that in the near term things are somehow easier for her.

Here’s Joan in 2006:
Portrait-Joan52

On a much cheerier and significantly more consumerist note, the next phase of sprucing up Chez Dua will involve less painting and more small appliances. We hated our toaster from day one (long story) and now it’s dropping parts. As soon as we find a cute toaster we like, it’s gone gone gone! We desperately need a vacuum and just plain want a coffee grinder.

I replaced our bathroom fan Monday night after the long long drive from Orycon, because the fan store is inconvenient to get to unless you happen to be on the road home from America.

The trip from Portland was cheering and restful, as working weekends go. We got to hang with some of our most beloved U.S. peeps, and to talk with them about all the cool little bits and pieces I am stuffing into the world of Stormwrack.