Category Archives: True Stories

Anecdotes from my past and present.

She’s got personal (post) ity

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Bird Nerd Report! I was very excited when I saw an owl this week in Strathcona. It wasn’t wild and I didn’t have my camera, hence the lack of picture. In fact, some biologists from SFU were using a tethered owl to try to lure down a Cooper’s Hawk whose blood they wanted to take.

In other bird nerdage, I reported a local convenience store to the Humane Society because they are selling local wild birds in friggin’ cages. At least, I’m pretty sure finches and twohees don’t come in domesticated varieties.

My corner of East Vancouver had a power outage on Monday night, when we were three quarters of the way through the penultimate episode of a dour little crime drama called The Killing. So little happens in an episode of The Killing and it all happens so very grimly that we usually have to pair it with an episode of Leverage, a program which nobody, I suspect, will ever accuse of taking itself seriously.

We call this recurring Killing/Leverage TV Event at Chez Dua “The Stupid Double Feature.”

I would also like to point out that wherever you are, Anathema, it’s almost certainly your turn to make a Scrabble move. Although I’m having trouble getting our game to load, so maybe I’m wrong about that.

Five Stages of Losing Your Keys in your Bra

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Keynial – “They’re probably at the chiropractor’s. Let’s go back.”

Bargaining – “If we order a coffee and a cookie at Calabria instead of demanding to search the ladies’ room, they will be waiting for me here tomorrow, covered in Baristo-tude, when I show up for work.”

Anger – “What do you mean I haven’t got the spare keys back from the cat-sitter yet?”

Consumerism – “Here’s my VISA. Cut some new keys, oh deities of the hardware store. And while we’re at it, give me this bag that I TOTALLY don’t need.”

Anger redux – “They were in my bra all along? But I gave myself a full-chest patdown!! Twice!!”

Nap – “At least they weren’t riding around in there until bedtime.”

Aren’t you glad I spelled that out for you?

Planetalyx Personals

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As I mentioned in this post, I’m trying to get back into the habit of telling you all a little something, now and then, about my actual life. Part of what makes this tricky, for me, is that this presupposes that there’s a nice clean boundary between my work and some ephemeral rest.

Frex: I’m buoyantly happy with the writing I’ve been doing lately. Happy! Personal thing. Joy of creation. Bubbling thoughts of protagonist angst. Intriguing plot challenges. Delighted . . . with the fiction writing. Which is kind of my main job. And yet it’s a job I perform in a lovely cafe environment, with twelve ounces of latte within easy reach, in the company of people who aren’t quite my friends though I’m awfully fond of many of them.

Or, hey: I want to go to Vancouver Aquarium with Barb sometime soon as a birthday outing. And OMG, they’re charging $27 to let you in the door now, plus I think they get rights to your genetic code. We’ve both agreed it’s worth it, especially as they have penguins, holy crap, peeeeenguins!! now. (If any of you has a 2 for 1 coupon you won’t be using this summer, let’s talk).

So, you know, outing with one’s mother, to a nice tourist attraction, to celebrate her getting older. Personal, definitely. Except you all know I’m going to do the same thing with the experience that I do with things like the California Academy of Sciences trip and the Burke Museum trip, which is to say Learn Science Fakts! Mutate the Life Forms! Write more stories like The Gales! and add funky Stormwrack details to the trilogy-in-progress and write the museum ticket off my taxes!

Plus, also, prettifying my blog with pictures from the exhibits. Is that work? Is that play? Who cares, because look! Fossil!

Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Seattle

I could go on. Perhaps I even should go on, because I’ve tried before, quite a few times, to blog about the blur between all the various allegedly separate areas of my life. All of those previous posts have ended up in the bin. Whereas this one seems to be going pretty well.

Want to help? Is there anything you all would actually like to know?

Getting personal

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Since Blue Magic came out on April 11th, a lot of my blogging energy and other kinds of attention have been drawn to just that–writing about the book, guest blogging about the book, travelling around promoting the book. This has, in turn and inevitably, meant the amount of personal news–your basic chatty stuff about my life–hasn’t been getting the kind of play it usually does here at Planetalyx.

I do prefer for my site to have a mix of all these things: writing talk, stuff about TV and film, foodporn, random this and that, the billion photos and things about what’s going on with me.

And, now that I’m done touring, I’m hoping to get back to that more balanced mix. I have things to tell, oh yes, and pictures to go with them. Here’s one of me and my cousin Alicia in San Francisco, for example, chilling out and having fun. (Also, all the new clothes I plan to tell you about? Came from Desigual, the store named on the bag A’s holding.)

Me and Alicia

Despite the piles of busy and the myriad distractions, I have done a pretty decent job of keeping up with the lives of those friends of mine who are still blogging. I’m hoping to keep that up, and expand on it. To start and continue some hey, how the hell areya? conversations as summer progresses. Doesn’t that sound nice?

So hey–how the hell are you? What are you doing this summer? Anything in particular you want to talk about?

Chickitty chickadee crow crow

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Kelly and I have installed a little plastic bird feeder to one of our fabulous new windows, and chickadees have been visiting. They’re still getting comfortable with our dinner table being nearby, but the desire for good sunflower seeds is winning them over.

I want to get a picture, but that would mean stopping everything, setting up the tripod and camping the front window… and I have heaps and gobs of things to do.

The feeder is held on by suction cups and is designed for small birds, but that hasn’t stopped the occasional crow from latching on with its talons, flapping wildly, and scooping as much seed as it can get. I’ll get a shot of that too, in time. It is a little startling to catch a glimpse of great black wings scooping air when you aren’t expecting it, but I’m fond of our local murder and all its members; if they can get the food out without knocking the whole affair over, I’m for ’em!

As for the pigeons… not so much. I’ve never really warmed up to pigeons, despite how gorgeous they are.

Coming back to the daily routine after two weeks on the road has been a bracing experience. The grand total on my six to-do lists on Monday was 72 items. A good dozen of those amounted to self-care and not all of them had to be done first thing, but still… daunting. Especially since this didn’t include the tasks back-logging in the Inbox. These first few backs have been chilly, rainy, and have felt quite long. I also caught a cold in Alberta–after Onoway, thankfully–and I’m not quite up to full strength yet.

I have two more travel-type gigs set for June and then I figure to be home continuously for three or so months. The first trip is an overnight to Victoria so I can participate in a short sail on a tall ship called the Pacific Grace, with an organization called S.A.L.T.S. This is research for my new trilogy, which will enable me to confidently talk about reefing sails and the like. The other, of course, is the reading in San Francisco on Pride Weekend.

I am looking forward to both trips, but I am also looking forward to just being home. Norwescon and Portland and Alberta plus two more jaunts, all since Easter, feels like a bit too much Disruption to Routine.

Speaking of routine, I’m seriously considering doing the Clarion West Write-A-Thon again this year. Who else is playing?