Happenstance of the day: a flash car with the personalised plates DRWOLF, parked by the tram stop where I'm waiting…and sitting in the car, in the driver's seat no less, is a malamute.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the expensive car, the personalised plates, the well-groomed dog…it all speaks of pretension, of a carefully preened image to be maintained. I suspect (I don't know, but I suspect) that the owner of that car and I would perhaps not have too much in common. (Except perhaps a love of dogs.)
On the other hand: a malamute. In the driver's seat. Of DRWOLF's car.
This amuses me no end.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I think tomorrow is an awesome day to be hungover.
If you noticed a brief silence on the blog, well done you, you're officially attentive. I spent the weekend in Adelaide, where I mostly distressed my grandparents with my (I quote) boundless energy (clearly, they haven't met Spawn) and distressed their cat with my strange and boisterous behaviour. He's used to much quieter, slower games, and definitely not used to flamboyant gesticulations. My cats don't even twitch an ear at random noises and gunfire chatter, or the stampede of running feet, or pillows hurtling through the air toward them. My grandparents' cat has had a far more tranquil life, and I was constantly doing something so alarming — such as, I don't know, COUGHING or REACHING FOR THE BUTTER — that he had to take off at high speed and take shelter under the nearest item of heavy furniture.
So then I embarked on a mission to see just how many different ways I could startle the cat. Naturally.1
the sublimely cranky 'Woman, I really like you and I would like to come back to you but if I do, will you do something alarming like, god, I don't know, MOVE?' face
It may not surprise you to learn, then, that the day after all that editing, I went couch-shopping. Today, five short days after I slapped down some cash I haven't actually earned yet, look what's arrived:
HUZZAH COUCH!
The sharp-eyed among you will note the remote control is already in prime position and yes, that is a cup of freshly brewed hot chocolate on the floor. Because watching those blokes lug the couch up two flights of stairs was exhausting, dammit.
(This is, needless to say, NOT one of the $8,000+ couches. Because while I'm sure they're very good couches, and will last the twenty years the manufacturer is offering as per their warranty, I'm just not ready for a twenty-year commitment at this point, yanno? Honestly, couch store, it's not you, it's me…)
It worked really well — right up until lunch, when I decidedly did not want what I had brought, but equally did not want to shell out money for something else. QUANDARY. Apathy forced me to eat the lunch I had brought, albeit with much grumbling about the sub-par situation.1
In other news, Tess talks here of her and my participation in the freeze frame project, which I link you to because it's easier than telling the story again myself. The first photo of us has shown up online: here you can see me gawking at Postscripts #18 while Tess gawks at Shadow Queen. (The reading of the books was Tess's brilliant idea. She is clearly a marketing genius. Everyone who came near wanted to know what we were reading. Quite a few went beyond gawking at the covers of the book and started reading over my shoulder. In fact, close as that fellow was standing, he was perhaps the least obtrusive of the folks that hovered around us.)
I suppose the presence of me in this photo does put paid to the theory that I have the vampire-like ability of not appearing on film, however. Which is a touch sad. I was kinda hopeful I could hone that and never have to worry about being photographed again.
There is nothing I love more than a typo on a menu (unless perhaps it's a malapropism), and today I have an absolute corker of a typo to share with you, one of those instances where the error results in a phrase so sublime… well, to be honest, I start laughing and lose the capacity to speak in sentences:
because when we offer spite as a beverage, we do not shirk - oh no! you will have some lemon, nay, some salted lemon along with that spite!
Today, it being a blustery, sombre sort of day, I invaded the local cemetery, for I ain't afraid of no ghostsweeping angels. You know what this means, don't you? Oh yes. You guessed it. Cemetery photos!
I met a lass, not long ago, who had once worked at a cemetery taking photos of headstones &c, because apparently once the family stops caring for the grave, the caretakers are not allowed to halt the decay and all that history crumbles away into nothing. Which is the natural course of things, and part of what makes cemeteries a cool place to spend a rambling kind of hour.
Halfway through my walk (which didn't actually come close to circumnavigating the cemetery; I think I managed to see maybe a third of the grounds, at best), I came across a mausoleum set atop a hill. It had a roof of red-hued stained-glass scales, so that looking up was like looking through the heart of a flower, or the underside of a young, unscarred dragon.
I never did find the name of the lady buried there, but she was loved:
And she was … synchronous? Is that the word I'm looking for? Well, whatever else, she was young:
All I could make out of the fellow buried here was that he was the second son of someone or other. Not actually a dog, as I at first suspected, but I'm guessing he rather liked them.
For those of you waiting for its arrival: I haven't seen a copy myself yet, but it looks like Postscripts #18 has been released into the wild.
This is the issue which features my story, "The Wages of Salt", and google alerts tells me it's made at least one good impression so far.
Now, being a writer, and therefore of delicate emotional constitution, this pleases me immensely. But I'm especially glad to see this story available for general purchase, because it's one of my favourites. Part of that is because, of everything I've written, "The Wages of Salt" is the story which best survived the translation from my head to the written word; it's always a tricky process, and every story takes a few wounds in the process of being pinned to the page. Also, partly it's because I simply adore the world I created in that story, and I'm keen to go back and write more in that same world. I have a few snippets of ideas, waiting for time and inspiration and a solid plot.
I took this photo yesterday morning, as I wandered through the Royal Botanic Gardens on my way to work. (In fact, I took quite a lot of photos. I would have taken more, but it was 8 o'clock in the morning and only 6°C: my fingers froze.) I liked the image of a circle of chairs gathered beneath a circle of trees, all empty. I wonder what meetings go on there? (Whatever they are, I bet the ones I'm imagining are far more interesting than the reality.)
So far, the new plan appears to be dropping in to the local library after work. It's survived first contact, but then my new writing routines rarely hit a snag in the first few days. It's the second week that gets tricksome, usually. Oh well. We shall see.
I've been sitting through a fair few classroom-style lectures of late, as part of the training for the new dayjob. To keep my mind ticking over and listening actively, I draw while I'm listening. Some of these absent-minded little drawings are getting quite elaborate.
This is one of the first ones:
I can see an echidna, curled up around its own stomach, at the left of that one. And I'm quite fond of the warped smiley face towards the right.
