A Curious Statistical Anomaly

As usual a project that shouldn’t have been so complicated turned out to be bigger than I thought. And, I started it just as we getting the zines ready to go live on August 1st. And, there’s more, Paul and I are making all the arrangements to drive to Denver for Denvention 3 (the World Science Fiction Convention August 7-10th).

What’s the project, you ask? Well, thanks for asking. I decided I’m sick of tripping over all the stuff in the pantry area and it needed to be organized and stored so that most of it is corralled and controlled in the space we have.

The pantry runs along a wall making a short hallway between the kitchen, dining room, and the laundry area. There’s also a half-bath back at near the washer. Part of the impetus for the cleaning and neatening of this area is that we’re planning to get a new washer and dryer soon (once these die, and they are not healthy). Before I started this project the hallway was overrun with stuff that didn’t fit on the shelves because they were a smidgen too big to fit. After barking/banging/stubbing my toe one to many times, I just started pulling things off the shelf and figured it was also time to flip the shelves over (they were bowing a bit) too.

So, the living room floor is covered with all the stuff from the pantry. I’ve pulled all the nice little cloth covers from the baskets we bought last year and washed them and refitted them into the baskets. I grouped the pantry food, bottles, packages, etc, into like type groups — not all the piles even show in this picture.

We also have a nice IKEA cabinet in the kitchen next to the stove that we recently found out can’t be used to store canned goods, only dry goods, since the heat from the stove causes problems. So, I moved all the dry stuff like cereal, spaghetti, macaroni, etc to that cabinet.

You’ll notice that lots of our stuff is in plastic containers as well as the original container. We live on 5 acres. I don’t care what you do or how often you clean — you get bugs. This year is our best year — it’s mostly ants. Last year it was some sort of wood beetle (or so they told me when I asked for it’s identity). We also have a cricket down in the basement which I hear but can’t find but since they eat bugs, and I don’t see it, I don’t care.

So, I’m betwixt and between in the project and going full-bore editing, proofing, writing, herding cats (aka reviewers), and aiming at the August 1st deadline. I’m really looking forward to Denvention and if any of you readers are going please look for us there (we’ll sign in on the Voodoo Board). Now, I’m off to get a few hours sleep before I dive in again tomorrow. (Oh, yeah I actually spun for 15 minutes again today.)

The marathon effort to get the zines up and live for the 1st of the month is now done. Gumshoe Review, SFRevu, and TechRevu are now all up online with new content.  As you can probably guess by the names, Gumshoe Review covers the mystery scene with reviews, author interviews, news items relevant to the field, media, and books coming out this month (that we know about and have a copy of).  We’d also like to do reviews of monthly mystery magazines but alas no one has seen fit to contact us about their magazine or send review copies.  SFRevu is our big sister publication and covers all the same areas as does Gumshoe Review, but in this case it’s all things speculative fiction based (SF, Fantasy, Horror, and the subgenres). Only on SFRevu, Sam Tomaino covers the magazines and short fiction and usually has review of 8-10 magazines a month.  We also tend to have more media reviews (as we have two dedicated movie reviewers — though one is off for health problems).

TechRevu is our technology zine.  The news items are updated daily and there new usually indepth reviews or commentary on technology weekly.  We’ve been working very diligently to make this online magazine your source for information on technology you can use to better your quality of life, or manage your life,  or because it’s just plain neat and we like it.

Take a look and see what I and Ernest Lilley and the other staff of these zines are doing with our time.  We’d really like to share our excitement about our mystery, science fiction, and technology magazines.

PS: Tomorrow — July’s cup.  I can hardly wait to share.