A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Today, we did our weekly shopping. Normally, we do the shopping on Saturday so we can hit the the recycle center along the way (you can’t recycle on Sunday around here — big chained gates forbid it). Anyway, shopping means the warehouse grocery store, the regular grocery store, Home Depot or Lowe’s (depending on what the house needs now), and any other errands. But we usually end the day with a stop at Border’s for coffee (me) and hot chocolate (hubby). Sometimes we get a book or two. You’d think since I review books and have huge stacks waiting to be read that I wouldn’t pick up any more. What can I say? Hi, my name is Gayle and I’m a bookaholic (but I have no intention of kicking my habit).

I’ve been on a big Jane Austen kick lately. Partly, because PBS is running The Complete Jane Austen series on Masterpiece Theater. However, they are taking a break so my Sunday nights from 9pm to 11pm are now open until March 23 when Emma will be showing. What to do…what to do? Naturally, I need my Jane Austen fix. It’s been Jane Austen on Sunday nights for weeks now.

I’ve been eyeing Jane Austen: The Complete Novels (Introduction by Karen Joy Fowler) for a while now. So…today…I bought it. It contains: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Lady Susan. The Introduction by Karen Joy Fowler is 7 pages long and I’ve only read the first 3 so far. As expected from Fowler, it’s witty, thoughtful, erudite, funny, and thought provoking and I’ve still got 4 pages to go. I expect that I’ll be posting reviews of the books as I read them or reread them as the case may be.

Couldn’t sleep last night so I finally got sick of tossing and turning and got up, turned on the laptop and got some work done. So today, after a short nap, I was able to catch up on a lot of things that I hadn’t got to yet. One of which was the image you see here. Tor is giving away free ebooks and I signed up to get a notice. Well, they also have two desktop images along with the book. The others have been pretty impressive but I’ve always loved the work of John Jude Palencar. Last year, I did an interview with him for SFRevu.

This image was for the cover of Charles de Lint’s Someplace To Be Flying. Charles de Lint is an author that I also enjoy and the two together, words and cover, make a wonder pairing. Now I’m going to have this wonderful artwork as my desktop background for a while. Already I find it soothing in a weird sort of way. Maybe it’s the colors, composition, or the subtle symbology. Anyway, thought I’d share.

Well, the deadline is approaching. On March 1st, there will be new issues of SFRevu, Gumshoe Review, and TechRevu online. Well, technically at the current time TechRevu updates immediately and constantly with new information but we’re in the process of making it a hybrid with a constant update of small items and monthly issue of more substantial articles on technology/gizmos/and geek goodies. But the others are monthly with essays, reviews, interviews, convention reports, and constantly updated news.

So, with a deadline looming on the near horizon and about 7 reviews of my own to write, even more to proof, and follow up on assignments — well, there may be very little here until Saturday.

So, what do you do when faced with writer’s block. Well, I don’t know about you but I clean or attempt to clean the house. It seems that if you can’t do what you should do, you ought to at least try to do something positive. Cleaning is not only a positive activity, it leaves your mind free to think of other things. So, while mulling over plot and characters and essay topics — I decided to clear up my stash.

My stash includes fiber ready for spinning, as well as yarn for various projects. Earlier in the week I avoided writing for a while, listening to a podcast of Stephanie Pearl McPhee (Yarn Harlot) from a link on her blog. I then thought, what the hey, I’ve never heard her speak so a youtube search and several talks later, my day was going on with a happier underlying note. But I remembered that in one of the talks she mentioned the beauty of Ziploc bags for yarn and fiber storage.

Since I’ve quite a bit of fiber and yarn (not a lot for a yarn store but a bit more than one person probably needs for a couple of months of knitting…okay for a year of knitting) and I’ve noticed some suspiciously moth-y type things. And while they all bit the dust fairly quickly, I’ve been meaning to go through and check everything out. So, today with Ziploc bags in hand, I started the fiber/yarn organization and checking.

Most of the fiber and yarn is in plastic bags with one of the following: cedar blocks, cedar circles, cedar sachets, or cedar balls. So, far I’ve got the yarn for two sweaters now sealed in bags by projects. I found most of the fiber was wrapped well enough so that it seemed fine but I repackaged in ziplocs with cedar whatevers and squeezed out the air. I’ve moved the fiber into boxes by type: wool in one box, bamboo fiber in another along with ingeo (corn-based fiber). The yarn is being organized so that all of the same yarn type/color is in a baggie. If there are yarns for projects, I’m labeling the bag as to what the yarn was bought for — usually socks or shawls.

The side effect of all this cleaning is that now there’s room in the living room for the tree. I found two containers of angora that had to be tossed. I guess angora is the favorite of moths and that seems to be all they ate so far and now that’s gone out of the house. I also think I might have figured out how my protagonist is supposed to get involved in the plot so, I guess tomorrow it’s back to the goal of 1,000 words a day.