One More Detour on the Writing Road

At NADWcon, I tried to get a copy of Gaiman's *NEVERWHERE,* but Greg/Dreamhaven didn't have any...which has turned out not to matter since I found a copy buried in the chair TBR pile.

Getting a shot of the peroxide-based contact lens cleaner in your eye.

Ow.

Phoned the eye doctor. I'm not the first person to have done this. I rinsed like mad, and will keep an eye on things, so to speak. And glasses. We're wearing the glasses today.

And the reason why the pups' skin/coat oil, bones, and toys never arrived from Drs Foster and Smith in time for Christmas is because I neglected to hit the final, this is it, very last Place This Order button. Luckily, all the goods were still in my shopping cart.

And you all missed out on a holiday pic of Gaby in an elf hat and King wearing antlers.

However, if the stuff arrives before Twelfth Night...

'Twas a day of overflowing toilet, and subsequent washing of floor, rugs, and towels. You need a day like this every so often. Keeps you humble.

At the day job, a curried meat dish served over "basalt rice."

Call it al dente.

The landscapers were by today. They did an *amazing* job--the yard looks like it's had a haircut, shower, paws 'n' claws, facial, and a fancy body wrap. Two men worked from 730am-5pm, with a break for lunch. I think it would have taken me the entire summer to do what they did.

The only issue is so trivial, yet comical. They raked, weeded, edged, and mowed everything, even the fenced-offarea around the raised bed. I don't think they knew what chives were, and thought they were weeds, because they whacked those as well--I came home at lunch to let out the pups, and I'm gaping at the neat way they edged around the raised bed fencing, and then it hit me that the chives were not visible. But, chives grow back, and I'm not crazy about them anyway. I will tell them to leave the inside of the enclosure to me, though, after I plant the tomatoes and such.

In not-so-great news, I may have to work through the eBay complaint system to get the money back for the mixer I have yet to receive. I checked the seller's ratings prior to bidding, and while there were a few complaints, they weren't recent. Other folks were happy, even though their mixers took 3 weeks to a month to ship. My transaction is approaching the 3-week mark. I have emailed the seller. If I don't hear anything by the end of the week, I'm emailing eBay. Guess the deal was too good to be true.

Hitting the keyboard for the next few weeks. 1K words last night. I wanted 1600, so. Will try to make them up tonight. 10 pages on a weeknight may be an impossibility, but I will do my best.

I'm so happy about the yard, I can't stand it.

Order arrived today from Penzey's.

::sigh::

Four ounces of dried basil is a *lot* of dried basil.

Now I know.

Took a detour on the way to work this morning, and drove to the intersection where I did the snow day slip 'n' slide on Saturday. Turns out that while there is a reflector post there, what I actually almost hit was the stop sign. You can still see Kuro's tire tracks, not quite obliterated by subsequent snows. The edge of the left front tire is 2, maybe 3 inches from the signpost.

That was a close one...

The garden has exploded over the last week. One of the kohlrabi is almost ready to pick. The parsley and cilantro are about 2 feet high. One of the Black Crim tomatoes has buds, and the store bought Sweet 100 has several teeny teeny tomatoes. The squash now had 2 2-inch squash, which I will pick when they hit 3-4 inches. Even the pathetic chive is coming along, although it's too close to the cilantro and I may need to move it.

Unfortunately, I can't get photos of any of this at the moment because my camera is not working. I can turn it on. The lens comes out. But when I press the button to take the picture, nothing happens. It's possible that I damaged the button more than I thought when I dropped it a couple of weeks ago. It's also possible that a little wine got in there in the aftermath of last week's spill, and fried something. I tend to think it was the droppage, though. The button was knocked crooked, and the camera wasn't turning on until I cranked it a couple of times.

Damn.

I may look into a new camera this weekend, but I really don't have the time to do any in-depth research. The ex-camera was a fairly inexpensive Nikon (1200? 2100?--the very simple one). Any recommendations for decent, inexpensive point and shoot cameras appreciated. I just bought another Nikon Coolpix. It received a very good review from PC World, and cost less than half what the ex-Nikon (another Coolpix) cost 4-5 years ago.

For the time being, I may buy one of those one-off cameras and take hard photos that I will have to scan. Better than nothing, I guess.

Does anyone have a Wikipedia account that allows them to edit entries. This entry states that CODE won the 1999 PKD, and it didn't. It was shortlisted, but it didn't win. Stephen Baxter won.

There's another page floating around that lists CODE as the 1999 winner, and I need to let the author know that this is not the case.