october

It is only my second October in Salem, and last year we were still in unpacking mode so we didn’t really have the time to stop and look around enough. It’s fun, though I think my favorite part is all the technicolor trees. We were severely lacking in trees living in Boston.

Went for a walk today and took a lot of photos. Wasn’t really planning to, just brought the camera on an excursion for bread. Came home breadless, alas, but did get some great photos and a pumpkin spice latte. Best of the photos are now on my Flickr photostream. Also met a cat named Maleek who enjoyed pets on the head (you can see him on the photostream, too).

Finished the tarot sevens. Am pondering my plot or lack thereof for NaNoWriMo now that it’s only days away. I am feeling a bit like I’m in a holding pattern, waiting for the rest of 2008 to tumble into writing and holidays and then fall into 2009. I am taking some time to enjoy the scenery.

reading pile, october 2008

I am mostly in a fog of edits and adjustments on the novel, trying to get it in the best shape possible before it goes off to a handful of very lovely beta readers next week.

I’ve noticed I tend to read less when I’m busy with writing things, so I’m attempting to rectify that. This is the reading pile for October:

I’ve already started Neil’s The Graveyard Book and I’m enjoying it so far. Am attempting not to read it too quickly because I do love all things Neil.

I picked up John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise because I’d been meaning to check it out for ages and it showed up in the Bargain section of Amazon. I’ve only read the cover so far but it’s a wordy cover, and kind of hysterical.

And I’ve been meaning to re-read The Catcher in the Rye for years and I’m not sure what happened to my old copy. I’m curious to see what I think of it now having not read it since high school. It did play a large part in earning me a 5 on the English AP exam, though, so I will always have a certain fondess for it.

In other news: kittens are napping, it’s finally full-blown autumn (yay!), I made armwarmers out of an old pair of stripey socks and I have BPAL from last year (pumpkin patch #5: Pumpkin with benzoin, bourbon vanilla, lemon peel, neroli, blood orange, and red ginger) in my oil burner.

conveniently inconvenient

My refrigerator is broken.

Yesterday while I was making my tea I happened to open the freezer (I don’t even remember what I was looking for, there wasn’t much in there other than frozen fruit and vanilla vodka) and discovered that my ice cube trays were full of water rather than ice. And the water wasn’t even particularly cold or frosty or in any manner on its way to becoming ice.

Then I checked the fridge and noticed it was remarkably close to room temperature.

The night before we’d had a bunch of little power outages, the power would go off for 30 seconds or so and then switch back on and the tv would come back with much higher volume on the Olympics coverage. (We’ve become addicted to the Olympics, completely unintentionally. The opening ceremonies were gorgeous.) This happened about half a dozen times, so I’m guessing something burnt out some magic cooling something or other. We tried a few easy things to see if we could fix it but alas, it appears to be unfixable.

Our very nice landlord is buying us a new one. I plan on getting ice cream once I have the ability to freeze again.

Oddly, though this is really inconvenient and has me drinking lots of tea and eating lots of Nutella on various bread products, it really couldn’t have happened at a better time. The weather is cool. We didn’t have all that much perishable stuff in there at the moment. We’re going to be gone most of the day tomorrow (going to see Radiohead tomorrow night, yay!) and the new refrigerator should be delivered on Thursday, which the boy had already taken off from work so I don’t have to wrangle kittens and handle delivery guys all by myself.

I’m wondering if this is some sort of cosmic lesson in problem management, that things like this that are unexpected and annoying are still manageable and not necessarily stressful unless you make them stressful.

Or it could just be a case of a bad thing having remarkably good timing.

curiouser and curiouser

First blog posts are always difficult. This one is especially problematic since I’m not entirely sure what I want this blog to be just yet. At least it looks pretty.

I have been blogging in various forms for several years, though this is my first WordPress endeavor and I am vaguely overwhelmed with shininess and buttons. I’ll get the hang of it eventually.

And because I have a penchant for significant dates, this blog has the same birthday as I do. Only it is zero years old and I’m thirty. I suppose, if nothing else, this is a new blog for a new-to-me decade of age. I am fond of the number three, and it has been a birthday of books and cupcakes and pomegranate martinis, so that bodes well.

Hopefully this blog will figure out what it wants to be somewhere along the way. Though there will undoubtedly be pictures of kittens.