Monday, May 26, 2014

Fencing

After almost of year of planning, I have a new fence. Or, well, almost. It's not quite finished. (This might be a problem because the guy doing it is supposed to be working on something else tomorrow, but I'm sure he'll finish it somehow.)

So that's the good news.

The bad news is that now everyone can look into my garden and see all the weeds growing everywhere. To give some idea of the scale of the problem, I completely filled the green waste bin and it didn't really look like I'd done anything at all. So I have a little bit of work to do.

But someday soon I might be able to park in the garage.

I'll post pictures when it's done.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

"Spring"

I know it's supposed to be Spring, but my yard is filled with dried-out weeds, about 100 sunflowers that are growing in the areas not covered in weeds, I have a bazillion mosquito bites, and the week finally cooled off to a max temp of 85 today. I think it qualifies as Summer.

In other news, I bought a bottle of baby aspirin for the Kittenhead who is currently in congestive heart failure. One bottle has 120 tablets, and at a rate of 1/2 tablet every three days, that gives her an almost two year supply. In comparison, she came home from the hospital with her diagnosis and a 30 day supply of prescription meds, which is probably already reaching. Lest you think I was being hopelessly optimistic when buying the aspirin, I will point out that I bought the smallest bottle they sold. In any case, she seems to be doing relatively well at the moment, although I'll admit I did cringe a little when she ran down the hallway this morning.

Who me? Heart issues? Let me purr a little louder...

Right. Have a good week.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

I Had A Swell Time (*)

Things I learned this weekend while visiting my parents:
  • Sometimes a hatchet is really the best thing to use for splitting up a plant while re-potting it.
  • My mom didn't learn that Santa Claus didn't exist until she was in the fourth grade.
  • K-Poo went to the first day of the women in leadership training hungover. (High five!)
  • My mom still looks pretty much the same as she did in her high school yearbooks.
Anyhow, I'm back. The little dog is still boarding until tomorrow, so it's very quiet here. The cats have been gorging themselves all weekend at the all-you-can-eat buffet and couldn't be bothered to notice me when I came in the door (except for Ripley who rolled around on the floor in front of me and generally made a pest of himself).

* There's a story behind the title, but I promised my mom I wouldn't mention it on the blog and it's Mother's Day and everything, so...

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Dear computers, please stop trying to be helpful

So, a few months ago I read this article about how there's a really popular genre of books which we'll refer to as "creature erotica". Now, it doesn't surprise me that there are books about people getting it on with Sasquatch, because... let's face it, there are books about everything. (Thanks, Internet!) No, what surprised me was one of the authors who claimed she'd made $30,000 in one month from sales on Amazon for one of her novels.

Anyhow, I was relating that on a writers forum today, and I did a quick search on amazon.com for "bigfoot erotica" just to get some numbers to add to my blurb. That search yields 195 books, most of which are part of a series involving other things such as the Loch Ness monster, etc. One series has the tagline "Paranormal Monster Bigfoot Erotica -- Things that Bang You in the Night", which I think is possibly the best thing ever.

Maybe I really should have put sex scenes in my November novel.

Anyhow, ever since I made that search on Amazon, all of the Amazon ads that show up on other pages are for books in that result list.

Maybe it's time to clear my browser cache.