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pameladeanI spent a great part of the day wrestling with Open Office. This is a grand improvement over yesterday, which I spent in enraged tears of frustration. Last night David came up and played around with the program and got it to consent to print my book proposal out in proper manuscript format. He thought it was about as weird and flaky as I did, but he wasn't fazed by this, having a better intuitive grasp of the entire idea of this kind of word processing program. I myself am stuck in the early 1980's in this regard. Icons make my eyes glaze over and menus drive me bananas. I can't imagine why they choose the terminology they do. I can get into an endless zoned-out state of madness wondering if something is File or Format or something else. The solution, of course, is to go in and look, but I have a jittery feeling that clicking on anything I don't understand will cause the computer to open up and restart the universe.
There, now you can all feel superior. (There are good reasons I don't use a Mac and good reasons I can't go on doing what I was doing, which was running Borland's Sprint configured to look like epsilon. There are good reasons I can't use emacs. Honest.)
When I found myself writing the wrong publisher's name on one of the envelopes (one to the publisher actually interested, the other to my agent, but I got her address right), I decided I'd mail the stuff tomorrow. Tomorrow is also my mother's birthday. I have successfully made the spaghetti sauce for the dinner. In the middle I had to go over to the hardware store with a handful of change dug out of the sofa cushions, and buy a lint trap for the washer hose. The current one got clogged suddenly, as usual, and sprayed water all over. I'm doing a lot of laundry because I'm leaving town on the 11th and won't be back til the 23rd. I had said I would also make a blueberry pie, but I have a very strong feeling that pie crust is going to behave like Open Office, so I think I'll make a crumble or a slump or a crisp or something like that, less prone to error, more forgiving.
It's snowing like hell, again. It's vastly beautiful, but I am not very much interested in shovelling any more of it. David did the front today already, while the tree guys were taking down Ari's favorite tree. Unfortunately, the tree belonged to our neighbor. It was a fairly large mulberry. It was certainly too close to both houses and probably not very happy, but I liked it, and I really don't like having an unobstructed view of the neighbor's upstairs windows, rather than a nice lacing of branches in winter and a lovely screen of leaves in summer, decorated in either case with a changing frieze of squirrels and birds. I hate to see a tree come down. They pruned the two little walnuts next to it, but that wasn't so bad. If the neighbor just had to mess with trees, he should have had the ones that are messing with the power lines pruned.
Lydy is engineering the refinancing of the house (she used to work as a mortgage counsellor), and we are hoping to also get a home equity loan to get our debt under control and net us a new kitchen. It's high time we did this, and I am grateful that she is doing the work, because the mere notion causes me to want to hide under the bed.
David and Lydy and I have had some nice socializing, sitting around and talking with the gamers all one afternoon even though the gaming itself had to be cancelled; and having dinner with M, who came to my signing, and her household and outliers, a really lovely time.
I am rereading all Dunnett's mystery novels. They are really even odder than I already knew. I'm getting all tangled up trying to think coherently about the voices they are written in. They are all first-person, but really a lot of the time the description does not sound as if the character in question is speaking. There are passages, like the ones that Dunnett would use the second person in if this were a Lymond novel, where the voice of the character comes through very clearly, but others that sound like the author. I am wondering why this does not bother me more.
If I don't mutter and grumble here again before I go away, I hope you will all have a pleasant February.
Pamela
There, now you can all feel superior. (There are good reasons I don't use a Mac and good reasons I can't go on doing what I was doing, which was running Borland's Sprint configured to look like epsilon. There are good reasons I can't use emacs. Honest.)
When I found myself writing the wrong publisher's name on one of the envelopes (one to the publisher actually interested, the other to my agent, but I got her address right), I decided I'd mail the stuff tomorrow. Tomorrow is also my mother's birthday. I have successfully made the spaghetti sauce for the dinner. In the middle I had to go over to the hardware store with a handful of change dug out of the sofa cushions, and buy a lint trap for the washer hose. The current one got clogged suddenly, as usual, and sprayed water all over. I'm doing a lot of laundry because I'm leaving town on the 11th and won't be back til the 23rd. I had said I would also make a blueberry pie, but I have a very strong feeling that pie crust is going to behave like Open Office, so I think I'll make a crumble or a slump or a crisp or something like that, less prone to error, more forgiving.
It's snowing like hell, again. It's vastly beautiful, but I am not very much interested in shovelling any more of it. David did the front today already, while the tree guys were taking down Ari's favorite tree. Unfortunately, the tree belonged to our neighbor. It was a fairly large mulberry. It was certainly too close to both houses and probably not very happy, but I liked it, and I really don't like having an unobstructed view of the neighbor's upstairs windows, rather than a nice lacing of branches in winter and a lovely screen of leaves in summer, decorated in either case with a changing frieze of squirrels and birds. I hate to see a tree come down. They pruned the two little walnuts next to it, but that wasn't so bad. If the neighbor just had to mess with trees, he should have had the ones that are messing with the power lines pruned.
Lydy is engineering the refinancing of the house (she used to work as a mortgage counsellor), and we are hoping to also get a home equity loan to get our debt under control and net us a new kitchen. It's high time we did this, and I am grateful that she is doing the work, because the mere notion causes me to want to hide under the bed.
David and Lydy and I have had some nice socializing, sitting around and talking with the gamers all one afternoon even though the gaming itself had to be cancelled; and having dinner with M, who came to my signing, and her household and outliers, a really lovely time.
I am rereading all Dunnett's mystery novels. They are really even odder than I already knew. I'm getting all tangled up trying to think coherently about the voices they are written in. They are all first-person, but really a lot of the time the description does not sound as if the character in question is speaking. There are passages, like the ones that Dunnett would use the second person in if this were a Lymond novel, where the voice of the character comes through very clearly, but others that sound like the author. I am wondering why this does not bother me more.
If I don't mutter and grumble here again before I go away, I hope you will all have a pleasant February.
Pamela
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Dunnett mysteries
Date: 2004-02-06 08:36 pm (UTC)Re: Dunnett mysteries
Date: 2004-02-06 11:54 pm (UTC)I have a complete set, which you are welcome to borrow.
(I just realized Boskone is one week. Is it too late to get a hotel room I wonder?)
Re: Boskone
Date: 2004-02-07 04:54 am (UTC)I'm planning to go to Boskone and take the last subway home to bed Friday and Saturday nights. (I'm SO glad Boskone is in the city this year!) It's probably worth a try for a room reservation in the con hotel. Even if the Sheraton is full, there are are 2 other hotels that connect to it by way of a mall -- you'd need shoes, but not a coat.
Re: Dunnett mysteries
Date: 2004-02-07 06:25 am (UTC)Boskone's room block already closed, but as said down-thread, there are many hotel rooms within that complex and it's probably worth a shot.
*goes off to read preliminary program*
Re: Dunnett mysteries
Date: 2004-02-07 02:16 pm (UTC)Order is a strange concept in this series anyway, since for at least most of it time moves forward, in that events contemporary to the year a given book was written in are mentioned, but the events of Johnson's life move backwards, towards a defining event. I have absolutely no idea what that is about, and keep meaning to poke about some Dunnett site or other and see if anybody has explained it all.
Pamela
Re: Dunnett mysteries
Date: 2004-02-07 02:56 pm (UTC)(I don't know that I've ever seen anyone call the mysteries fluff outright, but I did get that impression from various web sites.)
Re: Dunnett mysteries
Date: 2004-02-08 11:14 am (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-02-06 08:52 pm (UTC)K.
Re: Someplace warm
Date: 2004-02-07 02:17 pm (UTC)Yes, all right, warm in climate too. We are trying to figure out how to talk to people who aren't one another while I'm there, but we aren't getting very far. Maybe next time.
Pamela
Not that you're looking for a product endorsement
Date: 2004-02-06 11:39 pm (UTC)Takes about two shakes to install, free, cross-platform, and you can edit .doc and .rtf and various other formats as well.
Happy February!
Re: Not that you're looking for a product endorsement
Date: 2004-02-06 11:40 pm (UTC)http://www.abisource.com
:-)
Re: Not that you're looking for a product endorsement
Date: 2004-02-07 02:18 pm (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-02-07 01:27 am (UTC)Oh, my dear, geek that I've become I can utterly relate.
I remember getting my first Internet account, and venturing onto Usenet and reading and reading and reading and trying to work up the nerve to post - not because I was shy, but because I had a profound sensation that if I hit "send" I would blow up all the computers in the world.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-07 02:47 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-07 05:12 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-07 01:50 pm (UTC)This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]
Re:
Date: 2004-02-07 02:25 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-08 11:15 am (UTC)Pamela
Re:
Date: 2004-02-07 02:20 pm (UTC)Pamela
Re:
Date: 2004-02-10 12:43 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-10 06:21 pm (UTC)There is a possibility that TAM LIN may be reprinted, but it's early days.
Pamela
Re:
Date: 2004-02-10 06:42 pm (UTC)Keeping my fingers crossed for a Tam Lin reprint. :-)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 07:59 pm (UTC)Tam Lin is one of my favourite books, and the reason I became an English major. Whenever I start to get burnt out I go back and reread it and get energised all over again. I'm working on my Masters now and I have to admit it's a bit disorienting to be studying Twelfth Night and reading about Robert Armin as a historical figure, rather than as a character :)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-07 06:03 am (UTC)As for the printer, well. I've recently had to face up to the fact that I can't print from Protext any more, because of printers getting newer and printer drivers not. The way I've solved this is to buy a printer for
Re:
Date: 2004-02-07 02:26 pm (UTC)It is a pity that there is only one Zorinth.
But what about the italics?
Pamela
Re:
Date: 2004-02-08 02:54 pm (UTC)If you've ever wondered why there are no italics in my novels, this is why.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-07 06:51 am (UTC)We had ice on top of snow so the commuting was a little interesting; but, I felt quite virtous in not shovelling, and quite relieved that the power stayed on this time. I like storms in February better than December as I know that winter's about half over now. It is beautiful; but still.
They cut down a big old ginkgo a few years ago, and I was saddened for quite a long time, and for the tree (a locust) that used to buffer my house from the street noise. I've made do with some climbing roses, and clematis (and a wisteria from seed that I'm waiting patiently on...it may bloom this year or perhaps next)but there's something to the feel of a tree, the way it talks in wind, the age and solidness of it under your hand, and knowing how far the roots go, that it's very much just not the same.
When I was in high school, many years ago, we had an old Victorian house, a jumble of add-ons, strange noises, and nooks and crannies, and even a tunnel, and my bedroom was long and narrow with the outside wall all a Bay window. In the Summer, my bed was there; and at night with the windows open and the breeze rustling, it was very much like sleeping right in the branches of tree.
But my favorite tree was the old Blue Spruce at my grandmother's house. It was very unsafe, but I used to climb this tree with one or more of my books, and sit at the level of the eaves, feeling so far away from everything, and get lost in some story. Hours or maybe days later for all I knew, I'd scramble down in search of a meal, usually to get into quite a lot of trouble in addition to the food, as it was pretty obvious what I'd been up to, all scratched and pine sap covered and with stray needles and twigs stuck everywhere.
If I don't mutter and grumble here again before I go away, I hope you will all have a pleasant February.
You too. And best wishes for a safe and pleasant trip.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-07 02:21 pm (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-02-07 07:14 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-07 02:23 pm (UTC)Yesterday the cat jumped on my arm and I clicked the mouse, and the next thing I knew all the files of my book proposal were gone. They exist in at least four other places, but I still had that bottom-falling-out-of-the-stomach feeling. It turned out I'd just bumped them up a level and deleted their empty folder. Or something. I think the mouse is a basically unstable object if one isn't doing art. I never believe that something like drag-and-drop will really work, and even when it does I am suspicious of it.
Pamela
Re:
Date: 2004-02-07 02:36 pm (UTC)Still, had I even briefly the Eternal Reboot Button under my fingers, I might just do it, breathing as I did, If there must be pain, let it be to a purpose that we can see.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-08 02:55 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-08 06:44 pm (UTC)No, only that we understood it.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-20 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-24 10:23 pm (UTC)Pamela