So Comcast took out our Internet connection again yesterday. When we called it in, the person was certain it couldn’t be an outage as they weren’t able to ping our modem, so they were going to send someone out to look at it . . . on Monday. Fortunately, it came back this morning, otherwise I was all set to heat up the tar and start collecting feathers.
Lo, there was Christmas shopping. The highlight of our acquisitions (in my opinion, at least) was Hobkin’s Christmas gift. We bought a kiddie booster step for our fuzzwit. It’s a sturdy, wooden two-step stair intended for toddler-types to reach the bathroom sink and whatnot. It’s perfect for a stumpy-legged skunk to use to climb onto and off of the couch without having to wake mommy for a boost. Unfortunately, the wood has been veneered, which makes it very slick and not at all suitable for someone with paws and claws, so we went to Home Depot and bought some carpet tape. We’re going to take some of the remnant carpeting bits that we’ve got lying around from the sunroom project (yes, we’re utter pack rats) and tape them to the steps.
Writing Stuff
I did indeed manage to get the contract for “My Friend is a Lesbian Zombie” back to Stephen Eley of Escape Pod. But it required relocating the scanner from downstairs and putting it with me upstairs in the library–which makes the best sense because I’m the only one that uses the thing, and pretty much primarily for writing-related stuff–and replacing the defective USB cord with a shiny new one. Huzzah.
“Rue and Ruin” made it up to the Critters queue. Crits are trickling in. Can’t gauge yet how it’s going over. Also, I saw that there are a slew of stories this week from folks I know and want to crit.
Bought “Arachne’s Gift” to first draft and loaded it to Critters, and it’s already been bumped to go up next week. Coolness.
Received:
2, 74-day “unfortunately, I’m afraid it is not suitable for us at this time”s from Espresso Fiction.
New Words: 200 on “Vain and Vie,” part 2 of the novel stemming from “Rue and Ruin.” Also rewrote the ending of R&R to segue better into V&V.
I’ll aim for a crit of Rue and Ruin soon!
Coolness! I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts. And I’ll make sure I do “Metamorphoses” next week.
A carpeted skunk ladder? You should patent it, probably a fortune to be made.
Glad to see you are getting crits through critters, but I do miss seeing an occasional story from you posted to our little DC2K online group. Sniff, sniff. Guess I could join critters, but that’s more of a crit obligation than I can manage with my own goals and the salt mine drudgery, too.
Wah. Now I feel guilty for neglecting DC2K as shamefully as I have! But I also feel guilty about posting a story for y’all to critique since I’ve been so terrible about doing any of yours. I’m a bad, bad person.
Me, too, but our kindly little group is okay with it. It’s hard for me to work at the salt mines, write and do a lot of crits, but I jump in and make comments when I can. The group is VERY forgiving!
Hey Eugie!
As I don’t have a ton of Internet time, I printed out Rue and Ruin and brought it home. I’m going to hopefully just email you my comments about it later since I can’t spend too much time at the Critters site while at work. OVerall, I enjoyed the story, but you’ll get more feedback in the email.
Also…did you get my email regarding The Sword Review?
Coolness! I’ll keep an eye out for your comments on “Rue and Ruin.” As for your TSR email, yes I got it (I confirm after a frantic survey of my inbasket). Sorry I haven’t replied. I’ve been somewhat buried beneath technical difficulties on this end. I hope the move went smoothly. Do keep me updated on the status of your Internet/email availability, K?
Duude! You so have to post a pic of Hobkin using his contraption.
So her old dog could get on the bed, my mom bought a cushioned step stool. The cushion provided enough traction for doggy paws. I don’t think it was very expensive.
pat kirby
Pictures will definitely be forthcoming–after Christmas. We still have to carpet the thing, and of course, it’s his Christmas prezzie, so he has to wait for Santa Hob to bring it.
We looked at a step-stool design first, one with four legs instead of a solid base, but thought it likely that he’d get under it and tip it over, probably upon his silly head, so went with the solid two-step options.
Comcastic!
A carpeted step ladder for sunky? Maybe he would like a ramping spiral staircase. No, I guess not, skunks are very direct sort of people. When they want to go somewhere, they always want to take the shortest route, and that is usually a straight line. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know skunks love to explore and investigate, but as cute and the idea is of a skunk going around and around up and Archimedes Screw staircase to get up to back of the couch just makes me laugh.
As for cable problems, they come and go, drop-offs happen. Glad to see you are back up and running though. I know how shut-down and limited one feels when the net is unavailable. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness over the Internet, the new American Way.
Well, the new human way anyway I guess. I’ve been corresponding with a guy in the Austrian Alps (Kaufbeuren). The pictures he has been sending me of his little town are just so picturesque.
I’d like to come visit you, your hubby, and your four footed pal someday. Aside from being sociable, I’m curious to see your home work areas, how you have your files set up and organized and the like. What you have been up to and the way you’ve been doing it bespeaks of some pretty good oganizational skills. I can always use a pointer or two. I mean little things, like do you keep story files in seperate places based on status? That kind of thing.
Aj well, pet the pet for me. I like skunks a lot.
Scott
Re: Comcastic!
You should definitely visit us sometime. And yeah, I’m fairly obsessive about how my writing logs are organized. I keep both hard copy and electronic records, and they’re all sorted by story status (sold vs not-sold) among other criteria. The rest of our house typically looks like a herd of drunk rhinoceri had a rave in it, but my writing logs are meticulously ordered.
We gave Comcast the boot about a year and a half ago. 6MB downloads with a service that only works half the time = 3MB. Since moving to Bellsouth DSL I can only remember 2 or 3 outages in the 18 months that weren’t weather related.
My only complaint is that they block port 25 so I can’t e-mail except through their servers.
Um, LJ appears to have eaten my response. What I said in a nutshell: Comcast is evil but all our base is belong to it. Although we’re trying to wrest our bases to a more easily transferrable status.
Meh! Stupid internot connection! (Yeah, that was a typo…I thought it was appropriate, though, so I left it in. If it drops you one more time, I’ll stick an ‘s’ between the ‘r’ and the ‘n’ and be done with it…)
My crit of ‘Rue and Ruin’ should be filtering through the Critters queue any day/hour now…I went ahead and read it in spite of the warning (adult language) at the top–ahhh, but you’ll get the thing in whole soon enough.
Anyway, good luck with the subs! (Any chance that we’ll be seeing any more of your work over at TSR anytime soon?)
Thanks so much for the excellent crit, Keesa! I always find your comments so helpful. I have to admit I was surprised when I saw “Rue and Ruin” had been flagged by the Critters system as containing adult language. I can’t recall putting any naughty words in it.
“Any chance that we’ll be seeing any more of your work over at TSR anytime soon?“
Eee! I love having stories solicited. Erm, but I don’t have anything appropriate at this time. But as soon as I do, you know I’ll send them TSRward.
Perhaps it was the setting? That might be considered somewhat adult, don’t you think? 😉
:nods: Hopefully you’ll have something suitable soon. Of course, if you ever have anything really suitable…there’s always DKA, too.
Fuzzwit Stompies
So, how much stomping of the new stairs has there been? 😉
PJI
Re: Fuzzwit Stompies
So far, none, because we haven’t carpeted it yet and it’s hidden in our bedroom. Plus, it’s his Christmas prezzie! He has to wait for Santa Hob to deliver it just like everyone else. Although I do expect there to be some mighty stomping when he first sees it, at least until we can explain to him its purpose. Then again, he still stomps at the bear tuffet whenever we move it . . .