Why I love C.S. Richardson, and Goodbye...For Now

As those of you who read the blog know, I've been struggling with starting my second book for the last several months. I haven't actually been writing, but I've been in a strange phase where I'm constantly thinking about what I want to write. I sat down with BHJ earlier this week and tried to explain the strange, fuzzy, in-between phase of thinking - but not actually producing - a book. And the reason why I'm not yet writing is that I'm just not ready. I spend a lot of time thinking about my writing, and even more time not actually writing. With the last book, I wrote the first draft in 3 months and then spent the next 3 years rewriting. But at least I had a whole book to work with. This time, of course, I have nothing.

I was watching Fine Print on Thursday - which is an excellent show, btw - featuring Canadian writer C.S. Richardson talking about his first book - The End of the Alphabet. Richardson is an award-winning Canadian book designer who decided to try his hand at writing. During an interview he was asked a question along the line of; how did you come up with the idea for this book?

He said, "Well, I was kind of thinking, people always wonder; 'what would happen if you won a million dollars. But then I was thinking, what would happen if you got some very bad news, like you had a month to live?'

I sat back on our couch and breathed that in for a minute...what would happen if? It was perfect. What would happen if, is the best way to start a book that I've ever heard. And it's so simple. I have all of my characters rolling around my head and a loose idea of the plot - all I have to do is ask is; What Would Happen If?

Richardson went on to write a book about a man who finds out that he has only a month to live. What would happen if...you had a month to live? Me being me, I made one of my a semi-weekly trips to the bookstore today and picked up a copy of his new book, "The End of the Alpaphabet." It's beautifully designed and looks like a great read. And for giving me some clarity, he certainly deserves the buck he's going to get from the sale.

Then I came home, had a nap, had dinner, and started my next book; ten pages. So, thanks, C.S. Richardson.

In other news, I've come to the point where I'm ready to take a hiatus from the blog. I've been doing it for a year now, and while I've really enjoyed it, it's time for me to focus on the next phase of my writing, my next book.

I wanted to thank everyone who's come by and read and made comments, and especially those who have sent me nice emails about what I've written. It's been VERY much appreciated.

If you want to see how I'm doing, drop by my web page and sign up for my mailing list. When I sell my first book, you'll be the first to know. And you can check back here every once in a while, I'll probably be able to cough up a few semi-witty remarks every now and then.

Cheers,
Maia

Scrotum!

'The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.' (NYT)

Now they're banning books about scrotums! What's next, penguins?

Oh, wait....

Hug Your Friendly Neighbourhood Geek - or - Why I Hate George Bush

You might have noticed that I haven't been around the blog a lot lately. Why? Well, it's all because of George Bush.

In July, 2005, the US Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which was signed into law by George Bush on August 8th. God, do I hate the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In this ridiculous piece of legislation, Daylight Saving Time (now known as "Extended Daylight Saving") starts three weeks earlier, on March 11, 2007. (At 2 a.m., if you want to be specific. I have to know this because I'll be up at this time, glued to the clock.) Canada, claiming business reasons, has followed along with this insanity. The reason behind this law? Save energy by having more daylight at the end of the day. Of course, logically, people will be getting up an hour earlier, in darkness, and will have to....turn on the lights. God, do I hate the Energy Policy Act.

I have to instert a disclaimer here: I was the Y2K compliance officer for the company I worked at at the time. I had a year to prep, very little work to do in order to get compliant, and zero issues after the fact. So I know a little bit about massive systems changes, researching compliance issues and generalized foolishness. My better half was also on the Y2K team for his company. So between the two of us, we have a pretty good knowledge of these kinds of issues.

So, it's with this knowledge that I make this statement: Extended Daylight Saving is worse. (Well, in some very small ways. Don't start stockpiling food or anything.) And it's the reason I've been working my tail off lately.

Part of the reason that this is so bad is due to the fact that vendors are STILL working on the patches that are required for geeks like me to be able to transition our systems over to the Extended DST period. Microsoft has released tools in the last week or two when people normally need a month or two to test and roll-out. I've only been working on this a month.

So, why should you care. Running a computer? PDA? Blackberry? You need to update.

Here are some tips to make things earlier. (I have to provide a second disclaimer here, this is a suggestion only, not professional advice. When in doubt, always consult your vendor. But I'm right, so it's okay.)

Tips:

1 - Edit your calendar items *now* to reflect the correct start time of appointments between March 11 and April 1. Just click on the item and change the subject line to include the time.
2 - Print out your calendar *now*, paying special attention to any travel or critical appointments.

Then update your computer. If you're running Windows XP SP2, your patch is available here: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_hu3?Submit1=Download. This patch will update your time zone configuration so that your computer will move an hour ahead at 2 am on March 11. You could, however, change the time manually, but your PC will likely move another hour ahead 3 weeks later when the old Daylight Saving Time kicks in. (Hey, I haven't tested this scenario yet, but I'll put that on my list.)

After updating XP, appoinments in Outlook Web Access or Outlook will appear one hour later in the three week delta period after March 11. You can either manually move your appointments back or run the Outlook Time Zone Update Tool, although this is *not* guaranteed to work in all cases. I say, when in doubt, do things manually. (More information on this here.)

If you're using another vendor for your mail client (Eudora, etc.) you should check with them. If you're using a web-based program, Gmail, Sympatico, etc. your vendor should be fixing the problem, so don't worry about your email. You still need to update your own computer, though. To make things even more fun, Microsoft released the XP update this week as a critical update - so if you have "automatic updates" already set up - you might have the patch already. If that's the case, double check your appointments if you're using OWA or Outlook.

If you're running a Blackberry device, you can get a device update by navigating to: www.blackberry.com/DST2007/patch/index2.shtml on your device. If you're running other Blackberry software, take a look at their site to see what you need to do. If you're running a different PDA, check your vendor's website.

I'm amazed that this is just starting to hit the news now, considering the impact could potentially be significant. Billing, banking, accounting, and travel systems? Well, I'm glad I don't run them. My problem, however, is that I work for a company who hosts email for *other* companies, so that can get sticky. Plus some of the changes on my side of the fence are a little hairy. PLUS, information is changing almost daily, meaning it's impossible to keep up with new issues/changes (in fact, when looking for some links for this blog, I found out that Microsoft has changed their DST webpage since yesterday). Excuse me while I medicate my ulcer.

Now, to be honest, I don't think it's going to be the end of the world. Most people will likely experience a few headaches and take it in stride, but if a CEO misses a flight for THE meeting that was going to make their company millions of dollars, I can be sure that I'm going to have some 'splaining to do.

So, thanks, George.

Oh, and the best thing? This is a TEST PERIOD. So we might have to undo all of this next year. If that's the case, I'm quitting the computer industry and opening a fruitstand.

So, if you have a friend who's a geek? Give them a goddamn hug. We need one.

Cheers,
Maia

Oh, and don't forget, change all your clocks, smoke dector batteries, VCRs, PVRs, your automatic furnace settings, your watches, your car's clock...and anything else that keeps time. Which is pretty much everything.

I'm an Old Lady With Bad Knees, or, First Fall of the Season

First, let me say this; I'm not a great skier. For someone who grew up steps from the Laurentiens and whose mother is from Magog, (which has turned from a factory town into a fancy schmancy ski resort) I'm barely average. There are a lot of reasons for this, mostly my general unco-ordination and the 10 years I took off skiing after I moved to Toronto, mostly caused by lack of money, lack of transportation, and lack of desire to ski Ontario's tiny hills.

I got back into the swing of things about 4 years ago when my better half suggested a trip to Horseshoe "Mountain". I snapped on some snazzy new parabolic rentals and skied like Bode Miller. (It's hard to ski badly down 300 vertical feet). And just like that, my winters were transformed. I went from hating winter, hating the cold, hating snow, to loving all of the above. And I mean looooooooooooooving. Now when I see flakes start to fall, I do a little happy dance. Every time someone complains about -15, I smile so wide my teeth almost pop out. People can't stand it.

So I'm not a great skier, but that's not my problem My problem has to do with chair lifts and chair lift related disasters; stopping them, falling off of them, and - even - pushing others *cough* John *cough* off of them.

The chairlift has become my nemesis. Particularly the ones at Blue Mountain, our regular winter hangout, which, even though it's a barely respectable 720 feet of vertical, is the 4th most visited ski resort in Canada. So, basically there's lots of traffic + high speed six pack chair lifts. Six people going in different directions at once on skis? I smell disaster brewing.

So, a few weeks ago, John and were out on our first trip to Blue of the season. About halfway through the night we got on the chairlift with a kid I knew was going to be trouble. He was swinging his snowboard under the lift and smacking my skis and yapping in a loud, obnoxious voice about his exploits to the dude sitting next to him (for a fourteen year old, he has had a lot of exploits). As we got ready to disembark he crouched down and slid off the lift with his elbows up, his board almost sideways, and his head up his ass. Almost immediately he hooked the back of his board (snowboards have a slight curl upwards at both ends) under my right ski and started to pull my leg out from underneath me. Instead of lifting up my leg and releasing his board, which would have been a lot smarter, I was sort of caught in a daze, thinking; this little bastard is going to take me down. And I'm an old lady with bad knees. Unsuprisingly, about 2 seconds later I went down, my right and left skis pointing towards each other in a jaunty 90 degree angle, one that generally indicates that you've just mangled your meniscus. And I couldn't get up, because this was the first fall of the season and I had no clue what I was doing. After a few seconds of malingering I clued in and remembered; aha! This is how you get back up. And I did.

I think it's the height of unfairness that I have to re-learn how to fall and how to get back up again every single winter, and I did a suitable amount of feeling sorry for myself afterwards. Unfortunately, this is also where I'm at with my writing. I've got exactly one paragraph written of my new book and I can't remember what the hell to do next. I expect the answer is, just like skiing, to get up and keep going. And here I thought it was going to be easier this time around. On the bright side, it doesn't involve chairlifts.

Cheers,
Maia

PS. I'm back to Blue this weekend - Super Bowl Sunday is the best night of the winter to ski because everyone's at home drinking beer and waiting for another glimpse of Janet Jackson's boobies. If I embarass myself horribly in another chairlift brouhaha, I'll be sure to let you know.

Thank You, Strange Guy at the Queen's Quay Loblaws

On the day before New Year's Eve, we were hosting a dinner for some friends of mine. For any and all dinner parties I take a run over to the St. Lawrence Market, (a market so scrumptious it was voted one of the 25 best markets in the world). Conveniently, the market is just down the street from the Queen's Quay Loblaws (a grocery store so sexy it's rumoured to be one of Toronto's best pick-up spots), where I get all my non-market related sundries. Unfortunately, I also had to go shopping the day before New Year's Eve, a move only contemplated by utter maniacs.

I was in a wickedly bad mood; the fancy schmancy new Canadian Tire tree stand that we'd just bought had leaked while we were on our ski trip in Quebec and warped our recently refinished hardwood floors (more research on hardwood floors reveals that this type of damage is called cupping. Just thought you might want to know.) We had tried to staunch the flow, but I had just discovered some new damage before I left the house and I was officially pissed off.

I made the short trip downtown, muttering to myself while I steamed in my own juices in my little red car. As soon as I neared the market I realized that I was headed for disaster. My regular parking lot looked packed to the gills, the four-way stop was being overrun by SUVs bullying their way through the intersection, and people were *everywhere*. (I have a phobia about crowds. It's not pretty.) I managed to squeak into a parking spot, narrowly avoided getting squashed by a minivan, and escaped being flattened into the pavement by a family with a double-wide stroller, but by this point, I was almost purple with angst.

I managed to get through the throngs of people, sidestepped the crates of writhing lobster lining the walkways and ended up in front of a store where they were hawking - literally - yummy little Cornish Hens. The butcher was über friendly and quite funny and I felt a little warmed. I went over to the veggie store and picked up a bunch of green beans and shallots, but couldn't make it to the potatoes because of the wall of grumpy teens being dragged around by their mothers. I cut my losses, bought my handful of organics and headed out to the Queen's Quay Loblaws, but I was in for a surprise when I got there. It was the first time I've ever seen the massive main level parking lot look full, so instead of circling like some kind of parking lot predator I scooted up to the second level, thinking I was super smart. Nope, it was packed too. I knew I was in for a miserable time; I still wasn't feeling all that fantastic, the traffic was freaking me out, and I still had to clean the house.

I got my buggy and started to navigate the mess of yuppie/hippie/chichi/new-age couples and families with little less than a snarl on my face. It was almost impossible to navigate the store. Unfortunately, I'd been to the downstairs liquor store first, so I had three bottles of nice wine in my cart. Paranoid that someone was going to relieve me of $50 worth of spectacular booze, I didn't want to leave my buggy. I had been in the store for only about 5 minutes when the most interesting thing happened; I was trying to navigate the potato section when I came head to head to with an attractive older man in a nail-biting grocery cart standoff. I needed to get around him to make it to the all-important baguette section and he was in my way. And I wanted him to move.

And then...he did. He smiled at me, a smile that reached his eyes and transformed his face into a delightful maze of wrinkles. He backed up his cart, navigated around me, and said; "Happy New Year". It was a perfectly charming moment that rendered me so flustered I didn't move forward, thwarting the attempts of the person behind me, who pushed his cart ahead and ended up wedged against my ass. Instead of murdering him with a potato, I turned around and smiled. He backed up his cart, apologized, and smiled back.

My bad mood evaporated and I continued on my way, listening to snippets of family discord and strife; to husbands not giving a shit that their wives *had* to have organic beets for their side dishes instead of canned; to wives who didn't want to suffer through another torturous dinner with their mother-in-law; to mothers chastising their slouching Goth teens and screaming Gap-swaddled toddlers. The ever present, ubiquitous Christmas charols were playing in the background and they were...lovely. As I smiled at my cranky fellow shoppers and ceded right-of-way to their grocery carts, I thought about how lucky I was. I thought about how I was going to go home and make a yummy dinner for good friends and an unmarried/common-law/domestic partner who I adore. I thought about how thankful I am for what I have, thankful that we can all define who our family is in our own demented, quirky ways, and that living a happy life is sometimes all about perspective. So, thank you, strange guy in the Queen's Quay Loblaws, thank you for smiling at me instead of horribly mangling my foot by running over it with your buggy.

A very Happy New Year's to everyone. I wish you and yours all the best in 2007. And don't forget to smile at random strangers every once in a while. Just 'cause.

Maia

Happy Solstice, Y'all

UPDATE: I just finished watching the news, and apparently the tree in question was dragged back into the lobby yesterday, but was removed after a few hours. The plot thickens!

***

There was all kinds of brouhaha recently about a Christmas tree that was removed from a downtown Toronto courthouse so that it wouldn't offend non-Christians. Most people are irked about the removal, and some, quite rightly, have pointed out the fact that Christmas and Christmas traditions - including the Christmas tree - are outgrowths of early pagan festivals that celebrated the winter solstice and aren't Christian at all.

I'm not a religious person myself, but I do enjoy a nice Christmas tree - ours is so large we have to walk sideways into our kitchen. (It's possible we are crazy.) In any case, in the spirit of debunking some perceptions about Christmas, I did some digging about Christmas origins and traditions.

It is widely believed that Christmas is an outgrowth of Saturnlia, "...one of the best known ancient celebrations of the Winter Solstice...Saturnlia was the greatest festival of the Roman year, and was marked with great feasting, gift-giving, dancing, playing, and relaxing. Homes were decorated, work was suspended, and there was general merry-making done by all." They also took their festivities on the road; "Caroling, Wassailing, and masked processions were other Saturnalia staples that outlasted the Romans." A few millenia ago, the solstice fell on the 25th of December, and in modern times it has shifted to the 21st or 22nd. (The solstice this year falls on the 22nd, at 22 minutes after midnight.)

What about the recently relocated Christmas tree, anyway? "The Christmas tree, like many Christmas customs, originated in the ancient Roman new year festival of Saturnalia...Home decoration was emphasized, and the decorations were the evergreen trees sacred to the sun- pine, holly, etc."

Even smooching at this time of the year has a pagan origin; "(t)he roots of [kissing under the mistletoe] are unknown, but is likely tied with the fertility aspects of mistletoe and that it was viewed as a bringer of peace by the Druids." This particular tradition was banned in many churches, due to its roots in paganism.

What about Yule? And what's up with that silly song about the partridge in a pear tree? "The pagan Norse Solstice celebration, Yule, gives us both the Yule log and the "Twelve Days" of Christmas. The burning of a tree, a log, or a wheel was a widespread custom in European pagan Solstice ceremonies. The burning of the Yule log is a symbolic sacrifice of the sun's sacred evergreen, and its sacrifice gave energy to ensure the rebirth of the weakened sun."

Personally, I've always wondered what Boxing Day - the day after Christmas - was all about. Apparently, "(t)his word comes from the custom which started in the Middle Ages around 800 years ago: churches would open their 'alms boxe' (boxes in which people had placed gifts of money) and distribute the contents to poor people in the neighbourhood on the day after Christmas.

Well, there you have it. I, for one, would like to thank the pagans for their partying spirit and general hedonism. Happy solstice, everyone! John and I are ditching our families and running off to ski the slopes of Quebec tomorrow. Now all we have to do is pray for snow.

I'll see you all in the New Year.

Maia

Near Death Experience!

It's possible I'm a tad melodramatic, but that's part of my charm. I've been laid low with a spectacularly awful virus for the last week or so, making me delinquent on my posting, and in about every other part of my life. Now I'm busy trying to get BHJ and I ready to head to Quebec for a week of frolicking in the snow, except...there's no snow. Environment Canada says there's a 60% chance of getting the white stuff today, so please, everyone, pray to whoever your designated diety is (personally, I've accepted the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my personal saviour, mostly because of the focus on loose moral values) for some snow for us. We have the worst ski trip luck in the world. I blame John.

Cheers,
Maia