Monday, November 14, 2011

P&P Alert....

Big update tonight. Have at it.

Tamara

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Sunday, November 13, 2011

Back to Work

The weekend ends. Today was filled with chores and yet we found lots of time to sit back and relax as well, which was good after our go go go Friday and Saturday. I can also say today I needed a break from craft fairs, so it all worked out.

Here is hoping you all had great weekend and have a wonderful week. Enjoy those updates. And remember... if you have something to share, please send it on.

Peace, Health, and Happiness.

Elisa

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Saturday, November 12, 2011

Craft Show Fun

We ran the kids ragged today visiting Craft Shows. I do wish they'd space them out more but this time of year does seem to be Craft Show season as well. We have a few more next weekend but no kids with us.

The best thing about doing all this running, of course, is the cool Christmas gifts we find. The grandparents are now totally finished. Time to concentrate on the kids next.

Tamara

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Friday, November 11, 2011

11.11.11

You know with that kind of date one would think I could have great words, but alas no. Another day for us. Veteran's Day in the USA so kids out of school. We took them to see Puss in Boots. I thought it was cute but am realizing movies are tough anymore and that kinda sucks.

Back to your updates, enjoy. Another day of small because I have been lame in my duties of updating our checklist. It's on my list. I eventually will get to it.

Peace, Health and Happiness.

Elisa

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Thursday, November 10, 2011

Slim Pickings

Not too much for y'all tonight. E and I are very happy because we have tomorrow off. I am going to enjoy sleeping in.

Tamara

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Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Wheeee - Speedy 'Net is Back.

A little late but a Blessed Eid al Adha to our Muslim readers.

Thank you to those who responded to the plea from Regal Crest. They are very grateful for the information you supplied.

Internet working properly tonight. Not that our ISP was particularly helpful. The recorded message was pretty basic. "Yes, we are noticing a slow-down in service in your area but we do not know why. Please try later." I suppose at least they were honest. Anyway, whatever was wrong has been mended and I could check properly for updates, so I shouldn't grumble, should I.

Got a link to an original urban fantasy short story by Naomi Clark, (thank you Sandra Barrett for the link). She seems to be the only author currently listed at the publisher Queered Fiction Press. But they are looking for submissions. Ms. Clark has two books published, about the characters in this story, so if you like it you might be interested in the books. Haven't read it yet myself so can't offer an opinion.

It's still raining, by the way. I know we need the rain, I know I was complaining a little while ago that we hadn't had any rain. But I don't know that we need this much - there is a half-way point between drought and flood - honest there is. I've come home filthy, soaking wet, and squelching every day for the past fortnight. I'm running out of clean, dry work-clothes. Could we have some sunshine again?? Pretty please??

Take care. Enjoy your updates. Goodnight and may your God/s go with you.

Ze

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Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Slow, slow, slow

First - reminder about Tamara's correction of yesterday. The show featuring author Heartsways is this Thursday 10th November and not next Thursday as previously advertised.

Next - my apologies if this update isn't as complete as it usually would be but I'm having internet issues. The oh-so-speedy 50Meg connection we pay extra for is not working properly this evening and is slow enough that it's bringing back memories of those days (not at all lamented) of dial-up at 56k. And I've been waiting for thirty minutes to log-in to LiveJournal. Oh, and BuffyFaith appears to be down.

Lastly a message from publisher Regal Crest

    Update - 10/3 post "Piracy Issues"

    After reviewing the RCE contracts and a statement from Missy, the legal department at Amazon.de has removed the illegal translations from their web site. So, that is one part of the problem resolved.

    We still need to get the German publisher to stop publishing and selling the books on their site and any others we are unaware of. As of today, 8 weeks after it was brought to their attention, Edition Elles still refuses to respond to any of my inquiries regarding this matter. I have limited contact information for them - info@elles.de. We got that out of one of the unauthorized books and it may not even be an active email address any longer. There is no address or phone number on their web site and an Internet search has turned up nothing. If anyone has information for this publisher, or knows someone who might have information that will assist us in stopping the theft and copyright infringement, please let me know. at c.lenoir@regalcrest.biz


Right. See you all tomorrow, hopefully with a decent connection and a lot more updates.

Ze

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Monday, November 07, 2011

Hype!

Mark your calendars....


Waiting to be Found – “Lost Girl” & Author Heartsways
www.blogtalkradio.com/allaine/2011/11/18/waiting-to-be-found-lost-girl-author-heartsways

Tonight we venture back into the world of smaller, up-and-coming fandoms in the femslash community. The successful Season Two of the Canadian television series "Lost Girl" is currently airing, and SyFy has confirmed that starting January 2012 it will be bringing the show to American audiences. Which means Canada's less polite neighbors to the south will have ample opportunity to get in on the ground floor. "Lost Girls" claims that the Fae creatures of legend and folklore, from werewolves to the Morrigan, are real and secretly living among us. Into this world, divided for millenia between the chaotic Dark and the rigid Light, comes Bo, a young fugitive who discovers she is a Succubus, a Fae who feeds off the life force of her sexual partners to the point of death. Trying to come to grips with a parasitical power that has claimed human lives, Bo refuses to be recruited by either side. More importantly for our discussion, Bo is a bisexual woman who in S1 has a torrid, troubled relationship with Lauren, a doctor/researcher who works for the Light as their medical/physiological expert. While secrets tear them apart, nothing can break the heavy sexual tension that has persisted into S2. While the number of Bo/Lauren fics out there is still small, we'll be talking to the one woman doing the most to change that. Heartsways wrote the quite long, rather dark, and very good "Ways to Tell You I'm Sorry", followed by the even longer, darker and better "Darkening the Light". And she topped it off with the lighthearted "Super Sekrit Dialogue of Lauren and Bo". We'll discuss Bo/Lauren, the numerous obstacles in their way, and the future growth of the fandom.

Allaine
www.blogtalkradio.com/allaine


Please note the actual date for this show is this Thursday the 10th *not* the 17th.

Tamara

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Sunday, November 06, 2011

Where Did It Go?

The weekend is over already? Back to work with the splendid knowledge that it is a 4 day work week with Friday off for the kids, Tamara and myself.

Enjoy your updates! Holler if you want to ramble...we can all use those words.

Peace, Health, and Happiness.

Elisa

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Saturday, November 05, 2011

Quiet

Not much to read tonight. Hope your weekend is going well.

Tamara

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Friday, November 04, 2011

Busy Weekend

My official 11 year old is celebrating at a pool tomorrow with numerous friends. I am in charge of pizza and other various items like payment. Hopefully if Tamara and I are not too tired afterwards we will be able to get to a craft fair that interests us both.

I am feeling a bit better these days...still not up to full par, but close. Other than the headaches I'm almost me again. At least I am not longer dizzy and that is very nice.

Sunday kids return to our house and we have lots of house chores that need to get done prior to that.

Here is hoping you all have a good weekend. Enjoy your updates.

Peace, Health, and Happiness.

Elisa

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Thursday, November 03, 2011

Not a whole lot to say....

Running a bit late tonight. Enjoy 'em.

Tamara

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Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Sad

It did rain last Thursday. I didn't go to the site. No point. In fact it's been chucking it down for most of the time since then.

I got lucky though. I got a phone call around 10.30 Thursday morning, from a bloke I used to work with 3 or 4 years ago, asking if I was available for a couple of days for a demo job, £8 an hour. Nothing difficult - just a straight-forward pre-fab, concrete slab, single storey, building. I said yes, of course. Demolition work isn't affected by rain. Pre-fab concrete panels are easy to remove (or destroy) with hand-tools like a wrecking-bar, or a pick-axe, and £8 an hour for labouring isn't a bad rate.

He said he'd pick me up in the van, it wasn't far, just across the river, on the other side of the city. When we got there and I saw what the building was that we were demolishing I was gutted.

It was the branch library.

Government cutbacks (our current right-wing government delights in destroying public services and cutting facilities for the less-than-wealthy, whilst trying to reduce taxes for their right corporation friends - who actually pay next-to-no-tax anyway) are causing a great many local branch libraries (and day centres, and youth clubs, etc. to close). It's a short-sighted policy. And it borders on criminal.

My uncle taught me to read before I was old enough to go to school. And he introduced me to libraries. (And eventually second-hand bookshops). We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid. I couldn't buy new books. Libraries were magic. I spent hours in them. And the librarian at my little branch library was a star. She realised she'd got a budding bibliophile on her hands, even at age six, and she encouraged me. I don't even know what her name was. She was just "the librarian" or "Miss". But I owe her a great deal. She guided my reading and book-borrowing. I don't mean she censored it. Looking back she obviously felt that, as long as a child was old enough to read it then they were mature enough to read it.

No, what I mean is she encouraged me, she gradually introduced me to more and more writers, to more complex stories, to adult books that were suitable. She got me reading things that most kids wouldn't. Or didn't have a chance to read. Eight years old and reading Conan Doyle. Ten and reading Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and Walter Scott. She helped me see the world. She helped me find escape (from a pretty awful childhood) in fantastic books full of wonderful tales.

I love books. I love to read. And it saddens me that it just became a little bit more difficult for local kids to find the same sense of wonder I found when I first read The Count of Monte Cristo, or Ivanhoe.

It made me think of some ranting I've seen online lately. About e-books. And people who really support them dancing in glee and proclaiming the end of print. They're wrong. Print won't die. Print can't be allowed to die.

Now my feelings about Kindle and the like have been stated here before. But this is slightly different.

You see, those people claiming the ebooks are the future (and they may well supersede print - but not in my lifetime) and trumpeting Amazon sales figures are forgetting a number of things. They're forgetting that e-readers are the toys of the reasonably well-off. They're forgetting that an online store will naturally self-select for those who are reasonably well-off. Those who can afford e-readers. And who can get online in the first place.

They forget that most of the world doesn't have access to e-readers, and smartphones, and macbooks. That vast areas of the world don't have internet service. They forget about the poor.

I can donate a few pounds to a charity and they can buy half-a-dozen books with that. And those books can be read by hundreds of children in the poorest village in the poorest country in Africa. And no ebook can do that.

And that isn't even considering the kids in developed nations who are too poor to buy Kindles, and smartphones, and macbooks. The kids who need those libraries full of printed books. Because libraries are freedom. libraries are knowledge. Libraries are magic.

And it breaks my heart that I've spent the past four work-days demolishing a little piece of that magic and making it a little more difficult for some other kid to find the world of books.

Treasure your libraries and bookshops folks. The world is a poorer place without them

Goodnight and may your God/s go with you.

Ze

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Tuesday, November 01, 2011

All Hallows

November already - blimey.

Today was Samhain/Beltane (depending on your hemisphere) it's a bit late but a good festival to our Wiccan/Pagan readers.

And a good All Hallows'/Saints' Day to our Christian readers. And tomorrow is All Souls' Day - wishing a good one to our Catholic readers.

We didn't get many callers last night. Perhaps they're giving up. Trick or treat was never an English custom (closest we get to it is the old Celtic custom of guising, callers perform a song, dance, or juggling act, in return for a treat, usually an apple of a small cake of some sort) it's only in the last 20 years or thereabouts that kids have been doing the trick-or-treat thing, influenced by US American TV programmes & films.

I did stick a lantern in the porch though. Just to show willing. It wasn't a pumpkin. They're too expensive and I don't like pumpkin (to eat) and I hate wasting food. I got a large swede (rutabaga) and carved that instead. I do like swede so the innards didn't go to waste. Got loads of chocolate left over. Crunchie bars mostly, and a few bags of Cadbury's Buttons. No idea what to do with them (I don't eat them). I expect my cousin will polish them off...

Chap down the road goes all-out for Hallowe'en. decorates his whole front garden with fake tombstones and skeletons and things. Lots of lights. He even puts up a tent and has a sort of party. He and his missus dress up as the Munsters. They have a whale of a time. He's a big bloke. Built like a brick carsey. He's a lovely bloke though. Soft as mutton. Got this pair of tiny little yorkies and he walks them every day. Puts little rain capes on them and everything. Nobody makes fun of him though - he's a Satan's Slave, (local Hell's Angel type motorcycle group), and they have this "fight one, fight all" thing going. Nobody wants 40 plus Slaves turning up on their doorstep because they laughed at him.

Ze

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