A Thing of Beauty

We celebrated national insurrection day with some friends and a big old mess of paella. I should have taken before and after pictures, but this is what it looked like before it went into the oven:



It was even more beautiful and delicious when the rice was cooked. We also drank mass quantities of sangria and watched 300, which was kind of appropriate for Independence Day (albeit with a sad ending and me the whole time wanting someone to say "They can take our lives but they'll never take our freedom!).

The Fourth of July happens to be a most meaningful time in the lives of some of our friends, most of whom I don't think read this blog, but anyway. Miss Audrey celebrated her second birthday yesterday, Mr. Beckett was happy to have been back from Vietnam with his parents for a year, and Mr. Liam eagerly awaits coming home from South Korea with his parents as we speak. Best wishes to all!

Helper Kitty

We just got an elliptical machine and a weight machine for our new sunroom (we'll skip over the story of how fun they were to put together back to back) so we managed to accumulate a bunch of big cardboard boxes all at once.

Since Nick decided he'd like to put his car in the garage again, we spent some time this morning breaking down the boxes, loading them up in my car (more trunk space) and taking them to the city's recycling center.

Louis decided he needed to help.



When I first saw him he was actually lying down in the trunk, but by the time I got the camera he'd gotten somewhat less cute (like that's possible).

WTF?

OK, this has nothing at all to do with what I normally write about here, but I worked in Gloucester, Mass., for a summer (goodness, eight years ago!) so I still feel some kind of tie to that crazy city.

And crazy's the right word for it with the news of a pregnancy pact among girls at the high school there that has the teen pregnancy rate for times higher this year compared to last. There are now at least 17 girls in Gloucester expecting, none older than 16.

Time magazine originally broke the story and blames the baby boom on the sour economy (fishing jobs that once dominated the town are now mostly gone) that leaves kids directionless, the embrace by pop culture of unwed young moms like Jamie Lynn Spears and the school's own policies that won't provide students with contraceptives but do provide free day care to children of students.

The top officials at the school's health clinic have resigned because the school committee has so far refused to allow confidential distribution of birth control, but the committee is considering a new policy to be in place before the fall.

This would make me sad even if it weren't in a place I love, but knowing this town and how hard it's going to be for those girls somehow makes it worse.

Twitter By

I'm not a big technology person, but a lot of people at About Twitter so I decided I'd join in. You can find me here. If you follow me, I'll follow you.

I can't promise anything exciting, or that I'll even remember to update, but you will probably get lots of information about knitting and the other stuff I'm up to. If you've ever wondered what a freelance writer does all day, this may be your chance to find out.

Crazy. Busy.

I don't really have time to write right now (or ever, lately) but I am having a really good day. I went to lunch with a couple of my old colleagues from the Press and was really happy to hear the gossip, but even more happy that the drama they talked about is not my life anymore.

The redesign that About has been rolling out for longer than I can remember finally made it to my site, though it's only an A/B test so far and if you click the link you might get something really ugly. But the new design is nice. And someday there will be a better picture of me there, which is always a good thing.

The last bit of good news from today is that I've been accepted as a nonfiction reviewer for Publishers Weekly. For those of you not in the biz, PW is the review publication. Yes, there are others (and I'm not knocking BookPage, which I've written for for years), but PW is really the one you want your book reviewed in.

I have to write a few reviews on a trial basis before my name will be listed as a contributor (their reviews are unsigned but you do get mention in the magazine), but it's a good line to ad to my resume. Now I guess I can justify the cost of a subscription, too...

Boo to the BBC

It's really hard to get knitters riled up (OK, that's not really true) but here's some news that's sure to annoy knitters, science fiction fans and all who love freedom (well, most of them, anyway).

The BBC ordered a British knitter to take down her patterns based on "Dr. Who" creatures like the Ood, the Dalex and the Andipose because they supposedly violate the BBC's copyright. They're also just about the cutest damn things ever -- and I never thought a blob of fat could be cute.

(Links galore can be found at About -- click on over, I need the traffic!)

The knitter says this is completely silly, because tons of other people have Who knits (and someday I really am going to knit a Tom Baker style scarf) and tons of other people have knit designs based on other copyrighted objects, characters and what have you.

Usually no one bats an eye so long as the patterns aren't being sold, which these weren't. Maybe the BBC is planning a line of plush aliens? Or they just know that the franchise is so big right now, they can pull a George Lucas and try to control everything.

I had come across the Dalex a couple weeks ago, and now I'm sad I decided to save a tree and not print out the pattern. Here's hoping this will be resolved soon and we can all get back to our knitting, or, in the case of the BBC, back to making quality television and remembering that part of its mission is to foster creativity.

Office Flashback

I was clearing some old stuff off the memory card for my camera and I came across this picture of Louis in my office. This was from January, and I'm happy to say things have gotten better (although not as nice as I'd like).

Now a human can actually sit in the chair Louis is hiding in, and there's somewhat less stuff in that vicinity. I'm working on getting it together little by little (with the help of about a ton of plastic storage boxes for yarn and some healthy purging) and hopefully someday soon I'll have an "after" picture to show you how great my home office is so you can all be jealous.