Weekend report

This cool weather, with intermittent sun, is no doubt preventing me from suffering sunburn. But it just doesn't seem like summer. I did get out in the garden yesterday, trimming the neighbor's out-of-control forsythia, which was looming over our fence, and cleaning up other foliage in the back yard. John came over and I tried out Zevia cola on him (a cola sweetened with stevia). We were sitting at the table on the back patio, and I realized I haven't even brought out the patio umbrella yet this year! Perhaps later this week, when they allege it will get into the 90s and break temperature records (Tuesday).

Friday night I went to a party Janice hosted for the new graduates of the Clarion West writing workshop and saw various celebrity instructors and patrons. I was pretty much out of my depth, but did meet another beginning-level writer with whom I'm going to have coffee next week. Highlight of the party for me was listening to Thom Davis, a superb blues guitarist who was a guest of one of the guests. He performs frequently over on the peninsula; I intend to get over there soon to hear an entire evening of his music.

Saturday evening I was at a more intimate gathering of science fiction fans Andi and Stu hosted. They have the perfect party backyard! Unfortunately, they also had a heap of extra books available, so of course I came home with more reading material. (M.G. Lord's Astro Turf.) I met one of the organizers of the Australian science fiction community, who is on his way to Worldcon in Denver, aiming to get the 2010 Worldcon to be held in Australia. Oh, I'll want to go to that one!

Plans for today are yoga, haircut with Ross at Habitude, and the Ballard Farmers Market. If the weather really does getting sunny and warm, it's back to the garden to confront the oxalis that's crept into two of the front beds. Or maybe the annual bamboo trimming... Where's a three-day weekend when I need it?

News

Some of you heard a few days ago that Zorg and I are divorcing. There are no dramatic events that precipitated this, and I'm not talking about the details except to say that I am the instigator. Yes, we have talked with a counselor.

Each of us is meeting with a collaborative lawyer to begin work on what is known as "collaborative divorce."

As I understand it, a collaborative divorce uses an open process to reach a legal agreement that meets both partners needs and priorities. It's nothing like an adversarial court proceeding. In fact, if collaboration fails, you'd have to find completely different attorneys to file in court -- the collaborative attorneys don't do that.

We're optimistic about this process and hope to remain friendly through it and afterwards.

After 90, then what?

My mom celebrated her 90th birthday this past week. She'd had a 90th birthday send-off from her friends in Florida this past winter, and her actual 90th was celebrated by her friends in Edmonds Thursday. Friday night I took her to Canlis (a celebration we'd decided on three years ago).

This morning I called my mom and she said that now all the fuss (cards, flowers, candy, and phone calls from friends back East) is over, she is feeling a little bit down. After all, what do you celebrate after 90?

A good question, and not one you can field with a trite answer.

I told her that I had a bit of the same problem when I left Apple. When I worked at Apple, that was pretty much my identity -- a short label that everyone recognized and found impressive. I knew that the day after I left Apple I'd be just another freelance writer.

And, yet, it turned out better than that. The cache of having been at Apple stuck with me, and has been very helpful in getting contract work. In the same way, having made it to 90 will now be an achievement that follows her.

My mom is an unusual 90, because she doesn't look it, and certainly doesn't act it. Or sound it. She called her doctor's office the other day to make an appointment for her annual checkup and the woman on the phone, trying to find the chart for yet another Anderson, asked for the year she was born. My mom said "1918" and the woman yelped "What?!!!"

Quiet week

Mysterious Traveler will be on hiatus for a week. Thanks for your patience.

What's wrong?

LinkedIn is down for maintenance, Twitter is down for maintenance, and Blogger is extremely twitchy. I quit.

Money

Who isn't thinking about money these days?

If you are a serious investor with cash reserves this will eventually be a time to pick up some bargains, but those may very well be long-term investments that could take three or four years to realize.

Meanwhile, I've pretty much cut expenditures to fixing things that are broken and maintaining services essential to health and business. I just downgraded my membership in a business organization that has delusions of usefulness, and I'm letting some subscriptions lapse.

I was amused to see that the Wall Street Journal has sent out to their longtime subscribers a "special renewal price" offer of $349 a year or $499 for two years. While all over their website is an "introductory" price of $99 a year.

So, if someone lets their subscription lapse for a week and signs up anew, they save $249 a year? The mind boggles.

New car, new perspective

I'm now driving a 2008 Honda Fit. It feels just like my 1990 Honda Civic, but with automatic transmission, air conditioning, and air bags. I'm happy.

Today was my first day on the road with it, and I was alarmed to find myself sharing the highway with some of the craziest drivers on the planet.

Like the car that suddenly appeared in front of me on Aurora, sideways, and blocking two lanes of fast-moving traffic. I slammed on the brakes. The woman had apparently overshot the turn for a strip-mall shopping center, so, instead of circling the block, she decided to stop, back up, and then drive the wrong way down Aurora to get back to the store.

Monday also appears to be "take your big industrial truck to Ballard" day. Every third vehicle seemed to be a garbage truck, recycling truck or a tree-removal truck. Once they're on the road, and a bus stops behind them, you might as well just calm down and park.

Updates

Zorg is packing his gear for the Seattle-to-Portland two-day bike ride this weekend. I'll be driving down to Portland Sunday morning to pick him up at the finish. There are 9000 riders, but he'll have his cell phone so we should eventually find each other.

I just put a deposit on a 2008 Honda Fit (Sport, automatic) that I'll pick up Monday...I just couldn't wait for the 2009s (now moved out to October 2008) and the prices on the Fits just came down as a result of the slowing economy. It will be wonderful to have a car again, especially a fuel-efficient one.

Tonight I'm going to see Eddie Izzard at the Paramount, and tomorrow night it's SummerMash.

Monday madness

I wandered out to the curb with some cardboard boxes for recyling and was nearly bowled over by a brindle pit bull. According to a neighbor, she'd been galloping up and down our street for more than an hour. No collar.

I let her into the garage, gave her a bowl of water, and called the animal shelter. Turns out the shelter is closed for intake until noon on Monday, and didn't think they could schedule a pickup. I let the pit bull back out, which, unfortunately, was when it saw Sheba, our deaf white cat.

Sheba does not run from dogs, and usually this scares the dogs off. But it did not deter the pit bull, which was right on Sheba before she realized it was time to move, and fast. She and the pit bull vanished into the neighbor's garden shed. Seconds later, Sheba exploded out of the eaves, leaving the pit bull crashing around in the stored equipment.

I capture the pit bull, got it back in the garage, and called the pound again. They said I could get a possible pickup in the afternoon. I cancelled all my work appointments and went out to find Sheba, who was on a neighbor's roof looking upset.

Figuring I could drive the pit bull to the shelter at noon, I went down the street to the home of a reclusive neighbor woman who has two pit bulls. I eventually got her to come to the door, and, sure enough, she had a harness and a leash to loan me. Back home, I coaxed Sheba off the roof and took her upstairs. Then I went down to the garage, where the pit bull was banging around, slipped in, and was relieved to find that it stepped right into the harness. My plan was to take it for a walk, then put it in the car and go to the pound and wait for them to open.

We walked up the alley, turned onto 32nd Ave. NW, and an SUV pulled up with a woman who jumped out and said "That's my dog."

Turns out she'd called the pound, but they hadn't made the connection between her lost pit bull and my found pit bull.

I lectured her fairly sternly about the cat incident; she apologized, I returned the dog, and they drove off. Back at home, I noticed Sheba had a cut on her forehead, so I took her to vet. It was a minor injury -- not from the pit bull, but from the acrobatics involved in her escape. The vet shaved some hair, so now Sheba looks like a unicorn that had its horn removed.

My day was pretty much in shambles; I made it to our accountant's, but missed yoga class when an elderly woman fainted in the parking lot next to my car and I took care of her while her husband went off and got their car to transport her to the nearby emergency room.

Enough new stuff came in today that I didn't deal with all the stuff that got cancelled yesterday, so now I'm dealing with phone calls and emails from people who are probably getting somewhat irate. I did, however, get to belly dance class this evening and now I feel much less worried about the irate people. If you're one of them, my apologies.

An extra day

Odd to have a Friday holiday.

Zorg mowed the lawn; I trimmed plants, cleaned my office closet, ran some errands, and made chocolate-dipped cherries for a 4th of July party in Fremont. At the party, there was much grim conversation about the political climate and the economy. Several people felt that McCain's new staff is part of his alignment with the sector of the Republican party that was involved in the voting-machine rigging in Ohio and Florida in 2004.

Walked part of the way home, and then Zorg picked me up on the Fremont/Ballard border. We checked on our vacationing neighbors' cats and mice -- no fish this time. The cats, which get kibble as a rule, look forward to our visits because we bring small offerings of wet food.

Both of us remarked on how much quieter this Fourth seems than previous ones. Is it the economy?

The thunderstorms last night took care of watering the garden for a few days -- that's a real holiday for me.

Cats out for summer

Warm weather arrives, and the cats respond to the call of the wild.

Our neighbor's cat, Bee, spent five days trapped on someone's balcony until the woman across the street asked about the "new cat" and the homeowners noticed her. (You have to wonder if they were hard of hearing.)

Our big tabby, Zoe, has gotten trapped twice in the past few days. The first time, I opened the attic door to reach inside for a straw hat; Zoe slipped in, and spent the next few hours in the hot attic until I heard her yowling.

She failed utterly to learn her lesson. This morning I went into the garden shed for a pair of clippers. Zoe slipped in, and then spent the entire day in the shed. I noticed her missing this afternoon, called her name, and heard yowling again. When I opened the door, she shot out and dashed across the lawn, stopping on the patio to give me a hurt look.

Now I've resolved to conduct a "whisker count" every few hours to make sure I know where all three cats are.

It could certainly be worse. John Hedtke reports on the adventures of their cat Silas, which began with a tumble from a second floor balcony. John and his wife captured the injured cat and put him into a cardboard carrier, which promptly opened from the bottom, dumping the now-berserk cat onto the floor. And that was only the beginning...

How tall would you like your condos?

Seattle Metblogs reports the first sighting of "impeach greg nickels" bumper stickers. (Or I guess you could put them on your briefcase if you're riding the bus.)

Don't blame me, I voted for Sidran.

Fremont Parade picture

There's a funny story along with this photo Jeff Carlson got of me.

Two sides of the Fremont Solstice Parade

I danced in the Fremont Solstice Parade today for the first time; last year I was a crowd monitor, and Zorg has been a crowd monitor for several years.

Being in the parade was amazing. The crowd along the route is only about five rows deep; you see every face, and I saw dozens of friends and was able to wave to them as we danced by. I was in Delilah's Visionary Dance Studio belly dance troup. Here's a picture from the Seattle PI of Dahlia Moon, one of the teachers, leading her Gawazi (Egyptian) troup. Dahlia's group wore striped jackets; we wore more traditional "cabaret-style" costumes, all in hot pink.

While the parade (performers and audience) is very much Fremont artists, hippies and yuppies, the crowd that turns out to party at the growing number of bars and nightclubs in Fremont, and listen to bands on the Fremont Fair stages, is something else -- younger, more commercially oriented, and louder. The parties along N 34th as I walked back to the car at 4 p.m. looked more like grad school spring break than the Fremont Solstice Festival; the insiders had gathered down at Gas Works Park, where there was a strong scent of ganja and naked people were taking pictures of costumed ones.

Both crowds seemed to be having great fun.

Parade pictures were already flooding onto Flickr.com at 5 p.m. Here are some of my group:

Peace bra.

Lineup of belly dancers.

Following Delilah.

Henna tattoos.

Dress rehearsal

My bellydance costume is ready for tonight's dress rehearsal for the Fremont Solstice Parade, but I'm not.

I'm frazzled, freaked, and my hands (and other parts of me) looked like I was attacked by a porcupine with St. Vitus Dance.

There are whole books written on making the tops for bellydance costumes. I bought one of them, read it, and concluded its detailed content would be useful if you had a spare month or two to devote to sewing.

I didn't.

I was completely ready to buy a bellydance top (which can run up to a cool $500) except our teacher decided all the costumes should be hot pink, and there aren't many well-structured hot pink costumes available. One woman in my class bought a cheap one and brought it to class, shrieking "It doesn't even fit half way around me!"

So I bought a nice pink skirt, and went to work upholstering a black molded bra with a hot pink sequined paisley fabric.

What a mess.

I think I've employed every form of technology known to attach one thing to another — short of duct tape. In addition to thread, I have used elastic, stitch witchery, velcro, fabric glue, and ribbon. It didn't help that the cats kept lunging at the thread and needle every time I took a stitch. The top should have a label that says "No animals were harmed in the creation of this costume, but three were severely disciplined."

Initially I had been very concerned about making sure I had a top that would look attractive. Well, the sewing ordeal took care of that silly worry. At the moment, I don't care if I look like a hippopotamus in this get-up. I'm just praying I didn't leave a pin in it somewhere that will emerge as we prance down the parade route on Saturday.

Long days, busy week on the way to the parade

Three evenings in a row of two-hour belly dance practices (for Saturday's Fremont Solstice Parade) are making for very long days. Particularly because, for some reason, I also scheduled an 8 a.m. business appointment every morning this week and another away-from-home meeting around mid-day every day.

The result is that I put on a business costume, dash out, come home and put on practical clothes for a few hours, get back into a business costume for the next meeting, then come home and put on a belly dance costume.

I think I'd be bitching less if the weather were about 10 degrees warmer. And I'm looking forward to testing that hypothesis.

By the way, the inside word on the upcoming Fremont Parade is: best floats ever!

Blogging less, writing more

I've been writing fiction for the past few weeks, which likely accounts for my blogging less. Yes, I know -- I've been writing fiction for the past 20 years! But previously I've worked on one project at a time. Currently, I'm working on several, from short stories and ultra-short "flash fiction" to novels. And I'm working in multiple genres and multiple styles. I know it sounds weird, but if I don't want to work on one piece, I generally find that I do want to work on another one. At other times, I find myself thinking about a particular story or character, and head for the computer specifically to work on that piece.

Weird as it is, this system is apparently working because I'm completing projects that had been percolating for months. And I'm sending finished pieces off to various magazines and contests.

Be patient. Many of the magazines take months to respond (usually, with a rejection!), and contests take months to announce winners.

The one tight deadline I'm facing is getting three book chapters in the mail before the end of June to be considered for a fall writers workshop. Part of me wants to write the whole book before committing to the first three chapters, but there simply isn't time.

The Mysterious Traveler turns 5

Thursday, June 12, is our 5th anniversary here at the The Mysterious Traveler. Ironically, we'll be celebrating it by blogging for clients' blogs — evidence, perhaps, of too much success!

The blog has had 995 posts in five years, and will hit the 1000th post sometime in June.

The blog's most popular page continues to be the Waring Ice Cream Parlor machine instructions. Check out the comments!

At the market and at the movies

I started the day by dashing down to the farmers market. Got fresh cow's milk mozzarella that tasted like very large-curd cottage cheese (expensive large-curd cottage cheese), a nice bouquet of rainbow chard, two very esoteric tomato plants, and a dish of fresh mint chocolate chip ice cream.

After the market, Zorg and I went to the Jewelbox (a tiny theater inside a bar on Second Avenue) to see the film "Ordinary Angels" by Todd Downing. If you like "Heroes," chances are you'd enjoy this well-cast indie film; it's presented as a documentary about the final days of contemporary angels on earth.

Unfortunately, it was the middle film of a group of three, and the first film was simply ghastly — a bit of black humor that would have been amusing for 30 seconds but was pure torture for the several minutes it persisted.

When we returned from our artistic interlude, I planted the five tomato plants purchased from various sources over the past week, along with two tomato plants that grew from last year's seeds. The back yard beds are full of heads of lettuce and strawberry plants. I think I'm almost done for the season, except for some basil.

Chaos level back to normal

My mother's plane landed late Tuesday night. Her luggage failed to appear, but we spotted it in the unclaimed luggage area — it had arrived several hours earlier. That was fortunate, as quite a few of her fellow travelers on the delayed flight from Dallas discovered their luggage had languished on the tarmac in the rain for many hours before being loaded onto a plane for Seattle. One woman pulled her bag off the carousel, unzipped it, and what looked like the contents of a washing machine in mid cycle poured out. Murmuring sympathetic phrases, we grabbed our (dry) luggage and dashed for the car.

I dropped my mom at her condo in Edmonds, where we'd already delivered her freshly detailed car, and she appears to be settling in quite well.

Wednesday night my cousins from Baltimore were in town and we had them over for dinner, along with my mom.

Thursday and Friday I refocused on client projects, of which there are many, but still room for a couple more for June. One possibility is a very exciting business-to-consumer site with a focus one of my favorite lifestyle topics. (No, not belly dancing, but just as colorful). Stay tuned.

The cool, gray weather this weekend has really got me down. I walked to many of the Sunset Hill yard sales yesterday while Zorg was out cycling (a car + bike operation). My friend Tom came over to watch Heroes (nominated for a Hugo this year), and last night Zorg and I continued our watching of the Harry Potter films.

Today I did trailer park yoga and the spent the rest of the day writing while Zorg went out and did two more bike rides. He just got back and now I'm headed out to grocery shop before making a run up to my mom's to deliver a package that arrived here for her.

June in Seattle: Turn up the heat, please.