Somewhere, there's a schedule

OK, I'd like to know how the cats do it.

How do they decide whose turn it is to sleep on the bed at night? How do they know who guards the front window, and who goes out at 5:30 a.m. to patrol the property? How do they determine who gets to sleep on the bathmat at night, and who gets to wake me up in the morning?

There has got to be some kind of schedule, because they trade off. The tasks get done, but it's not always the same cat doing it.

Loving technology, hating website analyses

Marketing the ebook for the past two weeks has given me the chance to do what I've loved to do for the past 30 years — muck around with technology.

There are a lot of little backroads with the iPhone, and it's fun to see the solutions people come up with when they get stuck in the mud. I already have some updates for the ebook, which will initially appear on the publishers' blog.

The book itself is not selling as well as I'd hoped — the publisher markets to tech-oriented audiences, and those folks don't buy "basics" books. I am discovering that the iPhone newbies who are curious about the book will click through from my marketing pages but don't buy — I suspect they are wary of buying it through the publishers' website, which does not have PayPal or other familiar payment options. I am hoping that when the book is available through iBooks and some other ebook publishers, that payment barrier will be eliminated.

I was fortunate that as I worked on the book marketing and dealt with my injured ankle, my main client had two weeks of downtime.

I was able to complete two small business website evaluations and have decided that I don't want to do them any more. They involve educating the clients about technology, about marketing communications, about online communications, and about SEO — plus breaking the news to them that they need to divorce the web designer who saddled them with a cutesy, out-dated website with no content management system and start from scratch with a WordPress-based site. No fun at all, and I find that I spend too much time trying to make the reports I send them diplomatic as well as informative — so it's not even very profitable for me.

It would be fun about now to take a couple of weeks off to work on jewelry or cooking or furniture refinishing. I tried gardening, but my ankle didn't like it, and I don't dare try digging anything up!

An exciting weekend

Laundry. Ironing. I begin to wonder if there is a Guinness World record category for things like that.

My ankle is healing amazingly well, but I decided not to risk walking around at the antiquarian book fair today. Instead, I stayed home and blogged about demonic yoga and did laundry. Not just laundry laundry, but tablecloths and curtains and pet beds and even a full-size sheepskin (which is done with dish soap, not laundry soap).

The winter rains have begun. It's warm, green, and wet outside — sort of like an aquarium.

Ouch!

I've spent the day in bed with a sprained ankle. I was very luck it didn't break — I tripped and fell on the stairs this morning, and had to get x-rayed at Group Health. Everyone was surprised when the x-rays didn't show a fracture. The ankle is showing signs of improvement already, and I'm wearing a cute little black lace-up ankle brace that looks rather steampunk. I'm relying on ibuprofen and have the painkillers down to a minimal level. (They gave me a huge dose this morning at the hospital because they thought they were going to have to put me in a cast.)

Tom has been doing my list of household chores, from laundry to cooking a pot roast to cleaning up all the paperwork on the dining room table. Sadly, he looks as harassed and exhausted as I usually do on Sunday nights, and is just as unwilling to actually stop working and get to bed.

The cats' behavior is fascinating. I screamed in pain for a few minutes when I went down this morning, and now the cats are either comforting me or patrolling the yard for the predator that they (logically) think must have attacked one of their pack. This is not just a fanciful interpretation. The only cat that is not either comforting me or being vigilant is Sheba: being deaf, she didn't hear me scream and is unaware of any threat.

Psst! It's a soft launch*

*A "soft launch" means that a system is live but there is no official announcement yet.

My iPhone Basics ebook is now available from Take Control ebooks, and the readers of the Mysterious Traveler are the first to hear about it! I'll tell everybody else on Monday, when the publisher rolls out the PR.

If you visit the webpage, you can download the free sample PDF, which includes the introduction and these sections:

• Deciding What to Buy (Do you need the iPhone 4 or would the inexpensive iPhone 3GS be enough?)
• AppleCare (Who needs it, and who might get by without it?)
• Accessories (What's available, and what's a must-have?)

You'll also find some teasers for key chapters.

You are more than welcome to pass the word about the ebook's availability, but please don't link back to Mysterious Traveler. Just use one of the book's URLs, which are:

http://budurl.com/iphonebasics  or  http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/iphone-basics

You can buy and download the ebook ($10) or order the print edition ($20.99).

If you purchase the electronic version, the book can be electronically updated at no cost. That's important — Apple updates operating system software frequently, and we'll be updating the book to keep it current.

The publisher currently has a 30% discount deal if you buy the ebook with two other ebook titles — I highly recommend Joe Kissell's new ebook on dealing with email in iOS 4, which is also in soft launch today.

The pinnacle often feels like a plateau

About 15 years ago when two attorney friends of mine were enjoying tremendous media coverage during a murder trial, they noted that what probably looked like a career high point from the outside was a difficult and even disturbing time for them.

I'm there, now.

My first book, an ebook, comes out in the next few days. (I'll post here when it happens.) But I'm frustrated at not being able to take a day or two to enjoy the process for rolling out the PR for it on various websites and blogs.

I'm freaking out over a half-dozen projects for my web content business. The business requires a certain momentum to remain successful, which means that I can't "park it" for more than a day — or even guarantee that during the day I park it I won't get a ticket from an impatient client accustomed to "always on" service.

On Monday, an old friend from the folk arts scene died unexpectedly. This is someone I've worked with on folk arts events, including the Northwest Folklife board, since 1985. He was all involvement and no ego, and, as you can imagine, someone like that was in demand everywhere. He did everything from running the sound board at dances (of course, he had his own sound system he'd share) to guiding the executive committees of several organizations. Yeah, he was good.

I want some time to spend with friends talking about what he meant to us, and, even more, I want to spend some time on the dance and music scene he worked so hard to foster.

Instead, I spent the day writing a document explaining to a client how the Protect Document function works (it works horribly!) in Word.

Lots of vivid things happen to me, every day. I've got to figure out some way to better experience them.

At Foolscap

I'm at Foolscap in Redmond this weekend, setting up the auction that raises funds to underwrite the group's publicity/outreach work.

In other exciting news, my ebook on the iPhone is likely to be published late next week. I've started a website that will support it, iPhone 4 Tips, and ordered cards for the book (business cards that focus on how to purchase the book rather than how to contact me). I already have two speaking engagements and one radio interview scheduled. And, weirdly, there's going to be a reading at Hugo House Oct. 5 of the book of essays on women over 50 (In Our Prime) that I contributed to a year or so back.

It is useful to be at Foolscap with so many other authors, both new and seasoned, and listen to war stories.

My regular client work — blogging for my major client, and newsletter articles for three others, continues to hum along. There are two small businesses that I'm doing brief web audits for; unfortunately, I've never figured out a way to make money doing small business websites. The answer is to design website seminar for small business owners, which was what I was supposed to have been doing this summer when the ebook project turned up.

September went by in a blur. I'm hoping October is a little more reflective and that I find a better yoga class.

Rejection

This is a story about rejection. It has, if not a happy ending, at least an optimistic one.

As many of you know, I write fiction. Each spring I take the half-day writers workshop at Potlatch. Four or five writers submit stories in advance and then gather to critique each others' work and have it critiqued by the workshop instructor.

Last year, after the workshop, I was talking with another writer of unpublished short fiction and we challenged each other to a submitting contest. The problem, you see, if you love writing, is not writing.

It's submitting what you write — and getting those rejection letters.

One of my Potlatch-community mentors, David Levine, endeared himself to me by publishing a spreadsheet showing how many times his stories are submitted and rejected before being published. He blogs often about getting a story rejected and sending it on to the next publication. It's inspiring. Shortly after I met him, one of David's short stories, "Tk'tk'tk," not only got published in a major genre magazine, but it won a Hugo award (presented at WorldCon by Harlan Ellison, who growled "David Levine, are you here? Get your ass up here!").

Anyway, back on earth...

My friend Julie and I got chatting after Potlatch and challenged each other to a submitting contest. First person to submit wins.

Nothing happened for a few months, but then came the Clarion West Write-a-thon, a fundraising event to benefit the Clarion West Writers Workshop. As a member of the Clarion West board, I needed to gather people to support my writing goals for the summer. I asked for, and got, $250 in support for my goals. My goals were to submit two stories.

Which I did.

(A huge thank you to the friends — and one complete stranger — who underwrote my work.)

Here's the story of what happened:

The first story, a dystopian tale about a bitter elderly woman in the near future, was rejected by a Major Science Fiction Magazine about three weeks after I sent it. This was the kind of rejection you hear about. The proverbial self-addressed stamped envelope arrived, containing the cover page of my manuscript with a slip of paper (God forbid they should waste a whole page) stapled to it that basically said "Does not meet our needs."

 At the time I got the first rejection, I was dragging my feet with the second submission.  It's  a story far better suited to one of the Big Three science fiction and fantasy publications. A pro who had reviewed it for me had said if I made a few modifications to it she'd be willing to "introduce it" to a magazine editor. I made the modifications, but wasn't able to connect with her. Time was running out on the Clarion West Write-a-thon, so I went ahead and sent Story #2 off to Another Major Science Fiction Magazine.

To appreciate what happened next, you should know that Story #2 has a peculiarity that had alarmed everyone in my last writing workshop: It's about a writer, and you aren't supposed to use a writer as a protagonist. However, people had agreed that because it was a humorous story, and didn't take the writer seriously, I might be able to get away with it. Also, the writer is not a science fiction writer — he's a writer of Los Angeles crime fiction novels. So, off it went.

And this is where the story gets optimistic.

After four weeks of waiting, the story got rejected. But it got rejected in that wonderful, constructive way that you want. I got a personal letter from The Big-Name Editor. He'd thought my story was funny — he even played along with the joke in the rejection letter. Which was a helpful analysis of what in the story had worked for him — and what hadn't. My God, he'd read the whole thing!

So tonight I opened up my spreadsheet (yes, I have a spreadsheet, just like David does) and I recorded the rejection. I haven't quite decided where to send the story next, as the market for humorous urban fantasy is limited.

But that's OK. Because I have a Halloween story out for consideration at a small online publication. And I'm hustling to meet a deadline to submit a fable for a short story collection. And the writing is the fun part.

Yard sales, basement, and ice cream

This morning Tom and I went to yard sales with Beth. We soon discovered that the last Saturday of August is a yard-sale madhouse — apparently everyone decides this is their last chance to unload stuff before winter sets in. Prices were outrageously good, from Asian antiques to brand-new designer clothes. We saw, but didn't need, some wonderful furniture. We bought a professional mat cutter, blades and all. I got a blue-and-white pin-stripe cotton blouse that makes me look like Girl Genius.

As is my habit, I came home, moved the new stuff in, and set about bagging an equal amount of stuff to take to Goodwill on Monday — most of it clothes. This led me into the deep storage-recesses of the laundry room, under the basement stairs where the cats like to hide. What a mess! I hauled out a lot of stuff I simply trashed, a lot that needed to be washed, and I found the missing plug-in heating pads for the cat beds.

The laundry room cleanup was so extensive that I got into the garage and triaged the remainder of my dad's tools and hardware left from my mom's move to Florida.

This didn't leave much time for gardening, and the next thing I knew it was dusk, and time for a late dinner. I'd promised Tom spaghetti. We have a lot of basil growing in the garden, so I did a Genovese pesto sauce (but with parmesan instead of pecorino Sardo). It was outrageously good. I realize I should make it for guests, but who do we know who would be willing to wait until 8:30 at night for dinner?

After dinner it was time to make the cream base for the ice cream we're taking to Diana's ice cream social tomorrow. This involves heating half-and-half to 175 degrees, blending that into an egg/sugar mixture, heating it all to 175 and stopping just short of creating a custard. Then I pour it through a sieve and add cream, vanilla, and a tiny bit of salt.

At that point you usually add the flavoring (fruit, etc.) and refrigerate the base for 4 - 12 hours.  Half of this base is going to be made into butter pecan (you churn it, then mix in chopped pecans that have been baked and then tossed in melted butter) but the other half is going to be an extremely unusual flavor that our chef friend Nilos suggested. I looked up the recipe and it dates to 1760!

I'll reveal what it is after I find out how the people at the ice cream social react to it.

Ray the Engineer

Today must have been Unexpected Emergencies Day and I missed the memo. Everything I thought I'd finished turned out to have a time-critical Stage II or Stage III that nobody told me about.

So I spent today glued to my chair, working. Underneath my office, in the laundry room, was Smokey, my former cat. He's staying with us for a couple of days because the vet is trying to find out if he has a parasite. Smokey, who is accustomed to living outdoors in a greenhouse at Amelia's, did not much enjoy his day in the laundry room. But he is a passive cat, and simply glared at me when I came in with food. Use the litterbox, cat, and you can leave!

Across the hall from Smokey, in the den, was Mabel, Tom's cat. She can't go out until the abscess under her chin heals. We let her out for a bit last night, but only under strict supervision. Mabel is a far more cheerful prisoner than Smokey, but perhaps it's because she has a nice perch by an open window. (No, it's because Mabel is one of the smartest, coolest cats ever.)

When I finally finished my regular work at 9:30 p.m., I realized that I have a humor column due to an editor on Wednesday. Tom looked alarmed to hear that because I'm pretty far from humorous at the moment.

I'd been sketching out a piece about strange house sounds, but I'm not feeling whimsical enough to give that the light touch it needs. So I pulled out a sketch I'd started some months ago about my frustrations about having heaps of obsolete electronic gadgets and mysterious cables. Since I'm currently halfway through writing the second draft of a technology ebook, a rant about computer cables seemed oh so appropriate. And, yes, it really caught fire and writing it has even cheered me up a bit.

Developing the gadgets-and-cables story allowed me to introduce a new character into the humor column's cast — Ray the Engineer. He's a composite of two or three of my technology fix-it friends (you know who you are — Ray is you, but funnier).

Whatever happens tomorrow: I'm going to yoga at noon.

Bad cats

One of my clients went on vacation last week, meaning that much of the project management and decision-making work he handles on various projects has found its way down the line to me. I can hardly wait until he gets back.

I completed the first draft of the technology book, but now have a lot of additional work to do. I'd hoped to get to it this week, but, thanks to client #1, it hasn't happened.

And, in all fairness to him, there are the cat problems:

Zoe, the big, annoying tabby, is going through a bullying phase. The other cats have always pretty much ignored her (she blocks the doors, and takes a desultory swat at any cat that walks past) but about a week ago I noticed Mabel, the new black Bombay, was avoiding Zoe and even avoiding the house. Two nights ago, Mabel spent the night outside, then came in and spent yesterday holed up in the basement. I kept checking on her, and she seemed cheerful. She was eating, but sneaking around and avoiding Zoe, who I had to move out of Mabel's path a couple of times. This morning Mabel ate breakfast and went upstairs to her cat bed. I was suspicious, and went up to pet her and came away with my hand covered with blood. She had a huge, fresh abcess under her chin, and was running a fever.

Mabel is now at the vet, recovering from minor surgery to clean out the abcess and remove dead skin. I'm sure she'll recover just fine, but I'm glad we got her in for treatment. I'm not sure if Zoe, who has extremely long claws, caused the injury or if Zoe just took advantage of Mabel being injured to bully her, but Zoe is going to be under close scrutiny and will get "time outs" in the bathroom if she so much as looks funny at Mabel.

I discovered Mabel's injury just as we were about to go up to Amelia's to check on Smokey. Smokey is a 14-year-old black Russian Blue I found in Wallingford 12 years ago. When I moved to Ballard, I brought Smokey, who kept running off to move in with elderly people. He finally settled with my elderly neighbor Steve, and lived there for four years until Steve went to a nursing home (and was afraid if he brought Smokey, the cat would have run off). Smokey came back to our place, didn't much like the (then new) tabby kittens and wandered off and found Amelia, who had just lost her husband. She lives alone seven blocks north of us. Smokey "commuted" for a year before moving in permanently with Amelia.

Amelia is extremely fragile — she's only in her early 70s, but has severe osteoporosis and must weight less than 90 pounds. She can't have Smokey in the house because if she tripped over him in the dark, it could kill her. So Smokey lives in a very large glass greenhouse in her backyard. She's out there tending plants every day, even in the winter, so he gets plenty of attention. We go up every couple of months with Smokey's flea medicine and take him for his shots and checkup once a year.

In late June, Smokey, now 14, had the expensive geriatric blood tests and got perfect scores. But the vet noticed he had lost some weight, and asked us to check him. We went up yesterday and were shocked to see how thin he was. It's possible he has parasites (living and eating outdoors) or that he has cancer. We went back today, and, after talking with Amelia, we are also wondering if he isn't getting enough food and water. We left a water dish for him.

Amelia seems to be increasingly confused, and I'm wondering if she is simply forgetting to feed him. Amelia has a son who stops by frequently and takes very good care of her, but I doubt he is particularly concerned about the cat. We are going to go up every other day and police the situation, and feed Smokey some snacks and make sure his water bowl is cleaned and filled. And we're going to take him in to the vet Monday morning and see about getting him parasite medicine that would be safe for an elderly cat to take.

Last winter, we couldn't get Amelia to keep Smokey's cat bed heater plugged in (she was afraid of tripping over the cord). If Smokey does indeed recover from whatever is causing him to lose weight, I'm thinking that, come October, we will need to convert the outdoor pet-bed heater to run off a battery pack and simply go up and replace the batteries every few weeks.

Smokey is exactly the same age as Sheba, the deaf white cat, and you can really see the difference between the health of a pampered, mostly indoor cat like Sheba and an outdoor animal like Smokey. The way Sheba leaps and gallops and vaults through the house every morning you'd never know she's 14. She even still gets up on the next-door neighbors' roof.

Back to work...

The book project — and everything else

I'm writing a technology book under a tight deadline. The first half of the first draft just came back from the editor. She seems to like it.

Writing the book is completely fun! The stressful part is dealing with the expectations of other clients — and associates on volunteer projects — who are used to having me readily available. It is very hard for me to say "no." I'm more likely to say "yes," look freaked out, and then go into my office and throw things.

The hallmark of a good conference

I'm told the hallmark of a good conference is that you leave wishing you had attended every single one of the panels. That was certainly the case with Fourth Street. But I found that the panels I attended had so much information and so many ideas that there just wasn't room for anything else in my head.

Next year they are talking about have a writers workshop the week before Fourth Street, but I wish instead that they'd have it the week after. It's frustrating the get all these ideas and inspiration at the convention and have no time to use them when you get home and go back to work.

Of course, for quite a few people at Fourth Street, their work is writing fiction. Mine is writing non-fiction, and I'm getting ready to start my first non-fiction book project (as a writer rather than a contributor or editor). I'm not nervous or worried, but I am determined to clear the decks of small projects for the next two months — which means I won't be writing much fiction.

Hail in Minneapolis

Last night, as a bunch of us sat down to dinner, we realized that the sky outside the hotel's cathedral-style atrium had turned green, and water was gushing across the skylights. Some of us went out through the lobby doors to witness golf-ball size hail bouncing along in the parking lot. It went on for at least 30 minutes and was pretty spectacular. Unless your car was parked in the back parking lot, which flooded.

Getting away from it all

I'm a notoriously cranky packer but a great traveler. The second I walk through the doors into Sea-Tac, all thoughts of garden-watering schedules, feline demands, last-minute clothing repairs, and my clients' supposed emergencies vaporize.

I'm on vacation!

I don't know if it's this mindset that makes magical things happen, or if it's just that the mindset makes a lot of what happens seem magical, but travel is fun. (And it helps that I'm traveling with The Scholarly Gentleman.)

The plane to Minneapolis got cancelled, but miraculously replaced, so the four-hour delay was only 40 minutes, and we got to Minneapolis roughly on time. Delta's avaricious baggage checking fees meant that TSG took a roll-aboard suitcase (filled more with books and flyers than clothes) and wore his brown Victorian top hat.

It got some looks, but none more startled that the look from the slim young woman in Arrivals at Minneapolis who was also wearing a brown Victorian top hat. Hers was theatrically outsized, and had an orange wig attached. That, and her Steampunk clothing, indicated she was for some reason channeling Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter from the recent Alice in Wonderland film.

I read Kim Newman's Anno Dracula on the plane, a clever, name-dropping Victorian vampire/Ripper/mystery novel (it mentioned Dodgson aka Lewis Caroll) that seemed to me like a novella that got bundled up in a lot of back and forth extra details. But, then, I think that almost all Ripper books are better at novella length. The ending, however, was great.

Fourth Street doesn't officially start until today, but we got off to a grand start last night with 30 or so of the early birds doing the premiere reading of Jo Walton's comedy "Three Shouts on a Hill." I got to play King Lugh, which involved a lot of stern bellowing.

This morning got off to a very slow start. I sat down at the hotel room desk and wrote a customer profile (as a result of finally chasing down the interview subject, by phone, yesterday evening). It felt great to get that sent off.

The Clarion West Write-a-thon is underway, and I just saw the list of last week's donors to my Write-a-thon page. I was touched, surprised, charmed, mystified — you name it — by the folks who donated to support my work and the Clarion West Writers Workshop. More than 70 of us — Clarion West graduates, board members, and friends of Clarion West — have created Write-a-thon pages with excerpts from our fiction writing and descriptions of our writing goals for the six weeks of the Write-a-thon. (It runs in parallel with the summer workshop, at which the students, many of them able to attend Clarion West only through our scholarship support, are having the writing experiences of their lives.)

In my case, the Write-a-thon is a "submit-a-thon." I've got three or four finished pieces that need me to stop polishing them and send them out to editors of magazines. I was greatly encouraged last week by an award-winning speculative fiction writer who said the reason a story doesn't have to be perfect is that editors like to find some flaw in it that they can analyze and tell you to fix. I'm not sure that's true, but it is encouraging.

Please donate. If my page has brought in $250 in total donations by the end of July, I've promised to match my supporters' gifts with an additional $250 — which about the amount I'll make if one of the stories I submit gets purchased.

Positively 4th Street

We're off to the 4th Street Fantasy Convention this weekend. It's a science fiction literary convention that emphasizes contemporary fantasy (Neil Gaiman, Steven Brust, Jo Walton, etc.) and draws a number of editors from the New York publishing world. It also attracts the sort of folks who are interested in gourmet chocolates, arcane teas, folk music jams, and late-night discussions.

It's held at a convention hotel that didn't do much for me last year, but which is now adjoined by a fabulous new mall with ethnic restaurants and high-end shops. And it's near a couple of Vinyasa yoga studios.

I am expecting to like the trip.

As usual, it's extremely difficult to get out of town. We're coordinating the professional cat sitter who comes in the evenings with the neighbors who come in to feed the cats in the morning and the other neighbors who are leaving Saturday and whose cats I'll be caring for as soon as we return on Monday. (That meant I had to tell our cat sitter about the cats I'm responsible for Monday in case something awful happens and I don't come back from Minneapolis — she knows where the key is so those cats won't starve.)

To complicate it all, Mabel, our black cat, decided this morning to teach the striped cats how to catch a mouse. I removed the mouse from the house, but the stupid thing kept coming back and sitting on the back porch. I thought it had finally gone, but the cats got it again, and it had to be delivered to a large field a block away before things came to a fatal conclusion. The cats are still skulking around the back yard looking for it.

Weird things in the garden

Every time I look out in the garden, I see something else strange.

I just looked out the window from my office and saw a gigantic, six-foot weed in my neighbor's yard, towering over the fence. I hope I remember to get over there tomorrow and pull it out. He doesn't garden.

Friday after work I went out into the back garden and came to grips with the fact that a perfectly innocent hardy geranium that I've had for more than 10 years in a concrete pot somehow got loose and took root (via seeds) all over the back garden beds, crowding out the blue star creeper and various other things. Little yellow poppies were about to crowd out the strawberries, but I removed them.

My take on this is that the relentlessly damp spring has coddled the plants into producing shallow roots (that will be the death of them once it stops raining) and the weeds are poised to overrun everything by August. It's hard to get excited about summer at the moment.

Many cats ago...

More than 20 years ago, when I moved into the first Shady Rest, I brought with me from Greenwood a little black cat named RoyGBiv. A few years later, RoyGBiv got cancer and had to be put down. By that time, I had a big orange tabby named Bosco, a little Himalayan/Abyssinian named Betaille, and a gorgeous Russian blue named Sam. A lot of cats.

Mark Smythe was there when I put RoyGBiv down, and he helped me bury her in the back yard. After the burial, Mark drove back to Tacoma where he was in law school. He called me to report that when he arrived at his apartment building, he found a little back cat that looked much like RoyGBiv in the back alley, being menaced by some kids. Did I want the cat?

My answer was no. Sam's best friend, a little neglected neighborhood tabby named Socks, had already moved in and was in RoyGBiv's bed!

So Mark kept the black cat. He named her Melilot. She often stayed at the Shady Rest at Christmas when Mark would go back East to visit family. She liked going outdoors with our cats. One afternoon, when we got home from work, Melilot rushed up to

the porch to be let in and Zorg picked her up. Melilot didn't like that, and she batted him in the face with her little paws. She was declawed, so Zorg just laughed at her.

She leaned over and bit him on the nose.

Melilot lived most of her life in Mark's apartment in a urban part of Tacoma. She didn't get to go out much — but that might be why she lived to a very old age.

Two months ago, Mark called to say Melilot had been diagnosed with a fast-growing cancer of the jaw. Mark discovered some herbal remedies and managed to give Melilot another 10 weeks of life. He called today to say that she died last night.

Melilot, shown here on the mantelpiece at the Shady Rest, was a professional cat. She will be remembered.

Vision

I've worn glasses since I was a tiny child. I think I'm better adjusted to my hard-to-correct eyesight that just about any of my friends with comparable myopia. I enjoyed wandering around the halls in high school without glasses because it taught me to recognize people by the way they stand, or move, rather than by facial characteristics. I often remove my glasses to think in a big-picture way.

I love wearing glasses!

But last night I had an experience with my eyes that was weird. I'd had only about five hours of sleep the night before, and had headed down to Olympia at six a.m. for a three-hour meeting that turned into a nine-hour work session. Then we'd driven back. I'd taken off my glasses, taken a bath, and then gone to check my email before bed.

It was one big blur. I switched to my computer glasses. I moved the computer monitor around. Nothing helped. It was as if I had been given drops at the eye doctor's office.

I tried a few things and decided it was just my right eye that was malfunctioning. There could be only two explanations: One, this was a reaction to being exhausted. Two, something was wrong with my eye and would need to be repaired.

I have annual eye exams, have never had any serious eye problems, and had certain not had any injury to the eye. There was no pain or irritation, and the eye looked, to the outside observer, just fine.

So I voted for "reaction to being exhausted," and went to bed.

Fortunately, I was right. I got up this morning and my vision was back to normal — which is to say, mostly correctable by the progressive-lens trifocals I wear.

Whew. Losing your vision is frightening. And, yes, I am going to have my eyes checked.

My life with things

My mom's Oreck vacuum is schedule to depart the premises at 2 p.m. tomorrow. Yes, it's still all about things over here.

I got started cleaning the garage today and look forward resuming that tomorrow afternoon, the morning being devoted to going down to Seattle Center and training the volunteer greeters in advance of the Northwest Folklife Festival.

This week I was at last able to focus on work and catch up on most of it. I'm assisting three non-profits in collecting and writing client profiles, and working with two companies on articles and blog posts. There are two new projects on the horizon, one with an existing client and the other with a completely new one.

The website project in Olympia is just a few hours away from completion, but those hours involve meetings to Olympia, scheduled in the next two weeks.

The highlight of the week was the Campfire fundraising breakfast. Sherman Alexie spoke. If you have the chance to hear him in person, do it!

One unusual aspect of this week was that I went downtown three times in two days and had to wear business-type clothing. It wasn't too bad, but it was odd to come home and have to change in order to garden and do chores.