Cathi's Comments Archives 2009

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and for those in the US, Happy Columbus Day weekend. I am enjoying this weekend for a number of reasons, but not for the turkey. There is no turkey this year for us. It's not a bad thing, it's just it's only the two of us and not worth doing up a whole turkey for that. Yes, I could do pieces like I did last year but quite frankly, a spinning chicken was more what I wanted so there we have it.

I hadn't realized this wasn't updated; I'm on so many things that I forget whether it's this or a blog I've updated so sadly, this page was neglected. I've also - and yes I know this is a regular song here - terribly busy. But it's a good busy. Let me explain.

Following daughter's high school graduation and 18th birthday, this summer has been a blur of activity surrounding her university. She was accepted into the BScN program at Ottawa U, at a campus closer to me than her dad (not the main campus) so that involved intricate details on where she should live. Thankfully she found a really good place within walking distance of the campus and which allows her to be what she is, an adult. It's important to live on your own and learn to budget etc., and also to be free to be who you are and make your own decisions. I am not, and never will be, a person who tells others how to live their lives. I am so happy she is both independent and level-headed enough to make rational decisions. And really, isn't that a parent's job, to give them the tools to navigate the world in their own way, wisely, but fully? So if I have one wish it's that both my children live their lives without fear, with heart and just enough ambition to do well but not so much they get myopic and selfish. Everything else, well, that cornucopea is for them to choose from.

Son's big adventures this year involve Air Cadets and drumming; the former being the reason he's off gliding 300 km away instead of eating turkey, and the latter, well, he's pretty good at that. Now I just have to figure out where to get a reasonable set of drums. Wondering if Freecycle is an option. You never know. I hope there will be skiing but I just realized he's too old for the every other weekend thing so I'll have to figure out something. Time is becoming a serious premium with me, between 3 hours every Tuesday in a town half an hour away for Air Cadets, my after work job, my university course, and work among everything else. But life for not-so-little-guy is going along pretty well right now, even if he had to cut his long hair, lol.

So what's up with me is I've put plans on hold for doing a paperback and Kindle version of I Ching Jukebox out because frankly, if nobody wants to buy even the pdf version, what's the point? I don't want to seem snarr but really, I have lots of other stuff waiting to see a printer and Kindle isn't even available in Canada. My main aim right now is to fix the header problem that took off the title and page numbers on the hardcover version of Polaroids Get Yellow so that can go up on Amazon, and to get Off Air editted and up as well. My best editor unfortunately for me just got married and has disappeared into the ozone so it's a much slower slog for the final version of Off Air but it will be worth it. After having left that book for a couple of years, going back to it for it's inital edit made me fall in love with it again. It truly is a good book and will have a sequel, based on some of the smaller characters who played a big part in this book but in an understated way - all those undercurrents that went unsaid, well, they want to be said and the more I think about it the more I can see there's so much more to this story. I guess that's why, as disappointing as it is that I Ching Jukebox only has sold 2 copies so far (not enough even for me to get a royalty, which from Amazon is a whopping $2.44), my first love is and always will be writing. The characters get restless, the scenarios haunt me and words happen that need to be born on paper. Call it muse, call it inspiration, call talent, call it insanity, call it what you will, regardless this is something I can't shut off so I will be writing, whether or not people read it, or buy it. But for those who have, thank you, your kind (and even not so kind) words have meant a lot to me. I'm glad there's a few out there who I've touched enough for them to comment at least.

I'm not going to go into money issues much more than it's all status quo. Even taking a special assignment that showed promise of more money is really just more work, but while initially I'd thought that if it wasn't more money the hell with it, the more I get into the more I realize I can make a difference on something that affects a lot of people, not just with my computer science skills but with my ridiculous number of years of experience I'm kind of in between a rock and hard situation because of that, because I know what it could be, and I can guess what it will turn out if my voice isn't heard and I'd hate to not at least put in what I think can make things better. It does mean though that I am very very pressed for time, and there's no end in sight of that friggin' night cleaning if there's no extra money coming in. Even the two companies I'm a partner in aren't much more than extra work at the moment; one involves other people that need to do their thing for me to continue with my thing, and the other, well, I get little bits of work now and then but on average $200 a year hardly even makes it a viable business. So yeah, I can pin my hopes on Off Air, if ever there's the time, and the other businesses if there's ever anything we can actually sell.

As for my university course I got 75% on my first assignment but as usual I'm trying to find time to work on it, however at this point, I still think I can make it hopefully without another extension (I have 1 extension left). We'll see but I am hopeful, the 3 hours of nothing to do but wait on Tuesdays is actually a help :D. In the grand scheme of things, a part of me is thinking that since I'm so close to getting the University Certificate, that should be my main aim at the moment, and worry less about the full degree. I want that degree, I do, but after six years I'm still waiting for the hours in the day to do it more than one course or at most two in a year. Sigh. Sometimes I wish there were 2 of me, and this is one of those times.

Anyway, things are looking up, slowly but surely, and as we enter the last third of this remarkable year I just have to say have a wonderful Thanksgiving and Hallowe'en and let's not think about Christmas just yet, okay? LOL

À la prochaine,

Cathi .....

As the school year winds down, I am just catching up on a few things.

Let's see. I Ching Jukebox is now up on Amazon world-wide, Barnes & Noble, Lulu and has so far sold two copies! There's a wonderful review on Amazon.com by someone who read the PDF version and I am very pleased about these small steps. Off Air has had its first edit and is about to be formatted but right now I have been really busy so I'm leaving that for a summer finish. My poetry book, Polaroids Get Yellow actually is up on Lulu.com but I have the proof copy (it's great as a hardcover!) however the page numbers and page headers are missing so I have to fix that, get another proof and then hopefully that too will make it up on Amazon. Keeping fingers crossed!

As far as my university courses go, I am diligently working on COMP 314 (just about to do TME 1) with a hope of actually completing it on time and not having to extend it. We'll see but I really hope I don't have to. I have also been approved to take another course this year so yay, I can continue on.

Little guy is now completing what is so far a very good year. He is now in level 6 in swimming but is finding it a little more difficult than level 5; part of that may be one of the medications he's been on (and has now stopped) that was making him tired. He also had to miss 3 classes so that doesn't help. Regardless, he has made wonderful progress and we are all so very proud of him.

May 13th was my mother's 90th birthday and we had a good afternoon celebrating it with her. I can only hope that I will be as healthy and active as she is when I'm her age! She is in many ways my inspiration and I am very thankful for how much she has been with me (if not in body then in spirit) and has been a non-judgemental ear for all my many trials and tribulations. :D

In other news I had a wonderful work trip to Halifax in May and thoroughly enjoyed the city; it is beautiful and the people are great. I left there thinking that this is one place I could happily live in, and you know, maybe someday I will! In other work news I may be changing scenarios but won't post more because there is a lack of detail in what that new scenario would be that could be a dealbreaker if it winds up being more time and effort and no extra pay. I'm not putting the cart before the horse though, so we'll see what tomorrow brings.

In daughter news, she has been accepted into the nursing program at a local university near me so it's been fun helping with registration and picking courses and getting all the vaccinations, etc., necessary to enter the program. It is so hard to imagine that my sweet little girl, the one I see in my mind as that determined doll walking around and around the crescent on those cute toddler legs is going to be 18 in a couple of weeks. But she is, and so soon she will be an adult responsible for herself. She is lovely person and we are all proud to have raised such a level-headed and capable person.

So as you see, this remarkable year continues on; I look forward to the future and to see what else unfolds!

Hope everyone has a happy end of school year and a great beginning of summer!

À la prochaine,

Cathi .....

So here we are, four months into the year and my first Comments. Yup, I'm bad. I have been very busy with stuff. I'll likely be forgotting something or someone but, what can you do.

Let's see. I finally got the formatting completely fixed, and a final edit on I Ching Jukebox thanks to Mark Atherton's wonderful observations. So now it has been approved for distribution not only by Lulu (who is the publisher) but also on Amazon. To date, it isn't up yet on Amazon, but Genève Blue can wait a little longer. It would be wonderful though if somebody took a chance and actually bought the book on Lulu.com (do a search for I Ching Jukebox) or read the preview pages and made a comment. It will be up as a paperback on Cafe Press shortly - the inside is formatted but the cover design has to be redone since it is a different format than Lulu uses.

In similar matters, you may be pleased to note that the long awaited Off Air has had it's first edit and now to format and design a cover. I will likely enlist Mark Atherton again if he's willing to use his excellent editing skills for which I will return the favour if he wants for the book he's working on. I should mention that in doing my edit and intial format and rewrite, it is still a story I fell in love with writing and enjoyed reading. If I can enjoy my own work, I know it's a good story and I do hope others like it too. It is quite involved and I realized at the end that there's a whole other book at least worth writing on the subject with some of the characters that I just introduced briefly. So that's this year's project.

In university work, I was approved to do another course so I was able to start another one, this one being COMP 314 Computer Organization. Sounds simple but it really is how the computer works at a programming level, and not just PCs, it includes Macs, Linux, Solaris and a few other examples. A little esoteric but I'm seeing how the Data Structures and Algorithms course I wasn't able to finish (I sent in a project that wound up being a blank file and got zero for it so couldn't pass) and depending how this one goes it may just give me the confidence to attempt that one again since it is explaining some of the concepts so well.

My company Talerocker~Dreamcat made a whopping $80 last year but I'll be making slightly more in a week or so and from something I filmed last year and edited this year, hopefully that DVD will sell and we'll actually see a break-even or a profit dare I hope? Doing the taxes for a business is ridiculously onerous but it is kind of interesting what you can deduct. Of course you can't do that forever, eventually you have to make a profit or call it quits. But I have hope. And thankfully the work I do doesn't use a lot expenses, or rental of space or stuff like that. Jim and I became partners in another business with two other people, this one called Indigo Starcrystal Communications. That business will be more focussed on a newsletter and radio podcasts (with eventual online radio station) featuring interesting guests with an off-beat view of life. It can include anything from experts on UFOs to alternative healers and fascinating authors like the - ahem - illustrious Geneve Blue. Jim has already produced an hour long interview with Robert Burnett on his book about Rhodesia, a portion of which is on the site Above Politics. Jim does a great job on this, and it's to me it's proof that radio really is his forté and I do look forward to more like this from him. I should mention I've heard the entire interview raw and it is a credit to him that very little has been edited out.

In other news, the economy produced an interesting benefit for us. You see, my 12 year old Toyota was literally falling apart. After the axles were replaced, the brakes started failing and there was a problem with the steering. The mechanic pretty much told me forget it, get something else. Well, I wound up driving the leased Jeep to work (and racking up the kilometres which is not a good thing) but then the dealership phoned and said there was a big sale for current owners and leasors. I told him okay fine, we'll come in but here's the thing - we have a leased Jeep due up in July, and a dying Toyota. Yes we need something new but it can't cost much more than we're paying now. We want a 4wd and a van, so the options I presented were a new Jeep Compass for me and a used van, or keep the Jeep and a used van, or a new van and used whatever or keep the Jeep. The salesman remarkably didn't laugh at me but said, "let's see what we can do." He called me back and said, come in, I think we can do something for you. Well, it took about four hours in the sales office but we got a brand new off-the-lot Dodge Caravan with the fold down seats (good for camera equipment and gigantic black lab dog) and by getting that they were able to work it so the loans goes long and throw in the Jeep so over 8 years it is just a bit more than we were paying. We are very happy indeed. For folks in the Ottawa area, I should mention this was Dilawri and I certainly do recommend them.

Beyond that, some sad news: Wizard, my ex's dog died quite suddenly at the age 12 on March 4th. That was a shock for everyone and also for son who of course knew that dog all his life. The night Wizard died, poor little guy spent the evening hugging Jassper on the couch. And there we see the value of our big black hyper bundle of love - Jassper sat still the whole time commiserating with Ben, never moving. What a wonderful fellow. This was also the day that my brother-in-law's father died; my condolensences go out to him and the family and most especially his mother.

I had a very good birthday this year, in fact that week was great. One highlight was receiving a $100 Roll Up The Rim card in the mail, and getting the opportunity to see the movie Paschendaele at the Diefenbunker - this was a special Genie Awards showing and I was incredibly fortunate to get a couple of tickets. What a great show and it was nice to have the little tour afterwards.

Little guy did very well with the skiing - in fact he went from Step 2 to Step 4 which he will start next winter. Same with swimming, he went from level 2 to going into level 6 next week, skipping levels 3 and 4. Pretty amazing. We are all proud of his efforts.

One other interesting things, I have been trying to get an on-demand water heater for a couple of years now. First it was difficult to find that here, then, it could be found but had to be purchased and was quite expensive. Then a couple of weeks ago I got something in the a bill that said folks in the greater Ottawa and Toronto areas who are Enbridge customers had the opportunity to rent these. Well, I jumped at that. I immediately sent an email asking for more information. I explained I have an older hot water heater (about 20 years old but not end of life) and have been very interested in these for a while. They checked and yes, I'm in one of these areas. So how much for rental? Just a little bit more than my old rental, with a buyout option that I previously didn't have. Not only did I request one, it was installed within the same week. Let me tell you - with an old house, to finally be able to take a bath, run the dishwasher and a tap and not be out of hot water is fantastic. I should also see a difference in the gas, electric and water bills. I am a happy person indeed. So you see, some things are looking up!

I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out, but I think this should be it for now. Hopefully I'll update sooner next time!

À la prochaine,

Cathi .....