I spent Halloween and the day immediately before and days immediately following in Banff, Alberta, at the Banff Centre, at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival. For work. Banff is really stunningly beautiful and it obligingly snowed my last day so that I could go around looking like an idiot, standing and just watching the snow while the hardy ( Read more... )

Work, I begin to suspect, does not agree with me. But then I come home, and this fine fellow stops by to say hey:


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The Mountaineers Books "University" most recent course book was The Astrologer. Thanks to a suggestion of the editor-in-chief, I took a photo of the class, posing with their books and bookmarks (we're a shy lot). Photo, inevitably, posted here:


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In keeping with my semi-vow of writing LJ posts I am sat here (as any number of modern British writers would put it and is that really how they speak/write in England these days?) with Myrna while Eli is out for a run, and Gradka, worryingly, cleans her bottom. It's worrying because my day started when I woke to realize that there was a vile smell ( Read more... )

Alas, alexfandra's influence is only so powerful and I've had a busy few days during which my willingness to spend more time looking at a computer screen has been limited. But I have a few cell phone photos to immortalize and where better to do that than on LJ ( Read more... )

"Why don't you click on epoch converter?" Eli asked as I was furrowing my brow trying to determine what days to put into my subject line. But that feels like cheating, gentle Imaginary Reader, so what you get is my rough calculation. And it's sad, but true, that figuring out how many days it has been since Monday feels like higher math. Maybe it's ( Read more... )

There are those who might think that the 2012 edition of Birds and Book is now old enough to retire but that would be ignoring the lack of retirement options many of us seem to have these days. It's one of those things I wonder about: how many people in my age range actually believe that they'll actually retire some day. Certainly my brothers all ( Read more... )

I spent a few days in Banff last week for the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival. I wasn't really enthused about going, truth to tell, but it was a work thing and, well, work = money to pay the mortgage and I do love the house so though I hate leaving home (in an ever-increasing and, in fact, downright worrying way), I dutifully got my hair cut ( Read more... )

Oh, the non-bird list things I could write about if only I wasn't aware of the insistently ticking clock. Damn, damn, damn.

Last night we went to see Seattle Shakespeare Company's performance of The Threepenny Opera. I have to confess that while I've known of the play for ages, I really had no idea what the actual show was. What it is, it turns ( Read more... )

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