2 stories

I’ve sent “Out­side, Look­ing In” to a mag­a­zine, and I’ll be send­ing “Heat Death” to anoth­er one once their read­ing peri­od opens up (May 1st, so, real­ly, tomor­row). I had some encour­ag­ing words this week­end from a friend who read “Heat Death” at the tail end of a par­ty, and pro­ceed­ed to gush about my writ­ing tal­ent as he read it. He was a lit­tle drunk, but hey, in vino ver­i­tas, no?

Wish me luck!

Goodbye, B and B

Friends of ours are leav­ing the province in a cou­ple of days, so we had them over last night, along with our friend John and his kids. We had bar­be­cued chick­en (the bbq looked a litte iffy for a while, but then the rain stopped and the clouds part­ed) and oven-roast­ed pota­toes and a cou­ple of salads.

And alco­hol.

Oh my, what a night that was. I think I was prob­a­bly the most sober of us all (bar­ring the kids, who, at 11 and 8, are inel­i­gi­ble for wine and beer and spir­its, and so they had to get hopped up on Coke, sug­ar cook­ies, and vinerterte).

A good night was had by all, as far as I could tell, but this AM my dar­ling wife, sad to say, is pay­ing the price.

Pho­tos in the full post.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Good­bye, B and B”

New flash fiction

So I picked up a short sto­ry I’d start­ed in Decem­ber, found an end­ing for it, and put it all togeth­er in less than 1,000 words. It’s called “Heat Death” and I think I’m going to sub­mit it. If you’re inter­est­ed (it’s short–989 words by the counter in OpenOf­fice, 982 by the counter on the BBS), drop me a line.

It must be spring

I got a stone in my san­dal tonight, and there’s a sign of spring right there–I can wear san­dals. I can wear san­dals at 9 o’clock at night, and shorts and a t‑shirt, and not wish I’d put on more clothes before I left the house.

There were some gor­geous sun­set colours in the sky tonight, like it had been paint­ed in can­dy-floss hues, and there’s a smell of burn­ing leaves that speaks at once of spring and autumn. There are buds on the trees, there’s green in the lawn, and there’s bar­be­cued burg­er in my bel­ly. There’s mud in my dri­ve­way, dan­de­lions in the grass, and geese in the Ducks Unlim­it­ed ponds (pho­tos lat­er). I rode my bike for an hour today and remem­bered again why I pre­fer cycling over run­ning. Must get out and do more of it. Espe­cial­ly now that spring is here.

It’s my favourite of all the sea­sons, and not just because my birth­day falls on its first day.

And now, I’m off to write for a bit.

Happy Easter

We went up to my grand­par­ents’ farm for East­er. Pho­tos to come… prob­a­bly Tuesday.

Liftoff
Here’s a teas­er: The birds lift­ing off of a flood­ed field, dubbed Lake Ted by my family.

13 on the 13th

13 favourite songs from movie soundtracks.

Thursday Thirteen
Thir­teen Things about Patrick Johan­neson

  1. Primus, “Tom­my the Cat”, from the sound­track to Bill and Ted’s Bogus Jour­ney.
    This song intro­duced me to Primus, the bass-cen­tred wacko-lyrics band from El Sobrante, and I’ve nev­er had cause to look back since. It’s the sto­ry of a female cat out lookin’ for some action. When she finds Tom­my the Cat, her search is over:
    Con­tin­ue read­ing “13 on the 13th

Notes to self

  1. Save fre­quent­ly.
  2. Don’t give The Gimp real-time pri­or­i­ty when it’s already run­ning at 99% of the CPU.
  3. Bak­ing bread when you’re hun­gry does­n’t make you any less hungry.

You’d think I’d already know all these things.