The Ciel Show

By Ciel - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Journal

Sunday, February 11, 2018

new photos!

We finally have a snowfall worth a few pictures, and some of GalaxyFest. Ember's latest portrait is tucked in there, as well. She has been very all-over-me lately, and since recovering from the dental surgery, she seems to be simply happier. Not surprising, having lost all the tooth pain of the disease plus, as we discovered in the x-rays, some impacted and other problematic teeth that must have been a constant pain. It's hard to be specific, how this 'happy' shows, but Charlie also has noticed... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

Winning some, losing some...

It has snown an inch since I woke around 6:30 this morning, and it is now 3 hours later. Temperature is 14F, an excellent day to stay home and cozy. However... Today we must get in the small truck--the one without heat--and drive downtown to run our booth at GalaxyFest from around 10 till 10 tonight. Well, no heat, but at least we do have 4-wheel drive, which the big truck does not. And the fan works to blow air across the windshield even if it isn't hot. The irony is that the a/c does work, and... Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Outrage wins the day

The man in the center of the storm has announced on Facebook his decision to bow out of the event. I am glad he made this choice, but I am still not so glad of the manner by which it was achieved. For one thing, it was a vigilante fury that scared him out of attending, and that is a bad precedent to set in any community. Secondly, everyone who spoke against him without actual first-hand experience to offer may have put themselves at legal risk for having interfered with his right to make a... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Tuesday: winter

Waking this morning to a bit of white stuff on the ground, none clinging to the trees, but it will be cold all day, and there's word of "light rains" expected. Embers is clearly feeling better than I've ever seen her before--more playful, more mischievous, more in-your-lap... Less and less acting all of her 18 years! She still paws at her mouth now and then, probably at sutures not yet dissolved. Her fur is softer and the shedding less. In preparation for this coming weekend's Galaxy Fest, I... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, February 3, 2018

car wash

Here's one with a special note to FSN. The truck has been looking more road-salt grey than black lately, so I took it through a car wash yesterday. It was different from those I've been through beforeP It had a moving arm and pressure-wash spray that moves around the vehicle with hot water, then soapy water then rinse agent. Finally you drive out under a blower to sort of dry the vehicle. It got the job done and I feel positively reputable driving around in a shiny truck again! They guy there... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Faux meat

Charlie and I tried this new product, Beyond Meat--it's a plant-sourced meat substitute that tries to be very meat-like in texture and flavor. It tries... it still isn't meat or enough like meat to be mistaken for meat, but it's okay for what it is. We just cooked up the two quarter-lb burgers and did the standard ketchup/mustard thing on buns. Possibly it would be more convincing in something more highly seasoned--tacos, for instance. It doesn't smell enough like real meat. It is also rather... Sign in to see full entry.

Frustrations

I have installed a new photo editor, but have not yet sorted out how to save an edited photo to share it. So these cloudy skies are not as dramatic as I'd like to show them, but perhaps they convey the sense of strangeness we've been seeing so much of lately. Monday, driving up to Denver, there were clouds that looked so untextured, they were like cartoon clouds, then later when I was able to stop driving and take these photos, they were overlapping and going all laminar in some places.... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Back to business...

It's time to remind the world at large of my availability as an editor/writing coach. Coming across a stack of advertising flyers I made a few years ago, I remembered how much I love doing this kind of work with words and word-weavers. So many have tales to tell, and the desire to tell them, but don't know what to do about commas or how to coordinate the details, or how subjects and objects operate in a statement... One of my earliest jobs was for an elderly man who had spent his entire life... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, January 26, 2018

Slam!

Slam what? A door? No, poems. It's a thing of the past several years, the poetry slam, when a bunch of poets, often high school and college age, get together and speak out their poems with vigor to an audience of peers, often, and others who simply are into contemporary poetry. There are competitions, even. A couple of friends of mine have placed well, even taken 1st and 2nd prizes from time to time. One of those friends who teaches at a local high school, asked me to come to a high school slam... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

a good day so far...

It is sunny out, and the temps will be in the 50s today, with high and interesting clouds: many crooked curvy con-trails... Go home, Jet plane, you're drunk! I have been searching for a particular cat litter and have been unable to find it in stores--finally occurred to me to look online, and the order is in, and for a good price. It is unscented, flushable, and fine-grained enough so it doesn't follow the cat around the house. Upon arriving home from grocery shopping, I looked up to see an... Sign in to see full entry.

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