Installing software

I've finally installed the shopping cart software at Dragon Tree Publishing. Installed it but not loaded any products, much less tested anything. Still, it's a major step forward, even if I did have to add a warning to several pages: "You can't buy anything yet. We're still testing software." And then a friend asked me who I meant by "we", seeing as DTP is a one-woman operation. I said, "You know perfectly well that there's about 200 people inside this skull, including a hippo, two hamsters, and a whole tribe of dragons."

Win a book and a critique

No, it's not me giving them away, but there's a sompetition at http://wordznerd.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/100th-post-100-word-creative-challenge-win-a-book-and-a-critique/ Debz Hobbs-Wyatt wants you to write the opening of a story or novel (unpublished!) in exactly 100 words, and the prize will go to the best hook.

Carnival

I gave my sister-in-law a lift to hospital outpatients on Monday morning, where this man was waiting to see the same doctor.  He said that he'd had his appointment changed, and this was the only way he could fit in outpatients and carnival, and he wasn't going to miss either.

I was home by about noon, so I took my son and went to see Los Indianos (pictures at http://lapalma-island.com/2012/02/los-indianos-2012/ ).  The party goes on all day, but this is the first time I've gone before about 5 pm, and it's usually been much later.  I have to do this again, if only because it's so much easier to take photos in daylight.

This year I had a special reason to go early.  I had work as a tour guide this morning, and I had to be at the quay at 8:30 this morning - so I was tucked up in bed by 10 pm.

I was a bit nervous about the guiding because it was a new route to me.  We went to El Paso (where I found that the silk museum's been enlarged), La Glorieta, and Fuencaliente.    As it turned out, everything went well: nice group, nice driver, nice weather, I had no trouble finding places, and nobody asked me anything I didn't know.

Whew!

Silk hanky from the enlarged silk museum. It'd be a sin to blow your nose on it.

Who?

Today is the last school day before Carnival, so most kids have a fancy-dress party.  Which might be why we found a blue box parked outside the house this morning.

Froze toes and fingers

Just before Christmas, somebody left the freezer open a crack all night, and the inside filled with enough snow to build an igloo. But I was far too biusy to do anytng much about it, then.

So I ran down the contents. After all, over the Christmas rush, it was rather handy to do a bit less shopping and eat stews out of the freezer, rather than cooking. And last week I had it about 1/3 full – just about right for defrosting.

And then I got the lurgy, and couldn't summon the energy to defrost the freezer. Worse, I'd run out of home-made stew and frozen ready meals.

Well, today I finally did it. My fingers froze, but the freezer is now gloriously clear and clean. Not surprisingly, the dripping water and ice got my slippers damp, which froze my toes too, so I put them out on the balcony to dry in the sun.

It tired me out, though. So after lunch I went for a siesta.

And woke to the relaxing sound of rain.

Yup, my slippers we so soaked that I washed them. Now all I have to do is get them dry, and refill the fridge.

Semi-lurgy

I got to the doctor's yesterday, and she prescribed ear drops.  They're great!  After just 24 hours of treatment, I woke up this morning without thinking, "Eek!  I need a pain killer RIGHT NOW!"  In fact, I've only had one painkiller all morning.

With a bit of luck the brain fog should start to blow away soon, and I can start dealing with the backlog.

As Mum-in-law used to say,, "I'm better than yesterday and worse than tomorrow."

Lurgy

Going back to bed.

Lost

Lost - one sense of proportion, last seen disappearing into the distance with a work ethic and a sense of purpose. Reward offered for the safe return of any or all of the three.

Unspectacular Progress

I got another section of the Observatory book written and sent out to my beta readers, and I'm halfway through the next. I've done a couple of critiques for friends and a long-overdue review for another. I even managed to keep up with exercise programme. Of course it helped that Saturday morning's guiding job got cancelled due to an orange weather alert. We were threatened with 90 km/h winds along the coast, so it was reasonable to expect really lively weather up at 8,000 ft. I wasn't a bit surprised when the tour was cancelled, just relieved. And it meant that I could go to the farmer's market on Saturday morning when everything's really fresh, rather than in the afternoon when the best stuff's been sold. And we haven't had a storm here at all, although I gather it got rather lively in the north of the island. I imagine that the eye of the storm passed farther north. Ah well, I enjoyed the writing.

New web site

The website for Dragon Tree Publishing is up and running.  It's still quite simple, and will almost certainly  get tweaked as time goes by, but it's good enough for people to see.

Now I have to get on with writing books to sell.