Robin McKinley's Blog, page 184

Footsteps 

Somewhere around the age of ten, I started reading the books of Rosemary Sutcliff. Well – 'reading' is one way of putting it. In fact the process was closer to absorption into each story and felt overwhelming. At that age I had no idea that she was an award-winning writer. To me, her writing was (and is) just wonderful; well-researched, atmospheric, and with a power to engage one in the times and places in which she set her stories, and to care about her characters. This, below, is ...

I am sooo looking forward to stomping down the main street toward Peter's washing machine carrying a large backpack full of dirty laundry. 

            Described it this morning on Twitter like this:   Got home last night* to dead washing machine full of WATER & wet, soapy, dirty clothes. Joy. Fixer man cn't cm till nxt Tues, MORE joy.

            Last night I wasted most of an hour trying to persuade the wretched apparatus to finish what it had started.  Failed.**  It lay there making...

Way way long ago I didn't finish responding to some forum comments that I meant to respond to, because I ran out of time/energy/brain/thingummywhatsit logic.  Since then there have been a lot more comments I have meant to respond to and I haven't managed to do that either.  But here's a start on the end of  the thread that followed 'A few days ago this happened on Twitter':

 hedgehog wrote in response to my:

I'm falling off the airwaves about once every ten minutes which is very boring.  The lights flicker and whammo, bye-bye broadband.  The thing that is INFURIATING* however is that the lights just come back on again** but the broadband nooooooo, I have to close everything down, go into Peter's office, unplug the magic box, hang around, replug the magic box, hang around some more, restart the computer and . . . sometimes I have to do this twice.  I assume this interesting evening's...

A Virtual Garden Walk, part II.  By Anette, the Great Dane.

Come with me on a walk around my garden. It's not that big, but I have made it myself and I have many beautiful plants growing there.

Read more about:

A Virtual Garden Walk II

By the time hellhounds and I have walked home tonight I'll have spent nearly three hours traipsing around in the snow and the skin-peeling cold.*  Life as a pedestrian.  Give me my howdah.**  It hasn't snowed any more, although both the meteorologists and the sky keep threatening otherwise.  The latter keeps dropping the occasional snowflake just to watch whoever it lands on jump.  Aaaugh.  That cold fluffy white stuff—it's happening again.

            And I keep putting my coat back on and g...

Climbing roses

A Virtual Garden Walk by Anette, the Great Dane.

Come with me on a walk around my garden. It's not that big, but I have made it myself and I have many beautiful plants growing there.

Read more about:

A Virtual Garden Walk I

Lots more, apparently.  I admit this walking home at 1 am thing could get old, although I'm more worried about my elderly car.  I'll have to get him started tomorrow and attempt to drive him somewhere, but neither my cul de sac nor the long mews driveway has been ploughed, and while I still cope reasonably well with snow*, I don't cope with snow and walls that are less than a car-with-both-its-front-doors-open-at-the-same-time wide.  There's a long sort of tunnel at the mews, before you get ...

 We've got house-sized drifts from the wind but by carefully employed scientific calibration of the top of my town-centre, semi-protected  garden wall it's only about four inches total.  However these are evidently the advance-guard guerilla inches sent to infiltrate our technology and render us helpless to do anything but sit by a wood fire and read hard copy.  It's also still snowing and the sky is fully loaded.   Peter has no internet connection at all and mine here at the cottage is on...

It is so beautiful out there right now.  There are lights on the main road but both the long mews drive and my steep little hill are dark . . . except they aren't.  There's moon behind the cloud and the white snow lights up amazingly.  And it's all new and fresh and . .. white.  This entirely mundane little town is a fairyland, just like the stories.  We might have found ourselves in Lothlorien.*  

. . . Phew.  And that was a brief flicker of power outage.  No, no, I want my broadband.** ...