Why, Why, Apple Pie?

I had a piece of apple pie for my lunch dessert today. I have appetite issues at the moment, which is a strange thing to experience after a lifetime of gutsing down heaps of whatever come rain or shine, so if I'm even vaguely interested in some food or another, it's on the menu.

For years, when working in hospitals with dieticians, I spent a lot of time at bedsides trying to entice ill folk to eat and finding ways of talking them into consuming calories, so it's strange to find myself applying those old tricks of the trade on myself. Mind you, back in those days, before the massive budget cuts that made hospitalisation an even more miserable experience than necessary, food was viewed as an important restorative, hospitals had their own kitchens and legions of cooks bustling about whipping up meals on a daily basis, and one could pop down to the kitchen staff and request special meals for patients who were having a hard time with eating. Now, substandard, lacklustre food chosen for its toughness rather than tastiness gets trucked from distant processing places, and trolleys full of already set trays are shoved into giant microwave ovens for reheating. The results are not inspiring, and there's not much, if any, leeway for those who can't force the stuff down.

Anyway, this post is not about the good old days (we even used to place doilies on the trays to make it look nicer!), but customer service, or rather lack thereof, as with modern hospital catering.

Take my slice of apple pie today. On the way home from the movies on Sunday, a roadside sign advertised freshly made apple pies. It was the right sign and the right time. We turned back, and ordered two pies. So far, so good. Then we took two tubs of light sour cream from the fridge.

"Is that for the apple pies?" demanded the woman at the counter in amazement.

Yes.

"Really!" she squealed. Honestly, she squealed. Then again, even louder, "Really?"

Yes.

"Really?"

We exchanged looks. Yes. We still hadn't changed our minds. We still couldn't see what the problem was.

Believe it or not, she kept loudly repeating 'Really!' and shaking her head to the point where I was so embarrassed on her behalf that I had to back out of the shop and wait outside. And apparently, she'd kept it up like a demented thing. Apparently, whipped cream and ice cream are the only acceptable products you may have with an apple pie. This fact is etched in marble somewhere. Except, our family has always gone with crème fraiche or sour cream for fruity pies. Which is none of her business. Each to their own. And she certainly shouldn't have made such a huge song and dance about it. As you can imagine, we won't be going back there anytime soon.

But this is not our only bad apple pie experience in this area. Just around the corner from that shop, last year at the local Applefest, another maker of pies was exceedingly rude. All we did, since there were no instructions on the bag, was ask how long they should be heated in the oven. The woman turned into a demon, shrieking "I don't know! I just sell these things!" Maybe it was the end of a long hard day, but still, it was a massively unwarranted response. That was our first and last, local Applefest.

Unprofessionalism in any walk of life gets my goat. I don't care what product or service you're selling, you should always act with courtesy and common sense. You don't have to mean it, just do it. Be an air hostess. Don't vent your personal judgements. Otherwise, if you can't adhere to the basic requirements of your trade, find another line of work.

I worry that my apple pie eating pleasure may have been compromised by bad customer service :) Hopefully, I'll get over it. I'd hate to think that from now on, whenever I eat apple pie, because of two bad-mannered vendors, I'm going to have flashbacks each time, and question my culinary habits.

I know I did today.
        

'The Bread Also Rises' or 'There Will Be Butter'

I'm baking bread, which involves first stage preparations, letting it rise, adding more ingredients (it's a savoury bread) and bashing it all together, letting it rise, another kneading stage, letting it rise, and finally into the oven it goes. The butter is standing ready. Copious amounts will be slathered onto the finished, piping hot product. You only live once, and there are some things you really should not deny yourself. And a movie will be picked to compliment this yumminess.

Anyway, in between, during all the rising times, there's the Internet to cruise around on, checking markets, catching up on industry gossip, following links and finding new things to make one smile or go 'ooooh' over. Following a link provided by Jay Lake, I went to Grant Snider's blog Incidental Comics, and there found much fun of a bookish nature to amuse me. Grant does comic strips for the New York Times Book Review and sells his work as posters. I just might have to decorate my writing cave with one or more of the following:

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2012/06/haruki-murakami-bingo.html

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2012/05/behind-every-great-novelist.html

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2012/08/stray-books.html

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2012/10/ban-this-book.html

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2012/11/literary-consolation-prizes.html

I do agree with the comments that the Murakami Bingo Card really needs a sheep square, but that's just the friendliest sort of literary nitpicking that book people love to indulge in.

Now,  I'm off to whack some dough.  Then - breadtime!
 

Did it!

On Monday, on my way to the Arvo Job, as I was crossing a park (the slightly magical one that so often provides interesting writing ideas and story breakthroughs), a golf ball came whizzing through the air at an extremely high velocity, shot past my head and thwacked into the sports field beyond. Just a few hand spans to the left and bam! Cranial crunch time!

I immediately went into alternative universe mode and thought That'd be right. A person goes through the bother of being sliced and diced by surgeons, spends months recuperating, and then on a sunny day, just five minutes away from a triumphant return to normal life, gets knocked unconscious, or worse, by a recreational missile. Okay, it didn't happen in this reality, only almost, but a lot of unfair stuff occurs in this world, and sometimes it's only a matter of unfortunate people being in the wrong place and the wrong time. Move a little faster or slower on a certain day, and your fate changes. It's quite scary sometimes. As is, I was just happy not to become a sad headline or tragic topic of conversation. Life, right then and there, could have suddenly become a whole lot worse.

Anyway, thrilling near-miss aside, I've just made it through two days of commuting and putting on a reasonable show of business-as-usual industriousness at the Arvo Job. Tomorrow - or rather today, since it's just after midnight -  will be a (oh, thank goodness!) breather, a day for sleeping in, reading, writing, walking, submitting a story or two, napping, baking bread and building up energy for the rest of the week.

Nice.

Apropos Dressing Up

After yesterday's mass cosplay, this collection of short stories looks especially pertinent: Bloody Fabulous, an anthology of urban fantasy about fashion edited by Ekaterina Sedia. The TOC is full of authors I really like, and the importance, or not, of clothes is a subject that has always fascinated me (how I wish I'd known about this antho and given it a go). As part of her introduction, Ekaterina writes:

We cannot turn into predators, even if there is a full moon outside – but we can wear jackets with metal spikes on the shoulders to feel a little bit more dangerous. Our clothes give us some shape-shifting abilities – from ethereal to tough to glamorous in a single day! They give us the means to tell the world who we are today (or who we would like to be) without uttering a word. And they let us play and pretend, manipulate our gender presentation as well as other aspects of sartorial personas: clothes are the ultimate disguise, alluring enough to bring a shapeshifter out in all of us.

Fashion = shapeshifting. I love it!

As for today, I got in some bread baking, some ironing, some walking, some token housework and 3 hours of solid writing. I'm still nutting out my workshop story, which is unfolding nicely. I usually submit SF for critiquing, but I've decided that what our spec-fic workshop needs is more dragons, or some at least, so I'm going the whole fantasy hog with dragons, prophecies, wars, kings, traitors etc, etc, although things might not be what they seem to be at first...

As I laboured, Gus kept me company. Ahhh. A brand new story nicely buzzing along and loyal cat on my lap or by my keyboard just never gets old.

Working While I Wait

So I whiled away the morning reading New Scientist and writing a recalcitrant new story while I waited for the knock at the door that I've come to know so well , that most welcome sound which announces that the gas guys have arrived and I once more have a fully functioning household.

So yay, 'tis done now. Time for the whistling part of the day. Let the washing and sweeping and the bread baking begin.

Waiting for Gas

Wet weather shenanigans up this way are playing havoc with my weekend plans - Mother Nature is such an inconsiderate cow. Once again, I have no gas, which has scuppered my meticulously organised Saturday morning bread-baking-whilst-getting-other-domestic-duties-over-and-done-with scheme. Also, arrangements to meet people are in limbo because I don’t know when the gas guys will arrive and how long it will take for them to fix things.

Ah well, I guess I’ll just have to write.

A Battle for Hearts and Minds

From what I read this morning on the front page of the local paper, it's shaping up to be quite a fight. In the one corner we have a person with the uplifting, city-sounding words 'corporate support' as part of their job title. In the other corner we have those much loved, fundraisers extraordinaire, the local ladies of the Country Women's Association.

Ding! Out comes the shire's representative hitting heavily with business-speak sentences that include cheery zingers like '...discontinued the previous fee waiver policy...', '...implementation of the community facility hire rate to ensure equity with other community groups...', and '...to assist them with the transition including providing assistance and advice on making an application to...'

Ding! The CWA and its defenders butterfly-dance into the ring and counter with '...group that has a long history in the shire dating back to 1931...', '...all money raised goes to the community...', '...explain why the CWA has now been slugged for this enormous bill...", and '...what have we done so wrong to incur this kind of wrath from the council?'. There's also a lovely group photo of the grey-haired nans who have been baking scones for good causes for decades, cheery middle-aged types who can whip up trays of vanilla slices at the drop of a needy hat, and younger women, possibly trendy muffin makers, who will be the mainstays of the organisation in the years to come, one of whom is - bam! bam! bam! - hugging a cute country bub.

All I can say is, good luck with winning that one, local evil shire bosses.

Left behind?

Well, it's 18.20 and there's still no sign of Arnie...

I might as well unpack my bags and go bake some bread.

Baking for biodiversity

February 12th 2011 is Darwin's 202nd birthday (or would be if he were alive) and nothing quite says happy birthday like a "Host Dependant Replicate" cake or a "A Phylogenetic Tree of Darwin's Books" made up of cupcakes.

Each year, to celebrate Charles Darwin's birthday, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum organizes a contest in which participants create cakes in honour of Darwin and his achievements.

Go here to see a few results of the "Bake a Cake for Darwin Contest".

I'm not so sure about the "Primordial Pudding" entry, but please, cut me a slice of that venomous coral snake. Or is it the copycat species you're about to knife?

Wasting Money

Last night, whilst shopping on my way home from the Arvo Job, I had a hankering for juicy summer fruits and bought some peaches. I could have saved myself a few dollars, however, because today I picked these from the front yard:

The kitchen smells of freshly baked bread and ripe plums at the moment. Nice.

Writingwise, it's been a good week. I'm working well at home in the mornings, then hitting my self imposed minimum of 250 new words per train trip target on the way to the Arvo Job (Yes, all right, I confess - it's a New Year's resolution). I also, just this morning, finally filled in the missing section of the SF saga that I want to send to the Anywhere But Earth anthology, and I hope to finish it tomorrow so it can sit for a week before the final rounds of editing.

Sunday Recipe

Take a nice, gloomy, rainy day, lots of peace and quiet and no domestic chores, add one brain that is still fresh and zesty from the Xmas holidays, stir in the excitement of starting a new project in the morning, spice it up with the satisfaction of making headway on an old project in the afternoon, then finally garnish with the act of bravely sending a couple of submissions out into the world and serve with a side dish of cute, purring cats.

And there you have it: a perfect Sunday.

It’s been a year since I started this blog, and the reason I’ve been hesitant about resuming my natterings after the holidays is that I was trying to work out whether or not to continue with it. When I started out, I was all fired up by the “avalanche” of acceptances I had received towards the end of 2009. I rather optimistically imagined I’d be doing lots of posts about acceptances and publications.

Alas, things slowed down, and despite sending out what seemed to be a gazillion submissions (okay, 59 to be exact), and despite almost getting into a few pro magazines and anthologies, I kept missing out by a whisker. I garnered many pleasant, supportive words and much praise, for which I am grateful, but it all boiled down to just four acceptances for the year.

Right now, I’m fine with that. I know these things go up and down, but in December, with my days utterly subsumed by the mad, mad rush at the Arvo Job, I had one of those ‘what’s the point, it’s not what you do, it’s who you know’ episodes. When you’re tired and unfulfilled, it’s easy to get snarky and give in to bitter thoughts.

So it was time to step back, do other things, like sit on my Xmas present swing in the backyard, enjoy a few sunsets, read, walk, hang out with people, regain my sense of perspective, remember why I write and wait for the joy to return.

Which it did. In spades. As it always does. I’m tapping away on my keyboards like a crazy person again muttering "Don't get bitter, get better."

But I still wasn’t sure whether this blog was ... I don’t know... necessary? I mean, four acceptances in a year do not make for much of a writer’s blog.

So I looked at the stats for the year (very different to the counter, so I’m wondering whether that’s worth keeping) and saw that yes, a reasonable number of people do drop by - hallo everyone - and yes, quite a few of those visitors even checked out where they can find my work. Not a lot compared with JK Rowling or George RR Martin, I’ll grant you, but enough to make me think it’s not a completely pointless exercise.

So, I shall give it another year.

Besides, I quite enjoy nattering about my writing and posting photos of cats and foals.

Rural reading

The local library had a Monster Book Sale today - the chance to scoop up hardback editions nicely covered in plastic for the price of only $1.00 each - so guess where I’ve been this arvo?

However, since I’m still reading the booty I gleaned at their last sale, I put myself on a 5 book limit this time, and actually stuck to the restriction. So I got The Year’s Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois (the 20th annual collection from 2003), and added to my Tales of the Otori series by Lian Hearn with The Harsh Cry of the Heron and Heaven’s Net is Wide, neither of which, alas, I can read until I have secured Brilliance of the Moon.

But the very first book I pounced upon was Naomi Novik's Victory of Eagles, so now my post-trail-riding-plus-three-long-days-at-the-Arvo-Job brain (which also decided that this week's movie should be RED rather than Gainsbourg because it wasn't up to accessing long ago French lessons or negotiating subtitles, but a bit of Bruce Willis blowing up things was just the ticket) is telling me to sit in the backyard in the beautiful Spring weather (outside reading is a joy I’ve rediscovered since moving to the country) and just go adventuring with Temeraire and Captain Will Laurence. I’m trying to negotiate the doing of a few chores before this Napoleonic bliss-out, and I think I will win because one of them is the baking of dill and onion bread that will go extremely well with dragonish daredevilry and cups of tea, but we’ll see.

I’m not even going to broach the subject of getting my last YOSF&F workshop submission sent off today. If I do, I think my brain will throw a tantrum.

You just never know

Contrary to yesterday's extremely pessimistic expectations, today turned out to be a most productive and enjoyable day.


It was as quiet as, so I fired up the computer, did a few hours of so-so writing (a few hundred words of a sad (bleak?) love story and the overhauling of an amusing (?) poem that I'll send off tomorrow), made deadline plans for the rest of the month (finish four stories that possibly suit upcoming anthologies), and also fitted in a nice walk, reading (The Selected Works of TS Spivet by Reif Larsen - far too awkward a book to read while commuting) and domestic stuff like washing (still loving that I get to hang bedclothes out in the fresh air), baking (buttermilk scones, prune and walnut bread) cooking (a huge bean and vegie bake for portion freezing), and bonding with cats who are seriously cranky about me being away at the Arvo Job so much this fortnight.

Now to finish off with a spot of DVD watching. Dare I dream that I might get to write tomorrow too?

Bombs and Cakes

War. It gobbles up fresh young lives and resources and hope and happiness, blasts apart homes and cities and forests, and in return, it gives pain and suffering and death and blitzed landscapes and shattered families. I know some wars have to be, I understand there are often valid moral reasons for embarking upon the wholesale slaughter of other humans, I can comprehend the ingenuity that goes into developing amazing new weapons or strategies to maim and kill others before they maim and kill you, I can admire the stoicism and courage and heroism of those who obey orders for a greater good, and I can honour the memories of those who have died in so many campaigns throughout history, but really, the very heart of the matter, the incontestable truth of war is that millions upon millions of unique individuals die horrifically in terrible conditions far from their loves ones. War is humanity at its most contradictory and perverse.

I’ve just been to see Beneath Hill 60, hence my tirade. In the theatre, I kept wanting to shout at the screen, "Keep your head down!". Each death was gut wrenching. And on the drive home, I saw people preparing for tomorrow’s ANZAC Day events.

So I baked a couple of cakes (it was supposed to be just one cake but...). Soon, I’ll watch the pilot episode of Stargate Universe as I eat a slice or two, and try not to think about mud and corpses and stupid wars.