FIL is home, safe and sound though a little the worse for wear. While he waited for his final exam and discharge papers, I ran around doing errands. (Two pairs of soccer shoes, soccer shorts, two pairs of khaki jeans, sundry cleaning supplies, cold medicine, etc - check.) And since I am physically incapable of passing a bookstore without stopping in, and I am physically incapable of stopping in without buying something, I came out with a nifty canvas bag of books.

What was in my nifty canvas bag of books, you might ask?

A lovely hardcover anniversary edition of Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn, complete with Two Hearts and a really charming author interview at the end.

I am positively delighted, I tell you.

Also! A hardcover Ray Bradbury book called The Halloween Tree. Am I the only person who didn't even know this existed? :/ I pounced on it with a little cry of glee, and the man standing next to me smiled and said, "It's fantastic. You're going to love it." So I peeked inside as I carried it to the checkout - pictures! Lovely creepy pictures and fantastic creepy writing. Can't wait to read this to my kids... :D

And... ::she whispers guiltily:: I shouldn't have, but I bought my own copies of The Fionavar Tapestry - all three books at once! - because I can no longer check them out of the library. Husband is going to kill me when he sees the growing pile of books teetering precariously on my nightstand, but I couldn't resist.

Yes, I am a book addict. :D

Still tired. But at least, I think I'm on top of things. And the bank stuff is out of my hands, for the moment.

And my study is clean enough that the dog can lose her squeaky tennis ball under a bookshelf. That's a huge improvement.

H'okay. I have a question about my Teddy Bear's supplements.
He currently gets a Smartpak in the AM of Chondrogen EQ and I recently added Biotin II 22X to the Smartpak order after advice from my farrier. Before I bought him he was also given MSM. Recently I've noticed he's been rubbing up against things more and more frequently, specifically his face. Should I add the MSM back into his supplements for itchy skin? Could this be a symptom of anything else? Other than that, he's quite healthy and happy.
Also, is this too many supplements or a bad combination thereof? I don't want to give him a non-healthy mix or too much of something.
Any advice is appreciated!

( The horse in question... )

Originally published at Hollywoodland. Please leave any comments there.

(Geez. I have no brain today. I had this ready to post hours ago! And forgot to post it.)

John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president! Gosh, imagine that! What a shocker! Hello? Foregone conclusion, news people. Why are you so surprised???

Read the rest of this entry »

Two discussion questions for the group-

1. Say you had a stud with great bloodlines and an impressive show record. This animal is of breeding quality. BUT, he has pretty severely messed up suspensories in the hind, like his pasterns are just about dragging on the ground. He is not in pain, and he's sort of happy, and he is just used for breeding purposes.
He has a really hard time getting up on the phantom and you mostly have to ground collect him.

Is it ethical to keep breeding this animal? Why or Why not?

2. I'm trying to plan a gymkana for my girls and i'm coming short on games. What are your favorite gymkana games, keeping in mind most of the games will have to be done at the trot. Mounted and Unmounted games welcome!

You know your throat is sore when it hurts to breathe. I also need new shoes as my work shoes suddenly became flip flops instead of sneaker like.

I was just watching a bit of the movie Please Don't Eat The Daisies on TCM. It stars Doris Day and David Niven and is a relatively entertaining movie, but it's a far cry from the book upon which it is based.

I first read Jean Kerr's Please Don't Eat The Daisies when I was 10 or 11 years old. I discovered it the way I discovered many books when I was a child....it was lying around the house. I think it belonged to my grandmother, and one day I was intrigued enough with the title to start perusing.

After a few pages I was in love with Jean Kerr. She was the first humorist I recall reading, and she was brilliant. Jean was married to famous Broadway critic Walter Kerr, and lived in a huge Tudor/gothic mansion in Larchmont, NY. At the time she wrote PDETD, they had four slightly insane children, and her observations on life as an untypical housewife and mother were hilarious. Over the years I bought more of her books, like The Snake Has All The Lines and Penny Candy.

Being a child, I didn't understand a lot of the references in her books, but as time went on, and I reread them, I knew more. And of course, the books became even funnier.

Yes, before Erma Bombeck....before Dave Barry....there was Jean Kerr. I suppose you could say she laid the groundwork for my sense of humor.
I know I still have those books in a closet somewhere. I need to get them out. :)

Just sent off my renewal form for my passport. My photo wasn't as bad as they usually are - I didn't look like a felon on a 3-day bender or a haplessly dorktastic idiot. On the other hand, I don't think I really have four chins, but who am I to say?

They better get the new passport back to me in the promised two weeks. *shakes fist*

I put together my syllabus this afternoon. Here are the topics we're covering:

1) The International Phonetic Alphabet*
2) American English Consonant Sounds
3) American English Vowel Sounds
4) American English Stress System
5) -ed and -s endings' pronunciation rules
6) Rhythm (maybe)

Assignments include:

One poetry reading
Two speeches
One digital story (I'm doing the state project again)
Two listening/speaking exercises based on StoryCorps

Ambitious, but doable.

Yeah, yeah, I know . . . I was warned. People told me I'd be ripped off, that I'd get crappy merchandise, yadda yadda yadda. But--

That's not what happened. I haven't ever gotten anything that wasn't pretty much as represented (although I have misunderstood what I was looking at in photos, and that was my own fault.) I've had pretty good luck with eBay *sellers*.

It's eBay itself that decided last night around midnight that my money wasn't green enough and that they didn't want me shopping there any more. I had logged on around 11:45 and had paid for an auction item through PayPal and was returning to my eBay page when I got the "alert" that I had an Unpaid Item Strike. Now, I had not gotten any kind of preliminary email or reminder, so this surprised me. I looked at the list, and there was one item (a few jewelry findings that I wanted so I could make more charm necklaces--but that's another entry that I can't make until later) where the seller had entered a complaint. How long had this sat around unpaid? Two days.

But anyway, I clicked to PayPal that one and then went to the Dispute Console to enter the info about how I had paid and to politely suggest that they send an email warning people that they would get a strike if they didn't pay soon--rather than just entering a strike. I thought that was their policy.

As soon as I exited that console, I got a page telling me that my information was temporarily unavailable and to try again later. I decided to go on to bed and finish paying for the other three things in the morning.

But this morning when I tried to log on, I couldn't. I got a page telling me that my account had been suspended and that I would heretofore be blocked from any transactions. The "explanation" page told me I would have to pay all my seller's fees before I could be reinstated. Well, because I have never sold anything, I was dubious. Yet I clicked over to that page, and it told me I didn't have fees but should clear up all complaints.

I clicked on the live chat help button and got a representative who was mystified. She sent me to a billing rep, who said I didn't have any fees but that my account was blocked. He sent me back to a regular rep who sent me to another ebay page that let me send email to customer service. However, you have to log in to do any emailing on that system, and here's what I get when I go to ANY ebay page now:

Your account has been suspended
[ID]'s account is now blocked.
You have been indefinitely suspended from eBay because our records indicate your account was involved in activities that violate our policy governing eBay use by temporarily or indefinitely suspended members. Learn more about this offense.

"Offense"? Good grief. I clicked around and it finally told me that my account was "linked to another suspended account." The only way that could have happened is that I must've bought something from someone whose account is now suspended.

I went back into live chat and they sent me to a page where I could finally email customer service. I described the problem and said that I needed to pay the other auctions or else my account really WOULD be in violation. The page says that they take 24-48 hours to answer. No answers yet.

At this point I don't WANT to buy anything more from eBay, but I did want the jewelry findings and the little fish charm that I had already won. However, I can't get to the checkout page or go to PayPal with those auctions because I'm locked out. I tried to contact the sellers to tell them why I hadn't paid, but the system said my account isn't authorized even for that.

To hell with ebay anyway--Dallas is a shopping mecca, the stores are practically giving junk away (except for groceries and gas, which have both gone up!), and there are tons of flea markets where I could probably find this stuff just as cheaply. I don't HAVE to have jewelry findings anyhow. I was just makin' these charm necklaces because I had a ton of charms that I thought would be cool on necklaces. I have a few of the findings I need, anyway, so I could do a necklace without the stuff. But still . . . it seems like a random targeting for whatever reason. Makes me angry.

Here's the ironic part. Since I sent out all this "help me" mail, I have gotten a bunch of email messages telling me that I have unpaid item strikes for everything I was trying to pay for (and remember, these auctions JUST ended or ended a day or two ago, so they are NOT seven days old!) This means that my account is now eligible for suspension . . . BECAUSE they made it impossible to pay for the stuff by suspending it for no reason. I had to roll my eyes.

Anyhow, I had heard that eBay had gone way downhill and that it had started being really strange, and now I know what was meant by that. They target you for some minor thing (that they SAY is not going to be a problem in their policy) and then it snowballs.

So that solves my problem of buying things I don't need, anyhow. The Universe took action! And although it does seem strange that a company would want to zap someone who had been a good customer and had spent a few hundred dollars there over the past few months, hey, whatever--they're free to refuse service to anybody. They just lost MY business.

What great customer service, eh?

I was gonna do a post today about how to make a charm necklace and show you the one I made, but now I've got to go do some other stuff. Will take some photos later and do that post, just in case you might like to make one. They are kind of neat. I never wear bracelets 'cause they bang against the keyboard or the piano or the desk . . . you know the drill. But necklaces--yes!

Just don't bother to buy the stuff on eBay. Do a search and you'll find plenty of great shops that do business on their own websites. Be sure to comparison-shop, as the split rings and spring rings that I used can vary widely in price from site to site.

Sheesh . . . ebay. *grumble*

So I ended up wandering around the Sideshow Collectibles site this morning--I have a few of their LOTR pieces, including a bust of my patron movie saint, Galadriel, who watches over me beneficently from the shelf over my desk. That said, my weakness has always been "figures," twelve inches or taller, usually with fabric clothes, sometimes with molded plastic hair (sometimes with actual wiggedness), better known as "dolls." So of course, that's the section I started browsing. I immediately had a number of interested parties looking over my shoulder. ( I want to play with razors! )

Maybe y'all have had this link already, but just in case you don't:

Go here and listen to The Current, guest hosted by Nicholas Campbell, with guests, including (see part 3 on Canadian Television) writers and producers from Flashpoint and Durham County, and a special telephone interview with Mr. Paul Gross!

Django nearly always has sores on each of his hocks. I assume this is from him laying down on hard/rough surfaces.

He is outside 24/7, and neither he nor I really care to change that. His shared paddock goes from dirt to ag-lime, depending on the mud situation. The run-in shed has a dirt floor, but I've never seen him laying down there.

Is there anything I can do for these sores? Currently I clean them up and slap some salve on.

# of queries read this week: 183
# of partials/manuscripts requested: 1
genre of requests: general fiction

Dear Authors:

Agent Nathan posted a very handy list of Things I Don't Need To Know in a Query yesterday. I think I agreed with them all - the things he mentions just aren't relevant to the decision-making process at the query stage. And I particularly liked: "That your manuscript is completely different than anything that's ever been published" - because every week more than one author assures me of that very thing, and I wonder how they have read every single book ever published when I can't even find time put a dent in my TBR pile....

Here's my own list this week -- Things I thought of while reading queries this week....

* 40,000 words really tends to be too short for an adult novel (ymmv with YA/MG).
* When you get three queries in a row about novels featuring children being abused you have to take a break.
* Yes, I do find it sad when I realize the author didn't even use the spellchecker for their query. (Typos do happen, but 3 in the first line is just sloppy.)
* Certain kinds of email address names are really not appropriate for professional correspondence. (But sometimes they make me laugh. Or cry. And, no, they don't determine whether I ask for pages. I just notice some of the really outlandish ones when I'm drafting replies.)
* My Official Sidekick still fears staples.
* Please do not assume anything about the religious background, racial background, political bias, or sexual orientation of the agent you are querying. In particular, do not expound at length on the pro or con arguments for any of the same. This could potentially backfire. This is not to say these elements and concepts cannot inform your story. But being preached to in a query (whether you agree with the perspective or not) is a terrible distraction from ascertaining its literary worth.
* It's not helpful to apologize for how bad your query letter is...
* In the same vein, I'm pretty sure many authors believe their novel is far too complex to be sufficiently summarized in a query or synopsis but explaining how ineffective the method is doesn't remove the necessity of providing one.

With all this in mind, and many queries still to read, I invite you to ask about the do's and don't's of the query letter -- just in case these points have raised questions or there are things that you've been wondering about.

When I die, I want to be buried in the manner of Japan's 16th emperor, Emperor Nintoku:



Yeah, that's right. I want people sixteen centuries into the future to respect me to the point of letting me chill in my massive tomb while they cram themselves in the city that's around me but won't touch me. And I want a moat.

My Ancient/Medieval Japan professor showed us slides of this yesterday - you can see more aerial shots of various tombs (kofun) here, here, and here, with explanations about what the heck you're looking at at the actual Wikipedia page. The tomb pictured above is the largest one, the Daisen-Kofun, which is in Osaka. It most likely does hold Emperor Nintoku, although we do not know much about him or the tomb itself as [a] the information gotten from ancient documents has to be viewed with a skeptical eye, as it was probably altered to fit the mythology surrounding the imperial family and to fall in sync with numerological/astrological aspects; and [b] the Japanese government doesn't want people poking around the tombs, stating that they are sacred sites. It does sometimes give in, sort of: earlier this year, archaeologists were allowed access to the Gosashi Kofun, Empress Jingū's tomb, but they could only walk around - no excavations, no collecting of artifacts. The Egyptian pharaohs can only wish they were treated this well.

Anyway, that is the most interesting thing I've learned so far in my classes this semester. I wish there were enough books in English about these things so that I can write my research paper on them, but I have found nada. Bastids.

Another shot of the Daisen Kofun so people could know exactly how I want mine.

So, I was checking my e-mail this morning and I got an e-mail from someone who I knew back in elementary and high school.

Keep in mind, I've never been to a high school reunion. I have no desire to go. I didn't like high school, it didn't like me.

I was kind of surprised, but what made me chuckle was this

I had a conversation with my son last night about Olympic swimming, which resulted in a series of thoughts that ended with apartheid, which made me think of you (there was some Jeopardy-like game in a grade school GATE class, and you answered the question about South Africa’s official policy of separation). I hope all is well with you

So.... when one thinks of apartheid, one thinks of me. (No, I'm not offended. I'm guessing he remembers that because I was astonishingly geeky from an early age.)

As long as I'm doing a stream of consciousness thing, this reminds me of something that happened last weekend. Before I met my friends to see Man on Wire, I hit an ATM machine for some money. I'm used to having multiple language choices, normally Spanish, French, various Asian languages, and sometimes Polish, Italian and Russian. I never thought I'd see any ATM which would only have two choices: English and Afrikaans. I was amused.

On average, the British get 41 miles to the gallon.

(Average travel distance = 2000 miles, average alcohol consumption = 22 gallons/year.

http://fuglyhorseoftheday.blogspot.com/2008/09/weirdest-request-youve-ever-received.html

Here's a fun Friday topic!


"Cathy," said the guy. "How much do you weigh?"


"Great!" he said. "Can you ride my stallion in a race on Saturday?"


So, I think this is a fun Friday topic! What is the craziest, most off the wall thing you've been asked by someone after they found out you ride/have horses/know a lot about horses? I don't mean the constant requests to ride your horses, we all know about that. I'm going for something a bit more extreme - whatcha got?


Update on Buck, the horse with the terrible wounds that Habitat for Horses is helping.


Today's Friday Featured Rescue is a pair. Chance's Miniature Horse Rescue has these adorable boys up for adoption. Gorgeous flaxen chestnuts, they would make a lovely driving team for someone who loves minis. I am sure this rescue has their hands full as I have rarely seen any type of horse attract as many bad homes as minis. People think they are like big dogs and keep them in crappy conditions and constantly founder them because they have no idea how to feed them. These boys are young, sound, friendly and want to stay together. Located in Weimer, TX.