May
20

Out of Tune II Anthology Release Day

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Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. A few months ago I had the pleasure of seeing Loreena McKennitt in concert over at The Birchmere. (It’s  a lovely musical hole-in-the-wall, but there are always great acts and I adore going to concerts there as it is a very small and intimate venue – there isn’t a bad seat in the whole place and in this case I was about…oh maybe two feet from where Loreena was performing on the piano (or harp, depending on the song.) I’ve been a fan of Loreena’s since, I don’t know…college. Around 1994, I guess. Which makes me old. But still – her music has had a rather profound effect on my life, and seeing her live was really rather indescribable. But anyway, the… Read more
Apr
26

Oracles

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I seem to have become a bit of a collector of Tarot and Oracle cards over the years – as a writing tool they can be helpful when it comes to determining a character issue or a plot point (especially if you are a panster like me – sometimes a nudge in the psyche can open up a whole new direction.) More often than not though, I tend to buy card decks because I really like the pictures. Which may be sort of odd to admit, but a lot of times I find an artist with many lovely prints and while I would like to be able to buy them all, sometimes that just isn’t a possibility – so when I find out there’s a card deck involved? Mine. I actually *did* purchase a print of this lovely image by Julia Jeffrey of Elen of the Ways, though – and… Read more
Apr
18

Secret Garden

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Not really a secret garden. More like “how much stuff can I do before my HOA slaps me on the wrist?” Incidentally, I really hate my HOA. For the ridiculous monthly fee I have to pay, they sure don’t seem to do much other than drive around and tell people how they’re “doing it wrong.” I mean, I get that it’s better if people cut their grass on a regular basis and don’t have cars sitting on blocks in their yards, but we’ll get write ups because we left our garbage can at the end of the drive way an hour too long. At any rate, I’ve always been a little ambivalent about the little garden we do have – it was there when we moved in, and it’s mostly just shrubs of various sorts, several of which appear to be old and somewhat dying. But I’ve been working from… Read more
Apr
1

Unplugged

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So last weekend the DH and I left the kids at grandma’s for a few days and took off for the Shenandoah mountains. Specifically to do a little hiking and enjoying some quiet. This was partially just a needed break, but pragmatically, we hadn’t been able to do much for our 15th wedding anniversary, so this seemed like a nice way to celebrate. (And we had scheduled it before my current back issues, but figured we would attempt to make the best of it either way. I had two facet joint injections yesterday and I’m off to see the surgeon today, but at this point I have no idea what to do, so guess we’ll see.) Anyway, we started out over at Bluemont Vineyard for a wine tasting. I don’t actually drink for medical reasons, so this mean Dan did the tasting, and I enjoyed the cheese plate. (I was… Read more
Mar
23

Softly Chaotic

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I’m baking cookies today. The chocolate chip sort. It’s Spring Break, the kids are bored, and I had dipped into some rather dark places last night, so…baking. Not that I’ll probably eat any – I’ve been on a new sort of diet over the last 2 or 3 weeks. I hesitate to call it a diet, per se, since it really is more about changing the eating habits. Not that I’m particularly heartbroken about losing nearly ten pounds so far – I’ve got a lot more to go, but a slow roll off is healthier than a fast one. These last few weeks have been hard – it’s sort of an anti-inflammatory diet in that for the first month there’s no caffeine, no sugar, no carbs and no dairy. The idea here is that a lot of people are actually allergic to these things and don’t really know, so going… Read more