Macropodine Monday

macropodine ~ of, like or pertaining to kangaroos

It's the 24th of May,
The Queen's birthday.
If we don't get a holiday
we'll all run away!

Okay, so it's the 20th of May, not the 24th, but this is still Victoria Day here in Canada, so we get the day off. And in honour of Queen Victoria's birthday, I, of course, decided to do a little research on this, the first long weekend of the summer season.

The most interesting thing I found out is that Victoria Day is not, and has never been, celebrated in England. It is a uniquely Canadian holiday. Apparently, Canada always had a special bond with Queen Victoria, and made her birthday a public holiday. You might even say that Queen Victoria meant more to us than she did to Britain.

When I was a kid this was the big fireworks holiday. I remember our family going to the next town over to the fairgrounds to watch the fireworks. Then somewhere along the line Victoria Day became just another long weekend and the really big fireworks were moved to Canada Day. I like to think it had something to do with my getting married on July 1. Now all of Canada celebrates my anniversary. :-)

Other than blog posts, I got very little writing done last week. I did, however, crochet 25 snowflakes (bringing my total up to 40) and I spent a lot of time in my kitchen - baked a cherry pie and lots of cookies; made soup; did some experimenting . . .

The weather was for the most part gloomy, if not downright rainy, but it did start to warm up a bit and the weekend was pretty decent - a mixture of sun and cloud, although not quite warm enough to have supper outside yet. But it was warm enough for me to have my office window open so I could enjoy the perfume from the sand cherries that were blooming in my front garden.

I did not catch up on my Goodreads. I did attend a poetry reading, which I think was only the first or second one this year. I did get to Peterborough and I can't believe for the amount of time we were there we only went to three stores. I spent a pleasant afternoon with my crochet buddy, and it reinforced my decision to crochet 50 snowflakes for her group. Trust me, you do not want to learn to crochet by trying snowflakes. :-)

Blog Stuff For the Week:

Tuesday: The third in my series on the Major Arcana of the Tarot will be The High Priestess.
Wednesday: A new Hump Day Hunk for your viewing pleasure.
Thursday: Chapter 67 of Water. Things are heating up for Ravi and Taja, and not in a good way.
Friday: This week's Random Ramblings will be about snowflakes and plants. And it will have pictures! :-)

Other Stuff For the Week

I have some serious research to do on volcanoes and caves. While setting Dr. Arjun's compound right up to a volcano seemed like a good idea in An Elemental Fire, it doesn't seem like such a great idea in Water. In fact, it ranks right down there with using journal entries to start chapters and having characters speak in Middle English.

I'm pretty sure there is a poetry meeting this week, which would be Tuesday night. Our poemwork was to write something frivolous, so I started a parody of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. I'm not sure I'll have it finished in time - Poe uses a funky rhyme scheme.

I've got a meeting with my writer's group on Wednesday. I'm supposed to have a short horror story finished for it and I haven't even started it, which is kind of ironic because it was my idea. I suggested we use the same prompt and each write in a different genre picked at random. I even provided the prompt.

Getting together with a friend on Thursday and I promised her bread, so I need to learn how to use my bread maker. LOL

And as if that weren't enough, one of my two betas returned a marked up copy of Magical Misfire to me. Oh, the comma splices and head hopping. And why on earth did I think having characters speak in Middle English was a good idea? I'm going to let you in on a little secret. This was my very first novel-length idea, and I started writing it more than twenty years ago. And it shows. :-)