Horoscope for the week beginning 15 November 2009 (yesterday)
And what a week it is!  Friends from out of town will blow you away with how much they care about you, and there you were, wondering if anyone still remembered your hopeful face.  Chocolate coated tulips are just the beginning of their imaginative ways of telling you that you are loved.  By Wednesday, in your very own choose-your-own-adventure life, you can decide to either chew them and spit out the leaves, grumbling disconsolately about the freshness of flowers these days; or you can pluck the petals and throw them to the wind for others in greater need of grace to find them.  Up to you, really.  But I know you; I know your worth.  Gardening may not be your strong point, but if l

The leisure brain
I was just thinking… If we don’t have to remember anything any more, because we can just google it, how much space does that free up in our brains for more important, patent-producing work?  Like, I don’t know: nutting out all the calculations required to make a chaotic event predictable; or working out the gravitational force required to make the Universe stop expanding (actually, someone very smart, who doesn’t need google for anything except movie times, has probably already done that)? You know the theories – we only use a measly tiny fraction of our brain as it is.  But now that we don’t have to remember useless facts, like the yea

Beauty is seriously weird
I just had a realisation.  An epiphany?  No, just a realisation.  That will suffice as the noun of the moment. Do you remember the first time you said to yourself, “I don’t actually like the [insert popular thing that everyone is supposed to like here]“? For me, I remember the moment when I realised, “I don’t even like Jason Priestley.  Or Matt Perry.  His face is too thin.”  I was thirteen.  I made sure to only realise this in my head – too many of my friends had posters of Jason or Matt in their bedrooms for it to be politically safe for me to declare it outright.  Still, it was a liberating moment: I co

Self-publishing Mr Middleton’s Teleporter, Part 12
In which I just say no….I think.  Yes, that’s right.  No. It’s been some time since I updated you on Mr Middleton developments.  This is probably because I have been hesitant, not wanting to disappoint, and not wanting to jinx future efforts. This is what happened after the last post, at which point, Hoang and I were about to tackle the world of publishers. The major publisher who was interested, was not interested in a stand-alone, illustrated book. They liked my writing, and they liked the drawings, but it was just not their mainstream fare.  They said they would like to see a collection of short stories from me.   As my husba

Horoscope for the Week beginning 9 November 2009
This week, you will find the backbone you never knew you had as it transforms from spaghetti into kevlar in one, fell motion. Adversaries, believing until now that they had your number, fall back, confused and, suddenly, afraid. But you don’t need to wait around for them to re-group – you are on your way, donning the brash new colours of your courage and heading straight for the moral high ground. From up there, where mere mortals fear to tread, you might see someone who looks just like you, far, far below. Squint through your telescope – it’s not you, it’s (gasp) your mortal enemy, pushing against the same stone wall you used to prop up with your daily