Grey Sky Sunday

[annathepiper]

+0: Y'all welcome branwyn32 aboard! She joins me from the OKPK. When it comes to Great Big Sea fans on my Friends list, there's always room for more. ^_^

+1: Carbon Leaf is getting more and more ingrained into my brain. I now have a set of songs I really love to sing off Echo Echo and Indian Summer: "Wandrin' Around", "Torn to Tattered", "Life Less Ordinary", and "What About Everything?" These all seem to be in a range I can do; the highest notes are a bit of a stretch but I can actually hit them, as long as I work at it a bit and give it enough breath control. In related news, I've also put "Grey Sky Eyes", "Raise the Roof", and "Paloma" on my list of repeat plays off Indian Summer.

+2: The printing of Faerie Blood is now so close I can taste it. Two more chapters and a pass through all my beta reader comments to go, then I can send this entire bugger off to Luna! I will have to go buy an adequate amount of paper and a suitable envelope in which to mail the entire manuscript, though. Writers on my Friends list, can I find an appropriate envelope anywhere that sells office supplies, or will I have to go look at a post office?

+3: spazzkat came over last night and bought us pizza! And we watched the latest Doctor Who, which was quite good and a nice unusual take on the consequences of screwing around with your own personal history when you're travelling through time.

+4: I looked up cottonwood trees yesterday, wanting to try to figure out exactly what flavor of cottonwood we have around here so that I can actually identify which trees are the ones blowing fluff all over the place. I have learned that there are a variety of cottonwoods, and that they are in fact a type of poplar. From what I have in my Audubon Society tree book, the likely candidate for our local cottonwood is the Black Cottonwood, which is shown as being in the right geographical range, and I spotted a couple of trees in our yard that might be a match for that type.

+5: Last but not least, having just read the first of the Richard Sharpe books and having been so heavily reminded of the Aubrey/Maturin ones, that popped Desolation Island up to the top of the reading stack. I'm about 65 pages in and pleased to see some nice domestic on-land stuff with Jack's family, like we got at the beginning of the last book. And I'm oddly charmed to see more evidence of Jack's really just being a fish out of water when he's on land--and Sophie really summing it up when she describes shafting Jack at cards really being akin to trying to cheat a child. More on this as I continue through the book!

Comments

[branwyn32.livejournal.com]

wow! i get my very own welcome? i feel so special :D

how is indian summer? i don't have that one yet

[annathepiper]

I try to introduce newcomers to my Friends list to everybody else. :)

I like Indian Summer quite a bit. It's got a mellower, more laid back energy to it than Echo Echo does (Echo Echo is the only other Carbon Leaf album I have right now, but I absolutely intend to get more), but this isn't a bad thing. It is definitely the lyrical equal of Echo Echo, and has its share of nifty mandolin work. "What About Everything?" is currently my top Carbon Leaf song for getting stuck in my head.

[branwyn32.livejournal.com]

damn skippy, the mandolin is amazing! i have echo echo and ether, but i like echo better. i'm a sucker for trad sounding stuff.

if you ever decide you want to buy a bodhran, i've been trying to sell one of mine, so let me know!

i'm pretty intimidated by fiddle too, but i'd been wanting to learn for years, and i did a workshop at fanjam and managed to get the general idea of it, so i picked one up off ebay for $20!

[annathepiper]

I (heart) the mandolin, though I (heart) the bouzouki more. Something about the bigger, fuller sound, and definitely about the octave tuning on the deeper courses. ^_^ Love, love, love the bouzouki!

It'll be a while before I can buy another instrument at all, unfortunately, and it's probably for the best anyway since I don't have the time right now to really play the instruments I have, and never mind buying any new ones. I do well to play my bouzouki and my guitar every few days!

Only $20 for a fiddle?! Whoa. What kind of shape was it in when you got it? I wouldn't trust buying instruments off eBay at all; I have too much of a need to actually handle the instrument and listen to it and make sure whether I can find a way to "connect" with it, before I commit to buying it. All of the instruments I've bought have been ones I've handled first.

[kieri.livejournal.com]

I'm no expert on submission envelopes, but if you're just looking for a manila envelope of sufficient size for a manuscript, UBS ought to have them down in their supplies department. (I should know, I used to stock them!) :)

They also have the padded variety in a wide array of sizes, plus big clips and big rubber bands and such.

And massive congratulations for being almost to the finishing line! Luna's a goood imprint; I've enjoyed the few of their books that I've read. :)

[annathepiper]

Ah cool, perhaps I shall have to arrange an after-work swing by the UBS some time in the next couple of days!

Which of Luna's books have you read so far? I'm naturally looking forward to mizkit's Urban Shaman, and I'm thinking of picking up Laura Anne Gilman's Staying Dead when I get a chance.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Try Kinko's for the ms envelopes, maybe? My first thought was that there are scads of ads in the back pages of Poets and Writers for outfits that will sell you "manuscript shipping boxes" by the case. The only manuscripts I've actually shipped so far haven't called for anything that grand, but it might be worth looking into.

[annathepiper]

I've had a few conflicting suggestions about what to do for mailing the manuscript. The guy at Office Depot, where I went this afternoon, seemed bound and determined to try to get me to bring the manuscript in to mail with THEM, at which point they'd let me have a box for it, but that doesn't really strike me as satisfactory. I want to be sure to have some way of letting Luna send the manuscript back to me, and I'm not sure if asking them to use the same box is kosher.