Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Looks Like It’s Time to Move Along…

by

So..it’s been a sh!tty few days here at the Funny Farm. So much so, I’m thinking there really isn’t much to hold me here in lovely uptown Phoenix, a city deliberately cloned on another city I’ve long detested, Los Angeles. This afternoon I started thinking — seriously — about unloading most of the junk and moving somewhere far, far away. Preferably in another time and in another galaxy.

Looks like it’s time to move along…

But where?

Locally, there’s Prescott, a nice little burg where the summers are cooler and the ambience is a little more small town. Payson: a little too embedded in forest-fire country for my taste. Tucson: another developer’s hell. Moving on… Patagonia, Sonoita: maybe. Probably chez pitz unless you have a fair amount of cash, though. New Mexico? Can’t afford Santa Fe and not impressed with other venues I’ve visited there. Idaho: too cold in the winter. Oregon, Washington: can’t afford it. California: can’t afford that, in spades, and don’t want to live in dread of forest fires, mudslides. and earthquakes.

{sigh} Thinking on the question while cruising the Internet, what should I come across this afternoon but a YouTube squib about some poor homeless woman who’s living (happily, to hear her tell it!) out of her car for $800 a month:

Eight hundred bucks a month? Unless she’s making a car payment on the clunk — or buying a lot of meds out of pocket — that seems a little high. Especially since, because she’s using an old milk bottle as her toilet, she seems not to be haunting campgrounds.

If your car is paid for, what do you have by way of costs?

  • Groceries and personal items — a couple hundred bucks a month, at most.
  • Gasoline — depends on how much you drive. In my vehicle, I’d expect a couple hundred miles on a $30 fill-up. Say you don’t drive every day (why would you, if you come to rest in a decent free or cheap spot?)…a hundred bucks would take you, maybe, 700 miles…that’s a lot of territory. A lot of free or nearly free state and federal parks. Hm. $122 + $100 = $222.
  • Occasional stop to revive, take a private shower, get a decent meal: YMCA costs $22.50 a month. Okay, we’re at $244.50.
  • Car insurance: My car insurance was $1400 this year; about $117 a month, bringing the tab to $361 a month.
  • Campgrounds: BLM, national forests, and national grasslands are free. Average cost for a night in an RV park is about $30, but in many you get a hot tub, showers, and a laundromat. So, if you camped on public lands say, 6 nights a week, and then visited a fancy resort (as it were) once a week, that would rack up another $120 a month: total: $481.
  • Car upkeep: depends on how handy you are and what kind of condition your clunk is in. Maybe on average ±$50 a month ?? If it averages out to $50 a month (in addition to gasoline), then we’re at around $531.

That leaves about $270 for clothing, sight-seeing, an occasional night in a motel…hmmmm…. From that, pay for a rented mailbox to give yourself a place to receive mail and provide a fake address for things like voting and registering the vehicle…not much. You’d still end up about $200 less than the purported $800.

This assumes you already own a full complement of camping gear. Of course, if you were gonna take off for the open road, you’d sell all your worldly goods, leaving more than enough money to buy everything you’d need to live on the road. This lady sleeps in her car. It being a small sedan, that sounds like an extraordinarily uncomfortable arrangement. My vehicle, on the other hand, being a crossover, has plenty of space in the back — fold down the back seats and there’s room for two adults to sleep uncomfortably or one to stretch out with her dogs. You’d probably want a tent and various other camping tools, though, since in dry conditions tenting is probably more comfortable than sleeping in the back of a vehicle.

Much of this stuff would be one-time buy:

Some of it would be pricey: a tent’s not cheap, for example. Neither, obviously, are a pistol or shotgun and ammo. Or a decent sleeping bag.

Things like toothpaste, laundry detergent, stuff for cooking (salt, pepper, cooking oil, etc.), paper towels, and the like would be covered in the “grocery and personal items” budget. Phone: throwaway thing with minutes. Very cheap.

I fail to see how this would cost you $800 a month, unless you were staying in campgrounds often. But you wouldn’t have to. There are a lot of places to throw down for free. Indeed, these YouTube videos look like they were made in a place up the road, westerly and northerly of lovely Phoenix, where groups of footloose people bivouac out on the desert. It may not be altogether legal, but no one seems to stop them.

Personally, I prefer to camp in solitude, preferably by a lake or river where one can bathe and get water to boil for cooking and drinking. Silence, after all, is golden.

SDXB and I traveled in this mode all over the backcountry of Alaska and Canada. In summer, it was a lot of fun, fairly easy, and amazingly cheap — we traveled for three months for under a thousand bucks. That included airline fare to and from the Northwest, and bus fare across the Canadian plains.

For awhile, we also had a lash-up very much like the one this lady is traveling in:

There are some serious drawbacks to the camper lifestyle, and it’s probably not something you’d want to take up as a permanent dwelling. Although we had a friend who did so, pretty much. Here are the issues.

  • A camper is expensive to buy and expensive to maintain (not to say a giant PITA to maintain).
  • The camper also limits the kinds of places you can go: it has to be set up on level ground (or leveled with those stanchions you see in the video), and it torques if you try to drive it across an arroyo or riverbed on a dirt road.
  • This means you find yourself spending a lot more nights in paying campgrounds than one would like.
  • It uses far more gasoline even than an SUV, to say nothing of a sedan or crossover vehicle. It uses more gas than an unadorned pickup, for that matter.
  • It’s hard to park it in a grocery store or motel parking lot.
  • It’s like pasting a sign on your back reading “Burgle me!”

But it has some major advantages. Videlicet:

  • Air conditioning!
  • Heating
  • A shower (not very usable, but there it is)
  • A toilet (which has to be emptied and cleaned out, if you like that kinda thing…)
  • Electrical hook-up that allows you to use and charge a computer and phone at a campground
  • A stove
  • A sink
  • Running water
  • A table with bench seats
  • A bed
  • Doors that lock

These are all excellent things. The trade-offs are higher costs and more things to break.

We never spent any lengthy periods in the RV, partly because of the hassle factor and partly because it quickly proved itself impractical for the kind of off-road camping we preferred. So I couldn’t really tell you what it would cost. But I’d guess $800 would be on the low end.

I dunno. Living on the road seems like an awful lot of work. Given that out in Sun City, taxes are a third and insurance is half of what I’m paying here it would surely make better sense to get over my aversion for the place (it’s a mausoleum!), sell my house, and just move out there. That would be the path of least resistance.

Though I’d have to find new homes for the dogs: you can’t let a dwarf sheepdog go out to pee in the yard with the coyotes running around out there. They’ll grab your dog and be off with it before you can say…jackrabbit. And no, you can’t have flowers or a vegetable garden, either, because the rabbits (whose ubiquitous presence calls in the coyotes) will level anything you plant in the ground, other than a palm tree or a grapefruit.

But…with no further reason to stay here (except the church…and there are lots of churches, no?), I guess I can start thinking seriously about moving away from the blightrail and into an area with lower crime rates, lower property taxes, and fewer bums.

So it goes…

Overlazied and Underpaid…

by

LOL! Not exactly underpaid, but not doing enough work to matter! Which in Arizona’s summer heat is probably the best way to survive: not working.

Truth to tell, today’s summer heat is not as advertised. It is not going to reach 117 today. Not a chance: at noon, it’s only 110 out there.

The hounds and I rolled out at 4 a.m. so as to get in the mile’s dog-&-human walk before the predicted blast-furnace heat rose up. It was only about 87 at that time — we were told the low would be 90. The morning was actually rather pleasant. We encountered about ten of our fellow dog-walkers, all of whom apparently had the same idea. Arrived back at the Funny Farm around 5:40, fed dogs, watered plants, refilled the pool, tossed in some more chlorine tabs, went swimming.

That must have pleased the neighbors, because Ruby barks hysterically every time I get in the water. Apparently she thinks the human is going to drown. Then (horrors!) she won’t get fed anymore.

Since the neighbors were the cause of my spending the Fourth of July working myself up to a near heat stroke and having to opt out of my favorite party of the year so as to stay home and guard the Farm from the risk of nitwit-initiated fire, I do not give one thin damn if my dog barks them out of the sack on a 90-degree morning. 😀 Bay away, little dog!

All that notwithstanding, the heat and the humidity begin to wear. Just now — along about two in the afternoon — it’s about 115 on the back porch. Not intolerable…but somewhat warm.

Where creative and productive work are concerned, I do best in a cool, fairly gray climate: San Francisco and London are ideal. All this sunshine is a distraction. Actually, what happens is that it puts me in zombie mode. I just do not feel like working.

As in I cannot force myself to do ANYTHING.

Last week I had seven days in which to scribble the current installment of Ella’s Story. Did I write it last week? Was it ready to go come Monday morning?

Hell, no. Of course not.

But I did rack up 50,810 points on the set of games I’ve been playing.

{sigh}

So it was the middle of the afternoon before that got done, and then (IMHO) not very well.

Yesterday the place was overrun with various workers, which rendered writing or editing much of anything…problematic, shall we say.

Happily enough, though, I was rescued from having to pay some batsh!t amount of money to repair the propane grill! Its main knob — the one that turns on the primary burner — was stuck somehow. I thought the tube it attaches to had somehow got bent, and was silently blaming it on one of Gerardo’s cousins, whom I suspected of having whacked it with a leaf-blower.

BBQ repair dude was supposed to show up between 2 and 3 p.m. — try to imagine throwing yourself around with a heavy gas grill, in the sun, in 112-degree heat!

Not surprisingly, this poor fella called in sick. Along about 7 a.m., the office called and asked if they could send someone between 9:30 and 10 a.m.

This put the eefus on my plan to hit the grocery story as soon as rush hour ended. But without an oven, I’ve gotta have that grill working.

Well…”someone” was the company’s owner, an interesting and entertaining man. Forthwith, he discovered that nothing serious was wrong — a little rust or, he thought, just dirt, was jamming a part, He cleaned and lubricated the knob assembly, whilst entertaining me with conversation.

So that was good. Even better: he only charged $68 to fix it!

Man! I was expecting a $200 bill. The original appointment included their whiz-bang cleaning service, which I really did not need and would prefer not to get until after the weather cools off. So he opted that and barely charged enough to cover the gas to drive his truck up here.

So, even after yesterday’s junket to the grocery store, I still have $58 left in this month’s budget, with only a week to go.

At said grocer, I picked up a roll of dog food, meaning the doggy meals are now covered for the rest of the month and then some. Got a very nice watermelon — paying lots more than would have been required at Costco,. but obviating an extra trip to an extra store through the heat.

I may have as much loot as I need to make it to August 1 without having to buy any more food or household items. Possibly not. But whatever comes up surely will not cost $58.

Report from the Hubs of Hades

by

Five in the morning. It’s 90 degrees on the back porch. Windy. The sun is trying, unsuccessfully, to dawn through muddy yellow-orange haze. Off in the distance: dull thunder. Let the dogs out to do their thing. Decide against the usual a.m. doggy-walk.

Discover I’ve gained almost two pounds since the day before yesterday. Xergis is fattening?????? WTF.

The human and the dogs go back to bed. Actually, the human takes the laptop to the bed, perches there, and fiddles with social media. Dogs go back to sleep.

Cassie starts to hork.

Lift her off the bed before she succeeds in upchucking. Thank God for small mercies.

Clean up the mess. Let Cassie back out. It’s starting to sprinkle. Sort of. Hard to tell what it’s doing: it’s so hot, and the light wind is rustling the leaves, so the sound could be that rather than rain. If it is raining, it’s evaporating before it hits the ground. Cassie goes back in. Decide she’s probably done barfing. Lift her back on the bed. Climb back on behind her. Dogs conker out.

Storm continues to move in. Thunder surrounds us, rumbling in from all directions. Still have power, though. And 70% battery power remains on the Macbook — meaning the thing will run about another 30 minutes.

The pool will be a mess to clean up, with that much dust hanging in the air. The water is bathtub warm. Even though the mustard algae has almost disappeared, these conditions will invite it back.

Arranged to have the pool resurfaced in October. Earlier, if a miracle happens and the water gets too cool to swim sometime in September. I doubt this will happen: global warming is real, folks…and we’ve had it here for some time now.

Decided against the white PebbleSheen. The guy — a genuine charmer, definitely born about 30 years too late, dammit — brought some samples. We put them in the water, because the stuff changes color as it gets really wet. Chose a kind of medium-light blue with little stones engineered to show. I think it will be very pretty.

They’re going to try to save the tile. But if they can’t — it’s been through two replasterings that we know of, and there is a limit, after all — he left a brochure showing a local pool tile company’s offerings. Now I’m thinking I should just spring for the cost of installing new tile. Mine is pretty out of date…think this pool was installed shortly after the first buyers moved in, and the house was built in 19-and-ought-71. It has that 1970s look to it.

At any rate, the stuff is going to look amazingly pretty.

Looking at it in the water, I was reminded of Lebanon.

When I was a little girl, my father would occasionally take his short leave in Beirut. (Aramco gave employees two “leaves”: a two-week short leave midway through a two-year contract, and a three-month long leave between contracts. Sometimes we would go to Beirut; sometimes to Bahrain.)

Lebanon had been largely dominated by the French, following the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Before the civil war (followed, a few years later, by attacks from the Israelis)  reduced the city to rubble, Beirut hosted rows of beautiful, French-operated hotels that served up luxury accommodations and French food on the shore of the Mediterranean. It was a gorgeous place.

So we stayed in this hotel on the most amazing beach. It wasn’t sand, like the hot white sand where we lived, on the Persian Gulf. It was tiny, colorful, surf-polished pebbles. Each little stone was maybe an eighth of an inch in diameter and  they came in every color you can imagine. When I first saw them, I thought they were gemstones. A whole beach covered with jewelry!

When they were wet, they did look like highly polished gemstones. Let them dry out: not so much. But underwater, they were a spectacular thing to see.

Well, this PebbleSheen stuff is like that. Its little stones are about the size of the beach gemstones of Beirut. And underwater, they shine like they were polished.

So I’m pretty excited about doing this project. I think it’s going to make the backyard look really gorgeous.

The cat’s claw, which was suffering from the near demise of the irrigation system along the back wall, is reviving in response to being watered from the top with drip hosing. That stuff won’t last long — if you ever want soaker hose, do not buy the Miracle-Gro brand, which is true junk. But for the nonce, the scheme is working well. The idea of hooking the double hose bib on that back faucet was definitely one of those why didn’t i think of it before??? things. Now instead of having to climb under the shrubbery to hook up the soakers to the hose, all that’s needed is a flip of a switch and a turn of a faucet handle. It’s starting to blossom and will soon be covered with bright yellow trumpet flowers.

Ugh. I cannot stand to read the news these days. When is that orange-haired buffoon going to resign or be impeached?

Dollars to donuts, he won’t make it to the end of this term. But that may not be a good thing. Because then we will get Pence, who is an effective politician, and who hides his viciousness under a smoothly polished veneer of pious respectability. Frankly, a “Christian” who wouldn’t recognize Christ if the Spirit Himself came up and bit him on the tuchus may be worse than a clown whose corruption is obvious.

This country is in deep, deep trouble. As in End-Times trouble, at least for our democratic republic. Hellish hot rain, I suppose, is to be expected.

Update: Rainshowers barrel through to the south. By 8:00 a.m.: 80 degrees on the back porch, under a gentle sprinkle. Arizona is weird.

Things That Go Bump in the Night…

by

Well. Not “bump” so much as “rustle rustle rustle” or “munch munch munch.” It’s three in the morning — what most of us would call the middle of the freaking night — the hour that my internal alarm clock has, of late, designated as the dawn of a bright new day. The dogs are conkered out, they being vulnerable to no such metabolic failings. I’m laying there thinking about my best friend in junior high school, Sandy.

Sandy. What an eccentric! We were perfectly matched.

Sandy loved horse racing. Every Saturday morning we would meet at my house to watch the races on TV. Yes. In those days, Saturday morning television (at least in San Francisco) went not to the cartoons but to the races. We loved to watch the races.

Sandy’s hero was not Elvis but Eddie Arcaro, probably the greatest thoroughbred jockey who ever mounted a horse. So I’m laying there thinking — what else? — whatever happened to Eddie Arcaro? Naturally, I have to roll out of the sack (why waste time at three in the morning, eh?) and look him up. Now I’m sitting here, reading up on Eddie, when…comes from the roof (attic???) this weird little sound. At first I think it’s a light rain: could be tapping on the skylights. A sprinkle hitting the glassoid?

But it’s not quite like rain. It doesn’t sound like Ratty dancing across the attic beams. Quite. WTF? Scritch scritch scritch scritch… Something digging in the leaves that have blown onto the roof in the summer’s winds? Something gnawing on the drywall?

The skylights appear to be dry, but it’s hard to tell, because of course it’s mighty dark outside.

I get up and go look out the back door. The motion-sensitive lights have not come on. I can’t see a thing out there.

Open the door and hear rassle rassle rassle! The sound of something running away? I don’t hear anything more. I don’t see anything. And I sure as hell ain’t goin’ out there.

Probably Ratty, I figure. Though it could be a racoon. But I doubt if a raccoon would bother with climbing on the roof. Ratty can scamper up a block wall as easily as she can stroll across a field of grass. Yeah: almost certainly Ratty…

Or was it?

A couple hours pass. The dogs arise and demand a doggy walk. Along about 6:15 we get back, and eventually we wander out to police the backyard. Having performed the morning pool inspection, I amble back and find…

Ruby TRANSFIXED!

Did you know that a corgi can go on point?

Who’d’ve thunk it? That dog was pointing like a fine little vizsla…into the rocks filling a drainage ditch off the patio.

WTF?

So I approach cautiously (rattlesnake? wh-a-a?). She doesn’t budge. Literally: she does not wriggle, so fixed is she on whatever the target is.

From beneath the stones, we can hear the same sound: Scritch scritch scritch scritch….

What the heck? Whatever it is, it ain’t a raccoon and it ain’t Ratty!

I call Cassie, who’s smarter than either of us. She’s not the slightest bit interested.

I try lifting some of the stones, never having heard of a rattlesnake that could go scritch scritch scritch scritch.

This isn’t exactly a ditch: it’s actually a French well. So it’s several feet deep, and it holds a LOT of river rock. Under the first layer of rock, I find…nothing. Eventually the scritching stops.

Was the 3 a.m. scritcher inside the house? I doubt it. But…how could it scritch loudly enough to be heard through the roofing, through the attic insulation, through attic flooring, through the ceiling’s drywall? In both cases, the sound was rather soft. The volume seemed about the same. And in the wee hours, it distinctly sounded like it was on the roof or on a skylight.

The mystery has yet to be solved.

Hmh. Wonder if I could train this little dog to hunt Mearn’s quail? It appears they have, on occasion, been used as bird dogs. Innaresting.

Today’s header image: Preakness Stakes. By Maryland GovPics – Flickr: 139th Preakness Stakes, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32879764

Report from Sauna Central

by

Hot, wet, gray, and muggy.

We haven’t had a real summer “monsoon” season for several years — make that quite a few years. The so-called “heat island” effect creates a bubble over the ever-bloating urbanized area that acts like the Dome in the TV show of the same name. The daily afternoon showers of yore are bounced off, to pass by miles to the north or the south. This is the first time in probably close to a decade that we’ve had a system strong enough to overcome that phenomenon.

And strong it is: strongly wet. Took the dogs for a walk around 5:30 this morning and came back drenched. Parboiled, actually. Jumping in the pool doesn’t help much: the air is so wet, water won’t evaporate off your skin and hair, so you don’t get the cooling effect. My hair was still damp this morning — from yesterday afternoon’s dip!

One amazingly wonderful thing, though: despite the heat, the mustard algae has not returned to the pool!

It’s like some kind of freaking miracle!

What caused the little green critters to decide to vacate the pool? Beats me.

I’m not doing anything different. The only odd act was adding two pounds of non-chlorine shock treatment, an oxidizer that is known not to affect algae. The stuff disappeared within a day of that, and it hasn’t been back, except for a few small patches that I was able to wipe right off…and that did not just grow right back within a few hours.

So that makes me feel a lot better about the proposed replastering project. Really, I figured I was about to spend $10,000 to cover the pool with yet another fine substrate for the rampant algae. Of course, the stuff is in the filter and the pump by now, and so jackhammering off the old plaster and smearing on expensive new PebbleTec product is not gonna get rid of it. Its just going to create a very expensive algae-infested pond.

But nay! Apparently not!

Whatever is going on, something has killed it off, and it’s not readily coming back. This is the time of year, when the water is like bathwater, that it grows most exuberantly. So the fact that it’s not running amok now suggests it will refrain from covering the new surface with green slime.

It’s so gray and murky out there…I”m surprised it’s not raining right now. It is, however, only about 90 degrees, rather cool. “Feels like”: ohh, about 110… Chance of rain is only about 24% (so we’re told), dropping to about 15% tomorrow. And that’s about it until next Saturday, when the chance of precip spikes to 15%…very, very briefly.

Oh well.

Plants singin’ in the rain

 

Coyote Morning

by

So along about 6 a.m. the dogs and the human are trotting up Sub-Feeder Lane, headed back toward the Funny Farm, when flying around the corner comes — HOLY SH!T — a full-grown coyote moving out at a gallop. Big one, too: probably male. His hackles are standing on end (so, we might add, are mine…). Something’s got him scared. He glances at the human with its jaw hanging open and the extremely interested (and interesting) dwarf dogs but keeps on keepin’ on.

Don’t know what spooked him. On the other side of the corner wall, the only people I could see were Manny’s wife and daughter pushing their dog in a baby stroller (don’t ask). No one could be more unprepossessing.

So that was an interesting start to a soggy day. Water is still dripping off the eaves from last night’s rain. It’s hot, muggy, and wet out there.

The pool dude is supposed to materialize in another hour and a half, by which time I will need to be washed, dressed, and painted, and the pigpen more or less picked up.

Later.

The mind (as it were) is about made up: for the new PebbleSheen surfacing job, we should go with the lightest color available that has some sort of irregular mottled-looking pattern. This is most likely to retain its appearance over the product’s 15- to 20-year lifespan. Pool Dude remarked, when asked straight-on, that the coveted darker colors all fade to gray over time. Over, he added, not so much time… Yesterday whilst killing time a-cruisin’ the Web, I came across a chat board inhabited by guys who make their living in the swimming pool biz. One conversation was going on about recoating with PebbleTec and Pebblesheen, which several of the guys had put into their own pools.

{chortle!} God, but I love finding an online chatfest made for guys (and gals) in a trade. You learn so much from their water-cooler yakfests.

So, yeah: all of these products indeed do fade to a pretty uniform gun-metal grey — and it may take just three or four years for that to happen. Several of them posted images of the results…in their own pools. One guy had a chip from the original (black) surfacing job, which he held up against the (faded to chalky slate) side of the pool.

It appears this is mostly caused by precipitation of minerals and pool chemicals out of the water, although sunlight may play some part in it. Around here, you can be sure you get plenty of mineral precipitation: our water is very hard. That’s why, if you have any sense and plenty of money to burn, you should drain and refill your pool at least every two years. Really, it would be ideal to do it every winter, but I don’t like that kind of water waste and so put it off as long as I can.

Like…ahem…four years, just now. This, Pool Dude speculated, might explain the algae issue.

If you could install a couple of water tanks in the backyard that could hold the agèd pool water and allow you to pump it onto your landscaping or use it to wash the car, that would be ideal.

But in the first place, it’s probably illegal. And in the second, it’s unclear to me how you’d pump 18,000 gallons sitting below soil level up into a tank sitting on the surface of the ground.

My water bill this month was $277.

No, not an illusion: that’s almost three hundred bucks! A hundred and twenty-seven dollars over budget.

True, we had an irrigation leak on the front patio, which Gerardo has now fixed. But that zone runs only about 20 minutes…it’s a little hard to believe that would be enough to run up a $300 bill.

***

Pool Dude just called to cancel today’s get-together. Lhudly sing huzzah! It’s hot, muggy, and stuffy in here, and i gotta say…the LAST thing I feel like doing just this minute is banging around picking up the mess and getting myself washed, combed, & painted. Yay!

***

This will free up a lost hour or two to return to drafting the over-prescribing book. Yesterday I finally finished a second draft of the chapter on NNT and NNS (number needed to test and number needed to screen), and even managed to throw in outlines for half of the 14 chapters. Today: finish the chapter outlines; recruit someone to read the NNT squib. I’ve already shipped a draft off to The Kid to fix the documentation — when you write that fast and focus so tightly on difficult subject matter, getting the commas, colons, periods and italics right is more than you wish to cope with.

Next: write the proposal cover letter. Run through the NNT chapter again — third, maybe fourth draft. Then put the package together and ship it off to Editor #1.

As soon as it goes into the email, it’s off to the GDU library to track down their database or (preferably) their hard copy of LMP so as to compile a list of another half-dozen university presses that might be inclined to publish the thing.

Actually, I like a list of a dozen potential publishers for a project like this. Back in the Day, I would always have a half-dozen copies of the proposal in circulation: ship off six copies to six editors; then as a rejection comes in, just ship off another one to the next person on the list. This keeps half-a-dozen queries in circulation and cuts the time required to sell the project to a publishing house by several months. (It’s very bad style, BTW: publishers and editors hate you for doing this!).

LOL! Do as I say, not as I do. 😀

At any rate, this time I’m starting with a publishing house that I have some reason to suspect might be interested in the project. Once they reject (which they probably will: they don’t know me from Adam’s off ox), then we’ll start with the proposal-pushing waltz.

A-n-n-d…if any of this grand plan is going to happen, I suppose I’d better get to work…