Publishing Woes

Grrrrr, Adobe!

It started because a saint did her job: when she read my book, she pointed out where I had made a serious error in my book. (A character addressed another when that other should not have been present. Can any of you who have read my book tell me where that was?) Therefore, as a conscientious author--with the magic of Lulu.com at his fingertips--I began the process of editing the manuscript [sic] in order to upload it and correct all future printings.

Enter Adobe, the program for which I have paid but which has yet to give me a clean take-off on the finalizing of any document. There always seems to be a conversion problem, a problem "embedding fonts," or some such difficulty that I can't decipher.

Praise the Lord, Sara has Adobe on her machine, and it behaves just fine for her. Enter jump drive, to transfer raw files to Sara's machine, convert to .pdf, then jump back to my machine to upload. What a hassle!

After an hour and half, though, the egregious error has been wiped from all future printings of my book. (Maybe the erroneous ones will now be worth more after I'm dead. Picasso, here I come! Ha, ha!) Thanks, Barb, for your keen reading and gall to tell me my error. I appreciate it--and so will all my future readers.

By the bye: if you haven't looked already, check out www(dot)lulu(dot)com, and search my name. The price of both paperback and hardcover of "As in a Mirror" just went down! And if you read, will read, or have read it, please leave your review on lulu's website. I'd appreciate it!

~emrys

You Can't Do That On Television

I know you've always wondered about it. Don't worry, you don't have to admit it out loud--I'm going to do it for you. What happens when you squeeze a bicycle inner tube that's filled with liquid patch?

Gonna Move Into the Country--

--gonna eat a lot of peaches . . .

. . . and basil right from the garden.

Runners Below the Deck

With the irreplacable help of an intrepid young member of my congregation (who has more experience than I do in building treehouses, and is present in the second photo), I've got runners up for the first deck.

After putting up the four runners parallel to the upper joists, we found that there's too much give at the ends of the outermost runners. We're going to have to do something about that. However, I am determined not to drop vertical posts to the ground--this is a treehouse, after all, not a deck with a tree growing through it. So I'll have to get creative. But that project is for another day, when work does not beckon so loudly.

~emrys

Life and Growth

We've just returned from a couple of weeks away. Summer swings full, replete with growth and greenery; some of it we want, some we do not. The weeds have grown tall, including the first thistle I've seen around our house (grrrr). But our garden grows as well. We came back to a squash patch that is overflowing with vines, flowers, and even a few fruit growing under the spreading canopy of spiny leaves. The bees are buzzing around them and in them, assuring that we'll have lots of squash and pumpkins in the future.

I've heard that if you don't want to wait for the fruit, the flowers can be dipped in beer batter and fried up for tasty nibblins.

While the garden is growing, in the small moments I have to do completely selfish work, I'm working on a tree house. The first two joists are finished, and they pass the hang test: I can hang on the ends with my full weight (I can even bob up and down) without collapsing them. I'll put two cross-joists on (the first one is visible in this picture), and then I can begin to put up runners for the first deck.

I've got big dreams for this treehouse, but I'm starting small. (I've been informed by Sara that this is not a "kids' treehouse," since the first level is about 9 feet off the ground.) There is no shortage of trees, though, so I've got lots of room to expand. More pics as construction progresses.

~emrys