Stick a fork in it

It's done.

In a Dry and Weary Land weighs in at just under 102,000 words. Now I get to write a query letter and a synopsis and start trying to sell it all to literary agents.

I have a bad case of stage fright, but I'm determined to put myself under the lights anyway.

Wish me luck. Better yet, pray for me.


Technorati tags: Writing

I hope this idea is contagious

The Outaouais transit corporation is going to ask those annoying bus riders who bellow into their cell phones to pipe down. In extreme cases, they're even prepared to apply fines.

Now can they do something about the people who have loud prolonged conversations in movie theatres and churches? Please?

Apparently Australia has prohibited cell phone use on trains altogether. A bit of overkill there, it seems to me.


Technorati tags: Cell phones, Public transportation

We are going to have so much fun eating when you leave home

That's what I kept telling my kids as they were growing up. It was so hard to prepare anything that everyone was happy with, and some things were guaranteed to generate squawks from just about everybody. I dreamt of pizzas with onions, black olives, and mushrooms, seafood of almost any description, anchovies, asparagus, and artichokes, capers and, well, you get the idea.

Grown-up food.

As threatened, I had some fun this weekend. Fettucine Alfredo with shrimps and mushrooms and partially disguised as pasta primavera with zucchini and yellow bell peppers and broccoli. To swoon over.

It was, however, my first experience using raw shrimp in the shell, and I realized once they were in the pan with the onions and garlic, that I had only partially shelled them. I had to pick every single one out, let them cool, and remove the rest of the shell. You experienced shrimp cooks can stop laughing now.

We still had a lot of fun eating it and hubby managed, for once, not to get any errant bits of shell in his helping.

Technorati tags: Cooking, Pasta, Shrimp