Quick Catch-up

A speedy one tonight, as Duty Calls.


First, in the spirit of All Things Olympique: If you are around town [and by that I mean Rain City] for the festivities these days, you could do worse than catching a concert at Holland Park in Surrey. They are running every night, with a collection of GREAT bands. Find out more HERE.

Came across this the other day, and thought it Quite Cool...




And to finish, here is an action shot of my Canine Boys. It seems, on a hike, I can only get the rear view...

More soon!

~kc

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day here, Veteran's Day in the US.
A day to remember ... thoughts too big, perhaps for a single day.

For a little taste of something different, I invite you to enjoy this compilation post, American in origin, which has had me alternately laughing and crying my eyes out today.

A must for canine-lovers -- dogs welcoming their soldiers home.

[For non-dog lovers, the final clip of children being surprised by their returning dads is incredibly moving, too.] 


HERE.

Happy Remembrance Day!
[tip of the hat to boingboing for the link]

~kc

A Canadian Rodent love story

A hot summer day. Time for a swim.










A tiny dot in the Capilano River.











Time to investigate.












Inquiring minds want to know...just what makes a splash that size?
















Uh...well, a beaver tail, actually.














Twenty minutes of frolic later -- they swam their separate ways.













And off she went.



And that would be the end of the story...if she hadn't come back and swum with him again the next day!




(Identity of beaver confirmed first by scuba diver, and then by sighting of massive tail, proudly slapped.)

~kc

Penticton Wednesday

It's 11:09 pm and my camera is in the car, so no new pix for tonight. (I am in a deep, dark house in a deep, dark world and unfamiliar with the lights to take me to my car and said camera, she sez, verbosely explanitorially...).

Will check -- maybe I have a picture from yesterday to serve...

In the meantime, HERE is a link to a story in the Penticton Herald about our Youth Write endeavour here. I think we've made the paper every day while here, which is Very Nice. In other funny, nice news, Lee discovered a tribute video made for me and put up on YouTube by one of his ex-students. Very sweet.

What else? I have a whole blog post planned to illustrate with pictures of the pet cemetery (note spelling -- no 's' in cemetery!!!) we visited today. It was not creepy, but sad and desolate and wonderful. Tomorrow is technically the last day of YouthWrite, followed by a big signing event at the Coles in Cherry Lane Mall (please come, we'll have jelly beans!). On Friday, we have a book sale and signing at Okanagan College, where we've been holding the Youth Write event.

So, a whole lotta awesome for the rest of the week!

And, I did find a pic....

This is Shadow, and he is as big as a mountain. He belongs to Ed and Peggy Fodey, who have been our hosts this week. Shadow is Very Lovable...as are his owners.

Lots more tomorrow.

~kc

Penticton Tuesday

Another incredible class, loads of time travel rules and interestingly...more poetry to read.

I love poetry -- especially written by teens.

A great group of writers here, lots of stories to tell, lots of fun to be had.

First the work....







Then the play....



Yes, we seriously played minigolf this afternoon.

I won.




And finally, a shot of Lee's brother's dog Junior B, so anxious for me to throw the frisbee that he appeared willing to assist me off this bridge with whatever means necessary.

Of course, I threw it for him.












Another great day.

~kc

Happy Canada Day!

It's my boy's birthday today, so in honour of his 17th and Canada's 142nd, here's a dog blog I found of once confused cyber-puppy...




Notice how she watches her cat on the screen, and then goes to check her out in the fur, just to make sure she's still there!


~kc

Is this not a beautiful face?

I am so burnt from this day, I have only the energy for a dog blog.

Silas came and posed for me betweens swims at Ambleside yesterday.

Read up on all the doings behind the Surrey International Writers' Conference here.

Registration for Fall, 2009 is now open!

~kc

Battling the Germ...

... and I'm winning, so far, but at some cost to my energy levels. Thus, a brief (and yet somehow entertainingly informative) blog full of fascinating information, not all of it arcane.




Apologies to all whom I owe email. (There are at least 159 of you out there...) Will be back to you as soon as I can!

And now, the news...


Darby has a new contest up at her blog. Full details will emerge tomorrow, but apparently she's looking for a haiku -- featuring a skateboard. Prizes will be good, though, guaranteed! (I stole the cherry tree pic from her, too...)

A few April events to note:

April 18, 2009. My friend Linda's birthday. (She'd kill me for that, but she never reads my blog, so I'm safe. Ha! Some friend, eh?) Also the soiree for the BC Book Prizes. I'll be there along with a whole pile of other local BC authors who like free parties. (You'll need a ticket to attend the actual prize banquet). At the Metropolitan Hotel on Howe.

April 20, 2009. 7 pm. Science Fiction phenom Robert J. Sawyer will be signing (and reading, I believe) from his new book WAKE at the White Dwarf bookstore in Kits. 3715 West 10th Avenue.
I'll be there!

April 25, 2009. 11 am. Chapters is opening a new store in White Rock this month, and I'll be joining in as a part of the celebrations. Love to see you!


And to finish, a dogblog, of course. I've seen canine singers, but never one who accompanies himself on the keyboard... (tip of the hat to a Raincoaster tweet for this one)




~kc

Rare Were-Bunny Sighting

Romping through the snow in Lions Bay, scattering chocolate eggs.





If only it were an April Fool's joke. Sadly -- he's out on the deck right now, barking madly at the snowflakes...

Happy April 1, everyone! And can someone PLEASE arrange for it to stop snowing?

~kc

A Day...

Quite a day around here yesterday. Been snowing, of course. It was raining and 4 degrees in the city, but here?



More snow.

Last night was Birthdaypalooza, a celebration of a bunch of Capricornish birthdays including author and slayer expert James McCann, author and urban haiku high-priestess Jacquie Pearce and my own. My actual birthday was spent snowed in this year, so I was pretty bummed at the thought that Birthdaypalooza was going to meet the same fate.




Decided to put the principle of feeling better through exercise into action, so I took the dogs out in the snow for a romp up the mountain. The snow was falling so hard and fast I looked more like a walking snowperson than a human, but the dogs were having fun.




We walked up in the woods above the village until the snow was really too deep to walk further. It was not until I got home that I discovered my keys missing. Left the dogs inside, retraced steps -- but the snow had filled my footsteps and there were no keys to be seen.

Returned home again to find the second set of keys happened to be locked inside the car. Dealership will not replace a key without my licence and registration -- also locked in car.

In the meantime, Seamus somehow injured his back, slipping on the ice when he was playing with Silas.

After 3 hours, BCAA came to the rescue and broke into the car, rescuing my spare keys. Spent the rest of the night in Vet Emergency with Seamus, who was diagnosed with a muscle pull. Made it home at 1:30 this morning.




Seamus is now sleeping happily, hopped up on Medicam and muscle relaxants, though he will likely have to go for a precautionary X-Ray tomorrow.





So, instead of spending birthdaypalooza discussing my Joss Whedon obsession with my equally-geek-minded friends, I spent it with Duchess the pug in her hooded pink raincoat (symptoms: vomiting, diagnosis: inability to digest proteins, prognosis: not great for the long term), Dooley the Portuguese Water dog (symptoms: gluttony -- ate a stick that ...er...got stuck, treatment: an enema, accompanied by long, lowing howls of protest) and a waiting room jammed with other canine loved-ones.

The only silver lining to this came this morning, when one of my neighbours delivered my keys to my door. From what we can figure out, they must have been thrown up by the snowplow sometime in the night and found on the bank beside the road.

Birthdaypalooza success at last.

~kc

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

from Seamus,

and Silas Ermineskin

and me (the only one of the three of us who can actually type.)

May your every wish come true.

~kc

Books -- Not Just for Giving....and a pictoral of a Canadian Winter Day

Reading through Defining Canada, (the Dundurn blog), I found these remarkable sculptures , done by the incredibly talented paper artist Su Blackwell. If you click through the other stories, you can see a plethora of Other Things To Do With Books, presumably AFTER reading them...

We have had a couple of astonishingly beautiful days here on the normally gloomy West Coast, so for the remainder of this post, I will let the pictures tell the story...






We took the dogs up into the woods, and Seamus stopped to make a snow angel.

Step One: Find a nice deep drift and wallow in.


Step 2: Ensure Face and Body suitably snow-covered.




Step 3: Pause to show noble profile, before bounding off to follow dog brother.


The result. Can you see the snow-dog angel?

Look really hard....



More snow tonight.

According to climatologists, this will be the first coast-to-coast-to coast Canadian white Christmas since 1971. I think that may have been the year I was born...

~kc

Ye'll Never Collar Me, Copper....

The remains...

Mr. Innocent models his new collar. (Actually a hand-me-down from Seamus...)








~kc

Silas' Post

My dear friend Jenn told me she was interested in a Silas update.

"He's been so good lately," sez I. "Hardly anything worthy of a blog post."

But as those words left my lips, I thought of my welcome home....






So happy to see you!












See? I've brought you your favourite oven mitt!













And you were mentioning a post? Have I got a post for you!







Let's take a closer look at that, shall we?



Next week -- Silas learns how to sand...

~kc

Dog Days of Summer...

Or...

Silas eats his pool.

A Triptych

~kc

Inter-world Vertigo

Bit of a brutal weekend.

Good for writing, bad for real-world function.

I spent the weekend doing a final clean-up of a manuscript. I seem to struggle with switching worlds -- I mean, I've always struggled with this, even as a reader. But it doesn't seem to be getting any easier, however many books in I am into this writing gig.

It's tough enough to rip myself out of whatever world I am in to deal with things like feeding children and so on, but Silas takes it as a special licence to shred everything in sight, which makes real-world emergence even more unpleasant. And last night I got into bed to find that my daughter, who had been holed up in the only room with access to the litter box, had the door closed all day. To paraphrase Dumbledore: Alas -- cat pee.

On top of that, I am out of chocolate -- like really out. Haven't had any for at least a week, and this is NOT good for the soul.




A lot going down this week, so I'll leave you for now with a peek at my boys swimming in the Capilano River with their new haircuts. At last -- real world food without dog hair in every bite! Silas is getting mondo attention for his new 'do, since for the first time, he actually looks like a puppy.








Check out those Sister Bertril ears!



Hoping to be more coherent tomorrow...


~kc

Seamus Finds a Stick

Seamus is 3 now, and he's a pretty good boy, most of the time. And like the bulk of his species, he has a great fondness for sticks. He likes to bring them to me on our hikes.

But, sadly, these days, we no longer hike alone.




No sooner does a dog find a decent stick to chew on, when what should come sneaking out of the shadows but ... the Trickster.

Rapid head movement is no deterrent.


The Trickster just rolls his eyes and moves in for the kill.

Seamus puts up a mighty struggle. After all, he is still bigger than Silas -- AND outweighs him by about 20 pounds.


But alas...

The Trickster has speed on his side.

What's a golden to do? We are made for love (and food), not speed.
(You'll note I say 'we'. Let's just say I identify...)
Once again, the Trickster prevails, leaving the Golden boy, gasping and wheezing in the dust.

Luckily, all is forgiven after a big drink from the stream.

**This episode of DogBlog brought to you whilst your humble blog author is in plague-recovery mode. Please expect a return to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow...**

~kc