Part-time prevaricator
Warmer than it’s been, but still cold enough to kill two camera batteries inside the space of ½ an hour. I gave up on seeing any aurora and headed home to process what I got.
Update: As it turned out, I got some aurora after all.
About 170 photos, 5 seconds each (for a total of about 15 minutes of rotation), ISO 1600, 11mm, f/2.8.
This morning our old friend Hoss was in the yard. I snapped a couple quick photos of him before he hopped away.
I had a dream the other night. I was visiting a friend—I don’t recall who, but it might have been one of the Craigs I know—and, left alone in a room, I was looking over the friend’s bookcase.
I found on there a copy of The Elements of Style, colloquially known as “Strunk + White” after the authors. In the real world it’s a thin book, not much more imposing than a pamphlet; I’ve read novellas that are longer. But in the dream it was a trade paperback, probably 400 pages long, and I pulled it off the shelf. I used to have a copy, in the dream, and I thought maybe I’d lent it to this friend.
But if it was my copy, I hadn’t put my name in the front, which I usually do when I lend out a book. So I hesitated, contemplated taking it anyway, then decided not to risk it. I put it back on the shelf.
I don’t remember the rest of the dream.
When I searched the Internet for “Strunk and White”, I found this article from Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, in which she lays out one reason why she doesn’t much care for The Elements of Style. (TL;DR: it’s a style guide that everyone treats like it’s a grammar book. In other words, it’s a set of suggestions that people instead treat like laws.)
…though on days this cold, that pop of colour is pretty welcome.
Some of the pandemic restrictions have lifted recently, meaning that, among other things, stores are allowed once again to sell “non-essential” items. Flowers didn’t make the list of “essential” items, but now you can buy them again.
OK, so maybe I had to call a tow truck this morning to get our car started, and maybe the car’s in the shop right now getting its battery replaced.
But doesn’t beauty like this make up for it all?
Not really, if I’m honest. Bring on summer.
Some aurora tonight. To the naked eye it was a misty cloud, a little bit green.
It was ‑35°C, so I only stayed for about 15 minutes. Even so my fingers went numb and even now, as I type this half an hour after getting home, my legs are still chilly.
It snowed pretty good for a couple hours this afternoon. I snapped this from the upstairs bedroom.
A stack of 8 photos, each 50mm, f/1.8, 1/800 sec, ISO 100. Processed in GIMP.
I received this in the ol’ email inbox this afternoon.
Thank you very much for your story, and for letting us hang on to it for as long as we did. The piece has received more than one read, as our first reader enjoyed it a great deal. Due to our current (thematic) publication needs, however, we are unable to place this story.
[…]
Although we can’t use your work at this time, we thank you for thinking of us and encourage you to submit again in the future.
The funny thing is, they didn’t tell me which story they were rejecting, and I couldn’t remember what I’d submitted to their market. (I also couldn’t find my initial submission in my outbox, but that was less surprising; a lot of markets these days are using Submittable or Moksha or some other online submission gateway.)
Thank heavens for The Submissions Grinder. I did a quick search on the market name, and found that, yes, I had submitted a piece to them, wa-a-a-ay back in June 2020. Their submissions page said that they don’t generally send out rejections, so if you didn’t hear in about three months, assume you were not one of the lucky ones. I had assumed that, since September came and went with no word, that I was not one of the lucky ones.
Turns out I was right, but it seems I came closer than I thought.
Oh well. Once more unto the breach and all that. At least they liked the story; with form rejections it can be very hard to tell.
PS: If you’re a writer and you’re not using The Submissions Grinder, I strongly recommend you at least look into it.
