2008-04-22

These days are very precious, as each morning unfolds new glory in the yard. Today the dogwoods opened past the tiny buds of yesterday and are half-unfurled. And the peonies’ red stems are jumping up along the back deck. The lilacs are now in their heavily scented splendor and their sweetness permeates the area along the south side of the house and in the back yard where we have a couple of small lilac trees, one lavender and one yellow. And the tulips are spectacular! Gary took our digital camera and shot many photos of the scenery around Camelot for possible use on our B4 site as well as perhaps making a slide show to put on line with our other photo collections from various events.

Mick had a long, long day, not arriving home until after 6:30. But he came back in a triumphant mood, having accomplished the various extras which his customers asked of him today, along with his usual work. He enjoys doing these extra chores, knowing that the worthy widows for whom he does them need these things done and cannot do them themselves. There is a reason his nicknames around here are St. Mick and St. James – depending on the season!

I was joyful to find that Steve M had sent me back the reworked chapters of 101: The Choice which I had sent him. I carefully saved them into a folder marked Final Version and renamed the files to append “final” to the file names. Then I renamed all the file names to one format so that the chapters would line up correctly.

I had to figure out which of my versions was the final copy for the three chapters for which Steve had not been able to find my send. It was not hard to do, thank heavens. The other day, when I had three versions of Chapter 8, none of them had my changes. Today I found the reworked versions easily by comparing paragraphs and reading any dissimilar ones. I could recall the changes I had made and knew the final copy.

It is sad but in two cases, the final copy was the one without Steve’s initials and in the third case, the final was the one WITH his initials. For writing my next book, I will follow Steve’s suggestion and make folders for each rewrite stage and for the final copy.

I worked with Yelena’s questions for quite a while this afternoon. She is preparing for a private channeling session with Q’uo. She has written far too many questions to answer in one session. I had asked her to prioritize them, which she did. Mostly, I edited the copy, working with the questions in order to make them flow better. I hope she likes my work. However I am willing to go through as many versions as we need in order to make us both happy before we have the session.

I tried to write the “bullets” for the end of Chapter 12, using my chart, but the creativity just was not there. So I collected recipes for the last half hour of my work day. Both Gary and Mick are enjoying having the reworked recipes come in. The recipes have sparked their interest in trying new things. I’m working my way through the fish folders now, since that is our least prolific section. The guys tend to rotate between chicken and turkey, leaving out fish. Now they have more choices. Fish is a very good type of food, full of healthy oils and considered brain food. So I’d like to see us choose more fish recipes.

I have never previously concentrated on collecting recipes for fresh fish because it cannot be kept safely more than a day. And our lifestyle is to cook all we need for each week, store it in the refrigerator and heat our food in the microwave for each meal all week. I’m working around that now by rewriting the recipes for individual portions that can be frozen and pulled out one at a time for use.

I came downstairs to wait for Mick and found that Gary needed to discuss the plans for the upcoming Channelers Make-Up Session which occurs Derby weekend. We hashed out the curriculum, meal times, the restaurant to reserve for our night out – we chose Ruby Tuesday’s this time – and pick-up times for those flying in. it is good to have that well in hand. Mick came in just as we finished.

Mick offered a beautiful closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.