February 8th, 2010
So New Year’s Eve I was getting ready to head out to Beth and Marcel’s 4th yearly karaoke bash when I found that my car wouldn’t start. My poor car is fourteen years old, and it’s been going downhill for the past year or so, dying at intersections, juddering, etc. Now, it’s dead. It might be resurrectable, but at fourteen, I really don’t want to put more money into it. On the other hand, I’m not quite ready to buy a new car right now. I’m trying to pay off my school loans, and getting further into debt isn’t part of my plan. So, instead of a car, I got me one of these:
Granted, mid-winter is probably not the best time to start riding a scooter, but I’m still having fun. 
I recently finished my recording of Dayspring by Harry Sylvester for Ignatius Press. It’s already up on their website, and I’ve started a new recording for them, The Eternal Woman by Gertrud Von le Fort. It’s considerably shorter than either of the other two books I’ve done for them, and I’m nearly halfway through already. The only difficulty with it is the length of the sections; only four of them but two are about 20 pages and the other two are upwards of 40. That’s over an hour of recording for those last two sections. I’ve had to divide them into three so that I don’t blow out my vocal chords.
I’m also currently recording The Sky is Falling by Lester Del Rey for LV, another scifi, since I had such fun with the Mack Reynolds one I did for the SFFAudio Challenge.
Posted in audiobooks, librivox, literature, random, reading | No Comments »
December 23rd, 2009
I forgot to take photos of my Christmas knitting projects before giving them away! 
Well… they were for my housemates, so I may yet get a chance. I made two pairs of fingerless gloves (Fetching pattern from Knitty that I made for myself a couple of years ago), one in black, one in variegated pink. The third housemate got a cap and scarf. Now I can get back to work on the jacket I’ve been making for myself (another Knitty pattern – cover image from last fall). It’s been a while in the making. I started it last winter but kept getting sidetracked by gift knitting and only got about halfway up the back by the time it was too hot to continue (I don’t knit in Texas summer). By the time I picked it up again a couple of months ago, I was totally lost, so I ripped it all back and started over. So far I’ve finished the back and am halfway up the right front (might get that finished today or tomorrow).
Posted in knitting | 2 Comments »
November 16th, 2009
The library book sale was last week. I went on opening day this time ($5 entry) because last year I couldn’t find any knitting books and I was hoping to get a better choice this time. There still wasn’t a whole lot, but better than last year. In addition I got a few books of poetry, some mysteries and some scifi. I also picked up a few baby books for a friend.
I’ve started a new LV project, Ultima Thule by Mack Reynolds. I’m doing it for the 4th Annual SFFaudio Challenge. It’s a short novel, so I hope to have it finished within a couple of weeks.
Posted in audiobooks, librivox, literature | 8 Comments »
November 3rd, 2009
Left the window cracked in my car a couple of weekends ago and got rained on, and though it’s nice and dry now, it still smells. I may go through an entire bottle of Febreeze to get the smell out. The car has been living on the roof of the parking garage in the sunshine with the windows cracked while I’m at work, hopefully that’ll help too.
Finished stage managing Woman in Black this weekend. Dressed as a dead cowgirl for this year’s Masquerade Ball (which for once actually fell on Hallowe’en!). I’m hoping to get some more photos from the others who were there, but for now there are a few on my Masquerade Ball page.
Have been able to get more work done on my recording projects since the end of the show. I’ve been putting a bit more effort into Dayspring (had been concentrating mostly on Clara Vaughan before); the chapters on that one are much longer than any others to date – I have to make sure I have a glass of water handy or I won’t make it through.
Posted in audiobooks, friends, theatre | 1 Comment »
October 20th, 2009
Finally finished The Secret Garden for LibriVox.
Also finished two paid gigs within the last month. Megan for I Publish Press, though I don’t think it’s up for sale yet; and The Death of a Pope for Ignatius Press.
ETA: Megan is now up on their website
Posted in audiobooks | 5 Comments »
October 20th, 2009
Saw this in California a few weeks ago while I was visiting Mum.
Take a closer look at the far right of the bed.
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October 20th, 2009
Only it was the Heart of Texas Fair, not the State Fair. K, one of the girls in the Woman in Black, which I’m stage managing, was given some tickets at work, and she invited me and M, another girl from the play to go with her. She’d never been before, and really wanted to check it out, and since the fairgrounds are right next door to the theatre, we didn’t even have to pay for parking.
When we got down to the end of the fairway, we came across the freak show booth; K had also never been to a freak show before, so we went in. For the most part it was a collection of live, stuffed and preserved animals of the conjoined twins gone more wrong than usual variety. One of the stuffed animals, however, was purported to be a chupacabra.
After looking at it for a couple of minutes M said, “That’s just wrong. That’s a deer butt, upside-down.”
I was telling one of my coworkers about it, and he dubbed it the “chupacabr-ass”
On our way out, we saw one of those “Old Timey Photo” booths. Yet another thing K had never done (not that I had, either, incidentally… but then I’m not really one for voluntarily getting my picture taken). I agreed to join them in the photo under the stipulation that I was not going to wear anything frilly. They did have something in the Annie Oakley style, so I was happy.
Posted in friends, random, theatre | No Comments »
September 1st, 2009
We opened this past weekend. Got a pretty good review from Carl Hoover in the Trib. Friday and Saturday were almost full, Sunday’s turnout was kinda pitiful, but at least they were awake and enjoying it (not always the case with Sunday crowds). Two more weekends to go. Hopefully they’ll be completely sold out!
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August 24th, 2009
OK, so I don’t often let people know when my birthday is, because, though I don’t mind celebrating my birthday, I feel uncomfortable getting mobbed by well-wishers and being sung at, but thanks to facebook more people have found out when it is. I had to go to rehearsal on my birthday, and I was about two feet away from the back door at the end of the night, when I heard the rest of the cast start into ‘Happy Birthday’. No one could see me, so I quickened my steps and snuck out before anyone could catch me.
The following night I had tickets to Broadway by Request with Betty Buckley at the Hip. The ‘by Request’ part means that as you go in, you have the option of filling out a form requesting her to sing a song from her Broadway or recording career. I went with Regan, and on our way in, we saw MB, who was ushering. About halfway through the concert, Seth Rudetsky, who was acting as her emcee, accompanist, and foil, pulled out a request form (she’d been reading them all up till then). He called MB’s name and then read out her request: “It was my friend Karen’s birthday yesterday. Would you sing to her?” So, Betty Buckley sang me happy birthday in an auditorium full of strangers (at least I didn’t have to stand up!!!).
It was a fabulous concert, though.
Posted in friends, music, theatre | 1 Comment »
August 21st, 2009
A few years ago I discovered that my local public library had access to a whole bunch of audio books through netlibrary and I got all excited. I was a little less excited when I discovered that they came as one massive DRM’d file. When listening at work, I had to mark down the time stamp each time I stopped (they were WMA files, and I don’t know of a way to make WMP remember where you stopped, like itunes can); listening on my mp3 player was even worse, because the one I had at the time didn’t pick up where you’d stopped when you restarted it, it just remembered which file you’d been listening to… you try sitting with your finger on the fast forward button for ten minutes trying to get three hours into a file, and woe betide you if your finger slips and you accidentally advance to the next track, because then you have to start ALL over. Ugh. And of course, since the files are DRM’d, I couldn’t import them into Audacity or some such to break them into more manageable chunks. So, I mostly listened at work, and got used to jotting down the time stamp (oh, also, you can only listen to a given file on the computer on which you originally downloaded it, you can’t transfer rights from your work computer to your home one, for example).
Anyway, I’d been working my way through the Amelia Peabody series on audiobook. Netlibrary had the first few, but most of the rest I’d borrowed as discs, so I hadn’t been to netlibrary in a while. Imagine my delight when I went back and found that they’d insituted a new software to manage and listen to the books, and that this software downloads the books in approximately hour long chunks, rather than one massive one, AND remembers where you left off listening if you turn it off! Add to this the fact that I have also bought a new mp3 player (a sansa fuze, last November), that not only remembers where you left off, but has individual file recall for any file with an audiobook genre. I’m suddenly back on netlibrary with a vengeance! Yes, you can still only listen on the computer on which you downloaded it, but having an mp3 player that plays well with audio books, I no longer care! Thank you netlibrary for improving the interface, and thank you WMC Library for continuing to subscribe to the service!
Posted in audiobooks, literature | 1 Comment »
