Yesterday was my son’s fourteenth birthday.
Ephemeros…
In case you haven’t heard, the Hugo Awards were announced this past weekend. You can see the nominees and winners here. I have to say, while I haven’t read many of this year’s nominees, I think that the award for film should have gone to the first season of “Heroes” over the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s “Stardust” (which was, I thought, a fairly weak script and mediocre adaptation). But that’s just me.
Wondering if they’ll ever do an award for Best Podcast by an Unpublished Author Now that Scott Sigler and Mur Lafferty have broken the ceiling, I feel like I might have a shot — a long shot, to be sure, but a shot nonetheless.
I received a fair number of responses from people last week regarding my post on the completion of the “Assam & Darjeeling” podcast. I have to admit, it was very fun to see the little spikes on Twitter as people finished listening to the last episode.
And the response was very gratifying. Lots of people liked it, lots of people let me know. They all made my week. There’s no prize, but Shelley probably wins for being the first one to finish — or at least, the first one who posted about it. She was kind enough to point out that, being in Australia, she had first crack at it. But still, she was first.
And no, no hate mail (thanks for asking). Although there were a few “I can’t believe you [REDACTED]!” comments and responses. The first time I’ve ever received six exclamation points on the end of a sentence.
Based on the numbers I have through Feedburner, it looks like the “Matters of Mortology” podcast/audiobook picked up a few subscribers as a result. This makes me happy, particularly since I finished the fourth and final installment of that podcast this weekend.
They’re both out there on iTunes ready for download. Just search for “T.M. Camp” and you’ll find ’em.
If you prefer your podcasts al fresco, there are RSS links for “Matters of Mortology and “Assam & Darjeeling” as well.
And so now I’m podcast deprived. I can’t say I miss it, but I am looking forward to the new project.
Yes, I know I’ve been teasing it for a while now. I’m posting some info later tonight along with a few links for submissions. The first episode will go out sometime next weekend, I expect.
It would have gone out last weekend but I decided to spend it with my lovely
wife instead. Sunday we were out out at the family compound on Aurohn Lake, swapping stories with the most excellent Kensinger Jones over lunch. If you ever have the chance to hang out with someone fifty years older than you, don’t hesitate to do so. It’s even better when they’re the guy who invented Tony the Tiger.
On a walk later in the afternoon, Keeley and I stopped to check the dam. Back in July, we’d cleared away the logs stacked over the spillway by a recent, inexplicable immigration of beavers. This weekend, we found that they’d given up on lugging flotsam all the way to the end of the lake, opting for merely packed the spillway grate with mud and duckweed.
The sudden appearance of a very large, very black snake hiding under the grate was instrumental in our decision to not clean the grate off. The beavers are going to be in for a big surprise when they come back to check on their work.
Unless, of course, the snake fills up on the scores of frogs we disturbed on the path around the lake. Every few steps set off a chain reaction of frenzied hops.
The milkweed pods are out but still too green to scatter, of course. I did, however, see my first monarch-butterfly-in-training. He was very patient while I got things set up to take his picture. Although, at one point his antennae waved in a manner that could only be interpreted as “Honestly. Don’t you have something better to do with your time?”
Walking on, I was very happy that the cooler weather kept down the horseflies. Fortunately, the dreaded brush wasps that swarmed us last time were nowhere to be seen.
Keeley admitted to making up the name “brush wasp” but I decided not to wade through the shoulder length meadow grass to “my” hill. The name might have been a fiction, but the actual swarms were not.
One day, I think, I’d like to have a little shack on top of that hill. With windows on every wall and just enough room for a card table and a chair and a wood-burning stove. And a can of bug spray.
Unlike last time, we didn’t see any deer. We did, however, see four or five illegal tree stands set up by proactive poachers getting ready for the season later. Bastards. A few of the trespassers were thoughtful enough to put their names and phone numbers on their stands — which I photographed for later reference — making it that much easier to correct their ignorance and/or presumption. If they’re still there next time I go out, the temptation of taking along a hacksaw will be difficult to resist.
A big tree was down in the meadow, two hundred feet of history cut down by last month’s storms, the two-story tall crown of leaves burnt brown and withering by the sun.
Coming back through the forest, we heard an old woman crying in the trees.
After a few long moments listening, it came again from high above us. The wind and the creaking of the branches over our heads.
Still, it was an old tree and might have been a woman once. Keeley stopped for a moment to talk with her. The branches only grew from the east side of the trunk, as though reaching out towards the unseen lake beyond.