So you’ve seen how much fun we had with the airplanes. Now settle in for some fun without them. You may be here awhile.

Yes, in the afternoon we went to see the Parachute Riggers and the Jump Masters. Yet again I have to refer to my brother the pilot who believes that there is never a good reason to jump out of an airplane intentionally. He is not the risk taker that these guys are and the family likes that just fine thank you.

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t interested in finding out all about it. We had the good fortune to spend a couple of hours with four military guys who were kind enough to instruct us on the finer points of jumping out of aircraft on purpose just because you can.

There are basically two kinds of jumping out of airplanes when you mean to do it from the start. There’s static line like the movies where everyone hooks their line up to the wire and runs out the door. In that case the skydivers have their chutes deployed for them by virtue of the “static line” that stays in the aircraft while they do not. These are the guys who go out the door in a steady stream of humanity that will probably not ever reach terminal velocity. The reason is that the parachute opens right away and the fella never has a chance to “free fall”. In this video you can see the parachute riggers packing parachutes (static line chutes) and see some of the training. We didn’t see anyone actually jump out of an airplane and we didn’t get to jump (thank you Barb Kroon for that!) but we did watch a guy pack a parachute in about two minutes flat. They do that in this video as well. (I’m posting the links rather than embedded video because the video may be restricted to viewing on Youtube due to military content or because of the audio tracks or something. Each video will open in a new browser window).

You know about free fall right?

No not Tom Petty’s Free Falling…

More like this quick video:

correct position during freefall demonstrated

The position of the arms and legs will determine the direction he (or yes, she) travels while falling. Here you can see two views of a romance author demonstrating for the group. The first (above) shows correct arm and leg position as you travel forward (the straight legs will give you forward momentum.) from the aircraft and begin your freefall (presumably this would be what you’d do when you were new to it. Once you’re an old hand at it I suppose Cirque du Soleil rules apply and you get all freaky with it.)

Our host instructs on correct signal for chute about to open

In this second shot (above) you see the correct signal to indicate you are about to open your chute so everybody get outta the way. There her legs should probably be bent up in the drop straight down position.

If you’d like to see someone actually training over and over, watch the next video as the instructor that jumps with the paratrooper provides instructions using hand signals. I didn’t recognize all of them but the ones they showed us were to straighten your legs, bend your legs that sort of thing. It’s long, about nine minutes but the lessons are clear. Warning the audio is loud so if you don’t dig Hard Rock you may want to mute your audio for this. There isn’t any dialog, just soundtrack.

The freefall guys may jump at very high altitudes that require oxygen masks. They may freefall for a great distance and travel many miles (up to at least 10) from where they were originally dropped gliding like a turkey buzzard except constantly dropping and thermals don’t apply I expect due to the peculiar aerodynamics of the human body.

HALO = High Altitude Low Opening. This second video shows the in air instruction that the jumpers receive. Note the large altimeter on the wrist.

And finally our hero gives us the memorable finale.

GI Joe to the rescue. Go Team America!

Another Successful KOD Mission Accomplished.

Oh I promised to tell you about the blushing parachute rigger didn’t I. Someone in the group asked him “so, for work you jump out of airplanes from high altitude. What do you do for excitement on your days off?” The handsome dark skinned man actually shifted from foot to foot grinning, blushing and never did tell us his secrets. They must have been good though!

One other story worth mentioning. The two jump masters (at least I think those were their roles - these were the guys who judging by attitude had seen plenty of action. Your basic Alpha Hero type, lots a tats, muscles, economy of motion. Deliberate in their actions and words).

They looked like they were astounded at us blood thirsty romance writers when not one both groups that met with them independently asked how hard it would be to rig a chute so it wouldn’t open properly. Needless to say they were hesitant, this really is life or death for them and I’m sure they had visions of their answer coming back to haunt them. So we never did get an answer to that one.

What they did tell us is that each parachute that is packed is signed by the guy that packed it, signed by the guy who witnessed the packing, and locked away in a cage that only one or two guys have a key to. Then when the soldiers need them they are signed out, the soldier immediately puts it on and goes directly to the plane. There is very little room for error, and the accountability level is high.

Next time a fashion show for the historically inclined, and more stories from RWA National Conference 2010.

Ok, still pre-conference, but Tuesday the fun begins. Early rising, a bowl of yogurt and cereal and off I go on the Kiss of Death Tour. For those of you playing the home game Kiss of Death is the affectionate pseudonym for the RWA Mystery Suspense Chapter. Each year there is a tour where the participants go look at something and ask a bunch of questions. If you’ve been here before you may recall my visit to Quantico last year. There were guns involved.

This year there were no guns involved, but there were lots of airplanes and related thingies. We visited MacDill Airforce Base near/in Tampa. We first spent some time visiting with a KC135 crew and crawling all over the thing to get a look at this flying Sinclair station. Like the Sinclair mascot the aerial refueling fleet is mostly of my generation. Manufactured in the 1950’s with the last one delivered in 1963. Yes, we might have gone to school together if airplanes did that sort of thing, which of course they don’t.

The three airmen (pilot, nozzle jockey, and co-pilot I think) who gave us the tour were gracious and helpful and answered all our questions. They even allowed us to climb down in the cockpit and in the refueling pod at the rear of the aircraft to take photos and have a peek around. I was unable to take any pics with the Nikon because of the inside/outside temperature differential and the humidity. (Lens fogged) However thanks to my trusty google phone (G1) I do have a number of moderately viewable pics.

Here is the inside of the KC135 Refueling tanker. I think it’s the view out the back pod window.

Looking out the back end of a kc135 tanker

Partially obscured by part of the aircraft or support equipment. It’s tight. The nozzle jockey (It’s okay, I worked at Vickers back in the Seventies as a nozzle jockey so I can use the term) lies on his belly in a cradle of sorts and works the gizmos with a joystick. The author seen in this photo is actually lying on her belly in that very cradle. Yes, the KOD tours are awesome with a capital AWE.

Next we went to see the weather dudes at NOAA. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spent a bit of time with us explaining things like what they do, what the difference between a tornado and a hurricane is (okay, my dumb question - Hey, I’m a midwesterner, I know about tornadoes, but hurricanes are like snow in the desert to me). They talked about their staff, aircraft (I think they said they had thirteen). We listened to the presentation by a couple of meteorologists, a pilot, a director kind of fellow.

Then we followed them out to the hangar and took a look at the aircraft they affectionately call Miss Piggy. Apparently all the aircraft are named after muppets historically. Unfortunately Disney bought the muppets and we all know what happens when Disney stamps their trademark on something. Fortunately Jim Henson had grandfathered NOAA in on their existing fleet and in fact did do some of the artwork painted on some of the aircraft as illustrated here. I think Henson did Kermit, I don’t know if he did Miss Piggy or not.

Incidentally in case you can’t read it the logo for Miss Piggy says aero-nautical but nice.

Cute.

They also had a list of kills…well, thrills I guess is more accurate pasted on the side of the aircraft. It is a list of all the hurricanes that the aircraft had flown into.

My brother the pilot, asked if the interior was configured so that it could be easily hosed down. I suspect NOAA is prepared for that contingency, turbulence being what it is. The interior of the fuscilage pretty much looked like the computer room at work. Racks with computers, network switches and other geeky brand name hardware and lots of cat5 cables.

The list of hurricanes this aircraft has flown into

One funny thing that just coincidentally happened while we were in NOAAs hanger. Seemed that an entire fleet of firetrucks at the airbase made an appearance. I heard someone from NOAA say something about them being there just in case.

Nawww, it couldn’t be that they heard there was a whole hanger full of romance writers hanging on every word the NOAA guys were saying. Could it?

Come back on the 14th when I tell you about the last part of this tour. When we made the parachute rigger blush.

A few of you may be old enough to remember the old western TV comedy show F-Troop.  Well, this headline goes that far back but refers to something a little further into the remote regions than the wild west.  And if you don’t remember F-Troop get it on NetFlix.  It was wholly un PC and really funny to a nine year old at the end of the sixties.  Probably wouldn’t get on the air these days.

Balloo is the big blue bear from Jungle Book, a Disney flick from way back when.  I don’t remember much about it except the triple jointed looseness of the boy Mowglie and the song that the ape sang.  ”I wanna be a man, man child, and walk right into town…”  So when I came across a seven foot tall Balloo and Ape in the Animal Kingdom I couldn’t hold back those irrepressible lyrics.  Keep in mind that my friend Denise and I had been out for hours by then and my signature color was sweat stained from the 1200% humidity.  I still maintain that it was condensation collecting on the surface of our skin since we were two hot babes in the woods.

My new admirer

Now you might think that I had enticed Balloo over to have his picture taken with me but no, in fact he was drawn to me by my melodic crooning.  Balloo wanted his picture taken with me.  So naturally I obliged.  It’s a pretty good photo of Balloo, but I’m afraid it’s a bit dodgey of me.  That Florida sun is unforgiving.  You’ll notice the resemblance between us in shape.  Yes, well, I’ll have to work on that.

But this wasn’t the only fun we had in Florida.  No, we were there for serious business.  My friend Denise and I were celebrating our Semi-Centennial year.  We will both be skipping across that meridian that separates youth from whatever follows, later in the fall.

We celebrated the entire weekend with trips to three Disney parks, both of the Universal studio parks as well.  There we discovered that the Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios called the hippogriff (or something like that) was not designed using the standard American Buttwidth.  In fact we suspect the designers may have been using the French Buttwidth or even perhaps the Japanese Buttwidth universal measures.  We very nearly didn’t get into the cars.  You will see us here in the photo I’m holding (although this is from Expedition Everest).  We are the ones wedged into the back seats.

As you can clearly see we are having what they call fun. But even more fun was yet to come.

Later that evening while we were enjoying a frosty beverage and massaging
our feet we recalled that we were not the only ones celebrating.

Dick Powers (his real name) was also celebrating the half way mark without us in Lawrence, Kansas.  So we serenaded him in a birthday salute that I will spare you.  I do have a still from that event that I will share just because it proves that you’re never too old to make an ass of yourself.

So this was my last hurrah prior to rejoining my romance writer sisters and brothers at the RWA National Conference.

Consider this the obligatory vacation slide show.  You have been subjected. The work of Conference would soon begin.

Now, go write.

And congratulations to Gretchen Jones (the young blonde talented designer)  for winning the first challenge and making it to the next round on Project Runway.

Some things never change. I’m still sitting here trying to keep the cat off the keyboard, it makes typing a challenge. My day job is still driving me crazy but a lot of other things happened that were new and different.

I finished my type-in after more or less completing Holly Lisle’s How to Revise Your Novel course. I thought I would have to put my own eyes out after reading and typing in something like thirty or forty hand written pages. The end result? We’ll see. It may not be the great american novel but it’s complete and there were times when I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do it.

So what now? Well, thanks to the fabulous ladies at Do the Write thing for Nashville I won a full manuscript critique from the very generous Kim Lionetti at BookEnds. The bidding came down to the last two minutes. Can you say HEART ATTACK!  It’s amazing, there are still stars in my eyes from being over the moon about winning. And the money is going to such a good cause - Middle Tennessee Flood Relief.

Those ladies set what the irascible CEO Neil Patterson at Cerner calls BHAG’s Big Hairy Audacious Goals. They decided to hold an auction to raise money with donations from people in the publishing industry. In the process they raised more than $70,000.00. I suspect they had no idea how big or hairy or audacious it was going to be when they started. I think they kicked a ball hoping for a field goal and hit the moon instead.

Their auction is now over, but you can still contribute directly by donating to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee through the  dtwtfn blog and T-shirts are coming soon.

Now that I’ve completed a manuscript (well, a 2nd draft anyway) what am I going to do?

Go to Disney World!

Yes, because of the flooding the conference has been moved from Nashville to Orlando and Starwood’s Swan and Dolphin hotel. I’ve stayed there several times before for conferences. Anyone who is going will find a terrific conference venue. And there’s no way to complain about getting to spend the weekend before with one of my oldest friends enjoying the theme parks and celebrating our upcoming semi-centennial birthdays.

So now all I have left to do is wait.

Send the manuscript for critique.
For July to get here.

Start working on my next project.

I posted this on the CHAPLINK RWA loop.  You may find it helpful, or not. My memory is not perfect, but what I’ve written here I believe to be true.  If really important to you double check with the hotel. I can’t be held responsible, I’m a fiction writer. I may have made it up, but I tried to be accurate here.

I’ve been to a couple of conferences at the Swan and Dolphin.  My recollection is that there is wireless in many of the public areas and wired in the guest rooms.  The RWA info said it was free.  I don’t recall paying for it when I attended the IBM Rational user conferences.

Incidentally it is a very big facility and very nice. Plan on more walking than you did in DC or San Francisco. I believe it is not a Disney property but they do everything they can to put on a Disney like “good show”.  I never had any complaints about the rooms, food, or other facilities.  It is however on the pricey side as you would expect.  They do a lot of large conventions in this facility.  It is about the distance of two city blocks between the Swan and Dolphin.  I believe most of the ballrooms are at the Dolphin but there are also smaller meeting rooms over at the Swan as well.  If you have mobility issues plan ahead and ask before you go for anything special you might need.

Parking was about $8.00 per day the last time I was down there with a car. It may have only been for conference center parking.  It is possible that they waive the fee for guests of the hotel, I wouldn’t know for sure. I drove down in 2006 I think.  I went again in 2008 but flew that time.  The rooms are very nice, and in general the facility is beautiful.  The skinks running around the outside of the conference area will amuse some of you.  They’re tiny little lizards and they eat bugs.  They are our friends.

The hotel is adjacent to the Boardwalk area of the Disney Resort and it has lots of restaurants and shops that are not inside the parks (in other words, no cover charge there.)

There may have been a kind of convenience store but no grocery store that I recall unless it was over at the wilderness Campground (where the RV Park is) where some small amount of groceries may have been available. Milk, beverages, liquor (beer and wine anyway), packaged meats etc.  Don’t expect much in the way of fruits or vegetables but you can probably find some cereal etc.

For those of you thinking about the parks that haven’t been there before, ground transportation is abundant between all the hotels and parks and I’m pretty sure it’s free for those staying at any of the resorts and Swan and Dolphin.  It may not always be easy to figure out.  It took me about two hours to get from wilderness campground to Swan and Dolphin the first time I tried.  But once you figure it out it’s pretty easy (that trip narrowed down to about 45 minutes once I had the hang of the bus system).  There are water taxis and buses that will take you point to point between parks.

If you are an RV’er or even tent camper and want to save some money the campground is probably the nicest campground I’ve ever stayed at.  It’s safe, clean and has great services. I would feel very comfortable being there alone in my camper at night. It is quite a distance from the Swan and Dolphin though.  Wilderness Lodge and Wilderness Campground are two different locations however.  There is only camping at the campground.

Ask questions and I’ll do what I can to answer them.  The comments require approval so be patient to see them appear.

Last July I went to the RWA Conference in Washington D.C.  As part of an on line chapter’s pre-conference events we went to the FBI Academy at Quantico for a special program.  I had no idea ahead of time that we would get to go out on the firing range.  I hadn’t been anywhere near a firearm since I was about 16 but that was another story entirely.

The first weapon I ever fired (besides my mouth oh, and that #2 pencil I jabbed Bobby and Robin with in grade school - sorry about that - impulse control is much better now, thanks)  a thompson sub-machine gun…

A tommygun is definitely a woman’s weapon  I did like the feel of it.  Very solid, heavy, two handles to grab hold of and the butt wedged firmly against your shoulder it felt very secure.  The other rifle that we fired was also a nice piece of equipment that was comfortable to fire, didn’t kick terribly hard, but it just wasn’t the same.  There’s just something about a girl’s first tommy gun…(sigh).

Here’s the view from behind me.  You can see how close the instructors stood behind us.  Brave souls I must say.

Then there was the one round I fired from the shotgun.  It was not my favorite and just felt unsafe and out of control as the business end of the weapon rapidly pivoted up toward the heavens after firing.  I had the opportunity to fire additional rounds with the shotgun but I found it scary and it made me say HOLY CRAP several times quite loud even with ear protection.  So I exercised a judgement call on that and skipped it.

Below you can see my fine shotgun wielding form being corrected prior to taking the shot.

It took awhile to get the photographs from the photographer, but it was well worth the wait.

Some days just can’t be beat and this one was right up there at the top of my list.

Inventory list for world domination, which I’ll get right on just as soon as I finish revisions and sell my first novel:

(WHAT? it could happen)

• tommy gun

• 1964 Oldsmobile Cutlass f-85 Vista Cruiser Station Wagon (after market A/C,  maroon with maroon interior preferred)

• GPS

• Google phone

Had a fabulous time at Nationals.  First off we went to the FBI Academy on the KOD tour and shot guns.  Big ones, little ones, old ones, new ones.  Ones that fired one at a time and well several one right after another.  Okay they all operated in semi-automatic fashion.  I felt a little Suessian just then.

I didn’t take too many photos but here’s some of the ones that made it into my camera.  Others on the new phone I haven’t figured out how to extract yet.

There were hot spy chicks on the shooting range as illustrated here…

She was definitely all romantic suspense on the range in those heels.

Then there was a stop at the training neighborhood.

A nice location but the neighbors?

And a day at the State Department

The room is modeled after the UN they told us (at least I think that's what they said)

Everyone’s hair was lovely from the back

The KOD AGM really happened…

And now I need to write the minutes for that meeting I suppose.

Finally, Nora Roberts.  Attended her chat session.  Insightful.  Guess what, she’s a regular writer (except for that whole “nearly every book is a best seller” thing she’s got going on).  Just a little impatient after all this time with the same old questions I think.  Cool lady.

Nora Roberts- Sorry if the pic isn't fabulous. Used my cheap camera.

At the Death By Chocolate Party Cheryl won a crystal skull…

Cheryl and Deb With Cheryl's prized skull

Then there was the wonderful evenings spent with good friends.  Not all of them are in this pic which I swiped off of Lynn Cash’s web site from Jackie Bannon’s Camera.

Gretchen, Aimee, Jackie, and Heather

It was fabulous overall.  Can’t wait for next year in Tennessee.

In 1998 I travelled to Malaysia for work. At the time I worked for Cerner Corporation (Healthcare info systems) and was there to train the pharmacists at the ministry of health how to use the materials management component of the Cerner software. (Can you say DRY TOPIC? And I did this kind of stuff for 20 years. No wonder I’m writing fiction now).

Though I have travelled extensively within the United States, at the time I had never been out of the country. Not even to Canada or Mexico so this really was an adventure. The first strange thing that happened was when the plane stopped in Hong Kong. I didn’t know what to think. This was just after Hong Kong had been returned to the Chinese. The stop was not on the itinerary. As far as I could tell the plane was not scheduled to go there. They made us take all our carryon bags and get off the plane. We walked into the terminal and found it patrolled by all these young military men wandering around with what seemed to me to be very large automatic rifles. I was definitely not in Kansas anymore. A bunch of us nervous travelers stayed within view of the gate we entered the terminal from, not entirely sure that we’d ever get to leave Hong Kong. Eventually they let us re-board the aircraft.

Next stop Singapore where I had a four hour layover in the middle of the night. Unfortunately I was unaware that there was a hotel IN the airport so I ended up walking around all night until my next flight.

There were some interesting things to see in the Singapore airport. They have orchids growing in planters like we have asparagus ferns or dieffenbachia in our shopping malls. There were spectacular, thick, lush, bushes of orchids. At the time they had an exhibit of various varieties of orchids as well, so I had something to wander around and look at.

Malaysia itself was beautiful and pretty cheap. Their currency was about 4:1 USD so for most things such as food it was very inexpensive. They had beautiful silk batik there, made even more so because it was so inexpensive. The people were a mix of Chinese, Indian, and native Malay so the common language was English and that made it much easier to get around.

The first day I got there one of the people who I worked with from the Cerner Malaysia offices, took me to the Batu caves a Hindu shrine. If you’ve ever seen the photographs of the guys with the hooks hanging out of their backs, that’s the place You can see what I’m talking about here: http://www.malaysiasite.nl/batucaveseng.htm (scroll down on that page).

It was just after the big annual festival (Thaipusam) so it wasn’t crowded. It was strikingly different from Missouri where I’ve spent most of my life. We walked past shops - well booths really, where these tiny little girls (2 or 3 yrs old maybe?) were having their heads shaved and a paste of saffron applied coating their bald heads. They said it was some kind of a blessing or milestone ritual. It was pretty, but the little girls didn’t seem too impressed.

There were plenty of monkeys in the park where the Batu caves are located - right in the middle of this enormous city. And I followed the one piece of advice my boss gave me before I left:

If you see a dead monkey on the side of the road….don’t eat it.

Although the city itself was enormous and rather dirty in most parts, the architecture was beautiful in places. There were stunning ornate onion domed buildings with plasterwork filigree. The train station was like something out of the Arabian nights. It was white and very ornate with carved scrollwork on the exterior and onion domes on each corner. http://www.keretapi.com/rs/kualalumpur/kl.jpg

They were in the process of building a new state mosque that was really gorgeous. (Note: it may have been completed already, I’m a little fuzzy on the details.) It was white with a blue tile roof and minarets rising up at the corners http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Salahuddin_Abdul_Aziz_Mosque.

We got to do a drive by of the PETRONAS towers (at the time the world’s tallest building - may still be, I’m not sure.) and a couple of other notable buildings including a Buddhist shrine that was very China Town (pick your city).
At the time everything was a knockoff of something else. The state manufacturer’s cars were knock-offs of American cars. There was one that looks like a Ford Taurus and another that looked like a Plymouth Horizon. At the time I thought it odd that those would be the one’s they’d choose to copy. I suppose they were best sellers here.

You can buy counterfeit anything there. I bought a dozen “Hard Rock Cafe - Kuala Lumpur” t-shirts for about two bucks a piece to bring back as souvenirs for my co-workers in Kansas City. You could buy copy watches, music, videos, you name it. One of my co-workers from Australia took me to an open air market one evening and we saw all kinds of interesting things for sale. That’s where I bought the shirts.

I travelled up into the mountains north of KL (as the locals call it) beyond the rolling hillsides lush with tea crops. The roads were wonderfully built and maintained, and well marked with road and other directional signs. Many of the main roads in and out of KL were four plus lane divided highways that would rival the best of the U.S. interstate system. (And put I-70 through Missouri to shame.)

The resort we visited was very odd; essentially, the little town was a Dutch enclave. It was a resort that ex-pats would use to get away from the heat in the city back in the day. The mountain resort was very lush and green and about 20 degrees cooler than in the city. Bamboo was the roadside weed of choice.

I stayed in corporate apartments that struck me as being like projects in their construction though very clean and nice. The apartments were very nice inside but all hard surfaces, and the halls were open to the outside (no a/c) so it felt a little bit like going into a parking garage on a summers day. The washer and dryer were located on the balconies. You could never do that here in the Midwest.

It was the first place I ever saw remote controls for air conditioners. They were like wide squat window units mounted directly onto the outer walls of the apartments. Everything was tiled because of the heat and humidity. I guess it’s sort of like Florida or Arizona in that respect.

I got to do a little touristy sight seeing while I was there. I went to the butterfly museum and the orchid museum. Both were out doors and you walked through various screened rooms to see the native butterflies. There were also some native animals like ground squirrels that were interesting. The squirrels had completely different colorings than the ones in the U.S., black and brown instead of grey or red.

It was very hot being equatorial but I never got a bit of sun.  There was so much particulate in the air that the sun was a hazy orange glow most of the time.

Because KL is such a melting pot of cultures I never had an inconvenient moment.  The restrooms had western style toilets as well as asian ones sunk into the floor, you have to squat over them.  The ones in the Singapore airport actually had signs on them that said “watch your step”.  I can see how people might accidentally step in and break an ankle.

While there we even managed to make it to a shopping mall.  Yes friends, you can get Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookies on the other side of the planet.  Malls are indeed the same everywhere.

The biggest surprise for me, for all its mix of big city and third world (the block behind the office buildings had residences with loose chickens and the skinniest cats I’ve ever seen.) it was up to date. Everyone there had those remote fobs to unlock their fake Tarus, and everyone had cell phones.  Neither of which I had at the time.

Someday when I have time, I will post photos.  It will require a great deal of scanning and the box that holds the photos is waaaaay up on the top shelf.

Easter Sunday, as I wandered aimlessly around New York exploring, I happened along Madison Avenue just around the corner from Grand Central Station and our hotel.  It was a bit after 7am cool but sunny.  There is so much to absorb here in NYC. Everything from architecture, to the traffic, to the unending sea of humanity that seems to ebb and flow with the rhythm of the ever changing don’t walk signs.  I noticed a bronze (brass?) plate embedded in the sidewalk describing the street as Library Way.  It was a surprise that made me think of finding an easter egg when you thought all you’d find were acorns.  Nothing wrong with acorns, they’re perfectly fine nuts, but an Easter egg is not a naturally occurring entity, just as these plaques sprang from the concrete defying my expectations.  

Literary quotes of famous, infamous, and unknown authors.

First plate in the series

Quote from Kazin

Quote from Gu Cheng

Quote: Remarks are not literature

Dialog from Waiting for Godot

And finally something whimsical from the easter parade…

Cover for Invading Britain book

I’ve been threatening for two years to create a travel book from the blog we did when we went to Scotland and England in 2007.  Finally I got the right combination of software and hardware to pull it off.  Aperture 2 is the Apple application used to manage photographs on my Mac - it’s a step up from Iphoto.  The book template process was fairly easy with the exception of crashes that occurred frequently toward the end.  Mostly the crashes were around editing a single caption or “meta-data box” that was placed under a map of Alnwick that I inserted into the document.  I finally decided folks would just have to figure out that it was a photograph of a map and leave it to that.

 I have a really low powered Macbook so it may be related to lack of memory. 

After inserting photographs in photo frames and text in text boxes I finally figured out how to do columns and alignment of text in the text boxes and the result was really nice.  I used the PDF producing capabilities to generate a PDF file for the preview and finally when I was satisfied I couldn’t make it much better I clicked on the buy book button.  

The books arrived about two weeks later and were fabulous.  Afterwards I wished I’d used the large format template and purchased the hard bound books with the dust jackets but I would have had to start from scratch to do that.  I also wished I’d used a larger font and was a little more careful moving the text away from the center so that it wasn’t wedged into the binding quite so much.  But other than that I’m delighted with the result and am posting it here for your viewing pleasure.

You should be warned the file is about 83mb (HUGE) but it’s 86 pages and has over two hundred photographs in it so the size couldn’t be helped.  Click on the cover photograph above to download the PDF file.

Enjoy…