Boz Paws

Boz, my quiet muse. 

Boz, our fuzzy bouquet of stink.

Boz, the focus of too many conversations.
Boz, who wouldn't dream of leaving the porch without permission.
Boz, the passive-aggressive non-complainer of the practiced moan.

Boz, whose limits are untested, unfathomable, infinite, or perhaps just infinitesimal.
Boz, the master communicator.

Boz, the despot of routine.

Boz, my honey-pot,

Boz has the prettiest paws.

TM2READ

When I was a kid at 4H camp, the counselors used to sing a song at lunch in the lodge: "Announcements, announcements, announcements! A terrible way to die, a terrible way to die..." Then it just repeated itself. It was kind of terrible. But I'm grown up now so I like to think I announce better things than trash pick-up at the tether ball court.

A blood drive for Children's Hospital Los Angeles is taking place conveniently here in Pasadena from 7:30am to 1:30pm today. You can find the CHLA Blood Mobile at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green Street, right behind the Paseo. CHLA needs 1,000 units of blood every month. Take lunch early and be a hero!

And,

A short story of mine, called Portraits, will be published in April of 2013 in a collection called Literary Pasadena: The Fiction Edition. I'm honored to be part of this Prospect Park Books collection, along with local star authors like Michelle Huneven, Victoria Patterson and Jervey Tervalon. Michelle will contribute the introduction, Victoria was a guest author here on PDP, and I met Jervey once at a party! I'm in excellent company.

And!

My very short story, Belinda's Birthday, is now an audiobook (voiced by me), available on Amazon for 89 cents. Because it's an MP3 download it's listed under Music. You can click on my little ad at the upper left or just click the link right here. I'll be interested in your honest feedback and, if you're so inclined, your Amazon reviews.

We have two entries awaiting your judgement in the Camelot Where You Are photo contest. I'm holding onto them until I get a couple more, for competition's sake. It's your turn! (Details are here).

Have a great weekend!

Theme Day: Water's Edge

 sometimes the watershed is wet

Conveniently timed with City Daily Photo's theme day, Pasadena's Department of Water and Power**, in collaboration with the Pasadena Museum of History, is launching a free exhibit at the Central Library entitled, Celebrating Pasadena's Water Centennial.

We live at the "water's edge" in Pasadena and that edge is receding, so I'm grateful for this extended opportunity to learn about where we stand.

  sometimes the watershed is dry

City Daily Photo has a new website! I used to give you a count of our worldwide members, but when we lost our previous site we lost our main way of staying in contact. And apparently many of those blogs were not active. Right now, Julie from Sydney, Australia is working with Peter from Sunshine Coast Daily Photo (also in Oz, thanks for the corrections, folks) to put it all back together. As of today's count, they had re-recruited 211* active blogs.


*see Julie's comments
**see Ann's comment

Be Afraid

Happy Halloween. Get scared but not too scared. Have fun. And if I come trick-or-treating at your house, please don't give me any candy. Just admire my costume and send me home.


(Scary guest photographer John Sandel says, "ooga-booga marriage.")

Little Free Library

 

You're walking along tree-lined North Catalina Avenue in Altadena** on a warm, autumn day. Just north of Atchison Street you pass a sort of pumpkin-on-a-stick with a window in it, and you think, "I need to take a closer look at this thing."

This is not a pumpkin-on-a-stick, it's a tiny library in a Halloween costume. You've discovered one of the three Little Free Libraries in Altadena**. There may be more around here, the list/map is not up-to-date, and there are hundreds more around the United States. The mission of the Little Free Library is to promote literacy, build a sense of community, and build more than 2,510 libraries around the world ("more than Andrew Carnegie," they say, though his are somewhat larger, and I've never seen one dressed up for the holiday).

The little window is deceiving--there are two full rows of books: paperbacks and hardbacks, nonfiction, cookbooks, novels, books on business, books for kids, and more. The idea is simple: just come and take a book. Leave a book, too, if you can. I left four yesterday so if you can't this time, it's on me.

**I had this wrong. This is inside the Pasadena border.

Zen Monday: #218

Some out-of-Pasadena (though not out-of California) Zen today.

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Kids and dogs, people, kids and dogs.

The winner of last Week's Camelot Where You Are contest is Susan, with her Wednesday rendition of #24, the Camelot Preschool (click the link or just scroll down to view). Congratulations, Susan! And thank you all for your entries. Susan wins a free copy of my new novel, Camelot & Vine, which, believe it or not, really will be published in the not-too-distant future. It's not happening as fast as I'd hoped, but it's happening.

Here are the stats. (Kids and dogs, I'm telling you.)

Currently, I have two more contest entries. I'm holding onto them until I get two more so we''ll have some competition. If we don't get two more, we'll have a run-off. One is from my New Zealander friend who lives in Germany and took the photo in New Hampshire. The other is a charmer from a blogger the Chieftess found. If you haven't sent in your entry, the details are here.

Parrot Season

My title's misleading. It's always parrot season in Pasadena.

Some say they escaped or were freed from a 1959 fire at Simpson's Gardenland and Bird Farm, or they flew up from Mexico and Central America. Some say they were spawned by remnants of Adolphus Busch's original Busch Gardens in the Arroyo. (The Parrot Project of Los Angeles has all the doo-doo.) Escaped pets joined up, everybody reproduced, et volant! We've got flocks and flocks.

Giant gangs of them roam our skies year 'round, bleating, "ohmygodohmygodohmygod!" like terrified Aunt Tillies. But winter is their big time. The noise they make can be deafening. I love them.

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VOTE!

While you're here, vote for your favorite Week Six entry in the Camelot Where You Are photo contest! Voting ends at midnight.