CategoriesArchivesJanuary 2012 |
Nothing exciting? Sheesh…Good lord! The Dow down just shy of 200 points, gold up $19.70 and flirting with the idea of crossing the $1,000 an ounce barrier. Not to mention it’s only 7:30 in the morning. What a day to be away from my computer! I’m so curious to see how the day plays out. I wonder if all this whirlwind activity is going to show up in the other aspects of life as well? Drive carefully everybody. Posted by Meg Tilly on Thursday, March 13, 2008 in Chewing the Fat interesting to meI just plucked this out of this investment blog I read, Postcards from Cape Town. This particular piece that I’m quoting was written by John Authers/Financial Times. I wasn’t planning on blogging today, but this stuck out, so I wanted to share it. “The S&P financials was at a new low on Thursday, in dollars. But measure this index in euro and the scale of the collapse in the world’s confidence in the US financial system becomes more apparent. This index has now fallen more than half - 53% - since it peaked in euro terms as long ago as 2001.“ I knew the dollar has been in a nose dive for some time. I knew that the financial are in extreme crisis mode. I didn’t know that the drop was this deep. Oh, and on a lighter note, check out Yann Martel’s What is Stephan Harper Reading. Tanya Kyi, (tanyalloydkyi.blogspot.com) a fellow CWILL member emailed me complementing my oatmeal cookie recipe. She already made a batch, and if her family is anything like my family, I doubt there are any left. I even lick the crumbs off the plate with these cookies. Anyway her blog link was under her name, so I clicked on it and obviously read a great deal of it. That’s how I found out about Yann Martel’s Stephan Harper brilliance. It was great fun. You have to go back to the beginning of it though to get the full impact. Happy reading. I’m off to bed. Posted by Meg Tilly on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 in Chewing the Fat tax-timeI’m going to be out of town tomorrow. I’m taking Will to the airport and then hopping over to the island to have dinner with my boy, Dave. And in the morning I’m off to see Gerry, the most fabulous accountant in the whole world. He does a wonderful, through job, year in and year out, and he is funny and engaging and I feel lucky to have him in our family’s life. I don’t know what I’m going to do when he retires. Cry in my pillow I’m sure. I feel safe with him. Tax-time, tax-time, don’t you love it. It took me several days to sort out and organize all of my stuff. Don, on the other hand, gets up after dinner tonight and sighs heavily, “Ugh…I guess I’ll have to go get together my tax stuff.“ He disappears into his writing room, and LESS than two hours later, he’s mooching around in my writing room. “Don’t you have to get your tax stuff sorted?“ I ask, feeling smug that I plowed my way through my stuff over the last couple of weeks. “I’m done,“ he says. DONE! Now that’s just not fair! Granted, my stuff is way more complicated than his, and I’m doing it for the whole family, but still… Phooey. Anyway, I won’t be lugging my laptop over to the island since it is just a short trip, so unless I happen upon an Internet cafe, there will be no blog until the day after tomorrow. Let’s hope nothing really exciting happens in the meantime, because I am going to be totally out of touch. *By the way Emily and David, have you sent your stuff in? xo Posted by Meg Tilly on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 in Chewing the Fat CONDOMS…CONDOMS…CONDOMS…CONDOMS!For all of my teen blogger friends, I am very worried! I read this article today that surveyed a slew of teen age girls and followed up the survey with medical testing and they found that 1 in 4 teenage girls have a sexually transmitted disease. One in four! Heart breaking. Many of these girls had no idea that they were infected. Only one half of the girls acknowledged that they had sexual relations. However some teens do not believe that oral sex counts as having sex and that the only thing that does is intercourse. Girls and boys, you can get an STD from oral sex. Of the girls who admitted having sex a whopping 40% had at least one STD (sexually transmitted disease.) Now, there are some STD that can be cured with antibiotics. And as you know there are some that can’t. There is a new powerful strain of Gonorrhea that is drug resistant. There is no cure for HIV/AIDS yet. There is no cure for Herpes. It is vital that you always use a condom, unless you are in a stable long-term monogamous relationship, where both of you have been tested for STD’s and have been re-tested after the window it takes for the infection to show up in the blood work. Until that time YOU MUST USE CONDOMS! Also, all of my teen readers out there, if you’ve had any type of unprotected sexual activity, INCLUDING oral sex, please see your family doctor and get tested. You can make the appointment yourself. Just call up and make an appointment. The doctor will have your medical care card number on file and if you ask for discretion they will have to honor that. Some STD are very treatable. And if treated soon after you have become infected, can make the difference between being infertile or not and many other things. But as you know, there are no cures for some of the scarier STD’s and you could actually die from them. The 15-26 year old age group is now the group that has the highest rate of new HIV infections. I was also STUNNED to read that some teens believe that douching with Coca-Cola will kill any STD. This is ABSOLUTELY UNTRUE. PLEASE…PLEASE…PLEASE…BE CAREFUL! Much love, Meg xo Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 in Chewing the Fat ahh…now that was nice.David Jasper from The Bend Bulletin interviewed me today. I was a little cautious because of my last interview, but I had nothing to worry about. He was lovely. I really enjoyed talking to him and everything was about or related to the writing. Well, okay, almost everything. I don’t think I could get through an interview without mentioning my children, (to me, grown to the world) But again, I probably never would have felt the desperate need to write and make sense of my world and my past if it hadn’t been for them. Anyway, he was so nice and intelligent and with a quiet sense of humor, and his questions were writerly and it made me feel so good. Spring Break is towards the end of this week, and Will is off to far away places and Don and I drop the dogs off and head up to Bend Oregon, to Sun River Music and Books to see Deon and visit the school and read and chat. Then in April, I get to go to Emily’s reading festival at the beginning of the month, and then the BC Book Tour in the middle, to the grand Gala on the 26th. And they are talking about shooting a reunion documentary for The Big Chill (I’m not sure if I’ll be in it though, because the timing might not work out for me.) But boy, quiet little April, where I was going to lounge around, take a break from the writing work, eat yummy food and read a ton of good books is turning out to be not so quiet after all. Hmmm…this is a happy, contented, but quite boring blog. So, I think it would be wise for me to sign off before I bore you further. Sweet dreams! Posted by Meg Tilly on Monday, March 10, 2008 in Chewing the Fat Delicious Oatmeal CookiesTonight is closing night of the musical Will is doing with his school. There is a party afterwards at the Headmaster’s house and then another party after that. I find when teens are going to a party, it is a good idea to try to sneak food into their belly one way or another. Just in case. Hence, my oatmeal cookies! Who could resist? Delicious Oatmeal Cookies ingredients: butter, white sugar, light brown sugar, vanilla, egg, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, raisins, salt, old-fashioned oatmeal (important, don’t use “instant” or “quick”) Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. (If you have convection, you can use it with this recipe to make the cookies even crispier) -I cup of softened butter Mix in another bowl: Blend the flour/oatmeal etc. mixture into the butter/egg etc. mixture. When all the flour mixture is blended in, sprinkle in to the cookie dough, -1 1/4 cup of raisins. (I like a LOT of raisins, so I get one in almost every bite, but if you like only an occasional one then cut the raisins down to 1 cup or even 3/4 of a cup. OR you could forgo the raisins altogether, leave out the cinnamon, and sprinkle in semi-sweet chocolate chips and if you really want to get crazy you could chop up a handful of pecans and fling them in there as well. That’s the joy of being the cook. You get to decide these things, without an if-you-please to anyone.) Back to the recipe. Fold the raisins in, so they are spread out evenly. Then drop rounded teaspoons of the cookie dough onto a greased pan (greased with butter of course!) Smoosh the rounded balls slightly with the palm of your hand and bake for 10-12 minutes. And then, gobble them up while they are still warm, with a nice cold glass of milk. (The musical, by the way, was lots of fun, and Will was wonderful, of course! I should know. I went to every single evening performance they had.)
Posted by Meg Tilly on Saturday, March 08, 2008 in Recipes cobwebs from the past…I was interviewed by a guy named Chris today. There were a lot of movie questions and personal questions and I answered them all the best I could, but I don’t know, somehow the experience took the shine off of my maybe-I-really-am-a-real-author happiness. Like no matter how far I come, how far I distance myself, I’ll never be seen for who I am, how I stand in my life, in the world now. Like on Yahoo how when you punch in my name, somebody has posted nude pictures of me. Pictures that actually are illegal. When I did the movie that these images are lifted from, there was no photographer allowed on the set. I had complete photo approval. Someone has taken pieces of the actual film and is selling and distributing them as photos. Now, I acted in that movie because I loved Richard Adams book. I loved the whole complex battle between Christianity and Paganism. I thought the book was beautiful and was passionate about Karin. I agreed to do the movie for what amounted to a tiny fraction of what I usually got paid because I fell in love with the character. And then when I saw the directors cut of the movie, yes, the movie was shot on an extremely low budget, but oh my, I was proud. I thought that perhaps it was some of the best work that I’d ever done. Imagine my shock, when I went to the Premier several months later and saw the horrific mess the producers had made of this labor of love. They didn’t understand what they had. Each piece of the movie was like a tiny puzzle piece. Each part important to the whole. They thought the movie was too long, so they cut it. Not by gently lifting a sentence here and a sentence there. No, they hacked away at it with an sledge hammer. “Oh, this scene is too long, let’s cut it in half.“ Whack. What they didn’t understand is you can’t just cut a scene in half. Cut of the whole back end off it, because then there is no reason for the beginning. I think it was a language thing. Being from a different country, culture. Not understanding the nuances of what was being said. Heartbreaking. I almost quit acting after seeing how they brutalized Karin. It felt like a rape. And now, someone has lifted frames from that movie and have posted them on the Internet, out of context, nude photos of me as Karin, illegal photos, and it feels like a violation all over. Not just to me, but to my children as well. And my heart hurts. And I don’t know why, but in the interview today, I felt like a thing again. Like I could never wash the actress from me. And I tried to stay big. Stand tall in what I have accomplished, carved out for myself. But it was hard. And certainly, none of this is saying Chris did anything wrong. He’s just doing his job. Asking the questions that interest him. I had just hoped, having written three books, being for the most part well reviewed, well received, being nominated, that that was why he wanted to talk with me. And when I pointed out, around half way through the interview, that all the questions were about my past life, being an actress, etc. to his credit, he heard me, and asked a few writing ones. And it’s a rare man who will really listen, hear what is being said, stop in his tracks and change his course in a generous and polite way. A rare man indeed. So, Chris if you’re reading this. Thank you for that. Posted by Meg Tilly on Friday, March 07, 2008 in Chewing the Fat ta…da!Okay, here it is…The Big News… “Porcupine has been shortlisted for the 2008 Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize. One of the BC Book Awards, this prize is awarded to the author of novels, including chapter books, aimed at juveniles and young adults, as well as non-fiction books for children (including biography) which have not been highly illustrated.“ And in case there is any confusion…That’s MY PORCUPINE! I’ve been shortlisted. Woohooo! Congratulations to the other shortlisted authors. John Wilson, author of The Alchemist’s Dream, David Jones for Baboon: A Novel, Polly Horvath, author of The Corps f the Bare-Boned Plane, and Gayle Friesen, author of For Now. Isn’t this fantastic?! And we get to go on a road trip all over British Columbia. It’s going to be so much fun. Polly Horvath read right before me at Word On The Street, and she seemed like she would be a very nice, down-to-earth, jolly sort of road trip companion. (She also wrote, the award winning book, Everything on a Waffle, that my sister Suzanne sent to me.) Tra..la..la…la…LA! I’m shortlisted for the Shelia A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize. I never thought I’d ever get shortlisted for anything. Oh, hey, and I googled Shelia A. Egoff last night after I got the very exciting news, and this woman was amazing. She accomplished so much in her life, which makes the whole thing feel even more special. Posted by Meg Tilly on Thursday, March 06, 2008 in Chewing the Fat A lovely day.Today was a wonderful day for a variety of reasons. The first great thing that greeted me this morning, (besides my absolutely fabulous husband lying next to me) was the news that some medical researchers at the University of Alberta have found a gene that can attack and contain the HIV virus in the cell and make it so it can’t spread to other cells. This is thrilling news and watching them interview this guy, I felt all cautiously hopeful in my belly The second good thing about today was that I took the ferry over to the island and spent the day with my sister, Becky. I got the grand tour of her new house and we had tea and she gave me a beautiful butter dish and tried to give me her favorite earrings, but I was too clever for her. I know her well enough to know that whatever she digs out of her jewelery box and casually tosses into my hand saying, “these I never wear,“ her eyes darting to the side and unable to rise up to mine because she is a lousy liar, I know by now, after 47 years that those must be her very favorite earrings and that is why she is trying to slough them off on me. I had to use all of my bargaining skills not to walk out of her house with my pockets stuffed to the gills with all of her treasures. We had too much lunch. I ate and she nibbled, which probably explains why I weigh a good 15-20 lbs more than her. She hasn’t figured out yet that women in their forties are SUPPOSED to sport little muffin bulges when they sit down. Then, we zipped by the shopping center to find a pair of comfy earrings for me to sleep in so my new-to-me (I did it 10 months ago) pierced ears won’t close up in the night. She is an expert at navigating the mall. I was VERY impressed. Then after a day of sisterly fun, we raced back to the ferry and we managed, by the skin of our teeth, to get me on the appropriate ferry. (I almost missed it, we were having such fun.) And the good thing about doing two ferry rides in one day is that I managed to get all my writing work done, so while I was having a good time with my sister, I didn’t have to feel guilty. And then, to top off this really wonderful day, I get home and find out that PORCUPINE is on Foreword Magazine’s Book of The Year 2008 Shortlist AND… Well, I can’t give you the exciting news about the other great thing that happened, because their press release doesn’t go out until tomorrow, but I can tell you this… I am jumping up and down about it! Much love, Meg Posted by Meg Tilly on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 in Chewing the Fat Yay!The sofas have arrived! Oh thank goodness. And guess what…my bookcases are coming TOMORROW! Am I lucky or what? Now I won’t be here for their big arrival, as I am going over to the Island to visit my sister, Becky, but when I come back…HOORAY! I can finally get my writing room back in order. Alright, I’m off to watch The Biggest Loser. I love that show. Last week though, I have to admit, I was a little surprised when my husband started bawling at the end when Mark did the right and honorable thing. “Humph,“ I can already hear Don saying. “I wasn’t bawling, Meg. I was a little moved is all.“ Right. Okay. He wasn’t bawling, his face just got really red and he had tears streaming down his cheeks. But he wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination bawling. Not a sob squeaked out from between his lips. Yay! My sofas have come. I’m going to go sit on them and eat chocolate and drink red wine and gloat. Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, March 04, 2008 in Chewing the Fat a requestI just got an email from Pamela Osti and apparently she is getting inundated with letters and emails and requests that have nothing to do with Porcupine. For those of you who have been trying to write to me, via her, you need to know that although she sent one batch of stuff over to me, she won’t be forwarding any more. It’s not that she’s being mean or anything like that. I have met her face to face and spent several days in her company when I was reading in Toronto. You could not find a nicer person. She won’t be forwarding any letters or requests, media or otherwise that don’t have to do with Porcupine because she just doesn’t have the time. Between Pamela and Melissa they handle ALL of Tundra’s books and authors. Take a look at their website. Every Spring and Fall a new load of books come out. All of them needing attention and care and reviews and interviews needing to be set up. Tundra is a wonderful publisher, but it is by no means large. The staff is very, very busy, the publishing business being what it is. They can’t function smoothly if their email and mail boxes are clogged up with anything that is not book related. To you it is something that you’d like to say to me. To them it is spam. Please know that I appreciate all of your good wishes and kind thoughts, but you can’t keep sending stuff to Pamela. I don’t want my publisher to think I’m too much trouble and decide to stop publishing me. So PLEASE, send only Porcupine related stuff to Pamela Osti. Thank you for your understanding with this matter. xo Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, March 04, 2008 in Chewing the Fat a dilemmaPresident George W. Bush says we aren’t in a recession. Okay. Here’s a quote from an article I read this morning. “I would say, by any commonsense definition, we are in a recession,“ Buffett said on CNBC. And yes…that is The Warren Buffett. Hmmm… Bush says there is no recession, Buffett says we are in one. Who are you going to trust? Seriously, I had to laugh. Posted by Meg Tilly on Monday, March 03, 2008 in Chewing the Fat a rainbow!I was popping some peanut butter cookies into the oven when I glanced up and saw that rain had started pouring down. The amazing thing about this is that it is raining, but there is beautiful, bright, brilliant sunshine streaming into the house, filling every room with the promise of Spring and happy nodding flowers and cherry blossoms floating to the ground. I was very excited and ran to various doors and windows so I could witness the spectacular rainbow that I was certain was out there. You can’t have such enthusiastic rain in conjunction with such happy sunshine and NOT have a rainbow. But no matter how much I looked, and believe me I’ve looked, from all directions, and yet…no rainbow. And then I figured it out. I can’t see the rainbow, because it must be sitting right on the roof of our house! So everybody else who is out scouring the horizon for it, can see it. And it is the most beautiful rainbow the world has ever seen and it is resting on the roof of our house because there is such love and joy and happiness in here, and that happiness that I have been blessed to find IS the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I don’t know why I’ve been so lucky in my life, but I have been. And I am grateful. And I would put good money on the fact that for this split second in time, with that rainbow pouring into our house, that everybody who sees it, will know how just how happy we are. Posted by Meg Tilly on Saturday, March 01, 2008 in Chewing the Fat a mish-mash of things and a bit of a rant, so if you don’t want to hear it, don’t read.Good lord. I just finished doing a couple hours of rewriting and I thought I’d check out the markets for a breather. Good heavens! The Dow is down 301 points, even the gold stocks, which doesn’t make sense, because gold is still continuing to rise. Right now spot price for gold is at $971 (and for those of you who have been reading my blog for a while you know that that is up $97.60 from the quote I gave you of $873.40 on January 8th 2008) Interesting huh? Why isn’t gold making front page news? If you go look at a chart of golds action since, say, 2000, you are going to be astounded by what you see. Okay, on to something else. My sofas. The minute I found out way back in December that my sofas were going to be headed for LA, I forced myself to go shopping, ordered some, and was assured that it would take 7-8 weeks until delivery. This was on Dec. 22nd. My sofas and other assorted furniture went out of my front door, via, the moving company on January 9th. No big deal. I told myself. There are other places to sit in the house. I’m lucky to even have a house. So, I don’t have sofas for a few weeks? So what. Well, I still don’t have sofas. And its been 9 weeks and 5 days. Not only that. The beautiful bookcases that I ordered at around the same time were promised to me in 4-6 weeks. Guess what? They haven’t arrived as well. I am tired of chasing the dogs away from that side of the room where all the writing I have ever done in my whole entire life is melding into one big jumbled up mess. This is taking almost twice as long as they said it was going to be! Why can’t people do what they promise? Why do they have to make out like I’m the one who made the mistake, the error, when in fact, I asked them point blank, “How long,“ and they told me and I WROTE it down. Right there, in the store. Because I needed to know, for my own peace of mind, how long my home would be in disarray. And then when I call to ask them what is going on? And why the hold up, they try to make me think I am going crazy. “Oh we never would have said that. No, you must have misheard us.“ Excuse me. Not only did I not mishear you, but when I called LAST week, your husband said that they were going to be delivered this week, and sorry for the delay. And if they’d told me it was going to be 10 weeks or 12 weeks, then I would know what I was dealing with, and I wouldn’t have been feeling like I was on hold. Grrrrr… I’m so glad that I was able to buy most of the other stuff from an second-hand antique store. Beautiful things, good quality. I try to go that route as much as possible because it is better for the environment, and thank goodness, because I had arranged to have them delivered that furniture on January 10th so we’ve had a table and chairs, thank god! Try blowing out birthday candles, on the kitchen floor, with two dogs galloping around. It wouldn’t have been fun. Okay, my furniture rant is done. Time to go have some candy. Posted by Meg Tilly on Friday, February 29, 2008 in Chewing the Fat blogging chagrinOkay, so Wednesday, I wrote that I was going to try to not inundate you with lengthy blogs. That I was going to try to blog a little shorter. Thursday morning I kicked off with a blog that wasn’t as long, perhaps, as the two previous days, but, as my husband so kindly pointed out, it wasn’t exactly short either. “Never mind,“ I said breezily. “It only seems long, because I inserted those two pieces of those other articles. I actually didn’t write that much.“ And then I got the…ahem….Jenny phone call. Okay, I have no excuse. I got carried away with the excitement of the moment. I blogged a little more than perhaps was necessary. And I know you will find this hard to believe, but that was me being restrained! If I had blogged as much as I wanted, while all the poker drama was going on…well, we don’t even want to go there. So, I’m giving you a breather, a short blog today. Unless, of course, something else really exciting happens, and then all bets are off!
Posted by Meg Tilly on Thursday, February 28, 2008 in Chewing the Fat |
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