Flying Whale Productions

One week into my new job!

I'm almost finished with my first week at a Garden Naturalist at Glenwood Gardens.

 It's only part time, but I'm loving it so far.  Sure I'm hot and stinky a the end of the day, but I like the work and I live all the folks I've met there. 

I'm going to try and bring my camera next week and get some photos of the part to post here.

I have a sunburn.

Cleaned the deck today.  I think I'm sunburned.  I'm afraid to take off my t-shirt and look at my back.

On a good note.  We got the deck furniture clean and uncovered and put the pergola awning up.  Chris cleaned the grill and we had burgers and watermelon for dinner.

Life don't get much better.

The weather has just right. for outside work.  Warm, but not muggy, with a nice breeze.  It was just about a perfect Summer day.

Detective Inspector Chen Series - Liz Williams

This in my June Review for Enduring Romance.

It's Summer. Time for a get-a-way to someplace warm and exotic.

OK, so we all can't take off and go to Tahiti, or even Florida, or Virginia Beach, but we can travel through books. Liz Williams' wonderful Detective Inspector Chen Novels make for a great reading vacation.

The series is set in Singapore Three a sprawling city in an alternative near future. Creatures from Chinese folklore walk the streets rubbing elbows with traditional grandmothers, and urban techno-punks. Heaven, Earth, and Hell are linked by next generation cell phones, and with the right paperwork business tycoons travel between the levels of reality. Det. Insp. Wei Chen is a detective who can summon ghosts. While investigating why the ghost of a wealthy industrialist's daughter has not shown up for her appointment in Heaven, Chen is paired with Seneschal Zhu Irzh, a vice cop from Hell, literally. He's a demon, but honest and honorable in his own way, and somewhat cursed with a conscience. Chen is middle aged and hard working, he has spent his professional life dedicated to a goddess, he does not rock the boat or break rules, except for marrying a beautiful young demon who he helped escape an arranged marriage in Hell. Needless to say that complicates things when her former fiancee and her family seem to bee connected with the missing ghost.

All this takes place in Snake Agent. In the other two books the plot thickens, a goddess goes mad, two nice young ghosts have a son, who might not be all he seems, Chen, and Zhu Irzh, and Celestial Warrior, who looks like a fragile, young girl, get sent on a fact-finding mission to Hell complications insure and various adventures take place. Oh and there are Dragons. Williams books are Urban Fantasies, but without the clichés that often make the sub genre feel stale these days. She does a wonderful job of realizing Singapore Three, and it's mirror city in Hell. Williams makes her readers feel like they have been to the city, from the small stifling hot go-downs and street markets to the glittering homes and offices of the super-rich business and industrial elite to Chen's house boat docked on the edge of the City's crowded harbor. Hell is run by powerful ministries, War, Epidemics, Lust etc. Upper Class demons, and souls who's family did not follow the proper ceremonies, or pay the right fees to get then into heaven live lives much like folks on earth , the lower levels are full of mindless horrors and hungry ghosts. Heaven is perfect, peach scented and maybe just a touch boring, for those not ready to become Celestial beings.

Chen, Zhu Irzh are great characters. The supporting cast is also wonderful. There is Chen's sweet demon wife Inari, her pet tea pot badger. Robin Yuan, is a wage slave at Paugeng, a powerful multi-national pharmaceutical company and Mhara , a timid young demon being used as a lab rat in Paugeng's research diversion. Jhai Tserai, is the Paugeng heiress, a brilliant business woman, murder suspect, not all the she seems and possibly Zhu Irzh's soul mate. Mrs. Pa is an elderly widow raising the grandson because her daughter's ghost didn't want him growing up in Hell. Mai a young woman sent to Hell by mistake when she died of cholera at age three.

So, if you can't get away the usual way to some place exotic this summer try diving into a books and taking a visit to Singapore Three.

Literalry Rivalry, clever promotion or both

 From an end-cap at Joseph-Beth my local bookstore.

Butcher has good taste. I like Scalzi and Novik.  I'm going to have to look up Name of the Wind.

Sidewalk to Garden project done

Part of what I have been doing since I lost my job has been working to turn a sidewalk that was already falling apart into a garden.  We rented a demolition hammer to break up the concrete.  Chris did HERO level work that day.  I then moved out all the rubble that was under the large concrete slabs.  In some place the rubble was as deep as a foot, and it was so thick and compressed that I had to pull 99% of it out by hand.

Unfortunately I deleted the original "before" photos but here is the job starting on day two.

 

Sorry for not being around

I have not been around much since Amity was sold and I lost my job.  I'm sorry about that.  I' hope to to be around more in the future, and I'll be doing some posts to let folks know way I was up to while I wasn't posting. 

Things I can change now that I am unemployed

I know that in addition to not knowing what I want to do when I grow up I have several other things that might be speed bumps in my job search.  I'm almost 50,   I'm a cancer survivor, and I'm not skinny.  Legally people are not supposed to look a any of those things when considering me for a job.  In reality I know all three will be taken into consideration. 

There is not much I can do about the first two things, but I can do something about my weight.  Just not sitting on my but at a desk all day seems to have been a good start.  I have not really done any serious weight loss activity yet and some of my clothes already fit better.  I have been  way more active with yard work and the like.  I'm also going to do yoga or go to the Y every day starting today. 

This morning I walked to the Y did 30 min on the elliptical walker and a round of weights then walked home.  I feel very healthy.

Job Hunting thought for the day

I'm now an unemployment statistic

Well, the other shoe dropped and I have been laid off. 

 No severance package, other than my accrued vacation time.

That really sucks after working for Amity for over twenty years.  I blame United Mail.  Their CEO out and out lied at the meeting where they told up they were buying Amity.  I asked straight out if they where going to take administrative people as part of the merger, and he said they were.  They didn't.  Only the top sales people, the coordinators who actually work with customers, and the people who run machines were made offers.  If the folks at United Mail had any spine they would have just said that up fount instead  of "we will be making offers to most, if not all, employees." 

They way they handled this makes me glad they did not make me an offer.  I think they lack integrity.

Pooh and the swine flu