TQB is a 588 page manuscript. It’s flipping huge. It weighs six and a half pounds. And I know people who write mss twice that long. (Actually, if we hadn’t decided to cut TQB where we did, it would be at least 200 pages longer, so apparently I’ve got it in me to go long too.) But I reel in awe and fear of people who write 1K+ page manuscripts. Anyway, the monster has been shuffled into an envelope and shall at some point later today wing its way off to New York. Whew.
Goodness. A very fast-talking American girl just rang the doorbell and tried to sell me €190 worth of makeup. Even if I wore makeup I wouldn’t be tempted, in part because their showpiece was a bunch of lipglosses (lovelycolorsandthey’llevenplumpyourlips! said the girl. I did not say, “My lips are already full, thanks,” as there seemed no point), and of the various kind of makeup I dislike, lipstuff ties for #1 on the list with fingernail polish, the idea of which just makes me twitch (it makes my fingers heavy). But even more, the colors for the eyeshadow and blush and the like were almost all entirely bad for me. They’d have looked good on
Also, I think if I were selling makeup I’d do a better job on my own, as her eyeliner was not straight and was too black, her lashes were too heavily done and stick-like, and the rest of her face was entirely neutral in color. I’d also do something more with my hair than have it scraped back in a ponytail.
Everybody’s a critic, eh? :)
Oh, God. The car started overheating while Geni and Kevin were here, and when we drove it the mile from our house to the train station last week it really started overheating, so Ted brought it to a mechanic today, and the head gasket’s blown. There’s absolutely nothing we did wrong, the mechanic said, it’s just that sometimes that happens. And it’d cost a thousand euro to fix. Not only do we not *have* a thousand euro, but the only reason to get it fixed anyway would be to sell it, and who the hell knows what we’d sell it for. Not as much as we’d have put into it, with the cost of purchase, insurance, and fixing a blown head gasket.
Apparently we need to find a salvage yard. Anybody know of one around Cork?
There is one off cork airport hill. I know there are others.
Sympathy – I had a similar problem with my last car just before I got rid of it. Slightly smaller problem but it cost 400 to cure and then about 6 moths later another similar smaller problem. Luckily I was buying newer car and the garage took old one from me.
Congrats on getting the mss out of the door, and commiserations on the head gasket. BTDT – messy and entirely unwelcome.
We had ’98 Punto that died when its head gasket went. It’s a common failure mode for them apparently.
We flogged to a salvage yard somewhere of the airport road for not very much. I’d have to do some looking around to get the name/place.
When I did my own novel, everything was done entirely electronically at every stage of the game. I printed out a copy of “galleys” for my own reference, but the editing was done directly in the document and then conveyed back to the printer as a PDF. But then again, I was doing this whole production on my own and didn’t have to deal with a particular company’s production flow…
We flogged ours for fifty euro to the man up the hill near the airport. He had promised us a hundred but nearly had us drive it away again when he realised it was an automatic (which we had mentioned). Mr wol very wisely tried to look disappointed and took the cash and didn’t mention that we would have paid him that much to take it.
Point of order. You can claim back your car tax for the unused portion of the year if you scrap the car so get it done as soon as youc an. You have to get a form witnessed by your local garda station – ours was on the back of the vehicle reg’ form but the form has changed design (although it could still be there).