Month: June 2021

Monday (Tuesday) Earworm: Beck

On By angeliquejamailIn Beck, Monday earworm, musicLeave a comment

Welcome to all the new blog subscribers who have been joining us over here this week! We’re so glad you’re here. 🙂

It’s always a good day when Beck is on tap. Enjoy this earworm of very good music with a very okay-ish video. But fun fact: the bellydancer you see in it for just a quick moment is Ansuya, one of the Bellydance Superstars from about fifteen or so years ago, and she is (or was back then — I don’t really know her now and didn’t know her well then) a fabulously lovely person. If you’re interested in bellydance, you should check out her instructional and performance videos. Good stuff.

Crowdsourcing Information: Solar Panels

On By angeliquejamailIn crowdsourcing, renewable energy, solar panels2 Comments

I’m curious whether anyone reading this blog has experience using solar panels at their home or business. I have some questions and would really love to talk to someone who has actually done it. It might be the most help to me if you live in the US, but I’ll talk to anyone who has experience with them. Please let me know if you’ve used them and would be open to a conversation about it. Thank you in advance!

P.S. — Earworm coming later tonight or maybe tomorrow. We’ll have to see how this evening goes. 

SONIC CHIHUAHUA Issue #2 Out This Week!

On By angeliquejamailIn literature, Postcards from La-La Land, Sonic Chihuahua, writing, zines4 Comments

Hello, zine readers! The second issue of Sonic Chihuahua is out this week. So, subscribers and other fans: watch your mailboxes for it to arrive very soon, if you don’t actually already have it. This month’s cover is a hot-summery acid green, which makes Han very happy.

In other news, the clerk at the post office yesterday morning saw my stack of envelopes and said, “Looks like you and I are gonna get to know each other real well today.”

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can click here for more information about my zine and click here for a marvelous review of the first issue. And if you want to be included in this awesome endeavor, drop me a line in the comments and I’ll send you one. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has already expressed their support and admiration of this fun little project.  🙂  You warm the cockles of our hearts.

Happy reading!

My Little Free Library: A Note

On By angeliquejamailIn books, literature, Little Free Library4 Comments

Yesterday when I went out to put some more books into my Little Free Library I found this delightful thank-you note.

I love being the steward of a Little Free Library. Sometimes the people who use it will leave me thank-you notes or holiday cards telling me how much the LFL means to them, how much they love having one in our neighborhood. I cannot even tell you how much I love and appreciate that our LFL has been embraced by our community! Honestly, it sees a brisk business and has been largely self-sustaining since about two or three weeks after my husband built and installed it, several years ago. (He’s working on an extension for it now, a large shelf to attach to the bottom, for taller children’s books. I’ll be sure to post about it once it’s done.)

Every now and then, my stock runs a little low. I’ll start running out of certain genres of books from the substantial pile of them that runs along the wall of our dining room. In particular, new releases and more recent hardcovers, especially in the YA category, tend not to make their way back home to the LFL. But I don’t mind much, because as far as I’m concerned, if someone falls in love with one of our books and cannot part with it, okay. I’m happy to have helped make that bookish love connection! And usually people will leave something else in its place, so the stock is always rotating. Periodically, I’ll put out a call among my friends and colleagues to see if anyone has any books they want to donate, and folks always come through. So there will always be more books.

Here is what I would tell the thoughtful stranger who placed this note for me yesterday:

I’m so sorry you lost your books in your move. That happened to me once, when I was in college. My parents moved from the house I’d grown up in to a new place in the middle of the semester, so I wasn’t there to participate in a meaningful way. I lost a whole crate of paperbacks, some of which I’ve never been able to replace. It still makes me a little sad, because books are such a part of who I am and have always been. I’ll keep putting more books into this Little Free Library, and you’re welcome to keep taking them. Let me know what you like to read, and I’ll keep an eye out for that for you. Welcome to the neighborhood.  🙂

Happy reading, everyone!

My Newsletter Is Migrating…

On By angeliquejamailIn author platform, writing2 Comments

Authors these days have to manage a lot of platforms. Like, a LOT. And periodically it’s a good idea to evaluate all of them to see what’s serving us well and what could maybe be improved — or maybe needs to be pruned.

I’ve been doing that this summer. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and this blog are all working out well for me. My newsletter…is an albatross. I’ve been using Mailchimp and don’t love it. The time-consuming and somewhat non-intuitive (at least for me) process of creating a newsletter means I don’t do it every month, so it’s not super-effective. Engagement there is low, unlike on this blog and the rest of my social media, where it’s much better! So I just sent out my last newsletter with Mailchimp today. (At least, the last for now. Never say never on resurrecting something in the future. But for now, don’t look for it to happen.)

Instead, I now intend to make all my announcements in detail here on the blog, though you will still see nods to them on my other social media. My hope is that everyone who was getting the newsletter will now migrate here to Sappho’s Torque. I’m also intending to devote the time and energy I would have spent working on (or fretting about) the newsletter into making this blog even better, so here’s to the best of intentions.  😉

In case you want to see that last newsletter, here you go. Just click this link to see the Authorland missive.

Onward and upward!

Monday Earworm: Madonna

On By angeliquejamailIn Madonna, Monday earworm, music, Sonic Chihuahua, zines2 Comments

I know it’s Tuesday.

Somehow summer break is even busier than the school year. I always think I’m going to have all this time and flexibility, but the first couple of weeks of June still end up being a catch-up on all the appointments I had to put off during the last six weeks of school. Ah well! C’est la teaching vie.

Yesterday this song came on the radio and it was JUST the right thing I needed to hear at JUST the right time I was in the mood to hear it. It came out in 1990, I think, the start of a very dynamic and changeable decade that ended in maybe no way like it started. The 80s influence is quite strong here, of course, but you can tell things are also very clearly moving forward.

But why didn’t I post this yesterday? I meant to, truly, but my afternoon and evening were taken up completely with finishing the second issue of Sonic Chihuahua — which piece of 90stalgia, by the way, got an absolutely delightful write-up over at Postcards from La-La Land today! Woot! Go check it out, and while you’re there, browse Nerija’s blog, which is really wonderful and has all kinds of goodies about literature and mermaids and (here lately) zines.

And if you’re a subscriber to Sonic Chihuahua, your zines should be coming to you soon. And if you aren’t yet but want to be, drop me a note in the comments!

And in the meantime, enjoy this earworm.