Search for Speedy Internet Service: A Saga

January’s not over yet, so I figure I still have time to squeak in another one of those retrospective type posts, right?

I already mentioned the best thing for me in my professional writing life in 2009. What about the second best thing? That has to be Getting High Speed Internet Service. Yes, complete with capitals and italics. Why was this such a big deal?

Um, imagine trying to blog, set up and maintain a website, work with an editor at a book packager to send and retrieve photo selections, send manuscripts, send and receive documents with tracked changes, and download pdfs for final editing all on DIALUP! And I should mention that all that needs to be done while SHARING a single telephone and internet line with your hubby who also runs a business out of the home. !!!

Okay, so I mostly didn’t do all that on dialup. I left the building, so long as I could work around the family schedule, and made use of public libraries and the local coffee house and the rec centre which all offered free WiFi. Thank god for their existence and may they be handsomely patronized and thrive forever and ever amen is all I have to say on that.

The ability to do all I need to do to keep up and keep on from my own home work space has made my life a whole lot easier. I count myself very, very fortunate. But you can be forgiven for wondering why I’m going on and on about this. Couldn’t I just sign up for better internet?

Nope.

I tried for years, like at least 5 of them, to get better than dialup service. The answer was always no, sorry, you’re not in an area where we can offer that service.

This didn’t make any sense whatsoever to me. I had people who had highspeed internet to the left of me, people who had highspeed internet to the right of me. And yet I, apparently, was not eligible. I was not worthy. But I could not wrap my head around that, especially when there is only one wire that GOES RIGHT BY MY HOUSE?!

Okay, so I have no real leg to stand on when it comes to technological know-how. It just seemed bizarre. Yes, I live in the boonies, but I’m a main road boony resident not a backroad boony resident. And it was the way I was being denied when my neighbours were not that irked me so much.

So I called every 6 months to ask, politely, if I could sign up. I’d get a junkmail flyer proudly announcing some new internet service or package available NOW in my area. I’d call or I’d fill out the form on the internet with my details. I always got the same result: Nope, sorry, enjoy your dialup.

But one day…

Well, this is getting rather long, isn’t it? In fact, it’s a pretty long story overall. It’s a Saga, I’m not kidding. But I promise it’s pretty entertaining, especially if you’ve ever tried to talk to a big Corporate Conglomerate about anything.

I’ll start the installments tomorrow.

[Go directly to Installment One]

© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.

Stephen Leacock Said it Best

I’m feeling decidedly Lord Ronaldish this week. Who the heck is that? He’s this fictional guy:

“Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.”  (Stephen Leacock, Gertrude the Governess: or, Simple Seventeen)

I’m now a couple weeks into the new year and I’m between work-for-hire writing projects. I should be ecstatic! I should be gleefully ticking things off my colossal to-do list. But instead I’m feeling some sort of confusion at all the seemingly endless possibilities. I feel like I could go riding madly off in a whole bunch of directions, and I don’t know which damned direction would be best.

As I was sitting here, trying to figure out what to do next, a vague recollection of that Stephen Leacock quote popped into my head. Wanting to be sure I got it right, I Googled the approximate phrase and Mr Leackock’s name, and presto! There was the citation I needed. I found my copy of the book Laugh with Leacock and there it was.

Hmmm, all that was decidedly NOT on my to-do list.

I think after living 2009 under the pressure of almost constant deadlines, this little breather is freaking me out. So where should I start? It’s just a little breather, really. It will be coming to an end shortly–

Excuse me while I go fling myself onto my horse and, well, you already know the rest now, don’t you?

© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.

Keeping up with…Myself

Like most writers, I keep an archive of at least one copy of everything of mine that’s been published. So, in a sudden fit of organization the other day, I realized that I’ve not yet seen the Babybug issue with the reprint of my poetic story “Fall Fun” in it.

I poked around the internet (what did we ever do before it?) and think this is the cover of the issue, October 2009. Lovely cover, lovely magazine.

My own kids loved this magazine as babies/toddlers. For now I will enjoy this virtual edition in hopes I’ll get a real copy soon. And yes, that is a friendly hint to the appropriate powers that be. :>

© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.

Big Belated Book Week Thank You

I admit it: I mostly avoided my computer over the holidays. I think I needed the break. Either that or it was just so darned hard to find it on my desk, practically buried with papers and cluttered with miscellaneous office type crap, that really needed to be tidied before anything else happened. So it just didn’t happen.

My first post of 2010 will look back on 2009 and give a big belated Thank You for the biggest thing to happen to me in my writing life: You know that has to be the TD Grade One Giveaway. I’ve been remiss in not doing up a roundup before now.

The whole experience was something not likely to be duplicated for me, ever again. It’s hard to put it all into words (and isn’t that a bit ironic?). It’s not just that my book was given to so many Canadian kids…

It’s not just that I got to tour southern Ontario with the book’s illustrator, Scot Ritchie…

And it’s not just that I got to see my book cover and name in huge type behind the TD bank president’s head at a big publishing industry gala with free hors d’oeuvres and cocktails…

But all those things were excellent!

Writers mostly write alone, you know? I’m holed up in my little office (or really my supposed-to-be-a-dining-room writing space) trying to create something that fascinates me while hoping I’m not completely off my rocker and that someone else would also like to read it and in fact actually pay money to do that. Then I found out that the book’s been chosen for this program that enabled it to reach EVERY grade one child in Canada. How do you wrap your head around that? The TD and the Canadian Children’s Book Centre do an amazing job supporting Canadian book creators and literacy for Canadian kids. Thank you to them!

The schools and libraries Scot and I visited all Book Week were welcoming without exception, and the grade one audiences were always terrific, playing along with our action games and listening to the process of how I wrote the book and how Scot illustrated it.

Some public schools wore uniforms, some did not. Some schools were new and some were old. Some schools were small and some were, well, HUGE. (We went to the largest elementary school in North America and saw all approximately 240 grade one students. Yes, three groups of 80 kids back-to-back!) Quite a few of the schools had done a lot of work talking about the history of transportation and then displayed their work around the school. That was awesome to see!

As an unexpected bonus, we received some lovely hardware,

and some beautiful, er, software…?

Thank you to all who hosted us!

Scot and I got to and around the five cities by train and taxi. Given that the book is about transportation, it was quite appropriate to be using a couple different types of transportation while talking about that topic. I recorded some of the sights seen from the train each night during the tour here on the blog. They’re filed under the Book Week 09 label.

Overall the opportunity to connect with all those kids made a big impression on me personally. And I think it was wonderful for those kids to see that an author and an illustrator are just regular people. We don’t sit down and write or sketch something perfect the first time around. We work hard at revising our words and our pictures just the way they do when they write and draw.

To see the connections made between the book, the audience, the topic, the teachers…wow. Thank you for Book Week, book publishers, book creators, book readers, book supporters, and books everywhere!

© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.