Getting into the Christmas Spirit (s)

It seemed like I good idea to do a blog entry after I just proposed to Ted that we should pick some random house in the neighbourhood and sing Christmas carols outside their door. Might be fun. Ted said, "Great idea, especially since neither of us can carry a tune." He's also pretending not to know the words to any songs - I'll bet you're wondering where this is leading, and all I can say, is nowhere good.

I finished the edits on Second Chances and submitted to Allister. The odd thing was that I had included some song titles that I swore were released by 1971 and they actually weren't. As I verified dates, I spent a good part of my day listening to old hits on Youtube - what a treasure trove of music history. I could have sworn I was stuck dancing to "Stairway to Heaven" (which is a very, very long song) at a school dance before '71, but turns out that was a physical impossibility. The good news is that I'm younger than I thought.

I'm taking a few week break from writing except for Christmas cards. I also have to do the acknowledgement for Second Chances and I'm trying to come up with a quote from the era for the beginning. I had this great idea to use a line from songs released in 1971 at the heading of each chapter, but copyright was a thorny issue that couldn't be overlooked. It's really too bad, but I would have had to approach each record company to ask permission and would likely have had to pay. I just don't have time to do the legwork. Allister says that he'll be presenting the book to sales reps in December even though release is September 2012. They also sends out ARCs (advance reading copies) to reviewers six months before publication and can't miss the window.

So, just kicking back this weekend, doing some gift shopping and watching curling on tv. My daughter Lisa was at the Canada Cup in Cranbrook and lost a couple of nailbiters yesterday to finish just out of the top three teams; otherwise, we'd be watching her on TSN this weekend. Lisa finished second amongst the leads at the event (they keep stats of each shot thrown) so we're pretty proud of her.

Since carolling is off the table, maybe I can convince Ted to put up some outside lights before Christmas Eve this year. It's become a cat and mouse kind of manouveur so wish me luck. He's getting way too good at dodging my big ideas.