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Operation Fruit Rescue offers to come pick your fruit for you and donate i/3 of it to the Food Bank…
Great Idea.

Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton (OFRE. pronounced “offer”)

Established in 2009. OFRE is a volunteer organization of fruit owners and pickers.

Do you have a fruit tree that you don’t have the time or the energy to harvest?
Are there more berries than you can handle?
OFRE will send volunteers to your house at your convenience to pick your fruit or berries for you.

1/3 goes to you
1/3 goes to Edmonton’s Food Bank*
1/3 goes to the volunteers

Having coffee at Starbucks with my parents after a delicious but filling Easter meal at Haweli…

Through attrition, karma or a weird way of subconscious planning, I find myself working in an office full of women… nary a boy to be found. Ad Akemi into the mix (behind the camera) and you see the crew:

A couple of weeks ago, John Scalzi invited questions on his blog so I took a swing at it. While I didn’t get one of his fullpage answers, I did merit a short one. W00t!

In which I answer some of the writing-related questions:

MacBlaze:

Do authors (SF especially) ever use any of the massive over-functionality built into modern word processors? Or would they be just as happy with a typewriter that erased words and saved files?

Or, in other words, how much has the tool changed the trade?

Or, do they ever rtfm so they know how to use the damn things?

I wrote The Ghost Brigades on whatever the most basic notepad program that comes with the Mac is called and had no more problems writing it than I would have had on a more fully functional word processing program, so at least in my case I don’t really use most of the bells and whistles on modern word processing programs, and I suspect most other writers likewise use mostly the basic functions to get things done. I think the most useful tool I have for book writing, in fact, is the large monitor I have, which allows me to show two full pages of text at one time. I like that a whole lot. But in general I think the best thing computers do for writers is make it so much easier to edit the document while in process. Really, that’s such an amazing advancement over typing out physical hard copy that I’m still amazed that writing actually got done before computer word processing.

Ah Leah

That hurts. Let me try again…

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out. That’s all I have so far, courtesy of snoopy.

That hurts. Let me try again…

She picked up a pen and stabbed her eye. The eye bled. She screamed for help, but no one heard her over the loud barking of a dog named Bruce.

That hurts. Let me try again…

And some more. And some more, convincing her that she’d never make it to Friday.

How’s that so far?

Much better. Possibly even exactly what I needed. Hey, do I always have only one eye when you think about me?

That hurts. Let me try again…

Ha ha ha. Good. No, I tend to think of you with two perfectly functioning blue eyes.

[bat , bat, bat, bat, bat]

That hurts. Let me try again…

That was enthralling. Can I write a sequel?

Please do. I’ll be waiting.

That hurts. Let me try again…

-Stolen from the email journals of two strange ladies…

Man, that’s a lot of markup! Apparently Obama takes his speeches seriously…