Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Home Is Where the Arrrgghh Is

Forgive me being a sporadic blogger of late. We're in the middle of renovating our lovely old terrace house and the place is a shambles. To wit...

This is what our kitchen looked like about about a week ago. Sure, it wasn't great to start with. We'd bought the place half-renovated.



But if you thought that was bad, take a look at it now. Here's what it looked like on the weekend. We built a new roof over the old one and now we're in the process of demolition:



And some day, we hope we'll end up with this when renovations are complete:



 So what's keeping you busy at the moment?







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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

What Goes Around Comes Around...and Around...and Around

Today I received an email begging people to adopt two adorable Labradors, Cookie and Coco. In the email, the owner said she was moving overseas and couldn't take the doggies with her. The pair had to be re-homed together because they couldn't bear to be apart. The story tugged at my heart strings, especially since I've been watching episodes of the harrowing 'Animal Cops: Houston' nonstop for the past week.

The email included a note from the last person who sent it which gave me the impression Cookie and Coco belonged to her "father's friend." So I forwarded it to a few people who might be able to help. I felt a little niggle, though, 'cause I've been burned by sob story emails that turned out to be hoaxes. But then I thought, "Why would anyone send phony emails about animals in peril?" The story seemed so sincere, and just look at these gorgeous, soon-to-be-homeless faces.



I thought about the whole thing a bit longer after telling my friends, then I decided to google the contact email addy given in the email. All the results came up with variations of "The Cookie and Coco saga is a big fat hoax!" Grrrrr!

Why would anyone waste time circulating this **** if it isn't true?

Well, it turns out the story was true once upon a time--a real-life Lab pair were indeed in need of adoptive parents and they did find the right home. They're living happily ever after according to reports. Now spammers have gotten hold of the story and I suspect they're collecting addresses from the kind people who respond to the cry for help. God knows what they're doing with that info.

Anyway, the point is if you get a sob story email, google it first! Or check out this rumour-busting site.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Review News

At the We Love YA blog, we have a lovely benefactor who sends us piles of YA books to review. It's like Christmas! Go on over to the blog and check out what Natalie Hatch and Diane Curran have to say about Banquo's Son and Thirteen Reasons Why, respectively.

Tomorrow (Tuesday, November 3), I'll have an interview with Melbourne writer Gabrielle Williams about her book Beatle Meets Destiny. Dash off a comment and you could win a copy.