Ceallaigh's Blog
As we were leaving the farmer's market today, we stopped to say hello to a woman we've had pleasant conversations with before and to ask whether or not her fruit tarts were vegan. She had said in the past that she might try to make them vegan a time or two, but our attendance has been spotty at the market this summer, and we've missed the few times she's veganized them for us. One of her customers asked if we were allergic to gluten, and I quipped that no, we were allergic to death and suffering. I meant for it to be funny, and I underplayed the comment right away. But it was clearly the wrong thing to say, and in the woman's defense, I can understand why it might have seemed confrontational.
We've had a few irons in the fire here at Taigh MacCath-Moran and haven't been quite ready to talk about them until recently. But now that things are sorted, I wanted to announce a couple of cool changes in our lives.
First, we're finally permanent residents of Canada, which means we're not tied to our working visas any longer and can move about as we please, not that we'd ever live anywhere but Nova Scotia. There's a celebratory pub night in the works, so if you're local, consider yourself invited (and if you're not and want to come anyway, consider yourself invited to stay at our house overnight). I'll post the date on that once it's finalized.
Our wine appreciation experience at the Muir Murray Estate Winery was really great last night. We began with sangria on the deck, where the Annapolis Valley and the Bay of Fundy provided us with a beautiful view. Then we were taught to pair wines with food based on complimenting and contrasting flavors, something I've always wanted to learn about but have never taken the time. The chef prepared thoughtful vegan counterparts to the tasting hors d'oeuvres, and the wines themselves were lovely (I'm especially fond of the Gilgamesh Port, in part because it's delicious and in part because it's a Port called Gilgamesh).
Anyway, I can't recommend their wines too highly, and if you ever have the opportunity to attend an event there, you should!
As part of our weekly instruction in Gaelic class last night, we were talking about recent events in our lives, and our teacher asked me about Hal-Con. This precipitated a discussion of my guest appearance there next year and a question about the kind of science fiction I write. Now, I don't have the Gaelic to describe it yet, so I slipped into English and called it sociological science fiction. When that definition didn't quite suffice I offered 'serious science fiction', which it is, to some degree.
One of my fellow students, a man some years older than me responded in a way I'm sure most of the spec. fic. writers and readers on my f-list have encountered before:
Said Student: (smirk) Serious science fiction? Serious? Serious? (and later) Serious science fiction? That's an oxymoron.