CategoriesArchivesFebruary 2011 |
Oh, also…Around a week and a half ago, we received a Fed-ex package. It was very mystifying since neither one of us was expecting anything. I carried it into the kitchen and with the help of a kitchen knife it’s contents were revealed. A banged-up box of what looked like rather expensive Italian chocolate. A card was stuck under the ribbon, but there was no name or greeting attached. “Um! Chocolate,“ I said, popping one into my mouth. Italian chocolate is fancy, but personally, I don’t find them very tasty. It’s weird how I keep giving it a go though, like maybe this time it will magically be better. “What are you doing?!“ Don said, staring at me horrified. “Eating chocolate,“ I answered suddenly feeling guilty and not sure why. “Spit it out!“ His voice rising several octaves. “Are you nuts? You don’t know who sent that. It could be poisoned!“ “Don’t be ridiculous,“ I said, swallowing just to show him he wasn’t the boss of me. “Meg, for god-sakes!“ And even though he had a point, I dug through the bruised box of chocolates looking for something that might possibly taste better than the last piece, (that I would have spit out, if he hadn’t demanded that I do, because why waste the calories on something that isn’t making my mouth happy?) “I’m serious, Meg. You shouldn’t eat that.“ He was sweating now, quite profusely. I took a jaunty bite of the new piece of chocolate. Yuck. It wasn’t tasty either. “It’s free,“ I said, chewing nonchalantly. “I can’t watch this,“ he said, like I was going to fall to the floor in spasms at any moment. “Then don’t,“ I said like I didn’t have a care in the world. So, he took my advice and left the room, for which I was extremely grateful. As soon as I heard him pad down the hall and into the family room, I grabbed the garbage can from under the sink and spat the candy out. Then I stuck my head under the faucet and rinsed it throughly. It’s not like he scared me or anything… Okay, well maybe just a little, but if he was a proper husband he wouldn’t have bossed me and made me swallow that first piece. I left the box of not-very-tasty chocolates on the kitchen counter and called a few possible chocolate senders and made discreet inquires, like, “By the way, did you send us a box of chocolates?“ The interesting thing was, it was sort of embarrassing when I asked. Now, maybe I was imagining it, but there would be a slight pause as if the person on the other end of the phone was desperately trying to remember if they should have. Was it my birthday? Was there something wonderful that I had done that should have been thanked with a box of chocolates? The chocolates became a great mystery to me. Hardly anyone knows where we live. Who had I told my address to and forgotten that I did? Who do I know that doesn’t eat chocolate, because really, if you did, you never would have sent Italian chocolate. Not that I have anything against Italy! I love visiting, love their pasta, the architecture, the winding streets, the way they cook potatoes, fish, meat. The chocolate is the only thing I’m not particularly fond of. Which, of course, I never would have told the sender, as it is the thought that counts. Finally, my brain hurt from trying to figure it out, so I stopped. I thought, whoever sent it will call to make sure they arrived safely. But whoever is was, hasn’t. So, if the sender is an occasional reader of this blog, “Thank you so much for the thoughtful gift. I do enjoy chocolates. And the only reason I haven’t thanked you verbally, is because I don’t know who you are.“
Posted by Meg Tilly on Sunday, October 24, 2010 in Chewing the Fat Bolen Books frivolity and fun!Sunday was a BIG day for Bolen Books! First, Mel Bolen, who started Bolen Books (the two times winner of a very fancy trophy for the Best Bookseller Of The Year) is retiring. In a time when more and more of our beloved neighbourhood independent bookstores are having to close their doors, Bolen Books is flourishing. Mel has turned the reins over to Samantha Holmes. Who, Mel confessed quite proudly to all and sundry, has already been running the place for the last ten years. Apparently, the reins-turning-over ceremony was merely an opportunity to make the knowledge public and throw a great party to boot. And yes, for my old-time bloggers, it is the Samantha Holmes, who accompanied me to visit with Rosie when she came to Vancouver on her True Colours tour as my girls-just-want-to-have-fun-cohort, and whose name has appeared in numerous blogs over the years… Okay, that sounded like I’ve been blogging for decades, I should be more specific. “In the three years that I have blogged sporadically, Samantha Holmes, now the proud owner of Bolen Books, has been mentioned more than three times in my posts. How many times? I can’t say, but more than three.“ Here is a picture of me with my fancy-fabulous-friend, Samantha, at the Bolen Books 35th Anniversary/passing of the baton Shingding. It was a 70’s theme party with a 70’s band and yummy food that was popular in the 70’s and so there were 70’s flower power table clothes and… of course… one of those lights that changed colour. Well… Bob, (a publisher that I’d worked with) was there along with another publisher who I didn’t know, and she was standing by the light lamp and from where I was standing, the lamp’s strands were framing her head like a halo. And I was trying to be Oh-yes-nice-to-meet-you, but it was hard to be all proper and normal because the minute I pulled my focus away from that halo around her head, that light behind her would change colours. I was quite excited by the magic/halo/light show and how cool it looked, but I kept it inside. A few minutes later they had drifted to another section of the party and when no one was looking I made Don take a halo picture of me. We didn’t get the first attempt framed up properly. My head covered up most of the light strands, so for the next one I bent my knees. Don was a little slow pressing the camera button, and I was trying to look like one of those saint paintings on the church walls, but I was also, wishing Don would hurry up and take it before anyone noticed what we were doing and laughed at me. Hence, I don’t look quite as angelic as I would have under a less covert operation. After the picture was taken, I quickly removed myself from the area, as if distance would make me less embarrassed about how much I wanted that photo. It was going to be our little secret, but of course, wouldn’t you know it, we come around the book counter and who should be standing there, but my friend, Samantha. Well… what are friends for if not to tell secrets to? So, of course I told her, but it was sort of hard to explain, so Don took out his beloved i-phone and showed her the picture, which she thought was hilarious and one thing lead to another and… And then to top the evening off… The Blackberry/i-phone wars. Posted by Meg Tilly on Saturday, October 23, 2010 in Okay, so here’s the scary foreclosure thing I read…This is the part of John Mauldin’s Thoughts From The Frontline that I was telling you about. I had to read it more than once to really absorb it. The possible implications of this are mind-boggling. I find it both terrifying, horrifying and fascinating all at once. If this is indeed true, then those of you who have been or are in danger of being foreclosed on, you must read this. Those of you invested in the U.S. banks that are now in the newspapers with the foreclosure situation, I strongly recommend you read this. And for those of you in heavily in stocks, please be careful, because if this thing blows it could be huge, make sure all your eggs aren’t all in one basket. If you aren’t used to reading investment stuff, take it slow. You don’t have to understand everything. Read it once, twice, three times, or not at all. Reader’s choice. * * * The Foreclosure Mess OK, in a serendipitous moment, Maine fishing buddy David Kotok sent me this email on the mortgage foreclosure crisis just as I was getting ready to write much the same thing. It is about the best thing I have read on the topic. Saves me some time and you get a better explanation. From Kotok: “Dear Readers, this text came to me in an email from sources that are in the financial services business and with whom I have a personal relationship. The original text was laced with expletives and I would not use it in the form I received it. Therefore the text below has had some substantial editing in order to remove that language. The intentions of the writer are undisturbed. The writer shall remain anonymous. This text echoes some of the news items we have seen and heard today; however, it can serve as a plain language description of the present foreclosure-suspension mess. There is a lot here. It takes about ten minutes to read it. - David Kotok (www.cumber.com) “Homeowners can only be foreclosed and evicted from their homes by the person or institution who actually has the loan paper…only the note-holder has legal standing to ask a court to foreclose and evict. Not the mortgage, the note, which is the actual IOU that people sign, promising to pay back the mortgage loan “Before mortgage-backed securities, most mortgage loans were issued by the local savings & loan. So the note usually didn’t go anywhere: it stayed in the offices of the S&L down the street. “But once mortgage loan securitization happened, things got sloppy…they got sloppy by the very nature of mortgage-backed securities. “The whole purpose of MBS was for different investors to have their different risk appetites satiated with different bonds. Some bond customers wanted super-safe bonds with low returns, some others wanted riskier bonds with correspondingly higher rates of return. “Therefore, as everyone knows, the loans were ‘bundled’ into REMIC (Real-Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits, a special vehicle designed to hold the loans for tax purposes), and then “sliced & diced”...split up and put into tranches, according to their likelihood of default, their interest rates, and other characteristics. “This slicing and dicing created ‘senior tranches,‘ where the loans would likely be paid in full, if the past history of mortgage loan statistics was to be believed. And it also created ‘junior tranches,‘ where the loans might well default, again according to past history and statistics. (A whole range of tranches was created, of course, but for the purposes of this discussion we can ignore all those countless other variations.) “These various tranches were sold to different investors, according to their risk appetite. That’s why some of the MBS bonds were rated as safe as Treasury bonds, and others were rated by the ratings agencies as risky as junk bonds. “But here’s the key issue: When an MBS was first created, all the mortgages were pristine…none had defaulted yet, because they were all brand-new loans. Statistically, some would default and some others would be paid back in full…but which ones specifically would default? No one knew, of course. If I toss a coin 1,000 times, statistically, 500 tosses the coin will land heads…but what will the result be of, say, the 723rd toss? No one knows. “Same with mortgages. “So in fact, it wasn’t that the riskier loans were in junior tranches and the safer ones were in senior tranches: rather, all the loans were in the REMIC, and if and when a mortgage in a given bundle of mortgages defaulted, the junior tranche holders would take the losses first, and the senior tranche holder last. “But who were the owners of the junior-tranche bond and the senior-tranche bonds? Two different people. Therefore, the mortgage note was not actually signed over to the bond holder. In fact, it couldn’t be signed over. Because, again, since no one knew which mortgage would default first, it was impossible to assign a specific mortgage to a specific bond. “Therefore, how to make sure the safe mortgage loan stayed with the safe MBS tranche, and the risky and/or defaulting mortgage went to the riskier tranche? “Enter stage right the famed MERS…the Mortgage Electronic Registration System. “MERS was the repository of these digitized mortgage notes that the banks originated from the actual mortgage loans signed by homebuyer. MERS was jointly owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (yes, those two again ...I know, I know: like the chlamydia and the gonorrhea of the financial world…you cure ‘em, but they just keep coming back). “The purpose of MERS was to help in the securitization process. Basically, MERS directed defaulting mortgages to the appropriate tranches of mortgage bonds. MERS was essentially where the digitized mortgage notes were sliced and diced and rearranged so as to create the mortgage-backed securities. Think of MERS as Dr. Frankenstein’s operating table, where the beast got put together. “However, legally…and this is the important part…MERS didn’t hold any mortgage notes: the true owner of the mortgage notes should have been the REMIC. “But the REMIC didn’t own the notes either, because of a fluke of the ratings agencies: the REMIC had to be “bankruptcy remote,“ in order to get the precious ratings needed to peddle mortgage-backed Securities to institutional investors. “So somewhere between the REMIC and MERS, the chain of title was broken. “Now, what does ‘broken chain of title’ mean? Simple: when a homebuyer signs a mortgage, the key document is the note. As I said before, it’s the actual IOU. In order for the mortgage note to be sold or transferred to someone else (and therefore turned into a mortgage-backed security), this document has to be physically endorsed to the next person. All of these signatures on the note are called the ‘chain of title.‘ “You can endorse the note as many times as you please…but you have to have a clear chain of title right on the actual note: I sold the note to Moe, who sold it to Larry, who sold it to Curly, and all our notarized signatures are actually, physically, on the note, one after the other. “If for whatever reason any of these signatures is skipped, then the chain of title is said to be broken. Therefore, legally, the mortgage note is no longer valid. That is, the person who took out the mortgage loan to pay for the house no longer owes the loan, because he no longer knows whom to pay. “To repeat: if the chain of title of the note is broken, then the borrower no longer owes any money on the loan. “Read that last sentence again, please. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. “You read it again? Good: Now you see the can of worms that’s opening up. “The broken chain of title might not have been an issue if there hadn’t been an unusual number of foreclosures. Before the housing bubble collapse, the people who defaulted on their mortgages wouldn’t have bothered to check to see that the paperwork was in order. “But as everyone knows, following the housing collapse of 2007-‘10-and-counting, there has been a boatload of foreclosures…and foreclosures on a lot of people who weren’t sloppy bums who skipped out on their mortgage payments, but smart and cautious people who got squeezed by circumstances. “These people started contesting their foreclosures and evictions, and so started looking into the chain-of-title issue, and that’s when the paperwork became important. So the chain of title became crucial and the botched paperwork became a nontrivial issue. “Now, the banks had hired ‘foreclosure mills’...law firms that specialized in foreclosures…in order to handle the massive volume of foreclosures and evictions that occurred because of the housing crisis. The foreclosure mills, as one would expect, were the first to spot the broken chain of titles. “Well, what do you know, it turns out that these foreclosure mills might have faked and falsified documentation, so as to fraudulently repair the chain-of-title issue, thereby ‘proving’ that the banks had judicial standing to foreclose on delinquent mortgages. These foreclosure mills might have even forged the loan note itself… “Wait, why am I hedging? The foreclosure mills did actually, deliberately, and categorically fake and falsify documents, in order to expedite these foreclosures and evictions. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, who has been all over this story, put up a price list for this ‘service’ from a company called DocX…yes, a price list for forged documents. Talk about your one-stop shopping! “So in other words, a massive fraud was carried out, with the inevitable innocent bystanders getting caught up in the fraud: the guy who got foreclosed and evicted from his home in Florida, even though he didn’t actually have a mortgage, and in fact owned his house free -and clear. The family that was foreclosed and evicted, even though they had a perfect mortgage payment record. Et cetera, depressing et cetera. “Now, the reason this all came to light is not because too many people were getting screwed by the banks or the government or someone with some power saw what was going on and decided to put a stop to it…that would have been nice, to see a shining knight in armor, riding on a white horse. “But that’s not how America works nowadays. “No, alarm bells started going off when the title insurance companies started to refuse to insure the titles. “In every sale, a title insurance company insures that the title is free -and clear ...that the prospective buyer is in fact buying a properly vetted house, with its title issues all in order. Title insurance companies stopped providing their service because…of course…they didn’t want to expose themselves to the risk that the chain of title had been broken, and that the bank had illegally foreclosed on the previous owner. “That’s when things started getting interesting: that’s when the attorneys general of various states started snooping around and making noises (elections are coming up, after all). “The fact that Ally Financial (formerly GMAC), JP Morgan Chase, and now Bank of America have suspended foreclosures signals that this is a serious problem…obviously. Banks that size, with that much exposure to foreclosed properties, don’t suspend foreclosures just because they’re good corporate citizens who want to do the right thing, and who have all their paperwork in strict order…they’re halting their foreclosures for a reason. “The move by the United States Congress last week, to sneak by the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act? That was all the banking lobby. They wanted to shove down that law, so that their foreclosure mills’ forged and fraudulent documents would not be scrutinized by out-of-state judges. (The spineless cowards in the Senate carried out their master’s will by a voice vote…so that there would be no registry of who had voted for it, and therefore no accountability.) “And President Obama’s pocket veto of the measure? He had to veto it…if he’d signed it, there would have been political hell to pay, plus it would have been challenged almost immediately, and likely overturned as unconstitutional in short order. (But he didn’t have the gumption to come right out and veto it…he pocket vetoed it.) “As soon as the White House announced the pocket veto…the very next day!...Bank of America halted all foreclosures, nationwide. “Why do you think that happened? Because the banks are in trouble…again. Over the same thing as last time…the damned mortgage-backed securities! “The reason the banks are in the tank again is, if they’ve been foreclosing on people they didn’t have the legal right to foreclose on, then those people have the right to get their houses back. And the people who bought those foreclosed houses from the bank might not actually own the houses they paid for. “And it won’t matter if a particular case…or even most cases…were on the up -and up: It won’t matter if most of the foreclosures and evictions were truly due to the homeowner failing to pay his mortgage. The fraud committed by the foreclosure mills casts enough doubt that, now, all foreclosures come into question. Not only that, all mortgages come into question. “People still haven’t figured out what all this means. But I’ll tell you: if enough mortgage-paying homeowners realize that they may be able to get out of their mortgage loans and keep their houses, scott-free? That’s basically a license to halt payments right now, thank you. That’s basically a license to tell the banks to take a hike. “What are the banks going to do…try to foreclose and then evict you? Show me the paper, Mr. Banker, will be all you need to say. “This is a major, major crisis. The Lehman bankruptcy could be a spring rain compared to this hurricane. And if this isn’t handled right…and handled right quick, in the next couple of weeks at the outside…this crisis could also spell the end of the mortgage business altogether. Of banking altogether. Hell, of civil society. What do you think happens in a country when the citizens realize they don’t need to pay their debts?“
Posted by Meg Tilly on Monday, October 18, 2010 in Chewing the Fat kc dyerMy friend, Karen, aka kc dyer has released a new YA novel, so I thought I’d post the cover on my site to help her spread the word. Hmm… That didn’t work. I dragged the image of the cover off a book site, saved it to my desktop and then went through the whole “upload file” rigmarole, but obviously, I left out some vital step. I’ll try it again. Yay! Success. Although, maybe I’d better go to my site just to make sure. Be right back… It WORKED! Sometimes I’m so clever I scare myself. The only problem was the cover was hanging around quite a bit below the text so there was all this empty space, but I’ve done a little tweak, so, I think I’ve fixed that as well. On another front, I read quite a terrifying article with regards to the banks, foreclosures and why the banks have all suddenly taken a rest from evicting people from their homes. I am torn whether or not to post the article here. If what this person says is true, then it is extremely important information, not just for people who are or have been foreclosed on, but for anyone with U.S. bank stocks, or even, god-forbid, in the very worst case scenario, money in a bank. Now, the article didn’t say that last part, but of course I continued travelling down the road of what he did write and came to that unhappy place myself. However one of the reasons I don’t write so frequently is because I blog about what is on my mind, and quite often it has to do with what is going on in the world, financial, physical, political and I don’t want to hand all my what is going to happen to the world worries to you. Things are confusing enough without reading something else that keep you up at night. Says Meg-of-little-sleep. If I do decide to post the article in the next day or so, I’ll have the header be a warning, so those of you who aren’t interested can click on something else. Posted by Meg Tilly on Sunday, October 17, 2010 in Meg’s Fruit Crisp/Crumble Tasty TreatHello everyone, Yes, a wedding blog will be forthcoming, once I can pry a suitable photo from my husband’s grasp. But not today. Today I am going to post a recipe I just typed out for my friend. She was having a lot of house guests and was feeling over whelmed and so I made her a fruit crisp/crumble(?) to help out. I’m not sure what it’s called, just know that it is delicious. Anyway, one thing lead to another, the guests loved it, wanted the recipe from her, keep bugging her for it, and she has been putting them off, but it was getting embarrassing because she pretended that she made it, so a rather hilarious confession to me was made accompanied by a plea for the recipe. And I promised to write the recipe down for her to give to them. Which I have just finished doing, but then I thought, well, if her guests like my fruit-whatever so much… You probably would too! So, here it is. Enjoy! Love, Meg Fruit Crisp/Crumble Tasty Treat Preheat oven to 375° Place in pan: Approximately 4 cups of fruit. I eyeball it and fill the pan until it is around ¾ full. You can use crisp granny smith apples that have been peeled and sliced, or a combination of fresh or frozen berries. My favorite is a mix of granny smith apples, and a mix of the raspberries, strawberries and blueberries that I freeze over the summer. One or two apples depending on what I have in the fridge and the rest delicious berries. In a bowl mix: ¼ cup white sugar Mix. Chop a large handful of raw almonds, and a large handful of pecans until the pieces are around half the size of a baby’s tooth. Add to mixture in bowl and blend. Then dump mixture onto the fruit in the baking pan and spread until it is covered evenly. Cook until some of the fruit juices are bubbling through the top and you can plunge a fork into the centre of the crisp and not meet any resistance (i.e. an uncooked/or partially cooked slice of apple.) The timing really depends on whether you used frozen or fresh (both taste great) and how hot your oven is, since all ovens vary. So be flexible. Could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour to cook. When ready, take out of oven and let sit for a few minutes before you serve it or you might burn your mouth. To serve: scoop out a generous portion and drizzle heavy whipping cream over the top and around the serving (sort of like a cream moat.) Then… devour! Posted by Meg Tilly on Thursday, October 14, 2010 in Recipes Oops!Apparently the Caprica dates I was given were wrong and it aired last week, not this one. Sorry to those of you who tried to watch it. Posted by Meg Tilly on Wednesday, October 13, 2010 in Chewing the Fat CapricaHello everyone, So much has happened. Top on the Big Events list is…drum roll please… My son, David, is now a MARRIED MAN!!!! Huge deal. Way to important to squeeze into this pipsqueak of an update. In the next week or so I shall write a nice cozy blog, complete with a photo or two. Today I am too busy. I helped my friend make breakfast for her bed & breakfast, and now I am doing the prep work for our Canadian Thanksgiving Day Feast! I will be doing the whole shebang again in November when we travel to Jennifer and Phil’s house to help them celebrate the American one. And Emily is making the I-might-come-noises, that would really be great, because then I’d get to cook Thanksgiving Day Feast for two out of my three children. Actually, three out of my four children, because now that David is married…I HAVE ANOTHER DAUGHTER! Yay! I don’t know why, but there is something so satisfying to feed tasty food to the people you love most in the world. Cozy, cozy, cozy! Wait a minute, this was supposed to be a super short update. It’s like when I go to the grocery store to pick up some cream and I end up with a cart-full of deliciousness. Actually, probably not a very good analogy as I am not planning of doing the equivalent of a “cart-full” and it is probably not one of my more “delicious” blogs either. Let’s start again… Hello everyone, My old (from a long time ago, not old as in wrinkly) acting agent emailed me last week to tell me that the little cameos I did on Caprica will be airing on 10/12 and 11/23. Since the first one is this coming Tuesday, I thought perhaps I should post it, for the handful of interested parties, but really, to watch it you’d have to be really interested because another word one could substitute for cameo is small. Okay, off to my cooking. Will write more after the Thanksgiving cooking fest is complete (sometime after Monday.) Posted by Meg Tilly on Saturday, October 09, 2010 in I’m SO happy!I just received a wonderful surprise in the mail. A letter from Laura (my agent) with a royalty check for Gemma! That’s right. Gemma has earned back her advance. Which totally flabbergasted me, since they didn’t have me go on tour or set up a bunch of press or anything. So, despite Tooraj and Laura’s kindness in trying to beat the drum for Gemma, I was feeling a little blue about the whole thing. Sad, like Gemma had found a home, but she only got to eat a bowl of oatmeal for sustenance. But no! More of you discovered Gemma. Read her story. Took her into your hearts. So happy. Hard to believe, but including the sales from when I released it before, this little book has sold over 23,000 copies! Now, for you movie people out there, you might think 23,000 copies, that’s peanuts. Nope. In the book world 23,000 is quite respectable. Especially considering that out of the odd 1,500,000 books that are out there on the shelves, only 1.68% sell 5,000 or more a year. Thank you to all of your for supporting Gemma and me. xo Now, all I have to do is decide which charity I want to send the royalty check to. This is the fun part. Oh, also, for those of you who didn’t know, Gemma is also available in Large Print. You can check and see your local independent book store carries it. If not, they can order it for you, or you can get it from Amazon.com. I mention this because I am at the point where the print in some books is getting hard to read, and so if you are like me, or a little further along in the aging process you might find that Large Print books are a happy invention. I really like the cover they did for the Large Print copy. I wish I had a PDF of it so I could put it up on my site. Okay, I’m off to my writing. kc dyer’s dragon fly wishes at the start of the summer really worked and I’m around 3 weeks away from having a first draft on a new middle grade manuscript, maybe closer. My adult manuscript is resting with Laura, not sure what its fate is going to be. I try not to think about it too much, or I’ll tie myself up in worry knots. Breathe in, breath out. One step in front of the next, write one sentence and then the next, and before I know it, I have another possible novel sitting in a hopeful pile of pages on my desk. Posted by Meg Tilly on Thursday, September 09, 2010 in Bits and Pieces BC Book Prize AuctionI received a request from BC Book Prize to put a link to their auction on my website, so here it is. I went to the site myself and there are a lot of great things to bid on and in doing so you will be helping support and promote writers and illustrators in BC. Not only that, but the BC Book Prize group also tour authors and illustrators around BC to schools that otherwise might not have had the funds or opportunity to have a real live author or artist visit their school. AND every year BC Book Prize finds local sponsors who make massive donations to buy books for the school libraries in BC. Which is a godsend, since funding for our libraries over the last few years has been whittled down to a pittance. So, if you are feeling flush and you have your 8 month emergency fund socked away, and you have topped up your RRSP as well as invested in your TFS, and you have a little spare cash rattling around in your pocket and feel like doing a good deed, check out the auction and see if there is anything that grabs your fancy. Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 in Chewing the Fat For all of you who voted for my sister…I wanted to let you know that I just found out that she won the very prestigious the Bellagio 5k tournament and made 124 thousand dollars! Yay Jennifer! And I bet if she got into that stupid Tournament of so-called champions, she would have won that as well! Posted by Meg Tilly on Sunday, July 18, 2010 in Chewing the Fat Jasmin John-ThorpeDon figured out what the problem was. The photo was too big for me to upload, so the thing kept blanking out. Not to worry. Don worked his magic and so here it is! (The beautiful top I am wearing courtesy of my fabulous, fashionable sister, Jennifer, of course!) Posted by Meg Tilly on Saturday, July 17, 2010 in Chewing the Fat SummerHello everyone, If you are enjoying your summer even half as much as I am enjoying mine, you must be having great summer! Will is home and Dave is dropping by all the time and when his lovely fiance Amy is in town, I get the pleasure of both of their smiling faces. Chats with Emily on the phone. Life is good. I love our new/old home. Never going to move. Am done. That’s it. Finished. Ah… Bliss! ALSO another thing that has me dancing is that is is summer fruit time! So exciting. I’ve been making weekly visits to the local farms and have been gorging. The strawberries this year seem especially inspired. Tiny, tender morsels that bruise easily, don’t last long so you have to eat them up quick. Remind me of the taste of the wild strawberry patch my sisters and I discovered when we were young. Full of flavor and so sweet, dissolve in the mouth succulent perfection that makes me feel so happy and grateful to be alive and able to afford such a tasty treat. Driving back from the farms the car loaded up, warm summer days with a cool breeze tingling the skin, the inside of the car filled with the mingling smells of summer fruit, my husband beside me. What could be better? I’ve also bought some blueberries, although they are a tiny bit tart still, not quite where they need to be but good enough to nosh on a handful or two a day and certainly good enough for freezing. Hopefully in another week or two they will get to that super sweet, taut stage that is blueberry perfection. The peaches and nectarines are a little disappointing, not much flavor, a slight bitter tang and not the right texture. Don’t know if they will step into their own later on in the summer or if they are a wash this season. The raspberries are good. Not enough to send me into raptures, but perfectly fine, as are the cherries. I’m having a great summer. Went to the B.C. Youth Write Camp in Pentiction. Yasmin John-Thorpe is the founder/organizer. A woman with a huge heart. I seriously don’t know how she and her hearty band of volunteers manage to pull this off year after year, donating zillions of hours of their time, stretching a very limited budget to give these kids and teens this experience. I had a great time. The teens wrote their hearts out. Some serious talent in that group. Blew me away. Here’s a picture of me with the wonder woman that my friend kc dyer emailed me along with this wonderful sentence which I am holding to my heart like Dumbo’s feather. “Sending you summer writing karma on the backs of blue dragonflys….!“ Seems to be working. Oops! Been so long since I’ve uploaded a picture, I’ve forgotten how to do it. I thought I did all the correct steps, but nothing uploaded, so I’ll have to wait until my husband gets off-line. He is doing his weekly writers group meeting with Ken and James. James has written an enormous manuscript so I imagine Don will be a while, but I’ll have him re-teach me how to post this picture when he’s done. Bye for now. Posted by Meg Tilly on Saturday, July 17, 2010 in Chewing the Fat Well, I for one am not planning on watchingUnfortunately, my sister didn’t make it into the top 20 which was a disappointment, however, it was still very exciting that she got into the top 50! And who knows she could have been 21 and missed by the tiniest margin. We’ll never know. What I do know, is that you guys were GREAT! A few days after I had made my request, up she was in the top 50. It was very cool that you guys responded in that way. And I wanted you to know how much Jennifer and I appreciated the support. On the writing front, I got several chapters in and realized that it was just a meandering mess. Figured if I was bored with the story after just 30 pages, the reader would be as well. Actually, to be more accurate, it wasn’t “the story” I was bored with, it was the fact that there wasn’t “a story.“ Oh, I had convinced myself that there was one, but really, there wasn’t. Sigh… Posted by Meg Tilly on Thursday, June 17, 2010 in Chewing the Fat Last call at the poker boothHello everyone, Today is the very last day for voting on who gets to play in The World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions! Come one, come all click here to cast your last minute vote for my sister, Jennifer Tilly. I’m on pins and needles, hoping all of us have done enough. We got her into the Top 50, that we know for sure, but was it enough to get her into the top 20? Eeeee…nervous! Anyway, if you haven’t voted, have a moment on your hands and think, “Hey why the heck not?“ Then vote, vote, vote! Thanks! Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, June 15, 2010 in Jennifer and PhilWell, Phil broke the record and then some and I found this cute video of Jennifer and Phil on youtube and it was cozy in a weird-poker-world sort of way. So this is probably not a video for the under 16 set. There is no swearing or anything, it’s really kind of sweet. But it is the poker world, with chips and cash and stuff and it seems so fun and jaunty and like a happy party, but I don’t want to misrepresent the other side of the poker life that plagues so many people who aren’t as skilled as my sister and Phil. So that’s why the age recommendation. Posted by Meg Tilly on Monday, June 07, 2010 in Chewing the Fat |