I may have said, that changing dirty diapers is not nearly as difficult or as gross as I’d expected. Part of the reason, I think, is because it’s entirely different when it’s your daughter’s diapers you’re changing. Each poop tells you that your girl is getting the nutrition she needs to grow strong.
Also, when you start changing diapers at infancy, you have less mess to worry about. It sort of eases you into it, rather than dumping you in at the, ahem, deep dump end.
I return to my contract work tomorrow, which I’m sure will be an incredible adjustment. In between that, I’ve also gotten back to my writing work. I’m working on an article at the moment about rural wi-fi projects. This promises to be an interesting one. Living in the Tech Triangle, it’s easy to forget how spoiled we are when it comes to web access. Likewise, you don’t realize how much you rely on the Internet until it’s gone. Among the challenges rural businesses encounter these days is hefty downloads. A rural radio station which receives its newscast as an MP3 file has to wait ten minutes for it to download on dialup.
Two articles will debut in Business Edge over the next couple of weeks. One will talk about the loft development boom that’s going on in Kitchener-Waterloo at the moment, and the other profiles a hockey stick manufacturer celebrating its 100th anniversary of production. This plant used to produce the popular Hespeler hockey stick, and now the factory is back in the hands of its local employees, it will be interesting to see what the future holds. The president, Paul Bossenberry, was a delightful interview. When he gets to talking about the craft of making a hockey stick, the passion really shines through. His quote on the merits of wood over composite was gold.
The hockey stick article should appear this Thursday, with lofts to follow two weeks after that.
I was also lucky enough to interview Kenneth Oppel for a short feature that should appear in the Spring 2006 issue of The New Quarterly. He was very kind and offered a number of interesting insights into his craft. The interview goes with a short essay exploring children’s literature as literature. The issue appears to be turning into a special about genre fiction.
I’m still waiting on a cover and copy-editing of The Unwritten Girl. In the meantime, I did more work on The Young City, removing an extraneous element. It’s now in a stable draft phase, waiting for further rewriting. Now my attention is turning back to Fathom Five, barring extra inspiration for The Night Girl.