Gratz Industries HQ: Don't Try This at Home

Time for some siding derring-do!

With some loaner scaffolding set up, we were ready to start putting up the next two levels of Hardipanel siding. We got a start last Thursday, working our way along the back of the house over toward the third floor porch. The scaffolding we have only gets us to the bottom of the third story, but hey--if we can't work up, we can work down!

Yes, that's Alan hammering siding on between his legs. You won't see that on HGTV.

Nor, probably, will you see this:

That shot's not so dizzying as it felt, but this next shot gives you a better idea how high up it was--

Yikes!

But Alan survived.

A little more dangerous was using a kitchen step-stool on top of the scaffolding. We had to do this to be able to reach the top of the fourth row of siding.

Just don't tell our parents we were doing this!

Ah yes, and the always safe hammering across your body while standing on a kitchen step-ladder on top of borrowed scaffolding floored with garden timber. Wendi took these pictures so she could explain what happened to the coroner.

Thankfully, the evidence won't be used in any coroner's inquest in the near future. Instead, when everything was said and done, the results were pretty fantastic.

Siding!

Siding!

More siding!

We made it to the end of the fourth row on the south side of the house, but we didn't have it in us to haul that scaffolding around the corner to the front today. It proved to be a wise decision--the rains that chased us from our work on Saturday began just as we were putting our tools away.

Our favorite tool? Easily the mallet, which allows us to, ahem, beat misaligned siding into place. Not that we have to do that often. Really.

That's the end of the house work for the next few days as Wendi hits the road again, but we're moving right along, and hope to get back to it by next weekend, weather permitting!

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Rotten News

I just learned last week that Something Rotten is a finalist in the 2008 SIBA Book Awards. SIBA is the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance--meaning independent bookstores all over the southeast. Each year they name the "best of Southern literature," and this year Something Rotten (which is set in East Tennessee) is among the finalists in the Children's category:

CHILDREN

1. Aurora County All Stars by Deborah Wiles (Harcourt)
2. Br'er Rabbit Captured by Jean Cassels (Walker)
3. Chicken Dance by Jacques Couvillon (Bloomsbury)
4. Deep in the Swamp by Donna Bateman (Charlesbridge)
5. Louisiana's Song by Kerry Madden (Viking)
6. Something Rotten by Alan Gratz (Dial Books)

That's some big time competition in there, and Deb Wiles and Kerry Madden are both friends. Were friends. They're dead to me now. I'm taking them down.

The winner will be named at the Decatur Book Festival at the end of August, and I'll be there!

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Introducing P Is for Polkadot!

In my last post I mentioned developing a recipe for the back of my new hang tags. Hang tags? Yes, hang tags for my new business.


P Is for Polkadot is all for kids. It's about comfort (nothing itchy - ever!), easy wear (kids can put everything on all by themselves - no back zippers or ties), and easy care (all machine wash and dry). As I develop the designs for my book I'll be adding apparel, but for now it's mostly aprons and bibs. The aprons are the only things in the shop now. I should have bibs ready to list in May.

I've changed the link to my Etsy shop in the sidebar to my new Etsy shop - P Is for Polkadot. I've been filling it up with aprons as I finish new ones and I think I'll have them all listed by next Monday.

So what's so special about my aprons? The full aprons are designed with an adjustable fit - the neck band and ties are one long ribbon so as you pull on the ties the neck band gets shorter. Adjustable fit with annoying ties or buckles! And the ribbon is a nice soft grosgrain so it feels good on the back of your neck. The ribbon wraps around the back and attaches with velcro at each hip so kids can put it on and take it off without needing to ask for help.

The half aprons tie in the back, but also attach at one hip with velcro. The first time you put the apron on a grown-up can tie it in the back to fit, and then the child can open and close it on their own with the velcro.

One more important thing - all my aprons have pockets.

And the hang tags? They are the size of recipe cards. Full cloth aprons get the granola recipe, full oilcloth aprons get the play dough recipe, and frilly half aprons get the strawberry lemonade. Fun!

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Sweet Taste of Summer

It's been a while since I posted but I have a whole week at home and lots of things to get caught up on. Instead of starting with the backlog, I'm starting with today. It's not summer yet, but it sure felt like it this afternoon. Almost 80 degrees! I've been trying to figure out a recipe for strawberry lemonade and today I finally got it right. Perfect timing!

For each glass of lemonade you need. . .

juice from 1 lemon
1 cup cold water
6 teaspoons sugar (yes - you read that right)
1 heaping teaspoon frozen strawberry daiquiri mix (the secret ingredient)

Stir it all up and enjoy.

Jo was a very helpful model for me this afternoon so I made them fancy-schmancy as a treat for her, dipping the rims of the glasses in pink sugar and garnishing with a strawberry and a straw. She especially liked the sugared rim.

I needed to develop the recipe to include it on the back of the hang tags for my frilly Madeline aprons. I'm finishing up a big batch of aprons this weekend to go out on Monday - that's what Jo was modeling for me. She was in a great silly mood and I got some fun shots.


I'm not sure where she learned how, but she's really started striking a pose when I take her picture - hands on hips and a genuine smile.

And here she is in all her true goofiness.

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Gratz Industries HQ: Electric Boogaloo

In three quick days, the entire house was wired in by the great guys at KC Electrical. They only roughed in the electrics--we're going to go in and add all the sockets, switches, lights, and fans. That's the level of electric work we've done before on previous homes, so we're pretty comfortable with that. Especially since they were so nice to label everything!

The corner of the kitchen.

A box of wall outlet boxes.

The oven outlet, with lots of other wires running past.

The area that would become our breaker box, a work in progress -

And all spiffy!

And labeled even! This will be a first--actually knowing which breaker to flip when we need to.

Next up--insulation! We've got a guy in town who's giving us a great deal on some old asbestos insulation he's got lying around. Yeah, we know the stuff can kill you, but at these prices we'll take the risk!

(And yes, mom, I'm kidding about the asbestos.)

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Star Wars: Macbeth

Surfing around for images and information to use in the school visit talk I'm building around my Shakespeare-inspired YA mysteries Something Rotten and Something Wicked, I came across this gem: a Star Wars/Macbeth mash-up some kids did for a high school English class project ten years ago. (And for ten years ago, the lightsaber effects are pretty incredible.) The guys are grown up now (and a couple of them are teaching school now--as smart, creative people often do!) but they've preserved their masterpiece for posterity. Check it out here.

For the record, I think staging Macbeth in the Star Wars galaxy is brilliant. Both are stories about men going over to the Dark Side, after all. Imagine Anakin Skywalker saying, "Bring me my armor!" and being outfitted in his Darth Vader costume for the first time. Or Darth Vader squaring off against Obi-Wan Kenobi and crying, "Lay on, Kenobi!"

I am seriously going to e-mail some people I know with Knoxville's Shakespeare in the Square and pitch this idea. It would kill. With lightsabers.

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The upcoming vote in Pennsylvania

As everyone knows, there's a very important vote coming up in Pennsylvania. I'm referring, of course, to the 2008-2009 Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Master List!

Editor Liz just let me know that Samurai Shortstop has been nominated in this year's Pennsylvania Reader's Choice Program. Each year librarians select fifteen titles in four categories: K-3, 3-6, 6-8, and Young Adult. Samurai Shortstop has been nominated in the Young Adult category. Young library patrons must read at least three of the books on a list to vote, and the books that get the most first place votes are named the Greatest Books in the History of the Universe.

No, that's not right. They're just the winners for that year.

Here's the competition:

Caroline B. Cooney - Code Orange
Terri Field - Holdup
Helen Frost - The Braid
Alan M. Gratz - Samurai Shortstop
Kirby Larson - Hattie Big Sky
Martine Leavitt - Keturah and Lord Death
Julius Lester - Day of Tears: A Novel in Dialogue
Patricia McCormick - Sold
Stephenie Meyer - Twilight
Susan Beth Pfeffer - Life As We Knew It
Charlie Price - Dead Connection
Lisa Ann Sandell - Song of the Sparrow
Robert Sharenow - My Mother the Cheerleader
Gene Luen Yang - American Born Chinese
Gabrielle Zevin - Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Just some bestsellers, Printz winners, Newbery winners, and National Book Award Finalists among the great books in that list. Not to worry.

So all right, you young Pennsylvania voters! It's time for some Gratz-roots political action! Read Samurai Shortstop, then vote early and often! Together we can lead this nation, this world, this universe, in a new direction!

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Visiting Tewksbury, Massachusetts

Last week I was the guest of Tewksbury Memorial High School in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, as a part of their first ever Tewksbury Literary Festival. The other authors: Pete Hautman, Nancy Werlin, and Kate Morganroth. What company!

When I got to my hotel room Thursday night, I was greeted with a lovely bouquet made by one of the students -

- and a stocked goody basket. How thoughtful!

Even better was the auditorium, which was set up for the four authors to sit up on chairs beneath hand-painted versions of their book covers:


Pretty good, huh? One of the students drew these!

The day began with a meet and greet in front of the two hundred or so students signed up for the literary festival, and then the authors split up to give presentations for smaller groups of 10-15 students at a time. By the end of the day, I think there were twice as many students at the school wishing they had signed up for the literary festival. I had a particularly good time helping one of the lunch-time literary trivia teams tie for first place. (Fellow Dial author Nancy Werlin sat in on the other top team - curse you, Nancy Werlin! I will have my revenge!)

After a great day of presentations and fun, we adjourned to our hotel rooms to decamp, then joined the student planners and the literary festival sponsors for dinner at a local restaurant. I liked this sign, which I snapped with my camera phone:

Captain Horatio! Maybe Horatio Wilkes will become a sea captain and chase a great white whale. Wait, no, that's not Shakespeare . . .

After dinner we four authors read from our books at a community event attended by what looked like a couple hundred people, and then we sold and signed books. It was just a fabulous day, and so well designed and executed that it felt like these guys had been running this event for years. Congratulations to the teachers and students of Tewksbury Memorial High School for a terrific literary festival. Here's hoping you have many more to come!

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Gratz Industries HQ: Things are heating up!

After weeks--nay, months--of slow to no progress on our new headquarters, we finally have some action. Some Heatpex action! Heatpex is is a metal-lined plastic tubing that carries hot water through your floors to provide radiant heat. No air ducts, no blower, no sound, and each "zone" or room can be controlled individually. Mwahahaha.

The Heatpex yet to be installed is stored on this gizmotron, which allows the guys to pull more through when they need it. Clever.

The Heatpex was first run all the way down the length of the floor--in this case, the floor of Wendi's craft room--


--and then it was woven back and forth between the joists and covered with this metal covering. The covering holds it to the floor so that the heat radiates right underfoot, and it's metal so it reflects the heat upward. When the installation is finished, we'll then go back and put insulation between the Heatpex and the ceiling below it to further encourage the heat to radiate more up than down.

Ooooh. Pretty.

And lo and behold, the same day the Heatpex installation began, the flooring store finally brought the tile we ordered for Jo's bathroom. It's pretty too.

They ran out before they could finish though, so there are sticky places where little bits of tile should go. This is the one I stepped in without thinking. Watch out, Mr. Rabbit!

With the Heatpex has come warmer weather too, and we here at Gratz Industries are considering taking a week or two of sick leave to put some major effort into the house. And we really are sick--sick of staring at it through the windows of our mobile home. We want to be inside our new home! More images and updates to come . . .

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Getting our goat

Wendi and I want to get a goat.

Seriously.

There's a family down the hill from us that has five of them. The goats hang out on this really steep slope, munching on anything that grows there and keeping it "mowed." We're envious, and we have a steep, unkempt slope of our own what amounts to our "back yard."

Our back yard.

More of our back yard.

We do not want to mow this. We don't want to mow anything. We moved away from suburbia to get away from, among other things, a preoccupation with lawn maintenance.

Enter the goat. At least, our plan to get one. We have a few things to get settled first (like, finishing the big house in our front yard we're not living in--more updates on that soon) but we've already broached the topic with my parents. When it comes to things like, "We are moving to the middle of nowhere," "We're painting the outside of our house three different colors," and "We're going to buy a goat," it helps to give my parents plenty of advance warning so they can handle it when we actually do these things.

So my dad, ever helpful person that he is, forwarded me this e-mail ad today:

Never cut the grass again! Buy a goat
Cuts & Fertilizes At the Same Time

Yes, a goat. Not as neat as a lawn mower, but good enough. In one end, out the other. Cuts the grass and feeds the lawn at the same time. Get your own goat today. They do an excellent job of keeping the grass down, although they can be a bit indiscriminate at times.

They are not very good at a light trimming of course, big mouthfuls of grass from the center of the lawn is more their thing, not good at neat edges where the grass and the fence line meet, but in general they do a good job. Some customers hang on to their back legs and hold them up to direct their head. Reasons to buy:

• A good investment no gas required
• Highly reliable too (nothing the local vet won’t sort out)
• Affectionate & lovable animals- Environmentally friendly to boot.
• Free goat droppings for the compost pile.

The ad even had a link:
Click Here for Pricing & Shipping Information

So I clicked. I'll let you click to, so you can see how Dad got my goat. He claims he didn't click through to see that, but given what day it is, I have a hard time believing him.

And trust me, we're still getting a goat.

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