I'm skimming through Shayara stuff again. Pondering releasing bits of "My Empire for Ashes" during Blogathon, if I can get into editing headspace by then... and pondering getting back to writing Jessa and Fenris's as-yet-untitled story. Because that comes next, and because the person Fenris is largely based on is on my mind quite a bit lately.

And it occurred to me that, while the main story of Shayara is a big sprawling thing on grand epic themes, the side stories and before-our-story-begins stories are very focused and intimate. An organic process, I think. I've lived half my life with these characters, and they've grown until there's no room in the main story for great swathes of their individual stories.... and I love people, fictional or not, so while I tell stories of revolution and redemption, I make room to tell you about lost loves and broken hearts and the fractures that shape these people. I have a bad case of the "why"s, you know. An estimated 20K of "My Empire for Ashes" is because, the night before the big battle that closes Act Two, Katrina comes to the castle to see her abandoned daughters - her sole return to the city after she left thirtyish years ago to join the Council's breeding program - and, when she is dismissed, she and Telenias see each other on the balcony -

and they both pause.

And I thought Huh. Why?

They have a history, that's why. Why? He was the first person she met when she stumbled into the city. So wait, why did they break up? And why did she go to Stephen? Ah, now that's a story. And one that the main arc is too packed to hold.

So.

And Jessa is one of my favorite characters - and you never get to see her in the main arc. She dies five years before our story begins. But she's Important, in that there might never have been a revolution had she not stood up first. And she's Important to many of our characters - you never meet Jessa in the story proper, but you see her light reflected everywhere. In her daughter, in her best friend, in people who respected and admired her, in one who was obsessed with her and one who had her killed.

And Fenris (in icon), the aforementioned best friend, is one of my favorite characters as well. Him, you get to see plenty of! But he wouldn't be who he is had it not been for her being who she was.

And they have a story, oh yes. That would never really be told in the course of the main arc, because, well, she's dead.

And I find that telling these stories that happen thirty, twenty, ten, five years before our story begins - it gives you so much more of this world and its evolution. It gives you the Council getting more and more malevolent. It gives you backstory and worldbuilding.

And it gives you these people. These big complex people who, alas, cannot be my primary characters, but who I still love.

The problem with writing in this world is that it is so large. And so by narrowing the focus, you lose so much. And by going from comics to straight text, you lose a lot, too - I can't paint characters with color and scene and movement as vividly as I could with comics. What I love about comics is that you can tell so much more of the story in them. No ham-handed descriptors - the visuals are right there. And you can hide things - Jeramie's facial expression in this scene, the object on Fenris's desk in that scene. Things the eye skims over on a comics page sometimes, that on your second and third read you'll go "Oh. OH. Holy shit, dude, that was right there."

So I'm sculpting instead of painting; I am cutting away everything that is not this story. But - I honor and love people. And I want to tell their stories, too.

Joined LJ after attending the Geek Physique panel, and now I have NO idea how to find/follow/friend the people I wanted to keep in contact with! LOL.

Any advice?

I just this moment remembered something the anal, correcty boy-cousin I talked about in my last post said to me while I was in Alabama:

"I have CDO. That's like OCD, except it's in proper alphabetical order, the way it should be."

Current Mood: and also moan

Turns out that Frank Gehry hates disabled people.

And previously, I'd figured the only thing he really hated was coming up with a second idea in his lifetime.

I find the former a little more annoying, of course.

There's yet another chapter of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland up, complete with a reading by yuki_onna. So go read it (or read the earlier chapters first, if you haven't already).

A new chapter of haikujaguar's Spots the Space Marine went up last week, but I'm behind enough that I didn't catch it until today.

I'm assuming that the next chapter of Tim Pratt's Bone Shop will also go up today, but since it's still Too Early to Be Awake on the West Coast, you might want to wait to check that link.

As always, when there's great free fiction on the web, and if you have the money to spare, sending some of that money to the makers of that fiction is a wonderful thing. If you don't have the money to spare, sending nice words and telling others about the good free fiction is also a good thing.

Administration
Hello to new readers greenmother and thunderpigeon!

Medical
I got two decent nights of sleep in a row, which helped immeasurably. Still feeling weak. Stayed home yesterday because I wasn't up to any level of activity.

I have had to be very patient with myself. I want a cookie.

Little, interrupted jags of sleep last night, interspersed with chills-and-sweats, which I'd thought were no longer a problem. Feh. That does mean I remembered fragments of my dreams, though. And I dreamed of dancing. Which means my sex drive is back.

Blogathon
Up to $115 - thanks, new sponsor emmalyon!

Sponsor me!

I hope to get my big press-release-y post about Blogathon done today. And I need to update the auctions list.

Readercon Schedule
Friday 2:00 PM, Salon B: The Year in Novels. Charles N. Brown, Ernest Lilley (L), Shira Lipkin, Graham Sleight, Paul Witcover

Friday 3:00 PM, VT: Group Reading. _Interfictions 2_ Group Reading (60 min.) Delia Sherman (host) with Amelia Beamer, K. Tempest Bradford, Matthew Cheney, F. Brett Cox, Michael DeLuca, Jeffrey Ford, Theodora Goss, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Shira Lipkin, Rachel Pollack, Catherynne M. Valente, Genevieve Valentine

Friday 8:00 PM, ME/ CT: Annual Interstitial Arts (IAF) Town Meeting. Ellen Kushner with discussion by Liz Gorinsky, Theodora Goss, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Shira Lipkin, Delia Sherman, John Shirley, Sarah Smith, Catherynne M. Valente

Sunday 12:00 Noon, VT: Broad Universe Group Reading. Inanna Arthen (host) with Helen Collins, Elaine Isaak, Shira Lipkin, Jennifer Pelland, Joselle Vanderhooft et al.

So yeah, I thought I was only doing one panel + one reading! This is still good, though. Will also be doing the Meet the Pros(e) party. I also somehow got signed up for a two-hour improv workshop, but I don't know that I'm up for a two-hour improv workshop, so I declined that.

I really need to get my bio/bibliography written up today. After this post.

Link Soup
* Fabulous Facebook song. I haven't had friend requests from assholic ex-boyfriends - just the good ones. Have had some puzzling ones from people I haven't dated, though.
* I kinda totally want to do this.
* shweta_narayan is compiling a list of YA characters of color. Go help!
* Cool clock.
* Cakes based on Threadless tees.
* Adam reviews F&SF.

Daily Science
Two UQ Science researchers have proved two famous physical laws that have been widely used for the past 25 years do not always work.

Plans
This might be the day I actually get out of the house and see Moon. Also, I have enough of my brain today to do some catching up on e-mail, I think.

The Gold-Box Deal of the Day is the Seagate FreeAgent 1TB USB External Drive for $99.99 (48% off). Yes, a TB -- an external one, at that -- is now under $100. I'll resist griping about the way things were when I was young, and we only had floppy disks, and hard drives cost more than a new car, and we walked uphill both ways in the snow, and we liked it.

The videogame Deal of the Day is Mario Super Sluggers for the Wii for $25.98. I suspect that playing this will depress me less than watching the Mets, so I might switch all of my baseball attention to this game for the summer.

For those who like the high-end remotes, there's a sale on refurbished Logitech Harmony Universal Remotes, with prices of up to 70% off. This includes their Xbox 360 remote, btw.

In DVDs, every season of King of the Hill is on sale for $13.49 a pop.

Finally (for those folks who didn't read LJ over the weekend), this is your last day to get a free copy of any version of The Star Spangled Banner. So go grab one!

Last month, the folks at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction offered free copies of the August/September issue to folks willing to blog about it. Since free reading material ranks only after free food on the hierarchy of Free Things I Like, I naturally jumped at the chance.

Let's break things up by category here:

New Short Stories:

"You are Such a One," by Nancy Springer. A touching, occasionally gorgeous (and occasionally twee, alas), tale of a woman seeking a place in which she can be real. Good use of the second person to shake up what could have been a predictable tale of a woman's mid-life crisis.

"The Hunchster," by Matthew Hughes. Take a typical piece of flashfic -- complete with "surprise" ending -- and flesh it out with a huge amount of Stephen King-lite background about the characters and town until it's at a traditional short story length. That's what you've got here. The writing itself is actually pretty good, but the story is nothing special.

"Icarus Saved from the Skies," by Georges-Oliver Châteaureynaud (translated by Edward Gauvin). Beautiful prose (Gauvin surely deserves some of the credit, of course), but distinctly ugly characters, emotionally. A man who inexplicably starts to grow wings finds a woman who seems to love him only for those wings. It's meant (I'd assume) to be more a prose-poem than a narrative, so the fact that both characters would annoy me as real people is probably something I can overlook, but I don't find myself drawn back into the tale itself.

Novelets:

"The Art of the Dragon," by Sean McMullen. Great hook: A giant, invulnerable, cybernetic dragon appears over Paris one day and starts to destroy works of art, with any humans inside museums or near falling rubble merely unintended casualties. It eventually flies over the entire planet (although it explicitly skips LA, and although I'm all about snarking at the City of Angels, the Getty should have been an obvious target), before settling down for a nap. That's when things get dull, as we get way too much of the narrator and associates talking about the dragon and why it might be, but too little progress. And the ending itself is just weak.

"A Token of a Better Age," by Melinda Snodgrass. I am not a fan of Snodgrass's short stories, which I always find frustrating, as I share her general skepticism, and was a fan of her run on Star Trek: TNG (and I adore Wild Cards, even as I find her stories in the collections generally subpar). Suffice to say, this feels very much like a Snodgrass story, so if you like that sort of thing, you'll like this. The concept itself is certainly fine -- Roman history mixed with some Lovecraftian ideas. The writing itself just didn't click for me.

"The Bones of Giants," by Yoon Ha Lee.. This is the only entry in this collection that I see making it into one of the sixty-three annual "Year's Best" volumes. It's a superbly-crafted story involving necromancers, ghouls, and a quest for vengeance. There's also some great world-building, some interesting magic systems, and some nice subtle humor.

"The Others," by Lawrence C. Connelly. This is a direct sequel to a story I never read, but it stands nicely on its own, too, as the relevant setting -- that the Gamma copy of a cyborg named Cara has lost her access to the central computer in the process of colonizing a world -- becomes clear quickly enough. The story focuses on something I've got a soft spot for, namely the nature of individuality in a world featuring clones or similar beings. It's not Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang or even Singularity's Ring, but it's a fun, if predictable, story. And if the overall ending is predictable, there's a nice twist that got a laugh out of me. ETA: After writing the above, I went to the F&SF site, and saw that the story to which this is a sequel is available for free to read. I haven't done so yet, but kudos to GVG and his staff for deciding to make this available (and I hope this is something they'll regularly do for sequels).

"Three Leaves of Aloe," by Rand B Lee. A well-written story that never quite achieves greatness, mainly due to the tropes. Amit, a Mumbai-based call center employee, is told that her teen daughter -- suspended after her fourth fight -- will be expelled from school unless they agree to put a "nannychip" in her. A tale told by her uncle's wife convinces her that this would be a bad idea. The writing's fine, and I like the characters, but there's no real storytelling depth here.

"The Private Eye," by Albert E. Cowdrey. Shockingly, this is set in Lousisiana, an unusual twist for a Cowdrey story. It's a decent little tale, nicely capturing the setting and giving us some nice, larger-than-life characters. Nothing groundbreaking, but certainly worth reading and enjoyable.

"The Esoteric City", by Bruce Sterling. Sterling appears to do very, very good drugs. This is a gloriously fucked-up tale of a businessman, a mummy, a trip to hell, and of Turin. It peters out a little near the end, but is still a blast to read.

Reprinted short stories:

"The Goddamned Tooth Fairy," by Tina Kuzminski. If you told me that "Tina Kuzminski" was a pen name for Charles de Lint, I wouldn't be surprised. This is a beautiful little tale about a love, grief, and magic. It might actually be the best piece in this volume (which I guess is the point of a classic reprint). GvG provides a nice introduction.

Snowfall, by Jessie Thompson. Harlan Ellison provides what can only be called an Ellisonian introduction to the story, writing for nearly as long about the story as Thompson takes to tell her tale. Alas, I wasn't half as moved by the story as Ellison was. It's poetic and well-written, but there's just too little there.

Cartoons: Remember National Lampoon in the late '80s, when the cartoons were all written and drawn by folks who'd gotten the message to be tasteless, but hadn't figured out how to be funny? Well, replace "tasteless" with "somehow science- or fantasy-related," and that sums up this batch. Seriously, not one cartoon that was worth the space it took up. The magazine could have sold seven half-page ads and made money off these pages instead of paying folks for these clunkers.

Nonfiction: Columns by Lucious Shepherd (snarking on Watchmen), Elizabeth Hand (a well-written books column in spite of that fact that her taste and mine are completely opposed when it comes to the topic of Laura Miller, who Hand incredibly calls a "topnotch critic," a term I'd no more use for Miller than I'd use "topnotch actor" for Yahoo Serious), and Charles de Lint (good recommendations as always, especially for those of us behind on their Kim Antieau). All are worth reading. GvG has his now-infamous editorial, which has been discussed at length elsewhere, so I'll say nothing of it here (especially as it was a lot less relevent to my reading experience than the rest of the material above).

Overall, would I recommend this? I'm not sure I'd pay $6.50 for an anthology with only a few stories worth reading, but I'm also a picky buyer. Then again, the stories that are worth reading -- the ones by Yoon Ha Lee, Bruce Sterling, and Tina Kuzminski are all must-reads -- are very, very worth reading, and the weakest stories (once I drop my general inability to like a Snodgrass story) are also the shortest. So if you come across this, there's a lot of good material. Is it better than, say, any random issue of ChiZine, Lone Star, or Strange Horizons? Probably not (and since none of the latter cost anything to read, there's a longer debate about print vs webzines that I don't have time for today), but it's also no worse, and much as many folks (myself included) like to snark at the state of the print genre mags, this issue of F&SF, at least, still shows that the print mags can put together a great collection (cartoons excluded).

I got back from my trip on Friday. It was good.

I had brought a box of like a dozen books with me, thinking I could do a lot of reading, but as it turned out I did almost none. I did, however, do a lot of writing. Especially at the beginning of the trip, I had a lot of unexpected angst, and I discovered once again how helpful writing is in that situation. I may post some of that writing here soon, although I'll spare you (whoever you may be, dear reader) the more melodramatic bits.

Anyway, here is the short version.
( map and route! )

Driving around in the back woods of Northern California this weekend we came across this road sign.



We ended up scratching our heads and wondering what the purpose of this sign was. On one hand it seemed useful only to people who were previously familiar with the road's past condition. For people like us, encountering the road for the first time, the sign means "No matter what this road looks like now, remember that it didn't always look like this."

Isn't this kinda obvious? Isn't it not just this road, but everything that's in a constant state of change? I eventually decided that this sign was erected by Buddhists as a recognition of Anicca and a reminder of the benefits of the unconditioned mind, living a life of detachment from desire and expectation.

I was out of network and cell phone range this weekend when Sarah Palin resigned after completing 64% of her term as governor. I have no idea what to think about this - my mind is a tabula rasa right now - but I'm going to read through her announcement (which I've heard was difficult to parse) and try to figure out her explanation:

Many people laughed at William Seward for proposing the purchasing Alaska but they were wrong to do so. (Implication that Palin is also a proponent of Alaska and therefore people laughing at her are wrong to do so? Hasty generalization, questionable cause.)

Alaska is "the air crossroads of the world" (It's true - I fly over it from California to Japan) and "a gatekeeper of the continent" (she can see Russia from her house). Alaska also has moose, oil, minerals, and other important things.

Sarah Palin's administration has done many things in the first half of her term related to oil and gas, bipartisanship, prisons, refusing to let the federal government give them money , and elimination of the state's socialist dairy industry programs. Also something about private jets and chefs.

Things changed when she accepted the VP nomination and people started accusing her of holding a fish, wearing a jacket with a logo, or answering questions. Answering these ethical complaints (and 12 more) has the governor's office $2 million and Palin family half a million dollars. The asymmetric nature of the conflict means that anyone offering a "silly accusation" can force Palin to drain public resources to dispute them. This is not a fruitful or productive activity.

She doesn't want to stop doing the things that make people criticize her and just go back to being a normal governor, and she doesn't want to keep being a liability for the governor's office. So she's announcing she's not going to run for governor again. This means she's a lame duck. Some lame duck governors "travel around the state, to the Lower 48 (maybe), overseas on international trade ... hit the road, draw the paycheck, and milk it" and she doesn't want to do this so she's going to "take a stand and effect change" by transferring authority to Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell.

Palin remaining in office would be like "hit our heads against the wall" resulting in "watch valuable state time and money, millions of your dollars, go down the drain" so she's going to "take a stand and effect change" by resigning. To use a basketball metaphor she has to pass the basketball of sound priorities to teammate Sean Parnell because she's become ineffective at dealing with defense and opposition.

"I cannot stand here as your Governor and allow millions upon millions of our dollars go to waste just so I can hold the title of Governor. And my children won’t allow it either." Also, people were mocking Trig, which will decrease if she resigns. Like The Troops, she will heroically sacrifice herself for the good of all Alaskans.

She's ending "politics as usual" by getting out of the "politics" part. But you shouldn't be scared of getting into what she's getting out of, because she'll come to your campaign and help you out.

There are few things that don't make sense to me here.

Her motivation. Palin's being constantly criticized, but she's unwilling to "go with the flow" by just "hunkering down" and doing her job in the sustainable way that 49 other governors seem capable of doing. Seems like she's saying "the impulse to say or do crazy things is more irresistable than the impulse to do my job".

Cause and effect. Palin's decided not to run for a second term? Sure, OK. Therefore she's a lame duck? Technically, I suppose. And some lame duck governors become slackers? I suppose they do. So Palin has to resign now. Wait, what? Maybe someone who doesn't want to "go with the flow" should just do their job? Or how about just delaying the announcement so that people don't know you're a lame duck yet? It seems like she's saying "the impulse to slack off and start milking my public office paycheck is more irresistable than the impulse to keep doing my job." And if "travel around the state, to the Lower 48, or overseas on international trade" was so objectionable what about being Vice President? Isn't that exactly what a vice president does?

Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Palin's quitting a little more than halfway through her term because of public criticisms of percieved lapses in judgment. Isn't this the sort of lapse in judgment that's going to result in public criticisms?

If I could distill the speech down to a single concept it would be "Public criticism has been too severe and has attracted so much criticism, ridicule, and negative press that Palin couldn't do her job effectively anymore." Is that fair, or am I misreading anything?

(lgmfeed appears similarly confused. "Palin's central argument .. is just bizarre; no one resigns from state office "for the good of the state" unless they're morally or legally compromised." There's also a summary of right wing blogs' explanations.)

Tags: politics, sarah palin

We are moving. We have too much to do. It is lame.

On the other hand, we are going to be in the UK for a month around September/early October. I have various family to see, but also I kind of need to see some of y'all. storme, huskyscotsman libellum, awesomelies, we should probably plan things. I will be in Yakutat in a couple of weeks and fuck knows how long it'll take to restore connectivity.

There were two Sarah Palin impersonators in our Fourth of July parade. The better one had the mannerisms and the snowmachine-suit husband and an I Quit sign, which I think demonstrated a highly out-of-character awareness of current events.

I dreamed I was in some suburban residential neighborhood. I went out onto the sidewalk and this one student from Kumon was there. It was evening, and I asked her what she was doing out late by herself. Just then her mom drove up. We greeted each other and then they left. Then Mom appeared and said they had made an appointment to come to her office on Sunday.

There was another part where I was at a huge part. Tons of people were there, from UCSB and SBHS and Kumon and more. I overheard Robyn talking to another woman (whom I think I also knew but can't recall now). It seemed Robyn had lent the other woman money (or maybe vice versa), and the other person had left a check on Robyn's porch, but someone had stolen it and somehow cashed it, so now they were both out the money.

Then I ran into this guy Ryan, the brother of a friend of mine from elementary school. He said he had been playing a lot of bocce lately and invited me to play some later that evening. Someone else (I think it was this guy Damien who I knew in high school) was initially dismissive of bocce because he thought it was like lawn bowling, but after we explained it to him he seemed interested. Ajay and Aaron were also around (or maybe I called them), and I told them about the bocce plans. We seemed to be planning to do it late at night.

Later, though, when I went to find Ryan, I couldn't. I wound up lying on the grass in an idyllic twilight with these two little kids who are also Kumon students, who talked with me about cute little kid stuff.

Then it seemed I was in Spring Lake. Apparently I had been taking a trip like my current one and had to rendezvous with Mom and the rest of the crew in Spring Lake for a wedding or something. I was at my aunt Susan's house.

( Number three: sewing area and first stitches )

Next: making choices and finishing up.

Tags: sewing

( Number two in a series: making pieces out of fabric. )

Ready to sew!

Tags: sewing

This spring when I did my annual pull of summer clothing to check for size, wear, and touch-ups (ironing, sewing on buttons), I discovered I didn't have many clothes suitable for work: some were too worn and some didn't fit. I put the things that wouldn't do for work in a pile for a while and thought about what to do. I didn't have a budget for new clothes this summer, so I decided to try to find a simple pattern to sew some tops. Tops are simpler to make than pants, and anyway I have enough pants and one skirt that still work.

This is a very beginner-oriented story; at least, I hope I've included enough detail for beginners. I haven't sewn much for years, and I have only once before tried to make clothing for myself (and that was a complete flop). Ask if something isn't clear and I'll try to explain in comments.

( Number one in a series: Start at the very beginning )

Next: more prep.

Tags: sewing

I am looking for pictures (and video?) of our Young Frankenstein Masquerade entry

I mentioned The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T a few posts back, didn't I? So I decided to look for the Dungeon of Scratchy Violins sequence, and found it. I still think that Matt Mattox is in it about two minutes and twelve seconds in, but if so, he's uncredited. Still, it makes me happy to think it might be him.

Sometimes, YouTube can rip your heart out. I just refound the video from The New York Times about the closing of Rose's Turn, which probably has the only footage of Soren singing in existence.

For those living vicariously through my kid. (Which would include me, especially this week.)

* This past week she wore cat ears every day. This upcoming week, she has decided on hats. She has requested the loan of my ViolentBelle mini top hat for tomorrow. I am considering it.

* Friday's main event was an '80s-themed dance. <3 Her Saturday trip was kayaking and a visit to the Minuteman National Park; today was the Institute for Contemporary Art and Fanueil Hall.

* Random Explo fact: kids attend from over 40 states and over 40 countries.

* Every year, a kid gets momentarily misplaced. Last year, a kid fell asleep on the bus and got driven back to the bus depot. >.< This year, a kid tried to catch up from the slower-moving group to the faster-moving group on a trip and got lost on her way.

ASK ME HOW I KNOW.

*headdesk*

So yeah. Elayna ended up at South Station, where she located a map - and tried not to cry when she couldn't find the "you are here" dot or the ICA (they were on their way back to the ICA from Fanueil Hall). A nice couple saw her distress and let her use their cell phone; she called the main Explo office and they sent one of the staffers to get her.

The "holy crap this is a small world" part of this?

The nice couple? Both of them were former Explo staffers.

Anyway. She got over her distress quickly and well, thank goodness. And - she did really well, I think. She got to a recognizable landmark, she found a map, she called camp. I mentioned that ideally she should've gone to the MBTA staff to ask to use their phone, but the couple stopped and asked if she'd like to use theirs before she'd gotten to the "okay, what do I do now" stage. She kept her head about her. And... now she knows that being lost isn't the end of the world.

On the brighter side...

* She made yet another new friend on her kayaking trip. And the friend? Is a fellow s00j fan. For serious! Who found s00j's site whilst Googling for cool bands. She was very "NO WAI!" when she heard that Elayna actually knows and has sung with s00j.

So aside from today's separation from the group, she's having a blast. Tomorrow night's main event is a carnival. Hm - come to think of it, that hat totally works for the carnival theme.

If any of you love me, you'll buy me a jar of this.

Or, you know, anything else with bacon in it (other than the nasty bacon mints that they sell at Archie McPhee).

Also yesterday, we wandered into the money-sucking den that is Forbidden Planet.

Things we picked up: Superman: Red Son is a nice concept but lacks something; I feel like it wasn't explored deeply enough, really. But Batman does get an awesome hat.

We also bought episodes 1-13 of Ouran High School Host Club. It is an astonishingly cracktastic show. I think it's awesome; Iain seems mostly bemused by it.

And in the near future, we also have FLCL to watch.

My goal for the weekend, after about 8:00 Friday evening, was to be externally boring, and I think I can honestly say we're doing a good job. There has been writing, reading, working out, doing PT, cooking, and various and sundry other useful and/or pleasant things. And, I mean, I could chatter away to people about The Dark Knight and Bones S1 and the books I'm reading, but I'll probably do some of that later. Some of the people we want to do stuff with are out of town, and some are busy, and also some of us are unpredictable regarding sleep (just the usual some, there), and we're all sort of tired and peopled out. I was very pleased with having two weeks of 4th St. related stuff, but when push came to shove it had gotten to be time to curl up and not do or say much.

And so yesterday I invoked the 5:00 Rule*, and markgritter made guacamole today, and I think I win at holiday decadence, but just in case that's not enough, there will be grilled sockeye salmon, and I will finish this book I'm reading, and I will play with the doglet's ears, and that's what, really.

It's good timing for a lazy, lazy holiday: the doglet hates the 4th due to feeling under attack, so having quiet, soothing monkeys around is just as well for her. Also the rest of July is looking...a bit like we have a thing or two to do, let's say.

But more on that later. For now I am catching up on correspondence and renewing my zoo membership and other stuff that is quite satisfying from the inside and not the least bit of interest externally. So yay.

*The 5:00 Rule, for those of you who need a refresher course: if you are a morning shower person, and you manage, with this and that, to put off your shower until after 5:00 p.m. and don't have other stuff to do, you win! You are not required to put actual clothes on but can instead put clean pajamas on after your shower and luxuriate in your decadence.

Tags: holiday cheer and thumping, household minutiae

Justine Larbalestier on why authors should not publicly attack folks who give them bad reviews.

Week 1: Runs of 3, 4, 3, and 5 miles. Humid. Hot. Shin splints. Did the Lederhosenlauf 5k as my last pre-marathon run. That was so enjoyable that it makes me want to run 5k and 10k races as often as I can in the summer, except they don't mesh with the long runs I have on the weekends. So be it.

Week 2: Runs of 3, 4, 3, and 6 miles. Also humid. Also hot. Also tough to run after feasting on Father's Day. Remarkably, the shin splints were not the limiting factor, but rather the heat index.

Week 3: Runs of 3, 4, 3, and 7 miles. The first run should have been on Tuesday night, but due to Upstage rehearsal it was pushed to Wednesday morning. Thursday's 4 mile run took place as scheduled. The third run should have been on Friday, but due to Fogo de Chao feasting it was pushed back to Saturday morning... which was then followed with 2+ hours of Insane Chore Posse manual work. (Just for the record, that is not the ideal way to spend the rest day before the long run of the week.)

The 7 mile run was this morning, but it came out as 7.25 miles because I'm apparently just that hardcore (or that bad at judging distances in my neighborhood). My pace was 11:13 which is still just fine with me, as that was the longest run I'd had in almost a year.

The shin splints are nonexistent, and what had become familiar pains the last two years in my left knee and left hip haven't shown up yet, although I can feel some tension in my hip if I stretch it in an unnatural fashion. I am tentatively putting this into the "hell yeah" column.

Next week calls for runs of 3, 5, 3, and 8 miles, with increases coming in the 2nd and 4th runs, and then 3, 5, 3, 10 and so long to running fewer than 20 miles in a week for the next couple months.

Tags: marathon

As promised, a pic:

What I was trying to do was find a 8×8 tiling where each of the four square pieces touches exactly two of the smaller pieces, while keeping all of the arrows pointed the same way. Notice that I fail! (The T in the upper left.) Let me know if you can do better. (Actually, this points to one thing I really like about the set: one can handicap puzzle difficulty by relaxing the requirement that all of the pieces point the same way. Got all but 3 going the right way? That's pretty good! That can be your personal best, and maybe another time you'll improve on it. Meanwhile the elite puzzle solver will go for perfection.)

Anyway, I'm going to start selling them soon, but I feel like I should have more puzzles to solve with the set first. What I have so far: making 4 4×4 squares, which is conveniently what you need to do to get the pieces in the box nicely, and tiling the 8x8 such that none of the 2 and 3 square pieces touch each other or the exterior of the square. (And the problem in the picture, which has the disadvantage that I do not know if it's solvable.) I think I was spoiled by L-topia, which immediately suggested a large number of puzzles of reasonable difficulty. If anyone can come up with a puzzle I like well enough to include with the set, I can offer a few dollars of credit toward puzzle purchases. I think $5 sounds reasonable.

In other news, grad school started a couple weeks ago, (I'm taking the M.A.T. program at Lewis & Clark for to be a privateer high school math teacher.) It is kicking my butt, which is why progress on the puzzle front has slowed to a trickle.

(Maybe right when I was entering grad school wasn't the best time to start a small business. But it is very small.)

hey PC users, what program(s) do you like for writing a DVD that I can stick in my DVD player and play? I'm having a hard time finding one.

Tags: tech
Current Location: home office
Current Mood: discontent
Current Music: in my head - "Thriller" by Michael Jackson

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Tags: fun, music, recording, song
Current Location: at home
Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: This!

This week has been somewhat action-packed.

( Spinal Tap )
( Blur )
( Avenue Q )

I also managed to buy new shoes and new jeans today! Which means that I don't have to do that again until all of these have holes in too.

Amazon's giving away a free copy of any version of the Star-Spangled Banner today (or until Monday, actually). Realistically, that means a free copy of the Jimi Hendrix one, but there are versions by Jordin Sparks, Marvin Gaye, Molly Ringwald, KISS, and others, too.

No real plans for the day, other than hoping for some mild schadenfreude when any assholes who set off illegal fireworks when we're trying to sleep blow their hands off. Not a fan of parties, of course, and 'song's not feeling all that well today. We're currently just taking it easy, catching up on recorded movies on the Tivo. Currently watching Renaissance, thus fulfilling our annual quota of French Neo-Noir Animated Black-and-White Sci-Fi .

I had a lovely breakfast on the patio this morning: scrambled eggs with cream cheese and kale, followed by canteloupe. Now I'm sewing.

I'm still surprised at how much of sewing a garment does not involve actually sewing pieces of fabric together. Prep time is enormous and finishing as you go also takes up a lot of time.

Prep time includes choosing and buying a pattern, appropriate fabric, and notions like thread, zippers, bias binding and interfacing; washing or pretreating the materials in the way that you want to clean the finished garment (I like to make machine washable stuff so mostly that means a trip through the washer and dryer for the fabric and a warm-water dip and drip-dry for the interfacing); tracing off the pattern pieces and making any fit adjustments; ironing the fabric; laying out the fabric and pattern pieces with weights and cutting them out; fusing the interfacing and cutting out those pieces.

Sewing seams is really the least of it! There's pinning seams together, sometimes basting, and then after you sew them you must iron them open or to one side, and finish the seams somehow so the raw fabric edges don't ravel. Don't forget clipping thread ends and stray threads, too. It's a fun and challenging hobby.

And in the end I have a finished garment, to wear with pleasure, compliments, and pride. I finding sewing for myself very rewarding.

Melissa Anelli of Pottercast interviewed several of the cast and crew of the group that put on HP: The Musical here.

They are also on Twitter now: as StarKidPotter.

Tags: harry potter

but Palin's resignation is BIZARRE! Have you read her resignation statement? Mario Piperni [balloon_juice] points to Paul Begala’s biting take on Palin’s resignation.

Sarah Palin makes Mark Foley, the congressman who sent filthy emails to pages look almost normal. She makes David Vitter, the senator who was hanging out with hookers, look almost boring. She makes Larry Craig, caught hitting on a cop in a men’s room, look almost stable. She makes John Ensign, the senator who was having an affair with a staffer, look almost humdrum (and compared to the rest of the GOP whack-jobs, he is). And she makes Mark Sanford, the governor with the Latin lover, look positively predictable.

It gets better…

Her statement was incoherent, bizarre and juvenile. The text, as posted on Gov. Palin’s official website (here), uses 2,549 words and 18 exclamation points. Lincoln freed the slaves with 719 words and nary an exclamation; Mr. Jefferson declared our independence in 1,322 words and, again, no exclamation points. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1,796 words — still no exclamation points. Gov. Palin capitalized words at random - whole words, like “TO,” “HELP,” and “AND,” and the first letter of “Troops.”

And the knockdown…

I’m no latter-day Strunk & White, just a guy who was struck by Palin’s spectacularly rambling and infantile prose. It bespeaks a rambling and infantile mind. But perhaps not. Perhaps this is all a ruse. Perhaps Gov. Palin wants us to believe she’s an intellectual featherweight who is slightly shallower than an actor on High School Musical. Maybe she’s trying to throw us off the trail.

Naah. A lot of people thought that about George W. Bush. He couldn’t be so block-headed, they said. He couldn’t be as childish and churlish as he came off. Oh yes he could. And so, too, might Ms. Palin be as vapid and puerile as her inane statement suggests.

.

Tags: politics

( Tamora, Lick It Like You Mean It '08, Velvet, Prunella, Slippery Poppy Tincture, Lady Macbeth, Gluttony, Tombstone, I Fell In Love With A Floating Brain, Jabberwocky, Pain, 51, Mead Moon, Mag Mell, 13 (Thirteen) '06, El Dia De Reyes, Eclipse, Maenad, Flower Moon '09, Green Phoenix, Pumpkin I '08 )

Tags: bpal, reviews, scent

My previous post on the subject seemed to draw some small amount of interest/amusement, so I figured I'd post the conclusion to the tale.


June 27

Dear haoebay_88,

Thank you for your reply, and for offering a replacement item or a refund. As I
said in my first email, the problem is that the ring I received is not the size
that your eBay listing said it would be. The listing said it would be size 5.5,
but it is much larger than that. The ring I got has a tag that says "Size 19".
Chinese size 19 translates to North American size 9.5. It was advertized as
North American size 5.5, which would be a Chinese size 10. North American size
5.5 (or Chinese size 10) is the size I need.

Thank you for understanding.


June 29:

Dear friends, do you feel !!!!! I can understand the project but you have to return back!!!! I can replace it or refund you!!! Please understand!! Bless you and your family!! !

( The thrilling conclusion! )

No matter how many times I'm told otherwise, I keep thinking that "Brigadoon" is a story about the British colonial army in India during the Sepoy Mutiny.

Okay, sometimes this new crappy cameraphone surprises me and takes a halfway decent picture for a change.

Metafilter's palliser on Sarah Palin's resignation statement:


I can't understand what she's saying. I can never understand what she's saying.

Her speech patterns are, for me, in the uncanny valley of language. It's so disturbing to hear English words, arranged according (mostly) to English rules of grammar, but with no meaning to me. It's a facsimile of language, but not so cartoonish a facsimile ("blah blah blah," for instance) that it's clearly meant to be a facsimile.

It's like I'm in a dream where people are speaking, and it seems to be English, but I can't understand them. Like I've had a traumatic brain injury and can no longer parse language for meaning.

It's terrible to me to listen to her.
posted by palliser at 3:51 PM on July 3 [11 favorites]

Tags: news

Behold my new favorite online specfic feud.

Current Mood: amused

Bostonians whom I have not seen: I'm back, briefly! I'm in town through the morning of July 6th (my flight is at 1 PM, and add in transit and usual buffer times, so unless I can meet someone for breakfast or somesuch, I'm probably not going to be doing anything social that day). Tomorrow is the 4th, and I'll go to Fulton's Folly and/or RSI's camp for much of the day. Right now I'm just chilling at Random, being crufty among the undergrads (there may be a boardgame night later).

Anyways, if people I haven't seen are free in the near future, it would be excellent to see y'all (I've touched base with many but not all of the awesome people in Boston with whom I'm still in anything resembling contact, and some others I know have things going on this weekend, but I'm terrible at keeping track of names and addresses and who-all is still actually in Boston, so I'm sure there are some folks I haven't acounted for at all). This has been a generally awesome visit, but I'm kinda winding down and spinning my wheels at this point.

I should write about recent events at some point, but the capsule version of the New York visit: my nephew Nevin is cute and active and cool. It was wonderful to see Jon and Carla again. The City proper is full of people. I'm glad I had the chance to make the quick run out there.

Tags: reunion, travel

Mr. D is running around saying "Nanu Nanu"

One of the unfortunate effects of a week of nausea = a flatlined caffeine tolerance.

I'm a pot-a-day girl. Hush. Fibro is a fatigue condition, and the Lyrica... let's just say that when people found out how much I was on, they were amazed that I was awake. Like, ever. So. Pot of coffee. Few cups in the morning, few in the afternoon, maybe one at night.

But this week... so nauseated that I could barely eat or drink at all, for swathes of the week. So coffee consumption went down to a cup or two a day.

So today, when I hit cup 3....

Full-on shaky freakout. Like I'd been mainlining espresso.

ARGH.

Am mostly back to normal now. But. I do not like this. Because, you see, coffee is not medicinal for me. Coffee is one the few pleasures I'm consistently able to indulge in. I like coffee. The smell, the taste...

I do not want to cut back on coffee.

*growl*

And decaf is not coffee. So don't even.

Today is coincidentally the birthdays of two friends: theferrett and sararunning. The Ferrett asked all his friends to do something fun for his birthday present, and I'm cooperating by playing the CD I ordered that arrived today: Spider Robinson, "Belaboring the Obvious." I played the title song first, it's my favorite on the album, and now I'm playing it through from the start.

I called Sara to wish her happy and we'll make plans later this month after I'm over this darn cold.

I did get out between 6:30 and 7:30 to water and weed--it was still cool, but it's going to be over 90 F later today, and I am not heat tolerant! In fact I am rather a fragile flower of femininity when it comes to temperature: I have a very narrow range outside which I am not really suitable for human companionship.

Current Music: The Drunkard's Song, Spider Robinson

Our phone line is down again; static even worse than before. Totally unusable. And the ealiest they can get someone out here to look at it is Monday.

So. E-mail or call our cell phones if you need us.

We have asked the home care attendants not to come this weekend, so that we can have three days of living at our own pace. This will be lovely.

...and surreal. Soren's discovered a cache of what sounds like late 1950s/early 1960s Okinawan pop-rock, and it's, well, just weird. The internet is a strange and wondrous place.

Meanwhile, I am mulling over the fact that a friend, who happens to be 100% gay, always tells me I look good/pretty/healthy/etc. when I have my period. He generally likes the way I look, but there's a consistent pattern that the compliments are more effusive when I'm least fertile.

I think I shall spend part of this weekend lazing about, and part of it setting up my desk, and cleaning pens. It's time to cull the herd again.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Some blogs would put pictures of fireworks here, or possibly embed a Lee Greenwood song.

We give you the best Keyboard Cat ever.

We’re out for the weekend to do family-type stuff. Enjoy!

Tags: awesome music videos

Sing it with me, people:

When Captain America throws his mighty shield,
A small radioactive man his crotch shall yield!

At least, that's the way the current cover looks.

Administration
Happy birthday to theferrett and naufiel!

Hello to new reader 19_crows!

Medical
Closing out Week One of detox. I have slightly more of an attention span now. Massive headaches, but that's at least partly due to the weather and the jaw-clenching. Trying to rest and stay hydrated. Prone to the shivers. Still not up to much physical activity (weak like kitten!), and generally exhausted and dropping things out of short-term memory.

What I don't know is how much of that is Lyrica detox, and how much is Gabitril ramp-up. The particular hell of changing anti-seizure meds... you can't just stop one and start the next *after* the withdrawal, because that leaves you excruciatingly vulnerable to seizures. So you have what's usually six weeks of your body hating you, which can end up with you realizing that Untenable Thing X is a side effect of the new thing, not the withdrawal from the old thing. And then you start all over again.

What I *do* know now is that the Lyrica was not doing a thing for the fibro. Because my pain levels have not fluctuated at all this week. So that's good. Next thing I'm dropping is the Robaxin - dialing back to using it only when I'm in extra pain. I can't quit the Celebrex (the only thing that really works on the pain), the Lunesta (I flat-out don't sleep without it, and sleep-dep triggers fibro and is a major seizure risk), or the Toprol (the heart palpitations are not life-threatening, but are hella disturbing, and I don't get untenable side effects from it), and I have to be on an anti-seizure med. But I don't know that the Robaxin does much. We'll see.

Blogathon
Thanks to sponsors eustaciavye, highway_west, maxymyllyn, B. S-C, and my first anonymous of the 'thon, we're up to $85!

Please sponsor me!

I really need to write my big comprehensive post about Blogathon today. For you guys, and for BARCC - my volunteer coordinator wants to help me publicize.

And - I know times are hard. But sexual assault rates rise in times of economic distress, and our budget, like everyone else's, has been slashed on the state level. The Blogathon matters more than ever. We raised over $3,000 last year. It really does make a huge difference in the services we can offer survivors and their loved ones, and the community as a whole.

Halp?
Astrid offered me Blooddrop fragrance oils for Blogathon, but my brain isn't holding options very well right now. Which of these reminds you of something I've written?

BPAL
Stuff is getting mailed today. Really sorry about the delay. :( The weather has made walking to the post office a bad idea, and especially when I'm in anti-seizure-med flux, I should not drive. Adam has the day off today, so we can do that and go to the library. *nod*

Readercon
Is next weekend. As of now, I'm just on one panel (The Year in Novels) and the Interfictions reading, which suits my current struggle for coherency just fine... hopefully I'll be feeling much better by then, but if not, I can handle reading off a list of what I've been reading and telling you what I thought of it.

So who-all's going?

Link Soup
* Wow, what an unfortunate cover.
* These look awesome, though.
* Preorder this book!
* CAPTCHA fan art.

Daily Science
Hear the music your brainwaves make.

Friday Memage!
Wearing: Dark red pants from the Wiscon Clothing Swap, BPAL Inquisition shirt (the Lab has decreed that I am Naughty).
Reading: Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab by Christine Montross. Read Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater yesterday, and I am telling you, it is this year's Hunger Games. Intense, spare, wistful, lyrical, with some fascinating ideas.
Writing: Ha. I can barely write an LJ post right now. I'm tossing around ideas for a possible new story to run during Blogathon, though, along the bottom of the posts.
Planning: Shipping BPAL & hitting the library today. And perhaps we will finally get to see Moon. No plans Saturday. Sunday, the Wyrding Studios party at eustaciavye's, if I can get a ride.

My life has pretty much totally been on hold for a week now. I am being as patient as I can, but I do not like not knowing how long my life will be on hold; I was hoping to travel a bit in July, and as of now, I cannot make plans. I could be feeling better tomorrow, or not til August. I wait.

And how are you?

I don't think my two and a half days in New York could possibly have gone better. There's been a nice balance between catching up with old friends, wandering around old favorite places, eating, shopping, and just plain relaxing and soaking in the city. I saw the new entrance to Juilliard, checked out which shops are still there around Columbia, meandered through the Village and Alphabet City, and had some terrific food at some of my favorite places - strawberry shortcake at Cafe Lalo, pizza at Famous Famiglia, tea at Cafe Pick Me Up, plus some new-to-me places that were definite hits. And I visited three yarn stores. (My favorite: Downtown Yarns, on Avenue A.)

I couldn't do EVERYTHING I wanted to do, of course... I only saw Central Park in passing, and I didn't have time to go to the Met museum or see any shows or concerts, but as a nice little slice of catching up with the city, I'm very happy how this trip turned out. I need to get a job here so I can spend some more time.

All I need for this particular trip to be complete is a toasted bagel with chive cream cheese. That would make everything perfect.

Tags: trip report