I have been writing so hard and so fast lately--seized by an idea and therefore cheating on my long-term projects, which actually seems to happen a lot in the second half of any given year--that I am miserably behind on the news. (And I'm at the really exciting part, too, where you get to do lots of research and world-building. I'm letting it take ( Read more... )

Miscellany:

I have tickets to Midnight Harry Potter! The Lovely Emily and I have done this for years now--maybe since Prisoner of Azkaban; certainly since Goblet of Fire, I can't remember. (I think GOF was the one where she nearly killed some photo-with-flash-taking kids in the row in front of us. With her knitting needles. And if she was knitting ( Read more... )

Been having a really hard time the last few days. Don't even really want to talk about it, although suffice it to say that it's not just me feeling pitiful, it's me actually trying not to get sucked into a number of different people's dramaz and not entirely succeeding. I'm trying to space the entries several days apart, but if The Secret Life of ( Read more... )

Not doing too much today, even by our standards. My stepfather's out drumming at the American Village in his Revolutionary soldier coat; Sister Girl and her boyfriend came over for lunch. Mom used her new ice cream maker to whip up a pretty simple vanilla, which we then put homemade hot fudge sauce and fresh strawberries on (kind of like a ( Read more... )

Chez Jones is still a house divided over the Kris/Adam Question. As much as my mother has come to accept that Adam didn't "need" the win and will do just as well without it (isn't Queen in the market for a new lead singer? No, I mean a new -new singer), she is still somewhat disdainful of Kris. I cannot believe that, of the two of us, my mother ( Read more... )

Heartbreaking pictures of the Victoria fires and aftermath; Firefighter gives koala water, koala is recovering in shelter ("She has already got an admirer. A male koala keeps putting his arms around her"). Once again: the Australia Red Cross.

Remember the Etsy shop with proceeds going to the sick friend? She's restocked, and I particularly asked ( Read more... )

Another meme! Because I know you love them so much. In fact, I can't even tell if I'm being sarcastic there or not.

( Twenty questions, featuring the first video I ever saw on MTV )

Ugh. I just ate three Samoas on an empty stomach, and that was kind of a bad idea ( Read more... )

Bluebell's Triple Chocolate ice cream is the food of the frickin' gods. It's two kinds of chocolate ice cream (Dutch and milk, I think?), a meager swirl of vanilla (just for variety; they're not cheating you out of your chocolate), and a thick vein of sundae sauce. You put a bowl of it in the microwave for twenty seconds, and fnnnaghhhhhhhh ( Read more... )

You know, I take issue with the old adage that you should write what you know. Number one, as bibliotech pointed out, the entire science fiction genre would cease to exist. Number two--most of us lead extremely boring lives. If we wrote only what we knew, we would probably replace science fiction with navel gazing, and the You Are Way Too Young to Be Writing ( Read more... )