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We came to a meeting of the minds on seeing THE HOBBIT this weekend - Saturday - at the nearby Studio Movie Grill in Wheaton. I’d rather do the whole fanboi thing and see it at the first showing at Midnight, but the next day is a school/work day.

Alternate History that Doesn’t Involve WW2 or the Civil War - Friday, 02-10-2012 - 11:30 am to 1:00 pm - Birch B
As any judge for the Sidewise Awards knows, hundreds of Alternate History stories come out each year. Though many of them seem to fixate on World War II and the Civil War, some find more unique points in history for a divergence. What are ( Read more... )

I used to have a WordPress plugin/widget on the site a while back that you could input books that you had on your just-read pile, your about-to-read pile, and so on…and be able to have the whole thing be a part of the site.  As these things come and go, I’m looking to put up a new one, but I’m not getting a lot of luck doing searches on ‘library’ ( Read more... )

The surgery took place late on Tuesday morning; the pain levels are not what I had feared, and I’m doing moderately well.  I am taking Norco for the pain; it makes me sleepy and foggy.  A few things of note:

(1) Surgery was supposed to start hours before it did; I’m a very tough ‘stick’ for things like IVs, and I was a little dehydrated, so it was ( Read more... )

Especially for the paper fans and the folks in the general Philadelphia area:  The folks at Historic RittenhouseTown are giving classes from time to time on the subject of papermaking. (ok, they say ‘Paper Arts Workshops’ because it covers some other areas) which sound wonderfully worthwhile; I’d go, but it’s too far for me without a teleport ( Read more... )

I’m looking for some kind of document manager that will be able to easily file away my own, personal digital documents collection; scanned personal papers, scanned financial papers, pdfs of technical articles, that sort of thing. A good friend who is far more adept at programming came over the other day and was chatting at me about his similar ( Read more... )

Had a good time at my aunt-in-law’s house in the northwest suburbs, eating and trying to fix her computer.   The eating wasn’t a sure thing, as I’ve come down with something that fits the description of Norovirus (read: stomach and intestinal disorders, aches, pains, tiredness, cramps and more tired)…had me pretty nailed on the food department on ( Read more... )

Be a multimillionaire politician, go on a book tour, and have any of the outfits pulling you in for a speech buy bazillions of copies of your book in bulk. Helps your sales numbers no end!

Susan and Mere are doing a rummage sale today (Friday) at at our house: 577 Hitchcock, in Lisle, IL. (Roughly IL 53 and 55th/Maple Avenue.) I will either be inside hiding from the heat or outside in my wheelchair; Susan and Meredith are running the table, and selling more of the boxes of books I dug out from my collection for the earlier rummage ( Read more... )

My daughter Meredith is a competitive roller skater, and her skating club is doing a big rummage sale Saturday and Sunday at the Lombard Roller Rink in Lombard from 9-3.  I will not be there; Susan and Meredith are running the table, and I had an operation earlier this week and in no shape to walk or travel, but I dug out many boxes of books ( Read more... )