I am home from Montreal and digging out from under the mountain of things that will pile up when you take a vacation. It was lovely, it was grand, and now it is lovely and grand to be home. And oh, so much stuff. So much stuff. Presents to wrap, more presents to buy and wrap. Stories to revise, more stories to write. The laundry is starting ( Read more... )

1. I am in SF Signal’s Mind Meld this time around. It’s about the Suck Fairy and avoiding same. I think one of the things I thought of after, reading the other answers, is that you’re bringing different things when you’re at different ages. Sometimes you’re bringing your innocence or naivete. You shouldn’t feel bad about that-but you also ( Read more... )

So if you decide to use large tomatoes instead of ramekins or dinner rolls as implements for holding raw eggs to bake them in a moderate oven, it'll work just fine, but the acidity of the tomato will interact with the egg and increase the needed baking time to about 40, 45 minutes for a moderately firm yolk. I salted the inside of the tomato ( Read more... )

Upon reading the manual to our new car, markgritter was startled to discover that it can be taught to open garage doors. (timprov and I were startled, too, but did not read the manual. Suffice it to say that this is not a feature we would have been willing to pay for separately, but it's kind of cool to have it around.)

markgritter: Okay, I've programmed it now so that 1 is ( Read more... )

I was not sure whether to begin this post ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )

I am doing revisions on a printout, because I need to revise on printouts mostly, and when I try not to, I bang my head repeatedly against the wall and then feel stupid when it turns out all I needed was a printout. So. Printout! I need to remind myself of this in future, because I am unlikely to come admit to you-all that revisions have stalled ( Read more... )

Did you know that a bowl of milk and Cheerios contains a truly alarming amount of milk when you fall and gift your office with it? Sad but true, and so I have added, "Steam-clean office carpet," to the list of things to do for today, since I am not even remotely confident in my ability to find all the wee milk spots by hand and clean them up so ( Read more... )

1. I no longer like milk chocolate. I am still willing to eat a frozen Reese's Peanut Butter Cup once in a blue moon, but that may be it. I still have to try a Marabou hazelnut milk chocolate bar to be sure. But when we were in the Toronto airport, I spotted the lovely Quality Street packages and bought some. I enjoyed them two years ago. I ( Read more... )

We did ten loads of laundry yesterday. Ten. My mom said, "Didn't you do laundry before you left for Omaha?" No. I was writing a book. And the weather was varied enough between cool and warm that it was really not a problem, what with towels and dustcloths and this and that, to accumulate ten loads of laundryThis has to be some kind of record ( Read more... )