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Nov. 26th, 2009 @ 05:57 am Thanksgiving wishes and cranberry dreams
Current Mood: sick
Tags:
This is just a little post to say thank you.

I am more blessed with companionship and fellowship than I deserve and can express. Thank you for being a part of my life.

May today be a day of joy and happiness for all of you. And if health isn't part of that yet, may your recovery come speedily and soon.

I love you.

Happy Thanksgiving!
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Books!
Nov. 22nd, 2009 @ 06:44 am Comics
Current Mood: amused
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FYI, [info] lithera and [info] pullthestars, did you know that [info - community] scans_daily is up and running in Dreamwidth? If you'd like to join, I have DW invites, but I think you can always post comments with your LJ account as well.
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Books!
Nov. 22nd, 2009 @ 06:02 am Last night
Current Mood: happy
Tags:
How tired were we? We got home, and [info] wanderingfey was asleep by nine-ish. This is the equivalent of going to bed in the afternoon for him.

The wedding was lovely. Shortest ceremony on record, but that's not actually surprising, given the couple in question.

The glasses did not ting properly. This makes me sad.

The set up was remarkably simple, and everything got put together very well. And wow; until the sun went down, the scenery was gorgeous. I have not spent enough time on windy, rainy beaches. (I have now, however, spent more than enough time on windy, rainy beaches in high heeled sandals and sans warm coat.)

Everyone seemed happy to be there. No real drama was had (thank heavens!) The bride was shining and beautiful, the groom was shining and beautiful, and [info] lithera did a decent job of seconding them, if I do say so myself.

And, as Cantor Serkin-Poole told [info] wanderingfey and I, at the end of the day, you'll be married. Nothing else matters. And so it was.

MJ told me she had no doubts that eventually it would happen. Me, I was a lot more skeptical. Not for the past year or three, but before that. I was certain that if the relationship were going to last, it would not be under the heading of "married." But people grow and change, things that were once important are not as important as other things. I don't know how much the legalisms mean to [info] trilliumgrl and [info] seanb, but I think that the public announcement of it all meant something to them.

And I just now realized that I never actually congratulated [info] trilliumgrl last night. Foolish me. I do congratulate her, and wish her all the best life has to offer that she has not gotten already. *hug*

Anyway, it was a very nice party. I've been feeling really twitchy about this "going on a business trip for three weeks" thing, and so it was really nice to see people before the Thanksgiving/trip craziness ensues.

And on a completely different note, I am well on my way to becoming a b*tch when I grow up.
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Books!
Nov. 4th, 2009 @ 08:39 pm Where I am
Current Mood: happy
Tags:
I am three pages into P. Craig Russell's Sigfried. Sigfried is a teenage jock who deserved a spot in the Hall of Fame for jerks.

I am about seventy or eighty pages into Cherie Priest's Boneshaker. It is not as zombie-filled as I feared and I am enjoying it. I also like the brown ink. It sets the book apart.

I am one reading into Jeff Vandermeer's Finch. This is a book for [info] wanderingfey, I think. Guys being eaten to death by fungi kind of trips me out in a not-good way.

I am one reading into Cat Rambo's Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight. I am not sure how much I will like *reading* her stuff, as opposed to *hearing* it. When she read, her prose was poetry, and I have a horrible tendency not to appreciate poetry on the page. Too much reading for the story, I suppose.

I am more than halfway through Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime. It is fluffy and insubstantial, and showcases much of what is really wretched about Christie's plotting. But it's Tommy and Tuppence, whom I love. And somewhere, there is a web page that has all of the famous-at-the-time detectives that Tommy and Tuppence attempt to emulate that I don't know. (Except for Holmes and Watson, of course.) Why, look! It's the Wikipedia entry!

I am on the Eastern Front at the beginning of the War in John Keegan's aptly named The First World War. So far, it's quite good, if incredibly depressing. And it was made even more depressing by the note I heard today in Hardcore History, "Ghosts of the Ostfront I." Namely, more people were killed on the Eastern Front of WWII than died in battle in all of WWI. That's...a lot of people.

I am five chapters or so into Stefan Fatsis's A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays for the NFL. It's very well written, very crisp and concise. I was with Fatsis through trying to find a team that would let him be a paper placekicker, with him through his own training attempts. But then he got to the Broncos training camp, and I don't care anymore. I think, for me, having him be there is the peak. If I cared at all about football, I can see how my intrest would be much more rivited by what's going on behind the scenes. But I'm not, and so I don't think I'll be finishing this.

I am some pages into Age of Misrule: World's End. Like A few Seconds of Panic, I think that this one needs to go back to the library. Premise: The Age of Science is over, the Age of Magic and random crap happening to you because a god says so is back. I am a Technocrat; I like gravity. A lot. Gods and the fey coming back and f'ing over everything just because? Not so much. The universe suddenly being...other? No thank you. And England is the epicenter of it all because... No, I'm a little tired of the Anglocentric viewpoint. (Shocking, I know.) Please note that Ilona Andrews has a similar premise, and I love it. A) The characters are well-written and sympathetic, and B) The world still has rules. Humans are not playtoys or chewy snacks if they want to be other. Maybe I'm not giving this one a fair shake, but it's doing nothing for me.

I am finished with David Plotz's The Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. And it is exactly as he promises. It is a breeze through the entire Tanakah, from someone who wasn't connected to G-d or his Jewish faith. And now he's still not connected to G-d, but he's a lot more connected to his faith. Maybe it wouldn't be as funny if I were a Christian, or if I was an Orthodox Jew. But I loved his whimsy, his sense of the absurd, and his awe. It's kind of like the fantastic "God Said, Huh?" which is an excerpt from Julia Sweeney's piece, Letting Go of God.

I am 600+ words into my NaNo, which is probably not going to happen. I don't really want to write stories, I want to read them. However, I may try to do more of these "book reviews as they happen" posts, because I'd like to write more about books, but I never seem to get anything written after I finish them. So, I just need to sit down and write regardless of finishing.
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Books!
Nov. 3rd, 2009 @ 07:18 pm Out and about
So Jeff Vandermeer, Cherie Priest, and Cat Rambo will be signing and talking over at the U Bookstore tomorrow. I'm going, and IIRC, [info] seanb is as well. Anyone else want to come? Maybe do dinner beforehand?
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Books!
Oct. 19th, 2009 @ 08:46 pm It's done! (insert Kermit happy dance here)
Current Mood: ecstatic
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Eeeeeeee!

*beat*

*beat*

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It's done! Apart from my cravat, which is somewhere in the house and will probably show up next weekend, I have, in my possession, all of the base pieces for Faraday's outfit! Eeeeeeeee!

So shiny, so pretty. So very, very, very warm. I foresee much taking off and putting on of layers.

I do look like a ship, with the prow sticking out majestically, but for all that, it's just fantastic. I'm really looking forward to seeing all the pieces put together, which it will be for the wedding.

And I have a big ol' grin on my face when I think about it.

Oh, and if you're going to Steamcon, try and catch Marie in her Girl Genius-inspired lab coat with the long tails. She liked the effect of my uniform jacket so much, she used it for her own work. All hail engineering!

(The bunny jumping up and down on the Dreamwidth account? Totally sums up my mood right now.)
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Books!
Oct. 15th, 2009 @ 10:28 am literal *facepalm*
So I was dinking around on Amazon yesterday, and it said "You'd really, really like this new book of Naomi Novik's!" And I said, "Yes, yes I do want In His Majesty's Service!" But that seemed like an odd title for a book set in Australia, so I looked at more information about it. It's an omnibus of the first three books. And so I wiped it off my "recommended" list, becayuse I have all three. Some of them in first printing even, and at least one signed.

So, I'm checking up on LJ, and there's a post from [info] naomiinovik. About IHMS. Which is all three books...plus a new short story about Lien.

Argh! Ms. Novik, why must you do this to me!

On the plus side, the vast majority of the aviatrix outfit will be making an aappearance at the B'ham wedding.
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Books!
Oct. 14th, 2009 @ 07:30 pm The Me Review of Books - The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
Current Mood: cold
Tags: ,
I've never read this classic before, but I was curious about it after finishing David Fromkin's Europe's Last Summer. I finished the long slog through today. It might have been shorter if I hadn't kept stopping to look stuff up in Wikipedia, since my knowledge of the specifics of the war are sketchy. (Today's fun fact: Gallieni definitely saved Paris [well, with a lot of help from von Kluck] and is definitely implicated in bringing trench warfare into play.)

The short version of the entry into the Great War is that the Europeans were all tied together by treaties and such and they just sort of fell into it. Fromkin argues that the Germans and the Austrians bullied themselves into it. And Tuchman...good heavens, the Germans were bastards. And everyone was f'ing stupid. The French moreso than the Germans, but wow, everyone was just way too wedded to their plans to turn around once they hopped into the track.

The march through Belgium was interesting; I had put the concept of "the rape of Belgium" as war propaganda, something to get other countries fired up to come to aid. No, actually a lot of it wasn't ginned up. In the first place, this was the first "modern war," and it brought along a lot of stuff that we take for granted, which wasn't back then. And, apparently, the Germans a) couldn't believe that anyone would resist without being told to by authority and b) they were actively engaging in a campaign of terror in order to move through Belgium and France faster. Despite learning that terror methods beget terrorists, or, in this case, franc-tireurs.

Still, there were points when I looked at the book and said, "Really, Barbara? You couldn't find a less inflammatory way of putting it?"

All in all, a very good book. I'd like to get a copy of my own so I can mark it up.
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Authoritarianism
Oct. 12th, 2009 @ 05:44 am Bridal Shower: The Aftermath
Current Mood: accomplished
Tags: ,
I just had three dreams, two of which involved me getting angry. The first one had me getting into a huge fight with [info] wanderingfey. Fortunately, when I woke up, he was just about ready to get into bed, so I got snuggles and reassurances that no, in fact, we were not fighting. It's a little weird that your emotions can get so hyped up ove nothing that getting actual, calming snuggles really can make you feel better.

The third dream involved going to a party, with real people like [info] lithera and [info] sharkcowsheep there, and as I was waking up, I was going through the party saying good-bye to everyone. It was a bit surreal to wake up, since the dream was so realistic.

[info] trilliumgrl's shower seemed to be fairly successful. Some people didn't show, so the spread of people between the two tables wasn't as good as I would have liked, but other than that, people seemed to have a really good time, and [info] trilliumgrl was thrilled, so, really, I can't ask for more. And I got to see people that I haven't seen in a long time, and that was good too.

Things that I have learned:

1) Demitasse tea cup are good. Mugs of tea are fine for normal use, but you cycle through pots, and hence continue to have good hot water longer, with demitasses.

2) Similarly, the fewer people at the table, the fewer tea pots. They can be cycled through faster and hence can have more hot water.

3) Honeybush vanilla is awesome. (But I knew that already.)

4) Have someone in the kitchen boiling water. And maybe have two teakettles going.

5) Remind people as they leave that we are more than happy to have them take cookies with them. I think my co-workers are going to wonder if Christmas or Thanksgiving is early this year.

6) Corsets and tights do not work well. Corsets and garters is a much better idea. This will become important very shortly, as I was planning on doing white tights under the pants for the aviatrix outfit. We shall see what happens.

7) I need to not freak out. Seriously, standing at the sink on...Tuesday? Wednesday? Holding a pot and saying, "I can't let go"? Actually scary. I have some nasty little mental quirks in my subsystems, and it feels like they come out more and more as I get older. Fortunately, after I actually allowed myself to break down, I got better.

8) I cook food for people to show my love. That is also a little scary.

9) The millionaire bars (shortbread, dulce de leche, and chocolate) should get scored along the shortbread after it comes out of the oven, and scored again along the chocolate once it cools a bit. So very tasty, but so very, very hard to cut up. I swear that to get the pretty picture, they took an electric carving knife to them. They might also be serve well by a foil carry-case, so they can be lifted out of the pan wholly when required.

10) I can, in fact, hold a dinner party for 20-25 in my house, and it will work. It will be buffet-style, however.

11) If we hold gatherings like this more often, we need to buy more serving platters, or at least dig out the boxes of china and go through them for the needed stuff.

12) I need to go through the boxes of china and relabel them with both type and what is in them. Because trying to dig through heavy boxes stacked four high which contain 2-3 different types of china and/or glassware to find desert plates? Not fun. I was thrilled when Mom brought me my china, because then I didn't have to dig. (I inherited Noni's china, but since I was living in a studio in Alameda at the time, I left it with my parents. I also now have my bat mitzvah candlesticks, my birth plate and kiddush cup, and my name inheritance, which is apparently two little gold-rimmed decorative plates which are, at this point, probably at least a century old. That discovery was a little odd.

My deep and abiding thanks go to [info] puppygrrl and my mom. They both came over last Saturday and spent most of the day baking, and we got a *lot* done. And then Mom came over yesterday, and we made the sandwich fillings and set up, and she brought over all of the teapots, most of the teacups, the second table, and all sorts of needed things. And of course, [info] wanderingfey was wonderful, both during the week and at the event itself.

And really, thank you to everyone who came. It would have sucked without you, and I'm just thrilled that <lj user="trilliumgrl" got to have something so very nice for her wedding.
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Books!
Sep. 20th, 2009 @ 07:29 am Slightly belated, but it's still the holiday...
Current Mood: chipper
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L'shanah tovah tikatevu!
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Judaism
Sep. 16th, 2009 @ 06:07 pm National Chronic Illness Awareness Week
Current Mood: thoughtful
According to [info] seanan_mcguire, (who is fabulous, and you should all go and buy a copy of Rosemary and Rue [but more about that later]) it is National Chronic Illness Awareness week. So what does that mean? On the one hand, more words from people on your friendslist about causes and awareness and stuff.

On the other hand, it's about knowing what a health care plan can give you, and what will happen if you don't have one, and about your body attacking itself, and there's not much you can do about it.

Cut for my personal story )

Really, what I want to say is that a lot of chronic illnesses may be invisible, but that doesn't mean that they aren't out there. And, at least for mine, there was no warning, there was no sin, there was no being-a-bad-person. It just happened, and now I have to deal with it.
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Sep. 16th, 2009 @ 05:32 pm And now for a commercial interruption...
Current Mood: cheerful
Tags:
So there's this little yarn and tea shop near Third Place Books on Lake City. Not so coincidentally, it is called Village Yarn and Tea Shop. They sell yarn. And tea. They sell very good yarn, and presumably good tea. What they do not sell is location. They're easy to find, yes. But you can't freaking park there.

So they are moving. To the Third Place Books area, which means that I can have yarn and tea and books all in one place! Like the Mission, but less so. ("Seattle is like San Francisco, but there's less of it" quoth I. And, no, it doesn't have all the other stuff that the Mission has, but, let's face it, the Borderlands/Imagiknit/Samovar trifecta is pretty awesome all on its lonesome.)

But like all businesses that are moving, they don't want to cart a lot of stuff. So on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (September 18-20), they are having a big sale on, natch, yarn and tea stuff. I may go for some tea strainers, but I really have too much yarn at the moment to justify getting more. (I'm a project knitter, not a stasher. And I still love books more than yarn. Or tea.) And it's Rosh Hashanah weekend, so getting there is problematic at best, at least until Sunday. But I know that there are people on my flist who like yarn, and maybe they haven't heard this.
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Sep. 9th, 2009 @ 01:40 pm So what do you do at work all day?
Current Mood: darkly amused
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I just spent most of the day trying to fix the problem in my LC method that made the entire computer freeze to death when it tried to analyze the data after a run. (Freeze as in, "I get to pull the power cord out because the on/off switch won't work." frozen.)

It turns out that the method is fine. The computer just needs defragging.

Head, meet desk.
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Books!
Sep. 3rd, 2009 @ 04:38 am I don't wanna get up!
Current Mood: sleepy
So, I hear my alarm, and I struggle to get up and out of bed. I am exhausted and grumbly, because I don't feel like I've gotten a good night's sleep. But work must be done, and so I haul myself to the bathroom.

I brush my teeth. I take my shower. I grab my clothes so that I can get dressed without walking [info] wanderingfey up.

Which is when I actually look at the clock.

"12:02"

I blink at it a couple of times, wondering if there has been a power outage. I go outside, and [info] wanderingfey is downstairs and lights are on.

"Sweetheart, is it midnight?"

He stops playing his video game, puzzled. "Yes."

The assumption we're going with is that the video game was a little too loud, and I heard one of the alarms as my alarm clock. I very gratefully went back to sleep.
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Books!
Sep. 1st, 2009 @ 02:46 pm It's Science! Or something like it...
My G-d, I love Web of Science. I haven't had access to it since I left school, and OMG it makes searches so much freaking easier! Especially since the articles that I can access online have a cute little tag that takes me directly to the FDA access point.

I want to cuddle with this program.
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Jul. 14th, 2009 @ 01:56 pm Greetings from the nation's capital!
Well, it looks like I've rather lugged a brick across the country. My laptop doesn't want to connect to the hotel's internet access, so my free internet time is maybe 5-10 minutes a day, if that. So forgive me if I'm not caught up at all on anything that's going on. I'm still reachable by cell phone, though, if three hours off.

I'll be back late on Friday night, though. And therefore only missing one of the three S.J. Tucker/Tricky Pixie concerts, and no weekend time. (Beyond the whole wacky sleep thing -- I want fighting to stay awake this morning, even though I got as much sleep as I normally would, or so.

Note: Screaming children suck. Not being their parent *and* having headphones that shut out 90% of the noise? Awesome.
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Jun. 17th, 2009 @ 06:41 pm User accounts
Current Mood: hot
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So I now have four Dreamwidth invitations up for grabs. I figure that everyone who wanted one got one before, but I could be wrong. Anyone want one?
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Authoritarianism
Jun. 17th, 2009 @ 06:28 pm Really, really good book
Current Mood: enthralled
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So, Cat Valente ([info - personal]yuki_onna) is in a bad place financially. She really needs some help to get over this boost; she's got a going-to-the-mass-market book due soon, and that will give a push to the family income, but at the moment, they're screwed.

She doesn't want to ask for help, so she's offering a trade. There's a book in Palimpsest called The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Boat of Her Own Making.

Catherynne is now writing Circumnavigated as a YA novel. Every Monday she's posting a chapter, absolutely free, on her website, for all and sundry. All she asks is, if you can, do put a little something in the pot.

This is a fabulous book. It's Alice, it's Stardust, it's Edward Eager and E. Nesbit, and it's none of the above. It's a book that's worthy of buying in hardcover, and it's worth supporting in e- form. It is, quite simply, a good book.

Go, read. And five, ten dollars, for more and better? Well worth the investment.
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Books!
Jun. 15th, 2009 @ 01:31 pm Not sick?
It's amazing how a massive, nearly-incapacitating sinus headache can go away after spending a goodly amount of time spraying out forty pounds of flour out of a mixer with water hot enough to steam up your glasses.

Unfortunately, I am no longer getting flour and water on me, so I can feel the stuffiness and the ache creeping back.

Still, it was nice while it lasted.
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Books!
Jun. 10th, 2009 @ 04:08 pm Want to play?
Current Mood: amused
Tags: , ,
So there are some events going on in the next few weeks that I am pondering doing, and I wanted to know if you wanted to join me. (You being peoples who live in the Seattle area and are interested in this stuff.

1) Seth Grahme-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will be at the U Bookstore on Saturday, June 13th at 4 pm. I am of two minds on this. On one hand, I really like Pride and Prejudice, and I like the idea of a mash-up, Creative Commons type of novel. On the other hand, I really dislike zombies. If this had been Pride and Prejudice and Werewolves or Pride and Prejudice and Ninjas? All over it. But it's zombies, which I really just don't like. However, if I know that other people are planning on going, that's a different ball of wax. (And if we're gaming that day, well, if superheroes beat China Mieville, superheroes beat zombies. A lot.)

2) Jillian Venters of Gothic Charm School fame has a book. And it is launching at the U Village B&N on June 23rd at 7:30 pm. Not necessarily my full cup of tea, but [info]trilliumgrl expects it to be gothy and interesting, so I shall finangle an outfit together. (Probably involving my wedding corset as a) it's gorgeous and b) I can sit down in it.) Anyone else interested?

3) SJ Tucker is back in town! EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

She has a concert in Seattle on July 17th, 7 pm, for Can't Stop the Serenity. Then there's the Tricky Pixie CD Release Party in Kenmore on July 23rd. And another concert in Everett on July 25th. And I will be there, oh yes I will. We're definitely going to the TP concert, and I may hare off by myself for the other two because Sooj is MADE OF AWESOME. If you're wondering why the heck I'm obsessed, go here and listen. Especially to "We Are Shangri-La," but "Casimira" and the rest are good too. She is good. Even more so in concert.

(And if you're in Cali -- [info]__fullofgrace__, I'm looking at you -- SJ and Betsy will be performing at Seanan McGuire's book release parties in Santa Clara, San Francisco, and Berkeley.)

So, anyone interested?
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Books!