I finished staining the fence and was feeling all accomplishful, and then I realized I haven't walked again today.
Bother.
miles to Lothlorien: 215
Zilli woke us up at 3am by horking noisily but unproductively right outside our door. Ted and I are both a little o.O this morning. And I really need to start getting up earlier, because mostly what I'm getting out of the last couple of hours of sleep is a stiff back and vague grumpies for not getting up and being productive.
My sites might go down for a while 'cause I'm switching servers at my host again. But when I'm done switching servers almost everything should be working again. I hope. *whimper*
miles to Lothlorien: 214
music: Oklahoma
Good *God* but I'm in a good mood. I just love my life, I tell you. It's beautiful out, my job doesn't suck today, I've walked a couple miles, and generally everything is just *good*. I like *good*.
*boogie boogie boogie*
Oh, and also!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY WONDERFULLEST BESTEST LIL' BUDDY! I love you, Missy!
I like rice krispies quite a lot more than cheerios.
Hello! Did you miss me? I doubt it, since I have no plainitive email saying, "Kiiiit! Where aaaare you?" But that's okay. I'm brave. I can live with REJECTION *sob sob sob sob snivel wail sob!* ahem. :)
There is some stuff going on, she said in a sort of general and hand-waving sort of way, that is very cool, and yet I don't feel like discussing it yet, exactly. One wouldn't want to jinx anything. It's not, though, contract negotiations for another book, just in case you think I'm being a horrible tease. Well, actually, I am, but I don't care. :) Edit: I am not, for God's sake, pregnant.
Let's see! We went to Hero on Friday, and it was quite magnificent, in an operatic rather than action movie way. The visuals are amazing. My gawd. Jai! When are we going to go see it? Then Saturday I went to see Before Sunset, which I went away from smiling and didn't stop smiling for about two hours. I loved it. *beam*
Sunday Ted got his hairs cut and then we went out to the Palmer fair, which was much, much less interesting than the Tanana Valley fair, so we didn't have another fair accident. There was a *lot* of food at the fair, but not nearly as many interesting vendors. I wonder if their booths are just too expensive. And I read Laura Anne Gilman's STAYING DEAD, which I enjoyed pretty well. I'm discovering that I'm having a hard time enjoying urban fantasy, possibly because I'm writing it. I suspect LAG's book was more enjoyable than I found it, if that makes sense, because of that. *laugh*
And, let's see. What else? I got Nikki Flame halfway to 15th, which is the highest by far character I've got, and the most time I've spent playing CoH in a week or two. *laugh* And that's really about all I've been up to. See why I haven't been updating? :)
miles to Lothlorien: 212
Not dead! Just not very with it, either. Nothing to say today. Move along, move along.
Brought the comic shop boys a bunch of cookies today ("Who do you love?" I asked, coming in, and they said, "OOooooOOOOH. We love YOU!"), bought comics (only 3, because Ted has dropped the X titles! goodness! but they did something with Astonishing that just set all our teeth on edge, dammit), and went and got the Audi. Er, well, not at the comic shop, but you know what I mean. After that.
The Audi's speedometer is still broken. *sigh* Our mechanic didn't know the Magic Audi Mouth-Holding Position in order to make the new piece fit, so we still have to wait til the bloody 8th of September to bring it in to the Audi shop. I am Not Comfortable driving a car whose speedometer goes boingee boingee, so I can' t practice driving the damned thing until it's fixed. Sigh.
Came close to running out of stain, but not nearly close to running out of fence. Well, actually, I'm down to the last five or so sections. It's just there's more fence than there is stain. Hrnf.
Um. Hm. I guess that's all, then. Ooooh! THUNDER! *beam*
miles to Lothlorien: 202
Jai reminded me I was supposed to post pictures of the fair accident, so I am doing so now, behind the cut tag. Beware! Pottery and cute chefs!
The new canisters, guarded over by Pierre the Pastry Chef, one of three silly little guys that my Mom painted for Ted. :) Oh, and our pig, who has no name. He was a gift from my Aunt Eileen. He's our cookie jar. :)
This isn't actually a fair accident picture. It's just Guido the wine-tasting chef, standing guard over the wine. :)
And here we have Gustaf and the new sugar bowl, as well as a lot of spoons. :)
The pie plate properly ought to be accompanied by Pierre (or better yet, the blackberry pie I baked in it!), but I didn't want him to start getting airs because he got to be in two pictures and the other two gentlemen only got to be in one. :)
Fooled you, didn't I? You thought you were getting pictures of Ted. :)
There's also a syrup jug, but it's in the fridge full of syrup, and a gift for somebody, which I will post later. :)
I got up early enough to write this morning, but the idea was just unbearable for some reason, so I took the dog for a walk down to the water and back again. Now I feel much better and am prepared to write, but of course now I have to be at the day job. :P
It's really smoky out today. The air smells sharp and tangy and the sunrise was quite magnificent. It's chilly out for walking in shorts and a tanktop, but I'd have sweltered wearing sweats or jeans. One of the nicest things about walking early in the morning is that nearly everyone says hello or smiles as you go by. (Except one very grumpy looking man. I whispered, "*He's* not very friendly, is he?" to Chanti after he scowled his way by, and felt better.)
Someone had put a rather dramatic piece of wood that was shaped a great deal like a moose antler in the middle of the trail next to Earthquake park. I wonder how long it'll stay there. :)
Let's see, what else. I emailed a couple of my old teachers last night and have gotten big fat cheery emails back, particularly from Pat Dixon, who says my parents should go visit him next time they're in Seattle. :) Actually, he said when we're all on my big booksigning tour they'll come see us. *laugh* :)
Finished staining the inside of the fence last night. Now there's just one side left to do. I apparently need to work on my Tom Sawyer routine...
miles to Lothlorien: 200
*helpless giggles* Good, I got permission to post this. It's pure silliness brought on by a typo on a mailing list -- someone wrote URBAN SHAMAN as URBANE SHAMAN, which I said would be a *very* different book! People took off with the idea, ranging from an urbane shaman being "Some leathery faced, wise native elder wearing a top hat and monocle," to "a hunky Native metrosexual with long black hair with one feather in it leaning against a wine-bar," which promted, "Sort of Queer Eye for the Rez Guy." By the time all of these came through the mailing list, I was just about in tears from laughing so hard, and thinking that I really needed to write a short story to go with the Luna website OtherWorlds area when URBAN SHAMAN comes out -- OtherWorlds is a place where authors have been adding in extras about their world in the month their book is published.
But then the next email completely broke me, and made it clear that what I *really* needed to do was get Mercedes Lackey to write this short story:
The Urbane Shaman enters Cirque. Adjusts his tie, and sets his fingertips on the edge of the table. "There's trouble coming.""How do you know?"
"The salad fork is misaligned, and is in opposition to the steak knife. The steak knife points towards the circle of the Great Bird."
"You mean the turkey platter--"
*helpless laughter* Evidently Larry Dixon is actually responsible for this idea. The circle of the Great Bird. *LAUGH*
The problem with getting up at 6:20 is that by 11:20, one feels as if the work day ought to be mostly over, when in fact it is no such thing. My brain is sure it must be around 2pm by now. o.O
...inside I'll have to stay!
Good morning! I'm cheerful, having actually *gasp* gotten up to write this morning! Also, there was very, *very* funny email, which I will post if I get permission. *laugh* 1150 words on the HoS rewrite, and I'm not positive I need this bit that I wrote, but on the other hand I think I might, because it Makes Things Alarming (I hope) and yeah. Stuff like that. :) This book is going to be nigh unrecognizable from its original version by the time I'm done. :)
That may be the sum total of what I've got to report this morning, since I wrote down my mileage last night. :)
music: The Secret Garden, playing inside my head
ytd wordcount: 217,750
The RWA meeting was perfectly fine. Wendy talked about National, and we chatted about the changes at Harlequin, and generally had a nice time. :) Previous to that, I did some more staining of the fence, and used up the rest of the can of stain, but fortunately I've got a third. I think that it'll probably take most of that can to finish the fence, but it'll be done then. Yay!
The blackberry pie is better today than it was yesterday. MmmMMMmmmm. And, boy, let's see, what else. Anything else? Nothing else, really! Bedtime now!
miles to Lothlorien: 197
Okay! I have sent the Bombshell proposal (and a virtual life preserver) off to Jenn, having made some of the edits that Jai and Sarah suggested, I have managed to actually get some dayjob work done, and I am having a piece of incredibly good blackberry pie. What more could a girl want?
Okay, besides fifty million dollars to do LEGION with. Do I know anybody that rich? *hopeful look*
I logged on this morning to discover that Lithera loves me! She had links to this and this, just for me! *wriggle wriggle wriggle*!
Yesterday was nice. I made pancakes and a blackberry pie, went for a walk, visited with my parents (Mom made insanely good swiss steak for dinner), and finished reading Caitlin Brennan's THE MOUNTAIN'S CALL, which is the September Luna book and which I enjoyed hugely. I'm thinkin' maybe I'll try to finish up the 3 Luna books I haven't read this week, and then I'll have a whole month before the next one comes out! Why this matters, I donno... :)
You know, the one thing that LJ does that I'd really like to be able to do myself is the icons. I wonder if MT categories could be set with icons. Hm. I should talk to Garrett, for he is wise in the ways of MT in ways that I am not.
miles to Lothlorien: 193
It's been an oddly busy day. I got up to go to the Yoga For Weenies class this morning, but the yoga studio was closed. The other woman who was there and I went 'no video!'* at each other, and I came home again to walk the dog and finish staining the left-hand side of the fence. It looks really nice, if I do say so myself. The boys did a really good job building it. It looks all professional and stuff. It took, I don't know, 2.5 or 3 hours to finish staining it, and I started on the shadowy end and didn't think I'd catch up to the sunny end, but I did, and I only had another 15 or 18 feet or so to go, and it didn't seem worth going to put the sunblock on. That was an error in judgement, and now I have a funny square sunburn on my back, but it's not too awful.
Wrote a bunch of silly emails to Sarah, then went and did my writing. Walked the dog again. Went out with Ted to pick up a gift for Jai (ahahahahah!) and came home to stare brainlessly at the TV for a while. I donno, it just felt like a really full day! And now I'm waiting to go pick up Mom and Dad from the airport at midnight.
Ted went to bed, because he had a migraine, poor guy. :(
miles to Lothlorien: 190
*My nephew (used to, at least) want to watch DVDs on the computer while Mom and Dad were down visiting, but they didn't know how to make it go, so they would shrug and put their hands up in an "I don't know!" gesture, which apparently Breic is very fond of doing, and say, "No video!' And Breic would do the same thing and say, "No no no video!" back, and now my whole family does it.**
**We're rather disgusting, aren't we? :)
Thanks to Sarah The Slavedriver (who in fact isn't logged on at all today, but the Very Idea Of Her inspires me to write) I've gotten in another 1600 on the HoS rewrite, which makes it, um. Well, they're all new words, so at least I can count the ytd wordcount tidily. I'm reasonably certain I have to write at least two and possibly four entirely new chapters, nevermind all the rewriting on the ones that are already there. But it's going well. Yay!
Sarah wrote twenty-five hundred words today! Shamed by her dedication, I have slunk to my keyboard and worked on HoS. I have now reached the part where I must Irrevocably Entirely Rewrite The Whole Middle Of The Book. I can tell, because I just reached the part that now should take place Monday morning, but instead, in the book, it's Saturday morning, which means I have two whole days to fill up, and an awful, awful lot of stuff to write. I've already added 38 pages to the book, and yet I've also cut an entire chapter out wholesale. I suspect by the time I'm done I'll have added a hundred pages, although God knows how much I'll have cut.
It got lovely out again! I went on a 4 mile walk, which was v. nice, and then *proud look* I fried myself a chicken breast for dinner. Ted is off doing a catering thing tonight, so I had to fend for myself, and yet I had real food! Yay me! :)
All right. Despite the fact that I just cut 10 pages out of this chapter and am now procrastinating so I don't have to write more, I should go write more on it. Botheration. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 186
ytd wordcount: about 215K. Figuring rewrites is hard.
I'd have been disappointed with anyone else. :)
Athena
?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla
Gacked from Bang Bang.
1. What do you do for a living?
Web designer and author. Wait, no, HTML Web Producer, that's what the business card says. (The other one says 'famous writer'.)
2. What is your educational background?
BA in English and History.
3. What is your dream job?
Writing full time.
4. How long have you worked in your field?
Um. For web stuff, 8 years if you cut it the long way, 6 if you cut it the shorter way. For writing as pursued as a career, 13 years cut long, 2 cut short.
5. Do you see yourself at your current job five years from now?
Hell no. Not the day job, anyway.
Ok, I don't tend to talk about *what* my work does very often, but darn it, this is cool. It's an activity log that you can set up monthly goals and stuff on, and, well, darn it, it's *cool*!
Edit: Janne says that link doesn't work. Does this one?
My oh my. So after getting Quite A Lot of Work Done yesterday (yay me!), I went to get a massage. *goosh* It was wonderful. My back felt (in fact, feels) better than it has in months. I may have to make a habit of this. Plus the woman who was my masseuse, Chloe, got ridiculously excited over the idea of me being a Real Published Author. *laugh* It's really funny how complete strangers get all excited over that. So anyway, wow, my back feels good. Yay! And it's raining, so I have no reason to go stain the fence, which means I should have some more time for my dumb shoulder to heal up. Yay! :)
I finally went and talked to the guy about business cards, so that's good, and, let's see, what else. After my massage Ted and I went out to eat, and then went to see AVP, which I actually *enjoyed*. I really didn't think I'd like it, but I actually enjoyed it!
We also stopped by B&N, where I got the latest Luna book, Caitlin Brennan's THE MOUNTAIN'S CALL, and where in interests of not letting us have a bookstore accident, I did not get Wil Wheaton's JUST A GEEK (although I read the forward, in which Neil Gaiman says, "I pointed out to Wil that he would sell a lot more copies if he had Patrick Stewart write the introduction, but he wanted me to do it. That's because Wil is a geek. To geeks, I'm pretty much as cool as Patrick Stewart." *laugh* I liked that. :)), but I'll probably buy it soon, because I want to read it and I have recently developed this Deep Sympathy for buying first run books, for some reason. :)
Due to massaging and dinnering out and movieing and all, I 1. am convinced today must be Saturday, and 2. only walked 2 miles yesterday. But I walked, so that's good!
miles to Lothlorien: 181
CoH last night was very very funny. Ted and I teamed up with a level 11 scrapper (we were both level 10). He had a mission to finish killing off some Lost, and we were running around Perez Park just killing things randomly, but couldn't find any Lost. Eventually we found a pack of them. 9, to be exact. 9 level 13s, to be even more exact.
"I have a plan," says the scrapper.
"What's your plan?" Ted and I say.
"Let's kill them all."
"An *excellent* plan," I say. "A very *good* plan. It's a pity," I add, "that it doesn't involve a net."
"That's okay," says the scrapper. "I'm sure I could work a net into the plan, if you wanted to go get one."
"What," I say, "and let you guys have all the fun by yourselves? I think, though, that I might see a very slight flaw in your otherwise excellent plan."
"You'll die?" asks the scrapper.
"I'll die," I agree. "Otherwise it's a very good plan."
So we went and did Ted's door mission instead. :) When we left, we discovered that the Lost were still hanging out, and also there were two level 14 Lost Bosses over there. I pointed them out.
"Not even I have such a callous disregard for your lives," says the scrapper.
Shortly thereafter we got killed taking down some zombies, I think, causing the scrapper to say, "You guys are the bravest blasters I've ever seen." Dumb, but brave! It was lots and lots of fun. *beam*
Thinks to do today:
1. call for a massage
2. call dad & give him susan's phone #
3. go see about business cards
4. try to remember the other 2 1 things I needed to do
5. go to the post office
Shoulder muscle spasms drove me to the chiro yesterday (actually, Ted drove me to the chiro, but don't be difficult), and I got my neck popped fairly profoundly, which helped quite a bit. I've still got a knot of bad muscle, though, so I think I'm going to call up and make a massage appointment for the afternoon. Doesn't that sound lovely? I did not, however, go work on staining the fence more, because that would aggravate the stupid shoulder. I said to the chiro, "Does this mean I shouldn't go home and work on the fence?" and he gave me this very flat, "I can't believe you said that," look, which was pretty funny. :) I'm hoping to take up the brush again on Saturday.
Walked 4 miles yesterday! Have gotten past the 177 mark, which seemed Important somehow!
Let's see, what else. As I was not allowed to work on the fence last night, I watched Sliding Doors for the umpteenth time, and still adored it. :) Played some CoH, and went to bed. It's an exciting life!
Speaking of exciting lives, Fred and Rob rock: their 24 hour RPG, Fate, cleaned up at the Indie RPG Awards this year. Fred finds himself humbled. (And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you...)
Edit: Apparently the 24 hour RPG is Pace; Fate took lots longer. Still, they rock anyway! :)
miles to Lothlorien: 179 (298 to go!)
Went to the chiro yesterday and got crunched, which was good, but I think overall that painting the fence doesn't much agree with my back. I'm going to go to the Yoga For Weenies class tonight if it's still tonight and if I find out what time it's at. However, the first side of the fence is done. I ran out of stain, unsurprisingly, and we had to go get more, so we got two cans and hopefully I won't run out again. But I might. We'll see. There was another hour or more of light last night, so I could've kept painting, but I thought I'd killed enough brain cells for one day. Stinky stain.
It's still amazingly smoky here. The forecast had been calling for rain tomorrow, but it's changed to just cloudy, after which it gets nice again. We've now had a record-tying number of days over 70 degrees and today will presumably make it a record-breaking number of days, as it's supposed to be 78. Yesterday it was 81. Buh. And everything is orange, orange, orange because of the smoke. I would, of course, choose to be spending hours and hours outside /now/, when the air is bad, instead of for the last several weeks when it wasn't. Although, y'know, the fence only just got put up, so what can ya do?
When I am done staining the fence--hopefully by Saturday--I am going to reward myself with a massage. So there!
miles to Lothlorien: 175
Impatient. Want the work day to be over so I can go sit outside in the 75+ degree weather and stain the fence.
*pause*
Possibly my priorities are screwed up.
Oh, I just remembered the great sports commentator during the ... I don't know. Sports update thing on the news this weekend. They were talking about a baseball player, and for some reason the commentator said, "Suspended animation," and then, *compulsively*, I swear, added, "A state of bliss," which is a line from Pink Floyd's song "Learning to Fly". I was delighted. Hee hee hee! (I really need to get that album.)
can't take my eyes from the circling skies
tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I
Half the blogs I'm hosting aren't working. That includes Soly's and Ted's blogs. I will try to figure out what the problem is, but not this morning, because I've got work to do.
Gaaaaaaargh.
Kent is an angel of mercy from on high. He said the magic words that helped me actually fix the stupid site. I was making it too complicated. Sigh. Anyway, it works again now, and I *apologize* for the LJ feed spam. Bah. But that shouldn't happen any more.
The high yesterday was *84*. In *Anchorage*! Walking outside was like walking outside in California! It was unbelievable! And it's also horribly muggy and smoky. Gah. But I did get about, um. A fifth or so of the fence stained, and it's going to be a miracle of gosh if I manage to get even this whole first side done with the bucket of stain I've got. I'm going to need at least two and possibly 3 more buckets. Lots of stain! But being outside all evening was really very nice, although I should go see the bonecruncher today.
Finally making bread. Avoiding cleaning the kitty litter, too. *sigh*
miles to Lothlorien: 171
Oh, augh, sorry for the LJ feed spam. I'm trying to fix everything. Augh. Sorry.
Flaky site today, but I think it's better now. The host added some new thing to the servers today and it goofed me up, but hopefully it won't be goofy anymore.
Sooooo smoky here. I'm glad we're not in Fairbanks, where it must be ten zillion times worse. It's really nice out, about 70 degrees, but if it weren't smoky I'm afraid it'd be much, much hotter. Ye gods, the forecast for today says the high is supposed to be *eighty*. EIGHTY? What gives?! It's Anchorage! It's AUGUST! Who ever heard of it being EIGHTY in ANCHORAGE in AUGUST? The record high for today is 76. My gawd. *peers outside* I wonder if it'll hit 80!
*My* exciting plan for the evening is to go outside and paint a fence. It'll be a lot of fun! Me and Tom Sawyer will be there all evening! Won't you join us?
Edit: Obviously it's still screwy. Trying to fix it. :P
So we went up to Fairbanks to visit Ted's parents this weekend, which was very nice indeed. We went to the fair and bought a great deal of pottery (I now have CANISTERS! They're lovely! I'll take pictures eventually!) and a wonderful raven painting that we debated over a whole lot, long enough, in fact, to accidentally misplace Ted's mom. Oops. :) We were really glad to leave when we did, though, because the wind shifted this morning and the smoke from the jillions of wildfires came swooping in, so breathing started becoming an issue. But it was a *really* nice weekend.
And then I came home to learn there'd been a great deal of Writer's Weekend drama over the weekend. Among many, many other things, apparently the Writer's Weekend webpage got taken away from me *accidentally*. I'm given to understand that Karen clicked 'publish' on Front Page's webpage thing and it magically overwrote the whole site. In fact, it magically overwrote it all the way down to the DNS, which moved from 100megs to Godaddy. I didn't even know that could happen!
(I'm sorry, I just thought that was really, really funny. I mean, *really*. *laugh*)
Let's see, what else. Pottery, painting, lots of driving, and boy do I have an achy neck. Sleeping in a too-soft bed that's a size smaller than the one I'm used to is uncomfortable! And so I shall go to sleep in my OWN sized bed that is not too soft, now!
miles to Lothlorien: 168
So we were at the comic shop yesterday and I was looking at the Hellboy 2005 movie calendar. Now, I like calendars. I think they're quite wonderful; you get all that art for twelve or fifteen bucks, and the picture changes every month! I have two calendars up in the office right now, and if I'd found more that appealed to me I'd have bought 'em. I'm just like this. So my next statement is as a calendar aficianado, even if I'm not sure I've spelled aficianado correctly.
The June picture for calendars always sucks.
I have a certain investment in the June pictures, because my birthday is June 1, so I always hope there is a cool picture for June.
There never is.
In countryside calendars, the June picture is always something like a field on a rainy day. In geek calendars--take the Hellboy calendar, for example!--the June picture is not a wonderful picture of Hellboy. No, it's a picture of Sammael. Ok, sure the Sammael creature was cool, but who the hell wants Sammael glaring down at them for their birthday month? Especially when you could have Ron Perlman's yellow-eyed heroic demon giving you a sly look instead? If it's an architecture calendar it's the least interesting building in the calendar; if it's a dragon calendar, it's the most boring dragon imaginable. If it's a puppy calendar, the puppy is ugly. I swear this is true. June calendar pictures suck. Even in a James bloody Marsters calendar, the June picture is about as eh as you can get when you're talking about James bloody Marsters. (Ok, May sucks in that one too.) My 1990 ElfQuest calendar, which I loved, had a stupid grown-up Ember picture for June. Worse, she had FIVE FINGERS. I mean, *really*! It's a conspiracy! It's a plot! It's *consistent*. And I just wanted to let you all know that I'm bitter about it. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 164
SF reading meme, gacked from Peg Kerr, behind the cut tag.
I've read about a quarter of the list (typical, for me doing these things). There are another 15-25 that I'd like to read. Many of those are ones I in fact *intend* to read, but don't yet own. And then there's some like Alice in Wonderland. How can I have not read Alice in Wonderland?
Bold = read
underlined = started but never finished
italicizing = own but haven't read yet
1. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
2. Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, by Frank Herbert
4. Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
5. Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein
6. Valis, by Philip K. Dick
7. Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
8. Gateway, by Frederick Pohl
9. Space Merchants, by C.M. Kornbluth & Frederick Pohl
10. Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart
11. Cuckoo’s Egg, by C.J. Cherryh
12. Star Surgeon, by James White
13. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick
14. Radix, by A.A. Attanasio
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
16. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
17. A Case of Conscience, by James Blish
18. Last and First Man, by Olaf Stapledon
19. The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham
20. Way Station, by Clifford Simak
21. More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon
22. Gray Lensman, by E. E. "Doc" Smith
23. The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov
24. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
25. Behold the Man, by Michael Moorcock
26. Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon
27. The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
28. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
29. Heritage of Hastur, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
30. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
31. The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
32. Slan, by A.E. Van Vogt
33. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
34. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
35. In Conquest Born, by C.S. Friedman
36. Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
37. Eon, by Greg Bear
38. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
39. Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
40. Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
41. Cosm, by Gregory Benford
42. The Voyage of the Space Beagle, by A.E. Van Vogt
43. Blood Music, by Greg Bear
44. Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress
45. Omnivore, by Piers Anthony
46. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
47. Mission of Gravity, by Hal Clement
48. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, by Philip Jose Farmer
49. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
50. The Man Who Folded Himself, by David Gerrold
51. 1984, by George Orwell
52. The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
53. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
54. Flesh, by Philip Jose Farmer
55. Cities in Flight, by James Blish
56. Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe
57. Startide Rising, by David Brin
58. Triton, by Samuel R. Delany
59. Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner
60. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
61. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
62. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter Miller
63. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
64. No Blade of Grass, by John Christopher
65. The Postman, by David Brin
66. Dhalgren, by Samuel Delany
67. Berserker, by Fred Saberhagen
68. Flatland, by Edwin Abbot
69. Planiverse, by A.K. Dewdney
70. Dragon’s Egg, by Robert L. Forward
71. Downbelow Station, by C.J. Cherryh
72. Dawn, by Octavia E. Butler
73. Puppet Masters, by Robert Heinlein
74. The Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
75. Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
76. Deathbird Stories, by Harlan Ellison
77. Roadside Picnic, by Boris Strugatsky & Arkady Strugatsky
78. The Snow Queen, by Joan Vinge
79. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
80. Drowned World, by J.G. Ballard
81. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
82. Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
83. Upanishads, by Various
84. Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
85. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
86. The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin
87. The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham
88. Mutant, by Henry Kuttner
89. Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem
90. Ralph 124C41+, by Hugo Gernsback
91. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
92. Timescape, by Gregory Benford
93. The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester
94. War with the Newts, by Karl Kapek
95. Mars, by Ben Bova
96. Brain Wave, by Poul Anderson
97. Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
98. The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton
99. Camp Concentration, by Thomas Disch
100. A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Hee hee. The guy who came to repair the phone line admired the fence. Ted is all proud. :)
It's SOOOOO NICE OUT. It's in the 60s (finally! not too hot!) and there's a warm wind and it's SOOOOO NICE OUT! I shall walk the dog after my meeting, and later tonight I shall take her into the FENCED BACK YARD and throw her ball until she's exhausted from playing. Muahahahah. :)
music: Moulin Rouge
*laugh* Poor confused Chantico! She doesn't know quite what to think when I put her out without following her out to chain her up! Last night I noticed she was lying on the back deck, so I went to see if she wanted to come in, and she put her head down and her ears back and looked guilty, like she thought she might be doing something wrong. This morning--as we anticipated she might--rather than coming up to the door to bwuf to be let in, she stood at the foot of the deck steps--which is as far as her chain will let her go--and bwuffed to be let in! *laugh* Poor confused puppy!
miles to Lothlorien: 160
Well well well. The Writer's Weekend site has been taken away from me. That's very interesting. I discovered it by way of my email there not being functional anymore, so I emailed support to say 'hey, what's up?' They wrote back and said 'are you sure it's on our system?' I went to the whois to check, because I was going to say, "Well, duh," but in fact the domain's been transferred to godaddy.
Guess I'm shut of that, then.
On a completely different note, I saw an episode of Smallville for the first time tonight. I still think Tom Welling is too pretty, but I'd probably watch it if I had it on DVD. Sometime I'll have to pick it up. :)
The boys finished the fence! It looks WONDERFUL! What a lot of big work they've done! I'm going to stain it, although probably not until next week, 'cause we're going to Fairbanks this weekend, and wow, I can just put Chanti out now! It's quite amazing! Yay Ted! Yay Shaun! Yaaaaaay!
Oop. It appears that in the fence-building endeavor we cut the neighbor's phone line. Now he's outside looking at their power, um, thingy, monitor thingy, and talking on a cell phone. One would presume if they lost power yesterday afternoon they'd have mentioned it, wouldn't they have?
Oughtn't phone and cable lines and things be buried more than 6 inches deep, anyway?
Feeling remarkably unaccomplishful the last few days. It's possible I should check to see how much vacation time I've got, and use some of it to, like, you know. Take a vacation. Maybe that would help my tiny little mind some. Maybe.
Hm. 14 days of vacation time. Hm.
miles to Lothlorien: 158
Favorite series, by genre. I'm trying to keep it down to 3 series per, or I'll be here all year. Note, however, that I cleverly separated out SF and fantasy, allowing me to include both The Coldfire Trilogy and the Fionavar Tapestry as #1 without compromising myself. :)
My criteria here are not necessarily that these are the *best* series I've read, but rather that they're my favorites. These are the ones that I have re-read and will re-read over and over again. Comfort food, rather than brain food. I may very well create a list later of the best series I've read, which will have some crossover with this one.
YA:
1. The Dark is Rising Sequence, Susan Cooper
Comprised of: Over Sea, Under Stone, The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King & Silver on the Tree
2. The Damar Chronicles, Robin McKinley
Comprised of: The Blue Sword & The Hero and the Crown
3. The Harper Hall Trilogy, Anne McCaffrey
Comprised of: Dragonsong, Dragonsinger & Dragondrums
SF:
1. The Coldfire Trilogy, C.S. Friedman
Comprised of: Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls & Crown of Shadows
2. The Starbridge Chronicles, A.C. Crispin & others
Comprised of: Starbridge, Silent Dances, Shadow World, Serpent's Gift, Silent Songs & more
3. The Tales of Continuing Time, Daniel Keys Moran
Comprised of: Emerald Eyes, The Long Run & The Last Dancer
Fantasy:
1. The Fionavar Tapestry, Guy Gavriel Kay
Comprised of: The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire & The Darkest Road
2. The Belgariad, David Eddings
Comprised of: Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, Magician's Gambit, Castle of Wizardry & Enchanters End Game
3. Legends of Ethshar, Lawrence Watt-Evans
Comprised of: The Misenchanted Sword, With A Single Spell, The Unwilling Warlord & more
Mystery:
1. The Benjamin January Series, Barbara Hambly
Comprised of: A Free Man of Color, Fever Season, Graveyard Dust & more
2. The Monk Series, Anne Perry
Comprised of: The Face of a Stranger, A Dangerous Mourning, Defend & Betray & more
3. The J.P. Beaumont Series, J.A. Jance
Comprised of: Until Proven Guilty, Injustice for All, Trial by Fury & more
General fiction:
1. The Anne Books, L.M. Montgomery
Comprised of: Anne of Green Gables, etc.
2. The Little House Books, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Comprised of: Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, Farmer Boy, etc.
3. The Black Stallion Books, Walter Farley
Comprised of: The Black Stallion, The Black Stallion Returns, Son of the Black Stallion, etc.
(I observe that for general fiction I must reach back to childhood to obtain series, but still, I've re-read all of those books so many times it's not possible to count.)
The jelly seems to have set up! Yay! Now we'll have to see what it tastes like. :)
Ted's making danishes. MmMMMmmmm.
And, um, that's about all there is to report this morning. o.o
I haven't written. I did make grape jelly, but I'm almost certain it's not going to turn out. I think I put too much liquid in, 'cause I misunderstood the instructions. Well, we'll see.
My hair has reached this length that I didn't know existed. It is a length of 'Ok, I would like to braid this back out of the way now please'. I don't remember ever having hair which I had the impulse to braid before, so this is clearly a new and different length for me. (I'm pretty sure it's got something to do with the front being longer than the back, but whatever the reason, I can't /actually/ braid it, despite the urge to. Not long enough yet.) It's very annoying.
I have managed to achieve my goal of having only one sweet dessert today. That doesn't make up for being lame and not walking more than a mile today, but it's a small thing which I am considering a victory. Tomorrow I shall try to achieve it again.
So. Very. Hot. *pantpantpant*
miles to Lothlorien: 156
Got my act together this morning and sent Ursula some more money toward the Mandarin painting (if any of you were trying *desperately* to figure out how you could spend some money on me, you could send Ursula some money toward the painting; that'd be splendid :)), and it's a good thing I managed to do /that/, at least, 'cause I utterly failed to get up and write this morning. But I did get about three and a half chapters rewritten this weekend, and cut a chapter entirely, so now my timeline in the book is somewhat different (actually, now it's like, more different, because it'd been different already), but I think the rewrite is going reasonably well. I'll finish the ch. 15 rewrite tonight. And I'll try to be a good human and get up tomorrow morning to rewrite 16.
Let's see. Yesterday I was out of the house ALL DAY. It was splendid. I went berry picking with Dad (I think we got about another gallon of blueberries) and I completely forgot I was supposed to go see Spider-Man with Jai at 1, so we ended up going at 3:40 instead, and I like that movie better every time I see it. :) Then we went to Borders and had drinks and hung out and talked for an hour or so, and then I got to see her new condo before heading home to clean berries and watch some of the Hellboy DVD commentary stuff.
Hokay, to woik now.
I think I've got most of the bad parts of ch. 13 that were holding me back fixed. The end is still cludgy, but I can fix that. I think ch. 14 is going to look completely different, and then there's this whole other plot line that I've got to figure out how to work in. It's possible I'm going to have to rip 12 and 13 out again and redo them completely, because Margrit might be in a situation she can't get out of right now. I don't know. Mutter. Except she really kind of needs to stay in this situation, because otherwise she's not throwing in with Alban and she needs to be committed, so ... oh, and I should write *that* into the news report.
Writing is hard! Let's have ice cream!
miles to Lothlorien: 155
Well, this isn't going to work out how we'd expected. Ted was going to drive up to Chitna with Dad and they were going to fish, and I was going to spend all weekend revising HEART OF STONE. Instead, an hour after he left, Ted came back because the Jeep was overheating. So he's gone to the shop so they can look at it, and I'm all out of sorts because I'd had this plan and it's been thwarted. (Ted is equally out of sorts, actually.)
Well, what the hell, I can at least read the manuscript and try to get a start on this thing.
Cover me. I'm going in.
Somebody just hit the 80K visitor mark. Perhaps he or she will email me. (catie AT cemurphy DOT net if you don't know the email address for this site) :)
miles to Lothlorien: 151
Hey, I'm 2 hits away from 80K visitors on this site. Check the bottom of the page when you get here. If you're visitor #80,000, I'll give you something swell. (No fibbing, though, 'cause I got no way to tell.)
My sister needed a babysitter today--the daycare she's been using got closed unexpectedly--so Mom flew down to Montana last night to watch the munchkin for her. I have such a cool family. :) Apparently if Dad can get a airline miles flight he'll be going down to join them next weekend, after he RETIRES FROM HIS JOB, YAY DAD! Eheheheh!
Breic, when prompted to say Grandma, thinks saying Tractor is pretty funny. However, he was apparently glad to say 'aunt Catie' when shown the blue-tongued picture of me. :)
According to the USPS tracking thingy, my passport application couldn't be delivered as addressed to the Irish Consulate. I must've miswritten the address. So now I'm waiting for it to come back to me. :P And I have to get Deirdre's stuff together and send it down there so that while Mom's down there they can get the detaily stuff taken care of and Deirdre can send her application out too.
Ted cooked THREE MEALS yesterday. Ruthlessly spoiled. RUTHLESSLY!
I'm a mean and awful wife, though, and just made him get out of bed. His sleep schedule's been unbelievably screwed up since he and Dad went fishing last week, and he only took a 2 hour nap yesterday morning from about 5am to 7am, and then I wouldn't let him go back to bed because it'd only perpetuate the madness. So he went to bed about 10:30 last night (he might've gone earlier, but we watched a movie, How to Deal, which was pretty good) and now I've made him get up so he doesn't undo the goodness of having gone to bed at a sensible hour last night.
He brought the Audi over to the dealer yesterday and the radio is completely kaputz. It'll have to be replaced; I'm personally inclined to do it with a not-Audi radio, because hello, the car is *already* fourteen years old, I don't see the point in putting in an extra expensive Audi radio when an off brand one would do. And we'll see what the deal with the speedometer is.
I'm almost done reading C.S. Friedman's THE MADNESS SEASON. Re-reading, rather. I suppose I'm going to have to go dig THIS ALIEN SHORE out of the hardback boxes in the garage, because I've now (re-)read all her books this year except that one. Oh! That reminded me of the other thing I wanted to mention. :)
I actually worked on my shelves! In fact, the shelves themselves are now done, and I just need to sand and stain the brackets what I bought. I decided if I was prodding Ted about putting a fence up, I should probably get my act together about my own household project, and so I'm going to try to get the brackets done so the shelves can be put up next week on Shaun's weekend. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 149
I would just like to mention, in case I haven't lately, that I love my life. I have a job which, while boring, pays very well and allows me to work at home. The disadvantage, as I told my manager a while ago, to working at home is that it can be impossible to tell the difference between taking a break and vacuuming the living room. On the other hand, it's also difficult to differentiate between taking a break and baking chocolate chip cookies. :)
I have a second job which excites me beyond words and which I hope to switch into my full-time career in another 18 months. 18 months on one hand seems like a TERRIBLY LONG TIME; on the other, it's unquestionably The Forseeable Future.
I own a nice house in a nice neighborhood where the kids yell, "HI CHANTI!" when I take the dog for a walk, although they show no interest at all in what *my* name is. One of the little boys shows off a new bike-riding trick every chance he gets, as I go by. There is a fourteen mile bike/walk trail right next to my house, and I get to see astounding Alaskan scenery and the occasional moose (don't ask what the moose is when it's not an occasional moose) when I go for bike rides and walks. Every day when I do this, I'm thrilled all over again about my life.
I have a wonderful, silly family whom I see regularly (although in my sister's case, not regularly enough), who are all sufficiently cool that my friends now all want to be adopted, and my friends in high school would come over to visit and if I wasn't home, they'd just stay for a couple of hours to talk with my parents.
I have boatloads of talented, intelligent, ambitious friends, most of whom I don't see anything like often enough, but when I do, I enoy the time spent in their company immensely. I'm continually amazed at just how cool the people I know are.
And I have an amazing husband who is astonishingly talented in his own right, who also is not only capable of but actively focused on being supportive of me and my career. Ursula said of her husband, "He has quietly done the whatever I am supposed to be doing, like washing the dishes, made dinner, and put tinfoil over my portion... And when I finally come up for air...and thank him, he shrugs and says "Hey, I know how it is with art." Take my advice, O fellow artspawn--a spouse who believes in your gift and knows how it is with art is worth their weight in those short-lived superheavy elements that cost a million dollars an atom."
This is the kind of husband Ted is. I didn't know that when I married him, but damn, I tell you what, I couldn't have done better if I'd been trying.
So, yeah. In case I haven't mentioned it lately, I love my husband, I love my family, I love my friends, I love my life. It's a *good* life.
Yesterday turned out to be a pretty good day. I got a batch of blueberry jam made, biked 4 miles (*boy* is it beautiful out!), and read a couple of C.S. Friedman books. Today I must make raspberry jam and check out the raspberry bush I pillaged last week to see if it's got more berries for me. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 145
During lunch I took myself over to the neighbor's house and picked two quarts of raspberries, which is enough to make a batch of jam with but didn't strike me as 'too much'. Although, I have to tell you, that in looking at the berry bushes, I find it hard to believe they've actually done any picking. Well. At least not on the end that they told me I could pick from, next to the road and away from the house. There wasn't any evidence of berries having been picked. There were a few empty stems, but there were quite a few berries lying on the ground, too.
I really really wanna plant raspberry bushes along the back fence in our back yard. I suppose August is probably not the right time of year to be planting raspberries. :)
Wow. Except for checking my email last night to see if I had Angie's cell phone number (I didn't, wah!) I didn't turn the computer on all weekend. Go me! Instead I, let's see. Emily and I went to The Manchurian Candidate, which we enjoyed, then went out to dinner and had ice cream, which we also enjoyed. :) I came home and watched the rest of season 1 Dead Zone, 4 episodes or something (I skipped the one I knew I'd seen), because Ted was still off dipnetting with Dad (which is to say, they were dipnetting, not that Ted was using Dad as a dipnet) and I didn't have anything else to do. They eventually returned, having spent 12 hours driving and 6 hours fishing and some significant amount of money, all in order to catch salmon.
Three salmon, to be exact. :)
But! they said. We've learned a lot! And we'll go again this weekend, except to Chitna instead of Kenai, and they will catch many fish! Hopefully they're right! :)
To make up for the small amount of fish caught, Dad and I picked LOTS of berries this weekend. A little under two gallons of blueberries (wow! the blueberries, they are many! And they are large! And they are wonderful!), and we went over to Shannon-from-the-mailing-list's house, because she'd sent email explaining how they were overrun with raspberries and if anybody wanted to pick some raspberries they'd be most welcome to come over and do that. So we did, and we picked a gallon of raspberries, too. We kept saying, "Thank you for letting us come pick raspberries!" and they kept saying, "Thank you for coming to PICK raspberries!" Shannon said she'd been telling people to come over every other day, and one of her coworkers said maybe he'd come over this weekend, and she said, "Mm, no, I'm already booked for Saturday, and I've got an appointment on Monday, too. How's Wednesday?" *laugh* Raspberry appointments! And we told her that if they needed rescuing from the raspberries again, to just send me an email to let me know, and we'd be *glad* to come rescue them again! :)
Saturday Ted was too tired from fishing to game, so he canceled gaming and we collected Emily and went to see Catwoman, which was every bit as bad as we expected it to be. There were a handful of decent moments, which made Ted say, after the movie, "You can tell that there was a good script there, once." And Emily and I said, "A long, long time ago." :) Wow, it was awful. It wasn't Halle Berry's fault, though. At least, not unless she orchestrated the changes that happened to the script, which I doubt she did. But given the general awfulness of the script and story, she was actually probably as good as she possibly could be. She had some really nice physical stuff, especially.
Yesterday morning I made a pie with some of the raspberries. It turned out to be a Very Tart Pie Indeed, because I doubled the # of raspberries due to the size of the pie plate, but I simply did not remember to double the sugar. *pucker face!* However, with lots of ice cream it was fine, and Ted and Shaun liked it a lot, which surprised Ted, because he's not that keen on raspberries. I knew Shaun would like it, 'cause he likes violently flavored things.
*pucker face!*
Oh, and I did stop by the house around the corner to ask if I could pick their raspberries, and they said they'd been picking and picking and picking them, but they just kept coming back, and that I could pick some as long as I didn't take too many. So I shall!
And we had dinner at Mom & Dad's (some of that hard-won salmon! And it was very yummy!) last night, which was v. nice, and I made the pithy statement, "It's as natural as artificial gets," which was funny enough on its own, but my brain disengaged halfway through the sentence without notifying my mouth, and I ended up sitting there with this utterly perplexed look and asking, "What did I just say?" and completely meaning it. I had no idea what'd come out of my mouth, but I was pretty sure it hadn't made a lot of sense. :)
I neither wrote nor walked worth mentioning this weekend.