the jamming of peaches

So Mom made a batch of peach jam a few weeks ago, and to our interest, it turned out exactly as the peach jam I’d made years ago did: super, super stiff, almost crystallized. She thought it needed a couple more peaches, and since I love peach jam with an unholy passion and peaches are available right now, I got some and yesterday made a batch with two more peaches than Mom had used. It’s unbelievably pretty and very tasty, but still surprisingly stiff. Not as stiff as Mom’s or…

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Torc Waterfalls, Killarney

Kitsnaps: Torc Waterfalls

Torc Waterfalls in Killarny, Ireland. Killarney is a ridiculously beautiful area. The town itself looks like the town planners took a poll of Americans, concluded what the perfect picturesque Irish village should look like, and custom built it to suit. The landscape is equally lovely. I could live there very happily. :)

five things make a post

I have finished the major revisions to SHAMAN RISES and sent that chunk of the book off to my editor for approval while I polish up the edges of what’s left. My brain is fried. I have, tragically, run out of chocolate chips and Kraft mac&cheese. It should be noted that this is not related to the previous paragraph. I got hit with several spam messages in a row from a fake listserv. Now all the idiots on the ‘list’ are doing a reply-all and demanding to be removed from…

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Sploosh!

Kitsnaps: Sploosh!

I thought I’d set this to post automagically a few hours ago. I guess not. Sploosh! I wish I’d caught it a half-second earlier so its head was only partly submerged, but, well, I didn’t. :)

weekend report, again

Apparently a weekend report is becoming a thing around here. Friday night I went to see City of Bones with fifteen or so close personal friends of Sarah Rees Brennan’s. I actually quite liked it, although as with Beautiful Creatures they rewrote the ending so completely that I don’t quite know how they intend to go forward, assuming they get to. But Lily Collins was good despite some laugh-out-loud clunky dialogue, and I liked the casting for almost everyone. There were several times in the film I thought “God, if…

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