• Daily Life

    a live blog of the solstice

    9am:
    #ThinksToDo:
    wrap gifts
    put tree together
    hold my head still so snot doesn’t swirl around & make me dizzy
    work on leah’s comic

    10am:
    so far i’ve:
    emptied dishwasher
    cleared wrapping table
    gotten laundry going
    fetched wrapping paper
    located indy’s gifts

    11am:
    have now:
    wrapped, if not ribboned, indy’s gifts

    must now:
    store them
    find ted’s gifts
    wrap them
    shower
    eat something besides sugar cookies

    12pm:
    have now:
    found ted’s gifts
    disovered i hadn’t [redacted]
    proceeded to [ redacted ]
    wrapped MOST of his gifts despite delay
    did not shower
    ate fudge

    1pm:
    have now:
    cleared away evidence of gift-wrapping
    did another load of laundry*

    *by which i mean there is a giant pile of unfolded clothes in a chair

    3pm:
    have now:
    got child from school.
    bought honey for hot toddy.
    lost pokebattle at gym.
    ate some real food.
    cleaned kitchen.

    must
    Do Something about the tree soon…

    5pm:
    have now:
    left house, got stuff for dinner
    made dinner
    lit solstice candles

    solstice-candles

    must still
    tidy, vacuum, possibly rearrange living room
    put tree together

    7:45pm:
    have now:
    tided, vacuumed & rearranged living room
    PUT TREE TOGETHER (VICTORY!!!)

    …still need to fold a huge chairful of laundry…

    8:20pm:
    do not believe i will get to leah’s comic tonight. i may, however, get to that hot toddy…

  • CEMurphy

    Octocon 2016

    So Octocon was great fun. I went into it tired (because i was an IDIOT and i got a new phone on THURSDAY and i couldn’t get it to update properly and i stayed up until TWO IN THE MORNING getting it working right, the day before a weekend-long convention started!) and had a panel Friday night so I had to be vaguely functional through that, and more or less was.

    It was a weekend of selfies because I didn’t have the camera with me a lot because I couldn’t find the purse that more or less went with my outfits. :)

    Friday night pincurls & rebellion T that I designed. For some reason I always feel like a particular badass with the pincurls and do-rag. :) Got lots of compliments on the shirt. :)
    Friday night pincurls & rebellion T that I designed. For some reason I always feel like a particular badass with the pincurls and do-rag. :) Got lots of compliments on the shirt. :)

    Ted was one of the judges for the Golden Blasters Film Festival, so he was busy Friday night watching the films, but we had dinner with Nicholas and Mikaela before that, and we managed a bit of saying hi to everybody before collapsing into bed at a relatively sensible hour. I had Saturday morning panels while Ted set up our stuff in the dealer’s room and went to get Young Indiana from Dad’s house, where he’d stayed overnight.

    Saturday morning. The idea was to become increasingly glam throughout the day. :)
    Saturday morning. The idea was to become increasingly glam throughout the day. :)
    Indy & Auntie Kate
    Indy & Auntie Kate

    I brought about 50 jars of jam and jelly and we sold them all. I also sold some books, but the jam went really fast. O.O :) Ted, who had (has, poor guy) a cold, brought Indy home Saturday evening after Indy charmed everybody he spoke with all afternoon and was a genius at pitching the wares (“Magic & Manners! That’s 15 euro! RAVEN HEART is 5 euro! The jam is four euro each!”).

    Indy and author Paul Anthony Shortt at the dealer's table!
    Indy and author Paul Anthony Shortt at the dealer’s table!
    Indy took this one. Slightly more glam. :)
    Indy took this one. Slightly more glam. :)
    me & my boy
    me & my boy

    I spent the day becoming increasingly glam…

    Pincurls released!
    Pincurls released!

    …until I was dressed as Agent Carter from the Marvel movie universe for the evening’s Rebellion Ball.

    Gratifyingly, the moment I walked out the hotel room door someone said, "AGENT CARTER!!!" :) :) :)
    Gratifyingly, the moment I walked out the hotel room door someone said, “AGENT CARTER!!!” :) :) :)

    (The decorations for the ball were SO GOOD! The theme was ‘rebellion’ because the Irish Easter Rising was in 1916, so it’s a big thing around here this year, and they’d done up crepe paper banners with all kinds of symbols of SFF rebellions, and had screens with the Matrix code and it was great!)

    Honestly, I had every intention of bailing on the ball around 10:30pm and falling into bed, except we were all having so much fun dancing and talking that I stayed up until the music ended, and then, intending to sensibly go to bed then instead of going to the bar, had someone say, “Agent Carter, your mission is not yet finished,” and that was pretty much an irresistable pitch, so I toddled off to the bar to chat until I almost literally fell over at about 1:30 and figured that was Quite Late Enough.

    Rey & Agent Carter!
    Rey & Agent Carter!
    Marvel represents with Agent Carter & the Winter Soldier ("the two loves of Steve Rogers' life," as a friend said!)
    Marvel represents with Agent Carter & the Winter Soldier (“the two loves of Steve Rogers’ life,” as a friend said!)
    My hat looked great on everyone. :)
    My hat looked great on everyone. :)
    I took a super hot bath at 1:45am and felt good about my life choices as I went to bed. :)
    I took a super hot bath at 1:45am and felt good about my life choices as I went to bed. :)

    I thought I had two panels on Sunday and only had one, which was good because I was pretty loopy. Everybody was getting pretty loopy, in fact. *laughs* Octocon is a small convention, but it’s full of love and friends and we had a wonderful time.

    Less glam on Sunday morning, but still rocking a pretty good eye-makeup game :)
    Less glam on Sunday morning, but still rocking a pretty good eye-makeup game :)

    I *was* kinda crushed that I managed to get to not *one* of the Guest of Honor things, what with being either on a panel or at the dealer’s table during everything they were doing, but that’s the kind of thing that happens, so there you go. :) It was a lovely weekend and I got home last night and stayed up and talked with Ted a while, fell into bed, got up to bring Henry to school this morning and came home to take a 2.5 hour nap on the couch, which I really never do. I could go back to sleep, too, omg, but it was such a nice weekend. Thank you to all the staff and volunteers and everybody!

    the author with her latest works :)
    the author with her latest works :)
    Shilling for Dublin 2019!
    Shilling for Dublin 2019!
    GoHs Diane Duane & Peter Morwood rendered speechless as they recieved the Golden Blaster film award for career achievement, as GoH Rhianna Pratchett applauds!
    GoHs Diane Duane & Peter Morwood rendered speechless as they recieved the Golden Blaster film award for career achievement, as GoH Rhianna Pratchett applauds!
    This isn't actually the last picture I took at Octocon, but it accurately represents everybody's level of exhaustion by Sunday evening. :)
    This isn’t actually the last picture I took at Octocon, but it accurately represents everybody’s level of exhaustion by Sunday evening. :)
  • CEMurphy

    I work a lot.

    This morning as I was doing revisions on the 4th project I’ve worked on this month I had the shocking revelation that I work a lot.

    I can hear people rolling their eyes at me from all over the world right now, but it actually was a shock. I think it was because it was the fourth project (REDEEMER synopsis, MAGIC & MANNERS revisions, short story revisions, now SKYMASTER revisions) that I’ve worked on in the past 3 weeks that it really hit me. And if I get this done by the weekend, which I should, I’ll be doing something else next week.

    Frankly, you’d think I’d be making more money, working this hard. :p

    So anyway we’ll see what pans out from all this work, over the next few months. It’s possible 2016 is going to be the Year Of All The Independent CE Murphy Books…

  • Uncategorized

    ahglshglph.

    madly busy day and yet so far i have done none, count ’em, none, of the home-based things i need to do. like:

    laundry
    attempt naan
    – clean a bathroom
    – vacuum
    clean the kitchen i did this once why does it need doing again dammit

    and all of that aside is the fact that young indiana woke up ridiculously early and had a very vigorous morning, so now that he’s gone to bed i expect him to take a really good nap, which makes me want to write even though i swore i’d take a couple days off once NO DOMINION was done.

    not that the above looks much like a day off.

    here, a recipe. this is one of my favorite lunch meals, intended for one, but there’s no reason it can’t scale up.

    1 c uncooked pasta
    2 oz (about 6) frozen shrimp, thawed
    2 c button mushrooms, chopped
    2 tbsp butter
    1/2 tsp Cajun seasoning
    1 tsp garlic
    salt to taste

    Boil water for the pasta. While the pasta’s cooking, melt the butter in a sautee pan. Toss the chopped mushrooms with the seasonings and cook in the melted butter until golden brown. Throw in the shrimp when the pasta is nearly done. Drain the pasta thoroughly while the shrimp cooks, then dump the pasta on top of the mushroom & shrimp combination. Toss gently to coat the pasta with the yummy Cajun butter drippings, salt to taste, and eat.

    If you want to make a Weight Watchers friendly version of this meal, use 3/4c whole wheat pasta, 1tbsp butter, and maybe a dribble of olive oil instead. 6 points.

  • Uncategorized

    sha boom sha boom

    So far today I have walked, swum, made bread, made applesauce*, cleaned the kitchen, emptied the compost, made lunch, read part of a book, and made a grocery list. I would go shopping if we had any money, but we don’t, so now I’ll just wait for word wars. Oh, and upload pictures to see if any of them are any good.

    The wars, incidentally, seem to be running well into the afternoon Eastern time–as late as 4pm now, and it appears that there’ll be wars running fairly regularly in the evenings from 10pm Eastern, so people who can’t make the earlier window should friend Toonowrimo for war announcements and check the chat room to see if anybody’s around to war with!

    ytd km swum: 41.2
    miles to Minas Tirith: 250

    *Sundowner apples do not cook down well.

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