I love my parents.

My mother has just gotten a “Your Windows program isn’t working,” phone call. She likes to keep them on the line, apparently, so her half of the conversation is going like this: “Hello?” “Who is this?” “Oh *really*?” “My computer is already on!” “Oh no! What are you going to do about it?” “Are you sure? That’s astonishing, because I don’t use Windows. I use Ubuntu.” “It’s a different operating system. See, the thing is, Windows really *sucks*, so I don’t use it.” (Long pause, she reports in a whisper.)…

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many days at once

I had a rather good dream that had the bones of a MG/YA thing, in which there was a (difficult to access) window that led to another time period, and in which Amanda Palmer was the rather alarming Queen of Faerie. The sort you don’t mess with. I can’t, of course, remember any details, which makes me wonder once again if one could achieve dream recollection through hypnosis… We arrived safely in America, after the excitement of discovering, the night before we left, that my US passport had expired five…

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shindigs!

So I got outbid on that fabulous 1920s style dress, as I’d expected to. I was regretful but not surprised, and started poking around at other not-quite-so-good ones. Then I got an email from a reader. She’d clicked through to see the dress, her husband had seen her looking at it, surmised that she wanted it, and bid on it for her. “But,” she said, “I didn’t want it, I was just looking at it, so would it be too weird if I just had the seller send it to…

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weekend & thinks

We had a family barbeque on Saturday, which was lovely. (BBQ for, not of, the family, for the pedantic among you.) Ted even made baked beans, which om nom nom. :) I failed a third time to make decent ice cream, which is really pissing me off. I pride myself on my ability to make dessert, but custards are apparently not my strong suit. I have been given a non-custard recipe that Fred and Bryant swear by, so I guess I’ll have to try that. *sigh* Yesterday I went to…

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ice cream, charming child & guinness

So far I have made one amazingly successful batch of vanilla ice cream, a frozen chocolate mousse, and a crystalized lump of strawberry blah. This is *not* my usual kind of treat-making record, and I’m perturbed by it. OTOH, I made these chocolate chip meringue cookies with leftover egg whites, and *they* turned out amazingly. Meringue is supposed to be hard to make, but historically I have very little trouble with things that are hard to make (we shall not speak of the first angel food cake, particularly since I…

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