| Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 |
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Reflection's Edge is up! http://reflectionsedge.com Happy holidays! In this holiday time, we're providing you a little extra reading material for your extra leisure. And at RE we've already gotten a holiday treat: Shennandoah Diaz has agreed to be our nonfiction editor, and we're thrilled to have her. And, although we're now "off" until June, we'll let you know through this email list about our off-season specials that we'll be published here and there to keep things interesting. (You can also subscribe to our RSS feed.) Enjoy, and don't forget to spread the word. - Sharon ---------------------------------------- THIS HOLIDAY TREAT INCLUDES: Feature fantasy story "Der Führer’s Bunker," by Kevin McClintock The talents of James Francis Kegan III, Maria Perales, and Kirsty Logan An interview with Kelly Meding |
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| It is not terribly bad to jobsearch sitting in warm flamey comfort, eating cookies, and watching out for the Catina from the glider. Still disheartening, but when it gets to me, I can stop and stand in front of the stove until I am happy again. | ||||||
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| Monday, December 21st, 2009 |
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Some stuff that's happened in the three weeks since I updated-- There was a small kendo tournament in Columbus, the Johnson Cup. Had fun, but hurt my knee, and now must be tender with it for a bit. Also had the kendo Christmas party, at the Sharp Edge (so odd, to have my kendo team seated right across the street from Julian's apartment, where I once lived with he and Salem and our cat. Have been studying Japanese with renewed fervor, to the point where I find myself dreaming about kanji, about the shapes of radicals and the things that they mean or meant. Have gotten Rob to start Ico. I never got to finish that game; playing it with him is pretty much delightful. Also, he doesn't really play video games pretty much ever, so it's fun for that reason too. He's pretty sucked into it. Things with Rob go well. I've been dating him almost three months now and we've had one argument, over nothing precisely major. I sleep next to him nearly every night, most often at his place where it is warm and full of happy gentle dog Tess. (Tess is half German Shepherd, half Greyhound. A slim lurcher of a delicate silvery fawn color with brown eyes and ears almost perpetually folded back in submission. She often sleeps on the bed, and generally gets into the garbage after we go to sleep or when the house is empty of humans, but for all of that she's a sweet creature with a good disposition.)  Looks as though I'll be spending Christmas at Rob's. He doesn't celebrate, but he'll have Blue, so we can make cookies or something and be chill. I am quietly looking forward to it. And this is how life goes. I make dinner, or he does, and we retire upstairs to his warm attic room, read, laugh at things on the internet, I struggle with Japanese for a while while he edits MBA applications for people whose grasp of sense is loose. We sleep. We wake, walk dog, eat food, I go to work if it is a work day, or we have a quiet day until kendo if not. I come home, if not a kendo day, and we go for coffee or to visit with friends, or to have a drink at Dee's or the Tiki Lounge or the Lava Lounge and then home again, for dinner. And there's a lot else that goes on--conversation, movie watching, interesting places, looking at art, going for walks, but it is mostly just constant and good. For now, though--I have work in six hours and should sleep. Be well, my dears. |
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| Friday, December 18th, 2009 |
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Public Service Announcement: if the car won't jumpstart from a regular-sized car, ask a friend with a bigger car for help. With luck, the hour I spent driving around will have charged the battery. It's still in the back of my head as one more damned thing to do but it's not as necessary. The car works. I will drive around more to make sure it keeps working, partly errands and partly semi-errands, the kind of thing you do if you're in the area but don't really need to do right this second. The car will get me home, where a) I have to move it every night anyway, and b) Dad has a charger and other car-messing-around-with tools. I really like having friends who are willing to jumpstart my car over and over again. |
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| Thursday, December 17th, 2009 |
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Dear Back of Brain: I can deal with one thing at a time. Please do not take an emotional response to, say, the car not starting or responding to a jump, and turn it into an emotional response to still being unemployed and beholden to the entire world for supporting me through what is ultimately my responsibility and my fault. If I have an emotional response to a book, I'd like to have that emotional response stay related to the book. I cannot guard myself against everything wrong at once. Rather, I can, and I am, but we all know where that leads. Please stop ambushing me whenever I leave an opening. We need some new coping strategies.--Me |
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| Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 |
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| http://www.dellaward.com/ | ||||||
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| Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 |
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| ( Lots of Mary Balogh beneath the cut. ) | ||||||
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| Monday, December 14th, 2009 |
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Wow, I get one last story in before the year is out. Go read it at Thaumatrope. And, yes, it is a twitter market, so the story is a good bit shorter than this post. Published December 14th, 2009. Gotta love it! I'm heading for NY later this week (niece, sister), then CT (sister, aunt, cousin), then OH on Christmas (cousin, his family, and more relatives including Anthony's), then FL (dad, and more relatives) in Jan. Whew. Whirlpool. Cool, new PowerPoints for latest astronomy findings. Jupiter and Neptune will be really, really close to each other this week. (Wish I lived somewhere warmer.) I have solar powered LED Christmas lights up outside. They're a bit small, but I love the idea. Anyone ever see the "Masters of Science Fiction" TV anthology program--six episodes aired in the mid-80's. I bought it to preview for my class, but they seem to be very political and not very scientific (according to reviews). 44 minutes each--well, that part works for the 50-minute class. Cheers! |
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Christmas is in two weeks. How did this happen? Who let this happen? |
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| Sunday, December 13th, 2009 |
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I was looking for proofreading software today, and stumbled on Dark Room instead. It's a very simple text editor, green text on a black background, which runs full-screen; just you and your words. Excellent for making notes and when you don't want to be distracted by anything. Actually what I wanted was a simple tool that would split a document into either sentences or paragraphs, then feed them to me in a random order one at a time for checking (keeping track of which fragments had already been checked, of course). Apparently this doesn't exist, though. I also found out today that Stewart Copeland (the drummer for The Police) was behind the superb soundtracks to the first couple of Spyro games. Spook! Speaking of Spyro, I'm amazed at how well those games have aged. Playing them on the PSP, converted from the PSX versions, they still look gorgeous. Smart use of textures and good art design goes a long way. |
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