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| 2009-05-16 10:30 |
| [personal] Saturday unfolds |
| Public |
| calendula, california, cancer, cheese, child, conventions, family, omaha, personal, portland, travel |
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) calendula_witch, the_child and I are off to do Saturday things. Some shopping, some hanging around, a cheese expedition.
We're winding up at my parents' about 5 for a cancer party with Mom and Dad, tillyjane (my other mother), lillypond, The Niece, The Niece's dad and his sweetie, kenscholes, jens_fire (and onboard twins!), and the delightful K—.
calendula_witch is back to San Francisco tomorrow morning. I'm off to Omaha on Monday, then Delaware on Wednesday (anyone down for dinner in Dover Wednesday night?), then San Francisco next Friday so calendula_witch and I can hit BayCon. Cancer news when I have it; still waiting on the PET scan results as well as the biopsy on the polyp.
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A rather nice dinner in New York City last night, at Tarffalli y Vino just off Union Square. That's an elegant little wine bar with a nice Italian menu. maryrobinette and rosefox organized it for me, though maryrobinette was only to make it by for dessert. We had a nice turn out, including rosefox, mf_lives, KA, sinboy, squirrelmadness (without jaborwhalky, unfortunately), delkytlar, misofuhni, NF from the Day Jobbe, saycestsay, suricattus, douglascohen, and the sadly tardy maryrobinette.
I'd ordered some appetizers in advance, including a nice duck confit, a terrific fried chevre, and cheese plates consisting of Sottocenere al Tartuffo, Epoisses, Garroxta, a chevre whose name escapes me now, and Blacksticks, a Lancashire blue with a strong resemblance to Shropshire.
Dinner was very nouveau, with elegantly modest portions, but quite tasty. Some wine flowed — I had a pinot grigio, while suricattus had something Basque she'd never tried before. Conversation flowed around the table quite nicely. I felt very welcomed in New York by old friends and new.
Thank you everyone who made it out for this.
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Sally Forth on the dangers of exposition
Cheese of the Season — Great article on sheep and goat milk cheeses. (Thanks to kenscholes.)
Dark Roasted Blend with early monorails — Some serious cool here.
Military R.R.: 1865 — Shorpy with a Civil War era railroading photo. Note the very weird depth of field in this image.
Business secrets of the Trappists
Global Warming Predictions — More liberal propaganda from those pinkos at NASA.
Did Pentagon create orbital space plane? — Some cool black project stuff here. (Snurched from Dark Roasted Blend.)
?otD: Did anyone get the number of that jet?
4/21/2009 Body movement: n/a (travel day) This morning's weigh-in: 219.2 Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
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I celebrated my ginormous writing day yesterday with a nice dinner with scarlettina, after which we went to see Coraline. Which was, of course, stupidly charming and lots of fun. My basic take on it as a move was a mash-up of The Matrix and Nightmare Before Christmas. And oh, wow, did Coraline remind me of the_child.
We're off in a bit to the Ballard Market to look at artisanal cheeses, then I'm for home to resume work on The Heart of the Beast. Expect continued light blogging today as a result, but possibly cheese photos later.
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| 2009-01-15 05:27 |
| [personal|writing] Miscellaneous updatery of various sorts |
| Public |
| books, cheese, child, green, omaha, personal, process, stories, tourbillion, travel, writing |
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Heading for Omaha next Monday. So expect intermittent blogging next week, of unknown wit and erudition. The Omaha Beach Party had intended a cheese festival while I was in town, but Day Jobbery hath interfered with usual OBP schedule, and so we will be cheesing about in February instead.
the_child is part of a school concert tonight. I'm looking forward to that. She and her mother are going over early to prep, so I'll be having dinner with my mom and dad, and we'll arrive in the more usual fashion of audiences.
In my writing life, I'm back on "Chain of Stars." December kind of got eaten by three back to back galley edits, and the holidays, so as of right now I'm a month behind on my writing schedule for 2009. I haven't been laying down much new wordage these past few weeks, focusing instead on reading for Footprints and doing first reader duties for calendula_witch's Nightcraft Mother and kenscholes's Antiphon. Urban fantasy and epic fantasy: guaranteed to give you mental whiplash.
I need to finish this novella by this weekend, and I've promised a short story elsewhere Real Soon Now. I have some other short fiction commitments due over the next few months, several collaborative projects requiring my attention, the preliminary revisions to Tourbillon, then the drafting of Sunspin. Busy much?
Also continuing to contemplate the promised blog post on POV, but the more I think about it, the stupider I feel. Which sentiment will probably be the basic hook for the blog post.
Y'all play nice today.
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The year's Top 10 cheeses — Mmm. (Thanks to danjite.)
Scientists personalise cancer care by mix and match tumours with different drugs — (Thanks to lt260.)
Chinas Navy to Join Pirate Patrols — He noted that one Chinese special forces soldier could handle several enemies with his bare hands.
Top Ten Myths about Iraq, 2008 — More reality-based interference in the conservative worldview.
?otD: When will I see the sun again?
12/26/08 Body movement: na (guests sleeping in my exercise room, outside too cold and snowy to go walking in) This morning's weigh-in: 222.6 Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
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jeffsoesbe on the OryCon cheese party — Mmm, cheese.
First detection of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet — Oooooh. What you can learn from the light of a single pixel.
Bad Astronomy blog with some (retroactively) obvious logic about UFOs — Never thought of this angle before, myself.
Pirates protected from EU task force by human rights —
Eight Is Enough — Comment from The New Yorker with more on the Mormon Church and Proposition 8.
The Edge of the American West reminds us of the Iran-Contra scandal — Look! Over there! Whitewater!
?otD: How many tribbles can fit in a Volkswagen?
11/26/08
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a [forgot to weigh]
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.
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More blur. More stuff. Cheese party went off brilliantly, with co-sponsorship from calendula_witch and deborahb, along with a lovely concert from kenscholes. Big group dinner, mass signing, parties, bar, tired. Did get my two hours in on Tourbillon, though.
Zzz.
Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.
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More on the state of my stunt colon
Ghoti and choughs again — Language Log with some deep geekery about the inefficiency of learning English.
Cheese wedding cakes — ZOMG!!! It’s almost enough to make me want to get married again someday. (Thanks to kateyule.)
Mmmm. Radium. — Machine translation here in case you don’t read French. (Thanks to willyumtx.)
Neanderthals Didn’t Mate With Modern Humans, Study Says — Clearly these guys have never been to a frat party. Actually, there’s some pretty cool genetics in this article. (Thanks to lt260.)
Before the gunfire, cyberattacks — Infowar in Georgia. I believe the Chinese have been conducting similar campaigns against Pentagon servers for a while, albeit at a lower level of intensity. (Thanks to lt260.)
8/16/08
Time in saddle: n/a (3 hours hiking on Mt. Hood instead)
Last night’s weigh-out: n/a
This morning’s weigh-in: 239.0
Currently reading: The Avatar by Poul Anderson
Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.
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SF Signal with a make-up Mind Meld featuring me — I bloviate on scientific accuracy in SF.
Bathtub cheese — Mmm. Or maybe not.
Lightning guns — What every homeboy needs.
Charles Taylor’s one wheel experiments — Not exactly a unicycle, but wow…
Sheep flatulence inoculation developed — I can haz less fartz, pleez? (Thanks to lt260.)
How can you fail to read only the word California? — Another fascinating bit on neurolinguistic deficits from Language Log.
Strange Maps with a 1942 New World Order — Rather creepy. Good alternate history stuff, though.
A lot more than you wanted to know about the physics and sociology of traffic — Cool piece, though.
10 airports install body scanners — Security theater goes porno! (Thanks to my Aunt M.)
6/6/08 (my 44th birthday)
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (still recovering from surgery)
Last night’s weigh-out: n/a
This morning’s weigh-in: 260.8
Currently reading: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia [ Amazon ]
Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.
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Abandoned frozen ships — Photos of a marine graveyard in Russia. Wow.
The true history of reactor vessels — Interesting piece about a key production bottleneck in the construction of new nuclear power plants. With bonus samurai references!
Cheese: the video — tbclone47 taped me talking about cheese at the Rainforest Writers Village.
Today's APOD is deeply awesome — "Moon over Byzantium". Everybody sing: "Istanbul, not Constantinople..."
Short people are most prone to jealousy — Randy Newman's gone into psychological research?
3/15/08 Time in saddle: 20 minutes Last night's weigh-out: n/a This morning's weigh-in: 277.4 Currently reading: Field of Fire, by James O. Born [ Powell's | Amazon ]
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| 2008-03-08 08:16 |
| [links] Link salad lounges in the rainforest, checks in anyway |
| Public |
| Lake Quinalt, WA |
| busy |
| Louise Marley leading a yoga class behind me |
| books, cheese, contests, culture, funny, green, links, personal, photos, tech, writing |
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A new caption contest has spontaneously emerged here — Usual rules apply, go join in. I'll give away another Audible.com gift card, and another Escapement [ Amazon ] ARC. Tell all your friends.
A reader recommends my story "The Sky that Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and into the Black" — Also a number of other nice links there.
"I think I would remember having amnesia." — Get Fuzzy is funny.
A directory of obsolete skills
The Guru Handbook on teaching with lies — We had a brief discussion here this weekend about the relationship between fiction and lying. That's something I think I'll be exploring more soon.
florismk recommends Windows Live Writer — For you Windroids, anyway. Us Macheads need not apply.
Also, there will be cheese blogging later, and maybe more rainforest photos. For now, Green.
3/8/08 Time in saddle: 0 minutes ( lasirenadolce and I had a brisk two mile walk on level ground) Last night's weigh-out: 281.1 This morning's weigh-in: 276.8 Currently reading: Field of Fire, by James O. Born [ Powell's | Amazon ]
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Somewhat to my surprise, I am posting from Lake Quinalt. The Rainforest Writers Village is in full swing. There will be cheese today. (Oh, yes.) Lots of old friends here, and a scattering of the new.
Thought of yesterday: "The Speed of Time" would be a good title for a short story. Or possibly a novel.
Misheard last night: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) brendacooper discussing the sub-genre of Christian noir. Actually, she wasn't, but I kind of wish she had been.
Also, shsilver reviews Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon | Audible ] at SF Site.
3/7/08 Time in saddle: 0 minutes ( lasirendolce and I did a brisk 1.5 mile walk through the rainforest, with about 300 feet of elevation change) Last night's weigh-out: 281.1 This morning's weigh-in: 275.0 Currently reading: Field of Fire, by James O. Born [ Powell's | Amazon ]
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| 2008-01-31 03:26 |
| [links] Link salad, supersized for your convenience |
| Public |
| Omaha |
| awake |
| hotel noises |
| audio, cheese, cool, funny, language, links, photos, politics, tech, videos, weird |
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The rewriting post and poll
Movie mashups — Speed Eraserhead, anyone?
I may be a distant cousin of Barack Obama — Some of my ancestors are Kansas Dunhams from the same small town as his mother, who is a Dunham. Also, the town where Rocket Science [ Powell's | Amazon ] is set. (Thanks to Aunt Mary for spotting this.)
Blessed are the cheesemakers — ellameena becomes my new hero.
Ask Oxford — My dad sends along this link to the Oxford Dictionaries site, with a number of help resources.
StarshipSofa: SF Audio Podcast — These folks brought themselves to my attention. Worth checking out...looks like they've got a lot going on for your earbuds.
Eccentric genius: Antiques from a Parallel Universe — (Thanks to Z.)
Science — Shorpy with a WWII photograph that looks like a Thomas Dolby album cover.
Cheeseburger in a can — If this is available in the US, I'll order one and try it. (Thanks to AH. I think.)
The Fail Blog — Hahahah. (Thanks to AH.)
Reviews of the Bic Crystal Ballpoint Pen — Teh funny. (Thanks to tempested_bird.)
Vodaphone looking into femtocells — I had to click through to figure out what a femtocell was. Interesting squib about distribution cellular networks even further.
The most expensive PCs — (Thanks to lt260.)
Brattleboro, VT engages in sedition — (Thanks to lt260.)
Why Obama Matters — lordofallfools sends along this fascinating Andrew Sullivan article in The Atlantic about Obama as a unifier. The theme is that he can bridge the cultural divide of the last 40 years, with its roots in the Baby Boom's divide over Vietnam. (The fact that Sully has to balance the violent rantings of O'Reilly on the right with the carefully measured reasoning of Olbermann on the left (for example) in order to help make his case tells me a lot about the nature of the divide.)
Food Fight — A filmic critique of the history of modern warfare, culminating in the global war on terror, in food. Weirdly compelling.
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Note to self: no more beer, cheese and bacon soup.
Seriously.
Ever.
That is all. You may shop as usual. No need to return to your homes.
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It doesn't take a lot to get me onto cheese. After the Australian party in New York last week, a number of us went to a lovely Italian dinner under the intrepid leadership of ellen_datlow. I sat between Margo Lanagan and her highly entertaining husband, and in the course of the meal we discussed cheese — specifically sottocenere al tartuffo, which is pretty much my favorite cheese. (I believe it came up in connection with a comment on how different people taste truffles differently.) I told Margo I'd try to drum her up some truffle cheese in Saratoga Springs.
Fast forward to Thursday of that week, and me in the Putnam Street Market (which is not on Putnam Street, but I digress). I went to the cheese counter and began speaking cheese, whereupon someone appeared who spoke cheese back to me. It was sadly agreed that there was no sottocenere to be had in Saratoga Springs, but they did have this lovely Oregon chevre with a truffle infusion, truffle tremor, and would I like to have some? $150 later, I was all set.
The next problem was venue. This cheese party was not on programming, and had never been on programming. I was fine with it being open, but didn't want it to be so open it became a buffet line. We switched venues about four times before the magnificent dave_gallaher (to whom congratulations are in order, btw) got us the use of the swag room for an hour or so. Sharon Sbarsky was very kind and patient about that, as well.
With logistical leadership from lasirenadolce and a strong assist from klingonguy, ( set up ensued. )
The cheeses are, in order, Colton-Basset Stilton, Truffle Tremor, Drunken Goat, Urgela and Pierre Robert. Only the truffle tremor and the urgela were new to me. The truffle tremor has no goatiness at all, and a very nice mellow flavor with a bit of contradictory kick to it. The urgela was a strong, borderline stinky yet firm cheese — I'm used to the stinky cheeses being softer. Strongly recommend the truffle, recommend the urgela if you want to experiment just a little without going crazy.
We also had a drop-in cheese from icedrake and katfeete, who are professional cheesemakers from Meadow Creek Dairy called Whitetop. I have lost my notes on the name, but I believe it's Whitetop. Semisoft, a young cheese they're still working on, very buttery and pleasant. They want to bring it to a lighter texture, more like a triple cream, before they start marketing it. Test cheese or no, it went over very well with the cheese partiers.
To round things out, Team Oz was able to provide some very nice wine, courtesy of I'm not sure exactly whom except that Garth Nix and Trevor Stafford were involved.
( Then people showed up. )
Including ( the guest of honor. )
The moral of the story? Cheese can happen any time, any where. And I always do like a well rinded convention experience.
All photos courtesy of lasirenadolce. As usual, more at the Flickr set.
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Well, that was a whirl. We started out with a quickie breakfast and supply run, then hit the Con for a slambang day of Con-worthy fun.
I had a very productive meeting with casacorona, along with a number of useful (from a business perspective) hallway chats, klingonguy gave me partial direction on "America, Such as She Is", Bruce Taylor gave me a copy of his book to which I had written the introduction, hung out at the Wheatland Press table, laid on an impromptu cheese party for Margo Lanagan with only four changes of venue in 24 hours before it actually went off last night (cheryl_morgan had the right of it), saw more LJ'ers than I can shake two sticks at, including (once again) the lovely and talented saycestsay (whom I neglected to mention previously), did a reading of "The Man With One Bright Eye" and "Hard Times in the State of Nature", gave away some books, made a light dinner with blakehutchins and various others, hit the mass autographing where I hung out with gary_wassner (a WFC tradition for he and I), hit BarCon, then hit the parties, then went home and collapsed.
( Photographic evidence of BarCon )
Inconceivable as it may seem, Chris Roberson, halduncan and jetse were all in the bar at the same time.
Off to a breakfast meeting. More photos later, plus special bonus cheese blog update.
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pleased