Christopher Kindred

shesingsnow @ 8:15am: Work
Ugh.

Got to the office - it's 90F in here.

Ugh.

princejvstin @ 6:36am: Morning Workout 7/13/09
I am not completely over my virus, but I did go into the fitness center at work today and worked on the bike for 20 minutes.

I figure that if I can keep up and return to my dedicated ways, in a couple of weeks, I'll be able to start to add resistance to the bike run and return to previous levels in time.

matociquala @ 11:41pm:

New Shadow Unit content tonight!

shesingsnow @ 10:59pm: A whole lotta...Flour!
After my morning's funk, I decided that I need to cook. Break in the kitchen for real... Serious cooking therapy was in order.

I left the apartment about 2:30pm, got a (free) coffee at Starbucks and went to Whole Foods. Picked up some eggs, chives, blueberries, farmer's cheese and a bag of Yukon Gold potatoes.

Headed to the house in SGbury and I spent a while (a) showing my Mom how to send an email and (b) filling grocery bags with my clothes. I'm making a dent in the basement, which is good.

Left the house and headed back to Manchester - I texted my friend Jason to tell him that I was making pierogies and asked if he wanted to come over. He leapt at the chance, but I know that he didn't know what he was in for!

He later said that when he came in and saw the kitchen empty of "boxes of pierogies" but a pot of chopped potatoes boiling on the stove, he was absolutely stunned.

Here's a seriously Polish kid who's never made pierogies - it's been his dream, and we did it tonight. He absolutely flipped when he realized that we were - no kidding - going to make them with a big ole box of Scratch.

He taught me about sweet cheese pierogies - I hadn't known there was such a thing, although I know that Italians sweeten ricotta with sugar as a dessert.


1) I peeled and chopped about five potatoes and set them to boil.
2) He rinsed the chives and chopped them up.
3) I peeled and chopped up two Vidalia onions and had him saute them until they were pretty close to caramelized.
4) I took 1/2 of the pound of farmer's cheese and mixed it with sugar and vanilla powder.
5) I took the other 1/2 of the farmer's cheese and mixed it with the chives and the onions...and later, the potatoes, and mixed it all together, mashing the potatoes at the same time.
6) I put 3.5 cups of flour and put it into a bowl with 3 large brown eggs. I then whisked it just a bit to break up the eggs. Then I dug my hands in to knead and had Jason pour in a little water at a time. We used about a cup of water, at which point it got too sticky so we added a little more flour and then it started coming together.
7) We floured the counter and started drop-kneading the dough. Then we pulled off pieces and rolled them out with soda cans.
8) Jason took over rolling and I started filling. I'd put a little filling in the center of each dough circle and close it off. I put some water on to boil.
9) We filled the sweet cheese pierogies first and by the time they were done, the water was boiling. It's only a 3 quart pot that I had, so I could only fit three in at a time. I watched, they sunk, they floated, I pulled them out with a spider.
10) We kept the assembly line going. At some point I pulled out the small frying pan and melted butter in it and started sauteing the pierogi. We eventually worked through all of them.


Brillance. The counters were covered. It was SO fantastic.

I sent him home with about six pierogi and I kept about six. We ate the rest! I think we made something like 18 or so.

We used all of the sweet cheese filling and only half of the potato filling - so I will make more, methinks.


Loved it.

Here's a picture:

rikibeth @ 10:16pm: Old old picture of me
This is mostly for David Harmon from Making Light, because he remembers my name from my MIT days, and can't put a face to it. It might also appear on What The Hell? at Shakesville, although I sent them two, and the one with the kidlet age three in it is funnier because of her expression. This would be late 1988 or early 1989.




Also, have some dragons. I've named the purple one Unpronounceable Glyph.

wistling @ 9:41pm: Review from Down Under
A review from Australia of "Come From-Aways" in On Spec #76, by James Doig of HorrorScope:

My favourite piece in the Spring 2009 issue was Tony Pi’s “Come-From-Aways” about a Viking ship that washes up in a Newfoundland harbour with a single survivor on board. Tony Pi, a linguist by profession, handles the technical material well without swamping the reader, and the ending is up-beat and satisfying.

djinnthespazz @ 3:06pm: Slate on Sarah.

I know too many folks that talk and talk and never make their point ... at all ... much less coherently. This Slate piece had me laughing out loud.

Ah, it's sad. It really is.
( Read more... )

matociquala @ 4:52pm: he throws a bottle in a milk truck and as it breaks he grabs his nuts
Well, today's work was plagued by oversleeping, lack of focus, and needing to do laundry, but I did get through about forty pages of Chill revisions. I'm quitting here, even though it's the middle of Chapter 12 and I wanted to finish two chapters because I've added about 1500 words, Chapter 11 is really long, and the next thing I have to do is add a whole new scene. And I'm kind of too vague and addled to write a third scene today, so I think I'm g oing to finish the laundry and go start dinner and come back to this tomorrow.

The good news is that this revision is going remarkably well. There's a lot of work to be done, but I'm feeling competent and calm about all of it--everything that needs doing is well within my capabilities. That's rather a nice sensation, and not one I'm overly familiar with. I hope it doesn't mean I'm slacking off and failing to push myself to excel, but rather that I've had a skill jump between the end of this novel and now.

Anyway, for the time being I'll take it. I'm on page 242, and I am confident that I can have the book done by the end of the week, thereby averting my editor's wrath and Saving The Ranch.

Of course, since I am obliged to be rewriting Chill exclusively currently, The Steles of the Sky is flirting with me something fierce, waving promising worldbuilding details under my nose and so on. I hope I find a place to put the thing about the museum beetles. Current quandary, figuring out whether the language of science in this world should be PersiUn or Chinotese, since there are no Latinot languages in this continuum.

La.

Oh, the quandaries that make up my life.

shesingsnow @ 3:12pm: These are the scars that silence carved in me...

wiliqueen @ 11:36am: Brief pause for breath
I would be asleep right now, but last night's shoot was called on account of food poisoning (a fellow actor), so I was only up until 2 am instead of all night. The location has been lined up to do that next Saturday/Sunday instead.

Was going to do housework and put together agent mailings today, but woke up with a slight cough and scratchy throat. Given that this week involves two concurrent rehearsal schedules (for the "Comedy Tonight!" concerts next weekend and Seven Plays in Seven Days next Monday) and some rather challenging singing (oh, come on, Val, "The Girl in 14G" is like falling off a log!), I'm taking a shot at this strange "taking it easy" thing until this evening's rehearsal.

We'll survive a messy house for a little while longer. Might fiddle with some web updates, and will probably nap this afternoon (darn internal clock won't let me sleep later than about 7:30 regardless of bedtime).

Will likely be scarce online this week, and definitely not keeping up with fannish goings-on. Am now obsessed with "I'm Not Afraid of Anything" from Songs For a New World. Have a couple other film auditions in the offing.

And that's about all the news that's fit to post.

notshakespeare @ 11:04am: Pig Roast!
Yesterday was Charlie's annual pig roast. On the big food table, there was a pile of chips and related stuff that never even got opened. That pile grows every year as the attendees get younger and lazier. So, for once I actually brought prepared food! Well, it was cold beans so there wasn't that much preparation. Most of it was eaten before someone drop a desert into it.

But that isn't what the party is about. It is about seeing people you haven't seen in a year, which I did and that part was great! Many old faces, met some new faces, and had interesting conversations. Is a banana a spice? Had a kid tell me his mom was old without him realizing that his mom was my age.

I drank to much birch beer while waiting for the pig to finish cooking. I ate several pork sandwiches, some fruit, some butter cake, some cookies, some tasty couscous and generally became a pig.

The rain held off until the fireworks had already started. But we got most of the show in before the mass exodus.

Today, I am tired, and still slightly full. I think that means it was a good day.

notshakespeare @ 10:52am: Ready, Set, go do nothing
Yesterday morning my cell rang. I said "Hello?" and it said have some background noise. Several Hellos later I hung up.

This morning I rolled over in bed several times, then I looked at the clock, jumped up and went to the Y for yoga very quickly.

It was canceled. Apparently, a few other yoga regulars got calls with no one talking also. I'm not sure what that means, but I don't like it.

Now I need to figure out my alternative plan.

wistling @ 9:26am: Top Ten Things about My Trip to Vegas
1. The Venetian Resort Hotel & Casino, where we stayed. The room was spacious, comfortable, and had a great view of the Strip and the pools. There were three flat-screen TVs - one in the bathroom! Beautiful recreations of Venice landmarks. Highly recommended.

( Read more... )

Maybe a list of things we didn't like so much later!

nuadha_prime @ 4:38am: Gaming: Planescape

I just finished reading the Sigil and Beyond book from the Planescape box set. For years, I have heard about the wonders of Planescape and am now dying to run a 4th edition game in the Planescape setting. It mixes my favorite elements of gaming in Amber ( the wonders of a multiverse with interdimensional intrigue) with the fun of D &D.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

matociquala @ 11:50pm: home again home again like a turtle to his balcony
Tired now. That was the shortest week of my life, and one of the most fun. I miss you guys already, and I hope you're having a good time with Nalo.

Today was devoted to travel home from Seattle. Along the way, I finished an ARC of cmpriest's Boneshaker, which I enjoyed greatly. I thought the start was a little rocky, but once it settled down into present-day narrative and got its legs under it, it barely slowed down for breath ever. At Clarion West, I finished Sean Stewart's Nobody's Son, which was beautifully written but seemed to me to be another one of those stories where the primary conflict is men dealing with problematic relationships with their fathers, and while I realize that this is a common issue for my XY compatriots, it's not one that gets its squids in me.

Anyway, those were books # 33 and 34, and I'm nearly done with 35.

Tomorrow, the deathmarch through Chill begins again, as I really need to send it back to Anne as soon as possible, both to meet my deadline and so she will pay me. Yay, money!

princejvstin @ 10:25pm: Songs of the Dying Earth Table of Contents
Now that I have the copy in my hands, I can report on the table of contents. I haven't seen anyone else do it yet, so I get to be first!


Songs of the Dying Earth TOC:

Thank You, Mr Vance --Dean Koontz
Preface --Jack Vance

The True Vintage of Erzuine Thale --Robert Silverberg
Grolion of Almery --Matthew Hughes
The Copsy Door --Terry Dowling
Caulk the Witch Doctor --Liz Williams
Inescapable --Mike Resnick
Abrizonde --Walter Jon Williams
The Traditions of Karzh --Paula Volsky
The Final Quest of the Wizard Sarnod --Jeff Vandermeer
The Green Bird --Kage Baker
The Last Golden Thread --Phyllis Eisenstein
An Incident in Uskvesk --Elizabeth Moon
Sylgarmo's Proclamation --Lucius Shepard
The Lamentably Comical Tragedy (or The Laughably Tragic Comedy) of Lixal Laqavee --Tad Williams
Guyal the Curator --John C Wright
The Good Magician --Glen Cook
The Return of the Fire Witch --Elizabeth Hand
The Collegeum of Mauge --Byron Tetrick
Evillo the Uncunning --Tanith Lee
The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz --Dan Simmons
Frogskin Cap --Howard Waldrop
A Night at the Tarn House --George R R Martin
An Invocation of Curiosity --Neil Gaiman

princejvstin @ 10:05pm: Songs of the Dying Earth!
My copy of Songs of the Dying Earth, the Jack Vance Dying Earth Tribute Anthology, has arrived!

Let's face it, its news like this that my Bookgasm icon was made!

immlass @ 5:08pm: Whoniverse thoughts
I keep wanting to write a long entry about how the problems of the writers engaging with the fans in the current Whoniverse shows compare to problems of fannish engagement in mid-1990s comics, but the recent spoilers from the new Torchwood miniseries have put me off that train of thought, at least until I'm caught up in Torchwood.

As it is, from where I sit (midway through S1 of Torchwoord & Sarah Jane Adventures and S3 of New Who), 75% of the writing and plotting issues I perceive in the shows seem to be related to Russell T Davies' crush on the Doctor and his operating assumption that all of the characters in the universe should share his boner for/romantic fixation on the main character. Based on the spoilers I know, I'm not convinced this understanding of the problems is going to change when I get to the end of his run either.

(WARNING: Any comments may contain spoilers. Read at your own risk.)

mikescomics @ 2:14pm: SDCC Allocations
For all Advance Orders on SDCC Exclusives we've taken thus far, we still fully expect to have necessary supplies to fill those orders completely, WITHOUT EXCEPTION. And, there are some additional supplies available.

However, we just got numbers in telling us to expect an allocation of about 50% on both Black & White 2009 SDCC Doctor Who Exclusives. This seems like it's going to be a standard number for all retailers, though it's possible it just reflects a maximum for our account because we ordered so heavily.

We are not 100% certain whether there may be further allocations on the color SDCC exclusives.

So, for those who waited, this is why we suggest placing Advance Orders early. While we're still taking Advance Orders for the SDCC exclusives, our supplies on those two B&W versions are nearly all committed to be sold at this point. For now, we still believe we have strong supplies available for the three color figures.

As an open comment, we placed orders in January to avoid being hit with this kind of allocation, and thought we'd avoided it by working with the suppliers. And, we've had huge restrictions from Day One, from what we were allowed to post on our site, to not being allowed to sell to some of our best regular customers because of an accident of geography, to many other things best left unsaid here and now.

And, finally, to a particular person out there posting on a particular forum who seems to think we're somehow doing something unfair by working within the system to get information for the Doctor Who collector community at large, and taking Advance Orders on the exclusives (which are reservations NOT "pre-orders," not sales in any way until items arrive and are permitted to be sold, and it's a UNIQUE service your retailer doesn't apparently choose to offer to you), this is a community that's watching. Watching us. Watching you. We're not a clone of our competitors. And, if you're unhappy, instead of doing something that may restrict both products and information to this community, why not ask your own retailer why they're unable to do what we can do so easily. If they thought we were doing something wrong, you can be sure by now they'd have approached the suppliers and been told we are within the rules and have permission, just as they say they have in seeing some rules-breakers shut down. You don't have to buy here. If you've got loyalties elsewhere, that's for the best...customer loyalty isn't trivial, and usually it's well-earned. But, in saying all this, we got permission to do exactly what we're doing, the way we're doing it, every single step of the painful way in this situation, in collecting information for future orders and payments, and in posting on this blog and our site...and actually we have permission in writing to do more, but don't want to hurt this community or even violate the spirit of the contract we signed...even where we don't agree with it. Please stop going around saying we're doing things against the rules before you know the facts...the continuing stream of painful and intrusive restrictions on retailers world-wide on these exclusives are bad and damaging enough by themselves, and we're all going to have to stand in front of customers again to explain new supply restrictions. By working against those who are following the rules like us, and as we even call up the suppliers to make certain before we do anything that we're within the rules each time, you're only hurting yourself and others. And if you think this somehow helps the retailer you're loyal to, trust us, these things have a way of having the opposite effect. Next time, before you post, if you have a problem with how we're conducting ourselves, feel free to e-mail us. If we made a mistake, we'll try to fix it, and give apologies where due. If we think we're not doing something wrong, even if you're not our customer, we'll try to explain and we're willing to discuss. In this case, you just don't know how much we're doing to stay within the letter and spirit of the rules, and you haven't asked us. If someone is telling you differently, open your mind, ask questions, and stop engaging in politics when facts are available. Just because your source doesn't offer its customers what we do, that doesn't mean either of us is automatically wrong or violating the rules.

-Michael Salvo

shesingsnow @ 9:10am: Posted using TxtLJ
I think that I'm afraid to commit to this apartment!

katallen @ 6:48am: Torchwood
( Oh no, Torchwood, no! (you better believe there are spoilers) )

gi_jules @ 7:13pm: Mime. Hilarious. Watch.
Discovered via @doycet on twitter (don't ask me to link to it, twitter hurts my brain).



( Don't Look Back in Anger by Oasis, done by the same guy. Too funny. )

corwin77 @ 4:23pm: Annoyed...
Here are some of the things that have annoyed me in the past few days...

Last night while waiting for my fish and chips I was stuck behind a woman who was taking forev er to order. Why? She was look for something that didn't taste 'TOO FISHY'! At a gorram fish and chip place!

Today as I was trying to board the bus to work to old, fat ladies got off the bus and stood in front of the doors for a full minute discussing the heat. When the woman beside me, who was judging by her behaviour running late, politely said 'excuse me' the stood for another 30 seconds commenting on how rude she was before walking away.

Next on the bus which was so full of people that I had to stand next to the driver there was some punk kid sitting IN FRONT OF A PREGNANT WOMAN, worse the seat next to him was empty...except for his backpack. If I'd been able to reach him I'd have smacked him upside his little punk head.

princejvstin @ 2:38pm: Harry Potter and the Midlife Crisis
http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2009/07/harry_potter_and_the_midlife_c.php

Clearly, the youtube video was done prior to the release of Deathly Hollows.

(And I don't have a Harry Potter icon. Should I?)

loopygirl @ 12:10pm: Tobey update!
Well, I got up early today to go see the first of two human doctors for myself this morning, and found out that doctor #1 had been called to surgery and I had to reschedule. I've set that up for next Friday.

Then, I took Tobey to see his doctor - great news, there! Tobey's eyes have responded REALLY well to his medication. His...I don't know what you call it...the area where the blood vessels were attacking the surface of his eye...all that has totally receded, and Tobey has only a small permanent scar on the far, far edge of his eye where it doesn't interfere with his vision.

Because Tobey is doing so well, he gets to reduce his medication...we're going from 3x a day to 2x a day for the next three weeks, and then through August and September, he goes down to 1x a day, and then from October to April, assuming he continues to do well, he goes down to 1x every OTHER day. That's only for the fall and winter. When spring comes around, he goes back to every day, as the sun is worse on his eyes then.

I also got to go from gel medication to drops, which is way easier to apply. So this is all really great news. Tobey doesn't have to go back in for a checkup until next April, either - assuming I don't notice any relapse.

So, that's all to the good. I'm very thankful.

In other news...

My shoulder hurts worse today than it did yesterday. Sleeping on it was not good, and I didn't sleep well. I haven't gotten the housecleaning done, and it's really bothering me. I am going to give my shoulder another day before I clean, I think. My stomach has also started hurting again. Doc #2 is going to look at that though - he's all the way across town. That appointment is at 3:30.