Cleolinda everywhere

Oh my sweet God have mercy. ( I decided that I would rather not go to prison )

By the way, remember this story?

Meanwhile, on the way home from our last excursion of the day, we dropped by my grandmother's to bring her some more ornaments. On the way out, I stopped to play with a--I don't know, I guess you'd call it a banner? It kind of looks like a long flat bell pull? I don't know. She has it hanging on her front door, and it's this tan-colored strip of fabric with little decorated felt Christmas trees, edged with shiny gold rickrack. "I loved this when I was a kid," I told her, shaking it a little so the bells would jingle. "Ruth made that," my grandmother said warmly. "She really liked arts and crafts. She made all of this herself, every bit of it. Even the tassels. She sewed everything on it there--the sequins, the little ornaments, she even put the pearls on the trees. She's dead now."

I managed not to crack up until I got to the car. My mother couldn't understand why I was doubled up in the passenger seat crying with laughter. I'm not sure I understand it myself.

This year, I got pictures of it:




And now, I flop.

P.S. I still want a foot massage really, really badly.



(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

... on THAT OF WHICH WE DO NOT SPEAK:

I went on another photo safari (this seems to be a new Saturday morning tradition), this time at Hobby Lobby, a terrifyingly huge artsy-craftsy emporium. (The reason the photo safaris happen on Twitter is because you can take a picture on your phone and email it straight to TwitPic from there, which then appears automatically on your Twitter feed.) I mean, I spent fifteen minutes in that thing and I am ready to craft THE SHIT out of something. You take TLE there, he'll think he's died (again) and gone to heaven. Note on photos: we did not even get into any of the vertical aisles at the store. This is simply the shallow end of the pool.( Read more... )

Back to work. Apparently the best part of the movie (minus John Cusack's best line) is online completely legally. Enjoy.



(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

So: back to The Shelf.

Some days you do the best you can just to keep it all afloat. Gladdy and I settled down into a hard-working routine--me trying to finish my e-book project, and her trying to unravel the alethiometer prophecy, such as it was (next up: tea leaves).

( A truly harrowing experience, let me tell you )

Linkspam: The OH SHIT Edition, in which I suddenly realize there are a ton of things I was supposed to mention and, inexplicably, didn't.

made_of_fail_pc does, in fact, have a new episode up.

greyduck's new photo comic Quacked Panes (the secret life of rubber duckies, if you will).

The Sirens conference (sirenscon, October 1-4, 2009, Vail, Colorado):

Inspired by the daring adventures of women characters and compelled by the brilliant works of women authors, Sirens is a conference dedicated to women in fantasy literature. The conference, both scholarly examination and professional retreat, welcomes academics, authors, professionals, and readers to attend—and provide varying perspectives on fantasy books by women, female characters in fantasy works, the market for fantasy by and about women, and how to support women in fantasy literature.

Our Guests of Honor in 2009, our inaugural year, include authors Tamora Pierce, Sherwood Smith, and Kristin Cashore, each of whom has written of strong, smart women warriors. In addition, all attendees are encouraged to propose presentation topics related to women in fantasy: history, social studies, fan studies, business, specific books and series, fantasy generally, or even Sirens's 2009 focus on warrior characters and the women who write them.

The thing is, and I feel awful about this, the due date for proposals is tomorrow. Somehow I got "June 20" stuck in my head and thought I had plenty of time to mention it, because I suck. So if you do have something you think would work, do think about submitting that. I don't know that I'll be able to go, but I would love to and will if I can (depending on health and finances), so if nothing else, keep it in mind if you think you'd be interested in attending.

(Additional details: registration is currently $175 [all programming, events, keynotes and keynote food]; hotel is $109 for 1/2, $134 for 3-4. Adds praetorianguard, "Hotel is the Vail Cascade Resort and Spa. Think library, awesome bar, hot ski bum staff.")

From quizzicalsphinx: "Since you're an Alabama girl too, I wondered if you might link people to the Calhoun County Animal Shelter's Donation Page. Due to the economy, they've had steadily declining donations and two weeks ago, they lost their gas. I can't confirm this rumour, but word on the street has it that, as of this morning, they lost their electricity and water as well. If the utilities cannot be restored, up to 300 otherwise adoptable animals may have to be euthanised. Here's the local news report."

From sachielle: U.S. Manga Obscenity Conviction Roils Comics World; Neil Gaiman On The ‘Obscenity’ Of Manga Collector Christopher Handley’s Trial.

Assorted thoughts:

A couple of mail-related things--Lelio? I couldn't figure out what your LJ username was (to contact you), but I did get what you sent me? Also, I brilliantly lost the message (comment? email? PM?) where someone mentioned Rement, but I did get that package as well. The one with The Littlest Shopping Basket?

God, I need an intern.

Lots of jaw/tension headaches. Not sure if it's the weather (air pressure) or not. Or possibly a buildup of massive amounts of fail.

Slept in today, then made necessary purchases at local shopping centers. May go see Up tomorrow.

Yelled at people on eBay who could not hear me for bidding against me on a bargain and thereby making it less of a bargain. Won the auction anyway (it ended at only $18, I am not nickel-and-diming myself to death, stop saying that). You will find out what it was several weeks from now, I think, although rest assured that it is merely a prop, not a character.

Making a doll-sized longbow? Not as easy as you might think.

So I had some time to kill while I was waiting on multiple batches of cookies to bake (another thing for Mom's work), and starherd sent me a spare pack of those Twilight conversation heart candies, which I had said I should just go ahead and review. You know. For science! Besides, a different movie site writes about these every two weeks and then everyone sends me the link so, you know: The Official Discussion of Nasty-Ass Colored Chalk Candy. Let it be so.

Note: I would be more than happy to do this with candy or merchandise from another fandom (I still kind of regret not getting the Pirates of the Caribbean cereal, actually). Except Bertie Botts' Every Flavor Beans. I ain't tastin' no earwax candy. My dedication only goes so far, people.

( The Forbidden Fruit Tastes the Chalkiest! Is... Is That a Rash? )


Also, cryptic communication: Thank you, hakojo! I think it'll show up in the next installment. : )

Holy crow, what a day. I was so tired that I basically came home and slept for five hours after I finished checking my email, which would bring us up to... now.

Rewind. I finished my paper about an hour before the exam, mostly because I just hit this point where the paper was still a couple of pages short, but... I'd said everything I wanted to say. You know? So I just called it a day.

I did get to the point where I start making up words. Like "paganinity."

Random thought: I hate "Proserpina" and vastly prefer "Persephone." Stupid Romans.

And I read all of Samson Agonistes! (...she says, in that slightly smug, very self-satisfied tone reserved for the accomplishment of things you were supposed to do anyway. Possibly two weeks ago, in fact.) By the way: Samson is an idiot. ( YOU ARE SLEEPING ON THE COUCH, MISTER )

I think I rocked the exam, though. ( Read more... )

(Am officially done with class for the semester. The frantic book-writing begins NOW.)

Then Mom and I went out to Sol Azteca for lunch, since she'd taken half a day off to get errands done. We came home and packed up Vladimir's Christmas Package #1, and he told me to send it to Croatia via "plain U.S. mail," but Mom was like, "Oh, right, UPS." ( This did not turn out well )

So after we choked down our bile of shock, we paid the nice UPS people for their superb packing job ($7.50) and fled. And then we had a mild argument about whether there really is a difference between UPS and the USPS. I'm pretty sure you can imagine how this went. So there at the post office, we mailed off a shitload of letters from Mom's office and bought Christmas stamps and... (drumroll)... got me a PO box! So if you ever need to send me anything (I'm talking, like, letters here, not "your firstborn children" or anything), address it to:


Whee!

ETA: I totally forgot to finish the saga of the Christmas package. We got to USPS to send it air mail for $60. Not bad for a twenty-pound box.

Knitting: I found an awesome scarf pattern that's like, "Knit so many stitches to a row, and then knit rows until you're tired. The end." I will be using this one to start off with, once I get my needles and my yarn.

Still to do: the Lost recap. I haven't had dinner yet, but I think this one will be fun, so once I've made a sandwich or something I'm coming back up here to knock that out.

Fundraising: Please, please, please, if you have donated (and if this is a bad time for you, that is totally, totally okay--don't worry about it), please go log what you gave here, so I can add it up. No one will see the answers but me (and my mother, who has generously offered to calculate the tally for us so I can get on to writing the book and the recap, and she doesn't know any of y'all from Adam's housecat). What I had discussed doing with iczer6 is, once we have an updated tally, setting a goal above that, and we meet that goal, I'll post Lemony Snicket or Phantom of the Opera or something in Fifteen Minutes, which I normally might not do just because I won't have time this month (we'll have to see if I can do anything else not related to the book). I'm not saying that a "Fifteen Minutes" is all that thrilling a prize, but it's something within my power to offer, so... yeah. (Also, because it's straight parody, not fanfiction per se, I don't think we'll have any legal complications.) Let me know if that sounds all right with y'all, and if no one has any problems with that, I'll take it to m15m, which is a whole new pool of people, and we'll get started.