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Energy better used on effort, dark-energized.
Xanaxed muses power off their xylophones.
Counting the written over unwritten--contretemps.
Useless verbiage tracks across the screen, usurious.
Salient points lie unmade, lost in vacuumed sentience.
Elective abstention from composition spurs no elegies.
Sometimes the work does not work--excuses sum time.

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I've finished with the last of the heavy yard work until fall. Over the last 24 hours, we've removed a huge, mostly dead 20-year old azalea and three unruly and rather nasty Barberry bushes. Replace the azalea with a small golden Spirea and the Barberries with a dinky little dwarf variety of the same. Smaller is better. Somehow, fresher.

After the summer weather passes (and the threat of birch borers), four-six more trees are slated for the yard debris bin. That will happen regardless of how long we keep our house. They are all weak trees. The place will look better without them.

Of course, no decisions have been made yet. We may get to keep this place after all, should The Man find similar-paid work in Portland. If not, then Corvallis or Seattle it'll have to be. Can't be helped. Not if we want to survive.

I found myself flipping between feeling strong emotional attachment to this place, the home we built from the bare ground up and feeling excitement for a fresh start (with next to nothing in material things or finances – how adventurous!). I want to believe that people my age (55) shouldn't be in the position of losing everything for a "fresh start." Then again, this is what everyone calls the New economy and this is how big corporations work. One hundred years ago, people exactly my age were losing everything; we didn't live to what we today consider really old age. We're not dying (yet), we're just re-organizing. I guess I'm whining about nothing.

The lingering aftereffects of my cold have finally stopped. My congestion is gone: no more Sudafed, cough medicine or NyQuil are required. I can even feel my brain jogging back online.

Happy Memorial Day for all my USAan friends, and best of everything to the rest of you. It's good to be back.

Enjoy!

Originally published at A.M. Dellamonica. You can comment here or there.

So the whack factor ran a little higher yesterday. All to the good. After sleeping quite late (by my standards) and a morning workout, I met up with @howardtayler for a leisurely lunch off-site. We had a terrific conversation about writing, life and the value of kindness. Howard also did nifty caricatures of both our waitress and her manager. It was hilariously fun to watch them react with such delight.

Walking back from lunch, we passed a pretty radical steampunked car.



More photos later when I have the bandwidth to upload them. (That would not be right now, unfortunately.)

Back inside, I hooked up with Ellie Copperbottom of the League of S.T.E.A.M. to host a High Tea. Which was a blast, and very odd at the same time. After that, I recorded a brief podcast interview with them. Then I wound up down in the Vendor Room signing books, where we all but sold out of my stock at the table of Off the Beaten Path Books. Gail Carriger and I crossed paths there again.

Dinner consisted of me and a very helpful concom rep making a White Castle run. Sixty dollars later, the League and I were pigging out hard. From there, things devolved into an evening of music, hot tubbing (well, warm tubbing), drinking, and electroshock therapy. I managed to enjoy an electric kiss with a lovely young woman, as well as try out the new sport of electric motorboating. Plus people were doing shots off Boba Fett's icy head, but I eschewed that particular pursuit.

Today I have an author panel and a reading and a day of hanging out.

So, yeah. A lot of fun here. A lot of fun.

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Photo © 2012 Howard Tayler, used with permission.

Your Sunday moment of zen.



San Francisco houses, 2006. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Easter Island statues had bodies — Did no one ever think to look?

CSR project aims to create a high-speed, carbon-neutral steam-powered locomotive — Oh, cool. (Thanks to David E. Vincent.)

Egos and Immorality — Paul Krugman on the Wall Street fairy tale.

Scientist: Evolution debate will soon be history — This is stupid. The evolution debate has been history for a long time. What you have today is a combination of religious willful ignorance and conservative political opportunism. It's not a "debate" in any meaningful sense of the word, as the anti-evolution side has no evidence, logic or credibility.

Conservatives used to care about community. What happened? — They lost their fucking minds.

?otd: Ever been electric motorboated?

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5/27/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (Con time)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate; Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht

Hullo all!

Submissions Guidelines for Issue Three of Cabinet des Fees's Demeter's Spicebox are now up!

We have chosen the Aarne-​​Thompson type 2031C, The Mouse Who Was To Marry The Sun for Issue Three, do refer to the guidelines for the additional prompts!


Reading Period: 5 APRIL 2012 onwards (until we get the perfect two stories for the next issue).

Do bear in mind that you will need to read the stories from Issue One and Issue Two, as this is a storytelling project and the prompts reflect this. DS runs in Volumes of four issues each, and each Volume will start with a fresh set of prompts.

If you have any questions or doubts, feel free to email us at demeterspice (gmail) in April!

Best,

Nin Harris

Originally posted by abyssandapex at Wikihistory rides again!