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Also, This seems like a nifty networking site for readers and writers of fantasy. A sort of Facebook for fantasy geeks :-)

EDIT: for those of you on the other side of the Pond headed into Independence Day Weekend, I hope you have a super holiday.

Current Mood:

drained

http://modchen.com/news/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=126&blogId=1

this cartoon brought to you by Salon and the New World Order International Scooter Mafia. join today, comrade!

Once we'd finished, we wandered two blocks over to the huge Waterstones bookshop, which I absolutely love - but which I almost never go to (see: free parking at Borders!). For the first time, I was able to see in person several of the books I'd read about online, and better yet - they were doing a 3-for-2 sale! I ended up with four (!) new American YA novels that all look like so much fun: Robin Benway's Audrey, Wait! (which feels kind of like a teenage girl version of High Fidelity - excellent), Cassandra Clare's City of Ashes, Kelley Armstrong's The Summoning (first in her new YA trilogy), and Jo Graham's Black Ships, which I've been looking forward to for a LONG time. Just to make it all even better, I got mega-points on my Waterstones card for them, too, including 5 "eco-points" for not asking for a plastic bag - woot! I was practically bouncing as we left - it felt like Christmas. And as we walked through the busy downtown streets, surrounded by unfamiliar people and shops and scenes, I felt my mind opening wide open.

It is much too easy to fall into a rut with day-to-day routines. But it feels so nice to break it, even if it's only with something as mild as a drive into town.

This afternoon was Maya-time, with a trip out to the park. We'd started to worry that she wasn't getting enough dog socialization - she'd started acting nervous around other dogs when she met them, mostly because she didn't meet other dogs nearly often enough - so we've started taking her to the local park much more regularly. It's always full of border collies racing across the field after balls, Scottie dogs and labradors congregating in big wagging, sniffing groups, families playing games on the grass, and little kids climbing around the playground equipment. It's one of the most relaxing places I know, and I love it - especially on days like today, when Maya races around both of us with her tail high and wagging like a flag, brown eyes bright, pink tongue hanging out of her mouth, daring us to catch her, and then flying after her squeaky stuffed monkey with total dedication.

It's been a really good day.

Kat by Starlight

59,796 / 70,000 (85.4%)

I was just saying how much I don't like him anymore. But this looks like they are torturing kung fu panda.

watermelontail

There were fireworks tonight on the field between Lexington High School and the Center Playground; a carnival lit up on the grass, with fried dough and a Ferris wheel where I once walked in endless circles on a freezing May night, hot cocoa and blankets instead of stargazing and bugs. I no longer even remember what the twenty-four-hour relay was raising money for, only the cold and the conversations and the live music, because someone was fiddling "The Rights of Man." Tonight there were bats tacking back and forth between the trees, and I had never watched fireworks from the ground up before. I don't know what it is about explosions that always makes me feel better.

* Which is not any kind of aesthetic strike against them, but it does threaten the hypothetical CD with a certain lack of variety—and I don't even have quite enough to make a whole CD of John Darnielle vs. Classical Antiquity.

http://modchen.com/news/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=125&blogId=1

awwwww. 

http://modchen.com/news/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=124&blogId=1

i haven't posted much here lately because i'm too fed up, pissed off, and depressed to say much.

scooter was stolen, as many of you know, on thursday night last, or the wee hours of june 27th. insurance -- i am a huge insurance hoarder -- willbuy me a new one, but the time being i'm without wheels other than my car, which i hate driving.

i am, however, VERY EXCITED for this to come out:

YES. YES. YES!

in other movie news, i did see The Fall last week.  it was nerve-scorchingly gorgeous, and sad, and even relatively hilarious in parts during which you have to try hard to remember that this is a children's story. 

not many other movies on the horizon, but that's fine: i'm po' anyway. ^_^

Thanks be to rollick

Of course, then the opposite happens at work as I can't get in the bathroom as the bulemics in the office next door keep hogging it to puke. Maybe they're pregnant. Now couldn't I get the bulemics on my subway ride and the fat fucks as office neighbors? Is that too much to ask?

penchaft

Worldbuilding for this novel is turning out rather fun.

It's also hard. Creating a nonhuman race that is not a recent evolutionary offshoot of humans, that is instead related to humans in no way at all -- and doing it (hopefully) well -- requires a lot of thinking and note-taking and tossing ideas at penchaft to get a whole new list of questions back. =D

And once I've done my British Library research this weekend, I can start fleshing out the human part of the world.

maeve_the_red

We have tiny quinces and little medlars coming along. I have dug up a lot of startling, fuschia-coloured potatoes to go with tonight's goose.

And something I forgot to post earlier this week: Mum took Melissa to the vet, who said that there wasn't actually anything wrong with her (heart fine, kidneys not great but not bad, no lumps, etc); he gave her a vitamin booster and a steroid shot to perk her up, sprayed her with something to discourage flies, and sent her home. She seems to have perked up a little, although the arthritis is of course still present and she's still wheezing (something the vet didn't comment on, but he listened at her chest so evidently he doesn't see it as a problem). She swiped at Kheldar on Monday night when he tried to sniff the spray on her fur, which is definitely in-character for her. So we'll see how she goes.

The vet also said that she's the oldest cat at the practice (at 22 years). ^__^

http://homepages.poptel.org.uk/steve.rogerson/orbital.html

And just to share the joy, here are my two favorite links from the past couple of days:

kazdreamer just did a wonderful guest blog entry at All My Favourite Books. It's about how she wrote her YA urban fantasy novel The Iron Witch (which sounds fantastic!) in the midst of a really terrible time, and how she got her excellent agent, and the entry is called Writing My Way to Sanity. I really, really loved reading it, and if you go over and leave a comment about your favorite urban fantasy novel, she'll even enter you in a drawing for a free book. What's not to love?

Kat by Starlight

59,068 / 70,000 (84.4%)