laurel

20. Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente [dark fantasy, mythic]
21. Black Butler, Vol. 1 by Yana Toboso [manga, shoujo]
22. Fables, Vol. 16 by Bill Willingham [graphic novel, adult fairy tale]
23. Maiden Rose, Vol. 1 by Inariya Fusanosuke [manga, yaoi]
24. Maiden Rose, Vol. 2 by Inariya Fusanosuke [manga, yaoi]

http://www.oed.com:80/view/Entry/112609

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/TeBwXG9FUtk/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501821

Clik heer 2 add a funneh capshun!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/_BBrolHtRro/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501719

What the hell was I sleeping on last night?

It’s not just kittehs that love captions! ALL THE ANIMALS DO! Check out Animal Capshunz for MOAR!

LoL by:

bajio6401

Picture by: Unknown

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/Ccxvl3g6hIw/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501751

I can’t get enough of this super rare super squee white kiwi!

Life’s too short to avoid the *SPLORT*! Visit Daily Squee for your daily cuteness!

http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2012/06/double-rainbow-panorama-over-amersfoort-the-netherlands.html

"I’m trying to create a world where there’s no racism, there’s no sexism, there’s no homophobia. And I know it’s not real life, but I kinda don’t care. I’d like to create a world where none of that matters, you have the supernatural creatures for that to work as an analogy. In my mind if you can create a world like that on tv, maybe life starts to imitate it. That’s important to me. I think there are other shows that are better equipped to deal with serious topics. We’re doing werewolves in high school."

   I just wrote this entire thing and was on the second-to-last paragraph (had just written "and now for the most shocking coincidence") when LJ borked out and lost the whole thing (and apparently didn't autosave!), so this is take two. Anyway, this is the last leg of my recent journey. Previously I had left Ethiopia and, via Istanbul (where I found out my luggage was lost) headed for NYC.



Saturday, May 12th - At 8am on Sunday I found myself working aloft, 70 feet up the mast pictured above. While I was up there I reflected that at about the same time the previous morning I had been sipping Turkish coffee in Istanbul.
   I got in to NYC at JFK Saturday afternoon. My phone was dead and the recharger had been in my lost luggage, so I had to depend on skype on my computer and free wifi to do any communicating. This made life interesting and necessitated ordering more starbucks coffee than I'd have liked, esp since it really tasted inferior to the coffee I'd grown accustomed to in Ethiopia.
   Nevertheless several hours later I arrived in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In bridgeport Koriander has been working on the schooner Unicorn. The Sail Training Vessel Unicorn (STVU?) is a two masted schooner that has been laid up all winter and at this time was about a week from it's first sail of the year. As such they'd been working their buts off putting all the spars (yards, topmasts, gaffs and booms) and sails on.
   The STFU has an all-girl crew and takes only girls aboard in its "Sisters Under Sail" program. They wouldn't even let me spend the night on the boat! Though they'd let me help out with the uprig.



Sunday, May 13th - There were also a number of Xylocopa virginica --carpenter bees-- buzzing around the dock. I made friends with one:



Monday, May 14th - I'd been dreading my 30th birthday for years. I had also often wondered, especially during 2011 (the year of every plan falling through) what I'd be doing on my 30th birthday.
   As it turns out I had just returned from a second trip to Africa and was working on a tallship. The recent trips to Africa did a lot to help me feel better about it -- realizing that I have skills that can be of great benefit to humanity.

   Kori was able to get off work early at around 21:00 (yes that was early!), and we were able to find a restaurant that was still open and had some delicious cake. Kori gave me a pack of socks and a toothbrush for my birthday, and I've never been so happy to receive such mundane things (recall, my luggage was lost, I'd been wearing the same socks for three days)



Tuesday, May 15th - was another day on the boat. I had probably written something witty and interesting about this day the first time I wrote this entry.

Wednesday, May 16th - I had to flight to catch at 14:50 to head back home. Unfortunately, this was the day the Unicorn was finally getting off the dock for the first time and doing some maneuvers -- and it was doing this at the time I needed to leave the boat to go catch my train to NYC (around 09:20).
   I was able to leave a little later, the boat was still out maneuvering but I went ashore in the smallboat Pegasus. Incidentally that's exactly how my first journey to Africa began -- leaving the tallship Hawaiian Chieftain in the smallboat Pele to get ashore and catch a train.
   Fortunately I had planned an extra hour in my trip in case I missed any connections or encountered any delays. So this ate up that hour - I could still make it but without any delays.
   ...there were delays. I arrived at the airport around 14:30. Just in time to pay $150 to reschedule for the same flight the next day.

   Phone was still dead. Once again turned to skype to try to contact the world, and this time skype helped me not only in making the phone calls but I was able to log into the non-free airport wifi and have it billed through skype by the minute rather than pay the $7.99 one day fee the airport normally wants. Skype has really helped me a lot on this trip.
   My friend Pavel told me to come to his work downtown so I made my way there. He happens to be a programmer at a company that writes programs for cell phones -- so they had every imaginable recharger on hand! So I was finally able to recharge my phone.
   Pavel said I could crash at his place but Kori talked me into coming back up to Connecticut for the evening -- the first mate had even said I could sleep aboardship that night.


(The view as I departed the Unicorn)

Thursday, May 17th - Kori actually had the day off so she accompanied me into NYC as far as Jamaica Station, where I boarded the airport tram.
   As they scanned my ticket at the gate the machine beeped and printed out a new ticket stub -- this one listed my seat as 1D. Having accrued over 25,000 miles on Delta by now, I'd been upgraded to "silver medallion" frequent flyer status, with automatic upgrades to first class if available.
   In first class they were bringing us complimentary beer and wine before everyone was even seated. There was plenty of legroom, and the food actually tasted decent! I don't know where they found this relic of an airplane though -- it had no screens for watching movies!

   And now the most shocking coincidence: My flight home had a layover in Atlanta, and so had my flight out to Africa five weeks ago. I take my seat on the flight back to OC and who do I find in the seat next to me? The exact same guy who sat right beside me on the flight from OC to Atlanta five weeks ago!!!! Not in front of me or across the aisle but once again in the seat directly to my left. The same dude. Five weeks later! He'd been there and back twice in that time though.

   My parents met me at the airport in OC and we immediately proceeded across the street to an El Torito restaurant where I had a delicious burrito and a margarita.

   The End.


Epilogue A week later my luggage finally arrived. It appears to have been run over -- things that aren't even fragile, such as my stick of deoderant, were smashed. Of the four jars of honey given to me at the honey processing plant three of them were utterly obliterated. So the inside of my luggage had been soaking in hoeny filled with glass shards for a week. Surviving objects that were not shattered look like they have shrapnel pockmarks from the glass shards.

It seems I live by the principle of my eyes being bigger than my stomach.

In online terms that means I either make great plans for getting offline so I can work incessantly, and then check Twitter every 15 minutes

OR

conversely, determine to institute a fabulous program of blogging every day in a manner witty, wise, informative, profound, or edgy. You know. Like people do, who do that. Those people evidently will never include me in their number.

1) I’m still waiting to get my editorial comments on COLD STEEL from my editor, but this should not be construed in any way except that she has a number of manuscripts on her desk and has to tackle them in order of priority of publication schedule. I expect to hear from her soon.

2) Comments from beta readers are coming in, and I’m quite pleased on the whole. There are a couple of scenes I need to expand on, toward the end, but I knew that so this just confirms what I knew, and that is always pleasant. The reason the scenes got scanted is because by the time I was pushing to the finish of the novel I was so exhausted from the 14 months of wrestling with it and the sheer number of false starts and detours and wrong ways I had to correct that I just wanted to get to The End and then worry about revisions later. So that’s what I did.

3) When I mentioned to one of my beta readers that I felt bad that my readers were going to have to wait so long and patiently before it was published, she pointed out that I also have to wait: To talk about it. And since there are some scenes, and lines, and details, and Stuff that I really love, be assured that (for those of you looking forward to Cold Steel) that I am SUFFERING RIGHT ALONG WITH YOU. Kind of.

4) Next week I have a guest post going up on Monday (June 4) at A Dribble of Ink on diversity. I hope you’ll pop over and join the discussion, if one gets going.

AND

I am doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Thursday June 7 at 8 pm CST (Central Standard Time) which is, uh, omg, like 3 pm my time. You know, I need to figure that out. ANYWAY, if you feel so inclined, please pop over. I’ll announce it again on Twitter and Facebook and here on Wednesday. By the way, Elizabeth Bear is doing an AMA on Tuesday June 5 at 7 pm CST. Also, my sons are concerned that because it is Reddit, no one will ask me any questions, so prove them wrong!

AND

I also answered seven questions about beta readers for Donna Hanson’s blog series on beta readers/reading. I don’t have a date for that going up yet, however.

Mirrored from I Make Up Worlds.

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-editors-have-bought-recently-young.html

I’m not up for juggling my own words tonight, but I have been at least up for putting a dent into my backlogged email. Which of course means that I’ve got some book acquisitions to mention to y’all, since I’ve got a couple of pending receipts as well as notices from various crowdsourced projects I’ve been supporting!

Acquired via crowdfunding:

• The Old Races Short Story Project, by C.E. Murphy. She’d been doing this as a non-Kickstarter crowdfund, and finally deployed epub and mobi versions to her backers. I’d already had the PDF but still haven’t read the pieces, and since the epub and mobi are new acquisitions, I’m counting this as a work obtained this year!
• A Series of Ordinary Adventures, by Stevie Carroll. Digital copies of Kickstarter rewards from Candlemark & Gleam, and I should have a print copy of this on the way as well! Hurray for supporting the work of LJ friends!

Acquired from B&N:

• Blackout, by Mira Grant. Picked up in both epub for the Nook AND in print, because when it comes to anything by Mira Grant, that is JUST HOW I ROLL.
• The Old Races: Origins, again by C.E. Murphy. I think this in fact contains most of the same stories in the aforementioned Old Races Short Story project, but I’m buying it again just to show Kit some love. Because again: HOW I ROLL.

Last but not least, sent to Dara and me in print:

• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith. I’d had half an eye on this one anyway just because we did just see the trailer for the forthcoming movie, which looks sublimely silly and very likely required viewing. Also, it was written by the same guy who did Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which as y’all know, I did quite adore.

71 for the year!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Today I was an extra again, for a TV show which films here, and maybe it even takes place here, but we sign very fierce forms about not disclosing anything, so I am not disclosing anything.

But I can talk in a very general way about the general experience, which was generally very fun, and also very exhausting. It was an 11.5 hour workday, all told; there was lots of activity at the beginning of it (including! I got to drive my car! on film!) and then lots of no-activity as the day wore on (for me and a few other people) (because yet other people were being lots more active). And since this is the way these things go (and they are very careful to explain to us that this is the way these things go, and we sign lots of fierce forms about that too), I was neither surprised nor disappointed, though I admit I did get a bit bored, especially after I finished the book I’d brought to read, and then could only keep checking my phone obsessively every two minutes, to see if anyone had emailed, or had played a scrabble move.

So that was basically today.

And yesterday I didn’t blog because it had gotten very late, and there wasn’t much to say that was new (I wrote, I did freelance work, I had a real estate meeting, blah blah), but I did do something new: which was I joined a different gym, so that markferrari and I can belong to the same gym, and also it was lots cheaper, and has a larger and better pool–well, I think it’s better, it’s a saline pool. Which I looked up on the internet and it’s better than chlorine pools, but it also is a chlorine pool, so I am a bit unclear there. But I did go for a swim there, and though they keep it a tad warm for my liking, I did like all that space. And, of course, being lots cheaper doesn’t hurt either.

(And so when I went to cancel my current gym, they were all, Why are you leaving?, and I was all, Well, me and the boyfriend, same gym, and, you know, cheaper; and they were all, Well if we could match the rate?, and I was all, Yeah we talked about that when I wanted to sign him up here and you were all No Way, so here we are, and besides, saline pool; and they were all, Okay, well, yeah that is much better.)

Hmm. I feel like I’m rambling. Well I am tired. Did I mention eleven and a half hours work? We had lunch at 5pm. LUNCH. So maybe my caloric input is wonky too. Anyway, it’s Friday night, no one reads blogs on Friday nights anyway, right?

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Боже, какой бред. Украина, похоже, еще более провинциальна, чем Россия.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap120601.html

These three bright nebulae are often

A few hours back I had about 80 hits on YouTube. A half hour ago or so it'd gone up to 186.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:POTD/2012-06-02