The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Melody:

My sister-in-law, who works in St Paul, was called up by one of the security people at her building when she was in yesterday because there were 2 squads and 5 officers surrounding her car, a plain white sedan, where it was parked in the handicapped zone outside their building (and outside the RNC security zone). Her car was not the only one in the lot, but there were only a couple others, as it was LD. One of the squads was positioned to block the car. She is handicapped, has a placard, the whole thing.

She got a bit spooked, so she decided to work the rest of the day from home. She goes out to her car, all of the officers watch her get in, say nothing. She looks at them all, raises her hands like WTF?, and rolls down her window. One of them asks if she would like to leave. Uh, yeah, that's kinda why I got in and started it. They move the squad, and she drives off, all of them watching her leave; an overweight nicely-dressed mid-fifties woman with a cane.

Apparently even normal activity is suspect. Maybe all of us that actually live in the Twins are supposed to stay completely out of St Paul? We're dangerous folk, us and our hotdishes.

Thank you so much for highlighting this, Teresa, Oleander and I appreciate it. Mary Dell - that's an excellent point, some employers can really surprise you.

Argh! First time trying an embedded link, and I fail miserably. Well fine then, here: www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20080427

For any interested, one of my favorite web comics, Unshelved, ran a strip today about Little Brother Here.

And sympathies from myself and Oleander, Xopher...

TexAnne - Perhaps cane syrup (Lyle's is the only brand I've ever seen)? It's thicker than corn syrup, but oh my gosh, the difference. I can only find it at the more upscale grocery stores around here (Mpls). I like it much better than corn syrup in almost every application; it's the sekrit ingredient to my all-time favorite cookies, ANZAC bisquits. Mmmmm...

Oleander and I are doing a butterflied turkey tomorrow, having not quite the proper turkeyage at his sister's yesterday. My BIL did a great job with everything, but brining can be so finicky - it was very moist, but pretty salty. The surprise winner was his creamed onions...uh, yeah. Anyway, he fries pearl onions in OO, butter and a bit of salt until relatively crisp, adds cream and reduces. Simple, but whoa.

BTW, if anyone would like to get a copy of How Much..., and belongs to PaperBackSwap (no hackles, please, I only belong to find old OOPs that I cannot find a legitimate source for; I support authors/publishers/indeps like crazy), there is at least one copy available. There are a couple other of Mike's OOPs available there. If not a member, feel free to contact me.

You people have given me the strength to retrieve my Star Trek novels from the brown paper bag in which they have been hidden. Dammit, if respected ML contributors can freely discuss reading them, I can withstand the eyerolls from my S-I-L when she sees them on my shelves. Finally free after all these years. My little paper friends, I've missed you.

Serge - No, he hasn't, and the shame of it burns me. I'm doing him a huge favor by not sharing his name here, since he does consider himself well-read in the genre, and he contributes more frequently here than I do. Day-tripper.

Steve C. @940: When I heard that Keanu Reeves was going to star in it, I thought, hey, that's cool - he'll be great as Gort. But nooooo - he's going to be Klaatu.

Thank you! Following a horrifying day at work, I took up where I left off on this thread and promptly YOMANK. Laughed so hard I got dizzy, repeated joke to husband, found that husband had never seen TDTESS. How can I ever look at him the same again?

...and many thanks to you all from myself and Ed (Oleander) for your thoughts and good wishes, they mean a great deal.

CaseyL, you may be more correct than you know. About an hour ago, our Channel 5 news had a bridge expert on air, when they received a report from 2006 that there were cracks reported in the supports. He backpedaled and generalized his response after his first WTF reaction, but it was evident on air that it shocked him to some degree.

Summers here are almost always steamy, and it has seemed particularly hot the last few years, but that could be just my imagination.

I rarely decloak on ML, but Oleander and are fine. I was on that bridge coming home from work about 4.5 hours before it collapsed. I've been telling him for 6 weeks that I've been scared to drive on it with all of the jackhammers taking off the bridge deck, and now this. I can't think, all I can do is sob and wait on word from our friends and family...

Oopsy! Apologies, Ethan, I got you cornfuzed with Chris @ #58. No more Milk Duds, they fry my brainz.

Ethan #65: So you're saying that you're cool with everyone in those flood/tornado/hurricane/etc areas packing up and coming to Southern New England, then? Cool! Maybe you could put a few ...million... of them up at your place for a couple months if they can't find a good job right away.

It's not really just the author who gets distressed by cover art inaccuracies. My internal geek is often irritated by hair and skin color changes, blatant borrowing of faces from celebrities of the time and covers that have nothing to do with the book they are attached to, but rather were obviously painted for some other book (for instance a Mercedes Lackey with cover art that was quite obviously originally painted for The Forgotten Beasts of Eld). Eek! I am the convention trekkie of fantasy readers, alas!

Lori, exactly. When I was a bit younger, Serge, and voted there for the first time, I noticed that they had what looked an awful lot like Christian (AKA Republican, here in the 'burbs) voting guides right there at the welcome table(!!!). Being, then, young and completely, utterly stupid I burned in silence and said nothing. What a freaking idiot I was. How in blazes they have continued to keep their designation as a voting place is beyond me.

Done. Plus, I broke the optical scanner! Seriously. My ballot was so left-weighted, it made the poor thing shiver and die. As Oleander and I vote in a thumper church, my theory is that my ballot caused blue flames to erupt from the rollers and foul up the machine. Now my precinct gets to hand-count them all, oopsy.

Here in MN we have a fantastic Dem Senate candidate, Amy Klobuchar. It does my old sick heart good to be able to vote for such a good woman. No nose-holding here in DFL country.

Nothing surprises me about the Republican ability to deny facts anymore. To me, denying global warming is just a tiny step up from denying evolution. Perhaps this is just the latest in the long line of God's jokes on us - hey, if He planted dinosaur bones in the ground to trick us, He could temporarily melt the ice pack - it's nothing permanent! They'll all go back the way they were after we all learn...ummm...something.

Re: Dicily. Julia - thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am constantly looking for new high-I words, as I am an I-magnet in Scrabble. My husband (Oleander) and I made a rule long ago that if it appears on ML, it's valid for Scrabble. Yay!

...and you know what Joel? I feel completely justified in laughing my fat lumpy @ss off at that scumbag and his problem du jour. I'm truly tired of the argument that people fighting the good fight can't step aside and enjoy some snarky goodness once in a while. Feh!

Comment statistics for Melody on the Making Light blog

Total: 26 comments. View all these comments on a single page.