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

In 5th grade I became friends with a girl from Vietnam who'd had polio when she was about five. Her hip and leg on one side were affected, and while she could walk, it was with a severe limp due to a 3" difference in the length of her legs. She could do the splits without any kind of warm up--the affected hip was hyperflexible in odd ways.

She spent a month during 7th grade in the Shriner's hospital while they stretched her leg, by breaking the bone, then using a metal brace to spread the break while it regrew. Every morning they came around and turned the screws a tiny bit. It must have been excruciating.

Maybe I should stop in and get that tetanus booster I've been procrastinating on today. I'm glad I finally did the flu shot this year. Being sick, even the "mild" sorts, is no fun.

I'm baking election cupcakes. Chocolate blueberry (the basic butter cake from the King Arthur Anniversary Cookbook, plus 4 oz. melted chocolate and about half a cup dried blueberries) with frosting TBD (vanilla bourbon creme fraiche?). It just seemed like the right year for some kind of election cake.

Skipping back up to the alpaca knitting discussion: it's really good for lace or anything you plan on stretching. Most alpaca has something of a slinky quality.

Also, I'm on the 'more alpaca fleece than I can possibly use' side of things right now. So if anyone in the vicinity of Portland, OR is looking, I'd be happy to share.

Ugh, Typepad's policy on copyright infringement is the same DMCA-compliant crap that Google goes by.

Which is to say that they don't care unless the copyright holder sends them a bunch of documentation in the mail, even if the plagiarism is blatantly obvious.

Yes, I'm a little angry about spam blogs stealing my posts so they can slap AdSense ads on top, and the amount of work that appears to be involved in getting Google to revoke their account.

Just as a follow up to the issue of WL Writers’ listing on the AboutUs wiki: I'm at a demo being given by Ray King of AboutUs, and I asked what their policy is on disputes over how companies should be represented. Ray said that their policy is to always side with the outside community over the domain holder. I think that could be tricky to manage, but it's useful that it's possible to write "this company has been convicted of fraud" and they'll let that stand as part of the domain's record.

Having a listing on AboutUs.org is automated. They pull the info from the domain's whois listing and their website.

But the nice thing about it being on a wiki is that you can edit the entry...

Mmm, roast scammer.

Bruce Cohen @ 229:

If you get a chance to go to Portland (the left-hand one, not the one in Maine, way over on the upper-right), check out the neighborhood of Klickitat St. Beverly Cleary is remembered fondly there. There are statues of her characters in Grant Park a few blocks from Ramona's house.

They put the statues in while I was a student at Grant. The stoner crowd figured out that the dents that form Ramona's eyes are just the right size and shape that you can stick lit cigarette butts in there to make her look possessed.

Not that I would recommend anything of the sort. I still have all of my Beverly Cleary books from when I was a kid.

TexAnne @ 121: I saw suggestions involving sending knit socks or other items to represent the people who can't be there. I think some kind of proxy knitter thing would be neat.

I just saw a post from Ms. Yarn Harlot announcing a knitters' convergence in NYC on March 22. She's out to show the world just how big of a community (and market) knitters can be. I wish I could go.

Re: Clifton Royston @ 668:
There's something about "extra-virgin baby oil" that makes me crack up instantly. Nice.

Marilee @ 591: Is there? I'm not seeing it... It's straight out of my copy of The Lurker at the Threshold, so any strange grammar can be attributed to August Derleth or his editor. I think Metallica had a slightly different version, though.

If it's not too late to jump in on the open thread with a new question...

I'm starting a new sf/horror zine called Yog's Notebook (yogsnotebook.com) and I'm attempting to find places to post the call for submissions. I read several writers' blogs, but I'm not sure what the main places are that sf writers (published or aspiring) go to look for that sort of thing. Any recommendations? Thanks.

Merry Christmas! It's rainy and not too cold in Portland, and we're sitting around knitting and playing video games and watching the cats try to eat the wrapping paper.

LART: Luser Attitude Retraining Technique. The usual example is hitting someone with a 2x4 so they'll quit saying stupid things.

I get the feeling it's harder to not become mixed with the local culture here than in much of Europe. I'm not really sure how to articulate why, though.

Portland has a lot of Asian grocery stores with a Mexican food aisle, and probably some of the reverse, too. I like this.

Stefan: Portland definitely suffers from a shortage of thunder and lightning to go with the rain, but we did get (a small amount of) rumbling from an earthquake the other night. A third of a mile from my apartment, even. I was certain the upstairs neighbor had dropped something until I heard a report on the radio (which mistakenly gave the epicenter as being in the West Hills. Not sure how they got the wrong half of the city at first.)

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