Jenny @223: This sounds yummy. But -- cooked or raw rice?
Juli @275: I have been told that keeping the raw root vegetables in a "root cellar" - not quite fridge temp, but close, and preferably underground - means they'll keep all winter. I haven't gotten the knack of this myself, though: 3rd floor apartment. I am thinking of moving my "keeper share" veggies to the closet under the stairs (which is a titch underground on the front side of the building) and hoping that the building management people don't notice.
Marilee, thank you for the Silken Turnip Soup recipe - I may try that tonight if I'm not too tired when I get home.
I have a lot of turnips on hand. And Jacque won't let me give her ANY! hee.
And now I have read the rest of the letter over at Pub Rants. The middle portion really sticks out for me. Not only is Harlequin surprised/disappointed that RWA didn't discuss this with them first, but...
It is disappointing that the RWA has not recognized that publishing models have and will continue to change. As a leading publisher of women's fiction in a rapidly changing environment, Harlequin's intention is to provide authors access to all publishing opportunities, traditional or otherwise.
LOTS of pub-scammer language packed into that little paragraph. Publishing models are changing! Vanity is just one more opportunity! And another use of "traditional publishing" to mean the regular commercial advance-and-royalty paying stuff. Ick.
In tomorrow's news (today!), Harlequin will offer their Horizon authors a token advance of $1 to show that they believe in their authors' books and will give them the chance they deserve.
Most importantly, however, we have heard the concerns that you, our authors, have expressed regarding the potential confusion between this venture and our traditional business....
Oh, ugh. First they spawn a vanity publishing wing, then they start darn-near using Publish America's coined term-of-no-meaning ("traditional publishing"). This continues not to bode well.
{{{Velma}}}
Hang in there. Both of you.
So tonight's the night I make my Letterman debut, part of the chorus backing up Ray Davies
*Kinks-squee!*
Have an absolute blast. When's it air?
That was a darn good point made about William Hartnell.
Jacque, I have attempted your Cream Of Dinner Soup today for brunch. It looked revolting and tasted quite good. I feel nourished! (And thank you to those already commenting on the sub-thread; I must get my hands on How To Cook A Wolf now.)
...So, how about that new ep of Doctor Who?
(Open thread, meet empty mind... it must be bedtime)
Pretty much ditto everything Mac just said.
(And best wishes in siriosa's friend's direction, too.)
Those are some wonderful photos. Thank you for sharing them.
Serge @ 11, that's awesome.
The crossover fiction: it's so beautiful in my mind.
Saw the Twitter shouts and have retweeted the news and the Donate Button link. Am keeping my mental candle lit. And am hitting refresh somewhat compulsively, here and there.
Thanks again, y'all. Null is at the vet for 2-week follow-up, and I'm hanging out in the neighborhood waiting for that to be done. Mainly I hope to be reassured that everything I'm seeing is normal, or better than normal, for a kitty in his situation. The coffee at the Englewood-area Le Peep's is... well, it's OK. I think this particular Le Peep's is aspiring to be an IHOP.
That's dang good, Antonia - going by the traditional daily target chart, that's just about 6 days ahead of schedule. Go go go!
I only got caught up to last night's 20K target at about 12:15 AM. But at least I'm back on track now. Hopefully will stay there, although any day that starts at the vet (regularly scheduled follow-up for recovering kitty) is liable to be a profitless day. I was going to spend the wait time writing at the Le Peeps across the parking lot, but I seem to be poking at the Internet instead. Perhaps it will poke back.
Ah well. A slightly early "halfway done!" party is scheduled tonight in Boulder. About 17 of us are going to descend en masse (but not sans warning) upon the little cafe in my neighborhood that does cheap all-you-can-eat spaghetti.
Just to amplify what others have said:
The publisher is the customer of the writer. They pay you, and in return you give them permission to make a bunch of copies of your book which they will then sell to the reading public.
If you pay a publisher to bind your book, not only are you not making any money, but you're dealing with a publisher whose main source of profit is writers rather than readers. They will not get your book into bookstores. They will not get your book read.
Don't deal with publishers who think you are their customer. Only deal with publishers who know they are your customer.
You can usually make the distinction by reading the publisher's web site. Who is the target audience of that web site, and what product is being advertised thereon? If their web site says "Hey, writers, get published!" stay far away. Start with publisher web sites that say, "We publish a bunch of books you will love to read."
From what I understand, 50K is just dandy for a YA novel (Harry Potter et al notwithstanding).
However, my main reaction to Molly Case's 50K objection is, "So what? You think that the novel is sealed in stone on December 1? Let me introduce you to the term rough draft."
My main reaction to her attitude is much as geekosaur recommended. Although I did respond at length on my blog, at the time, but that was for the sake of my Nano friends reading it. Nano is in many ways about giving oneself permission to set aside time to write. It would be awful if anyone struggling to give themselves that permission were convinced by her that "selfishly" writing a novel without a publisher having asked you to do so were a shameful endeavor and an unforgivable imposition on your friends and family.
Jacque: If the site is back up for you, check out the Boulder forums. We can has Google calendar widget!
Thanks for the good wishes, Serge & Ginger and all. Null says hi.
About countertops and temptations: We have to retrain friends. Not just butter, but EVERYTHING has to be put away and out of cats' reach. No candy on the counter, in case they take it into their heads to sample the chocolate; no dried fruit-and-nut snack mixes since Uno investigated THAT and besides Null things nuts are the bestest things EVAR. Uno will reliably destroy any packaging that smells like yeast within minutes of leaving it out and turning your back, so bread stays in the fridge. Null (the recuperating kitty) will eat things a surprising distance up the Scoville scale, so those peel-and-eat Cajun shrimp aren't safe either. Neither are the chili cashews.
Reasons we want the cats off the counter whether we're there or not: electric stove burners stay hot longer than one realizes; dishes soaking in the sink should not be broken nor licked; cabinets above counter should not be explored and their contents broken.
Once I left the glasses cabinet opened (brainfart) and later that evening heard a terrible crash--Uno and Null were chasing each other around the house, and apparently Uno had attempted to escape into this convenient floating cave in the kitchen. We were lucky that only two wine glasses (and no kitties) got broken.
On training cats via short sharp shocks: When we lived for a year in a campus-area apartment in Boulder, we were limited due to a single income to one big purchase a month. Furnishing the apartment often fell behind Neat Computer Stuff or Awesome Entertainment in priorities, so we didn't actually acquire a bed for months. We slept on the floor in the corner of the bedroom where two windows met. Have you ever had a cat jump down from the windowsill and land on your belly when you're lying on the floor? Ooh boy. I would wake up, lash out entirely by instinct at the monster that had punched me in the stomach, and then roll over and worry about 1) whether I had internal injuries, and 2) whether I'd broken my hand when it smashed against the wall (Uno dodged). Still, both cats very, very quickly came to treat Top Of Humans as unsafe places to perch or land.
That said, we've totally undone this training, because when you're lying in bed and the cat gently climbs up on you it's much more cute. It was especially sweet last week when Null demonstrated himself strong enough to reclaim his favorite nap-nook: the small of my back while I lay on my belly on the floor reading or using the laptop. He wasn't even really taking steps yet at the time, but he managed to drag himself up with his front legs (which have gotten really, really strong, compensation-style).
Bwah. Long post. Sorry. Always easy to go on and on about cats, isn't it?
Given that the last post on this thread is a week old, and there's a significant gap before it, too, I hesitate to add a comment. Still, the late subthread involving training cats against jumping on counters does seem to imply that 3-4 foot falls are harmless.
One of my cats is currently recuperating from spinal injury. The damage was acquired indoors, without witnesses, without any other living thing to interact with but the other cat. The vet says it's consistent with a fall from a counter-top or shelf such that he impacted the edge of another surface on his way down.
By "spinal injury" we mean that one of the processes broke off and there was hemoraging and swelling severe enough to cut off all sensation and motor control in the hindquarters. He spent more than a week in the hospital just regaining the ability to urinate on his own. He's home now, beginning to walk again, slowly and wobbly for sure. Still can't really use the litter box; he's just able to get in and out of it on his own, but doesn't seem to be able to "hold it" yet in time to get there. He will be confined to small spaces and no unsupervised running or jumping or interactions with the other cat or *anything* for, we are told, 90 days. His follow-up appointment on Friday may alter that timeline though.
We got off light; he didn't need surgery, thank the Gods. I'm not even going to go into the vet bill. That he is home and purrs when I interact with him, I have come to view as a small daily miracle.
Before this happened, I might have thought, "Yeah, cookie sheets on counter-tops, that would do it; teach him the route isn't safe in a way that has nothing to do with human intervention." Hell, before this happened, I watched him fall off a TV top in his sleep and hit the ground about 6 feet down, and I laughed at how funny he looked, all undignified and confused and what cat falls off of things in his sleep anyway?
I'm a lot less OK with the idea of deliberately engendering a slip-and-fall hazard as part of cat training now that I would have been, is what I'm saying. Which is why I'm posting.
It would be a rare November that I did not stumble across at least one Internet know-it-all who proclaims, with great smug cynicism, that NaNoWriMo is a waste of time and a bad idea and that it's helping fill the world with dreck and that no one who needs a big event like this in order to get motivated is a *real* writer and why would you encourage people to write suckiness anyway?
(Not talking about DanR. Talking more about stuff like this, in which the critic considers NaNoWriMo something people should be embarrassed to encourage, and something which she hopes will die out in the near future. Have not seen a juicy example of it this year yet, but November is long and only just begun.)
I think the phenomenon is similar to that which drives people to react to online conversations which they think are boring or a waste of time, not by moving on to conversations they'd rather have, but by joining the conversation in order to diss the people having the conversation. I don't get that phenomenon, and I don't get the need some people have to go beyond "Nanowrimo? Not for me" to "Nanowrimo stinks and the people doing it should be ashamed". But I do think the impulses are related.
ANYWAY, yes, I'm doing it. For the 8th year. Also carrying the role of Boulder Municipal Liaison for the 6th year running. (Jacque, if you are doing it, why have I not seen you at a write-in yet? Come on out! We don't bite!)
I think giving myself permission to write utter babble allows me to go to the places where I find out stuff I never would have otherwise. For me, the rough draft is about exploration. There are story ideas and characters waiting in the places I can only get to by writing my way into them. I see a large part of my job, as ML, to be an advocate for this sort of writing-as-exploration. Also to encourage those who want to do it, but don't think they can do 50,000 words of it, and so might elect not to do it at all. NaNoWriMo is about community and support and challengers and being given the permission to spend a huge chunk of November doing something that an alarming portion of the population thinks is a selfish luxury ("If you're not busy, would you--" "I'm writing." "So you're not busy, then?"). Meeting the 50,000-word challenge is awesome, but going from wish-I-had-time-to-write to I'm-writing!-I'm-a-writer! is awesomer still.
Proud to be a part of it. If anyone wants to buddy me, I'm "vortexae".
That's why, in civilized societies, punishment is dictated by the law and not the victim of the crime: in that situation, none of us can trust ourselves.
Wesley, thank you for this. I was trying to get there with what I said about closure and vengeance, but you have put it much more eloquently.
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| 2007 | 295 |
| 2006 | 153 |
| 2005 | 16 |
| 2004 | 2 |
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