…which means everything drips. That’s El Nino for you. Washington gets rain. Not nice pretty snow.
I’m halfway through converting Hellburner. That’s going to go up under its old copyright. Feeling good.
And we still haven’t got the tree up, but the rest of the lights are up.
Note to self: never have guacamole at a place that calls itself The Onion. I’ve been miserable all day—we went out with OSG last night and had a very nice supper to welcome her back from her travels. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it tasted that oniony. But I’ll bet there was a lot of onion content, a veritable onion reduction sauce therein, so they could cram even more in. Neither Jane nor I is feeling too spiff. But we’ll live.
We’ ll try decorating this evening. Honestly I’ve moused so much on these conversions my mousing digit is quite, quite sore to the touch. Ow.
But most of my shopping is done. The graphics orders are in the mail—btw—the one thing we do ship ourselves. The lines at the post office were really pretty good: I timed it just right, so there was only an 8 person line, with few packages, mostly business or buying stamps. When I turned around to leave after posting my stuff, the line was out the door—I’d say maybe 50 people who each looked to be carrying St. Nick’s whole load including a reindeer or two.
You are not the only ones. We just got our tree and lights up last night, which was actually amazing since we were going to head out of town but are now staying around home. Family story there that should wait til later…
I did want to take the opportunity to post a recommendation for Jane Fancher’s Netwalkers series. I’m part way through book three (Harmonies) and am very satisfied with my purchase. The Closed Circle buying experience was fairly standard eCommerce with a cart, checkout, PayPal, and an email with the link to the download.
Most of the members here might be in the same boat as I: avid fans of CJ’s work, mild familiarity with Jane’s art, but no experience with her writing. CJ might be biased in her recommendation, but I have to give an objective report that I enjoyed Jane’s novels and have moved her from my “watch” list to “proven author” list.
– S
Oh, yes!
I didn’t realize that many here would not know Jane’s writing – I scored all three Rings when they came out. Definitely “buy on sight!”
+2 on Jane’s writing and I’ll drop over to her blog and tell her so also! I got an early Christmas present of the Rings books from a friend and I’m really looking forward to them.
I like how you spoke of the onions, your most sneaky nemesis. Should we be surprised at such irony, given the name of the establishment? Is not unlike like our esteemed Bren Cameron dining at a place called Alkaloids R Us, and supposing that the chefs have better sense? In both cases, I can just imagine the set of precautionary instructions–all to no avail. Alas, it’s always the sauce 🙂
oh noezzzz…! Say it’s not so: a reduction sauce!
Sandor, what about posting a review on Jane’s books to Amazon? I just did a short one on Librarything, in which I mentioned that they can be had at CC. We can turn this into a movement!
kokipy,
sounds like a great idea. I might need to wait to finish the current book so I don’t pull myself out of the universe too far and have to re-enter.
– S
May I suggest you add a few words to Hellburner? An intro, an afterword–maybe something about how it fits into A/U? Why? The new version would be a derived work, which resets the copyright clock. At least that tags the new, legitimate e-version differently from any pirate scan of the old version.
Merry Christmas!
THank you guys.
And Walt, not a bad idea. It’s not changed enough to rate a new copyright—this one came out much as I wrote it; but let me think on it.
One must say one is glad not to have had packages to mail (or ship) to associates or family this year. My Christmas shopping consists of going to the toy department of whichever store I happen to be in at the time, selecting a reasonably priced and reasonably desirable toy and after purchasing said toy, finding the nearest “Toys for Tots” collection point and putting the toy in it. I’ve gotten some weird looks from people at times, but I don’t mind at all. Some child is going to have at least one gift for Christmas, and though I’ll never know who the recipient might be, it’s still a good feeling to know you made a child’s life brighter. (This is the same reason I donate platelets as often as I can throughout the year.)
One also must ask, at a place called Tomato Street, is the cuisine mainly tomato based, or is the restaurant on a byway named Tomato Street? Having no food allergies of which I am aware, I cannot imagine eating something and then have it turn on me in the manner in which you and Jane suffer from onions.
Welcome back, Joe! We’ve missed you! —Tomato Street was our favoritest, and no, it’s the tomato-based cuisine—but they started using garlic salt or powdered garlic instead of the real thing. We can just barely tolerate garlic, but it turns out we’re both sensitive to the vegetable-based (?) powder used as a stabilizer in the powdering of garlic or onion (prevents caking or clumping). We don’t have many food allergies, actually, but garlic powder is a bomb in a bottle, onion powder is worse, and, imho, in a restaurant kitchen, the sign of a chef taking other shortcuts we don’t yet suspect. Julia Childs wouldn’t have done it. 😉 So alas, we can’t eat there any more.
What a wonderful habit, the toy gift, Joe. We have a similar thing going locally: Tom’s Turkey Drive, in which a local chain has grocery sacks full of staples in bins throughout the store: you pick them up and toss them in your basket, and when you pay for them at checkout, the checker puts them in a bin for the local charities to pick up and distribute. We do those. It makes it possible for families to gather in their own homes with their relatives, which is a good thing. Recipes get passed down, conversations get had, tales get told—in all, the holiday meals are something we like to support.