Driving home the other day, I saw this sign and just HAD to turn around and get a picture of it:
Just seen in Salt Lake
Category: random
Spaces still left for worldbuilding seminar
We still have about 11-15 spaces left for the worldbuilding seminar this Saturday, so if you were thinking you might come but weren’t sure if there’d still be room for you, be assured that we’ve got plenty of room. If Paypal was the trouble, at this point, just bring your check ($45 for an individual, $35 if you’re in a group of 5 or more) with you to the library, but still be sure to email my intern, Chersti, at cjstapley AT gmail DOT com with your registration information to let her know you’ll be coming.
Hope to see you there, and for those of you not local, I’m still working on the online workshop idea. Last week was rather slow on that end, however, due to a family emergency and my own asthma problems–I’m still waiting to hear how my ten-year-old niece is doing (thank you all for your thoughts and prayers–she’s doing better, and every time they do a test, like taking her off the heart bypass machine, she continues to improve, but we’re still just waiting to hear about a number of tests that I’m not sure that they’ve been able to do yet). I’m trying to get that ox back out of the mire from last week, which means getting several critiques back to people who have been very patient as I’ve been dealing with other things. Thank you all for being so kind and thinking of my niece–between all of my friends, and all of my siblings’ and cousins’ and aunts’ friends, I think there must be thousands of people thinking of her and praying for her. Thanks, everyone.
Testing
Updating my previous posts to get them to show up on LJ doesn’t seem to be working. At least it’s not that many posts to copy over, if it comes to that. Here’s a test post to see if the plugin is working correctly on cross-posting NEW entries, even if it’s not working on updating old ones.
ETA: That seemed to have worked. I’m still getting really frustrated with the linkback, though–it keeps adding backslashes before the apostrophe. I just deleted FIVE of them! And now they’re BACK!
And now for something completely different: cat yodeling
From the engineers who brought you The Engineer’s Guide to Cats:
I think I broke it, but I don’t know how!
My website seems to be down, and I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it. It’s either the Google Analytics code (which I’m off in a minute to go take out) or the fact that I fixed a problem on the new Critiques page caused by pasting text from Word. Either way, if the site *is* working for you, please let me know, and if it isn’t, I would love to know that, as well. Sorry for the inconvenience, and I’ll try to get it fixed as soon as possible.
A reminder, and random tidbits
One last thing [that I just edited to be the first thing, because it’s more important than my ramblings]: If you’re local to Utah and are a writer of the LDS faith and/or writing in the LDS market, remember that LDStorymakers happens next weekend. I believe the deadline is fast approaching (in fact, I just checked, and it’s today!) and there are no walk-in registrations due to the conference’s agreement with the hotel. So if you want to go, register now.
Now, the meandering:
Though little seems to be happening on the blog front, that’s because much is happening behind the scenes. I’m currently working under deadline on several projects, including XDM by Tracy Hickman, Curtis Hickman, and Howard Tayler, and several novels by individual authors (who I never mention by name on here because they’re not “my” projects to mention, and the work I do with authors pre-publication-process is very much behind-the-scenes work). I’m still looking for submissions for Tor, as well, though this week that’s not as high priority as the deadline work. So if you’ve been wondering where I went, well, there you have it.
In other news, though winter was officially banished a month ago, the heavens still seem to be singing Christmas carols. It snowed all morning, but when I ventured out at five to meet a friend, it had stopped and I thought that was the end of it. But noooo. My drive home tonight from a friend’s reminded me greatly of a time in high school, driving to a basketball game in my friend Tim’s ancient green Impala (he was driving—I was a freshman), when he hit the brakes and we just kept sliiiiiiding on past the high school driveway. There had to have been six to nine inches of snow on the road tonight at midnight. I did a few donuts reminiscent of that old Impala, as well, which reminds me that I have needed new tires since, oh, about October. I thought I’d gotten through the winter well enough by avoiding driving in bad weather as often as possible, but it had to snow just one more time, didn’t it?
Sigh.
But no collisions. At least, my car didn’t collide with anyone else’s (though there were a few close calls). I saw one accident, though, and no wonder, with the roads in that condition. I’m sure the snowplows have been put up for the season, given that it’s April.
Dollhouse
A lot of critics have been panning Joss Whedon’s new show Dollhouse, and I know some people are giving it a pass because they didn’t get into it in the first episode.
Me? I love it. I also love good cop procedural shows if they have character development (Bones, NCIS) and I think the misunderstanding of Dollhouse comes because people expect the characters to be quirky and funny like those in Buffy, Angel, and Firefly.
What Dollhouse really is: a serious science fiction show crossed with a cop procedural. Now that I’ve seen three episodes, I can see that they’re setting up a really intriguing mystery with the FBI agent seeking Echo, Echo’s past, and the possibility that Echo is a new kind of Doll–one who can adapt the mission to fit parameters no one programmed her to expect.
I’ll continue watching, and I think if you like a character-driven show, you’ll come to find it satisfying when the mysteries start to unravel more than in the first few episodes, when Echo is still more of a tabula rasa. But you’ll want to watch those first episodes to see how the mysteries and characters are getting set up.
The fashion report, New York, and cameras
I’m sitting in my friend’s New York apartment having just finished a rousing discussion on each of our personal existential crises. There’s always something that makes you think, "What do I *really* want to do when I grow up?" isn’t there? As things change, you have to adjust, and there’s always some negotiation as you figure out how you fit in the bigger plan.
Also, I’m making chocolate chip cookies.
And finishing a critique (you know who you are! almost done!).
I was going to spend the afternoon at a museum or something, but it’s rainy and slushy out, and I decided it was time to just sit and not be running around. Plus, the heel part of the sole came separated from the leather one of my shoes as I was taking it off last night. Random. But I th
ink it’s fixable. I just need to find a good shoe repair place at home. They’re much less common in Orem than they are in bigger cities.
So as I was heading back to my friend’s house from a quick visit to Alvina’s office this morning, I stopped by at a Payless and found a cute pair of boots on sale, which makes me happy because I’ve been looking for boots. The shoes that broke are Mary Janes–cute, but impractical even if you’re just running through the snow from the car to the house and vice versa, and even more so while running around New York in the slush.
But obviously they’re new boots, and they have a little bit of a heel, so they need some breaking in to be comfortable for everyday wear. It was either them or a pair of flat white suede boots with really weird leather fringe trim, and that was just not happening.
But I’m happy to have some cute boots before I head up to Vermont, even if it’s not the most practical thing to have un-worn-in boots, because they’re calling for snow and I think I want to go out on the snowy trails. I wonder if there’s snowshoe rentals up there? I had a great time earlier this month going snowshoeing with my friend in Utah. I don’t believe I ever shared anything about it on this blog at the time, because I was still trying to figure out how to get the pictures off my phone. Well, here you go:
Yes, that is me falling over. It happened several times. Have you ever tried standing up again from snowshoes in five feet of snow? That tree behind me? It’s the top limbs of the tree I fell in. It’s normally at least 10 feet tall.
But that won’t stop me from going again. It was a great workout–very invigorating. When I wasn’t feeling how impossible it was to get back up from falling.
Also, while I’m at it, a fun shot I took with my cell phone at the Salt Lake Library. Boy, do I miss my good SLR! But it’s fun to get some nice shots out of a little 2 MP camera.
If you ever get a chance to see the Salt Lake Library (the downtown branch), definitely check it out, by the way–it’s gorgeous.
I just found a great point-and-shoot camera (Sony Cybershot, 8.1 MP), so at least I’ll be able to get my snapshot fix while I work on replacing the good camera (and actually, the shoe and cookie shots are made with that camera). But I’m still sad and going through photography withdrawal.
Director’s cuts
I’m just about to watch a DVRed-off-TV version of Blade Runner (part of G4’s “Movies that Don’t Suck” series, which deserves praise in and of itself), the description of which I find really interesting.
Ridley Scott’s director’s cut of his sci-fi noir thriller adds scenes and a new ending, drops the voice-over [which I remember being pretty corny–there was so much corny voiceover in the 70s and 80s], and deletes some of the gorier moments. The story follows a 21st-century detective (Harrison Ford) charged with terminating deadly androids.
Now, “terminating deadly androids” aside–it’s a whole lot more nuanced than that–I find it interesting that the director’s cut chooses to delete the gorier scenes, and I think I’ll end up liking the movie a lot more because of it. I saw Blade Runner for the first time back in the early 90s, in college, I believe, if not in high school. I loved the story, but the thing that always turned me off was the gore. I don’t remember there being a lot, but I have the benefit of over a decade to fuzz
out my memory on that.
But usually a director’s cut will add scenes and not refine stuff like that, because usually the scenes added would increase the likelihood of an R rating (arbitrary though that is) rather than decrease the likelihood of it. And with such a great story as Blade Runner is, it has always disappointed me that it got an R, which would deter many people I know from seeing it.
Now, looking at the TV ratings on the DVR, this still says that it’s rated R (though I believe that G4 is one of the stations that edits for language, so that may be moot). But I am interested in seeing the changes and how it affects the story.
Treat time!
But on a brighter note, less than two weeks from Kindling Words! I’ve been very blessed for it to work out for me to go again this year, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone. I might even be able to make something for it–one tradition the retreat has is to bring along your snackable goodies, which are then left out for everyone to munch on between sessions. So the biggest question I will be tackling come a week from Monday: chocolate chip cookies or something more exotic? I usually make a mean chocolate chip cookie, but I found that living in Seattle changed how it baked and it ended up all floury and melty at the same time; very weird. What’s weirder was that living at sea level in Boston didn’t do the same thing–perhaps it was the humidy?
Now that I’m back up to high-elevation cooking, perhaps I should try it again.