cluegirl | Recent Entries

I have decided that eyebrow is a verb in my world.

I mean, if I tell you "Then he eyebrowed at me," you're pretty damn likely to know what I'm talking about -- especially if the context includes dialogue, or the proper names of Spock or Snape. Ergo, to eyebrow, eyebrowed, eyebrows, will eyebrow. Yes. It can stay.

And so say I.

In other news, Mandala House has now been alarmed. I decided that the open-window was fair warning on my part, and so when the world threw an alarm company with a really good installation and monitoring package under my feet last week, I asceded with what grace I could. We've not contacted the insurance company yet, but between the intruder alarm and the smoke monitoring package, the savings in the insurance bill might just cover the cost of the monthly monitoring.

And better yet, it's got a setting to just chirp at me if a door's been opened, without ringing the central dispatch. So when I'm on my own on any given day, I don't necessarily have to lock myself in.

I'm not actually a fan of alarm systems, really. They deeply complicate things like pet sitters and houseguests, and I've never been comfortable with the rabbit medicine inherent in getting a machine to guard your stuff... but the flood last January did put a dent in my stance. As did the open window last week. I'm perfectly willing and able to defend my house against an intruder, but legally and ethically it's much less complicated if it's harder for them to get in in the first place, eh?

The alarm installer was a hoot as well. He's just the sort of alt-lifestyle gent that Dominus and I both enjoy as friend-potential. Quirky sense of humour, fantasy reader, swing music/ rockabilly fan, got most of our jokes and volleyed plenty of his own as well. It's kind of a sad irony to have met him under this context, because now an invitation to just hang out would be nothing short of hinky. Alas.

And speaking of hinky, after months of no activity on my FetLife account, today I was friended by two male subs. Now mind, my account over there is a stub, with almost no information on it at all, so where they got the idea that I was a peg-domme, I've no idea, let alone what convinced the both of them to friend me on the same day, but there you have it. This reminds me of when random sissy boys used to ping my Brighid yahoo id, hoping I'd insult them, humiliate them, and make them crawl like vermin. It took me a month to work out that it was because I'd put "Goddess" in her job title field. D'OH! I'd meant Goddess as in immortal deity, not as in woman fetishized for presumed sexual cruelty. I changed that. It didn't help.

FetLife, however, is not yahoo, and so I'm not nearly as weirded out by random subs friending me there. Just bemused by the timing, mostly.

And now, I am officially through for the night.
Goodnight, Gracie!

Current Music: Apeman -- The Kinks

Flying a little bit low today.

Woke up with the opening verse of It's Only a Paper Moon in my head, looping over and over in my head.

Say, its only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me...

Yyeah, guilty as charged, I'm afraid. And how aggravating is it, by the way, that my inner Jiminy Cricket is voiced by Ella Fitzgerald? I guess it could be worse; could be Tiny Tim.

I picked up a lovely illustrated copy of the Tao Te Ching on Saturday. Started reading it last night. It's not surprising to me how well some (not all though,) of this resonates with my sense of Things That Are. Thusfar it's been more validating than eye-opening, but that's okay; I'm not in the market for a spiritual crisis this year anyhow.

I've also been wandering around the place shouting at

dodging_fate's parents for being cruel motherfuckers and using her baby's illness as a power play to try and piss in a circle around her home, her family, and her pets. What they're doing is trying to make her baby's struggle for life somehow about THEM, by 'fixing' things so he won't be sick anymore, and I just want to punch each of them in the head for it. Forcing her to discard her cats and dog will NOT miraculously cure a pheumonic newborn. The VIRUS that is ravaging the baby has nothing whatever to do with animals, or pet dander at all. No, what this manipulative bullshit will do, is traumatize the pets, the children who already live in the house and who love those pets, and utterly shatter their relationship with their generous, loving daughter if they can't find a way to step off before they reach her breaking point.

Someone needs to inform these people that parents can be disowned as readily as can children, and that right now, she has a LOT more leverage over things the loss of which they would seriously mourn than they do over her. She has their grandchildren, after all, and if they keep on being abusive, why on earth should she expose her daughters and son to people who act like that? Why should she expose herself to people who take advantage of a family tragedy to try and muscle her about?

(So... yeah. Kind of invested in this a bit more than is perhaps proper for a friend. This is one of the reasons why I haven't gone to the hospital to visit yet -- I'm not sure I can trust myself if either of them happen to be there, and I really don't want to verbally eviscerate

dodging_fate's parents in front of her. She's got enough to deal with already. But the Gorgon's right up close on this one, and she has Opinions...)

I'm also back at war with iTunes again. It's spontaneously decided it can't read any of its .lib files, so it has no existing library to which it can refer at any given time, and thus has to take two hours to import my music every time I turn it on. And that's without recourse to any of my playlists either, of course. I have finally had to step away and stop touching it, lest I accidentally throw the damned computer through the window. I have literally been picking at this mess all weekend long, trying to find a way to get it to remember where its arse is, and I'm just about at the point of using the Alexander Solution to Insoluble Knot Problems. And that's rarely good for the computer, I'm afraid.

In other, less ranty news, I splurged on one of these this weekend. Mainly, I justified it to myself out of the utterly crappy sound quality I'd been getting out of my old gaming headset mic for the tarot readings I'd been doing online. But really it had just as much to do with the fact that I've never been happy with the sound on The Moon in Her House when I recorded it, and I want to a) do it over with better equipment, and b) record Singing Each to Each once I finish the final edit, and offer that one up as an MP3 as well.

And, because my life works like this, on Sunday I picked up three tarot reading appointments for this week, which will pay for 2/3 of the mic flat out, assuming nobody cancels. Can't be too unhappy with that, can I?

Current Music: All I Want is a Proper Cup of Coffee -- Trout Fishing in America

Read on	Fic Title	Author	Genre	Words	Stars

Feb 6	The Grey King	Susan Cooper	Mythic fantasy	165	****
Jan 31	Chalice	Robin McKinley	Fantasy	259	****
Jan 27	Unwind	Neal Schusterman	YA suspense	335	****
Jan 12	Odd and the Frost Giant	Neil Gaiman	Fantasy	128	***
Jan 7	The Alchemy of Stone	Ekaterina Sedia	Steampunk	293	****

Current Location: Mandala House

Today has been declared lurker amnesty day! Have you read me but never commented? Do you surf by occasionally? Here for the fic? Say hello! You are under no obligation to ever comment or delurk again, but here's a chance to do so in a post just for that.

In other news, the Shingle is out today.
Have a question?
Want an answer, a card, a clue, or even just an educated (or entertaining) guess?

Ask away!

Where? In the office, surrounded by cats. (Godric is doing his best to cockblock my monitor... and has now been moved to vulture position on the back of my chair. Cyrene is snoring on the desk pad, poor snottery critter. Hilfy is keeping the radiator from floating out the window. Mithril is buried in the laundry, and only Sirocco is unaccounted for. Don't tell me cats are anti social!) Dominus has taken his shoggoth infestation back to work now that his lungs are no longer in bloom, but he sounds like a deep one -- er. That is, an even deeper one than usual. Ahh, the stressed vocal cords of a contrabass... I'm pretty sure if he got sick enough, he could cause earthquakes. We'll find out tonight, when he tries to sing without horking up a dhole onto the carpet.

Reading? Susan Cooper's The Grey King, with breaks for LJ, and certain very cool news stories. And to outline such bunnies as might come wandering past. (That's just one so far for today, but I expect more as hours wear on.) I'm waiting for some beta return before I can slice into Singing, Each to Each and try to shake about a thousand words out of it. When it's done, I'm distantly considering doing another podcast of it, but only if I can lay hands on a better microphone than the one I'd used for The Moon in Her House, because, dude; not enough pop-screen in the world!

Writing? Not planned currently, but at present the choice lies somewhere between trying to knock the last scene off Waking the Witch, and chewing on The Princess Writes her Eulogy... though that new bunny might get tickled a bit if it doesn't quit looking so cute at me.

Done? Half an hour on the treadmill, book in hand. Dishes done, cats slopped, first cuppacwaffee ingested. LJ perused for relevant content.

Not done? Morning pages, last remnants of Yule banished from the dining room, second cuppacwaffee, toe-eating vacuum stowed safely away, extra bedding removed from guest bedroom, and other suchlike open-door chores. Luckily, we've been too sick, the two of us, to make much of a mess.

Planning? Chocolate chili marmalade brownies. Yes, they will be experimental, and I expect also delicious. And moreover, they will be for the filk buddies to share tonight, because that way I will eat ONE, and not the whole bloody pan. *Nods sagely*

(Pause to stop Godric from chewing on Nataraja Shiva statue. Oh, cat of bad ideas, that idea is especially of the bad!)

Wearing? Chartreuse Get Excited and Make Things t shirt, black linen overshirt, shapeless black exercize pants with a pink racing stripe, (I feel so 80's!) grey knit handwarmers, and the Best Socks Ever. Over the knee, woven to mimick black, straight-laced Converse All-Stars, right down to the grey-banded white sole, and the tread marks on the bottom. I agree with Dumbledore on the issue of socks -- they are a simple pleasure of which it is hard to have too many.

And now, the intangibles.
( Gods, Monsters, Closets, Ethics, and Dust Bunnies )
And now, I'm off to get some stuff done while I've still the daylight in which to do it.
Avaunt, y'all!

It's tomorrow night. We'll be opening the house to wandering filkers around 7 or so. The guest bed's been spoken for this month, so if anybody plans to crash, please check with us on the matters of airbed and bedding space, just so we know how many to expect.

And finally, because I am NOT putting my home address on the internet thankyouverymuch, anyone who needs coordinates and directions to the jump point can either e mail me under this handle @gmail.com, or can send me a private LJ message (or IJ, or DW, or smoke signal, or a brief psychic communique if you're particularly good.)

For those worried about the plague, Dominus' fever has broken as of this morning, so while his sinuses are a bit squamous still, (when he sneezes, you can faintly hear cries of tekeli-liiii echoing from behind his cheekbones...it's kind of cute, really.) we believe the infestation is safely contained inside his skull for now. Just to be sure though, we'll run all the glassware through the dishwasher before anyone arrives.

Cheers!

That's right; the Great Old Ones are virii. And their latest conquest is Mandala House, apparently.

I spent yesterday transported to the Feverlands, queazing about and hoping to somehow wake myself to sanity. And as of this morning, Dominus has fallen to the double-whammy of phlegm-possession and strange, feverish aeons. It is a sign of his misery that he's elected to leave the supersuit off today, called in not-dead-just-eternally-sleeping to work, and is lounging about in his pajamas, sniffling in futility.

We're considering painting an Elder Sign on his chest in Vicks.

I'll let you know how that works out...

Okay, I'm kinda over this journal layout.

I need a new one, so I can pass this one on to

unclesiko, who likes it a whole lot better than I do.

Is there anyone out there who might be interested in trading design and/or CSS coding for Clue-goods?
What Clue can Do: tarot readings, fan- or original fiction (if you don't mind waiting for her dodgy muse,) blackbelt beta and plot-surgery, poetry, drawing and/or painting (but not in a machinelike way, I'm afraid. Dodgy muse again...) crochetted things, beaded jewelry, and costume design. And if none of this tempts, then I can probably come up with cash, to an extent.

So... any of you CSS masters out there think you see fair recompense for a bespoke design anywhere in there?

It's 19 years today.
As always and still, if there is a choice to be made, I choose him.

(You see the lengths I go to when I have no access to a scanner? Webcam snaps of twenty year old photos... for the love!)

Read on	Fic Title	Author	Genre	Words	Stars

Jan 31	Chalice	Robin McKinley	Fantasy	259	****
Jan 27	Unwind	Neal Schusterman	YA suspense	335	****
Jan 12	Odd and the Frost Giant	Neil Gaiman	Fantasy	128	***
Jan 7	The Alchemy of Stone	Ekaterina Sedia	Steampunk	293	****

Current Location: Mandala House

During the course of the case, the CDCR, other related defendants, and the Assistant Attorneys General who represents them have argued before the court that Pagans are not deserving of equal civil rights as are provided adherents of the preferred faiths. In one of their first arguments to the court, the defendants said that certain "traditional" faiths are first tier faiths and that those faiths were meant to have equal rights and protections under the United States Constitution, but that all of the other faiths, for example, Hindus, Pagans, Buddhists, Sikhs, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jains, are second tier faiths deserving of lesser rights, and therefore are not meant to have the same equal rights and protections under the United States Constitution as the first tier faiths.

I have been saying it aloud since 2000; this is why, until the GOP puts some effort into distancing itself from the Conservative Christian Right, I will never trust anyone who runs under that party's banner. Never.

Because if you can pass a law deciding what is "real religion", then the next step is the outlawing of anything you don't think fits. And the next step is the persecution of anyone whose practices or observances seem a little bit hinky to you. (Like atheism, and agnosticism, for instance...) And the next step is the rest of the world banding together to come to your country and tell you that you may not committ genocide in the name of religious purity anymore.

It can happen here. Certain people who think themselves well-connected in the wake of a proseletyzing President are taking steps to make it happen. If this action goes through, and is supported into law, then it, just like Proposition H8, will cheapen the very institution is was supposedly created to 'protect'. What would Jesus Do? He'd be in that court knocking tables over and calling this an obscenity, is what Jesus would do. "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s", remember? Even the Best Known Son was in favour of separating church from state!

Only good news this time.

Singing Each to Each clocked in just over 7400 last night, which means I should be able to tune it under 7000 with only a bit of adjective-scrubbing. Betae are considering the matter now, and I've promised myself a week of not looking at it before I go near again. Which means all I've got to do right now, is choose a book for the afternoon, and decide whether I'm going to let the cats nap me this afternoon or not.

Tonight there will be soup!

And on an ebtirely unrelated note, I've been reading Amy Stewart's Wicked Plants, and with the aid of google image and some Latin names, have discovered that no fewer than three species of nightshade grow in my yard. And I've been weeding and digging and sometimes cutting them barehanded for four years now. In the case of the atropa belladonna that was growing in between my transplanted lilies, I recall actually crushing a couple of the berries in my fingers when I pulled it out last year, but can't clearly recall whether I washed my hands anytime soon after that or not. Good Cod, am I ever ridiculously lucky...

Ludicrous first, as we shall better use our breath for laughing than screaming:

* That 7 degrees can feel like an improvement in the weather.
* That my cat keeps knocking his grooming brush onto the floor, and expecting me to 'fetch' it.
* That wearing my hair in a single braid for yoga class results in my getting literally singletailed in the sacrum when I come up quickly from standing forward bend. Y hallo thar, inappropriate public arousal! Glad I'm a girl... with long hair. *wicked leer*

The bad: to get it out of the way.
* Godric was grounded this morning for spraying. Again. Not two minutes after we'd let him out of the bedroom, by the look of things. He didn't even wait to eat first, which means that when he went into the bathroom for the morning to consider his error, he went in hungry. I have no sympathy whatsoever.
* That it's too cold to set out water in Mandala House's doorway shrine. It'll freeze and break the bowl if we do. (We've got a big 7 day jar candle instead.)
* That it takes the suicide of a friend to remind people to reach out for the people they care about, but rarely think about.
* That no vulnerability, no matter how crippling, is below the scruple of an abusive person's urge to exploit and to dominate.
* That the brain is so miraculously adaptable that it can learn to accept the depressed state as its normative baseline. I disapprove of that most strenuously.
* Getting You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch stuck as an earworm. In January.
* Three separate pairs of socks have succumbed to the dreaded toe-failure in this week alone. The rate of attrition in my sock drawer has spiked rather sharply.
* Amazon, Tor, and Macmillan having a pissing contest over which of them is going to most thoroughly screw the customers of and authors of their e-book selections.

The good: because, damn it!
* Mithril being playful. He chased a bottlecap all over the floor last night, and I nearly cried. Hilfy was unimpressed, however.
* I have remembered how to make my crochet spiral berets again. I've made a blue one, am working on a red one, and will shortly begin to play with other yarns and needle sizes. They will be for sale, of course -- I've only the one head, ergo can only use one at a time.
* Yoge pwn today. I was much stronger, and much more stable than I'd expected, especially after the travesty of last week, when I could hardly sustain DownDog for a minute at a time. MUCH better showing today.
* Along that line, MUCH less nerve-pinching and greying out when back-bending today as well.
* Waffle with peaches, pecans and cream for breakfast. No syrup necessary, and much with the delish!
* Getting out of the Farmer's Market without having spent our monthly food budget in one go.
* Muse showing up with a poem-seed that makes my hands itch. Another fairytale metaphor, like the werewolf meta from last year, only this one in verse.
* That an American terrorist is going to jail for his crime of assassination.
* That I got to hang out with

dodging_fate yesterday afternoon. I'd not seen her in ages, and it was so very good to catch up.
* That my wenchsista

sandmansister had time to spend an hour on phone with me, just gossiping like hens. SO missed that!
* NEW F'IN BED, y'all! We got the last of our tax paperwork, got filed, and learnt to our joy, that the return is going to fully cover the cost of a Sleep Number bed! We went down to the store last night to place the order, and in three weeks, it'll be in the house. Giddy is not the Word!

So there.
What's the shape of YOUR day then?

Paraphrases an acquaintance...

"Minus two? That's not even an AGE!"

I can think of a few:

* Meeting a Gorgon's glare (dead or alive, apparently) face-on.

* Looking over one's shoulder at a city being destroyed by fire from heaven. (Salt is a mineral, after all.)

* Cockatrice breath (and how cool is that, by the way? So long as you can outrun the belch, you're home free!)

* Basilisk's stare and/or bite, depending on the source you consult.

* Narnia's White Witch had a staff just for petrifying uppity peasants.
* There was also a petrifying pool in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
* And another such pool in an unnamed-as-yet Chinese fairy tale.
* And apparently there was some petrification in one of the Oz books, but reports are vague.

* Though gold is a metal, we may as well roll Midas' daughter into this list too.
* And on this theme the name of Nicobobinus has also been raised.

* Tolkein tapped the sunlight turning trolls to stone myth, but technically those were not humans.

* Niobe, who was turned to stone, but only after her husband and kids were fridged by the Gods to punish her for uppityness. She should hook up with poor Job.

* Dr. Frank N Furter had the Sonic Transducer that could work either way. (Accepting films in this list, just so I can keep on with it for a bit longer.)

What else have you got, oh clever and widely read flist of mine?
I'll ammend the list as more arise, and I'm dead certain I'll wind up facepalming myself over the number I've forgotten, but that's why this stuff is fun!
I'm especially interested in non-European mythos if any spring to mind, but anything which belongs on this list, regardless of country of origin, please let me know.

And if there's someone you'd regard as a source for this question, but who is unknown to me, please consider pointing them over to weigh in. The more brains in the pool the better.

*Casts 'accio brains' and ducks under the desk...*

I just drove through a freakin blizzard to pick Mithril up.

No, seriously, an hour of snow so thick you couldn't see thirty yards, and of course that means NY drivers want to speed. Ugh.

Then once I got there, I noticed that Mithril's chart had picked up two more red stars over the one they gave him when I dropped him off with the warning about last year's biting incident. So he almost certainly pinked at least a few people while they had him at the House of Pain and Misery.

He was, in fact, so intractable that they took seriously my offer to go back and get him myself, but only after he'd done his murderous banshee impression on the poor tech with the welding gauntlets. My boy hath lungs, and no fear in the use thereof in defense of his heiny. I've a feeling he picked up at least one of those stars when they clipped his claws. *Snicker*

When I went back, he was in full defense mode, huddled half under the thick towel they'd thought would protect them from him, rowling and hissing at anything that moved. They hadn't even managed to get the Cone of Shame off him, and that's saying something, because that has snaps on. He was so absorbed in his bad flashback that he didn't even recognize my voice, as he'd done last time. I had to crouch down, make eye contact, and shout at him to break through that fight-to-the-death trance he'd fallen into. Apparently being scolded was the trick to remind him that he knows me, likes me, and wants me to take him home more than he wants to eat my face. I could literally SEE the sanity come back into his face. Mind, he was still freaked out, unhappy and scared, but he knew me, he came to my hand, and he let me unsnap his Cone of Shame, then coax him into my arms so I could crate him for the drive home.

Nary a peep in the car but for some stealthy purrs from inside the crate, too. And once here, he's been following me about room to room to be sure he's really come home. He even came into my lap under his own steam for a few minutes just a little while ago, and stayed for as much ear-scritching as he could stand without wanting to freak and swing. Then he got down and went to nom some kibble like he'd not seen sustenance in weeks. Everything's getting his joyful attention, from his favorite toys to the rugs he isn't supposed to scratch on, to his favorite napping spots, Sirocco's ear (in need of grooming,) Godric's bum (in need of sniffing.) But he always takes care to be sure he knows where to find me, and if I change rooms, he follows.

It's kind of humbling to be so entirely wrapped up in a creature's sense of "Home" as I am, and to see such evidence of it as this.
Three red stars or no, he is SO my cat.

Current Location: Mandala House
Current Music: Industrial Monk - Jeremiah

Sometimes my muse rocks.

Today is (sort of) one of those days.

You see, ten years ago, I wrote O.W.'s Damnable Muse, on spec for an anthology which was full-by-invitation the day I heard of it. The editrix liked it well enough to keep on hand as a standby, but as none of the invitees dropped out, and it was too long for magazine submission, when she sent it back with her regrets, it had nowhere else to go.

Of course, as is normal with me when I've thought up a neat conceit and environment, I'd conceived about five more stories set in the Traderix universe, and revolving around her pawnshop, and the things and people who passed through it. I dutifully outlined those, and kept them to hand while I turned my attention to other, prior writing projects that were awaiting my attention.

Fast forward ten years, to me cracking open those old files and having another go at them, in case any still have the legs with which they came.
Nope, not so much. And I know why now, with yet another million words under my belt, but that doesn't make it any happier a thing. The problem with the Traderix universe is the main character. I made her wrong, and that critical flaw in her constitution made it practically impossible to put her in actual peril. Not that she's a Mary Sue, because she's significantly flawed and abrasive in her own right, but she's more of a Galadriel character than an Eowyn or a Pippin. Alas. I like Galadriel just fine, but she's lousy leading lady material. (Actually, I kind of loathe Galadriel, but that's more to do with Tolkein's use of her than with her character itself, really.)

So imagine my surprise when, in the middle of my morning pages, my Muse shows up and announces she's brought a guest to coffee. Then she plunks down an Eowyn/Pippin hybrid in front of me, and proceeds to explain exactly how she can take over the show without disturbing the central architecture of the Traderix and her shop.

And you know what? I like Tina Hernandez loads better than the Traderix already. And as with Galadriel, I liked Jade just fine -- better than fine, because she wasn't a coward, but I can already tell that Tina's going to take Buy, Sell, Trade places that Jade never could, really.

The only problem -- and it IS a problem, -- is that Buy, Sell, Trade is NOT on the schedule right now!

The ending to Singing Each to Each is on the schedule, followed by Tempus Fugitive, and Waking the Witch, and Brindleskin and El Dorado Road and House With the Kind Hearted Woman, and Breathless, and that doesn't even approach the fest fics to which I've committed, or the half finished fanfics lurking about my hard drive. And how the HELL do I shoehorn a whole 'nother universe into that mess and still sleep?

*Sigh*

I need another energy burst like I got back in 2003/4. I knocked out better than 400k of good stuff then, and loved the hell out of it. I wish that I could get back to that altitude.

And if wishes were horses, of course, the beggars would ride.

So I'm outlining Tina today, despite my previous intention to try and finish Singing Each to Each. I don't want to lose her, and I've grown somewhat supersitious about neglecting my Muse's gifts these days.

Current Location: Mandala House
Current Mood: quixotic
Current Music: Dead Can Dance - Wild in the Woods

Brother Mithril's at the House of Pain and Misery again. He seems to have decided that the anniversary of the Great Mandala House Flood is best commemmorated by making and hoarding bricks in his backside. It's been going on since Arisia weekend, for no reason we can divine, except that he had a bout of separation anxiety and stopped eating or drinking while we were gone. Which, with a constitution as dodgy as his, is all the shock it takes to stop the mail moving at all.

( Cut to spare you all the TMI of my cat's rectal dysfunction )

This is what Dominus and I made up tonight. It's a braised approach to the stir fry favorite we know from our favorite takeout Chinese place up the street, and because we had some potatoes that were sprouting in the basket, we decided to try it out over garllic mash instead of rice. Seriously. Zomg. So I'm gonna document the triumph for future exploration.

* Two pounds of stew beef.
* One white onion, shredded fine
* Half an ear of garlic, shredded
* A thumb of ginger, peeled and shredded
* Three to four smallish roasting carrots, cut into medallions.

(We handled the onion, garlic and ginger in the food processor at the same time, so figuring measured amounts is a bit of a dodgy proposal. Sorry!)

And here's the rub...

* 1T garlic powder
* 1t fine grain salt
* 1-2 T dried cilantro, rubbed to powder
* 1-2 T ground ginger
* 1/2 ground pepper(or to taste. Red pepper flakes could do well here, if desired.)

* 3T sesame oil, heated in the Black Betty on the stove.
* 1/4 c water
* 2T Mirin (sweet rice vinegar)
* 2T Tamari (soy sauce)

Toss the beef in the rub, and then sling it into the oil to brown. It's fine to let it scorch, but try and see that the cubes get a little singe on all sides. Then toss in the shredded onion, garlic, and ginger. Stir them down, and add the liquid to the pot, then cover it, and put it into a 300 degree oven, and set the timer for 45 minutes.

When it goes off, slice the carrots and add them, then put the pot back in.

Dice five or six red potatoes into a vegetable steamer, along with 4 cloves of garlic, and some salt. Turn on the heat, and set the oven timer for another 30 minutes. (Do not, as we did, forget the steammer was going and return to find the pot on the verge of boiling dry. That's not fun at all.)

Once the timer goes off, pull the Black Betty out and remove the lid. The carrots should be perfectly cooked when you stab them.
While that's cooling, sling the spuds into a bowl, add some broth, and mash them up. If you're unconcerned about cholesterol or calories, you can use butter, cream, and whatever you fancy running off later on.

To serve, scoop about a quarter cup of the potatoes into the bottom of the bowl, then spoon the beef and its broth over the top of it.

The result was beef that was falling-apart tender, garlicky, gingery, and nicely balanced with the sweetness of the carrots. Combined with the garlic mash, it rendered up an amazingly delicious meal. I think next time though, I'm going to up the amount of fresh ginger, and try it with the red pepper instead of the black.

Let me know how it works out in your kitchens, as usual.

* I have new spectacles. They are fetching, and I loathe them. They were made stronger, because I only use my spectacles for reading, but that means the 'culture shock' of putting them on TO read is pretty severe, due to my right eye's growing astigmatism. And the idea of getting up and walking with these things on is Right Out, unless I want to fall down the stairs, and even with the scrip designed to facilitate reading, I can't manage it for longer than twenty minutes at a go. Which adds a layer of complication to my daily occupation of writing, I might add. My right eye is in an uproar, and has declared war on the world over this. No, despite the bible's suggestion, I will not pluck it out. This is because I am a wimp, and still have not managed to defuse my old 'eye damage' phobia just yet.

* I am considering getting a variable-pressure paint gun for stray control. Our neighbors are feeding their cats outside, and so every tough tom for miles has come to hang about and prove he's the worst. I think the shock and sting of a paintball would convince some of them to walk wide of this yard. And perhaps the neighbors might consider letting their cats inside once in awhile if they turned up streaked with dayglow yellow. (They got these kittens last summer, and near as I can tell, do not ever actually let them in the house at all. I've seen both outside regularly at three in the morning, and during blizzards and rainstorms. NOT my idea of the way one treats cats. Or dogs. Or any other pet, really, but I'm actually more concerned about their effect on MY pack, which is generally, vet bills and anxiety-driven behavioral problems.) The stray toms, however, I'd like to have captured and cut, only I know they'd be killed for it as well. These guys are full feral, and utterly unadoptable by anyone who doesn't have a feed barn into which to turn them loose. They also have viciously septic bites, as is so common with cats who live on garbage.

* Packing up Solstice this week. Tree is down, garlands and lights to follow, making way for Imbolc -- my favorite shy of Samhain. I can't wait till I get to turn Brighid's plaque back around again. Tradition holds it's bad luck to leave decorations from Yule up at Imbolc, but I suspect that may be an example of 'new trad', and as much inserted as a motivation to holidazed wiccans to get their damned lights and ornaments down in a timely fashion as anything else. Still, during the grey months of winter, any excuse to get out of the chair and make a change is welcome.

* So I did a variation on my book log, adapted to account for my short fic intake. I'll be posting it at the end of each month, but it's hard to say how long I'll continue to maintain it. It has turned out to be a bit of a pain, having to open the file and document sometimes five or ten 5000 word stories in any given day. And if I'm running late, or vastly unimpressed with the story, it's even harder to find the motivation to spend even more time on it. Lazy. Bad Catt! But then again, there's the battlecry of "Life is too short to read bad fiction" by way of reply and refute. Because it is.

* I think the next sewing project on my plate will be a smoking jacket for Dominus. We went out and found some luscious brown velvet, and a turquoise/copper/silver arabesque style brocade for cuffs, pockets, and collar revers. And I've a rather spiffy pattern for such a thing now. He decided he wanted one when he saw me working on the one I built just after Arisia, for

yuki_onna, and New England is SO the place for them. In the evening, when the heater's winding down to sleep, they cut a much better figure than sweats, undershirt, and flannel hanging loose overtop. I'm kind of charmed that even after nineteen years of marriage, and six of dating before that, he still wants to look good for me, even when I'm the only one who'll see it. How can that not be sweet?

* My keyboard is full of white cat hair for some unfathomable reason.

* It is becoming more and more frustrating that there is no political party in the US for me as time goes on. However fiscally conservative, or pro-states' rights I may be, I cannot ally myself with the GOP, who also believe no woman can be trusted to make up her own mind about a dangerous, life changing procedure like abortion, and whose actions imply too strongly to be ignored that they consider "my kind' a problem to be solved rather than as citizens of this country, and a resource to be maximized. But neither, despite my strong belief that there is a need for socialism in any healthy capitalist society, can I ally myself with the Democrats who have fallen into such shameless in-fighting, back biting, and pissing contest nonsense that they at present look like they're going to hand Sarah "Chosen Of God" Palin the presidency in 2012 no matter what President Obama manages to get done despite their faffing about in the meantime. I am a Jeffersonian. I am a Lincolnian. I am a Bull-fucking-Moose, and goddamn it, I want to see every damn one of these Republicans and Democrats hauled off to jail for the pocket-lining, special-interest-blow-jobbing, spin-doctoring, buck-passing, crony-backing, classist, infrastructure-collapse-apologist, cowardly, pork-bellied frauds they are! Every One.

* And I'm not sorry for that.

* But I do want more coffee. So la, I go to brew.