maldis

stegzy @ 11:32pm: Eeh By gum

Ecky thump.

Is it Christmas yet? Or did I miss it again?

The snow has gone for now, the sad remnants of fairy lights still permeate the darkness. All is quiet.

The dustbins swell with wrapping paper and half eaten dinners, the shops are trying to sell off unwanted stock and consumers armed with gift vouchers and returns  battle it out for supremacy.

And yet there is still a tranquillity about the place. Or maybe that’s just Livejournal. Since my return this Autumn I’ve noticed that there are many dormant LJers on my Flist. While I am comfortable with the many well written and interesting insights into other peoples lives I am hungry for more.

Indeed, I have noticed that others on my Flist seem to have a similar problem. Therefore, inspired by similar posts on other peoples LJ’s I have decided to run what some call a “Friending Frenzy”.

The idea is simple. What happens, from what I have seen, is if you want to make new chums post a comment on this entry and say “I would like new chumz.” and include a little bit about you or a link to your info page. Then, you have a look at other peoples similar comments and see if anyone on there tickles your fancy and say hello, add them or tell them to fuck off and never darken your LJ ever again. Of course this works better if you tell your chumz on your LJ what is going on in this post. Link to it so they too can get involved, or indeed, why not hold your own.

See it like a conference where you are all delegates. Who knows, the single people might find their future partner, or they might find the person that finally tips them over the edge…it’s a fun game we can all play :D

Of course, you are more than welcome to totally ignore this post and carry on regardless. It is totally voluntary. I mean you might not want any old riff raff reading your journal and that I totally understand that. Or you might already know everyone on my Flist or not want to know anyone on my Flist (why that is? I have no idea, seeing as all my Flisters are really good friendly chaps and chapesses who all have interesting things to say)

Anyway, I’m going to leave this post open until the new year…see it as…New Year, New Flister.

( About me )

sekl @ 7:27am: Precious
There's a very sound explanation as to why there's a pile of plastic meat by my keyboard, but I'm amused all the same. It seems that after I called a moratorium on the Wii (Jakob was getting very frustrated with a boxing opponent) the kids noticed the little presents that I got them. Sean was very happily playing with his plastic meats and veggies from the dollar aisle at Le Target, Jakob was using his safety flashlight as a sight on his StormTrooper blaster.

And I was having the honor of doing Christmas dishes. There's a dark side to staying home for Christmas, I see that now. There is no one else to do the dishes.

At any rate, while up to my elbows in duck grease, I hear, "Reach for the sky and give me all your meat."

"No you play with the vegetables," Sean responded to the blaster-armed bandit. Jake tried this for a few seconds, then made a grab for the plastic meats.

Sean, quite calmly, whacked him with the plastic turkey. Jakob, howling more at the injustice of it all than the pain yells to me, "MOM SEAN'S STEALING MY MEAT!"

Uh-huh. Okay. Note to self, despite the 4.5 age difference between them, get exactly two of everything next Christmas.

grrm @ 6:01pm: Merry Christmas
Here's hoping all my friends and readers have a merry Christmas.

And you other people too.

stegzy @ 9:10am: Bah Humbug - Final edition Part 24

Day 24 – People that moan about Christmas

Miserable fuckers. All they do is bring everyone down. “Oh I hate Christmas, it sucks” and “It’s not as good as it used to be”.

Personally, I think by doing away with the whole festive season you would actually do away with these incessant moaners. Sitting there with their bottom lip on the floor. Anyone would think they had wasted a shit load of money on a load of old junk and eaten so much they had to diet for the next three months as a penance.

People like that should count their blessings. It could be worse, they could be in debt, fallen out with family members or some how broke bones when walking in the snow and ice.

I hear that the poor children in Africa aren’t sitting round moaning about the Christmas period. They’re more likely to be moaning that they had corn maize and flies again for dinner.

And then there are those that don’t get irony. They ask for it and all they get is socks. I mean how can you press your shirt and trousers with socks?

Now…does anyone want this strange smelling old Aunt that’s been sat in the corner drinking all the port? Oh and you can take them decorations down now, they make the house look untidy.

Have you kept the receipt?

( Read more... )

ramerk @ 10:08pm: CHRISTMAS STORY FOR YOU ALL
Hello everyone! Merry Christmas! I shall tell you a story to get you in the holiday mood.

Today Laura and I got all prettied up and went looking for a Santa to take a picture with. We sort of realized that it was the day before Christmas Eve and maybe Santa was very busy with his preparations for tomorrow night and we almost gave up, but then we accidentally stumbled upon one at the South Bay Pavilion (or something like that. We were going to target but found a mall and decided to check.)

HOORAY A SANTA! So we go in and there is hardly any line and we are like HELLO SANTA CAN WE TAKE A PICTURE WITH YOU? and he is like YES SIT ON SANTAS LAP HO HO HO!!! and then we pose for the picture and he is like SIT ON MY KNEE! PUT YOUR ARM AROUND SANTA!!!!!! I guess one of us accidentally touched his hat b/c he was like OH NO MY HAT IS FALLING OFF so he TOOK OFF HIS HAT and he had really bad black roots under his "gray" hair and repositioned it. So we are posing and the lady who is supposed to be taking pictures is dealing with something else and ignoring us and so he just starts talking.

MY BROTHER ASKS ME WHY I, I AM AN ATTORNEY BY THE WAY, THE EX ATTORNEY GENERAL I AM FROM MEXICO, WHY I, THE EX ATTORNEY GENERAL WOULD BE A SANTA CLAUS AND TAKE THIS JOB. I WILL TELL HIM ABOUT THIS MOMENT BECAUSE THIS IS THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD THANK YOU GOD I LOVE MY JOB.

Yeah, we're still in his lap. The lady is still ignoring us.

AFTER YOU TAKE THE PICTURE YOU MUST TAKE ONE WITH YOUR CELL PHONE AND EMAIL IT TO ME AND I WILL SHOW MY BROTHER AND HE WILL UNDERSTAND HOW JOYOUS MY JOB IS (THANK YOU GOD AGAIN). I HOPE THAT LADY HURRIES UP AND TAKES THE PICTURE! MY LEG IS GETTING NUMB OH BUT DO NOT GET UP! ACTUALLY SHE KNOWS WHAT SHE IS DOING! SHE IS STALLING TO GIVE ME EXTRA TIME HO HO HO!!! SHE IS MY WELL TRAINED ELF. ACTUALLY SHE IS THE WORST PERSON I HAVE WORKED WITH. EVER!!!

Finally she noticed we were posing and took our picture. So we smiled, popped off his lap, and got our pictures. I tried to pick the one where Santa looked the least lecherous. When we were finished, there was no line so he was like COME LET ME SEE THE PICTURE LET ME SEE so we had to go over and show him and he was like OH THIS IS VERY NICE THANK YOU FOR MAKING MY DAY! And then there was an extended conversation about how he prefers chocolate chip cookies and whole milk and some carrots for the reindeer when he arrives and to please remember and thanked us for having holiday spirit.

Later, when we were leaving Target, we saw him going in in his street clothes. Laura was like, "kate," and nodded with her head and i saw and i was like HEAD DOWN, JUST WALK.

THE END.

stegzy @ 1:00pm: Bah Humbug - Part 23
Day 23 - Dinnertime

So there I am. I'm sat waiting for my dinner. My tummy rumbles and groans as the perfume of roasting meats and vegetables permeate the air. But because my eldest brother is working late we have to wait for him. Of course this means that the usual Christmas day dinner time of 2pm has long passed and it is approaching a gut gnawing 5pm. He arrives. The meal begins.

So there I am. Asked to sing at a special specific Christmas day carol service. The lack of public transport and reluctance for people to give me a lift (I bare an uncanny resemblance to Peter Sutcliffe) means that I have to walk the 3 miles from the church to the family home. I arrive at 3pm. The meal has long been consumed. I am left with a shrivelled and desiccated dinner in the microwave on the none matching dinner plate, the none matching cutlery, the none matching place mat and the cracker from the previous Christmas.

So there I am. Much older. Much wiser. Still sitting on the odd chair, eating from the none-matching dinner plate with the none matching cutlery while observing that the other dinner guests have matching plates and cutlery. It was at this time...I realised....I was special specific. Something like that sticks with you for life.

Anyway, I digress, dinner time. Every year my mum would ask "Do you want sprouts?" "Do you want Parsnips?" "Do you want Christmas Pudding?" and every year I would reply "No mother, I have been eating here since 1973 and you should know by now that I do not partake in the illegal consumption of sprouts/parsnips/Christmas pudding (delete as applicable)". So to avoid any arguments I will now do a poll to find out your preferences for Christmas dinner.

( And it came to pass that Aham son of Joheb didst place the said poll behind the cut and saw that it was good. )

grrm @ 5:55pm: Odds and Ends
SUICIDE KINGS is out in hardcover (see below) and BUSTED FLUSH has been released in mass market. Meanwhile, I've delivered the additional content -- three new stories -- for the first volume of this storied series, WILD CARDS itself, which Tor will be reissuing later in the year. Since the first volume was historical in nature, telling the story of the wild card from 1946 to 1985, adding some original material to cover some of the "lost years" seemed like a natural.

The three new tales:
-- "Captain Cathode and the Secret Ace," by Michael Cassutt,
-- "Powers," by David D. Levine,
-- "Ghost Girl Takes Manhattan," by Carrie Vaughn.

No publication date yet. You'll know when I do.

As for FORT FREAK, the twenty-first volume in the series that WILD CARDS began, first drafts are all in, I've given the usual editorial note, and the writers are all off revising. This one looks to be a lot of fun. The Class of 2009 is doing some great work, and the old-timers ain't half bad either.

On other fronts, Gardner Dozois and I are very close to delivering our original cross-genre anthology STAR-CROSSED LOVERS, to Pocket Books. We're waiting for some minor revisions from one writer. Once those are in hand, the book will be delivered. Only it's not STAR-CROSSED LOVERS any longer. Pocket's sales force did not like that title, so the anthology has now been rechristened SONGS OF LOVE AND DEATH. Got a great line up of writers for that one, including Diana Gabaldon, Jim Butcher, M.L.N. Hanover, Peter S. Beagle, Marjorie Liu, Jacqueline Carey, Carrie Vaughn, Robin Hobb, Neil Gaiman, and many more.

Everybody's talking about AVATAR, which I haven't seen yet... but I have been going to movies. While the crowds queue up for Cameron, I've been catching up on some of the other films now in release. I enjoyed THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, and liked INVICTUS as well, but the one that really impressed me was ME AND ORSON WELLES. The guy who plays Welles should get an Oscar nomination for that performance.

As usual, I am way behind on my Xmas shopping.

Where does the time go?

grrm @ 5:01pm: Now On Sale
Today was the official publication day for the latest Wild Cards book, SUICIDE KINGS.

Run, don't walk, to your favorite bookstore and getcha copy now. And hell, while you're there, get copies for all your friends as well. All you Xmas shopping in one swell foop.

korva, posting in cockatiels @ 5:51pm: Holiday pics!
Crossposted to parrot_lovers

I finally have a somewhat decent holiday pic of my Sasha! I wrestled with the slowness of the camera in trying to capture her and trying to center my camera phone (can't find my other camera >_< ) when I can't see what I am taking! But yay! At least some came out well!



Sasha next to the Christmas tree. She would not go into it, but she was okay about being near it. And for some reason she loves showing off her injured wing to everyone and every pic we try to take. ^_^;



A nice profile of her showing off her colors ^_^



I would love to everyone's holiday bird pics past and/or present!

silence_eternal, posting in cockatiels @ 1:10pm: Birds drink TEA?!
Does anyone else have a problem with their birds getting into their tea cup? I was reading and watching my boyfriend play video games just a few minutes ago. I looked down and there was Serino stealthily drinking out of my tea cup. Aside from the fact it had sugar in it, I removed her because I didn't know if birds are allowed to have tea?! Can I get a pole on this one? I'm OK with sharing my (non-sugared) tea if they're allowed to have it but I figured with all the different plants there are probably at least some they can't have?

On a side note I got my beebs back yesterday afternoon and they got their birdy booty! Dusty immediately attacked his and proceeded to tear at it until he was disturbed by the children running around. Dusty and Serino are still trying to decide if theirs is going to eat them but I'm fairly certain by the way they've been eyeing it that they'll be chomping away it it by the end of the day. So one immediate approval and two un-sure-as-of-yet ratings. But much better ratings than a lot of the toys I've bought!

sekl @ 12:35pm: Oh crap
Opened up the Wii bundle and...everything but a Wii for Jake. This means ordering and overnighting a Wii. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there's always my present left until the last minute. We can always just skip that (happy Wii fit bundle to me) and make the dinners less elaborate.

I would kick myself more, but I know I was pretty distracted with the merger and trying to make time for all of the holiday events Jakob scheduled in. Still, ouch. I'm glad we stayed home this year.

yuki_onna @ 2:17pm: Life and the Living Of It
I haven't posted much over the past week, mostly because I've been down and depressed. It's hard, ever, to point to a why to depression. Maybe it's because the rest of the country has snow, and we don't, maybe it's because I haven't been taking care of myself as I should have been, maybe it's because my allergies have been intensely bad, maybe it's because I have this novel in front of me which seems insurmountable right now. Maybe it's chemical and has no source. I've never been on meds, a personal choice, and I don't really talk much about being depressive. When actual crises occur I'm generally pretty good about rallying and Being Okay. But sometimes for no reason at all, my brain hides in a corner of itself and even a blog post seems like too much, let alone cleaning the house or getting around to that pickling I have to do before the produce goes bad.

I really want it to be Christmas. I love giving gifts when I can, and I want everyone to open them. I want to cook for them. But I wonder if in pushing myself so hard to take care of other people's holidays I don't totally lose my own, any sense of being off duty and just having fun. I sympathize with my grandmother who had to host these holidays, and so never got to relax.

We are also a house preparing for one of our members to go to grad school. I'm so proud of mishamish , and he did very well on his GREs, but part of me is filled with tremendous guilt that I'm not going back, that at this point it's probably a fact of my life that I'm never going to get the PhD that I took as an obvious path in my early twenties. A given. Of course I would.

I grew up with a mother in her doctoral program, surrounded by grad students as my babysitters and later friends. That culture was deeply ingrained in me. I loved it, I wanted to be an academic, passionately.

And then I dropped out of my MA program because my husband needed me to go with him to Japan. Because if I stayed there was no point to having gotten married. And I never went back.

I think of myself as an academic, it's part of my identity, but it's a lie. I'm not one. I don't have a graduate degree of any kind--I have a half-finished master's and a handful of journal articles. And for a long time I didn't go back because the Navy moved us around too much, or because I didn't care for any of the Cleveland-adjacent universities. And now...I just can't imagine where I would find the time. I can barely stomach taking a year off writing to have a child, and I know from my old experiences that being in grad school means I just don't have leftover energy to write. (And I just couldn't get a creative writing degree. I don't believe in them, I just don't. Not for me, not in this life.) With my schedule ramping up as it has, and three novels to write in a year, how could I possibly do it?

But part of me knows that's an excuse. I could. There are great universities near here and I'm pretty settled in Maine. The raw fact is I don't want to, and there's the root of the guilt. All the energy I could put towards a doctorate and a dissertation swirls in my heart and I think: but how many novels could I make of that instead? Every book I write is a dissertation's worth of research and discipline. I don't have any doubt about my ability to finish a program--I'm really pretty good at school, and always have been. But there will come a moment when I'm not writing the novel I see in all that research, and writing a thesis instead, and I will be miserable. There will come a moment when I look back and see the gap, when I could have been doing the work I so desperately want and wasn't doing it, and I will be be miserable.

I don't want it enough. I don't want it more than I want to write all the time, to get all these books in me out while I'm still living and able to do it.

And that means I've chosen my path, right? I should find strength in that. But I find only guilt, because I was supposed to be an academic. I was supposed to be this other person with letters behind my name, like my mother, like so many of my friends. And I will never be that person. And I tell myself that my books have been taught in universities, and surely that is as fine a destiny. I know well that most English grad students want to be writers. But in the story of me, this was supposed to be something I had done by 25. I graduated early from high school, and had all that promise, and dropped out. So the guilt is still there. Because I loved something and I gave it up for a man, which I never thought I would do, and I am not going back to it, even though I could.

Goddammit, why isn't it snowing?

stegzy @ 4:07pm: [LJ2ME] Bah Humbug - part 22
day 22 - giant green radioactive maggots

There is simply just nothing more frustating about christmas than giant green radioactive maggots. They're everywhere! I really cannot see the appeal or see any reason why people insist on having them. All they do is ooze slime all over the place and lay eggs in the ears of sleeping people.

grrm @ 11:42pm: Giants Crush
Well, that was fun. If only every game was like this...

(Maybe it is, if you're a Colts fan).

These were the Giants I remember. The swarming aggressive D, the sacks, the knockdowns, the hurries, the interceptions, runners tackled at the line of scrimmage. And on offense, long time-consuming drives ending in touchdowns. Eli looked terrific, spreading the ball around. Nicks, Smith, Manningham, and Boss all had big catches, and even Derek Hagan scored a touchdown. The running game was back, especially when Ahmad Bradshaw had the ball. The O line opened gaping holes, and the D line was so relentless that our wafer-thin secondary was never threatened.

Yeah, these were the real G-Men.

I have no idea who those clowns in the Redskins uniforms were.

That fake field goal the Skins tried at the end of the first half had to be one of the most bizarre plays I've ever seen. Watching Steve Young talk about it in the postgame was hilarious.

I do feel sorry for Jim Zorn, whose postgame press conference was... well, obviously, no one ever taught the guy Coachspeak. Poor guy is not long for D.C.

But it was a great win.

Now we need two more like it, coupled with a Cowboys loss.

(Or a Packers loss, maybe... but while I know the G-Men have the tiebreaker over Dallas, no one has ever mentioned who wins a tie between New York and Green Bay).

Next week, the Panthers. Who beat the Vikings yesterday. Let's hope the real G-Men show up.

mistborn @ 6:09pm: WARBREAKER at GoodReads, B&N, and Romantic Times

Over at the Book Smugglers they've posted a guest spot from me on my favorite reads of 2009. As I've said before, I was sad that unlike a lot of you I didn't get to rush out and read a new Wheel of Time book this October. On that blog I share a list of what I did get to read instead.

There's been a lot of love for WARBREAKER recently. It's the December discussion topic for GoodReads' fantasy book club, and I'll be participating in the discussion there in January. The book also got the #4 slot on Barnes & Noble's book clubs Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Novels of 2009 list. (They discussed it back in July; see my Q&A thread there). But the biggest news is probably that WARBREAKER has garnered a nomination from the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Awards for Best Epic Fantasy of 2009. (See the full list of nominees here.) So far that's five fantasy novels out from Tor, five Romantic Times award nominations, and two wins (ELANTRIS and HERO OF AGES). Wow! If you don't know what all the fuss is about, I hear that Borders is a good place to buy WARBREAKER right now—they are the most likely chain to have copies in stock. (You can check your local store's inventory at the link.) Or of course check the list of stores that have signed copies.

In this week's episode of the Writing Excuses podcast, Dan, Howard, and I talk about antiheroes. Familiar with The Talented Mr. Ripley? Howard isn't.

In the most recent annotations for MISTBORN 3, I talk about Sazed putting on his metalminds and Spook's romance with Beldre as well as the death of Bilg. Don't remember Bilg? Umm . . . Oh, and I also put up an annotation for "Defending Elysium" (but be sure you read the story first).

kathy_kostinsky, posting in entomology @ 12:13am: Hypolimnas Dexithea
Inhabits only forest regions in the north of Madagascar


The pic is clickable

silence_eternal, posting in cockatiels @ 12:07pm: Bird Scale
I was just on the windy city parrot website looking around for a scale to buy and I can't find one anywhere. I swear I've seen one on there before. Does anyone have any idea where to look and/or another place that I can pick up a (relatively) inexpensive bird scale? (Yes, I know relatively in parrot language usually means under $200. *sigh*) Anyone have any preferences on brand or something they're absolutely in love with?

Oh, and HAPPY SOLSTICE EVERYONE!

stegzy @ 3:23pm: Bah Humbug – Part 21

Day 21 – Traffic Chaos

Much akin to the problems with snow, the Christmas period is renown for traffic problems. This year, it seems, is no exception.

If it’s not snow causing gridlock and road closures it’s everyone travelling at once to get from A to B. Traffic jams, slow moving queues and giant maggots blocking motorways, traffic at Christmas can be as taxing as the VAT on presents. Today, it took me 40 minutes to travel my usual 20 minute journey from Brierley to Barnsley. Mostly due to people deciding, quite rightly, to crawl along the snow covered roads at 20mph. Now I wouldn’t usually mind because I am a fairly considerate chap but when I say “snow covered roads” I am exaggerating. It was mush. Mush covered roads. So there was plenty of grip and traction and very little in the way of ice.

I recall one year travelling from Wakefield to Liverpool on the M62 and I saw 8 cars broken down. Foolishly the wife exclaimed “Imagine being broken down on a motorway at Christmas!” just as the Vectra decided that enough was enough and veered toward the hard shoulder. Oh how we laughed as we later ate reheated Christmas dinner all dried up and shrivelled.

And yet a previous year we managed to travel the 80 miles in just under an hour!

This is because, in Britain, if you want to get an idea of what it was like travelling on Motorways in the 1970’s you should set out on a journey on Christmas day. For you will behold how empty the roads can be.

But not to be outdone, this year the good old Christmas demons have pulled out all of the stops. My sojourn to Liverpool this evening has gone the way of the last bus as the exwife in her infinite wisdom went to Eurodisney this weekend.

Now, if you have been hiding under a rock this week or you live in the US, you probably won’t know that the Channel Tunnel (that railway line that connects Britain to the continent) suffered failures and has been closed since Friday night because of the cold. This means the Exwife is now stuck in France, though last I heard they were going to catch a ferry instead. Because of this, my visit to the olds and Liverpool has had to be postponed until tomorrow throwing my plans out by one day boo hiss.

So my effort to thwart the Christmas travel chaos has been….thwarted and tomorrow I face a long drive over the M62 to that jewel in the West coast through yet more ice and loads of trucks and lorries making that last minute Christmas delivery and tonight I spend time in the company of the ever so conversational puss cats. Joy!

Big. Hairy. Monkey. Balls

ygdrasil, posting in cockatiels @ 1:31pm: Lost - Riki - Cockatiel
Hello

On Saturday 19th in Brisbane Northern suburb of Red Hill, just before a huge rainstorm my second bird Riki got lost. She is white, hand reared and has a gree leg band. I hope that she has been found by someone, if that someone reads this.....
It's a long shot but I am trying everything I can think of.

silence_eternal, posting in cockatiels @ 5:43pm: Cleaning Rope Perches
Does anyone have any advice on how to clean a rope perches without the use of a dishwasher? Because quite frankly I don't have one and nothing I do manually seems to get them clean enough. I think I get all the yuck off the perches only for them to dry out and still have little white flakes in places. >:(

Also, what are the signs that you should replace them? Is there a standard of time that I should use them before discarding? I have one that I am just going to do away with because it is down to the under stuff because I've clipped all the loose soft colored rope away when it comes loose. But I have another that is in better shape but not great. I'm thinking of doing away with it too and getting more after the 1st of the year.

On a side note, I can't wait until tomorrow!!!!! I just got my first birdy booty order at the beginning of Dec. and tomorrow is Yule so when the beebs come home from their week long stay at their grand-peoples house (had to treat the house for fleas) they get to have their birdy booty! I can't wait to see if they like it.

~*~ River

grrm @ 6:04pm: Jets Crash
Life is meaningless and full of pain.

I saw this one coming. Three missed field goals will always come back and bite you in the ass.

Great D, but Mark still has a lot of maturing to do.

With the Colts and the Bengals yet to come, I think we can kiss the playoffs goodbye.

And I'm not feeling good about the Giants game tomorrow either.

stegzy @ 11:58pm: Bah Humbug – Part 20

Day 20 – Mad Friday

Venturing into Barnsley town centre on the last Friday before Christmas is possibly the stupidest thing to do ever. Unless of course you like thronging crowds of pissed up Yorkshire people vomitting, fighting and being squeezed like sardines into the variety of bars and clubs there are in the metropolitan area.

Personally, I’m glad I didn’t bother. I mean getting jostled about and crammed into bars is not my idea of fun. But be under no illusion. Mad Friday, or Black Friday as it is known in some areas, is a national, if not international, phenomenon.

Seriously, do people like this kind of thing? Is it a new level of socialising I’ve just not grasped? Another example of me doing life wrong?

My idea of fun is sitting in a nice quiet bar, enjoying audible conversation about old toot whilst supping refreshing beers from around the country. Not trying to move my elbow to lift a lukewarm lager to my lips in a sardine tin rugby scrum of buffoons and underdressed ladies whilst my legs ache from trying my best to remain standing in between jostles. Bah. Humbug.

grrm @ 5:08pm: Win a Copy of SUICIDE KINGS
Pat's Fantasy Hotlist is doing one of their famous contests, for two Advanced Reading Copies of SUICIDE KINGS signed by all of the contributors.

For details as to how to enter, go to

http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2009/12/win-autographed-advance-reading-copy-of.html

Good luck to all.

stegzy @ 11:18pm: Bah Humbug – Part 19

Day 19 – Nuts

Nothing says Christmas more to me than nuts. I love nuts. Especially walnuts. Hazelnuts are ok, Brazil nuts are a pain in the bum to get out of their shell, peanuts make me snore and almonds…well I can take or leave almonds.

But I love the nuts. Can’t get enough of them.

So why would I include nuts in a grincheque series about Christmas? Surely, if I love nuts I wouldn’t put have written about them. Well…it’s easy…Nuts make me fat. So the easy availability of nuts at Christmas guarantees that I will be a tub of lard by the end of January. Not only that, but the excessive amounts of peanuts, which I can’t help but scoff down, means that I will snore and wake the entire county of South Yorkshire.

Admittedly that’s not a strong enough reason to include nuts as a bad thing about Christmas, especially as I’ve got a love for nuts. But to be honest. I wrote “Nuts” down for my reminder for todays post and I haven’t the foggiest what it was I was going to gripe about….

Now where are them walnuts…..

nagarerutenshi, posting in entomology @ 12:25pm: Last night an amazing moth flew into my room! =D
( Pics, and a short video. )