Category: Uncategorized

  • X Is For… X Marks the Spot, or, Maps!

    X Is For… X Marks the Spot, or, Maps!

    \"Map

    Maps are a helpful way to orient oneself in a physical place.  We use them in all sorts of ways:  when driving from one place to another, when finding a new-to-us store or restaurant, even wandering around a mall or airport.  Now, maps are electronic – GPS, or Global Positioning Systems, are as ubiquitous as cell phones.  But how many of us have been steered wrong by their GPS and ended up in another place entirely (Google maps, I\’m looking at you, kthnxbi).  For that reason, I\’m still old-school and like my paper sheet-maps and guidebooks.  They don\’t send me into Muskegon Heights and the police station/mental asylum parking lot.

    When worldbuilding, I\’ve found maps to be invaluable – not least because I have a tendency to put stuff where I need it in story,  not necessarily where it actually is.  Aside from driving my coauthor and our editors up a tree, it\’s useful to know where said tree is – last time, it was on the front of the property, now it\’s in the back yard?  Well, yeah, maybe it\’s a walking tree like those the ents manage in LOTR?  No?  Oh, fine, I\’ll draw a map.

    And that\’s how the map of Persis, shown above, was born.  We needed to know, for example, how long it takes to get from Reghdad to Kotek City.  Is it a straight shot?  What kind of conveyance can one use to get there?  What\’s the terrain like?  What are the hazards of the journey?  And, most importantly, when editing Emerald Keep, we realized that the two Seekers we had written into the scene, who were from Cyrus and Darius respectively, could not have traveled to Reghdad \”just like that,\” and certainly not during the Daymonth.  Uhps.

    See?  Maps are important.  Take that, GPS.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    Are you a proponent of the newfangled or like yours old-school?

  • W Is For… Writing

    W Is For… Writing

    \"\"

     

    Writing by hand is magical.  There\’s something special in it, visceral.  Yes, computers can reproduce calligraphy.  But they cannot create.  They are not people and therefore, they cannot make what we can.  The sad thing about the ease with which typesetting can be done is that people\’s eye is no longer educated to the beauty of the handwritten form.  They now no longer teach handwriting in grammar school, either.

    This is an awful state of affairs.  Handwriting has been the hallmark of education for generations.  Moving away from that is a bad idea.  Writing by hand can unlock our minds in ways that we cannot do with a computer.  For one thing, you can write a question with your non-dominant hand and answer it with your dominant hand, and thereby discover things buried in your subconscious mind.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What\’s your favorite thing about handwriting?

  • V Is For… Vanuatu!

    V Is For… Vanuatu!

    \"2015-04-25

    Vanuatu.  An archipelago halfway between Hawaii and Australia, it\’s been under many outside colonial jurisdictions in its history.  In researching for my post today, I couldn\’t think of a \”V\” to feature so I asked the internet.  It gave me the country.

    Then, I found out some sad news.  The country was hard-hit by Cyclone Pam.  Officials are asking for aid from other countries.  International activists are calling on others to provide help to this small nation.  The Guardian has a detailed timeline of what\’s been happening there.

  • U Is For… Umbrella!

    U Is For… Umbrella!

    \"2015-04-24
    I always carry an umbrella. I live in Chicago, which is called \”The Windy City,\” but should be called, \”The City of Unpredictable Weather.\”  When I arrived here over a decade and a half ago, I believed in the power of the weather reporters to predict the weather.

    I have since realized they cannot do so, at least it doesn\’t seem they can here in Chicago.  I remember going for a job interview, wearing a fine wool suit.  When I left home, the sun shone brightly and I got on the train to downtown.

    When I arrived, the skies opened.  To say it \”poured\” is an understatement:  in under two minutes, I looked like a drowned rat and smelled like a wet sheep.

    Since then, I\’ve kept a portable umbrella with me at all times in my satchel.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What items do you carry for preparedness?

  • T Is For… Temp Work!

    T Is For… Temp Work!

    \"2015-04-23Temp work is a good way to learn the world of work without committing to a particular company.  Temporary agencies are used by companies of all sizes, from small single proprietorships to multi-national corporations.  You can spend your time learning the culture of the company to see if it fits with your goals and personality, and learn a lot about adaptive job skills in the process.

    As a temp, I\’ve done work in a declassified vault, filing documents; photographed graves for genealogical research; and lots and lots of copying of documents.  I can unjam copiers, fax machines, and printers; and put toners in all of them.  I\’ve worked on all sorts of networks.  I\’ve dealt with many different personality types and demographical groups.

    To get your engines started, here are some ideas:

    Adecco | OfficeTeam | Manpower | Accountemps

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What kinds of job resources do you like to use?

  • S Is For… Stars

    S Is For… Stars

    \"IC434

    I grew up on a ranch in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains, away from the lights of any city.  At night, you could see the stars – the constellations, the Milky Way, the planets, and the moon.

    When I went to college, I was for a brief time an Astrophysics major.  I was unable to secure funding to be able to finish the degree, which is why I ultimately got a Russian degree, but one of my classes in observational astronomy we visited the university\’s observatory.  Mine was the last class to get that opportunity before it was closed due to light pollution.  We got to see the Horsehead Nebula, among other things.

    To be honest, it looked like a blob to me.  The picture, above, is much better – of course it would be, since it\’s one of NASA\’s photos.  There is a wealth of astronomical information on the web, available for a click.

    Astronomy Magazine | Astronomy Picture of the Day (NASA) | Astronomy Now | Space.com

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What are your favorite science websites?

  • R Is For… Reading!

    R Is For… Reading!

    \"2015-04-21Books. It\’s what unites us. If you\’re a reader, then you know what I mean. If not, then… I don\’t get it.  There is a breed of person who is \”not a reader,\” but I don\’t understand them at all.  I remember the first time I heard that there are people who don\’t eat books the way that I do, and I\’m married to one.  But they puzzle me.

    I know the smell of books and paper.  I adore typefaces.  I\’ve read books in the bathtub, in bed, in the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, the restaurant, on the bus, train, boat, and airplane, and everywhere in between.  I remember one holiday season, I was reading one of the Myth Adventures by Robert Asprin and a woman sitting next to me commented on the fact I was laughing at what I read.

    I wanted to say, please, don\’t interrupt me, I\’m reading; but I was polite.

    Why do people insist on interrupting one when one is engrossed in a good book?

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What\’s the first book you remember reading?

  • Q Is For… Quotes!

    Q Is For… Quotes!

    \"2015-04-20

    I love quotes.  I have several quote dictionaries on my shelf, on subjects ranging from leadership to inspirational to a treasure trove for public speakers.  On Twitter, one of the popular hashtags is #quotes, and people from around the globe share things that inspire them.  There are many online resources, including BrainyQuote and Bartleby.  As a calligrapher, I like quotes to use as the genesis of an art piece.

    \"Calligraphy

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What are some of your favorite quotes?

  • P Is For… Physics!

    P Is For… Physics!

    \"2015-04-18
    The first time I realized I loved physics, and not just astronomy, was in a class in high school. The teacher was a ball – he taught photography, as well as physics, and had a bowling ball hanging from a chain over the counter in the front of the class. He would have a student sit up on the counter and bring the ball up to their nose and let it go – a living example of pendulum theory, but of course we all thought there\’d be a bloody nose involved. There wasn\’t, of course, and I was hooked.

    Then he explained that a heat coil on the back of a refrigerator is how the fridge stays cold, and I thought, this isn\’t physics, it\’s magic!

    \”Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.\”
    -Arthur C. Clarke, British author, scientist, and natural philosopher

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    Which of the sciences intrigue you? Physics, Chemistry, Biology, what?

  • O Is For… Outdoors!

    \"\"

    The outdoors. It calls to us, if we let it.  It wasn\’t until I moved to Chicago and met people who had been raised their entire lives in a metropolis, (Chicago is the third-largest city in the United States), that I realized not everyone feels the call the way I do.

    When I was young and living with a mentally-ill mother, one of the common escapes for me was to go hiking into the mountains behind our ranch.  It backed up to a thirty-acre cow pasture, but beyond that, it was just National Forest – no houses for, literally, miles.  Since my mother disapproved of my writing, I hid my papers and pen under my shirt and took off with my dog to go walking.

    At the time, I only knew I was escaping.  Now, at a couple decades\’ remove, I realize that I was also communing with nature and finding peace in what was a very dangerous and unpeaceful situation.  Many spiritual traditions talk of the silence one gets in touch with when one walks, and I find that silence is accessible as much in the city as it is in those faraway mountains of my childhood.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    Where are your favorite places to walk?

  • N Is For… Needlepoint!

    \"2015-04-16I\’ve got a sister post up at Knoontime Knitting, showing you some of my needlepoint. But since it was one of my first arts, I wanted to share some more thoughts about it.

    To get started in needlepoint is a snap.  It\’s a great art to try if you find stitches intimidating.  The basic method is that you color in a grid using single stitches, and \”painting\” a design with the threads.  There are, of course, very fine designs with teeny-tiny stitches; but you can also find nice big grids that aren\’t at all difficult.  There are even stiff plastic grids that you can get and use them to make physical objects like boxes and, yes, really ugly tissue box covers.  🙂

    I love making boxes, actually.  There\’s no reason one has to use ugly, fake-looking, cheap yarn to make a box.  One can just as easily use nice yarn and pleasing designs.  Making small boxes isn\’t difficult, either, which is part of the appeal.  And here\’s a mind-bender:  select a nice overdyed yarn (one of those multi-colored yarns) and you don\’t even have to \”paint\” the design – the yarn does it for you.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What would you put in a needlepoint box?

  • M Is For… Midsummer!

    \"2015-04-15Midsummer is coming in June, the solstice when the day is longest and night shortest.  To many, this is a special time – if for nothing else than to enjoy the sun.

    Of course, this is just for us Northern Hemisphere types.  If you\’re below the equator, it\’s Midwinter.

    My favorite way to celebrate Midsummer is with a barbecue.  I like going to a beach, and here in Chicago my favorite one is Lunt Street Beach.  In researching it for a link to show you, I just discovered it\’s called Leone Beach.  It\’s a lovely place, where you can relax, play in the water and, of course, barbecue.

    My favorite side dish for barbecue is potato salad, and my favorite recipe for it has apples and sweet onions.

     Ingredients

    3 lbs red new potatoes

    1 large sweet onion (Vidalia or Maui are best)

    1 large green apple (Granny Smith are yummy)

    12 green olives, sliced

    1.5 C mayonnaise

    1 tsp Dijon-style mustard

    2 T distilled white vinegar

    1 t steak or soy sauce (HP Sauce is good too)

    salt and pepper to taste

    Directions

    Cut potatoes in half or quarters and boil.  Cover pan and cook until tender, about 25 to 30 minutes).

    Drain and let cool.

    Dice into bite-sized pieces and put in a large mixing bowl.

    Slice onion thinly and add to potatoes with the cubed apple and olives.

    In a small bowl, whisk mayonnaise, mustard, vinegar and steak or soy sauce.

    Pour sauce over potatoes and toss gently (I find a wooden spoon works best).

    Add salt and pepper to taste.

    Cover and refrigerate for up to one day.

    Makes 10 to 12 servings.

     

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What\’s your favorite barbecue or potluck dish?