Barbara Hambly's Blog, page 20
October 11, 2012
Did grocery shopping early this morning, as it's beco...
Did grocery shopping early this morning, as it's becoming clearer that tomorrow and Saturday will be Major Traffic Mess due to rolling street closures. The Space Shuttle will be parked for 9 hours about a mile from my house - with the chance of every looky-loo in Los Angeles driving over to take a picture of it with his or her cell phone IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT IT'S ONLY GOING OVER TO THE SPACE CENTER WHERE THEY CAN SEE IT ANY TIME.
Road crews are still tearing out the traffic islands on the route.
The newscrews in the supermarket parking-lots, and the piles of closure-signs heaped on the corners near-by, remind me of New Orleans the week before Mardi Gras - particularly when coupled with the rain that swept through early this morning.
Road crews are still tearing out the traffic islands on the route.
The newscrews in the supermarket parking-lots, and the piles of closure-signs heaped on the corners near-by, remind me of New Orleans the week before Mardi Gras - particularly when coupled with the rain that swept through early this morning.
October 10, 2012
Well, yipes! Just had another history class - 7 weeks int...
Well, yipes! Just had another history class - 7 weeks into the semester! - dropped into my lap when the professor went out on medical leave at literally 15 minutes' notice. I've taught the class before, but - of course - Week # 7 is the week for which the lecture notes have gone walkabout. It's a day class - 2 days a week - so there is much reshuffling of time and energy.
September 28, 2012
Game assistance needed again...I've just got a copy o...
Game assistance needed again...
I've just got a copy of Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction. What a hoot!
But, neither the instructions with the game - nor anything I've found on-line - has helped me with a question that I guess everybody thinks is too obvious to need answering.
Does anybody out there play R&C?
In Tools, sometimes I'll break a crate open and thre will be these colored cubes revolving in the air. According to the manual, they contain ammo, but NOTHING tells how to access them. What do I do with them? I feel like I'm wasting an important resource but damned if I can figure out what I'm supposed to do with them.
Any assistance with this would be appreciated.
Thanks.
I've just got a copy of Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction. What a hoot!
But, neither the instructions with the game - nor anything I've found on-line - has helped me with a question that I guess everybody thinks is too obvious to need answering.
Does anybody out there play R&C?
In Tools, sometimes I'll break a crate open and thre will be these colored cubes revolving in the air. According to the manual, they contain ammo, but NOTHING tells how to access them. What do I do with them? I feel like I'm wasting an important resource but damned if I can figure out what I'm supposed to do with them.
Any assistance with this would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Driving over the Sepulveda Pass this morning, very much a...
Driving over the Sepulveda Pass this morning, very much a D-Day Minus One vibe. The bare hillsides on both sides of the pass are littered with evidence of prep for the big freeway closure that starts at midnight: lines of earth-moving equipment, cranes standing ready, little blue comfort-stations, and these monster structural-iron armatures -- taking up the whole hillside -- lying pre-assembled and ready to be craned into position to carry the new bridge.
Last time they closed the pass there was actually VERY little of the traffic chaos everyone was predicting. Everybody in LA went, "Oh, okay, I'll stay home, then," and stayed home or close to home. (Actually, I'll be dancing at a drum-circle with the ATS group I'm in, but it doesn't involve freeway travel to get there).
The New Kitty, Polly, seems to be settling in, though she misses her former family (who got rid of her when they had a baby) - possibly it's just general loneliness of being shut in a nice, comfortable bathroom by herself, with no people around. She's a VERY sociable girl, and clearly has been taught that good kitties don't get onto bare skin; they wait til the person has put a t-shirt or something over their laps if they're wearing shorts. She cried all night and I felt just terrible.
Last time they closed the pass there was actually VERY little of the traffic chaos everyone was predicting. Everybody in LA went, "Oh, okay, I'll stay home, then," and stayed home or close to home. (Actually, I'll be dancing at a drum-circle with the ATS group I'm in, but it doesn't involve freeway travel to get there).
The New Kitty, Polly, seems to be settling in, though she misses her former family (who got rid of her when they had a baby) - possibly it's just general loneliness of being shut in a nice, comfortable bathroom by herself, with no people around. She's a VERY sociable girl, and clearly has been taught that good kitties don't get onto bare skin; they wait til the person has put a t-shirt or something over their laps if they're wearing shorts. She cried all night and I felt just terrible.
September 21, 2012
Those sobs of grateful ecstacy that you hear indicate my ...
Those sobs of grateful ecstacy that you hear indicate my appreciation of the start of Apple Season - a bit early this year, I think. All to the good: Peach Season is waning fast, and apples constitute my lunchbox fruit through most of the winter. (Last year, due to local climate conditions, the peach crop totally failed at my favorite Peach Guy at the Farmer's Market, and those I tried from other vendors were severely disappointing, so this year's excellent Peach Season was most welcome). Haa's (of Tehatchapi, I think) had exquisite Honey Crisps this morning at the market, and Mr. Haa says the Fujis will be another couple of weeks.
When I can, I do the Farmer's Market thing (although supermarket grapes are usually pretty good). It can get expensive, and be a total pain in the shorts driving up there on Friday mornings, but it's amazingly worth it, particularly if you try to stay away from standard desserts and snacks.
When I can, I do the Farmer's Market thing (although supermarket grapes are usually pretty good). It can get expensive, and be a total pain in the shorts driving up there on Friday mornings, but it's amazingly worth it, particularly if you try to stay away from standard desserts and snacks.
September 14, 2012
Well, that was a massively tedious day. JUST as the facul...
Well, that was a massively tedious day. JUST as the faculty meeting in Woodland Hills was ending, word came that a brush-fire had broken out, basically right on top of the 405 Freeway, the carotid artery which connects the Valley (including Woodland Hills) with Los Angeles (including my house). This was at 4:30 pm - right on top of Rush Hour.
A Perfect Storm for a monster sig-alert in 102 degree weather, o joy.
Another faculty member who lives in that direction guided me through back-streets to Topanga Canyon Road, and I had a fast, beautiful drive through gorgeous canyons over a nearly empty southbound road, while the northbound lane to my left got thicker and thicker with traffic as people in LA took it to avoid the now-closed 405. I came out onto PCH - gorgeous ocean, light traffic heading south, gridlocked steel constipation northbound.
Once I got into LA itself traffic locked up on the surface streets (I wasn't getting NEAR the freeway), so it was about an hour's tedious thrash getting across town, but it could have been orders of magnitude worse. It had taken me nearly 2 hours thrashing in Friday-afternoon traffic to GET to Woodland Hills (up the 405 about 2 hours before the fire started). I took a nice walk.
When last I heard, the Getty Museum was in no immediate danger, but traffic is probably going to be mega-screwed until well into the night.
A Perfect Storm for a monster sig-alert in 102 degree weather, o joy.
Another faculty member who lives in that direction guided me through back-streets to Topanga Canyon Road, and I had a fast, beautiful drive through gorgeous canyons over a nearly empty southbound road, while the northbound lane to my left got thicker and thicker with traffic as people in LA took it to avoid the now-closed 405. I came out onto PCH - gorgeous ocean, light traffic heading south, gridlocked steel constipation northbound.
Once I got into LA itself traffic locked up on the surface streets (I wasn't getting NEAR the freeway), so it was about an hour's tedious thrash getting across town, but it could have been orders of magnitude worse. It had taken me nearly 2 hours thrashing in Friday-afternoon traffic to GET to Woodland Hills (up the 405 about 2 hours before the fire started). I took a nice walk.
When last I heard, the Getty Museum was in no immediate danger, but traffic is probably going to be mega-screwed until well into the night.
September 11, 2012
Fooling around with pictures and PhotoShop when I should ...
Fooling around with pictures and PhotoShop when I should be working (actually, after much delay due to Family Stuff I've finally got the major - I HOPE! - difficulties straightened out with Asher/Ysidro #5 and have started a massive re-write of the first half of the manuscript...)
In any case... How does one get a screenshot from World of Warcraft? I remember it's a certain keystroke... and then where does one go to retrieve this screenshot?
Thanks!
In any case... How does one get a screenshot from World of Warcraft? I remember it's a certain keystroke... and then where does one go to retrieve this screenshot?
Thanks!
September 3, 2012
Sorry...The edition I have is simply titled, Edwardian Lo...
Sorry...
The edition I have is simply titled, Edwardian London, in 4 volumes, printed by The Village Press in 1990 (no author given, but most of the articles were written by George Sims). (And the Village Press is either out of business already or doesn't have a web-site - that title seems to have been taken over by a London pub).
The original was published in 3 volumes in 1902 by Cassell & Co under the title, Living London, by George Sims. The series ISBN is: 1-85540-029-4.
And in the front cover is a SLEW of other publications about old-time London by the Village Press that I'm going to have to start looking for.
The edition I have is simply titled, Edwardian London, in 4 volumes, printed by The Village Press in 1990 (no author given, but most of the articles were written by George Sims). (And the Village Press is either out of business already or doesn't have a web-site - that title seems to have been taken over by a London pub).
The original was published in 3 volumes in 1902 by Cassell & Co under the title, Living London, by George Sims. The series ISBN is: 1-85540-029-4.
And in the front cover is a SLEW of other publications about old-time London by the Village Press that I'm going to have to start looking for.
Another peaceful day of solitude and writing. I'm slo...
Another peaceful day of solitude and writing. I'm slowly working my way through the 4-volume set of what I think were newspaper columns on Edwardian London; little essays on restaurants, kerbside vendors, dressmakers, what the Inns of Court were like back then. Sort of like the Edwardian London version of Mercier's Tableau de Paris. I keep running across references to Roque's 17th-century map of London, which was apparently huge and detailed - I think I need to find a copy of that.
When I looted the Department Chair's office back in May, one of the books I acquired was a much more technical little work on the vicinity of London pre-Fire, but it's slower going. The complexities of land-tenure - and the fact that we DON'T KNOW what a lot of these land-tenure arrangement terms even meant - clarifies for me why suits over landholding in the Court of Chancery in the 19th century - the true villain of Dickens' Bleak House - were so frakking complicated.
When I'm writing - especially first draft - it's VERY hard for me to read fiction.
When I looted the Department Chair's office back in May, one of the books I acquired was a much more technical little work on the vicinity of London pre-Fire, but it's slower going. The complexities of land-tenure - and the fact that we DON'T KNOW what a lot of these land-tenure arrangement terms even meant - clarifies for me why suits over landholding in the Court of Chancery in the 19th century - the true villain of Dickens' Bleak House - were so frakking complicated.
When I'm writing - especially first draft - it's VERY hard for me to read fiction.
September 1, 2012
A question of procedure - for a minor incident in a novel...
A question of procedure - for a minor incident in a novella I'm working on (this has NOTHING to do with anything in my Real Life).
Is there anyone out there who knows what would be the proper legal procedure in this situation?
Our heroine has reason to believe that, in a family she has met once, the step-father is molesting the daughter. She deduces this from seeing them together - body-language, subtle cues - and from events that she knows have taken place in the family at large that don't seem to have anything to do with the step-father/daughter relationship. She later hacks into his computer and notes that he visits a LOT of porn sites, but knows this isn't evidence. (The daughter is fifteen). She's pretty certain the mother isn't going to back her up.
IS there anything she can or should do?
It's a small incident in the story, but I need to get it right.
Thanks in advance...
Is there anyone out there who knows what would be the proper legal procedure in this situation?
Our heroine has reason to believe that, in a family she has met once, the step-father is molesting the daughter. She deduces this from seeing them together - body-language, subtle cues - and from events that she knows have taken place in the family at large that don't seem to have anything to do with the step-father/daughter relationship. She later hacks into his computer and notes that he visits a LOT of porn sites, but knows this isn't evidence. (The daughter is fifteen). She's pretty certain the mother isn't going to back her up.
IS there anything she can or should do?
It's a small incident in the story, but I need to get it right.
Thanks in advance...
