Elizabeth Moon's Blog, page 125

Finding

I'm very good at misplacing things.  Not so good at finding them.

Simplify your life, say all the experts.   Remove the excess, organize what's left, and it all becomes simple, say the experts.

Well...not...quite. 

Because (despite the attack organizers shown on TV, who have (IMO) execrable taste  and far too much smugness)  writers with deadlines do not have time to clear out and re-organize.  

But--all that aside--I had been in a near panic because I  could not find the password I needed to get t

Bread Again

More proof that bread wants to be bread and will overcome many errors by the baker: 

Our neighbor brought us a dozen fresh brown eggs.   I decided to make some lovely egg bread (braided, prettified with seeds on top) as a thank-you.   But due to Unforeseen Circumstances (tm) I didn't get to it until yesterday afternoon.   Cleared the counter, washed it down, the usual prep for breadmaking.   Got out the recipe, which I hadn't made in awhile (it calls for quantities of milk, butter, and eggs) and

New Paksworld post

There's a new post up in the Paksworld blog  revealing in detail why writers are considered strange. 

Me and My Congressman

I spent the energy regained from a nap yesterday afternoon (interrupted by two phone calls, alas) to stay up far too late writing a long letter to my Congressman in response to his answer to my first email.

My Congressman and I are not simpatico.   We are so not simpatico that I suspect Hell would freeze solid, not just over, before we were on the same page.   I would not mind his disagreeing with me so much if he showed the least ability to a) think, b) learn, c) understand what someone who does

Whew!

The copy edits went out Friday, and then large boluses of Stuff landed on me.   Because I thought I'd get the copy edits out Thursday at the latest (having been through them twice by then) with only a final cursory check Wednesday evening, I had bought the makings for a large pot of chicken stock and chicken earlier on Wednesday.   But came home with a weather-related migraine, so I got nothing done on the copy edits that evening.  Thursday morning, I thought "Oh, sure, I can put the chickens in

Soup (again)

Started large (20 quart) pot today.   Two large stewing hens, lots of celery, carrot, onion, garlic, parsley, bay leaves, black pepper, other herbs.  The drought has done in our herbs (water restrictions meant we could not water the vegetable garden as much as it needed) so herbs are dried.  

 Making and putting up this much stock and chicken meat is a two-day task (though, past chopping up the vegetable bits, the first day is mostly monitoring the degree of simmer), but it saves me a lot of tim

Almost there...

I've been deep in copy edits since Thursday evening, a marathon of staring at marked-up manuscript pages and trying to ensure that it's all correct....or, if I disagree with a copy editor's mark, whether it's worth "stetting" or not.   For those of you not writers, to "stet" a mark is to say "Let it stand" (as it was.)

There are standard ways to mark manuscripts, but about two in the morning, if you're not normally a night person, you start making mistakes.  Since you can't erase any marks (their

Advance warning--website temporary vanishment

For those of you that visit any of my websites or have a feed off the blogs--around August 14, Verizon is messing about with things and my hosting service expects everything to be down for at least  a day and somewhat whonky for three or four.   IP numbers will change, etc.   My hosting service is setting up alternative servers at a different site, but says to expect problems, though they'll try to prevent them.

I will post another warning a day or so before it happens--this is just to catch thos

The genealogy of H1N1 flu

You have to be a bit of a biomed geek to understand why I think this is so cool.   The New England Journal of Medicine's July 16 issue has a fascinating (to me, anyway) perspective article on the relationship of this year's pandemic flu to the 1918 pandemic virus, with a graphic that clearly shows which viral genes came from where.  For previous flu outbreaks we have only accounts of illness, but in 1918,  some hospitals saved tissue and blood samples...making it possible with the late 20th and

The writing life: Relief

The copy edits on the new book were due to me last month--and after a request for an extension from the copy editor (granted) there was nothing...no word.  This bothered Editor as much as it bothered me (copy editors rarely go missing) and I was becoming increasingly concerned...did the copy editor fall under a train with my manuscript?  (Not as big a problem these days, with electronic files backing things up, but still...)  Or had the book driven the copy editor insane?   Or into a blue funk?