Sarah Monette's Blog, page 88

Hey! Happy birthday, renenet!

Hey! Happy birthday, renenet!

Life in the great suburban outback is fraught with peril.

Things learned while gardening today:

1. I'm a much better gardener if you give me a task. "Go out and garden" does nothing for me. "Go out and slaughter all the grape vines you can reach" does.

2. If you have an Anthropophagous Rosebush, you let the grape vines co-habitate with it at your peril.

3. ZOMG! We have BERRIES! Blackberries, I think, but my woodsy lore is so stunted and vestigial that they might as easily be the rare and deadly cyanideberry for all I know. (No, we will not be eating them

Waterlog

TIME 43 min.
DISTANCE 5 mi.
TOTAL DISTANCE: 232 mi.
NOTES: Return of the dreaded shin-splints. Managed to work through them, though.
DISTRACTION: The Dead Zone, "Enigma"
SHIRE RECKONING: Following cunningly hidden path toward Weathertop. Sam is reciting poetry.



1. Please do not put Anthony Michael Hall in turtlenecks. They make him look like a bulldog.

2. PREDICTABLE PREDICTABLE PREDICTABLE. As soon as Tommy was introduced, I knew that either (a.) she'd had his baby or (b.) he'd murdered her. It probab

UBC: The City & the City

Miéville, China. The City & the City. New York: Del Rey-Ballantine Books, 2009.


I don't have much to say beyond OMG WOW. I found The City & the City both brilliant and readable; other readers, of course, may not find it to be either of those things.

ninja update

The ninjas were good, brave ninjas at the vet. And they got a clean bill of health.

I have no doubt they will wreak hideous vengeance on me at some suitable moment.

Some things

Werewolf story finished, 6,000 words, except that (a.) it's turned into the first chapter of a novel on me and (b.) it's drivel. Utter damnable drivel.


My aquarium has a new inhabitant, who was sold as a blue mystery snail, but who I believe is actually an apple snail, specifically a Pomacea bridgesii . The snail's name is Louise. (No, don't ask me, I don't know either. I put the snail in the tank, it opened its trapdoor to start looking around, and I thought, You go, Louise! You now know as much

In memoriam: Charles N. Brown

Charles N. Brown, co-founder, editor, and publisher of Locus, died yesterday, July 12, 2009.

Rest in peace, Mr. Brown. And thank you.

Waterlog

TIME: 43 min.
DISTANCE: 5 mi.
TOTAL: 227 mi.
NOTES: An advantage of exercising in the afternoon: since it is the least productive part of the day for me, I actually look forward to getting away from the computer.
DISTRACTION: The Dead Zone 1.3, "Quality of Life"
SHIRE RECKONING: Two miles to the foot of the Weather Hills!
1. There was too much slow-motion portentous hockey in this episode, but they get points for the kid demonstrating agency and common sense.

2. Anthony Michael Hall is sure working tha

who will rid me of this afflictive ice-cream truck?

Ice-cream trucks were not a part of my childhood. Possibly this is why I find them hostile rather than charming. But I can tell you one thing. If it was my job to drive that thing around all day while it played the first four lines of "Pop Goes the Weasel" over and OVER AND OVER, I would be a gibbering lunatic inside of a week.

Stark. Barking. Mad.

::listens apprehensively::

... I think it's gone.

Which means, of course, because I watch horror movies, too, that it's IN THE CLOSET! AIEEEE!!!

wailie, wailie

I have lost the index card on which I kept track of the submission history of the zombie coyote story. Now, as I never throw anything away (just ask my poor long-suffering spouse), I know it's here somewhere. But, on the other hand, as I never throw anything away . . .

This is hardly the Fall of Carthage, as tragedies go, but it means that I no longer have a record of where I have and have not subbed that story. And since it was teetering on the verge of being trunked, that means there's an awful