Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 185

After-Christmas health food

Today for lunch a group of us decided to seek food elsewhere, so after a quick consultation we headed to OnlyBurger for what was sure to be a healthy lunch. 

Oh, it so was--as you would expect from the OnlyBurger restaurant.

My main dish was the fried green tomato burger with bacon.

Click on the image to see it larger. This beast gets better the closer you look.
Yes, this monstrosity contains a burger, a fried green tomato slice, a fried egg, a couple of pieces of bacon, and pimento cheese.  Hey, it has fruit and protein; that's healthy, right?

My side dish was equally healthy:  the bacon-wrapped macaroni and cheese squares, three to an order (one disappeared down our yaps before I could snap this photo).


I love that they completely wrapped the macaroni and cheese; no bacon stinginess with these folks!

Perhaps a salad is in order for dinner....

Imagine going to the grocery store...

...with these bags.

You're being a responsible, Earth-loving shopper, so you're carrying your own reusable bags.  I've been doing that for some time; my two large bags have PT logos on them and are gifts we once gave staff.  Now, though, I can stroll into the store and plop down on the counter, courtesy of Scott, this bag with Holden's alert face.

As always, click on an image to see a larger version.

Sure, the bagger is likely to remark on the bag, but in a good, "what a cute dog" sort of way.

Say, though, that the purchases won't fit in one bag.  No problem; I pull out the other bag from Scott.


Now, the bagger is going to start looking around nervously, wondering where the lone security guard is and whether that old dude is going to be any help against the serial killer asking to have meat and veggies and muffins crammed behind his plastic head.

Oh, yeah, I'm looking forward to my next trip to the Whole Foods.

Christmas is a time

for me, at least, for spending time with family and those close friends who feel like coming by, for giving gifts and opening those you receive, for making food for others and enjoying the food they make, for sleeping late (at least now that the kids are older), and for being lazy. 

I'm doing all of those things today.

I hope you are, too.  If you have to work, or if you don't celebrate the holiday, or if you're alone, I hope the day is kind to you and brings you joy.  (I hope that for you every day, but particularly today.)

Merry Christmas!

Four things Christmas dinner must include

around here, anyway, speaking solely for myself, and in no particular order:
A luxurious cut of beef
Rolls with butter
Mashed potatoes with butter
Banana cream pie
To be sure, Christmas dinner around here typically contains many other items, including salad, green beans, macaroni and cheese, a chocolate dessert, and so on.  I simply consider those four dishes to be the bare minimum essentials.

Having said that, all I personally do is pay for provisions and cook the beef.  Others do all the hard work--and they do it better than I would.  I am grateful to all who provide food, at Christmas and always. 

What does it say

about me that my friend and colleague, Sean, texts me this picture


Click on this freaky thing to see it bigger. Don't blame me if you.
with the note

I saw this and thought of you.  :)

I don't really know, but I'm pretty sure it's not anything good.

Where the hell did we hang that pickle ornament?

Click on this picture to see an obscenely large image of my head.
Oh, yeah.


There it is.

You'd think I would have noticed it banging against my neck as I walked.  

The tree, she shines and sparkles

One decorating party and hours of work from many different folks later, this blank tree

As always, click on an image to see a larger version.
metamorphosed into this shiny one.


I love the look and the smell of decorated Christmas trees.  I particularly like the way a tree looks as it glows late at night in a darkened room, its colors and twinkles happy harbingers of good things still to come. 

You need a little from the Mountain Goats

Some days, you just do.

Let's start with this recent song.

Now, let's flash back six years to this melancholy tune.


That should do us for now.

Back to your regularly scheduled holiday music.

The first Christmas without Mom

As regular readers know, my mother died last February.  As the year has worn on, I've experienced a lot of key events, such as my birthday, the family beach trip, and Thanksgiving,  that are different for her passing. 

Now, it's Christmas' turn. 

Christmas was always a big deal when I was growing up.  No matter how poor we were, it was the year's biggest blowout, with presents for all and a grand meal in the late afternoon.  After Mom married Ed and we had more money, Christmas became even more extravagant.  I've certainly carried that tradition into my life, as anyone who's been here at Christmas will attest. 

Mom used to come to Christmas here occasionally, but she hadn't made the trip in recent years.  She'd call, and if I missed her, I'd call back, often reluctantly.  On more than one occasion, I got so busy with our Christmas that I forgot to call until the next day--an occurrence that frequently led her to call here first.  Now, I'd give a lot to be able to make one of those calls.  

She wasn't a big presence in my adult Christmases, but her uncanny ability to give truly amazingly bad presents (e.g., the James Bond wallet holster) made each package from her just a little more interesting for what oddness it might contain.  She spent a lot of time shopping for those gifts, and she always preferred to finish before December or at least as early in December as possible.  She liked stores and mail-order catalogs; Internet shopping was never her thing. 

This coming Christmas, there will be no gifts from my mother under the tree. 

There will be no call. 

I know all this is natural and the way of the world, and most hours of most days, I don't think about it at all. 

Sometimes, though, I feel the loss like a hard punch to the solar plexus that leaves me unable to breathe and waiting, waiting for the moment when air will rush back in and I will be okay again. 

All my books are now available on Amazon's Kindle Store

I apologize up front for the spambot-like headline, but this news is exciting enough that I didn't want anyone to miss it.  As of a couple of days ago, you can now buy all of the fine ebooks from Baen, my publisher, not only on Baen's own wonderful baenebooks.com store but also via Amazon's Kindle Store. 

As you'd expect, when you now see a book of mine on Amazon, you'll see it in Kindle editions as well.  Here's a not-very-well-done (sorry about that) screen shot of No Going Back on Amazon.

Note the Kindle, Hardcover, and Audible options; nifty!

You've always been able to download my ebooks to your Kindle, because Baen sells all its ebooks in seven different formats, including the Kindle's.  That process, though, did require a tiny bit of work.  Now, you can choose to have the benefits of those many formats or the ease of buying it from Amazon. 

Either way you buy my ebooks, you can be sure they will be DRM-free.  Baen has long stood firm against DRM, and I have for just as long supported that stance.  All of Baen's ebooks on Amazon's Kindle Store are thus DRM-free.

I'd be failing as a self-promoter--a role I find awkward and so do frequently fail at--if I didn't mention what fine Christmas gifts my books would make, so now I've done that.

It's great to see my books have more ways to connect to readers!