Kurt R.A. Giambastiani's Blog, page 73
June 19, 2013
Prepare to Stop
It’s been a tough couple of weeks. After Memorial Day, my wife’s mother went in for surgery, and she’s still in the hospital now, almost three weeks later. We’ve gone from the staff saying we should “prepare ourselves” to everyone being yippy-skippy and talking about “full recovery.” Thankfully, they’ve been in that order, and now […]
June 18, 2013
Earthbox Update – Wk02
From the Hoodathunkit Dept: This just in… To the stunned surprise of many–myself included–my vegetable plants are thriving in their Earthboxes. When I first assembled the boxes, I plunked in the starts and thought, Damn, they’re small. And they were. From their4″ pots I took them, each only a couple inches high at most, and […]
June 17, 2013
Baklava a la Moi
This weekend we went to a GNOIF(Game Night of Indeterminate Frequency) over at our friends’ place. It’s a great time for convivial banter amidst board and card games of varying complexity. Everyone brings something potable and something noshable. I brought a bottle of sangiovese from the winery at Castellodi Amorosa, and the finalized version of […]
June 16, 2013
Turn it Up
Turn it up. Make it louder. Not through earbuds. Not through headphones. Release it. Give it room to breathe. Let it surround me. I need to feel it in my chest. I want it to rattle my bones. Turn it up. Make the air ring with it. Blast it through horns of brass. Pound it […]
June 13, 2013
Silver-Lining Time
(Note: this post is not aboutthe USGovernment trolling the internet and spying on law-abiding citizens. This post is about Americans and their expectations of privacy on the internet. Okay. Off we go.) If there’s one good thing to come out of this NSA-snoopery debacle, it’s this: Americans will finally be disabused of their long-held belief […]
June 12, 2013
Why I Write
Yeah, sure. “I write because…because I must,” he said as he fell back in a swoon, hand to forehead. Blah, blah, blah. Flip it to the B-Side, Sonny. [Jeez...how many of you don't know what I mean by "B-side," I wonder?] Let’s drop the dramatics and be real for a moment. The truth is, if […]
June 11, 2013
We Three Kings
Do you moue and roll your eyes when someone mentions Shakespeare? (If so, then I don’t know why you read this blog.) But if you do, if you think Shakespeare is nothing but a collection of thee’s and thou’s, if you find it all just stuffy and boring and completely incomprehensible, then I have the […]
June 10, 2013
Check Under the Hood?
This is your bi-annual reminder about regular diagnostics and backup procedures. “Jeez, Unca Kurt! That’s boring!” Sorry, chirren. This is Important Stuff. This past weekend, I was thankful I had taken my own advice. About 2 weeks ago, during my regularly scheduled diagnostics run, the program (the HP-supplied Hardware Diagnostics Tool, powered by PC-Doctor), the […]
June 7, 2013
First Impressions
I had my first Book Meeting on The Wolf Tree. This is the meeting where First Reader and I sit down, I give her the pitch, and she tells me, No, the plot doesn’t sound stupid. Seriously. That’s what this meeting is for. Well, mostly. She also picks apart the plot, the characters, the backstories, […]
June 6, 2013
Chicken Hum Bao
When the going gets tough, the tough get cooking…at least in my case. Here’s a surprisingly easy recipe for something you may never thought you could make at home: Hum bao (aka hum-bow, aka humbow, aka “one of those big white steamed buns with savory filling you grab off the cart at the dim-sum place”). […]
