Robin McKinley's Blog, page 173

A Really Stupid Day

 

 I HAVE JUST WASTED NEARLY HALF AN HOUR TRYING TO MAKE THIS STUPID FRELLING COMPUTER DOWNLOAD A JPEG OF THE NEW TRADE PAPER CHALICE COVER.  AND THEY'VE SENT IT TO ME TWICE.  AND IT CRASHED ME BOTH TIMES IT CAME IN—the second time while I was in the process of writing to Merrilee telling her how much I hated my computer.  It ate the email too, of course.

            I have Computer Men coming tomorrow and very high on the list of evil dragons*** that need slaying is the fact that broadband at ...

Interview

Well, go on, click it.

Speculative Book Review

In which I talk about all those normal writer things I never talk about here.

Better

 

I'm almost afraid to admit it in case it goes away.  I'm still slightly loopy from the anaesthesia* and energy level is still running about 60%** . . . but I'm better.  Clearly.  I mean I'm almost . . . cheerful.

            And more to the point in a writer's blog, even a writer's blog about hellhounds, bells, roses, composing, and Converse All Stars, I've had the first good day on PEG II in . . . I don't want to think about how long, but I guess it's about a month.  First there was...

Another Monday. Yeep.

 

The day did not get off to a good start.  I had just briefly bobbed to the surface of wakefulness and was semi-luxuriously burrowing back under the sunlight-blocking pillow* when the phone rang.  Eight-thirty Monday morning and the phone rings.  BRRRRRRRRRAH!  BRRRRRRRRRAH!   Have you noticed the way the phone is loudest when you're not quite asleep?  If it has to come after you into the pit of sleep it doesn't really get loud till the gigantic drooling purple tentacled train is about to...

Dental Anaesthesia, Deathlike States and Really Good Reads

 

I knew it was coming, of course.  I heard the thwack, thwack of big horny feet and felt the hot breath of the panting pursuant predator.  Occasionally I am not laid out afterward by dental anaesthesia.  But not very often.  And after the fortnight leading up to last Friday it's not exactly surprising that this was not one of those times.

            It usually takes about twenty-four hours for the full pumped up roaring force of the thing to arrive.  Which means that I at least got through...

Guest post by Maren

A crash course in banned books

More than anything else in the library field world, censorship and other intellectual freedom issues have the power to instantly send me off into a blind rage. Unfortunately, as an academic librarian I don't get many opportunities to channel this energy into my actual work because it's largely a public and school library issue. I do however keep track of the email lists and Twitter feeds of various organizations that publicize and fight censorship*, so that…I...

A crash course in banned books

More than anything else in the library field world, censorship and other intellectual freedom issues have the power to instantly send me off into a blind rage. Unfortunately, as an academic librarian I don't get many opportunities to channel this energy into my actual work because it's largely a public and school library issue. I do however keep track of the email lists and Twitter feeds of various organizations that publicize and fight censorship*, so that…I can send myself into a rage all o...

Attack of the Real World, Update

 

One of the great things about dogs—hellhounds anyway—is that they can always catch up on their sleep.  They're not bothered.  So when I turned them out at 8:45 this morning—eighty forty five in the freaking morning*—they said, Oh!  Hurtle!  A hurtle!  How lovely!  Oh, hellgoddess, we're so happy!  Yeah.  We're all so ungleblarging happy.  Happy happy happy.  And I've got a little home experiment in antibiotic-resistant micro-organisms going on in my head right now.  I rang the dentist just b...

Attack of the Real World*

 

So Computer Man came** and it will be nice if I have a working printer again, I haven't had time to find out.***  I AM ALSO CHANGING EMAIL SERVERS so maybe it will stop taking several minutes to download anything larger than three lines of plain text, and hanging and crashing every time a new email comes in, and eating my contacts.  I proceeded therefrom to being dazed and confused by the options on offer by Orange, which is the company I pay money to to have a mobile phone.†  The first...

Guest post by Black Bear

Tulips

Writing a guest blog entry for Robin is always a daunting prospect.  She sets the bar high, you know.  Not only does she have a great deal to say, she says it very well and interestingly, to the point that I have found myself awake at 1 am on a weeknight doing further research on roses, which I don't grow, sighthounds, which I don't own, and bell ringing, which I don't remotely understand.  That's a pretty darn good blog, to my way of thinking.  Or so I keep telling her.

Not that...