C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 43

Picoreview: Ghost in the Shell

Picoreview: Ghost in the Shell: I think it’s probably the kind if thing you’re going to like if you’re going to like it and the kind of thing you’re not going to like if you’re not going to like it.

I apparently decided the hill to die on was “female-led films need to do well at the box office” rather than “whitewashing is evil” and went to see it last night. Having only seen the anime once, and not having particularly cared for it and remembering almost nothing about it except a handful of i...

gorilla dreams

I wondered aloud the other day if I were to consistently get enough sleep, whether I would still be tired all the time. I recall an experiment in this field a couple of years ago, where for about two weeks I made a real effort to go to bed early and get enough sleep. After a couple weeks I felt so great I…stopped…

Anyway, after a very busy day yesterday I slept 11.5 hours* and this morning had a lot of weird dreams, the highlight of which was about a troop of gorillas living along the creek b...

international consortium of Getting Stuff Done

Nearly 8 years ago now I started the ‘war room’, a chat room for writers to log into and keep each other company while we write. It’s a combination of support group, inertia-breaker, guilt-inducer, and social space. People log in from all over North America and Europe (I don’t think we have any other continents checking in), and it works really well. (Michelle Sagara dedicated the latest Elantra book to us. ♥ :))

I wish I could figure out a way to make something similiar for more off-line act...

Kitsnacks: Cocoa Brownies

This is our family’s go-to brownie recipe:

Cocoa Brownies
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c flour
1/3 c cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, room temp or softer
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Whisk the dry ingredients together. Add butter, eggs and vanilla and mix. Scrape into a 9×9″ buttered pan. Bake at 350°F for 15-18 minutes, until barely done (a fork inserted in the centre should come out slightly gooey but not *wet*). Allow to cool. Frost as desired. (I usually use chocolate buttercream frosting.) Eat! Make...

new hair!

My hair has been driving me increasingly crazy. I challenged myself to grow it for…three years, or something. Around the time Indy was born, until my 40th birthday. And I’m now a few months shy of my 44th and had kept it long, but all I ever do with it is pull it into a ponytail, or sometimes braid it, and eventually get the ends that are wrecked from ponytail holders trimmed off. And it’s just been driving me nuts. Not the weight, but the presence. The bits sliding into my face. All of it. J...

spring cleaning, i guess

I read an article the other day that said the average American household has 300,000 items in it and now I want to get rid of everything we own. :p

I mean, this isn’t really like a sudden new urge. I’ve been suffering from the Tyranny Of Things for a while now, and I keep grimly trying to do something about it. It doesn’t seem to get anywhere. More books appear. More RANDOM PIECES OF PAPER appear. I hang on to clothes in the hope that I’ll get slim enough for them or the fear I’ll get fat eno...

ambitious!

I woke up feeling really ambitious this morning, between the head cold and 6 hours of sleep:

I decided Ted should start working out and get in shape like The Rock.

(honestly, i have no idea where that came from but it’s so hysterical i thought it was worth sharing. i liked how *i* wasn’t gonna do this shit, no way. it was an ambition for TED. a really really extreme one! in retrospect, i thought, y’know, getting in shape like chris pratt would be a sufficiently impressive ambition. :))

As far...

Sugar Wars: I don’t want to talk about it.

I did do some pilates this morning. Not even pilates. Pre-beginners pilates. Pilates For People Who Are Too Out Of Shape To Do Pilates Or Anything Else For That Matter. Worse, I only did one round, and you’re supposed to do two. I am pathetic.

And the office floor needs vacuuming.

The post Sugar Wars: I don’t want to talk about it. appeared first on The Essential Kit.

Picoreview: Beauty and the Beast

Picoreview: Beauty and the Beast: exceeded my expectations by a considerable margin.

(Also, irrelevantly, I was sitting between two little girls who sang all the songs they knew, and an older woman who kept wiping her eyes, both of which I found pretty charming. :))

The showing I went to go see originally was sold out, which meant I basically spent four hours wandering vaguely around downtown Drogheda (spoiler: it hasn’t got 4 hours worth of entertainment in it) so I could go to the next one....

i has a sick

A cold attacked me on Sunday. One minute I was fine, five minutes later I had a raging sore throat and completely stuffed sinuses. Monday I sat on the couch and watched Farscape. Tuesday I went to Dublin, which was clearly an overtaxing of my ability, but I was glad I went. I went to bed at 7:30pm on Tuesday night (Indy tucked me in and read me a story &heart;), woke briefly at 11 and thought “yay I’m a lot better!” and went back to sleep…and woke up at 4:30am. :{ Got up at 5 or something. We...