Episode two of "So you want to be a DJ" went well, even if I will have to miss the first class. Got lost again, but allowed enough time to do so. And one of my classmates reminds me far too much of WindRose, except for the nose ring and several tattoos.

I loooove this community...

I was almost convinced that I didnt need LJ anymore with the available world of FB and MS, but the communities on here are amazing. This is by far, one of my favorites! Thrift stores/flea markets and garage sales are the best.. even the dino in my main pic was a amazing 69 cent thrift store find.. My hubby and I have a house furnished with second hand items but you would never see them on this page.. although, when we shop, we find the BEST oddball wtf items and laugh until we cry... I havent uploaded pictures in a while, so heres a few off of my cell phone for starters :) Enjoy!





I absolutely LOVE finding engrish stuff.. its amazing.. I almost bought that.. but resisted..
( DO THE JEW! ): )

I've been really exhausted this weekend, so this is going to be another short post with just a couple quick announcements. First, a signing announcement--but not for me. My friends Caitlin Kittredge and Vicki Pettersson will be doing a panel at the Clark County Library in Las Vegas (1401 E Flamingo Rd) tomorrow, July 6, at 7pm. They'll be talking about superheroes and signing books if you bring them. So, if you're fans of those ladies, go visit!

Second, thanks for all the feedback about the new site. For those who asked, I did do it myself, but like so many others, I used a program to help--Microsoft Web Expressions. I do have basic HTML skills, but a program likes that makes websites a lot easier (and nicer looking) than if I hand-coded--which I've done in the past! lolcatz served as a consultant on some of the aesthetics, as well as therapist/tech support when parts of the process frustrated me.

So, that's my weekend report. I hope my American readers had a nice Fourth of July! I spent mine on a 17th floor balcony of Expedia in downtown Bellevue, four blocks away from where the city's fireworks show was being shot off of a parking garage roof. It was pretty sweet. We got on the balcony courtesy of my friend who works at Expedia, so if you need to book travel plans, make sure you use them so that he can keep his job and let us come back next year.

Cloud formations
http://tinyurl.com/pgn4h9

My friend John, his house and property, and one of his cats:
http://tinyurl.com/obssap

B&W photos of the area
http://tinyurl.com/p2hcbr

John's July 4th party
http://tinyurl.com/oye6a7

Peter Schjeldahl's July 4th fireworks party
http://tinyurl.com/qpgnme

So I was roaming the backyard today, nibbling, while I was thinking about a story I'm working on.

Salmonberries. Brambleberries. Blueberries. The juicy basal stems of grass. Soon there'll be thimbleberries and blackberries.

And I got to thinking about all the plants and other strange gleanings we ate as kids, whether they were good for us or not.

We tried liveoak acorns, but they were nasty, like tannic hominy inside a wooden box. We were tempted every year, though. The smooth brown shell was so pretty and so nutlike, so shiny and inviting. A plump acorn inside looked like corn, or butter. Squirrels ate them, and somewhere one of us had read that if you were stranded in the woods without food, you could watch what the squirrels ate and eat what they ate, and you'd survive. Maybe. If you didn't die from the boogery things that lived in the festering, fetid stream water. We all knew Florida rivers weren't that lovely tea brown color because it was NATURAL, you know. It had to be horrible stuff that made it so dark. (In fact, it's tannins. Perfectly natural.) We found a few clear streams with beds of white sand, and sometimes we'd drink from them. We whispered about the kid who lived three blocks away who hadn't come back from a family vacation in Mexico because he'd drunk from a wild Mexican stream, and died of his diarrhea. True story, and every bit as sad then as it is now.

We lurked the red honeysuckle on the fence between our house and Best Friend Beth's house next door, pulling the blossoms in bunches, nipping off the green sepal at the base and drinking down the nectar, or squeezing it out drop by pale golden crystal drop, to lick with our tongues. Once after I'd taken botany in college, I wondered how many mites and aphids I'd eaten. Sometimes we'd sneak a shot glass out of Best Friend Beth's mom's liquor cabinet and see if we could collect enough blossoms and nectar to fill it (no, but we tried a lot). I'm sure the hummingbirds hated us.

A neighborhood kid told us we could eat the yellow oxalis (AKA yellow wood sorrel), but we knew it as clover. We ate the leaves, which were sour but tasty, and the flowers, which were just yellow and did not taste like butter the way that Kessler kid said they did. Though we did do the "do you like butter" test with the blossoms, holding them under each others' chins to see if the yellow reflected on the skin--if it did, you liked butter. We ate the okra-like seed pods, which tasted like the leaves only less sour, and with a certain gritty feel to the pod and the round white seeds inside.

Some kid dared us to eat azalea blossoms, so we did. I remember thinking at the time it was probably stupid, but that kid who got gum in my hair in 3rd grade and a comb tangled in it in 4th grade (he was a tad obsessed, that Stearns kid) ate them and dared me, so I did too. Once. I'm still here. Test inconclusive? As I recall, they tasted like petals do, of not much.

We all learned from an early age not to eat the oleander, not any part of it, no matter how beautiful the lipstick pink ones were. And it was plentiful, because in Florida it makes an awesome landscaping plant. Every kid told a story about some other little kid who died like a rabid dog, foaming at the mouth and kicking in the road like a dying frog, because they'd looked too closely at an oleander bush and gotten its poisons IN THROUGH THEIR EYES or something. All myth has its roots in truth.

In the summer, the neighbor's loquat tree would fruit. We'd dance around the tree half the day trying to get the loquats before the wasps and hornets, surfeited with the loquat juice, got us instead. But the wasps would go home at night, those that weren't zonked out of their tiny buggy minds on the fermented fruit that fell. In the hot, mosquito-filled dark, we'd pick the loquats by the weird pink light of the streetlamp, and eat them, wondering at their strange mealy texture and insipid flavor, something like apricots, something like plums, and nothing like what came home from the produce stand. That Kessler kid got stung on his tongue because he'd bitten into a loquat that came with a ferocious passenger.

Another neighbor had a scuppernong grape arbor. The mother called them "fox grapes" and sometimes made strange, champagne colored grape jelly which she gave to the neighbors at Christmas, along with fruitcakes. Grape jelly should be purple, you know, if it's proper kid jelly for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The scuppernongs were slipskin grapes, and mostly we shot them at each other by squeezing the butt of the harder grapes with enough force to propel the slimy, odoriferous innards a foot or two. The pulp looked like a glob of luminous snot, or so we told each other, and more than one sneeze joke used the pulp as props. Need to hawk up a loogie? Just find yourself a scuppernong, and fake it.

We ate the blackberries we found down by the "dead lake" -- a dammed-up stream that drained the golf course and created a pond that blossomed hugely with algae each summer. By-product of sprinklers and too much fertilizer on both the golf course and the yards that bordered the pond. The dead lake always smelled turgid and rank, a wet green smell we associated with decay. Touching the water meant you could be killed by the poisons in it. We never questioned the health of the snapping turtles, bluegills and perch who lived in it, or the great blue herons that plied their trade in the shallow end just after daylight.

Once, we ate a bluegill we caught in the dead lake. Leslie's mom was out for the day. Leslie cleaned the fish like her grandpa taught her, and we fried it in a pan. It was nasty, and the cats got most of it. We went on fishing, but mostly we threw our catches back, unless the fish had completely swallowed the hook. We fed those poor bastards to our cats. Fishing was a reason to sit in the sun and talk long important talks about the other kids at school, and life, and plot the best way to steal the neighbor's rowboat at midnight to drown our horrible gymsuits in the middle of the dead lake where they'd never be found. They'd never rot, either, monstrous double-knit polyester that they were. A million years in the future, an archaeologist would find them, wrapped around bricks, still flexible and viable and resistant to stains and soiling.

Somebody's backyard banana tree fruited, odd little finger-sized red bananas. They were astringent and tough, because we couldn't wait for the fruit to ripen.

We had a sparkleberry tree in our backyard, with blossoms like a million tiny lilies of the valley, followed by dangling beads of black berries, shiny as if they'd been individually polished. They tasted more or less like blueberries, and the birds ate them by the thousands. These days I'd know them as a relative of the blueberry or huckleberry--woody like a blueberry shrub, only tree-sized, and fruit as small as the huckleberry.

Cindy's grandmother, after a heavy rain, would send us out to the scramble pit where the motorheads would rage and ravage on their dirt bikes. A stream ran through the bottom and drained into a swampy area, and when it was rainy, the crawdads crawled out of their holes. Our job was to knock the beasts into the bucket with a stick and get them home to her, where she'd do a 'daddy boil. I only ate one; it was enough for a lifetime, though I later became quite fond of lobster and langostinos.

That Kessler kid once ate an earthworm because we'd promised him he could join our club if he did. We lied. We were impressed, but we still blocked the treehouse door. Florida earthworms are tiny in comparison to the giants out here in the Pacific Northwest. These things...hell, you could carve them up for steaks.

We collected a dozen fat garden snails from my mother's jungly backyard and speculated about the French and escargots, but none of us were willing to try them. We didn't think butter could improve a snail, nor could garlic.

One dip of a quart mayonnaise jar into the edge of the dead lake yielded a milling clutch of slippery black tadpoles--toad young'uns--and a water beetle. We dared each other to eat the water beetle, but in the end it went home with me and took up residence in a fish tank. It grew menacing and enormous on freeze-dried tubifex worms, living for years with the Anacharis plantation we had in that tank. Under the microscope, the water from the dead lake had a colony of rotifers and whip-tailed Euglena, and a blobby amoeba that set a land speed record on my slide. And once, wonder of wonders, a hydra, transparent and strange, bending in the current my breath made in the water trapped between the slide and the fragile cover slip.

Oh, my life has been rich. I no longer wonder where the stories come from; I know. They're from breathing too close to the oleanders. :-)

We did my younger niece's birthday today, we met at Claim Jumper, I drove the sister creature with me.. food wasnt that good, my au jus tasted like vinegar.

After dinner it was to the new house for cake and ice cream. Being family tho, we all had to help bring stuff up from the garage to the second story for them.. cake you know isnt free. grin. They had made a lot of progress since yesterday, my brother had his large bookcase (its a doublewide with doors) filled up and in order, and was getting ready to put the shelves in his second bookcase. They hope to be able to at least park one car in the garage by the end of the week.

Here you go, matociquala's Five Easy Steps to Becoming a Professional Writer. Of course, that first step alone is a doozy...


Fourth of July weekend was nice, although the day itself was rainy and miserable. The whole neighborhood had to content themselves with blowing shit up Friday and Sunday night instead. It's neat seeing white and green sparks fly up just over the treeline from several streets away. I heard no piercing screams or sirens, so I assume everyone came away from the experience with all their fingers. Admittedly, that's not as entertaining as seeing some idiot nearly blow out his own car windows by lighting a rocket that ought to have been stuck in the ground first.

Fireworks... if they're exploding at eye level, you might be doing it wrong.

Days 20 and 21 were lost to our grand adventures in Points North. Day 22 today yielded only a disappointed 2,100 words in an hour of effort. However, under my new weekly rubric, that makes 21,600 words for the week, well in excess of my 17,500 word target. I'm now at 87,500 words. Given that chemo shouldn't start before early August, I'm confident of getting this draft wrapped before cancer eats my brain.

( In the mean time, a bit of WIP: )

Originally published at jlake.com.

calendula_witch ably describes our weekend at Points North amongst her family and the fields of her youth. A marvelous time was had by all, albeit somewhat intense. I took a number of photos, but have just discovered I have the wrong card reader with me tonight, so they will remain inaccessible a while longer.

My day consisted of starting in Mendocino County, CA, being driven down to SFO by calendula_witch, flying to PDX, being met by the_child and tillyjane in the Genre car, dropping tillyjane off at her place, then driving to Pacific County, WA to my parents' beach house. So, erm, 5+ hours in the car and 3+ hours in airport and airplanes. Whew.

Beach house for a week (working the Day Jobbe from here as well as forging ahead on Endurance), then Omaha, then back to San Francisco and calendula_witch on the 17th.

Originally published at jlake.com.

Ogling the horror at thrift stores is as much fun for me as finding the gems, so I can't describe the glee this community gives me. I've commented a time or two, but this is my first time sharing the scary. Lots of pics from two local shops.

( thriftstalking under the cut )

Where it is




this one I flickrshopped for color, but that's life:



Although accessible from the road,it definately had that shoot first and ask questions later feel.

I just sent out my query to the editor and 10 agent query letters. Wish me luck! I will probably be stalking my inbox now until I hear something (or maybe I won't, who knows?) BUT after I had already sent out four letters, I noticed I had a typo (forgot the word "a"). I really hope I don't get a rejection over one freaking letter! We'll see :( I'm not gonna stress out about it. Hitting the send button was still the best feeling ever.

Anyway, sending out the queries was just the start of a big week. More details to come.

So. The Heart concert was cool. They didn't play for as long as I would have liked, but they played the songs people expected (Alone, Crazy on You, Magic Man, Barracuda, etc.) But it was such a beautiful day--weekend actually. It was totally worth the trip. And I have Lacuna Coil to look forward to on Friday!

I saw "The Hangover" today. It had its funny moments, but it was pretty underwhelming to me. Bradley Cooper is still a hottie! Although I wish he could play a nice guy in just one movie! And Ed Helms's character was basically Andy on the big screen. *shrugs* Supposedly, there's gonna be a sequel.

I should really upload my school pics soon. I know you guys want to see me in my cap and gown :)

A few changes and additions:

Friday: 11am The Seeds of Poe: Two Anthologies
Suzy McKee Charnas, Ellen Datlow, Elizabeth Hand, Delia Sherman, Peter Straub, Gary Wolfe--Gary Wolfe is moderating

Saturday: 10 am Short Horror Fiction: The Art (and Market)
Laird Barron, Jeanne Cavelos, Ellen Datlow, Adam Golaski, Paul Tremblay--Adam Golaski is moderating

Saturday 11am--autographing--I will be bringing some copies of my OP titles that will be for sale at my autographing and at Michael Walsh's dealer's table (he'll be selling them for me)

Saturday 3pm --kaffeeklatch

Sunday: 2pm The Year in Short Fiction
Neil Clarke, Douglas Cohen, Kathryn Cramer, Ellen Datlow, Theodora Goss--Theodora Goss moderating

Happy birthday to meeee!!! As I told Facebook earlier today, 29 is the atomic number for copper (the only atomic number I know!) and there are definitely worse things to be. I am growing ever closer to what I believe the perfect age: 32. If 32 is going to be a disappointing age, please don't tell me -- I firmly believe it should be fabulous. Sometimes I feel like the only person alive who doesn't dread birthdays, but... I don't dread birthdays. I love them. I love getting older, living life, learning, moving forward.

Usually on my birthday I catalog the first song I hear. One year, the first song I heard was "Ace of Spades" -- I was sitting in the car listening to the radio with boommonkeypants; last year it was "Rooms on Fire" by Stevie Nicks. This year, I haven't heard any music yet today (which is so rare for me), except for the Psych theme song!

Today has been a good day. My mom made blueberry pancakes and learned how to use the french press to make me coffee; then my sister and brother-in-law came over. We played Trivial Pursuit (and we all cheated a lot, since half the time none of us knew the answer to the question), and then a game of Clue (which I lost miserably), and then my favorite game ever: Rhymation.

Rhymation is a game that I guess is best compared to Pyramid: there are teams. You roll a die and move your marker across the game board. Whichever color you land on corresponds to the color on the card you pick. If you, for example, land on a blue square, you are given four rhyming words. One person has to guess the words based on clues given by their partner, in under a minute. So, for example, a round might sound like this:

If you are hired to kill someone, you are an...
ASSASSIN

If someone acts nice but isn't really, that person is...
SACCHARINE

They made two movies about this, starring Hollywood and jelly doughnuts --
MANNEQUIN!

Some people who have diabetes need injections of...
INSULIN

Then there are yellow squares (three groups of rhymes, each group containing two rhyming words that are each two syllables) and red squares (two groups of rhymes, each group containing two rhyming words of varying syllables), and grey (face off! You get one word and go back and forth between one member of an opposing team, each of you saying a rhyming word until you run out -- bike, pike, mike, tyke, hike, psych, etc.).

Back in the day, my two sisters, my mom, and I used to play this game a lot, and Lisa (the middle sister) and I always won. Always. We also used to bring the game with us when we went to visit relatives -- Lisa and I are no match for my mom and her older sister. To be fair, they have way more years of secret codes and shared experiences under their belts!

It is, I guess, worthwhile to note that aside from being a word game (which I love), this is also the only game my family has ever played that I've ever been able to win. I lose at Clue to one of my two sisters. Always. I lose at Mille Bornes. Scrabble often involves too much strategy -- I just like to make ridiculous or obscure words. I get bored with Monopoly very quickly. I don't have enough general knowledge to succeed at Trivial Pursuit (although out of all the games I've ever played, it's still one of my favorites).

Anyway, we ate from Roll'N'Roaster, one of my favorite restaurants, and then when Lisa and Matt had to leave, I took a nap, watched some more Psych, took another nap, reread an old Linda Howard book, and eventually I am going to eat my "birthday cake" -- a slice of apple pie.

It's been a really nice, low key, super fun day. How could I want more than that?

I hope you're all having such a good day.

Acquired some berries at the Noe St Farmers Market. These eventually landed in a cobbler

FLESH AND FIRE: Book One of the Vineart War will be in stores in three months. So, while I'm doing all the other stuff a writer has to do (that whole 'writing the next book' thing) I also need to start thinking about promotion, publicity, and getting the buzz started. Traditionally, a contest is a time-effective way to do that. Plus, it amuses me. Does it amuse you?


Poll #1425504
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

contest?

prizes?

Feel free to leave further comments in the, well, comments section.

Captain Monk and George.
Spotted this afternoon at the Trader Baker Flea-market in Shelbyville, IN.

Trips to the local supermarkets usually fill me with dismay - I have trained my eyes not to 'see' the rows and rows of boxed cake and pancake mixes as paying any attention to them fills me with fits of incomprehensible rage.

However, I'm still training myself to ignore all those hermetically sealed doggy bags of soup, a mere glance at them is enough for my eyes to develop a bit of a twitch. If only people realized just how easy it is to make soup! This pumpkin soup recipe, for example, requires a little time but is utterly idiot-proof, and freezes well for those who are only cooking for one or two!

So Sarah Palin resigned from her first term as Governor. Nobody knows why she would do something this insane...but, ya know, it is Sarah we're talking about here. You betcha.

Regarding the initial Palin speech, Sean Cockerham, of the Anchorage Daily News, wrote a concise article that put a lot of the rambling nonsense into context, in that what had previously seemed like Jabberwocky levels of street-rat crazy, now just seemed like normal Sarah Palin street-rat crazy.

So, the fun part begins! Get your tin foil hats on kids, it's time to "Find The Conspiracy".

Has anyone noticed all the press that John Coale is getting out of all of this...and how almost none of it mentions that he's a muckity muck in Scientology?

Ok, so...here's my new theory:

Scientology uses their incredibly well honed psyops to convince her that she's under attack from opponents she can't possibly defeat on her own. But..CoS can help her, they tell her. All she needs to do is spend a few weeks in a resort...say in Clearwater, Florida...and they'll get her feeling back up to par, and then, they'll help her get ready to run for the presidential election.

They turn her into the same unstoppable android force that is Tom Cruise. She gets polished up, trained on how to think before speaking, and using the cash and people of the CoS, she rockets to the top of the Republican charts. She'll explain away the CoS as being "not at all opposed to our true faith beliefs in blah, blah, blah" and she'll be believed by the ones who want to believe, and accepted by those who would do anything to get the "nigger out of the white house".

I'm telling you, if the economy doesn't get better, if more Americans go homeless and hungry, if old people start dying because they can't get medicines, if the cost of foods rise and the buying power of wages continue to go in opposite directions...if people are hungry, and hot, and angry, and poor...Scientology Sarah Palin would wipe the floor with any candidate facing her.

So...that's my Tin Foil Hat Theory. Your TFHT...show me it!