Hiding fandom in the underwear drawer since 1977

So, with lots of planning and second guessing and spending WAY too much money and time, nevertheless, the dinner party was a success.  Not enough roasted vegetables, too much rice, chicken and white bean dip, ovens acting up, and the chocolate fondue, garbanzo bean cookie brownie, and avocado/yogurt sauce all were very popular.  Not gluten for the evening, no eggs, no nuts, and optional cheese and chicken.  Everyone drank wine instead of all the beer and so I was very glad that they brought wine as hostess gifts.  Also, 2 extra people so we kinda ran out of seating.  Woops. 

Done.  I am done in.  Also, next time, I'll skip Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and Mom's Organic and go straight to Shopper Food Warehouse.  Our local SFW has an enormous ethnic foods department, huge selection of Kosher, Indian, Latin, and Asian product, the largest selection of Goya I've ever seen, and their prices are half of the other places.  Lots of vegetarian options, lots of gluten free options, and so much cheaper, and calmer than these lunatic high end places.  I don't even have to go into a parking garage and negotiate around giant SUVs with rhino guards.

Thanks to everyone for the excellent suggestions.   

SO FAR BEHIND, but, let’s try and get caught up!

 

vialethe  wants me to talk about Lucy

 

Corellian_sugar asked about cooking successes and disasters (I’ve been waiting for this one)

Anon wants to know where I’d assign the Pevensies in Hogwarts houses

 

 

( All about Lucy )

 

Cooking disasters

 

( that time the sweet potato casserole blew up 3 times )

 

 

 

( Pevensies get it sorted )

 

 

Phew.  Still behind but there’s 3 days worth!!!  Thanks so much!!

Also, Yuletide in.  I'd love to try and get a treat done.  We'll see.  I baked about 14 hours this weekend, managed to miss a Christmas party and my hands are covered in burns and cuts.  I have chocolate in my hair and under my fingernails.
 

( A personal milestone in working with Mr. Spock )

PS, on the subject of holiday disasters, so glad I'm not cooking Thanksgiving this year as we just had a water main break up the street!!!  AND IT'S NOT MY PROBLEM

Most of the CJers already know, having learned the devastating news last night via Twitter or Facebook, or woke to it this morning. Aaron Allston, the wonderful friend and mentor, a terrific writer, punster and humorist, author of so many popular books in the Star Wars EU, died yesterday at VisionCon.

You can read tributes here at Club Jade, which is where I first met him in the 90s when he become an integral member of the Wild Karrdes
And here on theforce.net

If you are on facebook, you will see is an outpouring of grief and so many pictures of Aaron with so many SW fans.   My FB feed is full of them and if you start with Aaron's own Facebook wall that will connect you, too.  Aaron was a regular fixture on the Con circuit and Club Jade events.  He was a popular and frequent panelist, part of the Tim, Mike Aaron show, at SW EU panels over the years. 

If you are interested in knowing more about the events to come as his friends collectively do our grief work, I would expect that a lot of the information will be posted on Club Jade, so following that site and Dunc's Twitter would be a good place. 

Yub, yub Emperor. I have that button, still.

With credit to Dunc, I borrowed the pic from her post with expresses so well how much we will all miss this wonderful man (complete with Hawaiian shirt).

Source Club Jade

The NFE Madness round posted here! AND TWO IMPORTANT THINGS! Someone wrote a lovely Susan story for me! World Enough

And someone else wrote a story set in TSG-related verse (set during Apostolic Way) involving Peter and the rabbit he showed to Morgan in the AUish Lost in Translation I wrote.  It's adorable and sad and lovely,  The Rabbit of the High King

There are some other really fun stories, too, so go check them out!


I should be posting a new H&M chapter this soon.  Here's a snippet.


I owe comments and thanks to many people for generous reviews.  Thanks so much.  I've not responded as I've been trying to finish the above chapter and as you might have read in the paper, things have been very unsettled in the area I live in.  Your support has been a bright spot in a very, very dark time.  A brief bit on that below. 

And behind the cut a brief comment on the federal government shut down

( Brief rant against those who think our President is a foreign-born Muslim and the anti-Christ )

The good news,


















The C.S. Lewis Company has entered into an agreement with The Mark Gordon Company to jointly develop and produce The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair, the fourth book published in C.S. Lewis' famed fantasy series. The announcement was made today by The C.S. Lewis Company. Coming soon.net has the information here!


YES THERE WILL BE ANOTHER NARNIA MOVIE AND THIS MEANS A MASSIVE INFLUX OF JILL/PUDDLEGLUM/EUSTACE/RILIAN OT4 Am I right??
At one time, on NFFR we cast Anderson Cooper as Puddleglum and Misha Collins as the Warden and Michael Bay to direct. BOOM  YES GIVE ME YOUR FRIVOLOUS CASTING SPOILERS

Also, the Fic Corner Exchange opened and I spotted 4 new Narnia stories, all lovely, and lots of other things.

The Narnia Fic Exchange is wrapping up and the madness round is starting.  There's been a big drop off in FB so I hope you'll go and check out the stories and give them some love!

Cute Overload is sponsoring Tocktober -- adorable pictures of cute animals' 'tocks -- that is, buttocks.

The Bad and the Ugly, the US federal government shut down.  Political rant:  About 30 Republicans in the US House of Representatives have decided to shut down the US government rather than allow poor, uninsured people the opportunity to buy health insurance in government-sponsored exchanges.  Because yes, it's better that poor people die of preventable disease than get to live and therefore potentially vote for a Democrat.  /rant

No, my family is not personally affected as neither of us is subject to the current US government appropriations process.  Many of our friends, colleagues, and family members are affected.  My deep sympathies to any of you affected.

I've been on holiday the last two weeks and the time has included long hours with some other suburban mothers in my vicinity, women who are predominately not now working outside the home as they have children and heavy activity schedules to juggle and their spouses work very long, hard hours.  Something very like the following the occurred when it was revealed that they had all read 50 Shades of Grey in their book club or while standing in the kids' section of Barnes and Noble while their offspring played on the Thomas the Tank Engine train table.

"What I don't understand is how Christian Grey had all that time!" Jane says as she slathers 50 SPF sunblock on her Lands End-clad tankini body.  "Honey!  No throwing sand!  Do you need Monkey Butt for the chafing?" she shouts at her children.

"It's ridiculous," Mary agrees.  "Hey, kids, stop eating all the Trader Joes Pirate Booty popcorn; we're  having lunch soon.  And, dude, you need to finish another 50 pages of your summer assigned reading or no XBox when we get  home!"  (The last is directed to her tween.)  Mary pauses to adjust the Sunbrella.  "If Christian Grey was such a self-made, young billionaire businessman, there is no way he'd have the time or energy for all those assignations.  'Sure, I'll meet you at 4 PM for sexy times!'"

All the women snort and roll their eyes, recalling all the missed soccer practices, parent-teacher conferences, and playdate pickups.  

"It's totally unrealistic."

"She's not seeing him until 10 PM and he's exhausted and checking his iPhone all night." 

This whole week has been an exercise in frustration.  I spent hours of work in the yard last week only to find that I still have mildew on my monarda (bee balm) in the butterfly garden.  Over the last day, I've spent hours researching what was a wonderful, brilliant and awesome idea at work that has now completely crashed and burned.  Sigh.  So frustrating.

Fic has not been rewarding as I slowly, ever so slowly, work on the next chapter of H&M (current word count 9,100).  It tells you something about my lack of enthusiasm and my degree of burn out that I've been working out on the treadmill rather than trying to write.  I wrote an additional 6,000 words that I ended up deleting or removing for possible later use elsewhere.  I have an additional 22,000 words of stuff for this part of the story in various states of good, bad, and ugly.   I feel badly that it's been so long since an update from me so maybe this weekend?  I hope?  So here, have a sneak peek:

( You don't offer flowers and chocolates to entice a Crow )
Edit: Goodness I'm cranky.  So, something happy.  Our bullfrogs are back in the pond and croaking up a storm and so far have not been eaten by passing herons.  The cardinals, goldfinches, black-capped chickadees, woodpeckers and nuthatches are mobbing our feeders and managing to hold their own against the marauding crows and starlings.   I've planted a new red salvia and I'm waiting for the red hibiscus in my butterfly garden because then we will get the hummingbirds (and no, I've never heard them swear).

So, the day started out on an off note.  We were awoken to the doorbell ringing on the apartment and the housekeeping staff.  It was 10:30 AM and we had slept through our alarms and missed the Vatican tour we had signed up for.

Oops.

Now, apart from the significant lost Euros, this was not a terrible thing as eldest child is thinking he's probably an atheist so seeing the greater glories of the Heart of Christendom and the relics of the Holy Roman Empire really are not high on the bucket list.  Also, Palm Sunday is tomorrow and there's a lot of Catholicism going on right now.  So we had pizza for breakfast and hoofed it over to St. Peter's Square and wandered about a little bit and saw the poor Pieta though it is now behind glass.  Then we went to the Castel Sant'Angelo which figured in Hadrian's history, the Borgia pope, and Dan Brown's Angels and Demons (evil Ewan McGregor?).  That was great fun -- a super combination of ancient history, Renaissance, and modern pop culture.  Lots of fun.

Here's a pretty picture!  A Stone Gryphon!


We had awesome gelato.  Twice.  The bad news is pretty bad, alas.  The bank ATM ate my card so I had a long distance yelling match (toll free!) with Wells Fargo.  Our lovely flat is on top of a nightclub cranking 80s and 90s dance music -- the Purple Rain soundtrack, Blondie Heart of Glass and Cindi Lauper.  Oddly, this was the music at our wedding some 24 years ago (knitress was there) and I think this was a lot of the play list at Luke and Mara's Phantom Wedding in Vegas in 1999.  (We did the bunny hop to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun).  Even 15 years ago, I'd be downstairs flailing on the dance floor.  Now, not so much.  Oh well.  Sleep is for the weak, I suppose and the ear plugs won't help for the vibrations coming up from the floor.  Burnin Down The House is playing now, and just changed to Sweet Dreams Are Made of This....

Tomorrow, Ostia Antica!  woot!

Also the awesome annual Washington Post Peeps Dioramas went live.  I love the OccuPeep DC and the CERN, and the Downtown Abbey Peeps,