1. Due to my Internet troubles some IAFAuctions did not go up on schedule!  Luckily one did.  Cris did a beautiful necklace for Prester John and I got to poke it for the first time yesterday.  It stood up to poking!  The other auction was JoSelle’s piece based on Black Feather, which is so awesome I can’t believe it.  It makes me feel so shivery inside to see these beautiful things that were inspired by some story I wrote.  I need to give JoSelle a big hug when I see her this weekend.  I’m in the midst of running around now, but I will have a blog badge for all the new auctions soon so that people can promote.  In the meantime, take note: Cris’s is the last Prester John piece going up for this auction, so if you want to get a bit of Valente’s magic as interpreted by amazing artists, you should bid on that or JoSelle’s Prester John piece (at $75 now!).  The Black Feather necklace is also the last chance to get something by JoSelle.

2. I finished redesigning my web design portfolio.  It’s a work in progress, as I may want to do something flashier with the header.  But it has all the information organized the way I want, and that was the main thing.  I need to add links to it, yes, but I am trying to decide how I will do so.  Go see in the meantime.

3. Did you know that my writing group the Black Beans has a website now?  You should go look at it and maybe keep an eye on the news section, because some big ass news is going up there soon.  (Not anything concerning me, mind, but something I am very excited about.)

4. I arrived in Madison a few hours ago and am very tired, and yet I’ll be up late tonight just as I will be up late every night. Ah well, tomorrow I can sleep in.

5. WisCon is finally here.  It will be over too soon.  Better savor every second!

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I was looking for music documentaries to create a promotional package when I stumbled upon a musical version of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland


This thing is amazing. It's got Peter Sellers, Fiona Fullerton, and Michael Crawford. Totally British and great. It excites me when I find nifty movies I didn't know existed.

Dear monorail cat,



You have a fan.



Moomin got up on this airport railing, laid down, looked up at me, and said, "MONORAIL KID".

The future is going to be very strange.

A word of advice for airline passengers: Travel light. Or else.

American Airlines announced Wednesday that it will charge most passengers $15 for the first piece of luggage they check.

Other airlines may soon follow suit, quite possibly marking the end of free bag checking that most passengers have known for their entire lives. Many carriers - including American - decided earlier this year to charge $25 for the second bag that customers check.

The reason? Oil.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Postal Carrier
Laser Test Subject
Secret Shopper
Stuntman
Haberdasher
Shark Whisperer
Sin-Eater
Samurai
Seneschal
Scapegoat
Golem
Time Lord
Ferret
Pie
Sleepy New England Town
Antirobot
Avocado
Ball of Floss
Volvox
Millisecond
Drake Equation
Dental Assistant

Next stop: Mirabile? -- SciAm talks about work done to express (single) genes of extinct animals, allowing us to see more clearly what they were like/what the genes did. But who knows....?

At least, per Scientific American!

Just in time for the new Indiana Jones movie the BBC reports that archaeologists are really, really sure the crystal skulls are fakes.

Not that such surety will settle the matter for true believers.

It's been called, in a f-locked lj entry of a pretty sharp guy, "indicative of the gross anti-intellectualism inherent in the core horror fan base."

vee_ecks said in a piublic post, "If some hero, brave and strong, could but chain this thread to the earth, stake its heart and cut off its head, the beast would die."

They speak, of course, of the current Shocklines thread Joshi on Koontz.

I've been so good too, not saying a thing. But on page 11 I just had to kibbitz.

Let's see how it goes from here. I'm expecting a lock within two pages.

http://www.myspace.com/rhubarbwhiskey


omgomgomgomgomg SO EXCITED!

I try to hide it but my close friends know… speaking in public freaks me out. At this
Commonwealth Club event I spoke at on Monday, there were not very many friendly faces in the room. There were a few cheese professionals scattered about, and one or two folks who looked like customers, but mostly I was about to speak to a room of strangers who paid admission. Not only that, I was going to speak about raw milk cheese on a panel with a biochemist and a dairy scientist. I’m here to tell you folks, a million years ago when I was in school; science was not my best subject.

I have learned the hard way that showing that fear does not make audiences sympathetic. In fact it makes them uneasy and unresponsive. So I fake it and drink a lot of water.

I made the audience laugh by talking about my rudimentary science skills. I talked about how many raw milk cheese illnesses are a matter of cheese manufacturing, not raw milk per se*. I mentioned that we really didn’t want to kill anyone, but that food has its risks. Look, Canyonofcheese.com wrote it up so I don’t have to

All in all it was a good event and we’ve already been asked to do another one.

Better than speaking in public, after the event a few of us went out to Incanto for dinner and drinks. Evidently the chef is kinda famous. I really should get cable TV one of these days so I can know these things. Because I was with a well-regarded cheesemaker and a cheese distributor who sold to the restaurant we got the “trade” treatment. I love the “trade” treatment. I never get it from working at Rainbow but I do get it from cheese events sometimes.

The food was pretty awesome and I tried my first plate of trotters. Poor little tasty piggies.

Since the chef had hung out with our table (let me reiterate, not because of me) for a while, when the waitress came back she asked if we were “trade”. Someone responded that we were cheese people. The waitress said, “I love cheese. I just got some great Petit Basque from Rainbow.”

Awesome. Cheese for the people. That’s us. The chef wouldn’t recognize me from anyone, but the staff buys their cheese at our store. I couldn’t sum up our goals any better.




*The biggest case of listeriosis from cheese in recent history was in the mid ‘80s in LA with about 150 people documented to be ill, including a number of miscarriages. Raw milk was the culprit but the cheese had been sold as pasteurized. Either through improper pasteurization or greed, raw milk was mixed with pasteurized milk, causing the listeria in the milk to spread like Vacherin Mont D’or on a hot summer day. Before you ask, this was not “bathtub cheese” but cheese from what was thought to be a reputable factory producer of cheese sold in many Los Angeles stores.

You get to vote!

To vote in support of the Supreme Court's decision on LGBT marriage:

1. call 1-916-445-2841
2. press 1, 5, 1, 1

After you've done this send it on to all supporters you know.
It couldn't be easier to vote... please take 15 seconds right now to do it!

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is receiving large numbers of phone calls from the supporters of "Limits on Marriage" (The constitutional amendment baning same sex marriage in California) about his comment to a group of Log Cabin Republicans that he wouldn't support a constitutional amendment.
We don't want him to go back on his word.
He must hear from us too.
The aide I spoke to yesterday was so glad I called as most of his calls were from the "other side." Now it is automated and you will not talk to anyone, just push the number for pro Supreme Court decision.
Call, email or write him and thank him for his declining to support this initiative. (They don't ask what state you are from, by the way.)

To email go to http://gov.ca.gov/interact, hit email tab and select Supreme Court decision on Same Sex Marriage. On the next screen you must click PRO. It's a little confusing since we're talking about the initiative for which we are con. Then just a couple of words of thanks are all you need. No long letter which no one will read anyway.

State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-558-3160 ( new number )

What a beatiful sunny morning.

I think that the NCIS and CSI: New York cliffhangers were well done, but Criminal Minds prompted both J and me to react with "Cheap trick."

If anyone comments, there may be spoilers there.

Originally published at perigee's WordPress Blog. Please leave any comments there.

Which is, I guess, okay, since I upgraded them both recently.

But it’s gonna bother me until I fix it all.