Monthly Archives: December 2009

Dec
23

Girls With Guns

Posted in random | Leave a comment
This is very NSFW, so you’ve been warned… And it’s a clip from a movie called Kick-Ass, which is in itself a spoof of a the superhero type of movie. The school-girl-as-weapon is a neat idea…except that I think every anime out there has one. Gunslinger Girls, although also wretchedly violent, is worth seeing. As a bit of social commentary, it’s rather sobering and sort of sad.… Read more
Dec
22

All I Needed to Know About Writing, I Learned From Max & Ruby.

Posted in writing | 1 Comment
Honestly? I hate this show. It’s creepy. Ruby is a anal-retentive little bunny with OCD. Max has a weird rubber elephant and a wind-up mechanical lobster. And flipping chicks. Why doesn’t Max talk? WTF are their parents? Questions like this don’t keep me awake at night, but I do wonder about it when I’m stuck watching it with Lucy. However, putting aside the weird factor, I caught the episode “Ruby Writes a Story” last night. I was hoping to embed part of it here, but I couldn’t find it online, so suffice it to say, Ruby wanted to write a story and I was a little struck by all the little mechanisms of procrastination that she goes through – getting the paper lined up, just so. Getting her nice new eraser lined up next to a stack of sharpened pencils. Deciding that writing is thirsty work after getting a single line… Read more
Dec
21

Separated at Birth? or How I *Really* Got My Agent

Posted in agents, cats, christmas, colleen lindsay | 7 Comments
So, of course I get a lot of questions these days as to how I got my agent. Was it the contest wins? My Hello Kitty mouse? The sheer and utter brilliance of my query? Probably some random combination of all of the above, but more to the point, Colleen and I apparently own the same cats. Case Study #1) Stinkyboy and Buddycat belong to Colleen: This is Stinkyboy (nicely lifted from Colleen’s Flickr account). And this is Buddycat (also taken from Colleen’s Flickr account). Case Study # 2) Killian and Jake belong to me. Killian from this morning. He has food on his nose and doesn’t look very happy about being photographed. He’s a grumpy old thing. And here is Jake. Who tends to preen a little more for the lens. He is less grumpy in general, although a bit more shy around people. Coincidence? I think not. Clearly… Read more
Dec
20

On Meringues

Posted in baking, snow | 3 Comments
I almost ended up not making these yesterday, and it’s a good thing I hadn’t gotten very far – if the power had gone out when I was mixing, the entire batch would have had to be tossed. As it stands though, I decided to document a bit of the baking process as I’ve had a lot of questions over the years on how to make them. (And it’s not that it’s overly tricky, but it doesn’t take much to screw it up. Given the amount of time it takes to make them, that can be a bit heartbreaking. LOL.)  Last time I made these I was in Canada and they turned out like ass – though I think part of that was because I had a hand beater and a shallow bowl, which really doesn’t work. You need a fast mixer. (It could also have been that the elevation… Read more
Dec
19

Snow and Anklets and Busted Gazebos

Posted in snow | 5 Comments
Yeah, so we got snow last night. A lot of snow (for DC, anyway). In fact, it’s *still* snowing. Which would be fine for the most part. After all, I have nowhere to go and I’d pretty much decided I wasn’t going to do anything but bake today, anyway. (I’m eating my 3rd homemade corn muffin as we speak and the eggs are setting to make meringues, which I’ll blog about tomorrow.) However. Apparently my gazebo wasn’t meant for having 20 inches of snow packed on top of it, and if I’d had half a brain I would have pulled the canvas roof off last night, but there it is. So after a little bit of time this morning I heard this nice thud and came downstairs to find the entire top end completely inside out, metal struts bent all to hell. Hmmmph. I’m a little pissy about it, honestly.… Read more