Friends

Your December Non-Denominational Gift-Giving Day Present from the Shadow Unit crew: "On Faith."

Come and get it.

It's a December Non-Denominational-Gift-Giving Day miracle! Two much-delayed checks have arrived today, along with a copy of the Russian SF magazine Esli, with truepenny-n-my space pirate story "Boojum" innit.

woot!

And now time to start that haaaaaaaaaaaaaaam. As soon as I find the recipe...

"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity."

...and there was nobody there to tell me that i couldn't keep her.

And this is why the Inauthentic Borscht recipe calls for grating the beets in a clean sink. (I pour boiling water into mine to rinse after I scrub it down, before using it as a food prep surface.

Mmm. Beets.

( LJ Cut for the safety and sanity for readers who prefer more substantial posts. )
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Watching the giant Wookiee muppet dog run around the back yard gives me a very good idea of what the hair movement on a sasquatch would look like.

Merry/Happy Christmas, to those who observe. I hope your day is filled with Christmassy delight (and no obnoxious relatives, drunken or otherwise)


Me, I'm off to go dancing/socializing tonight, followed by the Obligatory Movie & Chinese food tomorrow. Twenty-four hours of Social Behavior, and no writing. My wrist -- after 48 hours and thirty+ pages of new material -- will be grateful to do the raise drink/lower drink movement instead....

[and for those of you who need to reach me about ongoing social plans, the phone will be faster than texting/e-mail for the next 36+ hours.  Yes, shocking, I know...]




*taken from one of my favorite-this-year holiday cards, because it really does sum up my feelings about people who insist that everyone is Just Like Them, or unhappy that they're not 
EtA: I note that the number of e-cards vs traditional cards was about even this year, but it was only a few of the e-cards that had an overtly Christmas feel (incl Christmas trees, Santas, angels and etc).  And those came from people who really should have known better.  The traditonal carsd were all seasonal, not holiday-specific.  Indicative of the people, or the availability of season-general e-cards?  I

My brother's house last night. A winter wonderland! We were there for his father in law's 80th birthday party. As beautiful as it was outside, the drive home was very slow and took every ounce of concentration. Snow falling steadily, road covered with fresh snow and in that area they don't salt because of people's wells. It was the kind of falling snow that hypnotizes you as it drive through it, creating constant 3D effect  as if you are driving through a vortex. Wierd and wonderful.

Nevertheless, it was still absolutely magical out there.

Hope you have a contented and peaceful few days ahead of you:) Happy Christmas!

It's the eve of Christmas Eve and my cards are not done. For those on my Christmas list, this probably isn't earth-shattering news.

But this year, late is even later. Even for me.


late evening
the tangle of Christmas lights
still dark


In the meantime, hot apple cider is simmering as I enjoy reading this year's abundance of cards. There seem to be a few more homemade and personalized cards this year. I guess creativity is in an upswing!

I've read every poem, enjoyed every photo, appreciated every painting and sketch.


smell of cinnamon --
a glitter of happy
greetings

Thursday 24th Dec. '09

Christmas Eve sirens
the firies* drive round tooting
we wave and we cheer

*Aussie for firefighters

************************

summer hots up
the creek’s at high tide
but I’m packing

So there's my 1.5 attempt at spinning. The outside is better than the inside, but still very very erratic. And now I have to figure out when the spindle is full, and how to ply it....

(This is lovely wool that asciikitty sent. It's more teal than blue in person.)

It's the 1.5 because here is the .5 attempt, with combed 100% virgin silver Briard:



That's the belly of the GRD's stuffed lion, if you want to know. *g*

1) Tomorrow, at some point, there will be a new episode of Shadow Unit. I can't tell you when exactly, but it's called "On Faith" and it is our Very Special Holiday Episode.

It was written by Sarah Monette, and don't forget to check for easter eggs. *g*

There might also be a S3 trailer. Maybe.

2) Good climbing night tonight. I only did four walls, but one was a new 5.8 on the 45-foot overhand, which includes a little roof--and I didthe first thirty feet of it in one big push, which made me feel really good about myself. Two other routes were 5.9s on the slab that had previously eluded me. I didn't do 'em clean or neat, but I did 'em. And next time I will do better. (I also sent a 5.8 I have gotten before.)

Joy was redoubled by listening to two nice climber boys from Colorado bitch about how our 5.8s are like everybody else's 5.10s. I mean, I know it, but it's nice to have confirmed.

3) I am making borscht tomorrow, dammit. TBRE and I are both giving blood. We have an excuse to need beets and beef. (It was also a good excuse for steak tonight.)

4) I'm on page 57 of rereading The White City and it hasn't fallen apart on me yet. There's always the next bit, of course...

5) Crowded House's "Transit Lounge" is so a gamma song.

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

The controversial community organizing group Acorn has not broken any laws in the last five years, according to a Congressional Research Service report released Tuesday evening....

The report found no evidence that voters attempting to cast ballots at the polls had been improperly registered by Acorn, a chief Republican accusation. The report also said that a sting-style effort to publicize the group’s allegedly illegal activities, may have broken state laws

The report is available here

True? False? More political back-and-forth, with journos the willing ball-boys? The citizen-voter can only make their best guess, and hope, someday, we learn to wait for all the facts before jumping in for the kill.


My thanks to realthog for the heads-up.

Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

writing things:

4,000 words yesterday, total, plus interview questions, and the first half of a freelance gig. Only 2700 new words written so far today. I know I'll be able to put away another thousand or so later today, but mid-day is not good crafting time for me. So I give it over to the Other Stuff that fills every life, and hope to get back to it when my creative brain wakes up again.

Understanding how my brain worked -- what the most productive writing hours were, and when I simply wasn't going to do my best work, was a major breakthrough for me. I write best from 6am to about 11am, and then again from 4pm through to about 9pm. Mid-day is good for taking care of paperwork and chores, thinking-not-writing, etc. But it can be frustrating, sitting here at 2pm, wanting to write, but knowing that odds are good I'll just get frustrated and force 500 words -- while if I wait a while longer, those 500 and more will flow.

This is why I like doing freelance editing and copywriting. It fills the space between 11am and 4 pm so nicely.

EtA: 4,100 words, and back in a wrist brace for my efforts. Calling it a night.

non-writing things:

For my fellow Leverage fans: http://popculturezoo.com/archives/5049 You're welcome. :-D

One of the things I love about fandom is that, at its best, it's a potlatch society. It's one of the last few places in the Western world where a person's social status and the respect in which they are held is determined by the quality and magnanimity and effort involved in what they give away.

I've been involved in Criminal Minds fandom and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. fandom and SFF fandom, and I used to tell people I wasn't a real fan, because I didn't contribute enough to the communities. But I guess I do bring something, and I should value that.

I think of Yuletide, for example, or the people who write fic and turn it loose in the world for other people to read and enjoy, or the people who write meta and reviews and amazing critical analysis, and the people who run conventions, and the people who organize fan fundraisers, and the people who read carefully and comment and maintain rec lists, and the people who critique and educate about social issues, and the people who maintain lending libraries of out-of-print works, all for the joy of sharing something they love and feel strongly about.

Giving stuff away--and I don't mean obligatory gifts, the oh my god I have to find something for my mother in law that costs at least seventy-five bucks gifts--is a small human act of heroism. When we give time, or kindness, or something we know somebody else will love (or needs), we are reflecting, for a moment, our best selves. And in the act, we receive, as well: giving benefits the giver. Not in gratitude, but in oxytocin; the elevation that comes from community, from purpose. The love hormone, they call it, but what it really is is the social bonding hormone.

It's the thing that makes us a tribe. And the Internet makes that tribe world-wide.

I remember one time when I was so sad. I had walking pneumonia and a broken heart, and I was taking the bus home from work in a howling nor'easter and I had a mile to walk with no sidewalk from the bus stop to my door. And as I was getting off the bus, a pretty girl smiled at me. Just the gift of a smile, no reason. Maybe I looked as sad as I felt.

I still remember her, and that smile was in 1995.

As I've gotten older, this has become more and more clear to me. All I am, all I do in the world, the only value any of it has is where it benefits the world around me.

We all die. No, really. We strut our little time upon the--well, you know it. Trying never to die is futile and sad; but the prospect of that inevitability, I think, can be comforting. When we look at our own impermanence (as individuals, as cultures, as a species) then it starts to come plain that the moral value that brings the most good into the world is compassion.

Compassion is hard and scary. It means putting ourselves at risk and really listening to other people, even when we disagree with them. Even when they want to destroy us, or are completely oblivious to our needs. It does not preclude self-defense or anger, of course. And it does not mean that we have to martyr ourselves to the cruelty of others.

But it does mean that maybe, when it costs us nothing to give something away, we can do it. We can fold that neglected laundry we pull out of the dryer in the communal laundry room of life. That's a gift, after all.

Somehow, we've gotten this idea that giving is about stuff. And all that stuff we collect can make us more comfortable, but our enduring legacy is the attention we pay. The good stuff is the ways we help the world, the little pleasures we bring to others, the trees we plant, and the houses we build.

And so many of the things we can give away cost us nothing. Nothing we need, anyway. A little self-importance, a little of our self-image as Important Busy People Who Own The Road.

I like to let people into traffic. You know, I'm almost never in that much of a hurry to get somewhere. And the surprised and relieved looks they give me through the driver's side window are so very gratifying.

We are so small, and the night is so large. If we don't hold the light for each other, who will?

So this is just to say thank you to everybody who's let me into traffic over the years. For all the little kindnesses and efforts on my behalf, or just generous gestures broadcast. For all the aha moments, and the belly laughs or snickers, the things that made me go huh I'm not sure that's right.

Thanks for all the comments and arguments and small generousities. Thanks to everybody who's given me the gift of their attention, either here or to my published work: even if you hated what I had to say, you listened. (and thank you to asciikitty and coffeeem, as there is !fiber! in my mailbox today to go with my shiny new spindle.)

I'll do my best to pass it along where I can.

Happy sun return. Happy new year.

( LJ Cut for the safety and sanity for readers who prefer more substantial posts. )
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Tomorrow is Christmas Eve! How did it get here so quickly?
Lots to do still as always. Heading off to the gym shortly.
37 days until we BustaMove. Yikes! Did I mention that my daughter has signed on?
The prize list is growing:) Yay. Wooden Monkey has donated a gift certificate:) Thanks. $10 donation gets you in on a draw for all this! Only 57 tickets sold to date.