…squeamish reader. Yes, I know. I write fantasy in which the main character commits blood sacrifices. And I’m squeamish. I never pretended to be coherent) My favorite Stross novels are still the Bob Howard/Laundry novels and short stories, especially some of the short stories (The Concrete Jungle is awesome fun). And a French book, too, Shadow of the Prince by Tran-Nhut, a detective story featuring the recurring team of Mandarin Tân and his sidekic…

…er is, first, that I get those in the voters’ packet, and second, that I get a good to-read list for this part of the year. Last year I didn’t have much time at all for reading the novels, but this time around I’m ready, and I have plenty of time. Should be nice. Except that for some reason, I can’t manage to make the copy of China Miéville’s Embassytown stop crashing on my computer, grr)….

…An Apology. Due to the fallout of the ceremony (and the fact that several committee members were angrily accosted late at night in the bar, which is not a very pleasant experience), they’ve had a spate of resignations. They’re short of people now, for various reasons. If you want to volunteer, now would be a good time. ETA: fixed this, as fjm pointed out that I had been mistaken. -Foz Meadows on Why Teaching Equality Hurts Men. I’m actually not c…

…rts is up against The Wise Man’s Fear in Book Spot Central’s Annual tournament: vote early, vote often, etc. (especially since I suspect it’s going to take me a miracle to reach the second round given the competition…) Meanwhile, I think I have a first scene for the book, except that it doesn’t have enough magical fireworks. Will go add them in….

…t ideas for publishing and/or organising recipes on WordPress very much welcome at this stage, since I really feel I’ve done nothing but a short-term hack to fix the problem… In the process, I reorganised my website a bit, and moved a few pages around (hopefully nothing traumatic), as well as set up missing pages (*cough* Obsidian and Blood omnibus *cough*). And the weekend was meant to be spent looking at my US taxes, but this has come to a halt…

…is also pretty amazing compared to most mainstream Western TV). [3] I’m not saying everyone commutes to an office job today–just that it’s become far more common and accepted in our current society….

…nants in non-terminal positions (which is the case in Northern accent, incidentally). However, every time I opened my mouth, I seemed to come up with a different version of fail. So, the good point: there’s a logic. The bad point: most pronunciations appear to have very little to do with what I expect as a French/English speaker. And they depend on the vowel immediately preceding the consonant, which explains why I could never work out a consisten…

…Still brainstorming and researching the history of Paris. And still tentatively making changes to the blog to have better recipe formatting: apologies, it might look a little broken down for the next week or so. And started counting down to Eastercon. Wow. Can’t quite believe it’s so soon….

…em in place (which also prevent you from slipping in anything that’s not round and flat-ish); and a smaller space on top that’s used for glasses. Rice bowls don’t fit in at the bottom, and sort of fit in at the top (while taking the space of 1.5 glass, which is problematic). The H pulls back, looks at the washing machine, and says, “You know, I bet Asian washing machines are set up differently, because this was clearly not meant for rice bowls at…

…in and other powerhouses, so very much doubting it’ll get past the first round. But just in case… voting is March 13th-March 15th, I’ll try to post a reminder when it actually happens. And Servant of the Underworld is book of the month over at Absolute Write Water Cooler’s Book study, so if you feel like discussing its merits (or lack thereof), feel free to hop on over to the thread and speak at length. Meanwhile, we’re having stuffed zucchini wit…