This is a hard weekend, with me working Saturday & Sunday, so I’m letting myself slide on getting in a page a day on writing. Also, you may have noticed no podcast yet – although I still have a couple of days for that. I’ll try not to let anything else do the slip & slide as we go forward…

It seems lazy to just post a link to someone else’s brilliant insight, but I SO AGREE with this…

I’ve been keeping close to goal on my fiction, and posting nada about it. Time to show an excerpt from what I’m currently working on – a sort of Harry Potter meets Harry Dresden urban fantasy:

Losing a dimension, gaining it back plus one extra, then losing two and getting one back is a little stressful, but hopping was thankfully over quickly no matter where you went in the world. Bill appeared back in his natural form within sight of the airport and let out a sigh. “Why didn’t they put the airport closer to the ley line?” He stretched out his legs and back, then walked wearily the ten blocks to the airport’s entrance.
He pulled out his cell phone and called Milam’s number once he was inside the main building. “I’m just now picking up my bags,” Milam said. “Where are you at?”
“On my way to the car rentals. Meet me there.” Bill hung up and went over to the Hertz counter, where a young woman smiled at him. “Hi,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “I need a car for the next week or so.” He showed her his badge and gave her his government credit card.
“Working on a case?”
The young woman wasn’t looking at him, just making small talk, but he was always wary of people he didn’t know getting too much information. “Just some research.”
“Will you be taking the car out of Seattle?”
“Yes, we’ll be going into the Selkirk Mountains.”
“More than one driver?”
“My partner, Arthur Milam, will also be driving.”
“I’ll add him on here.” She typed for a few seconds. “Would you like an economy car or something a little larger?”
“Something comfortable. We’ll be in it a lot.”
“Of course, sir.” She clicked a few items off with her mouse, and swiped his credit card through a reader. In a moment, she was holding the printout of their contract and going over the details with him. After he signed, she gave him his copies and filed her own. “Have a safe trip to the Selkirks, sir.” She looked back at her computer, then back at him, her brows scrunched together. “The Selkirks. Isn’t that where that reservation is?”
“Yes, I believe so,” Bill said, stiffly, folding his papers and stuffing them into his jacket pocket.
“Avoid them,” she said conspiratorially. “Inbred bunch of loonies, if you ask me.” She caught a glimpse of his wand as he abashedly tried to retreat from her counter, and her mouth dropped open. Turning beet-red, she mumbled, “Sorry. Drive safe.”
“I will,” he muttered, hurrying away and trying to ignore her whispered conversation with her coworker. He was going to head to the parking lot, but remembered that he had to wait for Milam. Uncomfortably, he stopped within view of the counter and looked around for his partner.
He was acutely aware of every glance and pointed finger from the Hertz people. He had the urge to whip out his wand and do something vile to them, but that was the sort of thing the FBI frowned on, so he fought it. Instead, he clenched his right fist tightly and seethed inwardly.

My baby joins The System

That’s my oldest in front of the list of her classmates. She had her first day of kindergarten today. We dropped her off at class, then came back to eat lunch with her. I was fairly unemotional about it until this moment:

Posing in line for daddy

She was returning to class after lunch, and my heart just broke. The future reached out and grabbed me, showing me her first friends, her first disappointments, her first bullies, her first brush with mean people, and I fought tears the entire way out of the building. Once they’re in school, you have no control over what happens to them most of the day. You can’t intervene if someone’s mean to them. You’re not there if they get hurt. You only learn about it afterwards. You have to let go, and hope that what you have given them is enough.

Sure, she’s only in kindergarten, but I had to let go of her today, and it makes me a little sad. I hope tomorrow is easier.

Fabulous!

You will not believe some of these moments…

So, we have a DS9 episode playing, “The Muse”, and there was a line about artists – they create because they want to be remembered. I wrote something like that once, about how art is how we touch immortality. The only other thing we can do that gives us our chance to extend life beyond ourselves is have children, and kids, much as I love mine, are something we have only the merest control over.

Art, though, can be controlled. With the internet, you don’t even have to have the filter of editors, museums, collectors and what not to get in the way of your vision. Writers and painters, especially, are liberated by this medium, as we can see by the huge number of blogs and webcomics that saturate the web. Since the internet is forever, we share in its permanence.

These words live as long as the servers exist to transmit them. Therefore, as I stated on my birthday, I am forever.

I’ve kept up with the other goals, so I’m thinking a podcast needs to show up mighty quick to maintain my momentum. The big problem I have with audio recording right now is the 5 year old and 8 month old girls who love to help daddy with his audio recordings. There’s always 4 in the morning, I guess…

So, I didn’t get ANY recipes for FSP from anybody – shame on you! – so I looked up some variations. None of them really intrigued me, so I mixed and matched.

I used a premade graham cracker crust because I felt lazy. I’ll probably make my own next time, but it was ok for my first time.

I whipped about a cup of heavy whipping cream with maybe 2 tablespoons of sugar to medium peaks. This was WAY too much, given my needs, but better too much than too little. I stuck that in the fridge to use at the end.

Next, I creamed together a stick of butter and about a cup of light brown sugar in my mixer. (A birthday present for which I am eternally grateful to Ann, Rich, Dom and Leah). I occasionally gave that a spin while doing the next step.

I combined about a tablespoon of decaf Earl Grey tea with about 2 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips , a tablespoon of sugar, a dollop of vanilla extract and a 1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream into a glass bowl and let it melt together over a sauce pan of steaming water. This is the kind of thing you have to keep stirring in order to keep it from being a big mess. Once the chips were mostly melted, I pulled it from the sauce pan and let it start cooling, still stirring every now and then.

Back to the creamed brown sugar, I added, in retrospect, something I didn’t need. I put in some gelatin that had sat in water for a few minutes. This was unnecessary, I think, and next time I won’t use it. I then put in of the whipped cream from the fridge, then started mixing at a high speed. I put in the chocolate mix, stirred at high speed again, and then added in 2 eggs. I should’ve let the chocolate cool a little more, but c’est la vie. More high speed mixing, then I added in about a cuip of whipped cream. After a lot more mixing, probably about 5-10 minutes, I got a pudding-like texture.

Now, we were ready for the final phase. Poured the chocolate mix into the pie crust, then added the whipped cream on top. Stuck that into the freezer, then poured the leftover chocolate mix into a couple of cups for my wife and older daughter, who appreciated it.

After a couple hours in the freezer, it was ready to cut and serve. It was tasty, but I think next time I’m adding about 2 or 3 more tablespoons of sugar to the whole thing, and leaving out the gelatin. Also, I’ll let the chocolate mix cool more before adding it in, and beat the whipping cream to stiff peaks.

Feel free to give this a try – it really was a nice treat for my birthday!

Today, I am 45 years old. I feel every day of that when I creakily walk around in the mornings.
But, when I look into the eyes of my beloved wife, I am a teenager again, feeling all the warmth and excitement of first dates and first kisses, knowing that decades stretch out before us filled with that love.
When I lift my oldest daughter into the air, I am a boy, playing with the most precious young girl in the world and soaking in all the world has to offer, and thirsting for even more.
When I hold my baby girl, I am a child, filled with the potential of life and the desire to crawl after it until I can get up and run it down.
When I am with my family, my life stretches before and behind me, and I am a point on that continuum of love, pain, life, death, misery and happiness that intersects with dozens of others, and I am forever.

If you’re in the area, here’s a new gaming web site that looks like it needs members:

http://brazosvalleygamers.org/

Once upon a time, there was a barbecue place in town called Tom’s, and while I wasn’t too ecstatic about their BBQ, they had one dessert that my wife and I still remember fondly from our dating days. They had, hands-down, the most delicious French Silk Pie that I have ever tasted. They didn’t make it themselves, but bought it from a supplier. Alas, they went out of business before we could wheedle the supplier’s name out of some unsuspecting waitstaff.

So, if you’re from the BCS area and know the name of that pie genius, I summon your culinary knowledge! Failing the name of the pie maker, please post me a delicious FSP recipe (I’ve been known to cook a treat or two in my time), and I’ll let you know the results of making it.

My tastebuds implore you!

Man lives in futuristic sci-fi world where all his interactions take place in cyberspace

Around these parts, it’s taken as read that Barack Obama represents the far left of the political spectrum, and he’s dragging us into socialism with the iron grip that the Democrats are wielding their power with.

Now, speaking as someone who comes from the far left of the political spectrum, I can only say – I wish.

How has this tepid conservative, a man who consistently touts Republican policies and Republican idols like Reagan, been converted into Stalin’s love child? The same way that Bill Clinton, a man to the right of Richard Nixon, was assailed as a hard-core liberal. They lied.

Now, some of the confusion is intentional on Obama’s part. He did woo the left wing of the Democrats by making it seem like he was one of them: called himself a feminist, told the gay activists that he would be a “fierce advocate” for them, said he would never have voted for the war in Iraq if he’d been in the Senate in 2003. Once in office, however, he threw the gays overboard almost immediately, has been as pro-war as Bush was, and has continued eroding rights as much as his predecessor did.

Now, he did get a health care plan enacted – one filled with stupid tax breaks and burdens on everyone to buy insurance. So, we have mandatory health insurance, not universal health care. The insurance companies have made a great show of how much they don’t like being handed millions of new customers, but the only people they’re fooling are the people who think Obama’s a socialist.

He did appoint 2 women to the Supreme Court – replacing more liberal justices with pro-corporate conservatives who were, of course, denounced by the right-wingers as Maoist revolutionaries. Good luck hanging on to what little rights to privacy we have left, and hail the new, unlimited corporate person – all of the rights, none of the responsibilities of a real citizen!

The other big thing he did, of course, was the stimulus package. (Not the bank bailout. That was Bush) The package was almost exactly was McCain wanted to do. Half of it was tax cuts. Tax cuts. Instead of cutting taxes, why don’t we raise them on the only economic class that benefited from the slash and burn years of conservative ascendacy in America? That’s what a Commie would want to do.

In fact, let me just tell you what I, a true far-left Commie, would have done if I had control of the entire political process in this country. LEt me tell you what class warfare would really look like, right-wingers…

Banks crashed the economy? Well, I tell you what – we’re nationalizing the banks. And we’re throwing all those corrupt and crooked execs in jail and seizing all their assets, down to their nice, expensive shoes. Then, the new Bank of the USA would forgive all those mortgages and start lending money at low rates in order to foster community development, and not large corporate development.

Speaking of nationalizing, the insurance companies would also be nationalized, and the execs would follow the banksters into jail. If I need to, I would declare them “enemy combatants”, since George Bush so conveniently gave the president unlimited authority to do so.

BP ruined the Gulf of Mexico with incompetence or corruption? All their assets in the US are now forfeit to the government.

Congressman balk at my leftist agenda? I remind them of my power to declare people “enemy combatants”…

I replace retiring justices on the Supreme Court with real leftists, who will rule in favor of labor unions rather than corporations, and advance the people’s rights over the rights of the wealthy.

I would end the war profiteers free ride in Iraq and Afghanistan by cancelling all those contracts that they won through the virtue of being connected to Republicans and prosecute them for profiteering. They’d want to stay out of the country when I was done with them.

To keep jobs in the US, I’d insist that any company selling products here had to pay at least the American minimum wage to their employees, no matter where they were in the world. If free trade is to enhance the quality of life for other workers around the world, it can only do that if it raises their wages to a point where they can begin to improve their lives. With this policy, Americans wouldn’t have to compete against people making pennies a day, and we could force corporations to lift people up rather than drive them down.

There are lots of other things I would do, but you get the idea. When you see Obama, or any Democrat for that matter, making suggestions like these, then you can accuse him of being a far-left radical. Like I wish he was.

Have you ever looked at a social site’s friend recommendations, people who share a dozen or so friends in common with you, whose profile indicates that they were in the same place at the same time hanging with the same crowd as you for several years, and thought, “Who the hell is that?”

I realize that it has been a couple of years >ahem< since college, but I often get these Facebook friend recommendations of people who obviously knew everybody I knew at A&M that I don't recognize at all. I mean, it’s not like the Theatre Arts program at A&M was gigantic – I’m pretty sure I knew every single person who was in it by name.

Apparently, I’m wrong about that, because I see all these friends of people I do know by name, and I can’t place them at all. I’m not talking about the ones that it takes me a minute to remember, I’m talking about the people who must have dropped in from the alternate universe where they hung with all my school chums except me.

I’ve accepted some of these recommendations just to see if getting a better look at their posts and pics will jog my memory, but usually, if I can’t remember them almost immediately, I only confirm that I didn’t know this person at all. It’s odd.

My pet theory on this is that the membranes separating all the parallel earths are perilously thin, and we cross between them constantly. That’s why eyewitnesses to an event are unreliable – they all really did see something different, but they all popped into an alternate universe than the one they’re trying to describe. That’s why you and your friends always tell your old stories differently – you’ve slipped through from another universe, and damn it, in that one you really were cool!

So, if you see that you and I share almost all the same friends from school or work, but just can’t place me, rest assured that in my universe, we were the dearest of friends…