Rob and I stay in and make sushi for New Year’s Eve instead of braving the madness. But today I had to be in midtown for a meeting and walked through Times Square en route to the subway.  For you, I paused and took a picture.

See that pole in more or less the top center of the photo? That’s what the drop the ball from apparently. It says “2009″ at the base of it. Can you imagine traveling to NYC and standing in the cold with the wind and the snow to watch that tiny thing?  This is why television was invented. And hot toddies.

Tomorrow I’ll be snug at home enjoying the traditional black-eyed peas and collard greens, which are said to bring wealth and good fortune.  The good fortune is working, but I guess I gotta work on my greens recipe because the wealth is a little thin.

What are your plans?

Here’s an odd request. I need In-n-Out bags for a show I’m doing props on. I asked their corporate offices, but they said that they couldn’t help me. I’m hoping some of you might be able to.

If you live near one of these burger joints and are willing to mail me some bags¹, will you drop me a line?

1. I’ll reimburse for postage and buy you a burger or shake or whatever it is they serve there. [↩]

In 2008 here are the first lines of my first blog post for each month:

• January - Is there a better way to start off the New Year than listening to Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, Chaucer’d?
• February - Turned in a project, which I’ll blog about with photos tomorrow.
• March - Last night, the generous Ellen Datlow, invited me down to try some of her extensive collection of single malts.
• April - The spate of good news seems unending.¹
• May - Well, a mere five hours later and I have my primary website back online.
• June - This month, Clarkesworld magazine is offering my story, “Clockwork Chickadee,” as one of their two fiction offerings.
• July - I read all my manuscripts out loud.
• August - The Steampunk Panel that I was on with Holly Black, Liz Gorinsky and Sarah Micklem is now available for your listening pleasure at the Steampunk Workshop.
• September - Michele Lee’s Book Love has nice things say about “Scenting the Dark.”
• October - Well, this is handy, if a bit outdated.
• November -15:25 My reading has been moved to the Doll Room. Irony. #
• December - My wunder-agent, Jennifer Jackson just posted the following.

1. This was my favorite post of the year. [↩]

The Colossal Squid Exhibition has a fun, interactive Build a Squid page.  Go on. You know you want to.

While not labled as such, the sale to Gardner Dozois was clearly day 7 of the happy things meme.

Today? I have set my phone’s ringtone to be the hailing whistle on Star Trek the original series. Also, my phone has a tricorder on it now. This is true geeky happiness.

I failed to link to two of my twitfics up at Thaumatrope.

There’s not any real way to do a teaser of fiction that’s only 140 characters long. So… This story from Christmas Eve is not safe for family. And the story from Christmas day is.

I’ve been struggling with my main computer for some time. That’s part of why I got the eee pc. The Kowal Portable been crashing a lot and I was afraid to write on it because it would go down with no warning. I’d get a blue screen of death, but it always flashed past too fast to read. Last night after one of these, it wouldn’t restart, so I decided to do a full system restore, back to factory settings. I back up regularly, so I haven’t lost any data at least.

It hung twice during the restore, but the third one succeeded. And then, as I was still in the setup, it crashed, but this time the BSod hung around long enough to actually read. That’s the lovely picture there. We’ve spent today trouble-shooting and have gotten as far as eliminating the RAM as the problem.

Meanwhile, I’m going to be using the eee as my primary computer. Fortunately, I can touch type on the thing, but it takes a firmer stroke than the Kowal Portable. In the short-term, we’re going to get a new harddrive but in the long-term, I’m in the market for a new computer. Underneath the steampunk exterior, the Kowal Portable was an Averatec 1500.

I’m opening the floor for suggestions on a new laptop. For starters, don’t suggest a mac; I’m happy being a pc girl.

It needs to be able to handle graphic design and some audio. I prefer a larger screen, but don’t need a widescreen. I’ll probably mostly travel with the eee, so I’m not as fanatical about it being thin and lightweight as I was before.

Besides that, the field is open. Your thoughts?

I’m stunned.

“Evil Robot Monkey” will be appearing in Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction. You know, there were anthologies that I regularly bought before I started writing seriously. This is one of them, because the selections were always thought-provoking and that’s what I loved about SF. And to have one of my stories in there… I’m stunned.

And not using nearly enough exclamation points for the occasion.

We have landed in NYC. The peanuts the airline served us expired in November 2008, which I guess is one of their cost saving techniques. This was our first time having to pay for a checked bag and it has made us both a little cranky. But besides that this has been an uneventful transit experience. The bag Rob checked came out quickly and out bus home arrived right when we came outside.

We made it with no problems to Cincinatti. There’s lousy wifi and cell service in Concourse B, but otherwise it’s a decent airport. Rob is in search of coffee now.

We’re at the Chattanooga airport, waiting for our flight through Cincinatti to NYC. I’m sad to be leaving my family, but also looking forward to the comparatively slower pace of New York. We had a lot of family to see in a very short amount of time.

My AMC column on Fantasy Fashion in 2008 went live this morning, but I was busy hanging out with my mom and my niece in pursuit of fashion. Granted, it was in one of Dante’s unnamed concentric circles of hell — the mall the day after Christmas — so these fashions from Fantasy films might be a little more palatable.

I’m a fashion hound any day, so one of the things I love most about fantasy is the clothing. You see, fantasy heroes’ wardrobes are as integral to their characters as the weapons they wield and the spells they cast. After all, where would Gandalf be without his pointed Wizard’s cap and long flowing robes? He’d probably look like a homeless person. 2008 was a strong year for fantasy flicks to be sure, with characters battling undead mummies, journeying to the center of the earth and visiting magical lands where Lions rule — but how did they look while doing it? Let’s find out.

Drop by and let us know what you think were the best and worst looks in this year’s fantasy lineup

My six year old niece heard us talking about a recipe and asked what tofu was. Rob started to explain, including the phrase, “They add calcium carbonate to it.”

I went, “Um, you might…”

He caught himself and said, “It looks like white jello.”

That was all she really wanted to know.

My nephew decorated his home tree with ornaments he made himself. See that? That’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster. May you all be touched by his noodly apendage