My friend Doselle Young just sent me a link to this amazing poster from Cool Stuff Toys and Video.

Be afraid. Fear the wrath of the Puppet People!

I find this utterly charming. Chef Julian is five years old and has his own cooking show. I totally want to try making these cookies, or heck any of his recipes.

via Boing Boing.

In a future world where the weather is controlled, vineyard owner Bharat Mundari is unable to pay his weather bill after spending too much on his daughter’s wedding. The grapes are suffering in the resulting drought, and he is afraid to tell his wife about the trouble they are in; she knows, however, that he is keeping a secret from her and imagines the worse.

Although it gets a bit sappy towards the end,¹ this one is enhanced by the viniculture neep, and the wine-review epigraphs opening each section are a nice touch:
Mundari Vineyard 2045, Nashik (India), Shiraz

Black cherry, plum, and currant flavors mingle with aromas of sweet tobacco and sage in this dependable offering from India.

I have to give credit to Rob for the wine-review epigraphs. He wrote them. I cut them down to manageable lengths.

via IRoSF: Short Fiction, January 2009.

1. Guilty as charged, but I like sappy…particularly with body and structure, paired with a velvety finish as in a Sauternes. Seriously, do you think she knows that “sappy” is a popular description of Château d’Yquem’s Sémillon? Because that would be hilarious. [↩]

Today was one of those days where I got a lot done but nothing that was actually on the to-do list.

For instance, I needed disappearing ink, but the magic store was out.  But, they were close to another store, where I was able to find the tree I needed for a different show.

The whole day was like that.  Tomorrow, though, the focus is on building the lamb and making a mountain of paper and pine needles.

Antiticaption, the 2009 Hugos held in Montreal, has opened the doors for Hugo nominations today, so I thought I’d mention which of my stories came out in 2008.

Evil Robot Monkey — The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Vol. 2 (2008)

Sliding his hands over the clay, Sly relished the moisture oozing around his fingers. The clay matted down the hair on the back of his hands making them look almost human. He turned the potter's wheel with his prehensile feet as he shaped the vase. Pinching the clay between his fingers he lifted the wall of the vase, spinning it higher.

"Mary Robinette Kowal's Evil Robot Monkey is very short and bitterly moving, about an uplifted chimp." -- Rich Horton, Locus

(”Evil Robot Monkey” will be appearing in both Rich Horton’s Science Fiction Best of the Year and Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science-Fiction)

Clockwork Chickadee — Clarkesworld Magazine (June, 2008)

The clockwork chickadee was not as pretty as the nightingale. But she did not mind. She pecked the floor when she was wound, looking for invisible bugs. And when she was not wound, she cocked her head and glared at the sparrow, whom she loathed with every tooth on every gear in her pressed-tin body.

The sparrow could fly.

There is an audio version of this story as well.

Waiting for Rain — Subterranean Magazine (Fall 2008)

The sun peeking through the grapevines felt hotter on Bharat Mundari’s neck than twenty-four degrees. Another perfect day. Bharat scowled and worked his way down the row of vines, thinning the grapes so the remaining Shiraz crop would become fuller and riper.

I’d also like to point out that the Campbell nominations are open as well.  Receiving this award at the Hugos last year was one of the most amazing experiences and I’m looking forward to passing the tiara on to the next recipient.

Please swing by the Campbell award page to look at the eligible authors.  In particular, allow me to point out that Jon Armstrong and David Anthony Durham are eligible again this year for the award.  They were both nominated last year and I’ve had the pleasure of not only meeting both gentlemen but also reading their work. Good stuff, folks.

And today, ladies and gentlemen, I learned that not all to-go cartons are microwave safe.  The container on the left, containing my lunch, and the container on the right began life as the same size.  One minute and thirty seconds later, I had a shrinky-dink.

Edited to add: I opted for none of these and went with the Lenovo x61 tablet that Joe Iriarte recommended.  When I looked at it, I could trick it out to have everything I wanted plus it was 25% off an already existing sale price. It gave me enough room to also get a monitor and docking station for when I’m at home and need more screen real estate.

I know you must be getting tired of laptop posts, but bear with me just a little bit longer.  At the moment, I am torn between these three machines and would love someone to help me sort it out.

Whatever I pick will be my primary computer.  I’ll write on it, clearly, but also do graphic design and record audio fiction. My 5-year old Averatec works for these but is sluggish when designing large books.

HP Pavillion tx2500z series
Attractive because of the touch screen and handwriting recognition. Would need to add a standalone screen probably.

Elite ThinkPad W500 15.4″ widescreen with discrete graphics
Durable and a nice big screen. Plenty of processing power.

Lenovo X300
A Crazy long battery life, lightweight and seems like a decent blend between portable and power.

Basically any of these will seem like a step up from what I have, but I’m sort of paralyzed.  Your thoughts?

And this is part of why I love Iceland.

Via Boing Boing.

After all of the problems with my computer, I waited for two days to make sure it was stable before I started writing on it. It felt so good to be back on a familiar keyboard and with a full size screen, so I got some good words in.

And then my computer crashed again. The blue screen went past so quickly that I can only assume that it was the same error message as before. I turned it back on, to retrieve the file I’d been working on and it almost immediately went down again.

I’ve taken the RAM out, cleaned the connections thoroughly and stuck them back in, but I’ve got no real faith the machine will keep working. I’m using it to go online, as a test, but you know…

I think that shopping for a new computer has just been bumped up on the priority list.

With all the computer woes on Friday, I forgot to let you know that my new column is up at AMC.

Welcome to the New Year! Around this time, people are probably going to start asking you, “What’s your resolution?” Personally, I always have trouble coming up with a good one, and by that, I mean one I’ll actually keep. A couple of years ago it was, “No dirty dishes in the sink,” which isn’t glamorous but does get the dishes done. This year I decided to turn to fantasy movies for inspiration. After all, much of fantasy is driven by oaths, promises and wishes which, let’s face it, are at the core of resolutions. Here are a sampling of fantasy flicks and the resolutions they might inspire.

Swing by and let us know what films inspire your resolution.

I wrote this on December 23rd, but forgot to post it.

I’ve mentioned that my family has a giant Christmas Eve dinner every year with cousins and multiple generations getting together. This year is the 52nd annual dinner and we’ve got 31 people attending. One of the things that I loved when my grandmother was hosting the party were the party favors, which were always homemade Christmas tree ornaments. After she passed away, I took over the party favors.

This year, when I got to Chattanooga I was a little stressed because I had 10 more party favors to make. I normally have them all made before I get home but time was tight this year.

To my surprise and joy, my niece Katherine pitched in to help me make them. We stayed up until 2 am sewing and laughing together. It was just great to have one on one time with her. Although, I’ll admit that it added to my general feeling that our Christmas’s are straight out of Norman Rockwell.

You might recall that we’ve had a moose head in our apartment since last June. While it makes for amusing conversation, the thing took up massive amounts of space in our bedroom.  We wrapped the antlers in foam because of the number of times I stumbled into it getting out of bed at night.

It makes for an interesting bruise pattern, to say the least.

New Year’s Day, the actor whom we were holding it for, had someone pick it up.  Now, I have to say that it’s not his fault that it was here this long. We’d offered to ship the thing but it proved harder than we thought.  When I called him to say that we were giving up, he got his cousin to come over.

The process of getting the head out was like a Laurel and Hardy routine because the entry hall to our apartment turns the corner coming in. AND the head won’t fit on the elevator, so they had to walk it down five flights of stairs.

It is gone and our bedroom feels positively huge.

For those of you following along with my computer woes, you may join me in cautious optimism.  My new harddrive arrived today and I sat down to install it.  Annnnnnd… the computer wouldn’t boot from the recovery disc, which is supposed to be a boot disc.

Crap.

So I took everything out and put it back in. Still nothing but a black screen, the fan, and a chirp from the dvd drive so I knew it was working.  Curses.  I fiddled with the RAM. Nothing. Again removing the drive to check things and putting it back.  By this point I was late for a tea party.

Thank heavens, or I would have continued to bang my head against the wall. So I went off to the party, had a really lovely time, and came home to try again.  First, let me say that everyone who answered my twitter/facebook plea for help is a fantastic person.

I went through suggestions and started from the easiest up.  I put the old drive back in and experienced the exact same symptoms. I returned the new drive.   THEN, in a breath taking move — I know you can hardly stand the suspense — I took the RAM out and put it back in.  The computer worked.

Random.

It’s running and hasn’t crashed in an hour so I’m cautiously optimistic that it’s going to be fully operational again. Please, please let it be fixed.

• 4 cups chopped pears
• 3 large red peppers
• 3 large green peppers
• 1/2 lb. chopped onions (about 1 1/2 cups or 3 medium onions)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoon salt
• 1 cup vinegar

Grind or grate each of the first four ingredients into a collander and let drain. Put them in a heavy sauce pan with the remaining ingredients, mix them thoroughly, and cook ten minutes. The recipe makes 2 to 3 pints.