http://forkableblog.com/?p=908 "Bloody slide" recipe

Holy Crap! Tamora Pierce reads my LJ! *fan-girl aura*

The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
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No, we were no on Fort Hood today. We are safe!

I'm coming in Friday evening and staying with Dave and Kayla. Now, the fun part is going to be arranging Saturday night and Sunday morning. I have a flight which leaves at 10:25 on Sunday from BWI. It was the best I could get, but that does leave a problem of getting up ungodly early to get me to the airport. Looks like it's pretty much Even Stevens from D&K's or from the party to get there, just traffic and all that.

So, comments, suggestions, commiseration?

He's Home safely! Just pulled in.

The man hasn't quit driving yet! He's about an hour from Dallas at this point, if not closer! At this rate, he'll be here by 1:30 or 2, if he doesn't stop, and if he doesn't, it'll mean he drove straight all the way from Syracuse! He says his body's tired, but his brain won't shut down. He also says he'll take a nap in a Big Gas station somewhere. There aren't many of those south of Dallas, so I hope he stops soon. I keep having visions of the local police knocking on my door to tell me he's been in an accident because he fell asleep at the wheel. He's done so before, though woken himself up before doing more than hitting the noisy strip.

Today I finally managed to drag some music with me to the campus fitness center--the soundtrack to Star Trek, since its variations in music speed matches well with slows-and-fasts on the elliptical for me. I've discovered now that listening to it increases my speed by about 1 mph (to an average of 7 mph) and my heart rate by around 20 bpm, up to the 160s. At some of the faster points of "Enterprising Young Men" I consistently hit 7.6-7.8 mph. Must remember this for future reference.

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 11/3-4/09

New Words: 1800 (1000 / 800) on "Five Visions of Aztlan".

Total Words: Including a bit of cutting today, 11300. Longer than I meant; but as usual, I'll finish the draft first and then cut.

Reason(s) For Stopping: Work / lunch.

Mammalian Assistance: None. And I tricked Friday into not banging on the Writing Room door by letting him go down into the basement, which for some reason is a big cat treat.

Exercise: A one-way walk from campus to home / Fifteen minutes on the elliptical (a little over 1.5 miles) with a five-minute cooldown.

Stimulants: None.

Today's Opening Passage:

Yesterday: It seemed the farther we got from Glen Canyon—from the nexus of Aztlan—the more distant it became in memory and soul, increasingly easy to pass off as a sun-blanched hallucination so common to wanderers in the desert. I felt more wanderer than monk now, or Vicepresidente. And news coming through Wisdom Wind’s shortwave all the way to the Texas Panhandle was as pleasing as a cotton field full of boll weevils.

Today: The warriors lining the other rim didn’t move except to track our progress with our eyes. “They’re not joining us?”

“They’ll hear everything they need to,” Seven Stars told us.

Darling Du Jour: His laugh rose into a wind of its own that echoed across the canyon walls, magnifying into a coyote howl until the maelstrom around us was the wail of a banshee screaming for buffalo meat. Then we were all of us—Aztlan, Indians, Mexicans, Americans—inside a ring of standing stones...no, figures, some human, some animals, and some not quite either, like the wild-haired restless shadows of the Kokopelli, the Hopi spirits who seemed to speak through their flutes.

(And yes, there is a Hunter S. Thompson reference in the above paragraph.)

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Capote.

Why, Nashville! He'll either be in really late tonight, or early tomorrow. This is good, because it allows me more time to get the house cleaned up...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113223398&sc=nl&cc=es-20091025 Spider silk tapestry. it's gorgeous.

PROGRESS REPORT

New Words: 2300 on "Five Visions of Aztlan".

Total Words: 9800. Four "visions" down (Taos, NM; Flagstaff, AZ; El Centro, CA; and Glen Canyon Dam, AZ) and one (Palo Duro Canyon, TX) to go. This story is making me remember how much I love the Southwestern U.S. and is cementing my desire for my next multigenerational historical novel to be Arizona.

Reason For Stopping: Work, and finished the fourth "vision".

Mammalian Assistance: None. This was written in snatches at work.

Exercise: Three jogged laps around the gym, stretching, a mile (averaging 6 mph) on the elliptical with a 5 minute cooldown, then Ze Ab Kruncher.

Stimulants: I think I had a nip of Sprite.

Today's Opening Passage:

If you mean literally, I rewrote the story's opening first...

My name is Lazaro de Tormes--or that's close enough so as not to matter. I am a picaro, a scoundrel named for a scoundrel. I am a sinner, a liar, and a politician, but at least I am not a historian.

The story I am about to tell you is not a lie exactly, not exactly truth either, but close enough to truth to benefit all of us.

If you mean starting at the point where I left off on Saturday...

For all the trip north I wondered what a battle between spirit powers would look like to us mere mortals. Would they be throwing lightning bolts and tornadoes around? For a moment I had the odd compulsion to ask Don Pablo, but cast off that idea as foolish.

Yet when we got there, we were surrounded by...Nada.

It’s the best way I can explain. Nothing moved—there was no one to be seen (with one notable exception), no animals, no wind, no sounds. I was a little bothered by the fact that the Colorado River was completely still. I willed myself not to look at the black specks in the air that too much resembled birds in flight.

Not quite like other battlefields I’d tromped over.

Darling Du Jour: “You don’t think anyone will notice us?” I asked Wisdom Wind.

Don Pablo answered. “When the spirit powers fight, they fight outside of time. You can’t see them but they’re here, all around us, and they let us into their little pocket.”

I didn’t say, I don’t like being in anyone’s pocket. Especially not spirits’.

Instead I asked, “Why are we here?”

“To witness,” Wisdom Wind said.

“Witness what?”

He glanced at an old Elgin watch on his wrist. “Lots of things. The end of a battle. The end of the old world...”

“The rise of a new world?”

He smiled almost sheepishly and shrugged. “The spirits will get a rise out of something, one way or another. They always do.”

Or...

What stopped my frivolous speaking was the sudden panorama laid out below. It was ours to savor for that moment of timelessness we had been granted: This is Aztlan. Whether or not you believed the Aztecs or Fort Worth adjunct history professors. It could have been eighty canyons or thousands. It could have been dry or filled with mist. The walls were brown and red and their geological lines stacked one on top of the other, or all sight of them blanketed snugly by lush green and filled with trees. It was a hundred different places all at once, giving rise to a thousand different peoples, if not in this physical place then in the vortex of the cosmos that whirled here and sent spirits into infants throughout the ages of human history.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Capote.

So, I talked to phred1973, and he said he's going to have to leave tomorrow morning, because U-Haul's being silly about how to hook up the tow-bar. He has to go drill holes in his bumper and install a mount, which will weaken the bumper, but it's regulation, right? Oy. So, he'd planned to leave tonight, and get in touch with a relative, possibly spending the night, but that's been scotched. Current plan now is for him to leave around 9 AM.

Now, if only I can kick this damn cold before he gets here...