The drive over sucked like getting sold on the black market to play Ned Beatty's part in an illegally accurate Deliverance theme park. Oh, there were bright parts, like this photo of West SiiiIIIIDE! with my Grandma, whom we lunched with when we hit Everett.

( And here we go! )

( Then Seamus drank a poodle pureé. )

( There's a monster at the end of this back seat. )

And speaking of monsters, here's me with what we affectionately refer to as, "The Mama Monster." (I think this nickname was my dad's doing. I'm also a C0r1 Monster, but Seamus just pretty much gets called, "Sammich.")



In that last photo, note the vinyl stick-on eyebrows (which are actually supposed to be some kind of instant raver eyeliner, I think). My mom gets me the coolest stuff. Even if I did think, "WTF?" and lose them in a drawer for two years. Hey, if those little plastic strips were bigger, maybe I would have shaved something else.

The highway through Steven's Pass was bare, but whenever we parked to let the pooch out for a poop, we were reminded that it's winter in the mountains. ( Here, I claim all snow that touches my feet for Badassia. ) ( Then I fall through it like a cartoon. )

My right leg is entirely extended in that photo, and it's still not touching dirt!

...And every single time, I forget about that coral reef on the way back.

So, I lost 2K of this Unidentified Flying Steampunk Novella (which is my new favorite working title). I borrowed my buddy's machine to upload the story from my MobilePro and either he deleted it on purpose to get back at me for being sexier in women's clothing, OR, it just randomly disappeared. But we couldn't even find a lame temp file containing my prose.

However, like I told kehrli last night: I've written 2K in an hour before, and while that's unlikely this time, hey... it's better than losing the whole project. I'm still woefully behind (which is why you don't get a progress bar--it shames me!) but my first draft should be done by Thursday night, and I can edit it into some semblance of order starting next Sunday, after the convention ends.

“You've met him?” Lizetta asked casually, tossing back another shot.

While her chin pointed at the dead animal heads behind the bar, a wad of red taffeta rustled past and she nearly choked on an overwhelming gust of cheap perfume. Lizetta raised an incredulous eyebrow as one of the establishment's paid entertainers arranged herself with her back arched against the bar, cleavage practically knocking over the closest faro table, and turned her head toward the journalist.

“It's good stuff,” the interloper said, nodding at the open bottle. “But there's more'n one 'house best' to be had. My name's Cindy.”

Mister Warris squinted at Cindy. “Even if it's the 'house best' syphilis, I don't want it.”

I was going to ride my bike out to rdeck's house and keep him company while anghara telescopes the night away at Launchpad, but sorry Deck--the writing group decided to have a write-in!

Starting at 7:00 a.m. Starting at whenever spencimusprime shows up with his portion of breakfast Starting NOW because Spencer just got here, I will be doing my best to trounce the wordcounts of my fellow crit group members. I'll probably update my progress during my breaks, so I apologize in advance for annoying everyone who watches this blog.

To make up for it, check out my newest fish, who is carnivorous and likes to eat bloodworms that I drop directly into his mouth from a toothpick. He's a striped golden wonder killifish. (I'm not actually sure which variety he is. I bet his name is Aplocheilus awesomica.)

Upjack will get up to four inches long, and he'll eat anything that fits in his mouth horizontally. Even live crickets and flies!

This fish is awesome. When I feed him bloodworms, I have to wait until he's facing the right way to drop them in. Then, once he's gotten almost all of it in his mouth, he swims at the sides of the aquarium and repeatedly bashes his face into the glass to cram the rest of the worm into his mouth. Best. Fish. Ever.

In other wet pet news, I let the marsvin* stay out grazing in the rain because usually she stays inside her little wooden house and happily munches. Today, she decided to attempt rodential hypothermia; I found her soaking herself in the drizzle while voraciously inhaling dandelion leaves. She's now drying out on my lap, and she smells strangely like wet chicken, of all things.

Why do I know what a wet chicken smells like? I'll leave that to your imagination. If no one else comes up with something disturbing, we can count on my friend Bishop.




* Guinea pig in Swedish. It's a long story, but I first became interested in them while in Sweden, and I've mostly called them that since.

GUESS WHAT?! I FINALLY GOT MY OTOS!

And just so y'all know, Spencer now has an LJ at spencimusprime. Now, a wordcount to make him weep:

Noble Quest...
Words today: 4,554
Words total: 35,633
Reason for stopping: Midnight--I'll write more and add it to tomorrow's tally.
Favorite: The triumph of making it up the stairs without falling and dying even once was ruined when we found the bodies.
Abusing my power: I'm making two of the characters hate each other so I can trap them together in a life-or-death situation in the next chapter.
It's aliiive!: The faeries in this world have decided they don't look like the faeries in my other worlds. (Trolls in Broken Mirrors look like green apes; in Noble Quest, they're more like small Chinese dragons with long, fingered feet.
Embarrassment: When I wrote, "I scanned the area for pensile spells," Weese said, spellcheck insists I meant "penile." I think this story has actually corrupted my word processor.

35633 / 80000 words. 45% done!

...I could finish, edit, and polish three books per year and still have time to sit around taking photos of my plecostomus.

I'm trying on other people's writing progress formats like hats... I semi-ganked stillsostrange's this time::

Noble Quest...
Words today: 5,894!
Words total: 28,844
Reason for stopping: Take photos of pleco. (And the scene ended. Also, it turned into July 9.)
Favorite: The courtyard around the tower reeked, though it wasn't really a rotten smell. It was more of a thick, musty aroma, like wet grandma.
Abusing my power: A floral venereal disease (don't ask).
It's aliiive!: Jint decided he's afraid of heights, which will come in handy in about two plot points. Therefore, I approved his phobia and let him crawl on his hands and knees while the others pranced upright across a narrow, stone sky bridge.
Embarrassment: I wrote "stactatite."

28844 / 80000 words. 36% done!

I bought a clown pleco (Panaque maccus) the other day! I'm naming all the fish in Guppy Canyon after the characters from Immortal Showdown: the guppies are "the demons," when I get my killi (Aplocheilus lineatus) it will be "Upjack" (who eats demons WHAT SPOILER?), and I'm trying to decide for the pleco. I don't know what sex it is, so I can just make it up. I was thinking Burke (crotchety retired gunslinger), or Huampo (querulous blind elderly native). I think I might just name her Jii, after the giant vegetarian lake monsters.

Anyway, here she is:

ETA: That thickly-bladed plant in photo #2 came from the estuary by Iron Springs Resort--I scooped a few up, thinking they might do better in pure freshwater. So far, they're growing, but not as amazingly as the carpetplant I put in the other tank. That really liked getting out of the ocean. I'll put up photos of that later.

Today I rode my bike eight miles to anghara and rdeckert's house for our weekly reading. It was fantastic! Normally I only ride four miles a day, round trip, over flat ground. This was twice that up and down hills. I have a rule about hills: if I can't make it up on my bicycle, I have to carry my bike the rest of the way. And even though it was fun, I accepted debtaber's awesome offer of a ride back into town. Thanks again, Deb!

My friends helped me collect all that glass from the beach, which I then boiled/rinsed to remove the salt and other contaminants.

This is my second aquarium, and I'm pretty sure if it's not already cycled it will have done by the time I get back from the Iron Springs Writers Retreat. SO. EXCITED. (For the non-hobbyist, cycling means you cultivate a crop of germs which like to eat fish pee and turn it into nutrients for a second set of germs, which crap out plant food. At this point, it's safe to put fish in the tank.) Here is a full size of the last photo: ( 1280 x 960 pixels )

We're working on building a hood to hold the light ourselves. I have some of the parts--it's going to be all steampunky.

My personal website is live! I will give a present to the first person who gets the significance of "plunderpuss" and puts it in the comments below. There's a heavy hint in the site's title graphic.

Also, I paid a nice lady to shave my dog. Now I can't look at Shai without laughing.

(I know she looks sad, but when I'm not cornering her with a strange flashing device and no delicious bone, she doesn't appear to even know she has less hair. She does notice everyone pets her more, though, so the haircut is totally FTW.)

Fat old man raccoon is...( -drumroll-... )

Skinny teenage raccoon is...( -drumroll-... )

There were too many good suggestions to choose from. Charles Peace was a famous catburglar, and Sergeant Goggles is a strange bastardization of aimeeevilpixie's suggestions.

Of course, maybe neither of them will ever come back again after my dog Shai totally bit the crap out of Sergeant Goggles tonight. At first I thought Shai came out unscathed, though she did have raccoon blood on her, but then I took a closer look at her ( poor little nose... )

If you've never heard a raccoon in a fight, there's no way I could possibly describe it to you; I'll just have to accept that failing as a writer. Well, actually if it comes to that I better at least try:

A raccoon hiss sounds like my dog trying to growl with a punctured lung. (In fact, that's what I was afraid I was hearing.)

While I'm sharing pictures, cmpriest posted the godawful five-second caricatures I did of she and blackaire. If you look at those, I demand you also go look at these. (And if you want to look at them on a regular basis, friend pussinboots.)