Tell me about a story I haven't written and I'll give you a sentence (or a paragraph) from it.  You can be as detailed or as simple as you like.

I finally decided that I have the time to respond to these...so I hope you guys give me something to play with!

It's interesting reading all the posts about the storm, when I'm sitting in it.  Somehow makes it all the more real that so many others are experiencing this very same storm that's wailing outside. 

I flew home Saturday, leaving the boat a month early due to some family stuff going on.  I was afraid the storm was going to come in over the weekend and ground me somewhere in the middle of the country.  But no, I made it home.  We still have power (so far), and no flooding (we're on the top of a small hill so flooding is generally unlikely and hasn't happened in this house that I know of).  I'm hoping we keep power the whole way through. *crossing fingers*

But since I've been living on a boat for the past seven months, I wanted to pass along this boat story.  The Bounty, an educational tall ship, was heading down the coast from CT to FL and got caught in the storm Sunday night, 90 miles off the coast.  I'm not sure if they were trying to head to land or run past the storm or what.  But the ship lost power and the pumps couldn't keep the water out of the boat.  The 16 member crew abandoned ship and most were picked up by the Coast Guard.  14 have made it safe, 1 crew member is still missing, and 1 crew member didn't make it.  I'm praying they pick up that last crew member alive.

I met a friend from elementary school last spring. The last time we’d seen each other had been 6th grade – before puberty hit either of us – and we hadn’t been in touch since. (It was right around then that I moved five hours away, down the east coast to another state.) But I had been in touch with another girl, and, as things work, had gotten back into touch with my old friend.

We used to play foursquare outside her house, a cul-de-saq where no cars came. Her mom loved to buy huge boxes of Fruit Leather and the only time I got to eat them was when I had a playdate with this girl. I learned about natural mosquito repellant for the first time when I camped in her backyard.

We have a picture of the two of us, both skinny little sticks, wearing shorts and t-shirts with sweatshirts tied around our waists, sitting against the brick wall of the elementary school building. When I met her again I didn’t recognize her at first.

“Who is this person giving me a hug?” I thought. Then I realized who it must be. Did I mention that the last time I saw her was before puberty? She wasn’t a skinny stick anymore. Then again, neither am I.

But with very little friction we were able to slip back into our relationship as friends. I could be silly around her, something I reserve for good friends only, because we were good friends. We knew each other. We had skipped some years, but gossip would cover that.

And this leads me to wondering what makes relationships stick.

This girl, I hadn’t stayed in touch with at all. With no Facebook yet, and neither of us big phone callers or letter writers, we hadn’t spoken to each other for years. Another girl, the one I made the connection through, I stayed in touch with mostly because our parents were friends and they stayed in touch. But at the same time, we talked on the phone occasionally, and made sure to visit if we were in the area. A third girl, one I emailed recently and haven’t heard back from, became a pen pal after the move down the coast. We talked on the phone occasionally, but I haven’t seen her since before college, or even heard from her for a few years now.

So what made the difference? The first girl I’m back in touch with, the second I’ve always been in touch with, and the third I’ve lost touch with.

It can’t only be time. The third girl is (was?) my oldest friend – from Mommy&Me classes. The first I met in kindergarten, and the second in first or second grade. So the difference is not in how long we were friends.

Part of it is a willingness to stay in touch or get back in touch. And I suppose that goes along with personality.

I would be tempted to say it’s whether I need these girls as friends, or they need me, but I don’t think it’s a need at all. I have friends, and having a friend who lives five hours away can be more of a hassle than a boon. But perhaps it is a need. Perhaps it’s a need to not lose touch. Maybe there are people who want webs of friends and people who like to live apart.

For me, I think, it’s an unwillingness to let go of what was a good friendship. We had fun together. Why should that be over just because we don’t live down the block from one another? Why should remembering those fun times turn into nostalgia? Why can’t we still be friends, albeit slightly farther away, and have those girls’ nights out once a year rather than once a week? Why not?

Taken from asakiyume

So. . . do you know squanderball? If you were going to invent such a thing, what would it be?"

My answer was,
When I was little, squanderball was played with squash. Lots of them, big and yellow. They had to be ripe enough to splatter when they hit the ground so that we could drag out the hose afterwards and have a water fight while pretending to clean up.

What's your answer?

I just realized that Mythcon is held in Berkley and I am only across the Bay.  And then I looked at the ship's calendar and realized that I will be in Monterey that whole time, and I will have a free day during Mythcon -- but in Monterey.  Phooey.

But look!  Story blurb!

When you're inside a house that runs on chicken legs, it feels like being on a boat.  You'd never think so, looking at it from the outside.  What could be farther from the ocean than a chicken?  I mean, really?  Come on.  But it does.  It runs through the woods with a rocking, gliding gait -- not something you'd associate with a chicken either.  It's not really a chicken, though.  It never was.

The houses grow from eggs.  Baba Yaga, the caretaker of them all, has a secret ivy patch where she incubates the houses.  I've been there; invited, strangely enough, and seen the square eggs with their brightly painted shells.  Not that she paints them, of course.  They were planted that way.

The seeds can be found in the thatch of mature houses, and their colors indicate different powers or worlds or places that the windows and doors open into.  I don't know much about that -- I haven't been told all the secrets.  That would be silly.

But if you want to know a secret, here's one to remember.  Baba Yaga helps those who help themselves.  She is not kind, she is not nice, and she is definitely not your sweet old grandmother who fed you chocolate chip cookies.  She is best known as fate.  She loves those who are clever and she has a soft spot (but don't say I told you) for those who are kind.  She is never outsmarted; she just likes to pretend she is.  But she always tells the truth.

But who says I am telling the truth?

I've found that living on a boat is fairly normal, as things go.  My days are pretty regular: take kids out on a sail, teach them marine science, work on boat, go to sleep.  Or, you know, some combination of the above.

My free time is limited: days last at least eight hours, normally nine or more.  When I'm off, all I want is to sleep.

I live with my coworkers, and sometimes that gets trying, but normally it works out.  Sometimes, someone pulls out a guitar and we sing and learn to harmonize.  Or sometimes, they want to hang out after work and I'm like, but I just spent all day with you!  Or we all sit in our own little bubbles in the common area, doing stuff on our computers.

As adventures go, this one is fairly mellow.  It's a job.  A strange job, a different job, but a job nonetheless.  I'm not traveling on a daily basis; I'm in one place long enough to explore it and learn the culture -- well, when I have free time.  It's a different kind of adventure.

I finally got around to reading the Hunger Games, as they've been referred to me multiple times at this point. 

The Hunger Games was surprisingly catchy. I expected to like it, after so many people told me I would, but I hadn't thought it would be so absorbing. The beginning feels a bit simple, but the amount of raw emotion that's written into the story from the start just pulls you in. As the book continues, the first person POV really grows into its strength and the book ends wonderfully -- making you want to start the next one immediately.

Catching Fire was great, but at first I didn't like it as much as Hunger Games. About a third of the way in the plot picks up and I started becoming more absorbed. I kept feeling like Katniss was really dense during much of this book, but it was a realistic part of her character, so I didn't get too annoyed. And then the book ends on a cliff-hanger so you're definitely going to want to have the third one on hand.

Mockingjay slides into being darker and having more adult concerns and considerations out in the open. I think it's a natural progression from the first two, and nothing is ever presented in a way that breaks Katniss's character from being realistic. In fact, I think first person POV was an interesting choice for this book especially -- Katniss being fairly unobservant and out of the loop, and yet a very important character nonetheless. I liked this one from the start, though I would have preferred the end of the book to be a bit more coherent (I feel like it got a bit confusing due to the POV and Katniss's mental state at the end).

Overall, I think it was a very enjoyable series and it's definitely up for a reread.


( Spoilers...Collapse )

When the wind blows from the south, the mists come through the crack in the hills.  Everyone shuts their windows.  Everyone bars their doors.  Everyone but us.

We open the windows, invite in the mists and the things that live in that silvery gauze.  We give them tea made with rosemary, lavender, and anise; all wild, of course. 

In exchange, we receive the stories.  Tales of where the blue goes when it disappears from the sky, what color the hills become at night when the darkness swallows them whole.  Tales of the green leaves and the grey cranes.

When the morning wind blows the mists away, we pour the rest of the tea into the waves, close our windows and doors, and crawl into our beds for a few hours of sleep.

The rest of the village knows, of course.  They can see the silver sparkle in our eyes.  They say nothing during the day; but sometimes, in the blue hours of sunset, they come to our doors for silver simples and twists of rosemary and anise.  Sometimes, if they're lucky, they hear snatches of stories as well.

They are not brave enough to open their doors to the mists, but they do not shun those of us who are.  And that it fine with me.

In this village live three,
the townsfolk, the mists, and me.

asakiyume wrote this interesting post that talks about police tactics. In the post-9/11 world, with the Patriot Act still at large, I think it's important to read and just be aware of. She also links to a video which is an hour long, so I haven't had time to watch it yet.

Even innocent actions and behaviors can be interpreted as incriminating. The very fact of being brought in for questioning puts you at a disadvantage. The everyday events of anyone's life can be made to look sinister under the right light--and that's not even adding in other people's mistaken memories, attributions of actions, etc., and not even assuming any deliberate ill will. If you do add in any of those extra factors, then things get worse.

The police are also permitted to lie to you to induce your statement. We've seen this in cop shows. The Mentalist does it all the time, but so do most of the shows: a scenario is set up that makes the accused think something that's not in fact the case; she or he then confesses (or does some other majorly incriminating thing). In the cop shows, this is presented as okay--clever, even--because the detained person is actually the guilty party, or, when they aren't, then that fact is eventually recognized, the person is released, and the cops go on to catch the actual criminal. In real life, however, often the bewildered accused person is tricked into confessions or other incriminating statements and is not released. The wrong person is brought to trial and may even be convicted.

She has excerpts from Beyond the Blue Gate, the memoir of Teo Soh Lung, a Singaporean lawyer who was detained in the late 1980s on charges of being a Marxist conspirator. Also, the discussions in the comments are very interesting.

Link from ysabetwordsmith.

A link to a short article and pictures about gender differences in posture.