Dances With Refrigerators....

Hot hot hot in Portland this weekend. 103 yesterday (a record) and likely 100 or higher today as well. (We're supposed to break and hit the "cool" 80s tomorrow....)

My apartment is not a heat sink -- I'm on the bottom of a 3-story building, one of those where the front door is actually half a flight down from ground level, and my windows are north-south and shielded from direct sun for the most part. OTOH, neither am I air conditioned, so I walked down to the supermarket this afternoon and spent some quality time roving from one refrigerator case to the next, soaking in the blessed coolth.

This had an unexpected but profitable side effect -- the supermarket was running a "cake walk" today, and I managed to find the right spot at the right time, which meant that they handed me a free two-layer chocolate-frosted chocolate cake.

For a couple of days of hundred-degree heat every few years, I can deal with free chocolate cake....

Dances With Refrigerators....

Hot hot hot in Portland this weekend. 103 yesterday (a record) and likely 100 or higher today as well. (We're supposed to break and hit the "cool" 80s tomorrow....)

My apartment is not a heat sink -- I'm on the bottom of a 3-story building, one of those where the front door is actually half a flight down from ground level, and my windows are north-south and shielded from direct sun for the most part. OTOH, neither am I air conditioned, so I walked down to the supermarket this afternoon and spent some quality time roving from one refrigerator case to the next, soaking in the blessed coolth.

This had an unexpected but profitable side effect -- the supermarket was running a "cake walk" today, and I managed to find the right spot at the right time, which meant that they handed me a free two-layer chocolate-frosted chocolate cake.

For a couple of days of hundred-degree heat every few years, I can deal with free chocolate cake....

Mail call

Contributor copy of the new Amazing Stories has arrived, and looks very snazzy -- though not at all like what you'd expect of a traditional SF fiction-zine. They've retuned the concept dramatically -- it's now something like Starlog crossed with OMNI -- lots of feature articles focusing on a variety of SF/F media, but also a healthy supply of fiction and a veritable slew of reviews covering books, film, TV, DVD, comics, you name it. This does not mean that the fiction is "dumbed down"/LCD material, not with Gene Wolfe and Bruce Sterling on board for the first issue, among others. The cover stars Spider-Man from the current movie, and is clearly designed to attract newsstand readership.

Looks to me like this may sell a lot of magazines (knock silicon).

////

Also in the mail, contracts for the Fantastic Companions story -- admirably prompt, particularly having crossed the border from Canada. One peculiarity of Canadian contracts, or at least these Canadian contracts -- they want the signatures witnessed. No great difficulty with that, however (good excuse, though, to go book-browsing and to dinner in air-conditioned coolth).

Must go figure out what to not-cook for dinner now....

Mail call

Contributor copy of the new Amazing Stories has arrived, and looks very snazzy -- though not at all like what you'd expect of a traditional SF fiction-zine. They've retuned the concept dramatically -- it's now something like Starlog crossed with OMNI -- lots of feature articles focusing on a variety of SF/F media, but also a healthy supply of fiction and a veritable slew of reviews covering books, film, TV, DVD, comics, you name it. This does not mean that the fiction is "dumbed down"/LCD material, not with Gene Wolfe and Bruce Sterling on board for the first issue, among others. The cover stars Spider-Man from the current movie, and is clearly designed to attract newsstand readership.

Looks to me like this may sell a lot of magazines (knock silicon).

////

Also in the mail, contracts for the Fantastic Companions story -- admirably prompt, particularly having crossed the border from Canada. One peculiarity of Canadian contracts, or at least these Canadian contracts -- they want the signatures witnessed. No great difficulty with that, however (good excuse, though, to go book-browsing and to dinner in air-conditioned coolth).

Must go figure out what to not-cook for dinner now....

Micro-writing meme

Lifted from vampry(after finally creating a friends-group appropriate to the purpose):

Leave a comment with a ficlet request. Give me a character or two, a title, and one line of dialogue to be written in a 100-500 word story. After you comment, put this meme in your own journal.

Not that I necessarily plan to make this a habit, but I'm between fiction projects and something this short should be manageable. For request purposes, I'm literate in the Buffy/Angelverse, most forms of Star Trek, most animated DC Universe material except Justice League (I'm cable-challenged), a variety of odd-lot animated material ranging from Carmen Sandiego to Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century to Zorro, and an eclectic assortment of old or genre TV ranging from Remington Steele to The Equalizer to Xena.

Micro-writing meme

Lifted from vampry(after finally creating a friends-group appropriate to the purpose):

Leave a comment with a ficlet request. Give me a character or two, a title, and one line of dialogue to be written in a 100-500 word story. After you comment, put this meme in your own journal.

Not that I necessarily plan to make this a habit, but I'm between fiction projects and something this short should be manageable. For request purposes, I'm literate in the Buffy/Angelverse, most forms of Star Trek, most animated DC Universe material except Justice League (I'm cable-challenged), a variety of odd-lot animated material ranging from Carmen Sandiego to Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century to Zorro, and an eclectic assortment of old or genre TV ranging from Remington Steele to The Equalizer to Xena.