The front page for http://www.talesfromthesecuremarket.com has been updated.

Design and content suggestions are welcome.

Elizabeth kindly stayed up on her haunches for the ten seconds it took me to ready my phone's camera and take this picture.

R.I.P. Pete Brown.

Your life in dance and song will not be forgotten.

I am currently traveling at speed about seven feet above the streets of Boston Back Bay, surfing the internet. While this might not be my first trip on a double decker bus, it's certainly my first trip on a wifi-equipped one.

Yes indeedy, this is Hinks's first trip down to Maryland (I have been reminded that it's not -- but it IS his first bus trip), and I'm really looking forward to having the compact little fellow with me this time around. I've got a lot of work to do before I get to Maryland and about nine hours of bus trip in which to do it. Should be feasible.

To Do List:

• Finish my presentation for the LARP roast
• Fill in the new index page for talesfromthesecuremarket.com
• xiombarg's mom
• Cast Life at the Securemarket

http://www.talesfromthesecuremarket.com

thank you cirne. :)

Tales is nearing the end of its production and Life is picking up speed. I can still use help in certain facets of the production, though, and I thought I'd put out my feelers for anyone who'd be willing to help.

Please let me know if you:

• Know where to get a dozen plain red bib aprons on the cheap
• Have silkscreening experience or equipment to help get the logo onto said aprons
• Would like to help me design a 'front page' for the web version of the novel, to attract traffic and attention and facilitate easy navigation and understanding.
• Want to help me prep the .doc for publishing on Lulu.
• Know of an event where I could do a reading or shop the book in 2010
• As always, if you find a typographical or grammatical error in any edition of Tales, let me know! I've already received several notices about the Web Edition and we're gonna have those fixed soon.

It's up! A million thanks to cirne, quite definitively the AoC's most prolific patron, for getting the entire back end up and running.

http://www.theageofcorporations.com/stories/tftsm/

The current web version is very simple, but it's easy to navigate and read; use the 'p' and 'n' keys to navigate between chapters, or click on the links to the previous and next chapters. It's super easy to read; your excuses not to do it are diminishing! :D

Made this in response to hermitgeecko's post about the same. Since her idea of what a date is and mine pretty much coincide, I collaborated with her on this flowchart.

( Large image -- under a cut. )

1. Get the ticket order over with
2. Eat something
3. Stop being a humbug
4. Declare it Drunk on a Tuesday
5. ...
6. Profit!

The cheapest option to get down to see the Revels and do the LARP roast is Bolt bus. It also takes longer than any other option.

It also would cost me over $80. I didn't anticipate that.

I'm not sure what to do. I still don't have a lot of money. I was really hoping that somebody -- ANYBODY -- was going to the Roast from Boston this year. Some did last time.

I think this is my only opportunity to see the Revels, but I'm going home for Christmas too and I'm not sure I can afford both THIS travel and THAT one too. I don't know what to do.

EDIT: Okay. It is worked out to some satisfaction. hermitgeecko and I hunted and found some more affordable tickets -- it turns out that Bolt was the cheapest for my Christmas trip, but Megabus was cheaper for the LARP roast trip. The two combined are about $150 -- more expensive than I'd hoped, but still way cheaper than other methods.

A lot of this was just me having to get used to the changed expectations. That happens sometimes.

This chicken was originally intended to be a topping for the apple-onion salad that I made this Thanksgiving, but the recipe sort of ran away with itself, particularly as the chicken took longer to cook than I expected.

Please be advised that NONE of these measurements are anything resembling exact; in fact, some may be wildly inaccurate. I cook by feel and I strongly encourage you not to trust any numbers that come out of my mouth.

Ingredients:
About 2lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 bottle (12 oz) of hard apple cider. 2 bottles, if you are following step 2.
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp course ground mustard
2-3 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
1-2 tsp salt
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp corn starch
1 sweet vidalia onion
1 gala apple
A few tablespoons of olive oil

Cooking instructions:
1) Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. We'll start with the glaze. In a small saucepan, combine 1 cup of hard apple cider, 1/2 cup cider vinegar, garlic, mustard, brown sugar and corn starch. Heat on low to medium, stirring frequently. As the glaze thickens, add salt to taste and adjust ingredients accordingly. Once the glaze is thick and tastes right, remove it from heat.

2) Drink the rest of the hard apple cider, then get another bottle, because really -- who wants to drink just 4 oz. of cider?

3) On a large sheet of foil (or two: you have a lot of chicken), arrange the chicken in a single layer, leaving enough room for the foil to wrap over the top completely. Drizzle olive oil on top of the chicken. Cut the onion into slices and lay them on top of the chicken, also in a single layer (this will not use the entire onion, probably). Do the same with the apple (slice the apple thin). Paint a layer of glaze on top of everything, then fold the foil over and seal it as best as you can.

4) Place the bundle(s) of chicken and extra stuff in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes or until cooked through (until the center of the largest breast is no longer pink). Remove from the oven and dice the chicken; don't throw away the onion, apple and drippings.

5) Heat a large pan on medium high and cut the rest of the onion into slices. Once the pan is hot enough that a drop of water thrown on it sizzles, add a tablespoon of olive oil then the chicken. Keep moving the chicken and onions with a spatula to avoid burning; cook until lightly browned. Reduce heat to medium and add the drippings, apple and onion from the foil. Sautee for a few more minutes, then add the rest of the glaze. Stir vigorously for a minute or so, then remove the pan from heat.

6) Serve. Bask in the glow of compliments. Make burnt offerings unto me.

[ edit: forgot the brown sugar ]

Hey folks. As I'm only just now taking my life back from myself, I'm still a bit slow on the uptake with a lot of scheduling stuff. As that's the case, I am getting certain aspects of planning done late.

Is anybody on my flist going to the LARP roast from the Boston area, leaving Friday morning and returning on Sunday? If so, I'd like to ride with you in exchange for gas money and my scintillating company.

The first edition of Tales from the Securemarket is done. If someone has experience in converting a large .doc into a readable html format with a table of contents or can give me some tips on the best way to do it, please let me know.

Won't be long now.

I sense an end to this shiftless period. I think no small part of it is due to my acquisition of Hinks.

Speaking of Hinks, I'm really happy with the way I've been using him. Fed up with the partitioning and dual-boot nonsense, I took charge and wiped the entire hard drive, installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix as the only operating system. It's worked like a charm -- all of Hinks's hardware is getting along with the system and I am realizing just how much of the software I use and love anyway happens to be open-source and Linux-compatible.

Also, really huge news -- juldea has finished her style edits of Tales from the Securemarket, which means that once I go through them, the first edition will be ready to go. There are still some things left to do; to be exact, I want to get a free, easy-to-read version up on my site (and possibly buy a domain name for the novel) and I need to design a book cover.

Obviously, anybody who wants to help with this stuff would be most welcome.

Oh! Also! I am taking pains to pay attention to my eating habits. This is the least damaging lapse I've had to date (after a few months of being off-plan, I'm still at 200lbs), but I'm still not where I want to be regarding health and weight. mossdogmusic and I are playing DDR again, and I've set up the pull-up bar back in the doorway where it used to live. I almost had some really noticeable upper-body muscles; I want that back!

Things are looking better. I'm taking time and I'm using it mindfully.

I figured that since they make Linux for Stupid People now, I should go for it.

So installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix on Hinks was great, except that I was a dumbass and installed it twice.

Which means that my laptop is now partitioned into THREE chunks. This is not necessary. I think I cleared out the extra linux partition, but it's still ... partitioned.

Can somebody help with this? Remember that I am a good user, but still pretty new to linux.

Meet Hinks!

Hand and glasses included for scale.



Note the mameshiba desktop wallpaper.

Well, I'm off to the last Threads event I have planned to go to (I may go to more at a later date, but I'm not planning on it yet). This will be my first game where I'm NOT going as an author, but as a standard cast member. It's a strange but admittedly lower-stress feeling.

Anyway, I'll be down in Germantown, MD, but unfortunately I'll be way too busy to see my family or friends down there.

I will likely be logging in from the hotel. "Why," you ask, "How?" I received a wonderful surprise in the mail yesterday: My new EEEpc! :D Its tentative name is 'Hinks', but I'm reserving final judgment until I've spent some more time with it.

I'm sort of rambling. This is what happens when I try to write an LJ entry at 5am consisting of anything more complicated than 'blurf'.

An oldie but a goodie from Lore Sjoberg's Bad Gods. This one's for you, _rigel_.

This is what I get for talking up my games so much!

Life@ currently has 16 of 25 people signed up, which is respectable but doesn't hold a candle to Dark Line's reception. (I must admit, though, the people who are signed up already? Good LARPers, and very pretty.)

Tonight at 8 has only one signup so far! Luckily, I know for a fact that folk who missed it last year want to play this time around. Moreover, it's a second run and therefore will have a chunk of its potential audience gone.

Anyway, I am still confident that both games will get snapped up in due time. All of the people who sprinted toward Leash will be freed up for the second round ;) (thank fuck my games were not across from it.)

National Drunken Writing Night is upon us.

It's simple:

Drink, then write. Then show us what you wrote.

Write fiction. Blog. Write about something that happened to you. Rant. Compose poetry. Anything. Just drink first. Get nice and buzzy (at the very least) then write, then post your writing online.

Since I work very early on Friday, I'll be starting to drink and write early so I can conk out early. I'll count on the rest of you to keep things up after I'm unconscious.