I've added a new essay to my Tolkien page: Divine Aid in the Lord of the Rings

In it, I examine (if briefly) whether specific events occurred on their own, or with divine aid.

Strawberry season may be officially over, but U-Picks are still going moderately well (at least based on what I saw today).

For the first time in years (I'm not kidding, it has to have been over a decade) I went out to pick my own strawberries. Even though the sign said that strawberry season was over, the folks at the farm were sending people out to find what they could. No assigned rows, just find what you can.

The weather was hot! I'm fairly sure that by the time I quit that if I'd stayed out any longer (say, to finish the bucket), I'd have ended up with heatstroke/sunstroke despite the hat. I managed to avoid sunburn though. Personally, I think the dust from the field in combination with the sunscreen was impenetrable by the sun's rays. I certainly almost needed to scrape it off when I got home.

I'd gone with two friends. One got about ten pounds of berries, the other twenty. I was somewhere in the middle with thirteen or fourteen pounds. Either way, it was one and a half of the four liter ice-cream pails. I also bought rhubarb, blueberries, raspberries and a bag of green beans.

Of course, now I'm too tired to actually prep the stuff to freeze. I did get a strawberry-rhubarb pie made though, and it was delicious. I'll do the rest tomorrow: wash and freeze the strawberries and the blueberries, and blanch/freeze the green beans. While I made the pie my two friends cleaned and bagged their berries for the freezer.

All in all, it was a fun day.

They're marketing laser pointers as pet toys now. The surprising thing is, it's become the cat's favorite toy very quickly. She's bouncing about trying to catch that little red dot.

The two are actually somewhat connected.

The day before yesterday I gave in and bought the new Jamie Oliver cookbook, . Yesterday I went on a fundraising walk and then ended up doing some more walking (to the stores the second time).

How the two are connected is this: At the first walk, I won the silent auction on a Magic Bullet Blender. Then, I needed to get the ingredients for a cheesecake recipe from the new book. I'd forgotten that it is the beginning of summer, neglecting to put on sunscreen, leading to sunburned arms (and neck). Ouch.

The cheesecake turned out (although it's not as firm as I'd like), and has been a hit. The previous day's recipe (and one of the reasons I bought the cookbook), the Macaroni and Cauliflower Bake, was also delicious (and easy to make).

Today, I tried the smoothie recipe for breakfast. Yum.

If you like simple recipes, I recommend the new Jamie Oliver book. I've already matched the number of recipes I've done from his other book in the last year, in three days.

Had a nice surprise this morning over at my book blog All Booked Up.

Waiting as a comment there was an offer from Penguin books of a review copy of Defenders of the Faith. Of course I've taken them up on it, so now I'm just waiting for the book to arrive.

My first review copy of a book. For me at least, it's a sign that my book blog isn't just a waste of my time, but is actually being seen now and again (I have to admit, that sometimes I wonder).

I'm attempting to figure out what I was doing with the third story in the In The Open series I've been writing. I last worked on it back in September, and I left it with something clearly being set up, and now I can't remember what.

I just finished rereading Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein (review is at All Booked Up, my book blog), and as I was reading the book, I couldn't help but wonder what Methos would think of Lazarus Long, and vice-versa.

And, yes the icon is appropriate. The ceremony was at 8:30 AM, and I had to be there at seven in the morning.

By yesterday evening I was wishing I'd checked the "mail me my diploma" option (I couldn't find the clothes I'd intended to wear today, and had to go hunting in my closet for something else suitable) rather than agreeing to attend the ceremony, but I'm glad now that I did go.

Once things got started, it all went smoothly enough, but things were rather chaotic at the beginning, getting everyone in the right place to process through the ceremony.

Some tips for anyone who has a graduation ceremony in their future:
1. Take some safety pins. If your graduation regalia has a hood worn down the back, the straight pins supplied will be enough to hold it in place properly. I spent half the time processing and waiting today fiddling with the thing when the pins came loose or the shoulder slipped.

2. Make sure whoever in your family has the camera recording the event has a working camera. (obvious, I know, but it bears repeating, as there has been a malfunctioning camera at every grad I've attended).

3. There will likely not be anywhere to put a jacket or purse once you've got your gown. Be prepared to wear everything under said gown. I ended up with a fleecy underneath, which was far too warm by the end of the ceremony.

Despite all that, it was an incredible experience, and I'm actually contemplating going back for a Masters degree in the future.

I'm really going all out on the vegetable garden right now. Went out and bought the plants: far too much lettuce (8-packs of a single type, so bought 2), four-six swiss chard (rainbow type again), a rosemary plant, parsley, chives, a pack of marigolds, strawberries and two tomato plants. They didn't have beans in yet, so that will come later. Oh yes, a bunch of beets as well.

Here's the funny thing. In prepping the first bed for the new plants, I found little tiny carrots: less than an inch long. They were the ones I planted last May, and they'd barely grown at all.

Also, I've gotten the second bed nearly bricked to the second level. Now I'm wondering if it's worth going for three, or if two is good enough.

I've started tidying up the two patches I'm using for vegetables again this year. Well, actually, one and a half patches. One got fully finished last year (and was a moderate success). The other got cleared and I got some of the bricks I'm using for edging placed.

Now the weather has improved enough I can finally get out there and check things out for this year. Much to my surprise, the one square of chives I planted last year survived. Nothing else, so all the other dead plants got ripped out. I've still got to clear the pine needles and cones, but that can wait until I have an empty garbage can to put them in. The second patch is not done yet, but if I have to I can use it the way it is now. I got the rest of the first rank of bricks put in around it. I'd like to take the bricks two higher, making it a raised bed.

I'm following the methods used in Square Foot Gardening again this year as last year was the first year I had success with a vegetable garden after intermittent years of trying.

I'm plotting to plant beans (got a double handful of beans from four plants last year), swiss chard (two to four plants), lettuce (perhaps not twelve plants though this year), more chives as they help to keep the pests down, marigolds (for the same reason), tomatoes (although I didn't get anything from them last year, I want to try again), parsley (more of it this year than last). I'm thinking of giving radishes and carrots another try. Last year the seeds didn't even sprout - I think the birds got them all. Cucumbers (the one plant) took over but didn't give me any results, just vined all over three squares.

Wall, we'll see how things work out this year.

How else can a ping-pong ball (or three) go missing in an enclosed room? I've had to buy a new package of them to have any to play with. They bounce off the table and are never seen again.

I started All Booked Up about a year ago to review the books I read. In the last week or so (actually more like a month), I've been tinkering with it a lot to try to improve it's standings. I've changed the method I use for reviewing books, and the like as well.

Some of the recent books I've posted include all of The Adept series by Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris, Dies The Fire by S. M. Stirling, The Protector's War by the same author and the like.

The main reason I'm posting this here is because I finally noticed that I'd forgotten to add a link in the sidebar.

That and I finally removed the defunct link for the messageboard I used to have on my Tolkien Page.

I've added a new links section to the website: Games Related Links for all of the Tolkien related computer/video games out there. I don't play them, but some of the games look pretty good.

It's incredible how easy it is to fall into old habits again. At the end of the summer I lost the charging cord for my MP3 player. I knew it was in the house somewhere, I just couldn't find it, so I stopped using the player, and found I didn't really miss it after all.

I just found the cord again the day before yesterday (somehow I'd switched the cord for my phone and the player. All this time it was in the phone's box), and I've found that I've always got the headphones in again after only two days.

At least I didn't have to buy a new cord or player.

Title: Flagging Questions
Author: Endaewen
Fandoms: Highlander and The Adept
Rating: G
Summary: Another MacLeod finds out about the theft of the Fairy Flag after the fact.
Disclaimer: Highlander belongs to Davis/Panzier and The Adept is the first book in a series belonging to Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris. I make no money off of this story whatsoever.
Note: I'm not overly happy with this story, as it came out of a very sketchy idea. It's not much of a crossover either, only mentioning events and characters from the other fandom. However, I'm just glad to be writing again so I went with it.

( Read the story )

I'm posting the links to the reviews I have done recently of Kurtz's Adept books (and related)

Lammas Night
The Adept
The Adept: Lodge of the Lymx

May everyone have a year of their fondest wishes (so long as those wishes bring no harm to others).

I hope to get the website restructuring done (it's been over a year now), and to read more of the books on my 'to be read' pile, instead of re-reading and buying new books.

At the moment I'm working my way through the Adept series by Katherine Kurtz and reviewing the books on my book review blog.

Did anyone actually follow through on their new years resolutions last year? I know that the ones I remember making didn't get completed.

Snow, snow, and more snow. eleven and a half inches in about fourteen-sixteen hours! I've just been scraping off the deck, and the snow was eleven and half inches deep. And, I had to scrape it again after I'd shoveled all the snow off - it was already white again. No question about it, we're having a white Christmas this year.
Everyone has canceled and I've been baking up a storm for the season: butter tarts, jam tarts, lemon tarts, a square, peppermint chocolate candy and rum balls. Oh well, we'll have lots of goodies for New Years - provided the weather improves.

I'd promised a while back to post on my NaNoWriMo experience.
It was tons of fun, enough that I might do it again next year. I made the wordcount, which tells me that I can actually write stories longer than about five thousand words. However, every book I've read says to 'show not tell' what's going on. That I couldn't manage, and I'm sure the story is riddled with cliches, even though I'd been trying - I read a book on writing character emotions before starting.

It's fifty thousand words of nothing. No drama, no tension, nothing happens to the characters, it's all backstory. There are some passages I like, but most of it. Well, I'm not inflicting the story on anyone as it stands.

However, I did it. I made fifty thousand words in thirty days!

It's been nearly a year since I've updated Far Vistas, my fanfic site!

Obviously I hadn't written much this past year.

Anyway, I added the Forsaken Fandoms award I got for my story Faire Things, a Forever Knight story. It won "Best Fluff" this year.

I've also added the next Perspectives piece for In The Open, my Highlander series. As of last night the story is up to date on Far Vistas.
The stories are (so far):
1. Conversation
2. Discovery
3. In The News

There are also two "Perspectives" pieces, where I'm doing other character's thoughts on the events of the main storyline. The first, posted a while ago was Joe's thoughts on the story Discovery, and the second, which was written a little while back and only posted last night was Methos' thoughts on the same story. Actually, it's the same story rewritten from his perspective.

I also posted my one and only Crossover story to date: The Raven In The Raven. It's a very short piece crossing Forever Knight with Highlander: The Raven.

This is what I'd meant to ask last night, but somehow it got missed and rejected: Is anyone else finding their word counts and the NaNoWriMo wordcounts different? Mine is off by a couple of hundred words (higher than theirs). I'm using Open Office and I'm trying to figure out where my extra words are that the site doesn't recognize.