From time to time I get curious about what time sunrise and sunset will be occurring, and one of the glories of the internet is that it makes finding this out very easy. I used to use the solar calculator here, but today I found the much niftier one here at the Earth Science Research Lab. The new one is more fun because instead of putting in the coordinates of the place you want the sunrise/sunset times for into little boxes, you drag a little pin around a map of the earth. Also, you can tell it to remember where you put the pin, so you can go back to it later and not have to start over at the beginning. I put the map on Lincoln using a map view that showed eastern Nebraska, and then after cranking up the magnification discovered that I had placed it about four blocks from my apartment. How fun is that? Sunrise calculated not just for my city, but for my zip code. *swoon*

This weekend is the one-year anniversary of my move to my new apartment. It's not exact to the day, but I started to move the day after Thanksgiving last year, so it's good enough. I have decided this means I really need to finish unpacking. (I am so very bad at moving!) To be fair, I'm almost done with getting things out of boxes, it's finding them permanent homes that is the problem. The biggest issue is books, I have more books than bookshelves. I think that one is ultimately solvable--I have an office now, which means I have a place to write and store books--but getting it done when I could be writing or cooking or crocheting or etc is the problem.

I have a bit of incentive now, because I have decided to decorate my place for Christmas. In token of this, I bought myself a poinsettia this week. I may buy myself more, because I love poinsettias and they, like peppermint stick ice cream, are only available one month out of the year. I'd like an amaryllis as well, but that will depend on how my disposable income goes this month. But they are available all winter, so that is not such a problem.

My most recent story has been getting a lot of reaction, a lot of it bad, and it has bugged me more than usual. After finally getting a full night of sleep, I've decided that this was mostly because my day job was really stressful this week and that was hyping all my responses. But I remain irked by the notion that the story was a 'missed moment of awesome'. First off all, the concept smells like something from TVTropes, a website I have rapidly come to loathe. Second, I didn't miss a moment of awesome because I wasn't aiming for it. I do not write awesome. You want awesome, you need to stop reading when you hit my name in the credit line because you will only be disappointed. I've been on the story team for like three years now; shouldn't that be clear to everyone by now?

The sun has risen, my tea is finished: Time for laundry!

My most recent L5R story is up (finally! I was so horribly late with this one): Autumn Chronicles.

From time to time yhlee and helen_keeble make mention of having music lists for stories when they are writing, and for my most recent story I decided to try it.

The list I came up with is probably not optimized, if indeed that concept can be applied to a project like this. The list was assembled from songs I happened to have loaded into my MacBook at the moment, and I didn't go through any of my CDs to see if they had anything appropriate. It was fairly entertaining, and when I do get my music collection in order it might be fun to come up with lists for other stories I've done. I can't really say that it helped me write, but I've had so many problems with this story (and most of them non-writing related!) I'm not sure if that is conclusive.

For the curious, here's the list:
The Chain, Fleetwood Mac
Total Eclipse of the Heart, Bonnie Taylor
Courage (For Hugh MacLennan), The Tragically Hip
Too Good to be True, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Devil Inside, INXS
Silvio, Bob Dylan
The Dark of the Sun, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Three Pistols, The Tragically Hip
Zombie Zoo, Tom Petty
Kick, INXS
Divinity II, Advent Children soundtrack
All the Things She Said She Said, Simple Minds

So I'm finishing up my morning tea and scanning the AEG forums when I notice that the semi-annual dust-up over BoJ is still going on in the Setting subforum. I've been trying to ignore it this time, but (as usual) I can't resist a good train-wreck.

But even knowing what I know, I was kind of taken aback by the post that claimed that the current story team had no respect for the book. I mean, really? Misquoting the Story Team is the L5R community's second favorite pastime, but it's not often that the result is so funny.

(Also, it's not often your default icon is the exact perfect match to a post. More funny.)

For the past few years the bakery has offered dinner rolls in the shape of a bunch of grapes. We call them 'bread sculptures', which is something of an exaggeration given my lack of artistic talent--but I can bake bread, so they come out pretty nice looking. Anyway, this year I was organized enough to make some demo models in advance, so that customers would have an idea what they looked like, and to get photographs on the website. Which means, I can show them to my friends. ~linky!~

I love making them because shaping bread is always so satisfying. Next week will be VERY VERY BUSY, but at least I'll get to make bread!

The times I am most badly in need of a day off are invariably the times when it is completely impossible for me to do so.