I Speak With the Tongue of a Thousand White-Hot Lies!

I suck at linking, but I have been blogging at WordPress, if you want to click over.

... and my ghost story, "Hauntings," is in it!

There are other stories in it, as well, all of which play with the theme of "paranormal adventures" during this spookiest of months. (I love October. I love ghost stories. I'm so excited about this, I can't even tell you.)

The issue is $3.99 and is available in a variety of formats for your e-reading pleasure.

(This is a standalone story, by the way; no Teachouts in sight.)

Spent Saturday at Islands of Adventure to celebrate jkason's birthday.

I haven’t ever thought of myself as a Harry Potter geek, and yet I was all goofy as we walked into Hogsmeade, and did a little geeky dance of joy when we saw Hagrid’s cottage. (FANG WAS BARKING, OKAY? DO NOT JUDGE ME!)

My parents took the boyo to Magic Kingdom for the day, so I didn’t have to have Mom-guilt. I did miss him a lot, though—like, even more than I usually do when he’s not around. It hit the Lovely Husband, too; we spent a lot of time saying, "Oh, Z would love this," or "Z would hate that."

Said Z and I spent Sunday afternoon comparing stories and plotting out what sort of wands we want (even though the wand chooses the wizard and all that; I figure if the Sorting Hat takes requests, so can the good people at Ollivander’s) when we eventually go as a family to Universal.

My other trip highlights include the Spider-Man ride, which was awesome; the Jurassic Park ride (always go on rides with people who are willing to play along); and riding the Dudley Do-Right flume ride in the rain while swearing a lot and making bad 50 Shades of Grey jokes. Because we are very immature.

It was also lovely to stay up late talking about musicals and revenge tragedy and general gossip with Jason. That was probably my favorite thing. Dinner at Tu Tu Tango (art on the walls, dancers, artists painting, and so. much. food.) with three of my favorite people was a pretty close second.

Oh, and …

Z told me today that when he got off the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ride, he said a bad word. The ‘h’ word.

Then he paused, and said, “Well, actually it was the ‘b-h’ word.” Longer pause as he waited for the adults to figure it out. ”You know,” he said, “Ron says it.”

Wait. “‘Bloody hell’? You said ‘bloody hell’?”

"That’s the one, yeah!"

I got all fangirly over Orphan Black, and I am too lazy to do more than link to it. Yay!

I am also high as balls on allergy meds at the moment. (I wrote that specifically for my lovely friend, Erin.)

I have a bunch of projects I'm working on; I have no idea which of them, if any, will see the light of day, but I like being busy. However, this massive allergy attack has left me sort of reeling in place (and drugged). I've hit a goal on one thing, and am ahead on another, so I figured to hell with it, let's just take today off from writing.

Then I got bored.

So now I'm on the blog, and I have no actual idea what I want to write about. How long has it been since I've posted? (goes to look) Oh, not quite a week--it seems so much longer!

All right, then, what's going on around here ...

Well, the boyo is out of school for the summer, and I think we're settling into a groove. Sort of. He's reading his way through Dr Seuss's entire ouevre, never mind that he's read them all already. I had forgotten how complex Dr Seuss got, once you move past Hop On Pop (though that book has its moments).

I was really trying to push him toward actual chapter books, because he spent a lot of time with those during the school year (oh my god, the Magic Treehouse books ...), but I've backed off a lot because, you know, it's the summer and he should be able to read what he wants. And if I can go back and read all my old Betsy Byars books, or all the Little House books, or every Neil Gaiman picture book in the library (which I did, before I had a kid), then he should get to read No, David! again if he wants.

(He does not, in point of fact, want to read No, David! This actually makes me kind of sad.)

So, yeah--lots of Dr Seuss and Adventure Time comics at The Little Pink House right now. Tomorrow we may go see How to Train Your Dragon 2, assuming I'm not dead of allergies.

I am s l o w l y working my way through a re-read of Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, which I remember really loving when I was 19 and read it the first time. I'm kind of wondering how much of that love was due to the fact that I was reading it during my semester abroad, quite frankly, because the second time through, at 41, is ... not the same experience. In some ways it's good. In some ways it's not. But there are some interesting ideas/quotes, and half the reason I want to keep going is I might end up blogging about it.

Still watching Orphan Black. In fact, there's a whole blog entry in me about why I love Sarah and Allison the best ...

(I just got a free copy of Allure, and it tells you something about my age and overall sensibilities that the headline "Her Gutsy Haircut & Supermodel Stories" is perhaps the funniest thing I've seen since I learned the phrase "high as balls.")

The allergies have made my voice go all squeaky (I rarely get the Phoebe-style sexy phlegm; I sound like the little rabbit kid from the Disney Robin Hood), so when patrons approach the desk to ask me for help, I end up replying with this startling sort of bark/squeak noise that then resolves itself into actual words. It's both embarrassing and amusing. Another observation of my current allergy hell is how much my mood and general outlook depend on whether or not I can breathe through my nose.

Okay, I honestly thought I had more stuff to write about--like, I had an actual idea for the next paragraph, and now--poof!--gone.

... all right, yeah, it's not coming back. And so I will wrap up this goofy, pointless blog post and go blow my nose. Again.

Posted about Glee again on WP.

Maybe later this week I'll post the thing about the Moody Blues' Greatest Hits being a dystopian album ...

Wait, I just posted yesterday, what the hell is going on?!

So, Glee. I liked that a lot ... and all I have are random observations.

First off, though, I have to say I was disappointed not to see any talking cat-nuns or giant faces in jars in this episode. The bedbugs are not Macra. (I am a ridiculous Doctor Who nerd. But like that's news.)
( Spoilers ahoy! )

I posted half-formed thoughts about the last two episodes of Glee on WordPress.

jkason, you are on notice. You know why. :)

That is all.

The scoop on Scott and I meeting Alton Brown is up over on WP (with footnotes. After a day of jury duty--which is certainly our most depressing civic duty, if nothing else--I am too tired to cross-post and deal with footnotes).

If you don't know who Alton Brown is ... well, there's a link. As the paperboy fish on Spongebob says, "Arm yourself with knowledge."

(also on my WordPress blog)

So I have a husband. He's a good husband--he cooks! He vacuums! He's smart and cool and makes me laugh, and I think he's pretty cute. We've been together for 22 years, so basically my entire adult life I've been attached, in one way or another, to this particular goofball (who is currently sitting on the other end of the couch, buried in his laptop whilst "Bizarre Foods America" plays in the background).

They tell you, when you get married, that your spouse will always surprise you. And it's true, but as the years wear on those surprises become fewer ... then when they do happen, they're just ridiculously shocking.

The last time I completely shocked Scott, it was 2010 and I tried sushi (I am a notoriously picky eater, mostly because texture is a thing for me) and I liked it!

My most recent surprise, which has been ongoing for the past few years, is Scott's crafting ability.

(Okay, yeah, I hear "crafting" and I think felt and glitter and maybe poster paint. But that's not what I'm talking about. Bear with me.)

It's not his urge to make stuff that surprises me, because he's always had that. He's dabbled in writing, he worked in radio production for eleven years, he cooks, he's a creative person. That he wanted to make decorations for the boy's room and bottle cap magnets was not the shock. No, the shock came in that his stuff comes out looking really good.

Look, he can't manage to get his dirty clothes into the damn hamper even when it's two feet away from him. He only started remembering my correct birth date when we'd been together for seventeen of my birthdays. I love him, but I was somewhat skeptical about his patience and attention to detail.

Yeah, I was proven wrong. In fact, I now have five bottle cap magnets in my office at work, and people constantly ask me where I got them.

Anyway, all of this is to tell you about my Christmas present from 2010. (Because what's a blog post by Laura without some crazy amount of backstory as a lead-in? I am the Heinz Doofenschmirtz of blogging. Someday I'll tell you the woeful tale of my time spent as my family's lawn gnome ... no, actually, I won't, that's plagiarism and copyright infringement, and I like Phineas and Ferb.)

So! Christmas 2010! I was going through a serious steampunk phase (which I am not completely out of, nor will I ever be), and I'd made some noises about Things I Might Like Were I Able to Find Them.

I opened the box from Scott and got this:



]
These are actually the ones he just ordered for himself, but they're the same basic thing. (Wow, hello fingerprints!)



They're generic welding goggles. I looked curiously at my husband, who said, "I'm going to steampunk them up for you."

Cue montage (for which I have no photos) of spray paint, brads, lots of internet searches, frantic phone calls to our costumer friend David for instructions, the use and/or discarding of said instructions, ordering things off the internet, swearing and slicing up of fingers with copper wire, and many, many detours into bottle cap magnet-making, laptop decorating, pin making, and other various and sundry projects that were not my steampunk goggles, after which there would be an explosion of progress on said goggles before the next detour project happened.

Three years later, this past Saturday, at the conclusion to one of those progress explosions, Scott emerged from my parents' garage with my goggles and told me to try them on.

(My favorite part of this process has been sitting in front of Scott while he measured my head for the strap. There's something very quiet and very intimate about it, like when he fastens my necklaces for me. Sigh. /end schmoop)

"How are they?" he asked after I tightened the strap and shook my head around a little.

"They're good," I said.

"Awesome. They're done."

Wait--what? Three years of work and he just ... handed them to me with no fanfare at all? This is the man who, after completing a chore I've asked him to do, has been known to enter the living room and triumphantly yell "BOOM, MOTHERFUCKERS!" Have aliens replaced my husband with a clone?!

I suppose the fanfare is up to me, then.

BOOM, Y'ALL--I HAVE GOGGLES!

They are seriously cool. Here, look:



From the front. Check these bad boys out!





From the side (not pleased with this photo, but we do what we can with the iPhone camera)



And here they are on me:



Selfie! With goggles!


(The idea is that I, the mad engineer, needed special goggles for my insane plan to take over the world using ... I dunno, dirigibles and an army of steam-powered hairless cats, so I cobbled these together out of stuff that was laying around my lair-slash-laboratory. I feel that alternate universe steampunk mad engineer me is very talented and her steam-powered hairless cats would be quite the sinister minions.)

Best Christmas present ever. Totally worth the wait.