i'm at my family's home for xmas, with
lightgetsin and my dad. my uncle was here over xmas itself and my brother and his not-a-girlfriend are currently roaming about the countryside taking in the (very very cold) sights. and yes, there was more snow in virginia that there is up here in connecticut (although i understand it's melting rather alarmingly back home), but it's a whole lot colder here. yesterday light and i spent pretty much the entire day in the room with the woodstove -- i was telecommuting and she was writing things y'all are likely to enjoy a lot! -- except for a very brief excursion to throw a frisbee for the dogs in between wind gusts. (light's dog can catch a frisbee in the air about half of the time, which is cause for extremely victorious victory laps. my dad's dog...well, she can tell you've tossed something and she'll go look at it and leave it there.) then my dad came home and totally pwned me at kids' books*.
speaking of kids' books, remind me to scan
my 1935 lolcats book for y'all!
xmas presents highlights: electronic rubik's cube (it can solve itself!), the
complete calvin and hobbes (gorgeous and heavy!), and a tea-of-the-month subscription (because i needed more tea, right?).
yuletide present:
Proposition VIII from gael baudino's
dragonsword books. it is so
very much like the books, i am amazed! if anyone else out there has read these books, go, go read my story!
as for the yuletidery which i have wrought, i only finished one of the two stories i intended for my primary recipient. the one which just kept growing is...er...still growing. it SHALL be posted! and it shall be epic! and i am very glad that i finished up the other one, which is not epic but was still quite fun. and admitting that i wasn't going to finish the epic allowed me to pick up a little madness story as well.
i'm tracking yuletide (and other, eventually) recs
here: female man - russ, spindle's end - mckinley, chronicles of the kencyrath - hodgell, grosse pointe blank, oregon trail, white collar, lovelace and babbage, and dragonsword so far! and i need to shift over a few spirited away recs as well. i'm trying to comment as i rec-bookmark, so we'll see how that works out.
and i'm uploading my older stories as i have time, too. egads. i appear to have spent many years not believing in titles. now i have to find a hundred or so all at once! sigh. so if you suddenly get a gift notification from me for something i wrote for you five years ago, uploading is why!
* the kids' book in question is
it's raining, said john twaining by n.m. bodecker, and the rhyme which i completely flubbed and which my dad then recited by glancing at the book and then looking away:
There once was a King
who had three daughters.
The oldest he called Sip!
The second he called Sip sippernip!
But the youngest of all he called
Sip sippernip sip sirumsip!
Not far away lived another King
who had three sons.
The oldest was called Skrat!
The second was called Skrat skratterat!
But the youngest of all was called
Skrat skratterat skrat skrirumskrat!
Now by and by
the two Kings got together,
the King who had three daughters
and the King who had three sons,
and decided that their children
should marry.
And married they were!
Sip
got
Skrat
and
Sipsippernip got Skratskratterat
and
Sipsippernipsipsirumsip got Skratskratteratskratskrirumskrat. As simple as that!