emily ca.

So, obviously my efforts at NaNoWriMo this year have been slightly hampered by the fact that, um, I spent nearly the first week of it in Japan. However, I'm also running into a bit of a problem because this year I've decided to count whatever creative writing I do... and most of that, at the moment, is work on The Fic of Doom (AKA That Hellboy Fic I've Been Working on For a Long Time). At the moment, I have about 23,000 words on it.

So here's the thing - because of the way I write (editing as I go), I don't really know how I can keep track of what's *new* on the fic, as opposed to what I wrote before. So how should I go about counting the work on that doc into the NaNo count?

Poll #1482640 NaNo Word Count Question
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

Should I count the words for the Fic of Doom into my NaNo count, and if so, how?

I was going to include "Dear god, you're still working on that thing?" as an option, but since I'm genuinely curious what people think and wanted to use radio boxes to prevent more than one option getting tagged, I decided to leave it off. I promise to do something with fun ticky-boxes later in the month. ;)

According to Times Online (via my Google science RSS feed):

The rehabilitation of the beleaguered Large Hadron Collider was on hold tonight after the failure of one of its powerful cooling units caused by an errant chunk of baguette.

I... actually don't even know what to say to that.

Full article here. Seriously, thrown out of a plane? That... does seem a bit improbable, doesn't it?

http://chiasmus.org/blog/2009/11/delicata-squash-stuffed-with-spiced.html

Stuffed delicata squash
Originally uploaded by emily ca..

Another attempt to throw random veggie ingredients together to create something that doesn't appear to suck.

Here are the things I had:

• 1 delicata squash per person
  
• 2" piece of ginger, peeled and microplaned into mush
  
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
  
• 1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
  
• 1 tsp ground coriander
  
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
  
• 1/2 tsp ground serrano pepper (cayenne, etc. would work)
  
• 3 little chopped sweet/hot peppers (I'm not actually sure, they were from the farm share and I can't be bothered to look at the newsletter -- either way works for me)
  
• 2 tomatoes, quartered
  
• chopped cabbage and lacinato kale
  
• handful slivered almonds
  
• 1-1/2 c. cooked brown rice (preferably day-old)
  
• white wine to deglaze
  
• 2 scallions, chopped
  
• 1/2 big fat carrot, grated
  
• 1 stem basil, leaves torn

Heat your oven to around 400 degrees F. Slice the squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds and pulp, add a dribble of olive oil and a pinch of salt and bake until tender but not totally brown.

Meanwhile, prepare the fried rice. First fry the ginger and whole seed spices, then add the ground spices, then the peppers and tomato. Add a pinch of salt to encourage things to get reeeeal saucy. Add the cabbage and kale and cook a little more ('til greens are wilted), then add the almonds, stir, add the rice and cook for a few more minutes. If it is getting a little sticky on the bottom of the pan, add maybe 1/4 c. white wine and turn the heat up high, stirring to deglaze. Once you think things are pretty much cooked, turn the heat down low and add the scallions, basil, and grated carrot. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.

When both your rice and your squash are ready, scoop the rice into boat-like squashies, and stick it back into the oven for about 5 minutes.

Then you can eat it.

Yay! I'm hungry.

For vega_ofthe_lyre: Hellboy, Nuala/Abe.
Autumn wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay.
- Robert Browning

This is so not what I meant to write for this prompt. I hope you like it anyway.

( Autumn Wins You Best )

Soooooo, my very talented friend starbirdside (AKA miss_arel) is taking commissions. This is a wonderful thing, not only because I was able to slip in a request (yay!), but also because you could as well!

This is the person who drew unbelievably awesome Dalek Sek and Davey Jones for me, guys. You want art from her. Beliiieeeeeve me, you do. ♥

Links ganked from this morning's SkepChick column...

First, the bad - and I can't do better for my link text than a quote from the article itself: 'Dr Voussogh said that for him, a woman has to be a piece of jewellery [sic] which a man values.' Cosmetic surgeon remakes his wife, who he married for her "potential," into his vision of perfection. With 8 surgeries.

I'll be over here, too fumed at the gall of that man to think of anything actually useful to say.

For the funny crazy: Am I Dating a Werewolf? - Jezebel reviews a book that takes the usual dating types and breaks them up into categories based on mythical creatures. More interesting than your usual dating manual, at least. Quotes such as "I liked the Urban Elf very much. But I was still rebounding from my Satyr and was soon distracted by yet another Satyr; my relationship with the Elf fell away" make me giggle. A lot. Not necessarily in a way that is friendly to the author.

And, lastly - skeptical/scientific jewelry. Some pretty stuff, there. I'm always a bit leery of purchasing ceramic online, because of how variable glazes can be, but I have to admit that some of these are tempting.

In other news, I want very much to be writing, and very little to be working on my homework for class on Saturday. *Siiiiigh*

It's still the, er, Halloween season, right? Halloween fics are still coming! If yours isn't in this batch, I hope to have it finished by tomorrow - what with various charging issues and so on as well as, um, falling asleep on planes and other things like that, I didn't get quite as much cohesive writing time as I'd hoped on the trip. So I'm still playing a bit of catch-up. :)

But here's a few to get us started!

For zinjadu:
There's a reason why Mulder and Scully don't get invited to Bureau parties, and its nothing to do with the X-Files.

( Just Once Would Be Too Much )



* * *

For ruuger: Spike & Giles (or, you know... Spike/Giles... :P) with Halloween-loving Giles and disapproving Spike :)

( Watchful )



* * *

For beam_oflight: Romana & Sally Sparrow, or Romana/Sally or Romana is Sally. A Chance meeting at a Hallowe'en party - something along teh lines of 'This, again?'

( Halloween Monster Movie Mash, and the End of the World Again )

I probably should have made this post several hours ago, but a shower seemed more vital than the internet, and then I briefly broke my jetlag-fighting rule by taking an hour nap which really seems only to have made the situation worse, but hey! I'm home! I've been awake for over 24 hours straight (minus the hour-long-nap)! I'm totally brain-dead! It's kind of awesome how spastic I feel, seriously. But I made it through security and customs and all that (despite at one point going through the scanners with a double-handful of change and my metal belt-buckle still on, oops), and I didn't even murder the annoying teenagers on the light rail or the gaggle of tourists who prevented me from going up the stairs out of the transit tunnel. There was definitely muttering, though, oh, yes.

There will be more pictures when I am not exhausted, and there will be fic as well, because I did actually manage to write things on this trip! But suffice to say:

1. Even (especially?) in another country, I cannot escape constant reminders of Certain Things I Should Be Writing. Seriously, this got a bit silly toward the end of the trip. Not to mention surreal. And also Not Just Me. Pictorial evidence will follow, but I think at this point that ryunohi and maymargaret can vouch for me that, yes, the universe wants me to finish this stupid fic. And also that I do, actually, have slightly more random-crap-purchase-avoiding willpower than might otherwise be obvious. (I swear, I will make this make more sense at some point - at the moment typing complete words is enough of a challenge.)

2. Shinjuku may be a very nice area, but all in all if I'm going to get lost in a high-class shopping district with Eddie Bauer, the Gap, Starbucks, Tully's, Lush, and Krispy Kreme all within a four-block radius and while getting mildly drizzled on out of a pale grey sky... I might just as well be at home in Seattle where the street maps make sense.

3. Asakusa Kannon temple is awesome. Asakusa in general is awesome. Despite having, for no apparent reason, the highest bead store per capita rating of anywhere that I can possibly imagine. And a lot of scary Christmas stores.

4. Little old women don't care if you don't speak Japanese - they will just boss you louder and more vehemently. I literally got pulled by tiny old women a few times on this trip. It's adorable, if slightly scary. Although I will add that I was tickled the one time one of these women actually asked me (in Japanese) if I spoke Japanese. I can understand just well enough to tell what she was asking. And that, at least, made me feel ever so slightly less pathetic about having to make my now-patented "I'm a stupid gaijin, I'm so sorry" smiley-embarrassed face and shake my head.

5. Inevitably, yes, the adorably nice nurse-and-physiotherapist couple from Britain with whom we've been having a lovely multi-hour conversation in the hostel will turn out to be alt-med supporters. Seriously, where do I go to print out a handy pocket-size "This stuff is shit and here's why" pamphlet for passing out? Because 11pm in a hostel, my brain is not quite up to explaining to the very sweet couple "no, there so is not a lot of scientific evidence - you're mistaking 'lots of crap' for 'scientific evidence,' and that makes me sad!" I was good, though. I was polite. Really. But geeeeahhhhh.

6. My cat just knocked over the recycling. This is his idea of telling me he's glad to have me home, I suspect.

http://chiasmus.org/blog/2009/11/i-never-post-anything-but-recipes.html

Is that really so terrible? I don't think so.

Here's a soup I threw together for dinner. It tastes pretty delicious and can be made with stuff you might have sitting around (and not only if you have a spice addiction collection rivaling mine) plus something that's in season and wonderful.

You will need, roughly:

• 1 medium onion, chopped
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1 small kabocha squash, diced (~1/2 in cubes) -- this is the awesome seasonal ingredient!
  
• pinch nutmeg
  
• 1 tsp each ground coriander and cumin
  
• 1/2 tsp ground pepper (I have some neat ground serrano pepper, but you could use good paprika, cayenne, etc.)
  
• 2 bay leaves
  
• 3/4 c. red lentils
  
• 4 c. broth (or cheater concentrate + water)
  
• salt & pepper to taste

Saute the onions and garlic in a little olive oil in a good-size soup pot. Add the squash and cook a little more. Dump in the spices and stir around. Add the lentils and stir, then add liquid. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, partially cover, and let simmer for 30+ minutes or until the lentils are cooked and squash is tender. Season to taste and eat.

The other thing I made was much easier: quinoa tabbouleh.

All you need is:

• Some cooked quinoa
  
• A diced red onion
  
• Some chopped up parsley
  
• Diced cucumber
  
• Toooomaaaaatooooooo (I love tomato season, and heirlooms are leaving soon)
  
• Dressing of lemon juice and olive oil
  
• Salt and pepper to taste

I am not even going to explain that. It's a goddamn salad. It tastes good. It's good for you. Eat it.

Pictures from today's rambling are here.

It's just a few so far, but it's a start. :) I have a lot more, but it takes a while for me to go through them, and my contacts are driving me nuts, so that's as much as I can handle at the moment.

Today was a day for temples and shrines.

After working out some initial disorientation (I swear, maps around here are so weird, because of the streets being un-numbers) and breakfast, we headed up to Asakusa proper and the Senso-ji / Asakusa Kannon temple complex. Absolutely gorgeous area of temples and shrines, although we were slightly put out that the garden was closed. Lots of pictures taken, which I will hopefully put up somewhere in a while (when I can find the camera cord and so on) as well as having a fabulous lunch at a little noodle place, and then walking back via the river and another park with another really pretty temple.

We also found some exceptionally pretty hair ornaments, fabric, cloth things... all sorts of pretty shopping. Lots of pretty things. And a lot of randomness.

And now I have tea to drink, so I should get to that while it's on the way from absolutely scalding to too-tepid-to-enjoy. Right now I'm just happy to be off my feet after a day of walking. But it's been a very good day.

I made it, I live, and I'm sooooo tired.

It's 8:30 here in Japan, but as far as my brain is concerned, it's 4:30 in the morning... which means I've been awake for 23.5 hours, not counting a few naps on the plane today. But we got in, figured out the trains after a bit of wandering and confusion, found the hostel after a bit MORE wandering and confusion, and even eventually found dinner after a LOT more wandering and confusion, and with the bonus of a lot of mute pointing and other slightly frantic attempts to communicate with the nice restaurant staff, none of whom spoke more than a few words of English.

( Assorted complications and adventures in food and language barriers, among other things. )

Forgot to ask this earlier because I managed with my towel and sweater, but... am I the only idiot in the world who can't figure out how to blow up one of those damned inflatable neck-pillow things they sell for travel, or is there some kind of trick to it? It's got a... er... inflate-y-bit just like if you're blowing up some kind of inflatable pool toy, but no matter how hard I puff, I can't get the slightest inflation. Tried biting the... mouth-bit thing and all, thinking maybe there was a catch or something... nothing. Anybody?

Off to find correct terminal so that I can wait without worry...

Edited @ 9:25am Have successfully found correct terminal. The international stuff is all in a different building. Apparently this is meant to somehow be intuitive. Sorry, I come from a city where the airport only has one building. Although this does explain why the other building I started out at was so damned chintzy-looking. I thought that seemed a bit bizarre for a big international airport. :P This building is much nicer, albeit also under construction in parts, and with excessively long empty halls in others. Quite strange. But the terminals themselves are very nice.

I'll probably be dropping communication soon, to save my battery for the trip. Next time you hear from me, I'll be in Tokyo!

From The Boy (who knows how to keep me entertained when I'm awake early): Real Sea Monsters, a New Scientist article on ancient marine reptiles. Totally awesome stuff. ♥

Turns out that, while not exactly easy, it is actually possible to get a moderate night’s sleep in an airport. Admittedly, it does help if it’s the middle of the night and the terminal is pretty much completely empty, and also if you don’t mind looking like a complete imbecile while you’re at it. My method turned out to be curling up on one of the annoying bench-chairs, legs over my backpack and upper body around my purse, with my hood pulled up, sleep-mask on, and my wool coat wrapped all the way around myself (or as much as possible in whatever contorted position I ended up in).

Why the coat, you might ask? Well, partly to keep out sound and light, but mostly because it turns out that it’s freaking freezing in airports at night. I’m sure SeaTac would probably have the same problem (large space, no people filling it with their body heat, lots of windows, etc), but still. Cold.

As it is, I’m sitting here with my hoodie zipped up and my wool coat on, wide awake and wondering a) why the hell it’s so cold in here, b) where the hell this airport keeps all its reader boards and electrical outlets (Jack’s fine, but I’d like to charge up before getting on the plane), and why it is, exactly, that their Starbucks is not open yet. Maybe it’s just because I’m spoiled by SeaTac (or maybe just really naive - I realize I’ve never been in SeaTac at this hour before), but I truly expected that whenever I woke up, the Starbucks would be open. Especially given how damned cold it is in here. Bleh.

Still - 6.5 hours of sleep, not half bad all things considered. Definitely better than I expected to do, given the circumstances. If it hadn’t been for some maintenance guy setting off an annoying beeping alarm, I might even have done more, but the terminal’s getting more populated, so I suppose being awake at this point isn’t a bad thing.

A little over 5 hours til my plane boards. Oh, and look - it seems the Starbucks is now open.

So, among my last minute "oh-shit" things that I realized I had to do today before leaving for Japan: Vote. Absentee ballots are a glorious thing.

I'm embarrassed to admit how lost I felt when I realized that The Stranger's voter guide doesn't include any information on those pesky little one-candidate runs. The ones where there isn't a choice so much as a panic over whether to vote for or not to vote for this person I've never heard of before, when there really isn't an alternative. Googling politicians? Really not that helpful. And their websites are all kind of ass.

It doesn't really matter, I suppose, given the lack of alternative, but I always have the nagging feeling that I might accidentally vote for someone I'd totally hate if I knew a damned thing about them.

That said, I do love the feeling of voting a huge yes on Ref. 71 (our "everything but marriage" domestic partnership law), and another big old no on yet another of Tim Eyman's moronic plots to wrestle funding away from everything good in the state. Seriously, where do I sign to get that man permanently barred from ever submitting another freaking initiative? To my memory, we haven't had an election without his asshattery since before I could vote. :P

Director Paul Haggis Renounces Scientology in scathing public letter.

Gee, things haven't been looking so grand for the Church of Scientology lately, have they? :D

Note to Christians: This whole 'be not afraid to wear your crosses - we'll show Them!' shit from an archbishop just makes you look like idiots who can't figure out that, in the Western World, YOU are the fucking majority.

And seriously, don't even talk to me about the Pope. That guy... has some serious issues. Wasn't this meant to be a religion of love, or did I get confused somewhere along the line?

For the record: I am very much aware that neither the pope nor the archbishops really represent the majority of the people they're supposed to. I don't blame anybody for that, any more than I wanted to be blamed for the actions of the US back during the reign of Dubya the Incoherent. But sheesh.

I went out shopping for books for my trip this weekend (last night to Elliot Bay Book Company, and today to Half Price Books), and... I think I may have slightly over done it? I have this thing where I sort of get out of control with books. It's like any other addiction - if you allow yourself to take even one drink (or, in my case, buy one book)... it just leads to going nuts and overdoing it. Sooo... I'm a lot more poor, but I have a lot of awesome books. Yay.

I'm also having occasional teensy-tiny little nervous breakdowns about OMG LEAVING ON WEDNESDAY. Well. Technically, going to LA on Wednesday night, and then omg leaving-for-real on Thursday morning. But still. Same diff, in a general sense. Either way, it's all very suddenly immediate and I'm only freaking out a tiny bit, really, of course. Really. Hah.

Expect a near-constant state of panic between now and Thursday. And then silence, hopefully followed by a triumphant "News From Tokyo!" kind of post on Friday night. Well... assuming the hostel really does have Wifi. If not, the triumphant post might have to wait until I can find a local internet cafe. :D

But that's not yet. Not until Friday. Until then.... yeah. Until then, it's all over but two more days of work, and a lot of packing and panicking and general fuss and worry. Wheeeeee.