Weekend in review

Friday: As I have posted earlier, got that needed dose of Battlestar Galactica, some Mike's Hard Berry (courtesy of spazzkat), and the company of mamishka, who brought me a bunch of books. (Thanks, Meems and Paul, for making Friday night good!) Aside from that, I blew most of Friday night updating newmoon and door, though I wound up having to rope solarbird in to finish up the updates on newmoon since sendmail got all wonky. By the time we were done with that, it was pretty late--so we didn't bother to try to tackle lodestone.

Saturday: I seem to be in the habit of this morning walking thing now, because I actually voluntarily got up and did one on Saturday morning; if this keeps up, I might turn into a morning person. (I know, I'm scared too.) Aside from that, this was the Day of Getting Random Chores done; I spent most of the morning doing the updates on lodestone and then paying bills. Paul and Dara took off for most of the afternoon to go play croquet with jessicac, Meems, llachglin, and others. While they were gone, I scampered off to the nearby Shoreline post office to mail the bills I'd paid since I missed our neighborhood mail pickup, and then spent most of the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the upstairs bathroom. I also amused myself re-reading Skin, an old X-Files novel I'd forgotten I owned; it was one of the ones Meems brought back to me Friday night. For what it is--i.e., a media adaptation novel--it's not bad. It had the right X-Files-y mix of the paranormal and governmental/corporate conspiracy, the interplay between Mulder and Scully was true to character, and unlike the author of some of the earlier X-Files novels, the author of this one didn't make the jarring mistake of referring to our heroes as "Fox" and "Dana". The prose was not noteworthy in any way, aside from a comforting lack of typos. Still, though, a nice fluffy read.

Saturday evening went to the highly enjoyable pastime of watching Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet, which Dara found after judicious searching on Bittorrent--currently the only way we have to get in the States since it hasn't made it over here from the UK yet. Short form: two thumbs up on that. If you're a fan of the original Captain Scarlet, this will be great fun for you. If you're not a fan of the original, it should still be also be fun! The two most amusing comments about the episode came out of Paul, who qualifies in the "not an active fan of the original" category, so there you go. (These were "Meanwhile, on a nearby Halo level" as we see Scarlet in the British countryside, and "Spectrum is GAY!" when Scarlet deploys a rainbow-colored parachute. Snicker.)

Sunday: Quiet, mostly. I spent quite a bit of time poking around Wikipedia and even succumbed to fixing their pages on GBS and Alan Doyle, as I posted about yesterday. A lot of what I did on the site, though, was simply reading all the cool things they had about recent astronomical discoveries; I had had no idea, for example, that Jupiter is now up to 63 known moons. Dara and I walked down to Lake Forest Park for what's becoming our summer weekend habit of visiting the Farmer's Market for shave ice and fresh raspberries; risu walked down part of the way with us, and it was a pleasant walk indeed even if a trifle hot. Dara and I both got rather pink from the sun. Later on I read one of the two books Mimi loaned me: Suzanne Enoch's Flirting With Danger. Fluffy romantic suspense, lady thief meets dashing billionaire when she tries to steal a valuable artifact from him and winds up having to save his life instead. Ms. Enoch says in her author notes at the end that Remington Steele was one of the influences on this story, and it really did rather show. Hee. I was very charmed. On top of engaging characters and lighthearted prose, there wasn't a single typo anywhere in the book, which is always worth extra points with me these days. Dara made sun tea, we watched Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, and eventually I got around to doing some writing.

Days till my thyroid surgery: 22
Days without a rejection letter from Luna: 67
Days without a rejection letter from Nadia Cornier: 49
Saturday miles: 1.1
Sunday miles: 2.0
Monday morning miles: 1.0
Miles out of Hobbiton: 272.65
Miles to Rivendell: 185.35

Light-less in Seattle

I'm hearing tell of reports of a crane that took out a high-voltage power line, which in turn took out a large swath of power across the city of Seattle. solarbird is telling me that there are reports of power loss in the U District, Fremont, Greenlake, Eastlake, and Roosevelt.

Anybody else out there have more data? I'm not seeing any news reports yet on seattletimes.com or seattlepi.com.

Nathan Fillion goes all Captain Reynolds

Word out of the Browncoat Brigade has it that Nathan Fillion, our very own Captain Mal, recently went into a comic book store in search of a copy of the first issue of the new Serenity comic--one with his character on it, which he wanted to purchase for his mom. It seems further that the store in question had only one copy of the issue left, which they were selling for $20, and the guy at the counter flat refused to sell the issue to Nathan for the U.S. cover price.

Nathan was apparently less than pleased, and has sounded off to the legions of Browncoats to express his displeasure. (Thanks to kent_s for the link!)

Man, oh man. I read that blog entry and the link it quotes in turn over on fireflyfans.net, and according to that thread, the reason that the store was charging $20 for the issue is because it's how much they paid for it. But I'm also seeing reports on that thread from locals in Edmonton that the store in question has a history of pulling stunts like this.

Even if you're not a fan of the show and haven't watched any of it, how non-observant do you have to be to not realize that the guy who's standing in front of you buying a comic book is in fact the guy whose face is on the cover? I've seen that cover art! It's a good likeness! And how not-sharp do you have to be to miss a golden opportunity to get some actual autographs on merchandise in your store?

Maaaaaaan. I would not want to be that comic book store guy right now. He's apparently getting reams of pissed off email and phone calls from the Browncoats as word is spreading of Nathan's ire.

EDIT 4:32pm--And oh yeah, here is an LJ post quoted by the aforementioned fireflyfans.net thread. Apparently this is the LJ of one of the store employees, and he's getting in reams of comments, too. Best quote so far out of the thread:

"So whether you were right or wrong, I suggest you find a way to make peace with the Browncoats. They were born angry and fightin'; and they never forget a grudge."

Calling all herb geeks

So I have a small point of research I'm trying to figure out for Lament of the Dove, and my point of research is this:

I have a situation where my girl Faanshi needs to make a clever suggestion to another character about how to get some serious stink off his hands. kathrynt suggested that she should point out some herbs growing wild near his house that he might use, but while I'm finding references to several strongly aromatic herbs poking around Wikipedia and a couple of other sites, I'm not entirely sure yet what might be the best suggestion for her to make. Also, I'm not entirely certain how she ought to suggest the other character use them in the first place.

Anybody out there have any thoughts on the topic? Let me hear 'em! Right now the main candidates jockeying for my attention are hyssop, lavender, chamomile, lemon balm, pennyroyal, basil, and meadowsweet. (I know several of these have other uses, but these are the main interesting aromatic herbs I've been reading about tonight.)