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Why? Well, one, my book tour starts tomorrow and that’s two weeks straight out on the road, and after that I have events basically every other weekend through November, so better to prepare than not (I got a flu shot a couple months back, so I’m good there, too), and two, our dimwit-not-even-qualified-enough-to-call-himself-a-quack Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., may be about to try to make it more difficult for everyone under the age of 75 to get a COVID vaccine, based on absolute bullshit that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, so fuck him, I got mine. I booked my appointment at CVS, went in, got shot up and was on my merry way in less than ten minutes. Simple! Easy! Smart!
Naturally, I strongly encourage all y’all to get your own shots in as soon as you can (allowing for previous vaccine schedules and/or previous infections). Take care of yourself out there, because at this particular moment, the US federal government isn’t gonna do you much good.
— JS
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⌈ Secret Post #6827 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 34 secrets from Secret Submission Post #975.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
OK, so... we've known each other for a long time now, right? And um, I just think, I mean, I really think that we're ready to, you know, take that next step together, you and me, so... I was wondering, if you would do me the honor of...
...looking at a bunch of beautiful jewelry-themed cakes with me?
You will? Oh, this is the happiest day of my life!
Let's start things out sweetly with this charm bracelet cake.
It appears that this birthday girl is turning 30 and likes cupcakes and presents. (Hey, so do I!) I hope she didn't think the bracelet was a present too, because it's 100% eat-able.
Do the cogs of your steampunk-loving-heart whir mechanically in a beating fashion for this pocket-watch?
By CC member LourdesGel (more pics at link)
The interior is actually set in gelatin to resemble resin. So cool. Not to mention setting the bar very high for the typical "Jello cake," which consists of poking holes in a cake and pouring Jello mix inside.
Next up is this lovely triple-strand pearl necklace cake. (I'm betting the stand is cake too, otherwise that would make for a very, very small cake).
By CakeCentral member tiptop57
Pearl trivia alert: Did you know it's bad luck to be given a pearl? If it's a gift, you should buy it from the giver, even if you just give them a dime in return. Not sure if pearl cakes fall into this category, so just give it to me and I'll bravely test the theory out.
But seriously, I just don't know about this 'decorating with jewelry' trend, because if I came to a party where the cake was dripping with matching necklaces, I would get all excited and think it was some kind of cool party favor display.
Submitted by Jessica C., made by We Bake In Heels
I'd probably be just as excited to learn I could eat them though.
And some gifts are better off being eaten anyway. Buying your boss a fancy new watch? That's a good way to weird him out.
From the Raymond Weil page here (ordered for the CEO's anniversary), baker not listed.
But making your boss a cake in the shape of a fancy watch? You just got yourself a raise!
Here's another:
Doesn't this look totally real? That gold-plating is so smooth and shiny, I'm having visions of cracking a tooth on it.
The 'stones' inside this emerald choker are actually made from melted fructose and water.
By CC member Aleksandraaa
I didn't even know you could buy fructose. What does it look like? Does it come in a bag? I probably would have just attempted to microwave Jolly Ranchers or something, which is why I am not a professional cake-maker. (However, I do make a mean Jello cake.)
And speaking of emeralds, this cake features so many it could be the Wizard of Oz's wedding cake. If he like, really liked earrings, or something.
(Featured on Martha Stewart Weddings, but the baker isn't listed. Anyone know?)
Every single perfectly-piped pendant on this cake is completely edible as well.
And what would a jewelry-themed cake round-up be without including a certain iconic shade of blue?
By Sucre Coeur
Forget Breakfast at Tiffany's, I'll take dessert!
Happy Sunday!
*****
P.S. While we're talking jewelry, anyone want to bring vintage style pins back? Because this entire set of 7 lovelies is only $15:
OooOOOooh. I think the owl is my favorite. And the peacock. And the dragonfly.
The steerable 60 foot diameter dish antenna of the
There's nothing quite like reading fanfic that jumps up on your buttons and rolls around on them like my cat jumping up on my keyboard while I'm working.
Weekend one is not off to a great start, I'm gonna be honest. It's definitely now Autumn and the pressure change has my vertigo messing with me. At the moment I have tinnitus in both ears, but the right ear is the whooshing sound I usually get and my left ear is a high-pitched sound. The combination of tinnitus and audio processing disorder leads to the most ridiculous scenes in stores or restaurants or anywhere I have to talk to people because I'll be partway through an interaction and lose the ability to understand what the other person is saying.
The plan for this weekend has been cut down since bending over and other various weird movement is out, but at minimum we're planning on taking some stuff to goodwill tomorrow. This will happen. Bug went through her books some and for her that's huge. And we paid somebody with a truck to come take a few things too big for the car, so... Definitely some progress. Just not as much as I'd like.
I did also finish a fic last night but not anything I've been intending to work on, just something that took over my brain this week. Yay, that!
⌈ Secret Post #6826 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 41 secrets from Secret Submission Post #975.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
The first secret from this batch will be posted on September 20th.
| RULES: 1. One secret link per comment. 2. 750x750 px or smaller. 3. Link directly to the image. More details on how to send a secret in! Optional: If you would like your secret's fandom to be noted in the main post along with the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret. If your secret makes the fandom obvious, there's no need to do this. If your fandom is obscure, you should probably tell me what it is. Optional #2: If you would like WARNINGS (such as spoilers or common triggers -- list of some common ones here) to be noted in the main post before the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret. Optional #3: If you would like a transcript to be posted along with your secret, put it along with the link in the comment! |
It’s come ’round again, the anniversary of the first day I sat down and wrote something here intended for daily(ish) updating, twenty-seven years ago, long ago enough that AOL was still a viable and ongoing concern and that blogs weren’t called “blogs,” they were called “online diaries” or “online journals.” Because I was a former journalist and also a bit of an ass, I spurned both those titles (as I would the word “blog” a little later), preferring to say that I wrote an “online column.” Over time, I have become rather less precious about this, especially now that “blog” is a concept that now hearkens back to a cretaceous era of the Internet, before social media and algorithms and the concept of being “terminally online.” If only we knew then what we know now. We might all go running into the night, never to return.
Be that as it may, Whatever continues, and I still post here regularly, along with my daughter Athena, who was a couple months from being born when I started this whole thing. At this point in time, she actually does more here than I do; she posts almost all the Big Ideas, and writes as many of the longer pieces here these days than I manage. This partly because so much more of my professional life happens offline these days — in the last week or so, as an example, I wrote a short story, a script treatment and some of my novel, and then traveled to Portland for a convention, and starting Monday I embark on a two-week book tour — and partly because Athena is writing cool and interesting stuff and I’m really happy about that. The Whatever is better for having her as part of it, and it’s been fun watching this place grow from my personal soapbox into a two-person shop. I like that 27 years on, this site is still evolving.
I am very really happy with what’s going on in my professional writing life at the moment (I have some very cool stuff going on right now I absolutely cannot tell you about yet, but when I can tell you, I think you’ll be excited), and one side effect of that is that at the end of the day I often don’t have it together to post more than something short here. I don’t think this is a tragedy, but I would like to write slightly longer here than I have recently. I have some ideas how to do this, but a lot of that will have to wait after the book promo season I am about to find myself in. In the meantime, there will be views out of a hotel window, posts about cats, and more cool stuff from Athena.
And so, onward — for Whatever and for me and Athena. I like where everything is with Whatever, and I look forward to where we go from here. Another year awaits.
— JS
Our newest addition to the Scamperbeast clan continues to be friggin’ adorable, and also his personality is beginning to show more. He is rambunctious, which is to be expected in a kitten, and also a bit of menace, since he discovered that he enjoys both the stairs and being underfoot, which is a dangerous combination with one is trying to navigate the stairs at night and suddenly there is a kitten. There are reasons why, when I turned forty, I trained myself to start reaching for the railing on the stairs, and this kitten is definitely one of those reasons.
In terms of the other cats, Saja continues to be an annoyance to Sugar and Spice, the former of whom still wants nothing to do with him, and the latter of which has come to grudgingly accept that he might be on the bed at the same time she is. Smudge is more congenial to him and the two of them tussle on a regular basis now:
This is lovely for us, as it reminds us of when Smudge was the kitten a Zeus was the one tusslin’ with him. It’s nice to know the tussle reaches over generations. Charlie and Saja also continue to get along famously. It’s as good an integration at this point that one could hope for.
The one real annoying thing Saja will do is try to eat my face, which he does every night between three and five am. He’s probably not actually trying to eat my face, he’s probably trying to nurse, which will not avail him of anything, alas for him. This will continue until I grab him, take him downstairs and then plop him in front of a cat food bowl, at which point he goes, oh, right, that’s where the food is. I’m hoping he grows out of this; I would really prefer to sleep through the night. We’ll see.
— JS
⌈ Secret Post #6825 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 09 secrets from Secret Submission Post #974.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
We’ve made it to another Friday, and here is a new set of books and ARCs that have come to the Scalzi Compound. What here is piquing your interest? Share in the comments!
— JS
An Educational Overview from Cake Wrecks
aka
Grammar time! (Can't wreck this! Whoah-OH!)
Students, today we're going to look at how your lessons apply in the real world. Pay attention, because the pop quiz starts...now.
It's quite common for people to confuse "you're" and "your." Here's a simple way to remember which is witch:
This is wrong:
...because it raises the question, "Your old WHAT?"
This is correct:
Although it should be noted that owning an old Kurt in this day and age will never be "right."
Here's another proper usage you high schoolers may find more relevant:
Next, this rhyme can really come in handy for your spelling skills:
"I before E except after C..."
"but not in the words 'Tigers'...
"'their'...
"Or 'anniversary!'"
Quotation marks are vital for indicating when you're quoting someone verbatim or just being really, really sarcastic:
*Asterisks often denote footnotes, albeit sometimes invisible ones. Invisible footnotes are the work of the Knights Templar, and should be reported to Dan Brown "immediately."
A homonym (n) is each of two different words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, spellings, or both.
For example, "here" is where we are now:
While "hear" is what we do with our ears:
Next time we'll also discuss properly distinguishing your cursive "w"s from your "m"s.
Luckily, putting the proper endings on number contractions like first, second and third is as easy as 1th, 2th, 3th!
Well, I'm sure this lesson has been super helpful, students, so for your homework I want you all to show your teacher what you've just learned with an informative drawing. Bonus points if you use sprinkles. Or bring cake to class. Or write a sonnet entitled, "Why Jen from Cake Wrecks Deserves an Honorary PhD and also a Working Proton Pack, If Possible."
Now, chop chop!
Oh, and next week: biology!
Thanks to Ruth, Shane S., Gal N., Beth N., Brandi H., Amy S., Carla D., Margaret J., Maria R., Sarah R., Christina M., Nicole S., Michele T., & Jess for believing the children are our future. And for teaching them "well" and letting them lead the weigh.
*****
P.S. Teachers, if your classrooms need any more fun artwork I've got just the set for you:
Sweetzer & Orange Set of 13 Posters for Middle and High School Classroom
I especially like how they're all spelled correctly. :D (I think my favorite is "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears." So many good ones, though.)
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
