the birds have less to say for themselves

You know the method of making cakes that involves a can of soda and a box of cake mix?

I did that last night with champagne (a pink champagne that I found for $7). Basically, mix 1 box cake mix (I used yellow) with 1 1/2 cups champagne. Stir and bake. I made approximately 20 cupcakes, frosted with a simple icing of icing sugar/butter/champagne. The frosting flavor is pretty delicate, but the flavor comes through in the cake.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/Zw2DGBo2-6o/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=225201

http://whedonesque.com/comments/22764

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/12/8_nerds_who_will_utterly_kick_your_ass.php

Our favorite (mostly) redheaded witch comes in at number seven. Contains some swearing.

http://whedonesque.com/comments/22763

http://www.geekscape.net/features/9c6d4ad581438fbeb1b540c3b6fa5633/

Author for the site, Jim Pellegrinelli lists the best pop culture had to offer these past ten years (Comics, Film, TV, The Web). Includes spoilers for other properties and some language.

Also in the article, you'll find some appreciative mentions to Buffy and Angel in the segment about the Twilight franchise and the vampire genre.

These are 2 presents I made my boyfriend for Christmas. I don't have pictures of the other home made things yet. I don't think I'll get pics of the Little Mermaid bookmarks I made though. (1 sheet of nice Little Mermaid paper from A.C. Moore, cut 2 pieces the same size 2.5-4" long and 1-2.5" wide, glue back to back, round the corners, hole punch the top, string with strands of floss and tie as wanted.)

Coupons

I cut a piece of construction paper into 6 cards and punched holes in the upper corner (I used one of the pieces as a guide by notching out the corner and marking with a pencil). Gave them mostly silly titles and tried to get a lot of variety. There are things like making the meal myself, he gets to control the tv all day, end a conversation, and 2 random choice ones. Little bit of ribbon to tie them together and done!

Cookies


I can't remember the name, but I got the recipe from Woman's Day. It uses a puff pastry sheet with cinnamon, sugar, and pumpkin spice. Slicing them was hard because they're so thin, and I over cooked some. But he likes them! (And I get to eat the ones that are too well done for him.)

http://kjbishop.net/2010/01/01/%e8%9d%95%e5%88%bb%e4%b9%8b%e5%9f%8e.html

http://kjbishop.net/?p=2399

A nice beginning to the year: The Complex Chinese edition of The Etched City (蝕刻之城 — “shi ke zhi cheng”, I think — hope I’ll be able to find out how to say it properly), is out from Fullon Books in Taiwan, with a way cool cover — and a promo video. (Technically it’s out on 7th January, but it’s available for order now). Complex Chinese covers Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, though not mainland China. Translations are exciting and wonderful things, and I feel enormously lucky to have had my work published in other languages. And it’s really a thrill to be published in Chinese — a thrill from the bottom of my DNA, because I feel like a butterfly has taken my pollen to a distant garden. Where it might get blown away by the wind, or washed away by the rain, but hey, I’d rather just think about the butterfly. So a toast for the New Year to Zhou Pei Yu, who translated the book, and to translators everywhere. And a second drink to Gray Tan, my agent in Taiwan, and Danny Lin, who recommended the book to Gray, and to Fullon Books and the cover artist, whose name I hope to find out — I really dig that picture.

* * *

New Year plans and resolutions:

Last night was fun. Watching fireworks go off behind tall buildings is strange — at first you can’t see much, then as smoke fills the air the coloured flashes light up the smoke. Had a conversation with a guy who taught motorcycle riding, with the consequence that my major New Year’s resolution is to take the motorbike taxis less often and limit my use of them to short rides down quiet streets or very congested sections of main road (which used to be my rule, but I got a bit blase last year). What he had to say about falls and injuries was a timely reminder that Motorbikes Are Dangerous. Terribly convenient in this city, but this year I’m going to try to allow enough time for cabs and Shanks’s pony instead.

My other resolution is to read a book a week. Last year I probably only read one a month. I’ve gotten started on this — read Patrick White’s The Solid Mandala last week, now reading Radical Alterity by Jean Baudrillard and Marc Guillaume.

Travel plans: Australia in March and maybe again in October or November. Hopefully Kathmandu and surrounds for a week in February.

Writing: Still working on new material for the collection. It’s getting there. I’d really, really like to have this thing sewn up by midyear. The Floating World is the other major project. I won’t be taking on anything else — unless for one reason or another it’s irresistible.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/wcUfzu2JSHE/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=225498

Title: Planned Lives (Part 4)
Author: Lindsay
Pairing(s): Alex/Richard, Alex/Jacob, minor Richard/Jacob and Alex/Karl.
Summary: Jacob had always told Richard that Alex was special, that she was meant for something greater than suffering. Unfortunately, Jacob's plans were always hard to see, even when they were happening.
Setting/Spoilers: AU: Beginning mid-Season 3 through the end of Season 5
Rating: R (may go up in the future)
Previous Parts: Part One, Part Two, Part Three

("He's coming with us?")

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/h829ThO7X3Q/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=225209

http://whedonesque.com/comments/22762

http://whedonesque.com/comments/22762

Things to look forward to in 2010: the last three glorious episodes of Dollhouse, Twilight's reveal, Joss' Glee episode, The Cabin in the Woods trailer and hopefully Dr Horrible 2 and word about Joss' next project.

No pictures - nommed it too fast.

Had to use up a half package of dried beef from a cheese ball I made on xmas eve, so I whipped up a batch of creamed chipped beef - sliced the beef into small pieces and added to a simple white sauce with a pinch of cayenne and nutmeg.  Served over toast - my 5 year old food snob turned her nose up, but my 19 mo old ate two helpings. That's my girl :D

This is so much fun! I decided to join.

Five gifts for five people.

This offer does have some restrictions so please read:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make.
- What I create will be just for YOU & you are allowed to make requests (and I will try to honor them).
- It will be done before December 31th, 2010 [edit: I meant 2010, not 2011...].
- It might be cookies, a mix cd, a necklace, an original haiku, a scarf, who knows!
- You'll need to PM me your mailing address if you're one of the first 5.

In return, all you need to do is repost this somewhere and offer to make 5 things for 5 other people.

If you are one of the first 5 and pm me, please include a few details about your own interests, etc. so that I can make your gift as personal as possible.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/wishes.html

I have to read something tonight, if I can stay awake. (I'll do it somehow. Intravenous tea, possibly.)
And I sent them to http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/another-year.html which ended,And some people liked one, and some liked the other, and I suppose I'll write something new for tonight. But I haven't written it yet, and wanted to post this before midnight happened in the UK.

For me, 2009 has been unquestionably the best and strangest year of my life, with many enormous highs and one huge low -- highs such as the Newbery, the Coraline movie, the low being my father dying so suddenly and unexpectedly -- but the biggest change of all was finding myself in a real relationship for the first time in a very long time, and with someone who loves me and makes me ridiculously happy, and who has me doing things I would never normally do, like finding myself in a Boston concert hall with a lethal musical instrument on New Year's Eve. And none of it, the good bits or the rough, would have been as easy without the support of my children.

You don't get many years like this in a life, and I am both aware of this, and amazingly grateful. And an email from my editor letting me know that the Graveyard Book is still on the New York Times Bestseller List after fifteen months, reminds me of how much I owe to all of you.

So thank you. Have a wonderful 2010. And goodnight.

This post assisted by Mickey, my Jack Russell terrier-in-law. He has decided that the World Is Deeply Upset On a Fundamental Level if he is not in my lap. To avoid this, he is now firmly installed there, and not moving for nothing.

I'm not going to say I hate New Year Resolutions. I hate breaking them. But hey, making and breaking is kind of the Circle of Life, you know? New cylces, new thoughts, new selves.

I'm not going to say I want to lose weight, though I do and hopefully will. I'm not going to say that I'll travel more, or less, or that I'll appreciate things more, though I hope I will. I'm not going to say I'll live graciously, because zoethe 's got that covered and is better at it than me and I've been dealing with the pressure to be gracious and nice above anything else most of my life.

I'm going to tackle my worst habit. The thing that causes me the most setbacks and grief and stress.

I would like to stop procrastinating.

I'm terrible about this and it's going to take more than a year to stop fully. I put things off way too much, and then it piles up and I feel overwhelmed and I don't do the items on the list because I feel terrible about not having done them. It's a shit cycle and I'm going to work, without causing myself more stress by saying OMG I HAVE TO DO IT ALL NOW, on doing things as they come across my desk rather than putting them all away for a later date.

And of course, I will make more terriers happy this year than last year.

Lastly, whenever New Year rolls around I think of this post from 2004, which was one of the first Serious Posts I wrote on LJ. It said everything about my life then, and I look at it now and am so grateful that I have passed out of that dark place and into a kind of light. Yet it's still a touchstone for me, the final image of the post, a psychic place of both rest and sorrow that I return to again and again to put everything I am and know now into perspective. Old worlds, shifting into new ones. It's not such a bad thing to celebrate.

http://whedonesque.com/comments/22761

http://meloukhia.net/2009/12/whedons_brunettes.html

Pretty, fragile, damaged and dangerous -- what's the connection among these traits in female characters who occupy an important role in a number of Whedon works, and what's behind their creator's fixation?

It really does bear examining, because various permutations of the exact same character show up again and again in his work. And I think that tells us something about Joss, that he can’t seem to produce a creative work without this character. He inserts her again and again, setting up situations in which she can be saved, but in the end, she’s often doomed despite the best efforts of the other (usually male) characters.

(There's a lot of focus on externals in this article, so I think it's fair to note, as well, that Joss gives tremendous narrative/psychological importance to the inner strength, courage and personal dignity of these characters. An appearance of weakness often veils an incredible and inspiring strength in Joss's worlds -- a message well worth taking away into RL.)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/EkIHgQSCTg8/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=225319

A giant ridiculous dog and his aardvark in the snow:



Happy new year!

Relatively new on the fast food menu at Arby's here in St Louis, Mo, at least are the Roast Beef Gyro and Roast Beef Patty melt.

Arby's sent out coupons that I nearly threw away, until I noticed that they were $1 coupons! For $1, try the Gyro. Another $1 coupon for the Patty Melt and another $1 each coupon for the RoastBurger and Chicken Ranch something or other.

I opted to try the Gyro and the Patty Melt. (Lunch for $2.13, can't beat that!)



Arby's describes the sandwich as: Our gyro features Arby’s beef – roasted to perfection and freshly sliced on a warm, soft flatbread, topped with fresh lettuce, tomato, red onions, and traditional gyro sauce.

I found it to be nice and full of roast beefy goodness, and that the red onion, tomato and lettuce very nicely complimented the beef. The gyro sauce was also that nice cucumbery flavor that you expect from a Greek gyro sauce. And the flatbread held the components of the sandwich together very adequately. I have to say I was actually surprised at how good this sandwich was, as I don't hold the highest expectations for Arby's typically!



Next up, I tried the Patty Melt. The cardboard box it comes in promises cheesy crunchy goodness, but I didn't quite find as much of that as I would have hoped, unfortunately! Arby's describes this sandwich as: Our patty melt is made with oven-roasted, freshly sliced beef, piled high on toasted sourdough bread.  Melted Swiss cheese and creamy Thousand Island dressing add a tantalizing finish to a great sandwich.

I didn't know what kind of bread the toasted "bun" was supposed to be, and by taste I would have guessed rye or a sourdough rye. Perhaps the Thousand Island dressing threw my taste buds off, but I don't really think so. They also added chopped red onions to this sandwich, which isn't on the corporate description. I could have done without them, frankly, but they weren't too awful. I think I'd just had enough red onion since I'd just eaten the gyro! The swiss cheese, however, seemed to be all on the last half of the sandwich, perhaps it's not a full slice or I didn't get a full slice on my sandwich.

Either way, there you have it--one person's take on trying the newer sandwiches at Arby's on $1 coupons. The Arby's here in St Louis metro let you pair up multiple coupons together, so you can bring home the trashy, filling, and cheap eats from Arby's very easily! 

http://carriev.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/decade/

http://carriev.wordpress.com/?p=1635

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/BRgWyyFP8M8/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=225600