Category Archives: Tales of the Neighborhood

Tales of the Neighborhood

Apologetic pole

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While I was out walking Sunday, I noticed a little sign on a pole (click on the picture to embiggen):

Now, I wouldn’t even have noticed the pole if that sign hadn’t been on it. I mean, since I noticed it because of the sign apologizing for it not being attractive, I looked at the pole and decided that, sure, it probably wasn’t going to win any pole modeling contracts, but I can see an old dingy pole in the back of the picture below that wasn’t apologizing for being old and dingy and unattractive.

Now I definitely have high expectations for the replacement pole. What could possibly live up to the anticipation that the sign must be generating?!

“Do not adjust your dial. I am always perfect as I am.” -Mayhem

Tales of the Neighborhood

Since it snowed again yesterday and is supposed to snow today…

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…I thought I’d share a few more pictures from that snow-free mid-March walk I took.

This first picture probably isn’t that interesting if you aren’t familiar with Uptown and with Calhoun Square in particular. (Calhoun Square’s in the midst of getting a radical facelift.) In the photo below, you’re looking at what used to be Starbuck’s, the west entrance, Border’s, and the Lotus Vietnamese Restaurant.

A mysterious door across the street from the pit formerly known as Calhoun Square:

Intriguing twigs…

Some kitty playhouses, both unassembled…

…and assembled:

A wind gnome?

“I wish it was nice outside, because then the windows would be open and there would be birds to chitter at!” -Mayhem

Knitting, Reading, Reviewettes, Tales of the Neighborhood

Proof that parents actually like to receive bibs

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Now and again I’ve taken some grief about knitting bibs for baby gifts (let’s ignore the fact that using the cats as models for the bibs might contribute to that, shall we?), but I finally have proof that a knitting parent who received a few bibs as a gift was inspired to knit more bibs! Really, what better evidence could there be? (Yes, you have seen the bibs in the linked post before…)

Saturday was gorgeous here – sunny and +60F. Most of the snow has melted. Unfortunately, it melted so fast that the ground is still frozen, so you end up with scenes like this:

Yes, that is a mallard swimming around the playground. I totally wouldn’t recommend going down the slides, which each had eight inches of water at the bottom (and a fine layer of mud immediately below that). We shall not even speak of the snow that’s predicted for tonight and tomorrow.

Reading Update
Tall Tales and Wedding Veils by Jane Graves. Definitely recommended for CursingMama and anyone else who enjoys a well-done contemporary romance. It even had me sniffling near the end.
Happy Hour at Casa Dracula and Midnight Brunch (Casa Dracula, Books 1-2) by Marta Acosta. Funny, snarky, and delightful. I wouldn’t actually classify this as paranormal romance – they have more of a chicklit sort of feel. Definitely recommended. (I will neither confirm nor deny that I got a little sniffly near  the end of Midnight Brunch.)
Riding on Instinct by Jaci Burton. I won an advance reading copy of this book at Nalini Singh’s blog last month. This is the third book in Burton’s “er0tic romance” series about the Wild Riders, a group of bikers based in Dallas who work undercover for the government. In this book, the Riders are supporting a federal agent who’s working as a stripper in New Orleans, trying to find a rogue agent involved with Colombian drug runners. Burton can definitely write, but I need a little more story to support all the steam!
Kiss of a Dark Moon (Moon Chasers, Book 2) by Sharie Kohler. Um, the best part of this book was the Nathan Kamp cover. It’s a paranormal romance about evil werewolves and the people who hunt them. So-so writing, but there’s a big oversight a few pages from the end of the book that pretty much ruined it for me.
Mortal Sins (World of the Lupi, Book 5) by Eileen Wilks. This continues to be a well-written series, more urban or paranormal fantasy than romance. The main characters are FBI Agent Lily Yu and werewolf prince, Rule Turner. The series is complex and compelling. Recommended – and read it order, dammit. 😉
“A Dream of Stone & Shadow” by Marjorie M. Liu, from Dark Dreamers. A nice Dirk & Steele short story.
Date with a Devil by Anne Stuart, Cherry Adair, and Muriel Jensen. A merely ok collection of romance short stories.
Night Secrets by Cherry Adair. More T-FLAC wizards. Yum.
Dead Sexy and A Body To Die For (Harlequin Blaze) by Kimberly Raye. Hee hee – hunky vampire cowboy bikers who survive more on s3x than on blood! (Come on, you know I’m a sucker for the silliness of some of this stuff, right?) Usually I complain about people on the cover having tattoos that they don’t have in the book, but in both of these, it’s the opposite. Very rare.
Thai Die: A Needlework Mystery by Monica Ferris. Betsy Devonshire and friends are back, solving mysteries out of Betsy’s Excelsior, Minnesota, knitting and needlework shop. This was an ok addition to the series.

Things are going to continue to be cloudy and cool and rainy (maybe some snow on Wednesday) for the next several days, so I think Chaos has decided to hibernate. Wish I could join him.

*…zzzzzzz…” -Chaos

Tales of the Neighborhood

A Pre-Spring Walk with Mysteries

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On Thursday when I drove to work, it was -7F. Yesterday afternoon when I went for a walk? +55F. Crazy!

After a bitterly cold winter, Minnesotans embrace the outdoors at temperatures that might make other parts of the country shiver. People were eating outside, and some were even wearing shorts.

At Bob’s Java Hut, a biker coffee bar, the first hardy motorcyclists congregated.

And brunchers basked outside the Bryant Lake Bowl.

A little yarn mystery that I noticed:

Mysterious rocks that appeared on our sidewalk during my walk:

And a mysterious Sphinx-like creature that appeared in my living room:

“Worship me. It is my due.” -Mayhem

Linkity linkity link, Randonymity, Reading, Reviewettes, Tales of the Neighborhood

And then there was thundersnow…

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Let’s just admire this traditional postcard shot (from last July) of downtown Minneapolis (taken from the Sculpture Garden with Spoonbridge and Cherry in the forefront) until spring arrives, shall we?

It’s very snowy here at the moment. *sigh* (And the Cherry’s been removed from the Spoonbridge in order to be repainted. Probably the Dish will run away with the Spoonbridge before all is said and done.)

I have to admit that I felt a little silly yesterday at 11:30 when I left the office to do a few errands on my way to work from home for the rest of the day. Sure, the sky was a bit ominous, but it wasn’t precipitating. I stopped at the library. When I came out 10 minutes later, a few scattered snowflakes were falling. Next I stopped at the Wedge Co-op. When I came out 20 minutes later, I had to brush about 0.25″ of snow from my car windows. By the time I got home at 12:30, conditions were near whiteout! In fact, around 4″ of snow fell in the next hour or two. I felt a lot less silly at that point. 🙂

This looks like a lot more fun than badminton.

Poor baby!! Eeep!!

SciFiGuy.ca has posted a list of the urban fantasy, paranormal, fantasy, and science fiction releases for March. And the new Uncle Hugo’s (scifi/fantasy/paranormal) and Uncle Edgar’s (mystery) newsletter is out – I really look forward to receiving this each quarter.

Reading Update
Hot Mail by Janice Maynard. Extremely steamy non-paranormal romance. I got annoyed at one of the female characters, but maybe it’s because I could see too much of myself in her. 🙂
The Cat’s Meow by Emily Carmichael. I confess I picked up this romance/mystery solely because it had a black cat on the cover. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this well-written story of a high-powered attorney who develops amnesia and starts to hear her black cat Nefriti talking to her and giving her advice. I’ll be reading the other interconnected books.
Smart and Sexy (Sky High Air, Book 1) by Jill Shalvis. A nice solid non-paranormal romance. The male characters featured in these books own an air-charter business in California.
Caressed by Ice (Psy-Changelings, Book 3) by Nalini Singh. This is a very, very good paranormal romance series. Definitely recommended. The next book is already waiting on my book stand!
Angel’s Pawn: A Companion Novella to “Angel’s Blood” by Nalini Singh. Ebook. A decent read, but without the punch of Angel’s Blood. I’d recommend reading Angel’s Blood first to get familiar with the world. But then again – maybe it was just the ebook format, giving the reading experience a very different feel. Guess which reading experience I prefer? 🙂

“You put your left paw in, you put your left paw out, you put your left paw in and…. zzzzzzzzz….” -Chaos

Reading, Tales of the Neighborhood

In which I venture into the snowy streets to support a local business

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Don’t forget to leave your caption(s) for my caption contest by 7 pm CST, Wednesday, December 10! Contest is closed. Thanks!

Yesterday, I wandered over to Uncle Edgar’s Mystery Bookstore to procure a signed copy of Thai Die for trek.

Here’s Monica Ferris signing trek’s very own copy.

Behind her, you can see part of two aisles and thus get a sense of how many new and used books are stuffed into Uncle Edgar’s and Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore. (The front half of the building is Uncle Hugo’s and the back half is Uncle Edgar’s.)

If you want your local independent booksellers to survive, please support them!

“Books. BORING. Sometimes tasty, sometimes fun to knock over Mom’s stacks of books, but otherwise…” -Mayhem

Gluten Free, Randonymity, Recipes, Tales of the Neighborhood

Well, crap. I guess I’ll have to break out a recipe.

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Yes, my project on my other notebook computer continues. I got an official backup (a very unimpressive 22 hours to backup 125 gb – ack!) and am in the process of doing some simple “copy all of the good stuff on to the portable hard drive for redundancy and simplicity.” Theoretically simple, at least. At one point, Vista 64 informed me that it would take 38,000 days to copy 50 gb. *blink blink* Um… Iz hatez Vista. And if there were drivers for virtually any other OS for that notebook, I’d probably be test driving a new OS right now. Anyway. Wish me luck, since I’ll soon (hopefully) be reinstalling Vista 64 to see if that improves things. I’ve seen the BSOD more times in the past month than in my life prior to using Vista 64.

Onward! Here’s one of my gluten-free recipes that I haven’t posted before. Mmmm… snickerdoodles…

Snickerdoodles
1 c butter
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 c sugar
2 tsp cream of tartar
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
2 3/4 c GF flour mix (I used 1/4 c tapioca flour, 1 1/4 c sweet rice flour, and 1 1/4 c rice flour at the time, but Bob’s Red Mill GF Flour Blend would probably work well)

Beat together butter, sugar, and eggs. Stir dry ingredients together and slowly add to butter mixture. Chill dough. Roll into walnut-sized balls, then roll in a mixture of 2 T sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon. Place 2″ apart on parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake at 350°F until barely browned but still soft, approximately 10-12 minutes.

Let’s see what I have in my uploaded but not used photo folder. *sound of rummaging* How about some scenery pictures from mid-October?

Ah, a lovely guardian fruit basket, protecting the inhabitants from… scurvy?

I’m fond of this house and its boulder scaping. Personally, I think they should just have eliminated the grass entirely and gone with a boulder field.

Whoops – some Halloween decoration pictures I forgot to post…

Here’s a detail from the house above. Embiggen for full effect!

*more rummaging* Aw, look at Mayhem enjoying the sun back in… September 2007.

“Sunshine on my toes makes me happy! Sunshine in my eyes makes me blink!” -Mayhem

Contests, Randonymity, Tales of the Neighborhood

Communication breakdown

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Of the telecommunication kind…

Author Barbara Bretton is giving away ten skeins of cashmere and a $50 Elann.com gift certificate to celebrate the release of her book, Casting Spells. The winner will be announced around 10 pm EST, November 4 (aka today).

Deb’s having a contest over at Knitting Scholar, and there are a variety of ways to enter for your chance to win some of the review copies she’s received. Her contest is open until November 15 – and let her know I sent you. 😉

Want to win a case of gluten-free cookies and a t-shirt? You have until November 9 to enter.

Interested in winning a knitting pattern signed by author Neil Gaiman? If so, enter by midnight GMT, November 6.

I had my ten minutes of fame on Friday, when my three-song set was selected to be the Halloween edition for “My Three Songs” on the Current. (Why, yes, I did select songs about vampires and werewolves. You’re so not surprised, I can tell.)

The return of Standard Time. Close to dark when I get home from work. Kitties convinced I am torturing them by delaying their dinner an hour. Blech.

What Chaos is doing when I’m not home? Or maybe he’s doing something like this?

Check out a more scholarly look at vampire romance than you’ll find ’round here.

Inquiring minds want to know – what is Halloween Nog?!

Besides the many wonderful bloggers I “know” in Jersey (Hi Trek! Hi Van! Hi Chappysmom!), there’s also a bookstore devoted entirely to the paranormal.

Of the feline kind…

*bite bite bite bite bite bite* -Chaos

*hug nip hug nip* -Mayhem