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Laurel Krahn's weblog since August 1998.

I've been visiting The Owl Springs Partnership site for years and years now, but I can't remember if I've ever actually linked to it in this weblog. I was pointing it out to people long before I had a weblog.

Anyway, it's the web home of writers Diane Duane and Peter Morwood. They're cool, their books are cool, it figures that their website would be cool, too. Sadly, the site hasn't been updated in quite a while, but there's still good stuff to be found there.

And then there's The Eye of Argon. It's legendary, it's truly awful, and it's best read out loud with a group of people well after midnight. Maybe. It's always painful.

I didn't participate in the recent blogathon, though I like the idea of it.

I'd've been tempted to drink blog while blogging during the blogathon and so probably wouldn't have been coherent anyway. (Blog is an alcoholic punch drink of some sort. From Jim Young's mom's recipe. Served at Minicon and other fannish gatherings. It's a long story. But, blogger aside, I still associate the word "blog" with punch and not with weblogs. I think I always will. Just because I'm stubborn like that).

This next link is dedicated to Dean and Karen and Shaun, who were there when we first found the bacon dispensers at Minicon. It's all Dean's fault. Bruce and Mary and others added to the legend. It also goes out to the many many people we took on tours to see the bacon dispensers.

BLog (Bacon + Log = BLog). It's a weblog about bacon! bacon bacon bacon.

And hey, they linked to a site about donuts: Donuty Mmmmmm . . . donuts.

easy access to Kinder eggs, Lush, and mike's hard lemonade.

You can now get to the journal at the old URL of www.windowseat.org/journal/ (which has been broken since last week) as well as at laurel.livejournal.com. The images are on windowseat, the content is on livejournal, so whatever. Pick the URL you like the most and visit or bookmark or whatever. Livejournal has been mega-popular and busy of late so the server can be slow.

I also redesigned ye olde journal to look like this here weblog. So it should look familiar, if nothing else.

You can read the first eight chapters of Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion online.

And if you're ready to read the rest of the book (or would prefer to read it in book form), it's now available in stores.

It's not a Vorkosigan book, it's a new fantasy novel. Could be the beginning of a new series.

Remember when there were only 30 or so weblogs around? I do. Jesse James Garrett had one of the best weblogs. I admired it a whole bunch. Then Rebecca Blood showed up and produced a weblog that joined jjg's infosift on my list of favorite weblogs.

Look what Rebecca posted to the pocket on Saturday:

In April, 1999. I started my weblog. One week later, the smartest weblog I knew linked to me. I wrote; he wrote back. We met. I moved. Today I married him.

Yay! Congrats, you two.

I finally got around to looking at the audio and video from a concert John Wesley Harding and the Radical Gentlemen did for Yahoo. Recorded back in November, 2000. It's very cool. They perform a bunch of songs from JWH's latest album The Confessions of St. Ace. Any and all Wes info can be found at wesweb.net.

Set list: "Humble Bee," "People Love To Watch You Die," "Same Piece of Air," "Our Lady of the Highways," "I'm Wrong About Everything," and . . . ta-da . . . one of my favorites (appropriately enough) . . . "Window Seat" (from Awake)

JWH is one of my favorite songwriters and performers so I think you should check out the concert (if you haven't already). :) (I state the obvious, don't I? I mean, why else would I link to it?)

There's a problem somewhere with my code or greymatter templates or something so that some people can't submit comments to entries in this weblog. I know I can't do it when I'm viewing my pages with Netscape Communicator 4.74 on a Mac, for instance.

Every so often I look at my code and templates and try to figure it out, but I'm about ready to give up. If anyone out there has any suggestions . . . would be appreciated.

This weblog and almost all of windowseat.org and tvpicks.net were down from sometime on July 25th (when I up and removed everything) until sometime on July 27th when I restored most things. Some archives reappeared on July 26th.

I know, I'm a big weirdo. Also: indecisive.

But I was extraordinarily depressed and upset and taking down all my websites seemed like the thing to do. It sure was cathartic. Fortunately, I had a clear enough head not to delete things permanently.

Because in the hours after I did it, I received some extraordinarily kind emails that reminded me why I do this. And a friend made me do some searches to see the many places that have linked to this site over the years and the fab things cool people have said about this site (and about yours truly). (I'm one of the rare webmasters who avoids looking at her access and referrer logs and who doesn't regularly egosurf. So it was weird and kinda cool to see the various sites that had linked to me in the last couple of years. Lots that I hadn't known about, to be honest).

I'd thought that this site didn't matter, that I didn't. For a while, that's how I thought (further proof that depression makes one irrational).

And I'm still far from at my best, but I'm seeing things clearer and so I'm putting stuff back, even if I think it all sucks right now . . . it seems some people think otherwise. I hate that a hasty move on my part resulted in all sorts of broken links-- I always think it rude when other people do that sort of thing.

While the cliche is you've gotta do your website for yourself, not anyone else-- if I'm honest, I know that I'm really doing this weblog and the tv picks for you guys. I enjoy it or I wouldn't do it, but I wouldn't do it if I had no readers. It's for you. My apologies for underestimating y'all, for thinking there was no one out there.

To those who've emailed expressions of gratitude or concern-- it all meant more than I can say. I was moved (okay, I'll admit it: I cried). Big thanks also to those who've linked to this little weblog and to those who've emailed me about this site (whether it was last week or way back in '98).

These just in today from amazon:

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

little lights by Kate Rusby (great!)

distillation by Erin McKeown (love it!)

So Many Miles (Live) by Stephen Fearing (wonderful, of course!)

A gift to myself, really. Last week brought more gifts to myself:

DVDs of Hudson Hawk and Sunset.

And:

One Nil by Neil Finn (fabulous!)

Wonder Woman: The Complete History by Les Daniels

And before that, I receive a number of birthday gifts from friends and strangers, all of which were greatly appreciated. I wrote a bit about some, I know I owe a few people public or private thank-yous and I will get to them. Things are just, um, hectic of late.

I heard a lot of great music at this year's Winnipeg Folk Festival. I knew I would. Of course, I expected good music from folks I'd heard of and/or seen before like Blue Rodeo, Michelle Shocked, Cowboy Junkies, Jess Klein, Sarah Harmer, Sonia, James Keelaghan, Stephen Fearing, Alejandro Escovedo, Art Turner, Archie Fisher, and Danu.

It was fabulous to see SONiA (of disappear fear fame) live, since I'd never managed to see disappear fear live. It was fun to watch Jess Klein go from receiving polite applause at her first workshop of the festival to having hordes of screaming fans at her solo set on Sunday afternoon.

Fabulous new discoveries? (For me, that is): Scrüj MacDuhk, Kris Demeanor, Erin McKeown, Danny Michel, The Waybacks, Oliver Schroer, Kate Rusby, Luke Doucet, Mark Reeves, the McDades, Njava, the Almost Leather Band, Painting Daisies, Cara Luft, Rick Unruh, The Be Good Tanyas, the Waifs, Mason Jennings, Tom Wilson, Wimme, and Tom Landa & the Paperboys.

The only disappointment? A big one. Brad from Crash Test Dummies was completely wasted when they took the stage for their show and it was pathetic and painful to watch. People left in droves after just a song or two, I stuck it out for a bit longer, but ultimately left before they finished their set, too.

I've been on a music kick lately, the folk festival is probably to blame. Plus some people bought me a couple albums from my wishlist and I've picked up a few albums and downloaded some mp3s and well. I'm having fun.

But the best of the lot? Today I got the latest Neil Finn album in the mail, it's called One Nil and it's not available in the U.S. yet (which a crying shame). I broke down and ordered it a few days ago.

My, but it's a pop album. Of course (obviously). Some of the new songs are cowritten with Wendy Melvoin (of Wendy and Lisa fame). Lisa also plays on the album, as do Mitchell Froom and Lisa Germano and Sheryl Crow. It's a denser sound than Try Whistling This, but it's still chock full of Finn goodness. I'm only listening to it for the first time now, so I'm still processing it.

I'm pleased as punch that I saw in some interview somewhere that Neil Finn's next album will be in collaboration with Tim Finn (again).

Now if the album and singles would be released in the U.S. and if only there would be a U.S. tour. It's hard to fathom that one of the best songwriters of the last twenty years doesn't have a record label plugging him in the U.S.

Visit the fansite and the official site and Wendy and Lisa's site and so on.

I'm still recovering from my vacation and from being sick.

Someone told me about a bumpersticker they saw, which had me sputtering when I heard it. The bumpersticker said: "Fat people are harder to kidnap."

Um.

Well.

I guess . . .

Jon Carroll is right.

Last summer, I watched a lot of Big Brother, online and on the show. I read the topic on The Well and talked about the show a lot and was really into it. I was fond of those houseguests and fascinated by how the network/showrunners twisted events in the house for TV. And I was amazed at how few people seemed to understand what was going on. By how few people liked those houseguests.

Carroll gets it and was privy to a lot of the same stuff I was last year. His articles from last year are also spot on: The first one from before things got truly interesting. And a later one (called "The Revenge of the Nice People"), that's my favorite.

Martha Soukup has written about Big Brother 2 for Salon.com this year (her articles at salon and her posts on The Well last year were probably the best thing about the first show).

And this critic is also on the right track, claiming that "boring is better".

My brother turns 28 today. Happy Birthday, Chris! (Not that he reads this page, as far as I know, but you never can tell . . . )

Will Shetterly has updated the Flash Girls' website with new information re upcoming gigs (yay!) and the new album and such stuff.

Imagine my delight to see that Will's very fine story "The Princess Who Kicked Butt" is now online.

Years and years ago, someone I liked very much read that story to me when I was having a bad day. And yes, it made the day brighter.

The story originally appeared in Michael Stearns' very fine anthology: A Wizard's Dozen: Stories of the Fantastic which is still available in both hardcover and paperback and which includes stories from Bruce Coville, Patricia C. Wrede, Jane Yolen, and others.

I've got cool friends. I've received three books recently in the mail from amazon.com, which were gifts from friends.

One a week or two ago, another yesterday, and one more today.

Now they're all excellent books, which were on my wishlist. I don't expect gifts for my birthday, especially since I'm so awful about remembering other people's birthdays. So it's always a pleasant surprise when it happens and I'm more grateful and more pleased than I can say.

The books? The Deluxe Transitive Vampire. It's a fabulously fun book about grammar (I know, this sounds impossible, doesn't it?). I've coveted it for a long time and for a while I looked for it and couldn't find it. Now I have it in my grasp, thanks to someone cool. Whee!

Someone else also sent me: Help! My Apartment Has a Dining Room: How to Have People Over for Dinner Without Stressing Out which sounds neat and which could prove helpful since I've been meaning to have people over for ages.

And other friends sent me Cookwise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking which is a large hardcover and looks really cool. If you watch Good Eats, you're familiar with the author-- it's by Shirley! Cool.

Of course receiving two cookbooks in rapid succession from friends, when I've many things on my wishlist and only two or three are cookbooks, makes me wonder a bit.

My parents gave me a persimmon Fiestaware napkin holder and a turquoise Fiestaware classic pitcher. The better for entertaining, I suppose.

What are my friends and family trying to tell me? That I need to improve my grammar and my cooking skills? That they want to see my apartment? (But that would end the jokes that I live in my minivan!) Fine by me (but it makes me chuckle anyway).

Thanks much to you kind people you. A little birdie told me there may be some other gifts en route. So thanks in advance to anyone else who decided to send me stuff. And while I'm on vacation, I'm assured any gifts will be set aside someplace safe where they'll be waiting for me when I get back.

I'll respond properly to email when I get back, too. Your emails mean a lot, thanks for writing.

Oh-- I updated the journal last night. I talked to my Grandpa today (he's not doing well) and to my folks, who want me to check in daily while I'm vacationing in case something should happen. I'm worried. Here's hoping I have fun anyway and that I'll get a chance to visit my grandparents upon my return.

I've updated my calendar so that both July and August 2001 are now online. I'll probably put September up before the month is out, too.

I'm going on vacation shortly, but just as I've got people apartment-sitting for me and taking care of my cats, I've got a website-sitter for tvpicks.net. Um, something like that. Monty Ashley will be the "guest host" over there from Tuesday, July 3rd through Tuesday, July 10th. He did a great job the last time he filled in, I'm sure y'all will enjoy his picks. I think I'll be back to work on the picks on Wednesday, July 11th assuming I survive my vacation.

And, of course, there won't be updates of this weblog or of my journal for at least a week, maybe more.