We're finally having a residents only parking zone put in! No more inability to park due to soccer parents on school runs! No more eight car family over the road taking up the whole street with their cars! I'm so happy!

Welcome back, JonJon!

I visited a forum with a bunch of awesome people in it, for the first time in a long time. ;)

pics please! :)

NEW GLASSES!!!!
I'm a sexy beast now.

Maladict did seem to have a real talent for looking downright demonic in photos... Can't say I'm sad to see him go.

Benedict will never spend a day in jail. He'll retire to a mansion in Italy. The day the catholic church is not powerful enough to protect him is farther away than his death. A new pope with basically the same beliefs and policies will be appointed. For the near future, the church will continue business as usual.

But this is still a historic day.

Popes do not quit.

The catholic church is getting weaker.

The pope decided to quit, maybe now he will have the free time to get thrown in jail for covering up for rapist priests.

The internets already have some fun with it

Today I'm going to make a giant Yorkshire pudding. Why? Because why not, that's why.

Glad you liked it. I really had a lot of fun writing "The Game's Afoot!". I sat down at my word processor and went as far over the top with the story as I thought I could get away with without risking an unintended win in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Ursa-

RE: The Games Afoot!

Twisty, funny, fun, and to be much recommended!

I'm looking forward to your next issues!

Carry on dude, post away.

You can buy the anthology on Amazon (Kindle version only), and it should be possible to borrow it for free if you know somebody who has already purchased it, because we turned the "free lending" feature on for the book.

Attention moderators: Am I allowed to post a link here, or can I at least mention the title so that folks can find it if they want to?

EDIT: According to a private communication with Custador, it's okay.

You can find the anthology at Amazon. The title is "The Muse's Hand". It is a collection of five short stories/novellas, each by a different author. They are all "speculative fiction", i.e., SF or fantasy or some combination thereof. Mine is the last story in the anthology.

Goodonya, Ursa!

Now, what do we do for the priv. of read'n your writ'n ?

Double hurrah! I've been published again, this time an actual piece of fiction rather than an editorial.

Hurrah! I've been published. In a minor way, but published nonetheless.

And I got paid for it. In a minor way, but paid nonetheless.

I forgot to say what's going on. As per my "soap opera," my sister had to get rid of her cat while she moved out while my mom sold her house and nobody could take the cat so I got a cat. I think I said before she is sort of boring. She doesn't play with a paper bag, or even scratch a cardboard box, or climb where she shouldn't be. She doesn't do cat-like things like take over my pillow or sit where I was sitting while I'm in the kitchen getting a soda, she hasn't tried to see what's out the windows or even curled up by the radiator. Is my cat defective? The most interesting so far is that I find she likes to eat pepperoni since I bought some snacks for when my dad came but we didn't have time to eat them, so I've been eating pepperoni and cheese on crackers instead of real food. Win-win.

Also I got sort of installed in a sort of job at my new fencing club, where I can wear jeans to work, show up kind of when I like, work from home if it's snowing (like now), and a lot of creative freedom. No money really to speak of so far. That's my burden. It's not that much of a burden so far, but I will probably have this job if I can make the club money. If you think of anything I haven't thought of yet, let me know. I feel more like a peer than at any job I've had for a while. It's tough in a subordinate type of perpetual position as I often find myself to feel like a grown-up amongst professionals, but this is like starting my own business without the hassle and nightmares of starting my own business, although being the marketing point person is kind of a nightmare to me. A lot of people have been encouraging and I feel appreciated.

Warning: Shameless self promotion follows.
(And if any mods feel this should be deleted, I understand and apologize in advance.)

I've been doing some art based on an SF novel a friend is writing, with some captions explaining a bit about the setting. If anyone feels like taking a look, http://kessy-athena.deviantart.com/ Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

@botl: It's more because the product they sold was often A) Completely unnecessary, and B) Not actually what they claimed.

I knew a guy who had PPI policies on everything he owed, but when he got laid off, not a single one of them paid out. The list of exclusions on PPI policies was so great that they never, ever paid out, and that's why people are able to reclaim the cost of buying it - Because they were paying for a promise to do nothing.

I considered reclaiming on my mis-sold PPI policies, but I went bankrupt owing £40k to the banks (and no, none of my PPI policies paid out), so I figure we're even.

drax, PPI (Payment Protection Insurance), is something banks would sell to you when you took out a loan, so that if you couldn't make your payment they would make (normally) one for you. Problem was, a lot of banks were doing this without informing their customers/asking permission, so recently it's become big business to get people to claim back PPI, and take a cut for their help.

Going for a third. Wish me luck and all that, power of numbers! :

The story of the messy girl. Chapter 1. Sometimes messy girl doesn't pick up the litter. The litter provides a second chance to find something you thought you ran out of if you look, and multi-task by discarding some of the litter as you sort. Chapter 2. Sometimes messy girl puts things away where they belong. When all hope is lost, try looking where things are supposed to be.

Please explain PPI. I totally get the unsolicited call thing, but I like to mess with people who do that.

Heh, that's a useful little doohickey... we've recently got a brief from one of those PPI reclamation companies to do their advertising. Feels a bit dirty; not quite on the level of cigarette-ad-dirty, but still uncomfortable.

So I've been getting nuisance calls lately from some wankers trying to "reclaim" any PPI that I might have been "mis-sold", and despite some really very blunt exchanges, they still call.

Except now they can't. Now I have a little doohicky on my 'phone that answers their autodialler instantly (so I'll always be one of those that answers before the auto dialler runs out of sales people to connect me to), gives two seconds of silence, then hangs up and deletes all records of the call. Sweet.

Bacon sammich in the morning - Pretty decent, right? Tot o' the Scotch before bed - Lovely, right? Now imagine you could take these socially acceptable yet distinct and seperate luxuries and combine them into one super luxury of awesomeness. Well, welcome to my world. Welcome to the end of my night shift, a place of no holds barred, fast paced, full tilt, red hot, rock and roll craziness where you can rinse down your morning bacon with your bedtime toddy. Hizzels to the yizzes.

Good luck TQ. When you're rich and famous and coming to gaming cons in London I'll have to come and check it out ;-)

I go today to pitch my first ever game at a game convention. It will be three days of Other People hell, with a chance to end up with someone seeing, liking, and publishing my game. Got to admit I'm scared to death. The game is great-no worries about that- it's just dealing with people i'm not so good at ><
But, let's hope my socializing steps up to the plate and knocks a home run out, and puts me on my way to going pro.

I'm so glad y'all are ok! It was sunny and 75 here in Texas. I felt bad about it even! :)

We never lost our electricity or internet connection here, but the other side of our street was not so lucky. Our neighbors have been without power for three days now. There are still major outages all over the county, which I find inexplicable because the winds and rain from Sandy were nothing unusual for this region. We never see any disruptions on this scale during a typical spring or fall gale with equivalent weather, so why now?

The shiny happy part is that I am warm and cozy and have electricity and an internet connection, and I didn't have to break out the candle lanterns and the propane stove. I feel sorry for the neighbors, though. Most of them appear to have packed up and gone elsewhere for the duration, because it is dark and silent on the other side of the street and I haven't seen any cars coming or going at the houses over there since Tuesday morning.

Electricity restored!