Archive | November 16, 2014

Doomsday Academy: Sianna Intro

“What should I wear? What should I pack? Do you think they’ll like me? What do you think they’ll be like? Do you think I’ll get to dance?”

Sianna wasn’t really asking the questions. They were popping out of her mouth far too quickly to really expect anyone to follow them. But she had to get them out. There were so many questions, so many things she didn’t know. “Is it warm there, like the time we spent a year down south? Is it cold, like when we spent time in Uncle Martin’s cabin? What’s it like? What are the people like? Are they going to be mean, like those people…”

Sianna’s family traveled, they had always traveled. But they traveled together. And when they had been summering in a nice place on the outskirts of a really really big wheatfield, a spotted redheaded lady and a dark-haired man with the same nose and spots as the lady had shown up to talk to Sianna’s parents.

It had been one of those kids-go-play conversations, all hushed tones and some flailing of hands on her Mama’s part (and a bit more angry flailing of hands on her Daddy’s part, and that had been the weird part. Daddy didn’t get angry. Sometimes he got furious, but furious was an entirely different sort of thing from angry. Mama got angry).

But when it was over, Mama and Daddy, the redheaded spotted lady and the dark spotted boy had all been polite smiles, but polite-and-real smiles, not the weird fake ones. And Sianna had been going off to Doomsday Academy in the fall.

“Why do you think they call it ‘Doomsday;’ it sounds kind of mean. And why can’t you guys come with me?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/848500.html. You can comment here or there.

Catching up: first and last words of yesterday

Last line of yesterday: She leaned backwards instead of away from him. “Because you’re lousy at taking notes.”

First line of yesterday: It had been a fun contrast – especially since they were both so attractive, and both so determined.

I’m on The Despot of Santa Roux Finds Love, which might be in the same Clockwork Apoc setting as To Ashbury, or might be in another apoc ‘verse.

Words yesterday were 2,546, which brought me to 30,101, or just over 50% of the way to goal!

(chart is visible here: https://twitter.com/ThorneWrites/status/534041498497847296)

Back to the Word Mines!

How’ve you all be doing?

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The Thornes Go to Hershey (#altonbrownlive)

We’ve been watching Alton Brown on TV for years. We watched Good Eats nigh-on religiously, watched Next Iron Chef when there was nothing else Alton-y to watch, and watch and love Cutthroat kitchen.

We’re the sort of people that brine our turkey every year; I make biscuits by Alton’s recipe for our soup and we do own two of Alton’s cookbooks. I think it’s fair to say we’re fans.

So when the live show was coming to Hershey, PA, well… that’s only four hours away. We’ve driven three and a half hours to Albany three times between September and October (there was a wedding); we can drive to Hershey.

T and I don’t take many vacations. We used to do conventions with the Camarilla™, back when we belonged to said world-wide live-action Roleplaying game, and we did Dragon*Con once – in neither case did we pick the hotel. We’ve turned weddings into vacations for ourselves – again, we didn’t pick the hotel. I think this may be the first time we’ve chosen the hotel… ever.

Ahem. Alton Brown.

The show was awesome. I hadn’t done a lot of research about it, so I didn’t go in expecting anything in particular – but it was everything I could have wanted. He ranted about food, he did wild food tricks, he sang. It was two hours of pure Alton.

My only sad point? He took audience questions via twitter w/ selfie. Awesome… except for the 1% of us (me) that came sans smart phone.

But all in all – awesome show. I don’t think we learned anything about cooking, but we had a lot of fun. (Also, in his song about EZ Bake ovens, I got to examine how lucky we are to live in a sub-sub-culture where the fact that my husband does 9/10 of the cooking is entirely acceptable.)

Back to the hotel. So, I was a little hesitant about staying in a Howard Johnson (hotel snob), but it was the only one on the main drag that was a) well-reviewed and b) had a king-sized bed. So.

Turns out, it has a phenomenal restaurant underneath, and an absolutely tasty brunch place right next door. So not only did we get to listen to our favorite TV-food-personality, we got to eat delicious food, too!

All in all, a very good vacation, & back home in time to feed the kitties.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/847683.html. You can comment here or there.