Dreamflower's Mathom-house

In case you have not heard, the Henneth Annun Story Archive (known as HASA) will be shutting down at the end of the year!

An effort is underway to rescue stories that are not found elsewhere. The details can be found here.

If you can help, the post will explain how; if you can't help, please consider passing the information along! The project can use all the signal-boost it can get!

I came up with this the other day. It's a combination of several recipes I came across.

Watermelon Lemonade

8 cups of watermelon pulp
Juice of 2 large lemons
1/2 c. sugar (or the equivalent in your preferred sweetener)
Water
Ice

1. Put the pulp in a blender and blend on high until it is slushy. Pour the pulp through a fine mesh strainer; you should have about 6 cups of watermelon juice.
2. Pour the watermelon juice and the lemon juice into a 2 quart pitcher.
3. If using sugar, make a simple syrup of the sugar and an equal amount of water, heated until the sugar dissolves. Otherwise use your sweetener as directed. Add to the pitcher.
4. Add more water and some ice until the pitcher is full. Serve icy cold.

This was SO good! Nearly all the other recipes called for the simple syrup and a larger amount of sugar than I specified. I think that would have been way too sweet. But I decided to use Truvia instead.

I've been on a watermelon kick this summer, devouring more of it this year than I have in a long time!

While doing that "Books Meme", I was reminded of the author of the Doc Savage books I used to read and collect in the 60s and 70s. Lester Dent (pen name Kenneth Robeson) wrote hundreds of short pulp adventure novels, and at one point wrote down his secret of success. It can be found here: Dirty Thirties: The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot.

While a bit crass and cynical in expression, the advice he gives really does show how to write a page-turner in most genre fiction, and when I think about it, most of the successful adventure-oriented fanfics I've read tend to more or less follow the outline (word count excepted, since there's no such strict word count for fanfic as for pulp novels which were closer to novellas than true novels). But the story more or less divides up along the same lines!

Of course, the catalyst in his adventure stories was almost always a murder, but it could be adapted to other genres with a slightly different catalyst.

Dent never really thought of himself as an artist--he considered his pulp writing a job, and considering the times, he made a very good living at it.

In spite of having to work yesterday, I've had a rather nice weekend. Yesterday the DH and the DS got our dryer into the house, into the utility room! The dryer had been out in the garage, unuseable. When the delivery man had told us it wouldn't FIT in there, we went with our contingency plan of putting it into the garage--but then found that putting the proper outlet in there would be cost prohibitive. Finally with a tape measure we found that if we were careful it would fit--there was barely 1 1/2" leeway, and the washer faces in one direction and the dryer in the other, and the dryer is a little crooked due to the vent hook-up. But now, months after we bought it, we are finally able to dry our clothes in it!

Today after church the DH and I went in to Stillwater to have lunch at Red Lobster and to go to the library. Lunch was very nice; he had a platter with lobster, shrimp and crab, and I had rainbow trout with lemon garlic butter sauce; we also shared a dessert. We are both still full, and not in the least interested in supper!

My boss called and asked me to come in two hours early tomorrow. I said yes, since she's in a bind otherwise. But I am on the schedule way more days than I want to be. My usual shift is a chunk right out of the middle of the day, and it makes it really hard to do anything creative (like writing). Still, I'm hoping that it will ease up and I can go back to a slightly longer shift and fewer days. They've made some new hires--I just hope they stick, because we really need more people in the market part of the store.

This was an interesting article. I'm not sure that I agree with their "nine fandom personality profiles" or that they really understand fandom, but still interesting. How long before someone turns this into a quiz, do you suppose?

Tonight for supper, I made chicken leg quarters with a peach sauce I made up.

Peachy Chicken

4 chicken leg quarters
1 TBSP melted butter
Salt and pepper
3 large peaches, peeled, pitted and diced
2 TBSP honey
1 TBSP soy sauce
Juice and zest of one lemon
1 large or 2 smaller cloves garlic, minced

Put the chicken in a foil lined pan; brush with the melted butter and season with salt and pepper to taste. Place in the oven on broil for about 5 minutes to add a nice golden color.

Meanwhile, combine all the remaining ingredients in a small saucepan and heat to a simmer. Take the chicken out of the oven and reduce the heat to 350F. Spoon the peach sauce over the chicken; cover with foil, and return to the oven for about 40 to 45 minutes.

It was really, really yummy! We've already given away a lot of the peaches, but we still have a lot left. I will be looking for other things to do with them.

And another one whose presence has been around all my life is gone:

http://thedissolve.com/news/2765-james-garner-1928-2014-a-different-kind-of-macho-m/

I remember Maverick when it was a first run program, along with shows like Sugarfoot, Cheyenne and other great Western TV shows. I often see it in re-runs, as the DH is a big fan of The Western Channel. And then there was The Rockford Files, one of the best detective shows of the 70s.

He always played the funny one, the wise guy who was more likely to bring the bad guy down in some sort of sting than he was with a fast draw or a right hook. He'll be missed.

I'm finally getting enough time to respond with thanks to all my friends for the lovely birthday greetings!

I had a nice quiet b'day, as I had to work the day before and the day after. I spent some of it putting up our decorations for the Fourth, and watched TV. The DH brought home take-out for supper, but we were planning to celebrate on the weekend, because payday. I also had to work on the Fourth, but it wasn't a long shift. The DH took some days of leave, and so we've spent the last four days doing "couple" stuff, some of it errands and necessary chores and some of it fun stuff; but I haven't had a lot of computer time.

On Saturday we went into Stillwater. Alas, the library was closed for the holiday, as was a shop we had hoped to check out; however, the DH took me to JoAnns so I could pick out something I wanted for a gift. (I got some nice watercolor pencils and a book on Zentangle.) Then we had supper at Olive Garden--I had Portabella Ravioli, and we also shared a White Chocolate Raspberry cheesecake for dessert. Sunday we went to church and then out to lunch at Boomerangs.

But anyway, I finally got the chance to respond to all my wonderful birthday greetings:

LJ Greetings from:
shirebound
claudia603
cairistiona7
the_winterwitch
febobe
danae_b
baranduin
i_o_r_h_a_e_l

A really nice wallpaper from:
lilybaggins

A lovely story from:
blslarner Taken in Remembrance

E-cards from:
lindahoyland
pearltook1
pandemonium_213
My sister

E-mail birthday wishes from:
ramblin_rosie
kgreen20
pippinfan1
rubynye
kayleelupin

Lots of Facebook greetings, mostly from my SCA friends down in my old Barony of Seleone!

Thanks to everyone, and lots and lots of ((((hugs))))) to all my flist!

ETA: A birthday post from engarian!

Haven't been around much because of various issues, one of which was computer trouble. I spent most of the afternoon letting a nice tech from Norton fiddle around with my HP, (so weird to watch the cursor doing all kinds of things without me) and now the pop-ups and strange links are gone, the speed is better, and I no longer have to hit a key 10 times just to type one letter!

But it took so long I didn't get to do any of the writing I wanted to, and I have to work tomorrow, so I hope I get my challenge fic for this month done. Tonight I take A. (my son's girlfriend's 14-yr-old daughter) to the library for knitting circle.

Something else awesome. The new issue of the OTW's online periodical, Transformative Works and Culture is up. There is an article about crafting in fandom which I was interviewed for, and some of my interview is in it here: Beyond Souvenirs: making fannish objects by hand. The article mostly consists of interviews, though the caption on a photo of one of my projects is slightly incorrect.

Anyway, if I'm not too pooped from work tomorrow, I hope to write!

"such and such is not responding due to a long-running script"?

I get the choice of clicking "stop script" or closing the pop-up bar. It doesn't matter which I choose, it comes right back, and I can do nothing with the page, including close it. I usually have to close all tabs. Sometimes a page will work for a few minutes and sometimes it won't even load. Or the original page works but the links on the page won't.

I've been getting this on almost every page I open for the last day or two. It's a miracle this one's working.