12 November 2005

So. Those of you who read lj have the more detailed and prompt version of this: I went to World Fantasy Con and promptly got sick. Not, like, "new and life-threatening, must see a gazillion specialists!" Our current best guess is that it was food poisoning followed by a stomach bug.

This leaves me rather short on interesting con anecdotes, I'm afraid. "I was sick, and people were nice to me, and Stella rocks." So okay then.

At the sign of the orange moose, on the way there (that's Black River Falls for those of you who don't know I94 through Wisconsin), you can get suckies in the little coffee shop. I do not recommend any of their blended coffee beverages (oversweetened! ptui!), but the sucky selection is quite adequate. They have the butter rum kind and the strawberry kind with the wrappers that look like little fake strawberries and the raspberry kind with the chew bit in the middle. I am content.

Mark reported that my parents were asking for Christmas lists on my grands' behalf. I thought he said they were asking for Ista's lists, and I thought, "She's the dog! Get her what you want -- she'll like it!" And then we got sneaky: "Umm, Ista wants a stick blender, series 3 and 4 of Red Dwarf, and Bear's new book...yeah...she can't wait to see how it all comes out...."

This week I read John Keegan's The Mask of Command, which looked at military command through four historical figures. Now I'm reading Dorothy Dunnett's To Lie With Lions. I'm enjoying it -- it's book six in this series, making it the thirteenth of her books I've read, all in the same vein, so it's no surprise that I'm enjoying it. She's pretty good at doing "the same thing, only different." I only have two of her historicals yet to read after this one. I may try the mysteries, but I'm not sure; they certainly don't look like the same kind of thing, and so far I don't have many recommendations for them as a good version of their own kind of thing.

Ummmm...look! A puppy!

She runs under the kitchen table when she wants to get away from the monkeys.

We don't really have any interest in dressing the dog as a fashion statement, but this is Minnesota: dressing the dog is sometimes necessary for the dog's continued survival. Or at the very least her comfort. She's not a Husky, she's a poodle.