I forgot to share a couple of things with y'all. I KNOW! How DARE I?

anyway, I FINALLY hung some things on the walls in my house. Specifically a shelf and a picture and a magnetic strip and a towel rack - all in the kitchen. And then a full length mirror on the back of my bedroom door. It is very exciting. I am waiting for picture rail hooks to put things up in most rooms, but the kitchen doesn't have them, so YAY!

THEN, I had crazy wakko dreams last night. Several of you were there but now I cannot remember who, We were in some vast building with THE SCOOBY DOO GANG, but not at all cartoons or funny, giant PITA actually. Shaggy and some kid were completely strung out on some drug that looked like colored sugar, but was highly illegal in this place. For some reason we were stuck with them all for a while, but then I bolted. Oh, and I was pregnant! wtf. Then I went to the square in Mesilla (sara knows) and there was some carolling going on or something, but I had an appointment with a hairdresser and masseuse so I left people with my aunt (who used to live in LC, but doesn't anymore). It continued on weirdly, ending with me being with a group returning from a trip on a school bus and having to stop for dinner just outside of NYC. We went to a diner, but the food was all $20+ per entree and I threw a fit and the locals all got mad at us.

Thanks, Kate!

Yikes for pipes freezing. As a coastal CA girl I've never had to deal with that. It's a kind of winter-fu I'm unfamiliar with. I'm sure you looked great although you may not have felt fresh...

It's a kind of winter-fu I'm unfamiliar with.

Yeah, I feel like I should have expected that might happen, given my New England roots and many years of bitterly cold winters in MA, but it just didn't occur to me that the same thing might happen in Nashville! Despite the fact that the temps here got down into the single digits last night. Oops.

That sucks, Kate. I've been spending the last several nights trying to convince at least one faucet to keep dripping. Modern faucets don't want to drip, which is normally a good thing.

It must have been the night for strange dreams. I dreamed I was staying in a hotel room with the SG-1 actors and Amanda Tapping and I were bitching at each other about stuff we left around the room.

I've experienced frozen pipes once. It was in New Orleans.

Winter is so cold in northern places that they insulate and do other things to prevent freezing pipes. In the south, they don't expect it and so don't prepare.

Yeah, in the north as long as your heater is working, pipes don't freeze. (At least not in my experience.)

I like the Cubs. So I hold out hope that some day my great-grandchildren might live to seem them win the World Series....

Have you read Matt Fraction’s letter to his son about being a Cubs fan? The postscript cracks me up every time.

[link]

I had Mormons come by once. I think one of the guys was fresh out of training, because when I said I was an atheist he looked completely thrown and hesitantly offered, “Oh. Well.... that’s... not very good?” I said it had been working out for me so far, and I believe that concluded the conversation. Then I spent a while giggling, because I've never seen someone so flabbergasted.

My novelette e-book got a reader review. Fun, especially since it's a story I never had any plans for. It's sort of a concept story in the setting for my next novel.

[link]

I had mormons come by my house once. I had just finished Mikal Gilmore's book, Shot in the Heart, about his brother and Mormonism, the history of it and everything. It is a great book! So I was all excited and asked the missionaries if they'd read it and told them how great it is. They had no idea what I was talking about. I think I scared them away.

Have you read Matt Fraction’s letter to his son about being a Cubs fan? The postscript cracks me up every time.

Heh - that was fun.

I think one of the guys was fresh out of training, because when I said I was an atheist he looked completely thrown and hesitantly offered, “Oh. Well.... that’s... not very good?”

My friend Miriam has a coworker from the Philippines. Her co-worker was amazed that Miriam was Jewish. She was all, "You celebrate Christmas, right? You still believe in Jesus, right?" Apparently, co-worker had never met a non-Christian before.