Cancer

Writing assignments with deadlines ....

I would not put it past the English to have tipped off the Turks and provoked them into doing the breakdown-for-transport work

O-bo-dee-o-do, o-bo-dee-o-do, o-bo-dee-o-do, da-dum dum, do.

... clocks that don't work.

As someone with a lifelong talent for standardized tests, I've long known you should never rely on such a test as your sole criterion. You have to be idiots in order to do that. Oh wait. We're talking about the NFL. Duh.

Nothing produced today on the novel, but hopefully I did get my character for this new campaign finished, which has been a real timesink since Friday. Should be able to get a substantial amount done tomorrow.

Under some circumstances, you can compensate for poor targeting ability with larger explosive charge. Make sure you understand the ramifications before trying it, though.

Not watching it, but that score is kinda along the lines I expected.

He has already memorized 389 cheat codes, used them advantage and has sold some of his virtual trophy power-ups, and bought you your Christmas presents already with the proceeds of those sales. NT: Signs your cat has learned how to open doors that you closed and latched. (This afternoon, I am on the verge of deciding this must be the case with one of our cats, though I haven't seen her actually do it.)

A cheat, but ... Xmas cookies

Vanilla cream pie

Subject line: Someone recalled <your name>! Actual comment: "Despite my best efforts, I still remember that a-----e."

We have spoiled crows. We've lived in our current house for more than 20 years now. For most of that time, we've been feeding the crows. Our neighborhood is studded with large evergreen trees (mostly Douglas firs), and most of the houses date to the 1940s. This area used to be a peripheral suburb back then, so some of those "houses" are more like "summer cottages" in their origin. It's sort of ideal crow environment: not really dense forest, but thick enough to break up flight lines and sight lines so precision flying is much more important than raw speed. And there's lots of humans dropping edible trash around. So, we've got lots of crows. (Other birds also, but those don't enter into this anecdote.) Here, crow territories (one pair per territory) seem to be sort of ten-ish houses & yards in size. The territory boundaries shift a little from year to year, but not much. We can't identify the individual crows with any certainty, but the occupants of any given territory also seem pretty stable over several-year intervals. They clearly identify and remember individual humans and pets (dogs and cats); I remember at one point we had two black cats, one lithe young one who seems to have attacked a crow at one point, and one old fat one who pretty much ignored the crows entirely. The crows screamed at and harassed the attacker, and largely ignored the fat guy. Similarly, if I pop out while they're on the table they'll go up into the cherry tree directly over them without saying anything. Delivery guys or the occasional visitors will get yelled at. We have a dilapidated old wooden yard furniture table that's starting to fall apart. We call it the "offering table". When we have leftovers that we know we're not going to eat but we think the crows would, off they go out onto the offering table. Ditto for some cat food that the cats have turned their noses up on for a couple of days. When I put food out there, I announce the fact by making a fricative blast with my lips and hand (I played trombone as a kid) that sounds like two quick blasts on a duck call; that's as close as I can get to a crow vocalization. Many times, if the weather is good and it's light out, they'll come when I call, sitting on the utility wires or in the big old Japanese cherry tree on the north side of the property. The pair will wait until I'm gone (got in the car and driven away, or gone back into the house) and then come down and help themselves. While they are sitting on eggs or they've got new hatchlings, only one at a time comes; in summer after the year's hatchlings have fledged but before they've flown off on their own all three or four will come over. Most of the time, the feeding process usually means carrying off what they can and eating it elsewhere, but small stuff like loose cat food gets eaten rather than carried. Saturday evening my wife and I had tuna sandwiches and soup for dinner. My wife didn't finish her sandwich. The next morning, I put the sandwich remnant on the offering table, called, and then went off to my computer cave to bash on my Nanowrimo junk. When I came back a couple of hours later, I peeked through the cut glass portion of the north door. I was mildly surprised: they had not carried off the whole sandwich remnant. Instead, they had opened the sandwich up, eaten the tuna out of it, and left the bread on the table. Clearly we have spoiled our crows; they eat what they like and leave stuff behind. (A few hours later the bread was gone also, but that three hours later. I guess they got peckish )

Interactive story: George went with two other MHI personnel (my initial guess was the Driver and the Sniper, but it could be just about any two) out to check out some fragmentary reports of “big ugly flying things” in the high Cascades a few miles south of Mount Baker. After getting to a high isolated viewpoint, they spotted two large winged humanoids flapping below. These were gargoyles, and after a couple of rifle shots – unclear whether they missed or bounced off – the gargoyles got sight of them and started gaining altitude to attack. George’s “thump gun” (the M79 grenade launcher) was very important in the trio getting out alive despite its modest range and low rate of fire, but it took more than just firepower to make that happen. The really awkward part began after the second gargoyle was dispatched. (The first one had had the decency to drop into a rockfall under a rock scarp, where a broken stone golem would blend right in with the natural rubble.) That second one, killed in flight, fell into a section of forest actively being clear-cut by loggers, though thankfully not literally on their heads. Finding that dead thing was hard; manhandling the dead twelve-foot stone thing into the truck was another; and getting out of there without a mess of forest workers asking What in the actual f--- was yet another. But to get paid you had to have the corpse….

It's the daylight to standard time shift. Duh.

Hey, they'll always be the Cheatstros to me.

"I tell ya, kids these days..." five and a half millennia and counting.

7400 right now, with a couplw of hundred more to do today after I've pacified the cat's need for lap time pets. EDIT: 7800 words at close of business today. A much better way to spend this morning than watching the Seahawks get their clocks cleaned in Baltiore.

Meanwhile, the Squawks put on an historic implosion on the road.

Hmm, I might have yielded to the temptation to have that rightmost bin be "Bad Books".

"... the Submarine in Yellow."

Would you have taken the over in the UW-U$C game if it had been set at 90?

Only 600 words today, but I got the gore porn out of my system.

-- Bobby Knight

Cowcakes?