I ordered some Valentine’s themed goods from Michael’s recently, including these heart print champagne flutes. I ordered these because they’re actually made of glass and all other V-Day themed “glasses” I found were actually acrylic, and also way too expensive for plastic fucking cups. How are you going to charge almost ten dollars per “glass” when they’re plastic? Yet these actual glasses were four dollars. Wild.
Anyways, lucky me, two of them arrived shattered:
(Ignore the multiple packs of Liquid Death in the background, I was trying to fit the cans in the fridge. And YES I like Liquid Death, I don’t care if it’s kind of cringe marketing.)
If you follow my dad on Bluesky or Instagram, you might have seen not too long ago he posted that three of the four (much nicer) champagne glasses he ordered arrived completely broken:
Thankfully, he was able to get a refund, but it was genuinely a hassle. My refund for my two much cheaper glasses was a lot easier, and now a whopping seven dollars is back in my bank account.
Look, this post isn’t about getting refunds or being disappointed by broken glasses, it’s about the fact that somebody needs to start a delivery company that specializes in fragile packages and doesn’t just fastball your package at your front door. You can put “fragile” stickers on a package all you want and that mail carrier is still going to treat it like how airline workers treat your three hundred dollar suitcase. Aka NOT GOOD.
I’m serious, if there were a delivery company that guaranteed careful handling and extra care to get your goods to you in one piece, I’d be thrilled. I’m gonna start needing white glove delivery on every single package at this rate because I’m tired of hearing my package sound like a maraca when I bring it inside.
So, there you have it. My minor annoyance of the day. I shall live.
We’re all just trying to be good people, and sometimes in that journey we make mistakes. Perhaps the same goes for ghosts, as author A. C. Wise suggests in the Big Idea for her newest novel, Ballad of the Bone Road. Fae queens, paranormal detectives, and famous Hollywood ghosts, oh my!
A. C. WISE:
The big idea behind The Ballad of the Bone Road started out as several small ideas. The names Brix and Bellefeather made their way into my head and struck me as the perfect names for a pair of supernatural investigators. Around the same time, the line “When I was twelve years old, I met the Devil in an oak tree,” popped into my head. Finally, misheard song lyrics put the image in my mind of two young lovers in a hotel room summoning a ghost and becoming a throuple.
Those three bits of inspiration may not have happened in that exact order, but they happened close enough to each other that it seemed reasonable to me that they would all be part of the same story. The big idea then became a question – how do these pieces fit together? How do I get all these people in the same place and how best to complicate their lives?
While the original line about meeting the Devil in an oak tree didn’t survive fully intact, I realized it was a fundamental part of Bellefeather’s backstory and why she makes the choices she does throughout the novel. Brix, then, would obviously meet the lovers and get caught up in their haunting, which turns out to be far more complicated than any of them could have anticipated.
My previous two novels, Wendy, Darling and Hooked, are a duology of sorts, inspired by Peter Pan. I wanted Ballad of the Bone Road to be something different, but there are certain themes that carry across all three works, namely characters making bad choices in response to trauma. At their core, the characters in all three novels (with the possible exception of James aka Captain Hook) are mostly trying to be good people and do the right thing, but they make a fair number of missteps along the way. They hurt those around them by holding on too tight or by pushing them away; they let fear drive them until it forces their hands and they discover they know how to be brave.
Ballad of the Bone Road is inspired, to a certain degree, by the glamor of the silver screen, an art deco aesthetic, and stories of the fae that depict them as inhumanly lovely and dangerous in equal measures. There are also ghosts, of course there are ghosts, but what happens when a haunting is accidental and more melancholy than malicious? Instead of driving out their ghosts, what if those experiencing the haunting were doing everything they could to hold on?
Even if the initial ideas may have been small and disparate ones, they all came together in the end, and I’m pleased with the questions the book poses and the ways the characters respond to the situations they find themselves facing. They are flawed and imperfect and human – even when they’re not exactly human – and most of them are just trying to do the best they can.
We got a lot of snow in the Boston area, but people seem to be coping fairly well. The building management company have sent people over here to shovel the walks, several times, so I was able to take out the trash and recycling. The forecast for the next several days is for cold, very cold once you count the wind chill. It turns out that I can wear Adrian's old snow pants, which will do a lot to protect my legs from cold and wind. The remaining problem is boots: even with the 3/4 insoles Adrian lent me, they're too loose, including at the front, so I may try putting in a pair of full-length insoles and see if that helps. The other possibility is to go out looking for a pair of snow sneakers, or at least waterproof hiking shoes/boots (though the forecast is for the kind of weather where waiting for two trolleys, and walking from home to trolley to store, is daunting.
I've been looking at Bluesky again, in large part for news and commentary about what ICE is doing in Minnesota and elsewhere. When I've had enough for a while, I click on the "astronomy" feed I subscribed to months ago, so the first things I see are an astronomical pictures.
I did a lot of PT yesterday, and a few exercises today. It feels like I haven't gotten a lot done today, which I think is because I'd been hoping to make some phone calls (not all of them political), and assumed I wouldn't be able to take the trash out today. (The alternative to that walk along the side of the building is a spiral staircase, indoors, but spiral staircases aren't good for me, and this one is tight enough that my joints really don't like it. Cattitude can deal with it when necessary, but he's already going up and down that stair regularly to do the laundry.)
So often I write about extravagant, expensive dinners and specialty dining events, but today I’m here to tell you of an absolutely banging bargain lunch.
I love Indian food, but it’s scarce to come by in my area. The closest establishment to me is Amar India Restaurant, and it’s actually its north location in Vandalia rather than its original location in Centerville, which is considerably further south from me.
Amar India North has a lunch menu that starts out at a mere ten dollars, and only goes up to about fifteen dollars if you get one of the more expensive dishes like the lamb curry. There’s also chicken curry, chicken tikka masala, I think a fish curry, and the one I always get, saag paneer.
Once you pick your main, it comes with rice, naan, their vegetable of the day, and a small dessert. This is what the saag paneer platter looks like:
Two pieces of plain naan, rice, a big ol’ portion of saag paneer, pointed gourd as the vegetable of the day, and two jalebi for the dessert. I have had this platter three times and each time the vegetable has been different, but never the dessert, which is a shame because I’d love to try some of their other desserts, especially the kulfi and Gulab jamun.
It may not look like much saag paneer but I can assure you it’s a generous portion size for the price. I’m pretty sure the saag paneer platter in particular is thirteen dollars, plus I always get a mango lassi, which is $4.50, so in total I’m spending less than twenty dollars for a very filling and very delicious lunch! I truly think this is such a good deal and you get to support a local business.
I know the Centerville location used to have a lunch buffet. I don’t know if they still do but I’d like to make it down there sometime soon to see for myself. There’s also a Beavercreek location under the name Jeet India Restaurant, so I’ll have to check that out next time I’m in the area.
I just had this meal on Friday but now I’m already craving it again after telling y’all about it. Especially the mango lassi, I really could drink a gallon of that stuff.
Oh, and while you’re at Amar North, they just opened an Indian grocery store right next to the restaurant called Anand Indian Grocery. I popped in there on my latest visit to the restaurant and they have a huge selection of items, including specialty produce and cooking ingredients like ghee and tons of spices, plus the biggest bags of rice you’ve ever seen.
They also have tons of fun and unique snacks and sweets, and even ice cream flavors I’ve never heard of.
If you’re in the Dayton area, I highly recommend making it out to Amar North for their lunch special sometime this week. It’s between the hours of 11am and 2pm. I think I’ll go again tomorrow for a nice solo lunch.
Do you recommend any lunch specials in the Dayton area? Are you also a big saag paneer fan? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
I was away this weekend visiting a friend and seeing a concert, and my return home was delayed a day because of the weekend snowstorm. Heading back, I managed to avoid the crash on the I-70 that closed all the eastbound lanes of the interstate, but as you see, that luck came at a price: Immediately upon returning home my boots de-soled. The travel gods, apparently, needed a sacrifice.
These boots, as it happens, are nearly twenty years old, so the sacrifice was reasonable. It wasn’t like I had just gotten these shoes. In fact, the fact they were twenty years old was probably why they became a sacrifice; after two decades, the glue had clearly desiccated into nothingness. I can’t complain. I got good value out of these boots. The travel gods may take them to Shoehalla with my blessing.
In other news, I need new boots; there’s a ton of snow on the ground and my Sketchers are not gonna handle that. A-shoppin’ I will go.
This Chinese cauliflower stir-fry with beef is a delicious one-pan meal that’s quick and easy to make. It also highlights the use of cauliflower in Chinese cooking, which is rarely seen in the U.S. and underrated! My theory behind this is that cauliflower is not served in most Chinese restaurants probably because it is expensive […]
So yeah, kind of hard to concentrate on work while being consumed by rage. I've been to conventions in the Minneapolis area and I have a lot of friends up there, and one of my goddaughters and her husband live there.
For instance, this is Greg Ketter, from DreamHaven Books, where I've done signings, at the protest and running into tear gas:
In the middle of a storm, it's hard to remember, but ICE always melts, and there will be an afterwards. After the ICE melts, a garden appearsBees and their flowersAlpine (crevice) gardenWoodland pathVeggie garden ⬆and its produce⬇After the ICE melts, a garden. I have got the flu, but will return with knitting content shortly. --TK
And there’s no delivery because of all this snow. Also, they’re nearly out of food.
Good thing I waited for the bus at the corner store - I have cheezits, coke, and a cupcake, a c food diet. (And in the morning I’ll eat some of their Cheerios!)
I nearly didn’t make it in. Couldn’t get a car, and my bus kept getting canceled, but finally one made it out of the terminal.
The plot is picking up and I have no idea where it's going!
Also, it is absolutely impossible to track down the music for that show. There was one song I liked, so I tried to look it up. No dice. I eventually gave in and searched up "Killjoys soundtrack" and then, armed with the song title and artist name, tried again. Still no luck. I did find an entirely different song that's apparently written by somebody with no internet presence at all. If it wasn't apparently their only song I'd suspect AI. That picture is AI, though, has "artificial" written all over it, in illegible text. Song's not too uncatchy, but - I honestly don't know why the music in Killjoys is so hard to find.
The world is on fire, but after ICE murdered someone else in Minneapolis this morning, I called both my senators and also Chuck Schumer--I called him a coward and said we needed him to do better, giving my old Manhattan zip code. Apparently enough people made enough calls, and Schumer said an hour ago that Senate Democrats won't provide the votes for a funding bill that includes the Department of Homeland Security.
It seems likely that Alex Pritti's murder mattered to people who were prepared to overlook their murder of Renee Good, because it shows that while ICE is profoundly racist, a white man with a gun permit isn't safe either.
I can't do much for my friends in Minneapolis, but if there's something that would be useful, please ask.
ETA: After posting that, I realized I could afford to donate some money. So, I followed the links on Naomi Kritzer's recent post, donated $50 to Minnesota Rapid Response, and bought a bunch of dental floss to a group that was asking for that.
Today there was an ache in my knee even though I had not particularly exerted myself, and I wondered what that was about when it hit me: There was a storm coming. I am now one of those people who can tell when a storm is coming by aches and pains.
Excuse me, I’m going to go lay down in my grave now.
The kettle has just boiled and I’ve made myself a cup of tea. It is frigid outside. Absolutely bonkers cold and it’s only going to get colder and more snow is coming. (There is already rather a lot.) Each morning as I leave to “walk to work” I’ve been grabbing my skates from their hook by the front door and they hang over my shoulder cheerfully swaying as I walk a few minutes to an outdoor rink in a local park and have a few turns on the ice before heading back home. If this sounds ridiculously romantic, well it is – especially if you can ignore that I am an absolute crap skater, though practice can only help.
(Last week Elliot and I went for a skate and he’s just learning so spends as much time falling down as he does gliding around. After a little while he said “Wow Grammy you are such a good skater!” and then promptly fell down again. I can honestly say that nobody has ever, ever said that about my skating before and I highly recommend taking a young learner with you if you struggle with your self-esteem. I do not recommend taking them more than a few times though because by next week he’s going to be better than me for sure.)
Today was cold enough that I didn’t take my skates, I couldn’t imagine the minutes without mittens putting on and tying them up and I just went for my walk. I always listen to audiobooks as I walk (or clean, it’s the only way I can bribe myself into doing it) but today I didn’t because I wanted to think without interruption. I walked along, bundled in knits top to bottom (and saw several people wearing leg warmers and thought about knitting some but I think I will wait and see if that urge is still there when it’s not -25 since I have never wanted them before) and thought long and hard about what I wanted to write today.
Today is my Twenty-second Blogiversary and that means that 22 years ago I sat down and wrote and posted my very first blog entry and the minute I did that I stepped through the door it cracked open and nothing has been the same since. I tell you some version of that every year on this day and I always look for a different way to say it, and that’s what I was thinking about as I walked. It was still what I was thinking about when I came home and knitted a little bit, and made some soup for lunch.
(These are my Self-Imposed Sock Club socks for January- I tried to take them outside so the light would really show off the colours but there was nowhere that wasn’t too %^&^%ing snowy so I put them on the spare bed. Enjoy. Yarn is Indigodragonfly in Spoken Four, last years Bike Rally fundraising yarn, and the pattern is Defying Gravity and it is very fun.)
In the end I decided to tell you about something that happened not too long ago. I was at an event with lots of other knitters and we were knitting and chatting the way we do, and the way only knitters can. (Everyone else takes it so personally when you’re reading a chart, I’m listening to you for crying out loud.) The topic of The Blog came up and someone said they really love The Blog and someone else said “Well, sure but the blog is dead.” Now – before you get your back up on my behalf (I love that about you) there is no need. A big part of me can agree with them. For sure this space isn’t what it was. Like all things there is change and I get it. Gone are the days that I posted five times a week. I hear them, I respect that and I didn’t say anything or feel hurt. I did start thinking though, because while that little piece of me could see their point, a larger part of me wanted to push back hard because in my heart, that feels like a ridiculous statement.
It stayed with me, and I’ve reflected on it often. (Don’t worry it wasn’t that long ago, I’m not consumed.) I can’t tell you how desperately I feel like The Blog is not dead – is it just wishful thinking – something I’m holding onto because I’m not great at letting things go? This is one of my best and worst traits, so I always consider it. I’m GREAT at holding on by my very fingernails and this has both caused me loss and saved things that were important. Was this just my point of view? It wasn’t until I started to write about this that I realized the answer.
As I wrote that this person had said the blog was dead, I noticed a detail. Do you? When I wrote it as I heard them, I typed “the blog”. When I wrote about my feelings that it was still here, I hit that shift key. The Blog. I have written before about what the family and I call you – you are The Blog. We’ll ask ourselves what The Blog would think, or wonder if The Blog would like something. Around these parts The Blog isn’t software, memory, words and pictures. The Blog is me writing to you. Your comments coming back to me – connections made here and in real life. It’s me working on something you made me interested in, it’s you trying a technique I wrote about in 2017. It’s me having a snapshot of you in my mind because I’ve built it out of a collage made of your hundreds of comments over the years. It’s you knowing that Amanda can play the violin – or how this family fared during the pandemic. It’s me understanding what you love because I love it too – it’s you knowing Charlotte’s name. It is you introducing yourself to me in another town and me not really knowing who you are until you tell me your email address or username – and then in that moment having you bloom into the person I know from this town, that you’re a neighbour in The Blog. I’ve seen your socks.
I guess I think too that The Blog isn’t dead because at least once a week I get an email from someone who is reading the whole thing- from beginning to end and they want me to know that they really had their scene scrambled when their mum died too – or that it was helpful to read things I wrote about being a young mother – and that the things I wrote about the value of parenting made them feel better about how absolutely trashed the house their happy kids are playing in. Or they write and tell me something they thought about when they were reading about one of my multitude of insecurities because they thought I might feel less insecure when I read it. (They are usually right.)
A little while ago someone who reads this blog and leaves comments sent me an email and thanked me for a recipe I put here years ago. It was great that she wrote because it just so happened that I was finishing a book she had recommended in a comment.
Another yarn break – I’m knitting Craghill. I think it’s pretty gorgeous.
Essentially – I have never thought of The Blog as something that just I do. We are woven together in this place, knit into one fabric, use whatever textile metaphor you’d like to this is twenty-two years of books and recipes and patterns and bad socks and good sweaters and baby blankets and together we are The Blog, and you just don’t feel dead to me at all. As a matter of fact, I think we’ll be just fine.
Much love, and thank you for everything. Meet you here soon.
Stephanie
PS: This year I’ll ride my 15th Bike Rally. To be honest it was a harder decision this year but in the end the world could use all the good acts it can get. It has become tradition to kick off my fundraising on my blogiversary, so here we are. It’s also become tradition for your donations to be the number of years we’re celebrating here, or some multiple – 22, 44, 66… that way the fundraising staff processing them is super bewildered, especially when the explaination is simply “That’s the knitters.” The link to my page is here if you’re so inclined, and it’s also a great day to recognize Ken, the patron saint of The Blog, since he’s the one who gave it to me in the first place. His Bike Rally link is here.
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I ordered some Valentine’s themed goods from Michael’s recently, including these heart print champagne flutes. I ordered these because they’re actually made of glass and all other V-Day themed “glasses” I found were actually acrylic, and also way too expensive for plastic fucking cups. How are you going to charge almost ten dollars per “glass” when they’re plastic? Yet these actual glasses were four dollars. Wild.
