This is my "opposite of friends only" message. If you stopped by, even for a few minutes, I'd love to know that you were here! I don't care if you've friended me or not, if you just joined my friends list or if you've been with me from the beginning. I don't care if you never plan on coming back here again. If you're feeling sociable, pen a line or two about yourself in the comments. I'm all about the networking. You might meet someone you like in the comments. You might see an old friend. I might come visit your LJ. Make the web a little bigger and a little more interesting by pimping introducing yourself here. I'd be glad to know you.

Love,

Betty

Hi! It looks like I'm going to be posting less and less on LJ. If you want to see me on the Intartubes, look me up on Facebook as Wendy Mason (same user icon) or on OkCupid.com as BettyBaker. I miss you guys lots; it's just that my Internet habits have changed.

The surprise hits of my semester at school are my geology classes. I get to hold the rocks, smell the rocks, scratch the rocks, and judge (in a very, very fuzzy way) their specific gravity.

My return to school, along with an unabated work schedule, means that I have far less free time. At least until I figure out an effective study schedule and understand how much energy my new schedule will take, you won't see much of me here.

Silver Hollow posts will continue as normal. Dr. Sweetheart created a script that posts them automagically for me. Enjoy them!

If you want to get in touch with me, try e-mailing me at bettyirisbaker at g mail dot com. I'm interested in knowing the important milestones of your lives, but I won't be sorting through my f-list for them. More efficiently, get in touch with me via my OK Cupid profile; it shunts messages to an e-mail address that I check more frequently.

I posted the last of the South to the River panels this morning. I made a silly arithmetic error, so there were only two more, not three more, to post. So ends South, and I apologize for the delay.

~~Betty and Dr. Sweetheart are the picture of decorum on Christmas morning.

I can has guest art!

thesmallwonder sent me a gorgeous version of Audra, thesilverhollow's protagonist. It kicks a lot of ass. If you haven't already, you should take a looksee at thesmallwonder's Deviant Art page.

I received a set of six tiny white porcelain espresso mugs with matching saucers for Christmas this year. I'm not normally the type to swoon and squee over the precious, but as soon as I saw these dainty little things, my heart went kathunk with coffee love.

Thing is, I have no espresso maker. thechick told me about economical little stove-top espresso pots, so a couple days after Christmas, Mr. Magnetic and I went to the store in search of such a thing. Alas, we found none.

But. But but but! I did find a press pot, which I gladly purchased. It was early in the evening when we arrived back at my place, so we tried it out.

And good lord. Pressed coffee drunk out of eensy weensy white mugs is a mind-shifting experience. It was oily and gritty; really full-bodied and low acid. That first batch of pressed coffee we made with Peet's French Roast, and it was the first time I've swooned over that bean. More, I didn't need to add cream or sugar to it--I could tell at once that this was coffee not to be tampered with.

Now I'm drinking a Costa Rican Tarrazu; in the bag it smells like everyday whole bean coffee, but in the process of making it, it's transformed into something quite wondeful. I'm a convert.

Yesterday I cleaned out my automatic coffee brewing machine and put it under the counter. I'll keep it for times when I need a large amount of coffee for guests, but for my mornings? I'll take the pressed coffee any day.

The holidays caught me by surprise; I got caught up in the chaotic schedule of it all and managed to completely forget about Livejournal. I'm honestly surprised that I let southtotheriver slip through the cracks the way I did, and for that I apologize. There are a few more panels of that to post. The files are saved in the other room, where a friend of mine is sleeping, but as soon as I have access to them I'll share the final bits of that story.

Never have I been so ready to despise a movie as I am ready to despise Twilight. Tell me, will my inner thirteen year old thrill to it, or am I better off spending an evening clipping my nails?

Oh! And if you haven't had a chance, you should totally check out the guest art that the seductive, nurturing, and brilliant poeso made for thesilverhollow!

Welcome to new friend manicity!

I had one of those cram-jammed weekends. My lazy Monday is coming complete with rain outside, and I'm really okay with that. It's only lazy in the sense that I have fewer appointments than usual; in terms of prep work and planning, I'm actually plenty busy. It's just not a stressful kind of busy.

Last night I went to an Interfaith Choir Festival. It was *fabulous*. My favorite part was the fifty-person-strong Samoan chorus. If you imagine fifty versions, male and female, of The Rock, you'll understand what I saw. It was amazing! My favorite part was when five of the men (HUGE guys, all of them) came out and sang a gentle, shy version of Away in a Manger. In Samoan. Seriously. I had the weeps during that.

This year for Zombie Christmas I'm building a fortress for toddlers. Not only is it totally secure, it's also full of tiny tunnels and wee hiding places: small enough for a child, not small enough for a zombie. I'm filling the place with beanbags and puzzles, teddybears and picture books. The windows, though, are high up and barred, and at a safe adult height (for the babysitters) I'm mounting machine guns. If you look on the bathroom cabinet behind the first aid kit, you'll find a wicker basket full of highly explosive grenades; I hope the child locks work.

Tomorrow, junemcgee unveils her last panel. It's been interesting to see what folks have to say, and to realize that usually folks want to talk to me about June via e-mail or private message rather than in the comments section. One of the most frustrating things for me as an author has been my self-imposed prohibition against talking about her story, because the notes and comments have been juicy ones--and of course, I have my own set of opinions and biases.

junemcgee is more Rorschach puzzle than road map; for better or worse there's a lot of room in it for interpretation. I don't have any intention of making sweeping declarative statements about who meant what or who did what and why and how it all fits; to do so would be an amazing disservice; imposing author will on a story, I think, takes away from the possibilities that a story holds.

I've heard a lot about junemcgee; I've heard that it's resonant, that it's too slow, that it's gripping, that it's bad storytelling, that it exposes painful emotions, that it's distressing, and that it's the sort of story that you love to hate. Hey, I can dig it.

My favorite part of this whole run was the day the comments thread exploded and I got to see what you guys thought of June's tangled web of relationship connections. It happened on a day when I didn't think the panel was much of anything, but somehow the conversational ball got rolling and out it poured---your thoughts on the intricacies of relationships, the good, the unforgivable, the understandable, and the downright complicated--and how you either completely understood June or wanted to kick her in the teeth and watch her [1. cry, and [2. shape up. Or, in some cases, both.

I think that it's ridiculously cool that Livejournal provided me with a free platform for sharing a story; with printer paper, markers, a scanner, and an Internet connection I got to invite you in to witness the twisty inner world of June's sour psychology. I got to try a weird medium--I still don't know what to call June McGee's Lemon Tree. Was it a short story? A webcomic? A picture book for adults, only on the Internet? I don't know.

What I *do* know is that I'm glad that I posted it and that I'm glad that it's over. If you read through her story, know this: I'm grateful that you came along.

This year for Zombie Christmas I'm building an underground labyrinth and filling it with booby traps. When the zombies arrive, I'll have them chase the speediest person in our group--one armed with knowledge of the traps--through the maze. Later we'll brew some Starbucks Christmas Blend coffee for energy, pick our way through the labyrinth, and shoot the penned up undead in the head. If we have the right combination of body types, we might drag out the old chest of costumes and props from Aunt Gertrude's closet and arrange the re-dead undead into a nativity scene.

Dr. Sweetheart bought me a guitar for Guitar Hero for Christmas! We already had Guitar Hero III; we just didn't have the guitar for it.


OoooOOOOooh!

Just in time to avoid Christmas-party brownies, I'm hopping back on the vegan bandwagon. I've been vegan before, for months at a time; the siren song of cheese has lured me back to lacto-ovo vegetarianism time and time again. Lately I've noticed that my eating habits have been not-so-healthy, and last night, after a party full of very rich food, I spent hours that should have been spent sleeping communing instead with my very upset stomach. I know that eating healthily doesn't require the cutting out of animal products, but I also know that veganism appeals to me and that it works well as a handy structure for helping me to avoid delicious unnecessaries. I do this not in the spirit of Good Lord, save the chickens, I do this more in the spirit of paying attention to what I eat and spending a bit more time reading labels and solving the food puzzle, almost by way of hobby.

By way of stocking stuffer, this year for
Zombie Christmas I'm giving each member
of my family a labrys.

A few months ago my friend K. became the proud mama of two Australian Shepherd puppies. They were brother and sister, littermates; he was a hefty little chunkster and she was the feisty little runt that could. Together they were Shadow and Sunny, and they were energetic, lively things; smart as anything and very, very close.

K., who had never been a dog owner before, took her two new furbabies very seriously. Her level of devotion went far beyond walking, feeding, and cuddling. Knowing how intelligent Australian Shepherds are reported to be, she built them an obstacle course and started to train them using Dog Whisperer techniques.

I was lucky enough to be her dog-walking partner. A few times a week, we'd go to the park together. Shadow and Sunny had soft, soft fur around the face and gentle, huge, expressive eyes. K. and I took these walks as opportunities to talk about everything that was right and wrong and searching in our lives, alternately talking about love/diets/social-network-politics and teaching the dogs how to sit, stay, keep the leash loose, and not get too excited by other dogs. These were good walks, fulfilling walks, and as I watched K. learn how to be a great dog mama and I watched her puppies learn how to be extraordinarily kind and disciplined dogs, I felt that everything was right with their future.

On Tuesday, K. took her Sunny and her Shadow in to be spayed/neutered. Turns out, the puppies were both allergic to penicillin and they went into cardiac arrest. Sunny, tiny vigorous fighter, survived. Shadow, her big, gentle, calm brother, died.

I just found out a few minutes ago. K.'s coming over in a bit here. We're taking Sunny to the park for a (slow, gentle) walk. Shadow's going to be a ghost next to that little girl puppy for the rest of her days; she, K., and I are going to miss him.

For Zombie Christmas, we're carving a corpse instead of a turkey. It's macabre, I know, but it can't be Christmas unless you carve *something*, so this will suffice by way of suvival-celebrating ritual. We'll try to choose the undead form of someone we once knew--the principal perhaps, or our favorite checkout clerk--and then the man of the house will set the chainsaw to the lowest setting and deftly dismember and decapitate the (likely still groaning and flailing) zombie opponent. In fact, I'm researching red tablecloths and bibs for just this event. Once we've got neat sections of thigh, breast, and murderously angry head laid tidily out on the table, we'll gather around with cans of tinned ham, clink spoons, and feast for the holidays. We won't eat the zombie, of course. That'd be gross.

Welcome new friend sweettoothbetty! I don't know how you found me, but I look forward to reading your stuff.


***

Off the cuff, and with some degree of flippance, if I were to compare some of my LJ friends to major arcana I'd see quite a spread every day.

For example, shadesong is--like, totally--The High Priestess. marjory is my Temperance, and thechick is The Star.