{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav","title":"Bark Like A Fish, Damnit!","subtitle":"UrsulaV","author":{"name":"UrsulaV"},"link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"service.feed","type":"application\/x.atom+xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom","title":"Bark Like A Fish, Damnit!"}}],"updated":"2018-11-19T19:19:21Z","entry":[{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1701211","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1701211.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1701211"}}],"title":"ursulav @ 2018-11-19T14:15:00","published":"2018-11-19T19:19:21Z","updated":"2018-11-19T19:19:21Z","content":"

New novel, coming November 27th! Woohoo! It's called SWORDHEART. It's an epic fantasy romancey thing with an enchanted sword. Yes, as one of the love interests. No, he manifests physically sometimes. Let's not get carried away.

You can pre-order SWORDHEART for Kindle! <\/a>Or…<\/p>

Hardcover<\/a><\/p>

iBooks<\/a><\/p>

Kobo<\/a><\/p>Nook<\/a>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1701019","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1701019.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1701019"}}],"title":"ursulav @ 2018-09-05T09:46:00","published":"2018-09-05T13:49:31Z","updated":"2018-09-05T13:49:31Z","content":"The problem with not posting constantly is that then I feel the urge to start every post with an apology for not posting, which makes me not post because guilt is only a motivator up to a point. So let's not do that. If you follow me on Twitter (ursulav) or listen to one of the three podcasts, you know I'm not dead! And if you don't, uh...Hi! I'm not dead!

Nothing much is going on here--I wish I had a new book to drop on you or something, but while there's a lot in the works, nothing ready right this minute. Also it's hot and obscenely muggy and the garden looks like Jurassic Park, only with chickens instead of velociraptors, but I'm told that velociraptors were only the size of turkeys anyway. The dew point is one degree below the ambient temperature and we are 99% humidity, so the windows are perpetually covered in condensation. In theory, fall is coming, but so is the heat death of the universe, and I will believe it when I see it. 

Wherever you're hailing from, I hope you're doing well! I just felt like saying hi.

Also, in case you missed it, one of Kevin's baby chicks has grown up to be a rooster, because sexing chicks is hard. Dottie is now Dotson, and he is a large, imperious, very handsome bird who still runs in terror from Strong Independent Chicken despite being significantly larger than she is.
 <\/p>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1700738","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1700738.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1700738"}}],"title":"Wonder Engine Pre-Order open!","published":"2018-02-05T23:26:25Z","updated":"2018-02-05T23:26:25Z","content":"

Psssst. Wanna buy a book? *opens coat*<\/p>

Pre-Order The Wonder Engine now!<\/a><\/p>

Other formats are also becoming available but take longer to percolate--check your Kobo\/Nook\/iBooks as needed.<\/p>

(Remember! If you are a Patreon sponsor, you get the ebook free! No purchase required!)<\/p>

There will be a print version at some point, but not quite simultaneously on this one.<\/p>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1700551","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1700551.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1700551"}}],"title":"IT'S ALIVE","published":"2017-11-29T00:36:22Z","updated":"2017-11-29T00:36:22Z","content":"Did I not mention that Clockwork Boys is alive? It's totally alive.

We got ebook! We got hardcover!<\/a>

Amazon<\/a>
Nook<\/a>
iBooks<\/a>
Kobo<\/a>

Sequel, THE WONDER ENGINE, is hopefully out in February and I just handed it in to my long-suffering editor this afternoon!

"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1700126","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1700126.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1700126"}}],"title":"Clockwork Boys pre-order!","published":"2017-11-18T23:44:25Z","updated":"2017-11-18T23:44:25Z","content":"Clockwork Boys is available for pre-order!

We got ebook AND hardcover!<\/a>

Amazon<\/a>
Nook<\/a>
iBooks<\/a>
Kobo<\/a>

For those following along at home, this is the Thing With The Paladin And The Ninja Accountant. And it is Book One! It is not a standalone! Book Two will be out, hopefully February-ish! (It is, however, a duology, not a trilogy or whatever.)

Hardcover is currently on Amazon, but will hopefully be available elsewhere for those avoiding the River.
"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1699907","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1699907.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1699907"}}],"title":"One Book Two Book, Long Book New Book","published":"2017-09-15T17:26:28Z","updated":"2017-09-15T17:26:28Z","content":"So I have been working on this doorstop of a novel for...well, I started it in 2006. It gets abandoned, rediscovered, re-poked, re-jiggered every so often. In the last couple years, it's finally turning into a coherent readable mass of words and now I'm just cruising through trying to finish the damn thing. (For those following along at home, it's the one with the possessed paladin and the ninja accountant.)

The problem was that it was 130K and I still had a good chunk left to go.<\/p>

Now, I write fairly short books, as you guys know. 65K is about my perfect length. This thing was monstrous. I plan to self-pub the ebook but the idea of a print version was...well, you guys remember how I threw my back out lugging copies of Digger?<\/p>

My buddy Mur, queen of podcasting, listened to my woes at coffee and said "Make it two books."<\/p>

I gaped at her. "I can DO that?"<\/p>

"Do we have to have the economics talk? Have you on Ditch Diggers (that's her podcast, go listen to it) so we can yell at you?" <\/p>

This blew my mind.<\/p>

It also solved a lot of problems for an author who prefers to keep their ebooks cheap and their books not requiring death cement to keep the bindings together. <\/p>

So! Clockwork Boys<\/em>, Book One of the Clocktaur War, has been sent to my editor and will be out hopefully this year. (Patrons, you get the ebook for free, of course!)<\/p>

None of this is the point. The point is that, having split it into two books, suddenly I am working on Book Two (tentatively titled The Wonder Engine<\/em>) and I am having to do all the stuff that you do at the beginning of a second book, where you re-describe all the characters and do very brief info dumps about how your heroine got that tattoo and why she's still pissed at the paladin after rescuing his armored ass from a bunch of murderous deer people. And re-foreshadow stuff and re-establish that your thief sneezes constantly and the assassin smokes cigarettes and the paladin takes hot baths at every opportunity and all the stuff that you do when you're writing a second book. <\/p>

Which honestly, is sort of useful for the writer as well as the reader, gives me a chance to re-center myself in the story, but it adds even more words.<\/em><\/p>

The second book is already longer than the first one, and there's still so much more to get through. How do epic fantasy people DO this!?<\/p>

Anyway. Clockwork Boys, <\/em>hopefully this year, Wonder Engine<\/em> hopefully early next year. My brain hurts. <\/p>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1699625","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1699625.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1699625"}}],"title":"Rain, Rain, And Also More Rain","published":"2017-04-25T16:50:41Z","updated":"2017-04-25T16:50:41Z","content":"Five inches in forty-eight hours, by the home weather station in the garden. (I love this thing SO MUCH. I cannot even tell you how much I love it.)

\"\"<\/a>

The rivers are all flooding, of course, but I'm on high ground, so it's just soggy. The thing of interest to me is how my growbag + water reservoir systems are holding up. All of them are as saturated as it is possible to be now and the tubs of water are overflowing. So far, they've done fine staying consistently moist during sunny days--now we see if they drown in the rain!

So far, most of them are holding up apparently fine. One bag, which is too shallow for the tub it's in, is definitely waterlogged (but that's one out of over a dozen, so not too shabby!) The two big chiapas-inspired growbag + barrel tubs are hard to tell, because the rain also pummeled a bunch of stuff flat, so I can't tell if the tomato starts are dying from drowning or just hammered down by hard rain. The peppers in the same tubs are okay. I guess we'll know in a day or two.

We close on Dogskull Patch next week. I am trying not to think about it for fear of jinxing everything and becoming a whimpering wreck.
"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1699219","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1699219.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1699219"}}],"title":"Travel Sketches Day Two!","published":"2017-03-30T12:30:06Z","updated":"2017-03-30T23:34:47Z","content":"\"\"

Two lifers today--Stilt Sandpiper and Eastern Screech Owl!"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1698990","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1698990.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1698990"}}],"title":"Birding the Rio Grande!","published":"2017-03-29T21:14:48Z","updated":"2017-03-29T21:14:48Z","content":"Can't do good sketchbook pages from the road, so here's my crappy travel version...

\"\""},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1698737","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1698737.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1698737"}}],"title":"Productive Day!","published":"2017-03-20T02:40:00Z","updated":"2017-03-20T02:40:00Z","content":"Today we did a burn on the weeds in the garden, I weeded a bunch more by hand, planted some stuff I'd been meaning to get in the ground, dug up some ground covers and transplanted them to ground that needs covering. Then I made more pendants for Texas Furry Fiesta next weekend, prepped some bags-and-boards for prints, wrote a Hidden Almanac, and did a podcast interview with New Moon Girls in Minnesota.

It was very productive. I am trying to be glad of that and not to feel guilty when tomorrow and yesterday prove not to be nearly as productive. Still, I'm going out birding in Texas last week of March, and I'll probably have some evenings free to get some writing done, finish the latest kid's book worth of edits, maybe work on a novella that's been lurking for nearly a year, or even doodle on my iPad. I am feeling that itchy art brain of "MUST DO ART!" but it's slamming into the wall of having to finish the latest hamster book's worth of illustrations. Still, only a few more weeks of hamsters, and then I can draw any weird thing I want!

Really looking forward to that bit. I am very proud of the Hamster books, but they're a serious mental investment. It's worth it, and I'll do as many as they buy, but I want to draw other things for a bit and remember who I am when I'm not a respectable children's book author..."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1698436","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1698436.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1698436"}}],"title":"Not dead!","published":"2017-03-17T06:09:19Z","updated":"2017-03-17T06:09:19Z","content":"It appears the last cross post didn't crosspost. Doh!

Well, nothing of interest is happening except that I am pacing the floor waiting for someone to tell me Dogskull Patch will never be mine. And I have six more weeks of this! Arrghhbleghhhh....!

Wintersowing technique worked great for everything but peppers and tomatoes. Those died in our recent cold snap. Fortunately I have back ups!

Dogs continue to dog. Cats continue to cat. Kevin continues to Kevin. I continue to me. That's all."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1698276","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1698276.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1698276"}}],"title":"Real Estate, Part 2","published":"2017-03-03T01:44:03Z","updated":"2017-03-03T01:44:03Z","content":"They accepted the offer on Dogskull Patch. (Twitter named it.) I've been crawling the walls for a couple days wondering if they would hate me for haggling. They came down a lot on the price, and it's had septic and well permits done and oh my god why would anyone let me own a property Kevin has to fill my pill cases for the week I wear shirts backwards on accident sometimes I'm not qualified to own an actual place <\/em>and who can sell a place anyway this place has trees that are older than me and rocks that are older than my species and how can you own <\/em>a place <\/em>but maybe it'll be okay if I promise the place that I'm just gonna keep other people from messing with it and also I can, like, dig fifty frog ponds and put up a geodesic dome and no one can stop me<\/em>.*

I babbled all this out to my mother, who has had more experience than anyone else in deciphering my panicked babbling. She immediately began looking up geodesic domes and telling me about how she'd planned to move to Alaska and build one before I was born. This tells you that A) my mother is an enabler and B) apparently I come by the geodesic dome thing honestly.

It was different when I bought a house with my ex. I wasn't even on the loan paperwork as a real contributor. I was a freelancer and my income was too crappy, they thought I'd bring it down. And he wouldn't let me change hardly anything and thought about the resale value a lot. This feels like the sort of deranged freedom where you look up and think "I could just get in the car and drive and no one would miss me for days<\/em>."

Tomorrow I go talk to the realtor and she tells me what to say to an attorney who can hold money (I think this is important?) and we enter the due diligence period and we get another survey done and apparently I have to go buy POSTED signs so that people don't hunt on the property in deer season, although for all I know, *I* will hunt on the property in deer season.

I was terrified they wouldn't sell it to me and now I'm terrified that they have because I am not a grown-up. But apparently they are willing to. And no one is stopping me.

Dude.




*These do not counter one another, as I assume nearly any place would be thrilled to have both frogs and a geodesic dome.

"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1697926","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1697926.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1697926"}}],"title":"Real Estate And Other Madness","published":"2017-02-23T19:35:15Z","updated":"2017-02-23T19:35:15Z","content":"

So as some of you know, recently I got a movie option on one of my books. And, after rather a long wrangling, they paid me.

This was not a life-changing sum of money, sad to say (although if they actually made the movie, it would be!) but it was money that I hadn't already earmarked to go somewhere. I hadn't ever counted on getting it because Hollywood is fickle. It was kind of like getting a tax return, except that as a freelancer, I haven't seen a tax return since approximately 2004, so I'm not actually sure what that's like.

So they paid me and I paid off my credit card and gave some money to charity and paid the taxes on it and then I stared at what was left for awhile, and thought "I should do something with this. If I just sit on it, I'll eventually fritter it away on car repairs and vet bills and whatnot. I should do...something." <\/em>

The problem here is that I have basically everything I want. I have cheap needs. Two hundred bucks for a ton of fieldstone will keep me occupied for weeks. I have video games I haven't beat and books I haven't read. The truck is in good shape. Now that Gir has passed this mortal coil, my monthly vet bills have plummeted. (The vet claims that now that his records are out of the system, their computer runs faster, too.)

I am a nervous soul when it comes to money. My financial advisor at the bank had to forbid me from putting all my money in my sock and shoving it under the bed. Stocks are Right Out. But oh god, what if there's hyper inflation and suddenly my money is worth nothing? THE SOCK CANNOT SAVE ME THEN. What can I do that won't just go away if there's a recession? 

And very, very belatedly, it occurred to me that I could maybe buy a piece of land. Not a house! I don't want a house! Houses mean renters and other people and foolishness. But I live in the country. And I live in a county where dirt is, frankly, dirt cheap. And people sell chunks of it sometimes. And then you have dirt with an address.

I thought "Can I do this? Am I allowed? Can I just buy a piece of land and it just...sits there? And maybe someday twenty years from now when I can't handle stairs and a big house anymore, I put a doublewide on it? Is that a thing real people do?"

I asked Kevin. He confirmed this was a thing that real people did and was not a completely batshit use of a windfall. He added that I could also potentially sell that land in twenty years and make a profit. I had to go lay down for a few minutes with a cold cloth over my eyes.

I selected a realtor by virtue of driving down the street and finding one with an open sign and went in. The pleasant older woman there, who looked more like a children's author than I ever will, listened to me blurt out my thoughts.

"Is this a thing people do?" I asked her at the end. "Is this nuts?"

"No," she said. "I mean, it's not nuts. Yes, people do this."

I stared at her, probably much like Ernie the hound when he is faced with something outside his experience.

"It's fine," she added. "Let's look at some listings."

And that is how we wound up tromping through the woods this morning, looking at a multi-acre lot so cheap that I assumed it would be on fire while I was looking at it. There is a house from 1900 that will require the services of a man with a bulldozer and perhaps a priest. The lot would need a well dug, and if I wanted to actually live there, it would need various other things done, but none of them are urgent. It could just...sit there.

"Why is it so cheap?" I said, baffled. "And why has it been on the market so long?" I was assuming that the house was probably made of asbestos held together with lead paint, with a meth lab in the basement, but up close, no self-respecting meth maker would have set up shop there. There was a toilet and a privet tree on the front deck. Nevertheless, even with having to save for house demolition and lead paint disposal, I could probably make it work without breaking the bank. The bank might even help.

The realtor explained that it was not the best neighborhood. I looked at the neighborhood somewhat blankly. There was an abandoned house on one side, a couple of ramshackle farmhouses on the others, and a pasture full of goats. Was it the goats?

The realtor said it was not the goats.

It occurred to me, after some delicate hinting, followed by indelicate hinting, followed by pointing, that perhaps my notion of what a low-income rural area looks like has been colored by living, in the past, in low-income rural areas. People paying top dollar for lots in my county are usually going into a subdivision. We're a bedroom community for the Research Triangle. These people don't go out to a goat pasture with a ruined trailer on its side and say "AHHH, COUNTRY LIFE!"

"But once the trees leaf out, you can't even see the goats," I said. "Or the trailer."

The realtor gazed briefly at the sky.

"And I could--Oooohh! A dog skull!"

"You see," said the realtor, as I flicked pine needles of my new skull, "the things you want are...unusual."

"I shall name you Skull-Bob," I said to the skull.

"Annnnnway," said the realtor, "I'll talk to the selling agent and see if I can find anything more out about it. But I think this might actually be a good fit for you, since you're looking long-term and not to move right away."

"And this isn't nuts? I'm not missing huge red flags?"

"No, for the price and the neighborhood and the fact somebody probably subdivided out a family plot, this is actually all pretty normal."

"...Do I get to keep the skull?"

"You get to keep the skull," she said.

"Woo!"

And now of course I am seized with doubt and wondering if this is all utterly mad and a horrible waste of unexpected money, but our area is on course to gentrify with the new development that went in and I have no illusions about saving the house or anything and...still, I'm thinking, am I allowed to do this? Do real people buy land? Real people who aren't, like, rich people?

Is this okay?
"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1697725","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1697725.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1697725"}}],"title":"ursulav @ 2017-02-19T20:52:00","published":"2017-02-20T01:53:49Z","updated":"2017-02-20T01:53:49Z","content":"\"\"

Built a proof-of-concept today. I don’t even know what this is–a mini-chinampas<\/em>-inspired tub concept? Or is this something everybody already knows about and I just can’t get the right search terms to spit it out? Or has everybody tried this already and failed and now we all know better except me?<\/p>Well, I had pond liner and a whiskey barrel planter and Azolla caroliniana<\/i> and I’ve been making grow bags, so let’s see what happens.

"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1697312","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1697312.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1697312"}}],"title":"Month...Eating...Brain...","published":"2017-02-17T05:03:27Z","updated":"2017-02-17T05:03:27Z","content":" Apparently it has been two weeks since I posted. I kept thinking I'd do...something...but then I would get distracted and then it would be several days later.

My sprouts have sprouted! Some of them! Sunflower, Tithonia, Cilantro, Thyme, two species of poppies. I'm pretty stoked. Winter sowing is a wild success just on those fronts. Still waiting on the Solanums...they're a long shot, but I hold out hope.

I am reading about chinampas<\/em> agriculture and fighting a strong urge to dig up large sections of the garden and put in a moat. Because that would be nuts. Surely.

Really.

I'll be fine. 
"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1697175","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1697175.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1697175"}}],"title":"Journal 2-2-17","published":"2017-02-03T01:53:21Z","updated":"2017-02-03T01:53:21Z","content":"\"\"
"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1696855","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1696855.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1696855"}}],"title":"Winter Sowing","published":"2017-02-01T03:19:26Z","updated":"2017-02-01T03:19:26Z","content":"Today I did real adult things like a real adult with pants, and then, to make up for this unaccustomed devotion to paperwork and filling out online forms, I went and planted a bunch of seeds.

It's much too early to plant out anything but peas and maybe radishes, but I'm trying the Winter Sowing method, which involves lots of mini-greenhouses made out of milk jugs and plastic trays and whatnot. I'm using a couple of those big round trays with clear covers, like you get shrimp in, or ham rolls, or whatever small foods.

I planted 8 types of pepper, 7 tomatoes, "Hairy Balls" Milkweed (heh heh) Danish Flag Poppies, cilantro, thyme, chiltepin and ground cherries. I have no idea if this will work--it seems absurd, putting these plants out now, as if you could just ask for miracles and get them! But gardening is basically asking for miracles and sometimes getting them, and people swear by it. I hate fiddling with grow-lights anyway, and I have way more seeds than I'll ever plant this year, so if they all die off, I'm not really out anything.

Still, it's nerve-wracking. I have read all the forums full of people in far colder zones who swear by this method, who put tomatoes out on February 2nd in Zone 5 and get sturdy plants (though they are not quite so far along as the grow-light versions, but significantly sturdier seedlings) but it is a weird leap of faith to plant things out when all your nerves are screaming "Bring them in! This is madness! This will never work!"

I have the little plastic cel-packs with four cels each, the kind you buy annuals in, so each cultivar gets four cels, two seeds to a cel, to be thinned later (assuming any of them survive!)

Kevin goes in for the last of the jaw surgeries tomorrow, so we recorded a week of Hidden Almanac tonight. I got another hamster illo done. The garden is warm and I just want to wander around in it, finding things that are coming up (The filberts! The filberts have FLOWERED!) and pulling the occasional weed. It is better than watching the news and waiting for each new body blow, and at least at some point I may actually get filberts out of it."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1696725","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1696725.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1696725"}}],"title":"Protest","published":"2017-01-30T04:38:23Z","updated":"2017-01-30T04:38:23Z","content":"I went to a protest at RDU today.

It was fine. Just...strange. We waved signs. We chanted. We admired each other's signs. We massively exceeded the numbers they expected to show up and the protest was eventually dispersed.

"There's one planned for April 15th," people told me. And I thought "It's not even February. It's been a WEEK. April is a thousand years away. I don't believe this can last until April 15th. I don't know if I believe it'll last until March."

We live in very, very strange times, and they are happening faster than I ever thought possible."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1696473","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1696473.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1696473"}}],"title":"Rabbits for Refugees","published":"2017-01-28T19:27:55Z","updated":"2017-01-28T19:27:55Z","content":"Twenty pendants, $40, all rabbits, all proceeds to the International Rescue Committee to aid refugees trapped by Trump's ban.<\/a>
"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1696049","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1696049.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1696049"}}],"title":"Summer in Orcus Collection on Sale!","published":"2017-01-27T01:18:35Z","updated":"2017-01-27T01:18:35Z","content":"We got ebooks! Hot fresh ebooks! The whole collection, in one place!

PLEASE NOTE: If you are a Patreon person, you get it free! There should be an email in your inbox! You don't have to buy it! You already helped support it like whoa!

Amazon: <\/a>

B& N <\/a>

Smashwords<\/a>

And yes, to forestall the question--I'm currently chatting with a publisher about a print volume, so that's hopefully in the works for the not-terrible-distant future!

"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1695969","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1695969.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1695969"}}],"title":"Dream Theater","published":"2017-01-23T19:26:17Z","updated":"2017-01-23T19:45:12Z","content":"(slightly expanded from the Twitter record shortly after waking.)

DREAM: You're a girl making her way to the frontier to find her fortune.

ME: Premise accepted!

DREAM: You have a feckless brother with you.

ME: He won't last long.

DREAM: You meet a lovely woman, who vaguely resembles the County Extension officer, who will take you as an apprentice. Soon you will go downstream from the town and make money doing frontier-y things.

ME: With you so far.

DREAM: She is concerned that you bring enough socks.

ME: Seems legit.

DREAM: Axe murder! Everyone in town is now dead except you and the woman and the axe murderer.

ME: These things happen.

DREAM: You hide under anachronistic sheets of injection molded plastic as the axe murderer stalks the town.

ME: Yay injection molded plastic!

DREAM: Also, your brother is lost on the tundra.

ME: See, I knew that'd work out.

DREAM: Sexy Idris Elba shows up.

ME: HELLO SEXY IDRIS ELBA MY WE ARE SHIRTLESS TODAY

DREAM: The woman tells you she is a member of the cult of midwives. She has a necklace with a weird symbol on it. Kinda looks like an anarchy symbol only with labia.

ME: Don't care, go back to Idris--oh damn, a cult of midwives? That's pretty good. I should take notes.

DREAM: Sexy Idris Elba leaves.

ME: Nooooo!

ME: My bitterness overwhelms me.

DREAM: Axe murderer!

ME: Screw it, I kill that guy. He might hurt Idris.

DREAM: ...uh.

DREAM: Not where I expected this to go. Give me a minute.

ME: I'll wait.

DREAM: Your brother returns! Possibly he is also an axe murderer! At the very least, he is lazy and did not actually go on the tundra after all. He has been in the barn.

ME: Can I kill him too?

DREAM: What?

ME: He cut a hole in the barn because the door was on the other side and he was too lazy to walk! I'm getting the axe!

DREAM: ...this would be frowned upon.

ME: Chance I'm willing to take.

DREAM: OH LOOK SHIRTLESS IDRIS ELBA IS BACK

DREAM: He is telling you about his visions.

ME: While not wearing a shirt, right?

DREAM: Lotta visions. Like a frontier blog.

ME: As long as he's shirtless, it's all good.

DREAM: The townspeople are all back. Turns out they weren't murdered after all.

ME: This is dreadful.

DREAM: They have arrested Idris for axe murder!

ME: It seems this situation could be solved with a WHOLE LOT MORE AXE MURDER. Just sayin'

DREAM: ...You are out on the tundra. Alone.

ME: But do I have an axe?

DREAM: NO ONE GETS AN AXE. THE AXES ARE GONE. THERE WILL BE NO AXES FOR ANYONE.

ME: Well, this sucks.

DREAM: The clouds are doing something weird and uncanny and have cat and crow heads.

ME: No time, gotta save Idris.

DREAM: It's really neat, though? Like, they're all twisty and swirly and stuff?

ME: A SEXY MAN NEEDS ME

REAM: We blew the entire budget on these clouds!

ME: You're going to execute shirtless Idris Elba. I AM BUSY.

DREAM: This one's a dragon with like a skeleton in its mouth and that one over there is a herd of buffalo with crow heads.

ME: I ride back to town! I will save Idris!

DREAM: You have to fill out paperwork saying you're his alibi.

ME: ...Anticlimactic.

DREAM: You can't use a fountain pen worth a damn in a dream, either.

ME: You just can't give me anything here, can you?

DREAM: But wait! If you sign this form, your reputation will be compromised because you, an unmarried young woman, were alone with a man! Unchaperoned!

DREAM: The townsfolk will judge you!

ME: Nathaniel Hawthorne? What are you doing here?

DREAM: Ok, you've saved Idris but now you're a fallen woman.

ME: ...

DREAM: NO AXES

DREAM: Idris decides the honorable thing to do is compromise you further.

ME: I forgive you for everything.

DREAM: Ha ha, sucker! Evil clouds are back!

ME: Nooooooo!

DREAM: The clouds are emanating from a monstrous device buried in the tundra!

ME: Okay, but how compromised are we talking?

DREAM: Huge machine! Gouts of clouds erupt out! No one is getting compromised!

ME: Then I don't care if they kill us all now.

DREAM: You must pry open the grate on the machine while cloud monsters attack!

ME: And sexy grateful Idris?

DREAM: Went to get a shirt.

ME: KHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!

DREAM: There's a piece of meat stuck in the grate. Looks like bologna or something.

ME: ...ok.

DREAM: That was the problem.

ME: wut

DREAM: Evil piece of possessed meat drove the machine mad. It happens.

ME: What?!

DREAM: HEY LOOK IT'S IDRIS AGAIN

DREAM: He's brought you a quagga hide. He's very grateful.

ME: Oh yeah oh baby--wait, quagga hide? Where'd he get a quagga?

DREAM: ...

ME: This is important! Does he know where there are quaggas?

DREAM: HE HAS NO PANTS

ME: Then put on some damn pants and find me a quagga!

DREAM: You know what? I'm outta here. I can't work under these conditions.

ME: *wakes up*

ME: ...well, crap.

There is probably a moral here, but I think this just speaks to my priorities as a human being."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1695519","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1695519.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1695519"}}],"title":"Not dead Journal","published":"2017-01-21T02:43:14Z","updated":"2017-01-21T02:43:14Z","content":"...but holy moley, this con-crud has some teeth to it. Cough, body ache, fever and fatigue. Then you lay in bed and think "Am I REALLY sick or just lazy with a cough?" Then you get up out of guilt and then you have to sleep for three hours. Fun.

\"\"

\"\"


"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1695401","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1695401.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1695401"}}],"title":"Snow Journal","published":"2017-01-09T00:46:16Z","updated":"2017-01-09T00:46:16Z","content":"\"\"

\"\"

The tweet, if you can’t read it, reads as follows:<\/p>

ERNIE: i ate snow sad now
ME: Oh buddy, your ears are so cold. Let me snuggle–GET YOUR TONGUE OUT OF MY COFFEE
ERNIE: better now<\/p>Anyway, being home alone with the hounds during a snow event is not a bad thing, although I’ll be glad to see another human soon!

"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1695003","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1695003.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1695003"}}],"title":"First Journal of the Year","published":"2017-01-05T16:05:41Z","updated":"2017-01-05T16:05:41Z","content":"\"\"

I’ll tell you a thing, though. As many crappy little doodles as I do in these pages (and there are many!) when I look back, I don’t think “God, that sucked! I wish I’d done better!” I’m just glad I drew a weird little thing at all. Even if it’s just a chicken.

"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ursulav:1694803","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/1694803.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/ursulav.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=1694803"}}],"title":"In Which I Take The First Steps Towards An Alarming New Skill","published":"2017-01-04T01:25:03Z","updated":"2017-01-04T02:03:51Z","content":"Here we have a post that I am more than a little afraid to write, but I will do it because I am me and I do not let good sense stop me. And also I have written sagas of having electrodes taped to my butt, and if y'all can handle that, you can handle anything.

And, perhaps most obviously, if I can do this, anybody can do it, and perhaps my stark terror will be of use to someone.

I have decided that I want to learn to hunt deer.

There are good sound ecological reasons--deer are massively overpopulated on the East Coast, particularly in the Southeast, and I have frequently muttered to myself that a nuisance deer permit would be really handy right about now, while staring out the window at a doe who is gazing around vaguely wondering who is yelling "SHOO! SHOO!" at her.

And as a gardener I have become more and more enamored of the notion of being able to feed myself--not that I DO (far from it) but that if I really wanted to, I COULD. And I am not the sort of personality who can keep livestock, nor do I have the space, so this seemed like the best compromise position.

There's more to it than that, but the thoughts are still kind of tangled up in my head, so I'm not confident that I'm gonna say this next bit well--something about how if I am going to eat meat, I feel like I owe it to...something...to dispatch my own food at least once, so that I do not have the bloodless illusion of neatly packaged cuts on styrofoam trays. It may be that when the moment comes, I walk away and go "I can't do this again and will become a vegetarian forthwith," but I want to know. The more I learn about factory farming, the more I get angry at how we have turned a life into a commodity, and somehow I feel like if I can step away from that, I'll learn...something. I don't know what. I want to take responsibility for a life being sacrificed so I can eat, and own that debt. Even if it's horrible (and it might very well be) at least I'll know.

I have no idea if that makes any sense to anybody but me.

Having mulled over this decision, I wrote to my father, who is a lifelong hunter, and said "How do I learn to hunt a deer?"

The e-mail that came back said "Is this for a book?" and carried a strong overtone of "Wut."

I explained that I felt strongly about local food and that no, I wished to actually go through the process at least once.

We repeated this once or twice, and then, presumably confident that I had not actually been replaced by a lizard person, my father said "If you're sure you want to try, then I will teach you everything I know."

Unfortunately, this involves firearms.

I am a liberal. I am a liberal to the nth degree. Also, I'm a little scared of my Dremel, for god's sake.

Okay. Well, I have always said that I had no problem with people using guns to hunt. Let's see if I was telling the truth or not.

When Dad drove up for Christmas, he showed me the sort of gun he uses. It seemed to be approximately ten feet long. I could not imagine holding it level for any length of time.

However, apparently they make a whole bunch of types of guns. A whole bunch. Like...lots.<\/em>

Possibly some of you are aware of this fact already.

"It's pronounced "thirty-ought" he said. "People laugh at you when you mispronounce it. God, it's so annoying. And this is a clip and this is a magazine and if you ask for the magazine when you mean the clip, there is always someone who will correct you even though they know what you mean."

Apparently firearms bring out the pedantic side of many people.

We went through the basic process of "this is how you check if it's loaded. Always check if it's loaded. No one will ever get mad at you for checking. Ever. Even if they have just told you it is, check for yourself."

Have I mentioned that I'm a liberal? I am. So very liberal. Really really liberal.<\/em>

I screwed up my nerve for some days after this, and then off I went.

Now, my father tells me right off that he is intimidated standing at the rifle counter because there are a lot of people who are...y'know...(There were vague hand gestures at this point, expressing phallic substitutes and ammosexuals and people who are reallllllly into it in weird ways and so forth.) He was genuinely a bit worried about what would happen when I went into a gun shop, because misogyny runs rampant in many such places, and I was gonna get all the condescension with an extra helping of "Hey, little lady" on top.

(The shop I had planned to go to, everyone at the coffee shop said "DON'T DO IT THE OWNER IS--IS--JUST--DON'T DO IT!"<\/em> Also the windows were wall-to-wall NRA signs. And Trump signs.

I googled for liberal gun stores. The less said about that, the better. And then a woman in the corner piped up that a new place had literally just opened a month ago, and off I went.)

I sat in front of the brand new store. It did not have any Trump signs or NRA signs. It said it was a hunting supply store. Okay. I like supplies. Everybody likes supplies, right?

What the hell was I doing? I treat the cordless drill like it could turn on me like a starving wolf.

I wondered if there was somebody I could text for an affirmation that I was a strong confident woman and I could totally do the thing. But what if they asked what I needed the affirmation for, though? Would I have to tell them I was going into a gun store? Now I needed an affirmation to have the nerve to talk to the affirmation people. Oh god, this was hard.

I took a deep breath. I shut off the truck. I went inside.

It was a very new store. It didn't have carpet yet. There was a set of targets for sale on the wall. One of them was--I kid you not--a zombie jackalope.

This was sufficiently surreal that I felt like I was on safer ground. I understand zombie jackalopes.

There was one person in the store, standing behind the counter with the morose air of a man who is wondering if business is going to pick up in time to be worth it. I went up to the counter and said "Maybe you can help me."

"Sure!" he said.

"I have no idea how to use a gun. My father has offered to teach me to hunt deer. I would like to do this. I am supposed to buy a twenty-two to practice shooting with first, though. Can you tell me what I need to do to make that happen?"

I was rather proud that I got all that out without blurting that I was a liberal and a registered Democrat.

"Sure," he said, "this is the basic model I carry and if you're just looking to get a feel for shooting, the ammo's cheap." He took one down from the wall.

It was gray. It looked like it was made mostly of plastic. Was I allowed to put a Hello Kitty sticker on the stock or the butt or whatever it was? Would that mark me as dangerously insane? If people thought I was dangerously insane, would they leave me alone or would they try to make conversation with me? Oh god.

He handed it to me. I held it like a mulch fork. Myke Cole on Twitter has hammered into a whole bunch of nice authors that you don't put your finger on the trigger. I did not put my finger on the trigger.

"How do I check if it's loaded?" I asked.

He showed me. There was a little gizmo that is orange. If you see the orange bit, there is not a bullet in the way. If you do not see the orange bit, you are looking at a bullet, which is recognizable to many of us because it looks like a gnome-sized vibrator.

There is a thing that I believe is called the bolt. A bolt-action is a type of gun. Okay, this had a bolt. Did that make it bolt action? (It does not, as it turns out, any more than having a transmission makes a car a manual.)

Speaking of manuals, I really hoped the gun came with one.

"Look through this bit here," he said patiently, "and line it up with that bit there, and that should be your target." The tiny bit at the end seemed very, very tiny. Jesus. Also, I had apparently drunk a LOT of coffee while trying to locate my courage.

I have a liberal arts degree, emphasis on the liberal. My political leanings are somewhere to the left of Dennis Kucinich.

"Okay," I said, looking at the bit through the thing. Do not aim at anything you are not willing to put a hole into. Did Myke Cole say that? Anyway, I was aiming at a boar head on the wall. The boar looked very cheerful about something. "I see. Okay. I am supposed to get a scope." (I think that makes the bit bigger when you look through the thing.)

"It will take me a few minutes to attach one," he said, as if this were a perfectly reasonable request, "but this is a reliable and inexpensive scope for a twenty-two. It is what I would probably get."

"Excellent," I said. "Now, what do I have to do to buy a gun?"

He looked at me blankly. I looked at him equally blankly.

"Err...give me a driver's license and pass a background check?"

"...I don't need a gun permit?"

"Not for a hunting rifle," he said.

This was insane. I could kill someone with this! I mean, if I could hit them, which honestly, it'd be easier to club them to death with the stock (or the butt?) at this point, because looking at the bit through the thing seemed very haphazard, so they would have to stand very still unless they were right in front of me, and I'd probably forget to take the safety off and I didn't know how to load it yet and shouldn't they make sure I knew what I was doing before they let me give them money for a gun?!

"I don't need to take a class?" I said weakly.

"You will need to take a hunting safety class to get a hunting permit," he explained. "You go to the NC dot gov website and you can find class listings from there."

"But I can just shoot<\/em> the gun. Without a permit?" (Oh god, I wanted a piece of paper that said I wasn't an idiot and knew not to point the end at anything I liked. Maybe that would make it true. Truer. Extra true. Maybe I should take the hunting safety class before I shot at anything. Maybe I should take the class before I loaded it. Or touched it. Maybe I should have my head examined.)

I have a particular gift--or curse--that occasionally I am so absolutely incompetent that I can negate the competence of others. This man owned a gun-store named after his father. He taught handgun certification classes. I had successfully baffled him so hard that he began to sound as uncertain as I was.

"It's a twenty-two?" he said, as if this explained something.

"And I can just buy<\/em> it?"

"If you have money? You can buy a rifle? Err...are...are you a felon?"

"I don't think so?" I said.

We both briefly contemplated the possibility of my felonhood. Apparently this did not strike him as likely. I was no longer so certain.

"You don't need a permit to own it," he said.

"What do I do if I want to shoot it, though?" (Maybe this was like a driver's license, and I could buy it, but not drive it.)

"You...you buy ammunition...?" One of us was clearly out of their mind, and I believe he was starting to worry that it was him. "It's a twenty-two. Um. I have ammo. This is ammo." He looked at a box on the counter as if to reassure himself that he did indeed still sell bullets. "Um. Do you live in the county?"

"Yes? Uh, it's not incorporated?"

"Do you have something to shoot into?"

"There's a hunting property right behind the house. Trees for miles. I mean, it's not my hunting property, obviously. But we own some of the woods." I considered this, then added "They're trees. Yes," in case he doubted the existence of the trees.

"You...you just need one tree..." I think at this point he was starting to wonder if he was the subject of one of those sting videos, except that presumably I'd be better at it. "You put a target on the tree. If you're not in city limits and not right up by your neighbors, you can target shoot in the backyard. It's a twenty-two. Nobody cares. If the police come, tell them exactly what you're doing. They won't care. Believe me." He rallied a bit. "They've been out to my place plenty of times. Just tell them exactly what you're doing. You can hardly hear a twenty-two anyway, it's just a crack."

In fact, I hear what sounds like gunfire fairly often in the neighborhood, but I made a mental note to check all relevant statutes involving shooting at trees before I did anything. Maybe I needed to go to a gun range. Could I do that? Did you take rifles to a gun range? I thought ranges were for handguns. Could I find a range? Would they be able to smell that I had once voted for Ralph Nader in a fit of youthful madness?

"How long does the background check take?" I asked. "Do I need to come back later?"

"It..I...it only takes a minute, if the internet is working? Err. Fill out this form."

Forms! I am good with forms. I can fill out a form like a boss. I filled out the form while he collected himself.

There was a question that said "Are you a fugitive from justice?" I stared at it for a brief period, wondering if anyone ever said Yes.<\/em> People say yes to very stupid things sometimes.

"Does anyone ever say yes to this?"

"No."

He took the form. He looked at it. He said "Congratulations."

"Eh?"

"You're the first person who's ever filled it out right on the first try."

"...what?"

"The bit here, where you checked this box and then this other box, people only ever check one box."

"But it says right there that you have to check both boxes." I began to think that possibly I was not the least competent person to ever purchase a firearm.

I went away while he worked the scope. I frantically texted my friend Crimson who has all the certifications in all the things and I think is legally allowed to harpoon whales under seventy-two inches and asked him if I was forgetting a thing, or all the things.

He asked what brand it was. I said it was gray. Gray, as it turns out, is not a brand.

He asked if it was bolt action. I allowed as how there was a thing on it that resembled a bolt in some fashion.

He said I needed a cleaning kit. Oh jesus, of course, you have to clean these things. I saw that movie with Ice-T. Oh god. Were there, like, Youtube videos?

Crimson said that there were indeed a great many videos.

I asked him where I was supposed to put it when I wasn't shooting at things. I did not want to put it in a corner with my sword and my machete. What if it fell over? What if I was hyper-aware that it was there because I am a liberal and the presence of guns makes me break out in hives and the hives spell out the statistics of those killed annually by guns in the United States except we don't know all the statistics because the NRA blocked all those studies by the CDC and maybe my hives would be the only accurate source of data and I would have to volunteer to be studied without pants on?

I stopped myself before I had typed more than about a third of this, erased it, and asked what I was supposed to do about storage.

He explained about trigger locks, which I absolutely positively had to have, and then about gun safes bolted to the floor in case of theft, which seemed a little excessive. Could I get a case? A case seemed like a nice compromise. You can keep many things in cases, like birding scopes. They can be locked.

He agreed that this was a thing that was indeed possible. Also bags. Also, I needed eye and ear protection.

I texted my buddy Otter and told her I was scared and also a liberal. She agreed that I was indeed a liberal.

I went back. The gunshop owner, looking as if he was also having a slightly traumatic afternoon, showed me how to put bullets in the gun and then take them out again. We revisited the safety. He said something about lasers and the scope and the bore and I tried to look as if I had any idea what that meant. He showed me how to adjust the scope if I found it was not completely accurate, but said that I would want to try shooting it a few times first.

I looked through the scope. It was very dark.

He then showed me how to take the caps off the scope. I looked through it again. Yup, there was that boar on the wall again. Still looked happy.

"Get your head down on it," he said, which sounded like English, anyway, and then tried to demonstrate putting my head down farther on the back end. I made a note to look up all the Youtube videos.

I bought eye protection and a cleaning kit and a target. (Not the zombie jackalope one.) He gave me several free targets, possibly out of pity, and threw in earplugs as well. "If you have any problems," he said, "here is a card. And if you...err...if the shooting's difficult...if...well, come back and I have air rifles that we can shoot here and I'll show you what I can." He looked as tired as I felt.

The gun went into a box and the box went into my car. I made a note that it was a Remington. I have heard that name before. I passed this information along to Crimson, who confirmed that yes, guns exist with that name on them. I asked if I could put a Hello Kitty sticker on it to make me feel better. He did not say no.

I mentioned that I'm a liberal, right?<\/a>"}]}