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Month: September 2019

All the Modern Inconveniences

Once upon a time, more than twenty years ago, I was a shift manager at Taco Bell.* The next step up was assistant manager, but when the store manager sounded me out about it, I was adamant. Heck no. Assistant managers had to wear pagers. They had to be always reachable. No way was I going for that. I needed my freedom. Fast forward a few years, and some people had cell phones, but I didn’t. Never wanted one. I’m good. When the hubby decided he needed one when I was pregnant I still didn’t get one. ( “What if you go into labor??” “Who’s going to call you? Not me. I won’t have a cell phone.” ) After he passed, though, and I was a single parent, I gave in and took and used his cell phone. Single parents have to be reachable. But I didn’t have to like it. And that was easy, because it was a piece of carp from Cricket that rarely worked, so yeah. Didn’t like it. I was the last person I knew using a flip phone. When I made the jump to a “smart” phone (I was all but dragged to the Verizon store!) it was still a flip phone. (I still miss this phone. It was freakin’ cool!) Of course, I adapted. I moved on from the hybrid smart/flip phone when it stopped working well. I got a Samsung Galaxy S4-I-think. It did things. I found cool apps. I grew dependent on…

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Revisiting House, M.D.

I have always loved this show, and I was devastated when it ended in 2012. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, House was a medical show. What set it apart from other medical shows was the main character, Gregory House, who was a brilliant diagnostician who took on all of the medical mystery cases. Cases no one else could solve. While trying to diagnose his patients, he frequently used unorthodox means, which usually led to clashes between him and his team and also the Dean of Medicine. Apparently Sherlock Holmes was the inspiration for House. Also, he’s a jackass. He really is. He’s blunt, sometimes cruel, and likes to play mind games with people. He frequently refused to actually talk/treat his patients directly. He’d send one of his team to do it. He had a three-person team of doctors. But he always ended up solving the case and saving the patients’ lives. Part of the brilliance of the show was the interpersonal relationships—how the doctors related to one another and how House related to them. There were a few romances, too, which made things interesting. But man, those medical illnesses (beware! Wikipedia link!) were sometimes crazy. I believe they were all real, too. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia page on the show itself. Beware, you might lose hours there. You’ve been warned. The other thing is House’s addiction to Vicodin. He had some type of injury to his leg and uses a cane to walk and…

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Trying Out Cosplay Again

I know I’ve talked about cosplay here before, friends, but here we are. Actively doing it. Again. It feels a little weird, honestly. It’s been years. 2014 was the last time, to be exact, when I put together an Amy Pond cosplay out of clothes I owned and a red wig I first wore for my Joshua cosplay back in 2009 (but has been ever so useful since then for a number of different characters). And before that was 2011, when I made a steampunk outfit for AnomalyCon, and then 2010 was Agatha Heterodyne for WonderCon… This year I’m doing Crowley from Good Omens. (If you haven’t watched the miniseries yet, I highly recommend it if you have access to it. I’m also re-reading the book, and the series is pretty much spot on, except it’s expanded the emotional arcs for Crowley and Aziraphale.) I used to be a very dedicated cosplayer. I made my own patterns, started costumes months before they were needed so I had time to design and sew. I made armor and shoes from scratch. I (badly) styled wigs. I tried for screen accuracy when appropriate and was not against adding my own flourishes when not. It took a lot of time and money, though, and generally was bad news for writing (I find it hard to spend a lot of time on two different creative endeavors at the same time). I do miss it, though, especially the design aspect, and the problem-solving of taking something…

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Gardening Lessons Learned: A List

Things we have learned about gardening this year (so far–there are another six to eight weeks left in the growing season here, so stay tuned): If you buy an oregano plant, put it in your garden, then start eating it and think “Hmmm, this doesn’t taste anything like the dried stuff”, chances are good it’s not oregano even though that’s what the label said. (Turns out it’s an herb called summer savory. Thank goodness it’s still an edible herb, since we ate it for weeks before cluing in…) Basil goes with eeeeverything. We have basil coming out our ears. We’ve eaten it in tomato salads, in stir-fry, on pasta, on skewers with cherry tomatoes and bocconcini (small balls of mozzarella cheese), and there’s still more in pesto form in the freezer…good thing we love the stuff! Related: once you have had fresh herbs, it’s very hard to go back. Or garden-fresh or made-from-scratch anything, really. Since my spouse and I are not actually homesteaders or even homemakers, this is a problem. (We haven’t gotten as far as canning yet, but we did just make fresh Irish soda bread, peach compote, and refrigerator pickles, and our freezer is filling up with slow-roasted tomatoes and chicken broth. We miiight be wannabe homesteaders.) Beets are prone to diseases and pests (at least ours are). But you can still eat the beets, just not the leaves…which is sad because the leaves are tasty too, as it turns out. Squirrels like cucumbers even more than…

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The Photograph

a free horror short story by Erin Zarro The strange picture hung in the hallway near my bedroom, cloaked in shadows. It was a picture of a woman who wore a black dress. A black veil covered her face completely, obscuring her facial features. I’d grown up in this house, and the picture had been there for as long as I could remember. Unfortunately, the only way to my bedroom was past that picture. Every time I passed by her, goosebumps raised on my arms, the hairs at the back of my neck stood up, and I’d get this painful twisting in my stomach. It lasted only seconds, but it was enough. My brother and I were walking home from school one day. The air was crisp with the feel of approaching autumn. Leaves had started to turn color. My heart was heavy, because at school I had friends. At home, not so much. “I’m gonna tell Mom and Dad that you broke Mom’s vase,” my little brother, Evan, said in a sing-song voice. “They’ll believe me. They always do.” It was freaking inevitable, so I didn’t bother arguing. “Whatever.” Evan stopped dead on the sidewalk, an expression of disbelief on his face. “Something’s wrong with you. You always argue with me. ‘Specially when I lie to Mom and Dad.” I shrugged. “I dunno. They’ll blame me anyway, so what’s the point?” Evan started walking again, and I followed. Yep, that was the ritual. Evan blamed me for something I…

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