text:
Dunno where this came from…
Oh, and Ino's sexuality is a tribute to my best friend. She adores Ino.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Dedication:To finally having a life again.
It was after that day that I learned how to shoot a gun.
It was cold, you know? That icy, wintry cold that should be illegal because it's so biting-icy-freezing-damnit-it-hurts cold. That's how that night was. And I was just a kid. Six years old, and terrified of the world in general.
None of us saw it coming.
I can't really remember it now; I mean, it's been ten years. And I… I don't really want to remember. I dislike thinking about it. It's not exactly the happiest of memories. That house, my mother, my father… No, not the happiest of memories.
Because, for a long time, I was happy.
But that happiness didn't wouldn't-couldn't-shouldn't last.
And, in a twisted kind of way, I got lucky. My family wasn't killed by a crazed family member, not like Sasuke, or was never there at all, like Naruto. No, my family was killed by the things I hunt, the things I destroy. So I guess I got lucky, because I can hate the things that killed my family. I can kill the things that took my life from me.
I am a vampire hunter, and my name is Sakura.
Most of that night was blurry to me, looking back at it now. It was bitter cold, like I said. So cold. That's the thing I remember the most. I remember how bloody cold it was.
And I remember looking up at the cloudy sky, snow falling everywhere, and thinking that normally, snow wasn't that red, so why why-why-why-i-don't-get-it-explain-to-me-why was it so red?
I don't know how it happened. One minute we were sitting around the fire, light glinting off my mother's bright red hair, and happiness shining in my father's green eyes and we were laughing, and I think we might have had company, but I really can't remember.
And then all the kids went to bed, and I remember hearing my parents murmuring softly to each other, and I was so warm and cozy, and, when you're six, parents can protect you from everything.
So I guess I fell asleep.
It couldn't have been more then a couple of hours later. My mother shook me awake, this grim look in her eyes. Now I think it was terror, horror, fear. Then, I just didn't understand why she was waking me up so early. I didn't have school the next day, so why was she waking me up when it was still dark? I didn't understand.
I remember she told me something bad was happening, and that I had to get out of the house, and that she was going to wake up my brother and sister, but I had to go right now.
I got as far as the outside of my house, only to watch the whole thing go up in flames. There was maniacal laughter, ringing from everywhere, and I was so scared. I started crying, and someone came up to me.
I didn't know who it was, but they smelled of death, and I could see my mother's favorite necklace hanging from one of this person's wrists, and there was liquid dripping off this person's fingers and I wanted to get away from this person as fast as I could.
The next thing I saw was eyes. Blood-red, and insane.
"Hello, little princess" was what he said.
I just stared at him, so scared that I couldn't move.
"Ah, I'm so thirsty, and you smell so good. May I have your blood, little one? I promise it won't hurt too much."
I remember shaking my head, wanting to get as far as I physically could from this person. Obviously, he didn't want me going anywhere, and he reached down to pick me up.
But before he could get his hands on any part of me, a bullet went through his head, and he fell over sideways, away from me. My six-year-old mind immediately wanted to cry out, but then I saw where the bullet had come from.
It looked like a teenager, what my oldest brother looked like. He had white hair, goggles covering his eyes, and a mask. I couldn't see any part of his face. But he didn't smell like death, and he looked terrified as I felt. So I instinctively trusted him. He rushed over to me, and stood about a foot away from me.
"Did it bite you?" he asked, wary.
I shook my head, tears running down my cheeks. I wasn't wearing slippers or socks, and my feet were starting to get cold.
"Can I pick you up?" he asked, relieved.
I nodded, and as soon as he lifted me off the ground, I passed out, I suppose, because from then on, I don't have any memory. Not 'til a few days later, anyways, when I woke up, to find a purple-haired girl and the boy who saved me staring down at me, worry on both of their faces.
"Kakashi, she's waking up!" was what the girl said, and the boy nodded slowly. My vision was still a little blurry at the time, and I wasn't at all sure where I was… But I was always a stubborn child, and I tried to sit up.
That didn't work so well.
My still-blurry vision spun, and I sank back down with a pitiful mewl. The girl squeaked out an order to the boy, and he rushed off. I felt a little uneasy, strange to say, with him gone. I trusted the girl implicitly, already. She obviously cared about me, or she wouldn't be this easy to trust. I sill, to this day, think it was her hair colour that made me trust Anko so much.
But either way, another woman came rushing back in, the boy towed behind her, and she started asking me questions.
And that was how my new life started.
I found out that the boy who had saved me was Kakashi Hatake, and that he was a sniper, and that he was eighteen. The girl was named Anko Mitarashi, and she, too, was an orphan, and that she was seventeen. The woman explaining this all to me was named Tsunade, and right away, she felt like a grandmother to me. That made me happy. I'd never had a grandmother before them. I didn't understand most of it at first but (what six-year-old would?), slowly, things started to make sense.
Two weeks after that, Kakashi taught me how to hold a gun. I gulped down the knowledge, and learned quickly. It didn't take me long to learn what made a good gun, how to hold a good gun properly, how to set the trigger without blowing my fingers off. And there were accidents, like when I nearly shot Kakashi in the foot (the gun was pointed down and towards Kakashi; never point a gun down and towards someone else), or when I nearly blew up the kitchen (I can't cook, not gonna lie). But it could have been worse, I guess.
Anko was my stand-in mother, and Kakashi quickly took over the position of father. By the time I was ten, my blood-parents were starting to blur out of my memory. I could still remember my mother's kind smile and her red hair, and my father's booming laugh and the twinkle in his eyes, but they were faceless to me. When I had a problem with boys teasing me, I went to Kakashi, and he would straighten it out. If I had a problem involving boys, I would go to Anko, and then she would straighten that one out.
I was happy again, you could say.
And so the years past, and I started to grow up. We moved a lot, whenever Tsunade needed us in a new location, or somewhere safer. When I turned eleven, Kakashi and Anko got married. I snorted at them only two words. "About time." Anko had rolled her eyes at me, and told me to zip up her dress before she freaked out and ran off. So I did.
Training, moving, eating, sleeping, schooling, more training. That was my life for a long time.
And now it's led me here. I'm sixteen, pink-haired, green-eyed, punked-out, and really bitchy, most of the time. Kakashi thinks it's because I'm a teenager. It's not. I'm just a bitch in general. We've moved to Konoha, and I already hate it. It's tiny, and I'm a big city girl. And there are… trees… everywhere. It's actually a little scary.
And I have to go to school. I've never had to go to school before. It's made me a little more then pissy.
"Sakura, come on, we have to get you to school. No, what are you doing, put the knife down, killing me won't help anything! ANKO!" Kakashi, the cheat, called my mum.
"Sorry Hatake, you're in this one on your own. I'm not the one sending her to school!"
I laughed insanely, and advanced on him, the silver knife in my hand not even close to hidden. I probably would have stabbed him, too, had I gotten the chance.
But he got that knife out of my hand, and he dragged me all the way to the car, shoved me in, tossed my bag in after me, and off we went.
It took me two minutes in the place to make the observation that it was a shit-hole, and that I hated it. Kakashi did not seem amused. And he thinks I'm going to cause trouble. Of course I'm not!
But, seriously, if someone gets too close to me, there will be hell to pay. I've got two guns strapped to my thighs, knives in my boots, skirt seams, and in my wrist guards, and an entire artillery of weapons that could technically be considered illegal in my backpack.
Well. They were illegal for citizens.
Anyway, it doesn't matter, not right now. I have a class to get to. I looked down at my timetable, disdain written clearly all over my face, I was sure.
I was not putting up with anyone's shit today, not after dealing with Kakashi this morning. I think I had a right to do whatever the hell I wanted after that. The teacher could suck my metal guns for all I cared, I wasn't introducing myself.
I pushed the door to my homeroom class open, shoved the note Kakashi gave me at the teacher, and walked to the back of the room, to one of the only empty desks. The teacher raised an eyebrow, and gave me a look that said you-better-get-back-up-here-or-I'm-going-to-freak-out. Oh well. She could freak out, for all I cared about it right now. Dumb bitch.
I glared at her, and I guessed she figured that I wasn't having a good day, and she let me off the hook. Yay.
I grumbled to myself, crossed my arms on my desk, and then happily hid my face. A few minutes later, the mumbling whispers started, and I half wanted to kill myself.
Actually, no, I wanted to kill some leeches. That would make my life a lot more worthwhile and a helluvalot more interesting.
And with that, I ignored the rest of the class, and went to my happy place. Oh dear god, there were so many other things I could be doing right now…
"Sakura Hatake, would you please come and introduce yourself?!" Whispers broke out when she said my last name. Kakashi wasn't infamous for nothing. Weird… there was a group of kids sitting together, all of whom happened to be staring at me like I was the most engrossing thing in the entire world.
I snarled, but stood up and went to the front. Kakashi was going to be on my ass if I didn't at least make an effort…
"Okay, hi, I'm Sakura Hatake, I'm sixteen, I hate people, I like guns, and now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be sitting back down." So I went and sat back down.
The room was dead silent.
Damn. Now I feel like a waste of life in general. I didn't know I had the power to turn a room totally silent without even trying…
The teacher looked nervous. "Well, I need someone to show Sakura around for the first few days… who would be interested?"
The entire group that had been staring at me, all of their hand's shot up. The girls, anyways. The boys just seemed a little out of it. Whatever.
"Alright, Hinata, I think you'll do fine. Sakura, go sit next to Hinata, if you please."
"I don't please…" I muttered to myself, but I gathered up my stuff and went and sat down next to the indicated girl anyways. I didn't want to hurt her feelings; she looked nice enough.
But seriously people, it's a tiny freakin' school. I've worked in the dirtiest streets in New York; if I can get away from blood-thirsty, crazed monsters there, I'm pretty sure I can manage to memorize a couple of hallways. Gimme a break, I'm not helpless.
Hinata smiled, and the teacher started talking about cell division in plants, and how it differed from cell division in mammals (not at all, to be quite frank), and I grumbled angrily to myself. I learned this stuff a year and a half ago! Do you enjoy annoying me with pointless information?!
Hinata tilted her head, and shoved a piece of paper at me. Her writing was pretty, cursive, and I almost felt sick. My writing is chicken scratch, and I can't help but feel more then just a little bit jealous. Damn.
Oh, so you're Sakura, huh?
Yeah, I guess you could say that.
Why're you so… mad?
I seriously do not want to be here, and I did this shit a year and a half ago, when I was actually interested in Biology. It had to do with my favorite thing, so I was working pretty hard on it.
She nodded, and that was the end of that conversation. I spent the rest of the class staring at the clock, praying to god that it would be over. I went to one class Kakashi, what more do you want?!
The bell rang, and I was about to bolt. Screw it, I'd take the bus home. I was not staying here… But before I managed said bolt, Hinata grabbed my wrist and held me back (life be cursed, damn, damn, damn, daaaaaaaammmmmnnnn…). Normally, I would have broken her grip, but there was something in her eyes that made me stop moving, and like a rabbit, listen.
"C'mon, let me show you something, Hatake."
It was the way she said my last name. She said it the way Tsunade sometimes says it, when she's really pissed off at Kakshi, or when she's trying to drive home a point.
So, against my better judgment, I let the indigo-haired girl pull me from the class, and towards a huge-ass tree not far from the campus line.
"Hold on a few, everyone'll be here in a bit."
"Everyone?" I asked, nonplussed. I totally didn't get it, what can I say?
"You know that group that we were sitting with, all the kids and that? The four girls and the six boys? Yeah, well, that's everyone."
"So why am I waiting for these people, when I clearly don't know them? Look, I just want to go home, kill my dad for making me go to school when I could be home-schooled, and talk my mum into talking my dad into letting me go back to being home-schooled. It would make my life so much easier. So, may I go now?"
Hinata shook her head, and I groaned. How unfair was this?
We waited another ten minutes, and then that group of kids came up. Weird, I could the imprints of… well, things that shouldn't be on school property, hidden under every single one of their clothes.
A boy with sky blue eyes and blonde hair came bouncing up to us, and threw his arms around Hinata. She turned red, and looked a little faint. Oh, dude, she's totally into him…
And he was about to throw his arms around me. Hell. Fucking. No. I had him tossed on the ground, a miniature handgun pressed into the hollow below his Adam's apple. He was not going to be putting a hand on me.
He growled. "Get off of me, you crazy bitch, I haven't done anything wrong!"
I snarled, and pressed the gun deeper, before jumping off of him, and looking at the others.
They seemed unsurprised by my lightning-fast reaction.
There was a head talking.
"Nothing more then we'd expect from Kakashi Hatake's only offspring and daughter. Sakura Hatake, previously Haruno, Elite Sniper, sixteen years old, pink hair, green eyes, five foot three, a hundred and twelve pounds, currently working undercover at Konoha Municipal High School, and obviously not liking it."
I glared at the talking head. He was pretty, in a twisted kind of way - dark hair, dark eyes, really pale skin, black skinny jeans, studded belt, and oh dear god, I think I'm going to faint… Do you not understand how highly attracted I am to boys in skinny jeans?! See, now this was the reason Kakashi didn't want me going to ordinary school…
"How do you know I'm a Sniper?" I didn't care that he knew I was working undercover. I did care, however, that he knew my old last name. "And how do you know my old last name? That's not public information, and I suggest you tell me, and I might not kill you."
He smirked at me. How dare he?! "I know because I heard it directly from Tsunade, and she heard it from Kakashi himself. You got saved a long time ago, little girl. Don't think there's anything we don't know about you."
I stared at him, my glace cool and calculating. He was pretty, yes, but there was something… unsettling at best… about him. He seemed too aloof, and there was an almost vampiric aura surrounding him. Not inherited; he was completely human, but there was… something there.
"If you know so much about me, shouldn't it be fair that I know exactly the same amount about you?"
He paused for a moment, and we both continued to glare at each other. The blonde boy who had glomped Hinata broke the silence. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki, I'm seventeen, and I'm what most would call Assassination Squad One. I play heavy weight and I'm pretty fair with a set of knives, although personally, I prefer really big swords."
Hinata nodded. "Well, you already know me, Hinata Hyuuga, sixteen-"
I cut her off. "Hyuuga?"
"Yeah." She smiled slowly, dangerously. "I take you know my family, then."
"Yeah," I replied. "Intel isn't the easiest thing to manage, not gonna lie, I suck at it, and the Hyuuga family is known for being the best of the best. Your eyes are signature, then? Because it looks like you're related to White-ey over there." I nodded at another boy, with the same white eyes and dark hair.
I took another look at Hinata, before deciding something very important. 'Yup,' I thought to myself. 'She's the type that keeps whips and chains in her closet.
Hinata nodded. "That's my cousin Neji. Don't worry about him being a dick, he doesn't talk much. That's Sasuke's job."
"Sasuke?" I asked, unsure. I knew that name, Kakashi had mentioned it before, I was so sure of it…
"Sasuke Uchiha, seventeen, Assassination Squad One Leader, third-to-last remaining member of the Uchiha family, youngest Squad Leader since Kakashi Hatake." The jerk from before answered my question.
"Was I talking to you? No. I was talking to Hinata. Hinata?"
"He's right."
"Damn you. So who else is here?"
A blonde girl with blue eyes who could have been Naruto's sister smiled coyly. "I'm Ino Yamanaka, and can I have your number? You're really hot."
I was just a little freaked out, and Hinata, beside me, sighed. "Ino, stop it, you're freaking her out. Could you wait until after you get to know them before you ask them out?" Ino shrugged at her. Hinata glared at her. "Sorry about that, Ino's very into both sexes, and she's not afraid of letting people know. She is dating someone right now though; he's sitting next to her. His name is Sai."
I nodded, calm now. I had no problem with her sexuality, now that I knew about it. It was just a little bit unnerving to have it thrown in your face like that.
Hinata continued. "And she's the best seductress we've got; her blood is irresistible to the leeches."
"Ah," was all I said. I knew how important seduction was, in the game we played. If she was good at it… whatever. Ino's boyfriend looked up, and gave me the once-over.
"Hey Ugly."
I twitched.
About ten seconds later, I was standing behind him, a gun at the base of his skull. Damn, I really had to learn how to control my temper; this was getting ridiculous!
"Don't ever call me that, again," I hissed into his ear. He was totally calm, and, just to prove I could, I pulled out my second gun, and shot a perfect hole through a leaf while looking the other direction. Oh yes, I am good…
"Yes, Miss Ugly."
I snarled out something unintelligible, and walked back towards where Hinata was standing. They were all staring at the leaf, and then looking back at me like I was some kind of monster. Seriously people, it's not that hard. It just takes a lot of practice.
Hinata glared at Sai. "Sai, be nice, she's going to shoot a hole in your head if you keep it up."
"Yes, Your Shyness."
Hinata fumed, and muttered under her breath "Fuck you, you asshole…"
I was very proud of her. So she did have a dirty mouth, just like the rest of the world.
Another girl, this one with brown hair in two buns, raised her hand in welcome. "I'm Tenten, just a random orphan Tsunade picked up off the streets. I'm work best when it comes to quick, out of sight things. Like stealing." She grinned, and I grinned back at her. Anyone who could be so blunt would be worth talking to.
The others introduced themselves, and I came to know Shikamaru, Temari, Karin, Neji, and Suigetsu. They seemed like a bunch of kids I could probably get along with.
Karin did what I did, Sniped, and I knew without a doubt that we would get along. Apparently she was dating Suigetsu, but I didn't see how, as all they did was fight. Hinata whispered "They break up three or four times a week, but Karin told me the make-up sex is incredible."
Okay, that was a piece of information I had no desire to know.
Temari had the look of someone who was quiet, but would kill you in a second for looking at her wrong. She had a techie sort of look to her, with goggles hanging around her neck, and black wire tape around her wrist. Her blond hair was, oddly enough, up in four ponytails, and I thought 'Da-yum. The chick has balls.'
Shikamaru was the laziest person I have ever met, and that is saying something. Kakashi is my father, and he is late for everything, so yes, it is saying something. He, too, looked the techie type, with an undertone of rebelliousness. He seemed like a pretty cool dude.
Neji was too busy staring into space, so I think he might have been a tad bit high, because not everyone can pull of that totally uncaring attitude, and I hardly said two words to Suigetsu. And that was because Karin had kicked him, and he was lying on the ground, writhing in pain.
Oka-ay then…
So I went home after that. I was not into staying at school and re-learning stuff I had learned in previous years. I complained to Anko, and she promised that she would talk to Kakashi.
But really, at the time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.


text:
The opening of the first exhibition organized by RSBA had its official opening on 11 April, at the National Museum of Art in Bucharest. The exhibition is the result of a hard working project, aiming to present Botanical Art to the Romanian public. In a broad overview of Romanian wild flowers, the exhibition presents both classical paintings signed by famous Romanian artists, and botanical art signed by both Romanian and foreign artists who dedicated part of their work to this subject. Our exhibition partners were:
MNAR – The National Museum of Art, who kindly hosted the event and supported our project by facilitating the selection of classical works. We had in the exhibition 13 paintings from the MNAR patrimony, signed by famous Romanian painters.
Muzeul botanic al Gradinii botanice D. Branza, who gave us access to the fabulous works of Angiolina Santocono, a unique figure in the Romanian history of botanical art.
Addison Publications, who lended us the wonderful 2 volumes of The Transylvania Florilegium, together with 10 framed lithographic prints after original watercolors from the project.
This project was made possible only with the kind support of:
BASF, our main sponsor
Ursus breweries and Cimbria, sponsors
Hotel Cismigiu, who hosted our special guests in a wonderful setup that made their whole experience unique.
And no good project can exist without passionate friends who believed in us and helped us with their knowledge:
Ierburi Uitate, who stood by our side with all the massive graphic work
Art Safari, who helped us communicate best the event.
We thank for the special offers and free products to:
Frog, for the great cattering
Fares, for the good tea
Av Store, for the music
Aqua Carpatica, for the water
Vin Arte, for the wine
Here is a small overview of the event, thank you all for being part of this great journey!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Scripture: Luke 4:1,2
Luke 4:1,2 states, "Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry." Jesus, as our great High Priest, walked through these baptisms in our behalf and is, in many ways, our best example. The first baptism of fire is the fire of purification and cleansing. Jesus did not need purification or cleansing because there was no sin in Him, but He did need to endure the temptations and the tests and overcome them for us. He did, for forty days, endure the fire of temptation and He overcame. The fire of purification and cleansing is God taking our hand and leading us through the cleansing process where His blood cuts away all failures of the past and makes what was at one time a weakness and failure a platform for our greatest success. His mercy, through the covenant of Sure Mercy, becomes the foundation. As we accept His sacrifice, God accepts His purity and imparts it to us. The fire of purification teaches us to follow the Holy Spirit and be the overcomer that the Lord has called us to be.


text:
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple likely made some creators of high-end video games happy today.
At its Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced a new platform technology for game developers, dubbed Metal, which it claims can improve rendering performance for 3D graphics by tenfold.
The technology gets rid of some of the middleware that sits between hardware and game software. It enables developers to write their game programs directly "to the metal," so to speak, making it easier for developers to write software that directly accesses the 3D graphics hardware in an iOS device.
What developers get out of this is a less software overhead that stands between a game and an iPhone's or iPad's hardware. It also improves nongraphics use of graphics chips to dramatically improve the speed of applications such as video.
The Metal technology is designed for Apple's A7 processor, which has built-in 3D graphics. Tim Sweeney, the chief executive of Epic Games, went onstage to show a demo. The Zen Garden demo, which will be free to developers when iOS 8 launches, showed some incredible scenes, such as a koi pond with hundreds of fish, a cherry tree with 5,000 blossoms, and a garden with tons of butterflies.
Electronic Arts has been able to port its Frostbite 3D game engine, the same it uses for the Battlefield first-person shooters on consoles and the PC, to iOS thanks to Metal. The company showed a video that showed the online multiplayer shooter Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare working on an iPad, with 1.3 million triangles on the screen at once.
Besides Epic, Apple also showed Metal working with game engines from Crytek and Unity Technologies.
Metal is a low-level rendering applications programming interface, providing the minimum layer of software needed to allow software to run on different graphics chips.
Apple also announced SpriteKit, a development platform for casual game makers, to improve the quality and ease of development of casual games.
Tim Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, said in an interview with GamesBeat, "What they're really doing is writing directly to the A7 chip, and doing it in a way that streamlines the 2D and 3D elements."
Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said in an interview that Metal will require developers to write special code for Apple devices. But that won't be difficult for the developers because the game engine makers will do the necessary work that will allow that code to run on other platforms.
Moorhead said that OpenGL ES, which is a relic of the Silicon Graphics era of 3D graphics and is still used today. He said Metal could disrupt both OpenGL and Microsoft's DirectX API. A game developer could write a game using a game engine, but could write to the hardware, rather than to the older APIs.
"OpenGL's strength is its weakness," Moorhead said. "It runs on everything from workstations down to smartphones. But that leads to some code bloat."
Tim Sweeney, chief executive of Unreal game engine maker Epic Games, said in an interview that was accurate. He said it replaces OpenGL ES.
"It's literally an order of magnitude improvement," Sweeney said. "There's a huge amount of overhead that OpenGL adds to the graphics pipeline."
We'll have more from Sweeney in a later story.
You can't solo security COVID-19 game security report: Learn the latest attack trends in gaming. Access here


text:
It's been a while since I blogged. It's been a while since I felt like myself. It's been a tumultuous and busy time.
God always hears you, and occasionally I even hear Him. I could tell big changes were coming when I blogged about my 49th year. I said I didn't know what was next but that I was "ready". As always, He made me put my money where my mouth was.
So, I found fulfillment helping loved ones on hospice care, something that once I thought about it, I had basically been doing in one way or another for many years. I like it. People find a peace once they get the worst news they possibly could. You are there to help. You cannot fix anything, and that takes the pressure off. All you are there for is to, well, be there. There is a joy and peace that comes to me in just helping them enjoy each day they have left. Remembering, hearing their stories, sorting through pictures and getting their houses in order, so to speak. What this entails is as individual as they are, and has always made me feel blessed. Never more than this year.
Then I lost my job because of this, and almost had a nervous breakdown, but no cigar. Thanks to constant reruns of Sex and The City and a 10 lb. bag of M&Ms, I held onto my sanity by my fingernails. It took me 10 days to get over the shock. But then I remembered that I had said I was ready.
So there I was with a house in the middle of a remodel I would now not be able to complete, and a new, improved relationship with my father that I was still working on, a new grandbaby, and two boys and two dogs who still depended on me to put food in front of them and keep them in clothes and rabies shots. I can honestly say that I seriously considered just staying bed and seeing what happened. For about a week I only got out of it to pretend like everything was fine until the boys went to school and then again when they came home. But that was not really an option. Even I knew that. The angel forced me out of bed a couple of days, made me get dressed and then put me to work pounding nail out of boards that he wanted to re-use on a rental house. He said mindless work was good for the soul. He was right. I also prayed a lot. If I remember correctly, the prayer I prayed most often, through days and nights of not being able to sleep went like this:
Dear God,
I don't even know what to do here.
I mean, I don't even know how this happened.
God, I have no idea what to do, which way to go, how to proceed.
In fact, God, I don't even CARE what I should do, which way I should go, or whether I proceed or not!!!
I mean, this is really bad!!!!!
If you will just show me what you want me to do, I will do it!!!!
It doesn't even matter what it is!!
Just show me.
I will do it.
Fade to comatose, or perhaps even zombie-like state of consciousness.
NOT SLEEP. Healing, restorative, the boon we all crave, sleep.
I began to feel some peace. And then, I saw this post from Kelsey, which was about how when we are weak, then God can make us strong. There is no doubt in my mind that it was meant for me to see, THEN, and I cannot thank her enough for doing it THEN, even though she had no idea what I was going through. I would not be surprised if it has affected many others. It made accepting the food, money and household items which my friends and loved ones kept piling on me MUCH easier to take without feeling an inch tall. I hate needing help!!!! I give help, I do not need help. Well.........okay, I needed help. How could I need help?? Insert mad crying here, some kicking, screaming into pillows (so as not to disturb the kids or the neighbors). Pride can be our worst enemy sometimes, and you should consider the blessing that those who are able to give receive as well as your own blessing in receiving such things.
Once I decided to go with the flow of these rapids in the river of my life, things got a lot easier. Isn't that what I always say to do? Sometimes we just have to take our own advice. I have found out that I am a better giver than I am a receiver. Who knew? Shut up. hahaha
So I grabbed the bull by the horns, called my dad and cried.
He urged me, as he had been doing for the last year or more, to sell everything and move into his empty house down by my beloved "rock bottom river". "Honey, just sell everything and come down here. We'll take care of you." He had to say it a few times as I considered turning my whole life upside down ("What life do you speak of, exactly?" said the voice in my head), weighed how the boys would take the news ("Do they have a choice?" that maddening voice continued) and wondered who in God's name would buy my house in the condition it was in (What about that stellar house flipper right here in town?" the voice shot down my every argument).
I considered it seriously. I had lots of family down there. I had old friends who were still in the area. I knew the lay of the land, I knew which way the wind blew. I knew that no Democrat had held public office for many, many years. (For the sake of honesty I must state here that I don't actually hate democrats. In fact, there are some that I love, but I would never give them my checkbook. I do actually hate the tax rate increases they constantly burden the rest of us, and even themselves with. I'm not even going to mention what they did to insurance, because I don't think I have to. Bless their little suicidal hearts. And as long as we're on the subject, for God's sake, don't forget to vote!!!) I literally could no longer afford to live where I was anyway, and now I would never be able to even keep up, which is all I had been doing for years. I had to face the truth.
I started seeing it all happen, if only I had the guts to take the first step. If. All I had to do was pick up the phone and offer a good business man a good deal. Even though I did not feel in a position of strength. Just pick up the phone and see what happened. That's all. Just ask.
I considered it seriously. I had lots of family down there. I had old friends who were still in the area. I knew the lay of the land, I knew which way the wind blew. I knew that no Democrat had held public office for many, many years. (For the sake of honesty I must state here that I don't actually hate democrats. In fact, there are some that I love, but I would never give them my checkbook. I do actually hate the tax rate increases they constantly burden the rest of us, and even themselves with. I'm not even going to mention what they did to insurance, because I don't think I have to. Bless their little suicidal hearts. And as long as we're on the subject, for God's sake, don't forget to vote!!!) I literally could no longer afford to live where I was anyway, and now I would never be able to even keep up, which is all I had been doing for years. I had to face the truth.
I started seeing it all happen, if only I had the guts to take the first step. If. All I had to do was pick up the phone and offer a good business man a good deal. Even though I did not feel in a position of strength. Just pick up the phone and see what happened. That's all. Just ask.
So I took the biggest step and called the stellar guy. He bought my house within a week. He came and looked at that mess and didn't blink an eye. Score one for having the guts to take a chance. When you are too scared to start, just tell yourself that it doesn't hurt to ask. It really doesn't hurt. AT ALL.
I broached the subject with the boys, who took it better than I had hoped. After all, it wasn't like we were moving to somewhere they had never been before or didn't know anyone.
Then things just started coming together. Like, within a month I had packed up or sold most of everything I had ever owned, and lost 15 pounds. My brother rented a U-Haul, drove 5 hours up to help us load it, turned right around, got right back in the truck, and took us home. There he helped us unload and then drove the U-Haul back and went to his own home in the early hours of the morning. He would not accept a dime and his only comment was "No big deal. You keep your money, you'll need it." This was AFTER he had bought me enough canned goods, dry goods and goodies to last me almost a year. Yeah. Somebody's getting a Superman shirt for Christmas this year. I guess if I hadn't agreed to it he and my dad would have somehow forced me in a scheme to make me think it was all my idea. They know me that well. But I was sensible and rode the rapids. It's just how we roll. Eventually. Once we run out of M&Ms at least.
See that fog ahead? This is a perfect metaphor for my life during the month of August in 2014.
At no other time in my life would I have accepted help from Dad. I would even go so far as to say that at no other time in my life was he in a position to offer it. The last few years I knew God was working in my life, but I was unclear on what he wanted me to do. He slammed the door shut on the one thing I thought was stable in my life and left me no other choice but to do what I would never have done on my own. Even though I almost had a nervous breakdown and could possibly have let it go and just kept eating M&Ms and watched crap tv until the men in white coats came to take me away, in retrospect it was one of the BEST thing that has ever happened to me. I'm not even going to go into the relief I feel on a daily basis when I think about still going into that building and sitting all day, every day, getting more out of shape and more hateful by the hour. Because that would be beneath me. It really would. I thank God that is no longer my life.
Instead, now I drive into town on roads that look like this.
Admire scenery like this.
A trip to the park.
There are fish and ducks to feed.
Southern Missouri is recognizable by the running water everywhere, over rocks that makes the water look clear
All of these were taken at the city park in Neosho, Missouri.
I have always loved the houses made from the stones that occur naturally in the area.
Once you live near running water, you will never feel at home away from it. The noise it makes, the way the sun dances off of it, the sense of purpose. It never leaves you. It marks your soul and makes you realize how fast time is always moving.
When I get bored, I try to figure out that the house at up these stairs looks like. One day I will find the street it is on from the other side, on the top of the hill. I figure it will be easier than climbing all those stairs and scaring them to death unexpectedly, or getting thrown back down them.
See those stairs on the left side of the picture?
They lead to this house. It's all you can see with the leaves on the trees, but it looks like it would be worth the climb, were you rude enough to invade their privacy, which I am not.
But it looks REALLY COOL!!!! Perhaps someday I will "know" this house.
On my way back home I get to go by this, which is one of my favorite parts. It's a civil war fence, which confederate soldiers hid behind during the war right outside of Newtonia, and where cannon balls and spoons and such are still uncovered when the field behind is plowed each spring.
Ok, it's beginning to fall apart in places, but have some respect, it's OLD.
To top it all off, this stands at the courthouse where I registered to vote.
What's not to love? I was meant to be here!!
If all that were not enough, which it is, this is my view, from the front porch in my little village.
A calm place to be, where I can hear the voices of my youth and see the people who knew me when. Before I was an adult or anybody's mother. When I was just me. The people who knew you when you were young always will. That's a fact.
From the driveway. That field just got bailed and contains cows. I like cows.
So life goes on. Growing up with a father from SW Missouri and a mother from NE Missouri, (part hill-billy, part WASP) my heart was always split. No matter how glad I was to be going to one place, I was always sad to be leaving the other. You can't be two places at once, but two places can share equal space in your heart. To choose one over the other would be impossible. It would be like loving one child more than another. Impossible. You love each one for different things, in different ways, but not more than any other. There is room for both. Now there is time for both. I remain ready, and God continues His work on me. Here I have time and space to consider just what I have been readied for, and I thank Him for it. I wouldn't change a single thing that has brought me here. They boys have settled in and are learning to love two places at the same time also. This has only added to their lives, not taken anything away. The dogs seem happy too, although they seem terrified to leave the yard, which only works in my favor. Even that loose end has been tied up. Only God, as Patty would say. Only God could have done all this.


text:
I've already blogged about how to create simple Nuget packages using Rake and Albacore, now to the advanced part.
I used FluentMigrator as the example in my previous post and it was while creating the second package for FluentMigrator that I ran into a 'feature' of Nuget.
We had decided to divide the FluentMigrator package into two packages, the main core package and a new FluentMigrator.Tools package. FluentMigrator.Tools contains all the extra dlls that we didn't want to put in the core package. Basically, there are four versions of the tools directory, one for each supported .NET version and per platform (.NET 3.5 and 4.0, x86 and x64). The idea is that if you need the x86 3.5 version of the migration runners then the core package is sufficient otherwise you need to fetch the FluentMigrator.Tools Nuget package.
The core package has a lib directory which contains the FluentMigrator dll. So I created a dependency on the core package in the Tools package so that when you download the Tools package from Nuget it also downloads the core package. This meant that the Tools package only contained a tools directory at the root, no lib and no content directory.
Side Note on how to test your Nuget package
To test your newly created Nuget package (always a good idea!) point your Nuget source in Visual Studio to your nupkg file. In Visual Studio 2010 go to Tools->Library Package Manager->Package Manager Settings then choose Package Sources in the left hand menu and add the directory which contains the nupkg file to be tested. Then when adding a package from the Package Manager Console, in the Package Source dropdown menu to the upper left you should have two choices now; Nuget official package source and your new test source. So choose your test source and install-package NameOfYourPackage and test it out.
To the heart of the matter
While testing the Tools package in the Package Manager Console I got the following incomprehensible error:
External packages cannot depend on packages that target projects
Steve Sanderson ran into this problem first and filed an issue on Codeplex in which he also mentions a workaround (Thank you Steve!). The reason for this error is that my new FluentMigrator.Tools package only contains a tools directory and no content or lib directory and Nuget has decided that it therefore may not be dependent on a package that does contain a lib or content directory.
The solution is a big, fat hack. Add a content directory with a dummy text file and then use a powershell script to remove it from the target project after you have installed the Nuget package.
Diving into PowerShell
At this stage you will want to have the Nuget documentation open so that you check out the different conventions around powershell and Nuget. I created a text file named InstallationDummyFile.txt and placed it in the content directory and a powershell file named install.ps1 and placed it in the root of the tools directory. install.ps1 looks like this:
param($installPath, $toolsPath, $package, $project) $project.ProjectItems | ForEach { if ($_.Name -eq "InstallationDummyFile.txt") { $_.Remove() } } $projectPath = Split-Path $project.FullName -Parent Join-Path $projectPath "InstallationDummyFile.txt" | Remove-Item
It does two things:
- Removes the reference to InstallationDummyFile.txt from the project by looping through ProjectItems until it finds the text file.
- Deletes the InstallationDummyFile.txt file. First I get the path to the project file and store it in $projectPath and create a new path by joining it with the file name and then remove it from the project directory.
I am a total beginner when it comes to powershell so this was a bit of a struggle (and maybe will be for others?). The above calls are pipelines and start on the left with a bar (|) separating the different stages. E.g. The Join-Path function takes in two parameters and returns a new path to the text file, this is then passed on the next stage in the pipeline as a parameter. Remove-Item takes in the newly generated path as a parameter and deletes the file. Read the Nuget documentation for more info on the parameters passed in on the first line.
The Result
Now when you install the Tools package it first downloads its dependency, the core package, and adds a reference to the FluentMigrator dll in the target project. As the Tools package now has a content file, Nuget no longer classes it as an "external package". Next Nuget installs the Tools package in the packages directory alongside the core package and calls install.ps1. This removes the dummy file from the project (both as a reference and by physically deleting the file from the project folder) and now there is no incriminating evidence left of us fooling Nuget. When creating my Rake script to run migrations, I can now refer to the console runner in the FluentMigrator.Tools directory in the Nuget package directory. Mission accomplished.
Related articles
- Creating Nuget packages with Rake and Albacore (danlimerick.wordpress.com)


text:
Stewart, Paul and Riddell, Chris. The Phantom of Blood Alley.
Oddly, not nominated for the Cybils.
Barnaby is recommended to Clarissa Oliphant, a former dueling governess, to investigate the odd behavior of her brother Lawrence. When followed, Lawrence heads to a seedy laboratory in a bad section of London that is frequented by all manner of dubious characters, many of whom dabble in the new art of photography, which uses a host of toxic chemicals. Thinking that the chemicals are degrading her brother's mental facilities, Ms. Oliphant confronts her brother, but shortly after this, he is murdered and she becomes the main suspect, since the weapon in question was her prized dueling sword. Barnaby then investigates Lawrence's contacts... and each one of them is also brutally murdered. What nefarious dealings are occurring, and how can Barnaby stay safe?
Strengths: This entire series (Curse of the Night Wolf, Return of the Emerald Skull, and Legion of the Dead) is packed full of action, creepy monsters, and an accessible Victorian setting. Barnaby is a fun character who manages to survive and prosper on his own. Fabulous drawings. The brief historical information about photography is presented in an engaging way. There's a mystery unit going on in the 8th grade, and since the books can be read independently, I think I will just get them ALL checked out.
Weaknesses: The skateboarding with a piano lid on pram wheels seemed odd and forced. I'm still not entirely sure the "dueling governess" concept isn't real!
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Phantom of Blood Alley
Posted by Ms. Yingling at 4:56 AM
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
In a day when beef is assailed by many environmental organizations and lauded by fast-food chains, a new paradigm to bring reason to this confusion is in order. With farmers leaving the land in droves and plows poised to "reclaim" set-aside acres, it is time to offer an alternative that is both land and farmer friendly.
Beyond that, the salad bar beef production model offers hope to rural communities, to struggling row-crop farmers, and to frustrated beef eaters who do not want to encourage desertification, air and water pollution, environmental degradation and inhumane animal treatment. Because this is a program weighted toward creativity, management, entrepreneurism and observation, it breather fresh air into farm economics.
About the Author Joel Salatin and his family own and operate Polyface Farm, arguably the nation's most famous farm since it was profiled in Michael Pollan's New York Times bestseller, The Omnivore's Dilemmaand two subsequent documentaries, Food, Inc., and Fresh. An accomplished author and public speaker, Salatin has authored seven books. Recognition for his ecological and local-based farming advocacy includes an honorary doctorate, the Heinz Award, and many leadership awards.
Pages: 334
Weight: 1.33
Item Number: 5521
Format: PBK
Author: Joel Salatin


text:
Wenzel Sunward 30 Degree Sleeping Bag Review
The Wenzel Sunward 30 degree sleeping bag is a quality sleeping bag that is available at a bargain price compared to other bags of the same quality. The Wenzel sunward does an excellent job of keeping me warm on cold nights. Although I must admit, most of my camping trips occur in Texas, so my definition of cold might be a little different from somebody from, say Wisconsin or Maine. Wenzel says the bag is good for mild weather camping. I'm sorry, but the thirties are cold in my book. My tolerance for cold aside, I've slept in this bag in temperatures as low as 40 degrees and felt cozy throughout the night. As comfy as I stayed at 40 degrees, I believe this bag would do well in the thirty degree range that it is made for. This has been a mild winter so far in 2011-2012 for Texas, so if I get a chance to test these bags at thirty degrees, I will update this review.
The sleeping bag is filled with four pounds of hypoallergenic Insul-Therm polyester fiberfill. So people with allergies to certain fabrics shouldn't have issue with this bag. At four pounds this is not too heavy of a bag for the thirty degree class of bags. Wenzel designed the sleeping bag with quilt through construction to keep the filling from getting bunched up, thus preventing aggravating cold spots and annoying lumps that could interrupt your sleeping. The outside of the sleeping bag is made of a durable polyester that should last for many camping trips.
It comes equipped with two straps that make folding up, storing, and traveling with it a no hassle experience. The self repairing zipper is another feature that I like about this bag as zippers are one of the leading issues that cause campers to throw away a sleeping bag.
Immeasurable 77 inches in length the Sunward should hold people of above average height. One of my friends is six feet and one inch tall and he fit without any complaints. The inner liner is a comfortable polyester pongee, making the night a pleasurable experience. We used these bags with and without air mattresses underneath. When we went without the mattresses, these bags were still comfortable through-out the night. The Thermarest Collapsible Pillow is a good companion to this bag as they both are easy to store and carry.
- Temperature rating: 30 degrees F
- Size: 77 by 33 inches
- Fill weight: 4 pounds
- Fill type: Hypoallergenic Insul-Therm
- Outer: Polyester
- Liner: Soft polyester pongee
- Zipper: Self-repairing
- Storage: 2 elastic straps
I have a couple of these Sunward bags now and have been satisfied with them. Wenzel is a company I've grown to like, having used several of their tents in the past several years. Grab a one from Amazon right now!


text:
In episode 10 of the Market Urbanism Podcast, we discuss how to "legalize cities" with Brooke Fallon & Randal O'Toole.
In episode 9 of the Market Urbanism Podcast, we talk about causes and solutions to America's homeless problem.
We talk with Bob Poole of the Reason Foundation & Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute about the socialized nature of U.S. infrastructure, and the paths to privatizing it.
We take several listener call-in and write-in questions about gentrification and economic development. Then we interview Yesim Taylor, executive director of the DC Policy Center, on the gentrification problem in D.C., and how to solve it.
We talk with Charles Marohn, the founder of Strong Towns, and Rick Rybeck, director of Just Economics, about how better to fund America's overstretched infrastructure.
We talk with Liz Farmer, finance reporter for Governing Magazine, and Steven Greenhut, a senior fellow for the R Street Institute, about the state of municipal finance in America.
We talk with Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow for the Manhattan Institute, about the shoddy state of New York City's subways; and Nick Zaiac, commercial freedom fellow at the R Street Institute, about how transit should work in sprawl cities.
We talk with David Whitehead, of Greater Greater Washington, and David London, head of government relations at ofo, about the rise of alternative transit solutions - and how governments crack down on them.
We talk with Sonja Trauss and Brent Gaisford about the rise of the YIMBY movement. Trauss is founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Renters' Federation, and a candidate for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, District 6. Gaisford is a Los Angeles housing activist and director of the YIMBY group Abundant Housing LA.
We talk with Michael Lewyn and Ryan Avent about the meaning and evolution of Market Urbanism. Lewyn is a Touro law professor, and author of the book "Government Intervention and Suburban Sprawl: The Case for Market Urbanism." Avent is an urban policy writer for The Economist, and author of the book "The Gated City."


text:
I had picked Thursday (August 4th) as a day to meet up with Vivianne and the boys to check out the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge. A lot of people go there to see birds, but I go there because of all the frogs and the turtles you can watch basking. When we scheduled the trip, we didn't realize the high would be around 96 degrees and sunny.
Do you like to hang out in the open when it's 96 degrees and sunny? I sure don't, and even the frogs make themselves scarce at those temperatures. I was a little worried about walking around in an exposed, shade-less marsh, even in the early evening.
We were rescued by Gary, a friend of mine who works at the Refuge. He offered to drive us around on a little tour, inside an air conditioned minivan. It turns out that the shorebirds don't seem to mind the hot weather. We saw a lot of egrets and a couple species of sandpipers and yellowlegs, not to mention an osprey, great blue herons, a couple goldfinches, and lots of other birds whose names I can't remember.
The coolest thing I learned (and I learned a lot) was that snappers (Chelydra serpentina) make really prominent tracks in the mud as they haul themselves from one deep spot to another. They're exactly what you'd expect, I guess, if you dragged an eight-inch-wide, thirty pound shell through mud, but I had never before made the connection to say, 'oh, those must be from snappers.'
A few turtles actually made it out of the water to bask (mad dogs, Englishmen, and water turtles…), although the only one that sat long enough for us to get a good look at it was an invasive red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans).
After the tour we walked around a little. I was a little disappointed and feeling bad for the boys since we had so few herps to show for the effort, but then some deer stepped out of the woods into a grassy area of dried marsh and rescued the trip. I shushed and waved the boys over. They ran up for a good view, grabbing for my binoculars to see the deer up close and begging Vivianne to take pictures.
When I say that the deer rescued the trip, I mean they rescued it for me. This might be the point of the whole trip: the boys had already been enjoying seeing all kinds of things I wrote off as uninteresting. They liked the birds, but they loved the rabbits browsing at the edge of the roads throughout the refuge, and the deer completely blew their minds. It took that to convince me the trip was worth their while after all.
I guess I need to set lower expectations for these trips. If we find bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) and see one turtle basking, that works just fine. No herps? Well, check out that groundhog!
Of course, being 14 down to 9 year old boys, they asked all kinds of absurd-to-me questions like "are there anacondas in there?" "Are there alligators in there?" "Are you sure there aren't alligators in there?" That's fine, as long as they still ooh and ah over the critters we do have.
Our next date is the 15th of September. The Heinz Wildlife Refuge will be having a big festival with all kinds of raptors and big, impressive reptiles – maybe some of those anacondas and alligators that don't live in our marsh.
P.S: Sorry for the late post. We were in


text:
I am leaving India for the US and plan to tour Europe on my way back from the US. However, I believe I can't apply for a Schengen visa in India before leaving to Europe because I would be staying in the US for six months - longer than the validity of the schengen visa.
Thus I am curious if I can apply for a schengen visa from the US, while touring the US on a B1/B2 tourist visa.


text:
Bio-remediation of Hussainsagar lake
The Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA), which has taken up a series of measures towards restoring the lost glory of Hussainsagar lake, has now decided to take up bio-remediation of lake.
Under the Hussain sagar Lake and Catchment Improvement Project taken up with financial assistance from Japan International Cooperation Agency, the HMDA intends to go for in situ bio-remediation process using engineered microbial cultures that can be added to the polluted lake water for its improvement. This is expected to help arrest the algal blooms and foul smell emissions and improve the overall water quality.


text:
The 2012 TV mid-season has begun and it's shaping up to be an intriguing one. There's the ABC adventure drama "The River"; the NBC comedy "Are You There, Chelsea?"; J.J. Abrams' highly anticipated "Alcatraz" on FOX, and more.
Check out these 13 new shows to watch out for!
2012 Mid-Season New Shows
'The River' (ABC, Feb. 7)
Who: Bruce Greenwood, Joe Anderson, Leslie Hope, Eloise MumfordWhat: The show follows the story of wildlife expert and TV personality Emmet Cole. Emmet set course around the world with his wife, Tess, and son, Lincoln, while filming what would become one of the most popular shows in television. After he goes missing deep in the Amazon, his family, friends and crew set out on a mysterious and deadly journey to find him.
'GCB' (ABC, March 4)
Who: Leslie Bibb, Annie Potts, Kristin ChenowethWhat: The soap returns to Dallas in this deliciously fun, wicked new drama that shows that you can go home again... but only if you're ready to face the sins of your past.
'Missing'(ABC, March 15)
Who: Ashley Judd, Sean Bean, Nick EversmanWhat: Becca Winstone (Judd) learns that her son, Michael (Eversman), disappears while studying abroad, and it's a race against time when she travels to Europe to track him down. A surprising turn of events reveals just how far one mother will go to protect her family.
'Scandal' (ABC, April 4)
Who: Kerry Washington, Henry Ian Cusick, Columbus Short, Tony GoldwynWhat: A former media relations consultant to the President, Olivia Pope (Washington) dedicates her life to protecting and defending the public images of our nation's elite. After leaving the White House, the power consultant opened her own firm, hoping to start a new chapter -- both professionally and personally -- but she can't seem to completely cut ties with her past.
'Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23' (ABC, April 11)
Who: Krysten Ritter, Dreama Walker, Eric Andre, Michael Blaiklock, James Van Der BeekWhat: After a naïve Midwestern girl's (Walker) big city dreams are dashed her first week in New York, she finds herself living with her worst nightmare in this hilarious, contemporary comedy about a female odd couple who are surrounded by an outrageous cast of characters.
'The Firm' (NBC, Jan. 5)
Who: Josh Lucas, Juliette Lewis, Molly ParkerWhat: Based on the blockbuster feature film and best-selling novel by world-renowned author John Grisham, the new drama series continues the story of attorney Mitchell McDeere (Lucas) and his family 10 years after the events of the film and novel.
'Are You There, Chelsea?' (NBC, Jan. 11)
Who: Laura Prepon, Chelsea HandlerWhat: Inspired by the best-selling books from actress/comedian Chelsea Handler, the new comedy series follows the exploits of the twenty-something Chelsea (Prepon), an opinionated and unapologetic young woman who lives life to the fullest as a cocktail waitress, friend, daughter, sister and sexually dynamic "advanced drinker."
'Smash' (NBC, Feb. 6)
Who: Debra Messing, Anjelica Huston, Katherine McPhee, Megan Hilty, Christian BorleWhat: There's nothing more exciting than the opening night of a hit Broadway musical, except maybe what happens getting there. Julia and Tom, a successful songwriting team, begin work on a new musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. When a tenacious producer (Huston) jumps aboard, so begins the difficult task of casting the silver screen icon.
'¡Rob!' (CBS, Jan. 12)
Who: Rob Schneider, Cheech Marin, Claudia BassoisWhat: The show centers on solitary guy, Rob, who marries into a huge Mexican-American family.
'The Finder' (FOX, Jan. 12)
Who: Geoff Stults, Michael Clarke DuncanWhat: From the creator of the hit series "Bones" comes a quirky, one-hour procedural centering on a different kind of detective: a remarkable man with the extraordinary ability to help people find the unfindable.
'Napoleon Dynamite' (FOX, Jan. 15)
Who: Jon Heder, Aaron Ruell, Efren Ramirez, Haylie Duff, Diedrich BaderWhat: Based on the cult hit film, this new animated series follows the misadventures of an awkward high school teenager and his quirky friends as they struggle to navigate life in rural Idaho.
'Alcatraz' (FOX, Jan. 16)
Who: Sarah Jones, Sam Neill, Jorge Garcia, Jeffrey PierceWhat: From the creators of "Lost" comes a new drama about a Detective Madsen (Jones) assigned to a grisly homicide case, which leads her to a former Alcatraz inmate who died decades ago. Madsen's interest is immediately piqued, and once the enigmatic, knows-everything-but-tells-nothing government agent Emerson Hauser (Neill) tries to impede her investigation, she's doggedly committed.
'Touch' (FOX, Jan. 25)
Who: Kiefer Sutherland, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David MazouzWhat: From writer/creator Tim Kring comes a preternatural drama in which science and spirituality intersect with the hopeful premise that we are all interconnected, tied in invisible ways to those whose lives we are destined to alter and impact.


text:
What Happened after my Prom Dress Came off…
It happened at midnight on a Saturday in May of 1982 just after prom.
I'd pushed the screen out of my bedroom window and had one leg flung over the sill, when I turned back to my sister, Gina.
She was half-asleep in her bed, which was next to my bed — now occupied by three pillows shoved under the blanket shaped into the figure of what I hoped would look like my sleeping body should my parents poke their heads into our room.
"Whatever you do," I told Gina, "Don't make any noise."
"Okay, okay. Jeez, just let me go to sleep!"
I flung the rest of my body through the open window and darted pell-mell across our front lawn into the waiting arms of my prom date, Albert Schmitzon. (A pseudonym; but you know who you are!!)
I wholly blame my parents for this post-Prom tryst.
I was 16-years old and had never been alone with a boy on a date, because my parents were the Hormone Gestapo.
I believed they could instinctually detect any surge of hormones I might have while watching David Cassidy on The Partridge Family, or listening to Andy Gibb sing How Deep Is Your Love?
So, I was flabbergasted when they allowed me to attend my junior prom with baseball-playing Albert.
My dad, who is frugal to a fault, even went so far as to purchase the most gorgeous white ivory, pink-ribboned and tulle prom dress for a whopping 200$.
I have absolutely no idea what kind of madness came over him.
All I know, is that when I stepped out of the changing room in that gown, truly feeling like a beautiful princess, all my zits and frizzy hair forgotten, Dad's eyes softened and he said, "You can have it if you want it."
Going to prom with Albert was a coup.
I was popular in high school, but I absolutely wasn't cool. I hung out with the female jocks and the Mensa nerds.
Albert, on the other hand, was a card-carrying member of the cool kids.
He hung with the football and baseball players and the Songbirds; cheerleaders not to be confused with the Varsity Yells who were cute, but not hot, and gave the impression of keeping their knees together.
There were rumors the kids in the "cool group" were already sexually active, while my group were by-and-large virgins; either by choice or default.
So, going to prom with Albert was both exciting and terrifying.
I was in no way ready for the fast-lane, but I still really wanted to be cool and desirable.
Imagine my horror when my parents informed me I had to be home from the prom by 11 p.m.
"Eleven pm?" I shrieked. "But the dance is in Newport Beach, which is an hour away. We'll barely have time to get there and eat before we have to turn around and come home. I'll be a laughingstock!"
"Well," said Dad, impersonating Cool Hand Luke, "Then I guess you won't be going."
Prom, prom, you infernal gauntlet of societal caste systems.
Having to come home from prom by 11 p.m. will relegate me to the realms of the wildly uncool Untouchables.
Oh, ignominy of all ignominies why?? Especially when we were going to double-date with uber-cool Jerry Zachary and Inga Ellis. This meant they'd have to come home early too!
I seriously thought about, not just pretending to come down with a case of meningitis, but actually coming down with a real case of meningitis, wherein I would come so close to perishing (though just managing to pull back from the brink of death in the nick of time) that my parents would feel chastened by their own rigidity and assholicry and change my curfew to 6 a.m.
Unfortunately, I was perfectly healthy throughout the week preceding prom.
The good news was that I really took my time getting ready, like a cool girl would do, so that I was only ready an hour early.
After peeing for the sixtieth time, the doorbell rang and there stood Albert, decked out in his tux, holding a lovely wrist corsage for me.
My heart thumped out of my chest as he took me down the walk and placed me in the back of a Jerry Zachary's parents' Cadillac.
As we pulled away from the curb, I checked my make-up in a compact mirror when what to my horrified eyes did appear, but one black whisker poking out from my chin!
What. The. Fuhhhh? I panicked. Where the hell did that thing come from?
My mind spun wildly back to memories of my mother (of Czech descent) and the full mustache she had prior to undergoing electrolysis.
It appeared my parents were going to be cock-blocking me until the end of time.
I have faint memories of the actual prom. I know there was some kind of rubbery chicken served beneath a patina of gelatinous ooze.
I know I was forced onto the dance floor, where I tried to calibrate my rhythmic movements somewhere between dancing too eagerly and too cadaverously. It was a fine balance.
Then I remember the clock striking ten and this Cinderella having to get her be-tulled ass home.
Something unexpected happened on the drive back. Albert and I made out. This, I'm afraid, was a revelation.
Things became so heated so quickly I realized, like a thunderbolt, this was exactly the reason my parents kept my sister and me in lockdown.
All rational thought was impossible under the onslaught of Albert's kisses. I became amorphous, fluid, the proverbial silly putty in his hands.
We arrived home at exactly 10:55 p.m. I was still the "good girl" following the rules, right up until the moment Albert asked me if I could slip away after Parent Check-In to join him in a hot tub and Jerry Zachary's house?
I loved my parents and was suitably terrified of them, but the Kraken had been unleashed.
"I'll meet you just outside my bedroom window in 10 minutes," I told Albert.
And so it came to pass that ten minutes later, I was climbing out of my bedroom window and threatening my younger sister with full scale war should she screw this up for me.
Then I was dashing across our front lawn — a bathing suit clutched in my right fist — and straight into the backseat with Albert, where we once again fell to kissing.
What happened in the hot tub, stays in the hot tub.
Suffice to say, I returned home at 2 a.m. with wet hair, clutching my dripping bikini in my left fist, Albert by my side, with my chastity intact.
However, I'd glimpsed passion and possibility and it had changed me.
I could see womanhood not too far around the next bend, and felt a sense of emancipation. Right up until the moment I tried to open my bedroom window … and it wouldn't budge.
Someone had locked it. From the inside.
I glanced confusedly at Albert. Then we both heard my father's Clint Eastwood-esque voice from the nearby porch say, "Shannon, you've slit your own throat."
To say my blood turned to ice in my veins would be an understatement.
I turned to tell Albert he'd better leave, to discover the only thing visible of him were his white tennis shoes flying through the night, already a half mile up the street.
Turns out, Albert's tennis shoes were the last I'd see of him. He never picked up his prom photos and didn't seem to attend Upland High School anymore.
I thought maybe he'd moved into the Witness Protection Program, but it turns out he did finish out his senior year at my school.
He simply managed to cling to the shadows every time I came into view; my first lesson that a kiss doesn't always mean the same thing for a boy as it does for a girl.
In four short years, my eldest daughter will be old enough to go to the prom.
I'll help her do her hair and make-up and let her stay out until six in the morning.
The only caveat being that I will accompany her for the entire date wearing my old prom dress that I can fit into right up to my knees.
7 commentsWrite a comment
Rosie Carrillo 24 March, 2014, 12:36
Love it! How do you determine the spelling of great new swearwords? "Assholery" has to be the best yet. 🙂Reply this comment
Hal Ackerman 28 March, 2014, 10:54
I singer songwriter I love named Annie Gallop has a line in one of her songs that defines your Albert. "There's a false alarm in every crowd"Reply this comment
Pat 30 March, 2014, 09:37
Hilarous. Brought back the memories of good ol' high school days.Reply this comment
Haralee 30 March, 2014, 14:03
Too funny! I'm sure your daughter won't mind one bit!Reply this comment
Carol Cassara 30 March, 2014, 17:38
Such pretties! Love the dresses. But so mature!Reply this comment
Debgal 7 March, 2015, 20:28
I just found your website. We attended the same prom- at South Coast Plaza and the description of the meal was spot on, as was the hormonal boys! i lived in fear each time I snick out that my sheriff father would catch my twin sister and I. Their must have been a good reason he nailed the screen shut.Reply this comment


text:
Earlier this year I had the pleasure of working with the Department for Education, Nimble and Paper on the Alpha and Beta phases of a Find & Explore tool for the National Pupil Database. Having reflected on that experience, here's a few lessons I hope I can apply to future projects, in no particular order.
Complex organisations have complex processes. Take the time early on to…
Hi Ryan, could you do me a favour and just confirm this user's account please?
This request didn't pop up in Slack in the first days of a new user confirmation feature. I was seeing this a couple of years later. The single line of Ruby was well known amongst the developers (it's hardly rocket surgery) as we'd get a couple of requests a month, and…
We rely on Open Source for a huge portion of the Internet (and beyond), yet many projects still rely on goodwill and donated effort in order to survive. Sometimes that's not enough, and organisations like Ruby Together have helped to make critical pieces of developer infrastructure more sustainable. Other projects have taken the approach of introducing premium tiers, adding enhanced functionality to libraries, tools and services in an effort to…
There are many reasons why you might need to develop behind an HTTPS proxy, for example when testing integrations which behave differently based on the security of your site. This post describes how to add an nginx proxy to your docker setup.
Docker is great for building portable applications, modelling complex environments locally, and helping us bridge the gap between development and production, but installing your Bundler, Bower, NPM, Maven (and so on) dependencies can make builds slow. This post explains how to speed up your builds by seeding the image with most of your dependencies, so subsequent builds aren't hampered by the 'all-or-nothing' approach to updating dependencies.
Edit (2019-04-23): Updated to replace
compose_opacity with
DstIn to preserve source image transparency. Thanks Chen Han!
Picture the scene: you have a few thousand users with avatars on your site. You want to change from a boring 4x3 photo to a cool and hip circular crop. You know it'll look great for new users, but we don't want to leave the existing ones behind.
A while ago I switched from using boot2docker directly to the Kitematic Mac app. Although Kitematic generally makes life a bit easier when managing Docker containers, it was a bit of a pain to get it running.
After the Kitematic installation, the VM started but Kitematic had trouble connecting to it. The error messages showed
boot2docker paths so I made the assumption they'd got in a tangle. Uninstalling boot2docker didn't entirely solve the problem,…
Building custom web views within LabKey is pretty straightforward, but if you find yourself needing to constrain the contents of your module horizontally you'll quickly find that the surrounding tables will gladly stretch to any width. Fortunately restricting the width of hte container is pretty straightforward.
TL;DR: Wrap your contents in a table with
table-layout: fixed; width: 100% and the contents won't push the surrounding page to wider than the browser window.
I care about code, building great teams and the community. I run Slate Horse but I'm still a full-stack developer. Previously co-organiser of JSOxford and OxRUG.


text:
We loved developing this new soundtrack top and tail jingle for TGI Friday's. The brand haven't had a brand track for many years. The track had to appeal to a very wide target audience from singles to families and everyone else in between. We were inspired by their line' Give me more Friday's' which we developed into 'Give me more good times, everyday, down at TGI Friday's'.
It's upbeat, good time rock and roll with a few Stones inspired vocal shouts thrown in for fun.
The team at SEN led by Gordon Moore developed the brief and worked closely with Brand Music and the client to get the right sounding track.
Listen below


text:
glennPattonWork wrote:not as momentous
Quote:It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.
#realJSOP wrote:Everything I do is Texas-oriented by default.
General News Suggestion Question Bug Answer Joke Praise Rant Admin
Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.


text:
The Resurgence of Gaming On the Open Social Standard
[Editor's note: In the post below, entrepreneur and consultant Sean Ryan explains why he believes the Open Social developer standard is due for big growth this year. Although we expect that not all of our readers will agree with his points, we think they are worth consideration.]
OpenSocial is a set of social networking interfaces (APIs) created by a group originally led by Google and MySpace, but supported by a coalition of large sites in response to the growing power of the Facebook platform standard (FBML). Launched with great fanfare in late 2007, but adopted primarily by MySpace (and Orkut in Brazil), the standard languished for the next 2 years, although the community continued to evolve it until the 1.0 version was recently released in Q1, 2010.
Why did it languish? Primarily because every developer in the world was focused solely on Facebook as the best publisher platform and because the other social networks (SNS) didn't fully understand how lucrative online gaming was, and it too long for OpenSocial standard to evolve, at least until the last 6 months. I consult with various SNS about their gaming strategies, as well as with a variety of game developers, so I see it from both angles, and what we now see in the marketplace in 2010 is a growing focus on OpenSocial, with a massive surge in adoption of the OS platform coming this year.
Why? The first reason is that it has become abundantly clear to anyone not living in a cave that social gaming is the only truly profitable feature of a social network. And even better, it drives higher user engagement, not just revenue, since users return repeatedly to the site and often contact friends in order to get them to participate in games. Since the Facebook FBML set of APIs is fully owned by Facebook, the top player in social network services, it is a significant danger for Facebook competitors to adopt that standard, especially as Facebook becomes a tougher place to do business for everyone. Therefore, social networks with any IQ points are rapidly throwing away their home-built proprietary standards in order to adopt OpenSocial so they can roll out a compelling gaming solution.
The second reason is that to everyone's apparent surprise, Facebook has finally become a much tougher place to do business for game developers – in fact it almost resembles a traditional retail environment these days. There is an oversupply of content, Facebook is levying a 30% "tax" with Facebook Credits, and with significantly reduced virality due to platform changes, most developers are spending at least another 30% of revenue on advertising on Facebook, all of which is significantly reducing margins. This is all obviously great news for Facebook, but it means the gravy train of "free traffic and great virality" is over, making the site a much more difficult place for mid-sized and small developers, even though the core site features and massive traffic are still the best on the planet. Therefore, smart developers are again looking for Facebook alternatives.
So what should Facebook competitors do? Given that gaming is immensely profitable and that Facebook is starting to be less hospitable to many developers, it's becoming clear that all social networks should launch OpenSocial-compliant containers, striking deals with a select set of developers to feature their games in return for a relatively big revenue share. However, these smaller social sites must become an attractive destination for content developers, even though they have less traffic than Facebook. The key is that the OS container must be fully OpenSocial compliant so that developers can easily port their applications to a wide set of smaller sites with almost no work – if it takes a lot of work for each site, then the return on investment won't be worth it to the developer, and the site will struggle to attract strong enough games. Now that there is an agreed upon 1.0 OS standard, all sites should move to adopt it in order to make the developer experience more consistent. I also don't recommend that the SNS offer a big open platform since it's really hard to manage thousands of games and their developers without a huge staff – instead, feature a smaller set of games which pay a revenue split in return for the promotion/placement, and then market the hell out of them – the success of Tagged and MyYearbook in following this more focused approach are great examples of this approach and they continue to expand their offerings.
In addition, I realize everyone loves to hate MySpace, but it has significantly improved its product and its developer relations. At Meez, for example, we now have almost 500,000 active users after 6 weeks on MySpace, which was helped significantly by our promotional deal with them, as well as having a great app — so MySpace has again become viable as a good partner. Finally, there are numerous other social networks who will launch gaming solutions in 2010, all working closely with a small set of developers, but they are often still looking for more content partnerships.
What should social game developers with less than 100 employees do? For developers outside of the big 5-10, you really need to give up the FB dream – you're not going to be Zynga or Playdom or Crowd Star. As of today, out of the top 20 games on Facebook, the almost all of them are from 4 developers, with a few remaining outliers, primarily veteran games like Farm Town or single games from massive app providers like Rock You – we're not seeing big breakthrough game start-ups any more because the easy phase is over. The numbers I'm hearing from many talented, but smaller developers are simply horrific in many cases, with customer lifetime values less than $.50 and actual customer lifetimes being less than 30 days – it's especially tough now that the Facebook advertising cost-per-click (CPC) rate has gone up in many cases to above $.50, so the customer acquisition versus revenue calculus just doesn't work anymore.
I'd strongly recommend producing a great OpenSocial version of your game and trying to strike deals with a set of SNS not named Facebook – there are lots of them around the world with 10 million or more monthly unique users, many of whom are going to adopt the social games that are put in front of them if they're good games and if they can play them with their core friends on those smaller networks. There is a theory going around that gaming works best on Facebook because it uses real world profiles, but the data from the other social networks shows that tight relationships can form with only online profiles, so that won't be an issue with gaming. The revenue share idea seems expensive on the surface, but given the resulting increased promotion and reduced competition from other similar games on these sites, it's absolutely worth it, especially versus the increased costs and worsening odds on the Facebook platform.
Facebook is still a world class developer and user platform – but no one can pretend that the landscape hasn't changed in the past tw years. Smart developers and Facebook competitors are moving quickly to launch robust OpenSocial gaming solutions to drive their businesses – otherwise they will just continue to be demolished by Facebook, as we're seeing in many cases around the world.


text:
L'Oreal's Miss Manga Mascara has a slightly wet formula that provides an interesting result. This mascara aims to give you intense, spiky, anime style eyelashes - and it does. Miss Manga does next to nothing when it comes to length, at least on my top lashes (though it makes my lower lashes look extra long). L'Oreal's Voluminous Miss Manga Mascara really thickens the base of the my lashes, while separating the tips in some places, and binding them together in others. Overall, Miss Manga gives the look of chunky, spiky, sometimes clumpy lashes. Not exactly "manga" lashes, but this mascara can built statement lashes in just two coats. L'Oreal's Miss Manga Mascara holds a curl very well. I've had mixed wear with this mascara, for the most part Miss Manga wears well, but I've noticed some flaking from time to time. I haven't been able to put my finger on what causes the occasional poor wear. This mascara removes easily with cleanser or makeup remover.
I like L'Oreal's Voluminous Miss Manga Mascara. This was my first L'Oreal mascara, and now I'm kinda pumped to try more. I'm not opposed to the clumpy lash look, so I like the effect this mascara gives. Those that prefer separated lashes, or a more natural lash look will not like Miss Manga at all. I like the packaging, and the brush, but the bouncy, bendy wand was strange to me. I find myself reaching for Miss Manga quite often - I think I'll end up repurchasing it (an increasingly rare occurrence for me when it comes to mascara). If you want bold, sometimes spidery lashes, L'Oreal's Voluminous Miss Manga Mascara is an affordable choice.
Water, Paraffin, Potassium Cetyl Phosphate, Acrylates Copolymer, Cera Alba (Beeswax), Copernicia Cerifera (Carnauba) Wax, Ethylene/Acrylic Acid Copolymer, Steareth 2, Cetyl Alcohol, Phenoxyethanol, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Acacia Senegal Gum, Ethylenediamine/Stearyl Dimer Dilinoleate Copolymer, Sodium Dehydroacetate, Caprylyl Glycol, Hydrogenated Jojoba Oil, Hydrogenated Palm Oil, Propylene Glycol, Disodium EDTA, Pentaerythrityl Tetraisostearate, Sodium Hyaluronate, 2 Oleamido 1,3 Octadecanediol, Panthenol, Silica, Soluble Collagen, Sodium Chondroitin Sulfate, Atelocollagen, May Contain (+/-):, Iron Oxides (CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499), Titanium Dioxide (CI 77891), Ultramarines (CI 77007), Carmine (CI 75470), Mica
This product was gifted to me.
This product was gifted to me.


text:
TRAVELA Road Trip to Sustainability
4 minute read
There is something so mind-opening, liberating and gratifying about a road trip. And a road trip that leaves as tiny as possible an imprint on our environment is even more inspiring. We sent this couple on a voyage in our Kona electric — out of LA and into the open desert. Our couple found relief, connectedness and a bit more about themselves on this Sustainable Road Trip, and their account was enlightening.
Smog to Solar
A wet and windy winter's day in Los Angeles, and my mind was as crowded as the clouds above the Hollywood sign. It's the season of long lines at gas stations and cash registers. Smog and stress hovered over us. Downtown LA is a beautiful sight — filled with striking architecture and diverse citizens — but today, the hustle of the city left us drained. We needed an escape. We needed to get energized. We gave our Kona electric one single charge — 250 miles, zero emissions.
We drove deep into the desert. We almost zipped past an old, seemingly abandoned gas station but decided to stop in to experience its new purpose. We needed a few supplies for this desert voyage, and The Station in Joshua Tree was the perfect spot to gear up. The Station is a dreamy shop, filled with outdoor gear, vintage goods and a friendly crew. It indeed functioned as a gas station years ago — oh, how times change!
The beautiful thing about the shop is that the staff loves chatting about their products, art, auto, food, design and California culture. We shared laughs with the crew and bought a pair of vintage binoculars; we received a recommendation for a hike in Joshua Tree where the most beautiful jays often appear — Barker Dam.
We left the shop and laughed as we noticed our Kona electric parked against The Station's beautiful, vintage gas pumps.
The pumps were now as dry as the desert sands, which was okay by us. We still had a full charge to burn. No gas needed.
Come for the zucchini coffee cake,
stay for Patti's coffee talk.
We didn't burn fuel when we left The Station,
just a bit of Palo Santo.
We continued down Garnet Road and raised our eyes to another long line. This time, the feeling was sublime, not stressful. I stared at an infinite row of windmills. They rose like monuments in the desert, producing the Coachella Valley's energy as they made their routine revolutions.
I later learned that there are over 4000 separate windmills in the San Bernardino Mountains. And these 4000 simple, beautiful structures provide enough energy to power Palm Springs and the entire Coachella Valley. Energizing. We drove down the valley, and I let my hand ride outside the window, like a wave.
I felt the wind's power. I took a deep breath;
the fresh air whipped across my face. As the sun broke through the clouds, we pulled over. We took it all in.
I raised my head to meet the power of the blazing sun. I recalled that, along our journey, homes, hotels and businesses solar panel-paved roofs. I marveled at the progress we have made in harvesting the elements of the universe. Surrounded by clean energy production and consumption, our place in this landscape just felt right.


text:
Wrought Iron Glass Console Table
₦ 24,500
Item No: 2010
(Made to Order)
Add a contemporary and classic look to your living space with this unique wrought iron end table. You can easily alter the decor of your space by altering the position and angle of the table. The Glass top can be changed to another material if you desire a totally new look.
- Top Material: Glass (42"W x 16"D; 10mm thick glass).
- Base Material: Wrought Iron.
- Finish: Black.
- Hold: Four Metal Holds.
- Overall: 28"H x42"W x 16"D
- Care: Wipe Clean.
- Chat With Us.


text:
Thursday Sampler: Marred by Sue Coletta
October 1, 2015
Linda Pirtle
IN OUR MISSION to connect readers, writers, and books, we are delighted to give you a sneak preview of Marred by talented new author Sue Coletta. Marred is a brilliant and compelling journey through the dark streets of a woman's worst nightmare, and it will be released in early November. The riveting novel can be pre-ordered now from Amazon. Make sure you are one of the first to receive your copy of Marred. Sue Coletta is an author you will be reading for a long time. Her mind, I'm sure, is already churning up a new story guaranteed to keep you in suspense and afraid to face the night alone.
The Story
When a serial killer breaks into the home of bestselling author, Sage Quintano, she barely escapes with her life. Her husband, Niko, a homicide detective, insists they move to rural New Hampshire, where he accepts a position as Grafton County Sheriff. Sage buries secrets from that night—secrets she swears to take to her deathbed.
Three years of anguish and painful memories pass, and a grisly murder case lands on Niko's desk. A strange caller begins tormenting Sage—she can't outrun the past.
When Sage's twin sister suddenly goes missing, Sage searches Niko's case files and discovers similarities to the Boston killer. A sadistic psychopath is preying on innocent women, marring their bodies in unspeakable ways. And now, he has her sister.
Cryptic clues. Hidden messages. Is the killer hinting at his identity? Or is he trying to lure Sage into a deadly trap to end his reign of terror with a matching set of corpses?
The Sampler
Monday, July 17, 2006
1:30 p.m.
I used to believe people were inherently good, if only at their core. I saw the brokenness of the homeless. I respected the overachiever in the football star hoping for Daddy's approval even if he'd never get it. I saw the heart of sinners, the souls of lovers. Shattered dreams of an abandoned child. I saw good in evil, spirit in the unholy. I understood the complexities of love, marriage, life. Hell, I welcomed the challenge. I had hopes, dreams and affirmations. I did.
Then, that all changed. My views shattered, or my eyes finally opened.
That's what Niko said, though devastation also filled his eyes. No longer did he think of me as his optimistic wife who loved life. I missed our blissful marriage. I missed our baby. I missed my blindfold. If only I could put it back on. Most of all, I missed…me.
Living on autopilot was the only way I could survive.
After my third shower of the day, I hobbled down the stairs, clutching a load of laundry. White-hot pain shot to my right knee and folded me in half. The basket of clothes tumbled to the floor—socks, T-shirts, jeans, shorts, and Niko's sheriff's uniform strewn about the living room.
I fell back against the stairs, twined my arms around the railing, and stared at the white lines on my forearms. I straightened, and a thick scar on my jugular tugged at the skin. After three never-ending years, hours and hours of counseling, one small reminder—scars from the knife—and I relived that night in Boston.
The phone startled me when it rang.
I didn't want to answer, but for the Sheriff's wife that wasn't an option. "Hello?"
"Who's this?" A man's voice, distorted, disguised.
"Who's this? You called me."
"I think I have the wrong number."
A dial tone sounded.
That was weird. I shrugged it off and reloaded the clothes in the basket. When I headed down the hall, the phone rang a second time. I'd had it with this guy. "Hello," I answered, firm and harsh.
"Sheriff Quintano, please." Same voice.
"Didn't you just call here?"
"Sheriff Quintano, please."
"He's not home. He's at work. Who is this?"
The line went dead.
"Jerk!" I slammed the handset in the cradle, and a chill sheathed my arms in goose bumps. I'd announced to a stranger that I was alone in the house.
The cordless phone's musical trill resonated through the hall. Ruger and Colt jolted to their paws and took notice. I winced, not wanting to answer.
Third ring.
I rushed over. "I told you he's not home. What do you want? Why are you calling back?"
"Do you want to live forever?"
A cold sweat broke across my back. "What'd you say?" This cannot be happening. Not again. Unless…evil followed us here.
"Do you want to live forever?"
He found me. How? We were so careful. Niko and I hadn't left a forwarding address. Our phone number wasn't listed in the book. Neighbors asked where we were moving, and we refused to disclose any details. If questioned, I said north and left it at that. We escaped clean and faded into obscurity. Yet, he called.
I dropped the handset in the cradle, disconnecting from the past.
Adrenaline masked my pain, and I sprinted from room to room, closed and secured all the windows and double-checked the locks on the front and back doors, bolted upstairs, and pressed my foot on the sliders' security bar. Colt and Ruger watched me zip around the house, not knowing what was wrong. Ruger gave up and laid his head on crossed paws while Colt bounded over and stayed on my heels.
When I returned to the kitchen table, the phone rang again. My gaze locked on the handset, and I froze. Colt's face ping-ponged between me and the phone. He put the pieces together in his mind, trotted over, and knocked the receiver off the cradle, gently clasped the handset in his lips and carried it to me. By using his training to aid me, he was trying to help, but at that moment, it was the last thing I wanted him to do.
I didn't speak.
The man panted like Ruger after an exhausting game of fetch. I slapped a hand over my mouth and held back screams, refusing to give him the satisfaction of terrifying me. I also couldn't hang up. His breath held me hostage. My fingers lost feeling around the handset, knuckles white from lack of blood flow. Unable to move, I was in his thrall.
"Do you want to live forever?"
I gaped left, right. He could be outside my home hiding in the bushes. If I didn't respond, he might come inside. Perhaps he'd stalked me for days, weeks, months. Maybe he'd always been here. Out of reach, in the shadows. Watching. Waiting. Planning.
Why, oh, why was this happening again?
Razor-sharp pain shot to my right knee, ribs, arms, and stomach, his haunting question conjuring the injuries from the fateful night. I cringed. "What do you want?"
His demon-like cackle shot through my core like a poison-tipped arrow.
If only Niko had killed him that night…if his guts had splattered my living room walls, dousing me in his death…if he'd taken his last breath and his evil soul plummeted to hell…perhaps then I could breathe without his ghostly fingers around my throat.
How did he survive?
Niko had emerged outside the sliders and shot through one of the doors. The bullet struck the masked man in the shoulder. Glass shattered everywhere. The dogs barreled inside and over to me, whimpering, licking the blood off my face. They were so preoccupied with tending to my wounds; the intruder got a shot off before he fell.
The bullet struck Niko in the shoulder, and he flew backward and landed in the garden I'd made around the apple tree. It had taken me days to edge the garden in slanted bricks. When Niko fell, those bricks drove into his spine and incapacitated him long enough for the assailant to scramble to his feet and flee.
But not before he hovered over me and offered one last warning. "I'll see you soon, Sage Quintano."
That night he cackled too, as though he foresaw this day. After the attack, I hid for weeks, months. I lost track of how long I made myself a prisoner in my home. January slowed my heart rhythm to a manageable pace. Niko said that was when I healed. Not true. I'd never be the same. He'd stolen my child, my soul, my very being. The person I once was—outgoing, funny, adventurous—no longer existed. With his wrath and venomous, malevolent acts, he'd marred me for life.
For that, he should pay.
Deep in his throat, he chortled, sounding like the devil incarnate.
I bolted into the living room. In the corner by the sofa a grandfather clock ticked, slow and loud like a dying patient's heartbeat. Disconnected from my tormentor, I thumbed the button for a dial tone. Niko's cell rang twice before I hung up. Because I hadn't shared the intimate details of the assault, if I explained how I knew this was the same man, there would be questions. Lots of questions. Questions I was unwilling to answer. If my husband heard the truth, he might leave.
I was trapped. Perfect prey. Nowhere to run; no place left to hide.
Two hours later, I was searching through old records. The moving van we'd rented in Boston, utility shut-off notices, a letter I wrote to the Boston Herald to stop the newspaper—every receipt from the weeks before the move to see if Niko or I had mistakenly given out our new address.
I found nothing.
A hospital bill caught my eye as I loaded the papers back in the box. In the corner of the bill was our phone number. This number. The woman in the billing department had demanded a way to contact us, and as I recovered at home, I overheard Niko rattle off the digits.
He glanced at me and mouthed, "It's fine. Don't worry."
Only now, it wasn't fine. This was how he'd found us. Found me.
Someone knocked at the front door, and Colt and Ruger howled. I whirled around, my heart sinking in my chest.


text:
Elmer's Bar
Bar/Off Site Full Bar Catering
|115 E Clark AveOld Town Orcutt CA, 93455805-934-1664Visit Website
cnagy wine tasting and Nagy Wines
"My goal is to bring the flavors of the vineyard experience directly to you in each glass." Clarissa Nagy
|145 S. Gray Street Suite 103Orcutt CA, 93455805-286-7228Visit Website
Old Town Market
Old Town Market has a reputation for having the best selection of local fine wines. Featuring dozens of local craft and boutique labels comes to the enjoyment of market owner Mark Steller.
|405 East Clark AvenueOld Town Orcutt CA, 93455805-937-5619Visit Website
Santa Barbara County Vintners' Association
Diversity Perfected
|Post Office Box 1558Santa Ynez CA, 93460805-688-0881Visit Website
Core Wine Company
The core of every wine begins in the vineyard.
|105 W Clark Orcutt, CA 93455Old Town Orcutt CA, 93455805-937-1600 Visit Website