Randonymity

• We’re having a burst of unseasonably warm weather, which we’ve much appreciated. I think it was about 70F warmer this past Tuesday than the previous one! Of course, there’s still a decent chance we’ll have more winter.
• Art Materials in Uptown Minneapolis doesn’t mess around:

Contest(s)

• Blodeuedd’s giving away an ebook copy of The Soft Whisper of Dreams by Christina Courtenay. Closes March 14.
• Blodeuedd’s also giving away an ebook copy of The Legend of the Gypsy Hawk by Sally Malcolm. Closes March 18.

Bookity

• New releases: Fiction Vixen (UF/romance)
• Book and publishing news from Dear Author.
• RIP, Sir Terry Pratchett. Some words from his friend, Neil Gaiman. Heidi Cullinan on the impact Terry Pratchett has had on her life and writing. xkcd about Terry Pratchett (hover cursor/long-press for additional text).
• Dear Author takes a look at ebook prices after all the price-fixing lawsuits and such have shaken out.
• On the value of copy editing. (via An American Editor)
• A short film about writing “your vision or what everyone else wants you to write”.
• 25 Australian slang terms.
• Smart Bitches discovered that clip bookmarks improve the look of headless men on book covers.

Do, Make, Think, Learn

• “Think about ‘sending out ships’ when doing one new, scary thing“. (Obviously the person who wrote that headline has never played Civilization II and seen the dreaded “Your trireme went too far from the shore and has been lost at sea” message…)
• “How the Civil War broke up the Camel Corps“.
• Our very connected world, courtesy of NASA.
• 20 best science photos of 2015 thus far.
• Summer photos from the Arctic Circle.
• “8 of history’s greatest cat ladies“.
• “The moral philosophy of Calvin and Hobbes“.
• What’s the average temperature of the Earth’s surface water?

Cookity

• Kahlua crunch cake. (via orannia)
• All sorts of coffee cocktails.
• Vegetarian paella with red peppers and chickpeas.
• Mushroom asparagus frittata.
• Roasted cauliflower, chickpeas, and harissa. (via The Kitchn)

Gluten Free

• Dairy-free peanut butter cake with peanut butter frosting and chocolate ganache. (via maderr)
• Brownie butter cake.
• Quinoa chicken curry bowls. (via The Kitchn)
• Spaghetti squash pad thai.
• Irish soda bread.
• Cinnamon swirl quick bread.

Crafty

• Knitting linkity from kmkat.

Cool

• Wisconsin Icehenge.
• This photo of downtown Minneapolis was taken from near where I live.
• Old hubcaps turned into animal sculptures. (via toewses)
• Human body as transit map. (via habbity)
• Hanging Scrabble lights.
• Pop-up book with a tiny working planetarium.
• LEGO women of the Supreme Court.
• Simpsons’ LEGO Kwik-E-Mart.
• Linkity from kmkat.

Cool or Wha…?

• Mashup of The Princess Bride and Game of Thrones.
• Emergency nap kit for work.
• Archeologists dug up a 250-year old pretzel.
• Japanese candy-powered rocket.
• Windows 95 spoof called Windows 93.

Wha…?

• An American Hockey League fight “depicted by taxidermied squirrels”. (Update: Someone bought it!)
• Punching bag hole punch.
• Round wooden smartphone.
• Birthday cake flavored… wine.
• “Baseball team combines Krispy Kreme doughnut, hot dog, bacon, and jelly to create our nightmare“.
• Florida officials have been told not to use the words “climate change”, “global warming”, or “sustainability”.

LOL

• “32 moments in history (as covered by the modern media)“. (via wilwheaton)
• Cake Wrecks. Cake Wrecks Barbie-style.

Teh Cute

• Baby goat! Sheep and lambs! Kitten! Mountain lions (some gore involved)!

Reading Update
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Very good urban fantasy about a Londoner whose act of compassion slips him from his world down between the cracks to the dark and dangerous world of London Below.
Unbound (Ex Libris #3) by Jim C Hines. Pretty good continuation of this contemporary fantasy series – at least this one didn’t end on a near-cliffie like the previous book.
The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right Size by Julia Cameron. The book’s basic concept is using writing as a sort of mindfulness meditation to help you discover productive and unproductive patterns in your life, diet, etc. While I found the chapter on Morning Pages to be quite useful, as well as some tidbits from other chapters, overall I kept getting hung up on two things. First, the author isn’t a therapist, doctor, dietician, etc, although she did provide common sense advice: be more aware of what and why you eat, eat healthy things, add exercise to your life. Second, many parts of the book seemed triggery, from the perspective of someone who went through (successful) eating disorder treatment 25 years ago. When I realized that, I skimmed the rest, then put the book away.

“Basking. Go away, please.” -Chaos and Mayhem