CoffeeBear.net » Snow

Week 08: Unnecessary Freezing of Water

Mark — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:52:49 +0000

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.

– Carl Reiner

I’m really not doing well at keeping up with Project52, but at least this week I’ve got a couple of extra images to make up for the weeks I’ve missed.

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

– Abraham Cahan

And finally Winter, with its bitin’, whinin’ wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow.

– Roy Bean

Week 08: Unnecessary Freezing of Water © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Bloody Weather

Mark — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 19:26:28 +0000

We got hit with a blizzard warning for the weekend and last night things were not looking pretty out the windows. Then about 6:30 PM, the power went out. Fortunately, our house has a fireplace so we were able to stay warm until the power came back on around 1:00 AM this morning. We trooped up to bed, got a few hours rest and then went outside to shovel the sidewalks. *blech* Days like today make me hate having a corner lot (twice the sidewalks to shovel). The sidewalks had 4 layers on them: snow, slush, ice and water. It made shovelling the walk even more hellish than usual. Fortunately we have kind neighbors who lent us their snowblower which got rid of the snow and some of the slush. But that left us with plenty of ice and water. A few hours of backbreaking labor later, we had the sidewalks as clean we were going to get them and came back inside. Gack. You have to love living here; otherwise you go insane. I have the pleasant advantage of not loving it, but keeping my sanity locked in a box so I never lose it. :p

Bloody Weather © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

First REAL Snow

Mark — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 06:29:30 +0000

We’re getting our first real snow of the season. We’ve had a few clouds piss some snow down on us twice before. But it wasn’t hard enough to do more than pepper the ground and that was gone in hours. Tonight’s snow storm is expected to leave a good couple inches on the ground and looking out the window it looks so peaceful. Come morning though, the snow will have been disturbed by those unfortunately souls who have to be at work before I do. Plus I’ll have to clear the snow from my car which never puts me in a good mood. *sigh*

First REAL Snow © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Bah Humbug!

Mark — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 21:27:17 +0000

It was raining when I went home for lunch today. When I left to head back to the office; the rain was mixed with snow. *blech* It’s still too warm out for the snow to do anything except melt the moment it touches down, but it’s a sign that we’ve truly moved into Winter. Bah humbug!

Bah Humbug! © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Review: Threads of Malice

Mark — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:04:01 +0000

Threads of Malice
My rating: 4 out of 5.

I read Threads of Malice last week¹ and wowsers! If you’ve read Ghosts in the Snow then you need to be warned before reading Threads that Ghosts is a much lighter book than Threads. The villian in Threads is far more evil than the one in Ghosts and this gives the book a much darker tone. Still with that being said, Threads is a great read.

This time around Mrs. Jones takes us out of the castle and up into The Reach. Young boys have been disappearing throughout the region for the past couple of years. When Dubric arrives in the area; he’s greeted by dozens of ghosts all at once. It’s quite the unexpected & draining experience for him. Additionally, we get to see Dien’s family and Lars learns what real family life is like.

I don’t really know what else about the story I could tell you without giving away either the mystery or the good non-mystery bits. This is a problem that I’m not the only one has. I say this because at ICON this past weekend, I attended a panel where Mrs. Jones read some passages from Threads; as well as a few pages from her third Dubric book². One of the passages she read from Threads was included one of my favorite scenes in the book, though it turns out we visualized it somewhat differently. The scene takes place as Lars along with 2 of Dien’s daugthers are walking into town to buy some supplies³.

He hurried after them, their names hovering in his throat, but he halted after a few steps. Aly climbed onto the head of a massive stone rabbit, then slid down its back, laughing all the while. Jess leaned against it, her hand on its nose, regarding him with mirthful eyes.
“Lars, Hargrove, I’d like to introduce you to your geandfather’s rabbit.” She bowed with a flourish and grinned at him.

That’s just a fragment of the scene, but it’s the important part to me. When I first read this scene, my mind drew up a picture of a rabbit sitting up on its hindlegs wearing a waistcoat (like something you’d expect from Alice in Wonderland). The rabbit was made of a “mostly” white marble, with bits of grey scattered about here & there. The weather had caused a small crack to form near the top of the rabbit’s head, just above the left eye. Some moss had begun to grow in that crack, looking something like a scar and giving the rabbit a certain roguish appeal. From speaking to Mrs. Jones at ICON, I found out she had imagined the stone rabbit looking like a rabbit you’d see in nature. Ok, so maybe it’s not all that important but I found the scene very endearing.

I’m feeling a bit out of it; so I’m going to wrap this review up. The book was excellent but didn’t quite grip me like Ghosts had. On the other hand, the intense evil and darkness in this book was somewhat balanced out with Lars getting his first real taste of what family life is like. It’s a highly enjoyable read and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to any adult readers⁴. Mrs Jones, good job and I look forward to the next book!

¹ Since then I’ve read through Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters and Witches Abroad. I just didn’t feel like writing up reviews for those books.
² Currently, the third book is titled “Valley of the Soul”.
³ Taken from pages 144–145 of Threads of Malice.
⁴ Given the forms that the evil takes in this book; I would not recommend this for younger readers.

Review: Threads of Malice © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Why I Read?

Mark — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 16:45:53 +0000

A friend of mine recently asked if other people had similar reactions when reading a good book. Since this site has been heavier on the brainless fluff of late; I decided to answer the question here rather than in her comments.

When I’ve got a really good book in my paws, — mind you this is only for a REALLY GOOD book! — I’ll start reading and won’t notice the passage of time until either:
A. My bloodsugar has dropped from not eating in 8 hours.
B. It’s suddenly four in the morning and my eyes are tired so the words on the page start looking insanely small.

With a book that catches me like that, my head is totally in the book. People in real life can try talking to me, but they’ll get grunts for answers (at best). When my favorite character¹ is happy, I’m happy. When they’re running through forests; I can hear leaves rustling and feel the branches drag across my face as I dash through the trees.

The last time I really felt this way about a book was when I first read the book that I’m currently reading, Ghosts in the Snow by Tamara Siler Jones. A friend of ours had gotten her hands on an early (review?) copy of the book and recommended it to my wife & I. Ariesna sat down and read the entire book while we were at the friend’s house that night. I think I managed to wait until we bought a copy of our own to read it, but once I did I started to get really angry.

I need to pause a moment here to explain about how I generally enjoy my entertainments. If the book/movie/whatever has even a reasonably decent story; then I’ll suspend my disbelief and just enjoy it without analyzing it. This is particularly true on my first experience with the book/movie/whatever.

And what exactly does that have to do with getting angry while reading Ghosts in the Snow? Ghosts is a mystery story with a fantasical setting and I was getting attached to one of the characters. This character happened to be a suspect in multiple murders and some of the clues in the book seemed to be pointing to him being the killer. The thought of this being true was making me too angry to continue reading. Eventually, I had to ask my wife if he was the killer because I was so upset about it that I wouldn’t be able to finish the book if he was. She told me he wasn’t but not who the killer was (at my request) and I was able to finish the book.

It’s for moments like those that I read.

¹ This will usually be a supporting character. Why? Because the main characters tend to get all the glory while somebody else is doing more to accomplish the goal (e.g. Sam vs. Frodo).

Why I Read? © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Dear Mr. S. Bot

Mark — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 23:18:05 +0000

Dear Mr. S. Bot,

Mr. S. Bot, do you mind if I call you Spam? No? Good. I thought I would take a moment to let you know this blog uses comment moderation to prevent you from ever appearing on its pages. Additionally, I use a variety of plugins to prevent you from even showing up in my moderation queue. Unfortunately, you’ve managed to find a few ways to sneak past those plugins so I actually have to do something about you. I’d rather not have to do that and since you are never going to be allowed to display any information on this blog or link to your own sites from it; please give it up and go bother somebody else.

Sincerely,
Mark

P.S. I know the odds of this actually cutting back on the flow of spam to this site are less then the odds of me throwing a snowball from my office parking lot at the sun and hitting it, but it’s nice to dream. :)

Lovely Weather

Mark — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 03:14:52 +0000

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned previously, I live in Iowa. The last couple of years we’ve had cold winters but haven’t really had that much snow. Apparently, Mother Nature was feeling it’s time to rectify that situation and we’ve been having quite the snowstorm. Seeing how I like taking pictures and dislike getting cold; here’s a quick shot I took out my bedroom window. I apologize for the grainess of the image, but I took the picture during my lunch hour and I didn’t have enough time to try removing the window screen before taking it. That and I didn’t want to stand around outside in the cold taking photos; unlike some people I’m not all that eager to suffer for my art. :D

Review: Just A Geek

Mark — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 05:04:20 +0000

On the advice of a friend (Pukka), a while back I began to read Wil Wheaton’s blog. Though I’d seen Stand By Me and Toy Soldiers, my firmest memories of Mr. Wheaton were of Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was one of the few sci-fi shows that my parents were willing to watch and I have to admit while I enjoyed parts of that show (Picard rocks!); I hated Wesley. He always struck me as this smart ass; who’d lucked out his way into working on a starship. Of course, probably what really irked me about it was that it was him and not ME! Even so, that initially made me reluctant to visit the blog, but Pukka has a habit of sending me interesting links. Since he’s rarely wrong (unless I’ve already seen what he’s sent); I checked out Mr. Wheaton’s site and have been faithful reader ever since. Then back when I ordered my copy of Ghosts in the Snow from Amazon.com; I had one of my oddly, cheap moments.

Ghosts didn’t cost enough for free shipping and I didn’t want to pay the shipping charges for 1 book. My solution? Order enough books to get the free shipping; I did warn you that it was an oddly, cheap moment. The books arrived in due course and I read Ghosts first (no offence, Will but that was what I was really after). Once I’d finished Ghosts; I picked up Just A Geek and started to read. This isn’t my normal type of reading; generally I pick up some fiction and this is autobiographical. Just A Geek is a something of a collection of entries that Mr. Wheaton has made on his site, but at the same time it’s more than that. I don’t really know how to describe it, but holding the book in my hand and reading of Mr. Wheaton’s life experiences just feels much more intensely personal than reading it online. Reading this book takes you on an journey inside the life of this geeky guy who’s struggled to find work as an actor and now is a devoted father¹ who writes a very good book.

Again, this is another book that I’d highly recommend (5 out of 5 stars) for anybody to read, but especially if you remember sitting down once a week to see what sort of trouble Wesley could get into this week.

¹ Yes, I know technically it’s step-father but the obvious pride & affection that Mr. Wheaton feels for his kids overrules any such stupid technicalities and makes his a “real dad”.

Review: Ghosts in the Snow

Mark — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 04:39:23 +0000

A while back on the advice of AWelkin, I picked up a copy of Ghosts in the Snow. I read it, loved it, got distracted and never wrote up any kind of review. A couple of weeks later, I read again. I still loved it but I still didn’t write up a review of it. Sometimes, life just works against you. *sigh*

I think the best description of Ghosts in the Snow, by Tamara Siler Jones, that I’ve heard is “forensic fantasy”. It’s got ghosts, magical items, foreign religions and gruesome murders. Dubric Bryerly is the Castellan¹ of Castle Faldorrah and it is his duty to keep the peace. Recently, a serial killer has been stalking serving maids and killing them, one after another. The troubling part for everyone is that no one has seen the killer. The real trouble for Dubric is the ghosts of the slain are haunting him.

Unlike many of the fantasy authors that I’ve read; Ms. Jones doesn’t try to beat it into your skull that this is a fantasy novel. Though there are ghosts and magic, these are presented more as facts of life than as extraordinary things that you must pay attention to. I find this method to be both a more realistic² & a more enjoyable approach. But it’s more than just her approach to describing the fantasy elements that makes me really enjoy Ms. Jones book. It’s the wonderful characters.

Dubric: a combination of kindly old uncle, drill sergant & private eye.
Dien: Dubric’s right-hand man. A bit of a bruiser, but with a big heart
Nella: An innocent trapped in the middle of the vicious murders
Lars: The unwanted son of a nobleman who works for Dubric and strives to make his family proud.

It’s an amazing piece of work and I give it 5 out of 5 stars. I highly recommend you pick it up and read it; preferably leaving your weekend free, so you can finish it in one sitting.

¹ Dictionary.com defined castellan as “The keeper or governor of a castle.” For readers of Ghosts in the Snow, it’s better to think of it as chief of police combined with head detective.
² Though I’m not entirely sure that it is proper to call an approach to writing fantasy,“realistic”.