Hooh boy, what a crazy, busy coupla days! We got slapped with over an inch of ice on Wednesday afternoon -- luckily Elizabeth and I rode together over to Chapel Hill that day, and we basically drove back home about ten minutes ahead of the storm (we stopped for lunch and it caught up to us, as it started snowing and then quickly turned to freezing rain).

Here in Raleigh, snow or ice, or both, shuts the city down -- we're just not equipped for it. But the worst was the ice this time around -- it snapped trees, which fell on power lines, and about 500,000 houses lost power. And of course, we had the two coldest nights Wednesday and Thursday. Elizabeth and I hung out as long as we could at home, but when our fake-wood logs ran out, we went over to her parents' house. They got power back on Thursday, and we got ours late Friday.

Losing power really makes you appreciate how EASY we have it here in America. People live without power EVERY DAMN DAY in other parts of the world. And in places where it gets much colder than 20 degrees Fahrenheit. The upside is that I got a lot of reading done, and some of it even by firelight. Brr...

So we survived the ice storm, which the local electricity company claimed was the worst-ever disaster they'd seen, even worse than hurricanes Hugo of Fran. And as a result of the power, I'm WAY behind on all my journal reading and web surfing! What a tragedy, man. Had to spend a couple hours today getting caught up.

But I'm getting ahead of myself -- today was the LAST DAY of the paper route! Elizabeth got up with me at 3 a.m., darling wonderful angel that she is, risking seasickness and tendonitis to bag the massive 20-lb. papers for me so I could toss them out the window. And now we're DONE with it. So glad. So glad.

Now I must get some work done. My contract tech writing project was supposed to be done on Friday, but due to the power outage I'm behind. I'd love to finish it up today and tomorrow and be done, so I have basically the rest of the month to finish up MY writing -- the goal is to finish at least one, if not both of my current novels-in-progress, along with the short story I've been muddling over the past few weeks.

In parting, I wanted to leave you with some of the fruits of my websurfing labor, the first three all with a Lord of the Rings theme, in honor of the second installment opening in a week and a half:

First, check out a cool article about how they did the special effects for the battles in "The Two Towers" (thanks for the link goes to Toby B).

Then there's the incredible rapping of B-Dil and Q-Beam, a.k.a. The Lords of the Rhymes ("straight outta Hobbiton!") -- click on a link to hear their hilarious and somehow cool self-titled first song (big thanks to Jed H for this link)!!

You may want to view Leonard Nimoy's "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" first. (Click the "this movie" link.) View and listen at your own risk... (the Lords of the Rhymes sample a bit of this... ah, "song").

And finally, I want to urge all of you who like excellent fiction, as well as some great poetry, articles, art, reviews, commentary, and more, to DONATE to Strange Horizons for their fund drive. The magazine is free, but to me it's worth plunking down a little cash as a "subscription." Please give what you can, if you can. The SF/F industry needs quality markets like this one, and you can always depend on hours of quality reading every week at Strange Horizons.

And yes, in the interest of complete disclosure, I've published three stories there, as well as a review or two. But don't hold that against 'em! ;)

Now Playing:
"Live at Luther College," Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds

Now Reading:
stories by Cup-A-Prose writers; Echo and Narcissus, Mark Siegel; The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, Tim Pratt

Stories out to Publishers:
20