The sekrit surprise birthday lunch for beledibabe went off without a hitch.

There were pressies. There was much much food. There was cake.

We all had a blast!

At some point, D, who was official photog, will be sending me photos, so I can post.

Off to nap…all that pasta, and yummy everything else made me sleepy.

darthrami – I have something for you. ::g::

The very happiest of milestone birthdays to the always adorable byob_kenobi!!!!

My mad icon skillz are lagging right now – but name your fandoms and you get 3 icons of your very own from me. (sometime after work today..insomnia only seems to go so far).

to a friend, a fannish enabler, a cohort in crime

Today is beledibabe‘s turn-of-the century mark.

In celebration, these are for you.

…because 50 means getting to ogle the pretty:

…because being a writer at 50 sometimes means you need a new muse:

…because 50 is nothing less than fabulous:

and finally, because 50 means classic beauty in so many ways:

May your day be as fabulous as your are!!!!

A giant BOO and HISS to Sony…first we have the whole DRM thing, which soured me greatly. Okay, I’m prepared to be big about this and forgive them because they backed off and made retribution. Stupid mistake on their part, but still, I have always liked their hardware. Had a Sony VAIO laptop for several years. I’ve always reccomended Sony laptops for folks that want to buy a PC platform.

But now, spending money on Sony–not so much.

I’m reading Gizmodo and ogling all the new gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show, this item caught my eye.

It’s perfect, I think – you can buy e-books, you can download HTML files and PDFs (perfect for reading fic). So I try to go to the Connect Store to see if I can find out more info (e.g., what it’s going to cost, when it will be available, etc.

This is what I get:

Our Apologies

Thank your for your interest in the Connect music store!

Uh, so sorry – I don’t use IE for anything but testing stuff at work. My primary browser on a PC is Firefox. My primary browser on a Mac is Safari. So you won’t let me shop, huh? Well, then SO SORRY back atcha, no Sony products for this techie.

ETA:
This is what Publisher’s Lunch (a daily news e-mail from Publisher’s Weekly has to say):

viggofest, we SO need one of these.

My day so far: busy as all get out, including a 4 hour meeting at client W – good meeting – kicking off a new and fun project.

Got to chat for a brief few minutes with allaboutm_e this a.m. as she checked her AIM connection, other than that – I’ve pretty much been inundated in mundane work stuff.

Good news – next week I’m off to San Antonio to meet/see my Cuban uncle. I leave on Friday the 13th (!!) and return home on Monday the 16th. Quick trip and yay for cheap fares. Got a great deal on Delta for $150 RT. That’s unheard of. I’d have rather gone to Miami to meet my cousins, but it didn’t work out that way. Uncle M will be flying to SA to see my mom and stepdad. He’s my late father’s older brother and he last saw me just before we left Cuba in 1961. Wow.

Behind on LJ, still/again/always, but plan to catch up during the week.

I really didn’t mean to practically disappear for the last few days. I spent a very quiet New Year’s weekend at home, reading, watching SGA episodes and mostly vegging and trying to not think about going back to work today.

I stayed offline most of Sunday and thus am now at skip=160 on f’list posts. EEP!

The good news: I started back to work on A Necessary Evil and am up to 36,500 words at this point – just over a third done on the first draft, but I do have some deliciously evil/tricksy/complex plot/subplot things to come.

Spent a great deal of time thinking this over the past week or so and have made a decision to affect a major secondary character. In order to make the story mean anything, I really need to involve my core group of people more fully. I talked about this with beledibabe and she agrees that it’s a bold move, but it makes sense.

So, that decided, I began to sow the seeds tonight. Got about 1500 words written, polished about 1500 more that I’d started in a separate doc and began to weave in the new subplot.

In all, I’m satisfied.

Now, it’s back to reading LJ and seeing what I’ve missed.

oh yeah, work – it’s back..and I’m really tired. So much for easing back in.