A while ago I happened to read Dressing Up Tomato Tarts from Food and Paper. It mentioned the interesting idea of using an orange flavor to add zest to tomato:

Good recipes tend to be well accessorized, too. A drizzle of fruity olive oil, a generous pinch of sea salt, a scattering of basil leaves…these are tried and true ways to freshen up many a dish, especially one made of a pastry crust filled with a cheese custard and topped with fresh tomatoes. I’ve done it before and I’d do it again. But I’m not sure I’d do it again any time soon without adding a certain accessory I picked up from Mr. Tyler Florence. Orange zest. And not just a little. A whole orange’s worth. I never knew it before, but orange zest and tomatoes make a chic ensemble.

That little tip stuck with me, apparently, when I ad-libbed the following aside to a quick meal:

Ingredients

• One large seedless cucumber, peeled and sliced
• A half-pint of grape tomatoes, washed and halved
• A drizzle of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon sugar, honey, or other liquid sweetener (such as brown rice syrup or agave nectar)
• 2 tablespoons Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar (or other orangey vinegar)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients and allow to sit for a few minutes; stir a few times to dissolve the sugar or sweetener. Serve.

This doesn’t make a lot—maybe two decent-sized side salads or three to four small servings. It has a wonderful sharp, colorful, sweet, tangy taste, and it looks nice too.

Upcoming book reviews:

• “The EatingWell Diet,” Dr. Jean Harvey-Berino, Ph.D., R.D.
• “Deep Fathom,” James Rollins
• “A World of Dumplings,” Brian Yarvin
• “Fondue,” Lenny Rice & Brigid Callinan

I’ve also found a good handful of book review blogs to add to the blogroll over at Errant Dreams Reviews so you’ll have more sources of good reviews!

In a few years of blogging I’ve never done a meme, but what the heck. I got tagged (oops, twice!—guess I’ll have to do a pseudo-merge), and I’ll bite. Apparently this one goes as such:

Post the list of links and quotes below, put a star next to those you like, and add your own quote and link to the bottom of the list.

The quote’s content? Your tip on blogging and/or writing in general. That’s the theme for this one. Afterwards, tag 5 more people you know that haven’t contributed yet, and the circle continues…

I’m not sure how much meme’ing most of the folks I know do, but I’ll tag a few and they can decide if they feel like joining in.

1. Look, read, and learn. ****
-http://www.neonscent.com

2. Be EXCELLENT to each other. *
-http://www.bushmackel.com

3. Don’t let money change ya! *
-http://www.therandomforest.info

4. Always reply to your comments. ******
-http://chattiekat.com

5. Link liberally — it keeps you and your friends afloat in the Sea of Technorati. *
-http://chipsquips.com

6. Don’t give up - persistance is fertile. ****
-http://www.velcro-city.co.uk

7. Give link credit where credit is due. ****
-http://www.sfsignal.com

8. Pictures say a thousand words and can usually add to any post.***
-http://scifichick.com

9. Keep writing, no matter what, and the quality will follow. ***
-http://www.critical-hits.com/

10. Stay out of your comfort zone. Take risks, don’t be afraid to look dumb.**
-http://ambernight.org

11. Keep to a schedule. People return to blogs when they know they will find something new.*
-http://westkarana.com

12. Write something, ANYTHING, everyday. The moment you slip into a no writing funk, it becomes very hard to get out of it.*
-http://bildos.blogspot.com

13. Be thorough but brief. Some of us read a lot of blogs, and some of us read them between tasks at work or home.*
- http://hallower1980.blogspot.com/

14. Follow your heart. Even if folks say no one else will care about your passion(s), do it anyway.
-http://www.errantdreams.com/thoughts/

My contribution is really my way of justifying the fact that my blog covers all sorts of irrelevant topics when everyone else says you should cover just one. I blame the fact that I have the attention span of a flea on crack, and just can’t choose between my passions (or upkeep that many separate blogs).

So, people to tag. Hrm. Well, there’s Scott, of course; I was going to tag Aaron, but he tagged me first, so my next is Chessack (of course he’s in the process of moving so he probably won’t read this for weeks!); I’ll try Bev, although I doubt she’ll participate; and, finally, Jeffrey (can I get my husband to sit still long enough to participate in a meme? Probably not, but it’ll be an entertaining experiment!). Oh, and—an open tag to whoever else feels like participating!

Lawful Evil

I happened to stumble across Steve Pavlina’s blog post on Contributing through Your Career. His basic thesis is that most people feel driven to make some sort of difference in the world, and that if you do it on the side instead of through your career, it isn’t as fulfilling as it might be otherwise. I think he does have a point.

I have in times past struggled with the idea that I’d like to do something more… not ‘important’—that’s not really the right word. ‘Worthwhile’ is probably the right word. Eventually I came to a couple of realizations. One is that all of the information I put online for folks to help them be more creative (reviews of writers’ books and cookbooks, writers’ exercises, articles on writing and roleplaying, etc.) is worthwhile. So is making T-shirts. Things that help others do what they love, or that help make others happy, are worthwhile, even if they don’t involve feeding the world’s homeless or bringing about world peace. Someone has to make the little happinesses come about, and that’s okay.

The other realization is that it’s okay to say that reviewing books and designing T-shirts are my jobs. Sure, I don’t make a lot of money at them, and sometimes folks look at me like, “you call that a job?” but the fact remains that I put a lot of hard work in and just because I enjoy that work doesn’t make it a hobby rather than a job. And once I came to accept that these were my jobs, and not a hobby masquerading as a job, I became much more contented with them and far less restless. I’ve had far fewer feelings about what I “should” be doing, and can settle down to the far more enjoyable task of simply getting my job done!

So when you’re casting about for something to do that seems worthwhile, make sure you aren’t overlooking what you’re already doing. If you need something new by all means go for it—but sometimes you just need to come to terms with what you already love, even if you don’t realize it yet.

Needs More Coffee

I’ve blogged before about how much my old doctor sucked, and how much I needed to get off of my ass and find a new one. Well, I finally did it. I started out looking up a couple of clinics that I knew were close to home. I found that one was covered by my insurance, and happened to stumble across an online review saying glowing things about it. I also saw by the sign that it had a good handful of providers there, so I knew there’d be a few to choose from.

I still have to have my records sent to them and all that, but I needed to go see a doctor this week for a possible infection, so in I went this morning. The lady I saw apologized for being late—10 minutes late. This is after my last experience waiting 4.5 hours in a waiting room. Immediately I decided I was kindly disposed toward her.

The office was clearly very popular. I had a 7 am appointment (I love that they open that early!) and there was already a handful of patients present at opening. All the receptionists and nurses were actually smiling and friendly at that hour, which is a great sign. I knew they actually had some money invested in the place when I noted that instead of photocopying my insurance card and having me manually fill out all the information for it, they just scanned it in, much like the local hospital does.

That was nothing compared to the actual doctor visit, however. My doctor didn’t write anything down—she had a laptop for taking notes. She had a PDA with which she double-checked the prescriptions she was about to write me against my medications, and yes, she bothered to do that double-check to guard against unwanted interactions. She filled out my prescriptions on the laptop and just had them printed at the front desk for me to take with me. Clearly they have a nice budget and a willingness to make use of technology to make their work faster, easier, and more effective.

Best of all, though, she was a very cool doctor. She was nice and knowledgeable, and she listened. She seemed to be more up on things like allergic reactions (very important to me!) than previous doctors I’ve had. So now I have an antibiotic prescription to fill, and more importantly, I finally have a good doctor!

Unfortunately when I asked her if she could recommend a decent psychiatrist in the area, however—something no one has been able to do so far, since apparently they generally suck here—she just made a face and said that no, she didn’t know of any good ones. So apparently that’ll be a harder problem to solve. Still, one at a time. If I can find a good doctor, then I can find a good psychiatrist. It’s just a matter of time.

…OMG, I’m turning into an optimist!

Healthy Food doesn’t have to suck

Time to pass on a fun link: Wil Wheaton’s Sci-Fi Guilty Pleasures of the 80s. I love Wil’s writing, and since I grew up in the 80s I remember each and every one of these movies with, yes, that sense of guilty pleasure. Scanners is my favorite on that list, and of course I can’t help being disappointed that The Last Starfighter only got an honorable mention. However, Wil says if there’s a good response he’ll do more of these, so read & respond! I want more.

Edit: Apologies to folks waiting for return emails from me. I think the Medrol did the steroid thing of supressing my immune system enough that I developed an infection, so I feel pretty cruddy and have a doctors’ appt. tomorrow, and really am not accomplishing much. Hopefully they can make it all better, with as few antibiotic side effects as possible. Yes, this is an appt. with a new doctor, not that crappy old one.

Okay, I just want to make it clear that the following design is the doing of our business partner, and NOT MY FAULT:

He also sent me a whole list of alignment variation ideas to play around with this morning, so I have enough new designs to keep me busy for months. I’m thinking that you know someone’s been in the military too long when they start using PowerPoint as a means to send you T-shirt ideas!

I couldn’t help extrapolating a weird combination of the recent world-building articles and some of my most recent book reviews into Artisans in World-Building—today’s writers’ exercise.

Anyway, off to read more review bookage with me. I’m a little behind where I’d like to be on my current book.

This morning we debut the first article in a new series: An Interesting Nexus, a peek inside the head of our dear friend and business partner (under the pen name of Jervis Pax) as he pieces together bits of his own long-time campaign world. The flavor text is hardly just flavor—he truly is off in Afghanistan emailing us these things as a distraction from very real worries about getting shot out of the sky, so please keep a few well-wishes in mind for him and his family. This is a bit different from our usual style, which is very cool, and I found it really drew me in; I look forward to seeing the rest of what he sends us.

I’m also delighted to find that Photoshop is a far better tool for t-shirt designs than GIMP, particularly running on my new laptop, which is much faster than the old one. I started a new series of designs as a means of playing around with Photoshop: alignments and variations. The first three are up, but there are definitely more to come.

Lawful Neutral

Calories. The bane of my existence. I’m currently reading “The EatingWell Diet” for review; it’s a nutritionist’s guide to changing your eating habits long-term so that you can get healthy and stay healthy. One of the early things you do is calculate the number of calories you have to consume to maintain your current weight, decide whether you want to try to lose one or two pounds per week, and thus cut 500 or 1000 calories from that maintenance amount, as long as you don’t dip below 1200 calories per day. Of course at my height (did I mention I’m really short?) I had to round up to 1200 calories, naturally.

The book has you start out just tracking what you currently eat, because it’s really handy to see how much you actually take in, and just knowing that can often lead you to start changing your eating habits. I have to admit, I feel quite a bit of dismay to discover that, even eating healthy foods, it’s really easy to hit 1200 calories by early afternoon. Of course, there’s a reason for this—if you aren’t regularly exercising, you’re almost guaranteed to gain weight. And by exercising you can, of course, increase the number of calories you’re allowed to have each day. I’ll give it this—it gives one quite a bit of incentive to get out and get that exercise when you see those totals.

I am still glad that I read about the South Beach Diet, even though long-term it didn’t work out; it taught me a lot about the various types of fats and grains, and although my calorie intake still sucks, it did increase the quality of those calories, which is a first step in the right direction.

Anyway, back to reading that book with me. Coming soon: that review; the start of a new and unusual world-building article series from our business partner; and more T-shirt designs—I’m due to get a copy of Photoshop delivered today!

I have a feeling everyone else has already seen this. But just in case, here’s a link for you today: A Gamers’ Manifesto. It’s the most hysterical AND accurate screed I’ve ever seen about the state of computer gaming. I have a lot of favorite quotes from it, so it’s hard to choose just one, but here you go:

And this is years after analysts told developers that women would happily play games if they didn’t feel so objectified by them, and several decades past the point where they should have even needed to be told that. Have you guys ever met a woman? Then why don’t you try making just a few games that don’t play off of a 14 year-old male’s idea of womanhood on the apparent hope that he’ll play the game one-handed?

Anyway, that’s pretty much it for today. I need to do some straightening up so my mother doesn’t drop dead of horror (I almost said shock, but that would be the result if the place were spotless) when she visits for the weekend, and I have some more review-book-reading to do.

Edit: Whoops! I almost forgot to proudly pimp my husband’s new article: Case Study in Stealing from History, an article on world-building for roleplaying games. Go read it! I may be biased, but it’s hands-down the best starting-from-scratch world-building article I’ve ever read.

Welcome to my ignore list

I haven’t posted about LotRO for a while, so it’s time for another round-up of thoughts on that game. On the one hand, I don’t tend to play the game for hours on end the way I used to with Warcraft. On the other hand, I think that’s mostly because I have other things to do these days. I’m almost always working on things that are in some way related to the website and my reviewing.

I find LotRO to be a more relaxed experience than Warcraft. There are more frequent towns and stablemasters, so it’s easier to just play for a little while and have some fun without needing to invest a huge amount of effort at once. Every time I think of playing Warcraft again I think of how much effort it would take just to get to the area of my next quest and try to finish it that I end up not bothering; now that I’m happy to be spending the majority of my time on other things, I’d much rather play a more relaxed game where I can easily log in, wrap up a few quests, and log off again.

It isn’t that the quests are somehow fundamentally easier, but that there are more of them. If you want to advance in Warcraft—particularly if you tend to solo—you need to do pretty much all of the quests, and that means often traveling well out of your way to get the next stage accomplished before you can move on. With LotRO, I find I can always find a deed to work on or a quest to accomplish that suits my level and won’t take a serious investment of time and effort, if that’s what I’m looking for. There’s a ton of fellowship quests available if you want a greater challenge, but LotRO makes it much easier than Warcraft to subsist on other quests should you so desire simply because there are so many. Occasionally you need to do some traveling, sure, but you don’t have nearly the preponderance of “FedEx” quests as Warcraft, and most of them are meant to introduce you to a new area and can be batched.

This isn’t the only reason I prefer LotRO to Warcraft right now (the crafting system is another reason, but I’ll talk more about that once I’ve explored the further reaches of it some more), but it’s definitely a big one.

I do have to say that I was wrong when I initially said that the game seemed less immersive, and the characters more androgynous and obviously computer-generated. I think it was just that I was used to WoW’s cartoonish style. Now that I’ve gotten used to LotRO’s style I actually quite like it, and find the more “realistic” swaths of grass and such to be more immersive than Warcraft’s style.

This is my ALT