IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

In a desire to stop drunk driving this weekend to prevent as many fatalities as possible in Harris county..the Sheriffs office, The constables office, HPD and fort bend cops are going to be out en masse this weekend trolling for drunks. Nothing really new there. Here's what is new...if they pull you over for suspicion of DUI they're going to ask you for a blood sample..if you refuse, your taken to an 'intake center' where they have a nurse on standby waiting for the warrant which a couple of judges that will be on standby will sign and fax to the intake center.....does anybody else have a problem with this? I do.

It was a blurb on some the local news stations yesterday. I'll see if I can't find you the link later..but right now not seeing it on my local fox or the paper.

*puter screen acting up...time to go for a while. I need breakfast anyway. :)*

A good thing?

http://news.yahoo.com:80/s/ap/20080703/ap_on_re_us/four_day_workweek

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"I'm thrilled," said Rose Kenworthy, 58, an executive secretary at the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. "Now I can do anything I want. I can have lunch with my friends, spend time with my grandchildren or just chill out."
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uhhh you couldn't do that BEFORE bird brain? Riiiiiiggghhht.


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Turning off the lights, the heat and the air conditioning on Fridays in 1,000 of 3,000 government buildings will save about $3 million a year out of a state budget of $11 billion, according to the governor's spokeswoman
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3 million dollars? Out of a budget of 11 BILLION? yeah now THERE's a cost savings. Chump change. *headshake* Here's something else they probably neglected to pay attention to. This means that the work day starts an hour earlier and ends an hour later everyday. Meaning [depending on how far each persons actual commute is] they have to get up at LEAST an hour earlier each day and its at LEAST an hour earlier before they can relax. Which means...your a HELL of a lot more tired when you go to bed and when you get up in the morning because odds are you're getting less sleep. Cost of the tiredness? People will be more prone to being sick. Some people [particularly some of the elderly] will be out sick and the cost of the insurance will go up.

Yep that there 4day work week is just a GRAND idear.

*re the less sleep. aint puppies a grand thing...mine decided it was time to get up at 0500 this morning. to qoute Robin williams "whats the 0 stand for? Oh my god its early."*

I just had one of those “Oh god, I’ve lost it all,” moments, when my writing computer sort of took a breath on start-up, and quietly shut down again.

It booted properly the second time–and, in fact, I’d have lost maybe two chapters of work at most anyway–but you can bet your sweet tush that I have made a backup of Nook and stored it in two, soon to be three, different locations. *heart palpitations*

Ted got up at 8. I thought I’d rolled over and he’d come back upstairs to take a shower, but it turned out an hour had passed between those two things happening. I didn’t get up until nearly 10, which is extremely unlike me these days, and which has sort of thrown me off. Dragged myself to write, and it became clear that the setup for my office wasn’t going to work; I was just getting too much brightness from outside, and couldn’t counter it with the lamps, so I was getting, if not headaches, at least consistent grumpies from the light differential. So I rearranged, after which came the computer scare. I clearly need to go have lunch and … I don’t know. That sentence should end with “write”, but right now I think just managing food will be an accomplishment.

Yoga class tonight. I think it’ll be good for me.

slovobooks/Pádraig rang this morning to let us know our friend xnamkrad/Frank Darcy died early today, which was not surprising news, but which was very sad to hear indeed. I’d spoken with his brother on Monday, after texting Frank, and had been told he’d slipped into a deep coma from which he was not expected to awaken, so … yeah. Not surprising, but very sad. We expect we’ll go into Dublin Friday morning for the funeral mass (I think probably it’s fairly traditional for the Irish to attend the removal, as well, but we wouldn’t be able to get back to Longford if we did), though the early trains might make it complicated. We’ll see.

In the schizophrenia promised in the subject line…aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, it’s really been a rather nice day. We have internets at home now, and I’ve spent the last couple hours trying frantically to catch up on some email and general arrangement of stuff. I’ve made a small dent, at least. We went to see “Hancock”, which turned out a whole lot darker than we expected, but in the end we liked it pretty well. I mean, c’mon, it’s Will Smith. What’s not to like? (really, if you don’t like Will Smith, you don’t have to answer that…)

I haven’t managed to reach 50K on the book yet. I’d decided I was taking today off, but then we heard about Frank, and I couldn’t afford to not write today if we’re going to Dublin on Friday, so I scraped through the last of chapter 14 and know where to start 15, but I didn’t quite make 50K on the book. OTOH, I have broken 250K for the year. Holy moly.

Wonder if I can show off the cover for issue #1 yet.

ytd wordcount: 250,600
miles to Isengard: 64.6

He died of a heart attack. General Hammond has left the compound...
frack!

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=57051

would one of my fellow barflies post the link on the bar for me? Either my puter doesn't like the bar at the moment or vice versa.

This is my early morning “warm up the fingers before I start the real writing” blog entry, where “early morning” means about 9:30, which really isn’t very early at all. And it won’t be posted until sometime tonight when I go over to my parents’ house to use their internets. Not the point. *squinchy face*

It boggles my little mind in a turrible way that today is the first of July, and the second half of the year has begun. It’s been an extremely chaotic half-year, and I wouldn’t mind it one bit at all if the second half settled down some.

To that end, let’s see what I’ve got on my plate:

- finish writing CAULDRON BORNE
- write a proposal for THE IMPERATOR’S HEIR (asap)
- finish my “From Russia, With Love” revisions (asap)
- go to ComicCon*
- launch Chance
- hopefully sell & write THE IMPERATOR’S HEIR
- get the next six Chance issues written
- go to MeCon
- go to the Nickelback concert :)
- go to London for a book signing
- go to Octocon
- go to South Carolina to be a teacher how to write
- hopefully go to WFC in Calgary

Oh yes. That looks *much* less frenetic, doesn’t it? *rolls eyes*

While we were unpacking, I discovered pair after pair of cute pants which totally don’t fit me because I re-gained 25 pounds. It is a new month. It is a new house. It is a new town. It is my proclamation that I’m going to stop eating so much damned junk food (which really is my downfall: I love sweets, sigh) and get back into all those skinny pants. There’s a yoga class tonight. I’m going to go to that. So mote it be.

Today I need to write 4431 words, which will get me to 50K on this book.

Here I go.

(and, at the end of the day when i’m actually posting this…)

I only actually wrote about 3K, which isn’t enough, but, well, *shrug*, it’s what I wrote. I’ll try to make up the other 500 words tomorrow. We’ll see. I *did* go to the yoga class, which was invigorating, and…

…and I just got notification that TAKE A CHANCE should be in the July Previews at the end of the month for a September release. ZOMG. This might really be happening.

*If you’re going to ComicCon yourself, and we have not made arrangements to meet, please email me at cemurphyauthor@gmail.com so we can!

miles to Isengard: 61.9
ytd wordcount: 249,900

*bang crash* *sound of me cussing under my breathe*
Stupid freakin software. My NTTP connection for the bar has been acting wonky for a bit. Won't send my replies at least half the time unless I go into the outbox and do it manually. And now I can't get in using the bar interface...says its not there. I repeat..Awwww come ON! give me a fiskin break already!

Picture us all, sound asleep. Suddenly I am woken by a shrill bell, and I sit bolt upright, reaching across with my right hand over to my left side, reaching my hand over my nighttable, reaching -- and then I wake up. Honey is apologizing, and I don't have a phone to answer. She'd been woken by cat noises, couldn't get back to sleep, started playing around with her new phone and made it ring loudly next to me.

Old habits die hard. I haven't had to answer a phone call late at night in more than 14 years, but I reacted immediately to the ring by reaching for the phone that used to sit by my head.

She kept apologizing. We laughed about it. Kedgie decided that this was a good time to get some pettings. I assured Honey I would fall asleep and I did.

This morning Brady wanted to hang out with Buzz for breakfast, so he got his fud near the big guy. These two will get along well soon enough. Kedgie tolerates Buzz, as long as he doesn't suddenly invade her territory.

Sonny boy is grumpy in the AM, and has to make his lunch. I've been learning to back off and leave him to his task; he settles down and is less grumpy about things after being allowed to do his thing. If he could only do this in school, he'd have fewer problems.

Born: 5am 6/24/08 in Patti, Sicily, Italy.





( 4 more )

We watched Master and Commander, the movie based on the Patrick O'Brien book, but only the first half or so. It was good, and I couldn't help but think of hawkwing_lb's recent adventure on board and under way. ;-) Neither Honey nor Sonny were familiar with the ships of the British Navy, particularly in Napoleonic times, but I have read all of Hornblower and some of the Aubrey/Maturin series, so I was able to explain things -- sometimes just before the movie did. ;-)

More adventure at sea tomorrow!

Nearly 3 dozen LJ's and feeds added and updated, plus a few dead journals deleted. I didn't realize it had been so long until I went to update today. Remind me not to take so long again, because, lordy, that took forever! ;)

The White List. Enjoy!

P.S. If anyone has news on archer904, please let me know?

One of our neighbors, with two kids (one boy about the same age as Son, and a younger daughter) have taken the Son with them to some gathering that will have horseback rides, painting, games, food, and lots of running around. They left before lunch, and will be back around dinner-ish. This gives us the chance to act like grownups and do some yardwork. Well, we do that with him around too, but maybe later we'll treat ourselves to some Home Depot shopping and then who knows?

I am currently working on the pile o'clothing in our bedroom. Someone, who shall remain nameless to protect her its identity, has a habit of leaving clothing in piles instead of putting them away. Not all of them get left around, but over time, it accumulates, and grows large, blocking the dresser and making it even easier to justify leaving them out. So now we're in the process of cleaning things up. I've also done some more fabric surgeries today -- starting with suturing several lacerations on the comforter. And as you all know, lacerations are related to blunt trauma, not sharp (which causes stab and slash wounds). There was one large lac of about 11 cm, and the rest were just 2-3 cm long. Brady very kindly pointed out where the thread was until I managed to distract him away, ,and then he pounced on a catnip mouse for a while. Buzz was also very helpful in locating the other lacs, and checking the underside of the comforter. Then I took the comforter to the laundromat to use the Extra Large Washing Machine! and the Extra Large Dryer! which are the only ones that can handle this thing. It never gets completely dry, so the comforter is now hanging on the balcony to finish. Hopefully I will remember to bring it in before the rain comes.

The other surgery was a minor drawstring re-extraction -- I've been doing a lot of them lately. This one lent itself to my old technique of advancing the drawstring by walking it through the waistband until I could reach it with the Allis. Buzz ably assisted me in this one.

Remember those stings I got last weekend? They faded in a few hours? Well, they reappeared on Tuesday, but nothing else -- no itching, no swelling, no nothing. Interesting.

This weekend I am on call, so I have listened to the weekend technician discussing some sick mice, and agreed with his suggested treatments. If nothing else happens today, I'll drop in and do rounds tomorrow. The nice thing is, I'll have my comp day on Thursday, which gives me a four day weekend coming up.

Back to the salt mines.

First of all, let me apologize if this kind of post is not allowed in this community. Feel free to delete it, if necessary.

A friend of mine and I have to hold a presentation on fan-culture and fan-participation in the Star Wars fandom for one of our university courses and have developed a survey (don't worry, it's not too long). I'm sorry if I'm spamming your f-list with this, but we'd be thrilled if you were to send us your answers.
Thanks in advance

( on to the questions )

Still catching up on LJ.

Yesterday we (me, Justin, Galen, & joined by Wyatt) spent the day in Centennial Park & the Children's Museum. There was splashing in the fountains, and and playing in the playground, and playing all around the Children's Museum, and more playground, and more fountain and then Daddy showed up to save me.

In spite of chugging water & juice, I still came pretty close to heatstroke. Naturally, the boys were all fine.

Got home to discover that the power company has done their Biannual Lose Our Payment & Cut The Power Off thing. Naturally, we got home after their office had closed (it was, after all, after 6 pm and no one needs to call the power company after 6, right? Bleh). So, a phone call first thing in the a.m. and it's all good by about noon.

So, this morning I took Galen down to Cool Beans with the laptop - plugged it into the wall & recharged it, and we had coloring books and some youtube videos.

We've learned to say such fun wordses as "galoshes" "Beluga" and "gazebo".

Well, by noon the power's back on and we're both wilting, so I go home to have a light lunch and more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Gods help me), and plug the laptop back in to get my biweekly data entry thing done.

Ooops. No AC power to the laptop. Great.

Try several different outlets, and change out to a different cloverleaf plug thingie (with identical volt/amp ratings). No joy. Power inverter itself is staying cold. Plugs & pins are clean & unbent. So, I'm thinking power brick failure. Although I'm confused that it worked fine in the coffee shop and then nothing here.

Anyway, that's where I've been the last two days. Giving myself heatstroke, and swearing at my power inverter.

Catching up on LJ now. And trying to find a working power inverter for an IBM T30 Thinkpad, since I need to have this data entry finished and emailed by Monday 6 pm. *sigh*. ARG!

Oh, yeah - one last thing... WTF is Moon Sand made of? Running off now to Google it... it's weird stuff. Feels like.. ultrasuede shavings or something. Kinda spongy.

the book meme!

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. Well let’s see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.

I gotta say, my friends lists really skew the hell out of “only read 6 of these”, which of course makes it hard to believe that *really* that’s the average, even if I do, yes, understand how averages work. :)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

PENDANT PRODUCTIONS PROUDLY PRESENTS:

Original art by Nick Hadley for Pendant Productions

THE KINGERY, episode 2x03 - "The Evidence of Things Not Seen"

Madeleine makes things extra difficult for Tommy and Julie seeks alternative employment opportunities. Regina maintains a vigil and Devi tries to work out some of her issues.

"The Kingery" is a serialized, full-cast, ongoing sci-fi crime drama. Available for free download in .mp3 format, or as a Podcast!

Also available -- a commentary track with the director, assistant director and writer!

iTunes link:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=250780534

Podcast feed:
http://www.pendantaudio.com/kingery-podcast.xml

Download link:
http://www.pendantaudio.com/kingery.php

( Shuffle up and watch your back )

I have conquered my office, which was critically necessary in order to allow me to get back to work tomorrow. The art isn’t up, but the room’s arranged more or less to my liking, all the knicks and the knacks are distributed (Kate, you’ll be pleased to know that all of them arrived utterly unscathed, even the hard-to-wrap delicate ones, and I am very grateful to you for your efforts. You did a much better job wrapping them than I’d have done. :)), and the computer (still named Nook, which is increasingly misleading; I’m going to have to rent out an office suite to improve on this room!), is up and running. I also got the kitchen/dining room under control, although there’s an enormous pile of flattened boxes and four boxes of the landlord’s kitchen stuff in there, so it doesn’t look nearly as much like it’s done.

I went into our bedroom, looked around, and fled again. Not man enough to face that today. Nor am I prepared to deal with the computer room, but we need some kind of support structure for our printers, and probably at least one more bookcase before we can really get a handle on that room anyway. We have a number of boxes in there labeled “living room crap” or “STUFF” which need to just be gone through item by item in an attempt to get rid of as much of it as possible. But it’s coming along, and I should be able to work in my office tomorrow, which is good.

If I was a very, very good person I would take myself out to the grocery store and buy perishable sorts of food. I…doubt I’m that good a person. I may be just barely good enough to do some writing. I don’t know yet.

miles to Isengard: 46.8

Deirdre came out to Longford on Tuesday to do a photo shoot for publicity shots for the arts festival she’s participating in this fall. She gave me permission to post the three shots we settled on as her portfolio, so I’m doing so. We’re both very pleased with the results! Click through for larger versions of the photos.

I hadn’t done anything even vaguely resembling a studio shoot in *years*. I’d forgotten how much I loved it.

Back to unpacking now. :)

I recently read this excellent little piece of fanfiction (the fact that it's fanfiction is rather irrelevant to the plot, in this case) about a "fate machine", whereby the population must be reduced and this is done by a machine where two people go in and the better person is chosen to live (the other dies).

I can't help feeling this isn't a new idea, that the concept (or something similar) has been published before, but I don't know where. It reminds me of Logan's Run a bit, but it's not quite the same thing. Have any of you heard of this anywhere before?

In any case, it's a good piece of writing, and an excellent premise. Very sci-fi.