Mortaine’s Blog

This is an archive of my shorter book reviews and notes, which historically have been posted over at the 50 Book Challenge on LiveJournal, but which I’m starting to move over here. I’m posting them with altered date-stamps, but they might show up in my LiveJournal cross-post anyway. Bear with me, please.

Note: Many of these books also have full reviews available in the book review podcast (RSS).
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“Ouroboros” is off to Asimov’s Science Fiction.

I had several bad dreams involving international travel last night.

Normally when I have anxiety dreams about international travel, they involve getting to the airport and not finding my passport.

In this one, I had my passport. I went to the airport and got on the plane. For some reason, I had to fly to Edinburgh, then Poland, then Africa. I had a 2-hour layover in Edinburgh, and , , and ’s mom all came out to the airport to meet me. About an hour into our visit, I decided I should get my rear end over to the proper gate. and had gone off in search of food or something, but I told his mom to have them meet me at the gate.

This is where it turned into a nightmare.

I was told my gate was in another terminal. It would take 30-40 minutes to get there. And I needed to get my checked luggage first and take it there myself. [Believe it or not, I have had nightmares in this airport before and remembered the bit about getting my luggage between legs of the trip.] Outside looked like a Polish winter– totally snowed in. I went to bag claim, but found none of my bags. I asked around. This is when I realize that I didn’t actually pack anything for my trip. Great– no bags!

I rummage in my tickets and such (dropping plane tickets as I go), and find two claim tags for baggage claim. I figure maybe I’m courier-ing. Time is getting short. The claim tags are for something shipped “pharmaceutical” and must be picked up at a special counter. A counter that I can’t find. Can’t find the bags, can’t find the counter– and I now have 5 minutes to get to my gate.

I run into my sister, and literally beg her, crying, to help me find my luggage and gate, because I’m really really lost and confused….

In early August, I sent in my paperwork to enter the county fair. Yesterday, I whipped up some finished samples and took my goodies to the county fair.

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Watch Video

Click here for the movie! (MPEG-4 format, 13 MB, 4:45 minutes)

As you may have guessed, I am fond of beer. A week ago, I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the tail end of my book tour, and visiting my dad. We decided on Friday to go out beer tasting, and took the camcorder along for the ride. If you’re going to be in Grand Rapids any time soon, check out the pubs we visited and vlog them yourself!

Founder’s Brewing Company
648 Monroe Ave. NW
(616) 776-1195

Graydon’s Crossing
1223 Plainfield Ave. NE
(616) 726-8260

Technorati tags: geotagged geovlogged vlog videoblog, beer Grand Rapids

Technorati Tags: beer, geotagged, geovlogged, grand_rapids, videoblog, vlog