Don Edwards

I'm pretty sure Sam is the only transgender person we know of in or around Moperville. However, considering the size of the high schools, it's virtually certain that there are more just in high school - let alone of other ages. And while there's a better-than-even chance that the email in question came from someone in an English-speaking country, and a pretty good chance it came from somewhere in the US, there's no specific reason to think that the sender lives in or near Moperville. My first bet would be that the sender will never be revealed - or seen. That the importance of the email is in its effect on Elliot and crew, not in who sent it. (On the other hand, my second bet would be on Sam. Conservation of detail.)

Well, she can have multiple fairies now. Originally she could only have one thing from her box at a time. So it's not exactly the same, unchanged, spell. Either it's a different spell (specific to fairydolls?) of the same spell with more options. Maybe she has non-explosive early-unsummoning options as well.

http://www.wolframalpha.com "convert 1 US cup to liters" --> 0.2366 L "convert 1 Danish cup to liters" --> gets a bit confused but lets me choose from "US legal cup" (0.2366 L) or 3 other definitions of "cup": * "metric" --> 0.25 L * "Canadian" --> 0.2273 L * "UK" --> 0.284 L I would note that a great many recipes for sweet things call for what I consider to be rather too much sugar. When you eat a chocolate chip cookie and can't taste the dough or the chocolate because the sugar overpowers them, something's wrong. One lady whose baking I prefer, says she routinely reduces the sugar by a quarter. "convert 1 cup of sugar to grams" also presents an array of options that might be informative. (I love that site for all sorts of weird queries. And they don't have to be math-oriented.)

This here Anakin guy?

WD40. Redneck's toolkit: if it doesn't move and should, WD40; if it does move and shouldn't, duct tape. (Of course, the thing to remember is that WD40 is NOT a lubricant. It's a special-purpose cleaner. It can sometimes loosen things up so they can move, but it won't keep them loose and moving - for that you need a dab of 3-in-1 oil. Or a dusting of graphite.)

Read the package. It says it contains "process cheese food". I have no idea what a process cheese is. But the things, whatever they are, eat Velveeta.

Well, Nanase's fairydolls can be used as a spell to summon allies/reinforcements...

Well, we tried for "the rain in Plains falls mainly on the flames" but so far we haven't even gotten any rain for that to apply to. (There's a big forest fire on a hilltop about 30 miles west of Plains MT. During the Sanders County Fair, in Plains, the flames were visible from the fairgrounds at night and there was ash falling all over everything. So some rain would be much appreciated.)

It seems like most meats at Chinese buffets are breaded and then soaked in a sweet sauce. According to the Chinese-herbal-medicine specialist who helped my mate lose 65 pounds in 5 months, both the breading and the sweet sauce are on the "NEVER eat this!" list. Look for a Mongolian grill - preferably one with "all you can eat" pricing (it seems only about a third - the better third - of Mongolian grills have that even as an option). The routine at a good Mongolian grill is that you grab a bowl - or two or three - and go through the buffet area filling it with meats, veggies, and sauces (use lots of sauce, mix sauces if you like), then take it over to the grill and they cook your food for you. Less-good places might put the meat, and some even the sauces, behind a barrier and have the staff dish them out. (If they want to cook your food BEFORE putting sauces on it - don't go back there again.)

The recommended dose of Immodium is two tablets, and then a third tablet later if needed. When I need it, I usually start with half a tablet.

I usually buy my tea in 250g bricks. (Or I did when I had a supplier who carried the bricks - they moved to another, smaller shop and stopped carrying any bricks at all. Haven't found a new supplier yet.)

IMHO excessive conservation of detail creates worlds that seem bare. Face it, reality is mostly made of irrelevant details. I like worlds with enough detail to seem real. And characters who, even if they are really minor in this story, feel like they have their own stories. Unfortunately, some critiques of my writing say I go too far in the opposite direction. One chapter of a story I'm working on has dialog with three characters, and only one of those characters appears at all in any other chapter. Got a couple of suggestions that this chapter isn't needed. My view of that is that we're trying to draw sharp boundaries between different parts of a cloud. And while there clearly are different parts, the sharp boundaries mostly don't exist. In particular, the boundary between genderfluid and gender-neutral is rather fuzzy. Also between gender-neutral and agender. For that matter I'm married to someone whom I suspect is mildly transgender - and that person agrees I have reasonable grounds for that suspicion. But we don't exactly have well-defined scales and calibrated tests for this stuff...

"I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that students go into psychology for ulterior motives. Either they want to learn how to manipulate people, or they're kooky. So, is it really any wonder that the basic psychological model of the mind is that of a manipulative kook?" -- Dr. Queller Same applies, to at least some degree, to psychiatrists, but they can do it with drugs too.

And the answer is, of course, that after Tuesday even the calendar said WTF.

If Mercury had a companion body large enough to do that, Mercury would orbit the companion body.

Looks more like they aren't interested in defeating until they are rested.

I'd guess most of them had antisocial personality disorder before they became aberrations... and most of the exceptions weren't very smart, so probably don't last long as aberrations.

Prof, pure speculation, but I think if you could get the various pains under control the depression would lessen. Which is hardly helpful... in fact it probably doesn't qualify as advice... but it may be comforting.

This is a known bug in the forum software (actually I think it's in the default configuration). This thread may be helpful. edit: bad html fixed and duplicate posting reported

but nobody promises that life will be fun.

We don' t know if that was a potion or a device, and we have explicit evidence that it was sabotaged.

Considering how often we humans overlook the obvious, it would take some intellect - if that's even the right word - to be incapable of overlooking the non-obvious. And of course some things are just random, according to every theory that doesn't make absolutely everything (down to when each unstable atomic nucleus or subatomic particle will degrade and in exactly what fashion) deterministic.

Yeah, sometimes the damnthings are pack hunters.

I prefer to buy my tea in bricks... when I can find them. It's nothing unusual to find a tea shop where the staff doesn't even know there are varieties that come in bricks. (At least the two shops in Missoula are better than that... neither one carries any, though.) Oh, and the bricks should be dated. They start developing the depth I like at about 4-5 years of aging, although 8 years is (so far) the best compromise between taste and affordability.

I say ask her about it. If it means you can pick stuff up off the floor without falling over or gasping in agony, she might go for it. Or if it means you can pick stuff up off the floor rather than interrupting whatever she's doing at the moment. Granted, lately the main use for ours has been picking up the mousetrap, taking it outside, and removing the mouse to the garbage can.