The first step is admitting you have a problem...

Hi. My name is Michael Mock, and I... am an addict.

It started small. Just a cup or so in the morning... you know, to warm me up a little. But pretty soon it was more than just one cup. The cups started getting bigger, too. And now... well, some days it seems like I just can't get going without it.

I told myself it was fine. I told myself I could quit any time. I... might have been wrong about it.

But, y'know...? It's not interfering with work. It's not interfering with my family life. Heck, my wife and children actively enable the habit. And I'm just not sure I'm ready to give it up. Oh, sure, maybe I'm a "functional addict," but right now I can live with that.

Plus, the stuff is full of antioxidants... and the way I drink it, it gets a little extra calcium into my system, too. That's healthy, right?

So... I'm sorry folks, but I'm just not ready to for that second step. If this is madness, I don't want to be restored to sanity. I'm just... I'm just not ready to give up my tea.

* * *
The other day, author Martha Wells observed that every time someone mentioned tea on Twitter, she gets a craving for tea. I tweeted back to point out that I get around this problem by making sure that I keep a massive mug of tea nearby at all times. This is true, but I don't think it really captures just how massive a mug I'm talking about.

So, to assist and enlighten you all, I've prepared a quick visual of my tea cup:

That's right, if your mug won't double as a life raft in an emergency, it's just not big enough. (Incidentally, while I did run that picture through Photoshop to put in the word balloon, I didn't mess with the sizes of the objects at all. The mug is seven inches tall and four inches across. You can get thoroughly sloshed just thinking about how much beer it would hold...)

Apocalypse River 004

This is one of those of those stories that I come back to as the mood takes me, so my progress is infrequent and irregular. The rest of it can be read here, if you want to start at the beginning or just refresh your memory.

The outer doors were open - old Belinda must have done that, anticipating the need to escape across the water - and Tammon was able to reach out and shove off them, increasing their speed a little. The boat rocked alarmingly, but didn't spill him out.

It was the largest of the boats in that boathouse, doubtless chosen so all the children could hide behind it, but it was barely enough to hold them. The children were huddled together in the middle of the boat, as low as they could get; driven there by a mixture of instinct and intelligent caution. Old Belinda was at the far end, which was now - mainly because of the way they were drifting - the front. Tammon and Shannan were at the back, closest to the boat house and the shore.

There was a loud crack behind them as one of the Forsters kicked open the smaller, shore-side door leading into the boathouse. The darkness inside made him hesitate, a massive silhouette tightly framed by the doorway. Then he caught sight of the boat and roared a command.

Other figures, equally large and solid, raced around the sides of the boathouse. Like the River People, no two of the Forsters looked quite alike. Most were tall, around six feet, and heavily muscled... but this one had four small, upswept horns on his forehead, and that one had two sets of vestigial arms hanging from its chest; this one was entirely covered in fur, and that one had a long tail that curled and lashed behind it. The one that had smashed his way into the boat house appeared to lack fingers entirely, having claws like knife-blades in their place.

He was the first to pursue them, hurling himself recklessly into the water. Another, the one with the horns, evidently heard the splash and followed his example, hopping down from the bank and wading out into the waters. On the shore behind him, the furry one leaned back and hurled a spear, which arched up and then dropped towards the boat with devastating precision.

Tammon felt Shannan move beside him. The movement was enough to rock the boat, but not to upset it - she had learned from his experience with the doors. She leaned towards the center, where the children crouched and lay, and as the spear came down her hands flashed out in a quick double slap. The first blow turned the point aside; the second caught the falling shaft as it spun around. She rotated the spear and laid it along the side of the boat.

One of the children whimpered softly.

Straightening slightly as Shannan settled back, Tammon looked again towards the shore. The knife-handed Forster had barely cleared the doors of the boat house before something pulled him under. His companions hadn't noticed his absence, yet. The other one, the one with the horns, was up to his shoulders in the water when his expression changed. He turned back towards the shore, but too late. Something had him, and the water around him was starting to change color.

Good, thought Tammon. That will keep the fish distracted. Nobody knew exactly what lived in the river these days - the streams and inlets, natural and artificial, were their own ecosystems, and havens for species seeking escape from the deeper waters. On its own, their boat - even metal - might attract some attention, some curiosity from something deeper in the water. Forster blood might draw everything nearby, though of course there were no guarantees.

Then something launched itself from the water. Faster than an arrow in flight, it impaled the Forster with the extra arms and dragged it into the river. Though he had seen it happen, Tammon was unsure just what had struck: a snake, a tentacle, a spearing fin from some heretofore unknown species of fish? He wasn't even sure it had been an animal. It might have been some underwater vine or weed, pulling in food so that remnants and scraps would filter down to the riverbed when the fish were done, and thereby nourish it. It was certainly nothing Tammon cared to investigate more closely...

And evidently the remaining pair of Forsters felt the same way. The one with the fur and the one with the tail turned and sped away, forsaking the river and making for the village, or maybe the forest beyond it.

"As much as you can, be still," said Tammon, directing his voice towards the children. Several were looking at him; three actually nodded. Good enough. He didn't want to explain; no telling if the things in the water could hear voices.

There was nothing left to do but cultivate patience. Even if they had brought oars, using such things would have been a risk. They were at the mercy of the current, now. Taking his own advice, Tammon settled back beside Shannan and tried to relax.

In the front of the boat, old Belinda was already asleep.

So far, so good...

New website is live (mostly) and so far nobody has set off a resonance cascade in the server room.

Episcopalian Humor

I remembered this yesterday, but I forgot to post it. You know how I keep saying that I grew up in a fairly laid-back, Grace-oriented version of Christianity? Well, this is part of what I'm talking about when I say that. You see, when I was growing up, one of the priests had a sign on his office door. It said:

Priests do more than lay people.
I was just old enough to get the joke. (For anyone out there who's still scratching their heads and trying to figure it out... it helps if you have your mind in the gutter.)

Light Blogging

So... The Web Redesign Project Of Horrible Doom From Beyond Space is scheduled to go live on Monday. We will deactivate our current web server, and redirect our URLs to a new web server. In layman's terms: we will flip the switch, and the entire website will break. Panic and chaos will ensue.

Well, okay, hopefully not... but that's about what I'm expecting, frankly.

Unfortunately, just about the only thing that could dissuade us from making the changeover would be an even more epic catastrophe: the rise R'lyeh, perhaps. Or the zombie apocalypse. Rivers and seas turning to blood. Gozer the Gozerian making an appearance in New York. Martian war-machines beginning their invasion protocol. Gay marriage being legalized at the Federal level.

...Well, okay, maybe not that last one. Not catastrophic enough.

Anyway, it may be pretty quiet around here for the next few days. Especially if we get eaten by zombies.

Foglios, are you listening?

You know what would make my year? A collection of plush Jägermonsters. (Also, if there's anybody in my readership who isn't following Girl Genius, stop reading this post right now. Take the rest of your weekend. Go back to the beginning of the comic, and start reading. You can thank me when you get back.)

Right, where was I? Oh, yeah. Plush Jägermonsters.

Why do I need plush Jägerkin? Well, to put it simply, Firstborn's plushy monsters badly outnumber my own. He has Cthulhu, Gug, Ithaqua, and Nyarlathotep; he also has a facehugger, a scorpion, two wombats, two platypi, a parrot, and a pretty ugly doll.

I have a one-eyed teddy bear who's approximately as old as I am. And while he makes an excellent statesman, ambassador, and political adviser, that isn't much help when Firstborn's hordes come against us.

But Jägers? I think the Jägers could take them. Especially if I could get ahold of, say, a nice set of four? Phil & Kaja Foglio, take note: this is a brilliant marketing opportunity... and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't lose your hats.

So... Please? Please???

Notes from the Mad Science Lab: Ecological Housing

Ladies and gentlemen, I must apologize. It appears that I may have made a very slight miscalculation in constructing my latest project.

My son, you see, wanted a tree house for his birthday. Well, more of a fort, really. He didn't just want a wooden room built into the big tree in the back yard. No, he wanted a house that was a tree, and would keep away all the people that he didn't want in there.

I have to say, I was rather proud of what I came up with. It's basically a tree with a massive trunk, carefully designed so that a boy-sized tunnel spirals up through the center to the chamber at the top. The chamber at the top has four windows, which open onto the outside between the two layers of the canopy: one circle of limbs below, and another set of limbs above. (If you've ever seen a White Pine, it's kind of like that.)

The people my son wants to keep out are mostly his fellow eight-year-olds, which limited what I could do: no death rays, no giant mutant Venus Fly Traps, and so forth. So I went for more gentle, organic defenses - which had the added bonus of being things that my son couldn't get blamed for. So, in addition to the branches at the top, I designed it to grow thorny vines all the way around the bottom third or so... and to produce urushiol oil into the bargain. Urushiol oil? It's the same substance the poison ivy produces, the part that makes you itch.

Naturally, all this took some time to develop. So, by the end of last week, I had only a few days to grow the tree house - or citadel tree, as I prefer to call it - if it was going to be ready on my son's birthday. It was here that I may perhaps have made the tiniest error in my design. You see, in order to speed the growth, I incorporated elements of kudzu into the design.

In my defense, it worked brilliantly. The tree was completely ready for my son's birthday, and only a few of the children went home itchy from his party. For the past week, my son has spent his every spare moment in the top of the Citadel Tree. He's even asked to sleep up there when it gets a little warmer.

Unfortunately, the tree... hasn't stopped growing yet. It now occupies most of the back yard. The oak that used to be there is completely covered by the thorny vines, which appear to be slowly strangling it. The vines have are also climbing up the side of the house... and apparently digging down under the foundation as well. It's also assimilating the privacy fence.

That isn't really the problem, though. I mean, I could set up automatic laser-trimmers to control the vines. No, the problem... is the spore pods. They showed up in the upper branches some time yesterday. And late last night, they opened. And as of this morning... well, let me put it this way: you can tell which way the wind was blowing by the way the seedlings are scattered. The neighbors' house is pretty well inundated with them. So is the front yard of the neighbor beyond them. The street isn't faring too well, either, though the next set of yards in the line only seem to have gotten a handful of seeds.

This... is going to be a bit of a problem. Especially if they reproduce again before I have chance to deal with the ones that are already growing.

Never fear, though. Science will prevail!