author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Welp. I got nothing. But I saw the new Star Wars film! It was a proper Star Wars film.

And tomorrow will be a proper Tuesday. It will start with a visit to the dentist, but it will be proper Tuesday for all that. See you then.

A thousand apologies, but all things fictionette will be late again. Nothing bad happened; I just got to work on things too late, and now it's nearly midnight. Expect fulfillment this weekend or, at the latest, Monday.

Probably I should have just excused myself from both this one and last one, seeing as how they're both on holidays. And of course I've been on vacation. I only just got back late last night. (It was a very nice homecoming. John brought me home from the airport and then immediately began pressing me to stuff my face with his homemade bread, and homemade chocolate chip cookies, and homemade spaghetti sauce. Best homecoming ever.) One of these days I really must stop overestimating the amount of work I can get done while on vacation, or at a roller derby tournament, or at a convention. One of these days.

Vacation is over, though, and it's back to everyday things, chief among them writing and roller derby. ("What have you been up to lately?" "Oh, writing. Roller derby. Video games. And more writing. And more roller derby." This is my life.)

On the skating front, three of us were at the practice space in below-freezing weather just because we love being on wheels. John, in his derby persona of Head Coach Papa Whiskey, gave us some agility drills to try and helped us improve our hockey stops. Then we're all having a party tomorrow night to celebrate the end of one season and the beginning of another. Then we have our last off-season Sunday morning practice. Team practices begin this week, and I'll be going to all the All Stars and Bombshells practices that I can manage, because the results of the latest travel team try-outs is that I'm an A/B crossover again. Woot!

On the writing front, my immediate goal is getting "Down Wind" ready for submission. The response to my submission of "Caroline's Wake" to that market was, indeed, a rejection, but such a complimentary one! Such lovely things they had to say! I sent it along to somewhere else, a prestigious market that's always been a long shot--but if any story of mine was worth a long-shot chance, this one's it. Anyway, that means I'm free to send something new to the market that rejected it. But I've only got until January 15, so I'll have to get to work right away.

(I did not work on any short fiction other than fictionettes in New Orleans. Vacation!)

I am also having thoughts of rereading, and reworking, Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, because it's been a few years since I've done that. I think it might be time to do it again. But about that, more later.

Oh, hey--happy new year!

Today's report from My Christmas Vacation will be brief and numerical.

1. The Crab Cake Pontchartrain is delicious. It is even more delicious enjoyed in exceedingly good company.

2. I should visit downtown Covington more often. (Afternoon tea!)

3. Also Abita Springs. (Birthplace of Abita Beer!)

5. Driving alone across the Causeway Bridge is a wonderful opportunity for audiobooks.

4. I should also visit my Aunt June more often.

5. Aunt June may well be the Boulder County Bombers' newest superfan.

Today, the last day of fine weather I'll enjoy during my visit home, I succeeding in getting outside via driving across the lake and back. Since that's a 24-mile one-way trip just from shore to shore, nevermind the remainder of the journey to my relatives' house, I think this counts as significant time outdoors.

There was very little wind and very little traffic, and the bird-watching from the bridge was fantastic. Pelicans soared close over the bridge and right along the rail, probably taking advantage of the updraft off the warm cement and hot car engines. Mallards and cormorants stuck closer to the water's surface, flying low or just resting in duck-at-aquatic-repose position.

Every one of them Mom spotted, she said, "Look, there's another one, isn't that wonderful." I'm afraid she's lost the distinction between pelican and seagull and duck these days; they're all just "birds" to her now. She still remembers the rhyme about the queer old bird that's the pelican, and her own version of the rhyme that celebrates New Orleans's basketball team, but she no longer can pick out a pelican from a lineup.

The whole way across the bridge, too, she reads the tenth-mile markers aloud. 14.8, 14.9, 15. Exercising her grasp of numbers. Practicing, maybe, or maybe just reassuring herself that she can still do numbers even if she can't entirely do words or faces anymore.

We were visiting my cousin and her family. Turns out her 18-month-old son was fighting off a cold and not up for all-day adventures in New Orleans. We wound up just visiting at the house and ordering lunch from the Covington location of New Orleans Food & Spirits. I had the grilled stuffed catfish, which was delicious and so very filling that instead of going for one last skate along Linear Park when I got home, I put myself to bed for a nap with a couple of new-to-me Bunnicula books.

Now I'm doing my daily writing tasks--the ones I'm actually holding myself to, being on vacation and all--from one of my parents' comfy armchairs, having watched LSU handily win their bowl game against Texas Tech. I don't usually watch college football, but it's bowl game after bowl game during the holiday season, the best of the best playing on TV nearly constantly every day, so I might as well watch my Dad's alma mater show off their current roster's stuff. And their stuff was seriously amazing, I gotta say. Some of those catches were unbelievable.

Tomorrow sees some more visiting on both sides of the lake, and maybe a trip to the post office to get some fruitcake in the mail. The tradition continues!

Again, apologies for the belated Christmas Fictionette. Well, it's not really anything to do with Christmas. It's set more in the fall, I think, round about harvest time, though I've just realized there's a tiny, insignificant, yet unsightly plot hole concerning this detail. There is an impending birth, and I suppose it's technically a virgin birth, but that's just a coincidence of species. In any case, no midwinter festivals were harmed in the making of this fictionette, which is called "Premature Labor."

This brings my first full year of Friday Fictionettes to a close. New Year's Day will be the first Friday in 2016, and I intend to begin another full year of 'em at that time. (That fictionette probably won't have anything intentional to do with its holiday, either.) It's not that I find the sheer number of Patrons a compelling case for continuing the Patreon campaign. But I do continue to find value in the weekly routine. It's good for my work ethic. It's good exercise for my writing muscles. And it's just plain good fun. So! Roll on 2016, with another 52 fictionettes in store.

The visit home continues at a leisurely, unpressured pace. I thought I might head into the city over the weekend, but in fact I never quite crossed the parish line until today, when I took my freewriting and my fictionette work over to Rue de la Course. This was followed by lunch at Pho Bistreaux (shrimp spring rolls and Vinh's special) and a little window-shopping up and down Oak Street.

That doesn't mean I didn't get out of the house all weekend. Did some biking Saturday (and had the Pasta Carmella at Bistro Orleans). Skated over to Bucktown on Sunday (and wound up watching part of that very enjoyable Saints game at Melius Bar over a couple of Abitas and a chili cheese hot-dog).

Tomorrow all depends. If my cousin and her family wind up doing fun things in town, I may wind up tagging along. If not, I'll probably end up combining the skating thing with the writing at a public establishment thing, as it's the last day of my trip that's forecast to be at all dry and sunny, or at least dry and overcast. In any case, it would be a shame to waste it indoors.

Guess what? There are no PVP blockades this weekend--or the next. It's the regularly scheduled holiday closure, and Oceanmaster Demeter has confirmed that the blockade closure dates they penciled in some time earlier are for reals.

That doesn't mean there's nothing going on at all; a couple of event blockades are scheduled for tomorrow, one each on Emerald and Meridian. If that's your thing, you'll want to be right on time, because they're both just one round long.

Meanwhile, the Yetis are out in force this holiday season, with an increased incidence of expeditions available to have your portrait painted with these reclusive beasties. Alas, if you have the curse of the pengmonk upon you, you'll have to turn of seasonal effects in your Options: General panel before you can pose for a picture. I guess no one coded in any portrait artwork for swashbuckling penguins.

Standard reminders: Schedule is given in Pirate Time, or U.S. Pacific. Player flags link to Yoweb information pages; Brigand King Flags link to Yppedia Brigand King pages. BK amassed power given in parenthetical numbers, like so: (14). For more info about jobbing contacts, jobber pay, and Event Blockade battle board configuration, check the Blockade tab of your ocean's Notice Board. To get hired, apply under the Voyages tab.

Doubloon Ocean Blockades

*** Sunday, December 27 ***

12:00 p.m. - Dendrite Island, Meridian Ocean
Event: 1 round, nonsinking
Hosted by: Radioactive

3:00 p.m. - Blackthorpe Island, Emerald Ocean
Event: 1 round, nonsinking
Hosted by: Order of the Jolly Roger

I have had a mixed-blessing sort of day. Well, I've had a mixed-blessing sort of visit thus far, though I don't do a lot of the complaining here that I do in more private spaces because, well, family is family. But today being Christmas, everything got turned up to eleven. As a result I've been kind of nonfunctional since returning home this afternoon.

Which is why the Friday Fictionette will be a weekend thing again, which is why I am bothering telling you so.

I did go for a brief outdoor skate at dusk between the Bonnabel Canal and the Suburban Canal. That was nice. Skates make everything better. They don't fix everything, but while they're on my feet, they make the things they can't fix feel much more distant.

I'm having a little bowl of yesterday's kimchi with a boiled egg. Comfort food is comforting. I'm not sure when kimchi became one of my comfort foods--goodness knows I didn't grow up eating it. But it indubitably has. How I know is, when I opened the container, the smell of it reached down into my chest and kind of loosened things up a little and made me smile.

Good night, everyone. See you tomorrow.

We shucked the rest of the oysters today. Dad estimates there were 80 pounds of them, total. He borrowed this device that was basically a steel tooth on a hinge with a lot of leverage, with which he popped the oysters open. Then all we had to do was scrape 'em out with oyster knives and put 'em in a container in the fridge.

Well, all except the ones we ate during the process. Privilege of doing the shucking.

At some point during the oyster-shucking session, I remembered that Maangchi's kimchi recipe calls for oysters, and wouldn't it be cool to make kimchi with fresh-shucked oysters instead of frozen? And, hey, there's a Korean grocery store just a few blocks away from the friend who loaned us the oyster-popping device, which we gotta bring back to him anyway. Might as well stop in. And they had everything I needed, up to and including the Korean radish and Asian chives.

("Those don't look like chives," Dad said. "Totally different allium," I admitted, "but it is an allium. Unless I screwed up and bought lemongrass." We both tasted some. It was not lemongrass.)

So now my hands smell like garlic and hot peppers, and fresh kimchi is fermenting in big rectangular bins over by the laundry room. At some point I will have to figure out what to do with it all, because I'm unlikely to be able to eat or give away all of it by New Year's Eve. I suppose maybe package it in dry ice in the fruitcake bin to get it home in checked luggage? And put what's left of the fruitcake in something much smaller? But I don't have to worry about that for a week.

And now I'm rewarding myself with a trip to Hurricane's to hang out with my brother and listen to live music and drink Abita and give my computer a wifi connection it hasn't had a spat with. Seriously.

So I made it into the New Orleans area Monday night. My flight was pleasant, comfortable, and uneventful. Even my pre-trip packing and last-minute chores parade wasn't so bad. Got everything done early and had time for dinner (and the first half of the Saints game) at the airport Rock Bottom in terminal C.

Turns out that Riedell's bottom-loading "gear pack" does indeed function as carry-on luggage. Fits right into the overhead bin. However, once you get your gear in there, forget about all those enticing home-office style pockets that make it look like you can pack your laptop and accessories and pens and pencils and stuff too. I mean, I did manage to get that in there, because that's me--determined, like--but it was a tight squeeze. Getting any single thing out again was a bit of a process.

The helmet does not fit in the gear pack. The helmet went clipped to an outside loop. I was prepared to offer to put the helmet on my head if they gave me any trouble taking it onto the plane. But they didn't, so I just unclipped it and shoved it under the seat in front of me.

That I had my roller derby gear as carry-on luggage made it very, very tempting to put my skates on at my arrival gate--it was a bit of a walk from there to baggage claim, and the aisle was uncarpeted and linoleumish the whole way. But I didn't. I didn't want to alarm any airport security, and, more to the point, I didn't want to go to the trouble of actually sitting down and changing my footwear when I could just keep walking.

I shoulda done, though. It's not like I've been able to skate at all since I've been here. STOP RAINING ALREADY JEEZ.

My first few days in town have been laid back. They have been divided up into vaguely scheduled chunks governed by "do I have access to Mom's car or not" and "am I hungry and what wonderful tasty thing will I put into my mouth." For example, Monday night/Tuesday morning (we got home from the airport around midnight) was all about Question 2 and the venison stew Dad had been cooking all day in the crock pot. Tuesday afternoon was all about Question 1 and driving myself to a coffee shop for a few hours of writing far away from my parents' Fox News habit. (Also for a bowl of the coffee house's corn-and-crab bisque.) Today the answer to Question 1 was "yes, but I want to take the bike to the shop" and the answer to Question 2 was "Mandarin House with Mom for lunch, then beignets at Morning Call while I wait for the bike shop to call." Also there have been random raw oysters, because Dad's friend picked up a sack and brought them over. And crawfish sushi because I was at the grocery Tuesday and it looked good. And more of the venison stew, and also the corn and sausage soup, and random Popeye's leftovers, because they were in the fridge and I was feeling snacky at late-o-clock at night.

I've begun assembling a photo album over on Facebook - I think it's totally public and you don't have to be logged in to see it - because I have this new camera, as you may remember. Here's a close-up of one of the photos. Apparently they have yellow caution signs for everything.

You guys, I cannot even with the forum posts today. My ability to even has been reduced to nothing. Mind you, I'm in a noisy taproom having lunch and a rather high ABV beer, so that could have something to do with it. But there's nothing really informative in the forums that I can see, just people sniping at each other in a way that might be related to this weekend's blockade schedule. They have even gone back to arguing about the tree on Aimuari. The tree, you guys!

Look, there are blockades. There are a lot of blockades. On Meridian, Imperial Coalition did a lot of scuttling (which got them accused of cowardice because enticing a Brigand King to attack your island is an effective means of preventing player flags from doing the same), as did Alria (ditto), and now there are a billion Brigand King attacks going on which hopefully means a lot of PoE for jobbers. On Emerald, it just looks like a lot of simultaneous drops from This Means War, Order of the Jolly Roger, and Naughtiest Naughtiness. By contrast, Cerulean is quiet, and so is Jade and Opal, each of them with one or two blockades or so.

Anyway, this isn't even the interesting thing this weekend. Not hardly! This weekend, the Sealpocalypse has been unleashed upon the Oceans! You may have noticed.

Standard reminders: Schedule is given in Pirate Time, or U.S. Pacific. Player flags link to Yoweb information pages; Brigand King Flags link to Yppedia Brigand King pages. BK amassed power given in parenthetical numbers, like so: (14). For more info about jobbing contacts, jobber pay, and Event Blockade battle board configuration, check the Blockade tab of your ocean's Notice Board. To get hired, apply under the Voyages tab.

Doubloon Ocean Blockades

*** Saturday, December 19 ***

9:27 a.m. - Accompong-Insel, Opal Ocean
Defender: Glare
Attacker: Schatten-Reich
Attacker: Dark Nightmare

9:27 a.m. - Paihia-Insel, Opal Ocean
Defender: Glare
Attacker: Schatten-Reich

11:03 a.m. - Hubbles Auge, Opal Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Alianca da Aguia
Attacker: Chthonische Horden (1)

12:00 p.m. - Arco Ascalón, Jade Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Courage
Attacker: Prole de los Dragones de Hielo (1)

12:00 p.m. - Stormy Fell, Meridian Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Imperial Coalition
Attacker: Fleet of his Imperial Scaled Highness (3)

12:00 p.m. - Zuyua Mist, Meridian Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Imperial Coalition
Attacker: Chthonic Horde (3)

12:00 p.m. - Swampfen Island, Meridian Ocean
Defender: United We Stand
Attacker: Cream Pie

12:00 p.m. - Moab Island, Meridian Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Alria
Attacker: Fleet of his Imperial Scaled Highness (3)

12:00 p.m. - Labyrinth Moors, Meridian Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Fellowship of Friends
Attacker: Fleet of his Imperial Scaled Highness (5)
Undeclared: Glub Glub Glub
Undeclared: Heisenberg's Uncertainty

1:00 p.m. - Tigerleaf Mountain, Meridian Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Imperial Coalition
Attacker: Fleet of his Imperial Scaled Highness (5)

1:47 p.m. - Ansel Island, Meridian Ocean
Defender: Cannabis Nation
Attacker: Blood Sweat and Beers

2:00 p.m. - Napi Peak, Meridian Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Imperial Coalition
Attacker: Fleet of his Imperial Scaled Highness (5)

3:00 p.m. - Hadrian Island, Meridian Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Alria
Attacker: Fleet of his Imperial Scaled Highness (4)

3:06 p.m. - Blackthorpe Island, Emerald Ocean
Defender: Keep the Peace
Attacker: Order of the Jolly Roger

4:00 p.m. - Scrimshaw Island, Emerald Ocean
Defender: Loose Lips Sink Ships
Attacker: Coming In Hot

4:05 p.m. - Ashkelon Arch, Emerald Ocean
Defender: Midknight Sun
Attacker: Order of the Jolly Roger

4:06 p.m. - Kashgar Island, Emerald Ocean
Defender: Midknight Sun
Attacker: Order of the Jolly Roger

4:29 p.m. - Windward Vale, Meridian Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Alria
Attacker: Fleet of his Imperial Scaled Highness (6)

6:00 p.m. - Admiral Island, Emerald Ocean
Defender: Qlimax Telecom
Attacker: This Means War

7:00 p.m. - The Lowland Hundred, Emerald Ocean
Defender: Illuminatti
Attacker: Order of the Jolly Roger

7:00 p.m. - Fugu Island, Meridian Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Imperial Coalition
Attacker: Fleet of his Imperial Scaled Highness (6)

8:54 p.m. - Aimuari Island, Emerald Ocean
Defender: Qlimax Telecom
Attacker: This Means War

9:06 p.m. - Raven's Roost, Meridian Ocean
Defender: Blood Sweat and Beers
Attacker: Chapter Three

9:06 p.m. - Havoc Island, Meridian Ocean
Defender: Blood Sweat and Beers
Attacker: Chapter Three

9:31 p.m. - Wissahickon Island, Emerald Ocean
Defender: This Means War
Attacker: Naughtiest Naughtiness

9:37 p.m. - Ix Chel, Emerald Ocean
Defender: This Means War
Attacker: Naughtiest Naughtiness

9:38 p.m. - Armstrong Island, Emerald Ocean
Defender: Qlimax Telecom
Attacker: This Means War

9:39 p.m. - Alkaid Island, Emerald Ocean
Defender: Qlimax Telecom
Attacker: This Means War

10:20 p.m. - Corona Reef, Meridian Ocean
Defender: Dragon Lords
Attacker: Infamous

11:14 p.m. - Cochineal Island, Meridian Ocean
Defender: Dragon Lords
Attacker: Infamous

*** Sunday, December 20 ***

12:00 a.m. - Acanthaster Spits, Meridian Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Imperial Coalition
Attacker: Chthonic Horde (5)

Subscription Ocean Blockades

*** Saturday, December 19 ***

12:00 p.m. - Spring Island, Cerulean Ocean
Brigand King attack!
Defender: Dies Irae
Attacker: Jinx (6)