Until Midnight (& Sometimes Later)

My weekend in a nutshell starting Saturday morning: drive 2.5 hours to Washington-National/Reagon airport (DCA). Fly Air Tran to Milwaukee (MKE). Frantically try to locate friends. Find them. Eat dinner with them at restaurant with abysmally slow service, okay food, and excellent bloody marys. Sleep at LaQuinta. Get up and judge cat judge. Return to MKE. Fly back to DCA. Shuttle back to the Doubletree where the car is parked for the looong ride home.

Shuttle is almost full, and everyone else is (not surprisingly) staying at the Doubletree for the night. They are nearly all flight crew. Someone starts a discussion about the complimentary Doubletree cookies you get at check-in (all the crew seem at least somewhat acquainted with one another).

“Can I have your cookie if you’re not going to eat it? I’ll have it for breakfast.”

“It’ll be hard as a rock in the morning if you don’t put it in a plastic bag.”

“You know: they reheat those, and reheat them, and reheat them . . .”

“Do you remember when the cookies used to be bigger? It must be the economy.”

“Do you remember the old days when we used to get two cookies? I remember that.”

I’m guessing none of these guys had been flying anywhere particularly interesting . . . .

I was curious–who would the computer think I wrote like? I fed a chunk of my steampunk story into the analyzer, and got the following:

I write like
Isaac Asimov

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Then, I fed in a piece of my fairy/salamander story, and got the following:

I write like
Raymond Chandler

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Try it here–it’s fun!

A Beautiful Friendship
by David Weber

Hardcover 2011 Baen Books www.almadenbooks.com ISBN: 978-1-4516-3747-2 Rating: 5 paws (out of 5)

David Weber is an exceptionally well-known writer among those who read science fiction, most particularly for his military science fiction series featuring Honor Harrington. The series spans Honor’s career in the Royal Manticoran Navy from midshipman to Grand Duchess and Admiral. And wherever Honor went, she was accompanied by her treecat, Nimitz, usually riding on her specially-padded shoulder.

Honor was born on Sphinx, a planet in the Star Kingdom of Manticore–a world settled by colonists from Earth. Treecats were the native sentient species on Sphinx, six-legged, telepathic, and looking something like domestic cats with very long prehensile tails. Treecats and humans sometimes formed an empathic lifelong bond.

A Beautiful Friendship is the story of Stephanie Harrington, one of Honor’s ancestors, and the colonist who made first contact with the treecats. This is a coming-of-age story, showing interactions between human and treecat even as Stephanie is growing up and trying to figure out what to do with herself and her future. It’s a colonization story, set on a pioneer planet that still holds many dangers, with people exploring and learning about their new home. And it’s also a classic “first-contact” story, handling the complicated twists and turns that occur when the colonists realize that they share the planet with another sentient species–and that species was there first!

Most of the story is told from Stephanie’s point of view–this is her story, make no mistake. Occasional scenes and chapters fill in gaps using some of the adults as viewpoint characters where absolutely necessary to the plot. The other main viewpoint character is Lionheart, Stephanie’s treecat, or as he is referred to by his clan, Climbs Quickly. The chapters from his point of view, explaining treecat society and motivations is a real treat. The treecats find “two-legs” very confusing. For those familiar with Carole Nelson Douglas’s Midnight Louie mysteries, these chapters are a similar read to those from Louie’s viewpoint (a Las Vegas private eye with four black paws–see here for a review of Midnight Louie’s latest).

While Stephanie is an exceptionally bright girl, she is also quick-to-anger, and fiercely protective of those she loves. When she is in trouble, she looks for a logical solution to the problem, and really tries to think outside the box. But sometimes there isn’t an easy or quick solution, and she ended up frustrated, but that made the book a more satisfying read as she worked her way through more complex and layered problems.

I particularly enjoyed the insight into treecat society and their description of human activities–“Why should they need a nest place so large?” I also enjoyed the brief forays into the economics of colonization, and the concept of aided immigration: paying for your passage to the colony and earning the right to vote sooner versus having the government cover your passage and then paying taxes for several years before you voted in planetary elections.

While clearly aimed at and marketed as a young adult book, A Beautiful Friendship is suitable for people of all ages, most especially those who have shared a special relationship with a feline at some point in their lives.

A Beautiful Friendship is based on a short story of the same title, which appeared in the anthologies More Than Honor and Worlds of Weber.

Dinner is in the oven. For a change, I thought I’d document one of my usual recipes. So, here is Elektra’s meatloaf.

Combine in a bowl: 2 pounds meatloaf mix (combined ground beef, veal, and pork), 1 beaten egg, 3 onions (chopped), 3 tablespoons chopped garlic, 1 bell pepper (chopped), 12 oz fresh mushrooms (chopped), 1/2 15oz can tomato sauce. Season with salt, freshly ground pepper, ground cardamom, ground coriander and ground ginger. Add enough bread crumbs (I prefer panko) to create a dry enough meatloaf to be shaped.

Place in a large baking pan and shaped into a loaf that is of even height throughout. Surround with canned white potatoes (I used two 15oz. cans–Mike really likes them). Top both the meatloaf and the potatoes with the remaining tomato sauce, bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours, until it appears to be done when you cut into it.

I tend to adjust the seasoning every time I make it–never the same meatloaf twice! Leftovers make great sandwiches (best with homemade bread).