This morning, on the drive back home from the farmers market, the conversation turned to eyes. According to Akemi, one of the instructors at her English language school: “Has eyes like Husky!”. Clearly, them’s some lovely eyes. But, apparently, they don’t hold a candle to those of my writing partner. “Munyu Munyu’s eyes [her nickname for Paul] have more power.” Yeah, he gets that a lot. Akemi likes his eyes. He wins the male category. When it comes to the female category, Robert Cooper’s wife, Hillary, is the big winner: “She has beautiful eyes. Like flowers inside!” Like flowers!
In addition to her unique turns of phrase, Akemi has produced some equally inspired creations in the kitchen. Check out these Stargate cookies:
Cacio e pepe…
Her sage and brown butter sweet potato gnocchi…
And this homemade eggnog for yours truly:
Inspired by her inspired creations, check out my oven roasted egg-in-an-avocado-hole…
And roasted chicken meatballs (hiding melted cheese centers)…
Akemi flexes her culinary muscles…
Continuing our Book of the Month Club discussion of Terms of Enlistment…
Kathode writes: “And did anyone else get annoyed that we never learn Halley’s first name? WTF? She calls him Andrew, and he refers to her exclusively by her last name, even in his thoughts? That’s kinda fucked up, no?”
Answer: Wait, I thought Halley WAS her first name. No? Then that is mighty strange. We made this a gag in the SG-1 episode 200 when Jack calls Sam “Carter” on their wedding day!
Katholde writes: “I only brought it up because Grayson himself felt the weight of what he’d done when he saw the floors above the grenade impact site pancake one on top of the other. He told us he felt bad that he’d been responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people. If he’d really felt entirely blameless in his actions, he’d have had no problem telling Halley about it via email.”
Answer: Well that’s what I found so strange. He expresses that initial regret, clearly doesn’t want to discuss it in the email, but we delve no deeper into his conflicted feelings. Sure, he feels justified for his actions, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t still feel conflicted or somewhat guilty.
Line Noise writes: “Re: Andrew being at the right place at the right time. I think that’s a limitation of first person narrative. Because you only have the point of view of one person in the story the author needs to contrive situations that gets that person to where the next part of the story goes. If the story was third person and following several characters then I think it would have been structured differently (Andrew staying on Earth and Halley encountering the aliens, for example).”
Answer: The need for something to happen is not an acceptable excuse for coincidental or contrived development. There are other, albeit trickier, ways to get there. They just require more thought and effort.
Line Noise writes: “Re: soul searching and self- torture. One of my least favourite book series that I read was The Seafort Saga by David Feintuch. The hero starts off as a Midshipman in the space Navy and through a series of events over many books makes lots of hard decisions that kills a lot of people in order to save many, many more. He is so consumed with guilt that I ended up hating him because of his self-pity.”
Answer: I’d argue there’s a fairly wide-ranging middle ground between feeling guiltless and consumed by self-pity
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