So my wife and I were talking about restaurants, and since I'm a foodie, two of my favorite restaurants in the Bay Area happen to be fine dining:
Alexander's in Cupertino - steakhouse - and
Millennium in Oakland - vegan. Both are a bit pricey, but, as a vegan, my wife has experience with only one of these.
For a carnivore married to a vegan, it's quite useful to acquire a love of vegan food, so we go to vegan restaurants like Millennium and
Happy Hooligans a
lot. But by the time the two of us have done drinks, alcohol, three apps, a dinner entree and their dessert assortment, Millennium is, um,
pricey, and my wife wondered whether it was the most expensive place that I ate at.
"Um, no," I admitted. "Alexander's is
way pricier." (And it is. Some entrees at Alexander's, like the Alexander's Trio of different kinds of
Wagyu beef, are more expensive than our entire meal for two at Millennium).
After a beat, my wife said, "Well, it had better be that expensive, because the animals you eat at Alexander's get fed the kind of food we eat at Millennium."
After a moment, we laughed and agreed that this was probably true - and that we should call up an old carnivorous friend who once told the story of one of his friends who refused to eat vegetables because "that's what food eats."
-the Centaur
Pictured: Appetizers, entree and dessert trio at Millennium, teh yums; Alexander's Trio and a mother-bleeping
four-and-a-half-pound wagyu tomahawk chop, which is the largest steak I've heard of at Alexander's, the second largest steak I've
ever heard of and a full third bigger than the biggest steak I've ever eaten (and at least twice as big as the largest steak I've eaten without regret).
72 ounces? Even
I can't eat that much ... and anyway, I prefer the savory taste of regular beef over the super-richness of wagyu. Actually, just after even writing that, I feel like posting more vegan food to balance it out ... here's a vegan burger and vegan fish and chips at Happy Hooligans:
You're welcome.
This somehow all magically happened because I never lost my momentum after the Night of Writing Dangerously, oh, and because this is Cinnamon Frost, and she's awesome!
This is the most I've ever written in Nano, by a long shot - almost 10,000 words more. Not quite, and I'm not super motivated to make it exactly 10,000 words more. If I think of more words tonight, eh maybe.
Oh yes, the traditional excerpt:
Winning at Nano always feels like climbing a hill, but for me in particular it almost always feels like I start out sliding back down, Sisyphus-like, as I struggle to get a handle on the story.
But then there comes that magic point where I need to write 1,666 words in a day and I. Got. Nothing. Then I'm forced to be creative, and the real fun stuff happens, an event I call "going off the rails". Hey, let's try to embed a tweet!
I'm one more thing too: 200,000 words into the Cinnamon Frost trilogy.
There are 3 published Dakota Frost novels: 
"Okay, so ... um, hi! I'm Cinnamon Frost, and I'm here to tell you that my biographer, Anthony Francis, is busy as fuck writing 
Okay, I couldn't leave "
... though technically speaking neither are steak, and 
... but either way, all of it was highly delicious!
-the Centaur
Not literally; we were far south of the literal fires, which just barely missed the homes of our friends. But so many other things have been going wrong that it felt like things were on fire ... so no posts for a while, sorry.
But tonight, I got to the last chapter of Dakota Frost #6, SPIRITUAL GOLD.
I will likely finish this chapter Saturday.
That makes today a good day.
Time for some cake.
-the Centaur
Pictured: a cat break with Loki. Not how things look right now, but how I feel.
What you see above is the precise moment Irma touched Greenville, South Carolina, just prior to my supposed flight back to the Bay Area two days later.
That flight was canceled three times, finally being rescheduled to the next day.
Yeah, it was time to get the heck out of Dodge ...
-the Centaur 
So at Dragon Con I had a reading this year. Yeah, looks like this is the last year I get to bring all my books - too many, to heavy! I read the two flash fiction pieces in 
But that wasn't recorded, so, oh dang, you'll have to either go to 
Wow. I guess a lot of books are going to be waiting for me when I get home tonight ... either the shipment of 
All good things come to an end. I've known that since I was a child, when I asked my art teacher whether she had kept any of her childhood drawings, and she, with aplomb, replied no, they all burned in a house fire. But I've become more aware of that recently, as, one by one, places that I enjoy have come to an end. 
As I've said before, it's all too easy to kill the golden goose: a business decision which appears to save money may actually undermine the way you make money. Perhaps Books Inc is struggling, but I and many others like me spend a lot late at night, and when they cut their closing hours from 11pm to 10pm it took away one of the reasons I had for going there. Moving from their glorious two-story corner location to a regular storefront will remove more reasons for more people; and eliminating the cafe will remove more reasons still, leaving it just another bookstore instead of a landmark destination.
I don't have access to their books and I can't know all their reasons; maybe they were forced into this move. But I've talked to similar business owners about similar moves, and they never say, "we can't afford the late night staff" but instead say "we aren't making money on the late night traffic," which shows that they don't get the connection that the traffic they get at earlier hours is dependent on the later hours, and those of us that are night owls will be compelled to go everywhere. It's not the four buck cup of coffee we're paying for: it's the pleasant environment to drink it in the company of friends.
Still, I wish Books Inc the best of luck in their new location, and I'll be sure to drop by. And I hope Jay at Caffe Romanza finds a new option. But I will miss that place where I wrote the bulk of my many novels ... but I will soon move on and find a new favorite, as the cycle continues.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Books Inc, an insanely large gift certificate for Caffe Romanza given to me by my colleagues on my tenth work anniversary, and Caffe Romanza, end of shift. 
Facebook is not a waste of time: it saved my cat.
Not long after my good friend 
They thought he would be home after a couple of days, though it was closer to five. But he's home safe now, and that happened because me and my friends were on Facebook, sharing our stories.
Jim, if you're reading this, as I said on Facebook: I'm sorry for your loss. But thank you for sharing it. You helped me save my cat's life.
-the Centaur
It might not be immediately apparent from this shot, but outside, it’s sunny and the weather is nice. That’s despite 
I live near Coyote Valley, not Coyote Creek - two totally different areas miles apart - so my home was providentially spared.
I was, however, woken up yesterday morning by a text, a call, and a Messenger message, all wondering whether I was OK. My wife, off to the East Coast on a business trip, called to ask if I’d evacuated yet; I looked out the window to sunny skies, sleeping cats and the early-morning sound of a leaf blower, and said no.
Sorry for concerning you, I know there have been three different disasters / evacuations in San Jose recently! Last night at dinner at Alexander’s, the server, my good friend Todd, reported three different closures of Highway 17 that kept him from work - one that involved a gun battle and five hours trapped in his car, but the rest, weather. 101 in San Jose has suffered similarly. I think these are somehow all related to “
