On how Lis and I communicate:

LIS [Pours herself a Mike's Hard Limeade and mixes it with cranberry juice; drinks it]: Ooo! This is really good. Ian, want a sip?
IAN [Takes a sip]: Ooo! [In precisely the same modulation as Lis said it.] Just so you know, while I said "Ooo!" like that in order to tease you, I actually mean "Ooo!"; that really IS good.
LIS: So it was really sincere mockery?
IAN: Well, I was sort of trying to call out to you. So it was actually calling. It was Colin Mocherie.

Oh, something nifty I learned back at Boskone

So, when I was at Boskone, I chatted with one of the people from the Higgins Armory Sword Guild (the folks that translate Medieval and Rennaisance European martial arts manuals and work out how people actually used all those pretty pretty pointy thingies). I do this a fair bit, because their work is just that cool.

He was saying that they were working with a manual which had instructions for use of a poleaxe thinggummy -- one of those things, about as tall as a person, with an axe on one end, and pointy bits in various other useful places. Like, for instance, a butt-spike -- a pointy bit on the bottom end of it.
( Cut, because, I guess this could be kind of gross. I mean, it's not really bad -- it's just talking about how the manuals suggest you use these suckers. )