Bleeping Music....

This is why I don't generally listen to music. :P If anyone asks, or if a comment seems contextually appropriate, I'll usually say I'm not that into music. The truth is, I'm into it too much.

I can't listen to music as background noise. If I like a song then it's distracting, and if I don't then it's annoying. I generally just avoid it because it sucks me in if I'm not careful.

This morning, I wasn't careful.

So I got a Facebook notice that a friend of mine posted a link. I went to check it out, and it was Queen's Live Aid set. I haven't seen that in a long time, so I clicked through and watched it. Awesome stuff -- Queen rules.

But I glanced at that column of links to the right on the YouTube page, and saw that there are... holy crap, there are reaction videos with people who've never heard Queen before, and sometimes the younger ones have never heard OF Queen. O_O

There were a few other things too -- one video analyzed Bohemian Rhapsody (the structure, not the lyrics) and it was really good. And I watched a video analyzing how Disney makes the songs in their movies feel nostalgic, which was actually sort of a history of Disney movie music, and how the music is one of the major factors in bringing about the Disney Renaissance, starting with Little Mermaid, which had completely awesome music. (I nagged my then-boyfriend, Jim, into renting it on my first or second visit (to see him in realspace -- we met online) and when we finished "Under the Sea" he had to rewind and watch it again right away. :D )

But mostly it was Queen reaction videos.

I got up a bit before midnight last night, Jim went to bed a little after two, and I started watching videos between four and five in the morning. I just finished. So... yeah, I lost like eleven hours of what was going to be productive time to watching a bunch of ridiculously fun music videos. :P I watched the Live Aid set like... seven times? Maybe eight, counting the original non-reaction video link that set me off. (Or maybe nine...?) I watched people watching the official video of Bohemian Rhapsody like eight times, maybe nine, including one guy who actually tried to break down and analyze the lyrics and figure out how it all made sense. [giggling facepalm] He paused after the first chunk and started talking about how the singer had just killed someone and was talking to his mother (he was watching a live-recorded video, without the intro :P ) and I was sitting here going, "Oh, dude, do not go there!" LOL!

I found a young man who'd grown up exposed to only hip hop, but someone had suggested he watch Bohemian Rhapsody and do a reaction video. His head exploded two or three times, he called out his parents for only playing hip hop when he was a kid and not introducing him to Queen, and he went on to do eighteen more Queen response videos, every one of which I watched. [hides under keyboard] Seriously, he was fun -- his reactions were more analyses, not incredibly technical, but with enough specific commentary and grounded opinion to make them interesting to listen to.

And just, watching people who've never heard Queen before watching for the first time (especially Bohemian Rhapsody, but a few other songs too) and going all O_O and then rocking out on it? That'll (unfortunately) never get old. :D It's like, introducing your favorite music to someone who's never heard it, and getting to enjoy both the music and their joyful reaction to it, which is massively awesome and fun.

So yeah, that's what I spent the morning and most of the afternoon doing. Thanks, Lyn. [wry smile]

Angie, who was finally able to break away and is going to do her best to forget that response videos exist because otherwise she'll get nothing else done for the rest of the year

Settling Down for the Holidays

There's less than two weeks left of the year, and it's time to look at wrapping things up. Jim and I are heading to Reno where my mom lives tomorrow evening, and I don't expect to get a lot of work done for the next few days.

That's okay. Christmas is coming -- I still have to run out tomorrow and ransack the shopping center looking for stocking stuffers -- and then New Year, and I think it's time to wind down and kick back, and look forward to setting new goals for 2019.

I didn't make all my 2018 goals, but I've done pretty well. I completed thirteen short stories and one novel this year, and while a few of them were stories I began some time ago and just wrapped up this year, most of them were completely written in the last eleven-and-a-half months. That's pretty good; I'll take it.

I've had a bunch of shorts in the pipeline for a while, just because of the vagaries of the publishing business. One came out earlier this month, two will be released in January and one in March, and it'll be great to see things appearing again.

I came this close to actually getting a book indie published, until I took another look at the cover and realized there's a word missing from the title. [headdesk] It was purchased for me from a cover artist I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I can fix it. I just have to dig out my notes from a class I took five and a half years ago and figure out how to get the .JPEG back into InDesign, and then do a patch job. It should work, and I thought I could get it done before the end of the year. I still might, but I've decided that stressing out about it at this point -- especially since that kind of stressing out makes it more likely that I'll get run-to-the-ER-level sick -- isn't worth it. If I trip over the how-to in the next week or so, then great. If not, January is a thing.

And I have a second book in the pipeline; I have art chosen and licensed for the cover (which I want to do myself, from scratch) and a slot booked with an editor I trust.

I wrote over 150K words this year, most of which came since early September, when I started using Habitica. The gamification strategy is working great for me, and I'm confident that I'll get a lot more done next year. If you've ever had a great time running around a dungeon or a forest or a derelict spaceship killing monsters, scooping up treasure and levelling your character, give Habitica a shot. :)

I joined Facebook this year, and have managed not to lose too much productive time to it. [crossed fingers] I've hooked up with a bunch of people I haven't been in contact with in a long time, and that's always cool. And there's some funny stuff going around Facebook; I've always loved good cartoons and fun videos. :)

I also have about a week and a half left of my diet hiatus. So little time to bake more cookies, eat more mac-and-cheese! And I still have to bake bread! Not till we get home, now, but definitely after that. On 1 January, I'll go back to eating ridiculously healthy, lose whatever I'll have gained by New Year, and hopefully lose a bit more; I usually do at that point. I'm still feeling great.

Usually, though, I'd be getting a bit frantic at this point in the year. So much to do, so many goals I'm still struggling toward, so little time to wrap things up. This year, I'm not worrying about it. I got a lot done, and I'm happy with that. Life goes on after 31 December, and my to-do list will still be there.

I hope you're all having a great holiday season, and are happy with your accomplishments for the year. Best wishes to everyone!

[wave/hugz]

Angie

Dragged Kicking and Screaming into Social Media

So, I've finally succumbed to the Dread Lord Zuckerberg, and joined Facebook. :P An anthology project I'm in is organizing on Facebook. I'm not going to be precious about it, so I signed up. If you want to friend me, I'm here.

I have no idea how much time I'll spend on Facebook. I don't need another timesink, but I'll probably browse through periodically. We'll see how it goes.

There's a whole lot of stuff here, and I'm sure my page or wall or whatever it is looks pretty bare. I refrained from dumping my entire contact list from Gmail into the system. If I've ever e-mailed you, you're welcome. :) I still need to go digging through the privacy settings and figure out how to turn off as much of that stuff as I can. I've heard it's a pretty horrific experience, requiring a machete and several maps, so I'm not looking forward to it. :/

With any luck, it'll be fun too, though. I might even run into some folks I've lost track of over the yars; that'd be cool.

Angie, looking over her shoulder

Musing About Childhood Games

I just saw one of those little margin surveys on a web site, and it got me reminiscing. :)

It asks, what's the best childhood game? and offers kickball, capture the flag, hide-and-seek, or other.

For me, remembering how we played those games, it depends.

In the daytime, it's capture the flag, hands-down. At school, we played capture the flag on the soccer field, with extra-large chalkboard erasers as the flags. The 50-yard line divided the field in half, and jumpropes marked out huge circles at either end of the field, two on each end, one where your side's flag hung out, and one as the "jail" where captured players from the other side hung out.

For anyone who never played, the point is to get over the border, through/past the other team, grab their flag, and then carry it back across the border to your side, all without getting tagged. This, as you can imagine, is very difficult and takes considerable cunning.

If you're tagged while on the other team's side (or if kids from the other side could lean over the border and grab you -- without moving both their feet onto your side -- and drag you over the border so both of your feet were on their side) then you were captured and had to go to their jail. I have a feeling the grab-and-drag part of the program probably wouldn't be allowed in today's elementary schools. [cough]

If you could make your way past the other team without getting tagged and get to their jail, you got a free walk back with some one person who was in jail -- you could "rescue" them. You had to walk back holding hands, or grabbing their wrist, or whatever your childish ego would allow. :)

An out-and-out win was rare, and when it happened it took cunning. One of my favorite tricks was to wait until nobody was watching me, then step over the border and start walking, all slumped down and dejected-looking, toward the jail. Most of the time, anyone who saw you were assume you'd been captured, and you might get some jeers, but rarely would anyone bother tagging you. When I got to the jail, it was all, "Hah-HAH!" and "Losers!" as I walked back with one of my teammates.

Alternately, I'd walk dejectedly to jail, but then stay there, as though I'd actually been captured, whether or not there was anyone from my team legitimately there. Rescue wasn't the point. Then from jail, where I was free to leave whenever I wanted since I hadn't actually been captured, I'd watch the other team. Most of their attention was usually facing away, toward the border and my side, as they watched for incursions from the front. I'd wait until some other of my teammates were making a push to get over the border, and when all the enemies were fully engaged elsewhere, I'd dash over from the jail to the flag circle, grab the flag and hotfoot it to the border, passing enemies from behind. I actually made it a few times, which was pretty awesome. :D

Out of school, the kids on my block played a sorta similar game we called British Bulldog. We played on a large lawn, the adjoining yards between two houses. Each house had a concrete walk leading from the front door, along the side of the garage, then a short jog back (away from most of the lawn) to the driveway, which continued on to the sidewalk and the curb. We played between Tommy and Jimmy Tousignant's house, and Jimmy Ramirez's house, because there were no intervening trees or bushes, just a big expanse of lawn from one walkway/driveway to the other.

Someone started as the Bulldog, and went in the middle of the lawn. Everyone else lined up on the walk or the driveway, which were Base, a safe zone. The sidewalk was out of bounds. The Bulldog yelled, "British Bulldog" (I don't know why, that's just what it was) and everyone tried to dash across the lawn to get to the walk/driveway Base on the other side.

While this happened, the Bulldog would try to "get" someone. They had to get the person they were after down on their butt on the grass. How they did this was up to them. Pretty much anything was allowed -- tackling, pushing, grabbing and arm and doing the swing-and-slam... whatever. Yeah, it was a rough game. I think that's why we liked it so much. (Yeah, I was the only girl playing.)

If the Bulldog successfully got someone down on their butt, they were captured, and they stayed in the middle. Now there were two people trying to "get" the kids still running across. The game continued until everyone had been captured except one person, and that person got to be the new Bulldog for the next game.

No flags or anything, but there are similarities, and it was one of our favorite games to play in the daytime. :) The fact that it required no equipment at all was probably a major plus.

At night, though, hide-and-seek was king. We played in the daytime sometimes, but twilight and after dark were the best times. The shadows were your friends, and you could be a lot more creative with your hiding places.

I'm going to assume everyone knows how to play hide-and-seek. In the daytime, you have to actually hide someplace where you're hidden. As the light faded, though, you could be sneaky. We played in the front yards of five or six adjacent houses along our street, so there was quite a lot of territory to go through. One neighbor had a row of loose bushes running down the border between their yard and the next; in the dim or dark, you could kneel down on all fours between two bushes and fade into the ragged row of foliage, whereas in the daytime you'd be laughably visible. And once (but only once!) I successfully hid by standing up, straight and still, against a neighbor's garage, along a line of tall, straight, juniper bushes that grew there, a few feet apart. The kid searching didn't notice that two pairs of bushes were twice as close together as all the others. [grin]

Ninjas weren't really a thing at that time in popular kid-culture, in the early- to mid-seventies, but we were totally ninjas on those summer nights, hiding from each other in the shadows and the dim-blurred yards.

What games did you play as a kid?

Angie

Six Month Check-In -- Can't Believe It's July

Seriously, half the year is gone already??

The only reason I have a half decent (seriously, half decent -- just short of 95K) wordcount so far is because of the two workshops I attended, one in late February and early March, and the other in April. They both required writing, and I work best (unfortunately) with an external deadline. I need to learn to work to my own deadlines, which is proving to be kind of tough.

I had so much enthusiasm and such great hopes at the beginning of the year. My weight-loss-and-fitness thing was and is under control, and I was pretty sure I had enough spare focus to turn some of it back to writing. Guess not. Or maybe I do but I've been spending that resource improperly.

So, its July 1st. Right now, I'm renewing my determination to do more writing this year. I can still make my goal for the year if I buckle down and do the work, and I'm declaring, here in public, that I'm going to do it. I have a book about building habits and writing every day (which I'll review here after I've put it to use and seen how it works for me) and hope to get back to being productive.

It's not all bad -- I have accomplished some things, like starting up my Patreon, and my writing/publishing review series. The most important thing to a writer is writing, though, and I need to get back to that. So I'm going to stop blathering and do so.

How's everyone else doing, half way through the year?

Angie

The Seattle Snowpocalypse of 2017

Okay, everyone in the Midwest or in Upstate New York or wherever is going to laugh or roll their eyes, but seriously, this is a metric buttload of snow for Seattle. O_O Jim usually volunteers to the Aquarium on Monday afternoons, but they've cancelled at least five busses already off the route he usually takes downtown, and he doesn't get off shift until after dark, so he's not going in today.

Last time we had snow like this was a day or two before Thanksgiving, a few years ago before he retired. He worked downtown and it usually took like half an hour, maybe forty minutes to get home on the bus. It took him over seven hours that day. He really doesn't want that to happen again, and I don't blame him.

We're supposed to get about a foot of it today, and it's got quite a lot to go. It's pretty, though.

This is out the front door, on the opposite side of the building, looking in either direction:

Yes, our neighbors across the driveway still have Christmas decorations up. I like it, actually -- it's cheerful. :D

And this is the view off our balcony. That's on the second floor, off the living room. (Yes, I know. Seattle's weird that way. It's hilly, like San Francisco, so there's not a lot of flat land left in the city. Newer construction tends to be tall and narrow. Our place is three stories, with the main living area on the second. When we were house hunting, we looked at one townhouse that was four stories. Kinda crazy, but it's what they do up here.)

This is what our little yard looks like, taken through the screen door because I was feeling calorically timid when I shot this pic:

I'm here in the living room with my laptop, bundled up under a blanket and with the heater going. I think I'll be staying here most of the day.

Keep warm, everyone!

ETA: a neighbor's kids built a snowman. :) It's pretty rare that there's enough snow here to do that.



Angie

Why Amazon Is Taking Over the World

So I finished my first square for the World's Biggest Christmas Stocking. It was fun, and when I finished I wanted to make another one. So I picked a new pattern and ordered yarn for it from Yarnspirations, the company that's donating some money to a charity whenever you buy a skein of yarn from them. That was the seventeenth.

It's now the twenty-second and my package still hasn't arrived.

I got a note from the company with a tracking number. Okay, cool, let's see where my box is.

I poke around a bit, and first thing I see is that it takes them at least two business days to just pack your box and get it out of the warehouse. Umm, okay. Two days after I order something from Amazon, it shows up at my doorstep about 90% of the time, and that's without expedited shipping. (And that's just two days, not two business days, unless the second day is a Sunday, and sometimes even then.) But okay, I live in Seattle; I'll bet not everyone gets service that fast from Amazon, and I don't know where Yarnspirations is shipping from.

I go looking for their tracking system. Clicking on the tracking number in the e-mail takes me to a general page where they're trying to sell me a bunch of stuff. Down in a lower corner is a big red button that says "View Order History." Okay, would've been nice to go there straight from the tracking number, but whatever. I click on the big red button.

I've ordered from them twice, and there's a line item for each one. The order from the seventeenth is on top, and... it says "Complete."

Funny, I don't consider that order complete, seeing as how I don't have it in my hands yet.

I click on "View" to, presumably, get more info about this order. I get my name and address, and what I ordered, what it cost, payment method, that sort of thing. Under "Shipping Method" it says "Shipping Option - US Standard Shipping." Wow, that's incredibly generic. USPS? UPS? FedEx? Ralph's Tricycle Fleet...? Anything? No clue. There's a tracking number with no-kidding twenty-two digits in it, but it's not clickable. And since I don't know which company they gave my box to, I can't try plugging that huge number into anyone else's tracking system either.

Oh, but there's a button to one side that says "Track This Shipment." Cool, that must be what I want, so I click on it.

It says:

Shipment #100024731
GM-SPE: 9261293250801316909589

and nothing else, with two "Close Window" buttons, one above and one below. That's the order number, which was on my e-mail, and the tracking number I got on the previous page, which makes this tracking page perfectly un-helpful.

And that's about it. Short of putting in some kind of help ticket, I have no way of getting any more info. I'm hoping that by the time they'd have gotten back to me, I'll have my package. [crossed fingers] Tomorrow, maybe? The seventeenth and twentieth are two business days during which they hopefully got my yarn packed, and tomorrow is the twenty-third, which would give three days for actual transit. I don't remember how long the first one took to arrive, so I can't make a comparison there.

Maybe it's my fault. I haven't done any knitting in at least half a dozen years or so, and starting up again has re-kindled my enthusiasm for it. I did most of my knitting while sitting here watching Netflix on my computer. It took me about ten days to knit my square, and apparently it only takes ten days to burn in that habit; it now feels weird sitting here watching TV online without something to do with my hands. That makes me a little more eager than I was before.

But still, seriously, if it gets here tomorrow, it will have been almost a week. And their order tracking system doesn't deserve the name; it just ticked me off. If Amazon does end up taking over the retail world, as so many hysterics keep screaming will happen, this will be why -- faster, superior service.

I for one will welcome our Amazonian overlords. I wish they'd take over this yarn vendor and whip them into shape.

Angie, listening with annoyed impatience for a knock on the door

Gardening Notes

I used to do a lot of gardening before I got married. I lived with my mom for a few years, and she had a yard with some empty space. Mom's into instant gratification, so she mostly bought plants and pots. I've always liked planting seeds; watching them push up out of the soil, get their first set of leaves, and another, and another, and grow into something that has flowers -- that's pretty cool.

Every spring (which in California is, like, February, or maybe late January) I'd start planting seeds in pots or trays or whatever containers I could get ahold of. I used the lids of paper boxes once, but they were really too shallow, and they dried out too fast, being cardboard and all. After we'd been doing this for a couple of years, I'd saved up a bunch of the plastic six-packs and pony packs and small plastic pots that Mom's plants from the nursery had come in, and used those. They worked much better.

Around March or April (I honestly don't remember anymore -- it depended on the weather and how I felt) I'd get out this ancient pickaxe we'd inherited from when my grandparents owned the house, and go over the beds. The soil in Cupertino is dry and sandy and gravelly, and it produces a fine crop of rocks, up to fist-size and occasionally larger, all on its own. No matter how I worked it, or what amendments we put into it (we tried peat moss, compost, actual potting soil, and various combinations) it was back to its dry, pebbly self by the end of the season at latest. I dug down about eighteen inches or so, then mixed in whatever we were adding that year with a spade, so we had great soil to plant out my babies.

By mid-summer, the yard was blooming with pansies and alyssum and baby's breath and yarrow and delphiniums and columbines and carnations and sweet peas and lobelia. All right, I'll admit I had great beginner's luck with the delphs, and could never get them to sprout after that first year. :/ But the delphs kept coming back, mostly, for a few years; I think the last plants finally gave up after four or five. They were gorgeous while they lasted.

And the alyssum and carnations and sweet peas smelled wonderful. Flowers are supposed to stink real pretty, you know? :)

I haven't done that in a long time, though. I planted some columbines in pots while we were in our first apartment in Long Beach, and some bowls balanced on the fence at the condo, but it wasn't the same. My health got worse, and I couldn't get out to tend plants every day.

But now we're in Seattle and I have a little yard, so I thought I'd try it again.

Mind, the yard gets like four and a half minutes of sun per day, and less if it's cloudy, which... well, this is Seattle. But there are plants that do okay in shade, so I'm giving it a shot.

I'm not used to gardening in an area where it gets below freezing every year, though, much less an area where it snows, like two years out of three, at least a little. Wait, seasons? What are seasons...? :P When can you plant seeds outside? I didn't want to get everything sprouted and then have it all freeze. My husband noticed a local community ed program had a workshop coming up for starting seeds, though, and that helped. I didn't go, but I figured if they were planting seeds on a particular date, then it was probably safe, so I decided to plant mine shortly after.

I ordered a bunch of seeds online, and decided to try those pressed cardboard type pots, the ones you can supposedly plant right in the dirt? Although I have no intention of doing that, because I read somewhere that although they do break down eventually, they maintain their rigidity long enough that the plants end up essentially rootbound anyway. But the site I ordered from didn't have the little plastic pots I'd seen in nurseries (basically the 4" pots small plants come in when you buy them; I bought some while experimenting with containers back in the '90s and they were like a quarter a piece). All they had were either shallow little seed trays that required a ridiculous amount of space, or these compressed pots, so there you go.

Bad idea.

The problem is that they dry out like crazy. I water every day, and they're still bone dry by the next watering time. With plastic pots, moisture can only evaporate through the top, but with these compressed pots, moisture can exit from all sides. Which I suppose isn't a major problem if you have an extra-humid greenhouse, or if you sit your pots in huge trays of water. I suppose I could do the latter, but I was born and raised in California, which has droughts with depressing regularity. A wide, shallow tray of water evaporates like crazy, which is a huge waste. So. :/

And about a week ago, I went out to find my plants all knocked around, and some of the pots were bent or broken. Someone's cat got curious. :/ I picked things up and put them back together as best I could, but I lost a lot of plants, including all of my pansies, which really ticks me off.

I've had cats crapping in my pots before, and this is a similar problem. If it happens again, I'll get some mousetraps. They're great -- they sting hard enough to make Mr. Kitty yowl, but don't do any real damage. Great deterrents; even the dimmest cat eventually gets the message.

In the mean time, though, I have a lot less to plant out than I was hoping. Losing all the pansies is really annoying.

I have about half the alyssums left, some Shasta daisies (planted for my husband, because he likes daisies; I've never planted them from seed before, so this is an experiment), about half the lobelia, and some snapdragons, which I've also never planted before, for whatever reason.

Somewhere in this process, my husband started talking about how he'd love to grow some tomatoes.

Umm, okay. The problem is that tomatoes need sun, and we don't have any in the yard. But then I noticed that our little balcony off the living room (which is on the second floor, because Seattle) gets some sun. Huh, that might work.

At that point it was too late to plant tomato seeds, so I told him to look through the online site I'd used and find a tomato plant he wanted to try. I'd order the plant and put it in a pot on the balcony. He was happy with that, but he's almost as good a procrastinator as I am. :P Finally, about a week and a half ago, I went online to order a tomato plant for him. He could live with whatever I got, and maybe next year he'd pick one for himself, earlier.

Except it turns out you can't order just one plant from this site. They sell them in threes only, and I really didn't want three tomato plants taking over our tiny (no, really, it's miniscule) balcony. They'll do a mix-and-match thing with three different plants, though, so okay, I could live with that. I set up a three-pack with a tomato, plus basil and chives, and went to process the order.

Oops, they apparently can't ship live chives to Washington state. No clue why. :/

I tried a couple of other herbs, and they all got bounced. Of course, none of the plant listings tell you ahead of time which states they don't ship to. [sigh] I finally gave up and got another tomato plant, different kind. We'll see which one works best.

The tomatos arrived the other day, which was pretty cool. I've never ordered plants by mail before, and was wondering how they'd be packed. Turns out they have these little three-cell plastic clamshell packs, inside a cardboard box. The root balls are pretty small, but the plants seem healthy, only a bit battered from shipping.

The next step is "hardening them off," which I've never done before, because see above re: California. Apparently you have to keep the plants inside for a day or two, then them used to being outdoors slowly, a few hours a day, until they're ready to be outside full time, like big, grown-up plants. Umm, okay. [bemused smile]

So I have two tomato plants and one basil plant living in the downstairs bathroom, in the sink (because the tub is used for storage -- boxes and an old printer and stuff -- with the light on 24/7. I just put them outside for the first time. I hope they don't, like, die of shock or anything, and that Mr. Kitty doesn't show up. :/

Angie

Starting Over

So, it's January first again -- a new beginning. To a lot of writers, it's a time to heave a sigh of relief and reset your counters to zero. That's exactly what I'm doing, and it feels pretty good.

One or two of you might've noticed I stopped updating my wordcount counter several months ago. My writing crashed, and I never got it back, despite trying a few times. My real 2014 wordcount is a few thousand greater than my counter was showing yesterday, but not enough to sweat over. I made a little over 200K words last year, when my goal was 300K. That's a pretty huge failure.

Back in 2012, my year-end total was a little over 80K words. I considered that to be a huge failure too. And coming into the last month and the last week of the year, I felt about the same in 2012 as I felt in 2014 -- depressed at failing, and eager for a new start. The difference this year is that my horrible, huge failure in 2014 produced about 2.5 times as many words as my horrible, huge failure in 2012. That's a pretty great failure, if you think about it.

Aim high, miss high.

I have a goal of 300K new words of fiction again for 2015. Hopefully I'll make it this time. With luck, I'll pass it. But even if I fail, so long as the failure is up in the six digits, I'll have done a decent chunk of writing. I'm good with that.

I finished eleven stories in 2014, and no novels. I'm going to shoot for a goal of an even dozen shorts and at least one novel in 2015.

I have stories coming out in four anthologies this year. I'll finally have a significant (relatively [cough]) number of publications on the SF/F side, and that'll be cool. I'd like to have at least as many next year, but that's just a wish; I can't force someone to publish one of my stories, so all I can do is keep writing and submitting. Putting myself into a position where editors and publishers can decide to accept my work is all I can do on the tradpub side.

I also want to indie pub at least six short stories this year. It's not a lot, but I've been wanting to get into the indie side for a while now. It's time to take some action, so those six indie shorts are a goal. If I can do more, great.

I'll be starting up the Anthology Market posts again this month. I apologize for going on hiatus for December; I should've announced that. I've noticed that a lot of publishers take a vacation in December too, though, and a lot of writers back off to do holiday things. Hopefully we didn't miss much, and everyone's ready to dive back into the pool this month.

I started a new blog for Angela Penrose, my SF/F writer persona, at http://angelapenrosewriter.blogspot.com/. It's meant to be a resource point for readers, rather than a place for writers to chat. The Anthology Market posts are not cross-posted over there, and I'm keeping that blog very low traffic. That's where I'm talking about new SF/F releases, and similar things readers might be interested in. I'll probably mention major milestones here as well, but I wanted an uncluttered place where a reader could find my work without having to take a machete to a lot of writer talk and general blathering.

[Yes, I have a Gmail account for that name. I don't check it very often. If you need to get ahold of me, angiepen at gmail dot com is still the best general address, or angiebenedetti at gmail dot com if it's for something romance-specific.]

I had a decent holiday, with some ups and downs. I got a lot of books for Christmas, which is always a good thing. :) I hope everyone else had a great holiday too, and is ready to get back to work.

Angie

Looking Forward

Yesterday was my birthday -- I turned fifty-one. Which makes today the first day of my second half-century.

It sounds pretty neat, actually. I've never had any age hang-ups, and thoroughly agree with this cartoon by The Oatmeal, but being fifty-one feels unusually cool. The Start Of My Second Half-Century sounds like a beginning, and it's a beginning to something pretty darned big. There's an excitement in that, like I'm starting a new slate and I can write whatever I want on it. The past is even more past than usual, and this is the first step into the future, like I've come to a whole, huge beach of fresh sand to leave footprints on.

That's what it feels like, anyway, and I'm looking forward to the next chunk of my life.

Angie

New Year

I've been pretty quiet for the last few weeks, so I thought I'd crawl out of my cave and say hi. I've been sick a few times, got to know more of the folks working the local ER. I missed holidays with my family because I've been afraid to travel; having to start from scratch to break in a new ER staff, convince a bunch of strange doctors that I know what's going on and how to treat it, when at times I have to argue with the local ER staff who have my history in their records, just feels like too high a hurdle when I'm already feeling lousy. All together, my give-a-damn broke down about halfway through November, and I didn't feel like getting it fixed. I've read a few million words, played a lot of solitaire, and generally vegged for a while. I'm actually feeling eager to get back to the writing, so I guess the downtime did me some good.

My 2013 writing goal was 250,000 words. Even taking the last seven weeks or so of the year off, I managed 304,169, which feels pretty awesome. It's the most I've ever done since I started keeping track, and I'm pretty sure it's the most words of fiction I've ever written in a year. I had two novels come out this year -- Captive Magic and The Executive Lounge -- and one short story in an anthology that paid pro rates, another first for me that I felt pretty good about. I finished eight other short stories, which are making the rounds on the pro-pay side. All together, I'm pretty happy with 2013.

My 2014 writing goal is 300,000 words. It's obviously not a stretch goal, but I know myself; if I push too far and fall behind at some point, I'll get depressed and it'll be twice as hard to catch up. Almost a third of a million words is still pretty decent, and if I pass it, that's a bonus.

I'm looking forward to the coming year, and I hope everyone else is too.

Angie

Trying This Google+ Thing

Okay, so what happened is a couple/few months ago (don't remember exactly how long) I came across this add-on for Chrome that'd let you use the old Compose box with Gmail. I really hate the new one, and a lot of people seemed to like this add-on, so I added it on. It had a quirk or two (like adding space between the lines in your in-box right after you'd used Compose) but I could live with that to have the old Compose box back. And all was well for a while.

Then like a month ago, I suddenly couldn't get into Gmail on Chrome. First it was just my desktop system, but a few days later it broke on my laptop too. I had no idea what the problem was. I could get into that Gmail account just fine on Firefox, or even [shudder] Internet Explorer, but when I tried to bring it up in Chrome, it just kept cycling and cycling forever, as though it were processing the page but couldn't get anything to resolve. I logged out and logged back in -- nothing. I logged out, restarted the computer, then logged back in -- nothing. I tried approaching Gmail from different angles -- nothing.

Now all this time, Chrome had been bugging me to "complete" my Google+ profile for my AngieBenedetti mail address and, like, get with their system. I wasn't interested in another social network thing, so I ignored it. But eventually, after trying everything I could think of, I though, Maybe Google's messing with me because it wants me to do this Google+ thing? It wouldn't be the first squirrely thing some huge company had done to try to get folks to use one of their products, and Google's been closing its eyes on its "Don't be evil" thing now and again over the last few years, so I figured I might as well try. So I set up my profile on the angiebenedetti mail account.

Nothing.

[sigh]

I moved on, and eventually figured out that it was the add-on that let me have the old Compose box. :( I turned that off and poof! I could see my in-box in Chrome again. I figured the most recent Chrome upgrade had hosed the add-on. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Google did it deliberately, either, because they have major issues about forcing everyone to do things exactly their way. But anyhow.

So I had this Google+ profile floating around out there, with basically nothing but my name on it. Then someone added me to a circle. And someone else added me. So I guess I'm sort of there whether I planned to be or not?

I decided to give in and at least try it. I filled out my profile a bit more, and added a couple of people to circles, but most of the folks it suggested to me to add weren't people I know terribly well. If you're active on Google+, even if only a little, and would like to add me or have me add you or whatever, let me know. I'm still woefully ignorant about how this system works -- I'm not even sure if you'd look for me there as "Angie Benedetti" or "AngieBenedetti" or "Angela Benedetti" -- so however you want to ping me about it, do that. :)

We'll see how this goes. If it turns into a huge timesink, I'll probably walk away. But for now, it might be fun. Anyone else playing?

Angie

[ETA: Closing comments because of a ridiculous amount of comment spam. :/ ]

Culinary Adventures

So last night I made Scotch eggs. For anyone who hasn't been lucky enough to have one, it's a boiled egg (hard or soft yolk is debated, and up to the cook) encased in a layer of sausage, then a layer of crumb-breading, then deep fried. (There are oven variants, which are hellspawn. Okay, not really, but if you're going to eat Scotch eggs, you might as well go for it, right?)

I had a Scotch egg on our last cruise, where one of the lounges had a British Lunch sort of thing going once a week. They were wonderous -- eggy and crunchy and sausagey, like the perfect breakfast in one bite -- and I've wanted to try making them ever since. "Ever since" finally came yesterday, but unfortunately the process wasn't without its bumps and diversions.

I'm more of a technique cook than a recipe cook; I'd rather learn a technique, then apply it to different foods, than have to memorize a bunch of recipes. When I'm baking I'll usually have a recipe on the counter, because baking is fussy like that, but most savory dishes are freestyle-friendly, once you've accumulated a certain amount of experience. So I typed "scotch egg" into Google and browsed through a few recipes to get the basic idea, then closed the browser and went off on my own.

You need a lot of oil for deep frying, which I've never done before. Seriously, if I got into the habit of deep frying, I'd be significantly fatter than I am now, so it's just as well it's a major pain. (No, we're not buying a countertop deep-fryer gadget, no-no-no.) So the husband brought home a couple of bottles of extra oil (just basic canola), and a pound of bulk breakfast type sausage, and a carton of fresh eggs. I had AP flour and panko breadcrumbs (which I used because, crunchy), plus seasonings and such, all on hand.

First, boil the eggs. My favorite way to boil eggs is in the electric kettle. You fill it about halfway with cold water, put your eggs in carefully (up to about four, depending on the size of the kettle) then flip the switch. The kettle goes on, and when the water boils, it turns itself off. If I'm just making hardboiled eggs for egg salad or something, I leave them in until the water's cooled enough that I can get the eggs out without scalding myself, since I like my hardboiled eggs hardboiled. For Scotch eggs, though, I was going to be cooking the eggs again, so I fished them out with a spoon about five minutes after the kettle shut off, then put them into a bowl of cold water to chill down.

When they were cool enough to handle, I filled a dutch oven (ours is enameled, but I don't think it matters) to within about 3" of the top with the oil, clipped a fry thermometer onto the side, and got it heating. I peeled the eggs and set them aside, got everything else out and set up, then checked the thermometer. It wasn't even registering yet and it'd been about ten minutes, so I left everything and went back to my computer for a bit, figuring I'd check it in another twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes later, the oil was "steaming" and the thermometer still wasn't registering anything. :/ Okay, most likely a broken thermometer. We have one of those cool, gun-shaped infrared thermometers, and it said the surface of the oil was some ridiculous temperature, like seven hundred degrees. O_O Oops. Okay, turn the heat off, and carefully shift the kettle off the hot burner.

The oil's clearly past its smoke point, which means it's technically ruined. In reality, I didn't have any more oil, so I figured I'd try it anyway. First times are for experimenting, right? Mental note, buy another fry thermometer before I do this again.

While waiting for the oil to cool, I broke the sausage slab into four approximately equal chunks, for about a quarter pound of sausage per egg, and flattened each chunk out. The recipes generally say to roll the sausage out between two pieces of clingfilm (which is British for plastic wrap) but I hate that stuff, so I just put it down on a piece of parchment paper and flattened each one out with my palm. I rolled each egg in AP flour in a little bowl, shaking off excess, then wrapped it in sausage. (Flour before sausage is supposed to help the sausage cling.) Shaping the sausage around the egg, once you've got it basically wrapped, is a lot like making meatballs; the actual shaping motion is a lot like that, if you've made meatballs.

I broke two more eggs into another little bowl and beat them, then filled a third little bowl with the panko breadcrumbs. I added some salt and white pepper and garlic powder to the panko, and stirred it up. When the oil was back down around 365 (the recipes said you want it around 350 for the frying, but putting stuff into the oil lowers the temp a bit) I took the first sausaged egg, dipped it in flour, then beaten egg, then rolled it in panko, dipped it in egg again, then rolled it in panko again. The double layer of crumbs is supposed to make the coating extra crunchy. Then I slipped it into the oil with a spider, since dropping it in didn't seem like a good idea. On to eggs two, three and four.

They fried up nicely, and I started taking them out when the panko crust hit a sort of medium-dark brown. Jim and I let them cool off, then ate them like finger food while watching TV.

I couldn't taste the smoked oil in the fried crust, which is good. But the sausage layer was a bit underdone (we ate them anyway and they were tasty and we didn't get sick) and I suspect that the smoked oil made the crust brown faster than it would've with unsmoked oil. Also, if the surface of the oil was 365 when I put the eggs in, the interior was probably a lot hotter, something I didn't think about at the time. So I probably fried them at too high a temperature, which would also darken the outside before the inner sausage cooked all the way. I'll do better in both areas next time.

And there'll definitely be a next time. Despite the glitches, these things are incredibly yummy. Two was very filling, and makes a good meal, if you're not fussy about your produce; most people would probably be good with one Scotch egg and a big salad or something. I imagine Travis would be good with just two eggs and call it a meal, which is what Jim and I did.

Good stuff, definitely worth keeping in the repertoire.

Angie

Almost Over

My husband had his second eye surgery a few days ago, the one for the cataract. The follow-up appointment looked good; there's no sign of either infection or of glaucoma, which is a rare but non-zero possible consequence of this kind of surgery. If that particular number comes up, there's nothing they can do, and all you have to look forward to is eventual complete blindness in that eye. It looks like Jim's dodged that one, though. He'll go back in a couple of weeks for another check-up, and to get a new prescription for glasses, once things have healed up and settled down.

He's feeling good about the outcome. His left eye is a lot clearer than it was before this recent surgery, and we're hoping that with his new glasses, he'll be able to read paper books again. That'd be awesome. Positive thoughts in Jim's direction greatly appreciated.

It's funny, I was looking at my wordcount records just recently and realized that, one, I haven't written squat this year (which I've been aware of for a while), and two, that the squat started right around April. Duh. :P Dean and Kris talk about liferolls, and I hadn't really thought about it because it didn't happen to me, personally, but I've been stressed out over this since Jim's retina tried to rip itself out of his eyeball back in April. I'm bipolar, which means my productivity is iffy at the best of times, dependent upon what my brain chemistry is doing on any given day. I don't handle stress well at all, and this has been almost eight solid months of worrying and stressing out. It's not quite over yet, but there's the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel now, and there's a decent chance it's not an on-coming train. We'll see.

At least I can look forward to 2013 being a much better writing year than 2012. It really couldn't be worse, so the future's looking good. That's something to feel optimistic about.

I hope everyone else has been doing well, and has a great holiday. [wave/hug]

Angie

Travelling -- No Anthologies This Month

Greetings from the South Pacific and all that. [wave]

For anyone looking for the Anthology Listing, I'm afraid I'm skipping this month. I'm on a cruise ship a couple of days out from Tahiti; internet is unreliable, and when it works it costs thirty-eight cents per minute. I usually do several hours of research online before I post the month's listing, and much as I love you all, I'm not willing to spend a hundred bucks or more to do it. :/ When I get home, I'll have one (1) day to wash every garment I own before getting back on a plane to go to my mom's for Thanksgiving, at which point I'll be doing family stuff. I think November's going to be a wash for the listing. Everyone keep writing, and I'll see you in December.

I've been having a great time, doing lots of reading and lots of writing, and am sitting here with a truly spectacular sunburn, courtesy of Bora Bora. :) We went on a 4WD tour around the island and up three mountains. It was truly awesome, but the truck had no roof (which was one of the awesome parts, actually) and I got sizzled like whoa. My face has been peeling off my skull in small, dried-up bits, and the peeling part is working its way onto my scalp. I expect to have what'll look like an absolutely terminal case of dandruff by tomorrow at the latest. [rueful smile]

Tahiti's awesome; see it if you can. Bora Bora was particularly beautiful, and had great weather, sunburn notwithstanding. Samoa is lovely and has incredibly nice people, but the missionaries did a number on them like whoa, to the point where it's rather horrifying. (Samoa is very Christian, to the point where you're required to go to church on Sundays, and when one of the people on our tour asked the guide on American Samoa about their religious beliefs before the missionaries, she smiled and said, "We had no beliefs." O_O Note that American Samoa was the less uptight of the two stops; Apia was more conservative on the surface, but nobody asked any of the locals there within my hearing about their traditional beliefs. Now I kind of wish I had, for comparison. I'd like to think this one guide is just particularly well brainwashed, and not representative.)

Hawaii is... well, it's the US, and there you go. It's worth visiting, definitely, but don't expect it to feel terribly different, if you're an American. The Polynesian Cultural Center that everyone raves about is very expensive and very plasticly Disneyfied. Oh, and no one grows sugar cane commercially on Hawaii anymore, something I didn't know. The last crop was harvested in December of... either 2008 or 2010, I forget now, but just a few years ago.

We have our share of idiots on board, including one gentleman who was on a tour with us who seems to think all brown people speak Spanish. [headdesk] I've been wishing I could confiscate people's citizenship for a while now, because nobody who goes out to foreign countries representing the USA should be allowed to be that obnoxiously ignorant. Every cruise seems to have at least a handful of them, and it's damned embarassing.

I meant to do a stop-by-stop commentary, but that probably won't happen at this point. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer. I'm having a great time (and losing lots of weight, yay! being one of the few people on the planet who loses weight on cruises) but am looking forward to being back in my own bed.

Oh, and the internet on this ship has some kind of nanny software installed. :( Early on I was bounced off of several of the sites in my RSS reader because of "adult" content, and I've been pretty much ignoring the whole thing since. I'm not sure how tight it's set, and trying to read something means it's marked as "read" in my feed reader; I already have to just remember (with my awful memory) that I need to back up on a few blogs and comics, and I'd just as soon not mess up any more feeds, so I have 1000+ posts piled up with more coming in all the time. I'll try to get through them all, at least eyeballing post titles to see what's interesting, but if I haven't commented on your blog in a few weeks, that's why. [sigh] It's going to be a busy holiday season.

I hope everyone's been doing well, and writing well, and that everyone's safe and unflooded and not blown over. {{{}}}

Oh, and Washington now has gay marriage! :D Washington's voters rock; I'm very proud of the state I live in. I wish the rest of the country would get with the 21st century.

Missing you all,

Angie

Wicked!

Jim and I went to see Wicked last night, at the Paramount Theater in Seattle. All I knew going in was that it was the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, with some hazy concept that it was her side of things, showing why she didn't deserve to be considered the villain of the original book/movie. Which... yeah, that's pretty much what it's about. As with most storytelling, though, it's the details that matter.

[Some spoilers, I guess, sorta.]

The characterizations were great, with no really cardboard characters among the main cast. Teenage Glinda (who starts out as Galinda) is first presented as a shallow, self-absorbed, tissue paper character, with her *Good!* persona deliberately worn in her quest to be liked. And while she's pretty dim throughout the whole story, she acquires dimension as events progress, and turns out likeable. Even if I still wanted to smack her occasionally.

Fiero, the love interest, is a Winkie prince who's proud of how many schools he's been thrown out of. Glinda assumes that as the pretty, popular blonde girl, she must be the Heroine and is therefore obviously going to "get" the handsome prince. Looking back, I think Glinda's major tragedy is that she's trying to be genre savvy but is failing horribly because she doesn't know what character she's playing.

Which is a lot of time to spend on someone who's not the protag, but in the original WoO, Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West are opposites, contrasting and balancing one another. If we're going to change our view of the WWW, we have to change our view of Glinda as well, and the play spends a lot of time focused on Glinda, as the major supporting character, to do just that. The relationship between Glinda and Elphaba grows and changes, taking a couple of sharp corners along the way, and is arguably more interesting than the romantic relationship either has with Fiero.

Elphaba, the actual protag, learns the most and changes the least. Or rather, what changes is her understanding of how the world works and how far she can manipulate it, rather than her core personality. This is her story more than anyone else's (although we get some great background on the other Ozian characters from the original story) and we're focused on her throughout. I'll admit I had tears streaming for most of the play -- not sobbing or anything, but just overflowing, because although there aren't very many out-and-out sad scenes, the play opens with the celebration of the Wicked Witch's death, then goes to flashback, so through the whole thing, you know what's coming.

What it comes down to is that Dorothy was duped into taking a paid hit on someone who'd become inconvenient to the ruling establishment. Which is, you know, a rather cynical but definitely non-fairy tale way of looking back at The Wizard of Oz. [wry smile]

Oh, and the ending works beautifully. :)

Definitely see this if you have a chance. I hope they make a movie so everyone can see it without shelling out for expensive tickets, but for now, if you have the money in your entertainment budget, this is a great way to spend it.

March Stuff and an Early April Mishap

Writing: 5997 words = 1
Editing: 114,093 words = 23
Sub: 1 loooong novel = 1
TOTAL = 25 points

I didn't look at my total until April, so of course I didn't have a chance to write another Three Freaking Words to get another writing point. [headdesk]



I finally finished Emerging Magic the sequel to A Hidden Magic. Actually, I finished it in February, but it took most of March to get through an editing pass and ready to submit, but it's in, yay! This sucker's taken more than twice as long as I thought it would, and having it finally finished feels wonderful. :)

I'm visiting my mom in Reno over Easter, and the world is letting me know I should've stayed home. :/ I only have one pair of jeans that fit, so I wore them up here, and brought a couple of pairs of sweats to sleep in, and bum around the house in, and hopefully wear to the gym if I can go with my brother whenever he goes. Also brought a skirt in case we go somewhere fancy for Easter dinner. So I flew up Tuesday, and when I got in, my mom made me a cup of hot chocolate. She has a tablecloth on her table, which I'm not used to, and somehow while sitting down to drink (with the cup at my place already) I managed to catch the tablecloth on... I don't even know what, maybe I sat on it somehow, although I didn't think it was that long. Anyway, next thing I know the cup's fallen over and I have HOT chocolate all in my lap and some on my top, and a second later it soaks through and it's freaking HOT! Damn!

So I go change out of my jeans and top, put on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, and put my jeans and top and the tablecloth and the placemat and all in the laundry. They wash, and I put 'em in the dryer when I go to bed.

Yesterday, we're going grocery shopping so I go to get dressed. Get my jeans out of the dryer... and there's a huge shredded rip down the seam in the seat! [headdesk] Totally ruined. The washing machine just ate my jeans, and of course they're all I have. :(

I get online and go to the site where I bought the jeans to get more. Can't just go out and buy a pair; no stores I know of carry pants for women who are tall and fat both, right there on the rack. I wear a 24T, and the only way to get those is mail order, and not from very many places even that way. :/ So I go to Woman Within, and sure enough they have a nice selection. I pick a couple of pairs, both on sale yay, and order. I was originally thinking to just have them sent home and that I'd be wearing sweats the rest of my time here (got the skirt, but I don't like wearing them unless I have to) but I see the site has a super-duper express-zoom delivery option that'll get you your stuff the next business day if you order before 4pm Eastern, for only twenty dollars extra on the delivery charge. O_O Okay, yeah, it's a lot, but if I can get jeans to wear while I'm here, that's awesome. The stuff I ordered was on sale, so it sort of makes up for the delivery charge, right? :P So I change delivery to Mom's address and go for it. By this time it's like three minutes after 1 here, which is 4 on the east coast, so I'm hoping it'll sneak in and be delivered tomorrow (which would be today now) and if not then it'll come on Friday and that's still good.

I hit confirm order and it chugs along... and the confirmation screen comes up showing regular delivery to Mom's address, estimated delivery date April 14th. WTF?? O_O

I won't even be here then! :( :( :( Something screwed up, and I'm pissed off.

So I send an e-mail to their customer service address, explain what happened and why this is completely unacceptable. I tell them I want delivery expedited to arrive either Thursday, or Friday at the very latest, or I want the order cancelled, one or the other. Hit send, then we go off grocery shopping with me in my sweats.

Give them credit, by the time we got back, there was an answer in my e-mail with an apology for the screw-up. The Customer Service lady said she'd make sure I got my stuff on Friday. We'll see. If so, then cool. I still wish their system had worked the way it was supposed to the first time, but an efficient and prompt fix is what you want from a good company. Everybody makes mistakes; what separates the good companies (and people) from the bad is what they do after they've made the mistake.

I hope everyone has a great Easter, or just a great weekend if you don't observe the holiday. [wave/hugz]

Angie, hanging out in sweats in Reno

Going Visiting

I did a Q&A session with writer Giselle Renarde, and the post has gone up on Giselle's blog. I got to talk about writing, reading, piracy and DRM, and the unfortunate existence of way too many bad BDSM books. Come join the conversation. :)

Angie

June Stuff

I'm taking June as my month off for the Koala Challenge, because I did squat last month. :/ I did a bit of writing, and submitted a few stories, but all around it was kind of a blah month, and then the end was sucked up in other things.

I've been watching my blood pressure, and it looks like it's definitely gone up. No clue why; I've been heavier than I am now with a normal BP, but I suppose age and such are piling on. My doctor gave me some medication for that. At the same visit, she gave me another medication for my edema; it was the same one I was taking before that didn't do anything, but this time we're trying twice the dosage.

I haven't actually been swelling up anymore since I got that under control -- meaning since I started spending twenty-two hours per day with my feet elevated -- but I want to get off my laptop and back to my desktop full time. I want a mouse. I want my desk with all the stuff on it. I want my computer room, with its books and software and such. The laptop works, in a hands-on-keyboard sort of way, but with just a TV tray to put Stuff on, there's no way I can keep all the things I need around me on a daily basis there. Plus I really want a mouse. So, back to the meds, to see if I can get back to the desktop at least half of the time.

That was a Thursday. I started taking the new meds Friday morning. Saturday Jim and I went downtown to a concert -- Carmina Burana, or most of it anyway, and the music was great. This was the second time I've seen it performed live, and the guy who sings the Swan Song solo always hams it up royally, which is a great giggle. The chorus was awesome, and the other two soloists, and the Seattle symphony is excellent. Unfortunately we were in a box with the front barrier way too close to the front of the seats. My bad knee doesn't like being forcibly bent for very long. I was encroaching into my husband's leg room next to me (of which he was wonderfully tolerant) but it wasn't enough. The next morning my bad knee was much worse; I had a hard time just getting around. In a three-story townhouse where there's often at least one flight of stairs between me and what I need, this is an issue. :/

Then the next day, I started having stomach trouble. It was like I had a big rock in my belly, and I had some rough times over the next few days. By Thursday night, I felt bad enough that I called the advice nurse on our insurance plan. She said that both the medications I'd started taking recently had side effects like this, so apparently I was getting it from both sides. [headdesk] She suggested I call my doctor's office even though it was closed, because they probably had someone taking after-hours calls. I did, and got a nurse, who passed my info on to the physician on call, who wasn't my doctor and wasn't there on site, and -- after the nurse relayed a message to me -- was reluctant to actually say anything to someone else's patient (then why do they have this service? [headdesk again]) but he said I should discontinue the first of the two meds and see my regular doctor. I stopped taking the one pill the next morning as advised; I have an appointment to see my regular doctor on Thursday anyway, so unless I get worse I'll just keep that one.

It's been three days that I've been off this one pill, and I now feel like I only have a medium-size rock in my stomach. [wry smile] My doctor gave me some nausea pills back when, and I've been going through them like crazy, but whatever works, right? Hopefully my doctor can find something to sub out for the other med that won't twist my guts.

My knee's been getting a bit better too, slowly. Looking back at what was going on, I'm not sure what happened with that. At first I thought it was two hours of cramping it up, but this seems excessive; it's been over a week now, and usually it only takes a few hours max to get over that kind of issue. Both of my new meds are diuretics; I'm wondering whether the knee problem is actually an issue with too much liquid getting sucked out of the pads between the joint bones? Or maybe a combination? Too many variables at once -- my inner scientist is Not Pleased. :P

In other news, there've been explosions going off around our house all week. The spousal unit exercised his Google Fu and found that the Indian reservations can sell fireworks legally. I think that's cool; I grew up with home fireworks and have missed them in recent years. Unfortunately, someone was selling sticks of dynamite -- whole, half and quarter -- as home fireworks. O_O Umm, yeah, that's a bit too much even for me. It sounds like some of the folks in the neighborhood think it's an awesome idea, though. [wince] Hopefully that part of it at least will die down after tomorrow. Umm, later today.

Other than that, not much going on. Although I've figured out that in Seattle, summer is the season when it only rains half the day. :P Not that I've been out in it much, but it's weird hearing frequent rain on the windows in June. And July. [blinkblink]

Have a great Fourth everyone, whether it's a holiday for you or not. :D

Angie

Some Links

Federal judge says you can break DRM if you're not doing so to infringe copyright -- this is excellent news, in my opinion. DRM is a pointless annoyance anyway, and courts ruled many years ago that someone who bought a piece of software was allowed to make backup copies for personal use, so it only makes sense that we should be allowed to break the DRM on a movie, and e-book, a game, or whatever that we've legally purchased if it's become a pain in the butt, or if we want to make a backup of that for our own personal use. Of course, some of the publishers would love to force us to re-purchase our entire electronic libraries every time a hard drive crashes or a book reader is stolen, but it seems there's a judge who disagrees. Good to know at least one circuit court is on the consumer's side.

Funny, smart commentary about burqa bans -- the idea of a government body dictating what people can wear, short of the really riciculous exception examples cited in this piece, is ludicrous. If Moslem women want to wear a burqa then they should be able to. Anyone who wants to wear a burqua, or a veil, or a T-shirt saying "Our Government Is Full of Idiots!" should be able to do so. Banning a traditional item of clothing which causes no harm to anyone is an outrageous infringement of freedom, and racist to boot.

Period Speech -- this xkcd comic pretty much says it all about various writers' attempts at period speech. (It also applies to various kinds of accents and dialects used by writers who apparently have never been exposed to same.) It's easy to see how silly it looks when our era is one of the ones being mangled, but plenty of writers trying to write "medieval" or "Southern" or whatever sound pretty much like this.

Jane Austen's Fight Club -- this is a really wonderful video. :D I'm not usually one for videos, but my husband e-mailed me this one and I was LOLing. Watch and enjoy. :D

[Edited because embedding the video didn't work. :/ ]