Musings of a Lurking Dreamer

Interlude with Caterpillar

2012-02-06T17:45:00.000-08:00

This morning, we watched a hummingbird gather material for a nest. Later, at the park, I spied this furry little harbinger of spring.

Fingers crossed that we've seen the tail end of ice storms...

Hoofin' It

2012-01-29T21:19:00.000-08:00

This past Xmas, my uncle surprised us with tickets to a local event: Cavalia, a touring equestrian/acrobatic show in the vein of Cirque du Soleil. With Grandpa's mental and physical state iffy at best, and relatives just plain unpredictable, we weren't altogether certain how it would go. But it was a Family Thing, and who knows how many of those we'll have before the Family is less complete than it is now?

The weather, as one might surmise from the photograph, wasn't particularly promising. Online reports indicated that the tent was climate-controlled, at least. We showed up about an hour before showtime to wait for relatives and gather tickets - a smart move, as the lines grew exponentially longer by the minute. Fortunately, the rest of the clan had the same idea, so we didn't have to stand around outside waiting. Also fortunately, Grandpa was in an "up" mood, relatively alert and mobile.

When we got inside, we discovered that our seats were closer than we'd anticipated - only about seven rows back, if off to the side. The online seating chart warned that these were "partially obstructed" views, but the stage looked plenty big enough for that not to be a problem. Meanwhile, we were wondering how to get Grandpa and his walker up the stairs to our seats. The problem solved itself before it was encountered; the staff, taking note of his mobility, offered two front-row floor seats for him and a relative. My horse-nut sister opted to sit by him, while the rest of us settled into our "partially obstructed" seats amid the growing crowd.

To cut a long story short, the show - after a bit of a slow start - proved magnificent. We failed to see how our view was in any way obstructed by anything. My only complaint was that they could've routed traffic better during the intermission. (Well, that and merchandising selection, but then I'm often disappointed with merchandising selection. Didn't stop me from buying a keychain, though...) We were all impressed - even Grandpa, who was more talkative than he has been in many a moon. Dad declared it the most spectacular thing he'd ever seen in his life - which covers more than 80 years, so that's saying something. As for my horse-nut sister, she came home with a keychain, a pictorial program, and the deluxe book.

All in all, this was probably one of the best belated Xmas gifts I've ever received.

Dreamer in the Dark

2012-01-24T20:50:00.000-08:00

Or: Reading by Lamplight

Well, it's been a few days, hasn't it? If not for you, then certainly for me. The short story is that the snowstorm mentioned in my previous post took a turn for the nasty, leaving us without power for 5 1/2 days.

The long story? Read onward...

When last I left me, on Wednesday afternoon, I had returned home from an abbreviated workday, braving nearly-deserted roads. At the time, it was just a snowstorm... if an unusually heavy snowstorm for our region and altitude. I figured we'd get a good coating of crystallized rain and that would be that.

I figured wrong.

So, evidently, did the weather people.

As the storm wore on, snow began turning to ice. Ice, as one might know from science class or personal experience, is heavier than snow.

And we had a lot of trees whose boughs were already straining under the burden of snow...

Late on Wednesday night, at almost 9 on the nose, the power died. We gave it a few minutes to see if it was just a hiccup, but it wasn't. Not a problem, we figured. It had been years since we'd had a multi-day outage. Since the nearest town went from being a bedroom community to a full-blown city in its own right, we tended to be in a higher-priority area than we used to be as no-name suburban-country hicks. Besides, we had a gas generator. While it wasn't strong enough to run the well pump, it could run the furnace or the microwave (or a freezer). We had some bottled water and some nukable dinner options. By the time I went to work on Thursday, we'd be back up and running.

THURSDAY - Dawn of Darkness

Sure enough, at around 4 AM, I heard the power come back on. It's strange, listening to dead silence - one is almost startled by the sudden resurgence of hum and thrum and buzz, the nearly subsonic breath and pulse of our modern electrified age. I quietly rejoiced, as much for the power as for the realization that I had a few more hours of sleep before the alarm went off.

I woke from a half-doze two hours later to a rising silence. The silence of the dark.

I knew I should've taken a shower at 4 AM when I had the chance...

Crawling out of bed, I managed to make do with a little leftovers from the hot water tank and a bucket. In the meantime, Mom emerged from her room with a radio news update. As bad as driving was on Wednesday, Thursday was worse. The roads were sheets of ice. Branches and trees (and power lines) were dropping left and right - a fact I could personally attest to, with half a minute's listening. They had even invoked the Emergency Broadcast System to tell people to stay home unless they absolutely had to leave.

I called the closure line at work, thinking I'd hear the same story. Instead, I was informed that work would be starting at the normal time... which gave the roads about an hour to shape up.

Peering into the driveway, I saw my car encased in ice. Literally encased. I watched a massive limb crash down from the Douglas fir in the yard... adding to the pile already on my mother's car. I poked my head out the front door and found the stairs to be impassable.

I called work back a half-hour later and told them I was unable to even reach my car, let alone drive in to work. The tech on the phone didn't sound surprised; several people had already called out, and they'd just lost power anyway.

So I found myself with an unexpected day off.

I don't know why I found myself buried in my Kindle. Perhaps I've worked for the library long enough that my subconscious demanded I spend my day among books, if not slinging them then actually reading them. And, really, there wasn't much else I could do in a dark house. No computer, no internet, no TV. But at least we had heat. And power couldn't be more than a day away.

Even if Dad had forgotten to fill the gas can before the storm hit, leaving us with half a tank of gas against a day and a night of ice and snow. Even if our upstairs fridge was rapidly defrosting. Even if my mother's car already had one dangerously large branch draped over it, with more raining down as the day progressed... enough that we didn't dare check for damages, because even a small branch off this monster tree would be lethal.

I was beginning to suspect that we were not as well prepared for the storm as we'd previously believed...

To further complicate matters, that afternoon the largest branch we had yet seen dropped from the heavens. This thing was large enough to be its own tree. As frightening as it was watching this fall, with hardly a crack to announce its sudden departure from the greater trunk, its fall was capped by an almighty crack against the wall.

That crack was the end of our phone line whipping back against the living room window.

With ice-encrusted roads, power lines down on either end of the street, dropping limbs (which we later learned actually killed a neighbor, if not one we knew by name), and now no phone, we were effectively isolated from the outside world.

Worse, word was that power crews were actually being called back from the job due to dangerous conditions.

And we were nearing the end of our backup water supply...

FRIDAY - The Drive of Death

On Friday, the ice storm itself was over. Limbs were still falling, but new ice wasn't accumulating. Temperatures were set to rise over the day. Things had to be improving.

Had to be, because I had a job to get to, and no way to even call in to find out if we were still on early-start (as we'd discussed on Wednesday.) I tried my cell phone, but the nearest tower was out of service.

Nevertheless, I dutifully chiseled out my car. Someone had to make a run to civilization, for water and more food if nothing else, and be danged if I was going to give up before I even tried getting through to work.

The downed lines were still down, but I knew a way out to the main road through a nearby church parking lot. Unfortunately, so did someone else...someone whose 4 x 4 had torn up the road so badly I danged near got stuck. But I had to get out, and there was no turning back, so I coaxed the Golden Taurus down to the (thankfully plowed and sanded) main road. It was more of a controlled slide than a true drive, as my poor car wallowed and ground its way in the direction most favored by gravity. I made it, but realized even as I did so that I'd committed myself - I could never get my car back up the torn-up road I'd just come down. Hell, I wasn't sure I'd even get the car back up the road to my driveway. But here I was, and here I must remain.

As I rolled through town, I noticed a couple of things. The power was out at every business, and the roads were still almost empty. When I saw that the local library was pitch dark, I suspected that I would have no work to do if I drove out to the shipping facility. I wanted to try calling again, but I needed a place to pull over and check for cell service. Unfortunately, the plows had buried the parking lot entrances to every store along the main road. I'd already pushed my luck on my slalom-ride down to the main road; no way I was risking my undercarriage on an unplowed parking lot. When I finally hit working stoplights across town, I found a gas station whose patrons had helpfully compacted the plow-dam enough for me to pull off. Finding I had a signal, I called in to work to find out what the hell I was doing in the middle of a deserted town at 7:45 AM.

The phone at work rang... and rang...and rang. This doesn't happen - either someone picks up, or the answering machine kicks in. And we were supposed to have started work at 8 AM.

I'd already risked my car getting this far. At the very least, I'd swing by a store to pick up some more supplies before throwing in the towel.

The nearest store was wide open. Literally - doors standing open to the weather. I thought it closed - the parking lot was nigh deserted, a rough and laneless stretch of tire tracks and slushy ice. But the lights were on inside - generator lights, true, but lights nonetheless - and I saw someone come out with a shopping bag. I went in and managed to grab water, some more food, and even a sack of litter to grit the stairs (one of those things I thought for sure we had when I was stocking up for the storm, but which I'd evidently hallucinated.) Sitting in the parking lot, I gave work another try. Twelve unanswered rings answered my question: I was not going to work today. I was also not sitting in the parking lot for another hour to keep trying.

So, I went home. How did I manage it, if I couldn't get back up the church road? I wound up driving over a downed power line. Previous tire tracks convinced me it must be safe, though in retrospect it was probably one of the dumbest things I'd done, not unlike the whole morning's adventures to be perfectly honest. (Besides, my only alternative was sitting around in a powerless city, calling work until my cell phone died; I couldn't even call home with the cell towers acting up. All things considered, I didn't think I had much of a choice.)

I'd forgotten to grab the gas can before I went - I had thought I was going to work, after all - but our neighbors had made the matter of generator fuel moot; they offered us an extension cord from their commercial-grade natural gas generator. It powered everything our gas furnace would've done, allowing us to save the half-tank for a rainy (or snowy) day.

Thank you, Fate. I knew we fools could count on you...

Another day of reading gave way to writing: I'd backed up four book reviews, and wound up writing them out longhand so I wouldn't forget my thoughts on them. If nothing else, this outage was sure clearing up my Kindle reading backlog. Later that night, I pressed the Little Black Critter into service typing them up in Notepad, so I could cut and paste them online when the opportunity arose. Then I read some more.

SATURDAY - Winter Showers

On Saturday, we were ready to break. Two and a half days trapped together were threatening to turn this little outage into a crime scene. And it was two and a half days too long without access to a proper shower. (There's only so much one can do with a bucket of icewater and a washcloth...) Fortunately, my grandfather's unoccupied house had power, and by now the roads were much improved, if not entirely clear. So we piled ourselves, our laundry, and our soap into the Golden Taurus and struck out for brighter skies and warmer water.

Oh, but it felt good to have a proper shower...

(I've determined that I'd never make a good survivalist. I'm too addicted to creature comforts like hot water.)

While we were over there, we dropped by the adult home to visit my grandfather. He's doing pretty well, telling us about the icicles which had, until recently, adorned the roof. We also grabbed more food and headed home, via a few unexpected detours. (Really, would it have killed the road crews to announce the need for a detour due to a major road closure before I saw the Road Closed sign in my headlights?)

Which brings us to Saturday night, as I type this on the Little Black Critter, by the light of a lantern dangling from the edge of a shelf. With improving conditions, the power crews have made great strides in restoring electricity. Why, just this evening, I called their automated line for an update on our outage. We were told that power was expected to be restored by 8 PM this very night.

It's 10:53 PM as I type this... by the light of a lantern, in my darkened room.

Oh, well... at least I got my shower today.

SUNDAY - Unanswered Prayers

My hopes, raised so high last night, of an impending resolution to our power problem grow decidedly dim. Before, the power company outage hotline was able to give us a plausible cause and approximate time that we could expect our electricity back. This morning, waking to find the house as dark and dead as it was last night, I called again. While they inform us that the outage is on their books, they claim that the cause is a "tree falling on the lines," and that they are unable to even speculate on a repair time.

On the plus side, the roads are bare, and ice only lingers in patches on the driveway and lawn.

This morning, the neighbors helped us extract Mom's car from the branch fortress that had formed around it during the ice storm. Despite my fears about the state of the hood, the car started up just fine. (The "Maintenance Required" dashboard light didn't even turn on. I guess the car thinks it's perfectly healthy, despite the shattered windshield and cracked light and dented hood. I never have trusted those catch-all lights...) This bodes well for the repair bill and work time, at least.

Later in the day, we headed into town to pick up a prescription for Mother. It didn't go well... the blood pressure meds she needs were once again denied. This time, Mom went in and demanded an explanation. After playing phone tag with doctors and insurance, the pharmacist was able to answer the question that had plagued her since November. While the new doctor's office has flubbed a bit, and her doctor didn't always follow through, the bulk of the blame lies squarely on the weaselly little shoulders of her insurance company. They did give mother a prescription for another blood pressure med that the company approved of - one that she swears she's tried and which didn't work for her, but at least it's something. So at least now she knows who to yell at.

We grabbed batteries and more illumination devices at Freddy's, including the cheapie head lamp that's currently illuminating my keyboard. Too cool... Then, we grabbed lunch at Wendy's. While there, we heard two guys thanking the employees profusely for being open. I guess we aren't the only ones still without power around these parts.

After lunch, we hit the gas station (for the car and the generator can), and headed home. Where Mother promptly realized that she'd left her purse in Wendy's. Her purse with her cell phone and her money and her everything. Unload the car, and I drive her back out to search for the thing. Fearing the worst, I went in to ask if someone had found a brown fanny-pack purse. A tense wait, as people talked to people. Then a miracle. Yes, they had it! I threw a dollar into the donation jar at the counter and returned in triumph to the car.

At least that much is going right...

When we got home, we called the power guys again. Same story, same non-answer. Funny thing is, we saw no trees down between the dark houses and the illuminated houses on our drive out of town. Either of them. My guess is that they're giving us the brush-off; we should've come back up with the rest of the people they restored last night, they don't know why we didn't, and they've therefore dropped us to the bottom of the repair list until they deign fit to bother with us lowly little peons who aren't worth their prime time.

Our fault for daring to be their customer, I suppose.

So now it's 8:27 PM - over 24 hours past when we should've been repowered - and I'm typing on the LBC by the twin illumination of a fluorescent lamp and an LED headlight.

And now I can't find my little purple flash drive or my cheap tiger mouse pad from my laptop case.

And we're going to have to chuck most of what's in the fridge.

And I'm really pissed off at the power company for forgetting about us.

Please, please, please, Master Water Dragon, whose year of honor commences tomorrow... do be kind and help us start your year well!

MONDAY - New Year by Lanternlight

Another day of broken promises by the power company and frayed nerves in the household.

The sun was shining on the last of the snowmelt, with bare roads and rising temperatures.

At the cat vet, where I was grabbing more food for one of my boys, I mentioned that we were still without power. The lady at the desk said that she lived much further out than us, and she had power.

When I called the power hotline this morning to check on our status, we were given an ominous message about how they didn't even want to hear about it unless it was an emergency. I think they're just sick of hearing from us.

This evening, we grabbed a pizza for dinner. We fervently hoped to see the annoying garage light on the way home, the loud and buzzing and always-on thing that heralds whether or not we have power.

It was dark.

Tonight, we were given a deadline of 11:30.

After midnight, the neighbor's generator stopped providing power, but their house is dark, as is the neighborhood. We fired up our puny gas generator, so at least we won't freeze.

Dad called for an update. New time? 8 AM tomorrow morning.

At least we'll be getting our 50-buck rebate from the power company, for being out more than 5 days...

I'd rather have the juice...

TUESDAY - The Light at the End of the Tunnel

8 AM came and went. Like so many promises made by the power company, it amounted to nothing. (Their new deadline was 12. Or 6.)

Today, at least, the phone company was due out to fix our phone. When, they couldn't tell us, but some time between dusk and dawn seemed the most likely time. While Dad waited for them, the rest of us piled into the faithful Golden Taurus with a bag of laundry and headed back to Grandpa's, also known as the Oasis of Warm Water. Showers and laundry (and lunch) accomplished, we came back home - this time returning by our usual route, the one that was denied us by road closures on Saturday.

Our private road lies off a "horseshoe" spur, touching on the main road at either end. Usually, we only see one half of it in a given day - the half that leads to the nearest town. Our return trip took us up the other side.

We finally understood why the power company was having trouble.

Even now, five days after the storm, the place was an almost-impassable disaster zone. Half the lines that could be knocked down were. Piles of debris and branches that were practically trees themselves lay alongside - and even in - the roadway, choking passing to a narrow single lane at one point.

This is the end of the road where a neighbor had died. (We still don't know exactly who, or which house they were in, but it was a sobering thought.)

Needless to say, 12 passed without so much as a blip from the power lines. My sister went off to attend a continuing education class she'd signed up for a month ago, taking my father along to help navigate. (He's freakishly good at navigation, as he's freakishly good at waiting for tech guys and other tedious tasks.) Mother and I went out to look for more batteries, as our supply was running dangerously low.

On our way home, I saw a glimmer of light from the main road.

A particular annoying, always-on garage light glowed in the darkness...

It was too much to hope for.

I held my breath, biting my tongue, as we crept up the road and into our driveway.

Our motion-activated lights gave us the best welcome I've had in many a moon.

--

And thus ends the Great Power Saga of January 2012. Given weather patterns, I have a bad feeling that it won't be our last brush with the darkness before the winter ends.

In the meantime, I have five days' worth of websurfing to catch up on, and eight new book reviews to format and post.

Oh, yeah... and work tomorrow.

(Mother's branch-encased car. Bad as it looks, it actually could've been much worse, considering the size of the branches that fell mere inches to either side.)

Snow Delay

2012-01-18T07:26:00.000-08:00

When I was young, snow on a weekday meant eagerly listening to the radio, holding our breath as the list of closures and delays was read off - or, sometimes, watching the morning news on TV as the little bar beneath the babbling anchors scrolled through names familiar and strange. Closures were best, of course, but a delay meant little more than a change in routine. It was too late to actually crawl back into bed and get more sleep. In truth, as someone to whom crawling out of bed in the morning was never a pleasant task, it was rather annoying; if I'd known beforehand, I could've at least slept in.

Today, work had called for an early start, as the MLK Weekend "storm surge" was due to strike. The weather gurus, however, have been muttering and mumbling about a Major Snow Event, the potential for a foot of snow today, with possible winds. Around here, we take our weather forecasts with a steamshovel of salt, but - sure enough - this morning I woke to see a fresh layer of white across the yard, and fine wet flakes still sifting down from the great flour sieve in the skies.

Now, I know what work is not school. We grown-ups are expected to risk our necks on icy roads amid our fellow grown-ups to get to our jobs, trivial as they may be. And the library is, technically, government. They don't close down unless they can't get the doors open, or unless the power's out.

Still, memories of school days, of the golden "C" word, prompted me to call in before I took the time to excavate my car from the driveway.

We have a one-hour delay, after which we lowly part-timers are to call in and check to see if the facilities are opening at all.

So, I crawled out of bed on maybe 5 hours sleep for nothing... and, once again, if I'd known beforehand, I could've at least slept in.

Dang it...

(Did they make us go in? Even when nobody else made their employees go in, except maybe Metro and the Post Office? Did they make us drive on icy roads that were almost entirely devoid of other vehicles?

Yes. Yes they did. For all of 2 1/2 hours. Turns out that most of the rest of the library system was closed or intended to close early, so it was pointless to keep us there any longer. Tomorrow we finish the holiday load we were supposed to do today. And Friday we get slammed with snow-day catchups.

And I forgot my sandwich at work, too...

Dang it.)

Countdown to 2012

2011-12-31T21:59:00.000-08:00

Ah, yes, the infamous year 2012... so-called Armageddon date according to the so-called Mayan calendar. Year of the Water Dragon. Election year, leap year, etc.

Time to ramble aimlessly about the previous 12 months.

Well, let's see. 2011 was certainly a little more eventful than I'd have liked. I nearly lost my father. I nearly lost my grandfather. We nearly lost net neutrality and freedom of speech and the right to decide what's best for my own body... oh, wait, I may have spoken too soon on that. (Election year, after all...) But any year that ends with a roof over my head and clothes on my back and air still moving in and out of my lungs can't be all bad.

In a little over two hours, my 2011 Resolution list will be obsolete. Don't ask how I did on them... ball not only dropped, but rolled into the gutter, down the drain, and on to the sewage treatment facility. So the 2012 list will see some repeats.

Dang it...

To avoid staring my failures in the face, I've spent today tidying my spaces (my bedroom and my workshop, mostly) to start 2012 with a clean (or cleanish) slate, in a physical sense if not necessarily a mental one. Well, mostly clean. Turns out that it's impossible to eradicate glitter from a given area, even with a high-powered shop vac. The next projects that come out of my workshop will be a little more sparkly than I'd intended, and the trail of glitter that formed between my shop and the front door in December will likely persist until Valentine's Day, at least. I also updated my book review website, trying to stick to my once-a-month schedule. (My updates look pathetically small now, after Project Animorph's inflated numbers. I need to find me a new serial series to addict myself to...)

Tomorrow, I'll have a whole new calendar to face, and a whole new list of resolutions staring at me from the closet door above my computer monitor. In the meantime, I have two more hours to kill before midnight. I could take a last crack at a couple resolutions, or I could blow it off and goof off online.

Wonder what's on Hulu tonight...

Christmas Past

2011-12-26T16:00:00.000-08:00

For 35 years - my entire life - we've celebrated Xmas as we've celebrated Thanksgiving, Easter, and other family gatherings: at my grandfather's house, the house where my mother and her siblings grew up. Every gathering was an opportunity to relive their childhood, recollecting which families used to live in which houses and what fates befell them over the years, while my sister and I sat on the couch and pretended we knew who the heck they were talking about. It was a house full of memories, of history.

This year was different.

For some time, Grandpa's been fading, mentally and physically. After his close call last March, he has been unable to live alone anymore.

We had Easter at his house anyway, as it's near enough to where Grandpa was undergoing rehab that we could stop by afterwards. It was awkward, to say the least, eating in the empty house of a man who could no longer live there.

Now, Grandpa's doing a little better. He's in a group home, where he will probably live out the remainder of his days. The family is still working out what to do about his house - it's fairly clear, at this point, that Grandpa is never returning to live there again - but, in the meantime, we have to met somewhere for the holidays.

And so we found ourselves at my aunt's place.

In many ways, Grandpa's better off than he was last Xmas. He was able to stay awake, and could open presents with minimal prompting. But it was still strange, being in my aunt's house, without the old plastic Xmas tree blinking in the corner.

Didn't stop my mother and her siblings from yet again recreating their childhood neighborhood from memory...

Anyway, another Xmas means another round of Xmas ornaments. This year, I told myself I'd be extra-clever and start early, picking designs that couldn't possibly fight me until 2 AM on Xmas morning.

So, guess who was up at 2 AM on Xmas morning, trying to will tacky glue to dry with sheer psychic willpower...

Family Ornaments - Front and Back
Papier mache bases from the craft store, with metallic acrylic paint, glitter, glue, and sequins.

Relative Ornaments - Front and Back
Ditto.

Friends' Ornaments - Front and Back
Paperclay over a flat wooden base, glitter, and acrylic paint. (Looks like a simple design, right? I mean, it's flat. You don't get stress fractures opening up when you're just sticking Paperclay on a flat shape, right? You wouldn't think so... you really, really wouldn't think so... Long story short, I wound up scrapping my second set for another project, meaning they left my workshop so late that probably haven't reached their destination yet.)

V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!

2011-11-28T16:32:00.001-08:00

It wasn't easy.

It turned into a wandering, listless slog.

It needs a thorough overhaul, from the plot to the typeface, if it's ever going to see the light of day.

But, as of 16 minutes ago, I officially finished my 2011 NaNoWriMo story.

That makes me a Winner. For the third year in a row.

Now, where's my Victory Cake?

The Holiday Fog

2011-10-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

It's almost Halloween. That means three things:

1 - October's almost over.

2 - November's almost here.

3 - I'm already too far behind on holiday projects.

Fortunately, I know (or at least have a reasonable idea) what I'm doing this year. Unfortunately, I just haven't gotten my tail out to my workshop to start the things.

Instead, I've been reading. Between books I've been reading. But only when I haven't been reading. For some reason, it's the only thing my brain's been able to settle on when it stares at my ever-shifting, always-growing list of Things I Need to Do. I can't really complain - I'm finally past 800 archived reviews on Brightdreamer Books, a goal I didn't think I'd hit until next year - but it's completely devoured everything else I meant to do with September and October. My sketchbook is stagnating, my workshop's feeling lonely, and my room still hasn't been reorganized. I've also had an uncommonly bad run of luck with the books I've picked. Yet I can't seem to stop myself from picking up more.

When I haven't been reading, I've been beating back this year's NaNoWriMo story with a proverbial stick. This one really, really wants to get written, even though I don't have a clue about many pertinent facts... like where the plot really wants to go, how it wants to get there, or what the collateral damage and death toll will be once it arrives. But that doesn't stop my mind from chewing on it to the point of distraction. I finally broke down and wrote some backstory, just to keep my brain from shaking itself to pieces waiting for November 1. (And it gave me a chance to fiddle around with my new writing software, WriteWay Pro. So far, I'm liking it enough to consider paying for the full version; as a habitual cheapskate, that says something.)

Since I'll be forced to put down books for a while anyway, I probably should mosey out to my workshop and get started on those holiday projects. The year's not getting any longer.

If only my list of Things I Need to Do could say the same...

(Photos: The first was from a foggy morning, taken from a post office parking lot before work. The second was a puddle in a grocery store parking lot. And people say I never go anywhere fun...)

Kindle-ing

2011-10-04T21:38:00.000-07:00

This year, like every year, I celebrated a birthday. After this one, however, I found myself in possession of a shiny new Kindle.

Like most readers, I've been watching the e-reader revolution with mixed feelings. While part of me worries that the bookstore experience - wandering shelves, happening across new titles, browsing cover blurbs amid the smell of fresh paper – might be going the way of the soda fountain, another part can certainly see the advantages. Packing so many books into one small device… the ability to read thirty-odd pages free on most offerings (which would've saved me a lot of time, money, and general aggravation)… plus, more often than not lately, I've just plain had more luck finding what I want via Amazon than in the local Barnes & Noble. I was intrigued, but with my nonexistent budget I didn't expect I'd actually ever have one.

And now I did.

First things first. The package, once I managed to work it open, contained blissfully few items: a quick-start guide, a USB cable that hooked into a 2-prong adapter for charging, and the Kindle device itself: matte gray, little longer and wider than a mass-market paperback and scarcely as heavy, with a little keyboard and navigation buttons and not much else to confuse me. It was a matter of moments to start the battery charging, and the simple controls easily let me access the on-board instruction manual. The biggest problem was figuring out how to connect it via the household wifi network. We've had issues with the thing in the past, most notably the password and security key (which are not, oddly enough, the same thing; which device wants which one varies, with no sense of logic or certainty.) While a Kindle can operate without wireless internet access, it seemed like it would be happier if it could use the thing. Besides, there's the principle involved; we have wifi, and dang it, I ought to be able to use it!

Long story short, I wound up having to restart the wireless router in order to reset the key. This, incidentally, enabled the CD that came with the router to actually function as it was supposed to, something it had never done even when I bought the thing. Very strange, if fortuitous. (I wonder if this means I can finally get my printer to work on the wireless network... but that's another project for another day.)

That hurdle cleared, I was able to synch up my Kindle with my Amazon account in under half a minute. Yes, my Kindle knows my Amazon user name and password, just as it knows how to use my wifi network. Not the sort of thing your average book could figure out - even the leather-bound deluxe editions.

Now, I needed some content. Fascinating as the user manual was, I foresaw a day on the far horizon when it alone would fail to entertain me. While technically I can shop via the device iitself, I found its controls limiting when it came to browsing; I had trouble running basic searches, even with the keyboard. Well, when in doubt, head back to what you know: a good web browser and a proper computer. Booting up my desktop, I headed to the Amazon website… where I noticed that they had my Kindle device already listed when I logged in.

Spooky…

This being my first experience with the Kindle, I started looking for free books. Fortunately, Amazon has a fairly large selection of free, out-of-copyright titles available for the ~~cheapskate~~ thrifty reader. Now, according to the manual, any title I grabbed could be downloaded to my Kindle in 60 seconds or less. (I could also download it to my PC and drag-and-drop via the USB cable later.) I grabbed a free title at random – the classic Treasure Island, which I'd never gotten around to reading in my youth – to test that claim With a skeptical eye on my e-reader, I clicked.

I must have blinked, because suddenly there was a new addition to the main menu. Treasure Island had appeared almost before my mouse cursor cleared the "Send to my Kindle" button. As someone used to the wait for shipping, or even the wait entailed by the need to drive home from the bookstore, I had to say that this instant gratification was rather cool.

Reading on a screen instead of on a printed page proved a remarkably easy transition; I hardly noticed I was clicking a button instead of turning pages after a while. I could power it off and walk away, then start up right where I'd left off without hunting for scrap paper to serve as a bookmark. I didn't even delve into all the extra options I had – highlighting, adding notes, in-line dictionary definitions for unknown words, adjusting font sizes, and more. It even had a handy progress bar at the bottom, telling me how close I was to the end of the book. (Much more accurate than the old squinting-at-the-spine method.)

In conclusion, while I don't expect the Kindle to replace all of my book purchases, I can certainly see it making a dent in my reading piles. It should also come in handy with the library, as the local library system just launched Kindle compatibility with their e-reading options. It may be a while before I get to exploring that, though, as Amazon still has many more free titles for me to browse... plus some interesting offerings at Baen books, and other places I'm just stumbling across. I've already started the Kindle equivalent of a bookpile... a bookpile that takes up no more space than the Kindle itself.

I think this little device and I are going to get along just fine.

Deer me...

2011-09-16T22:35:00.001-07:00

Where has the year gone? How can it be halfway through September already?

Well, it's been a couple weeks, so I thought I'd poke the ol' blog.

I wish I could say I've made vast strides on my many projects, but I expect you'd see right through that ploy. Truth is, I've been focusing on writing and reading, weighing toward the reading end. You can, as always, check my book review blog for more details on that front. For the quick summary, suffice it to say that I've finally broken 750 reviews at my website. I may even break 800 by the year's end. How is that possible? Recently, I started seeing reissued Animorphs books go through at the library, which spurred me to finally go through and add individual reviews of the series. This, naturally, requires me rereading them. Freed of the one-book-a-month schedule imposed by the original release, I've found I can get through two or three installments in a day, if I'm not doing anything pressing. I'm trying to space them out, though. For one thing, I'm already ahead of the re-release schedule. For another, I'm sure all zero visitors to my book review blog will get sick of them if I post too many in a row. And, of course, there's the whole "other things I should be doing instead of rereading books" thing... Still, it's not easy holding back. Even though I know how the whole thing ends (not the most uplifting finale, to say the least), they're still addictively readable.

On the family front, life seems to have settled into a rough holding pattern. Grandpa just has good days and bad days. Dropping more water weight tends to give him more good days, as does getting on top of infections early... not easy, when every little step requires jumping through a zillion little bureaucratic hoops in order to get the staff of the assisted living home to help. (For instance, we had a standing order - in writing - from the doctor to increase his water pill dosage if he gained a certain amount of weight in a day. When he gained more than that, we were told that they had no memory of this standing order, and we had to run around playing doctor tag to get another order issued... all while Grandpa was falling further and further into his fog.) He hasn't been up to any major excursions since the sand sculpture exhibition, though. With the weather taking a sharp turn toward autumn, I don't know how many more excursions we'll manage to pack in before things get too damp and dreary out.

I suppose I ought to wander off. Just thought I'd toss a quick post to keep this thing from getting too stagnant. (Oh, the deer photo was taken from my car window a couple mornings ago on the way to work. The young buck stood by rather placidly while I clicked away with my purse camera. Rather considerate, all things considered.)

Sands of Time

2011-08-30T00:52:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday, the relatives and I visited the World Sand Sculpting Championship, once again hosted in a scenic area parking lot between a deserted Target and a deserted Toys R Us. It was a little smaller this year - no teams larger than pairs - but, if nothing else, it would give me an excuse to inflict more photos on the blogging community.

"Relatives" included the usual immediate family, my uncle, and Grandpa. This being a flat and relatively small venue, and something he actually seemed to enjoy last year, we thought it would be an ideal place to get Grandpa out and about for a while.

For a while, he was getting himself up to walk three times a day at the group home where he's been living. He'd been reading the paper (or at least skimming it), and commenting on it.

But, as we've learned too well this year, it's impossible to take anything for granted at his age, in his condition. They finally got the catheter out, but he still has lingering infection issues. He also keeps building up too much fluid, requiring numerous games of doctor tag before anyone will adjust his water pills to deal with it.

All of this takes a toll on his increasingly fragile stamina, not to mention his increasingly cloudy mental state. Between one day and the next, he can go from relatively alert and lively to glassy-eyed and weary. Sunday, the day of the Great Sand Sculpture Excursion, was a weary day.

For a while, Grandpa managed to walk with the use of his walker, but the effort told on him. Though we were there while the sculptors were still working, fielding questions and putting finishing touches on their incredible creations - including patiently affirming one clueless man's question as to whether the sand being wet had anything to do with how they were able to sculpt it - he hardly seemed to notice them. Just staying upright consumed most of his attention.

Before too long, it was time to switch off to the wheelchair.

The group home has an annoying habit of removing the foot rests of Grandpa's wheelchair, and storing them far away from the wheelchair itself. My uncle didn't check, before he left, to see if the rests were on or off. (Of course, this is a man who never remembers sunscreen or a hat, despite repeated scorchings...)

Without foot rests, pushing him in the chair requires some cooperation on Grandpa's part; he has to lift or "walk" his feet, or they catch on the ground or snag the front wheels.

For a while, it worked out. Freed from the effort of walking, he even seemed a little more alert, though his eyes tended to wander about, unable to stay focused on any given sculpture for long.

Before too long, though, he was letting his feet glide along, unwilling or unable to lift them. Even sitting down was proving strenuous for him. Since he couldn't be pushed, my uncle had him get back up on his walker as we headed toward the food court (or rather, three tents selling foodlike substances and cold liquids.)

Grandpa managed to get to the tables, even navigating hoses left in his path. (People don't realize how difficult it is to deal with hoses until they have a relative in need of a walker or wheelchair; that inch or so of lift to clear one's feet becomes a monumental task.) But that was about it for the day. He was asleep almost before he'd sat down. Even the temptation of chocolate milk failed to rally his stamina.

Before the final judging started, we headed off. Grandpa had to be rolled backwards; once more unable to participate in his own transportation, it was easier to roll him backwards, letting his heels skim the ground, than push the whole length of his foot on the asphault.

The final sand sculpture, on the last row, seemed oddly and eerily fitting for the day. Its title, appropriately enough, was "The Sands of Time."

The Trek

2011-08-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

Barely a week in, and August is already shaping up to be a busy month for family things. Last weekend (technically the last day in July), we hit the local Highland Games. Yesterday, we made the drive down to Northwest Trek, a native wildlife park whose main draw is the tram tour: a large chunk of the park is dedicated to free-range herbivores, with tram tours allowing visitors a "reverse zoo" experience wherein the beasts are free and the humans are confined. As children, we all made the pilgrimage at least once, and remembered it mostly for the long drive down, a tram tour where one might have seen a deer sleeping next to the road, and a quick lunch before being loaded onto the buses for the long drive back before school let out.

For some reason, Grandpa got it into his head that he wanted to go. From there, it infected the rest of the relations, until it became a "We Have To Do This Someday" summer plan. (Grandpa's still not quite who he used to be, and we all know he won't be around too many more summers...) Yesterday, Sunday, became "Someday" for trip-taking purposes.

Why, yes, I am about to subject you to the virtual photo tour. Why? Because the Internet's the closest thing to social interaction I have...

This guy has been greeting visitors since... well, since as far back as I can remember, possibly as far back as the park's been open. I expected it to be as close as I was likely to get to a photogenic animal; as mentioned, in years past, I've never had much luck with their tram tours providing more than the most fleeting glimpse of the resident fauna. (Admittedly, part of my skepticism stemmed from a less-than-direct route to the park; despite Mapquest directions, the other carload of relatives insisted on the "scenic" - i.e., the "I'm sure I know a faster way/Wait, what was the exit again?" backtrack-for-half-an-hour-and-ditch-the-hapless-fools-following-them - route. Not a great foot to start out any expedition on...)

Once we'd paid for our admission (which came with a tram-ride token - about 40 minutes out), we herded ourselves inside for a visit to the restroom and a glance at the map. I scarcely remembered all the meandering trails about the central area... trails far too extensive for kids to explore when there's a school bell to hurry back to an an hour-long drive to beat it. If nothing else, I figured I'd get a good in. Grandpa was enjoying himself, at least. The weather was cooperating, if nothing else was yet...

We didn't want to get too deep into the trail system before the tram tour, so we headed down there to wait. Fortunately, we weren't the first in line... Actually, they were moving people through at a fair clip. We also got to get on first thanks to Grandpa's wheelchair. Time to settle in and see if I can't find something photogenic.

Horseshoe Lake proved nice and easy to photograph. But, then, it's much harder for a lake to hide in the grass, dart across a road, or turn its least-photogenic end toward you...

Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was dumb luck. But I saw more animals in that tram tour than I recall ever seeing in my entire history of visiting Northwest Trek. Since the trams aren't allowed to come to a full stop (slowing to a near-dead-stop-crawl), and since I suck with cameras, I can hardly report spectacular success, but nevertheless I was pleasantly surprised... and the throw-enough-stuff-at-the-wall theory proved out as I managed to fluke a few decent shots.
This guy's an endangered species of elk, with scarcely more than 2000 left between America and Canada; their old-growth forest habitat's been on humanity's hit list for far too long.

A Columbia Blacktail deer rests in a patch of grass. We saw several of these guys, but this buck was the most photogenic.

Next, we came to a herd of bighorn sheep, who also proved suspiciously cooperative.

A group of misguided tourists in a second tram, up on a ridge above the sheep-filled meadow, must have thought we were interesting enough to photograph. So I returned the favor.

A bull bison snoozes in the woods. Normally, he would be out trying to impress the ladies this time of year, but this guy looks like his freewheeling bachelor days are long behind him... like most aging males, he prefers to be left alone for a nice snooze.

The tram tour wound over hill and dale, through meadow and woodland. This view just reminded me of so many places I've been in the Cascades - the tall, sun-dappled treetrunks and the shady trails - that I thought I'd record it for posterity.

We came upon a wetland with a pair of moose. The bull was resting right next to the road... on the opposite side of the tram. The cow, on the other hand, was more conveniently located.
We also learned that moose eat somewhere in the neighborhood of 27,000 calories' worth of plant matter daily. The tram operator tried to impress us by telling us we'd have to eat about 47 Big Macs or 20-odd Cinnabons to get that many calories. (My thought was... only 47? Dear gods, no wonder obesity is about to go pandemic...)

Another pair of bison. We later saw another herd, with calves, but they were in the woods on the opposite side of the tram.

Remember that ridge we saw the second tram on earlier? We found ourselves up there, later in the tour. Couldn't see much in the way of animals, save tiny brown dots far below, but the view was something else...

Toward the end of the tour, a mountain goat turned up by the roadside. He didn't think much of tourists and their cameras, though...

Coming back around Horseshoe Lake, we spotted the White Widow: a trumpeter swan whose mate had passed away. Several of their offspring had evidently been shipped back east, to Ohio or thereabouts, to help rebuild the swan population there. (There is still a second breeding pair of swans on the grounds, but they seem strangely drawn to a nesting site near the raccoon den... 'coons make lousy egg-sitters, evidently.)

On the way back to the tram station, a herd of caribou had set up camp on the roadway, as is evidently their habit; we had to crawl behind a nonchalantly-trotting beast all the way up to the station. (The tram operator said she sometimes felt like Santa, following reindeer up the hill...)

And thus ended the tram tour.

Time's gotten away from me, so that'll be it for now. Later today, I'll post the pics of the rest of my trip.

'Till then...

LATER...

Okay, got Grandpa's lawn mowed, picked up groceries, and otherwise fulfilled my real life obligations for the day.

Back to the photo dump...

Once the tram ride was through, we split up and wandered through the extensive trail network, where more animals were on display. This guy reminded us of the bird feeder bandit, currently held at bay by an electric fence.

A grizzly. If one of these guys had been after our feeder, we would've let him have it. And anything else in the yard he wanted.

Wolves, a former native, are slowly making a comeback in the wild in this state (ranchers and poachers notwithstanding.) This one displayed an uncanny sense of cameras, mocking us from the rear of the exhibit.

Of the three cats at Northwest Trek, the cougars proved the most active. In their display, one can view a red dot on a tall tree; it marks the highest recorded downward jump of a cougar... 60 feet. (They can jump about 20 vertical feet from a standstill, too.) The kids next to us were engaged in a lively debate about whether a knight or a cougar would win in a fight. They seemed to be of the opinion that the sword would tip the balance. I wouldn't bet on that one...

A fisher, of the weasel family. Another Northwest native that's been having a rough time with bipedal invasive species.

The otters were, in otter fashion, moving faster than the camera could reliably tracked. This is the closest to a presentable image I got of their antics.

It probably looks stuffed, but this is in fact a live beaver (on a leash), part of a trailside talk by the staff. Like most rodents, beavers grow continuously throughout their lives. This on was 20-30 pounds, but records exist of 70-odd pound behemoths... in the days before large-scale trapping.

The park had four birds on display: the snowy owl, barn owls, a turkey vulture, and a pair of golden eagles. Two of the four species proved too elusive for a good shot. Three, really, if you count this cruddy image (the best I managed under the circumstances.)

One of the golden eagles, patiently posing for photographs in its habitat.

Well, that's it for the photo dump. It was a beautiful day, one that already has relatives talking about a return trip (possibly for one of their limited-seating photography packages.)

The Break Eternal

2011-07-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

This morning, I showed up bright and early for work.

I cleared my e-mail. I submitted my hours. I even finished an online training quiz I'd been putting off. I was ready to go, waiting for 9:00.

At about 8:30, the power flickered.

It flickered again.

It died.

So, we sat in the break room, waiting for the lights to come back on.

We waited a very, very long time. Long enough to nearly finish the break room puzzle.

It finally came back on shortly before noon... but then the various machines needed to be reset. (For some reason, they don't like power outages. Go figure...)

How long did that take?

Check the time stamp... and we're still waiting.

(At 2:00 the point becomes moot.)

Oh, well... at least I'm still getting paid. And there's a new puzzle to work on...

Visiting Pandora

2011-07-21T17:07:00.000-07:00

The Sci-Fi Museum downtown has a special Avatar exhibition this summer. In honor of a relative's recent birthday - and because Avatar was far and away the most immersive sci-fi world I've ever experienced on the silver screen - we decided to swing by.

It had nothing to do with the many projects I'm dutifully procrastinating on. Really...

Our wet summer weather managed to melt the iconic Space Needle; here it can be seen in the process of oozing down the wall of the EMP building.

A helpful exhibit map explains where we are. The entire lower floor of the Sci-Fi Museum had been cordoned off; I expect that they needed all the power they could get for the Avatar exhibition's many interactive displays. One room had a motion-capture booth where one could act out a short scene from the movie and see oneself digitized as a Na'Vi in real-time. (I was too cowardly to attempt it.) Another had a virtual camera where one could attempt to film a sequence from the movie; moving the screen around rotated the camera, and buttons zoomed in and out. (I did try that... didn't do too badly keeping track of the action. Very, very, cool...)

Plant specimens display the bioluminescent properties prevalent in the Pandoran forests.

Numerous pieces of Avatar conceptual art were on display, many of them on interactive computer tables and screens. This one let visitors build their own Pandoran plants. The screen I poked at was a bit buggy, but it was still fun.

One of three main character busts on display, exacting down to the smallest detail. A short video loop described the process of creating the Na'Vi from motion-capture cameras - upwards of 170 per actor - and the breakthrough methods that allowed the crew to actually see the simulated characters and sets in real-time while shooting a given scene. Impressive stuff...

Props such as this were not only designed on computers, but built in real life to help the artists capture the look, feel, and movements of various materials.

The many animals (and plants) of Avatar were made as biologically plausible as possible. Several had their own motion-capture actors (animals, occasionally) to give them life.

A life-sized military walking suit replica. The humans didn't get as much display time as the Pandoran flora and fauna, but then they weren't really the focal point of the experience...

On the way out, we stopped by a large projection screen in the walkway. It looked just like ambient scenery from the Pandoran forests, but if you stood still for a while, you realized that you had visitors...

Yes, they did respond to movement. Yes, it was exceptionally cool.

And, yes, I'd still give any of various organs for a ticket to Pandora...

Halfway to the End

2011-06-30T22:20:00.000-07:00

As of tonight, the end of the sixth month of the year, 2011 will officially be half over.

Yes, I panicked, too.

On the downside:
- I've still failed to secure secondary income sources; part-time jobs I'm remotely qualified for don't seem to be appearing, and I haven't even tried making anything to sell online.
- I still haven't started at least one project I'd meant to have done by now.
- I've completely dropped the ball on picking up the exercise habit.
- I'm still effectively standing in my own way when it comes to artistic improvement.
- I haven't finished editing the story I'd wanted to sent out for beta-reading by now.
- I still have piles of Stuff I need to sell off, donate, or otherwise relocate to a place that isn't here.
- I still haven't (insert other project, activity, or personal improvement goal here).

On the upside:
- I'm still alive.
- I'm still employed.
- My father's still among the living.
- My grandfather's still among the living... and actually doing better than we had any reason to expect.
- I still have a working motor vehicle. (The other day, I came out of the store and saw a gold sedan with its entire front bumper and grille on the ground - right about where I parked. Nearly had heart failure until I realized I was one aisle off...)
- I now own a (cheap-arse prepaid) cell phone, bringing me one step closer to the 21st century.
- I've read 27 new (or new-to-me) books... which puts me on track to top 750 reviews by the end of the year.
- Slow as I'm going, I'm still filling sketchbook pages.
- And I managed a trip to the zoo. Can't knock a trip to the zoo...

All in all, I'm still breathin' air... which is ultimately all one can ask of the Universe to provide. The rest, unfortunately, is up to us.

Dang it...

The Summer that Time Forgot

2011-06-21T22:36:00.001-07:00

While a fair portion of the country, as I understand it, has been wilting under heat, my own little green and damp corner has been... well, green and damp. I read recently that we averaged 75% of days below normal temps this spring. Having never truly gotten a spring, I nevertheless found myself confronted with a summer. There it was, bold as brass and twice as shiny, staring at me on the calendar.

For once, the weather actually agreed with the date.

Seeing as how none of us were feeling excessively poorly, and the weather was being so bright and cheerful, we figured we ought to celebrate.

So we hit the zoo.

Woodland Park Zoo has a special display of animatronic dinosaurs this summer, which we'd planned to visit before school got out before Life reared its terrifying head and interrupted our plans. Today seemed as good a day as any to brave the swarms of kids; it's not like the brats were going to get any thinner. I packed up my two cameras (my little purse-sized Canon PowerShot and the ol' reliable 15x-zoom Sony Cybershot - and if you can't tell the difference between which camera took which picture, I'll pretend it's a compliment to the manufacturers and not a statement of my insufficent photo-editing capabilities) and we headed on down. (I also took my sketchbook, in the off chance I got a chance to sit and sketch. It never happens at any zoo I've ever gone to, but that doesn't stop me from taking it...)

Oh, and if the above wasn't forewarning enough: Yes, I am about to dump a metric snotload of photos on you.

It being the first warm day in some time, many of the animals were taking advantage to snooze. Cats being cats, the lions were no exception. This one forgot her zoo training, however, and fell asleep in camera range.

I know it's not the best shot, but in thirty-odd years it's the first time I've pulled off a photo of a blasted tapir that wasn't ruined by glass reflections or obnoxious kids pushing in my way.

One of the zoo's Asiatic elephants takes a little stroll, a perfect opportunity for a generic "elephant at the zoo" shot.

The lone African elephant, with its lone tusk, spent most of its time with its back to the viewing area. I swear that thing had developed the same sixth sense that causes birds to scatter near cameras. Patience finally paid off with a somewhat more flattering angle.

After the elephants, we wandered through the Trail of Vines orangutan exhibit. Even the apes were feeling the heat... which seems a bit wimpy of them, as their home is much warmer (and more humid), but I suppose they're used to dense forest canopy shading them.

An orangutan peers out from a burlap shelter.

I've never had the best of luck with the bears. Today, however, they proved much more cooperative, to the point where even I managed to fluke a decent snapshot.

For many years, the zoo had a display of bald eagles in need of rehab. This year, the baldies were gone... partly due to budget cuts, and partly due to a wild bald eagle pair building a nest in the caribou exhibit. (Why pay to display an animal that's just fine with displaying itself for free? ... Whoa, that came out wrong, didn't it?) In their place was a Steller's Sea Eagle. A most impressive substitute, even if it was heck to take a picture of due to the wire mesh in front of the viewing area.

After a break for lunch, we finally hit the dinosaur exhibit, where we found a helpful sign at the entrance.

Inside, we found several life-sized, if somewhat unconvincingly painted, animatronic dinos. Tails, jaws, forelimbs, even eyes moved in a somewhat eerie manner, complete with vocalizations. I swear the things had some sort of motion sensor; they seemed to keep following you as you moved in front of their displays.

Of course, some of them had better manners than others...

Many of them came in adult/juvenile pairings. This Styracosaurus had a young one off to the side (which didn't look quite so convincing.)

This was a fun little display; there was even a little baby hadrosaur that popped out of its egg. Really clever, the way they scattered throughout the zoo, with that guy in the white lab coat with the tranquilizer gun hot on their heels... hmm...

Of course, the king of the dinosaurs was, well, the king of the dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus Rex, in the animatronic flesh. (Yes, I know they've found bigger carnosaurs. They're not "Rex," are they?)
You see pictures of the bones all the time, and think,"That's a big dinosaur." You see them in a museum, and you think,"That's a really big dinosaur." Then you see this...

... and you realize,"Holy crud, that's a really big dinosaur!"

Really... really... big...

You never know when you're going to run into a celebrity. There I was, with my sister, wandering through the Day exhibit (the remainder of the former Day and Night exhibit of diurnal and nocturnal animals, with the latter animals victims of budget shortfalls), when we saw a Gaboon Viper... star of many an episode of Animal Planet's Fatal Attractions. Unfortunately, we couldn't get an autograph. No hands to hold a pen... and we'd watched the show enough not to be anywhere near it without a good, solid protective barrier between its fangs and us.

An orchid sets the mood for the tropical house.

Watch out for snakes... a tree viper lurks in a treelike environment.

A tropical bird, of the toucanesque persuasion, carrying a stick for unknown reasons.

One of my favorite parts of the tropical house at the zoo is the room where numerous birds fly free over an elevated walkway. I could've spent much longer there, had I been alone... and had it not been quite so humid, it being a jungle environment and all...

A sunbittern showed up to put on a spectacular display, even fanning a brightly-colored wing... while I was at the precisely wrong angle to photograph it.

And so on and so forth...

After the birds, I checked back to see if the jaguar had roused itself from its hidden nap. It had, but it wasn't too keen on being seen, pacing out then turning right around and pacing back out of site.

Eventually, with the unaccustomed sun beating down and the unaccustomed miles on our shoes, we decided it was time to brave rush hour and head homeward. These flamingos seemed to have the right idea, right about then...

So, all in all, the first day of summer proved to be a decent one. Hopefully it's a good sign of things to come, in the weather and in life.

Back to Normality

2011-06-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, Dad started feeling sick.

Thursday morning, we weren't sure he'd pull through.

Dad came home today. He was well enough to walk out of the hospital under his own power. Aside from a few follow-ups and the usual restrictions on driving or heavy lifting for a time - and, of course, the two-odd meters of dead intestine the surgeons removed - he's back to normal.

Normality can be a great thing...

The Hammer in the Works

2011-06-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

Dad's been having gut pain and some nausea all day. He finally decided to go down to the local ER, figuring it was a flu that they might be able to help with.

He's on his way to emergency surgery as I type for a bowel obstruction. Mom and my sister are going with him, while I man the fort here.

Dear gods of Heaven and Earth, please let that old man be all right...

THURSDAY UPDATE: Well, he's still kickin'... They wound up removing a good chunk of his remaining intestinal tract. He'll be in for about two weeks. Dunno if I should go into work right now - I mean, there's nothing staying home will do, but I don't expect I'll be much use. (Update as of a few minutes later: I called in. Family before work.)

THURSDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: We went to visit Dad in the hospital, and things are looking cautiously optimistic. Bad numbers are going down, good numbers are going up, etc. If he'd waited another 24 hours to go in to the ER, though, things would've been much different...

FRIDAY UPDATE: Dad's done some sitting up and walking. He's reportedly a little tired (not surprising) but otherwise doing okay. His heart was acting up a bit, but his heart's done this before. By the weekend they're hoping to bump him up from surgical ICU to regular ICU (which actually means moving up a floor.) (Later: They figured out what the deal was with his heart; apparently, he's getting his meds in IV form rather then by pill - for obvious reasons - and that makes the heart meds kick in faster and wear off faster, making for an apparent jump and drop in heart rate. You'd think they'd know about this kind of thing at a hospital where patients get meds through IVs all the time... And he's still not in any pain, which is good. Anyway, they still mean to move him tomorrow or so.)

SATURDAY UPDATE: Still truckin' along... They want to move him, but can't find an open bed in the ward they want to move him to. (I think that many people do their elective/non-emergency surgeries on weekends, when they're off work anyway, so they're just full.) The weather's celebrating by being summerlike for about the first time since last summer.

SUNDAY UPDATE: Dad's been upgraded to an "intermediate" care room, hopefully on his way to a full-blown regular hospital room. He's looking better every day.

MONDAY UPDATE: He's been moved to a "normal" room, where he'll spend the duration of his stay according to the doctors. They seem happy with his rate of progress. I'm still shellshocked; it hasn't even been a week yet, and it feels simultaneously like a day and a month...

TUESDAY UPDATE: The hospital started Dad on solid foods today. He might come home as early as this evening.
Yeah... Dad's surprised, too...

Well, That was a Weekend...

2011-05-31T00:08:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day Weekend's pretty much over (ten minutes to go as I type, so it'll be over by the time I post, I'm sure.) As usual, the family and I wandered down to the local Folklife Festival. Since few of the acts actively caught our eye, we mostly meandered about the grounds.

We first went down on Saturday. There seemed to be fewer vendors... at least, some of the ones we usually see around the grounds weren't here this year. But these guys were... they're called Tie Dye Everything, and they have pretty much any article of clothing you could ask for dyed in all manner of bright colors.

There were also the usual just-kinda-weird vendors about the grounds...

... but at least they had pretty stuff.

Despite urgings of the festival staff, people insist on bringing their dogs to the festival, often without bothering to bring dog water (or clean-up bags.) Some of the canines take the matter into their own hands... this one in particular couldn't get enough of the fountain. I don't think I'd seen a happier dog in ages.

Other animals have to earn their keep. Phineas here, an African Gray, put on a nice little show... though Malarkey could talk rings around this guy. (Probably not the kind of language you'd want around kids, though...)

"Lookit the giant tomato... Got little Timmy... Ate 'im all up."
Part of a new Children's Museum display in what used to be Fun Forest. Either that, or that radiation plume from Japan really wasn't as harmless as everyone said...

Hey, it wouldn't be Folklife without the weird-arse street musicians of variable talent...

We came back down on Monday (after a Sunday spent mowing Grandpa's lawn) to meet my aunt, my uncle, and my grandfather. I'd rather hoped to get a good family shot - we don't expect Grandpa to be around for that many more Folklifes - but it didn't happen... Anyway, while wandering around, I saw this peculiarity.

Guess that about does it. I suppose I ought to wander off and try squeezing in a bit of writing time before bed; I'm desperately far behind on revisions, and June's breathing down my neck, with the halfway-point of the year right on its heels.

Backslides

2011-05-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

Grandpa's in the hospital again. He's been getting wheezier for the past week, showing signs of discomfort (without being able to articulate it), and had some extremity swelling that got the family and the group home nurses concerned. Most of Sunday was spent in the ER trying to track down the problem. We suspect a reaction to one of his newer drugs - the switch and the onset of symptoms seem remarkably coincidental - but we don't know as yet just what the official diagnosis is.

I have a day off on Wednesday - one of those "get HR off my back for over-accrual of vacation hours" vacations - but until I know what's going on with Grandpa I'm hesitant to make any real plans. (I was considering a run to a local zoo... one of them has a few new exhibits I'd like to see, and the other has a special dinosaur display that sounded cool. Heck, even the hole-in-the-wall on the hill nearby has a new tiger exhibit that I'd kinda like to look at.) I suppose this is part of the reason I finally broke down and bought myself a cell phone this weekend, though... still doesn't feel quite right.

In the meantime, I've been on a bit of a nostalgia trip; I found Almost Live! clips up at a local news site. (Almost Live! was a long-running local comedy show, though a fair amount of the regional humor probably doesn't hold up with newcomers; Ballard, for instance, is no longer a haven for Nordic fishermen and old drivers, having been yuppified significantly. Not that there aren't a few holdouts in the area...) I remember most of these from the original airdates, and danged if I don't still chuckle.

I guess I've been backsliding, too, in a way...

MONDAY UPDATE: We visited Grandpa in the hospital after stopping by his house to mow his lawn and check his mail. (Trying to make sure neighbors know the place is being watched...) He wasn't as bad as he evidently was on Sunday, but he wasn't as good as he's been, either. The heck of is is that nobody in this so-called integrated hospital system will talk to each other. The hype about interconnected patient files and cooperative care is pure malarkey. Nobody will even consider the possibility of a drug reaction, even though he has every symptom on the list and they have nothing really to lose by taking him off the thing and seeing. My uncle's ready to strangle someone to make them listen; they kept Grandpa in an unheated room for hours, refusing to fix the thermostat and ignoring requests for a blanket. (The room he's in now felt too warm to us; I'd hate to think they're that petty at a hospital, but I don't know anymore...) It's enough to make one almost glad that one can't afford health insurance; there's almost no chance I'll live long enough without it for this kind of runaround to dictate my life or death.

THURSDAY UPDATE: Well, they finally sent Grandpa "home." ("Home" being the group home where he's been staying, not his house.) Little definitive answer on what went wrong, why he'd stopped eating and could barely answer questions, and so forth, but he did have some manner of infection and an edge of pneumonia. He wasn't eating much there, but he ate everything they set before him when he got out of the hospital. So we're hopeful he's back on an evenish keel.

So Much for Promises

2011-05-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

I'd rather hoped the world would be down a few nutcases by now, but apparently the promised Rapture didn't take place as scheduled. Which really sucks, as not only would it have helped our global overpopulation issues, but I'd already picked out my new car, new house, and new job based on the expected vacancies. Plus I'd be just as happy going about my daily life without fear of running into the sort of people whom God evidently likes enough to lift straight into the VIP afterlife club.

The Oatmeal explains the technical difficulties...

So, you may wonder, what have I been up to? Fortunately for you, not taking pointless pictures and composing blog posts about meaningless events in my life to justify posting them. Unfortunately for me, I haven't been doing much else, either. The year continues to slip past at the speed of a greased weasel on an espresso high. I have projects backing up that need finishing (or starting, in some cases.) About all I've excelled at is coming up with reasons to continue procrastinating.

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, I finally joined the 21st century about a decade late with the purchase of a cell phone. (Yep, those who know me can attest to my nonstop chattiness and overall gregarious demeanor, and will likely keel over in shock wondering how I got by without one for so long...) It's a cheap little prepaid number, mostly to enable me to contact family members if we have another incident on the scale of the Grandpa Catastrophe, or to call AAA if I find myself in need of roadside assistance. I literally just activated the thing, so I'm still figuring out what-all it can do. It claims to have a camera and Bluetooth compatibility, among other bells and whistles and shiny things I don't foresee myself ever having a need for. But, then, at one time I never foresaw myself needing the internet, so we'll see...

At the very least, figuring the thing out will allow me to procrastinate nicely.

Maybe by then God'll have debugged His heavenly teleporter and beamed up His more self-righteous followers, like He promised.

Miscellaneous Things (Illustrated Edition)

2011-05-04T20:33:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything remotely informative, hasn't it? (It's been longer since I've posted anything remotely interesting... oh, who am I kidding? I've never done that!) Mostly it's because I have little to post that's worth an entire blog entry. So I thought I'd gather up the various things that wouldn't fill an entry by themselves and stick them together.

Hey, it's either that or do something productive with my evening...

The above photo, for the ornithologically challenged, is a band-tailed pigeon. A native game bird, it is significantly larger than the common city pigeon (more accurately termed a "rock dove," if any nitpicky bird enthusiasts are within earshot, or "winged rat," if you happen to own a bird feeder.) I have an older bird identification guide that describes band-tails as "shy," just starting to venture near feeders.

Someone forgot to tell the birds.

All my years growing up, we used to have - at most - three band-tails in the area. I'd hear them, or see them circling the yard, or watch them swing by the feeder briefly. For the past couple years, however, we've seen more.

How many is more?

During one visit (or, more accurately, invasion), my sister stopped counting after 30.

They're not necessarily evil birds. They're natives, after all, and they're kinda pretty in a mostly-gray way. But if city pigeons are rats with wings, these guys are full-blown pigs. They'll strip a feeder bare in under an hour, and explode into the sky at a moment's notice. (They're also not the brightest bulbs of the bird world. More than one has tried to come through the window into the living room. As in, they were perched on the sill and thought they could step inside, for no discernible reason... and the lighting conditions were all wrong for reflections to be blamed.)

My sister finally figured out a way to slow them down a bit with feeder covers, but it's still a pitched battle to keep the feeders full long enough for other birds to get a shot at the seed. With the exception of the destructive bears, they're the only things that have ever made me wish I owned a shotgun.

--

This is the view from Grandpa's new home. It remains to be seen whether this is permanent, or if he's going to deteriorate to the point where he needs more intensive care than this group-home setting can provide. More signs have surfaced of lingering brain damage and dementia issues, enough that sending him back to his home to live, even with 24/7 care, is looking more and more like a hazy pipe dream. He seems to be settling in okay, but the family stubbornness has taken root full force. He can no longer be coaxed into exercising; even walking a lap around the living room is out of the question. The promise of going home isn't even enough to prod him into action. On the plus side, he's eating better, and he seems to like the company, even if they do tend to keep the TV on "girl" channels whether or not any other residents are in the living room. (He's the only man in the house at this time.) I keep hoping things will finally settle down a bit, now that he's in a stable situation. So far, it's just a hope, though...

--

We've still been suffering a general bee shortage in the area. For all the fruit trees blossoming and flowers blooming, I should be seeing more bees. Partly to blame is the wet weather; the few bees I have seen tend to be bumblebees. They can function in cooler temperatures than other bees, evidently, due to their furry bodies and larger mass. This little buzzer, though, wasn't doing so hot on the hood of my car... but it was a great excuse to whip out the purse camera and click away. (I moved it to a better perch before I actually took the car on my planned shopping trip. We need all the pollinators we can get...)

--

After nearly a month of being unable to find time or enthusiasm, I've finally picked up to something close to my old reading schedule again. Had some fun finds and a few duds, but I'd missed losing myself in a book of any sort. (For reviews of recent reads, check my book review blog.) To that end, I hit Amazon a couple of weeks ago with a gift certificate I earned (via an online survey site I joined some years back... once in a while I earn enough points to justify cashing out.) Hopeless penny-pincher as I am, I managed to stretch that certificate to cover about six or seven books via used affiliates. Normally, I've had pretty good luck with them sending me items in the condition described; if anything, I've found the things I ordered come to be in better shape than expected. But this time, I found a less pleasant surprise...

Note the description on the tag, which is what I read online when I ordered. Note the area visible just below the tag. One of these things is not like the other... (And, yes, I inspected the packaging thoroughly. A waterproof envelope, well-sealed, and dry. If it had happened in shipping, it wouldn't have the staining and the color cover bleed, and it would probably affect more pages. It would also have still been damp when I opened it. Which it wasn't.)

At the library, when we're deleting old items from the catalog, we automatically chuck (or recycle) any book with any sign of water damage, let alone staining from whatever beverage did the damage. We do not resell it as a "good/very good" used book. For the price, I didn't think it was worth my while to return, but I was still dismayed enough for a less-than-positive vendor review. Needless to say, I won't be doing business with them again. (They were also the one that took the longest to get to me, though they were the closest vendor I ordered from. Go figure...)

--

Well, I think I've stretched that premise as far as it can be stretched. And I still have a few hours left before bed time. Guess I ought to try giving that "productivity" thing a chance after all...

Dang it...

Intermission with Trophy

2011-04-20T16:06:00.000-07:00

Tangible proof that not only did March exist, but at some point in there I contributed to something at work. Kinda. If you take a few steps back and squint...

(Original post explaining the trophy's origins here.)

Moving Day

2011-04-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a stressful week. Hell, it's been a stressful month and a half, but the preceding week or so has been particularly stressful.

The staff at Grandpa's rehab center, which once went all-out trying to figure out what was wrong with him, has done a complete 180, hiding behind bureaucratic technicalities and health care system flaws so they can essentially wash their hands of dealing with him. (I won't get into details here, except for a question. On TV shows like Law & Order, a big deal is made of mental competence when it comes to trials and convictions; a mentally incompetent person is not allowed to make legal decisions for themselves, and may not be held accountable for their own actions or words. Why, then, in reality, does the word of a hard-of-hearing man diagnosed with dementia, who has had major brain trauma in his recent medical history and is very likely suffering from sleep deprivation and/or depression, constitute a sufficient excuse for doctors and nurses to shrug their shoulders and say he doesn't need assistance?) I'd say that they're just overwhelmed, packed to the gills with an influx of rehab patients, but to be perfectly blunt about it they're supposed to be trained to deal with it. Grandpa's paying just as much as everyone else; he should be worth some of their precious time and effort.

Fortunately, Grandpa won't be stuck there much longer. Tomorrow (or today, rather, as it just cleared midnight), he's scheduled to move into a small group home. The person in charge seems like just the kind of person Grandpa needs in charge of his situation right now, someone who won't accept malingering or stubbornness as an excuse not to push oneself. Hopefully, the change in surroundings and extra attention will perk him up.

With any luck, having Grandpa out of the neglectful rehab clinic and into a better (we hope) situation will ease some of the stress.

Can't say I'm holding my breath on that, though...

MONDAY UPDATE - Well, Grandpa was moved today. He took it surprisingly well... as in, he mostly slept through the transfer process. We're just as glad to see the backside of that danged clinic, though... they hadn't even bothered washing his hands, even with signs all over about using hand sanitizer.

Today we saw some of the strangest clouds we'd seen in a long time, with some of the wildest weather shifts. The March lion seems to be lingering overlong this year... unless this really was some manner of airborne leviathan.

April, Already?

2011-04-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

Time flies when reality's in limbo...

The days have been getting away from me for the better part of a month. Aside from writing, I've managed to drop the ball on most everything I've meant to do. Sketchbook consumption is down to a crawl. Craft projects are just not happening. I'm even having trouble just sitting down to read books, which means my April update at Brightdreamer Books is going to be so anemic it probably won't happen. Don't even ask how I've been doing on the exercise front, though I can blame the unusually wet and scuzzy weather for that one. (Well, I probably shouldn't, but I choose to anyways.)

On the other hand, over at Grandpa's house, things are moving along pretty well. Rooms are being painted, fixtures are being updated... all sorts of little things that need doing after a few decades of use are finally getting dealt with. So, whatever happens, at least the place will look decent when we're done.

Grandpa himself is not progressing as well as one might hope. Some days he'll feed himself and notice surroundings and be able to talk for an hour or so. Others he just isn't there. At this point, we're suspecting that it could be sleep related. Evidently, older people sometimes have trouble getting enough deep sleep (REM stages 3 and 4.) In other words, just because he's sleeping most of the day doesn't mean he's really sleeping deeply enough to rest. If this is true in Grandpa, that could be the invisible key to his inexplicable shifts from reasonably coherent to nearly comatose, since nothing else changes in his routine from day to day. I don't know if there's anything that can be done to ensure proper sleep, or at least improve the odds, or even if this is what's really going on to baffle family and staff alike, but I'd feel better if we can put our fingers on a cause.

Maybe then April won't be the lost cause that March seems to have been.

Reflections on a Sunset

2011-03-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

We spent yesterday at Grandpa's house, cleaning and painting and preparing. The doctors wanted us to have a Plan in place last week, anticipating a possible release date of Friday. We're nowhere near ready, but we're making some headway against the decades of accumulated stuff.

The Plan has been that Grandpa would go home, but not be left alone, day or night. A rough schedule of who takes what shift is in the works. It won't necessarily be easy, but it's family, so it will happen. Somehow.

Grandpa had been doing better on Friday, according to my uncle. He ate most of his food. He was talkative. He even wanted to walk around before going to bed - an activity he hasn't volunteered to do for years. It looked like he'd bounced back again.

My aunt stopped by the house yesterday after visiting Grandpa. He slept through most of her visit - not a true and restful sleep, but an exhausted, lingering insensibility. Even when he opened his eyes, he wasn't there, foundered in his own fog.

He's also been having other setbacks. The pneumonia tried to return; apparently, it's caused by him being unable to swallow properly and inhaling bits of food or water. The rehab center was supposed to be giving him thickened liquid to help, but not every order at this place is necessarily carried out with due efficiency or follow-through (as we discovered during the catheter/renal shutdown incident.)

It's starting to look like he might not come home after all. The balance of good days, days when he could be at home with a little supervision, and his bad days, days when he needs specialized eyes and hands nearby constantly, seems to be tilting towards the latter. All of our preparations may be not to bring him home, but to make Grandpa's home sellable.

He's bounced back before, but as days stretch to weeks, as nearly a full month has elapsed, those bounces look shorter and smaller, a ball running out of energy to rebound as it settles slowly towards a standstill. He's 92 years old - eight years shy of a full century - but watching those years catch up, his life wear thin, down to this last threadbare stretch... it may be inevitable, but it's still unpleasant.

We drove home under one of the strangest sunsets we've seen in years. The slanting sun painted the world in bright golden light, while a flat blue-gray sky framed the scenery. It looked more like a sunrise. It was oddly beautiful, enough so that we pulled over on the way home twice to snap pictures, to try to capture the peculiarity of it before it vanished to a memory.

On camera, at least, sunsets - and people - can last.

The Bumblebee

2011-03-21T21:33:00.000-07:00

Today, we went over to Grandpa's house to continue cleaning up spare rooms; if he comes home, he'll need live-in help of some sort, and if he doesn't come home the house needs cleaning anyway. When we got there, I saw a bumblebee of significant size - not the largest I'd seen, but decently big - lying on the windowsill next to a vase of silk tulips. Nobody had been in the house for a day; it must have come in then and, having failed to find nectar in the artificial flowers, succumbed after beating itself against the glass.

Not a great sign, given Grandpa's continued downward slide.

He hasn't eaten voluntarily in three days. He rocks with nausea and stomach pain. Yet the staff still declares he's eating well. They even asked him if he was fine; he said yes, as he often does to any question put to him, especially questions he doesn't want to answer. So he must be fine. Never mind that he's shaking with hypoglycemia, that he can barely swallow what food my uncle coaxes him to try. Never mind that everyone who sits near him at meals knows he's falling asleep in his food and hasn't eaten. Never mind that one glance can tell you he's sick.

The whole family is getting exceptionally hacked off by the way the staff keeps brushing us off. Something's clearly wrong. He probably needs to go back to the hospital. At the very least, he needs someone to pay attention. This is not the same man who was doing so well in therapy. This isn't even the same man who left the hospital to begin with. This is a sick man, maybe even a dying man.

We'd been cleaning for a few hours when I heard something buzzing in the living room window. It was a bumblebee of significant size. A look at the windowsill revealed that the immobile, seemingly dead bee was no longer there. It had sprung back to life, and was now doing its best to escape the flowerless confines of Grandpa's house. I helped it out the door, where it buzzed about angrily for a moment before taking off.

I can only hope Grandpa will be as lucky as that bumblebee...

TUESDAY UPDATE: Mom went to see Grandpa today. The other day, my uncle got in touch with a social worker who would see to it that Something Was Done, so she wanted to see if they were following through. She called from the rehab center a while ago. Grandpa's on his way back to the hospital proper for a urology problem. So, maybe they'll figure out what the heck's wrong with him and actually Do Something About It. (Seriously, one of the chief reasons we went with this rehab center was the fact that they had a hospital right below them if something went wrong... why did it take something this bad to make them actually take advantage of that proximity?)
UPDATE OF THE UPDATE: Grandpa's back in the rehab center after an excursion to the ER at the original hospital. (Turns out they don't have a urologist at the ER in the rehab building basement. I thought urology issues were pretty common problems, especially when you're dealing with older men, but whatever...) Anyway, they finally got a catheter in and drained him; it'll be a couple weeks before they can figure out if he'll need one permanently, or if there's any permanent kidney damage from the backup. Yes, this has been coming on for at least 24 hours, probably since he went off his food to begin with. Grandpa was apparently in so much pain he was crying last night - and this is a man who used to calmly sew up his own fingers if he cut them too deeply. Evidently the rehab staff was much more helpful today after complaints were made over their heads... guess you really do have to be the squeaky wheel, after all. So, it's been a long and stressful day, but it's over now. I hope.

Intermission with Moon

2011-03-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

Just because it's been danged depressing around here lately...

Setbacks

2011-03-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

When last I posted, Grandpa was doing pretty good in rehab.

On Monday, he started coming down with a bug.

Tuesday, he seemed worse; his mind was wandering between dream and reality, and he was coughing stuff up. But he still seemed decently upbeat overall.

On Wednesday, he complained to my uncle about an ache in his lung.

Fast-forward over Thursday, and Friday an X-ray showed fluid in his lung. Probably pneumonia. He's back to sleeping almost all day and showing no interest in food.

The rehab center he's in has an ER on the first floor, so he's in the right place. I'm hoping this is just a minor setback. So is the rest of the family.

Dang it...

SATURDAY UPDATE: The news continues to be Not Good. Apparently, the rehab center now claims that he's going to need 24/7 care regardless, and that further therapy probably won't help. This, after telling us all week how well he's been doing in therapy... Either they've decided that the lingering mental issues are insurmountable, or someone's been bald-face lying to us.
And the X-rays continue to show Not Good Things. Something about a mass, likely fluid, nearish the heart and lungs... They'll do another X-ray on Monday.
On the plus side, even though he still had to be coaxed into eating, he was evidently more lucid today.
I really wish we'd get a straight story out of these people, so we know what the heck is going on.

What a Difference a Day Makes

2011-03-10T16:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Grandpa's first full day at the rehabilitation center. My uncle spent most of it with him, seeing how he settled in. Grandpa kept wanting to go home. He didn't like the food. He didn't think the therapy was going to help. He started fishing around for the answers they wanted to hear, in an effort to secure his release. (I'm sure they've heard every trick in the book, at this place - the proof's still in the pudding, and you can't fake whether or not you can walk on your own two feet.)

Today, Mom and Dad visited him during lunch. He was smiling. He was happy. He liked the food now. He'd started talking to people, and he was doing so many things. He stayed awake for his entire meal - which he hasn't done reliably since before Xmas. He still has some short-term memory issues, but he had them before the Killer Furnace Incident. (To be perfectly honest, I'm not seeing a real difference between the Before and After Grandpas at this point - which is really amazing, considering how close to death he was, and how "off" he was when I saw him in the hospital.)

Maybe it's because he knows he's going home eventually - it's a "when" not an "if." Maybe it's being made to do something other than sit and rot in a recliner all day while other people did everything for him. Maybe it's being around people, in a new place. But he's starting to act more like the older Grandpa, the one who had some age-relating fuzzing of the brain but who still enjoyed doing things, who still thought, who still wanted to be more than deadweight in his own living room.

So, maybe he needed this all along... or something like this, without the nearly-dead part.

The Great Library Sorter Race

2011-03-08T14:35:00.000-08:00

For many years (well, four), I worked at the only library system in the country with a complete AMH setup. Then the Queens library in New York City got one, too.

It's been unofficial war ever since.

We'd set a record hour for items processed. They'd set a record hour. We'd pull ahead. They'd get further ahead.

To determine once and for all who was the fastest sorter, us or them, a contest was proposed, to be held today. It started, evidently, as a little informal contest between bosses. Somehow, the stakes were raised. The AMH system manufacturer offered a trophy. The losers had to send the winners a prize. Soon, it seemed like everyone and their brother was leaning over our shoulders.

Normally, I don't work Tuesdays, but there was an opening, so I took it. So I found myself in on the big event.

How did we do?

We set a new hourly record for our facility, north of 12,000 items in a single hour.

We also set a new hourly record for the NYC facility... by fewer than 150 items.

In other words: we won, if by the proverbial skin of our teeth.

And not only did we win (in spite of snarky sorter software that fouled up our second hour), but we finished over an hour early. Even with an hour-plus lunch break. And we got celebratory cupcakes before we left.

Considering how cruddy the past week has been, that cupcake tasted especially sweet.

--

Okay, for all none of you following along on the Grandpa Saga, he was discharged from the hospital this afternoon. The people at the hospital are all amazed at how far he's come; he's still not 100%, but he's surprisingly close to his mental state before the Killer Furnace Incident. Now, he's at a rehab facility. I was at work during the transfer, but apparently he was excited: the facility is much closer to home, and he seems to understand that it's not a permanent, nursing-home situation. We don't know how much care he'll need long-term, but this place will assess where he is mentally and physically, and do its level best to get him as independent as possible again. I think the family's pretty much agreed that he can't be left alone all day anymore, though. We were pushing our luck before this, to be perfectly honest. Hopefully he'll just need someone to be with him during the day instead of 24-hour care... and hopefully he'll be able to go back home. But all we can do is take it one day at a time. The ball's really in his court now...

Field Report

2011-03-06T15:46:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in a designated "Family Waiting Area" at the hospital where Grandpa is staying. Since I am family, and I am waiting, it seems like the appropriate place to be. There's a fireplace in the corner, currently dark, and a small collection of chairs around a cheap-looking coffee table on a greenish carpet, the kind of bland, institutional pattern one only sees in hospital waiting rooms and generic offices.

The Little Black Critter sits on a fake wood end table next to a gold-washed metal lamp. Behind me, smocked employees of indeterminate rank push large, rattling carts full of linens and unlabeled medical supplies. The occasional visitor or white-coated doctor wanders past, but otherwise the waiting area is empty save myself and my sister.

Guess there aren't any other families waiting around in this wing of the hospital.

Down a hallway and to the right, Grandpa sits in his new room. No longer considered a critical care patient, he was upgraded this morning to somewhat more pleasant accomodations, without the oxygen mask and other tangle of monitoring cords tethering him into bed. The man whom we met sitting in the chair looking out the window, however, is not Grandpa.

Not entirely.

He remembers family. He knows he's in a hospital, if prompted to tell a body where he is. But there's a glaze, a vagueness in his eyes, that can no longer be blamed on sedatives. His gaze roves the room, looking over familiar faces, and wanders back to his hands, where he picks at his bracelet, the bandage over an old IV line, the fringe of his gown or his hospital-issue blanket. The effort of thought, of focus, of stringing together meanings from words, tells in the prolonged delays between question and answer, the faint crease of his brow. He'll be better, he says, when he goes home. Is he going home today?

Not just yet, Grandpa.

But already his thoughts and his eyes wander elsewhere. To the past, to some distant cloudy place, where he watches the world float by from a chair, a source of only occasional interest. He still isn't clear on why he's here. At one time, he thought he'd had typhoid (likely connecting the word "heatstroke" to "fever.") At another, he thought his house had almost burned down... which didn't stop him from professing an interest to go back home. The home he wants to go back to, I'm afraid, no longer exists. It's the home of years gone past, a home where he was still the man he used to be, the deviser of ingenious solutions, the tinkerer, the instrument builder and lapidary hobbyist. That home was fading even before his furnace malfunctioned and landed him here. Now, it's gone forever, burned up by a 109 core temperature, total dehydration, and near death.

While he took a nap, we went to the cafeteria to grab some lunch. Thin-cut chicken fried steak with a country gravy full of more pepper than flavor, over a bland white lump of potato with a side of carrots and peas. There was talk about what to do next - where we should put him, how much needs cleaning out if we opt for the in-home care option, what the best source of reliable information would be.

By the time we'd returned to the room, Grandpa had woken. He had pulled out his IV, and was bleeding. Nurses were summoned to deal with the problem. Why had he pulled it out? No answer, save a puzzled glance at the people fluttering about him, for no reason he could readily recall.

And so my sister and I sit in the family waiting area while Mom and Dad sit with Grandpa. He's resting again, I'm told, his IV back in place. The nurses claim it's not uncommon for patients to pull lines out. Nothing to worry about.

Except the Grandpa I used to know wouldn't have done it.

In the corner of the cafe stands a large fountain, an indoor waterfall spilling into a rock pool. Beneath the rippling water, bright coins gleam against the stones, wishes cast in by patients, by family, perhaps even by staff. I should've tossed my own coin in to join them, but what I'm wishing for is beyond a penny's power to buy.

Bad Call

2011-03-01T20:47:00.000-08:00

There's never a good time for a bad call.

Round about 6:40 this evening, the phone rang. This is not unusual; there seems to be an autodialer that enjoys annoying us in the evenings, no matter how many times it gets our answering machine. But this was not an autodialer. It was my uncle.

He was at Grandpa's house.

Sometime during the day, his old thermostat malfunctioned. Did he know it was malfunctioning? Had he felt chilled and turned the gauge up? Had he tried to call? We will probably never know; he's been losing his words, over the years, losing the focus needed to pick up a telephone and dial for help... if indeed he recognized that he needed help.

By the time my uncle stopped in after work, the entire house - including the basement - was about 100 degrees. Grandpa was lying in bed, panting, hardly coherent.

Heatstroke, the EMTs confirmed.

He's in the hospital now, being cooled down from a high core temp of 105 (CORRECTION: Evidently, we misheard. It wasn't 105. It was 109.) It's too soon to tell if there will be lasting brain damage, if he might develop pneumonia... if he has spent his last night in his own home.

Since they only want one relative at a time to see him, and since my uncle and aunt (and her husband) were already there, Mom opted to stay home unless called for now.

He's proven remarkably hardy in the past, so we're all hopeful that this isn't the end. Not yet. He was apparently twitching his feet and toes when they got him into the ER, which is a "good sign" according to the doctors. In the meantime, there's not much to do except keep an ear cocked for the phone to ring.

And hope that it's not another bad call.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: This afternoon, right after work, I headed over with the family to see Grandpa in the hospital. He's still pretty out of it, but he opened his eyes now and again and was determined to get his oxygen mask off. Looks like he can move on both sides of his body, but it's still too soon to tell if he's lost anything else to heatstroke. He's doing much, much better than yesterday, though... evidently, he was down to brain-stem functioning. Probably less than an hour from actual death. In any event, it'll be a few days before he can go home, if it's determined that he can head home at all. We'll be inspecting the furnace and replacing the controller thermostat before then. (I proposed subjecting the faulty equipment to a sledgehammer retirement, but I expect my uncle will opt for more traditional removal methods.)

FRIDAY UPDATE: First, the Killer Furnace update. Evidently, the older model of thermostat in Grandpa's house had a little glitch: if the thermostat died, the furnace would run indefinitely. (Ours has died and our furnace just wouldn't kick on, but ours is newer.) So, even though the max thermostat setting was 99, the place actually got significantly warmer. Hence, the near-death. But it's Being Dealt With.
Now, the other update...
After a bad night, the hospital was forced to sedate him to keep him calm enough to stay in bed. Today, Grandpa was evidently doing Not So Great (TM). The drugs might explain some of it, but the doctors believe there is actual brain damage from the heatstroke. The upshot is that he can't live alone, possibly not ever again.
This will have to be Dealt With Soon...
Dang it...

SATURDAY UPDATE: According to relatives, he was doing better today, but still needs rehab at the least and alternate permanent housing at the worst. His short-term memory, never his strong suit these days, seems to be worse, and he's confused about why he's at the hospital, or if he's at the hospital at times. He's also being treated for pneumonia.

Attack of the Crystallized Rain

2011-02-23T20:06:00.000-08:00

In the Pacific Northwest, we've been enjoying a fairly mild winter - unlike most of the country. Not only is our snowpack (and consequently our summer water supply) suffering, but so is our sense of proportion. While a large chunk of America heaves a sigh and shovels the latest blizzard from their walk, many Northwesterners succumb to panic-induced heart attacks at the mere whisper of snow.

This commercial, by a local insurance outfit, pretty much nails it. (You may have to rotate through the other ads to get there... It's worth listening to the radio spot, as well - always makes me chuckle.)

Now, in our defense, our snow is not like the snow in much of the nation. People from out of the area usually confirm it. We have a lot of hills, for one thing, and our snow is almost invariably accompanied by some very nasty ice.

It still can get ridiculous, and this is coming from someone who has lived here her entire life.

Last week, some distant rumbles on the more obscure news sources hinted at the worst. By Monday, the meteorologists on every local news station had flooded the airwaves with fear. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would likely not rate as dire a warning as that issued from the news desks across the region.

Snow. Crystallized rain. The horror to end all horrors.

Who cares if there was a devastating earthquake in New Zealand? Why would a newscast waste precious airtime on a incidental fluff piece like the Libyan riots? No, the majority of every evening show this week has been the snow. Field reporters who drew the short straws in the studio were deployed to strategic locations, charged with filling airtime as their on-the-spot reports showed graphic, live images of nothing. ("A short while ago, this street was covered in snow." "It may look bare now, but in a few hours..." "Trust me, I'm not just wasting your time and our money - I'll find something to yammer about as I wander around by the side of the road if it kills me!")

As the above photograph indicates, snow did eventually fall. It's still falling, in fits and starts. The thermometer's also plunging, to the point where it won't creep above freezing on Friday (if the gloom-and-doom weather reports are any indication.) With the snow and ice making for a risky commute, I won't know if I'm working tomorrow until I call in.

As much as this snowstorm has turned the Greater Puget Sound region on its head in the middle of a workweek, derailing dreams of an early spring, I can't help but feel the eyes of the nation as a whole upon us, peering through narrow slits between hats and scarves, peeking over debris piles from storms the likes of which we, in our sheltered corner of the country, can only imagine... glaring.

Procrastination Post with Poppy Pod

2011-01-28T23:25:00.000-08:00

I saw the above in the garden a few days ago. For a moment, I feared alien invaders. Then I recognized it as the emaciated remains of a poppy bloom. (Unless poppy plants are, in fact, alien invaders. But that's a theory for a whole different blog.) Anyway, I thought it was strange enough to photograph for posterity.

Or for kicking off a pointless blog post written solely to procrastinate on other things.

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to...

Well, as one might surmise by the lack of blog posts, January has been a rather dull month (knock on wood here), poppy pod photo ops notwithstanding. The horrendous winter weather we were promised by grim-faced meteorologists muttering about the horrors of La Nina has thus far failed to materialize... at least in this part of the country. So, I haven't been able to use the weather as much of an excuse to keep myself from doing anything.

Dang it.

With the holidays now a faded memory in the rear-view mirror of life, I've been slowly working on getting myself back on track insofar as Accomplishing Things. While I can't report spectacular success, my efforts haven't been entirely discouraging. I'm at least maintaining my artistic efforts, and I've made a conscious push to resume writing on a more regular basis. I haven't made much progress when it comes to making myself exercise, though I still delude myself into thinking that my job - which involves lots of walking and bending and moving - counts for something here. I'm even getting back into reading again, after the holiday-imposed moratorium. (I stopped reading during November for NaNoWriMo, and December was just too danged busy.) Anyone wondering what I've been reading - or even what I'm reading now - can visit my book review blog, via the sidebar link.

It doesn't make for spectacular blogging material, but it's what I've been doing nonetheless.

In other news, the Golden Taurus is hinting that it might want to visit the shop in the nearish future. Ever since it got back from the previous maintenance visit in December, I've had an intermittent, annoying buzz from the dash area, and occasional issues with the windshield defrost not liking to defrost the driver's side and with air vents blasting cold air instead of warm. In my experience with cars, A/C issues like this are never just A/C issues, and thus it seems to be the case here. I've also noticed, along with the buzz, condensation problems inside the windows. This may or may not be related to a door latch problem I noticed during our last cold snap: the car door latches want to freeze themselves open. I'd get one opening and closing out of them, then the danged things would freeze in the "open" position for several minutes. Spraying deicer stuff onto the latch didn't seem to help. I'd just have to work at it and get the car warmed up enough that the things would thaw. Online research indicates that this may be a sign of moisture getting inside the doors, driving out the lubricants in the latching mechanism and potentially creating rust issues. Moisture, not unlike condensation, which seems to be directly related to the dashboard buzz and the A/C problem.

With any luck, I'll get the thing dealt with before we have another bad cold snap. With even more luck, it won't require me to drain my savings account to deal with whatever's wrong.

Well, I suppose that's about it. I just figured it had been long enough that I ought to write an I'm-not-dead-I'm-~~boring~~busy post. (The fact that writing said post took long enough to count as my self-imposed daily writing quota is an entirely incidental factor, I assure you...)

So Long, 2010!

2010-12-31T23:54:00.000-08:00

Well, technically there's another 20 minutes to go on this coast, but I figure the year's pretty much done what it's going to do by now, and the credits are rolling, so it's safe to say the thing is over... unless there's some sort of stinger at the tail.

Let's just hope not...

After the rare full-moon eclipse that saw us through the Winter Solstice, we find ourselves leaving the year under the light of the barest lingering crescent. (I shot the above photo with my little purse camera before work this morning. Came out better than I'd expected, though not as good as my big camera would've done. Didn't help that I was leaning on an icy rail at the time, either...) Appropriately enough, the new moon arrives with the new year - or close enough for horseshoes.

I won't bother retyping my 2010 resolution list for an itemized run-down of how I did. For one thing, I have a cat convinced that I've resolved to rub more kitty bellies this year. For another, I'm just too lazy to bother. Anyway, by my estimation, I hit about three out of the five main goals I set for myself. I could've done more on all of them, but I checked off significant portions of two and at least one item on the third and fourth. The only one I completely dropped the ball on was my exercise resolution, which I readily admit was entirely due to personal laziness. (I said I was too lazy to bother retyping the list...)

So, up for 2011 is pretty much more of the same. I want to keep working on the stuff I made headway on last year, and pick up the slack on the stuff I didn't.

The abridged 2011 resolution list (leaving out specific sub-goals that mean nothing to anyone but me):

1. Increase monetary income. (Pretty much the same as last year, unfortunately...)
2. Draw and/or paint more. (I kicked up my sketchbook productivity last year, but I want to do more in 2011.)
3. Write more. (Been far too lazy on this front, spending most of my time dinking around instead of finishing stories.)
4. Get back into the exercise habit. (Self-explanatory. Walking's been linked to all sorts of health benefits, and unlike insurance it's affordable.)
5. Continue organizing and cleaning. (I made significant progress on this front, and don't want to lose ground.)
6. Start/Continue other personal improvement projects. (Sort of a catch-all for some things I've been meaning to get to. Mostly, I want to stop taking time for granted so much - stop assuming I'll be able to get to it later, that it'll be easier tomorrow.)

Hopefully, I'll maintain my better-than-half average in 2011, starting in six minutes... make that five...

Another Xmas Come and Gone

2010-12-26T01:11:00.000-08:00

This is Grandpa's Christmas tree.

It's been at his house nearly as far back as I can recall. It has little silk-strand ball ornaments, traces of old silver plastic tinsel, and two sets of old-fashioned electric lights that blink out of sequence. At one time it belonged to a late uncle, but since then it's been Grandpa's.

We've had Christmas at Grandpa's every year since I can remember as well. After our family gift exchange, we'd pile in the car to meet the relatives over there for a holiday feast and more gifts, and while away the short hours until evening until the grown-up talk was over and we went home. Pulling out of that driveway meant Christmas was really over. It always seemed a bit surreal, after all the excitement and anticipation, how it seemed a mere blink of the eye before it was all over, the magic gone, the world gone gray again as the year tumbled to a close.

Through all the years, Grandpa's Christmas tree has been there, blinking away every season, not a bulb dimmed, not an ornament shifted, a constant through years of change.

This year, we arrived to find Grandpa shuffling back to his chair, having just been encouraged to clean up for dinner. He stumbled and shuffled and collapsed with a sigh, and gazed about with a vague, watery gaze as though just woken. With some prompting, he put in his hearing aids, but the look didn't change, and his eyes still slid closed as Christmas songs and conversation filled his living room.

At dinner, he shuffled over to the table, and nodded off over his plate, before returning to his recliner to doze off once more.

As gifts were distributed, he napped on. Once in a while, his eyes opened, but more often than not they weren't the eyes of the grandfather I'd grown up with. Vacant, vague, not quite seeing, not quite hearing. Lost in a fog of age and fatigue.

Did he want to open a few gifts? After all, it was Christmas.

No, he'd rather sleep.

Presents were exchanged, conversations waxed and waned. My uncle finally enticed him to open a couple presents. He hardly seemed to know what to do with them. Long moments of looking, of concentrating, of visible effort to wade through the fog before he would slowly work open the wrapping paper. An ornament with his name on it momentarily confused him. The effort sent him to drowsing again, a restless doze.

Some time ago, we got him a game system, in the hopes that the simple controls might get him moving again, get his mind moving, the once-sharp mind of an inventor, an engineer, a builder and solver and doer. Exercise helps, sometimes; moving, walking, can sometimes shake off the dozing fog, the vacant confusion of the years. Tonight, it only drew an occasional glance, a brief moment of open eyes that was not so much waking as a lesser form of sleeping.

Once in a while, he'd notice again. A new camera. A slice of pie for dessert. But the fog would pull him back, and he'd drift away again, never quite waking, never truly resting.

When we left that night, Christmas lights still glowed in the yard, in the windows of neighbors. Garland still hung from Grandpa's ceiling fan. And the immortal blinking lights on the little plastic Christmas tree still blinked, seemingly immune to the passage of time... unlike the old man sleeping in the chair beside it, under a new blanket he hardly seemed to notice, a pile of unopened gifts carefully moved out of his way, remnants of a Christmas he scarcely woke long enough to enjoy.

I wonder if I'll see that little tree again next year.

--

Sorry... bit of a depressing Xmas, in some respects, so I thought I'd get it off my chest.

In an attempt to end things on a somewhat less downer note, I can say that I had an otherwise decent holiday. People seemed to like what I got them. I liked what I got. (The above photo was shot with one of them - a compact camera I can carry around for on-the-go photographic emergencies.)

Oh, I also have photos of this year's ornament blitz results. The theme this year: glitter. Lots of glitter. And plastic ornaments, some fabric paint and glitter glue, and a few rhinestones for good measure... but mostly glitter. Because one can never have too much glitter in one's life.

Family Ornaments - Back and Front
The center shapes were larger plastic rhinestones. I'd intended them to shine unadorned, but the silvering on the back was so cheap that the glue showed right through. So I just coated them more glue and covered them with glitter, then tried to hide the evidence with decorations and embellishments.

Shipped Ornaments - Front and Back
These are the ones I know reached their destination on time. The others might have been lost in the mail. Or the recipients are just too busy to say if they got them... Another case of Salvage Mode Creation - the decorations on the back were not my original intention, but what happened after the original intentions failed miserably with a shipping deadline breathing down my neck. (Actually, they're more 95% complete, here - I had to add hangers and drumsticks, still. But it was pretty much my only chance to stop and shoot a picture, so I took it.)

And off I go...

X minus 7 days... well, 6 and 1 hour... and counting

2010-12-18T23:05:00.000-08:00

Well, calendars don't lie, and my calendar says that next Saturday is Xmas. My calendar also says that Tuesday is Winter Solstice. (And Monday is supposed to be a full lunar eclipse, which - clouds pending - we might even be able to see.) All signs are pointing to 2010 being down to the final dregs.

Things I have done:

Finished holiday shopping.
Wrapped everything.
Mailed cards.
Avoided sitting through the insipid "Christmas In The Northwest" and the annoyingly pointless and circular "Charlie Brown Christmas" songs once thus far this holiday season. (I did have to sit through "Christmas Shoes" once to do it, though...)
Needlessly neglected cats to type up blog posts.

Orion! Get off the keyboard, dang it!

Sorry about that... where was I? Oh, yes...

Things I have not done:

Finish family ornaments.
Publish the December (or November) updates for Brightdreamer Books.
Read much of anything to justify an update at Brightdreamer Books.
Check off a good chunk of my 2010 Resolution list.
Decorate my workbench.
Listen to my Trans-Siberian Orchestra holiday CD clear through.
Rub enough kitty bellies.

Okay, okay, hint taken...

And people wonder why I never get anything done...

Wet and Drying

2010-12-12T22:16:00.000-08:00

Winters in the Pacific Northwest tend to be gray and damp... some winters more than others. Usually, though, we don't see actual flooding in December. But this is evidently an unusual year. This weekend, the Pacific Ocean sent its regards via the Pineapple Express. For those outside the region, this is a weather system bringing warmer temperatures and rain up from Hawaii to our doorsteps. The weather people blame various causes, mostly La Nina, for this particular storm. But whatever the cause, the end result is the same: too much water on too much pavement with too few natural wetlands left to cope. (One might think that there was a reason that broad, low river valleys were traditionally farmland rather than houses piled on top of each other... filled with people who seem just as surprised to find a river in their basement as they were last spring... but I digress.)

Anyway, with over six inches of rain in 24 hours, the little seasonal stream in our backyard decided to make a break for the lawn. In the hopes of preventing a catastrophic fence collapse (and a potential for basement flooding), I spent a fair portion of today wading out to poke holes in piled-up debris, trying to relieve the pressure and encourage the stream back into its usual banks. I couldn't actually reach the logjams behind the fence that were the cause of the whole problem, so every few hours I'd have to head back out and poke fresh holes in the accumulating debris. As one might imagine, it was rather a zero-sum effort in my part, but it seemed to help a bit... if temporarily.

Since all this water came from Hawaii, I suppose this counts as that tropical vacation I've always wanted...

Between bouts of battling the runaway stream, I've been hard at work in my new workshop* shed trying to finish the first round of holiday ornaments. Ideally, I should've shipped them last week - with any luck, I'll hit Friday, though the things have decided to fight me after several days of relatively smooth progress.

I'd be making more progress if paint didn't take so long to dry. I'd be even further along if it weren't so danged slippery outside that I can't risk trekking to my workshop after dark; flashlights don't make mud any less slippery...

Fortunately, the rain is supposed to be backing off to mere sprinkles for the week, giving us a chance to dry out. Hopefully, this means I can stop worrying about the stream attacking the fence and spend more time trying to salvage ornaments that seem dead-set on self-destruction.

* - Mom retrofitted one of her old storage sheds into a workspace for me, as a birthday/Xmas gift. I just got moved in about a week ago. Now I can work in my own space without having anyone peering over my shoulder... and without ambient dog hair to settle into drying paint.

Lumbering Across the Finish Line

2010-11-29T23:53:00.000-08:00

With 24 hours, 20 minutes, and 229 words to spare...

What am I talking about? See the sidebar, under NaNoWriMo 2010. (If you're too lazy to look, I can't help you...)

I have to say, this year was a tough one. Not only was life generally cruddy and annoying this November, but this year's story rolled along like a wheelbarrow full of cement on a field of mud. The characters never really gelled. Storylines flared only to gutter out out mid-scene. The world was an embarrassingly slapdash conglomeration of inconsistent details and illogical rules. It didn't so much end as lumber to an ungainly, wheezing halt at a point where I could slap on some semblance of an end-cap. If I ever talk myself into a second draft, I expect everything but the name to change beyond the point of recognition... and right now I'm fighting a reflexive urge to burn the sucker onto a DVD, back over it a few times, then light it on fire just to watch the miserable, recalcitrant monstrosity go up in flames.

But at least I finished it. And a full day ahead of the deadline.

Go, me...

Frozen Feathers

2010-11-23T10:38:00.000-08:00

Guess what the weather's been like around here...

It started with plunging temperatures over the weekend, then on Sunday night the flakes started falling. This morning, we had five and a half inches of the white stuff, give or take a bit. Fortunately, we never got the winds that were predicted (though some areas weren't so lucky.) The local roads are a mess (hills and ice being a bad combination), so tomorrow might be interesting when I have to get to work.

That'll teach us to procrastinate on buying snow tires...

It was a Dark and Stormy Night

2010-11-15T22:26:00.000-08:00

No, really, it was...

Well, the winds have picked up out there, and the power's been blipping with alarming regularity. Fortunately, I have a UPS. And, into that UPS, I currently have the Little Black Critter, plugged in but charged and ready if the power goes. I also have a flashlight/lantern around my neck... just in case.

With all these precautions, the power should hold.

The cliche title is intended to evoke thoughts of terrible novels... speaking of which, I finally edged over the halfway mark in this year's NaNoWriMo effort not one hour past. I'd hoped to be further ahead by now, but this weekend kinda sucked, long before the threat to household power became a real and valid excuse for procrastination.

Friday started out bad when I went to the car to leave for work. While wiping off wind-deposited Douglas Fir needles (nasty little things - they seem to get everywhere they shouldn't be), I noticed a crack in my windshield. This was no little thing. This was longer than my hand.

I think I would've noticed it if it had been there before. In all likelihood, I had a very minor and undetectable crack for some time, and our recent dip into freezing overnight temperatures (brief as it was) caused it to catastrophically expand.

Well, I thought, at least I have windshield replacement on my insurance.

And trying to ignore the omen, I set off for work.

At work, we were nearly half an hour late starting due to the Big Crane being snarky. During the downtime, people started talking about insurance and accidents. Kinda weird, as I'd just been thinking about that very same thing... but we finally got to work, and though an off start tends to throw the whole day out of kilter, somehow we got through the load.

Off to the grocery store, then to home... but not quite. See, backing out of my parking space, I saw someone else backing out. I stopped. They didn't.

No damage to my end, but they claimed damage on theirs. And they insisted I instigated the whole thing. (As they were copying my insurance info, a bystander came by and handed me his business card - a witness supporting my statement that I was stationary, and they were not.)

So much for ignoring omens...

I went home and got to play phone tag with the insurance company on two counts: one on the parking lot incident, and one on the windshield replacement. It was more than enough to make me want to bash teleprompters and their stock questions to which I've already provided answers with a suitably large and spiky object.

Needless to say, between that and a stubborn coughing cold, this weekend was hardly my most productive writing period...

But, today, I got my windshield replaced. It almost didn't happen due to the weather - the guy had to check a mobile app from the Weather Channel to confirm no rain, because the wind was bad enough he couldn't set up a tent - but it got done faster (and earlier) than expected... and it really was covered. And I got the call from the insurance company about the accident. Seems that having a witness may have paid off; suddenly the other party decided playing insurance chicken would be too big of a headache, and backed off on pushing a claim. Since no parties wanted money, they decided to deem the thing a wash... and, theoretically, it won't affect my insurance rates. (Since insurance companies are all about money, and they spent none, I'm hoping the guy on the phone was right.)

Thus elated, I managed to get back on the proverbial horse and get back into the NaNo race.

Which is why I was so happy to reach the halfway mark that I risked logging on for a celebratory blog post.

Even though it really is a dark and stormy night.

Rolling Back to Go Forward

2010-11-07T01:04:00.000-07:00

Not just for clocks anymore...

So, as you might have noticed, I'm up to my proverbial neck in NaNoWriMo 2010. I'm also somewhat ahead of the bare minimum word-count-per-day requirements for finishing by November 30th.

At least, I was.

When I started this year's effort, I had a far less concrete idea of my story than I did last year. I had a vaguely amusing idea, a couple thoughts that might be fun to visit along the way, and something that might resemble an opening. That was it. A few nights into writing, unfortunately, it started going off the rails. The steam started leaking out through the many gaps in the pipes. Though I was pounding away producing words, I just didn't feel I was actually producing any story.

I was already past 10,000 words, but I didn't think I could hit another 10, let alone 40k.

So, I did the only thing I could do, if I wanted to have a rough draft worth finishing.

I ripped the guts out of the sucker and went back to try again.

This time, things are falling into place much nicer. I'm getting more invested in the characters and their world. I'm seeing possibilities and plotlines opening up as I go. I may have lost two days of forward momentum with this rollback, but it was entirely worth the effort.

With any luck, by tomorrow I'll be back up to where I was, and beyond... thanks, in no small part, to that extra hour I'll have to work with.

Witches, Ghosts, and Paper Bags... it's Halloween again!

2010-10-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

Last night, my sister and I went to the one-night-only special Rifftrax Live presentation of The House on Haunted Hill. (For those unfamiliar with Rifftrax, and too lazy to follow the link, three of the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 have started riffing movies again, sans robot puppets.) It was taped in Nashville and broadcast to select theaters nationwide... and, for once, "select theaters nationwide" included a location that wasn't some weird little place downtown that requires parking across a freeway and walking through unlit back alleys in the dead of night to reach.

We arrived much earlier than planned, since the rush hour we'd anticipated never seemed to happen (and the road construction we were allowing for didn't happen, either.) Being the first in the door, we staked out our favored seats and settled in for the wait. It was stony silent, sitting there all alone, without even ads to keep us company.

"Remember when they used to run music before a show?" my sister asked.

At that exact moment, saxophone-heavy jazz came blasting over the theater speakers. It was as if some strange (and exceedingly bored) wish fairy were hovering overhead.

"Remember when they used to give us 100 dollar bills before a show?" I asked, just in case.

The wish fairy must have left by then, unfortunately.

It was almost ten minutes before anyone else showed up; we were starting to think we'd be all alone. He left after a while to make a call - the jazz music was just above the comfort level and just below the pain threshold - but we toughed it out. We like our favorite seats, thank you very much...

Between the music and the feature presentation, we watched onscreen as they synched up the satellite feed. Some disturbing messages popped up now and again, but it seemed to work. All of the sudden, the blaring jazz was replaced with another song...

Sparkly Vampires (by the Rifftones)

Movie trivia, famous quotes, and Halloween tips flashed onscreen... with a Rifftrax flavor. Long before the actual broadcast started, we and the rest of the growing audience were laughing out loud. Between the on-screen hilarity and the continued Rifftones soundtrack, it was hard to decide whether to focus on my eyes or my ears. Either way, I was highly entertained, and the thing hadn't even officially started yet.

When a Man Loves a Shark (by the Rifftones)

The feature presentation had the unexpected bonuses of a "guest riffer" (a comedian I should probably know, but whose name has slipped my brain at the moment) and two vintage short-subject films (a.k.a "shorts.) The first short, "Magical Disappearing Money," showed a grocery store witch who grows so concerned about 1970's shoppers throwing money away that she forces them all to watch a magic show about smart shopping. The second short, "Paper and I", stars a sick boy hallucinating about a paper bag who talks him through the paper-making process, then makes all paper products in the world vanish to prove how important he is. (Shades of Coily, from the MST3K-riffed short "A Case of Spring Fever", here...) Both were absurd on their own, made all the more fun with the commentary.

The House on Haunted Hill is an old Vincent Price film about an eccentric millionaire (Price) who invites a handful of strangers to a haunted house, along with his gold-digging wife and the traumatized man who owns the place but doesn't live there due to the ghosts and the long history of bloody murders associated with the place. (Great party atmosphere, eh?) Anywho, lots of dialog occurs, half a hundred doors get opened and closed, an old blind lady glides around on invisible skates, a wine cellar pit inexplicably left full of acid gets put to good use, and then it ends with hardly any body count worth speaking of.

And we, along with the rest of the audience, laughed nearly nonstop.

Now, the odd thing is, my sister and I had seen the non-riffed version of House on Haunted Hill before... and for some reason, we remembered a totally different ending. (As we recalled, the whole thing was a set-up - and there hadn't even been any murders in the house, as the freaky owner implied. Maybe we transposed another movie ending...)

Anyway, it was a highly enjoyable experience, much more fun than anticipated, and a great kickoff to the holiday weekend.

Happy Halloween, everyone! (And remember: a sign left next to a bowl of candy saying "Please Take One" really translates to "Free Bowl of Candy.")

(The photo at top would be the phoenix stepping stone I mentioned previously... unfortunately, we didn't realize that, while the yellow, blue, and the copper were inside the glass, the red was evidently painted on.)

NaNo Minus 9 Days and Counting

2010-10-23T16:44:00.000-07:00

More like 8 and a near-half by now...

Yes, as those who still read this blog might have surmised by the new little gadget in the sidebar, I'm taking another swipe at NaNoWriMo this year. (That's National Novel Writing Month, for the abbreviationally challenged. And it's actually worldwide, but InNoWriMo just doesn't have the same ring to it.) I have an idea, one I've kicked around for a while without ever getting to take substantial shape, so hopefully I can pull off my second victory in as many years. I've had the further inspiration/kick in the tail of just finishing a lousy book, so my sense of irked indignation that that junk got published and I'm still picking away fruitlessly on the keyboard is all fired up. (That kind of thing usually makes for good emergency fuel when I'm staring at the screen wondering what the frell I'm doing.) It should be interesting this year, because I'm working on a second draft of another story and I hope to keep picking at it between NaNo bursts. Yeah, I know... not the greatest timing. But I'm trying to increase my overall productivity, with the goal of having a marketable product to annoy editors with in 2011.

In part to keep myself from jumping the gun on the new story, and in part to keep up my lifelong tradition of procrastinating, I downloaded a new (free) program: yWriter 5. It has some fans on the NaNo forums, and it looks like it might appeal to my nitpicky style - it lets you keep track of character info, scenes, subplots and more without having to scribble it all down in a notebook beside the computer and hope to heck you can remember where you wrote it (and what you wrote, if your handwriting's as illegible as mine.) Theoretically, you can rearrange scenes and such with a few mouseclicks, as well, which could be very useful. I'm currently testing it with a dummy story. Yes, I'm writing a story to test software on which I intend to write another story. So far, I'm still getting the hang of it. It works completely differently than I'm used to, but I can already see how it'll be nice in some respects. Kind of like having your little notecards and margin scribbles right there onscreen with you as you go.

So, let's see... that would be two stories I'm actively working on, and one in the rough planning stages that I intend to start in 9 days (give or take a few hours.)

Oh - and I really need to get my tail in gear and start, if not finish, my annual holiday ornament blitz while I'm writing one novel and editing a second. My workbench is still mothballed (or rather ratballed), but we're working on a solution to that issue as I type, and I have an idea that shouldn't be too time-consuming to do. Assuming I can get started before too much longer.

Should be interesting, to say the least...

(For the bored/curious: The stepping stone picture was one I made with my own two hands, as part of a family stepping stone project. It was supposed to be more complete, but we had some issues with the cement mix on that batch.)

Clearing 700 and Other Pointless Excuses for a Post

2010-10-09T16:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple weeks, so time for a I'm-not-dead procrastination post.

Well, October has arrived far too early this year. I ought to check around the house to see if a few weeks fell behind the couch cushions or went through the wash in someone's pocket. With it has come our typical fall weather, with days of gray punctuated by random spots of sunshine.

Nothing much exciting has happened since my last post, except that I've unofficially cleared 700 book reviews; for the curious, it's DragonArt: Evolution (by J. "NeonDragon" Peffer), and it can be viewed at my book review blog. The October update, scheduled for later this month, will make it official. Can I make 800 by next year? No idea, but my reading backlog isn't getting any shorter...

Last weekend I wandered down to our local celebration of suicidal salmon. The usual crowds and the usual vendors, but it was nice to get out of the house. This is where I saw the metal dragon photographed above (full body shot here, for scale. No pun intended... not that I'll admit to, anyway.) Since then, I've been keeping an eye on our local stream. Just in case... (I know they're on a four-year cycle or so, but I can hope for another run.)

Well, that's about all I can come up with. I suppose I've procrastinated enough. As your reward for slogging through the preceding post, I'll throw in a couple video links.

NSFW humor, but danged if I didn't laugh out loud at this one... when I watched it, and at inappropriate moments during the day when I thought about it:
Why Nicholas Cage is in so many cruddy films

And a link my sister sent me, a 15-minute movie made entirely on open-source 3D animation software (Blender.) Things like this remind me why I want to get better at art, and why I find animation fascinating. (Rated PG, for mild violence/bloodshed.)
Sintel

Enjoy!

Sanding Tall

2010-09-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

Not a typo, but a very lousy pun...

Today being the first decent day in a while, we ("we" being the immediate family and I) decided to head to a nearby city to view the World Championship of Sand Sculpting. This is the first-ever time the championship has been in America, and the first-ever time at this venue (actually an empty parking lot outside an empty Target building.) Their publicity has been, shall we say, a trifle pathetic; my grandfather and uncle went a week ago, and they were so desperate to get bodies in the door that they gave the pair deeply discounted tickets. Grandpa was so impressed that he actually called us on the phone to tell us about it - an act virtually unprecedented since his mental decline began a few years back.

Getting back to today...

The sunny weather made standing around on asphault a not-entirely-fun experience. Still, the sculptures were beyond amazing. I cannot conceive of how much labor and planning goes into the creation of these things. (They use a diluted glue solution after they're done, but that doesn't explain how they manage to sculpt sand in such impossible shapes to begin with.)

Yes, I brought my camera.

Yes, you're about to be treated to/tortured by a very extensive photo dump.

Click away now, or slog ahead...

Work in Progress
A sand sculptor works on a new project, from the top down. There were supposed to be more sculptors wandering about answering questions, but evidently many of them had already left. (It's an international competition, so it was inevitable, but we felt a bit gypped that there were only two pros on hand to talk to when it was implied that there would be more.)

Please note that many of the following titles are mine and mine alone: they weren't very well labeled, for one thing, and for another I just plain didn't see the names if they were there at all.

Spiritual Visions
A nice wolf-themed sculpture, the first one to greet visitors.

Abracadabra!
Two kids chance upon a wicked witch in a Halloween-themed sculpture.

The Vine Lady
From the back, her hair was extensively detailed, but I had to cull a few pictures here and there to keep Photobucket from pitching a fit... and myself from being prosecuted for mass murder by photo-link-induced boredom.

Facebook
Another with a lot more than I could cram into one frame...

The Face of the City
Absolutely amazing 3D sculpting, here... and also amazing, how many people had to have it explained to them...

The Bridge (side and detail)
A 360-degree work of amazement, full of little details from any angle viewed.

The Missing Links (detail, detail, detail, back, detail, and detail)
One of my personal favorites, and one of the largest sculpts on the grounds.

And now a word from our sponsors...
Part of a long wall honoring the sponsors of the championships.

Connected (and back)
Oddly enough, while the Facebook (earlier) scupture seemed fairly self-explanatory to most ages, many older visitors took a while to clue in to this one, despite the similar theme; I think it was the use of handheld devices as opposed to the "old fashioned" computer that did it.

Dreams
The line of figures continued through the hole at the bottom, wrapping around to the tail end (seen on the ground behind the main block of the sculpture.

Through the Door
I think that's the wrong door...

Open Mind
The damage on the hand was caused by rain in the previous week. Apparently, sand being porous, rain itself just drains through; only when it pools is there a problem. Since the competition was set up on a parking lot, some sculptures got puddles under them in heavy rains. Most of the sculptors had gone home, so those left behind repaired the ones they could and left the ones they couldn't. This was one of the latter, evidently. Still impressive, though.

Splitting Headache
Well, that would explain it...

The Impression
Odd little brain-warper...

Cranes with Origami
Cool.

Icarus II
Check out the details on those feather edges...

Sand Castle (with "facilities")
This is the one the photo at the top of the post came from.

Swirlies
The level of detail on these things continued to astound me, and still astounds me in retrospect.

Welcome to 2065!
"It was just a bad dream", reads the caption.

Puzzle Head
Self-explanatory.

Noh Theater
Also self-explanatory.

Faces in the Wall
All in all, they're just bricks in the wall...

Rapunzel in Green
So, that new organic shampoo looks like it has a few side-effects...

Fantasea Castle
Looks like a happy place...

Sandflow
Not sure what to say about this one... I mean, it's cool and all, but I don't know what to say about it.

To Be Revealed
One of those sculptures that makes you forget you're looking at sand.

Trees with Orb
Love the little mousie on the log...

Mermaid
Striking.

Tribute to Freedom
A work-in-progress sculpt, from the form around the base, but already impressive.

There are more sculptures at the event itself, and I took scads of photos, but I figured any visitors have suffered enough already. In any event, if you're around the area before October 3 and are looking for something to do, I'd recommend it. (EDIT - Sounds like they may have extended it to October 10... if so, it's definitely worth a view!)

Now I suppose I ought to head off and do something even less productive with the rest of my evening...

The Web of Fall

2010-09-22T22:54:00.000-07:00

The furnace has been kicking on in the mornings.

There's a bite in the shadows and a chill to the rain.

The sunlight has a sharper slant than it did a month ago.

The downtown trees are brushed with crimson, and the green of the hills is shading towards gold.

The spiders are spinning their webs.

Yep, it's fall again.

The last month has been fairly uneventful, hence the lull in posting. Mostly, we've been going through our storage sheds for the first time in too many years, getting rid of stuff we no longer need. So far, we've sent over 20 sacks to donation and more than that to the dump. (These are garbage-bag size sacks, not grocery-store size sacks.) It feels good to lighten the load a little, even though we have barely begun to scrape the surface of decades worth of accumulation.

I finished Draft 2 of last year's NaNoWriMo monstrosity, and I already know it'll need more tweaking for Draft 3 before the kinks in logic, character development, and plot continuity are sufficiently ironed out. I've decided to let it marinate on the back burner for a while, and called up one of my unfinished stories to take its place. So far, I'm mostly skimming my backstories and chapters, getting my brain back into the feel of the universe. This time, I'm finishing a draft... and, fingers crossed, it'll be a draft worth chucking in the mail. Might have to take a break for NaNoWriMo 2010, but that's a month away; if I get my tail in gear, I can get the bones of the tale hammered out sufficiently before then.

Don't laugh... it could happen...

At work, the local library system is switching over to a new computer program to control everything. Because this switch knocks out the brains of the sorting system while it sets itself up, I had a day off today. My sister, my mother, and I took advantage of the sunshine to head up to a nearby trailhead (where the above web was photographed.) Then we grabbed lunch and ate at the lake, watching parasailers launch and land on the beach. (They were towed with a boat to get altitude; not sure if that would be easier or harder than jumping off a mountain, but danged if it doesn't look fun...) All in all, it was a pleasant day.

Well, I suppose that's about all that's worth updating. The blog looked a little lonely, so I figured I'd post to keep it company.

Big Wheel Keep On Turnin'...

2010-08-24T00:37:00.000-07:00

We spent today (or a few hours of it, at any rate) playing tourists aboard the Queen of Seattle, a paddleboat on Lake Union. Things got off to a bit of a rough start; the website failed to mention that construction had closed off most of the parking, and construction fences forced a further massive walking detour. Then a local fluff-news crew stopped by, evidently with little warning, to do a "short" segment on the ship that ended up delaying departure for nearly half an hour (no compensation for the lost time for those of us standing around waiting to board.) Other than that, for the cost, it wasn't that bad, though I get the impression that the crew is still getting the hang of the whole "old-timey tourist boat and banter" part of things. In addition to the narrated tour of the waterways, we were treated to the occasional steam calliope concert (with a steam calliope that could use a little work, as the notes would randomly not play... that, and the player was used to a piano keyboard and not the calliope controls, making for oft-mangled tunes.) On the way back to dock, they had a little cabaret show, which was just one gal singing Gold Rush era tunes and a guy playing the slightly-out-of-tune saloon piano while providing the aforementioned unpolished banter. The lady had a nice voice, at least...

Afterwards, we hit lunch and wound up visiting a little place we've been driving by forever but never managed to stop in at: Barone Gardens, whose cruddy website doesn't do justice to the zillions of statuary items, birdbaths, and fountains on site. They're actually reasonably priced, too; not exactly bargain-basement, but not priced through the roof, either.

I'd post more pictures, of the paddleboat trip and the statuary, but my computer has decided to pitch a minor fit today: every time I try to play with graphics from the file folder where I stored these photos, the window locks up for upwards of a minute. I've got a disc-check scheduled for my next bootup; since I just tested with another photo folder with no lockups, I'm hopeful it's just a bad sector. (I just copied the folder to a different part of My Pictures, and it works just fine there, too.) I know I'm pushing my luck insofar as age corrupting hard drives with this machine, but I'm really not in a fit financial state to consider a replacement at this point.

EDIT - Okay, got the pictures relocated to a less snarky folder, so I'll try posting some links.

Shipboard Singer
One of the costumed staff aboard the Queen of Seattle.

Voyeur on Houseboat
Hey, you don't see me taking pictures of everyone who floats by my house in an authentic steam-powered paddlewheel, do you?

Houseboat, or Floating Mansion? You Decide...
There was quite a range of styles in the houseboat neighborhoods we paddlewheeled past, depending on when they were built and how much money people were willing to shell out. According to our tour guides, some modern houseboats even have basements with underwater windows.

Gasworks Park with Duck
A former power plant converted into a "safe" park. (How safe is it? If you picnic there and drop anything, it's not advised to pick it up...) In front is one of the amphibious vehicles from the "Ride the Ducks" Seattle tour.

So Much for the Extinction Theory...
An unfinished topiary project from the Jurassic era.

TARDIS sighting
I can only assume that, in the original timeline, the drawbridge failed to open and a major disaster ensued. (Okay, I know the scale's way off... still looks like the blue box to me...)

Mama Tug and Babies
Ah, ain't that cute?

Arc to Arcturus
In memory of Jack "Star Gazer" Horkheimer, as he speeds on to Spica.

The aforementioned Big Wheel, actually turning
Yep, that there's a paddlewheel...

The Calliope Whistles
After the cabaret show started and the little kids left the top deck, the staff dropped the "Authorized Personel Only" cable and let those adults remaining get a closer look at the steam-powered calliope. The buckets are for runoff/drainage.

Cabaret
Not the most dynamic show, but with a little polish it'll be more impressive, I expect.

Sail the Rainbow
The Center for Wooden Boats must run some sort of sailing day camp or school in the summers. Earlier, they had kids out kayaking, too.

Barone Garden Decor: Catfish, Eagle, and Gargoyle Fountain
Because it was a darned cool place to wander through, even without a yard to decorate. Or a budget to spend on said decoration.

Well, that went faster than I thought...

2010-08-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

I just updated Brightdreamer Books, with the new ratings system and a new book list page that organizes reviews by genre. Turns out upgrading the ratings went quite a bit quicker than I anticipated, so I went ahead and tackled the genre-list project. That went faster than I thought it would, too. (My classifications may make little to no sense for most people, but they were the way I had them organized in my mind, if not on my shelf.)

Next up, with any luck, some more enhancements for the September update. I figure I ought to do something special, at least... Brightdreamer Books - at least, the new and improved incarnation of it - turns one year old on September 8.

Talk about things going faster than I thought...

Too True...

2010-08-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of as SciFi Wire (sorry... now renamed SyFy Blastr, in keeping the the general degradation of the network's target IQ)... Well, actually, they got from another site, but the ads there are even more obnoxious than the ones on SyFy.

The Lifespan of a TV Show

Enjoy... or cringe in sympathy as you remember favorite series of years past as they trudged along the arc of death.

Oh - and just so you don't leave on a totally depressed note:

Technovelgy, a site that shows how sci-fi-predicted gadgetry has become reality.

Web of Eternity

2010-08-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

Offline, I just finished the Great Cross-Linking Project for Brightdreamer Books, a project I started in April. This will be shown to the world (or rather the one or two people who stumble across the place) in the August update, but it has been such a monumentally time-consuming task that I had to note when I finished.

This is good news.

I also decided I needed to change how I reviewed books, namely adding a half-star for those books that fall right on the line between one rating and the next.

This is bad news.

It will require retrofitting over 600 pages and giving a quick re-scan to over 680 reviews to see where the half-star might apply. It will be a pain in the tail to get done, but I know I'll be eternally bugged if I don't do it. The site is also screaming for new graphics and a nicer layout. I ought to consider listing books by genre as well as by author, too, one of these days.

Oh, yeah... I also wanted to try promoting the danged place in some way. And I haven't even looked at Skyhaven in far, far too long...

Ah, well... I suppose the only finished website is a dead website.

Back at it...

Red Skies at Night

2010-08-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

Today, the skies seemed hazy, in contrast with the area weather forecasts.

On the way to the weekly family gathering, I noticed an unusual amount of dust on my car.

As the day went on, the light took on an odd, orange tone, as if filtered through a slice of agate... a tone which shifted toward an unsettling reddish hue.

Tonight, I saw perhaps the strangest sunset I have ever seen in my life, something I can't recall witnessing outside of a sci-fi film set on planets far, far away.

Finally, it clicked. Wildfires east of the mountains have kicked up enough ash to dust my car and color the skies. (Actually, the news claims it was the fires in British Columbia behind it.)

Still creepy as heck, though...

(Yeah, this was mostly an excuse to post an I'm-not-dead-my-life's-just-dull update. I got new glasses which may or may not need realigning - still trying to figure out if it's me or the lenses - and I hit ten posts in a month over on Brightdreamer's Book Reviews, but nothing else has leapt out as postworthy.)

So Much Cooler Online...

2010-07-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

And I'm not just saying that because I'm currently sitting beside a nice, cool fan on a warm and humid day.

Nice, cool fan....

Today, I made an attempt at personal socialization. Nobody died, at least not in a manner that can be legally connected to me or my actions, so I suppose it counts as a success. I just don't seem to do well when I can't cower behind a keyboard, unfortunately... nothing personal, you understand. I'm just a cowardly loser.

But I'm a cowardly loser with a nice, cool fan.

Speaking of nice, cool fans (in a different sense, but, hey, I needed a segue), today's excursion was to the local Sci-Fi Museum. Despite being a second-generaton fan whose existence can be directly tied to fandom (my parents met over fanac, or rather the printing of fanac, oddly enough), I hadn't managed to get down there before.

As promised before my departure, here are the photos I almost managed to salvage.

The Shiny Object That Ate Seattle Center
The EMP may be a photographer's paradise, but I still see it as the thing that spelled the beginning of the end for Fun Forest. (And if the rest of the site really does become another monument to Chihuly's oversized ego... one the general public can't even see without paying through the nose, despite the fact that the Center was supposed to be for everyone... Eh, never mind.)

Aliens! Aliens are attacking!
No, no, no - not them! That's just the Sci-Fi Museum's window washing crew.

These are them! Run! Run for your lives!
They look like normal tourists, don't they? Just a little too normal, if you ask me...

Retired robot, or security issue? You decide.
Typecasting's hard enough on human actors. This poor guy only had one hit, and hasn't been heard from since. Even Robby the Robot landed more gigs than him. He says he's not bitter, but try asking him for an autograph some time. Acts like he doesn't even hear you...

"Just because they're aliens doesn't mean they don't have to go to the little boys' room."
(Arnold Rimmer, from Red Dwarf) And you doubted my alien invader theory... see how welcome they are on this planet?

"And now, if you dare, look into the Hypnotic Eye!"
(from The Hypnotic Eye) A really, really cool spherical projection screen, covered in ever-changing, moving displays. Isn't this what TV was supposed to be like by now? I mean it's, what, 2010? Get with the program, you lazy tech guys!

Fanac gets its due
A nice display honoring the evolution and importance of sci-fi fandom, which helped launch more than one author from letterhack to bestseller. (No SAPSzines made the cut, though... and by now, the Spectator Amateur Press Society has to be one of the oldest running printed 'zine groups left. Most everyone else has folded or gone online by now.)

When I am an old alien, I shall wear purple
Just a cool con costume... shiny and glittery, ain't it?

Robby and Co.
Couldn't get a good angle on the original Robby the Robot (sorry Dad, I tried!), but I got the one from Lost in Space. I see the original Battlestar Galactica's Muffit made the cut for the museum, too, as did R2D2, Twiki from Buck Rogers... but no sign of Dr. Theopolis. Maybe he retired and started a new career as a lunchbox...

A familiar face
A Scarran from Farscape. Dang, I miss that show...

When rayguns are outlawed, only outlaws will have rayguns
A portion of the sci-fi armory, which has seen many a cheaply-costumed hero through many an impossible battle.

Where's OSHA when you need them?
I mean, come on - not even a railing? There are kids down here, for cryin' out loud!

Destination Moon
Maybe this is why we never got ourselves a proper moon base going. We didn't have funky retro rockets to fly us there and back.

Yoda, Y-O-D-A Yoda...
It's hard to look him in the eye without think of Weird Al Yankovic's classic song...

"Great! Even in the future, nothing works!"
(President Skroob, from Spaceballs) Remember where Paul Allen used to work, folks... used to... Fortunately, the planet rebooted successfully. Probably time to defrag the thing.

Relics of yesterday's future
Can you believe anyone thought you could perform advanced calculations on that little weird sliding thing? Me, neither, but they were everywhere in the old days. Laughable now, isn't it? (Honestly, it boggles the mind, how anyone came up with a slide rule, let alone was able to use one to solve the kinds of scientific and mathematical conundrums that led us to the digital age on them. Maybe the experts are right; we are dumber than we were a couple generations ago...)

The ultra-groovy HypnoScreen (TM)
And me without my 3D glasses... I think the EMP is trying to run the Pacific Science Center's laser show out of business with this thing.

Look to the skies!
Ah, now I get it. While everyone is hypnotized by the HypnoScreen (TM), the Space Jellyfish descend and devour their prey.

The gift shop - OF DOOM!
One heck of an entrance for a fairly tepid-looking gift shop, if you ask me.

A sonic tornado!
Actually, this explains it. Yes, there were instruments rigged to play themselves; you could listen to them on the headphones by the base. Pretty cool, really...

That's about all I got. Afterwards, I headed off to a family function. In hindsight, I should've stayed behind... I really, really should've stayed...

But if I had, I wouldn't be here, writing up this blog post.

And sitting in front of my nice, cool fan.

The Silenced Howl (and Other Reasons the Past Few Days Have Sucked)

2010-06-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, we got a call from my uncle. Evidently, a neighbor had found Grandpa sitting at the bottom of the stairs leading to his door, unable to pull himself to his feet. She got him into the house, and my uncle was called. Grandpa's been having some troubles getting up and down for some time. We also found out he'd driven to the store, which he should definitely no longer be doing. (Long story involving a stupid pharmacist calling a number they were told not to call and insisting he pick up a prescription...) So finally the keys have been taken from his hands, and we think he's figured it out. But taking away car keys doesn't change the fact that Grandpa's days of living alone are just about over.

On Monday, Mom's increasingly flaky boss at the increasingly unprofitable store where she worked one day a week decided to favor quick money over a loyal employee. What was worse was that she point-blank lied to my mother's face about several things in that conversation. (Another long backstory here... suffice it to say that this has been coming for some time.)

This morning, I was woken at 4 AM by trouble in the house. My sister's 12-year-old Malamlute/Husky/maybewolf mix had been diagnosed with probable liver cancer in November, but he's been trucking along decently... until now. He was making distressed noises and couldn't climb to his feet. We wrestled him into the car and drove him to the nearest emergency vet we could remotely trust (the closest one is part of a vet chain that favors wasting money on expensive and unreliable tests... another long story.) Pale gums, fever, enlarged spleen, bleeding into abdomen... At 5 AM, my sister had to make the decision that every pet owner dreads making, silencing one of the most beautiful canine voices I've heard.

There's also a dead mouse hiding in Mom's car, and somewhere in the walls the rat poison is taking effect, to judge by my nose.

There have been good moments, too. After the fall, Grandpa has inexplicably been walking straighter and sleeping easier (something he does much of the time when we visit him.) On Monday, after Mom came home, we met up with my uncle and went down to a lakeside park with beautiful reflections on the rippling water; we saw ducklings and chickadees and turtles and cedar waxwings. And today, I had the pleasure of watching three bald eagles dance over the lake.

All in all, though, I can't say I've ever been happier to know I can escape to work tomorrow morning.

Feast Amid Famine

2010-06-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

It's no great secret that I'm not a wealthy person. (Some people might say that they may be poor in money but rich in other ways, but I'm not one of those people... mostly because I find those people annoying as heck.) I only have a part-time job, and on it I'm more or less treading water. I've become pretty good at talking myself out of anything that even has the faintest whiff of unnecessary expense.

Once in a while, though, I have my moments of indulgence.

There is the impulsive sale indulgence, where I find something deeply discounted and talk myself into, rather than out of, buying it.

There is the overtime indulgence, wherein, after a particularly long and fruitful stretch of overtime at work (and often with a coupon or two on hand), I'll permit myself a bookstore run or a lunch.

And then, once in a very, very rare while, there is the juice-dripping-down-the-jaws, painfully selfish yet marvelously satisfying indulgence.

During the course of my recent efforts to clean up and unburden myself of unnecessary Stuff, I realized just how much of that Stuff consisted of loose change. Oh, I knew it added up over time, but I never realized just how much. Then I sat down to count it.

My, no wonder my purse felt more like a bowling bag...

I could have taken it down to deposit directly into savings... but that's a bit of a drive, to get to the branch that can actually handle monetary transactions in person.

Then I remembered the CoinStar machine. For a nominal fee, I could get my pile of coins processed and get cash back from the store. I wouldn't get the full amount back, but the change would be gone. Plus, there's a certain feeling of triumph, when the clerk at the grocery store hands over money for once, instead of the other way around - that alone is worth a little fee.

Or, there was a third option. A terrible, evil third option. For no fee at all, I could go to the same CoinStar machine and turn those coins directly into a gift certificate... and that gift certificate could be to Amazon. There's Father's Day and two family birthdays coming up within the next two months - but, really, the only one who could possibly benefit from this course of action would be me. Me and me alone. Lazy, underemployed, undereducated, and financially challenged me. Only a fool, in my shoes, would even remotely consider such blatant gluttony.

If you heard a mad cackling echo ominously across the Internet a short time ago, that would have been me... pressing the "Confirm Order" button.

I may be a broke fool, but right now I'm a danged happy broke fool.

Five Months Down...

2010-06-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

The calendar finally rolled over to the sixth month of the year. Though the year isn't technically half over until the end of June, I'm already feeling the pressure to step up efforts and Do Something Useful with 2010. My resolution list still has pathetically few checkmarks of completion on it.

Operation Declutter continues in fits and starts. I still haven't figured out a feasible way into my closet yet (don't ask... let's just say the room wasn't designed with computer desks in mind), but I've tackled other areas of accumulated crud that needed attention. So far, I've amassed one more donation sack, another bin full of recycling, and two more bags for Half Price Books (after another two scrounged up after my last report... the total's somewhere around eight or nine by now, I think, and I ain't done yet.) I'm feeling a little less claustrophobic from the lightening load. Creative juices are starting to trickle, if not properly flow, again.

For some reason, I've been on a reading binge. May saw seven new book reviews posted at Brightdreamer's Book Reviews, and I'm still working on my cross-linking project on the review archive site itself. (I've also decided that the formatting on the ones I've done is sloppy, so I need to go back and fix them, but right now my priority is getting all the cross reference links up and running.) Offline, the I reviews are finished; I hope to have at least three more letters done by the time I post the June update. Once I've finished - or maybe even before then - I hope to find a way to promote the place to see if I can't get a little traffic over there.

As for the rodents... while they're still about, I'm under the delusion that there may not be as many of them around. I'm not in charge of that particular operation, though, so I can't really say.

Well, I guess I better skedaddle. We have a long shift tomorrow at the shipping center, thanks to Memorial Day.

Flying Dust

2010-05-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

Due in no small part to our rodent issues, I've been on a cleaning kick lately. This weekend, I finally tackled my room. How long has it been since it had a good gutting? Well, let's put it this way. When I first got the cats, I had to throw everything on high shelves as fast as possible... and 99% of those items hadn't been touched since. That was over a decade ago.

So far, I've removed a trash can's worth of raw junk, two bins worth of recycling, and nearly three garbage bags' worth of items for donation and/or Half Price Books. And I still haven't hit the closet... that'll be at least a bag's worth of stuff to go, as well.

I've found many things I forgot I ever had. I found things I can't for the life of me remember why I bought. And I found books that must have been snuck in by the clutter gnomes, because I know I never spent money on them. I also found old sketchbooks and art projects, not to mention fragmentary notes and sketches for many of my old stories. For now, at least, I'm hanging on to those; flawed as they were, they were still things I created, and I just can't bring myself to turn my back on my own imaginary worlds, even if I've forgotten almost everything I knew about them. (Just for the heck of it, I should try revisiting them sometime...)

Even though I'm not done, and even though I'm probably holding onto more things than I ought to, I'm already feeling the lightness of shedding unneeded crud from my life. It's a good feeling. Almost makes me wish I had the gumption to clean more often.

Almost.

Some manner of success...

2010-05-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm over half a month behind my self-imposed deadline, but I just printed out the test copy of this year's Camp Coyote logo. Hopefully, that'll be it for that...

Speaking of artistic successes, my Snow Leopard drum sold. I'm down to one drum in the store. Really wish I could paint up more, but we're experiencing rodent issues in the basement, so my workbench is under protective covering until we get a handle on that... hopefully, some day soon... (Oh, how I long for a separate work shed...)

Anyway, just thought I'd post an "I'm not dead, I'm busy" entry on the ol' blog before returning to the pile of Stuff That Needs Doing.

For anyone who reads fantasy...

2010-05-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

This cartoon is all too accurate.

(No, I really don't have anything else to report with this post, except a vague sense of disbelief that it's already May 1. I've been on a reading/writing binge lately, which precludes interesting external activities.)

Works In Progress

2010-04-12T17:36:00.000-07:00

I have a camp logo to design and ink. I have a story that needs editing. I have workbench projects to start and finish. I have a budget that needs restarting, and various and sundry other goals, large and small, that need doing.

So, naturally, I updated my website.

I've needed to update my book review site for a while. I wanted to do it every month, but I kept getting distracted, and it started bugging me. Plus, it was something I could do that wasn't important, and that's exactly the kind of task my brain was looking for.

Brightdreamer Books not only has new reviews and new Random Recommendations, but a new feature. I've started cross-referencing reviews, pointing all none of my visitors towards other titles they might enjoy (or prefer.) It's a work in progress, of course; right now, I only have A - C done. I'm still fine tuning the process, and it'll be a while before the whole list of 660 reviews is finished (yes, 660 - only 40 away from 700, which is my unofficial goal for 2010), but it's a start.

Swing on by and let me know what you think.

In the meantime, that's one thing checked off my list of frivolous distractions.

Let's see if I can't get to work on the important stuff, now...

APRIL 24 UPDATE - Well, I made tangible progress on the camp logo. I also just updated the book site again, with more cross-linking (D-G and T-Z books) and more Amazon links. Just need to keep chiseling away at the workload, but I feel like I might be getting somewhere. Almost.

Slipping Gears

2010-03-29T23:13:00.000-07:00

Ergh... Be forewarned, this is another pointless, potentially whiny post intended to allow me to procrastinate rather than do something useful.

Well, March is almost over already. I can't say I accomplished much more this month than I did last month. Unfortunately, I can't use the February Bug as an excuse this time. Just can't seem to get my brain to lock into a gear.

Story editing has hit another lull, as I grind back and forth between actually editing my rough draft and simply rewriting it in scattershot, first-draft style. I keep telling myself that it's a necessary evil, to patch up serious plot structure and pacing issues, and not me falling back into old habits as a crutch, but I'm not at all sure that's the case. I want a finished second draft by November at the absolute latest, but the more I waver on whether or not I'm progressing, the less actual progress I'm making.

My sketchbook's stagnating, with barely a page a day getting filled; I want to be drawing more from my mind, maybe nail down a few book scenes and characters, but once again I find myself wavering between teach-yourself-to-draw studies and lousy-crud-from-the-imagination thumbnails. Neither seems to be getting me far. Right now, I've given priority to a project that has an actual deadline (it's for someone else; the annual camp logo - a.k.a. my annual skirting of potential copyright infringement hell.) Unfortunately, the theme is nothing to make the ol' pencil leap and dance across the paper. Sometimes, I wonder if the staff deliberately picks ideas without a smidgen of inherent interest. But, a job's a job, a theme's a theme, and like it or not it needs doing. Once it's done, I tell myself I jump back into my sketchbook with a vengeance, to make up for time lost wrestling with a theme that makes "Watching Paint Dry" seem fascinating and dynamic.

As for my other hopeful March projects - sprucing up my websites, rearranging my room, fooling with my budget program, researching Etsy, and so forth - well, somehow they all ended up piled on the back burner. How they got there, I don't know, as I honestly can't say I see anything significant on the front burner to displace them. But there they sit, cold and congealed, frosted with dust and specks of mold.

Hmm... maybe I ought to move cleaning the kitchen up a notch on the priority list...

Interlude with Daisy

2010-03-15T01:10:00.000-07:00

Just a brief update to waste time while adjusting to the Missing Hour.

The February Bug has pretty much retreated to an occasional squeeze in the sinuses. I finally felt secure enough to start up the Claritin again. I didn't want anything to possibly interfere with my immune system while fighting the bug, and I have a vague, twisted idea that allergy medication might alter immune response, since allergies seem to be an overreaction of the immune system to unharmful stimuli. My relatives, on the other hand, aren't so lucky. My sister's ears are still clogged, and her sinuses and throat aren't done yet. My mother was feeling better, but it's gone back to lurking in her throat again. Hopefully, the danged thing clears out of the house soon. Illness makes people cranky... well, crankier than usual.

I'm getting back on track with my various trivial goals in my trivial life. I just made my first relatively major change in the story I'm editing, which feels much more productive than just opening the file and staring at random sections like I had been doing. (Whether or not the change helps, well, that's for Draft 3.) I still have some pacing issues to deal with. I also have a vague idea that I can manipulate things so that the story doesn't need a sequel; has to do with relocating events in the finale, and possibly delaying them via a few more catastrophes. I'll burn those bridges when I get there, though... right now, I've just started Chapter 9, where the main character has to recover from attempted murder and a close call with death by dragon fire.

Half the fun of writing is tormenting imaginary people.

Other than that, I can't say I have much to report. Just thought I'd post to let all none of you know I'd shaken the worst of the bug. I still never found February, though... I think it went wherever the Missing Hour goes after the time elves sneak into our houses and steal it from our clocks.

And the daisy? Eh, I just shot the picture at a local park a few weeks ago. Little daisies in the grass always mean springtime to me. Mainly, though, I thought it would help dull the pain of trudging through a pointless blog post if there was a pretty picture to look at.

The Missing Month

2010-02-23T21:51:00.000-08:00

It's February 23. In less than a week, it will officially be March. I'm still waiting for my February.

The weather around here has been wavering between March and April for the past few weeks. I've seen butterflies and bugs and blooming flowers. I've woken to birdsong and sunlight. I went for a walk where I didn't even need my heavy jacket. Sometime in late January, we jumped clear past the rest of winter and wound up in spring.

February was also robbed by a nasty bug. I don't know if it's a cold, a flu, or a curse from the sinus gnomes. Whatever it is, this thing has torn through the whole family, and roughly a month after the first twinges in head and ear signaled its arrival, it still doesn't want to let go. I even missed a day of work from this - and I do not call out of work if I am even remotely capable of bipedal locomotion.

I had plans for February. I was going to make significant headway on story revisions. I was going to update my book review website. (I have several reviews backed up on my book review blog, waiting to be archived.) I wanted to get more drums painted up and investigate alternative outlet sources. I thought I'd start the long-overdue reorganization of my room. Instead, the only major accomplishment of the past fortnight has been finally sleeping through the night without once considering taking a power drill to my sinuses and ear to relieve the horrific pressure.

Of all the months of the year, February's always been something of a runt. It can't even muster 30 days, and it only gets 29 every four years. Sure, it has a few holidays, but it's usually a nondescript, gray little stretch of time. Most of us hardly notice it as it slips past, riding the tail end of winter. But it's still a month, and to find so much of it gone is depressing.

Four days left... wonder if I can find my missing month before then...

UPDATE - Well, it's February 28, the last day of the month, and I can finally say I've accomplished something.

Brightdreamer Books has been updated. I now officially have more than 650 book reviews posted on the site.

Okay, so we can't all accomplish big things, all right?

Picking Up the Beat

2010-02-08T22:11:00.000-08:00

It's been well over a year since I sold a drum ornament. I'd pretty much given up hope on them, and was rooting about uselessly in my brain for something else to try. Then, a few weeks ago, the phoenix drum sold. The person who bought it also asked for another drum: a snow leopard. They even provided a reference picture.

It wasn't a great time to do a commission. Various bugs were attacking various relatives. I'd just seen Avatar, which derails one's artistic vision the way reading the perfect novel derails one's writing vision: in a thousand thousand years of finger-bleeding, eye-tearing practice, I don't think I could ever come up with a world as varied and beautiful as Pandora. And it had been a year since I picked up a brush, let alone tried to paint with one. But a commission was a commission, and I'd be lying if I said I couldn't use the money.

It took me two or three days to unearth my drum-making supplies, and another day to figure out what I still had and what I needed to replace. I was annoyed and disturbed about how much I'd forgotten about making drum ornaments, and how much I had to relearn on the fly. Long story short, I got the thing done and delivered one day under my stated two-week deadline. (Whether or not it's been picked up yet, I haven't heard, but I'm happy knowing that I can still hit a deadline, even from such a flat-footed start.) While I was at it, I decided to dust off the cobwebs - figuratively and literally - and do up a couple more drums. I did a second snow leopard, this time from my own reference photo (because there was some initial miscommunication on the color of drum the client wanted, and I wanted my tail covered in any eventuality), and a special drum in honor of the upcoming Year of the Tiger.

I just finished the last one today, and plan to drop the two new drums off tomorrow. I also plan to raise my prices by a few bucks... especially for the danged tiger.

For pictures, follow the links...

Snow Leopard (Commission): Front Back Close-up

Snow Leopard (Other): Front Back Close-Up

Year of the Tiger: Front Back Close-Up

I wish I could say I was 100% happy with them. I wish I could say that, in a year of working on art and filling sketchbooks, I'd improved. I wish I could say that the drums flew from my workbench on golden wings, with nary a frustration or misstep or hair-pulling scream of agony. I wish I could say all that, and more, but I can't.

What I can say is that, while stringing and painting and gluing and beading, I learned something. As aggravating as the process could be, I missed it. I missed making physical objects with my art. I missed making things with my hands. I missed seeing an end result, rather than page after page after page of sketches.

I suppose this means that, in between filling more sketchbooks and editing my story and searching for extra income, I'll have to squeeze in making stuff at my workbench again.

Dang it.

Not the Best Way to Spend a Sunday

2010-02-01T00:53:00.000-08:00

Today - or yesterday, I suppose, by now - as usual, we went over to visit Grandpa for lunch. He seemed unusually tuned out, even for his recent baseline. He was too tired to eat lunch. He was too tired to stand up, and too tired to walk. He was too tired to answer if he was feeling tired.

We ended up taking him to the local ER to be looked over.

Sitting in ER waiting rooms is never fun. People come and go. Snatches of other people's lives drift about, while yours sits in limbo waiting for news that never seems to come. There's always a fish tank, though this ER's tank was about the least impressive saltwater tank I've seen in a medical facility. There's always a TV, tuned to a station you would never watch in a million years at home but which keeps drawing your eye nevertheless as the hours crawl past. A line of vending machines beckons with suspiciously unhealthy fare, and even books and playing cards. I wound up buying a word search, not just to have something to do but because I was fascinated by the idea that I could buy a book from a vending machine. (Why don't we have something like this at work? It could revolutionize the library business! Or maybe not...)

We wandered down the hall, past pictures of rich people who enjoy having their photographs taken and nature images placed where few people will be able to properly appreciate them. A small gift shop - closed at this hour - sold expensive handbags and jewelry in addition to junk candies, stuffed toys, and other generic cheering-up treats. I had to wonder at the kind of person who, lingering in a hospital, thinks to buy a designer handbag and gold necklace.

It was hours before we got word back. Grandpa's problems seemed to stem from bad dehydration. In all likelihood, he's been ill and hasn't been willing or able to tell anyone. (Grandpa has been losing his words over the past few years; the synaptic connections between thought and speech just don't seem to work properly anymore, and as hard as it is to get any member of this family to speak about anything important, it's been exponentially harder to get him to engage in conversations longer than a half minute in duration.) The CAT scan ruled out a stroke - which we'd feared, given his sudden drop in activity level and inability to walk properly, not to mention waking up from his day-long doze in a state of evident agony yet being unable to recall pain when asked about it immediately after the fact - and all other tests were apparently normal.

So, despite the fact that Grandpa cannot reliably get out of his own chair anymore, the hospital sent him home for the night. My uncle will likely be staying with him tonight and tomorrow. After that... well, I think this proves that his days of living alone are over. We've all known it was coming, if he lasted this long, but it's still a bit of a kick in the gut to actually see it dawning.

All in all, not the best way to spend a Sunday.

Ups and Downs

2010-01-22T17:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the crane at work was pitching a Mercury-retrograde snitfit. On the other hand, I got four breaks in five hours, and I found 12 pieces to the puzzle in the break room. (Bit of an aside: we have running puzzles in the break room to keep us from going crazy, and the current one - a 2000-piecer - has been fighting us for ages. At this point, it's a grudge match... and it feels all the sweeter when a piece finally locks into place. So a 12-piece day is really a big thing.) So work was an up and down thing.

I finally sold that phoenix drum at the store, and got a request for another drum. Unfortunately, I completely slacked off and didn't do more than stare at the story in revision. An up and down day.

Today, the crane was much happier at work, enabling us to take a good swipe at the backlog we'd accumulated. On the down side, I caught my pants on a protuding bit of metal and got a nice-sized rip in the leg. Didn't actually get me - the only thing wounded was my dignity - but I had to use bandages to tape up the rip for the last hour of work. (I keep bandages with me on the job because I sometimes catch nails or pick up papercuts. Never thought I'd have to use them for field repairs of clothing...)

This really has been an up and down week, in retrospect... and it still technically has one day to go.

Stuck in the Sketchbook

2010-01-18T23:32:00.000-08:00

Operation Story Revision has just hit Chapter 4. I honestly thought I'd be further along by now. After all, I got Chapter 1 rewritten in a day.

Or so I thought.

After rereading what I wrote, I decided that it was a weak opening. To fix this, I went back and added a prologue, using something I hadn't mentioned until later in the original draft. Then I decided the prologue needed some work to make it more interesting.

This made the first chapter seem even weaker, so I had to tweak it again. Finally, I hit Chapter 2.

You guessed it, Chapter 2 meant I had to tweak Chapter 1 again. And I rearranged parts of the new prologue.

I just finished Chapter 3 - or a version of Chapter 3 I choose to live with - and am doing my darnedest to keep from going back and nitpicking the previous two chapters and the prologue.

This is the kind of behavior that has kept me from finishing a second draft in ages.

I often think I'd do better if I had some sort of outline. A nice chapter-by-chapter overview of what I want to happen. I even tried it once.

Did it work?

I'll let you know if I find the outline. And the story it was associated with.

They say that editing is a process. One cannot think of a story in editing in the same way one thinks of it during its original creation. The first draft is the rough sketch, maybe the color study. Editing polishes it for public consumption, filling in details and removing tangents and perfecting composition. The final picture may vary radically from the rough sketch, but only as a result of the revisions; it doesn't do to keep going back and scratching away at a sketchpad when one has a canvas to fill with paint. At some point, the sketchpad has to go away, or at least be relegated to spot-sketches to solve specific problems that crop up in the polishing process, and the canvas itself must be tackled. So, I've been trying to think of editing the story as I'd think of drawing a picture, moving from the gesture studies of the NaNoWriMo-spawned rough draft to - hopefully - a presentable work of art.

Unfortunately, I haven't finished a picture in ages, either...

Gentlemen, Start Your Spellchecks...

2010-01-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

Computer, note-taking materials, and flash drive? Check.

Cats asleep, relatives dispersed? Check.

Worst of the year-starting bug over with? Check.

No clue what I'm doing, but determined to do it anyway? Check.

Running out of things to do to procrastinate? Check.

Okay. It's officially Revision Time.

The monster that came into being during NaNoWriMo 2009 is about to be dismembered, gutted, reassembled, clipped, scrubbed, and polished to within an inch of its life. How long will it take? I don't know; I've never successfully edited a second draft before. But, before 2009, I'd never written a rough draft in under a month before. As the saying goes, there's a first time for everything. (I wonder who said that first?) Online estimates indicate that a full revision of a 50,000+ word draft will take about a year, unless one devotes every waking minute to the task. My hope is to have something presentable before next November. We'll see how that goes...

I already did the initial read-through. As I suspected, it needs serious help. The first step is writing down what I have... that I want to keep, at any rate. Character descriptions, places, world history notes, that sort of thing. Then, with these notes on hand, I'll start the rewrite proper. I expect I'll end up doing most of it from scratch, with the first draft serving mostly as inspiration.

Well, I suppose I ought to stop blogging about revisions and actually get started with them.

Away I go...

The 2010 Resolution List

2010-01-01T00:39:00.000-08:00

For accountability... or a laugh in 2011, at the very least. Since the "bonus" idea seemed to help last year, I'm trying it again this year; mainly, they serve to clarify what I want out of each resolution.

Increase Monetary Income.
Bonuses: Sell something online; Investigate/obtain business license; Start some sort of long-term investment.
Decrease Personal Clutter.
Bonuses: Reorganize my room; Reorganize my workspace.
Spend at least 1 hour daily, 5x/week creating.
Bonuses: Start working with color; Work with Wacom more often; Improve digital art skills; Learn 3D graphics; Resume penny whistle practice; Do at least one Daily Sketch Group (ConceptArt.org) per month.
Finish at least a rough draft of three stories.
Bonuses: Edit a story into marketworthy shape; Send a story to a beta reader; Submit a story for contest and/or publication; Win NaNoWriMo again in 2010.
Exercise in some form at least 3x/weekly.
Bonuses: Increase walking range; Healthily lose at least one belt notch of weight.

I suppose the first thing I ought to do to start the year off right would be to head off to bed. (And tomorrow I get to sleep in... nice way to start a new year. Gotta love workin' for the library!)

Another Year Down the Drain

2009-12-31T23:13:00.000-08:00

We're in the final hour of 2010 (in my time zone, at least), and though technically the decade itself lasts for another year longer, tonight the calendar rolls over into the double digits in the second millenium.

It's been a year of ups and downs, with the ups mostly outweighing the downs. I didn't manage to get a second job, nor did I sell anything more, but I kept the job I had. One of our pets isn't doing so hot, but none of them have died this year. Grandpa's increasingly not there, but when he is there at least he's still Grandpa. The car I drove into 2009 is no longer the car I'm driving out of it.

This year, I saw salmon return in decent numbers to a stream where I, personally, had never seen a single salmon swimming. I stood close enough to feel the water spray off their fins as they struggled upstream, and understood a bit of the wonder that the overcrowded, undereducational local salmon festival failed to instill in me after over three decades of attendance.

I stood outside on a clear night under an evergreen tree, and as I looked up through the branches a thousand raindrops transformed moonlight into glimmering stars.

I saw the bright magenta flash of an Anna's hummingbird outside our window, for the first time ever. This fall, I stood less than a foot from a young Anna's as he scolded us for letting the hummingbird feeder freeze up.

I saw goldfinches return to our feeders. I saw a hawk in the front yard. I saw a bobcat.

I rediscovered a local trailhead, much improved since my last visit, even if at least one of its visitors disturbed me as few other humans have disturbed me. While up there, I saw a flock of tanagers.

I stood in the midst of a dragonfly dance.

Not so bad, as years go.

On the Resolution front, without going through the trouble of reposting, I hit about 3 out of my 7 major goals, in spirit if not precise lettering. I resolved to create more this year, and create more I did: I filled more paper sketchbooks than I have in any previous year, I made more ambitious projects, and I even maintained an online sketch thread on an art board. I also participated in - and "won" - a NaNoWriMo. I even relearned basic web skills and overhauled a good chunk of my web site. So, three out of seven... that's roughly a 43% success rate. Again, not so bad.

Once the new year rolls over, I'll be posting my 2010 resolutions.

In fifty minutes... or less...

Xmas Ornament Blitz Photos (Plus Bonus)

2009-12-25T00:42:00.000-08:00

Inspired by an episode of Animal Planet's The Most Extreme: evidently, our local banana slugs will drop out of tall trees by slime trails in order to avoid baking in the sun. When I saw that, I knew I had to make a banana slug holiday ornament.

So, I've extracted promises from my victims - er, relatives - that they won't hit my websites until after the festivities tomorrow morning. Or this morning, actually, as it just rolled over to midnight. In any event, it's time once again to post my usually cruddy pictures of this year's usual cruddy ornaments.

The Process Begins
This year, most of my family took a trip to the ocean with Grandpa. It was likely his last vacation. In honor of the event, I decided to do ocean-themed ornaments. And what's more oceanic than a seashell? I used a real shell, and formed Activ-Wire mesh around it. (If I'd known how well the stuff worked, I would've used it in another project... but that's in the Bonus section.)

The Process Continues
Once the wire was formed into a shell-like shape, I pressed Paperclay onto it and formed the shell I'd be working with. Inside first, then outside. It went surprisingly well, considering my usual luck.

The "Other" Projects
About midway through the process, my aunt had some dental issues involving a front tooth. All she wanted for Xmas, she declared, was her front tooth... with much repetition of the very similar song. Well, her wish was my command... provided her husband loans her his ornament. And provided she doesn't mind shark teeth. I drew a template of paper, cut Activ-Wire for the shape, built it up with aluminum foil, and wrapped it with florist's tape (so the Paperclay would adhere better.)

The Teeth Continued
How they built up. I hadn't done the tops yet; I was going for a Megalodon/fossil tooth look, and wound up using a hairbrush for the rough texturing... more visible in the next images.

The Final Products Front and Back (immediate family: front and back)
Okay, so I skipped a step or two. I started doing scrimshaw on the shells: I traced pictures onto the insides and scratched the outlines with dental tools, then did an antiquing rubdown to mark the lines. Unfortunately, the results looked... well, "horrific" springs to mind. It was my first attempt at scrimshaw on Paperclay, so I suppose it was bound to come out looking terrible. To salvage them, I wound up doing a wash/shade look. Then I painted the backs, hit them with glitter glaze and a coat of spray-on pearl coat, and glued pearls in the tops. The shark's teeth got a similar treatment, except I kept the tops fairly neutral (save a hint of dark glitter for sparkle.) A final topcoat of satin finish to seal them, on with the hangers, and done in time for Xmas Eve. Well, the evening part of Xmas Eve, at least...

The Banana Slug: Side Shots
More views of this year's personal project. Well, he amused me, at least...

The Bonus: Operation ~~Double~~ Quintuple Dragon
Since I have confirmation of receipt by the vict- er, person who requested them, I thought I'd post the start-to-finish chronicle of the making of this year's most ambitious project. What started as a request to add to an existing ensemble resulted in a complete remake.

In the Beginning, there was Wire...
I started, as usual, with no clue what I was going to do, but with a nice wire frame with which to do it. Having lurked on an art board for some time, I figured I'd try some of their techniques, namely wrapping the wire (for a better grip) and using epoxy to hold together the armatures. And, as the second image proves, these armatures were completely freestanding! (A personal victory, if of little to no import to anyone else.) Yes, those counting may note only four armatures: the littlest one was fighting me, and currently is little more than a wrapped wire spine.

We are experiencing structural difficulties - please stand by...
No, I'm not dumb enough to gratuitously torture dragons, even incomplete dragons. The Mighty Putty I used to secure the various parts of the armatures had a few issues. The only way to fix it was to let them dry without resting any weight on the stressed joints... so I strung them up from the ceiling with old earphone cords, because I didn't trust string not to be cut through by the wrapped wire.

A little closer, but something's missing...
I got the wings fleshed out a bit, and started posing them. But something's not right...

Oh...
Yeah, dragons do better with heads, you idiot. Gluing on the styrofoam heads wasn't fun, and couldn't be done while I was working too heavily on posing the beasts.

Fleshing Out
One of the more tedious parts of sculpting (at least, the way I do it)... Aluminum foil gives some structure, and florist's tape gives the Paperclay something to stick to. In retrospect, I should've used Activ-Wire for the wings; wrapping them is a serious pain... I've also added the digits at this point, and made more pose refinements.

Eye to Eye
I've started adding Paperclay, and I also stuck the eyeballs in their appropriate sockets. The eyes are just more Paperclay, pre-dried, and are there to give me something to work around as I build up brows and lids and such. The observant may note that I've added some peculiar jaw projections to the two adults. While I was remaking the dragon family, I decided to give Master Dragon a beard (and, though it's not visible, elbow tufts) and Lady Dragon a jaw frill.

One Miracle Later...
Roughly a month of off-camera work got me here: sculpted and sanded, the dragons are ready for priming and painting. The reason for the long jump between progress photos is that, in the interim, they spent much of their time on their backs and sides and other unphotogenic positions.

The Final Product
I started with a base of white acrylic gesso, followed by Christmas Green. Or at least, it should've been Christmas Green. Unfortunately, Delta's downgraded their products terribly, so the green I bought refused to cover. My only other paints - Liquitex - didn't come in a green I wanted, and I didn't trust myself to reliably remix a shade I'd be using so much of. So, off to the Home Depot and a sample jar of Behr premium paint + primer (flat interior, Par Four Green.) Worked great*, though I have a ton of Par Four Green left over. It's hard to see, but I've done some spongework and antiquing over the base, in darker greens and metallic gold. I also glued in the crystal beads (and the teeth, in the case of one chatty little dragonling.) After this group photo, the dragons were packed and mailed across country... in the middle of some of the worst winter weather to sock the nation. Fortunately, they arrived at their intended destination.

* - I only recommend this if you watch the person mixing the paint like a hawk; my sister tried using their sample paints for her projects, but she wound up with three bickering twits who not only miscommunicated between themselves, but screwed up her batch so bad it's more like stain than paint.

Anyway, it's been a fairly productive year at the Brightdreamer Workbench. Hopefully, I can carry this uncharactaristic trend through into 2010. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Early Xmas Treat

2009-12-21T01:10:00.000-08:00

Because the last post was depressing, and in honor of the winter solstice, I thought I'd post an early holiday treat, mined from the depths of YouTube:

Darcy the Dragon

My next post will likely be ornament photos, after Xmas. In the meantime, Happy Holidays!

Quick Dog Update

2009-12-16T22:05:00.000-08:00

First off, no, the infection wasn't back. Secondly, there was evidently some miscommunication between the first vet and the second vet, a.k.a the biopsy vet who might be able to tell us more about what's wrong; the first vet told us (at least twice) that the second vet had already received the dog's info and would call us when they had reviewed it, while the second vet had never heard a thing about it. (Apparently, when the first vet said she'd faxed over the labwork to the second vet, she was thinking of faxing her order over to the pizza delivery joint or something.) But we finally got the papers exchanged and the appointment made.

The results are not encouraging, on more than one level.

The second vet sounds reasonably certain that the liver "mass" (which the first vet referred to merely as "nodules") was cancerous, and it had increased significantly in size since the first vet's exam. The bloodwork - which the first vet told us wasn't worrisome - was evidently worrisome after all. He still wanted to perform a highly invasive procedure to confirm the diagnosis, a procedure that sounded like it was remarkably risky and likely to cause problems without actually helping the dog much. We kept getting the runaround on whether or not treatment options would be worthwhile in his condition, or if the liver issues were responsible for his lack of strength in his back leg.(They don't seem to know why he sometimes can't seem to stand on it, nor do they seem too interested in finding out.)

So, for now, we're going to try some liver supplements; if it's not cancerous, this might resolve the issue. We think. Maybe. If it's really his liver causing his problems and not an infected appendix or ingrown nostril hairs or something else they haven't bothered to tell us about but will happily charge us through the nose to consider.

Why, yes, I'm just a wee bit cynical that the vets seem to be deliberately obscuring the facts in order to play referral tag and siphon off as much money as possible without actually helping the dog. Why do you ask?

Holiday Hands

2009-12-11T22:18:00.000-08:00

The past few days, our region's been in a deep freeze. As in, when it crept above the freezing level this afternoon, it actually felt warm to me. Unlike most of the country, we've been spared the devastating blizzards and mudslides and storms and winds, but it's still been very cold. And very dry.

All day at work, I handle books. Paper, as anyone who has worked with it can attest, sucks the moisture out of one's hands like nobody's business.

And my holiday projects are all in Paperclay. An air-drying clay that shares paper's ability to dry out one's hands.

So, basically, despite my heavy-duty cream, my hands are shredded, split, bleeding messes right about now. But, hey, anything worth doing is worth a little blood now and again...

Thus far, my holiday projects are going decently. (Though I've yet to hear if Phase I reached its intended destination in one piece - it should've gotten there by today at the latest, but I don't suppose the post office takes horrific weather into account when giving shipping estimates.) My holiday shopping's more than half done, save one impossible-to-predict relative. Tomorrow, I plan to make out holiday cards. I haven't read a book in over a month (as my sadly neglected book review blog can attest), and my sketching's slacked off since I started holiday project work in October, but, hey, can't complain. If I'm not precisely on the ball, thus far I've successfully kept the ball from rolling on top of me. And sometimes that's all one can ask.

Oh... if anyone remembers about the dog who was having issues, he went back into the vet this evening. To summarize, he'd developed a terrible limp in his hind end that screamed "dysplasia," but was in fact a bad leg infection. At this time, his liver was found to be disturbingly enlarged. For the leg, he was prescribed painkillers and antibiotics, but, being the only dog in the planet who carefully chews every bite of food before swallowing, our attempts to pill him failed miserably after a week or so, when he realized his kibbles were tainted. Nevertheless, he was doing better until a week or so ago, when he started limping again. And pills, as we've discovered, aren't going to help. The vet said she cold do injections, but she needed to see him first. So now they're trying to determine if the infection's back (so he would need one kind of injection), or if it's pain (which would require a different injection.) One can be done at home, the other needs to be done at the office. And the liver will require a biopsy which is a pain in the rear to schedule this time of year; this seems to be an independent issue, near as we can tell. Hopefully, we'll have an update on the leg/limp end of things tomorrow.

Step Away from the Keyboard

2009-11-28T00:48:00.000-08:00

Going through a bit of post-NaNoWriMo withdrawal, here...

For nearly a month, I thrashed around, figuring out characters and world info and plotlines. I wound up with 58,000+ words that I didn't completely despise, arranged in a manner that could be called storylike. At least half of it will require extensive rewriting to achieve any consistency. As for the ending, I admit I already had to fix that. I did that Turkey Day morning, actually, the day after I technically "won" NaNoWriMo 2009. No, the characters wouldn't leave me alone long enough to go to the family get-together until I'd straightened out their final moments. Unfortunately, though I like the new ending much better, it still begs a sequel, which I don't even have the vaguest notion of a plot for. I can't even begin to work on it until I establish a more consistent framework to work in: character histories, the world geography, a quick-sketch history of nations and races... In short, I need to get this story edited into a more cohesive second draft before I can begin the rough draft of Book 2 (of what danged well better be a two-part series.) And editing will take some time. Significant amounts of time.

December is staring me in the face, with a host of Xmas shopping I haven't done yet and ornaments I haven't finished (or, in some cases, started) and various holiday things that need organizing and deciding and doing. I also have a nagging feeling that I'll be able to do a much better editing job if I don't have other projects breathing down my proverbial neck... and if I let the story settle for a while after the vigorous stirring and boiling it underwent in the greater part of November.

I've tried distracting myself. I immersed myself in ornament work most of today. I've played Solitaire and poked at Sacred. I weeded old e-mails. I messed with my blog layout. Anything to keep me from committing to a premature rewrite, one I just cannot spare the time and energy for until the holidays are over with and I get some creative breathing space back.

Of course, it couldn't hurt just to go back and tweak the dragon's description a bit.... or maybe rework that one scene... rename a town or two... or figure out a less awkward way to fill in backstory on the main character, one that wasn't created to keep my nightly page count quota intact...

I'll just tweak a word or two. Honest.

I think I'd better step away from the keyboard...

The End... For Now...

2009-11-26T00:14:00.000-08:00

I already know I need to do some serious rewriting. The world lacks integrity and structure, my characters aren't the greatest, the action's all over the map, and I may even have to scrap the ending. There's also the nagging hints of a sequel, which I'd rather not feel obligated to write. But I wrote the words "THE END", so that means it's a finished rough draft.

It feels good to finish a draft. Even a rough one.

It feels even better to accomplish a goal, such as winning NaNoWriMo 2009.

Now, I just need to step back for a while and let it simmer on the back burner before picking up the Hatchet of Editing and having at the thing...

(For the curious, yes, it's a fantasy. Yes, there's a dragon in it. No, it's in no fit shape to be shared, unless you like your stories rough-edged and raw in the middle.)

Oh, and Happy Turkey Day to any fellow Americans! (Not that anyone else is forbidden to have a happy day, or to eat turkey on it... or to consume a happy turkey, for that matter.)

One Milestone Down...

2009-11-23T00:24:00.000-08:00

I may not have reached the headwaters.

I may have barely cleared the nearest river.

But, like the salmon returning to the local creek after many years of absence, I'm struggling up the final stretch into the unfamiliar territory of the finished draft.

Tonight, I crossed the 50,000 word mark of my NaNoWriMo novel.

I think I have about a fourth of a story left to write, and I still hope to actually write the words "The End" on this draft before December 1. But at least I won the word count challenge part of it.

Now, let's see if I can one-up the fish and live to do it all again...

TUESDAY NIGHT UPDATE - Argh... up to 56,000 words and counting. I think I only have a little bit to go, but for some reason the stupid thing decided to have all the earmarks of a potential sequel. And I'm still not positive how it'll end... dang it. (Of course, it has to sit on a knife-edge at the end of a writing session on a work night... couldn't have done this earlier, when I could stay up and push it one way or the other.)

Wayward Salmon and Other Milestones

2009-11-17T22:18:00.000-08:00

What with holiday projects, scuzzy weather, and overall laziness, I haven't managed to make myself go for a walk for a few weeks now. Today, I saw a window of sunshine amid the gray clouds as I ate lunch, and I figured I'd better seize the opportunity. Besides, my workbench projects needed more drying time before I could move on to the next step in their completion.

By the time I'd eaten, dressed, and gotten my tail out the door, the window of blue had moved further into the distance. A light sprinkle fell from increasingly gray skies. But I'd put it off too long. I'd do at least an abbreviated walk; not to both stop signs that I usually go to, but to one stop sign and a little creek I cross. It's a small thing, too small to run full time, but it was recently restored by one of the local groups that restores streams, on the theory that it would help the salmon; you know, one of those "every little bit might help, but probably won't" civic things. In any event, it's a pretty little stream, and it made a decent landmark. Every bit as good as a stop sign for turning around at.

By the time I'd come to the stream, the skies were more than a little threatening. But I was too far from home to turn back and stay dry anyway, so I made it to the banks. As I turned around, I saw a splash.

No way, I thought, but I stopped to look closer.

Another splash.

A wriggle.

Yes, a late season salmon had made its way up the little creek, and as I watched it was making its way even further up.

Back before this area was a growing, light polluting, and overcrowded city, there used to be salmon in this stream. I heard stories of a neighbor whose sons liked to take home salmon in their wagons; one year they got a female who laid eggs in the bathtub before Mom got the thing out of the house. But I'd never seen one there myself. Until this year.

Maybe that restoration project worked, after all.

I only saw the one lone salmon making the run, so I don't know if my little finny friend was simply a loner or searching in vain for a mate with whom to repopulate the restored stream's salmon run. But if I saw one salmon swimming there, this late in the run, then others might very well have done the same.

So swim on, wayward salmon. Best of luck to you and yours.

--

In the Other Milestones department, I'm disturbingly close to hitting my self-imposed deadline for my first round of holiday projects. As in, the major sculpting phase is done, which is the part that takes so long. Of course, I have more stuff chomping at the bit to be started as soon as I clear these from the workbench, but that looks to be happening round about the time I had hoped it would happen.

Helps that I started in early October...

And, if you care to glance at the NaNoWriMo 2009 widget, you'll see the next milestone I crossed tonight. If the widget isn't displaying, I'll just say that I crossed the 40,000 word mark of the 50,000-word goal. I'd say I have at least another 10,000 words, likely a fair whack more, worth of story to tell. I want to finish it by the end of the month, though, no matter how many words it ends up being. The characters just hit their next little snag ("little" as in "potentially lethal"), so tomorrow I find out how they get through it.

Halfway There

2009-11-10T00:26:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post, to say that I'm halfway there!

25,000 words down, at least that many more to go!

Track my NaNoWriMo progress via the little widget on the sidebar (at the top over there, just above "About Me).*

So far, so good... I'm getting to the point where I can start doing evil things to people and I haven't run out of things to say yet.

Wish me luck...

* - Sorry, the thing seems very touchy about when it shows up... Anyway, I'm past 27,000 words now, and things are about to take a fairly nasty turn. About time, too... (11/10/09)

Fall Behind - Er, Back

2009-11-01T01:08:00.000-07:00

So, tonight's the night we finally get our magic missing hour back. The relief of sleeping in one hour late only lasts about a week, but it still feels nice. Besides, I could use all the extra time I can manage to scrounge, which makes the magic hour all the more welcome.

I started holiday-related projects in early October - much earlier than usual - and I'd hoped to be further along than I am. By my estimates, I'm about half a week behind where I wanted to be by now. I may have to come up with a way to shorten Paperclay drying time, so I can squeeze in extra work sessions.

I also did something stupid and impulsive on Friday Night. I signed up for NaNoWriMo. This, for all none who don't know of it, is the National Novel Writing Month challenge to produce a flawed but finished 50,000 word novel (rough, rough draft, obviously) in 30 days. The 30 days of November, to be precise. Which, if you're counting, started today, two hours ago.

Oh, wait - one hour ago.

Thank you, magic hour!

Why? Well, why not? I feel like I'm making minimal progess in my "regular" stories (the fact that I call them my "regular" stories shows just how long I've been stuck on them), and the whole point of NaNoWriMo is to crystalize the "sit down, shut up, and WRITE!" mentality that actually gets stories finished as opposed to picked at and muddled and ultimately lost. Besides, my unofficial participation last year (which netted me a 30,000+ word novel, which was my goal) felt oddly invigorating, so I thought I'd up the stakes this year. So far, I have 2000-odd words written. Only 48,000 to go...

Here's hoping I don't fall further behind. Now that we've fallen back, there aren't any more magic hours waiting up ahead to save me.

Friday Night Dog Update

2009-10-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, so he spent his day at the vet, and these are the results:

1 - The vet found nodules on his liver in the ultrasound/sonogram/whatever, and possibly a larger mass (not clear on that bit.)

2 - They didn't bother with the Cushing's blood test, as this didn't jibe with Cushing's syndrome.

3 - The possible diagnoses include some manner of cancer or some manner of not-cancer, one being treatable and the other untreatable. To learn more, we must consult a specialist who can do a biopsy.

4 - Nothing else looked off, so if it is malignant it's confined to the liver.

5 - The vet techs at this animal hospital are rather half-arsed and couldn't even figure out how to use a Pill Pocket treat without botching it.

So, not the greatest news, but it could be worse. We figure it's worth looking into a needle biopsy; he's worth that much, at least, though if it proves to be the untreatable option we don't think we want to put him through too much misery for no reason.

The Wait

2009-10-26T12:23:00.000-07:00

One of our dogs has been having trouble getting around. He has the dreaded "shepherd hips", and he's not exactly a puppy anymore, but with canine glucosamine he's been managing.

Until this morning.

My sister found him stuck outside in the rain, unable to climb the short flight of stairs to the dog door.

So she wrestled him into the car and, along with Dad (to help wrestle him out again), took him to the vet.

That was nearly two hours ago, and I haven't had a call since. (Well, the phone has rung four times, but they were all hang-ups and/or telemarketers.).

I can't decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing...

AFTERNOON UPDATE: The dog's still at the vet, where they hope to get X-rays. He may have an infection of some sort, which means that maybe they can do something for his pain. Fingers crossed and we'll see...

AFTERNOON UPDATE UPDATE: Well, he's home. Oddly enough, his hips are crystal-clear on the X-rays: no signs of dysplasia, despite a lifetime of the "shepherd walk." Even the vet seemed amazed. On the other paw, the trouble walking has been traced to a bad infection originating in a hind paw, which will require fairly intensive home therapy. They also found that his liver was disturbingly enlarged, so he goes in on Friday for an ultrasound. Otherwise, he seems to doing decently, with no overt signs of trouble (aside from those already mentioned.)

The Blazing Hills

2009-10-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. The days may grow shorter, the skies may grow grayer, the weather may turn colder, but - for a time, at least - the leaves compensate with their own fireworks show.

Now, this part of the country isn't known for its spectacular fall foliage. Unlike back East, we have fewer "show" species. We get gorgeous yellows and golds on our big leaf maples, but to find eye-searingly bright colors, you have to do some looking. Which is what we did today.

Every year, we mean to go looking at fall leaves. And nearly every year, we never do. Things come up. Family plans fall through. Nobody pins down a date. But this morning we had lighter gray skies, and many of the trees around town had been teasing us with color explosions for weeks. Enough was enough. Mom, my sister, and I grabbed our cameras and headed up I-90 to look for fall leaves.

Our first stop (after gas) was Rattlesnake Lake, where we bypassed the lake itself and visited the Cedar River Education Center. We hadn't been there before, and were pleasantly surprised. It featured a cool water feature running around and through the entire facility, a small educational center explaining how water travels from the ocean through the ecosystems, and nice views of Rattlesnake Lake and Rattlesnake Ridge. (No, no rattlesnakes - at one time, evidently, camas plants were abundant in the area, and their seed pods rattled in a manner reminiscent of rattler tails.) A central garden area featured rain drums, which are drums played by rain (or rather driplines) in a random fashion.

A trail near the center led by a row of old maples in their fall yellows and golds, remnants of the old company town that worked the nearby hydroelectric projects.

Inside the interpretive center were some neat displays, including this overhead root ball. Either the illuminated portions were artistic additions, or people should reconsider drinking the water around here...

After that, we poked our way further up the interstate. On a small side road we happened upon a beautiful stand of vine maples and some neat snags.

More meanderings brought us to this picturesque hollow stump.

Further up the way, more vine maples...

And about as high as one can go, with yet more color lighting up the alpine slopes.

On the way back home, we meandered through back roads filled with autumn's glory. The sun finally broke through, painting the world in vibrant colors beyond my ability to photograph, let alone describe.

In a few short weeks, the color will be gone. The grays and browns and rain-dampened greens will again dominate for the long, cold months until spring returns. I've never minded the grays so much, being a local native. Even so, I still enjoy this last burst of color. It may not rank high on a national level, but it's enough for me.

And Thus The Madness Begins

2009-10-05T22:53:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, at my workbench, I cut a length of wire.

In and of itself, not so momentous an event, but it marked the official start of the 2009 Holiday Ornament Blitz.

I'd been gathering ideas and materials since early September, but today was the first time I actually started using said ideas and materials in some concrete manner. For me, it's a relatively early start, but I have a significant workload I hope to tackle this year, and as anyone who has ever made things for the holidays can attest, there's no such thing as starting too early.

Considering that my budget may not allow for much in the way of actual gift purchases, it puts all the more pressure on to make these things perfect, beautiful, and - above all else - finished by the end of December. Earlier, if I can help it. It would probably go much smoother if I had a firm plan in my mind, but I usually go into these things with only a rough idea of a concept in my head, letting the rest work itself out as material choice clashes with (in)ability and (lack of) talent. I almost never end up with what I thought I'd end up with, though over the years I've noticed that the end results tend to look marginally better as I go along.

That simple snip of wire marked the beginning of countless sessions sitting at my workbench, fighting wire or clay or paint or beads. It marked the start of numerous rummages through disorganized boxes and drawers and untold last-minute trips to the craft store. It marked the first of many successes and failures and frustrations and all-around hair-pulling that somehow, impossibly, tends to resolve itself into a halfway presentable "thing" in the end. Even though I knew from experience that the creative road is never a straight or easy one, it felt good to start down it once again.

I wonder how it'll all turn out.

Lost Treasures and Other Random Musings

2009-09-29T22:43:00.000-07:00

I've been poking around Half Price books this month, both selling and buying. Being a cheapskate on a very tight budget, I naturally gravitate to the Clearance section. Here, items already being sold for half (or less) of their original retail value are dumped for one, two, three bucks maximum. Books, puzzles, DVDs, computer games... There is nothing inherently wrong about any of these items. Some, as in the games, are not even necessarily used. It's just that nobody else seems to want them. If they make it to the Clearance bin, even Half Price Books doesn't want them anymore.

My latest game purchase from this area was a little game called Space Colony for the PC. (Yes, I only play PC games. The kinds of games I like - RPGs, strategy/sim/city-builders, and such - just don't translate to consoles without significant dumbing down, plus it makes it that much more difficult to find mods to enhance gameplay.) I remember seeing it when it first came out, and I never could justify the price. For three bucks, though, I figured it was worth a try. Couldn't possibly be a bigger disappointment than some games I paid full price for.
Upon opening the box, I was greeted with my first pleasant surprise: a game manual. An honest-to-goodness paper game manual. Game manuals are a lost art. A good game manual not only explains how to play the game, but sets the stage for the playing experience. I remember many drives home from the computer store, sitting in the back seat with a new game, reading the manual. Every page made me more and more eager to load the game. My personal favorite manual ever was the Arcanum manual, but then Arcanum is my favorite RPG of all time. These days, you're lucky if you get a slip of paper telling you how to load the game, or even a PDF file on the disk. Nobody seems to care anymore about creating an atmosphere, setting the stage, whetting the appetite. Space Colony's manual might not have been as thick as Arcanum's, but it succeeded in a way that sterile PDF files and random slips of paper cannot. It made me turn the pages. It made me eager to explore the game. It made me laugh, and anticipate more laughs once I booted up the game itself. It also made me remember the simple joy of reading about a game, the glorious anticipation that a good game manual creates which even the most cleverly-designed box advertizing simply can't do.
When I finally booted the game up, I wasn't disappointed. The humor evident in the manual shone through bright and clear. I've just begun playing, and I'm still learning, but I'm already enjoying it. No, it's no rival to Arcanum, but it's not trying to be. It is, however, just plain fun. It blends shades of classic city-builders with bits of The Sims; keeping the colonists, each with a clear personality, happy is just as important as defending the base from alien attacks and generating wealth. Sadly, the critics panned it (as they seem to pan anything that's not Grand Theft Auto or another first-person-shooter), so the odds of a Space Colony II are essentially nonexistent. But, for me, it made a nice little treasure.

On my most recent visit to the Half Price Books clearance shelves, I snagged a couple older-but-popular titles from the sci-fi/fantasy rack, books I've been meaning to read but haven't had the budget to buy new. One of these was Terry Brooks' Magic Kingdom For Sale - Sold!, the first of his Landover series. The premise - a man buying a magic kingdom through a high-end catalog - intrigued me, and I told myself I'd buy it if I ever found it cheap enough. It was on the shelf for a buck, which even my cheapest cheapskate gene agreed was indeed "cheap enough." When I got it to the car and flipped through it, though, I realized it had a secret. On the title page in front was a signature. A personalized signature, to the previous owner, from Terry Brooks.
I've only ever gotten a personalized signature once. It was early last year, at a local con, when Naomi Novik (author of the wonderful Temeraire series) was in town. I didn't even mean for it to be personalized, but she saw my name on my con ID badge and personalized them anyway. She even spelled my name right, which is something of a feat. I probably should've said something like everyone else did - how much I loved her series, how much I enjoyed the characters, how I'd sell my soul in a heartbeat if doing so would give me her incredible luck and writing skills - but I figured the very fact that I'd purchased a con ticket, bought her books, and stood in line for roughly half an hour for her to deface them with a pen said everything I could think to say, only more eloquently and without my pesky speech impediment.
At some point, in 1994, somebody also purchased a book. Perhaps they were at a convention, as I was, and bought a ticket as well. Or perhaps they were at a local bookstore. They held in their hands a story they loved, written by a person they admired, and they were getting a chance - perhaps their only chance - to meet that person... more, to be acknowledged by that person, if only for half a minute of their time. They waited in line, I suspect, perhaps at least as long as the one I stood in, the anticipation and illogical nervousness building with every step forward. And at last, when they walked away, they bore with them much more than ink besmirching a book. They bore that experience, that moment of joy, of seeing the person who produced a world they so loved to lose themselves in live. Whenever they opened that book, they would remember that moment, and it would make the story that much more special.
How did it end up in Half Price Books, being offloaded in the clearance section with other books nobody seems to care about anymore? Was there some great upheaval that made such treasures expendable? Did the book get lent to a friend and somehow never found its way home? Did the original owner pass away? Or did life just carry them in a different direction, the meaning behind that moment fading as new interests beckoned them forward?
I bought that book for a dollar the other day. Whatever happened to the memory, or the person who bore it, I cannot say, though I can't help but wonder.

--

In other minor news, I made a pleasant discovery. Thanks to Mom's electric brick (a.k.a. the dying notebook she was given as a gift), I learned that my flash drive is malware free! (We figured the computer is on its way to Silicon Heaven anyway, so there was no harm in plugging in the flash drive even if it was infected.) So I don't need to reset on my stories, after all! Of course, now I've lost my excuse to not press forward... unless, of course, I find something else to keep me from writing. Like coming up with long, pointless blog ramblings on work nights.

Blank Slate

2009-09-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

The good news: The Big Black Critter's home from the shop!

More good news: The evil program is gone, gone, gone!

The bad news: So is everything else!

Yep, evidently the problem got so bad that Windows actually crashed out, so they did a format wipe and reinstall. Luckily, my last-minute salvation DVD burn was uninfected, so I saved the pictures I really wanted to save. Unfortunately, all my settings and programs and such are history. I'm in the process of reloading stuff as I type. (My latest issue: trying to get Outlook Express to remember how to reach my e-mail account.)

Oh, well... I needed to clean the hard drive up anyways...

So, today has been spent reinstalling programs and various other bits of hard drive clutter (Word files, pictures, games, etc.) I have a few more things to do - restart my Money budget, a game or two I'd miss if I didn't have them on hand - but for the most part I'm back to where I was, with one exception.

I read a rumor online that my nemesis, the evil malware program, might be capable of writing itself onto flash drives, creating an autorun file. One thing I use extensively is a flash drive. It has all the latest versions of my stories on it, so I can go back and forth between the Critters. I haven't touched it since the BBC went in to the shop, because I don't want to infect the laptop with the big boy's germs. Now, I don't want to reinfect (and rewipe, and reinstall) the desktop tower.

I have two options:

1 - Plug in the flash drive and hope against hope it won't contain anything evil.

2 - Chuck the old flash drive and start over from scratch. (Well, not quite scratch - I have older versions backed up elsewhere - but the work of the past several months would be toast.)

Oh, well... I was thinking about restarting anyway.

Another Quick Computer Update

2009-09-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

The computer shop called this afternoon.

The Big Black Critter is ready to come home.

Unfortunately, I was fighting my way home from the zoo in rush hour traffic, and going out of my way to swing by the shop just wasn't going to happen.

So, tomorrow I find out what damage was done. (The shop guy mentioned something in the message, but his enunciation and accent combined to make his words virtually unintelligible. I think - think - they had to reformat and reinstall Windows, but they may or may not have saved my info. All I really could pick out was that my computer was ready to be picked up.)

Hopefully this means I can clear two trips' worth of pictures off my camera, not to mention getting back into story writing. (I'm afraid to use the flash drive I'd been using to store my stories, as one report hinted that Personal Guard 2009 liked to sneak exe-files onto flash drives. Not that the story was going so hot to begin with, but still, that's a lot of work down the tubes if it's on a corrupt drive. Maybe if it's the first thing I try to reinstall, so I don't have so much to lose...)

Guess I'll head off. Got some general websurfing to do. There's also an annoyingly loud fly in my room that I'm trying to lull into landing; the cats seem uninterested in fulfilling their roles as pest control devices, so it's up to me to eject the unwanted insect.

I think it's finally landed....

Quick Computer Update

2009-09-21T22:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it's gone My computer, that is. To the shop from whence it came, in the hopes that they can remove the foul infiltrator. They have a sufficient backlog that they don't expect to even look at it for a few days. The guy who took the info seemed to actually listen to what we were saying, though, and he read my printout. (I'd written out, as near as I could, what was wrong, what I'd tried to do about it, and what I wanted done, so there'd be a written copy in case of communication issues.) They hadn't heard of PG2009, but I have a sneaking suspicion I won't be the only customer they see with this problem before the year's out; looks like the latest fad in spy/malware is mimicking antivirus software and trying to trick you into "activating" it.

All things considered, today went pretty well, aside from the whole wishing-I-had-my-desktop-back thing. I made a Half Price Books run that netted me over ten bucks (it was 15 before I bought a PC game on clearance - maybe knowing it has a fun little game waiting for it will encourage the Big Black Critter to cooperate with the repair people and get home all the sooner....) We had lunch out, then grabbed dipped cones at DQ, because we hadn't had dipped cones in ages. Then we went to the lake to walk off lunch in the beautiful weather.

Today was also another good day for dragonflies. I've seen a large number of them this year; the last time I washed my car, a huge blue-green fellow hovered within a foot of me to watch the process with evident fascination. I like to think of them as good luck; if nothing else, they're a reminder of the strange and wonderful things in a world far bigger and more interesting than one's own minor little irritations.

Guess I'll head off. The LBC wants to update, so I suppose I should let it do so in peace.

Curse You, Mercury Retrograde...

2009-09-19T17:28:00.000-07:00

I'm typing this on the Little Black Critter whilst I await the results of a bootup virus scan on the Big Black Critter (a.k.a my regular desktop PC.) Spybot found a vaguely worrisome thing, and I've noticed an apparently harmless program that doesn't want to be deleted, so I figured it wasn't worth my while to ignore it. After Spybot's done, I might give the thing a rest for a bit, then go in with Norton to be extra-sure the problem's resolved.

It started round about the time I last did a Quicktime update; a program called Personal Guard 2009 turned up, and kept turning up. I haven't noticed any particular "issues" - slow runtimes, corrupted files, etc. - but when I delete a program I prefer it to stay deleted. Hence today's long and tedious runs through spyware/malware filters and virus scans.

While the BBC was puttering away on that, I booted up the LBC, at which time I remembered that I'd been meaning to get a free antivirus software on this critter for some time. (I refuse to pay for two Norton subscriptions...) Well, no time like the present... Of course, the first thing it wanted to do was a bootup scan.

At least I got some sketching done whilst both computers scanned themselves.

Dang. The BBC just finished Spybot's bootup scan, which claimed it rooted out the problem, and then Norton squashed something. And now the BBC seems to think this "Personal Guard 2009" - which I did not download, at least not intentionally - is the default AV program, instead of Norton. So I'm running a full Norton scan.

I so did not want to get this sucker in to a shop... part of my scanning obsession was that it was about time for me to back up my PC again. (I suppose it's a bad idea to back up files from a potentially infected computer... even if they're just image files, as that's what I'm most worried about losing at this point.)

Oh, well... part of the reason I got the LBC was for just such an emergency...

Here's hoping Norton does the trick. If not, the LBC just found a site on Google with a removal tool - yes, Personal Guard 2009 is indeed spyware, and potentially malicious spyware at that.

Fingers and mousewires crossed....

UPDATE - Well, it's later the same night. To cut a long, curse-laden story short, the BBC goes into the shop at the soonest convenience. It still runs, but I am unable to permanently extract the malicious programs. (It got increasingly annoying the more I tried... and, evidently, it never did reset itself as the default antivirus; that's one of its popup windows, which mimics the Windows screen almost perfectly.) I tried three different spyware tools, and the only one that might have caught it - that "free removal tool" I mentioned - forgot to say that, yes, it may detect problems, but you have to pay a 30 buck subscription fee to get it to actually do anything about what it detected. Nothing else came near it. Norton doesn't seem to know it's there, but it seems to block several of its false popup windows. My sister and I even tried the manual removal instructions, which did exactly nothing. So unless the bugger went in and activated System Restore, we have no clue where it's hiding on the hard drive. Just what the budget needed...

Oh, the title: Mercury's gone retrograde, which makes a great excuse for major technological problems. The computer on the belt at work had trouble last week, and now my computer's been hit. Keep an eye on your own electronic devices... it may come after you next...

It is Done (More or Less)

2009-09-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

Nearly two weeks of file transfers.

A full day of wrestling with FTP.

And a cold to cap it all off.

But it's done...

Brightdreamer Books - The Reboot

It's a bit bare-bones at the moment, but the content's all there. Feel free to let me know what you think of the new layout and such.

The Rainbow Eternal

2009-09-06T22:49:00.000-07:00

Today dawned wet and cool under gray skies. We were promised storms and thunder, and that's what we got: gray skies, rain in buckets, intermittent lightning, and random sunbreaks. In short, a perfect autumn storm to usher out the last official weekend of summer.

During this wild weather, we also saw a rainbow.

It started as a faint line in the sky, barely discernable against the background clouds. It was so dim, in fact, it was easiest to see if you focused your eyes just beyond it, or to the side: if you stared directly at it, it vanished like a mirage. We were at my grandfather's house with Grandpa, my aunt, and my uncle, so we all looked at the rainbow through the windows and admired it, then went on with our gathering. Several minutes later, I looked outside again.

The rainbow was still there, making a full arc across the sky.

In my experience, rainbows are highly transient phenomena. The precise combination of rainfall, sunlight, and viewing angle tend to be golden for very limited times - often just long enough to see the rainbow, run inside the house, and fumble one's camera out of hiding. The way the storms were blowing through today, I expected this rainbow, and its attendant rain and sunbreak, to vanish shortly.

Ten minutes later, the rainbow was still there. Brighter than ever. And it now had a faint twin.

That's when my uncle and I went outside to snap photos of the thing. We watched it for a while longer, marveling at its brightness and completeness - I've only rarely seen full-sky-arc rainbows - before going back inside. Some time later, we decided to leave.

The rainbow waited for us.

All on the drive home, we watched the rainbow. Sometimes it grew brighter, sometimes dimmer. Sometimes I was aimed directly at one of the arc ends, sometimes it arched neatly over the roadway. It followed us through storm and sunshine. It followed us, in fact, all the way home, when it finally vanished with the setting of the sun. All told, that rainbow lasted well over an hour, easily the longest-lasting rainbow I've ever witnessed in my entire life.

We weren't the only ones who noticed it. At a stoplight, I noticed a small flash in the car ahead of us; someone had just tried to take a photo of the rainbow through the car window. (I don't expect it'll come out, but at least they tried.) On the way home we saw a pair of men pulled over by an industrial yard, one standing in front of ugly slag piles while the other held a camera.; As we drove past, we noticed that the rainbow's brilliant end would appear to be just behind the posing man. I found it oddly reassuring to know that we're not the only people who still look up once in a while.

The rest of the day wasn't so spectacular. My grandfather's slipping slowly but surely into that oblivion from which there is no return, evidence of which grew increasingly abundant as the day wore on. My aunt and uncle both have friends going through terrible stretches. Immediate family sometimes grew irritating in that way only immediate family can irritate. Somehow, though, knowing there are still beautiful and mysterious things in the world helped me make it through.

Thank you for the eternal rainbow, Universe. It was greatly appreciated.

-----

For the curious, Operation Mountain Relocation Phase 1 (i.e., updating my book review website) continues to progress, if at the pace of frozen molasses. I'm down to two more letters - M and N, representing 73 reviews - to transfer. After a bit more tweaking and some style refinement, I hope to publish the results by next weekend. Stay tuned...

Moving the Mountain

2009-09-01T22:33:00.000-07:00

I've been talking about site revamps for well over a year now. I've poked at books. I've picked at websites. I hemmed and hawed and fretted and paced, but I kept not doing anything. Every time I sat down to make a decision, the whole weight of the site transfer came down on my shoulders. It was like trying to move a mountain with a teaspoon... and I couldn't decide which teaspoon to use.

Last week, I finally had had enough of myself.

"Self," I said,"you're an indecisive, lazy idiot who needs to just sit down and get this thing started."

Well, I can't talk to myself like that without getting a reaction. So I wandered off and grabbed a cup of cocoa, then played a video game.

"Self," I said again,"knock it off."

I rearranged some books and hung a picture.

"Self," I sighed,"just sit down, shut up, and do it."

I figured I was pretty serious by this point, and I didn't want to lose my cocoa privileges. So, one fine Wednesday afternoon, I sat down. I booted up HTML-Kit, the free site editor I'd scrounged online. And so began the Great Site Transfer of 2009. I figured I'd start with Brightdreamer Books, because I wanted new graphics before I redid Skyhaven. Besides, the book reviews were relatively straightforward, and transferring them from FrontPage to the new program would be good practice.

How far am I?

So far, I've transferred 295 reviews (A - E and S - Z; I find attacking the alphabet from either end helps it seem less monotonous.) If it sounds impressive, remember: I've been at it for seven days. And I have 629 reviews in total to transfer before I can officially update.

I was right. I am a lazy idiot...

Of course, it's not so simple as swapping pages. FrontPage generated a lot more junk code than I'd anticipated, so I'm having to selectively cut and paste each entry. I've also found several minor errors I needed to fix; grammar, spelling and the like. Compounding this is the fact that I'm changing the layout of reviews significantly, making it easier to update in the future but a pain in the rear to set up initially. So it's gonna be a few weeks before the finished product's online for the whole world to ignore.

In the meantime, those who are so inclined can see any new reviews I come up with posted at my second blog, Brightdreamer's Book Reviews. This will act as the "New Reviews" section for future site updates, with reviews eventually being archived on the site proper. And, yes, I have a new review there right now.

Guess I'd best get back at it. The mountain ain't gonna move itself...

Monster in the Woods

2009-08-24T00:15:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, we went for a walk in the woods at a nearby trailhead. It being a particularly popular trailhead and a sunny Sunday to boot, there were a fair number of other hikers, everything from stick-toting pros to barely-walking infants. Despite the traffic and attendant noise, we spotted a few snakes, a handful of birds and squirrels, and two dragonflies. Among the two-legged fauna, we spotted torn-black-hose Goth chicks, smokers too selfish and oblivious to reconsider carrying smoldering ashes into a tinder-dry forest (who later flicked their dead butts into a lake), and a man yakking on a cell phone and completely oblivious to where he was. (Ironically, he was doing so as he wandered past a trail marker bearing a quote from Thoreau, in which he wondered why anyone would go into the woods if their mind wasn't there with them.) But, disturbing as some of these were, they were nothing compared to the Monster in the Woods.

She had blond curly hair and carried a stuffed blue parrot. She couldn't have been older than four or five. As she walked along the trail, she pointed her finger at everything - stumps, trees, her family, and other hikers. And she repeated the same phrase.

"Bang! I kill you. Bang! I kill you."

"It's just a kid thing," her dad laughed as we stared in disbelief.

The look on that girl's face said it wasn't just a kid thing. She knew she was saying something nasty. She knew she would get away with it. And she enjoyed it. Too much. A little brat with no parental control, completely desensitized to guns and the concept of killing anything and anyone she points at.

Beware the Monster in the Woods.

Wish I Was There

2009-08-19T22:26:00.000-07:00

This morning, the Golden Taurus departed for a three-day trip to the ocean.

It carried my mom and my dad. It picked up my uncle and my grandfather. At some point, it will meet my aunt.

It did not, you may note, carry me.

This was a somewhat spur-of-the-moment trip, and the spur hit the moment too late for me to request time off. (Which is remarkably ironic, as I received a letter last week from HR complaining that I'd accumulated too many vacation hours.) My uncle's vacations occur at about the same frequency as ice ages, and Grandpa... well, for one thing he's 90 years old, and for another he's a fading shadow of the man I knew growing up. So this may be the last "big thing" they do as a family with him around.

Considering mobility and comfort issues, I figured that the Golden Taurus was a much better option than the other cars the family had available, so I sent it along with them. Meanwhile, I'm borrowing Mom's car to get to work and back.

Today, I slung books with a persnickity crane and stubborn computer that locked up for three hours yesterday, resulting in a massive backlog today. Because it continued to fight us, I get to go in extra-early tomorrow to help whittle the numbers down. (I suppose it worked out okay, me not taking vacation this week, as I'll earn at least two hours of overtime by being here to work them, instead of the standard hours I'd have filed for had I been gone. Still sucks having to get up at 6 AM...) The guy who fills the candy bowl is in Vegas, so we're down to old Tootsie Rolls and a few butterscotch things; the candy bowl is pretty much the main "perk" of the job. After work, I helped wrestle a broken recliner out of the house and pick up the debris generated by furniture rearrangement and washed a sinkful of dishes. Then we drove over to water Grandpa's yard and grab pizza for a late dinner, after which I washed another sinkful of dishes, fed various hungry critters, dumped some trash, and crawled online to clear e-mail and try to shut my brain down sufficiently for an unnaturally early bedtime. Nowhere in there did I manage to pick up a sketchbook or poke at a story, or even just sit down for more than a few minutes.

Today, the Golden Taurus got to taste the ocean air for possibly the first time in its existence. When I called to see if they'd made it okay (Mom was supposed to call when they got there, and round about 5 my sister and I got a bit worried), they were already having a ball. I think Mom needed this vacation more than she realized... not just to the ocean, but away from us for a bit. They'd walked on the beach. They had a big lunch. They saw a doe with three fawns and heard rumors of a cougar sighting in the area. After we talked, they were going to head out to the beach again.

Wish I was there...

Stylin'

2009-08-09T15:38:00.000-07:00

In my efforts to bring my websites up to date (or at least significantly closer to date), today marks a small but significant milestone.

Today, for the first time ever, I successfully wrote and implemented a style sheet.

Now, this probably seems like a spectacular non-event to most people, but to me it's big. I spent many years relying on FrontPage to determine how my sites looked and behaved, so taking matters into my own hands and writing out the code - in Notepad - felt like a major accomplishment. No, the results aren't published. Truth be told, they're downright hideous, on purpose. I've been cobbling together a "test web" on my computer to play with, so I wanted to see right away if the style sheet took or not. When they did, and when I successfully modified them without crashing anything out, I wanted to cheer. I probably would have, except I didn't want the cats staring at me, wondering what kind of freak they live with and why she can't let them nap. (They stare at me like that enough already...)

No, I don't have a life...

Unfortunately, the fact that I'm becoming more aware of the power of CSS and coding means I'm even more reluctant to rebuild my sites using software that generates junk code - which, evidently, rules out pretty much all WYSIWYG editors. I do still need some software to check coding, though, and I like having tools on hand to help with some of the drudgery of site generation and maintenance (navigation trees, updating/checking links, etc.) So I've been poking around online trying to track down free/cheap HTML editing software. Right now, I'm toying with HTML-Kit, because the free version fits my budget. (It's only 65 bucks to register and get more toys, which isn't entirely impossible - unlike the triple digits some big name site authoring software wants.) Any recommendations on that front would be appreciated, though I'm rapidly approaching decision time: I expect I'll start actively recoding sites in a week or two, starting with Brightdreamer Books before moving on to a complete re-imagining of Skyhaven (which will not be named Skyhaven anymore - no new name yet, but I'm working on it.)

Guess I'll get back at it...

Meltdown

2009-07-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

Temperatures continue to rise locally. We're in the midst of a record-setting heat wave; they predict triple digits tomorrow and Thursday. I work tomorrow and Thursday, and Friday. In the only building the county library system owns that doesn't have AC, despite the fact that not only do we work harder, on an hourly basis, than the other pages, but the Great Machine hates heat with a passion. I'm already little more than a puddle draped over my computer chair and the keyboard.

This, I think, will be Not Fun (TM).

But I relish the opportunity to overheat whilst slinging books in a stifling warehouse with a persnickity crane.

Why?

Because I won't be dealing with the Electric Brick.

I gotta give Mom credit. She's hunting through every dark corner and back alley of the Internet trying to get this thing to work for her. It'll go online happily at the store where she works. It just will not accept a signal from my router, and we cannot find a way to update the driver for the thing. She also can't get around the admin lockouts to clear space on the hard drive.

Amazingly, she actually found a few message boards with posts from people in her exact condition: old notebook-type computers, free from a friend of a friend, with no disks and no proof of ownership and no way past passwords and other annoying crud left by thoughtless previous owners who didn't know enough to wipe everything but the bare bones basics from a computer they're dumping. Unfortunately, the only solutions she's found seem to be Catch-22's. The latest frustration? She found a program that's supposed to reset/clear administrator passwords. In order to use it, one has to log in as the administrator.

Personally, I'm starting to wonder if the XP Pro upgrade's entirely legitimate. I could've sworn all XP versions came with a free unzipping program, but this one has a copy of WinZip that wouldn't work because the "free trial period" had expired. (I jumped on C-Net and got a free-for-everything-forever unzipper, so at least she has an unzipper. Which she used to unzip the program which wouldn't work, because she can't log in as administrator. Oh, and it claims it won't work on laptops, even though Mom found the link to the program on a forum thread answering a question from a fellow locked-out laptop owner.)

Hopefully, the Electric Brick will be on its way to a repair shop eventually. First, we have to call to see if there's anything they can do with it. Short of hurling it through the window, that is.

I'll do that for free.

Happily.

It'll let the breeze in...

Stubbornly Productive (Almost)

2009-07-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

Today I crawled out of bed before 6 AM. I don't voluntarily do this, but I had to work - I'm going over the 69-hour page limit at work and they're short-handed this month, so I've been picking up all sorts of extra hours. The downside is the early wake-up on days I normally get to sleep in; I'll see the upside when I get the paycheck.

Despite the Great Machine pitching the occasional fit, we finished the load early, but we didn't get to go home early, as is the usual drill; we instead filled out the time chiseling away at the deleted-book backlog. (This is where old library books go to die, or at least be removed from the system.)

I came home and intended to do Something Productive with my day. After all, I have a car that, after our ongoing dry streak, seriously needs washing. I have stories that need editing, and sketchbooks that need filling. I have web stuff to study and sites to plot overhauls on. I have a workbench that needs cleaning up, and projects that need starting once said workbench is cleaned up.

I forgot about family.

I forgot that my mother just got a freebie used laptop, and - because I bought a wireless router - I've apparently been elected Tech Support Person, charged with getting an overloaded third-hand Pentium II dinosaur to play nice with our network.

I forgot about the various yard projects my sister's working on, that occupy the front yard hoses and hose attachments and make getting a hose to my car difficult.

I forgot that I'm evidently the only person capable of making dinner, let alone washing the dishes afterwards and putting them away.

I forgot that Dad tends to let recycling pile up in inconvenient places (like, say, the dish drying rack.)

I forgot that the neighbors' idea of weekend fun is to blast old whiny country music as loud as their stereo will go, until it can be clearly heard all around our property and nearly through closed doors. (I can't seem to gain support for my plan to retaliate with a boom box and a CD of the Wicked Tinkers...)

So, no, I cannot say I filled a single sketchbook page today. I didn't get to work on my websites, nor did I get near my workbench.

But I washed that car, dang it.

And I vacuumed it, too. Just to prove they couldn't stop me.

Thunder Sky and Website Ponderings

2009-07-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

Last night, I watched a spreading smear of gray across the sunset: clouds, towering and wispy-edged. I welcomed them, waiting for the first drops to fall, but none came. All night and through the day, the clouds hung overhead, now dark and gray, now thin and white, but always there. Taunting. Mocking. At last, this evening, I heard them rumbling in the distance. And then the raindrops fell, cleansing the skies.

The rains have come, if briefly, at last.

We of the itching noses and throbbing sinuses rejoice in this day.

--

Nearly halfway through July, and nothing worth blogging about. I suppose that's a good thing, in a way. I'm still hacking away at the mountain of ignorance between me and a better understanding of HTML/CSS and related website arcana. My goal is to post brand-new websites before the end of 2009. To that end, I updated Brightdreamer Books for probably the last time before I overhaul my web presence. I'm still deciding what I want to do with my sites, and how I want them to go about doing it. The more I learn, the more I'm intrigued by possibilities, and the more I'm plagued by too many options. I'd like to keep my reviews up and running, if only because it took me ten years to bust 600-odd reviews and I'm loathe to chuck them in the recycle bin, even if I'm probably the only human being who knows they're on the Internet. Most likely, my book reviews won't change drastically in content, only in style and background coding. (I also need to figure out if there's any way to promote an amateur book review site; it would be nice if I got a little something back out of my Amazon.com affiliation other than an excuse to add cover illos to my reviews.)

As for Skyhaven... well, the days of click-and-take cyberpets seem to have gone by the wayside, save for specialty sites (read: cliques) like Gaia online, Pony Island and the like. (It's possible some cyberpet-like entities exist on MySpace or Facebook, but I don't have accounts at either place and have no plans to get them, as they sound like royal pains in the arse to manage.) No, the trend now is interactive cyberpets, along the lines of NeoPets, Virtual Horse Ranch, and other places designed to eat one's free time (and often one's money: pay subscriptions are gaining ground in the cyberpet world as well.) Even grade-schoolers seem capable of launching (if not necessarily maintaining) interactive pet sites, and I must admit part of me is tempted to give it a shot. Fun as it looks, though, I don't think it's going to happen For one thing, there are only 24 hours in a given day. For another, the moment you deal with interactivity and subscriptions, you open a whole can of worms I've spent my life avoiding: dealing with people. Sure, some of the potential players would be nice and friendly, but it's the Other Kind that ruin things. The idiots who refuse to read rules and spam help forums and e-mail with poorly-spelled run-on sentences demanding assistance. The beggars. The trolls. The disgruntled players (or ex-players) who take out their frustrations with hacks and viruses. I just plain don't want to deal with them.

So, what am I to do with Skyhaven? Delusional as I am, I've always considered the site's strong suit to be the story, the words and the backgrounds I threw together. They were as much the excuse for the adoptable critters as the critters were the excuse for the words. When I tried redesigning the Skyhaven Hunt to eliminate most of the writing, the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure "old school" style, I found I lost much of my motivation to continue. It just didn't feel as fun on my end as I thought it might. I guess I'm still mostly a writer at heart, and the new Skyhaven will have to honor that if it's going to survive. Right now, I'm contemplating ways to merge the old-school text adventure style with something that might appeal to today's instant-gratification market. I don't want to abandon all progress, but it needs to be on my terms, and employed in a way that fits with my creative style.

In the meantime, I'm still trudging ahead with my Internet education. Somewhere in that tangle of codes and acronyms and scripting languages lies the key to realizing the future of my sites.

The Halfway Mark: Resolution Update

2009-06-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

The above is the result of several days of playing camera tag with the local goldfinches. We usually don't have that many - indeed, we stopped feeding nyger thistle seed some years ago due to total lack of interest - but this is an unusual year, apparently. Not only do we have goldfinches hanging around (at least two pairs of them), but the thistle feeder's been perhaps the most active one in the yard; birds'll fight each other for the privilege of a perch. I think it may have something to do with the loss of local thistle fields; most of the open land where they used to find wild thistle has been "reclaimed" in the past couple years. So maybe we're the only game in town for thistle seed eaters. Or maybe thistle is a distant relative of tobacco, and the birds actually are as addicted to the stuff as they act.

Okay, back to the title...

Today being the last day of June, the sixth month of the year, we are now halfway through 2009. In the interest of wasting time and internet space, it seems like a good time to check how I'm doing on that resolution list from January.

Develop More Income Sources. (Bonus: Obtain Business License.) - Well, I can't claim much success on this front, unfortunately.
Spend at least one hour daily creating. (Bonus: Start online sketchbook.) - If "one hour daily" can be counted as "one hour daily, at least five/six days a week," then, yes, I'm definitely seeing progress here. At least, I'm doing much, much better on this front than I was last year. As for the bonus, I started my ConceptArt.Org sketchbook on January 1, and the thread's up to five pages. I think I've posted at least one new item a week, usually more than that. Hooray for me... now, if only I could actually start to show measurable artistic growth...
Follow through on at least one creative book/site/course. (Bonus: Develop 2D/3D/animation program skills.) - I started out okay here, but I seem to have fallen off the wagon somewhere in mid-spring or so. I blame the weather... and the pollen count.
Finish at least one marketworthy story. (Bonus: Submit said story/stories for publication.) - Nope, hasn't happened yet, though I'm forcing my way forward on a couple of my stalled-out monstrosities; with any luck, I'll be able to check this one off by my birthday. I'm not holding my breath, though...
Overhaul web presence. (Bonus: Relearn "basic" skills - HTML, CSS, etc.) - After some serious procrastination, I've finally started moving foward on this project. (The observant may note the new Link of Interest - W3 Schools - where one can learn such things for free online.) As I thought, things have changed in ten years, and the stuff I got away with back when I started the sites looks like it won't work these days, or much longer into the future. I think it'll be easier to start over from scratch than simply retrofit my old sites to the newer standards, but if it needs doing it needs doing. Once more, I hope to have something to show for it this fall, but we'll see how it goes.
Organize, clean, weed out my space. (Bonus: Rearrange shelving/storage.) - I won't lie. I haven't made any progress on this front. If anything, I've backslid. Fortunately, budget issues mean I haven't accumulated too much extra junk.
Walk/exercise at least 3x weekly. (Bonus: Walk even on work days.) - Eh, what can I say? I have good weeks and bad (a.k.a. lazy) weeks here. Hopefully I can have more good weeks than bad by the end of the year.

So, that's how I've been doing. I feel like I'm doing better on resolution follow-through than I was this time last year, so we'll see if I can carry the momentum through to the end of December.