Not that it seems to be waiting on my permission out there. Very sloppy commute this morning.
I think I deserve more points. I've been watching the entire run of BtVS during a weeks-long marathon, and I haven't been coming over here Spike-blogging even once.
I mention this because my brain is all full of S7 Spike today and yet I am nobly refraining from inflicting this upon you. (Okay, not so much refraining.)
It's an odd fandom for me. I go all obsessive about the canon (and, okay, about one character, although Willow and Giles share corners of my heart) but I have absolutely no desire to read or write in the fandom. (Least of all do I want to read Xander-slash since, next to Dawn, Xander is one of the most tiresome characters in the show for me. And Dawn, make no mistake, is amazingly tiresome. Last night, as I watched, I found myself fast-forwarding through her scenes, even in eps I've never seen before.)
I did find both Cordy and Anya more entertaining this time than I did the last time I watched the show. Cordy, especially, really grew on me.
Anyhow. The phone was already ringing when I walked in at 7:45 this morning. So I went right to work. It's 9:15 now and I have a 10:00 call for which I need to prepare (remember what it is I've done for the past couple of weeks and be prepared to discuss it), as well as having at least seven really critical calls to make today.
I need to get my head in the game and not be all focused on platinum blonds, okay? I cannot be thinking about ensoulled Spike, all muscled up and looking angsty.
(Okay, now I'm all sweaty and overheated...but we'll assume that's the IC and has nothing to do with Those Eyes.)
(Mmmm. Spike.)
(Stop that!)
In other non-news, the latest draft of the blasted SEN is well underway.
I pulled a seven-hour marathon on it yesterday, deleting and stuff. (I was supposed to be spending the day shopping and whatnot with a friend, but she had to cancel when one of her kids got sick, so I wound up with time on my hands and a task I knew had to be done.)
I've pulled 29,000 words out of it. So far. Pretty much the entire case story has disappeared. I had to change the "function" of the case, not that it served much of a function the way it was. Now the essential non-functionness of it is less of a problem, so that's good.
I still need to do more rewrites because the slash story remains halting and lame, but it's...better. The ending is massively lame, but as time goes b y I find I care less and less about that and more and more about the other, shorter, and consequently much more entertaining story ideas I have notes for.
Anyhow. Now I'm trying to decide if I have enough paper left to reprint the SEN, or if I need to hit the office supply store on my way out today.
Today, I'm lunching with a different friend, doing large amounts of laundry, including a lot of hand-washing I've allowed to stack up, cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming, dusting, making a pot of soup for next week's lunches, and figuring out a way to clean the coffee pot. (Owing to a little miscalculation about whether or not the pot was properly centered under the drip, I managed to cause a back-up in the filter. Now there are coffee grounds in the water chamber and in every crack and crevice inside the stupid machine. )
I love Sundays. I always think of them as my "down time" when I don't have a schedule to follow. The one day of the week I can just lounge around, drinking coffee, and not completing a list, you know? It's a mystery to me how I wind up with such a long list some weeks.
Like...I've almost finished the rewrites of the website, but I have to reformat all of those rants. (although it occurs to me that I could just not, you know? That was all so long ago and I have trouble working up enthusiasm for wasting another week reformatting old stuff when I could be creating entirely new reams of junk.)
It's gray and foggy right now. We're supposed to have snow later. My only hope is that, if we do, it comes early enough for them to get the roads cleaned up before rush hour tomorrow. I don't want a repeat of that two-hour commute I endured after the last storm.
On the other hand, I do have plans today, so I don't want it to come before then, you know? About 3:00 would be good. I should be on my way home by then.
I'm not sure I really had anything to say. I just felt like blogging with my morning coffee, you know?
I really do have a lot of story ideas. All PWPish, but I'm at peace with that. I wish I could get the SEN-monster off my back.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:01 AM | Comments (2)I'm totally stuck for anything specific to blog about.
I mean, my computer just let me down as I was trying to log into our conferencing software. That was embarrassing in front of a potential client but we've rescheduled the meeting.
The DarkGlass study may be going by the wayside. That's not good news when you consider that the people funding Hell's Own Software seem to be suffering from ADD. Our funding for that project may not last past the end of this year. The distant spectre of re-unemployment looms in the distance....
I wrote some pointless dialogue for some pointless DS and Sen stories a short while back. I've been reviewing all of it and have decided it's not bad, so I'm going to go ahead and construct pointless PWPish stories around each hunk o'dialogue.
I received, as I think I said previously, the read-through of the SEN from A Kind Friend. I read her comments and accept the validity of all of the criticisms. I just haven't been able to decide how to implement the necessary changes.
Some substantial deletions will be involved, which is simple enough (and which I'm totally looking forward to), but I'll need a whole chunk of new stuff to replace those sections and I've been pondering what to do.
Brooding. Lynn is on the road for the next eight or nine days, which means I have all the peace and time anyone could expect to reconstruct the story. I wonder if I'll actually do any of it? She was gone last night but all I did was watch episodes of BtVS and play computer games. (Spike. Nekkid. Heh.)
Ferd the Laptop has...I don't like Ferd. The name, I mean, not the laptop. I've decided the name is insufficiently...I don't know. Something. It's not appropriate, anyhow. Let's just say that the Computer Previously Known As Ferd, as anyone who knows me would have suspected, has mostly been put to use to play games so far.
But I totally intend to use it for writing. That's the justification I gave myself when I bought it and that's how I'm going to use it. Eventually.
Failing, as I did today, to discover any remnant of my work ethic, at one point I found myself poking around in the old stats program, looking to see what there was to see.
Much amusement and not a little disgust can be produced by such a search. (For example, those searching for "rps" about Adr**n P**l are welcome to go away and never come back.)
Also, by way in information, it's called mpr*g and not "pr*gn*nc* sl*sh"
S*x**l topics remain the number one category for search phrases that pull this blog. Some of these searches I didn't even understand. I've run across the concept of b*d*s*m and I've run across the game of cricket...but the words together...I just don't want to know. (Actually, the b*d*etc. thing appears in a scary number of searches.)
Apparently someone asked Jeeves for a recipe for y*g*rt. I suggest buying your own, it's only 50 cents for a fruit-flavored 8-ounce carton, after all.
I am reasonably sure I never posted instructions for building a br*ck m**lb*x...all of those stupid asterisks are just too incomprehensible, so let's just be brave and spell it out...for a brick mailbox. Sorry. Nor do I know how to fix a broken pipe, beyond the obvious. (#1 - Duct tape. If that doesn't work, #2 - Plumber.)
People search the web to find the calories in a lot of substances. Nutritional information is not just one more service provided on this site. Sorry. (Except that I will tell the person who needs to know how many calories to burn in order to lose a pound - the answer is 3,500. And the average "walk" that the average person takes to "exercise" burns about 80 calories. So put down the cinnamon role and back away from the fudge brownies. You do not "walk off" the calories from that banana cream pie in 20 minutes. You "walk off" 1-1/2 Hershey Kiss in that amount of time.)
Many individuals are also searching the web for cheats and walkthroughs to various games. I, myself, have taken advantage of online walkthroughs for many GameBoy games, and I'm delighted to be in the position of giving back just a little help.
Re: "insaniquarium cheats final boss." I don't know about the on-line version, but if you've downloaded and registered the game, the best answer I have is to remember that clicking the "menu" button will pause the game. I pause a couple of times during the final boss to rest my mouse hand and to glance over the screen to make sure I don't have a little blue alien running around, gobbling my pets without me knowing about it.
I do from time to time, write about fandom morons, but that's just from my perspective, donchaknow. No idea who if anyone would agree with me, but there are a lot of people online discussing that topic and many of us are pointing, one suspects, at each other.
I can't help but suspect that the poor soul searching for information on "head twinges" is, like myself, a bit of a hypochondriac and afraid they're developing a tumor.
You will find, on this site, no information about Keith Hamilton Cobb except for the part about me thinking he's pretty sexy.
Nor will you find links to M*ld*r and Sc*ll* Er*t*ca because I think it's icky.
Also? The things you do while reading sl*sh? I don't want to know.
If you have VPL while wearing a thong? Buy larger pants.
Some needed to know, "what to do if your office has water damage" and my suggestion would be, "take the day off."
And, finally, to the person looking for, "you can t take that away from me Tony Bennett"? I like you best.
In terms of labeling, what I think would be more useful would be a Quality and Canon system, you know? Every story would get two ratings. One for the quality of writing and one for how closely it adheres to the actual universe in which the story is, presumably, as fanfiction of that universe, set.
Canon
A = Superb grasp of characterization and universe
B = Excellent, amazingly accurate
C = Very well done
D = Adequate
E = Canon and characters not well-defined
F = What universe was this again?
An AU, of course, wouldn't get a Canon rating, but you could still Quality-rate it.
Quality
1 = Kill. Me. Now.
2 = Eye, meet sharp stick
3 = Hurt to read, but I'll get over it
4 = Enjoyable moments, could have been much worse
5 = Not bad, not bad. Some good stuff there
6 = Is there any more like this?
7 = Recruiting material!
Seriously. This would be a lot more useful than most of the labels people use today. Forget labeling content (except for my squicks). Label the thing with something that tells me if it's worth reading.)
Or...go ahead...label for squicks. That would be a color-coding system.
Red = Excessive violence (death, rape, psychological or physical torture, maiming)
Orange = Extreme violence (mutilation, beating, minor psychological or physical torture)
Yellow = Moderate violence (abundance of pain and suffering, possible threat of death or rape)
Green = Canon-level violence
Blue = No violence, or no more than moderate hurt, balanced by an abundance of comfort.
Indigo = Sweetness and light abound
Violet = BunnyLand (Warning: pet names, baby talk, animated toys, and other excesses)
If you say a story is F1-Red...well, that pretty much says it all.
A story would be B3-Green for an author who has an excellent grasp of the canon universe but whose story is just not well-written.
A story could be F7-Yellow and if you have the tolerance and you care more about a well-told story than you do about a particular canon...you'll jump in with glee.
I wouldn't read anything below C6 unless I was really rabid about a fandom and there wasn't much available, in which case I'd go D4 in my weaker moments.
(I'd read only Green - Indigo. Should I start thinking that reading about someone suffering is "entertainment," I'll read the news for a few days and cure myself of that delusion.)
Sitting in on someone else's meeting for an hour is so boring.
You know what I hate? I hate when someone hires you for a job because you have 10 years of experience at it...and then expects you to play receptionist/shipping clerk/travel agent on top of it, you know?
I continue to insist that I cannot imagine anyone treating a male employee this way. If they hired a man with ten years of sales account experience, no one would expect him to fend off solicitors, answer the phones, or make other people's travel arrangements, okay?
If Buehler hadn't noticed my frustration and sat down and booked the contractor's travel plans himself, I'd be feeling very bitter at the moment. But he did and now I feel like I was being unreasonable for staring dumbfounded at someone for whom I am the client who thought it was appropriate to "delegate" his work to me.
Also? I'm getting a little uncomfortable with Sterling. He's a very nice man and all and I'm happy to chat with him for a few seconds of a morning and give him a dollar, but I'm not his "girlfriend" and I'm not comfortable with the hugging thing. Some people are huggy...I am not one of them. (He's not hitting on me or anything, he's just being very nice, but I'm not comfortable with it.)
BtVW Seasons 5, 6, and 7 should be appearing today. Weekend festival!
Sorry for the Blogging Lapse. I had four meetings and ten scheduled calls yesterday and I have seven meetings and five scheduled calls today. These kinds of things take up time.
Not much, but marginally.
You'll be glad to know I'm not that single-minded about everything. I mean, I go back and forth on some issues.
Like...story labeling? I'm all "yes, but no, but yes" about that one.
One the one hand, I completely understand the irritation of an author who spends 30,000 words or more building up to an emotional climax in her story, even as she knows the impact has been diluted or destroyed because she was forced to add a "spoiler" label up front to keep the fragile fans from drowning in a pool of tears when they ran across an idea they didn't like.
On the other hand...I don't want to find myself reading something I don't like.
I don't like death stories and I don't want to read them. It's all very well to say it's just a story and that it won't do me any permanent damage, but this is where the good author, the one who can really write, is a liability.
I can read a dozen death stories from TypoidMary(tm) and not blink. She couldn't touch my emotions with a sledgehammer. No talent? No problem.
On the other hand, one story from WonderWriter, someone with actual talent, can fry my brain for a month. Well-written death stories are the ones I fear the most.
Rape stories? Not under any circumstances. Yes, I understand it's one of the most common sexual fantasies for both sexes, but I don't share it. To me, rape is rape and I don't want to read about it happening to characters I love. Or even characters I don't love.
And...well...I have issues around consent. (Rape labeled "non-con" as though that somehow made it not rape? Who are you pretending to fool? I mean, I've backed off from this topic in other forums because this is not the kind of topic where arguing will change anyone's mind, but that doesn't change my private beliefs.) I'm a big believer in consent. I won't read anything that includes non-consent.
The problem probably lies in the different way different people view the characters. To some, a story is a thing they put themselves into and the characters are there to react to them. So, as long as they share whatever fantasy is being presented, the story is okay. It's not only a fantasy, but they have an additional psychological distance from it because it's not actually their fantasy, so there's almost no point at which they cry enough! and bail out. (I sometimes wonder if this is why some fans seem to be able to tolerate and even enjoy astonishing amounts of pain and damage in a story? )
To others, like myself, the characters are alive within the confines of the (well-written) story. These readers don't put themselves into the story because it's already full of real people. And, while they're reading the story, they don't really want to read anything they would be uncomfortable hearing about happening to any real person.
Death and rape are probably my only two real squicks. There's other stuff I don't like (MPreg, etc.) but I can just barf and move on. Or even be amused, if a competent writer constructs a story around such a premise, but that's rare.
Fandom should label for my squicks.
Heh. Heh-heh.
Reality shows we'd really like to see
By Cindy Rodríguez Denver Post ColumnistHow low can TV producers go?
How's this: A reality show in Germany called "Sperm Race" that tests the semen of contestants to see which man is the most virile.
It gets worse.
The same company, Netherlands-based Endemol productions, is working to launch a program in the U.S. called "I Want Your Baby," in which a childless woman in her 40s picks a sperm donor from a group of men.
I wouldn't mind these mindless reality TV shows if there were enough to counterbalance them. But look at the list: "The Real World," "The Apprentice," "Cribs," "Project Runway," "The Simple Life," "Blind Date," "The Surreal Life."
These are self-indulgent, voyeuristic shows that hinge on embarrassing someone.
On the positive side, there are a few good shows - "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and "The Biggest Loser."
Both of those shows are hits, which makes you wonder: Do viewers watch shows like "The Bachelor" because it's what they like, or is it because there's nothing better on?
Narcissism is celebrated in these shows, and an unfortunate effect is that it glorifies materialism.
It makes me wonder why TV producers can't produce more shows like "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," which rehabs the homes of deserving people.
Here are shows I'd like to see.
"Queer Eye for the Crooked Guy": Here the Fab Five have a bigger mission than teaching a frat-boy how to pick fine wine. They have to turn corporate swindlers and embezzlers into honest businessmen.
"Extreme Personality Makeover": In this program, people who are selfish or vain work with counselors and therapists to figure out why they behave that way, then construct a plan to change.
"Ridiculous Millionaire": In this show, the contestant who has the best philanthropic project idea gets $1 million - but must spend it on the project.
There's more. Well worth reading.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)Few fans I know would be willing to stand up publicly and say, "my fandom is okay, your fandom sucks" but I'm willing to do it. (Much of this, of course, is the courage that comes from knowing no one is listening and no one cares what I think anyhow.)
The fandom that says you can slash a character with the actor who plays the character? That sucks.
The fandom that says it's okay to write sex stories using actor's real names? That sucks.
I'd like to say that the fandom that turned women into some evil that has to be erased from the face of the planet to allow the men to boink each other in peace also sucks, but slash has always had a fair amount of misogyny, so I'll just say I strongly disapprove, and we'll move on.
The fandom that says it's okay to mix-and-match an actor's roles? Use the name from Show A and the personality from Show B, mixed together with the fictional universe from Show C? That sucks.
As far as that goes, the fandom that says it's okay to take the character names and nothing else from a show and label it fanfiction for that show? Sucks.
The fandom that says you're entitled to positive and loving strokes because you took the time to type out some words and give them a title? Sucks.
The fandom that says punctuation and grammar aren't important? Sucks. (I know they're important. I'm just not good at them.)
The fandom that says canon isn't important? So. Totally. Sucks.
The fandom that says no one should ever see a negative critique of what they've written? Sucks.
The fandom that took the once-in-a-lifetime and only-for-the-shock-value-gimmick of MPreg and turned it into a genre? Really sucks.
The fandom that turned torture into a genre? Sucks and blows. (Angst and H/C aren't torture. There's a noticeable difference.)
Feel free to add your own suggestions.
Probably I need another Starbucks chocolate drink, don't you think? To soothe the trauma?
The "entertainment" offered by television will continue to suck, even as the mid-season a replacements are aired. Color us all so surprised.
First up:
The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Search" aims to whet appetites, at least among the male demo.
This may just win the "lamest concept of the year" award.
But "The Will" presents a wealthy, 73-year-old rancher looking to name someone to inherit his large Kansas spread. The pack of 10 friends and family members who compete for the honor -- and what a scuzzy and/or silicone-enhanced crowd they are! -- could make you lose your appetite.
Go ahead. Tell me you really believe these shows are about "reality."
Also in the "scraping the bottom of the barrel" department, television is now making television about how to make television.
Situation: Comedy.
For writers, producers, and television executives it's a nerve-racking time where ideas are passionately pitched, made, and the next big hits must be found. Yet outside the industry, the painstaking process that goes into making a "Friends" is relatively unknown ? until now. "Pilot Season," a ten episode series, will bring viewers into the world of television production as the search for the hottest undiscovered writing talent begins.
Yep, it's yet another "reality" show concept.
I'm skipping most of those ddescriptions...which means I'm able to skip most of the mid-season offerings. There are "reality" shows about fashion, cooking, makeovers, dating, magicians, hidden cameras, newlyweds, boxers, and other nightmares, all queuing up for your attention.
I'm also passing by, with eyes averted, from the flood of FBI- and CIA-themed shows, including the one with the trigger-happy agent who shares his house with his family, an alien with attitude, and a talking goldfish. What the television industry needs is more drug-free workplaces.
Most everyone also has a little of the devil -- but not like Christina Nickson, the winsome teen whose parents are a mortal woman and the devil himself. She's the heroine of a new drama, "Point Pleasant," which, might be described as the spawn of "The O.C." and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
I'm still waiting to hear the point.
An exercise in teen-scream hokum, "Point Pleasant" is named for the small but oversexed New Jersey seaside town
Ah. Teenage girls and sex. That must be it.
Production has begun in Rome on "Empire," a sweeping new limited drama series from the executive producers of the Academy Award-winning "Chicago." The period drama focuses on Julius Caesar's nephew, Octavius, who is forced into exile after Caesar's murder, and a fictional disgraced gladiator, Tyrannus, who has sworn to protect him.
I always like a good period drama. I may also try Rome.
the saga of two ordinary roman soldiers and their families in 51 b.c.
But I may not.
Less appealing are some of the other soon-to-be-burnt offerings in production:
The women are sexy, empowered, and their exuberance is impossible to resist.
Sounds very contemporary, until you read that these are the employees of a secret "burlesque" club. That is...it's a strip club. But, you see, it's in the "old tradition" which I think is meant to imply was somehow a superior way of getting nekkid so you could be ogled by desperate strangers or something.
There will be yet another Law & Order spin-off. Seems it wasn't enough to destroy West Wing, they've decided to push this tiresome concept just a little further. Color me so surprised to see that this one will feature storylines rrrrripped! from the headlines (I am so sick of hearing that phrase), making it just another tiresome clone.
(Also? Let's hear some hisses, boos, and tomatoes tossed toward ABC which has, on a "someday" schedule, an idea to make a show about the first female inhabitant of the Oval Office. Unlike that tedious West Wing, though, this show will be about her family life, not her job. Because no one cares what a female President does at work, no. They want to know how her husband copes.)
An Americanized version of the U.K. hit The Office is in production. Unthrilled <-- That's me.
In Revelations, Bill Paxton will be wasted as a scientist who finds religion. No word on what the second episode will be about.
Left Behind has been confirmed as a starter for the mid-season.
Primetime television audiences will be riveted when they experience the thriller that has engaged millions of readers in the popular novel series "Left Behind," where in one cataclysmic moment, millions around the world disappear.
Apparently it's based on an apocalyptic book or series of books. Can't tell if it's about biblical apocalypse or something else. Don't much care.
And, for anyone who cares, William Shatner apparently did not write, direct, produce, and star in an original movie, "Invasion Iowa." It was a trick played on the inhabitants of a small, Iowa town so that they could be turned into "reality show" participants.
One of the things I'd planned to do this winter was to weed out my over-full bookcases. Now...I think I'm going to need all the reading material I can lay my hands on.
The point seems to be that Google has taken the free content from all over the internet and built it into a $50B business.
Some people...are not amused.
So?
Posted by AnneZook at 01:49 PM | Comments (0)You didn't know Bert. I'm not sure I ever introduced him to you here, but he was one of the little cadre of homeless men living around this area. I hadn't seen him for a while, but the guys move around sometimes.
But as it happens, when it snowed...not this last time, but the time before, Bert got sick. They put him in the hospital, but he had massive frostbite and his family refused permission to amputate his legs. After a few weeks, the decision was made to pull the plug on the respirator.
Sterling was telling me about it today. At the same time, he was trying to tell me I don't have to give him a dollar every day. And I'm thinking...for the lack of a few dollars to gain him access to some building with heat...Bert died.
And then I wanted to give money to every homeless person in the city because it's supposed to snow again tonight.
Later....
And then I remembered. Of course you know Bert. He was the MoonMan. He was building a rocket to take him to the moon so he could be President. He thought he was a better choice than Bush. The last time we chatted, Burt was working on funding for the engine.
Poor Bert. He'll never finish building that rocket now.
The political blog continues to deliver entertainment. This morning I received a note in response to a book review I did and I could feel, in every word, the effort the writer was expending to prevent him/herself from screaming, cursing, stomping, and throwing things.
I stand by my position. An appalling and logically indefensible premise results in a bad book. And sucky writing is sucky writing, regardless of the topic.
You guys never flame me. Not even tangentially or with great repression. This person was terse and sarcastic. It was fun.
Last week, McSwain recommended Immediate Fiction as a how-to book on writing for those who'd rather be popular than good. I may get it. I'm always up for another book that explains to me how I'm never going to learn to write decently. At least this one seems to be about book writing. Most of the books I've found are about script-writing, as though that was the be-all and end-all of any aspiring writer's dreams these days.
Saturday I lunched with a dear friend I don't see often enough. I always enjoy seeing her...possibly because her manners are so much better than mine that she lets me monopolize the conversation. She says she likes to hear me talk. but I assume since her own life is full of stresses and strains at the moment, she's actually just hiding from reality and not listening to me at all. And I'm cool with that.
Saturday, I made an unfortunate junk-food grocery store run bought Fritos, cheese crackers, and chocolate. I emptied the Frito bag in one day...proving that I need to restrict that to a once-a-month indulgence in the future. (And buy the "grab bag" size instead of the bigger bag.) I made inroads on the cheese crackers but not to any disgraceful extent. I've already chowed down on every piece of chocolate I got for Christmas and I ate an appalling amount of that I bought on Saturday as well. So...it's back to fat-free hot chocolate for me.
Saturday I bought a router and hooked up a wireless network at home. It was laughably easy. I mean, I had a tech problem at one point (it all seemed to have installed properly but I couldn't get on-line), so I called the 800#, was put right through to a tech, and he resolved it in 30 seconds. (Later I will be posting the name of this company so that those of you thinking of going the wireless route will know of at least one company with fabulous tech support. I'd post it now if I wasn't drawing a blank on the name.) Now I'm wondering if a wireless mouse might not complete my journey to Cord-Free Joy.*
Sunday, I woke up with A Back. For the third..or fifth...or something consecutive day in a row. I may have to resign myself to the fact that I have A Back.
It makes life An Adventure. Putting on my shoes, for instance. That's adventurous. Changing the sheets on the bed...that's very adventurous. I can't wait until the next time I have to scrub the bathroom floor. That's a hands-and-knees proposition, or you can't get to the corners. It's a small bathroom...but it's all corners. I foresee An Adventure.
Walking is good, though. It makes The Back feel better. Yesterday morning I walked over to St~rbucks and had a Ch~ntico. (I can't type either of those words again. The last time I did, it produced Unfortunate Results in the way of links from professional media sites and that's really not what this blog is all about.) Both creamy-delicious products made my back feel much better.
Anything that involves standing up and not bending is Not Adventurous, so I managed to make a pot of chili and a pot of vegetable-beef soup yesterday. Since I'm resigned to a lifetime of yogurt breakfasts, I'm set for daytime food this week. For tonight's dinner, I have a nice chunk of salmon. (I'm hoping I can fool my hips into forgetting the Fritos.)
Sunday I wrote twenty or thirty lines of dialogue for a new short story.** At least...I wrote 20-30 lines of pretty good dialogue. We'll see if a story wraps itself around them. It's DS. I'm dabbling with that and Sen at the moment.
Sunday I finished the re-coding of the website and loaded it. (Ferd is such a pleasure to use. Stretched out on the floor, sitting at the dining table, curled up in my comfy recliner....) I'm frustrated that some of the new pages are loading too slowly but I'm not sure if I can fix them. I made certain the files weren't huge so I suspect it's weirdnesses in the coding that are creating the problem. Not much I can do about that. (I mean, yeah, I could go on-line to one of those "let us review your code" websites, I guess. Or, you know, double-check the sizes of the graphics files. I rather suspect that the one I used for Lynn's page will have to be replaced. Her page loads far too slowly. It's a pretty graphic, but it may have to go.)
Today the Maintenance Men are supposed to be replacing the carpet pad in our entryway at home, thus cleaning up the last of the damage from the Great Flood of '05. This will allow us to move the rest of the furniture back into place and forget what a ghastly day or two we had. (I left work early on Friday to mop the kitchen floor, wipe the counters and cabinets down, again, vacuum, again, and do a bit of dusting and furniture-shifting. That cleaned up most of the residue, but there was one bookcase we couldn't move back into place until the carpet stuff was done.)
Today, an exceptionally Kind Friend dropped me a note that she's finished reading through the S.E.N. and has hopes of being able to key in and send her thought some day soon. I feel badly. She's clearly put more work into this than the story was at all worth. Still, anything she has to say is always worth hearing.
Today I went to St~rbucks and did not have a Ch~ntico. At least...not yet. I just discovered that Buehler is out of town...so I may indulge myself later today.
In the meantime...work!
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* It's great to be a mobile and stuff, but do you ever feel like you're tied up in cords any more? Power cords, mouse cords, headphone cords, sunglass cords, seatbelt cords, hands-free phone cords. I didn't realize being a grown-up involved so much voluntary bondage, okay? I mean, if Robert Redford was showing up at my house with a feather and some chocolate pudding...okay. But other than that, it's starting to get on my nerves.
** It's a complete mystery to me how I can sit down and write what I know is decent dialogue at the drop of a hat, but I can't write a story. I've decided that part of the problem is probably my source material...I need to switch for a while to a better-designed universe. Sort of...you know, ease back into it, before I tackle the problems that come with this particular universe.
So we had a flood in our little apartment yesterday. The good news is that the water damage (from a broken pipe) is confined to the living room and entryway and it was reasonably fresh water, not something icky like sewage.
The bad news is that I don't know how long it's been since I moved the couch and vacuumed under it and the Maintenance Guys had to move it to inspect for water damage.
Last night? Did a little quick vacuuming, washed the rugs from the kitchen floor, and cleaned all the counters. Carried out a fifty-pound kitchen trash can.
It's not normally fifty pounds, but the flood filled it full of water (we keep it under the sink). Lacking any brains, the Maintenance Guys decided the right place to put it was up in the sink, when they found it was full of water. Having, as I said yesterday, Done Something to my back recently, I can assure you I very much enjoyed the experience of lifting 50 pounds of water and trash out of the sink.
The apartment stinks. I decided there was no use mopping the kitchen floor since they'll be back in there today. Tonight, though, I mop. And I'm going to dust and polish the furniture and anything else I can think of that will create a better smell. I doubt they replace the furniture they yanked into the middle of the living room floor, so tonight I move furniture, too.
I'm a bit puzzled. Someone from the apartment complex did call me yesterday afternoon to tell me there was a flood in the building but she couldn't confirm if it was in our apartment or not. She just wanted to tell me they were going into our apartment to look for water. I told her to find out and call me back, but she didn't.
I can't decide if she expected me to just come home because there was a flood that might have touched our apartment, or what?
I mean, in retrospect, it's clear to me that, having been told there was a flood, I should have gone home to deal with it, but yesterday I couldn't even find out where in the building the flood was and it didn't sound that critical. There are four floors, the only place she actually mentioned water being seen was on the first floor (I don't live on the first floor), and there's been an intermittent water leak in the laundry room (the opposite end of the building from us) for months. So...I just didn't get it that I should go home, you know?
Anyhow. We went out for dinner. And then watched a couple of episodes of BtVS and tried to pretend we always keep the couch in the middle of the floor, flanked by bookcases and desks. And that we couldn't smell anything. Or hear any weird noises from what I'm fairly certain was a water pump going in the apartment below ours.
The good news, for the apartment people, is that the apartment opposite ours, the one where the leak occurred, is empty, as is the one below us. So we're the tenants closest to the damage and we're not psychos or anything.
On the other hand, based on the rush in the laundry room last night, few first floor apartments escaped low-level flooding. People were lined up to do laundry, and all of them were carrying armloads of rugs.
Chantico.... Whoever named it, did a good job. Chantico....
Starbucks offers many beverages. Coffee, espresso, hot chocolate, tea, coffee-free milk drinks, and no doubt others. I go to the one by my office once a day, sometimes twice. They know me there. They love me. Today they gave me a free sample of Chantico.
It's a dark, thick nectar, cut with just enough hot water to make it pour. Sweet...but not as sweet as regular hot chocolate. It's creamy and bittersweet on the tongue and the flavor lingers in my mouth.
I'm not even going to speculate on how many calories this stuff may have.
Also? I called my Resident Consultant about my back because it was sort of paining me to an extremely noticeable extent, but she was busy. Happily, when I walked over to Starbucks and I stepped off a curb...pang!...and my back was better!
The R.C. called me back later, though, and although I've already changed the way I sit, she informs me I now have to change the way I sleep. I'd protest...but every time I follow her orders, I feel better. It's very annoying because the orders are (as such orders tend to be) always to stop doing comfy things and do rigid things. Like...no slumping. No crossing my legs. No sitting on the floor.
I'm going to miss sitting for hours, with my legs curled into a complicated knot in the middle of my overstuffed recliner. So far, I haven't made up my mind to get rid of the recliner and buy a chair that actually fits my body, though. I love having a big, cushy chair to wallow in. I love being able to curl my entire body up in it. Even if I'm not allowed to do it, I can think about it.
I love the little hidden bucket in the arm where I can keep a variety of useful things, so I don't have to stand up if I want some lip gloss or a bookmark or something.
And I like wallowing in my big chair.
It's heck getting old.
Body parts, as I've whined frequently, that I've never really contemplated are starting to let me down. I know my body is full of glands and organs and other purple, squishy bits. I always assumed if I didn't pick on them, they'd keep chugging along.
I mean, my kidneys and I have had a truce for years, ever since I came to terms with the concept of drinking water. My tonsils and I have lived in peace since the Summer of '73 when they agreed to stop swelling up repeatedly and I agreed to cancel the call for the man with the knife.
I know I posses a pancreas, when I take the time to think about it which is almost never, but I never really thought it would be necessary to make any formal acknowledgement of the fact. I still haven't, but I foresee a day when I'll need to know why it is.
Then the leg started bothering me from time to time. Nothing extreme, just reminders that you can't spend six weeks in traction without feeling the consequences later in life. The occasional swelling from the ankle. The occasional feeling of weakness in the knee. Nothing major. Just twinges over the past decade or so. Perhaps a bit more frequent in the last couple of years but certainly nothing to pay much attention to.
And now...the back. I did something to my back last Friday. I woke up and pursuant to my usual method of arising in the morning, I threw my legs up and over toward the floor and let them drag my body after them.
Pang!
I feel betrayed. I've always treated my back...okay, very badly. But it never seemed to mind before. Nowadays, it's all attitude and demands.
Tuesday and Wednesday it didn't really hurt at all except during my daily commute. I attribute that to the extreme cold and the icy road conditions. I was very tensed up.
Today it hurts.
I'm not sure I really had anything else to add to this topic. Mostly I just like posting to my blog and looking at the pretty design.
I always have a great deal to say that no one particularly wants to hear. Blogs were a great invention.
One of my favorite Christmas gifts was a Garden Gnome. Not just any Garden Gnome, but a Traveling Gnome. He sits on my desk, on his manicured lawn of lush green grass, in front of various backgrounds detailing his world travels. Today he's in front of the Eiffel Tower. (I'll bet it's not 9 degrees in Paris.)
It's been a disappointment to me that no one's really commented on him. Buehler said, "I like your gnome" but no one else has said a word.
To commemorate the snowy weather, I've moved him to Mt. Everest.
I need to take a picture of him (must bring in the camera) and post it. (While I'm at it, I'll upload pictures of this year's Splendiferous Gingerbread Houses that we built over the Thanksgiving Weekend, because I've only inflicted those on three of you so far.)
So...what's up with the old personal life?
Spent yesterday evening watching BtVS DVDs (of course) and working on the redesign of the website.
I'm sure if I were better at html, I could code it so you could just pick up the whole site and move it easily, but I'm not and I can't. So, I'm formatting the stories into tables so they display better on-screen, removing (as I said earlier) all of that annoying and intrusive Microsoft garbage, re-writing links, and tweaking some graphics.
I'm about 75% of the way through the process which also involved learning how to use the (surprisingly friendly) ftp program my site host (Hosting Matters*) offers. I hope to get almost all the links re-written and the garbage code removed from all the pages tonight. There will still be some formatting work to be done, but that will be the biggest chunk of it out of the way.
(* I also noticed, which goes to show that you should look at things sometimes, that the IP banning page allows you to ban by IP and by domain name. I've blocked what seem to be the two heaviest spammers of my site and hope to see the level of spam start dropping as a result.)
The new site will still be...basic. I see and admire those fancy sites with java and frames and dancing icons, but I don't know how to create them (and wouldn't see any point in expending that much energy on a dinky little site like mine if I did).
Having lunch with a friend I don't see often enough on Saturday, assuming the weather cooperates. That + fighting the inevitable problems with "plug and play" (hah!) wireless router technology should eat up Saturday pretty well.
Sunday...housecleaning, laundry, cooking (lunches for next week) and possibly even a bit of writing on a little Sentinel piece I've been thinking about.
Haven't heard from the Kind Friend looking at the SEN. I hadn't thought about the story for a week, but it popped back into my head this morning. I should take another look at that story. Or, you know, burn it. But I'm content to wait for the Kind Friend to do her thing. To be honest, I'm happy to have it out of my face for a while. It's been a very peaceful couple of weeks. (I daresay if I loved the story more, I'd be impatient to have it back, but I never really loved it. It was just an experiment I tried that didn't work out very well. The only reason I don't just abandon it is that such a massive failure would be such a blow to my ego that I'd never write again.)
The CoSlash group is lunching next weekend. I was going to go (I don't make it as often as I should) but I'm already coming across conflicts and don't know if I can. (It's astonishing to me that someone who never seems to have anything that she's done to talk about is sometimes so busy. Just...living.)
(I was supposed to hand off my OaT tapes for someone to dupe to DVD for me at that lunch, so I may have to find another way to handle that, as well.)
Mostly...I think I'm just babbling at the moment. Waiting for my brain to kick in so I can start work.
It's still snowing. I got to wear my hat yesterday. I love my hat. So what if it has flaps? They're supposed to wrap under your chin and around your neck to keep you toasty warm and they work. Also, with them wrapped around my neck? The wind doesn't blow my hat off. I forgot my hat today. Very sad.
The temperature has skyrocketed to 6 degrees, although I hear the wind chill is still at 9 below.
I'm even more aggravated with Slim Pickens now. I complained about the new arrangements after I tried to get into my files yesterday and the ones I'd copied back down to my hard drive seemed to have disappeared.
I'm sure it was very thorough of him to have redirected the shortcuts on my desktop, making it appear I was working on my hard drive when I wasn't, but...not. I like it when the IT people do things I ask them to do. It pisses me off rabidly to have them messing around with my computer when I have not asked them to and when they don't tell me what the hell they're doing.
Anyhow. It seems I had to "synchronize" which makes no sense to me and now the network "synchronizes" to my hard drive (so I can work if the network is down), instead of my computer backing up to the network. What part of "I want to work on my hard drive" is that hard to understand?
Also? After the network goes down and I work on my hard drive, I foresee a time when the network will "synchronize" over the top of my new documents. Again? Pisses me off.
Slim Pickens, DiamondGirl's replacement, has only been on his own for two days and I'm already not impressed with him.
Certainly the last thing I wanted to discover when I came in this morning was that he'd moved all of my files from my hard drive to the network.
Don't get me wrong...I believe in backups. But backing up files (which I did request) is not the same thing as moving files, you know? (I mean, what exactly does he expect me to do if the stupid network is down? Just twiddle my thumbs? Especially when I get here around 7:30 most days and he doesn't show up until 9:00 or 9:30?)
Anyhow. I had to stop and copy them all back down, which wasted 25 minutes.
While I was at it, I deleted 90 Mg worth of files left-over from previous users of this machine.
Also? Something he did made my computer take 12 minutes to start up this morning. No doubt it was changing all of those "personal settings" to the network ones. Now I have to figure out how to change everything back so the stupid thing resets to the hard drive in the morning and not the stupid network. (Among other things, our network is very slooow sometimes.) I'm not sure how to do that...to set it so the computer goes to the hard drive and not the network when it boots up.
Pisses me off.
Also? Our e-mail is down. Again. His expertise at network and e-mail stuff was, I was told, why he was hired.
Hah.
And on other annoying fronts? Bossyboots remains near the top of my shitlist. A client called this morning to report that she's been waiting a long time for someone from her to contact her about a problem she has. Seems Bossyboots told her a few weeks ago he'd "get right on it" and she's been waiting patiently ever since. I went and asked Moe and Bossyboots never mentioned the problem to him. (To be fair, not that I feel any urge to do so since this is after all my forum, Bossyboots says he asked Curly to do it. That's quite possible but it was Bossyboots' responsibility to follow-up and make sure it was done.)
Hooray! I got BtVS S2 last night and started watching it...and today S3 and S4 arrived in the morning UPS shipment!
Color me...still not thrilled. In spite of my best efforts, the blahs have set in. Could be the usual Monday morning stuff, but I doubt it.
So, to continue my earlier litany of all the things I have scheduled for this month....
Sadly, the Mole's gainful employment means she's no longer available to e-mail with me incessantly all day, every day. Perhaps that's an indication that I should make some kind of resolution to be more productive at the office? (Naaah.)
Due to my discovery of Dove's chocolate-chocolate ice cream bars, I'm back on the diet. I packed on four or five pounds this fall. I need to get rid of it before it buys lawn furniture and starts picking out new curtains. (No, five pounds isn't that drastic, but it was by putting on a pound here and a pound there and deciding it wasn't important that I wound up 25 lbs overweight in the first place. I have no desire to spend six solid months on a diet again this year, so I'm going to fight it while the problem is small.) (Also, I got rid of all my old clothes and I certainly don't want to have to go out and buy another new wardrobe.)
And...I was talking about Spike, wasn't I? Spike-love will probably drive me to stop by Tower Records on the way home this evening to buy the next season of BtVS. It may not...but it may. I wonder if they have S2 available? It's so tempting....
Especially since my boss just asked me if I'd like to go "drive around and do nothing" for a while. So, I'm off to run some errands for the company.
It's 2:18.... I should easily be able to string whatever this is out for a couple of hours, don't you think?
So. It's the New Year. Hoorah.
You know what that means to me this morning? That means it's five months until another long, holiday weekend. If I didn't have Escapade to look forward to in two months, I could get really depressed about that.
Generally, January is one of my least-favorite months. The excitement of the holiday season is behind us (I love any time of the year when everyone gives me presents), the days are still dark and short, and there's Weather. We're supposed to get some Weather tonight and tomorrow. Just a few inches worth. This year, I've decided to be just a little less whiny about it. I mean...it could be worse. I could be living with the fallout from a tsunami, right?
And, I have much to look forward to this month. The new laptop toy ("Ferd" for those interested) is a delight to play with. This weekend I'm going to pop out and get a wireless router so I can set up a wireless network and access my cable modem from the laptop. That will be fun.
Also, due to the sad events over at Trickster, something I still mourn because it was a reliably and friendly home for so long), I was forced to find a new home for my website at least temporarily. That motivated me to undertake the long-overdue project of reformatting all of my stories to eliminate a lot of that annoying code Microsoft Word sticks in when you use the html editing feature (Can't help it. Didn't know how to code html when I did a lot of that stuff and there weren't the free and easy editors you can find today). I'm about 75% of the way through that project now and deeply regretting how prolific I used to be.
(Appallingly enough, I found one story where the formatting was completely hashed and in trying to fix it, I actually found myself reading some of the text and wondering just exactly when the story disappeared and what's clearly a rough first draft wound up getting posted. I'm not generally a big fan of re-writing but I really think I'm going to have to work on that one. )
Haven't decided what to do about all of those obnoxious essays I wrote once-upon-a-time. I doubt I go to the bother of reformatting all of them. Strikes me as a tedious project. (Actually, all of this reformatting is tedious. It might be a lot simpler just to put Lynn's and Mallory's stories back up at the new locale and do mine...whenever the mood strikes me.)
Also, I have the new stories to look forward to. I have, as I believe I've mentioned repeatedly in recent weeks, outlines for a handful of stories lurking on my hard drive. Mostly Sentinel and Due South. And all much shorter than that blasted S.E.N. that the poor Mole is, even as we speak, struggling with.*
I'll have to re-watch some episodes for those shows, which will be tricky. Oh, we have the episodes, if not very good quality in the case of the Sentinel, but I went on a BtVS binge this weekend and my brain is all filling up with Spike again. I don't see the point since it's not a fandom I'd ever write in, but there you go. That's brains for you.
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* Well, not even as we speak, because today she officially became an Employed Person and she's at her new job. Hooray!
