Thursday, May 31, 2007

Still alive

Very, very busy this week. We were at Balticon through Monday then back to work with about two thousand emails that came in while I was out. Tuesday was senior award day then yesterday doctor appt with the orthopedic nurse who decided not to put Cullen in a brace for 12 weeks, thank goodness. Then take Chris to Baltimore twice, come home and somehow write a thousand words of Kitta. Today was work, Cam's induction into the Tri-M Music honors society then home to write my column and so far 900 words of Kitta.

Tomorrow Script Frenzy starts - I'd have to be absolutely bad to start a script in the middle of this Kitta book...

Friday, May 25, 2007

Away until Tuesday

We're at Balticon until Tuesday so I will be posting very little. I plan to take a short break from writing also, the first one since October. I've written at least a thousand words a day since the beginning in November and I'm somewhat nervous about breaking my streak but I'm hoping the time off will do me some good.

We went to a panel on how to hook an agent. I didn't stand up and say, "But that's not what Miss Snark says!"

Then we saw the Prestige which was quite good and interesting although I had trouble telling the male characters apart.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Tentacle monsters!

So when you're blocked you can bring in two guys with guns and shake things up or you can do what I did, bring in the river kraken and get it to read a bedtime story to hundreds of little tiny ghosts...

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

I can't write!!!!

After seven straight months of writing at least a thousand words a day, sometimes two or three, I am stuck. I did six hundred or so and am floundering.

I blame this woman. My heart is broken.

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Monday, May 21, 2007

It's a packet and a wave!

Did you know the library has an entire shipwreck section? That's what I'm talking about.

So I got this idea this morning about a character who shows up very briefly in the Gabriel book. If I do the script in June thing I might write about this character.

And in other news, I think you should prizes for not losing your temper. Seriously, why not give out ribbons for behaving well? I was in line for twenty minutes at the Micheal's today trying to buy some doublepointed needles. There were only two people in front of me!! All that time was spent checking out one dude who was buying a couple of paintbrushes.

When I got to the front of the line I did NOT ask how long the woman had been on strike. I didn't say anything mean. Actually someone else opened up another line and I finished checking out before the first lady ever finished with paintbrush man. I thanked my checkout lady for saving me. The whole store reeked of natural gas and the florescent lights were buzzy and flickery. I threw up twice while we were out today.

But in the end I victoriously carried home doublepointed needles and shipwreck books so I win!

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Sunday, May 20, 2007

How I spent my weekend

When I write I stop and check things all the time. I confuse myself, often over simple things, since I got meningitis so I stop and look things up. Sometimes it's as simple as a word, is this a real word? Does it mean what I think it does? And sometimes it's something bigger like today Kitta wakes up from a fever to find the Prince has cut off all her hair, theoretically because she had a fever but something else may come of it, I'm not sure yet. So did people really cut off your hair when you had a fever? I'm almost sure you did but I stopped and looked it up, which was really hard as my first search strings brought up blogs about people who needed haircuts and were sick with fever (perhaps proving you should cut your hair if you have a fever? Or the reverse? If you don't cut your hair you'll get a fever?)

Here are some of the links I looked at over the last two days. I'm also idly researching shipwrecks for a story I might write.

Slaughterhouse Studios blog (to see if Lisa Snellings Clark would be at Balticon - I'm horribly behind on reading her blog, writing 200,000 words in six months can do that to you)

The Great Panjandrum Himself (courtesy of Neil via Lisa)

These two go together:

A wikipedia article about Irish evil
.

A dinosaur comic.

The Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Conet Project - a page about numbers stations with creepy recordings.

A site to help you track fitness progress.

The local AFTRA SAG office. We've got a meeting tomorrow I should attend.

Script Frenzy - brought to you by NaNoWriMo - can I write a 20,000 word script in June as well as write 30,000 words of Kitta and my weekly column? Is it insane to even think about doing this?

How to make a ginger tisane.

The Eclectic Practice of Medicine - Scarlet Fever.

Text of an interview with Juergen Bassfreund, a young Jewish man who was at both Auschwitz and Dachau. Part of a project called Voices of the Holocaust.

Africans in America Part Three Benjamin Rush - I read quite a few sites about this founding father, extremely interesting.

Horrible page about the history of medicine in parts of America - whoever wrote this has some basic misunderstandings like he or she doesn't even get the simple fact that science used to be called philosophy so of course a doctor would also be a professor of philosophy.

Analysis of Beethoven's hair.

The Morro Castle.

More Morro Castle - I actually read about twenty pages about this ship as well as a few more. It's a horrible story.

SS Morro Castle.

The Vestris
- holy crap - this is a shocking story.

So end result of all this reading? I'm depressed.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Wii age

I took the Wii sports fitness test yesterday and scored a 73, meaning I have the fitness of a 73 year old. I tested on bowling - not so good, baseball - horrible, can't figure out when to swing, and tennis, better once I learned to let the ball come to me.

I tested again today and got the same test. I did even worse on the baseball, only hitting it three times and never getting it in the right range. I did well on the tennis but it wasn't enough to save me, I'm now 79 years old. At this rate I'll be dead by the end of the week.

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Friday, May 18, 2007

Typos that count

I was just writing an email to a make friend of mine and I made a mistake. I'm sending this dinosaur comic and I wrote "It's the last panal that really gets me." Of course panel is misspelled so spell check asked if I meant "anal." See that would be a bad email to send in error.

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Thursday, May 17, 2007

Hmm, what's going on here?

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=37387730&size=o

Has this woman been fooling around with my boyfriend Spiderman?

I heard the school song for Old Mill High tonight at the chorus recital. It was extremely funny. I don't think it was meant to be...

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Dinosaur cartoons

This is hilarious. http://www.qwantz.com/index.pl?comic=462

And in other news we met Roland the Gunslinger, the one who went to the Dark Tower, working at the retina specialist today. It was AWESOME. Now you know what people do when they finish their quests.

Cullen's eyes look pretty good, whoop! And the doctor we saw was the same one who diagnosed PTC (after my optomotrist sent me to see him thinking I had hypertensive retinopathy) and he was pretty psyched to see that my optic nerves are totally flat. He called up my old films and marveled. What's amazing to me is that I let my eyes get so bad before I did anything about them. I was having significant visual disturbances for quite some time before I went to see my eye doctor.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Super Mario!

I played Super Mario one today for the first time in like FIFTEEN years. I got to level four or something but only because I used a pipe to jump levels.

Now Cullen and I are watching Ninja Warrior. Tomorrow he goes to see the retina doctor to see if he has any tears other than the one in his iris.

I've been horribly busy this week, finishing my Kitta writing at three in the morning. Ugh. Now I've got to pay my bills and renew my library books before I can go to bed. I'm thinking I badly need a vacation but the car needs work, a catalytic converter and I spent another unexpected five hundred bucks this week (still need another 475 for my crown) so I think I'm too broke for any kind of vacation. I'm still hoping to get everyone up to Philly to see King Tut before the exhibit goes to London but with the boys going to Alaska for weeks of the summer and money so tight I just don't know.

Here's a tip I learned while researching this week's Quality Time column - if you want to Google for new roller coasters don't just type in New roller coaster 2007 because you'll get a list of horrible accidents that happened recently. I read of one that gave me nightmares.

In other news I'm reading a really terrific book by Elmore Leonard (love him) called La Brava.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Grouchy grouchy grouchy

I'm unbearably grouchy. Tired and far too busy. I graduate from the two year college next week (I started college in 1979 when I was sixteen and dropped out a couple years later when my grandma got cancer and needed fulltime care so it's taken me a thousand years to get the two year.) on the 24th so I've been running around getting my cap and gown and stuff.

Cam was inducted into ITS yesterday then I had to run up to Baltimore to pick Chris up but his bus was two hours late, which meant I didn't start on my thousand words until like one am and didn't finish until three.

I think I'm just tired and need a vacation. A long vacation, maybe with some troll monks on the top of a mountain where I could sleep a lot and drink tea all day.

The highlight of the week was watching Nick Carter dance at the ITS induction ceremony. When he dances he looks like he's moving for the sheer joy of what his body can do and when he lands after a jump you get the feeling he only landed because he wanted to, as though gravity is something he's never even heard of.

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Thursday, May 10, 2007

In which I almost make a mistake

I was Googling 300 and Watchmen today, trying to follow up on the rumors that the director of 300 is doing Watchmen next and I found this site. http://300watchmen.com/default.aspx

I thought it was a real world game site and I was going to go ahead and try and become one of the 300 watchmen but at the last second I checked to see who owned the site. joker.com says it owned by one Sammy Lowdermilk of Dunlap, TN.

Uncle Google says Sammy Lowdermilk appears to work for US Congressman Lincoln Davis, D, TN.

So is Lowdermilk going to take over the world by himself or is the Congressman in on it? Does the Congressman believe in the separation of church and state? Because the 300 Watchmen site does not seem to.

Organizational Society:
"The Watchmen"
The parent organization to oversee the PAC and Non-Profit will be The Watchmen. With 300 members strong, with political influence, and with a compassionate hand, The Watchmen will bleed into all walks of life. We will be a self-proclaimed group of “watchmen” to look after the masses. ‘To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God’.

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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Closing some tabs

This page is interesting. Has some laws that make no sense. I found it while trying to find out about the three articles of clothing law I read about while reading Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. I didn't find what I wanted but I did find this.

Bengies is celebrating their 51st year. I think we may go see Spiderman 3 there this weekend. Neil's idea actually.

I thought this quote was kind of nice.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
John Muir
Other than that we're respectively, making art, wearing a beanie so as to be inducted into the ITS (International Thespian Society?), studying for and taking AP exams, and polishing up both the first Kitta book and the Gabriel so as to not be ashamed to send them over to Will Shetterly for a quick read through with comments. Also writing the new Kitta book (they're all currently in a barn with a wounded beast and lots of little ghosties with ember eyes and ashen mouths that apparently dissolve in milk) which means we're all very, very busy. Once we can slow down and take a breath it will be time for at least one of the boys to leave for Alaska. Summer's just not what it was. Sigh.

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Monday, May 07, 2007

Who has the right to tell doctors they aren't practicing good medicine?

According to recent legislation it's fine for both federal and state governments to tell doctors they can't do what's best for their patients. Do any of these various justices and lawmakers have a medical degree?

The New England Journal of Medicine has an excellent summation of the history of government interference in women's health issues. You can read it here without having a subscription.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Good news, bad news, good news

Today's WaPo had some encouraging news.

This is an article about Germany's success with solar power. Very interesting and I laughed out loud at the quote - the bit about conquering the world market struck my sardonic bone.

This article
about medical students and doctors in Iraq is appalling on many levels. Not just because conditions are so horrible but because of what it says about the future of the country. One woman has only attended ten days of school because she's afraid to leave her house. Many students study at home and only come in for exams. I'm not sure that sort of training is what I look for in a doctor.

Finally more than 20 nations agreed to discourage bottom trawling. Whoop!

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Mildly Amusing

If you read this rant from the dude that runs this awful site that exults in lenders going out of business you can find a lot to laugh about but the best part is how vehement he is when he says he's not a blogger.

The second is that I am quite obviously not a "blogger" with ml-implode. I don't use any "blogging" software; the system I have is unique and I produced it myself.


He goes on, blah blah blah but I won't bore you with it. Let's just skip to his gawdawful home page where we see:

Founder's Pages

* autoDogmatic (blog)
* Wall Street Examiner (blog)


So his first two sites listed are blogs but he's not a blogger? He's got this enormous blog roll and many of his readers are bloggers. Why try so hard to alienate them? It's quite odd. And really, could he fit any more ads on his site?

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