mostly mundanity

stuff and nonsense

2009-02-28T19:36:34Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: rain pattering on the windows
drinking: british blend tea

I made an incredible pot roast earlier in the week and now have some incredible BBQ made from the leftovers simmering on the stove.

It's raining right now, and supposed to continue doing so until tomorrow evening when, if the weather forecast holds true (and what are the odds of that, really?), it will change over to snow, snow all night and much of the day Monday.

I'm continuing to work on two projects at the same time - the manuscript project, which I'm dragging my feet on because I really have reached the final manuscript and I love the research phase, and re-rendering several dozen of my fractals at "print quality," each of which takes several days.

I haven't worked on the manuscript project in two days, because my hands ache. I don't know if it's the weather or overuse, but my left wrist is now looking sort of knobby and aches like my right wrist did before it crumbled and fell apart. If I end up having to have part of the bone removed in my left arm too, well ... that doesn't really bear thinking about.

So I've been resting my wrist for the past few days, not typing much. Instead, I've been utterly and completely sucked in to an egghunt application, called Hatchlings, at Facebook. Crazy, I know, and not like me at all to get caught up in something like that. It's just challenging enough to hold my interest though. I only have 27 of the 100+ limited edition eggs! Must find more! Must! ::: tsk ::: (If you're on Facebook and haven't added me, please do. Note me if you need my contact info.)

My medieval website won an international "Site of the Decade" award yesterday. Go me. Website awards can be kind of goofy, really, but this particular award was judged by some of the nitpickiest people online. The criteria was such that I thought my site would be tossed out at the beginning of the judging, even though nothing in particular jumped out at me as a disqualification. I was informed that I was in the running because I'd applied for their evaluation/award in 2000 (or maybe it was 2001?) and was named the "Site of the Year" at that time. So, my site was measured up against nine other sites, but all ten of the sites had to first pass the disqualifications and then be evaluated on many fine points of coding, content, navigation, etc. And I'm rambling. Pardon me. It does feel like quite an accomplishment though, and will probably boost my traffic for awhile.

Son left on his second deployment last weekend. I hope he gets to see something more interesting than Bahrain and Dubai this time. And the inside of the underwater tin can he calls home. And hopefully the tentative plan for him to return in three months to attend a LAN school here, instead of the standard six month deployment, will stay on track. I wouldn't want to be around him if they told him it had fallen through and he was stuck on the sub for that extra three months.

and that's me updated.

today's reading: since last updating i finished my reread of jasper fforde's the eyre affair, the next in the series lost in a good book, which i think was better than the first, and am now in the midst of 98 reasons for being by claire dudman and enjoying it immensely.

the peanut gallery

2009-02-15T14:05:23Z

i am: waking up slowly
listening to: wind chimes
drinking: british blend tea

i had a dream this morning right before i woke up (indeed, the dream woke me up) that i had commented on an entry by zcat_abroad, and moments later received a mail reporting that anonymous had replied to my comment. i returned to the journal where, the first thing i noticed about the comment was the userpic - charlie brown sitting at a miniature piano, where linus should have been. the comment itself rather nastily criticized my lack of proper capitalization and punctuation. it said something to the effect of, "Children in the lowest grades are taught to capitalize the first word of their sentences, along with proper nouns." in my dream i was mentally composing a sarcastic reply/excuse for my stream-of-consciousness-like entries and replies, and i woke with a start, thinking, "ooh, i need to remember that." remember what? i have no idea, but i suspect that's the only reason i remember this dream.

the thought passed (quickly) through my mind, yet again, that maybe i should take the time to capitalize and punctuate properly here, but you know ... i really don't care. my hands are so trashed from the many things i'm working on that require proper capitalization and punctuation, among other projects that are stressing them, that, at this point the less effort it takes to do something with them, the better.

i'm also aware that i tend to use the word "that" in many places where it's not necessary. to which i reply, bite me, chuck.

today's reading: finished my re-read of jasper fforde's the eyre affair late last night. today i'll get started on the next in the series, lost in a good book.

updatedness

2009-02-11T13:31:14Z

i am: taking a break
listening to: telemann - viola concerto in g
drinking: honey lemon ginseng tea

We've been having a few days of early spring this week, and it's been nice. I find the smallest of birds fascinating to watch - the wrens, chickadees, and the house finches (which look large next to the others.) They flit around in pairs scoping out possible places to build nests, then flit off, only to return five minutes later. I've enjoyed having windows open during the day, except for the havoc it's already wreaking on yog's poor eyes.

I've been continuing to madly work on manuscripts. I know I keep saying "the last one," or "one more after this one." I feel like I've been saying that for a few years. Now I'm working on what would be the last one if I didn't realize I'm missing representation from a particular time frame. When I finish it, I'll seek one out and will have completed the research/transcribing phase.

In the meantime, I'm re-rendering all of the fractal designs I have uploaded and made into products at my Zazzle shop. Near the end of the year I sold quite a few products: Quite a few to me is more than one; I have not been very successful in my online marketing attempts. In reviewing my end of the year report from Zazzle I was surprised to see that from the middle of November until the end of December I'd sold eight calendars, a mouse pad, five cards and a keychain. This was with minimal promotion and marketing; I hadn't even bothered to list with Google Shopping. So, giving my aching hands a break from the manuscripts I've been educating myself about these things and now have a new plan - which involves re-rendering all of the fractal designs I have uploaded and made into products at my Zazzle shop (full circle) in larger sizes for prints and other products that are available on sites other than Zazzle, i.e., CafePress. My grand scheme is to create a shop of my own, similar to the Merkat Cross section of my medieval site, on my newish Abandon Reason site, which I'll then take the time to properly promote. This will all take quite a while, but the renders run quietly in the background while I'm doing other things.

The only drawback to this is that while the system is rendering the old designs, I can't create new ones. I really miss that creative outlet and am definitely experiencing Apo-withdrawals.

Since I have my grand scheme mapped out and processing in the background, now when I take a break from the manuscripts, I've been loading Facebook. A couple of days ago I finally added my educational information and was instantly rewarded with a link to check out other people who attended the same schools I did. I surfed through over 500 photos/user names and was brought into a strange state of living in the past and wondering who the hell those bald, graying grandparents were. And it's not only that I didn't recognize 99% of them; I couldn't relate to them at all. Real estate agents, police officers, preachers, architects, gray-haired women surrounded by toddling grandchildren. (How did they get so old? I'm not that old.) I recognized a few names, but only one face. The handful of people I was looking for and would have been comfortable adding as a friend aren't there. Friends from post-high school days are, well ... non-existent. I worked and was friendly with people I worked with, but there were only two people that I had any contact with outside of work and they're not there either. I've often jokingly referred to my hermit-like life, but have now been struck by the fact that it's not a joke at all.

Enough navel gazing; back to work.

today's reading: i'm about halfway through jasper fforde's the eyre affair, which i'm rereading in preparation for the next in the series, lost in a good book.

Writer's Block: Fearsome

2009-02-07T16:31:51Z

Bees and wasps, but not without good cause. When I was five years old I was playing hide and seek with some kids in the neighborhood and hid under a largish shrub that was part of a hedge separating two yards. I hunkered down in the still green shadows, patiently waiting to be found (I never made the mad dash to to the established homebase) when I felt first a prickle, then a sudden intense burning on top of my head. I don't recall being aware that I'd been stung, at first; I only remember an incredible freak out of running and screaming bloody murder, my mother coming out of the house with a magazine in hand (so much for her relaxing cup of coffee and read while the kids were outside playing.) She rolled it up and started beating me on the head with it, which added to my confusion and terror. It wasn't until she was picking the dead bodies out of my hair that I realized I'd hidden directly beneath a large wasp nest. I was double-stung again several years later - stepped on a bee, and when I put my other foot down to lift the hurt foot, I stepped on another one. I still have problems today not doing a duck and squint when a bee or wasp zips by.

Another fear I had was of being abducted by aliens, which I wrote about here a few years ago.

we're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars

2009-01-23T20:04:51Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening: the dryer spinning
drinking: british blend tea

i dream. a lot. i dream vividly - sub-conscious images that often seem surreal in the recounting. i'm not a hard-core proponent of dream analysis, but on a few occasions i've sought out symbolism in a dream encyclopedia that i bought on a whim decades ago, and have found the dissection of particular dreams to be eerily relevant to what's going on in my life at the time. ditto horoscopes. i think they're amusing, but sometimes they're uncannily reflective of what's happening with me at the time.

so, i found my horoscope yesterday especially intriguing:

Sagittarius: Upon waking, try to recall a dream. You are receiving precognitive dreams filled with information intended for your highest good.

wow, go stars.

as it happens, besides dreaming vividly, i also at times am able to semi-direct my dreams if they start going in a direction i'm not pleased with; or, sometimes if i'm having a particularly good dream i slightly surface from the dream and tell myself remember this thing, almost like a keyword. for example, telling myself to "remember mustard" once brought back an entire dream very reminiscent of the movie "field of dreams," the irony of which has escaped me until this moment.

last night i didn't go to bed with the conscious thought that i was going to try to remember a dream; i went to bed as i usually do, physically exhausted, mentally still a little wound up, which i take care of by reading until i can barely keep my eyes open. at some point during the night i became aware that i was dreaming, surfaced slightly and told myself to remember this. unfortunately the only thing i remembered when i woke up was exactly what i told myself to remember. no rambling hopi dance, no field of dreams, no badger with a target on its side, no sucking knee-deep mud, no pumpkin patch in the forest, no two-headed elephants, no screaming dream house, no bus trip or airport dream where i was returning to the UK. nope. all i got out of my dream last night - my "precognitive dream" that would serve my "highest good," was a scrabble game.

in my dream, i played a bingo - the word SEARCHER at the top left corner, covering the triple-score square with the S. (now, for those of you who are scrabble players and are shaking your heads because the word SEARCHER has eight letters, i've been playing "lexulous" online, which altered their format to avoid further legal action from hasbro: a rack holds eight tiles.)

SEARCHER seems like a very symbolic, relevant word as related to precognitive, highest good word, no? one would think. but even in my dream i was aware that i had seen this word recently, could still see it in my mind's eye - on the back of penny widmore's boat - "previously on lost."

(Image courtesy of Get Lost Podcast).

which amused me.

on another note, i'm still drifting through my days, always busy, but actually accomplishing very little. i did transcribe an entire manuscript yesterday (called "the charitable pestmaster," which was enlightening regarding not just treatments, but actual "cures" for the plague and small pox, some of which involved putting crushed scorpions in orifices you would probably rather not hear about) and am slogging on through this seemingly never-ending project.

no, my inner angst comes from my so-called artistic endeavors: i've lost my will to fractal. i keep telling myself that since i'm not inspired to create any new fractals that i should go ahead and re-render some that i've done previously in print quality size so they can be made into prints and tee-shirts, but i don't think the pay-off would be worth the time and effort. no, i want to do something else. something different. something new. i want to be able to create the images in my mind, the vivid, surreal dream-like scenes that i can picture being created in bryce or some other 3D program. but when i sit down and try to create them, they vanish (in the haze.)

so, i close the program in frustration, transcribe a few more pages, load the fractal program, goof around in it and find nothing that inspires me to goof further, close it, load a transcript or bryce, and spend my days cycling through these motions and thoughts ... always busy, accomplishing but little. and every so often, though much more rarely than in the past, my characters from my shelved novels raise their heads and gaze at me woefully, wondering why i created them, only to murder them before they had a chance to truly live.

perhaps i really am searching after all.

today's reading: since updating last i finished company of liars by karen maitland and started clare clark's the great stink, but have abandoned it. it's too dark for the mood i'm in. i've now started a re-read of ed mcbain's the frumious bandersnatch, which i haven't read in a very long time, but remember enjoying immensely.

destiny trip

2009-01-20T19:08:48Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: gel-sol, raneboze
drinking: british blend tea

well, i haven't rambled here in awhile. i've been sort of detached since the beginning of the year, haven't had any thoughts interesting enough to string into intelligible sentences, so i've been using facebook a little bit more for my inane little updates. facebook makes it so easy for updates to be little. i'm skellorg there if you're there and we haven't found each other.

and yet here i am, getting ready to bemoan succumbing to, suffering with and fighting off a persistent case of viral bronchitis. i'm so tired of coughing and blowing my nose. i've gone through a box of tissues a day for the past week and a half. for a couple of days i was wheezing so loud that i was keeping myself awake. thankfully that stage has passed, and i'm even more thankful that my labyrinthitis has calmed down because i can't imagine dealing with the misery of that on top of this.

i'm still plodding through manuscripts. i finally finished what i thought was the last one (this story is getting old) only to discover a couple that are specific to the plague at the harvard university library, so i grabbed those and am working through them. they're relatively brief considering some of the others i've worked through though, so by the end of february i'll be ready to start dissecting and organizing the material. i'm both looking forward to and dreading that task.

ironically, my progress was waylaid by the purchase of a new/better/faster system. i took advantage of the after christmas sales and a generous check from my parents and finally broke down and bought myself a new computer. it was sorely needed and i'm very pleased. specs for those of you who may be interested: intel quad-core processor, 6GB RAM, 650GB HD, vista home premium (64-bit) OS, and a 19" wide flat/LCD monitor. i can now render fractals at twice the size at 1/4 the time it was taking me on my old system, which is amazing. after three weeks of playing with it, i've come to the (personal) determination that vista has gotten a bad rap. or maybe i was just lucky in that everything i have works okay with it, or had a simple solution. it may help that every piece of hardware i own is HP (well, other than my external HD, and router.) oh, right. how soon i put that angst behind me. getting the network up and running was as joyful as it was the first time. at first i blamed the problem on getting vista-64 to communicate with XP-home, but it turned out that my linksys range expander had died an untimely death.

i've been listening to a lot of different music lately. i found a radio station called "mixing of particulate solids" out of bratislava/slovakia that i've been listening to for most of my waking hours. i've never listened to much experimental ambient electronica or techno-whatever ... i have no idea what to call this stuff, honestly. i've found it to be a good alternate to classical, which i usually have streaming in the background when i'm transcribing. so, i've been listening to a lot of falling you and gel-sol, and many more whose names i haven't taken down. it's good to expand my musical horizons, especially at my advanced age. ;)

and that's me updated.

today's reading: since last updating i finished my re-read of ed mcbain's fat ollie's book and am well on my way to finishing up company of liars by karen maitland, which isn't as good as the reviews lead me to believe it would be.

'twas brillig

2009-01-08T01:46:42Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: lewis carroll reading jabberwocky
drinking: green tea, iced

yeah, another hit and run entry. i'm so very close to finishing up the last manuscript on my list, i can't stop to do much of anything else, lest i lose my momentum.

today's reading: since updating last i finished jerome k. jerome's three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog) and have begun a long overdue re-read of ed mcbain's fat ollie's book.

in praise of wondrous stuff

2009-01-05T15:52:46Z

i am: procrastinating
listening to: blessed silence
drinking: cup of brown joy

After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!"
Three Men In a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) Jerome K. Jerome, 1889

today's reading: more of jerome k. jerome. 'tis delightful!

2008 in a nutshell

2008-12-31T18:35:34Z

i am: getting used to a new keyboard
listening to: the wind howling
drinking: british blend tea

in keeping with tradition:

subject line from the first entry of each month:

january: we'll see how long i remember to do this ;)
february: one bizarre hymn
march: looking up from my work
april: snippets: series 3
may: geekgasm, indeed
june: so how shall i presume?
july: sometimes it just turns out that way
august: only robinson crusoe had everything done by friday
september: watchings
october: listing: part two, or possibly twenty
november: past/present
december: twisted

fiction read:

Fool's Errand Robin Hobb
Golden Fool Robin Hobb
Fool's Fate Robin Hobb
The Eyre Affair Jasper Fforde
Ella Minnow Pea Mark Dunn
The Last Kingdom Bernard Cornwell
The Pale Horseman Bernard Cornwell
The Lords of the North Bernard Cornwell
Doomsday Book Connie Willis
A Dirty Job Christopher Moore
Fluke Christopher Moore
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Coyote Blue Christopher Moore
Girl in Hyacinth Blue Susan Vreeland
To Say Nothing of the Dog Connie Willis
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell Susanna Clarke
Mistress of the Art of Death Ariana Franklin
World Without End Ken Follett
The Green Mile Stephen King
Outlander Diana Gabaldon
Sword Song Bernard Cornwell
Voyager Diana Gabaldon
A Falcon For A Queen Catherine Gaskin
Ender's Game Orson Scott Card
Ender's Shadow Orson Scott Card
With No One As Witness Elizabeth George
Lord Foul's Bane Stephen R. Donaldson
The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco
Celestial Navigation Anne Tyler
Careless in Red Elizabeth George
Dark of the Moon John Sandford
Deja Dead Kathy Reichs
Phantom Prey John Sandford
Passage Connie Willis
Death Du Jour Kathy Reichs
Silent in the Grave Deanna Raybourn
A Sight For Sore Eyes Ruth Rendell
The Nature of Monsters Clare Clark
In The Woods Tana French
The History of Love Nicole Krauss
The Accidental Time Machine Joe Haldeman

movies i remember watching:

Apocalypto
Billy Elliot
Pride and Prejudice (BBC Mini-series)
Lost in Austen (ITV Mini-series)
Amadeus
I Am Legend
Flower Drum Song
Oliver
Camelot
The Pursuit of Happyness
Shakespeare in Love

and that's that for 2008. wishing you all a pleasant, productive and prosperous 2009.

today's reading: since updating last i finished in the woods by tana french, reread the last kingdom by bernard cornwell, started and finished the history of love by nicole krauss and the accidental time machine by joe haldeman. i'll be starting three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog) by jerome k. jerome tonight.

twisted

2008-12-03T19:41:17Z

i am: procrastinating
listening to: my ears ringing
drinking: british blend tea

i have to go to rite aid one day this week - and should do it soon, since this week is quickly running into next week - to get my prescription for labyrinthitis refilled. it's that time of year that my world is in a spin, and not in a good way. add bringing a tree into the house in a week or so, and i best make sure to have drugs on hand. (or up my nose, which is actually where they go. tmi, i know.) so, since i have to go to rite aid, which qualifies as an event in my hermit-like life, i thought i'd go through the sale sheet that came in the sunday paper to see if there's anything i need on sale: shampoo, toothpaste, etc. the sale insert was, of course, full of holiday items: ornaments, candy canes, cards. and then there were the gifts - pre-wrapped, even: the leg lamp from "a christmas story" (in three different sizes,) an electronic key-finder, which consists of a special keyring and then a palm-sized device with a button on it. i assume the keyring beeps when you push the button. the thing is, if you lose the keys, who's to say you're not going to lose the key-finder too? and then there's the talking flyswatter. i shit you not. i have no idea what it says, but i'm tempted to find out when i'm in the store.

my plumbing bill from a couple of months ago has been hanging over my head, dragging me down, making me think that having a toilet that flushes and sinks that drain may be over-rated if paying to have them fixed does this to my spirits. with christmas looming, i've been sinking deeper and deeper into despair. i finally decided yesterday to hit up my paltry little emergency fund and bail myself out. i'm still trying to convince myself that's what it was for; the plumbing problem was an emergency (thus the emergency weekend rate,) and anyway, up until very recently i thought that emergency fund had been tapped out (when zz totalled his car last thanksgiving; never underestimate the powerful combination of a nor'easter and morning rush hour traffic.) so, it's almost like "found money." (i'm trying to convince myself of that too.) what's left is enough to pay off the plumber's charge on my credit card and take care of christmas shopping, tree, and all the other little (and not so little) expenses that go along with that. it's a relief knowing it will be taken care of, but at the same time i feel like i just pulled the crucial thread out of a safety net. all i have to say is, nothin' else better happen. geez. it's a rough old life. but it could be worse. it could always be worse.

haven't accomplished much the past few days; i feel like i haven't been warm in weeks and just want to curl up under a blanket and read. i haven't been doing that, though; i've been mindlessly flitting from one project to another, making a mess of my desk and the floor surrounding it, thinking maybe i should call an official "time out" from working on the manuscript until the new year. i can't do that; i'm so close to (finally) finishing giovanni da vigo's "most excellent worckes." even if i just do a few pages every day i should be able to finish it and move on to the next in january.

which reminds me (the manuscript reminds me, that is.) i finished the nature of monsters by clare clark the other day, and loved it so much that i ordered a copy from b&n with my b'day gift card. (thanks, son.) from the publisher's website:

1718: Sixteen-year-old Eliza Tally sees the gleaming dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral rising above a rebuilt city. She arrives as an apothecary’s maid, a position hastily arranged to shield the father of her unborn child - a wealthy merchant’s son - from scandal. But why is the apothecary so eager to welcome her when he already has a maid, a half-wit named Mary? Why is she never allowed to look her veiled master in the face or go into the study where he pursues his experiments? And why is she having vivid dreams of ferocious dogs?

this book would make an excellent film; it's dark, it's brooding, it's gritty, it's twisted.

well. "The xiii. Chapter, Of corrosive, and putrefactyve medicines, and that breake hole fleshe" awaits me; i guess i'll go get back to not getting much done.

today's reading: since last updating i finished the aforementioned the nature of monsters by clare clark, and am well into in the woods by tana french.

my lovely turkey! all that work!

2008-11-26T00:34:11Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: my ears ringing
drinking: nothing at the moment

hello LJ people, i think of you often, and am keeping up with your entries, but have fallen back into that evil habit of mentally replying to your entries. i am not a very good LJ friend. :(

as usual, i have nothing of import to impart, nary an entertaining anecdote to share. i'm just slogging through my days, still working on the same manuscript (which has moved on from using frog spawn in every remedy to the ever popular decoction of earthworms washed with wine,) goofing around with fractals every now and then, trying to keep warm. brrr. it's cold out there.

today ushered in the insanity of three days of preparation for a meal that will last less than an hour. there's something wrong with that. in keeping with my own personal tradition, however, i did find time today to seek out and read the thanksgiving scene from anne tyler's a patchwork planet (which i posted here last year.) and then i started thinking of other anne tyler thanksgiving scenes and sought out the scene from the accidental tourist, which, while not quite as picture-perfect as the previous, is still a fairly good depiction of what can happen around the table during this all-important family holiday meal.

"Oh, isn't this nice?" Rose said. "Aren't we going to have a wonderful Thanksgiving?" She stood on the sidewalk wrapping her hand in her apron, perhaps to stop herself from reaching out to Danny as he slouched toward the house. It was dusk, and Macon, happening to glance around, saw the grown-ups as pale gray wraiths - four middle-aged unmarried relatives yearning after the young folks.

For supper they had carry-out pizza, intended to please the children, but Macon kept smelling turkey. He thought at first it was his imagination. Then he noticed Danny sniffing the air. "Turkey? Already?" Danny asked his aunt.

"I'm trying this new method," she said. "It's supposed to save energy. You set your oven extremely low and cook your meat all night."

"Weird."

After supper they watched TV - the children had never seemed to warm to cards - and then they went to bed. But in the middle of the night, Macon woke with a start and gave serious thought to that turkey. She was cooking it till tomorrow? At an extremely low temperature? What temperature was that, exactly?

He was sleeping in his old room, now that his leg had mended. Eventually he nudged the cat off his chest and got up. He made his way downstairs in the dark, and he crossed the icy kitchen linoleum and turned on the little light above the stove. One hundred and forty degrees, the oven dial read. "Certain death," he told Edward, [his dog] who had tagged along behind him. Then Charles walked in, wearing large, floppy pajamas. He peered at the dial and sighed. "Not only that," he said, "but this is a stuffed turkey."

"Wonderful."
"Two quarts of stuffing. I heard her say so."
"Two quarts of teeming, swarming bacteria."
"Unless there's something to this method we don't understand."
"We'll ask her in the morning," Macon said, and they went back to bed.

In the morning, Macon came down to find Rose serving pancakes to the children. He said, "Rose, what exactly is it you're doing to this turkey?"

"I told you: slow heat. Jam, Danny, or syrup?"

"Is that it?" Macon asked.

"You're dripping," Rose said to Liberty. "What, Macon? See, I read an article about slow-cooked beef and I thought, well, if it works with beef it must work with turkey too so I - "

"It might work with beef but it will murder us with turkey," Macon told her.
"But at the end I'm going to raise the temperature!"
"You'd have to raise it mighty high. You'd have to autoclave the thing."
"You'd have to expose it to a nuclear flash," Danny said cheerfully.
Rose said, "Well, you're both just plain wrong. Who's the cook here, anyhow? I say it's going to be delicious."

Maybe it was, but it certainly didn't look it. By dinnertime the breast had caved in and the skin was all dry and dull. Rose entered the dining room holding the turkey high as if in triumph, but the only people who looked impressed were those who didn't know its history - Julian and Mrs. Barrett, one of Rose's old people. Julian said, "Ah!" and Mrs. Barrett beamed. "I just wish my neighbors could see this," Julian said. He wore a brass-buttoned navy blazer, and he seemed to have polished his face.

"Well, there may be a little problem here," Macon said.

Rose set the turkey down and glared at him.

"Of course, the rest of the meal is excellent," he said. "Why, we could fill up on the vegetables alone! In fact I think I'll do that. But the turkey ..."

"It's pure poison," Danny finished for him.

Julian said, "Come again?" but Mrs. Barrett just smiled harder.

"We think it may have been cooked at a slightly inadequate temperature," Macon explained.

"It was not!" Rose said. "It's perfectly good."

"Maybe you'd rather just stick to the side dishes," Macon told Mrs. Barrett. He was worried she might be deaf.

But she must have heard, for she said, "Why, perhaps I will," never losing her smile. "I don't have much of an appetite anyhow," she said.

"And I'm a vegetarian," Susan said.
"So am I," Danny said suddenly.
"Oh, Macon, how could you do this?" Rose asked. "My lovely turkey! All that work!"
"I think it looks delicious," Julian said.
"Yes," Porter told him, "but you don't know about the other times."
"Other times?"
"Those were just bad luck," Rose said.

"Why of course!" Porter said. "Or economy. You don't like to throw things away; I can understand that! Pork that's been sitting too long or chicken salad left out all night ..."

Rose sat down. Tears were glazing her eyes. "Oh," she said, "you're all so mean! You don't fool me for an instant; I know why you're doing this. You want to make me look bad in front of Julian."

"Julian?"

Julian seemed distressed. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket but then went on holding it.

"You want to drive him off! You three wasted your chances and now you want me to waste mine, but I won't do it. I can see what's what! Just listen to any song on the radio; look at any soap opera. Love is what it's all about. On soap operas everything revolves around love. A new person comes to town and right away the question is, who's he going to love? Who's going to love him back? Who'll lose her mind with jealousy? Who's going to ruin her life? And you want to make me miss it!"

"Well, goodness," Macon said, trying to sort this out.

"You know perfectly well there's nothing wrong with that turkey. You just don't want me to stop cooking for you and taking care of this house, you don't want Julian to fall in love with me."

"Do what?"

But she scraped her chair back and ran from the room. Julian sat there with his mouth open.

"Don't you dare laugh," Macon told him.
Julian just went on gaping.
"Don't even consider it."
Julian swallowed. He said, "Do you think I ought to go after her?"
"No," Macon said.
"But she seems so -"
"She's fine! She's perfectly fine."
"Oh."
"Now, who wants a baked potato?"

There was a kind of murmur around the table; everyone looked unhappy. "That poor, dear girl," Mrs. Barrett said. "I feel just awful."

"Me too," Susan said.
"Julian?" Macon asked, clanging a spoon. "Potato?"
"I'll take the turkey," Julian said firmly.
At that moment, Macon almost liked the man.

and that's all, probably until next month, which isn't so far away. i'm sure i'll be popping in to complain about christmas before the end of the year though. ;)

today's reading: since last updating i started and finished both silent in the grave by deanna raybourn, and a sight for sore eyes by ruth rendell - which i finished just a little while ago - and thoroughly enjoyed both. i'll probably lose myself in a "comfort book" for the next couple of days, until i can get back to the library.

ho hum

2008-11-15T21:01:08Z

i am: bummed
listening to: rene gruss - bellatrix
drinking: british blend tea

my system has not the RAM nor processing speed necessary to render fractal images large enough for the swedish designer to present to the wallpaper manufacturers. my system is ancient, but it's what i have, so such is life. in this case it may as well be a paperweight. it was a nice thought while it lasted.

there was something else i was going to say, but now i've forgotten what it was.

today's reading: finished death du jour by kathy reichs earlier and will probably start silent in the grave by deanna raybourn tonight. or maybe a sight for sore eyes by ruth rendell. haven't decided yet.

past/present

2008-11-12T15:44:23Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: psychic gibbon
drinking: british blend tea

starting off by stating the obvious - it's been ages since i updated. i think of things every now and then that i'd like to document here, things i've remembered that strike me as slightly amusing, that i don't want to forget (like the disco version of ave maria and the guy who was sitting across from me in the doc-in-a-box the afternoon i went in to see a doctor about my so-called ulcer.) i don't really want to turn this into a collection of misty water-colored memories though. or maybe i should, since i usually don't have much else to talk about. one of my favorite anne tyler quotes is, "i had a promising past." it strikes me as succinctly relevant.

so, an update, because there are some things going on in my life, which is rare. first, i spent my day yesterday at longwood university. i haven't climbed so many stairs and hills since i was in the uk eight years ago. i ache today, but it's a good ache. i would love to have hills to climb every day; living at sea level sucks. we went on a tour of the university, which is daughter's first choice, guided by a student ambassador whose overuse of the word "awesome" was amusing at first, grating by the second hour. "here's the new science building - it's so awesome. this is the student union, it's awesome. here's the new gym, it's awesome too." for the young men and their fathers in our group, i think the thing they found most awesome was a flyer on the bulletin board in the lobby of a women's dorm announcing a sex toy party. zz seemed equally fascinated, though a little skeptical. i looked at him and said, "does that surprise you? it's the safest sex," and moved on.

so, yeah. longwood. daughter had opted for the "immediate decision" application and was pleased when we finally finished the tour, sat down with an admissions' rep who started off with an immediate congratulations and welcome. acceptance does not, however, equal attendance. we still have to find the funds. i have my work cut out for me now.

so, that was exciting for her, for all of us, really, and i have many more thoughts and observations about longwood that i may write about some other time, but i also have some potential excitement going on my own right now. i was contacted by a graphic designer from sweden this weekend who has expressed interest in purchasing the rights to some of my fractal art for use in interior design products - specifically, wallpaper. we're in the very early discussion stage right now and i'm trying to keep it all in perspective (she could have contacted 200 other fractal artists as well, for all i know.) it would be cool though - not just actually making some money from it, but the thought of one of my designs splashed all over someone's wall in sweden. crazy.

other than that, it's just more of the same. working on a manuscript, goofing around with graphics when i'm not working on the manuscript, tending neurotic-dog, who did not appreciate being left with a dog-sitter while we were gone all day yesterday. she's still moping.

and then there's this ...

thanks to ladytalon for the linkage in her recent entry. i've been listening to it all morning and am now going to seek out other cuts. aural stimulation giving birth to inspiration. this is great music for fractalling.

i need to start thinking about thanksgiving and christmas. i'll do that later, rhett.

today's reading: since last updating i returned my library books, brought another armful home, and am well into death du jour by kathy reichs.

mostly show, little tell

2008-10-30T20:35:53Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: my ears are still ringing
drinking: green tea, hot

i haven't had much to say lately; i'm just slogging through the days and wondering where this year went. whoosh. almost gone.

still plugging away at the manuscripts. every time i think i have just one more to do, i find two more tucked away in the folder i'd thought of as "maybes," that now seem like a good idea to represent.

since i haven't had much to say, and the manuscripts i'm working on are a little dull (frog spawn, frog spawn, and more frog spawn) i thought i'd share some fractals, aka what i'm doing when i'm not transcribing remedies involving massive quantities of ... frog spawn.

(links lead to larger versions at my dA gallery.)

Okay, that was a lie. I've had to edit this, 'cos I deleted most of my dA gallery, so I'll just stick a link to my art site here, which is also badly in need of an update. And should I mention that I'm editing this entry almost *three years* later? Nah ...

Abandon Reason - Digital Art by Susan Wallace

that's all.

today's reading: finished phantom prey by john sandford, started fresh disasters by stuart woods, but i'm not sure if i'll be able to get into it. i'd forgotten that the last time i read one of his books i was struck by how much his recurring character, stone barrington, has turned into almost a caricature of a NYC based james bond.

not to put too fine a point on it

2008-10-27T11:11:07Z

i am: not really awake yet
listening to: my ears ringing
drinking: british blend tea

okay, you can click even if your name isn't travis and today isn't your birthday, but beware the earworm. ;)

happy birthday, travis, and many happy returns of the day. :)

(i could make a tradition of this, eh?)

today's reading: it's been so long since i last updated that i can't remember what i was reading. whatever it was, i finished it and have since made a library foray and read careless in red by elizabeth george, dark of the moon by john sandford, deja dead by kathy reichs and am well into phantom prey by john sandford.

psa: lj user icons

2008-10-08T16:59:12Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: a chorus of mockingbirds and robins
drinking: glaceau vitamin water: focus

i can't believe it's been over a year since i made a post at obsessiveicons; my, how time flies, just not enough hours in the day; we all know the drill.

anyway, for those of you who did not know this: i'm a contributor to an LJ icon community and have today uploaded several dozen icons created from my fractals. just in case you're interested. :)

they can be found here: http://community.livejournal.com/obsessiveicons/234175.html

if you hit the "fractals" tag in the right column, you'll find earlier sets; likewise, if you hit "skell's icons" or "skell's bases" in the right column you'll see how obsessed i was with the 100 x 100 art form at one time.

i wasn't alone. there are some extremely talented and prolific iconists at OI. happy shopping, if you're in the market.

that's all. i need to go get some real work done; i'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel that is oswald croll's bazilica chymiatrica.

today's reading: i started a reread of the excellent bound for the promised land by richard marius last night, but i doubt i'll stay with it to the end since i've read it at least a dozen times before.

not bad for a monday; not bad at all

2008-10-07T01:44:30Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: dogs next door barking
drinking: iced green tea

i usually look forward to mondays; i reclaim my house on mondays; i'm one of those people who puts a high value on personal space, and i make no secret of it.

so today being monday puts it ahead of the game to start. and then a series of positive things happened that made it even better. since i don't usually make exceptionally positive or negative entries (they are, indeed, all mostly mundane) i thought i'd make an exception for an exceptional day. and yeah, i've definitely overused the word exceptional, but you know? i don't care.

i managed to win a war of words and will, succeeding in getting the plumbing company to credit $445 to my credit card, which was much abused by their company last week.
i finally got to see billy elliot, a film i've been wanting to see for years. i thoroughly enjoyed.
i made the xaos tab on the new version of apophysis do what i wanted it to do, thanks - as always - to help from balplatinus.
i found a keeper of a quote in the book i'm reading, which i'll tack on at the bottom of the page.
and i was vastly amused by this: if the world could vote. the FAQs are interesting; the results even moreso.

today's reading: i'll finish anne tyler's celestial navigation tonight. i'm unsure what i'll read next, though i'd told myself i was going to read candide by voltaire; not sure i'll follow through on that.

"If you were to shake me awake in the middle of the night and say, "Quick, without thinking: What is the most important thing in the world?" I would say, "Privacy." I know that's not right; you don't have to tell me. I know that the true answer is probably love, or understanding, or feeling needed – even for me. But I am telling you what comes to mind first, and that's privacy. Sitting alone in a room reading a book, with no one to interrupt me. That is all I ever consciously wanted out of life."
~ Anne Tyler, Celestial Navigation

listing: part two, or possibly twenty

2008-10-02T18:26:52Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: the tinkling of wind chimes
drinking: british blend tea

until working on the present manuscript i'm transcribing i never knew there were so many uses for frog spawn.

week before last i said to a friend that it would cost $150 for me to upgrade the RAM in my system to 2GB, since i'd have to replace my two 512MB SDRAM modules with two 1GB modules (@$75 apiece) and that i couldn't afford that right now. and yet over the past three days i've paid a plumber close to $3000. priorities. modern life sets her own and seems to enjoy the "gotcha."

and after writing out that sickening check yesterday, my ups (backup power supply) went insane, reporting 34 power outages in the space of ten minutes with a virtual chorus of clicks, beeps and dings. after speaking with tech support at apc, they gave up and decided to call it a hardware failure, arranged to send me a new unit, and gave instructions on how to return the old unit. as i was packing up the old unit i realized the data port wasn't completely seated in the side of the unit. i pushed it in and that seemed to fix things, so i called tech support again, explained and they canceled the replacement/return, saying if i have any more problems just call, because i still have over two years left on the warranty. and then zz came home and said that all of the ups devices connected to the work stations at his office did the same thing at the exact same time and that by the time the systems admin set about shutting down the server to troubleshoot, the problem stopped - again, at the exact same time mine started functioning properly again. very, very strange. maybe the data port wasn't the problem after all, though i can't imagine what else it could have been; it does seem a very odd coincidence.

i pacified myself by playing with apophysis and ended up uploading a fractal to dA, finally finding a design that i felt was worthy of the title "the primal om," not because of the design, but because of the purpose it served at the end of five very stressful days.

as some of you may know, i'm a "survivor" fan. i can't help it; i got sucked into it from the first season, way back in 2000, and have always found the social aspect of it fascinating. perhaps that's because i used to do a lot of primitive camping - meaning, go out in the middle of nowhere with a few supplies, set up camp near water, dig a toilet trench, etc. - and i find it interesting to watch a group of strangers doing this together for well over a month. (personally, there was a girl named bonnie that went with us one time that i would have loved to have "voted out" after the first day; and a young man named keith who dragged a huge pot of water up from the river and heated it over the fire so i could wash my hair who definitely would have won my vote as the "ultimate survivor.") anyway, season 17 started last week - this time in gabon, which features some amazing scenery - but i have a feeling the vice presidential debate that comes on immediately afterward tonight will provide more entertainment and drama. wonder whether it will be biden or palin that gets voted out in the long run?

(my list runneth over ... with mundanity.)

i did a tiny bit of unintended genealogical research today, the first i've done in close to ten years online. i probably should have kept at this project, though i really think it needs to be a focused project to be done correctly, which i will use as an excuse for not staying with it. however, through a series of steps which i will omit here due to their overwhelming dullness, i ended up on google earth, and once again ended up studying the village of tarleton in lancashire. tarleton is a family name, and each generation for many, many generations back my family has used tarleton as a middle name for first born sons (thusly son's middle name is tarleton.) i was bitten by the bug, once again, to attempt to tie my tarletons to the village of tarleton, even though the information i have states they hailed from liverpool, which was/is a bit south of tarleton. and in those few moments of research (there's so much more online now than there was ten years ago) i discovered that my 7x great grandfather was the lord of the manor of aigburth in liverpool during the reign of charles i (1625-1629) which fits very nicely with the information i have. it doesn't, however, tie my tarletons to the village of tarleton, which has been in existence since 1246. i did say "well, la-dee-dah" to myself for the first time ever (and most probably the last,) though.

that's all.

today's reading: finally finished umberto eco's the name of the rose. started a reread of anne tyler's celestial navigation yesterday; the only one of hers i own that i've only read once. it's comfort food in book form, and i'm proud of myself for not reaching for bernard cornwell's "saxon chronicles" series again, which was my first inclination.

Jeremy Pauling saw life in a series of flashes, startling moments so brief that they could arrest a motion in mid-air. Like photographs, they were handed to him at unexpected times, introduced by a neutral voice: Here is where you are now. Take a look. Between flashes, he sank into darkness. He drifted in a daze, studying what he had seen. Wondering if he had seen it. Forgetting, finally, what it was that he was wondering about, and floating off into numbness again.

instrument of wondrous hypotyposis

2008-09-21T00:01:17Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: it's very quiet in here at the moment
drinking: iced tea

i seem to have been stuck in hibernation mode lately; i've been working through a manuscript that's extremely challenging, and at the same time quite entertaining. i have less than 100 pages left to do though, and then one or two more. it seems like i've been saying "one or two more" for months, and i know i've definitely finished one or two. fie! they multiply!

i had thought to share an odd remedy or two, but most of the odd/entertaining ones in this manuscript are also of the macabre bent, and i've already grossed out a couple of people this week by describing in (what was probably too much) detail the ordeal i went through with my wrist three years ago. so if you're looking for ways to use turtle blood and powdered man's skull to make yourself feel better, you'll just have to look elsewhere. ;)

i did get sidetracked early last week, playing with google earth. i've played with it before, but didn't really understand the full power of the program until i did some reading at the google earth outreach site. i've now created a customized companion tour to my travelogue and someday when i'm feeling like it, i'll put a link to it on that portion of my site. i'm considering doing another to complement a rather largish addition that i set aside earlier this year (a gazetteer of place names mentioned in blind harry's wallace,) but that will have to wait until i at least finish these last one or two manuscripts (ha!) and cull out the remedies for "the pest," aka "the pestilence," which we know as the plague or black death, to include in the medieval medicine section of the site. there are some astonishing treatments for that particular malady, but i have a difficult time being amused by them, because they are tempered by firsthand accounts of the conditions in the cities.

oh, i ramble about things of no import to anyone but myself. my apologies.

today's reading: i've abandoned the thomas covenant series by stephen r. donaldson (again.) i was able to make it halfway through the second in the series before i realized i just couldn't take any more. i would say that my newfound appreciation of fantasy fiction has worn off, but last night i dreamt that i had the next volume of george r.r. martin's "a song of fire and ice" series in my hand, and was thrilled to discover a 100-page excerpt of the next in the series after that at the back. in reality, i picked up umberto eco's the name of the rose, for a fourth attempt, and wonder of wonders, i had no problem whatsoever getting into it this time.

"The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than a list, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis."
~ The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco

watchings

2008-09-05T21:38:05Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: rain battering the windows and awning
drinking: iced tea

i've not updated much lately, because i've nothing much of interest to say. that's never stopped me before, but my hands are still aching - and i still have no idea what i've done to them. i've not been overly abusive, but they're just not cooperating often, and when they do cooperate they whine and complain. much like i'm doing now.

moving on ...

wanted: the good, the bad, and the ugly about longwood university. (oddly enough i think i have three longwood students/alumni on my flist.) some firsthand feedback would be greatly appreciated, because it's looking like longwood's at the top of a very short list right now for daughter's continuing education possibilities. i'd appreciate it. if you feel like it. if you have time. and feel free to note me if you'd feel more comfortable sharing privately.

i finished up a manuscript today that i wish i could share in its entirety here. pity it was the shortest i've done yet; i could have happily continued working on it for weeks because it was the most bizarre and entertaining one i've done yet. it was concerning the commonly believed doctrine of signatures, which, in simple terms is "like cures like." for example, it was believed that jaundice was cured by saffron, because of its yellow color. the author takes things a step further and identifies signatures or correlations between humans and animals regarding their characteristics, abilities and "mechanics," saying that man has learned or adapted these character traits and behaviors due to his coexistence in the microcosm with these other animate beings, e.g., man takes the signature of meekness and gentleness from lambs. actually what he says is this:

But animal, and astral men, eating of the tree of proper pride, who neglecting the eternal patrimony in this world, live captives of the stars, and suffer themselves by the spirit of the stars (which by the wise, or rather by the spirit of God in the sapient is ruled,) to be governed and subjected, after excitation, may in themselves (as a little after is said) observe the nature and spirit of their forefathers lurking in them. There is no man so holy, and just, in whom those occult seeds of malignant stars are not latent, suffocating and suppressing the daily prayers of the wise, that by entreating they may manifest themselves; so in the ungodly, destitute of the preserving grace of God, they easily break out.

and i wondered how long it had been since he'd had any fresh air. or what he'd been smoking.

one of the most entertaining passages, to me, was when he wrote that man has learned the "mechanic" of standing watch from the crane, or ... the captain of the cranes.

Cranes are fowls that make great noise; whatsoever they perceive, by voice they signify it to others. They have watchings in the night times; he which watches holds in one foot a little stone, which if by sleep let fall, his negligence is discovered. They choose out of themselves a captain, who cries out when the whole company sleeps. When in an exceeding great multitude they fly, by course they appoint such as shall cry out, who while the whole company are flying cries constantly, till they descend upon the earth; then the captain with loud acclamation cries out, that all may come and feed together; if through too much crying he is hoarse, they substitute another in his stead. When they rest, all sleep, save only the captain, who by his voice signifies what he perceives. In like manner geese celebrate nocturnal watchings, and by their voices testify their wakefulness.

i love this stuff.

watching and waiting for hurricane hannah's arrival; we need the rain, don't need the wind. hope the electricity holds. it could be a very long, hot weekend otherwise.

today's reading: i'm finally closing in on the end of lord foul's bane by stephen r. donaldson. a hundred pages ago i was convinced that i wouldn't be going any further in the series, but i feel a cliffhanger coming on and will probably continue with the next after all.

gold egg, beg gold, boggled

2008-08-29T02:27:58Z

i am: very tired
listening to: the science channel in the other room
drinking: nothing at the moment

i am so very tired, i probably shouldn't be attempting this but i've been meaning to update for awhile and i think i need to take advantage of the small measure of motivation i'm feeling right now to do so. i've also been meaning to respond to my deviantART messages; i'll try to take care of that tomorrow, rhett.

my brain is thoroughly and properly boggled. i can trace this boggledom directly to the source: it began on tuesday morning when daughter and i met with her guidance counselor to have her schedule fixed. she signed up for studio art, and they put her in multiculturalism. i mean, wtf? it took some doing, but we got it worked out, and then i asked the counselor if she thought daughter should take the SATs again. her score was okay, not great - but, you know, maybe she just froze a bit. (or so i told myself up until last night when daughter told me that she'd known all along that she was going to take it again, so she skipped a bunch of stuff she didn't feel like figuring out.) anyway, the guidance counselor said we can get the testing fee waived if her GPA is high enough. this i did not know, and i'm still not sure i believe it, because i've been all over the collegeboard.com website and can only find fee-waivers mentioned based on financial need, and no mention whatsoever of a fee-waiver based on GPA. regardless, what happened next is what sent my brain a-boggling.

as a bit more of a preface i should mention that i actually have seen all of daughter's report cards, so i was aware that her GPA was probably pretty high. none of us were prepared to learn that it's 4.2 though. at this point the guidance counselor started questioning us about daughter's thoughts about college. community college, or maybe ODU if we could swing financial aid was all that we'd considered. she's been unsure about what she wants to do - something to do with art, but what? she doesn't know. definitely studio/digital art; graphic design, maybe - not painting, sculpting or metalsmithing or any other crafty art, she's definitely not interesting in majoring in art education nor art history. the guidance counselor said that with a GPA like hers she's fairly certain daughter will have no problem getting scholarships and grants to cover everything for four years, just about anywhere she wants to go. well. another case of believing it when i see it, but it does open a lot of doors and windows for consideration.

so, after some rigorous research into many art programs at several colleges/universities, and lengthy conversations with daughter, we're looking at VPI, VCU, and possibly JMU (though after reading about the admission process into their art school, i think she'll most likely want to pass on applying there.) on top of this acronym filled whirlwind that's swirling between my ears, there's the fact that she'll need a car to get from point A to point B, and she'll need it sooner rather than later so she has time to get used to the car and driving around alone.

this all hurts my head. it also makes me want to take many - many! - of the courses i've seen scrolling past on my monitor. at least fantasizing about taking university level digital art courses has put an end to my fantasizing about going to nova scotia (which i have failed to mention - son's taking some much deserved leave and taking a road trip to nova scotia. after surfing the "visit nova scotia" website - i want to go. i want to go to the gaelic village. i want to go whale watching in the bay of fundy, and fossil hunting at the joggins fossil cliffs, and go to a ceilidh, and .. well.)

hopefully my brain will settle soon, because i've accomplished next to nothing in the past few days. i've been goofing around with some botanical images that nicely illustrate medical remedies, but i haven't been transcribing said medical remedies because my hands hurt. not sure what i did to them, but they've been very painful for about a week. i was even reduced to donning my darth vader brace for a couple of days.

and hmm. well, enough of a ramble. opinions on VPI and VCU, or firsthand knowledge of the art schools/programs at any other virginia colleges are welcome. art history, art education, and studio art that doesn't include graphic design or new media/digital concentrations are on daughter's "not interested" list. fact is, the local community college offers an AAS in graphic design, and the program looks excellent, with the bonus of the credits being fully transferable to both VPI and VCU. it's nice to have a fallback position if the guidance counselor's enthusiasm about scholarships and grants is misplaced. and how did i get back on this subject?

today's reading: since last updating i finished with no one as witness by elizabeth george. my amazon order of the next novel in the series didn't work out; i guess someone got to the third-party seller's copy before i did. so now i'm reading lord foul's bane the first book of the first trilogy of the chronicles of thomas covenant, the unbeliever fantasy series by stephen r. donaldson , which comes highly recommended by son. so highly recommended that he brought over the first six in the series. i haven't completely found my footing in the fantasy world just yet, but am finding it a good read.

mind dump

2008-08-15T21:07:32Z

i am: present and accounted for
listening to: the rumble of distant thunder
drinking: british blend tea

i am sad to have finished ender's shadow by orson scott card yesterday afternoon; sad because it was a great story that i didn't want to end, and doubly sad because i don't have any others in the series, and the book i ordered from a third-party vendor at amazon last week hasn't arrived yet. this is the longest i've ever had to wait for a book from amazon, and i'm starting to get a bit peeved. the book i ordered is elizabeth george's latest - careless in red. after all the fantasy and sci-fi i've been reading recently a proper british mystery is in order, and elizabeth george is my favorite author of that genre. since it hasn't arrived yet, i've started re-reading with no one as witness, the novel that comes chronologically before careless in red. there was another published between them called what came before he shot her, which runs concurrently time-wise with with no one as witness. huh. i'd never really thought about that as a common technique amongst authors, but ender's shadow ran concurrently time-wise with ender's game as well.

tucked inside with no one as witness i found a post office receipt for a package mailed to great lakes, illinois on 4 feb 2005 - when son was in boot camp. at least i know now how long it's been since i last read this book. i don't really remember mailing anything to son when he was in boot camp, unless it was a bag of M&Ms.

on the back of the receipt i found a note to myself. notes to myself are often mysterious when found years later (sometimes they're even mysterious when found days later.) once i decipher my own scrawl, i often have to puzzle out what i meant. this note is no exception. i'm especially curious about what i meant by "the primal om." whatever it was doesn't matter now; i've think it will make a nice name for a fractal, though i haven't come across the appropriate design that merits such a lofty title just yet.

speaking of M&Ms, marahmarie made a very interesting entry recently about what she considers essential software, hardware and utilities, inviting others to reply with their own lists. after making note of a few programs she's running that i'd never heard of and knew i'd find useful, i followed a link to lifehacker and read what the editors and many of their readers had on their lists. i bookmarked quite a few, installed a plug-in or two. well, you know how one thing leads to another. now i'm trying to decide whether or not to download and install either pidgin or digsby. i don't do a lot of IMing, but i hate having to log on to AIM to talk to one person, google chat for another, and MSN for yet another. i think an all-in-one would suit me, but i'm looking for compact, customizable, and full functionality without having to pay to upgrade to premium. any of you guys use pidgin or digsby? (i'm leaning toward digsby - i like what they have to say about security, i like the email option and i like the way the interface looks in the screenshots. my hesitation stems from the newness of the program, and the lack of any information about it online, other than from their own site and wiki.)

on a completely unrelated note: i love the way yog watches me when i'm in the kitchen, her eyes so bright and observant, alert to my every movement. it's as if she's thinking, "i worship you, o thumbed one. have mercy on me, your lowly but loyal minion. please, i beg of you, open the freezer door and grant me one, just one, piece of ice."

wow ... look at all those words. who typed all that rot?

today's reading: i've just started with no one as witness by elizabeth george. should the mailman ever deign to show up today (i really need to make a mailman tag, since i've vented about him before), and should he deliver careless in red (which he may or may not do, regardless if it's in his bag or not,) then i'll read that instead.

listing: part two

2008-08-10T23:41:11Z

i am: ready for monday
listening to: a string of commercials on the tv in the other room
drinking: iced tea

i finished up my calendars on thursday: assembled, uploaded, ordered my "quality control" copies. i need to do some focused proofreading before releasing them into what zazzle calls the public marketplace - just to make sure i didn't misspell february or something, even though i've checked and rechecked. with my sites, with anything and everything online, it's so easy to make corrections - notice the error in a moment of sheer panic coupled with utter chagrin, edit a bit of code, upload the file and it's fixed - but when it goes into print, it's a frightening prospect, especially since one often sees what one expects to see after messing around with something as long as i have this project. i took screenshots of the covers, backs and all interior pages after i uploaded them at zazzle, which you can see on my LJ scrapbook, if you're interested in such things.

all along i'd been working to get this project completed by august 8th, which was the release date of the new version of apophysis (the fractal software i use.) unfortunately, once i got my hot little hands on it, i realized that my muse had taken a hike, or perhaps a long walk on a short pier. art block, i guess they call it, and worse than any writer's block i've ever experienced. i'm stuck in a rut, and can't seem to find a way out. yesterday i swore off apo altogether; told myself i wasn't going to load it for a week, and then this morning i had an idea for yet another variation of the same style i've been stuck on for almost six months. i want to do something different, but that desire is keeping me from relaxing and exploring, and allowing inspiration to find me.

... and so i returned to my manuscripts. i've been away from them too long, and today have found comfort in working through giovanni vigo's most excellent worckes. the chapter i've been working on has been about sephiros, which are hot, dry apostems, or sores. the remedies all begin with a diet that must be followed, listing things that should and shouldn't be eaten. the diet for those afflicted with sephiros recommends meat of kids and year old mutton - let us hope he means the meat of a baby goats and yearling sheep, as opposed to children and mutton that's a year old- , fayfantes (pheasants) and several different types of fish that live among the rocks. he states that crevices are also allowed. hmm, thought i, fish that live among the rocks and ... in crevices, or ... what? i shrugged and moved on, thinking i'd figure it out later when i get into the real meat of the project, because when i stop to investigate such oddities, i usually end up spending quite a bit of time that i could be knocking out a lot of text i do understand. however, the next time crevices were mentioned, they were mentioned in conjunction with crabs, not as food, but in a description as to how a cankerous sore adheres to the skin - like a crab or crevice (actually, he wrote crabbe or creuyce.) it took me a few minutes of saying crevice in as many different voices as i could come up with before it hit me - crevice, or creuyce, if you will - are crayfish. another puzzle solved. go me.

and as i transcribed and solved puzzles, and even as i'm typing this now, i've been rendering several renditions of the fractal i created this morning, called "dream within a dream," which may or may not ever see the light of anything other than my monitor, because i'm at that point where i'm second-guessing myself on everything. i'm second-guessing myself so much that i'm now on the eleventh rendition, which makes me wonder if there's such a thing as eleventh-guessing.

last night's cast of characters from my dreams included a bunch of guys i went to high school with - one who morphed into roger daltry, circa 1972 - an old russian woman with a broken yellow BIC lighter, and some little girls at a birthday party. unfortunately when i lit the candles on the cake, at the insistence of the old russian woman who foisted her broken BIC lighter on me, the cake went up into something resembling a tornado of flame, a swirling inferno which caught the roof on fire and ... well. there were obviously more candles on that cake than i thought.

today's reading: i finished ender's game by orson scott card on friday, and since i had to go buy yog kibble and had a 15% off barnes & noble coupon in my email on saturday morning, i decided to go ahead and get ender's shadow, which is every bit as good so far as ender's game. as i walked up to the entrance, snapshot memories of travis and claire standing outside the door flashed through my mind. i'll never go to barnes & noble again without remembering a very enjoyable afternoon spent with them there.

snippets: the return of the sequel

2008-08-06T01:47:27Z

i am: grumpy again
listening to: eureka is on in the other room
drinking: watered down iced tea

i've had a cover crisis today with my calendars. it figures, since everything else is rendered, assembled and ready to upload that i should now change my mind on the cover design. but enough about that. i will be so, so glad to finish this project.

i woke up this morning with a mysterious ache in my leg. i must have been running through the back alleys of calcutta with little baby mary-kate olsen clutched to my breast, trying to elude the bad guys from pulp fiction, in my sleep again. my dreams amuse me, but mysterious aches do not. let me tell you, people, getting old sucks. and i'm pushing it by saying "getting."

i tried, but failed. i tried very, very hard to get into dragons of autumn twilight. today i admit my defeat, and offer up apologies to travis, carmen and ellen, who have all highly recommended this book - and the dragonlance series - to me. i made it past the talking unicorn (grrr!!! travis!) i even made it past the pegasi, but this endless meandering around and fighting off lizard people, with the little kender dude finding everything amusing and the dwarf finding nothing amusing, makes me want to knock all their heads together and push them in the boggy mire. instead, i closed the book with a sigh and moved on. i'll probably try again sometime. maybe when i'm not so grumpy. i have no patience for endless meandering right now.

i'm ignoring the fact that the IE8 beta is available for as long as i possibly can. most of the IE users/visitors to my site haven't even upgraded to IE7 yet, so i figure i have a grace period, and for once i'm going to take it. i can't deal with IE right now. (i have a difficult time dealing with IE on the best of days.) i have calendars to finish and manuscripts that sit on my hard disk singing the sirens' song. oh, for fat little puppies, mallow roots and goose dung.

that's all.

today's reading: i started ender's game by orson scott card last night; maybe i just needed to read sci-fi instead of fantasy at the moment, but i had no problem at all getting into it. i'm having to force myself to slow down so it doesn't end too soon and can foresee reading more in this series. (thank you, claire ... wherever you may be.)

show and tell : the return

2008-08-03T02:00:37Z

i am: procrastinating, but that's nothing new
listening to: the drone of the tv from the other room
drinking: iced tea

i took a break last night from my rendering (i'm still making changes to the fractals featured for each month on the calendars - more rendering, but i think i'll be happier with it in the end) and scratched the itch of wanting to create something new. as i created, as so often happens, a song started playing in my head. this is very handy, because it makes titling my pieces so much easier.

(yet another entry edited, 'cos I deleted most of my dA gallery - here's the image on a bunch of "stuff" at zazzle, which i'm linking to because my art site gallery is in iframes ... why am i editing LJ entries, when i should be fixing these things?

Into White

someday i may have something profound to post here. today was not that day.

today's reading: still enjoying my introduction to the dragonlance chronicles, with dragons of autumn twilight by margaret weis and tracy hickman.