Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Redirect.
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
This blog is no longer active. Please visit my active blog at LiveJournal.
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Simplify, Simplify.
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
So. There’s gonna be some changes around here.
1. Blogging.
If you are reading this on the LiveJournal side, as 99.99 percent of you are, you aren’t going to notice a thing, except maybe the absence of the “originally published at” dealie at the bottom of the page. For some time now, I have been keeping this blog on my WordPress website and cross-posting it to LiveJournal. Which has never worked properly; it has always required several extra steps for me to get it to post correctly on LiveJournal.
So I looked at the numbers. In 307 posts, I’ve received 24 comments on the website–which is actually 12, because half of them would be my answers. That’s 12 legitimate comments; also, there are 3,780 spam comments.
In other words, very nearly all of my activity is over on LiveJournal. That’s also where I keep up with my friends. So I’m just going to post there, and leave out this step.
I’ll still keep my website active, with publications and appearances (just updated it today, in fact). But I’ve changed the front page to point to the LiveJournal blog, and I’ll add a small entry atop this one to that effect, as my final post here.
2. Micro-Whatever Stuff.
I’ve got a Twitter account and a Facebook account. I use them sporadically at best, ignoring them for weeks at a time. Then feeling guilty about it. This morning I have finally owned up to the reality: the tiny, tiny limits just don’t work for me. Micro-writing is not my style. I end up posting cryptic, contextless stuff; then people respond to it, trying to engage; I don’t answer; I feel guilty. So, enough of that. I’ve posted a notice on Facebook directing everyone to LiveJournal; I’m just going to leave Twitter be. I do not naturally write short and pithy.
3. Focus.
What I am going to do, as far as the computer is concerned, is focus on two things: writing fiction, and keeping my blog. I realize that the world is leaving me behind, that everyone is moving smaller and smaller, that blogging is passe, whatever. Fine. I do not need to be cutting-edge. I’ve never been; why start now? I don’t even watch television. I am so far out of the loop, I can’t even see the loop. I’m good with that. I don’t need the distraction of all the other social media, or the guilt I feel for neglecting them.
This feels very freeing.
4. Finally, A Note:
If you are one of my friends on LiveJournal, and your only posts are those daily aggregates of your tweets, I will probably not de-friend you, but I will be filtering you out.
Simplify, simplify.
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Quiet Day
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
Well, as it turns out, after my morning walk, I didn’t leave the Nest all day.
See, in the morning it was raining; then, by the time it got to be sunny, I had written my 500 words on Teh Collab and was ensconced in doing edit/crit work for John (Honeyed Words, the sequel to the forthcoming Black Blade Blues); then as it got later, I was doing some proofreading for Jak so I could feel good about going out for the evening; and by the time The Ogre, alas, called to cancel our evening due to his coming down sick, I no longer had any oomph for going out at all.
Oh well.
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So I stayed in, and drank some wine, and made up a big batch of delicious coleslaw, which covered my kitchen in tiny shards of bright purple cabbage. I’m not sure how that happened. It’s all cleaned up now…
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The spam comments to this blog amuse me. Sometimes it’s random words or characters with what appears to be links to pr0n sites; sometimes long strings of Cyrillic with what appears to be links to pr0n sites; sometimes highly ungrammatical praise of my blog (with links etc etc); sometimes highly ungrammatical criticism with etc.
This one I rather liked, though: Brim over I assent to but I dream the brief should prepare more info then it has.
Kind of poetic, in its way.
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Also, someone finished the pistachio ice cream. Thank god. That’ll make it stop screaming.
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Chemo, Remote
Friday, February 5th, 2010
Jay has his third chemo session today.
I’m not there.
The problem with long-distance relationships is, well, the distance. I live here. He lives there. “Here” is rather far from “there,” actually. It costs money to get from here to there, and back again. It disrupts what’s left of the life I have here (”what’s left of”–now that I’m not working, that is) to spend time there, out of my home, in space that isn’t set up for me.
Be that as it may: I am there a lot. I was there for the first two chemos. I sat in the infusion center and I learned how to unplug the needle from the port and I was there for the doctor consults and the bottle ritual and all that.
We discussed this at great length, the schedule. It’s every two weeks, the chemo. We’ve been seeing each other roughly every two weeks for some time now–long before the excellent cancer adventures started up again.
And so, in our discussions, we asked: did we only want to see each other during the “bad” times, when he is sick? Or did we want to try to space it out, so that we also have some relationship-time during the “good” times?
It made so much sense to do it that way. That’s what we decided to do. Jay has family and many loved ones in Portland and very nearby, who can be with him during the infusions. He is surrounded by love today.
But I’m down here.
And, as it turns out, it sucks.
Earlier this week, he realized that he’d rather have me there during the sessions, that even the “good times” are really not that good… but the tickets are bought, the plans are made, for the next month and a half or so. We can’t change the plans for the next few sessions. I’ll be there for all the ones after #6, going forward.
But this is #3, and I’m here, and he’s there.
So, there you go.
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In other news. I went to the East Bay and had lunch with a friend I haven’t seen in well over a year, and saw her lovely new home. I have baby artichokes and whole garlic cloves simmering on the stove. I didn’t get a nap today. I didn’t write today. Okay that’s enough other news.
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Go Order a Book!
Friday, February 5th, 2010
You can pre-order it now! Because, you know you want to, and I know you want to. So, what are you waiting for?
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A Curious Development
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
I am discovering a new skill in the last few days, something I’ve never been capable of before, in all my years.
It is called napping.
It most often happens when I have had a busy, productive morning: first yoga; then work at the keyboard: writing (a full thousand today, on Ye Olde Problematic Collab), critting, and correspondence; then a small lunch; then perhaps some time on the phone (today with Mark, finally released from his most recent Work Death March); then I decide to lie down in bed with a book for a little while, as a reward for all that industrious productivity.
Then my eyelids get heavy.
Then the words swim on the page and make no sense, even though the book was perfectly compelling earlier.
Then I decide to just curl up and close my eyes a bit, let them rest….
Then it’s twenty or thirty minutes later, I don’t know who I am, and there’s drool on the pillow.
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Who knew? I’ve never been able to nap before. I think it’s a function of being near an actual bed, in the afternoon. With nothing else I’m *supposed* to do. Not supervised, not stuck in an office.
This must have been when I’d get M&Ms, when I had a real job.
Napping is probably healthier.
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Discipline, Restored
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Yep. And instantly rewarded, too: the scale numbers have retreated to where they were before the weekend, and went a half-pound further to boot. That’s what I like to see.
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Seekrit Difficult Collab Story continues to give me fits. I had a clever ending all figured out, and wrote up to it, and got there, and realized that the clever ending is actually just a semi-clever mid-story twist, leading to far more complications. And the ending itself…. recedes into the distance, never to be found… How long is this story going to be? We never agreed we were writing a novel…
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Also I: did yoga; successfully wrangled two loads of laundry through the FailMachines of Quarter-Eating Doom; watered the orchids; remembered three things and forgot a fourth at the grocery store; finished reading a book and fell into a tiny nap afterwards; did thirteen chapters of crit for a friend, and two chapters (plus a prologue) of proofreading for another friend. Because that is what we do for each other. Ask me how many people are reading Demonhead and Our Lady of the Islands, even as we speak.
Good stuff. 
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Um.
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
So, my weight crept up a bit, according to the scale this morning. I wonder if this is at all related to all the eating and drinking over the weekend? 
Anyway, back on the discipline, now. Except, with a small bit of wine, and a half-smoothie in the morning. But other than that: discipline.
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I wrote 750 words on the Seekrit Difficult Collab Story this afternoon. It was like pulling teeth, but in a good way, in that I think I have a hint as to where it might be going. It stands at 5,000 words now; it might go to 7 or 8K total. More on it tomorrow. I hope.
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That’s about it from here… Be well, everyone.
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Impromptu Writing Workshop and Culinary Retreat Part II
Monday, February 1st, 2010
More on the culinary and less on the writing, today. As far as actual output is concerned, anyway.
To wit, the kitchen produced: lamb meatballs, in a thick tomato sauce, with plenty of garlic and mint. And leftover pan-seared asparagus; and some of the ahi and wild rice for lunch. And a precious, hoarded bottle of Former Boss Man’s basement 2006 Pinot Noir (Nuit San Wogga Wogga, decanted, of course). Oh, the yum, it was off the charts.
On the writing front: lots and lots and lots of discussion; no word count to report. But hey. It all counts, doesn’t it?
Jak returns north tomorrow morning, early. It was a lovely visit, and I look forward to many more fruitful collaborations in the future.
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The Witchnest Impromptu Writing Workshop and Culinary Retreat
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
Jak is in town this weekend, and the town is behaving beautifully, bringing lovely sunshine where before there was torrential rain.
There has been much of the writerly discussion, and then there was actually some of actual writerliness. I picked up a Seekrit Collab project that had been languishing since mid-December and wrote about 500 words on it, finding my way towards the end. (Then my Clever Collaborator will fix everything I’ve messed up, and it will be an excellent story. At least, that’s my plan. Shh, don’t tell him.)
More exciting than the writerliness, though, is the situation in the kitchen right now. A pair of utterly gorgeous ahi steaks are going to be prepared before my very eyes. All I have to do is make asparagus.
Even more exciting than *that*, however, is that martinis are being concocted as we speak. Le Yum!
Oh and last night’s wine? Mmmmmm. And I didn’t overindulge, and I didn’t gain back an ounce.
So that’s the news from here. Gotta go–I hear my new cocktail shaker, well, shaking.
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