Passing (holiday) thought

Posted on by Dawnrigger

Speaking of problematic (weren’t we? Was I arguing w/myself again? Whatever. Here be the thought.)

Thanksgiving.

Family. Politics. Obligatory travel. Racist origin story based on lies…all that. In the United States there’s no getting away from the trappings and pressures of “Third Thursday In November.” Not even the relentless seasonal creep of Christmas season can stop it. 

Holidays are stressful enough, and this one kicks off Consumer Frenzy Month ™ so I support spending it however you like within the boundaries of your necessities & eating whatever you want, and be damned to all the Every Proper Celebration Needs and Thanksgiving Must-Haves not to mention the Do This For The Best Thanksgiving Evers. 

Starting a long weekend off & big traditional turkey feast you cooked all by your own self?  Great! AMAZING, even. ENJOY!

Day of peaceful solitude w/video games, boxed rice & beer? ALSO GREAT!

Working in a hospital, firehouse, or police station, on the front lines of an emergency or serving in a military unit today? THANK YOU! You’re a part of what’s worth giving thanks for every day–social institutions and support through sacrifice.Bolting down a meal with family before racing off to work retail overnight with barely a break for a sandwich and a dive into the bathroom? THANK YOU TOO (and I’m sorry. See postscript below.)

Spending it on the road for work, at a restaurant, or in a rest stop? SAFE TRAVELS and may you find something of goodness and joy during your working day. 

Me, Imma go enjoy the rest of my quiet day, writing more about the mayor of a ghost town. Football on the TV, all the easy holiday foods & the turkey prepped & ready to go in later, Spouseman puttering about the house, friends online..I have so many reasons to give thanks. Far more than a single day can hold.



cranky postscript: I am NOT thankful I live in and time & place where transporting & selling consumer goods is considered a critical job on equal footing with emergency services, military duty, and law enforcement…but not considered worth a critical job’s pay on holidays, but hey, that’s me.

Inside my head

Posted on by Dawnrigger

5. Recently in learning experiences (1) I can use the space bar on my tablet to move the screen cursor instead of trying to tap the right spot with a fingertip. (2) I changed out several new application icon images using my updated desktop system. Yay, baby steps in tech advancement! 

4. Every time I see a TV commercial for Miracle Spring Water (about once a day, despite fast-forwarding through commercials) I worry a bit more about the future of humanity. I know people have been gullible forever, but…oy.

3. The basement may have floor space again soon. Maybe. I’m not holding my breath. Spouseman is a collector, and letting go of past collections is a hard, hard thing. But…being able to walk around furniture is nice too. He’s making an effort. That’s a start.

2. Next on the home improvement list: the water heater.  Not a dire need, but it will come sooner than later. (the installation of the house humidifier demonstrated some shortcomings.) 

I am much tempted by the idea of instant, endless hot water via a “tankless” system, so if anyone has opinions pro/con, toss ’em my way. I’m in research mode.

1. Random observation: when I fill the bird feeders, all the birds go from one feeder to the next together, even though more of them would get food if they split up. Recent sightings:  sparrows, goldfinches in winter coats, Mr. Cardinal, juncos, and one seriously cranky chickadee.

The latest in searches:

  • Grand Guignol
  • chaise lounge history

Media update:

  •  Read: re-reading Jo Beverley’s Rogues romance collection. Don’t judge. I enjoy fantasy. Regency-era romances totally count.
  • View: a memorial showing of Princess Bride.

Random cat pic:

He’s sitting here often.
Might have something to do with being directly above the heater.
Might.

No-Context-Snippet from a short story I’ll be submitting to the pro market before the end of the year. (When?  As soon as I verify that its tenses are all tidy. The darned thing insisted I re-write it in present tense. 

Pops holds claim over a huge stretch of wilderness beyond his castle, land given over to wild pigs, pygmy deer, albino peacocks, and one fat, lazy bear who used to be a gamekeeper. As I step onto his lands, magic kisses my skin in a cool, tingle of recognition. 

A pale, smooth roadway appears where my foot touches the earth, curving ahead into the gloomy woods.

And that’s all the all there is for this time.

Passing thought

Posted on by Dawnrigger

Some thoughts on body comfort & dealing with aging and generally coping with the reality of being a lump of replicating cells that creep daily toward death.  Inspired by all the “oh, body, how you betray me as I age,” posts all over the social sphere on the one day a week I’m allowed to surf.

The bleak humorous posts come mainly from people in their 20’s and 30’s. I can sympathize with their shock and unhappiness, oh, yes. It’s aggravating to discover you can’t do something as easily as you once could.

There’s often a sense of resentment about it, though, and I can’t fathom the bitterness.

First, I don’t remember ever having an expectation of navigating daily life without pain or risk of injury. Maybe as a toddler? No, there was the top bunk incident and the 16 stitches in my chin (blood swirling down the drain, my parents talking over my head with the doctor about possible facial scarring… I was 3, I think?) I knew life was a contact sport wherein any action could bench me with injuries before puberty hit. Tying my shoes and “sitting wrong” have always been hazardous. No biggie. Deal & heal.  I honestly never realized it wasn’t like that for everyone until college. (There are reasons I was teased for being The Oblivious Child)

Second, resentment springs from a sense of betrayal, and that relies on an adversarial relationship with physicality I can’t grok. My body isn’t an enemy or even a frenemy. It’s a housecat.

No, really. It cannot care for itself without my help, it wants lots of things that will do it harm, it’s always finding new and creative ways to break things, and there’s no ignoring it when it needs attention. It’s my responsibility to monitor its behavior and keep it from hurting itself, and we are both happiest when I give it extra pampering. It’s totally a cat.

And yeah, sometimes I’m displeased with my body. (I REALLY didn’t like that phase in my teens when my neck and spine grew first and my legs took time to catch up so I felt like a teeny, clunky giraffe, but hey. I did even out. eventually.)  I’m sometimes displeased with my cat, too. Like when he decides my bedside is just the place to vomit up hairballs.

But I digress. My body is mine, and sometimes it purrs, and it tries to be good, and so I can’t imagine resenting it for things it can’t help.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with resenting your body. I’m an all-out supporter of doing whatever works to keep yourself going. No such thing as a One True Way etc. I can’t see that it would ever work for me, that’s all I’m saying.

Anyway. Gonna go give myself a treat and a brushing now.

Lately, inside my head

Posted on by Dawnrigger

THIS IS MY 500th post!  Freakywild. The Big Blog Experts ™ recommend a celebration or using the event to promote something, but…it’s just another post about whatever has been running through my brain for the last little while, semi-organized because organizing helps me think. So. ONWARD!

1. The other big news: there’s a nice man named Dan drilling a hole through the wall of my house right behind me RIGHT NOW. He’s outside, but still. RIGHT THERE. The man named John is downstairs right underneath me, hammering and drilling and wrenching at metal things. Out with the old furnace, in with the new. New furnace is super-high-efficiency and needs a secondary vent. Hence, HOLES. And my office is smack in the middle.

It’s a bit stressful. I’m choosing to upgrade, efficiency=environmentally responsible etc, but change is stress. (I mean, what if I don’t like it?!?)2. Yay, me! I remembered to use my Prime Lending library again this month. (It’s my way of supporting indie author ebooks within my minimal buying budget.) This month’s entry: Crier’s Knife by Neal Litherland. Good solid fantasy adventure, check it out for yourself.

3. Went outside to toss something in the trash and heard the little brown birds who patronize our bird feeder peeping up a storm. So I stop to see what has them all excited. Nothing.  The birds are all hiding in the evergreen bushes, yelling away. Nothing to see.

I take a step closer, and a hawk launches out of the bushes, lugs herself over the hedge and flaps away.  Big girl, too. Not our usuall zippy l’il Sharp-Shinned lurker. Probably the same Cooper’s Hawk who was lurking here last winter.

4. The latest in searches:

  • deadly spider hoax 2018
  • election 2018 map update

5. Media consumption!

  • Books: Archangel’s Prophecy & Silver Silence by Nalini Singh. Urban fantasy/contemporary fantasy/whatevs.  I enjoy her characters in both settings immensely and admire the author’s ability to come up with two detailed, wildly differing worlds and keep expanding on each.
  • View: The Spy Who Dumped Me. Flawed but fun spy movie…not-quite-spoof, but not at all attempting realism either. Kinda like Hitman’s Bodyguard, but without the problematic elements. Friendship rules the day over romance in this one.

6. Must-share link of the moment: US Wildfire Activity map

Usually this shows me what parts of the country are on fire. For some reason the link sometimes takes me to maps of baseball  parks or floods or other things. Apparently ArcGIS is a program people can use to make their own maps. Which is pretty cool info all by itself.

Random cat pic:

img_5641
Judgmental Scooterboo is Not Happy and is judging everyone

And that’s all the all there is.

Inside my head

Posted on by Dawnrigger

I have finally tried the iTunes “Genius” feature, the one that generates radio-channel-like mixes from my music collection. (It’s only been there for years…) Now I get”singer-songwriter” mixes, “party-dance” mixes etc. It’s fun to click and let it pick songs, but there is one huge downside; I’m long accustomed to timing my work sessions with music, and these mixes will go on forever, randomly repeating.  If I don’t watch myself I can keep going for “one more song…” for hours. Which is noy healthy.

A thing I realized recently: committees have distinct, recognizable personalities. It makes sense, right? Groups are made up of human beings, so it’s logical they reflect the personalities of their members, especially the leaders. Corollary: not all personality traits are healthy ones. Could I give real-world examples? Oh, yeah. I could. But I won’t.

“Reality” television, oy. It’s a thing that makes me sad for humanity. I have no problem with basically-real, transparent-about-the-scripted-parts documentary shows,  but the manipulative, harmfully-scripted creepy ones, like all the American “talent” competitions, DIY dramas, and voyeuristic surveillance shows? Brrrr.

The latest in searches:

puffball mushroom species, fairy ring mushroom species

etymology word history greenhorn

tomato, garlic, rice, feta recipe
(when I can’t decide what to cook, sometimes I query the internet with “list of what’s in the fridge” + “recipe” and the internet provides. )

Media update!

  • Book: The latest Archangel novel by Nalini Singh. I honestly cannot remember the names of any of them, and it isn’t important. It’s a long, lush, complex alternate world fantasy genre, and it’s fluffy goodness. Just what I needed.
  • View: Sorry To Bother You.  I cannot adequately review this…but I recommend it. Scathing social commentary AND a drama with a cutting sense of humor. Not an easy watch, but a really good one.
  • View: Skyscraper. It had Dwayne Johnson, so I had to try it. Not as bad as I expected. Basic cartoonishly unbelievable action movie plot with another telegraphed occurrence of the tired Betrayal By Trusted Friend trope, but wow,  The Rock is great working with kid actors. I mean, seriously awesome.

Random cat pic:

img_8057
I should probably start calling these “random Scooter pics”

Last no-context WIP snippet for a while:

Bergen’s leering expression held steady until Deena pulled out the chair opposite him. Then his split lip curled off his teeth, turning the smirk into a grin. “Well, hell-oh, Chief Cheerleader. You taking me on?”

Deena kept her face locked in the don’t-screw-with-me expression she’d learned in the Army, but inside she wanted to burst out laughing. Chief Cheerleader? Seriously? “You don’t know me, Jack Bergen. You barely knew me, back in high school. A lot’s changed since then.”

And that’s all the all there is for this time.

Inside my head

Posted on by Dawnrigger

I realized recently more than half of my meals consist of a fruit, a vegetable, a bread, and a cheese, plus tea. Cheese pizza & applesauce; crackers & veggies w/spread & berries; pickles, bread, sliced cheese & apple; lettuce salad w/almonds & cranberries and a pita…what can I say? I’m predictable.

Last con of 2018 for me this weekend. VERY much looking forward to it as I pack up my stickers, bookmarks, signs, and of course my books. I have “con boxes” now. the whole repping myself as an author feels…real and mostly comfortable. At least at small cons.

I haven’t mentioned this lately, but if you’ve ever wondered, any images on this blog I don’t take with my phone camera come from Pixabay. They’re all CC0 no-rights-reserved public domain images, but I believe in sourcing (and paying a bit when I can.) So if you like pretty pictures, Pixabay.com is a great place to find them.

Using a gate-keeper and a screen time tracker to keep my online distractions under control really works. I’m at 2 hours/day on the mobile side, including texting and my fitness tracker, with no social media access on the laptop. I’m a happier camper without it, and a much more productive one. Next goal: trim my TV/movie viewing down to 1 hour on non-library nights and nothing after midnight. That…will be a challenge.

The latest in searches:

  • LBJ programs Great America
  • evidence tape procedures
  • difference between gourds & squash

Must-share site of the moment: TIL Reddit. It’s a fountain of random trivia WITH CITATIONS for each entry. It might as well have been created for me. Writing research gold, and a great story idea generator too.

Random cat pic:

img_5645
cranky cat-dragon defends his turf

No Context WIP snippet:

The world of the living ceased to interest Fletcher Davis when his last great-great-grandson retired and moved away. Fletch had been dead a long time by then—a century or so—and without family in town to keep him entertained, the mortal world quickly grew boring.

And that’s all the all there is for this time.

Inside my head

Posted on by Dawnrigger
  • You know  what happens when I am a Good Homeowner and schedule regular maintenance? I discover our heater has a cracked heat exchanger, that’s what. The old one lasted 26 years, so I have no complaints. And it explains the weird behavior of the CO detector last winter. (A couple of times on super-cold days it would beep once, then stop.  Now I know it was catching the exhaust seeping back from the exchanger and saying, “HEY, I SMELL CARBON MONOXIDE…no, wait,  it’s gone now, never mind.”)
  • So, anyway, we’re getting a new heater soon. (Apparently some people wait for the crack to get big and immediately dangerous. Yikes. Nope. Not me. I like breathing.) The AC unit is just as old and didn’t do a good job this summer, so we’re budgeting to replace that too. We could plug in electric heaters and not freeze but Spouseman will melt in a Chicagoland summer without cooling. So that’s the latest big deal.
  •  Anyone analyzing cable television shows by their advertising would conclude that the main audience is, “people with diabetes and/or cancer, people who care passionately about condiments, and people who need cheap car insurance and expensive security systems.”
  • The latest in searches:
    • bubble wrap invention date
    • single item narcissism
    • pumpkin size varieties
  •  Media update!
    • Book: Kingdom of Ash by Sarah Maas. It’s the big sprawly, conclusion to the long, long, looooong classic fantasy saga. It would be easy to list out a dozen things about the series that rub me entirely the wrong way, and a half dozen more that make me wince…but…I liked it anyhow.
    • View: Jurassic World. Um. I enjoyed the dinosaurs, but ugh. It’s one excuse after another for major CGI battle & chase scenes, with gratuitous gore. (Keep in mind I don’t mind gore qua gore. In this movie it was jarring in the wrong way.) Oh! OH!  And  “diversity characters” who are walking weak stereotypes? Awful. Worse than the ridiculously thin villains.  Did I mention I enjoyed the dinosaurs?
    • View: Ocean’s 8. Fun, basic, heist movie. The callbacks to Ocean’s 11 and 13 were super too. I kept thinking Cate Blanchett and Sandra Bullock were the same person in different wigs, but that’s not a flaw in the movie, that’s my brain’s little issue with face recognition.
  •  Random cat pic:

    DSCN0015.JPG
    This is the earliest pic of Scooter I have in the blog archive. Enjoy.
  • No Context WIP snippet:

    The tenth time the dog sprang to his feet and alerted to a blank spot on the wall, Deena lost her patience. “Seriously, Bazel? What is your issue?”

    And someone answered in a deep, pleasant drawl, “He has good instincts. So do you, grand-daughter.”

And that’s all the all there is for this time.