Birthday Bunny

Sorry for crapola quality, my camera is basic and I took this standing on the back porch.

This bunny showed up in our yard yesterday. Our neighbors have bunnies and we asked if they lost one and they said no. It doesn't run away when we go outside. It's very cute and seems to think under our back shed is a great place to hang out.

Still don't have a car. Boo. I would never have taken it in this week had I known I'd be carless all week. Must move on.

Quiet night at home tonight. Party tomorrow afternoon.

Happy New Year.

Oh - and Slumdog Millionare: FANTASTIC.

Forty-Five

This is my Pirates of the Caribbean wristband I got at the Super Biz Mart store this morning for a dollar. They have more and also red ones so if you want one, let me know and I'll go back and buy you one. You can also see the purple spot on my thumb where I shut the shower door on it the other day.

Starting at Thanksgiving I suddenly randomly couldn't pump gas into my car. The nozzle would keep shutting off. First I thought it was the pump I was using so I moved my car. But it wouldn't work that one either. I asked Bob if he could try and he went to a different gas station and had the same problem.

You can get gas in the car but it's a lot of work. Luckily I don't drive much so it hasn't been a huge issue.

Between weather and holidays we haven't had time to deal with it so I thought I'd just get it over with today. I hate putting off car stuff. They gave me an early appointment so I thought, "Good I'll get this over with and have the whole day." I set my alarm and got up at dark-thirty and rushed out of the house. Bob picked me up and we went for breakfast and killed some time visiting a few shops because Toyota is completely across town from us. That's why we were in Super Biz Mart (possibly not actual name).

Finally at about Noon I called to see what was up and they still hadn't looked at it. Why the hell did they ask me to come in so early if they weren't even going to look at it?

We went home and sort-of put our plans on hold not knowing when we'd have to go over and pick it up.

You know that thing I do when I always expect it to cost $600? Well, I didn't do that this time. I just assumed this was going to take an hour or two, a hundred bucks and I'd be on my way.

Oops. They finally just called and the combobulator filter agitator trip-wire bungyuny is all fouled up and needs to be replaced and there is one part, somewhere in Portland and they think they can get it tomorrow and if all goes well I can pick up my car by this time tomorrow. For about $525.

Okay. It's not $600 but farkity-fark-fark-fark.

I was mad but I got over it quickly. Lots of things to be grateful for right now. It's just money. Besides my "If Dec 30 is your birthday" horoscope says that the year ahead will offer "many chances to get ahead."

We are on our way to see Slumdog Millionaire and have a bite to eat.

Here's the Christmas alien enjoying the teeny bit of snow left in the front yard. It all seems like a dream, now.



Here's a terrible photo of the Lord of the Rings glowy mugs. Please, steal this image all you want.

I said I'd finish a certain writing project by the end of the year and today's the day. Tomorrow I'm at the office and yoga for a full day. Tuesday I am the birthday queen. And the thirty-first I don't want to be all stressed out about completing 2008 goals.

If I haven't called you back or responded to your messages or otherwise have blown you off, don't take it personally. I'm doing it to everyone. (My poor neglected husband.)

Not done yet. Back to work.

Post Holiday Wrap-Up
I bashed my thumb in the shower door while cleaning. I told it off with a number of really fabulous bad words. It's already turning blue. Photos in the future, if it gets really ugly.

* * *

I spilled come candle wax on my clothes and thought I'd check the Internet to see if there were any great tips for removing it.

The first one I found said this: "The best way to avoid wax stains on clothing is to not get them in the first place."

Wow. That's genius. Let's think of all the places we can extend that fabulous bit of thinking. "The best way to avoid overcoming brain damage is to not fly through that windshield in the first place." "The best way to avoid a painful, lingering death is to not be born in the first place."

What kind of person typed that first advice? I bet if s/he has kids, they hate him.

* * *

The thaw is on. Now we have flood warnings. Yay, us. At one point the awning over the back deck appeared to be caving in. Looks fine now. A guy is going to look at the gutters on Monday.

* * *

I cleaned house today and then mulled some wine to drink in my Lord of the Rings promotional goblet with the red glow. I'm too lazy to take a photo and I just cruised Flickr with some luck but no Creative Commons licensed photos. Please world, learn about Creative Commons. It could have used an orange slice but otherwise, pretty good.

Jedi v. Hobbits

Guess what happened yesterday?

It snowed some more. Snowiest Christmas in history. The snow on the garage took out that raingutter, too.

But it was was the kind of snow with huge pretty fluffy flakes and I could watch while I made dinner.

I made a bunch of delicious recipes from the Sunset magazine holiday recipe round-up like broccoli gorgonzola casserole and artichoke parmesan stuffing. I'd love to link to them for you but Sunset's website sucks major ass. Sunset has been including quotes from blogs in their pages. I sure hope they get that one.

I also made their herb dinner rolls. The recipe calls for fresh herbs and I had bought a few herbs to supplement what I have in my yard. Except we couldn't find the herbs we bought. Must have been left at the store somehow. And I didn't feel like putting on boots and tromping across to the backyard and digging out my frozen garden herbs. So I used dried herbs and the rolls still came out good. I just ate a leftover one cold and it was delicious.

And we had turkey and mashed potatoes and some brown sauce that some might consider calling gravy, and I made a pumpkin pie from pumpkin I grew myself. It was good but a lot of work for one person. After we finished the last dishes I took a hot bath and then finished watching The Two Towers which is my favorite of the three. That was Christmas.

The day before yesterday I watched Attack of the Clones. I re-watch episodes IV-VI all the time but I haven't seen any of the first three in awhile. There's really no way of getting around how monumentally stupid that movie is. I enjoyed it in a dorky fangirl way but sitting there watching it again, I found myself cringing. That's why I gave up on Jedi and switched to Hobbits.

Storm Damage 2008

Hello guest reader Joel. Sorry your flight got canceled and you can't be in town to enjoy all this endless snowy mess.



*Note snow on roof. Will figure in later in this post.

This is our "cleared" driveway from yesterday. I had the front porch and walkway all cleared off, too. It felt like we were making progress.



Here's our street. I thought I had the exact same photo from this fall but I can't find it right now because I'm lame at organizing my photos and searching through a couple hundred of photos in a folder called "Around Our House" isn't yielding much so you'll have to image the golden autumn light and clear pavement in your head.



Here's the Safeway parking lot. Doesn't look too bad. The parking lot across the street was PERFECTLY clean. There's a library annex there and we guessed they must have a private contract with some sort of do or die clause in it.

That was yesterday. Now on to today.

This is our driveway this morning after the latest round of snow.



I was sitting here at my desk, all buckled down to get some work done before I power down for 36 hours to do holiday cooking, cleaning, decorating and celebrating. We never got a tree so I'm going to hang a string of lights and a few ornaments on the Ficus. I'm not much of a decorator to begin with but this is awfully pathetic.

But back to my writing. I heard a huge clattering sound on the roof and since it's way too early for Santa I figured the snow must be sliding off and I jumped up and ran to the window.

I was right. It was scary loud. I sort bent down and covered my head which I'm sure would have been very effective if the world was crashing through the roof of the house.

The snow completely filled in our nice shoveled walkway. Piled on our front porch.



And almost completely destroyed our rain gutter. Look at the way the icicles are pointed in. And the way the wood is all chunked off.

We're not too upset. We stood around on the lawn gaping and laughing. One more thing to go on the list of things to fix. I broke the control string on the window shade in my room, too. And then there's that car thing.

Here are some killer icicles in case we get the urge to stab each other.

I told myself I wasn't going to sit at the computer beyond 1pm but the snow thing got me all distracted. Just two more things to finish before I log off.

Happy Holidays Everybody.

I am planning on doing a holiday newsletter but probably after Jan 1st. And it's probably going to be shorter but I'll offer a story for people who like stories. And it was going to be a Christmas story but since I'm running behind, maybe I'll make it a winter story. I guess I shouldn't worry about it. Not like there are Christmas story police.

Winter Hooey Part 759

This morning we cleared the walk and driveway and chained up and headed out and got groceries. It wasn't as dreadful as I expected.

You could tell I haven't been out of the house much since I tried to strike up a conversation with every single person in the store and parking lot. I'm not normally very friendly.

Best moment: when the music was the the Herb Alpert version of that Sleigh Ride song. We danced a little in the aisle.

I have photos of the adventure but I left the camera in Bob's car and he is being a prince and looking in on his mother. He might also be trying to scrounge up some sort of Christmas present for me since he got out of school about fifteen minutes before all this weather happened and he's had little opportunity to get out there and do his thing.

Christmas is mostly canceled. My family isn't coming up. I'll deal with shipping out their presents later. This morning I revised my menu and shopping list accordingly.



The Reading Pile

This isn't a completely accurate image of the to read pile. I have tiers of piles.

Things are organized depending how badly I want to read them or how quickly I want to return them or how guilty I feel about how long they've been in the launch area contrasted those I'm intentionally avoiding but hang on so as to appear like I might read them someday. I did finally give back The Kite Runner.

I thought this would be a fun project and ran around trying to find everything I wanted to read. I pulled stuff from my bedside table, a lot of it already partially read, and from different parts of the bookshelves. I made that giant pile and then I felt sort of sick and despondent. When am I ever going to get to all that? Plus I resent anything longer than 300 pages. Well, unless it has angsty teen vampire romance.

Many of those I don't intend to sit down and read cover to cover. And that's not every single unread book in the house that I'd like to get to eventually. Bob has zillions of interesting books on his shelves, too.

Well, there are worse problems a girl can have.



My index card collection.

I have a thing about index cards. I have them in every color, lined, unlined and graphed. 3x5 and smaller ones from Germany. I don't like the bigger ones except I use some 4x6 at the office.

I keep them all over the house. All over my desk and computer cart. By my bed. I was holding back on using the little ones and I found a whole stack behind some pillar candles when I was pulling them all out to take this photo.

The ones on the bottom are special deluxe colored ones. The lined side is one color and the unlined side a different color. I know, cool, huh? I don't remember where I got them. I found a stack of regular white ones in the other room after I took this photo.

I have some that I bought recently that are not cardlike at all. They're like construction paper. I believe this is a crime against nature and will submit a complaint to the appropriate authorities. That's what happens when America outsources all its manufacturing. Terrible index cards.

Enough of this crap already. I've had a good attitude and now I've had enough.

That's the driveway we cleared and the car we dug out yesterday do we could run around today and do errands.

HA!

For consolation I'm baking pumpkin scones.

This is our driveway

I'm very sorry I mocked the snow gods now. I shouldn't have said or thought those things. The snow is pretty and fluffy and trapped under a nice layer of ice.



It made a satisfying crackle-kuh-crunch sound when we walked on it. Which grew old rather quickly.



We cleared a path from the street to the front door which is sort of hopeless because as soon as it gets warm enough, all the snow on the front side of the roof is going to slide off and right onto the front porch.



This is the backyard

I broke all the ice off my car and scraped all the snow off because it's my plan that the freezing rain and snow that's falling right now is the very tail end of it. Overnight the temperatures are going to blast to a non-freezy 40 degrees and I'm going to get out there and buy hundreds of dollars worth of groceries for the family this week. And I'm going to get to the store early so it's not a living nightmare. I have a low tolerance for all things crowded but generally I opt to avoid those things. Food shopping I cannot avoid. I also can't avoid if the weather has freezier plans.



Here is our highly accurate temperature measuring device with icicles.

A few cars have been back and forth on our street and I walked in some tire tracks to the closet main street to see if it was getting plowed and sanded. Do they even have sanding trucks in Vancouver? Probably on the east side. The plow went by as I watched but the road looked pretty sketchy. I'm glad I don't have to go anywhere today.

Finally. After teasing us for a week, something that looks like real snow out there.

I heard a spoon clattering in a ceramic dish and I asked Bob what he was making.

"Flavored snow."

I asked him what flavors.

"Orange Izze and cranberry. It's really fresh. You should try it."

Today I'm trying to act like a civilized person. I did an extended yoga practice because I've been spending lots of time with the butt in the writer's chair which is great for the writer but terrible for the butt, not to mention the back, shoulders and neck. I'm really starting to understand why you don't see a lot of writers with great abs.

This morning I did yoga first, then put on regular clothes. I've been wearing pajamas or sweat pants most of the past several days. I put on my jeans and was relieved to find I can still button them.



Bob likes honey roasted things and he likes nuts. I found these at Trader Joe's and bought them for him.

He said they were really good and hard to quit eating. Then I had to try. After standing in the middle of the kitchen for several minutes shoveling nuts into our mouths we decided to hide them.

I threw them in a cupboard with the serving bowls.

A couple days later I found what was left of them in the closet in my room.

I just took them out to the kitchen and put them in a dish. "There aren't enough left to hurt us," I said.



This is the magazine pile.

It actually looks a lot better than it did a week ago. I finished an Asimov's, a F&SF and 3 MacLifes.

Those digests are what's killing me. When I was accepted into CW I thought I should be more familiar with the markets so I subscribed to Asimov's and Fantasy & Science Fiction. Also Locus. But they each sent me an issue right before I left and at least two while I was gone and then another one while I was recovering so I was already so way behind.

And then my reading time has dwindled so I haven't managed to catch up. I'm trying to skip stories I don't like or skim them but I like a lot of them.

The New York Times Magazine I don't keep up with much but those are the Annual Issues of Ideas. I like to go through them and makes notes of some of the more interesting ideas. I say issues plural because, uh, one of those is still from 2007. I'm trying!

The National Geographic was passed along because it has an article about the Klamath River. I belong to 2 historical societies, Siskiyou County and Humboldt County and I never seem to get to those. Siskiyou is only an annual but Humboldt comes out 4 x a year.

Cooks Illustrated I love. I also get Sunset which is good for recipes. I'm caught up on that one. There's another local visitor's magazine in there that has an article about an Indian exhibit I want to check out.

I was going to do the to read pile but I've got to get some work done so perhaps tomorrow.

Update: Two more magazines in today's mail. Plus something from our mortgage company addressed only to my husband.

Cosmo

I got this as a gift when I left the firm and I totally forgot to take a picture of it. It lives in my office but I brought it home so we could put it on the tree. It's from Diamonds of the Sea. Billy got the Indian.

For the last couple of weeks I've had my panties in a twist about NW Natural. I finally found the letter they sent so I called them this afternoon.

We switched to natural gas and we had to apply for our account. I haven't applied for a utility in awhile but this application struck me as being somewhat hysterical. I applied as the co-applicant. If I made a copy of the application I can't find it but as I recall I had to put down things like where I worked and for how long.

Bob handled the furnace installation so I didn't talk to anyone at the utility. Meanwhile, I get a letter from NWN that says I've been listed as a co-applicant so I'm also responsible for the bills and if this is a mistake I need to let them know. And this kind of irritates me because, duh. And because I'm not a roommate. I'm a homeowner. It's 2008 and I don't have to have the same name as my husband.

But what really made me mad was that the rebate check we got as new customers was only made out to him. It has nothing to do with "him getting the money." It's all the same money. It just seems sort of rude to suggest that I only count if they need someone to pay the bill.

I phoned today to politely update them to the customs and ways of this crazy future we find ourselves in and ask that my status be upgraded to homeowner and apparently that's not an option. I'm just a co-responsible for the bill.

This is a really old picture of snow in Orleans at the Grandparents

I have something that I'd set aside to give to people at Christmas and I can't find it. I keep thinking I'm going to find it but it wasn't in the Christmas wrapping paper stash and it wasn't in the Christmas ornament/doodad boxes. It seems like I would have put it in a place I was likely to look at this time of year.

It's not stashed on the bookshelves or in any of the little boxes I have in the closet where I stash things. I'm not sure where else to look and not really in the mood to take on a more major search effort. The world doesn't end if I don't find it but now it's bugging me.

Is there some rule that newsreporters who stand outside to talk about the weather must be clinically stupid? I thought getting on television was a competitive job and you had to have some sort of skills or brains or something. There was a woman today who was so awful, I couldn't stop watching. My conclusion was that she must be excellent at something else which I won't mention on a family blog.

The weatherpeople keep promising all this snow and ice and accumulations and we must be living in a special bubble because it's been just fine here. Cold and frosty. I've been sticking close to home for nothing. I'm planning on running out and taking care of errands tomorrow.

Yesterday I ran around downtown doing some xmas shopping. My list is pretty boring off-the-shelf type stuff and I had a hard time finding anything that I was looking for and if I did, it came in one color. I'm trying to help the economy but I need better choices.

It's already the 17th and I have no interest in starting the annual newsletter. This doesn't happen very often. Maybe this weekend I'll find a surge of energy.

Carlton Mellick III

I know there are a few folks who read this who aren't dialed into Clarion West and LJ (I hope that link works because my computer is choking on it right now) deal.

My classmate Carlton Mellick III has a story in Vice which you can read here.

Or, even better, you can hear it by the voice who tells you which register to use at Whole Foods here

Highly recommended.

Today's Post Brought to You By Wool

This morning I turned on the TV to see if there was anything traffic related I should know about. The ruddy-faced weatherman announced that there was some cabin-fever in Stumptown. The roads were crowded but all the schools were shut down.

I penned him a polite note when I got in, informing him that teleportation hadn't been invented yet and that people use cars to go to work, too.

I'm wearing what I consider to be my most heavy-duty wool pants. They're also my vintage wool pants. My mom gave them to me a long time ago. When she first gave them to me, I still lived in California and didn't understand how wonderful wool pants are.

But then for a long time I couldn't fit into them. Now I can fit into them and I love wool.

The only thing is that they are the most high waisted pants on the planet. The waistband is bumping against the bottom of my ribcage right now. I didn't like the low waistband thing for a long time. But now that I'm used to it, the high waistband is uncomfortable and for reasons I'm guessing are juvenile flashbacks, feels super dorky.

I went to Pendleton a couple months ago to look for new heavy-duty wool pants, assuming they'd updated the cut since these ancients ones I'm wearing were made. Nope. Up-to-my-armpits waistband. Maybe I should pen them a polite note.

Ice Ears



This is how I took it and now I'm wondering if I should flip it. No, too lazy.

Bob and I are both home today. It's sunny outside and according to our highly accurate backyard temperature measuring device, it's 28 degrees. It's also really windy. We don't want to turn into winter lumps so we decided to go for a walk. We piled on layers of clothes, hats and mittens and headed out into the bright coldness.



What do you think this thing is for? It's a retired tea kettle on a stick. It's lined up with a couple of other bird feeders so I guess it's a birdfeeder but not sure how that would work. Maybe it's just outdoor art.

We originally thought we'd take this long route by Burnt Bridge Creek but we started heading east into the wind and our noses turned blue and it was so ugly we almost turned around right then.

But we thought we'd at least hang in for a couple of blocks and once we got around the first corner it wasn't so bad. But we never made it to the creek.



The holiday load has been manageable so far. I've got a few errands left but nothing to freak out about. It's the rest of my load that I can't seem to catch up on. My email box is stacked and I owe from way back at the beginning of November. Every day I try to go through at least ten but by the end of the day at least twelve more have come in. I unsubscribed from every company email list I'm on because they were all sending me things every single day. Too much crap.

And I have a million of those little things you have to do that probably won't take that long but you never seem to get to them. I need to find my camera book and figure out what magical combination of buttons I pressed that makes the display screen all wonky. I need to find all the stuff for our natural gas account and put it in the same folder. I need to update the family address list and distribute. I need to clean out this drawer in my bathroom where hair product spilled. I should probably go look for the lens cap to my camera. I'm 99% sure I lost it at home but I'm afraid it fell off when I went outside and walked around the yard and don't really feel like bundling up and looking right now. I was hoping it would be on my desk but no luck.

I know, don't you wish I'd go on?



This is Mt. St. Helens with an old farm that's still in the neighborhood. There was a chainlink fence and I lifted my camera up over the top to take the picture and when downloaded it from the camera I was surprised by how well I aimed.

Yesterday the weatherman said we could expect 1-3 inch accumulations overnight. You can imagine my disappointment when I ripped the windowshade open this morning and saw this. It looks like someone shook a bag of flour out of an open car window as they drove by.

It picked up again later but there was never enough to cover anything.

I don't know how Laura Ingalls survived that Long Winter. I ran out to the backyard to see how things were progressing. It's windy and 30 degrees. I ran back inside and stood on the heating vent in the living room until I stopped shivering. Laura Ingalls probably wasn't stupid enough to run outside in her pajamas.

Now I've also revealed that I never changed out of my pajamas today. Well, at 3:30 I took them off and put on sweatpants. But I'm wearing the sweatpants to bed so it wasn't like I traded up.

Every time I plan to have a lazy day, the opposite happens. I guess there are worse problems.

I wrote most of the morning. Then I Bob and I had a hot lunch. Then I decided to bake a loaf of bread so I could make fresh bread Nutella toast when I felt like a snack while being inside on a snow day.

By the time I had the kitchen all cleaned up it was 3:30. So I changed into my sweatpants, as mentioned earlier, and then fired up a crackle log and sat down and watched a Firefly. It was the one where there's a fancy ball and Kaylee wears this crazy pink dress and Mal has to swordfight this guy who wanted to make Inara his personal companion.

Now I'm cleaning off my desk while I wait for the bread to come out of the oven.

I think after dinner we might watch Iron Man from Netflix or we still have a million Life on Mars on the DVR. I guess it's a half lazy day.

Klamath River

Long week in terms of sitting at the computer and getting stuff done. Completely beat.

Out of town on business until late Friday night. Two social events Saturday.

Perhaps decent update on Sunday.

A week or two ago I made chicken pot pie using this recipe. As we were serving it up he said we had to have a picture of it.

Bob ate very quietly and about every five minutes he would look at me with damp eyes and say, "This is really good."

I was going to write a quick post about how much I hate baby carrots. I might have covered this topic. I like to peel and cut my carrots myself.

Just out of curiosity I asked my favorite search engine where baby carrots come from. And this is what I learned.

I still don't want to eat them but I don't hate them any longer.

Note: I don't know what to do to make it look less green. Every Photoshop trick in my very limited skill set just makes it look worse.

Erin's workplace

Good News: my desktop computer is back home and working like a dream. No lost data. Yeah.

However, I didn't expect to be running across town to pick it up this morning so my day is off to a crooked start. I gotta pull myself together and get on top of a few things.

Toxic Chocolate

Every year I buy advent calendars for the office. Wow, only $1 from Trader Joe's what a screaming deal. This year the chocolates, in addition to being microscopically tiny, taste so horrible they could possibly be toxic. I had to eat a See's Candy to get the taste out of my mouth.

So now what do we do? Do I open the window for each day and then throw the candy away? Do I throw the entire calendar away? That ruins the fun of the advent calendar. But then, the nuclear waste candy has already done that.

This is funny because last year I had three advent calendars (2 were gifts and extremely yummy) and I couldn't eat the chocolate fast enough.

A Tad Early in the Season for Feelings of Violence

I'm overwhelmed by commerce right now. When I got back from three days offline over the long weekend I had about 30 emails waiting for me. Fourteen were from entities wishing I would buy something. Everyone wants me to buy things. Pendleton wants me to buy embroidered blankets, men's bathrobes, wool pants. It's a new thing every single day. Ann Taylor is smothering under the weight of all those sweaters that I should be buying two for the price of one.

I did finally succumb to Prana's love taps because those 70's cords are awesome.

* * *

You know those people who wander through Target, slowly pushing their carts aisle by aisle, the whole time jabbering on the phone? I'm not talking about people who are checking up on the shopping list. I'm talking about the people who seem to think that the whole point of Target is to provide a big red cart and mountains of product to look as one talks on the phone.

I think it should be legal for me to punch them in the face. Not only that, I think I should get paid for it. And all the other customers should stand on something and applaud when I walk by.

NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up

I didn't sign up officially. This was self-directed NaNo. I fully expected to fail when I started mostly because my work days are long and I didn't think I would be able to do 1667 words on those days. Especially not for a full month.

I was wrong.

The final word count is around 50,300. I can't tell you the exact number because it's trapped in the guts of the dead computer. My best day was 2630. My worst day was 725 – but that day I was working on another writing project that I didn't count toward my NaNo. I wrote prose-fiction every single day for 30 days and now it feels like habit.

My NaNo project was expanding a story from another project. I was only partially successful. I wrote about 44,000 words on that and it has a beginning, middle and end although there's a little gap in there that I haven't figured out how to fix yet. I'm confident it's dreadful but I'll be curious to look at it down the road and see if it's as bad as I think.

I realized about three days in that I had the wrong POV character and shifting the focus would involve a complete re-thinking which I didn't have time to do under the circumstances. I may revisit the story with a different approach on the POV. I haven't decided. My expectation was that it was an exercise. I didn't expect to write a real novel in a month.

With my leftover words I wrote three first drafts of short stories.

I've never been a big fan of word count goals because I don't work that way. I wrote something about my process in April of this year. Choice quote if you don't want to go back and read it:

A typical writing cycle for me goes: get new idea, rabid excitement, research and tons of writing, get stuck, dread the writing chair, avoid writing, hate myself for avoiding it, despair, force myself to go back to it, find what interested me in the first place, finish story.

For the record, there's a bale of stuff in my files that's still waiting for the part that comes after "despair."

It's funny to read this after Clarion West.

At CW I had to finish a short story in a week so I had to get over the despair (and if you read my posts while I was there, despair was still a part of the process) and move on very quickly. So the lesson there was that stories feel like crap in the middle. Get over it and do it any way. Or put another way, I could write more quickly than I thought I could because I didn't have the luxury of being stuck for very long.

I also learned that I can write when I'm tired, hungry, cranky and not in the mood for writing. I can write late at night. I can write after lunch. With music. After interruptions. I had previously believed I could only write first thing in the morning and if I was interrupted the day was ruined. (Barely exaggerating.)

When I got home from CW, I had a hard time getting back into writing again and figuring out how to balance real life with writing. NaNo was a good exercise to make me find time to write every day and get over the idea that CW offered an ideal writing environment that could never repeated at home. And I learned I can write after work. I can write on the bus. I can write before bed after an evening function that includes adult beverages. I could write in short little bursts between other activities, although still not my ideal.

Now I'm a fan of the word count although 50K in a month is too many. My writing was exceptionally sloppy at that pace. I'd rather write less words that come out on the page more orderly. My goal for December is 20K.

Another thought that I don't know where to shoehorn in is that having and sticking to word goals (and starting in January, submitting things for publication goals) is that I rarely feel panicked and annoyed that I'm not writing.

What didn't happen during November? I only read one book. I only looked at the Sunday NYT one time which was the 30th after I reached my goal. I had to schedule my TV time so I wouldn't get too far behind. (Yeah, I realize TV would be an awesome thing to give up. But I don't watch that much and I don't want to give it up.) I exercised about 15 minutes a week. I owe a zillion emails. I only did about a third of my normal autumn garden activities. I'm not beating myself up too much on this because we had a super busy month with social activities. I feel I'm on the verge of finding a way to balance it all. But I do wish I read more books.

I feel like I have lots more to say on this but also like I've gone on long enough. It's very funny to look back on how much things have changed in a year.

What's Wrong With Me Now?

This is going to be a rambling post from many topics scribbled on this tiny piece of paper next to the keyboard.

Pihnêefich has taken up residence in the house. My computer died. The laptop won't connect to the wireless. The DVR didn't work last night and every time I tried to pick a show it told me to try again later.

bwah! How do we appease you Mr. Trickster?

* * *

For the first time in history I've been skipping yoga class due to an injury type situation with my back. I hate calling it an injury because (a) I don't remember a moment that I injured it and (b) people who talk about their injuries are tiresome.

I've had this situation before (last year and 2005.) The discomfort lasts for several months but usually only bothers me when I first get up in the morning or if I sit in certain positions. This year it hurts during practice so I'm laying off class. I still practice at home and work around it.

* * *

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in at least 5-6 years. I took a bath. Our bathtub coating or whatever it's called disintegrated and we didn't do anything about it until this summer when I got a pretty new bathroom.. This is the first chance I've had to use it and it was more wonderful than I imagined.

* * *

Bob and I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall last night and thought it was totally stupid. Yes, we laughed. That rock star guy was hilarious and Paul Rudd also funny but that movie was about 20 minutes too long and really, really dumb.



Here's one of Bob's photos of the fog on the way down from Greyback.

I was going to do my NaNoWritMo Wrap-up today but this is already taking too long so I'll do it tomorrow or later this week.

I did make the 50,000+ word goal.

Oh, also I have a weird rash on my scalp/face. It's an inner rash. You can't see it but I can feel it.

Major Tragedy
My desktop computer just died. As in completely and totally nothing but a hunk of metal dead.

Good news: we bought the AppleCare for three years!

Bad news: my 253 photos from Thanksgiving and my writing I did today are stuck in there.

Let's all agree that it's probably just some tiny little thing that takes 5 minutes to fix and doesn't destroy any data.

Best Thanksgiving Ever, So Far



We saw three bald eagles on the drive home. THREE!

Two on the Klamath, at the same time. This is one of them. The other in the Willamette Valley.

We left at 9am and stopped in Somes Bar for coffee, stopped for bald eagle photos and stopped again for fog photos which I will post tomorrow or later in the week. We ate giant plates of Mexican food in Roseburg and when we hit town we stopped at Safeway for groceries before we went home.

I'm beat.



This is Shadow, the world's most popular dog, moments after being given a rubdown in the river because he rolled in something so stinky it made Erin gag. Later, in the car, he sat behind me and I wept real tears due to the stench. Imagine you bought a hundred pounds of greens and totally forgot them in the fridge and then when you finally remembered to take them out they were all slimy and stinky and just then, 100 camels farted in the same room. It was bad. He had to have another major scrubdown when he got home.



This is Shyboy, the world's biggest scardicat. His origins are sad. Someone threw a bunch of kittens over the side of the road or something and he was feral but my folks were endlessly patient and turned him and his brother into nervous domesticated cats. His brother, Friendly, met an untimely end a couple of weeks ago in the clutches of a mean dog(s). (This is rugged country, folks.)

Shyboy has been sort of needy ever since. He has sat in my lap exactly two times in history because he's anxious around strangers. Of course this weekend it was while I was very busy working on getting my NaNoWriMo words done and did not want a cat in my lap.

I'm also including this shot because of the watercolors of me and my sister way a long time ago when we were little.

Destination: Klamath River

I couldn't find my list of things I want to post about this morning and now I don't have time to write anything good.

I'm going to be offline until later this weekend.

Enjoy your holidays.

You Read That Right: Envy

This is from an actual postcard we got from the company that makes the Congressional Directory we use at the office. The directory is compact, easy to use and I think everyone should have one. (No, they aren't paying me to say this.) It has everything you could ever want to know about the government. Each state starts with a picture of the state and its population. For example, Idaho has approximately 1.5 million people. It lists the governors, senators, representatives and brief bio and contact info.

It has tons of info you didn't even know you were interested in. U.S. Senate Cloak Room – (D) or (R)? Call them right now. Congressional committees, cabinet officers. A handy map of Washington, D.C. And tons of things I'm not going to mention. It's fun to look at even if you don't need it for your job.

But envy seems a stretch.

* * *

New Rule

If your backpack needs its own seat on the bus then it needs to pay full fare.

The List

This is what I did today:

Wrote 2630 words

Dug up those weird purple bulb-things that grow into tall yellow flowers

Raked all the leaves and buried the compost into giant holes I dug in the garden

Went on a lovely sunset walk with Bob

Made 40 tamales.

And finally had Bob take this photo of the giant coat for Eden beautiful zombie girl of Chicago.

Confused Snail

A couple weeks ago I was getting something from my car when I noticed this display on the front door. I never saw snails with shells up here until they magically appeared in my own yard. And now they're breeding. I can't get the snail bait out there fast enough.

What was it thinking? Do snails think? It really thought it would be a good idea to go up my my front door with some sort of distracted side-tracking in the middle and then perch above the front door?

Is this considered lucky in some cultures?

It disappeared the next day or rather returned to the bushes and ate some snail bait and the good luck is over.




I'm still depressed about Twilight. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should go back and see it again. Maybe it won't be as mediocre as I remember.

The First Video Game You Can Play With Your Butt

The title of this post came from a commercial during my wait for Twilight. You can't make that stuff up.

I wish I could have a conversation with the stoner that set the line-up of trailers that went before Twilight.

First was Harry Potter. Okay. Then there was a trailer for a horror movie called The Unborn that made me want to crap my pants in fear during the few seconds I had to sit through. Then was a dumb "boys go to cheerleading camp" called Fired Up.

Then there was a series of trailers that stand for the proposition that you can put up any turd with thumping music and lots of quick cuts and make it look plausibly decent: Valkyrie (Tom Cruise, already know how it ends); something action-y with Dakota Fanning that looks like Hong Kong X-Men, one more that I can't understand my notes.

I'm sure you're dying to hear what I thought of Twilight.

Didn't hate it. But didn't think it was too good. There were some very satisfying moments for fans of the books but the script and the direction were tragically awful. Some of the modifications worked. I loved the high school kids. I loved the baseball scene except I could have done without some of the effects. I loved the big fight scene at the end except that ever single second of it already aired on the previews. They should have dragged that out a bit more.

I thought the movie wrecked my favorite part(s) of the book which were the big Port Angeles dinner and drive home and the trip to the meadow.

My most ginormous peeve is that Jacob did not speak anything like a reservation Indian. Reservation Indians have very distinct ways of speaking. You would think that for the one movie of the year that had actual Indian parts, they might have done a TINY bit of homework and got that bit right. I'm available for consultation if they want help with the sequels.

So as a fan: yes, worth it. Satisfying. Loved the first moment Edward appeared on screen.

But overall: could have been better.

* * *

Last night we saw Annie Leibovitz at Arts & Lectures.

My dear husband gave me a documentary to watch which I grumbled about. He wrote about it here. I don't have time to watch the shows I want to watch. I don't need anyone feeding the pile.

But I came home Wednesday and stuck it in the machine and was completely captivated.

When Bob came home I had to tell him he was right and it made me enjoy the lecture that much more.

Bob's review of the lecture is here

She read from her new book coming out and showed a bunch of slides starting with early in her career and touching a lot of her most famous photos.

I very distinctly remember the John Lennon and Yoko photo. And I very distinctly remember John's murder. I don't remember those things happening /together.

An amazing career. We talked about it and agreed it was the right personality and talent at the right time.

I had a third topic for tonight but I can't remember right now.

Booty Call

If someone calls me and seems to know who I am but I don't recognize who they are, I will normally just keep talking until I figure out who it is. I very rarely ask, "Who is this?"

The other night my cellphone rang around eight pm and I thought I recognized the voice but I wasn't sure. He started with one of those breathless, "Heys!" which I returned. Then he asked how I was doing and I said fine and asked how he was doing. He asked if I was still at work and I said no, I was at home. How about him? He said several other generic chatty things that were too vague to make a postive ID.

Then he said (Joey Tribbiani voice): Are you still interested in hanging out tonight?

And I said: "Uh, I think you have the wrong number because I haven't the slightest idea who this is."

And he said bye and quickly hung up.

The Man In the Office Next Door

I mentioned before that there's a gap in the wall between me and the office next door so I can hear that guy over there.

Here's what I've learned so far:

His name is Roger.

His cellphone rings the Lone Ranger music. For obvious reasons, this makes me uneasy.

He keeps irregular hours.

He has chronic cough.

He tapes up a lot of stuff. I hear that SKRIIIIT sound of tape every afternoon he is there.

High Anxiety

I'm thinking I should see a hypnotist or something about my driving anxiety.

I've always been an anxious driver but it seems like it's getting exponentially worse. Like if I have to go anywhere off my normal beaten path I have to go through all these extra preparations and if there's the slightest unexpected blip, my heart races and my knees tremble.

I keep asking myself what exactly am I anxious about? It's not like a terror about accidents although I do have an exaggerated fear of skidding into a vehicle in front of me. I'm committed to safe following distance.

I don't know how to explain it. It's like I'm afraid all the other cars will beat me up if I do something wrong.

Skidmarks
I found the scribbles of genius in my coat pocket this morning. Yay. I had intended to look there but since I was having the world's busiest weekend, and the weekend did not involve any rain, I never got around to it.

Yesterday on the way home from the candle party the traffic came to a screeching halt at the bottom of the Marquam Bridge. I figured there was something going on at the Rose Garden Arena and we'd be past it soon and cranked my Scorpions Rockers and Ballads CD a few notches and didn't worry about it.

But when we got to the Rose Quarter, I realized that everyone wasn't getting off the freeway. I also noticed that the only cars coming from the opposite direction were coming from the onramp.

I felt a little bit queasy about this because if the freeway is totally shut down, it can't be good. Then we curved around and there was an RV sideways - completely blocking the entire southbound freeway. (To clarify, my side wasn't blocked, we were lookie-loos.) It was so perfectly sandwiched in there, they were still trying to sort out how to tow it. There was maybe a 3 foot space between the back end and the freeway median.

It didn't look bad enough that anyone was hurt, only a pain to clean up. This morning I looked for skidmarks on my way in to see if I could figure out what happened. It's a spot where three lanes goes to two and looks like the RV had to brake hard probably because some jackass zoomed around on the right, and then skidded perfectly sideways.

I found this last time I downloaded photos. I took it from the yoga studio parking lot two weeks ago. Two weeks later the rain was pounding down and all the leaves were gone.

On Thursday on the bus on the way home I had a great idea for solving a story problem I'm having. I scribbled it on the back of the grocery list I was holding since I was making a stop on the way home.

Then I got groceries. Now I can't find my genius scribblings. I even looked through the recycling. I think I remember everything so it's not really a tragedy. But I wish I could find it. I might check the grocery bags.

I just did my daily word on a writing date with Kira. Now I'm off to hurry up and do chores before I go to the candle party with Kathy.

Non-Binding Agreement to determine whether removing dams on the Klamath is feasible.

* * *

I'm in the middle of the world's busiest weekend and need to head out the door as soon as I have a snack.

Yesterday was the first day I didn't hit my word minimum and today is looking more grim. Sure, I could be doing it right now but I'm hungry and need a power nap. (For the record, I did write, but only on a non-NaNo project that we read at writer's group today.)

Maybe when I get home tonight.

New Furnace
Turns out I'm about three weeks ahead of schedule on my regular holiday-overschedule hysteria attack.

I had a slight preview to this earlier this week. I had an errand to run in another part of town and I thought I'd invite a friend who lives out that way to join me and we could have lunch and visit and so forth.

I got out the calendar and realized that the only day I could do this errand before December 19th was today. And because I'm crazy and doing National Novel Writing Month and doing a related but different project for my writer's group which meets tomorrow in addition to regular old having a life, there was no way I could do lunch or visit. I ran out and did errand and returned and parked back in the writing chair.

But the panic started when I tried to figure out when to schedule our inspections for the furnace. We have to do two and we were advised that one of us should take the day off to be here for these inspections. But Bob doesn't have the kind of job where you can just take a day off so you can get some inspections and I shouldn't have to take a day off since I'm on a 4-day work week.

First I thought we could do it next Friday and get it over with. But you know what's on Friday?

Twilight. And I know it's just a dumb movie but I have been looking forward to that dumb movie for a long time and I want to be sitting in the theater downtown at the first matinee at 11am with my Team Edward t-shirt, and my Team Vampire baseball cap and my limited edition Bella and Edward Raisinets and my Forks Washington Commemorative Super Gulp and see my damn movie. I don't think I should have to miss it just because we got a new furnace.

Meanwhile, I have something every single Friday between now and December 19. I need to call and see if we can schedule it that far out, otherwise I'll suck it up and take a day. I just hate using up leave pay for something stupid like that. Or to make it even stupider, you could argue that I'm taking leave pay so I can see a vampire movie.

I bet I'm not the only one.

Random TV Trivia

John-Boy and Gibbs have the same Dad.

Just over a year ago when we had our furnace serviced we learned that some sort of doodad inside was cracked and our furnace's days were numbered. When we bought the house we knew the furnace had only ten to twenty years left in it so we weren't totally surprised.

We had the crack patched and it worked just fine last winter but I wanted to replace the furnace during the summer, when we were prepared, not in January when it died and it was 30 degrees outside. I am part lizard and do not like being cold.

We borrowed money for a home improvement project and we borrowed enough to cover a furnace and starting in June, Bob made the first calls to ask about buying a furnace. We ended up talking to a couple of sales people about our options and did lots of homework and at the beginning of October we signed a contract to set the thing in motion.

We have the money, we did everything we were supposed to do so I'm not sure why the installation didn't start until TODAY (and last we checked NW Natural STILL hadn't installed a meter) and we have to go for 24 hours without any heat. WTF?

Fortunately, tonight will be relatively warm for this time of year so thick fuzzy sweats and space heaters ought to keep us alive.

Guess What's for Dessert?

This morning Bob took me to a breakfast place that's a local chain. It's located in a strip mall between a laundromat and a payday loan place and has yellow walls and hard chairs.

After we were seated Bob said, "Isn't this nice?"

I said, "Remind me how we ended up together."

It's one of those places with a confusing menu where if you order just what you want to eat, say, 1 pancake and 1 sausage link, it costs about $9 but if you order the special with 2 pancakes, 2 eggs and 2 sausage links it's a buck cheaper and all the food you can't finish gets thrown away.

The monthly pancake special was pumpkin and it was delicious. But between my breakfast special and my hot chocolate I had more sugar and fat (two giant dollops of whipped cream!) and carbs than I'm accustomed to before Noon and as soon as we got home I had to have a nap.

Today's writing hasn't been worth crap and I'm fretting about wasting a whole free day without getting any work done. I'm going to keep my butt in the chair for one more hour and then light a presto log and goof off until dinner.

On the way home from yoga I composed a post in my head about the amazing personal growth I'm experiencing due to NaNoWriMo (18,217 words so far, if you're interested) but now it's almost 8:30pm and I'm tired and I just hoovered my dinner which was a salad and potato chips. Maybe I'll write it a different day.

Today's post will be about another energy saving tip I read. It said you should take clothes out of the dryer slightly damp. They will dry as you put them away.

First of all, I'm not sure which is the "slightly damp" setting on my dryer. So do I stand there and check every five minutes?

Second, I've taken items out "slightly damp" because I had to get a move on and didn't want my stuff in the dryer any longer. I then hung them up and two days later they were still damp.

I think this is a lame tip.