26 March 2012

Brain dump #982,579.863

• I've lost count, but I think I've been sick 5 times since the beginning of the year. Nothing major, mostly GI stuff,but enough that I'm realizing I've been sick an awful lot.
• It has not kept me from writing...I've got a manuscript in the final editing stages. It's not long--it'll only run about 130 pages--but it's something I'll be able to use for fundraising.
• I can't think of a good title, though. It kinda can't go to print without a title.
• It occurred to me yesterday that every single one of us has seasonal allergies. That includes the cats. The Spouse Thingy and I both have hay fever, Max gets a periodic asthma-like cough when pollens are high, and now Buddah gets watery eyes when pollen is high. The poor guy looks like he's crying...I feel bad for him, but that didn't stop me from taking a picture of his tears yesterday.
• It's supposed to rain all week, and that is bumming me out. We need the rain, but it rained last week and dammit, I want to go for a bike ride.
• It didn't rain yesterday or much the day before, but my intestines were not cooperating, so I stayed inside and spent way too much time surfing reddit
• I also want to go walk around San Francisco. Damned rain.
• I'll leave you with the image of Buddah crying, just in case you didn't see it on Facebook. 

Click to biggify...

19 March 2012

Ok, so now you know you might want to rethink your car door locks. Not sure what you can do, but this certainly gives one pause.



Remove 'em, maybe...

16 March 2012

Non-news: I'm doing another breast cancer walk this year. This time, I'm giving the Avon Walk a try; it's two days instead of three and 40 miles instead of 60, but the fundraising minimum is also less. So, yay for that. I'm still registered to crew for the Komen walk, and I'm still on the fence about that, but I'm starting to lean toward doing it.

Komen's screwups don't negate the good they do, and the people who are walking deserve as many crew supporting them along the way as they can get. But that doesn't mean the sour taste in my mouth is gone and that I don't have some ambivalent feelings.

Anyway...I need to raise funds for the Avon walk, and as part of that, I'm selling some temporary tattoos based on my own real one. You can get yours HERE.

If you don't want a tattoo but still want to be my best friend EVER, and you like the idea of reaping a tax deduction for your donation, please donate directly to my Avon fundraising page by clicking HERE. Not only do you get the tax deduction, but you'll be eligible for the prizes that are coming soon.

Still working on the final details, but I can tell you that I am writing a book that should be available in the next month, and one of the prizes just might allow you to read it electronically.

11 March 2012

I spent most of last night tossing and turning; I thought about getting up and playing online for a little bit, or opening up the current manuscript and working on that, but I just didn’t feel like it. I felt like lying there in bed, being annoyed that I couldn’t fall asleep.

A year ago, I was sleepless on the same night, but that was because I had the TV on and was pretty much glued to coverage of the tsunami in Japan. I stayed at my desk with the TV on and I hung on Facebook, then crawled into bed with the TV on and I went back to Facebook using my iPad.

Kay Lee Kelly's FB profile picture

I wasn’t alone in that; a lot of people were using Facebook to connect, and Kurtis Ming from Sacramento’s CBS channel 13 used FB to keep the sleepless updated from the newsroom. I spent a lot of time talking to one person in particular, Kay Lee Kelly; we watched different networks on TV and talked about what we were seeing, we talked about my (I now know irrational) fear that when the waves hit the west coast of the U.S. that my son would be close enough to the water to get hit.

Having someone to talk to through the night helped.

I finally went to bed at around 6:30 on March 11th, 2011; I don’t know what Kay did, if she stayed up or went to sleep, if she had somewhere she needed to be that day or not. I only know that someone who knew me through Max’s blog and had friended me on Facebook stayed up all night and kept me company, sharing my horror at what was happening to the people in Japan.

Five days later, she was gone.

Her son posted that she died from heart failure on March 16th. I never got to meet her in person and I knew little about her personal life, but I do know that she was sweet and funny, compassionate and caring, and that I miss talking to her on Facebook. I miss the way her phone-generated updates and replies looked like Haiku, one short line after another. I think it says something about a person, when even though I didn’t know her well, I still miss her.

I wouldn’t wish a disaster like last year’s tsunami on anyone, but I am grateful, in a way, that I stayed up all night when it hit, and spent a few hours posting back and forth with her. It's not often that you can pinpoint the last conversation you ever had with someone, but as long as Facebook exists, it will be there, on both our Timelines, and in private messages.

And that's some kind of cool.

7 March 2012

Got Amazon Prime? You should have Amazon Prime. You get free shipping on tons of stuff, lots of videos you can watch for free, and now you can borrow all of my books from the Kindle Lending Library.

I will get paid for every borrow...so please borrow. Encourage your friends to borrow. BORROW LIBERALLY!

This does not (yet) include Max's books.

At some point I'll make each free for a day or two here and there, and I'll give heads up when I do; I'm still trying to decide if I want to throw the three volume Charybdis Novels out there first or just the first book in the series...I can come up with arguments for doing it either way, which leave my brain cramping a bit.

The thing about this is that as long as I keep my books in the program that allows them to be borrowed and made free, they won't be available on competing books stores...which is another reason to embrace Amazon Prime.

For me.

What, you needed a better reason? Tsk.

5 March 2012

Things that are annoying me because I can’t sleep and when I can’t sleep, I am annoyed

• If you have received email, either to yourself alone, or as part of a list of recipients, don’t forward said email to me without permission from the author. Forwarding someone’s email is unspeakably rude. I don’t care if it’s about me (favorable or not), is something I might like to know about, or because you assumed my lack of inclusion was a mistake; the email was not sent to me, therefore it was not meant for me.
• In that same vein…don’t forward email I have sent to you without asking me first. Just because I wanted to tell you about that weird nipple like growth on my leg doesn’t mean I want to tell anyone else.
• Phones.
• Chinese food is evil in its deliciousness; I can actually feel myself bloating from tonight’s last night’s Kung Pao chicken. Not even exaggerating. My forearms are beginning to ache with it. If I was ASLEEP right now, it wouldn’t bother me at all, and I would be somewhat grateful because it would likely mean not getting up to pee in the middle of the night. Instead, I’m up grumbling in the middle of the night.
• Chocolate needs to have far fewer calories, and it needs to appear on my desk right now. Late night munchies suck.
• Why do people feel the need to belittle the suffering of others by comparing it to things that are, apparently, worse? One-upping is mean; just because you have a broken leg, that doesn’t make your friend’s wicked paper cut hurt any less. Of course things could be worse. Things can always be worse. But someone’s suffering is his or her own, and they shouldn’t have to feel it doesn’t matter. The only way you really win the mine-is-worse game is by dying. Don’t do that. Winning isn’t everything.
• Pollen.
• You never need the approval of someone else so badly that it becomes all right to treat others with a lack of kindness. Doesn’t matter who it is. It is not all right to engage in pettiness and vindictiveness just to get closer to someone; the person who would encourage you to…dude, remember, she does that everyone else and stabs you in the back every time you turn around. Don’t play that game. You’re better than that.
• Writer’s block.
• Brushing my teeth and then finding the chocolate.
• The taste of chocolate after the teeth have been brushed.
• There are approximately 650 channels in our DirecTV subscription, yet there’s not much worth watching at 2 in the morning.
• Max is so going to make me his little bitch in the morning.