Archives

On the Mend

Mar14

Folks,

Hi.  Sorry for my abrupt vanishing.

Eary January 2021, I was having a bad day – pain, pressure,  lightheadedness.

Off to the emergency room!

Sometime in the next couple days I sent a single word message to some friends, still expecting this to be fast: pancreatitis.

About then, said disease, the painkillers, and various complications took over.

I have no clear memory of the last 3 months, so please keep that in mind.

But that is where I have been.

And now I am in rehab.

My apologies for previous lack of update.

Blog post : hospitals

Mar31

So I’ve learned a bunch of stuff about hospitals in my time in…. now three of them, three departments of one.

This is going to be a lighter touch on some things.

* you can really tell how understaffed a department is even before you get to the call button answer time.

* losing your call button when you can’t stand up is terrifying

* brushing your teeth becomes an act of personal autonomy and suddenly very very important

* washing hair? Amazing.  But the ‘dry shampoo- caps that really do almost nothing still feel awesome.  And your standards go from ‘I need my personalized shampoo’ to ‘just pour some water on me please. ‘

*doctors have no sense of urgency

The one below cut is more heavy

Continue reading →

The Great January Rebloggening Challenge!

Jan19

Home Site HouseKeeping

Good morning! (Good afternoon, good evening, and good night)

It’s been a good week for web housekeeping!

Let’s see: I covered my work on the Fae Apoc Landing Page in last week’s post, even though that was in this week.  This week, I also worked on the Microfiction Landing Page!

Because a lot of my tootfiction was lost(*) when TootPlanet migrated to Ping.the-Planet, my Microfiction landing page has been a bit of a mess of broken links. Continue reading →

Jason Momoa(‘s characters) Belong in Fae Apoc

Jan13

I need all of Jason Momoa’s roles to be people in Fae Apoc.

Khal Drogo is an old soldier of the likes of Aelfgar.  He’s been fighting monsters, Nedetakaei, returned gods, and more monsters for longer than he can remember. If he dies, he’ll be reborn into this.  He is a warrior all the way through, but he’s getting a little bit tired.  Picture him riding a motorcycle – or a horse – through the post-apocalypse wasteland with his warriors, chasing down a wyvern or climbing up the side of a giant to cut out their hearts.

https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Drogo

Aquaman? He’s younger than Khal Drogo, amusingly (since the role came later in the actor’s life, that is), but he’s a fighter with (obviously) an aquatic Change.  He’s a scrapper, probably over 100 years old but never really grew up all the way, and while he’s deadly with the weapons of choice, he’s also laid-back.  He likes to sit on his beach and drink a beer, toes in the water, ass in the sand ♪

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaman_(film)

And then there’s Ronon!  Ronon Dexhas been out of school (possibly Addergoole) for four or five years, all of which has been surviving an apocalypse.  The Returned God Assholes are after him.  He’s learned to take down wild animals – both the sort that existed on Earth before the apocalypse and the sort that came through the portals with the Returned Gods.  Or MAYBE he ended up falling through a portal and ending up in a strange part of Ellehem for a while before managing to return home.  Either way, he spent years in the wilderness and now he needs to learn how to readjust to whatever society he finds himself with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronon_Dex

I have not seen the modern Conan the Barbarian yet (It’s now on my to-watch list) but I can bet that version would fit somewhere in the Fae Apocalypse, too.

I mean… just give me all the Jason Momoa characters forever, please?

Blog Post: Halloween! 🎃

Oct30

It’s Halloween!

Okay, it’s the day before Halloween.

I really love Halloween.  I loved it so much as a kid, when I hadn’t learned to be nervous about what I wore.  I can still remember some of my costumes – the year mom made me a full bunny costume, for one.  The year we couldn’t find cat ears so Dad bought a set of mouse ears, cut them, and spray-painted them black.

That was pretty cool.

When I was a kid, trick-or-treating meant Dad driving me (sometimes Mom) to houses we knew – relatives, church people, friends.  My neighborhood growing up was rather rural (less so now).

We don’t keep our light on most years now, but a lot of that is because out here, there are no kids.  This house is even more remote than the one I grew up in, and our neighbors on this street are approximately a hundred and twenty.

But man, I miss costumes, and I miss being brave enough to wear them.  The candy is nice, sure, but all the other trappings of the holiday, that’s what I really love.

The “spookiness” and the harvest and the pumpkin, the black cats (cats, always!), the costumes, the pagantry… it’s an unabashed feeling holiday and I love it for that.

I really do wish I could do costumes the way I did when I was eight, unabashed, fun at wearing something new, loving the way it looked on me BECAUSE it was a costume.  I do hope I can do that again some day, that my brain will let me.

In the meantime, i’m going to dress up my tumblr feed and my twitter feed every October and sit up until past midnight on Halloween getting ready to write for Nanowrimo.

In my cat ears.  Of course.

 

 

 

Blog Post: Apples and Dog-cations

Oct10

It’s October!

It’s October and there was a stranger picking apples from our tree this week.

I mean, not exactly strangers.  The lady – Barb – comes by every year.  She comes by about a month early every year and we tell her our apples will be ready in October, so she came by Friday with a grandson and picked a couple bushels I think.

(Every time I say bushel, I hear my grandmother singing “I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck…”)

(Turns out it’s from Guys and Dolls!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfnwhlywWjA )

Then today, Ezra, who lives a block away, stopped in – he left a message a month ago and turns out, no big surprise, that he works at the same university that I do.  He makes cider!  And he offered us some sweet cider in return. Continue reading →

Blog Post: Calc I

Sep16

Going to School

I am taking Calculus I this semester!

This is because Calc II is the pre-req for Multi-variate Calc which is the pre-req for Probability Models and Inference, which I wanted to take this semester but I’m going to take in… what, two years?

I mean, I took AP Calc in high school. I did well, too! I really liked it. I can still remember liking it. I also remember sitting next to my best friend Crystal, then. I mean, any class and every class is made better with a friend there, and Crystal was amazing.

(I miss her. I really do. I lost touch with her sometime in college and I haven’t been able to find her.) Continue reading →

Blog Post: Being Sick in a Pandemic with a Chronic Disease

Sep2

So being sick in the middle of a pandemic while one has a chronic disease is a kinda weird shitshow. Pardon the phrasing, but uh, it’s been strange. So far I have gone through “it’s probably a cold, but get tested for COVID-19 if you don’t feel better by xx.”The nasal scrape test is a little weird, not nearly as unpleasant as it’s been described, sort of like snarfing water but the sensation stays for longer. COVID test: Negative. Next call.  Might be allergies. It’s not allergies, but I’m not that good at standing up to doctors. Getting better, lots of practice and all, but especially with stuff like this – “minor” stuff – it’s harder to get all firm and be like No I Need An Answer.

I mean, it’s a cold, right?

It’s not all that important.

Ahem. Continue reading →

Blog Post: Projects and Productivity (Telecommute Month 5??!)

Jul23

It might be weird, but I love the days at work where I have a project that really takes up the whole day and all of my brainspace.  I love when I can dive in and really focus and, what’s more, feel productive.

Copyediting the Journal is almost like that.

At my last job, sometimes I would get an assignment of Build A Spreadsheet/Workbook That Does (something really we should have independent software for).  That, that was pretty damn awesome.

In between, well. Continue reading →