Matthew and I went out and bought a new couch today for the great room. It was impulsive, unnecessary, and extravagant, but we did it anyway. 
Sometimes, a person’s just gotta buy a big ticket item, just so’s they can maintain their obligatory debt quota.
Got forwarded an e-mail from a fellow animal rights activist. I can’t believe that people’s actions can still surprise and appall me. And yet.
This is excerpted from an email from Mary K. Van Dahm of the Ferret Advice and Information Resource Society/Sanctuary. Some bastard just left a store full of animals to die of thirst and starvation:
“Recently we also helped rescue a bunch of animals from a pet store that had closed down. The owner just locked the door and walked away – leaving the animals behind to starve to death. Someone finally called the police, who broke in and found the animals. All of the puppies and kittens were already dead. So were the birds and most of the larger animals. Three ferrets, two rabbits and an assortment of small rodents survived. Thankfully the ferrets were able to be placed right away. The rabbits unfortunately were too sick and had to be put down. The rest of the rodents came to my house until we could find homes for them. While we have found homes for many of the males, most of the females were pregnant, which compounded the situation. We are still looking for homes for 3 guinea pigs, 6 golden hamsters, 4 dwarf hamsters, and 18 gerbils. A few other rodents will be put in our foster home system due to injuries they sustained while fighting for food or territory during their ordeal at the pet shop. Since we were not set up to take in so many rodents, we had to buy tanks and cages for them, food dishes, water bottles and food. Some of them needed veterinary care so we had to pay for that, too. At any rate, our association is financially in dire straits right now and we still have animals that need continued medical attention. Any donation that you would be willing to give would be greatly appreciated. You can make it payable to FAIR and send it to our P.O. box listed above or make it payable directly to our veterinarian – The Midwest Bird & Exotic Animal Hospital; 1923 S. Mannheim Rd. Westchester, IL 60154”
Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe I’m just tired, or maybe I’ve been too sedentary of late and it’s finally catching up with me, but I’m feeling dispirited. (Ever notice how many sad words start with “d”? Discouraged, depressed, disheartened, downcast, dejected, daunted, doldrums . . . )
Today is really dragging–oh look, another “d” word–and all I want to do is curl up with Matthew and Hobkin, and tune everything else out.
Glad it’s almost the weekend. Very glad tomorrow’s my day off.
I heard a little blurb on NPR via shower radio this morning and it made me grin. I wanted to post a link to the story here, but I can’t find any write-up online. Guess it was too small for them to bother with. Or maybe it hasn’t been posted yet (since it was just this morning).
Anyway, some Alaskan fishermen caught a Humboldt penguin in their nets and when they reeled it in, they were like: “It’s a penguin. Wow.” In probably bears mentioning that Humboldts are not indigenous to Alaska, but rather hie from South America around the coasts of Chile and Peru. The NPR guys were talking about how the penguin managed to make it to Alaska, and said that it’s probable that it hitched a ride.
I immediately thought of Opus on some sort of pilgrimage. *Giggle*
Thank you NPR and Berkely Breathed.
Writing stats:
2000 words on High Fantasy work (!).
400 words on funky Dark Fantasy hybrid thingy (sigh).
My creative process remains a mystery to me.
Lady Inspiration is a fickle slut. My muse has decided that no, she would not like to finish the high fantasy piece we have neatly outlined and set to go, but instead, she would like us to work on this slipstream modern mythos fantasy fusion thing that popped into her (our) head as I was driving home from work last night.
Dammit.
Part of it’s my own fault. I should never outline, apparently. As soon as I know exactly where and how a story is going to go, I lose interest in it. Or maybe I should just never try to write high fantasy.
On an up note, I’m over 2000 words into the slipstream modern mythos fantasy fusion thing. They just poured out of me, easy as smiling. Not sure where it’s going, but I like what I’ve got so far.
Damned slattern muse. Oh well, at least she’s still sitting on my lap and not larking about with some other writer. Take what I can get.
Just got confirmation from Corporate Travel for my itinerary for my training trip back to HDQ. It’s getting to be old hat, these jaunts back. Still don’t like ’em, but can’t complain too much. Telecommuting from Georgia is just too sweet a benefit and at least when they send me back, they shack me up in a luxurious suite (complete with a fireplace and kitchen!) and I get to visit old friends.
Weekend was quite productive and enjoyable. There were many chores done, and the looming necessity of having to don black vinyl fun-wear as my only clean clothes option for work has been unloomed.
Monday mornings are never great, but this is my short week, so I’ve only got to hang on until Thursday, and then it’s a three-day weekend. Huzzah.
I keep wondering if I should switch from my current 9/80 week to a 4×10. Except the appeal of having a three-day weekend every week instead of just every other week is mitigated by having to work ten hour days. Hrumph. Will continue pondering–undoubtedly indefinitely and will thereby just keep on keeping on with my current schedule.
Purr, hmm. Last night, Matthew and I had ourselves a mini-party. We bought some decadent Bunny Tracks ice cream, poured ourselves some alcohol-laden beverages, and had a big screen movie-thon in the home theater upstairs. Stargate first, then Big Trouble in Little China. Much giggling ensued. There was some talk about either The Thing then or Escape from New York but after two flicks, I was too tiddly to handle any more Kurt Russell. Hobkin almost had his first taste of Guinness-wanna-be beverage, but paper towels were faster than the inquisitive fuzz-head. He’s far too young to be drinking.
Pity it was too warm to hop into the hot tub; that would’ve made it perfect. But it takes too long for the A/C unit in the sun room to cool the place down. Should’ve got a bigger one when we built the thing. Ah well, live and learn.
Post 2nd flick, I slumped over on the couch, undoubtedly still giggling softly, and Hobkin curled up with me in his favorite spot–nuzzled up against my neck. Y’know, when he was one and a half pounds, curling up at my throat was cute and cuddlysome, but when he’s cresting four pounds and up, it’s a little strangley. But still cute.
Eventually I exhaled enough alcohol from my system to stumble with Matthew to bed, whereupon I slept in! Woohoo! (Okay, I woke up–briefly–to feed Hobkin breakfast, but then I was able to get right back to sleep.) I haven’t been able to sleep past 7am in ages! Two cheers for better living through fermented vegetable matter.
So, today, I’m going to brew up a lovely pot of tea to tempt my muse (mmm, sikkim), and write.
There’s much to be said of the virtue of lazy Sundays.
I debated whether or not I should post this, as I’m still hoping the problem will just go away, but decided in light of new information I’ve discovered, that I’d post it with a “friend’s only” lock.
The LJ user abdulsharif is stalking me. I have reported him to the LJ abuse folks, and am awaiting their response.
On Monday, 7/22/2002, this individual was apparently trolling through LJ and happened upon my journal. He then proceeded to post an insulting reply.
http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=eugie&itemid=15458
mouseferatu posted a reply, coming to my defense, as did I. We both banned him from our respective LJs, and I disabled anonymous posting.
He then went to mouseferatu‘s LJ and posted anonymous abuse there, but Mouse tracks IP addresses and was able to identify abdulsharif as the poster. (Mouse deleted the offending post, but you can read about the lengths that abdulsharif went to from Mouse’s comments on my LJ.)
Since then, abdulsharif has identified what LJ communities I’m a member of from either my journal or my user info. He surfed the
abdulsharif also got my homepage URL from my user info and posted more abuse on my guestbook.
Please keep in mind that until this week, I didn’t even know this guy existed.
As soon as the LJ abuse folks have given me the all clear, I’m deleting the nastygrams he’s posted on my LJ and my website’s guestbook.
I discovered today that I am not the only person whom abdulsharif has stalked and harrassed on LJ. xxsuigenerisxx posted a heartfelt thank you to her LJ friends on her journal, and abdulsharif accused her of plagairising it, which of course, is completely ridiculous. She thanked her friends, with her words, from her experience with them. He then tracked her LJ friends and went to delphizyx and posted more defammatory, libelous comments about xxsuigenerisxx there.
This person is a stalker. He’s displaying classic obsessive behavior. He’s also an asshole. May his testicles become leprous and his penis fall off.
Thanks for listening, y’all.
Glah. Drinking a lot of (uncaffinated) herbal tea is not at all beneficial after a bout of insomnia. Screw the decaf, gimme some coffee!
Writing stats:
I had three, or was it four more critiques of “Running” trickle in from Critters after I mailed off my final draft to a market. No biggie, the macro comments had been made in the previous critiques, except the very last one found a leetle, bitty, itty-eenie typo that all of the 24 or so previous critters (and myself after a gazillion read throughs and my first reader on his two passes) had missed. AGGGHHH!!
It’s tiny. I dropped a letter in the middle of the name of one of my secondary characters. It doesn’t impact the story and odds are the editors/first reader won’t even notice. But . . . dammit. Fume.
Better news:
2500 words into “Two Minds.” I actually outlined this one (*gasp* high fantasy and outlined! What is the world coming to?) It’s likely that it’ll crest into novelette length as well. Hmm. I’m writing longer works recently. Wonder why.
Pet the muse. Nice muse. Would musey like a cookie? NO, she’d fucking like some coffee! NOW!
Eep. You heard the lady.
I was dwelling on the nature of sleep and insomnia, which is ironic right now, since, hey, 5:45 am and bing. Actually, early morning insomnia is less of an issue these days since we got Hobkin. Crepuscular critters are more than happy to romp and play at 5am. Insomnia hardly feels like a problem when a person’s got a fuzzy beastie frisking about at one’s feet, begging for attention :).
Or, err, begging for breakfast.
*feeding the fuzz-head*
Anyway, Matthew saw a show on sleep mechanisms the other day on the Discovery channel. I’ve always been fascinated by sleep, even when I was just a wee undergraduate with dreams of electrodes and Freud dancing in my head. So even pop-science blurbs rivet me.
Them scientist types have found that there’s a chemical responsible for sleep. That is, a chemical in the brain which shuts down all your “waking” impulses and sends you off to nappy-time. This, in itself, is fairly old news. But what they didn’t know until recently is that it’s always cycling through your system. It doesn’t get released at certain times, it’s always there. What does get released is another chemical that overrides it, and thereby allows you to wake up. Stimulants like caffeine and amphetamine don’t mitigate the “sleeping” chemical, but rather they stimulate the suppressing, “wake up” one.
Neat huh?
There’s more. Insomnia, that red-eyed demon of the night (or in my case, of the early morning), is when the suppressing chemical gets outta control, and it triggers even when you should be sleeping. However, researchers now think that insomnia is actually a survival trait. Under times of stress and danger, it was advantageous not to fall asleep. Which makes sense–big bad carnivore stalking your tribe. Probably not the best time to get overwhelmed by a fit of the yawns. Hence, those people whose sleep suppressant mechanisms were hyped up had an advantage. Of course, now, triggers for insomnia are more esoteric than a big, hungry claw-fangy. Doesn’t do much good to lie awake at night worrying about taxes.
But still, isn’t that cool? Makes me want to brush up my ole researching skills and dig a little deeper for the actual study write-ups. Hmm. Well, actually, probably not. But there’s a story in there, I think. Definitely something for the ole idea file.
