Optimism and Internet Dependency

My last post was far too optimistic...almost a week later and today is actually the first day I've been able to do any real work on the rewrite. I'm still stuffy and uncomfortable, but I'm functioning at close to full capacity. My new deadline to finish the rewrite is February 10th. Nice to have a deadline that I set myself.

The other day, during a winter storm, our power was interrupted briefly, and after that we discovered that our internet connection was out. I was amazed to realize how profoundly this hit me. I don't think of myself as terribly internet-dependent, for all my blogs and websites and net savvy. But I felt bereft and cut off when the connection was out. What emails was I missing? What news of my friends? What group conversations?

When the company told us it could be as long as three days before the connection was restored, I felt even worse. I began mentally planning who I should contact from some other connection to let them know why I would be absent for a few days. Which was silly, since I hadn't worried about being out of touch while I was sick. But this was somehow different!

My husband was in a worse state than I was, because it would mean an enforced absence from World of Warcraft. :-)

As it turned out, the connection was restored by that night, and we survived just fine. But it made me question how healthy this dependency is. It's not that I spend enormous amounts of time on the internet, but I realize that I really rely on the feeling of connectedness I have with it. Is this a good thing or not? I really don't know. But I have have a feeling it's not going to change anytime soon.

Blinking in the light

My last post actually gave some indication of the way things were headed for me, although I wasn't anticipating several days in bed! Those daggers in my throat presaged a bad case of sinusitis unlike anything I've experienced before. I'm still recovering and not back up to speed, but at least I didn't have to go back to bed yesterday and I think there's a slight improvement again today. Whew!

Sadly, the rewrite has stalled as I've been unable to think clearly enough to work on it--but I think probably tomorrow I'll get back to it. I'll have lost a week, which is too bad, but the deadline is luckily my own and therefore flexible. And it's still waiting here patiently on my desk, right where I left it...

'Tis the season...

...of 'flus, colds, and other assorted nastinesses. It seems like we've had a run of sickness in the house ever since the new year came in. I thought I was on the mend but today my throat is so sore it feels like daggers every time I swallow. My son is home from school as well today, having had a fever all through the night and a bad cough. No doubt we're in for more yet.

I worked on the rewrite this morning for a while but I've been in too much pain since then to concentrate on it. I thought the internet might be a distraction but even that's not enough. Soon I'll be resorting to television...(shudder).

Yes, we have winter

For a few days, at least; who knows how long it will last with the crazy weather patterns we've been seeing? School was cancelled and the kids were outside playing before nine o'clock this morning.



No, this is not my house. ;-) This is the barn where my grandfather's cows used to live, many, many moons ago. It's sort of behind our house. Every winter we wonder will this be the last one that it remains standing.



Our dog, Holly. She's not very impressed with the snow, can you tell?



Berries on our Mountain Ash tree.

Pure Evil

Here's a product that can't really be described in any other way: candy-tipped cigarillos. Unbelievable. They come in twelve different flavours, obviously to appeal to young people, and have managed to worm through a couple of legal loopholes with regard to packaging. Cigarettes must be packaged in a larger size and display the health warning labels, but cigars fall under different rules. Being cigars and sold in smaller packages, they do not have to carry the labels (which is something that I think should be changed), so these appear in brightly colored packaging that really has the appearance of a "treat."

I'm sure it's no coincidence that there are so many flavours: by the time one tries them all (the obvious ploy) many people will have developed an addiction.

It's a sad commentary on the fact that the drive to make money supersedes all considerations of ethics or morality.

The USA Tobacco Company should be completely ashamed of themselves. I was going to link to their site but why give them a Google boost?

The Green Meme

This is one definitely worth propagating! Charlotte of Charlotte's Web devised this green meme from a Newsweek article on easy ways to live a more environmentally friendly life.

1. What do you for the birds and the bees? "Pesticides, pollution and habitat destruction are taking a toll on the birds and insects that pollinate about 80 percent of the world's food supply..."

We've been working on our garden ever since we built our house ten years ago, and we do use native plants and a range of flowers that attract butterflies, bees and hummingbirds. We also feed the birds in winter. I think we're doing our part in on this one.

2. Household products. Chemical or organic? "Household chemicals contribute to both in-door and outdoor pollution."

I have tried "green" cleaners but they're not always available where I live; the only cleaner I actually buy regularly is Mr. Clean or the generic version thereof. Guess I could do better in this department.

3. Do you junk? "Not only is junk mail annoying, it kills trees."

I don't think there's anything I can do about junk mail at the mailbox level here, although I have already put our names on "do-not-call-or-mail" lists. Whether these actually work or not I don't know. Any junk mail we do get goes into the recycling, for what that's worth.

4. Air-dry or tumble-dry? "Make like Grandma and line-dry your clothes once in a while."

This is a tough one for me--I really hate line-dried clothes. Most of the year here the weather isn't optimal for outside drying anyway, so I have a bit of an excuse there. However both our washer and dryer are low-energy, and our washer is low-water use, and I always wash in cold water and dry on low heat. So I'm doing my best.

5. Old gadgets. Recycle or toss ‘em? "Don't clog landfills with old electronics."

We have a repair shop just up the road and they love donations of electronic gadgets and computer parts which they re-use, so most of ours go there now. We've also participated in electronics "swaps" where you can turn in your old stuff. So we're doing pretty well there.

6. Lightbulbs - incandescent or fluorescent? "Trade your old incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent ones...They use about 70 percent less energy than regular bulbs and last 10 times longer."

We don't have many fluorescent bulbs, although we do use the low-wattage ones, and also halogen bulbs, which may not be as good as fluorescent but I believe are better than incandescent. We also participate in a program offered by our power company to support renewable energy by paying a little extra. We've been trying to be more aware (and train the kids also) of turning off the lights when not in use, but we're bad for leaving the computers on all the time.

7. Meat or veg? "Have a meatless Monday...it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat."

For a while we were doing meatless Mondays; I got out of the habit of scheduling it, but we don't eat meat every day--just most days. I'd like to try and make it two meatless days a week, for health reasons as well as green reasons. I do try to buy locally when possible, but I'm not one for taking cloth bags to the store. The plastic ones get reused and recycled, though.

8. Loo paper. Virgin or recycled? "If every U.S. household replaced one toilet-paper roll with a roll made from recycled paper, 424,000 trees would be saved."

Unfortunately we have a heavy paper-using household. I will start looking for more ways to use recycled paper (never thought of it for bathroom tissue or paper towel, actually). With a house full of writers and artists, it's not going to be an easy area to cut down, although I do try: when I print out manuscripts I save the printouts and print the next draft on the other side of the paper, then it gets shredded and goes into the composter. Other paper that's only used on one side gets cut up for notepaper next to the phone, shopping lists, etc.

9. Tap or bottled water? "Instead of spending big bucks on bottled water, drink the stuff that comes from your faucet."

We use a water pitcher with a filter to keep cold drinking water in the fridge. Sometimes I buy packs of small bottles of water because I find it encourages the kids to choose water more often, but when I do the bottles get recycled.

10. Dating - metrosexual or ecosexual? "two recyclers are better than one."

I'm the main green-thinking person in the household, although hubby is moderately green. I keep after him!

**********

As an aside: The only thing I thought was missing from the Newsweek article was composting, although I suppose if one's municipality doesn't support organic waste collection and you don't have access to a backyard composter it's not going to be feasible. I can't believe how much less garbage goes out to the curb since I started composting. For anyone not living in an apartment complex it's something that should be considered.

I do get very irritated that municipalities often don't make the distinction, however, between compost and organic waste. They're not the same thing.

Re-energized

After a bout with a debilitating head cold I'm tearing back into the rewrite today. I actually only had one day when I was sick that I didn't work at it, but I didn't have much energy to put into it. Instead I worked on The Scriptorium, which is not quite as brain-intensive to put together. I don't know that my editorial is as cohesive as usual, but at least the issue is up.

Overall, I'm a bit worried about the amount of markups I'm making on this first read-through. There aren't as many as I expected. Surely my first draft writing hasn't improved that much! Or maybe I'm just not being as diligent as I will be later. Soon I'll be into the phase where I have to write in the additional sections that I've thought of since the first draft. That's where I expect things to get messy...

Word Meme

From Helen's blog, memed from Charlotte's Web, memed from Zia...of course I'm completely making up the fact that "meme" can be a verb and will probably bring down some sort of word nerd wrath upon myself. In my defense I will be just like Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass:

When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master--that's all.'

At any rate...
A word that describes me is:
Creative.

My favourite word is:
Limn. It should be in much wider use for its evocativeness.

My least favourite word is:
Noob. Come on, it's not even a real word and gets mis-applied all over the place anyway.

Use these two words in a sentence:
The noob's face was limned with the bluish glow of his computer screen, as he gazed in rapt delight at his new game.

A word I have to think twice about pronouncing is:
Bowdlerize. I always want to put that "l" in the wrong place.

Dictionaries. Printed or online?
Both, for sure. Online for quick lookups, print when I want to be really sure.

A word whose meaning I cannot seem to retain no matter how many times I look it up is …
Chartreuse. It simply does not sound green to me.

Open a dictionary to a random page and find a word you don’t know. Post the word and its meaning.
Hesperidium. n. fruit with sectioned pulp inside separable rind, e.g. orange.

Use the word and the word you can never remember in a sentence.
I wasn't sure if these particular hesperidium were ripe--were they supposed to be chartreuse?

One of the most overused words in my area of work/study is …
Grinned. Everyone in my stories seems to grin too much.

Rewrite progress

The first read-through is still going well. I'm making lots of notes and markups, although I haven't come across any major problems yet, which is a good thing. I'm about a third of the way through. I'm taking Holly Lisle's good advice to use a different color pen each day for markups and notes. It makes it easier to find the places that the notes match up to.

On the other creative side, I had a brilliant idea the other day. The four of us are all going to attempt to do Illustration Friday for the year. We all want to do more drawing and this seemed like a fun (no-pressure!) project we could all do together. I'm thinking I'm going to do all ATC size--that's 2.5 x 3.5 inches. I love working in the small size and it makes the project more manageable. I'll be posting the results either here or on my art blog. I find doing art so relaxing, especially when I have a big writing project on the go.

It's extremely windy here today, although not terribly cold. We're having rain instead of snow, and fairly mild temperatures. Usually the winter would have come howling in once the holidays were over, but it's definitely a different kind of season this year.

How do YOU spell procrastination?

I originally said that I would begin the rewrite of The Seventh Crow on January 2nd. Well, on the 1st I did gather all my notes and printouts and maps together in preparation. Then I realized that the 2nd was really the last day of the kids' school vacation and we should do something fun, and so it was the last day of my vacation too, so the rewrite could wait another day.

Yesterday I went to start it and realized that I needed a new printout, because I'd made some changes since the last time I printed it out. That actually took me most of the morning, for some reason. Then I went skating in order to fulfill my other goal (to get back in shape), and then it was after school and homework and last night I was tired...

Then today the kids were both home sick so I spent the morning making chicken soup and coddling them, and most of the afternoon too, so then needed to relax after supper and worked on my colored pencil and listened to podcasts until it was time to get the kids to bed...

And then I sat down to work. I did, I really did start. Only two days late, and it felt wonderful. I read up to page 41 and made loads of edits and notes already. If it's true that "Well begun is half done," then I'm well on the way.

Okay, okay, I know it's only page 41. I'm just trying to stay positive.

Oh yes, and in the aftermath of my skating fall, there were very few parts of me that were not sore today. Very, very few.

Skating

I had a glorious skate this afternoon at our local forum. I discovered just before the holidays that there is adult skating time three days a week just after lunchtime, which would fit in perfectly with my schedule as the kids are in school. I used to skate regularly twice a week when I was in university and I love skating, but haven't done it much in recent years, except for a couple of times with the kids. I decided I would check it out after school started up again, so I went off this afternoon.

It was quite wonderful--the most people on the ice at one time was five! The music provided was, I think, still the same tape they used to play when we'd go skating there as children, songs like "King of the Road," "Black Velvet Band," and "Wings of a Dove." They are good skating songs, though, and I was having a great time--until I fell.

These things happen so fast I still don't know what caused it, but one second I was skating and the next I was hitting the ice hard with my tailbone. I also banged up my elbow (although that didn't register at the time) and just barely conked my head on the ice. I sat right back up immediately and laughed, but a man was already skating over to help me up and ask if I was all right. Embarassing, but with only three or four witnesses it wasn't too bad. I'd been skating for almost an hour so maybe I was just getting tired. At any rate, I stayed on the ice for another ten minutes or so, then it was time to leave. Hopefully I won't be too sore tomorrow--it's a bit of a worry with my bad back, but I'll keep my fingers crossed. I was hoping to get back again on Friday if my muscles don't protest too much.

My best friend asked me once if I found it hard to go to this forum, as it's the building my father died in. He took a heart attack while playing hockey, when I was nineteen. At the time I told her no, because the few times I've been there with the kids since then I've really been too busy to think about it much. Today, though, I took a few minutes to consider the question, since it was quiet and a nice peaceful atmosphere. I decided that my initial answer was correct. Although I can never ignore that fact, it's also the place where we skated together as a family when we were small, and where I took figure skating lessons, and where my brothers played a bit of hockey...all good things. It's actually a place I like. Hopefully I'll be able to spend more time there this winter doing something I love.

Holiday Food

It's a little late, but I do have a couple of holiday food stories. The past couple of years I've bought a Gingerbread House kit and the kids and I have had fun making them up together. This year I bought one as usual, but it was met with lukewarm enthusiasm. I impulsively suggested that maybe instead of following the kit's instructions, we might branch out and make it into a castle instead. Now I had the enthusiasm, but no plan as to how to pull it off.

The kit is to make this:



...which looks more like a gatehouse than a castle. We studied the pre-cut gingerbread pieces, added a few embellishments, and here is what we created:








All we actually added was a tube from a wrapping paper roll, three ice cream cones, and some of those little round silver candies, which I'm sure have a proper name but it is unknown to me. With the turrets soaring and the erstwhile snowmen transformed into a princess and a knight, everyone was pleased with the results.

Since my friend Helen seems to be always posting lovely pictures of her culinary masterpieces, I thought I'd add this one of my own. Alas, this appetizer has no name (although we were somewhat unimaginatively calling them "Veggie Squares") but looks beautiful and tastes even better. What's more, they're very easy to make.



I made other things over the holidays, of course, but didn't have the presence of mind to snap a picture of them before they were devoured.

Ready, set...

Today was the last day of school vacation, so I counted it as the last day of my "vacation" as well. I took the kids to a movie this afternoon (Night at the Museum, which I highly recommend), played some Guild Wars , and generally relaxed. Now the children are in bed, and I'm about to round up all my manuscript papers and notes and printouts in preparation for wading in to the rewriting task tomorrow. The only possible problem is that my son was feeling a little under the weather tonight, so there's a chance he'll wake up sick tomorrow. If he's home I won't be able to really buckle down to work, but I still hope to get a start at least.

I've also started a new colored pencil piece, which I'm tentatively calling "Fairy Gossip." It's the first time I took a "real-life" picture and turned it into a fantasy piece, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. I'll work on that when I need a break from the rewriting.

I did end up making some resolutions for 2007, although they're a little out of the ordinary. They are:
Laugh every day.
Read more.
Stress less.
Do more things just for fun.
Learn something new.
Treat myself once in a while.
Personally, I think they're very wise resolutions.