Dandelyon's Worlds

I had a great time at GAFilk, but not so great a time driving home, as the winter storm blew in long before we got home. That made the driving both longer and a lot more stressful. We pushed through, and arrived home safe, but exhausted. And the stupid Long Covid waves of exhaustion have intensified. Emotionally, I'm so very over this crap, but obviously physically is another story.

I did manage to pay bills this week, and make stew, but hardly anything more. Minimal music practice. Nothing done toward organizing the house this week, not even getting the pages of lyrics I'd alphabetized before the con into the three ring binders waiting for them. Bleah. And the ongoing winter weather has not helped anything.

Well, on further consideration, today I have managed to do some laundry, and I took the shop vac down into the laundry room to vacuum out the inside of the dryer from the back, which has increased the efficiency of said appliance. And I made stew, so there's leftovers for a couple of days. But I wanted to be doing a lot more practice, and some recording. Maybe tomorrow. Even having napped, I don't have a lot of focus.

It's not none, at least--I'm here, after all.

The headache is better, and so is the throat, so long as I don't dare sing. Today there was lovely sunshine, and I eventually dragged myself outside to try to start getting the garden ready to plant. I did almost nothing, and exhausted myself in the doing. I hate being sick. I also have the stupid positional sinus dizziness on and off today, which is not helpful either.

But still, it was very pleasant to have sunshine on my skin and fresh air still wandering through the house. And then I came inside and sat to rest a bit and couldn't keep my eyes open. There was a zoom concert I planned to attend at 8, so I laid down for an hour or two and woke up after 10:30. Um, well, I guess tomorrow I can go find the replay, but that's Not how I'd planned it.

Nor did I plan to keep taking naps all day, missing out on the glorious sun.

I also managed a little more of the stupid paperwork this morning, before going outside, also slow and brain-fogged. I sure hope this gets enough better soon that I can feel competent while I actually put the numbers into the tax program. Taxes are stressful enough without brain fog.

And I have fun things to do, if I can get past the not-fun ones.

For the first time in years I'm not at Lytheria; I am tired and draggy again today, and went out to do errands anyway. Snow was starting to fall when I left, and fell on and off.

I dropped off the boxes of clothes and other stuff I'd packed away to donate and got a tax receipt, got pet food, prescriptions, and dinner; the later it got (and I was home before 8:00) the worse the driving got. The allergy meds took care of the headache, but still, the appeal of the party didn't quite overcome my antipathy for driving in this weather with the inevitable drunks.

Well, at least I can start the new year doing what I want to spend most of it doing--writing. I promised a rewrite of a finished story, but after that, I've got some urban fantasy vignettes & stuff to write.

My porch. Well, part of it. You see, earlier in the season I scraped off an area of the porch that's more exposed to the weather than the rest and took the tail end of some oil primer and painted it. That, of course, left an unsightly white stain on the purple porch.

But life has been busy, with unpredicted time sinks and distractions. So early this week, we had a bit of snow with my unsightly porch paint job still in evidence. So, while watching Bones (now unaccountably a Friday night show) I looked at the weekend weather -- rain. Oh, goodie. So I went out to paint the porch purple in the dark, with just one electric light (if you don't count distant street lights) to guide me. Then I came in and started this post, but was too tired to finish.

I slept a looooong time,

Now it's raining, and I'm hoping the paint dried before the rain started!!!

But somehow I'm not convinced that returning my purple porch to its proper purple counts as a "sketch".

Ever since they replaced the dead hard drive on this computer and I got home only to have to drive all the way back to the store to have them install the wireless driver, my wireless has been unreliable. Having to turn the computer off (or pull the battery) to restore function is annoying when it happens once a week, but maddening when it happens a half-dozen times in a night. Like last weekend, when I was trying to do stuff to make the house less crazy-making, the Muse Fusion, and get ready for Worldcon all at once.

So, yesterday I got up early (for a non-work day) and headed off to make them re-install the driver. To get there, I drove on a highway, and was reminded that on the trip to Muse Con, the car had made an intermittent strange, not-loud (but not right) rhythmic noise if we hit about 65 MPH. Except that now it was doing it if I got to 50. Erg. In dealing with the infection and root-canal in two sessions, I'd totally forgotten about that noise.

So I went to the computer store, where I had to talk to a manager to get them to just reinstall the driver instead of making me choose between them doing nothing at all and them keeping the computer for a day or two to do full diagnostics. While they had the computer signed in, I drove back to the Firestone I'd passed to say "Hi, I got my tires at your now-defunct downtown location, and now I have this noise..." Hours in a hot waiting room with nothing to write upon but my Kindle and $200 later, I have a new tie-rod, rotated and rebalanced tires, and no noise.

So then back to the computer store, where a sympathetic couple said, "you haven't been here all this time, have you?" and I got the computer back. It would have been more fun to have been there, actually, since the computer store is clean, has free wireless, and air conditioning (and no Judge Judy clone-shows on a TV you aren't allowed to touch). Oh, well, I got several hundred words written.

Then I had other errands--cat food, people food, program My Angel's phone so she can call the lady she's working for at the con to confirm when she's needed--Oh. 24 hours earlier than she remembered. Glad I took the whole week off! Better give up on housework (except can't leave the fish filters another week, oh, and this stuff needs to be out of the 'fridge and in the compost, and...) um, yeah. Time to pack in a hurry AND do other stuff.

So, I never got the words transferred over from my e-mail to Word, and the internet in the room costs money, so here I sit in one of the lobby areas, where the internet is free and the sun is shining in a skylight onto my face so I'm glad I learned touch-typing, and

I HAVE MY BADGE. Fans I know (and fans I don't know) keep hurrying by, taking luggage to their rooms or engaged in the important business of setting things up. Soon, I'll need to go back to my room, where I can see the words I wrote yesterday and weave them into the story I'm working on, because there's no way to plug the thing in here where I'm sitting. But for now, I'm here, and as far as I'm concerned, the con has started.

If you're here, feel free to stop by and say hello! You can leave a message at my room, find me at Filk things, at the Broad Universe table, at programming I'm on, or "around". I would have said "at the pool", but sadly there isn't one!

Thu Aug 30 1:30-2:00 pm.....Writer Under Glass #4 in the Fan Lounge

Thu Aug 30 4:30-6:00 pm.....Storytelling the Old-Fashioned Way in Buckingham

Thu Aug 30 9:00-10:30 pm.....The Exploration of Gender Roles in SF in Dusable

Fri Aug 31 12:00-1:30 pm.....Art in an Ebook Market in San Francisco

Fri Aug 31 3:00-4:30 pm.....Broad Universe Rapid-Fire Reading in Grand Suite 3

Sat Sep 1 12:30-1:00 pm.....Reading: Deirdre Murphy in Dusable

Sat Sep 1 3:00-4:30 pm......Autograph Session 10 in Autograph Tables

Sun Sep 2 1:30-3:00 pm......Where's Thursday? San Francisco

That last, by the way, is just WRONG. Thursday was always in Chicago, or perhaps a near suburb. Saying it's in San Francisco--what were the programming planners thinking? That's like saying your favorite superhero is Adrian Monk.

So, what are you doing this fine Worldcon week?

Hmm...that sounds like a character name. It's actually what it was like outside today, on the way in to work and after work too. Probably all day, but I can't vouch for that.

I thought about taking the camera out to look for another rose to share with you all, but I didn't--after all, the camera is also my cell phone, and killing it would not be a good thing.

Monday I was delighted to get the occasional phone call at work, even when it was one of the calls that start "Do you speak Spanish?" Today I really wanted to hide the phone under the rug--I had things I wanted to get done, and the phone calls weren't helping! (Knowing how to count to 10 in Spanish is helpful--it means I can repeat a phone number back in Spanish, so at least my bilingual attorney can reach the clients and potential clients I can't properly talk to.)

When I called on the way to the grocery store to ask My Angel what she needed from there, she complained that she'd left the bedroom window open, and it was cold and damp and she felt like she was camping, without any of the good parts.

But still, perhaps Misty Grey should be the name of some kind of fantasy sleuth...someday.

Oh--and did you see today's cool Google logo? I am enjoying living in the future.

Happy Full Moon, everyone!

I was wondering why I've been so tired the last few days. Stress of a new job? Plausible. So, Saturday I slept in, and got up to do a few online and at-home chores, and spent some time submitting stories--enough to not only make my 10 submissions for the month for the first time this year, but to nearly fill up the empty spots for last month too. And I got another "your story made it past the first read" note, making two stories being held at anthologies I'd really love to be in right now.

Then I dressed to go to the housefilk, realized I needed to online-pay a bill before I left, and started to yawn.

I hadn't been up that long! How could I be tired?

My Angel and I headed out the door with instruments, got in the car and I started to sneeze. There was this delicate floral aroma -- "Angel, are you" *sneeze* *sneeze* "wearing perfume?"

"No! When do I wear perfume?"

. . . Spring Allergens!

I stopped at the side of the road to spray my nose with allergy medicine--an advantage of the new diet is I can use those more often without getting nosebleeds, and we headed onward.

I spent most of the next day asleep, or functionally asleep. I totally forgot my plan to do readings on Beltaine. My phone reminded me of my plan to submit a story to one of the online magazines, but their submissions page says both "we are currently closed" and "we will reopen to submissions on May 1". I broke down and sent a query today. I'd really like to send that story there next, but if they're staying closed, I don't want the story lost in electronic limbo.

The Muse Fusion might be this weekend; if it's not, and the allergies abate a bit, maybe I'll do readings then.

In the meantime, Happy Spring Pollen Season, everyone!

So, they predicted wonderful weather until the thunderstorm hit. So, we thought, we'll clean up the yard and plant bulbs.

So, I was sitting here eating my breakfast and I hear a thump. I go into the bedroom--nothing got knocked over by a cat. Then I looked out the window--a piece of siding fell off the house. Oh, wonderful.

Once MyAngel got up, we spent the afternoon on the porch, cleaning out a squirrel's nest (plus dead squirrel), sistering or replacing damaged wood, and putting up one of the leftover pieces of siding stored in the basement. The leftover 2x4s in the basement were old hardwood--sturdy, but not the fastest things to nail t We finally used part of the piece that fell off to cover a remaining hole, temporarily, since it was getting dark and windy. We'll have to properly cut another piece of siding, as well as replacing insulation and properly sealing everything on another day.

Fun fun.

And now the storm is blowing in.

Here's hoping we did enough, at least, for today's storm.

The bulbs are all still in their packages.

On the positive side, the neighbors like the purple flowers we were too busy to go down and properly identify. Here's hoping the storm doesn't shred them before tomorrow.

Yes, I know, technically it's spring. But that's still just a technicality.

The news is full of wonderful, encouraging news. Unemployment was up again last month (no surprise in February), 51 percent of the jobs lost were womens’ jobs, and 95 percent of the new jobs went to men.

From my personal experience, there seems to be a slight increase in job listings, but so far no increase in phone calls responding to my resume, which is to say, I haven’t gotten any calls since early January.

All of this is complicating the fact that it’s the end of the “allergens collect in the house” winter heating season, so I'm using up a LOT of Kleenex (which is distracting as well as time consuming). And the Kleenex doesn't keep the allergies from making me tired.

Have I mentioned how much depression and being too tired resemble each other?

I’ve got lots I want to get done, and it's really hard to get started, especially on housework (since that puts my nose into the thick of the fight, so to speak) and on creative things, which go SO much better when one has a little energy. I sure hope the weather gets better soon. I know from past years that being able to open the windows and air out the house will help.

In better news, Torn World is currently #6 on the Top Webfiction Website! It’s wonderful to see the banner up, but even better that people looking for things to read might stop by and check us out.

If you enjoy my Torn World stories, please consider stopping by the Top Webfiction site: http://topwebfiction.com/vote.php?for=torn-world is the link to vote for us. You can also vote for other cool things, like Addergoole, Spots, and Shadow Unit—and a lot more. Your vote is counted as of the moment you vote; the default page counts votes in the last week, but you can change that and see how many different people voted for a project in the last month or year.

I plan to start posting this link during each Muse Fusion, and also whenever I post a draft of Torn World work here, so those of you interested in voting can do so easily.  And thank you to the people who do bote.

I hope to hear from you!  So what interesting, thought provoking, or inspiring things have you come across lately?

With the rest of the world, I've been watching footage of Japan's earthquakes and tsunamis, sympathy and horror in my heart, and awe at the sheer power of simple things like rock and wind and water in my soul.

But even while I watch, praying for the people there, I'm also thinking, taking notes--look, see the things that people in an earthquake and tsunami-prone place in our world do to prepare. See what the waves look like. Remember the flow and the spray, the burning building sailing by, the mud. Remember the terracing, and how it guides the waters. Remember the airplanes and trucks and smashed cars scattered like children's toys by the water. Remember stories of tall buildings built to sway rather than crash, and historic buildings retrofitted with "seismic isolation".

And parallel to that, remember Torn World, whose temporal disaster caused not only massive earthquakes, storms, and tsunamis at the time of the Upheaval, but which is still suffering what might be termed aftershocks of that event as the broken shards of the world have started to heal together again.

And in particular, remember the Duurludirj, who have faced storms, earthquakes, and tsunamis so often that the core traditional building is a houseboat, anchored to the ground with a ship's anchor or two rather than with mortar or cement.

How do they tow their homes out to sea before a storm, if they know it's coming? Do they have winches or draft animals? Do they collect rainwater in high cisterns, and pour it out creating a planned flood to float their homes to safety? Do they simply gather all the neighbors into work gangs and drag their homes past the high tide line?

For the homes built too high (or stranded too high by a previous storm) to run, do they have something to act as bumpers, perhaps wooden porches designed as crush zones if a big enough tsunami does lift them from their mooring spots? Or do they surround their homes with something like our inner tubes, providing air-and-rubber armor to keep the home itself, and the people and resources in it, safe?

And what of the insides of their homes? Do they have railings on their bookshelves? Pictures on their walls? How do they store things? Chests? Cabinets? Bags tied to the walls? How much of their furniture is bolted down permanently--or designed to be bolted down when needed? How much of their furniture is reminiscent of Japanese paper wall-screens--deliberately fragile and replaceable?

Oh--hey--what about commercial buildings? Might they (or at least the ones near the sea) be designed in a modular fashion so that in the event of a tsunami, each section could become, in essence, a separate boat?

I can tell that there will be stories.

My mind is too occupied with the enormity of real world events right now to know what those stories will be. But the writing part of my brain is busy in the background.

What things have you seen in the news footage that I might have missed?