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Lost!
One Distributed Dense Utility Fog

Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past Slope communities
http://www.adn.com/2835/story/864687.html

Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.

"It's certainly biological," Hasenauer said. "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.

Reward if returned to Canada labs. More reward if alive.
Still more reward if you can isolate why it is alive.

Dangerous if touched, inhaled, or applied externally.
May respond to various names from 300 year old texts.
Might come when "called."

£ Big reward £

So, this is vacation
My husband, my brother-in-law and my stepdaughter got involved in a foolish bet: Who can eat a whole pan of brownies in one day?

Stepdaughter gave up after about four brownies. Thank goodness. The rest of us ate from her pan.

The other two finished. My husband came screaming in before 9PM (I think). Brother-in-law choked down the last one with 30 minutes to spare.

Most people do not believe my husband belonged in a fraternity, especially when they know how little he drinks. But it's moments like this that you can sort of see it. Even though he's 35 now, and should really, really know better.

In other news, we installed a shuffleboard thingie on the tennis court and have been shuffleboarding it up like people twice our ages.

And my nephew scored 300 in Wii bowling this morning. He's 5. He's played just about every day for a year--since last year, when we introduced Wii bowling to him.

And I figured out something not entirely minor for my book, five days after I sent it away. Of course.

Harry Potter tonight.

Freebies for any locals
Have some stuff to offer up if any locals want them:

Tan 2 drawer locking file cabinet. In very good shape.

Jason telescope (311 model). 280 Power, 60mm objective, 700mm focal length. About 20
years old, hasn't been used in most of that, been moved around a lot, so I have no idea what shape the optics are in.

The Saga of the Envelope
I've never had to mail anything longer than a hundred pages before. Probably only 65 pages, really, that one time, when I liked to pretend that By Right of Conquest was a short story and before I turned it into "An Almanac for the Alien Invaders" and then it actually was a short story.

Today--was supposed to be yesterday, but yesterday was Stupid, capital S--I mailed the 439 pages of my book manuscript to my agent. She claims this request (for me to mail it) shows her age, though I would guess from her picture she's younger than me, so whatever. I mailed it. I can (I hope) tell all the writers in 2049 that yes, by gum, I was alive and working in the age of mailed manuscripts, which is (I bet) an age that is not long for this world.

Yesterday evening, I was trying to slide the 439 pages into a too-small (padded) (Jiffy #5) envelope. Tried and tried and tried. It was like watching a modern-day office Sisyphus at work. If I bend it a little bit this way... If I fold it a little bit that way... Perhaps if I move the middle into the eighth dimension? Until

redmomoko said: "Merrie. It's not going to fit."

I sighed. "But I used my neatest writing on this envelope!"

So I had to go back downstairs to the reused envelope pile and find one that didn't look like a reuse and was bigger. And of course what I found was way bigger (Jiffy #7), and had to be doubled over and taped to heck and back.

And the writing on it is only my second-neatest.

What to do, what to do
I seem to be on an inadvertent summer hiatus from fandom and writing. I'm around and reading livejournal, but have been immersed in garden and health stuff and home improvement projects for the last couple of months. Seriously, I've come home almost every night for the last three weeks and painted and cleaned for hours (weekends too, when we haven't been driving out to the in-laws for birthdays and christening and such). On the plus side, projects languishing for years (some since we bought the house five years ago) are getting done and I'm enjoying the satisfaction of seeing things as I'd envisioned them and the relief of decluttering reorganization.

On the negative side, my feet are not pleased at this two to five hours standing on a ladder every night. But the bulk of the ladder-required painting is done, and now I'm just happily blazing my way through a lengthy to-do list while I am pain-free and energized enough to do so.

And back to the trenches of the front hall closet.

Clearly my mind doesn't want me to eat healthy
I peeled and cut up a bunch of carrots last night so I would have something healthy to snack on at work today. Where are they? Still in the refrigerator at home. *sigh*

Guess I'll just have to get something at the Townie party.

Current Mood: hungry

Read a book!
Read a book!
19th book read in 2009 : Under Copp's Hill by Katherine Ayres, 163 pgs
Well-written/Synopsis?
This is book #8 in the American Girl History Mystery series.

This story takes place in 1908 Boston. Italian immigrant girls are invited to join a settlement house where they learn to read, sing, dance and create pottery. A rash young girl, Innie, makes some poor choices, which lead the ladies of the house to believe she is stealing from them. While she is guilty of a few mistakes, she mostly ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, because she is determined to find out who the thief is and how it is getting in.

I did not find the main character very likable in this book. Though, it is explained and a plot device why she is the way she is. I was quite taken with the idea of the settlement houses, and the Saturday Night Girls and Paul Revere pottery. Although my family spent many years in Boston, I had never heard of this part of history, and have researched it quite a bit since.

Looking back discusses 1908: Chelsea fire, Settlement houses, Hull house, Immigrants. Also contains a glossary on Italian and Yiddish words.

Would I read it again? Maybe
Keep or give away? Keep
Would I read a sequel/further adventures/etc? No sequel, but I am reading the rest of the series.
Overall recommendation: Not my favorite history mystery, though as I said, I did like learning the surrounding circumstances of the time.

Read a book!
20th book read in 2009 : The Smuggler's Treasure by Sarah Masters Buckey, 163 pgs
Well-written/Synopsis?
This is book #1 in the American Girl History Mystery series.

This story takes place in 1814 New Orleans. During the war of 1812, Elisabet's dad is captured by the British. All his possessions are sold to pay his debts, and she is shipped to Louisiana to live with an aunt and uncle she has never met. She has been raised in wealth and luxury, and is quite shocked to learn she must now earn her keep working in the family's bakery. As she attempts to learn the fate of her father and rescue him, she learns of her uncle's supposed hidden treasure and the ghost that haunts the home at night. There is also a smattering of pirates in the story.

Again, not the most likable protagonist. I also found the mystery to be weak.

Looking back discusses 1814: American revolution, war of 1812, New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory, privateers and Jean Lafitte, Upper class vs lower class life for girls. Also contains a glossary on French words.

Would I read it again? no?
Keep or give away? Keep
Would I read a sequel/further adventures/etc? No sequel, but I am reading the rest of the series.
Overall recommendation: Not my favorite history mystery.

Read a book!
21st book read in 2009 : Secrets on 26th Street by Elizabeth McDavid Jones, 147 pgs
Well-written/Synopsis?
This is book #5 in the American Girl History Mystery series.

This story takes place in 1914 New York. Susan's mother works long hours in a factory trying to make ends meet, but must take in a mysterious boarder to make the rent. Susan is very taken by their boarder, Bea, until she starts to realize that Bea has secrets and has been lying to them. When their mother disappears without a trace, Susan believes Bea has something to do with it, and she is determined to uncover the secrets.

I had this one figured out pretty early on. Oh well, but it is a book for children. Still a decent story, with lots of harsh truth about being a poor girl in the early 1900s.

Looking back discusses 1914: Suffrage movement, Famous suffragettes, tenements, factories and the "political machine".

Would I read it again? No?
Keep or give away? Keep
Would I read a sequel/further adventures/etc? No sequel, but I am reading the rest of the series.
Overall recommendation: It was ok.

this is panic
I have a paper submission due on Wednesday. I *thought* (for reasons that now escape me) that it was due on the 22nd.

When I believed it was due on the 22nd I wondered, with a certain quickening of the pulse, how I could possibly have it ready in time.

now?

well...

now I'm fucked.

new clothes for baltimore
I've been thinking about

_earthshine_ a lot lately and thinking about how much I miss being a musician. The photo is of the pole at the end of my driveway.

this is not endorsed by north. this is not a real thing.

The End of the Book: I haz it.
Just going through now and putting in italics (underscores, anyway) where they were stripped out by the ruthlessness of clearing out my screwed up formatting.

I need to remember that MSWord gets DARN PERSNICKETY on me when I write longer than about sixty thousand words, and even more persnicketty when switching a document back and forth betwixt Open Office. Maybe copy-paste is my friend, and also stars or some crap like that which can be search-replaced at the end, not that I ever remember how wild cards work without going to look it up on-line.

I can't possibly finish my underscoring search tonight. Eyes, crossing.

G'night.

78
I'm 28 and I can conservatively estimate that I've been playing golf for 15 years or so. I only took lessons once, when I was 21, the same time I bought my current set of clubs. I can't fathom how much money I've spent on golf, but it has to be in the tens of thousands of dollars. I've broken a few clubs, I've quit more than once, and I probably wonder aloud why I waste my time and money on this sport at least once during every round.

And it all paid off today.

( Cut because you don't care all that much )

The 78 beats my previous career high by 3 and my previous best @ LF by 15 strokes. I had wanted to play tomorrow, but I'm sure if I go out and shoot anything over 80 I'm going to be pissed, so I'm just going to enjoy this for a bit.

Case in point
I went out to pick up our CSA food today. The drive there was uneventful. I did think the car felt strange when I turned it off. I went in, grabbed my box (which has watermelon AND squash AND corn this week. I am psyched) and got back in the car, envisioning eating watermelon within a half hour's time.

And the car did nothing. Literally, nothing. No start. No chug. No ding. No lights lit up. I placed calls to Eric and my dad, and went back in the shop to tell them my car wasn't working, I didn't know what to do about it, or how long it will be sitting in their parking lot. A nice man in the shop offered to jump it, but I wasn't optimistic. When he opened my battery, it was covered in blue and white mold. He did the best he could to get rid of it, then tried to jump. Nothing happened. He said he should see sparks on the red metal thing and nothing. We sat the cables on there for a while and still nothing. Then he left.

Eric came and we spent some time idly staring at the battery and scratching our heads. Then my dad returned my call. He wouldn't come rescue me, but told me to call triple a. Which made Eric happy too. So then we had to sit around for an hour waiting for them to show. The AAA guy ran a test on my battery. It is supposed to have 500 chargy thingies, and it had 0. He kind of laughed, and said it is totally dead. So we got a new battery. Then the heavens opened up again with pouring rain as he spent 45 minutes trying to remove the old battery. It was so corroded, it was glued in there onto the connector thingies. He kept spraying orange coorsive foam and wd-40 on there. He finally got it out. It only took him a few more minutes to put the new one in, and run a test and paperwork. And then I had to speed off late to my first day of classes of the term.

With all the prophetic dread I have been having lately about the cars, I feel lucky to get off for $125 and four hours of my life. I hope that is it for a while. (Tho it is due for oil) It made for a sucky day, but I am glad it happened when and where it did. These things are never convenient, but it could have been a lot worse.

Still haven't had any watermelon.

I can see the end of this book
Quite literally. And figuratively. If I don't finish tonight, it will be only because of this stupid earache making me go to bed early.

Not much left now. Would be done if I hadn't rewritten the last third of the book a second time, but it was mushy. Would be done by now, part the second, if I hadn't caught Ze Dread Earache. Would be done by now, part the third, if I had figured out how to rewrite the book about a month earlier. So, really, there's no one thing.

I was a bit daunted to jump back in tonight. The papers, the notes, the arrows, they are too much. So I took a picture of them:

Click through, if you dare. There are Notes.

Once I captured their soul on film, the notes became much less intimidating, and I dove in and fixed some problems in my last scene written, and starting porting over the last 5k of the book, plus connective tissue--basically, Chapter 40 on. I also hung a lantern on some boats. Literally--well, sort of--this isn't writer jargon. I went back in the book and noted the detail that there were lanterns on some boats. Because it came up that there would need to be.

I'M THAT CLOSE. And the scent of victory is making me a little crazy. Obvi.

The other side of the story
T.Boone Pickens' 1 GW wind farm probably won't happen [Forbes]. But don't get too bummed about this. Pickens' transmission lines were really just a "deal sweetener" for his actual plan: to pump water from the already-low Ogallala aquifer to Texas cities [Mother Jones]. Now that the government won't pay for his transmission lines or create the right-of-way by taking private land, he scraps the project. Pickens is just another in a long line of people ready to use massive government money for massive private gain.

Enough
Let's get this right out of the way: Michael Jackson was not a hero. Michael Jackson was an entertainer.

A singer, a songwriter, and a dancer. Nothing more. Without delving into his odd predilictions, that's what he was. He was a cute kid who was forced to be famous by his dad, and then he ruled the music industry for about 15 years. Then he became what has to be the weirdest has-been in the history of the world. None of that made him a hero.

Regardless of the verdict in the sexual misconduct case, he admitted to sharing a bed with children that were not his. His face should speak for itself, but apparently it doesn't speak loud enough. He obviously had some serious emotional/mental health issues and for that I felt for him. But that doesn't make him a hero.

Obviously, I'm taken aback at how society has handled his death. When even NPR is running sound bytes of people calling him a miracle worker at *every* news break, something has gone too far. If crazy people want to dance in the streets and worship a long since relevant singer, that's their business. But since when does a near-bankrupt state decide it's a good decision to spend $3.6 million on a funeral for a private citizen?

And while Jackson did donate substantial amounts of money to charity, was he some sort of underground social pioneer that I'm not aware of? Did he break some racial barrier? Did he solve the plight of the urban poor? Or did he turn himself into a white woman while courting Emmanuel Lewis and a monkey?

He's dead, mostly by his own doing. Let's let him go, remember the good times, and move on. He's not a hero, and nothing you can do now will change that. Instead, let's focus on the people who dedicate their lives to helping others, not just entertaining them.

Jobs
The stores have the back to school stuff out. Its depressing. I also realized that if I were going back to teaching, I would be going back in three weeks. It is really wierd to stop thinking of my life in terms of schoolyears. My summer has been kind of crap. I've been sleeping in, but thats about the only summer activity. No trips, no vacations, I've hardly even left my house other than to go to classes. I'd love to just pack up for a month and go to Florida, but that just isn't practical. Even if I were free to leave my home, we don't have any money for other vacations either.

Anyway, that's not really what this post was supposed to be about, just an idea of where my emotional state is. More proof that I cannot be a domestic wife, even if we could afford it. I get way too depressed with nothing meaningful to do. (Mopping my floor four times a day is NOT meaningful).

Yesterday I started my internship. I am working at an HR block, though the counselor tried to get me in somewhere else, that lady never called me, and this place sounded like it was really going to work me (not just put me on phones) and I felt good about that. She told me the reason she was trying somewhere else is that there is almost zero chance they will hire me permanently. Yesterday I found out why.

They are all in Spanish. With no English subtitles. Seriously. They all speak Spanish. They all speak Spanish to the clients. The client names and payrolls are all hispanic. There was one whole conversation in five hours that was in English which didn't involve me. It is really a strange sensation, and one gets very paranoid at times that they are the topic. Though I am sure I wasn't. So. I realized pretty quickly that no matter how good and efficient I am at what I do, they will not hire me. Which really sucks. The place is right down the street. I would take a job just for the commute.

They did put me right to work. Real work. I was reconciling bank accounts and journalizing and classifying transactions. It was really cool to put everything I have been learning over the last year into practice. They don't seem to be as "by the book" as has been drilled into me, but their priority doesn't seem to be as much about the audit trail and up-to-dateness as the taxes. I was catching up accounts which haven't been touched since January. They were behind because of taxes, they explained. So they spend the first four months on taxes and the rest of the year playing catchup. I can't really say from my measly five hours experience, but I guess this is more tax service than accounting services.

I worked on two accounts. One was a service company, and one must have been merchandising, because they had cost of good sold and inventory accounts, though it looked to me like a trucking company or something. Not sure. In all I did 8 months of reconcilliations in five hours. They had to kick me out. Apparently, the latest shift leaves at 5:30. When I handed them the files and told them I had completed everything they were stunned into silence. They really didn't believe me. SEE! An English speaking asset!! Right here! (flashing pointing arrows!!)

I did not get the file clerk job. Apparently I don't have the required experience. I am not going to comment further on that. At first I didn't really care, because this is my last summer, and I want to enjoy as much time as I can (even though I am really not). But I spent a hell of a lot of money on "work clothes" and those bills have to be paid. Extra bills, no extra money. I also am realizing that my checks are going to run out soon, and I am going to have to get a job. I am also realizing that whether I am waiting tables or accounting, what I make is going to be a fraction of what I used to make. I am not regretting at all leaving teaching. But I am very worried about finances. I feel we have no savings, we have no investments, no way to finance our retirement, no money for new cars, no money for much needed home improvement, and certainly no money for adding to our household. I have been squirrling away money every month, but it certainly won't amount to enough to even replace my wood floors, let alone finance a car or vacation or anything more serious that might come our way. Most likely it will pay my bills til I get something else paying. But then I think that won't carry enough of a paycheck for me to continue to save from. Not to mention the school loans I have now. And then I feel like I am the only one who worries about money like this. No one else seems to plan their whole life around their finances.

God, I totally woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.

Also, the counselor called me today. She is such an idiot. I want her job. She had totally forgotten we had talked about my interview. She also didn't even remember where my internship was. What a dumbass.

Rounding the Horn
This thread on this entry of

sartorias's journal...

Just reminded me to articulate something I've been feeling lately.

( gets a little dull and navel-gazey. MORE dull and navel-gazey. )

What with starting a pretty diligent writing habit pretty much concurrent with the onset of puberty, that's... a lot of years of practice. It's not all been to the good, I'm sure; I resisted instruction at many points, for a while feeling that if I couldn't get it by intuition, it wasn't worth getting. Maybe five years ago, I started to diligently suss out techniques and to consider my craft. To the point that, you know, I couldn't look at a piece without book-reporting it, per

sartorias's entry linked above. I also, for a while, couldn't look at anyone else's work without book-reporting it--critiquing it on the fly, and thinking, "That's not how I'd do it!"

Various folks assured me that this can (and does) go away, and it has. In fact, I can turn off book-report-head at will, most days; that's why I could enjoy Twilight, frex. And turning it off is how I get that energetic first draft down on paper, and theoretically, turn it back on to examine structure and character and rising action and all the rest and attempt to make sure I've written a satisfying story.

Lately, though, I've not had to think as hard about things, even in the rewrite. I can do more and more of it intuitively. Every leap forward is a leap backward. There was a joy in learning the craft, of course, but there is far more joy in having long, immersive moments of writing by intuition.

To the point where my general feeling is "Oh, THANK GOD."

Anyway. Just wanted to document that. I'm sure I'll forget all about this moment in a few years.

Fancy-ass CPU fan busted yesterday
I started work yesterday and soon noticed that my CPU was running at 69C, but was completely unloaded. One look at my case and I knew why: my CPU fan was not spinning.

Since nobody makes a replacement for this special three-screw-mounted fan, I took an old 120mm case fan, set it on top of the heat sink, and tied it down with wire. It works, and I idle at 40C now, and 64C only at full load. Of course, it has no speed control and is ugly.

That's my day. Hope yours was more fun.

Oh, and

capital_l and I made a lightning 8:45PM computer game store run. I picked up "Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge" and played it until 4 AM. I haven't really enjoyed a computer game in about a year, and it still feels good. Well, it doesn't feel good to not get anything checked off the "todo" list. That's another post.

Where is everybody?
Are you all on Facebook? Come on back and write more than 140 characters here.

Watch out.

Oh yeah. Guess who's got 484 processor cores in one 600 Watt computer?