Thursday This n That

I'm really not sure where my head has been lately.  I totally screwed up Sunday's post.  I totally missed Tuesday's post.  But I'm here for Thursday.  That counts, right?

Monday got into the 80s here.  Tuesday was in the 70s.  Yesterday?  Freakin' 50s again.  Yuck.  As of typing this post last night, I felt gross.  I blame the rollercoaster weather.

I've been watching the Dr. Pol marathon all week this week.  (It's a daytime thing, so if you're not seeing it, that could be why.)  I've watched so much Dr. Pol, I can now predict what the diagnosis will be for quite a few of the cases.  The other day, I was watching a different vet show and telling the TV vet there that he needed to call Dr. Pol because the doc had experienced that very thing several times and knew just what to do.

When I was a freshman in high school, I wanted to be a veterinarian.  I even joined the local Explorer post for veterinary medicine.  I stayed with the Explorers - which ended up being kinda lame - longer than I should've because there was this guy in the post who was way hot.  The only thing other than the guy that I remember is a trip to visit a local dog breeder.  I was really excited about going and then it turned out to be this chick who was breeding bulldogs in her basement.  It was creepy and dark and smelled like poo.  Oh, the dogs all looked fine and were well kept and socialized, so not a puppy-mill, but totally not anything to live up to my excitement.  Totally wrecked the last vestiges of my excitement over the Explorers, though.  Plus, the guy totally wasn't interested in me.  Harsh.

Then I wanted to be a clinical psychologist.  Totally into delving into the human psyche.  Totally not into a lifetime of daily contact with mental people, though.  I switched majors my sophomore year in college.

I really should've been an engineer, but I suck at math.  I am awesome at figuring out ways to do things, though.  I was the one who built dams out of rocks and sticks.  I dug canals to move other water from where I didn't want it to elsewhere - usually out of the driveway and into the ditch.  When I'm trying to fall asleep, sometimes I try to puzzle out the problem of turning water into a usable, safe and cheap fuel.  H2O - hydrogen and oxygen both extremely flammable gases merged into something totally non-flammable.  If we could find a way to separate those atoms in small amounts to make the explosions minuscule, we could drive anywhere without relying on gas stations.  Yeah, I think about these things sometimes.

What about you? 

Sunday Update - Week 11

Yes, I know this isn't Sunday.  Unfortunately, I didn't realize yesterday was Sunday until it was afternoon and by then I couldn't muster the gumption to write an update post. 

Writing... Nope.

Editing... Well, I did do a little, but not really worth noting.

Reading... Also nope.

Cover and Blurb...  Both done and ready to upload to Goodreads.  I'll talk more about that on Outside the Box.

Fishing... Went Thursday - Sunday for 2-3 hours each day.  It's been gorgeous here.  Not great for catching fish, but great for the soul.

Gardening... I got the hollyhocks in the ground and moved a couple iris bulbs.

What did I do with my time?  :shrug:  I spent a lot of time watching the Dr. Pol marathon this past weekend. 

I had a major meltdown Saturday night.  It was spectacular in a very quiet and individual way.  I had the thought the other day that I was like the Enterprise (Star Trek) in a battle against the Romulans with Scotty shouting from engineering that he wasn't sure how much longer the shields were going to hold.  Well, they fell.  Which is how I ended up outside putting hollyhocks in the ground after sunset after much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  (Hey, it's my process.  I also did the dishes and would've vacuumed but I didn't want the noise.)  The shields are back up again.  Not full strength, but enough to stop from leaking atmosphere into space and having tiny crewmen bodies floating away.  If that makes any sense.

I've also had a low-grade headache for the past week.  I thought maybe it was my eyes.  (I do need to get new glasses, after all.)  I noticed something this morning about that, though.  I didn't have a headache when I woke up and I didn't have a headache for about an hour afterwards.  But I was on Facebook, reading the newsfeed when I saw a friend had made angwy face to something I was about to heart.  Instant headache.  And while correlation is not causation, I think there's a pretty good bet of where my headache has been coming from.  Yes, now that I think about it, my headache disappears when I'm fishing, too.  The world has gone stark-raving mad and I'm subconsciously reacting to it.  Exposure to insanity = background headache.  Tada.

I commented yesterday to Hubs, being funny, that it's gotten to the point where I would rather watch commercials than the news.  And we both laughed.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize it's true.  Which isn't funny at all.

And another thing... Wait, this was supposed to be an update post.  Well, that's really all I've got for you this morning.  Do you have anything to update?

Saturday Fishing Report - 3/18/17

Hello and welcome again to my Saturday Fishing Report. 

It was a slow week for fishing because the weather pretty much blew.  And blew.  And got cold.  It was gross.  Lucky for my sanity, that changed on Thursday.

Thursday - It was in the mid-60s, so I talked Hubs into going fishing with me in the afternoon.  We went out about 2:30pm.  The first place we tried - what we call 'the ledges' - no bites.  So, we moved to another place off a feeder creek - no bites.  So we went to our go-to spot.  Hubs caught two 6" bluegills and almost got a third.  I caught two 6" bluegills and a 13" spotted bass.  Got home about 5:30.

Friday - Another warm day and totally overcast, so I went out in the morning.  I got to the go-to spot about 8am.  Tried several areas, with the worm set about 6.5' deep.  Nada.  But I knew the fish were out there because I kept seeing them surface.  I set the hook shallower - about 3-4' deep - and started getting hammered.  A 14" spotted bass was the first to make it to shore.  (I lost what I could tell was a bigger fish before it got close enough for me to see.)  Then I caught about four 6" bluegills.  At that point, though, I ran out of worms.  It was about 11:30.  I took another 30-40 minutes picking up trash again.  I must've pulled several hundred feet of line out of the shore, along with numerous rusted hooks, sinkers, etc.  Plus, beer cans and assorted garbage.  It's a never ending battle. 

I thought about going out again in the afternoon, but my body needed a break.  Maybe I'll be back out by the time you read this.

Have an awesome week next week, and take a kid somewhere outside.  Fishing, hiking, birdwatching... anything.

Fiction and Lying for a Living

Let me start out by making one thing perfectly clear...  I am a fiction writer.  I don't 'lie for a living'. 

Never once have I tried to imply that the fiction I write is in any way the truth.  That's what liars do.  They try to convince you that what they're telling you is, in fact, the truth.  No fiction writer I know does that.  We write fiction and we proclaim loudly that this is fiction.  It's not reality.  That would be non-fiction.  Or journalism...

Wait.  Scratch that.  Actual journalism is about facts and reality.  You know, TRUTH.  Not sure what's going on with what they're calling journalism these days.  I'd call it fiction, but I don't want those people associated with my profession. 

Remember back when the so-called memoirs of a certain person caused a hullabaloo because it was revealed that his non-fiction had been mostly made up? 

Remember back when that news anchor got caught making shit up about his experiences and foisting them off as the truth?

Remember when news networks used to carry reports of those embarrassments?

Well, now it seems the news networks have become the very embarrassments they used to report on.  :sigh:

Anyway, fact is fact.  Truth is truth.  Reality is reality.  Nothing anyone says or does changes that.  "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away." - Philip K. Dick.  It also doesn't go away just because someone has tried to replace it with a homemade reality cobbled together out of whims and assertions and bullshit. 

Journalism and news - whether in written or verbal form - should stick to the facts and to truth.  Leave the fiction to the fiction writers, please. We have enough competition amongst ourselves, thank you very much.  And just as we novelists don't lie for a living, you shouldn't be lying for your living either. 

Thursday This n That

Every day it gets a little more difficult to not post what I really want to post. 

The weather here has been cold.  Which means no fishing since last Thursday.  I really really hope I can get out today.  My sanity needs to drown worms for a few hours.

The jury's still out on whether the cold snap affected my gardens.  My peonies already had small buds before the snow and cold.  =o\

I really hate Windows 10 and I don't even have it.  But someone I help with computers via the phone does and it really sucks.  I have to google screen shots of things because I tell her where to click and it's not there anymore.  It's over there, or over there, or gone entirely.  But I am NOT going to load that crap on my computer even if having it here makes it easier to support her there.  What I'd really like is for MS to stop 'fixing' things that weren't broken to begin with.  And stop 'idiot-proofing' things so they're damn near impossible to do.  Gah.

I wrote this last night and I was feeling particularly bitchy.  I've been feeling bitchy for days.  And sometimes a gal's just got to let it out.  (Lord knows, Hubs has heard enough.)

On a happier note, I noticed one of our deer is pregnant.  I mean, most of the big does probably are, but this is the first time this year one of them is noticeably pregnant.  She's still carrying up around the ribs - natch, because they don't drop fawns until May - but she's getting wide in the sides.  Yay!

Okay.  Tell me something happy.  Or just give me your this n that. 

Thought for the Day

Some days I just want to run around the countryside smacking people in the back of the head.  

Sunday Update - Week 10

Last night was the time change, so my clock says I'm writing this at 6:47am, but my body feels like it's 5:47am.  What a dirty trick those politicians played on the people of the world.  But they bought it and now we have this stupid clock resetting thing that doesn't actually do anyone any good.

'Nuff said.

Okay, so last week...

Natural Causes is finished with that round of editing.  In a marathon from 7:30am to 7:45pm Wednesday, I got 'er done.  Now it's with my editor for the next three weeks.  Which means I can stop thinking about it.  Kinda.  It topped the scales at 66620 words.  I doubt much will be added or deleted in the next round.

I got into editing Wish Hits the Fan yesterday.  Chapter One has been read-through and notes have been taken.  I meant to get to it Thursday night, but we had storms.  And I was supposed to get to it on Friday night, but ended up in a marathon phone call with the Kid right as I was getting ready to work.  Sooo, I did some work Saturday night when the snow had shut the satellite TV down to 2 channels.

The weather has been weird.  We had thunderstorms and tornado warnings Monday night and Thursday night.  We had heavy, thick snow on Saturday. 

Reading's been slow still.  I did finish that non-fiction I was working on.  And then I read Silver's latest Redeemed by the Cowgirl.  Awesomesauce. 

I cranked out a crappy blurb for Natural Causes to go with the not crappy cover.  You can see those over at Outside the Box.

Hubs and I did some major yardwork - pulling weeds for the first time since fall.  They were taking over.  But we got the majority of it done over the course of two days.  All that's left is along the side of the garage and along the back of the house.  Easy peasy.  Good thing it snowed, though, because I need some recuperation time. 

I bought some hollyhock bare roots to put in on the south side of the garage, but the snow prediction put that off until next week.  I also ordered butterfly bushes, lavender plants, and some grab bag type mix of sun loving bulb plants.  Not sure when those will ship.

As always, you can see what fishing I got up to on the Saturday Fishing Report.

That's it for me.  How was your Week 10?