It's a Strange Place Out There

 The world has become such a strange place.  Maybe it was always strange and the internet helps everyone see just how strange, but I don't think so.  The internet's been around long enough now that we should've seen the strangeness years ago.  Nope, this is newer and stranger than ever before.

For instance, this morning I saw a dude commenting on an underwater photo of a kingfisher diving, saying the pic was contrived and disgusting and he was near to vomiting.  I'm not sure if he was objecting to the fact that it was probably taken in a closed setting and not in nature.  Or if he thought someone was drowning that poor bird.  Maybe he was pro-fishy.  Maybe he objected to the fact that the bird missed its meal and would go hungry.  Who the hell knows with people these days?  

I'm guessing based on his geographical location and the overwhelming number of leftists there that he objected to the bird be objectified.  Or something. 

It hurts my brain to try and figure out what's in other people's heads.

Perhaps he was just uninformed.  Kingfishers eat fish.  They have to dive underwater to do this.  It's actually pretty neat to watch and no birds are harmed in the diving.  If the birds are lucky, fish are harmed, but they're fish.  And birds gotta eat.  And those fish probably eat other smaller fish who in turn eat smaller life forms.  Generally, fish aren't herbivores.  

Whatever the reason, this gentleman felt the need to express his disgust to the world.  As if the world gives a great goddamn about it.  'Oh no, some random dude hates that picture, let's take it down.'

I hope the page posting the picture doesn't take it down.  I hope the photographer they credited doesn't experience a shitstorm over it.  It was a beautiful picture.  (I can't share it here, I don't have permission.)  But that's the world we live in now, where anyone can express outrage for no real reason and a shitstorm will follow.

Also, at any time and for any reason, he or she or you or me could get our internet presence blocked or deleted or banned.  Hell, I got a ban from Blogger because they said I violated some rule I hadn't violated and then I had to beg for my blog back.  There wasn't even a 'pardon me, but we believe you might've' message beforehand.  Just BAM and it was gone.  

Any of them can do this to you.  If I disappear one day, you'll know why.  I said or did something someone found offensive.  :shrug:  

I miss the old days when people weren't so damn offendsensitive.  

Sunday Update - Week 40

Well, that week flew by.  Let's see if I can rebuild it.

I didn't do any writing, but I have been back at making edit notes on Untitled Fantasy.  If I remember right, I'm at 61% now.  I don't even want to think about how many pages worth of notes that is.  Lots.  Lots and lots.  I'd like to have these done and input by the end of the month, then do another pass through and have it ready to send to other human beings by Thanksgiving.  We'll see how that works out.

I still haven't done any marketing, but by some happy quirk, someone bought the entire genie series in ebook and someone bought a ebook copy of Up Wish Creek, then someone read Blink of an I all the way through in Kindle Unlimited.  It was the best sales week I had in a long time.  Sad, but true.

As for reading, I'm still working my way through A Brief Darkness - an Alfred Hitchcock anthology.  So far, I've only DNF'd one story.  The beginning left me meh.

In baking news, I made zucchini bread and oatmeal butterscotch cookies.  The cookies were just made with my regular recipe, substituting butterscotch chips for the raisins.  Hubs approves.

On the activity front, I did something active 5 out of 7 days.  Sunday was a flurry of cleaning, after which I took apart my container garden.  Tuesday was vacuuming the entire house.  The rest was outside stuff.  I haven't weighed myself since last Sunday, but the scale was kind.  Weight: 179.4.  That's down 2.2 lbs from the beginning of the year and down 7.6 lbs from my highest in June.  Yay.

Yes, I took apart my container garden.  It was time.  Well, time for everything but the two biggest tomato plants - one still has tomatoes and the other still had flowers that might turn into tomatoes.  Everything else edible got pulled.  I thought the deer might like the plants, but they ignored the pile of greenery.  :shrug:  I repotted my elm tree - Elmer - and my two little cedars.  We'll see how they overwinter.  

In regular garden news, I redid what I refer to as 'the cedar bed'.  I dug the whole thing up, set aside the iris bulbs and threw everything else out.  Then I leveled it out, covered it in pine mulch, and stuck a bird bath in the center.  Except we put seed in the bird bath instead of water.  The birds are enjoying it muchly.  And the squirrels are SOL for now.

We also took down tippy tree.  Last December, a cedar tree just off the yard began slowly falling over.  When it fell far enough to lean against the next cedar, it stopped.  But it was harshing the growth of the other cedar and making us leery of walking anywhere near it.  So, Hubs and I took matters into our own hands,  He used a saw and an axe to whack it off the stump, then we pulled the damn thing down because it wouldn't fall on its own.  Since then, Hubs has been cutting it into manageable lengths for burning in a wood stove.  By the time we get one of those, it should be seasoned enough to burn.  I helped with some of the stacking.  

Note:  peanut butter removes cedar sap from your skin when soap and water won't.  Smear it on, let it set for a few seconds, wash it off.  Then wash the peanut butter residue off with soap and water.  Easy peasy.

I did a bunch of other honey-dos this week, catching back up with the things I'd let slide while I was otherwise occupied.  I only have two things left on my to-do list - thoroughly cleaning the kitchen counters and then washing the kitchen floor.  Then I can start my front flower bed project - wherein I dig the whole thing up, set aside the plants I want to keep, and then redirt and replant.  By the time I'm done with that, it should be time to get into the woods again for my usual winter woodswork.  Yay.

How are things in your neck of the woods?  

Thursday This n That

It's 3:30am and I've been up for an hour.  I might try going back to bed after I type this post.

Getting older sucks.  But it's better than the alternative.

I make my own sweet tea.  But I commit sacrilege by putting sucralose in it instead of sugar.  And no, sweet tea is not just tea with sweetener in it.  It's a wonderful, magical beverage.  (Psst... The secret is baking soda.)

I lied.  I'm going back to bed now and I'll finish this when I wake up again.

It's now 7:30.  Which is over an hour longer than I planned to sleep, but it makes up for the hour I was up, I guess. And then some.

There's a picture making it's way through my FB feed.  It shows through a magnifying glass a tiny daisy growing up through the cracks with blurred people walking around above it.  It says 'Stand up for what you believe in, even if means standing alone.'  FB has chosen to hide this photo 'due to sensitive content' and says it might show 'violent or graphic content'.  Maybe they watched 'Day of the Triphids too many times.  Or Little Shop of Horrors and it scared the crap out of them.  :shrug:  Maybe the idea of standing alone IS too violent for sensitive types these days.  Or maybe they just don't want people to stand up for stuff.

A FB friend of mine just got back from another 30-day ban.  We call him Army Sci-Fi guy around the house.  He's pretty much on point most of the time.  Anyway, to make sure people still get to see him even if FB decides to eliminate him, he offered his blog for folks.  So now I follow that, too.  Whether you do FB or not, I suggest you subscribe to his blog.

This morning when Hubs finally got a chance to feed the deer (sorry, deer, I overslept) there were 17 of them standing around waiting for corn.  They don't play nice when there are only a few.  They play even worse when that many show up.  Don't let anyone fool you, deer are not the soft, fluffy, gentle creatures of Disney fame.  They can be mighty nasty when they want to be.

As a person who once got her arms shredded by a rabbit (long story), they aren't always very nice either.  

Okay, it's almost 8 now, so I should probably get this posted.  Got any this-n-that for me today?

Randomosity

So apparently Facebook went down yesterday for about six hours.  I noticed because as I play poker, I like to scroll through the feed when I'm not in a hand and when I tried, I got a note from my browser that there was no Facebook.  I shrugged and went on with my day.  I totally forgot about it until later when I clicked my link and in my feed people were talking about the outage.  Some people are joking that Facebook banned itself.  Others are joking that this outage was due to some whistleblower and Zuck needed to shut down to delete stuffs.  

Last night I made a dish for dinner using chicken, onions, baby potatoes, and mushrooms sauteed in butter with salt, pepper, and basil.  Dished it up and drizzled BBQ sauce over it.  Pretty yummy stuff there.  Hubs has been off chicken lately, but he said it was good, so there's a win.  Yay.

We're at that point in the year where I have no idea what to wear.  Too hot, too cold, too hot, too cold.  Shorts and then sweats and back to shorts.  Put on a sweater, take it off.  

I'm up to almost 300 million in poker now.  When you're playing with 20 mil at a whack, it's easier to go up quickly.  There's also the chance you'll go down just as quickly if you aren't careful... and lucky.  Like I was at 200 million and went down to 91 million over the course of a day.  And it took a couple weeks to get back to 200 mil.  :shrug:  Yesterday, I jumped from 245 to 298 thanks to a couple good hands and some other minor wins.  Waxed a couple of people when I went all-in with pocket aces.  That netted me 37 mil.  Got another 10 mil with a flush on the river.  I was third on the leader board for the week for that buy-in level last I checked.  Go, me.

My arms are still pretty much toast from the work I did.  This makes reading hard.  Holding up a book or an ereader for any length of time exacerbates the ouchy.  Typing for too long is also a no-no.  This is the excuse I'm using for not writing again yet.

Yes, mousing is also hard, but I try to limit that when I play poker.  And I don't play for too long at a stretch.  Play a little, take a break.  I think this might be the key to getting back to writing/editing.  Do a little, take a break.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  We'll give that a whirl today.  Maybe.

I cleaned my bathroom.  This is notable because I haven't done it in months.  Because reasons.  Now it's so pretty!  Makes me not want to take a shower in there and mess it up.  

I really need to cut my hair.  This, too, will mess up my bathroom with hair bits which I will have to vacuum up.  Which reminds me... I have to shave my legs, too.  Blerg.  Too much information?  LOL

And on that note, I'm going to wander off.  Got anything random to add?

Great at Writing, Bad at Communicating

You'd think, as a writer, I'd be better at communicating with other human beings.  Umm, no.  I'm actually quite bad at it.  

You see, while being a writer is all about successfully communicating ideas, with writing there's the whole editing process to help us do that successfully.  Put the words down on paper (physical or digital) and then go back and rewrite them and rewrite them and rewrite them until the meaning is clear.

In person, you have one shot.  Sometimes you might have time to think it through and edit it in your head before it comes out of your mouth.  Other times?  Not so much.  

As a writer, you also have the benefit of other people editing your stuff before it pops out into the real world.  Beta readers and actual editors can catch your words when they don't make sense or their meaning isn't quite what you wanted to convey.  I don't have that when I'm face to face with another human being.  And my internal editor, the one who's supposed to be catching things before they come out of my mouth, is incompetent.

I'm especially bad at communicating when I'm tired.  And if the person I'm communicating with is also tired, the results can be bad.

The other day, the last day of helping my friend, we got a late start.  About two hours in, I walked up to her and asked her to tell me what needed to be done because we didn't have a lot of time and I didn't want to be there too late because I hate driving in the dark.  And I was already pretty tired at that point, which is never good for driving in the dark.  I later learned that she took that to mean I didn't want to be there at all, with maybe a side dish of 'screw you' and a sprinkling of 'fuck off'.  When really all it meant was 'we have a lot to do and we're burning daylight, so help me help you get this done so we're not here into the wee hours'.  She didn't tell me this.  She made a snide comment to Hubs, who told me about it a couple days later when I was verbally pondering whether she'd been pissed at me or her husband or the general situation.  Turns out, she was pissed at me.  Huh.

Having a resting bitch face doesn't help.  I often look pissed when I'm really just thinking.  And not thinking about anything really.  Once I was at the corner store, pondering whether I was going to buy lottery tickers and which ones I was going to buy, when the cashier made a comment about how bad my day must be going.  It kind of startled me and then I started laughing.  I explained 'resting bitch face' and what I'd really been thinking about.  She laughed, too.  

As a writer, I can work around all that.  There's no misunderstanding about whether my characters are mad or sad or whatever.  (At least I hope there's no misunderstanding.)  As a person, I'm pretty much screwed.  Lucky for me, Hubs can tell from some other subtle clues or something whether I'm actually mad or whether I'm just lost in thought.

I think I'm not the only writer like this.  We're basically a bunch of awkward teens trying to make their ways in a world that they don't understand and that doesn't understand them.  Or something.  We spend the majority of our time in our heads, hanging out with people who don't exist that we can make do whatever we want.  The interaction with those fictional people pretty much ruins us for interacting with actual humans.

How are you at interacting with real people?  I hope, for your sake, you're not as bad at it as I am.

Sunday Update - Week ???

First off, let me start by saying I am totally derailed and scatterbrained.  Six weeks of putting my... well, everything on hold and helping someone else has me sitting and wondering how to start resuming my life again.  I'm not bitching.  I did what I wanted to do.  Just hindsight is 20/20 and I maybe might've done things differently if I'd been able to see then what I know now.

I'm still pondering how to get back into the writing/editing groove again.  I might start with a short story and see how that goes.  I might jump right back into editing Untitled Fantasy, which I have committed to finishing by the end of the year.  I know I need to get back into the marketing groove again soon.  Sales have been abysmal.

If you stopped by yesterday, you know that I'm 6 books behind in my reading goal.  With 50 out of 75 books read, though, I think I can still manage to win by the end of the year.  25 books in three months should be easy-peasy.

Last Sunday, I baked granola bars and made chocolate/butterscotch chip cake cookies in bar form.

On the activity front, I spent 3 days finishing up the Friend Project.  And one day Hubs and I took a wander.  The other days were pudding and I had the dumb.  On Friday, I tried going out and beginning to dig up the cedar bed, but then I heard thunder, so I quit that.  I resumed that on Saturday, but my body only put up with it for about an hour.  Weight: 180.0

Speaking of the cedar bed, my friends gave me several bags of mulch and a big terracotta bowl thingie.  So, I'm going to dig up the bed, lay down the mulch, and stick the bowl in the middle as a kind of 'on the ground' birdbath thing.  They also gave me two bags of potting soil which I'm going to use in my container garden.

Speaking of the container garden...  It's pretty much over for the season. BUT I have to start planning for next year and there are certain things that can be planted in the fall for harvest late this year or for overwintering.  I'm thinking about potatoes and carrots.  Maybe onions.  I still have two tiny tomatoes growing and once they turn red, I'll eat them.  Everything else needs to be pulled out and the greens fed to the deer.  Maybe I'll get to that today.

Since I've been busy elsewhere, my household chores have been neglected.  Oh, Hubs was a big help keeping the dishes clean and making sure the laundry was done - in addition to helping out over there.  I'm talking dusting and vacuuming and cleaning my bathroom.  That's on the list for this week.

So much to do, so little energy to do it.  I'm still sore from the ordeal.  But I'll get there and be back in fighting form soon.  I hope.

How did your week go?

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 10/2/21

Hey there!  I don't have much to talk about yet, but I thought it would be a good idea - and a step toward normalcy - to post a Saturday Reading Wrap-up today.

Since last we met, I did pick up 5 hardcopy books, three of which I already had.  I'm trying to complete my Vince Flynn collection, but I can never remember which ones I don't have and I don't carry the list with me, so more often than not, I end up getting the same titles over and over.  Derp.  Other than those, I picked up a  copy of The House of Seven Gables, which I didn't have yet, and an old Hitchcock mystery anthology.  As for ebooks, I have 9 left unread - which I obtained between July 12th and August 20th.  

Stopping by Goodreads this morning, I see that I am 6 books behind schedule.  50 books read out of my goal of 75.  Reading 25 books in the next 3 months shouldn't be unreachable.

No books read.

Also no DNFs.

Currently reading... that Hitchcock anthology.  I got through one story yesterday and started another.  It's not much, but it's reading again, which is good.

How are things in your readerly life?