Trekking on...

I actually have been "making progress" (God, I hated when my mother would ask me, "Are you making any progress with your house?" A. Not your business, B. Are you 'making progress' with your nasty-ass house, and C. Would you ask any other adult that?) with the house, but other than get the top of the dryer cleared off, and a good start on my little desk in my room, there's not much to show.

My son and brother flew down on the 1st and then drove the boy's car car up to Lincoln. Junior Birdman and I went to the dentist on Thursday--I stayed home from work and we had lunch and hung out), then stayed in the cluster-fuck that is Austin traffic for over an hour trying to pick Hairy Mon up from work, and then another hour getting home. Austin has just gotten out of control...it's nowhere near as bad as other cities, but the influx of people from other places has just ballooned the traffic issue.  Our 'secret' route in the morning is now just as bogged down as I-35.

I give on on trying to give stuff away via Freecycle. I deleted by auxiliary blog that I kept for photos of things I was giving away. People are just eejits when it comes to picking things up. If I want something and they give me the address, by God, I'm there.  Anyway, picked up the perfect little table for keeping the pet food bin on. And yes, I said, I'll be there within the hour and I was there...and boom...home. The table works perfectly; I'll try to post a pic tonight.

Poldark is over for another year...thinking on a review of some kind....

*falls off the world for another month or two*

No...really...

Merrily , merrily, merrily...

We are once again facing torrential rains in the path of TS Bill. Bill. A tropical storm named Bill. *sigh* What's next year? Bobbie Sue, and then Bubba?  I guess it's better than TS 2015-B.  I for one, love the rain and it's not been that bad for us up on our hill of limestone, but folks lower down are having major issues.

I love the rain. Sunny days are nice once in awhile, and I'm sure I'd get sick of the rain if it did it all the time, but here in Texas, the rains are like a balm. Of course it's either feast or famine here: searing heat and drought for months years on end or deluges of biblical proportion.

A bit of history here--personal history, skip ahead if you desire--concerning the recent health BS. Back in January of 2014 I had a vicious virus of some kind, the sickest I've been in a long time and got severely dehydrated. That dehydration led to atrial fibrillation arrhythmia. Long-assed term for your heart beating like bat wings. Went to the ER and spent many hours on an IV while they pumped fluids and drugs into me, finally my heart "converted" and I was okay. Then comes the cancer diagnosis in June, surgery in August and six months of chemo and I was on sotalol (which is somewhat odd because I have never had high blood pressure in the least, so it's solely for control the heart rhythm). During that time, I had many very small episodes of a-fib, nothing too major. Then, in March, I went four hours again and went to the ER to make sure I wasn't having a stroke. Added another med, Xarelto, which it turns out I'm allergic to, so they changed it to Eliquis (both are blood thinners to keep clots from forming, which they will when the atrium is going bonkers). They decide to do a cardiac ablation and I stopped the sotalol. Since I haven't had too many episodes, we all thought, well, that'll most likely fix everything. But the heart has to heal from being burned, so the rhythm, I was told, might flip out occasionally. I had one several-hour episode and the nurse told be to go back on the sotalol; that fixed it. But then 1:30 AM on Friday it started again. They told me to watch it over the weekend. By Monday, nothing had changed, so they scheduled me for a cardio-version.

Basically, a cardio-version is like using those paddles you see the EMTs use on TV, except that they affix these pads with electrodes to your front and back. The pads cover roughly the same sized area as the paddles, but are thin, foam things. Then they put you out, zap your heart into stopping and restarting, and wake you up. It's now more than 24 hours later and things are still normal. I'm thoroughly cheesed off with the whole mess. I didn't have heart issues and most likely would not have had, had it not been for getting so dehydrated in the first place. Perhaps, though, it was a bomb waiting for a fuse. Who knows?

Now the sun is out and I'm sure it's like a sauna outside...good thing I'm in the AC and have no reason to gad about today. Although later I might go to Fry's and look for a case for my new Touch. Yeah, I drank the Apple Kool-Aid. Truth be told though, I'd love to have a Mac. There are logistical reasons I have Dells, which I won't go into. The Touch is really neat--the only un-neat thing being that if you aren't where there's wi-fi, you have no connectivity, but I can live with that. It's so slim and light it makes my phone seem a heavy clunker.  So far I'm liking iTunes and the interface seems a lot better than my little Sandisk Clip Sport. The main thing I love about the Clip Sport, though is it's tiny size and portability. The Touch is somewhat more difficult to carry around when you're dancing, etc. But a sport case with an arm band should remedy that.

Speaking of music, Billy Boyd's (Beecake) new album, World of Things, came out this week. It has a new mix of  "The Last Goodbye" on it. I listened to the sample on iTunes and have to say I like the original much better. The pacing of the new one seems too fast and I'm not wild about the piano addition. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

© John Lamb 2013

At some point, I need to finish my little micro-series on the Hobbit actors and get the article done, who knows, someone might pick it up. Meanwhile, chapter eight is calling my name...Namoji is going to be pivotal, I have a feeling (picture Jed Brophy as a chaotic neutral sorcerer wizard just trying to make a living).

Until later, lads, cheerio.

Moving on.

Sunday AM..more rain. I love the rain, but not the mud in the back yard. The dog brings most of it in the house with her. Ugh.

I finally got fed up with the bullshit on FB. I knew it was only a matter of time. Too many people posting political stuff that just gets me angry...and yeah, I posted some, too.  I know where my loyalties lie and that's all I need know. So, yeah, I haven't been on FB other than to check to see who's replied to something (like..no one..) in about two weeks. I don't miss it and not one single person has even noticed I'm not there. Heh.  This isn't a pity party, but just to show it's par for the course.

So, moving on from there, I might be here more. I need to write, no matter what it is. I have a project and article in the works and massive research to do for that. I also need to make my silly third post about Hobbit Trivia.

Speaking of The Hobbit, in the course of looking up stuff about each of the actors, I've been trying to watch other projects they've appeared in . If you've been paying attention, you'll know that Mr Hotness...er...Aidan Turner is starring in a new BBC production of Poldark.  First thing I saw him in other than The Hobbit and it convinced me he is actually a rather good actor indeed.

Screen Cap of Poldark starring Aidan Turner

I went on from there to watch him in Being Human. Both shows are done with the BBC's penchant for quality. The costumes in Poldark are perfection. Period fabrics, hand sewing (or at least 95% looks hand-sewn), proper fabrics for different classes, etc. The production values are superb and the Cornish scenery is just lovely. Well done, BBC, well done.

I stopped watching Being Human once Aidan was written out of the show (won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it), but the three series (seasons) are very good, heart-wrenching, and dramatic; there is a fair bit of humor, too. Russell Tovey and one of Aidan's exes, Lenora Crichlow, costar.

I've been trying to get hold of series 6 & 7 of The Clnic, well, actually I'd like to watch the whole lot of them. He was written out after series 7. I've seen a YouTube compilation of just the scenes he's in, but the show looks like it would be very good. There's a boxed set sort of available on Amazon. However, even though it's coded "0" --any region-- apparently it won't play in the US. Drat it all. He's a bit younger and plays a character who's a DJ in a club by night and a receptionist in a clinic by day. Wowsa, puts a whole new curve on being a receptionist.

The house is, as always, a huge mess, my studio is a wreck and all I feel like doing is playing Mahjong and writing. Go figure. I'm supposed to be washing dishes and making a grocery list (how utterly mundane), but "supposed to" and I have never really been friends.

The novel moves along a bit, seven chapters done and let's see, it's only taken me...7..8... years. *faceplant*

On writing

I've always considered myself a fairly decent writer. I've always gotten good grades for and compliments on my writing. But lately I question whether I've retained any of that skill. I read certain people's blogs and think, "I can't write like that." "Look at that, it would take me so much effort to produce something even half that good." Of course, I have to step back and remind myself the person in question might very well have slaved over that piece for days and not just pulled it from thin air.

Often I over-think my writing. I'm a perfectionist, and am anal about word-crafting (blog posts not withstanding), so I write, read, edit, read, edit...ad infinitum, and as a result never get much of anywhere anymore. When I was in college, I had deadlines, of course, so only a certain amount of that cycle could take place; my work was probably the better for it. In my fiction, of course, that read-edit cycle (is that the Krebs Cycle of literature, I wonder?) takes place because so much time elapses between work sessions that I have to remember just what the heck I wrote last time. I end up with some interesting continuity errors otherwise.

I'm no particular fan of Stephen King's, horror is not my thing (I've read Eyes of the Dragon and it was fairly good, but has a bit too many references to boogers for my taste); but I've been thinking about this particular post lately. There are a couple of items on the list with which I disagree, more from a personal standpoint than in theory. For instance:

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

I see what he's trying to say there, but if you find yourself repeating the same word over and over, sometimes you just want a slightly different way to say it. I don't use a thesaurus to find a fancy way to say it, but to verify that a given word will have the same connotation I think it does. On the other hand, perhaps what he's trying to say is, "If you're repeating that word over and over, perhaps it's not the word that's the problem."  Hmm. 

I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they 'don't have time to read.' this is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn't have time to buy any rope or pitons.

I am always a bit baffled by this, too. I suppose the best excuse would be that if you haven't read something in your own genre, one could hardly accuse you of plagiarism if you happen to write pretty much what someone else has already written. Of course, convincing the court of this might be tricky. Reading not only spawns ideas (not ideas to steal, but new scenarios, or different ways of tackling a character or metaphysics in your fictional world, for instance), but also gives you a sense of what good—and bad—writing is. 

This ties in with number 12:

Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It's not just a question of how-to, you see; it's also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing. 

In this I believe he's right. Which brings me back to my original question: have I retained my writing skills? Yes, but it's like my drawing, it will only come out with exercise.