Tuesday, September 23
Well, since my parents apparently want their bedframe back, I've just had to spend an hour getting all the junk I'd been storing on that convenient flat space stored somewhere else. Rats. I'm running out of places to move things.
I'm such a packrat. It's terrible. I mean, it's not just that I saved all the notes I took in all my college classes in little binders. Some of those notes *are* useful, or would be if they were in any discernible order, and my habit of scribbling story ideas in the margins at least provides some excuse. It's that I saved all the notes I took in my classes in New Zealand and shipped them back overseas. Not cheaply, either. I have piles and piles of graded and returned English papers, class handouts from classes I flunked, an entire sheaf of tracings from a book of costumes I thought were cool (because I was too broke at the time to do photocopies - I kid you not), birthday cards from people I barely remember, dozens of half-used notebooks, pressed flowers, hand-drawn star charts from made-up universes, broken CD cases, packs of index cards with things scribbled on them....
To make matters worse, the bro, who is now living in the room I used to live in when I was a kid, has been cleaning it out, too, and keeps coming it with items. "Hey, Kat, how come you had two railroad nails stuck up on the doorframe? Can I throw out this birdsnest you found when you were eleven? Is it okay if I take every map that National Geographic put out for the last ten years off the walls? Where did this horseshoe come from?"
The brighter side of this is that cool stuff turns up. I found a really nice thank-you note from my favorite professor and a brass rubbing of a plate showing the cover of the book of Kells that I'd done at this crypt-turned-cafe in London. (Brass rubbing is where you cover an engraved brass plate with a piece of paper and then rub the paper with a chalk, giving you a copy of the plate. Or a really big chalk smear. Apparently there's people who get very, very into this; for myself, although I enjoyed getting chalk all over myself, the table, and everyone present, once was enough.)
And I turned up yet another half-full notebook, this one dating back to my teenaged years. I went through it in some fascination. It's one of those three-subject notebooks, with dividers labeled "Beehives," "Bee Garden," and "Sewing," testament to my unshakable, if unfounded, belief that I will not only stick with my hobbies, but that I will actually use a notebook only for what it was meant to be used for. Needless to say there is nothing whatsoever about bees or sewing in this notebook. There's all kinds of other stuff, though - two pages of notes from what was either high school or sophomore-year college Chemistry (yet another of my unshakable beliefs: "This year I'll do all the class reading, and take notes on it while I read so that it sticks."); class notes from my Driver's Education course (amusing. Because I was homeschooled, I took the summer course of Driver's Ed, which meant I was mostly in with people retaking it for one reason or another. We had one day of learning driving stuff and four of drug education, which may shed some light on "one reason or another"); various lists, mainly having to do with me going off to college for the first time; pages and pages of roleplaying characters, worldbuilding, even sketches of spaceships, along with the address of the guy who first introduced the bro and I to roleplaying when I was fourteen and who I had entirely forgotten about (and how many people can say they learned to play D&D in a National Park? Or heard the words, "All right, very funny, now give me my arm back," in their first session?); and, of course, the writing. Ah, the writing. Cringe.
The notebook contains the first draft of my first-ever completed short story, which I had thought long lost and which I am actually glad to have, in a cringing kind of way. Then there's a few pages of two different novels. These are... educational. The first fragment was written when I was 12 or so, at a guess, and is kind of like a plagurization of Pratchett's Small Gods written in the style of Mercedes Lackey, if you can imagine this without your brain shutting down in self-defense. It is happily and unabashedly bad. The second was written several years later, at 15 or 16. This was after I had Gotten Serious about writing, as only a teenager is capable of Getting Serious. It's intensely, self-consciously literary, humorless, and utterly pointless. There's a couple of pages of conceptualization, too. I wasn't naming my characters at this point, I was giving them titles, like The Artist. And, yes, with the capitalization. It's just as bad as the stuff I was writing when I was twelve, but - and this was really talented of me - I'd managed to hit bottom in a completely different way with this one.
What really worries me is that I may be looking back over the stuff I write now 10 years down the line and thinking the same thing. Gah.
The more immediate worry, though, is that I'd had the idea, when I picked this notebook up, that it was the one containing a couple of really terrible, morbid, angst-ridden poems I'd written after my first boyfriend dumped me, and it's not. This means I don't know where the angst poems are. And this is a bad thing. I could be paying hush money for the rest of my life if my brother gets hold of those.
Oh, well, there's no way to ask after them without rousing suspicion, so I'll just have to keep a sharp eye out. In the meantime, I really need to find somewhere I can store all these binders full of notes and this horseshoe.
(Post-milking addendum: I really wish they'd tell me when they move the cows. It's embarrassing to be driving 'round the farm thinking, "Dammit, I know I left those 86 nine-hundred-pound cows lying around here somewhere."
I'm such a packrat. It's terrible. I mean, it's not just that I saved all the notes I took in all my college classes in little binders. Some of those notes *are* useful, or would be if they were in any discernible order, and my habit of scribbling story ideas in the margins at least provides some excuse. It's that I saved all the notes I took in my classes in New Zealand and shipped them back overseas. Not cheaply, either. I have piles and piles of graded and returned English papers, class handouts from classes I flunked, an entire sheaf of tracings from a book of costumes I thought were cool (because I was too broke at the time to do photocopies - I kid you not), birthday cards from people I barely remember, dozens of half-used notebooks, pressed flowers, hand-drawn star charts from made-up universes, broken CD cases, packs of index cards with things scribbled on them....
To make matters worse, the bro, who is now living in the room I used to live in when I was a kid, has been cleaning it out, too, and keeps coming it with items. "Hey, Kat, how come you had two railroad nails stuck up on the doorframe? Can I throw out this birdsnest you found when you were eleven? Is it okay if I take every map that National Geographic put out for the last ten years off the walls? Where did this horseshoe come from?"
The brighter side of this is that cool stuff turns up. I found a really nice thank-you note from my favorite professor and a brass rubbing of a plate showing the cover of the book of Kells that I'd done at this crypt-turned-cafe in London. (Brass rubbing is where you cover an engraved brass plate with a piece of paper and then rub the paper with a chalk, giving you a copy of the plate. Or a really big chalk smear. Apparently there's people who get very, very into this; for myself, although I enjoyed getting chalk all over myself, the table, and everyone present, once was enough.)
And I turned up yet another half-full notebook, this one dating back to my teenaged years. I went through it in some fascination. It's one of those three-subject notebooks, with dividers labeled "Beehives," "Bee Garden," and "Sewing," testament to my unshakable, if unfounded, belief that I will not only stick with my hobbies, but that I will actually use a notebook only for what it was meant to be used for. Needless to say there is nothing whatsoever about bees or sewing in this notebook. There's all kinds of other stuff, though - two pages of notes from what was either high school or sophomore-year college Chemistry (yet another of my unshakable beliefs: "This year I'll do all the class reading, and take notes on it while I read so that it sticks."); class notes from my Driver's Education course (amusing. Because I was homeschooled, I took the summer course of Driver's Ed, which meant I was mostly in with people retaking it for one reason or another. We had one day of learning driving stuff and four of drug education, which may shed some light on "one reason or another"); various lists, mainly having to do with me going off to college for the first time; pages and pages of roleplaying characters, worldbuilding, even sketches of spaceships, along with the address of the guy who first introduced the bro and I to roleplaying when I was fourteen and who I had entirely forgotten about (and how many people can say they learned to play D&D in a National Park? Or heard the words, "All right, very funny, now give me my arm back," in their first session?); and, of course, the writing. Ah, the writing. Cringe.
The notebook contains the first draft of my first-ever completed short story, which I had thought long lost and which I am actually glad to have, in a cringing kind of way. Then there's a few pages of two different novels. These are... educational. The first fragment was written when I was 12 or so, at a guess, and is kind of like a plagurization of Pratchett's Small Gods written in the style of Mercedes Lackey, if you can imagine this without your brain shutting down in self-defense. It is happily and unabashedly bad. The second was written several years later, at 15 or 16. This was after I had Gotten Serious about writing, as only a teenager is capable of Getting Serious. It's intensely, self-consciously literary, humorless, and utterly pointless. There's a couple of pages of conceptualization, too. I wasn't naming my characters at this point, I was giving them titles, like The Artist. And, yes, with the capitalization. It's just as bad as the stuff I was writing when I was twelve, but - and this was really talented of me - I'd managed to hit bottom in a completely different way with this one.
What really worries me is that I may be looking back over the stuff I write now 10 years down the line and thinking the same thing. Gah.
The more immediate worry, though, is that I'd had the idea, when I picked this notebook up, that it was the one containing a couple of really terrible, morbid, angst-ridden poems I'd written after my first boyfriend dumped me, and it's not. This means I don't know where the angst poems are. And this is a bad thing. I could be paying hush money for the rest of my life if my brother gets hold of those.
Oh, well, there's no way to ask after them without rousing suspicion, so I'll just have to keep a sharp eye out. In the meantime, I really need to find somewhere I can store all these binders full of notes and this horseshoe.
(Post-milking addendum: I really wish they'd tell me when they move the cows. It's embarrassing to be driving 'round the farm thinking, "Dammit, I know I left those 86 nine-hundred-pound cows lying around here somewhere."
Friday, September 19
The four-wheeler, our primary means of on-farm transportation, blew out its front wheel bearing. Dad can't fix it, and has been in a foul mood all day. We're trying to keep out of his way.
My little juvenile deliquents didn't help. By this I refer to this year's calves, now going on six months, and absolute trouble from hoof to head. Think 25 two-year olds who can run really fast and who outweigh you. They had to be moved today, but when we got out there about 5 had escaped and gone a-roving on their own, gotten lost in the woods, and were mooing forlornly off in the distance. ("We're sooooorrrry! Come saaaavvve us!") The bro had to go fish them out with the dog, and then they all tried to take a shortcut and got lost *again*, in the bramble patch, and Dad had to go cut them out with the machete. (Except the bro. The bro got himself out.) After *that*, they were pretty good, except for running poor Shep right into the ground. He's getting too old to be chasing deliquents around. Of course, he made up for it by sitting in my lap and panting out the window the whole way back, which, after the first few efforts to shift him (Shep weighs about 80 pounds), I resigned myself to, except for quiet protests of "Ow. My kidney," and the like. We all know what rolls downhill, and I long ago realized I was below the dog.
My little juvenile deliquents didn't help. By this I refer to this year's calves, now going on six months, and absolute trouble from hoof to head. Think 25 two-year olds who can run really fast and who outweigh you. They had to be moved today, but when we got out there about 5 had escaped and gone a-roving on their own, gotten lost in the woods, and were mooing forlornly off in the distance. ("We're sooooorrrry! Come saaaavvve us!") The bro had to go fish them out with the dog, and then they all tried to take a shortcut and got lost *again*, in the bramble patch, and Dad had to go cut them out with the machete. (Except the bro. The bro got himself out.) After *that*, they were pretty good, except for running poor Shep right into the ground. He's getting too old to be chasing deliquents around. Of course, he made up for it by sitting in my lap and panting out the window the whole way back, which, after the first few efforts to shift him (Shep weighs about 80 pounds), I resigned myself to, except for quiet protests of "Ow. My kidney," and the like. We all know what rolls downhill, and I long ago realized I was below the dog.
Thursday, September 18
So when the vet came by for herd check the other day, we had him take a look at our youngest dog, Kid, who'd been shaking his head a lot.
"He's got a bite at the base of his ear and it's gotten infected," he said, after examining it.
This did not surprise us greatly - the biting, that is. Kid has a very special relationship with our older dog, Shep. Shep is the alpha wolf of the dog pack, and he knows it, but like many an alpha wolf he's not very secure in his authority, and therefore makes up a lot of arbitrary rules about what Kid can and can't do. When Kid breaks the rules, he gets his ass kicked.
We'd noticed this, and done what we could to stop it (not much), but were puzzled as to why Kid kept doing the things that pissed Shep off and got him beat up. Shep outweighs Kid by quite a lot, so Kid doesn't really stand a chance in a fight, and we *know* Kid's smart enough to figure out the rules. What we finally realized was that it was a form of guerilla warfare involving us. Whenever Shep attacked Kid, he got yelled at and sent away, and Kid got patted and fussed over. And so Kid was carefully, deliberately, and very subtly provoking Shep into attacking him, and then gloating quietly as he was petted while the disgraced Shep sat and watched and simmered. Shep was winning every fight, but he was loosing the war.
From this we have reached the logical conclusion: Border Collies are scary.
But I'm getting away from the point of the story, which is that, although we had stopped rewarding Kid's provoking behavior once we figured out what was going on, the dogs still fought quite a lot, and Shep had already taken a chunk out of Kid's ear once, so the bite marks were not a big shock.
"Here's some sulpha," said the vet. "Give him half a tab morning and evening."
And so now I'm stuck with the chore of getting a half-tablet of sulpha down the throat of the sneakiest dog I've ever owned every day, twice a day. It's a war of cunning, and I think I'm loosing. The first time was easy - he didn't yet know what was going on. By the second time he was wise to it and started panicking the minute he saw the tablet. Luckily he's so much of an attention junkie that I don't have to work to catch him, but he can still make life difficult for me. He won't bite (although he did consider it, the first time, before some last, dying shred of common sense buried deep in his crazy doggie mind saved him), but he *will* clench his teeth shut so tightly that it requires a crowbar to get them apart. Any time that I am not actively holding him upright he tries to roll over on his back, which is a very Kid thing to do in that it is outwardly respectful (doggie submission position, throat bared) but actually damned cheek, since I'm sure he knows it's not possible to give him a pill like that. He mastered pill-spitting the first day, so I have to hold his mouth clamped shut until I feel him swallow. This morning he learned how to fake a swallow.
I'm debating feeding him the hunk of pill in a piece of cheese or meat. On the one hand, it'd be easy, and not risk my fingers. On the other hand, this is a dog that can eat an entire bowl of dog food and leave on the bottom a neat little heap of the mineral-suppliment powder that I had sprinkled on the top. Getting the pill out of the middle of a hunk of hamburger probably wouldn't even present a challenge.
Sometimes I think that it would be nice, just once, to work with a normal animal. But I'd only get bored.
"He's got a bite at the base of his ear and it's gotten infected," he said, after examining it.
This did not surprise us greatly - the biting, that is. Kid has a very special relationship with our older dog, Shep. Shep is the alpha wolf of the dog pack, and he knows it, but like many an alpha wolf he's not very secure in his authority, and therefore makes up a lot of arbitrary rules about what Kid can and can't do. When Kid breaks the rules, he gets his ass kicked.
We'd noticed this, and done what we could to stop it (not much), but were puzzled as to why Kid kept doing the things that pissed Shep off and got him beat up. Shep outweighs Kid by quite a lot, so Kid doesn't really stand a chance in a fight, and we *know* Kid's smart enough to figure out the rules. What we finally realized was that it was a form of guerilla warfare involving us. Whenever Shep attacked Kid, he got yelled at and sent away, and Kid got patted and fussed over. And so Kid was carefully, deliberately, and very subtly provoking Shep into attacking him, and then gloating quietly as he was petted while the disgraced Shep sat and watched and simmered. Shep was winning every fight, but he was loosing the war.
From this we have reached the logical conclusion: Border Collies are scary.
But I'm getting away from the point of the story, which is that, although we had stopped rewarding Kid's provoking behavior once we figured out what was going on, the dogs still fought quite a lot, and Shep had already taken a chunk out of Kid's ear once, so the bite marks were not a big shock.
"Here's some sulpha," said the vet. "Give him half a tab morning and evening."
And so now I'm stuck with the chore of getting a half-tablet of sulpha down the throat of the sneakiest dog I've ever owned every day, twice a day. It's a war of cunning, and I think I'm loosing. The first time was easy - he didn't yet know what was going on. By the second time he was wise to it and started panicking the minute he saw the tablet. Luckily he's so much of an attention junkie that I don't have to work to catch him, but he can still make life difficult for me. He won't bite (although he did consider it, the first time, before some last, dying shred of common sense buried deep in his crazy doggie mind saved him), but he *will* clench his teeth shut so tightly that it requires a crowbar to get them apart. Any time that I am not actively holding him upright he tries to roll over on his back, which is a very Kid thing to do in that it is outwardly respectful (doggie submission position, throat bared) but actually damned cheek, since I'm sure he knows it's not possible to give him a pill like that. He mastered pill-spitting the first day, so I have to hold his mouth clamped shut until I feel him swallow. This morning he learned how to fake a swallow.
I'm debating feeding him the hunk of pill in a piece of cheese or meat. On the one hand, it'd be easy, and not risk my fingers. On the other hand, this is a dog that can eat an entire bowl of dog food and leave on the bottom a neat little heap of the mineral-suppliment powder that I had sprinkled on the top. Getting the pill out of the middle of a hunk of hamburger probably wouldn't even present a challenge.
Sometimes I think that it would be nice, just once, to work with a normal animal. But I'd only get bored.
Saturday, September 13
Well, I finally did it - allowed myself a day off of schoolwork in order to (gasp!) clean my bloody room. I have a floor now. Wow. And a desk too. And various small insects have been unkindly rousted and told to find their own bloody rooms. I expect I'm the object of much bitter complaint in Insect World right now ("It was such a quality area, dozens of hiding places and half-eaten food galore, and then what happens? I tell you, the government ought to do something about people like that.")
But apparently there is a nest of bumblebees hybernating in my wall. I find this mildly disturbing, especially since they keep falling out and crawling around on the floor (now that I have a floor) looking dazed and confused and generally bumbly. I wish they wouldn't.
And, satifyingly, once I'd cleaned up and gotten a suitably large pile of paper trash, I got to take it out back and burn it. Thank God for living in the country. Housework would be even less appealing if there wasn't that promise, that Holy Grail, of getting to set fire to something when I'd finished.
But apparently there is a nest of bumblebees hybernating in my wall. I find this mildly disturbing, especially since they keep falling out and crawling around on the floor (now that I have a floor) looking dazed and confused and generally bumbly. I wish they wouldn't.
And, satifyingly, once I'd cleaned up and gotten a suitably large pile of paper trash, I got to take it out back and burn it. Thank God for living in the country. Housework would be even less appealing if there wasn't that promise, that Holy Grail, of getting to set fire to something when I'd finished.
Thursday, September 11
Today was Kat is the Cheese Writing Bitch day. Which is to say that every Thursday I work for my Mom. Usually this involves upkeep on the webpage, since I know the most HTML of anyone in the family (frightening thought. Also explains a lot about the webpage, when you get right down to it.) This is one hell of a chore, since the webpage has, in its four years of existance, been managed by half a dozen people before the management filtered down to me, including one professional who added a bunch of nifty features to the site (none of which I understand) but knew nothing about cheese, farming, or running a business. "Mess" is about the best way to describe it.
But the other Thursday chore which comes up from time to time is writing advertising copy. I hate this with a passion. I am no good at writing advertising. Unfortunately, the other members of my family and the cheesehouse employees are even worse, and since I'm the only semi-professional writer/English major around, guess what? Today was an attempt at revising our brochure, which needs to go to the printers at the end of the month. Mom and I brainstormed a bunch of ghastly advertising-type phrases, each one worse than the last, until we couldn't stand it any more and stopped. So we're nowhere near finished with this, but at least there was progress. I'll pull out what we did tomorrow or so and re-read it to see if I can't make it less ghastly.
This post brought to you courtesy my mother's laptop, since the bro has hijacked my computer to watch Babylon 5 DVDs on.
But the other Thursday chore which comes up from time to time is writing advertising copy. I hate this with a passion. I am no good at writing advertising. Unfortunately, the other members of my family and the cheesehouse employees are even worse, and since I'm the only semi-professional writer/English major around, guess what? Today was an attempt at revising our brochure, which needs to go to the printers at the end of the month. Mom and I brainstormed a bunch of ghastly advertising-type phrases, each one worse than the last, until we couldn't stand it any more and stopped. So we're nowhere near finished with this, but at least there was progress. I'll pull out what we did tomorrow or so and re-read it to see if I can't make it less ghastly.
This post brought to you courtesy my mother's laptop, since the bro has hijacked my computer to watch Babylon 5 DVDs on.
Wednesday, September 10
Comments are back! Yay! Now I just need readers. *grin*
Found a nice bit of planning software courtesy Holly Lisle's blog. It's impressively flexible, flexible enough to accomidate even *my* plotting habits, and it's pretty, and I can think of at least other three uses for it besides novel plotting. The bad news is, it's seventy bucks. Sigh. Well, I'll see if I'm still as enamored of it when the trial period's up.
In other news, I've done two Latin lessons in three days, which is great but not particularly blogable. Also played X-Box again last night. Badly. I'm beginning to suspect, however, that X-Box is one of those things that I enjoy *because* I'm bad at it, and that if I ever became good at it, I wouldn't have half as much fun. There are other things that fall into this category. Golf, for example. Now I am *bad* at golf. Really, really bad. The last time I played golf the folks from the RV park next door were setting up their lawn chairs just so they could watch me, my bro, and my bro's two friends fail utterly at playing golf. That's how bad we were. Ours was the only golf match to feature extra events like the Twenty Foot Straight Up Into The Tree Golf Club Toss ("It doesn't count against my score! It never touched the ball!"), the Backwards Onto The Green We Just Played And Which Other People Are Trying To Play Tee-Off ("'Scuse me! Sorry! My bad!"), the Hundred Meter Ball Search ("It landed somewhere in this creek. I know 'cause I heard the splash,"), the Over The Ten-Foot Fence And Onto The Putt-Putt Course Tee-Off ("Oops,"), TWICE, and that all-time favorite, the Keeping of the Score ("I lost the little pencil again," "Hey, wait - I thought it was *you* keeping score," "Does anyone remember how many times I've hit this damned thing?"). I had the worst score, at something like 46 over par, on what can only be called a dinky little golf course. And I loved it. Every minute of it. Even the bit with the tiger lilies. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to piss myself, and how many people can say that about a golf game?
Golf when you're good at it, on the other hand, looks a dead bore. I'd be terrified of someday becoming good at golf, except that really - when you look at my past plays - that doesn't seem to be a risk. Likewise the X-Box.
As a side note, the people who program these things are a) male, b) exceedingly sexually frustrated, and c) have a touching faith in the power of female support garments. I have now been banned from shouting, "And let's hear it for... THE AMAZING LEVITATING BREASTS!" while playing fight games.
Found a nice bit of planning software courtesy Holly Lisle's blog. It's impressively flexible, flexible enough to accomidate even *my* plotting habits, and it's pretty, and I can think of at least other three uses for it besides novel plotting. The bad news is, it's seventy bucks. Sigh. Well, I'll see if I'm still as enamored of it when the trial period's up.
In other news, I've done two Latin lessons in three days, which is great but not particularly blogable. Also played X-Box again last night. Badly. I'm beginning to suspect, however, that X-Box is one of those things that I enjoy *because* I'm bad at it, and that if I ever became good at it, I wouldn't have half as much fun. There are other things that fall into this category. Golf, for example. Now I am *bad* at golf. Really, really bad. The last time I played golf the folks from the RV park next door were setting up their lawn chairs just so they could watch me, my bro, and my bro's two friends fail utterly at playing golf. That's how bad we were. Ours was the only golf match to feature extra events like the Twenty Foot Straight Up Into The Tree Golf Club Toss ("It doesn't count against my score! It never touched the ball!"), the Backwards Onto The Green We Just Played And Which Other People Are Trying To Play Tee-Off ("'Scuse me! Sorry! My bad!"), the Hundred Meter Ball Search ("It landed somewhere in this creek. I know 'cause I heard the splash,"), the Over The Ten-Foot Fence And Onto The Putt-Putt Course Tee-Off ("Oops,"), TWICE, and that all-time favorite, the Keeping of the Score ("I lost the little pencil again," "Hey, wait - I thought it was *you* keeping score," "Does anyone remember how many times I've hit this damned thing?"). I had the worst score, at something like 46 over par, on what can only be called a dinky little golf course. And I loved it. Every minute of it. Even the bit with the tiger lilies. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to piss myself, and how many people can say that about a golf game?
Golf when you're good at it, on the other hand, looks a dead bore. I'd be terrified of someday becoming good at golf, except that really - when you look at my past plays - that doesn't seem to be a risk. Likewise the X-Box.
As a side note, the people who program these things are a) male, b) exceedingly sexually frustrated, and c) have a touching faith in the power of female support garments. I have now been banned from shouting, "And let's hear it for... THE AMAZING LEVITATING BREASTS!" while playing fight games.
Sunday, September 07
"ALIEN IN SLAMMER AFTER FISTFIGHT WITH BILL... OVER HILLARY!"
Ah, tabloids. My wait in the grocery store checkout line would be so much duller without you.
Spent most of the day being introduced to the wonders of X-Box by my ever-lovin' (and bored) brother. We played three total - a first-person shooter, a fight game, and something that was supposed to simulate riding a snowboard, which I gather is a pretty good sweep of the field of X-Box/PS2/whatever game thingies. I enjoyed it, but don't expect me to become a regular player of these games... I don't have the reflexes. I also don't know my right from my left very well, and I get lost even in real life, which meant that in the first person shooter I spent a lot of time banging my nose against corners and being fragged by people, while proving that my own aim was absolutely absymal, unless I was shooting at my teammates by mistake, in which case I was very accurate. This led to a pretty predictable pattern for gameplay:
Bro: I'm coming down the stairs! It's me! Don't shoot at me! Don't... ARG! You killed me!
Me: Sorry. There's one of those red guys around here somewhere.
Bro: You shot me with a heat-seeking missile!
Me: Sorry. Cool gun, eh?
Game Screen: Conner has been defeated by Murphy. Again. Get a grip, woman! Oh, and Murphy has been defeated by Phoenix Commando.
Me: See? I told you one of those red guys was around here somewhere. Why didn't he die when I shot at him?
Bro: Because you were pushing the left trigger instead of the right. Also, you'd used up all of your ammo on me.
The fighting game I did a lot better at, or at least a lot better at than I deserved. This is because after a while I start panicking in these games and just punch as many buttons as I can, all at once, over and over, which turns out to be a pretty good strategy in fight games because:
a) My opponent cannot hit me, since my character is apparently trying to do the hokey-pokey while breakdancing and suffering from St. Vitus's Dance. Any blows anyone can land on her are completely accidental. Of course, I can't hit him either, but that's okay because
b) The programmers of these liked to put in a bunch of really cool moves which can only be accessed by knowing all the key combinations for all the characters by heart or, alternatively, by randomly pushing a bunch of buttons. This means that every so often, and to my complete surprise, my character would make a Mystical Hand Motion and announce, "The Path of the Lotus is Strewn With Rice Paper," or something, and then her opponent would be struck with blue lightening, frozen in solid ice, picked up by his feet and banged headfirst against the floor a couple of times, or, on rare occasions, all three, while my brother shouted, "What? How did you DO that? YOU'RE JUST PUSHING BUTTONS! THAT IS SO UNFAIR! Cool though." The opponent would then roll around moaning a bit while my character made finishing-up passes and smiled serenely, the impressiveness of her chi only slightly marred by the fact that I am not very quick on the uptake and so the hokey-pokey St. Vitus's breakdance had continued throughout.
Snowboarding was more or less a draw. My random-button-pushing did uncover several nifty snowboarding tricks for which I got points, but sadly it was not enough to make up for my complete inability to keep the character upright, going where I wanted, or, on several occasions, doing the course while facing the proper direction. I do not think I shall ever take up snowboarding. My ability to keep a real snowboard under control is probably not much ahead of my game abilities, and and the noises the characters were making while I careened them off of various solid objests were very realistic.
Ah, tabloids. My wait in the grocery store checkout line would be so much duller without you.
Spent most of the day being introduced to the wonders of X-Box by my ever-lovin' (and bored) brother. We played three total - a first-person shooter, a fight game, and something that was supposed to simulate riding a snowboard, which I gather is a pretty good sweep of the field of X-Box/PS2/whatever game thingies. I enjoyed it, but don't expect me to become a regular player of these games... I don't have the reflexes. I also don't know my right from my left very well, and I get lost even in real life, which meant that in the first person shooter I spent a lot of time banging my nose against corners and being fragged by people, while proving that my own aim was absolutely absymal, unless I was shooting at my teammates by mistake, in which case I was very accurate. This led to a pretty predictable pattern for gameplay:
Bro: I'm coming down the stairs! It's me! Don't shoot at me! Don't... ARG! You killed me!
Me: Sorry. There's one of those red guys around here somewhere.
Bro: You shot me with a heat-seeking missile!
Me: Sorry. Cool gun, eh?
Game Screen: Conner has been defeated by Murphy. Again. Get a grip, woman! Oh, and Murphy has been defeated by Phoenix Commando.
Me: See? I told you one of those red guys was around here somewhere. Why didn't he die when I shot at him?
Bro: Because you were pushing the left trigger instead of the right. Also, you'd used up all of your ammo on me.
The fighting game I did a lot better at, or at least a lot better at than I deserved. This is because after a while I start panicking in these games and just punch as many buttons as I can, all at once, over and over, which turns out to be a pretty good strategy in fight games because:
a) My opponent cannot hit me, since my character is apparently trying to do the hokey-pokey while breakdancing and suffering from St. Vitus's Dance. Any blows anyone can land on her are completely accidental. Of course, I can't hit him either, but that's okay because
b) The programmers of these liked to put in a bunch of really cool moves which can only be accessed by knowing all the key combinations for all the characters by heart or, alternatively, by randomly pushing a bunch of buttons. This means that every so often, and to my complete surprise, my character would make a Mystical Hand Motion and announce, "The Path of the Lotus is Strewn With Rice Paper," or something, and then her opponent would be struck with blue lightening, frozen in solid ice, picked up by his feet and banged headfirst against the floor a couple of times, or, on rare occasions, all three, while my brother shouted, "What? How did you DO that? YOU'RE JUST PUSHING BUTTONS! THAT IS SO UNFAIR! Cool though." The opponent would then roll around moaning a bit while my character made finishing-up passes and smiled serenely, the impressiveness of her chi only slightly marred by the fact that I am not very quick on the uptake and so the hokey-pokey St. Vitus's breakdance had continued throughout.
Snowboarding was more or less a draw. My random-button-pushing did uncover several nifty snowboarding tricks for which I got points, but sadly it was not enough to make up for my complete inability to keep the character upright, going where I wanted, or, on several occasions, doing the course while facing the proper direction. I do not think I shall ever take up snowboarding. My ability to keep a real snowboard under control is probably not much ahead of my game abilities, and and the noises the characters were making while I careened them off of various solid objests were very realistic.
Saturday, September 06
Ok, I can't resist.
Now, if I am reading this right:
I am plain vanilla and utterly, absurdly straight, which I knew already, and;
As far as thinking about it and talking about it are concerned I am lagging far behind the pack, but;
As far as actually having sex in my preferred way goes, I am way more experienced than most.
Why this should give me a case of the giggles I don't know. No complaints here, though, in spite of being identified as over three-quarters pure.
This came up in conversation recently, so of course I had to find the link and have another look. It's still funny enough to make me weep. Yes, I *was* bored today, why do you ask?
Chilly... I guess fall is really coming, and it seems like summer'd just barely gotten here. Not truly cold yet, just enough to make me think how nice it'd be to have a human space heater sharing the bed. Or maybe that's the cold. Or maybe I should spend less time thinking.
| Your Ultimate Purity Score Is... | ||
| Category | Your Score | Average |
| Self-Lovin' | 78.3% Never taken out of the packaging | 64.9% |
| Shamelessness | 90.5% Has yet to see self in mirror | 79.3% |
| Sex Drive | 89.5% The Pope is envious | 77.6% |
| Straightness | 21.4% Knows the other body type like a map | 45% |
| Gayness | 100% | 83.1% |
| Fucking Sick | 96.5% Refreshingly normal | 89.8% |
| You are 78.77% pure Average Score: 72.5% | ||
Now, if I am reading this right:
I am plain vanilla and utterly, absurdly straight, which I knew already, and;
As far as thinking about it and talking about it are concerned I am lagging far behind the pack, but;
As far as actually having sex in my preferred way goes, I am way more experienced than most.
Why this should give me a case of the giggles I don't know. No complaints here, though, in spite of being identified as over three-quarters pure.
This came up in conversation recently, so of course I had to find the link and have another look. It's still funny enough to make me weep. Yes, I *was* bored today, why do you ask?
Chilly... I guess fall is really coming, and it seems like summer'd just barely gotten here. Not truly cold yet, just enough to make me think how nice it'd be to have a human space heater sharing the bed. Or maybe that's the cold. Or maybe I should spend less time thinking.
Friday, September 05
You know - as has been pointed out to me, in various situations - when my body wants something, it's really not all that subtle about communicating it to me. My body, in fact, appears to have the diplomatic tact of a two-by-four. So does the rest of me, mind you, but it's a little startling all the same.
Today, for example, my body wanted sleep. So I turned my alarm off - more or less in my sleep - showed up half an hour late for work, and essentially sleepwalked through milking... to the extent that I was frightening my family and nobody would let me run any machinery. I felt like my head would fall off if I moved it too quickly. Everything was very far away and dreamlike and took great effort for me to focus on. I made it through milking, went back to the house, and went back to bed, although with the general expectation that I would take a bit of a nap, nothing more; I don't sleep very well during the day. Then I woke up at 3 pm.
However, that seems to have more or less done in the cold, so no complaints.
I have officially done nothing more than exist this week. Next week: activity returns. Maybe.
Today, for example, my body wanted sleep. So I turned my alarm off - more or less in my sleep - showed up half an hour late for work, and essentially sleepwalked through milking... to the extent that I was frightening my family and nobody would let me run any machinery. I felt like my head would fall off if I moved it too quickly. Everything was very far away and dreamlike and took great effort for me to focus on. I made it through milking, went back to the house, and went back to bed, although with the general expectation that I would take a bit of a nap, nothing more; I don't sleep very well during the day. Then I woke up at 3 pm.
However, that seems to have more or less done in the cold, so no complaints.
I have officially done nothing more than exist this week. Next week: activity returns. Maybe.
Thursday, September 04
Rain. It feels weird to complain about it raining - my area has been in drought for the past five years - but, jeez, did we have to have all the surplus delivered at once? We had more rain in the month of April than we had last *year*, for God's sake. The roads are flooded. Everything's flooded. Everything's damp. It's like I'm living in Wales again.
On the other hand, as I say, I remember the drought. And it was terrible. There were people shooting animals they couldn't afford to buy water for. Our hundred-year old springs were drying up. Everything was drying up... it felt like the end of the world. I still have one of my rare poems, somewhere, describing that time. It's awful, of course, as my poetry always is, and horrendiously long, but it makes me choke when I read it, because I remember so well. I'd be tempted to post it, except, well, it's awful.
But something to remember, when I feel the urge to curse the rain.
On the other hand, as I say, I remember the drought. And it was terrible. There were people shooting animals they couldn't afford to buy water for. Our hundred-year old springs were drying up. Everything was drying up... it felt like the end of the world. I still have one of my rare poems, somewhere, describing that time. It's awful, of course, as my poetry always is, and horrendiously long, but it makes me choke when I read it, because I remember so well. I'd be tempted to post it, except, well, it's awful.
But something to remember, when I feel the urge to curse the rain.
Wednesday, September 03
Ill. Bleh. Sleep.
Tuesday, September 02
I have slept, I have unpacked (in my own peculiar, chaos-theory way), I have cancelled my ATM card, I have been shit on by cows. Ah, the routine of home begins again. I'm also starting to come down with a cold, which does not really surprise me.
Other than that I've managed to write a little more on the story. It's rough draft material, but I'm kind of proud of it anyway... maybe just because it's the first thing I've written in weeks. Snippet:
"Attention!"
Attendance was, to say the least, sparse. News of the murder had not yet, by a miracle, gotten out, which by necessity limited the funeral attendance. Herself; the Commander; Thomas McMillian; Jason (after considerable browbeating); Norman, of course, and the new StarMind, a man named Siebel Nix, who had just arrived the day before. No others. Joey doubted there would have been more even if it weren't for the secrecy. Galee Inne had, after all, been a telepath.
They'd done a decent job on him, she noted dispassionately as the coffinship drifted by, displaying its cargo for one last time through special viewing windows on the side. For a man who'd spent the last week on an autopsy table he didn't look half bad. He was recognizable at least. She'd been to plenty of funerals where they hadn't been. Joey had always hated that, running up a dead man's records to find no next of kin, or worse, funding insufficient; burial in space required. No one to even claim the body, or at least no one with the money to have a body shipped all the way home, and only a cold military funeral with a handful of bored officers attending. Galee's had been worse. Family declines to accept charges. Meaning, they'd had the money, but didn't care enough to pay. Or didn't want him back, even dead.
Telepath. The tattoos were still visible on Galee's face, marking him for what he was. Even dead.
Keeping the formal parade posture was a strain. She was exhausted - not physically, which she could have handled, but inside, tired to the bone, the kind of exhaustion where you woke up worn out. Nothing. Every lead she'd had, and they'd been few, had petered out over the past week. Every path she'd tried to follow had dead-ended, in spite of her efforts, in spite of Patricia's increasingly shrill and increasingly frequent demands for progress. The time she had to find the murderer was ticking away, and she didn't even have a single suspect.
The coffin floated smoothly, and with stately slowness, through the airlock - not catching on the doors either, which Joey silently appreciated. The drone mind which ran the coffinship was not bright, and there were few things more unpleasant than chasing a dead body wrapped in a half-ton of metal through a freefall bay.
"Officers reform," Patricia said quietly, and they pivoted obediently to face the outside wall as the airlock shut. "Computer, display exterior."
The wall shifted to show a view of empty space. There was a long moment of silence, and then Joey felt the heavy thump of the mass driver releasing through the floor, and the coffinship shot into space.
Even with the mass driver it took a good ten minutes for the little bullet-shaped coffin to reach the sun, a ten minutes in which no one spoke. Stupid really, Joey thought, and incredibly wasteful, of both materials and energy and even organics. Any rational civilization would have dumped the body straight into the recyclers instead of going to all this expense. It was obscurely reassuring to realize that even the determinedly hard-headed Federation had its limits and its superstitions.
The ship's course wobbled slightly as it grew close enough to the sun to really feel the pull, and then it speeded up, plunging unerringly into the heart of the brown dwarf. Goodbye, Galee. I'm sorry. Joey's eyes were throbbing dully; she had to resist the urge to rub them. The ship's destruction barely caused a flare on the red sun. The Bloody Sun. Have you had enough yet? Eaten enough of us, you cat-loving thing?
"At your ease."
---
BTW, the reason there are no links for comments is that YACCS has a server down. Welcome to the Information Age, where nothing works and no one really knows why. And think good thoughts for the poor sod who has to fix that server....
Other than that I've managed to write a little more on the story. It's rough draft material, but I'm kind of proud of it anyway... maybe just because it's the first thing I've written in weeks. Snippet:
"Attention!"
Attendance was, to say the least, sparse. News of the murder had not yet, by a miracle, gotten out, which by necessity limited the funeral attendance. Herself; the Commander; Thomas McMillian; Jason (after considerable browbeating); Norman, of course, and the new StarMind, a man named Siebel Nix, who had just arrived the day before. No others. Joey doubted there would have been more even if it weren't for the secrecy. Galee Inne had, after all, been a telepath.
They'd done a decent job on him, she noted dispassionately as the coffinship drifted by, displaying its cargo for one last time through special viewing windows on the side. For a man who'd spent the last week on an autopsy table he didn't look half bad. He was recognizable at least. She'd been to plenty of funerals where they hadn't been. Joey had always hated that, running up a dead man's records to find no next of kin, or worse, funding insufficient; burial in space required. No one to even claim the body, or at least no one with the money to have a body shipped all the way home, and only a cold military funeral with a handful of bored officers attending. Galee's had been worse. Family declines to accept charges. Meaning, they'd had the money, but didn't care enough to pay. Or didn't want him back, even dead.
Telepath. The tattoos were still visible on Galee's face, marking him for what he was. Even dead.
Keeping the formal parade posture was a strain. She was exhausted - not physically, which she could have handled, but inside, tired to the bone, the kind of exhaustion where you woke up worn out. Nothing. Every lead she'd had, and they'd been few, had petered out over the past week. Every path she'd tried to follow had dead-ended, in spite of her efforts, in spite of Patricia's increasingly shrill and increasingly frequent demands for progress. The time she had to find the murderer was ticking away, and she didn't even have a single suspect.
The coffin floated smoothly, and with stately slowness, through the airlock - not catching on the doors either, which Joey silently appreciated. The drone mind which ran the coffinship was not bright, and there were few things more unpleasant than chasing a dead body wrapped in a half-ton of metal through a freefall bay.
"Officers reform," Patricia said quietly, and they pivoted obediently to face the outside wall as the airlock shut. "Computer, display exterior."
The wall shifted to show a view of empty space. There was a long moment of silence, and then Joey felt the heavy thump of the mass driver releasing through the floor, and the coffinship shot into space.
Even with the mass driver it took a good ten minutes for the little bullet-shaped coffin to reach the sun, a ten minutes in which no one spoke. Stupid really, Joey thought, and incredibly wasteful, of both materials and energy and even organics. Any rational civilization would have dumped the body straight into the recyclers instead of going to all this expense. It was obscurely reassuring to realize that even the determinedly hard-headed Federation had its limits and its superstitions.
The ship's course wobbled slightly as it grew close enough to the sun to really feel the pull, and then it speeded up, plunging unerringly into the heart of the brown dwarf. Goodbye, Galee. I'm sorry. Joey's eyes were throbbing dully; she had to resist the urge to rub them. The ship's destruction barely caused a flare on the red sun. The Bloody Sun. Have you had enough yet? Eaten enough of us, you cat-loving thing?
"At your ease."
---
BTW, the reason there are no links for comments is that YACCS has a server down. Welcome to the Information Age, where nothing works and no one really knows why. And think good thoughts for the poor sod who has to fix that server....
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