I've decided to take a couple computer classes in the fall. It seems like a good idea. I've an interesting relationship with technology. Like all other things, I'm neither fish nor fowl when it comes to technical literacy. By the standards of most of my coworkers (particularly with my last job, marginally less so with my current job) and those I grew up with, I'm a techno-wizard. To most of my age peers, I'm a howling technophobe, mostly because I dislike using text messages. Silly I suppose, bu
The best thing about this blog is that I can post random crap like this and not care that it is a waste of time, space, and energy. Ah well. I'm told my generation is going to hell, since we're so utterly self-absorbed and the only thing we collectively care about is hooking up and chatting. I could respond to that, disagreeing a bit, but mostly pointing out that the system that has educated my generation has emphasized individual self-esteem and validation over actually information, so perhaps
Mostly I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank the admins for all the work they put into this website. I've been a member for a couple years now, mostly lurking, but it has been a joy to watch the site expand and improve over time.
As to the current unpleasantness, I won't say that I am taking the Admins side, because they have not asked anyone to do so. Besides, the fact that I have met four out of the five admins, and liked them, prejudices me to look at their words with a little le
Just kidding about the title. Actually, Dan is quite possibly the first person to say something positive about my voice. More often, I get made fun of for it, not least because I have a greater degree of control over it. I can pitch it high falsetto, properly, so even that can be easily heard, or I can pitch it low so that it carries through doors and walls. Usually I mumble, which makes those two tricks all the more startling the first time someone hears them. This last week I've been sick, and
A conversation I had this morning with my sister stationed in Iraq.
Her: Hey little brother.
Me: Oh, hey sis! How's it going?
Her: Good. I got your package.
(I laugh) Me: Including the birthday card?
Her: Yes. I laughed. Good timing too, since it arrived today.
Me: Oh, yeah. Happy birthday. You 40 yet?
Her: 36.
Me: Close enough.
Her: Well, Mom tells me you were moving to Texas.
Me: Aigh! For crying out loud, I'm not moving to Texas.
Her: I'm just repeating what I've been told. She
My parent's live in fear of me running away to Texas. Not so much the Teas part as the running away, though they are a bit leery of Texans too. During a certain era in US history (which at one point I could have named but now the time period escapes me), the phrase "Gone to Texas," oft shortened to "GTT," meant you had pulled stakes and gotten the f**K out of town with no intention to return. Given my past, my parents are probably quite correct to fear that I will one day do exactly that. I'm no
I have these images in my head. I doubt I'll use them, but they are there on an endless feedback loop regardless. I don't think I'll be finishing my entry for the summer anthology in time, but if I do, this might be interesting. Anyways.
Lou lit her last cigarette. Put in her out-sized wallet years ago when she went inactive and joined the CHoIR, it was a promise to herself that there would always be a later, better time to finally and formally rid herself of the habit that claimed her fa
Getting ready for Texas in a few weeks. I'd hoped to see many of you there, but I'll take what i can get. After all, I'll be meeting Joe, Myr, Dan K, and Trebs, plus a few others, and those cannot be considered minor points.
As far as reading has gone, I've been working my way through a backlog of ebooks I came into possession of a while back. They are all from www.baen.com, a niche publisher that mainly comes out with "Hard" sci-fi, "military" sci-fi, and "space opera;" where these various
It's been a month. Over. I completely skipped March. I have been unreasonably busy. I haven't even had time to talk to Mike in about that long, which had been heading towards an every day thing. In summary I:
*Moved.
*Saw my folks.
*Worked two jobs to pay for above activities.
*Slept when and where I could
I also had to find time to keep up some kind of exercise, lest I *gasp* gain weight. I barely had time to read or write either. It's been unreal. It is little wonder the couple grey ha
I'm being remarkably stupid today. It amazes me how often this happens, actually. I'm comfortably in the high nineties when it comes to measurable intelligence, and I was nearly always in the top third of any class when I was in college (only four exceptions, and in two of them I was near the top when it came to actually understanding the material, despite my laziness when it came to doing the work, which drove my instructors to distraction). So I shouldn't be stupid, or at least not illogical.
I have my anthology story completed. Which is little wonder, since it is more or less an edited version of a story I wrote two years ago. But I think I'd like the advice of someone else on this one, so I thought I'd put the call out there.
In other news, I am all better. Therefore, I have probably already caught the virus that cause my next round of illness. Also, I am up at 6 am. Make that, I am still up at 6. My work ahs affected my life cycle more completely and quicker than I would have
I'm sick, so screw proper diction.
If it wasn't for the ever changing symptoms, I would be worried that I was simply staying sick, never actually beating it off completely. I also realized where I am picking up these little bits of joy. My second job involves interacting with people that come to Southern California from all over the country. I'm a lightening rod for illness, so it is little wonder that I am picking up a complete selection of this countries flu strains, one after another.
A week or so ago, I was chatting with Mike about how I was a morning person, and quite happy to be one. Aside for a couple years (ages 15-19), I've been getting up earlier than my peers and enjoying that sort of existence. It was really great when I was going to college, and summer mornings it could seem like no one for about a mile was up at 7 am except for me.
And now my work has switched me to a 7pm to 7am schedule, meaning I have now joined the dark side.
Except I haven't, really. I'
A few entries ago, I identified California's seasons as being: Tourist, Fire, Holiday Shopping, and Mudslide. Lo and behold, a mere week after the last throes of shopping had faded, the sky opens up and drops more rain on us in two days than we've had in the last six months.
I was supposed to go visit my parents this "weekend" (which, this week, was today and yesterday), but tmy parents live in a rural area. An area that is pristine in its natural beauty, and has roads that flood out at the
I picked up today Lois McMaster Bujold's Paladin of Souls. Bujold is a favorite author of mine, so by page two I was grinning, enthralled with her words. I've been reading rapturous, for the last hour, but it just now hit me why I like this story so much.
I wanted to write it.
Well, not exactly this story, the details aren't all there, but a story I developed three years ago opens along the same premise as this. One woman, nominally mistress of her domain, feeling more like she's been cl
Life accelerates past the point where I can handle it.
I've been talking online a lot to a fellow Gayauthorite (hey Mike), so I assume some of the creative bleed off that this blog functions as has been satisfied in that manner. Really, I write here because I need to write, constantly, and this gives me an excuse to do so without such considerations as characterizations and plot continuity.
I work a second job now, minimum wage, but at least it gets me out of the apartment and into the w
I finished the first draft of my anthology piece, tentatively title "Lovers Really Fell In Love to Stay." I'd been stuck on the same spot for weeks, trying six or seven times but unable to move the plot forward in a satisfactory manner. I finally decided that I couldn't go to Borders until I finished the piece. That was about two horus ago, so clearly this method of self-motivation has a bit of kick to it.
The next step is to finish and edit all of the unreleased Khayyam stories, and one by
So. Mo. It has taken me this long to remember to bring the notebook up from my car.
Note: This is the very first thing I've written for him. His character is not fixed yet, so some of the jokes may be different from how I sold him a couple weeks ago.
************
"List every priority you have, in order, of what you want in a job." It seemed simple enough, just too bad I couldn't list, "hot coworkers" as the primary consideration. I put down "large company" and hoped for the odds.
"M
I knew intellectually this time would come, eventually. I always thought that I'd be mature about it, accepting my fate with some dignity and perhaps a bit a levity. Actually, that's a flat lie. I was depressed most of my teenage years, and never really thought I'd live to see drinking age, let alone twenty-three. It didn't really hit me that I was going to have a full-fledged adulthood until I was standing there in the sun with my BA in hand and wondered, "Well f**K. Now what?" So worrying abou
I had a rather...bitchy rant posted here up until a few minutes ago, but I've decided to nuke it. It wasn't particularly healing or necessary.
Instead, I'm going to introduce y'all to one of the characters floating about in my head. His name is Missouri Weeks. Mo for short. He's a bit of a loser, in that he sort of drifts through life in a happy daze most of the time. He is, in other words, what my mother calls a space cadet, only sometimes touching down on earth before his mind is off on an
I am to visit my parents over the next couple of days, which are my "weekend" days this week. My mother in particular has been asking when I'm coming up for several weeks now, so I decided to just say, "the hell with it" and make the drive, which is about seven hours, one way. I know I don't visit them often enough, but it's a lot harder to break away from my obligations than it was a couple years ago. My job was through my college's housing department, so when I had no school, I had no work (an
I nearly always get carded. For everything. I got carded trying to buy crazy glue once. I can sometimes buy a Rated M video game once in a while, or go to a Rated R movie, but not often, and only if I take pains to make myself look as preppy as possible. It doesn't help that my ID only sort of looks like me. I've changed quite a bit in the last eight years when that photo was taken, but, sadly, I honestly look older in that picture than I do in real life. I live in dread of the day when some bar
Short entry today.
Three years ago, I was trying to write my second novella. The first had been demanding as hell, and I never did complete the follow-up. I have since written a second novella, however.
Two years ago, I was trying to figure out why a boy from work had let a third boy, who we'd all assumed was gay and had found many reasons to talk to me in the few weeks since I'd been hired, believe we were a couple. This is a question that has yet to be answered to my satisfacti
Contrary to popular belief, California does have seasons. They are Tourist, Fire, Holiday, and Flood. I find myself strangely homesick, because I can smell ash in the air. Not that I can escape out of the city if I wanted to, all the places I would run to has a fire blocking access. I wonder how the people at my old job are coping. At my current job, hair is being pulled and feet are being stomped, and I got to gently tell customers that it sucks to be them that the fires cut off major shipping
