I'm creating a separate blog in which to write the novel. Like sausage-making, novel writing may be one of those activities best not observed by those who wish to enjoy the end product. However, if you have a strong stomache, you can watch me flail at Oh No! Not Again!.

Suddenly, writing a novel in a month sounds like a really good idea. It's probably temporary insanity. If you'd like to join the madcap fun, point your browser at National Novel Writing Month. And hurry! the follies start tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I've spent most of October feeling overwhelmed. September's 4 fundraising events really took it out of me. Everywhere I look around the house, I see something I haven't done. There's the magazines piled by my bed, the laundry overflowing the baskets, the mail overflowing my in-box, the dishes on the counter ever since I made full press beef broth 13 days ago. But hey, I promised the writer's group I'd have something to read Thursday. My invention muscles need the workout. Why not write a novel in a month?

Hey! I just had an idea about what to write, too! Too cool!

It's far too bleak a prospect to spend all my waking hours on maintenance, and none on creation. I'm overdue for a deadline, time to treat fiction as an urgency. I may write something cool. I may flame out dramatically. Either one sounds a heck of a lot more fun than not even trying.

Time does go slipping by. I ran four fundraisers in September. I hope I never try to do that again. It's really good to have time to myself again.

I really care about this election. I don't really care about John Kerry. There's a good essay by John Perry Barlow about that here. For those of you consulting this site later, it's the Oct. 3, 2004 entry.

Meanwhile....

I keep considering a complete update of this website. A reorganization would do it a lot of good. As the most active page, this should be the homepage. Better indexing, more design. But as I also have small avalanches of reading material to catch up on, that may be long delayed. Priorities, priorities.

Am I fooling myself as I hope that good attention to my daily routine will lead to better health and an hour or two daily of energy for tasks beyond that routine?

Well, it remains to be seen.

I'm currently reading The Progress Paradox. It is in some ways a sloppy book. I'd rather he had only included the strong, well supported arguments, instead of a kitchen sink collection of strong and weak arguments. Still, he has massive data to support his thesis, and a few weak examples do not disprove the rest of the material.

See the excellent review at David Brin's site. David Brin is my favorite futurist. He sees problems, and believes optimism can best take us to the rich, diverse, peaceful and fascinating future we'd like.

In a nutshell, The Progress Paradox argues that things are getting better -- in fact, much better -- and we don't notice it. I was startled at much of the evidence he mustered for improvement in the world. Successes remain unreported. Who knew war, hunger, poverty, crime and pollution were down? Can this be true?

I'll report more when I finish it. Happy world, all.

  
Monday morning, my friend Catherine called to say
her son's apartment burned down.   Could I go to
Portland and help him salvage what they could?   So I
made a couple calls, and freed myself up to go.  

As it turns out, the fire was two stories above them.  
They had smoke damage and water damage, but
nothing in their apartment had burned.   They needed
to move, and we needed to see what we could save.  

Moving is a lot of work.   Moving suddenly, with most
of your stuff soaking wet, covered with soot, or both,
is huge.   Chris and Stephanie had a two bedroom
apartment they'd been living in for two and a half
years.   She's an artist, and he runs a computer based
business from home as well as working in another
location.   They had a lot of stuff.  

Fortunately, a lot of their friends pitched in.   And
Chris and Steff got out safely with their cats.   Most of
Steff's art seemed to have made it.   They were still
waiting on the computers to dry before testing them.  

Catherine and I arrived a little after noon Monday,
and worked until 8:30, packing and moving.  
Tuesday, we finished out emptying the old
apartment.   The complex rented them another unit,
a little ways up the hill.   We moved everything into it.  
Catherine washed the dishes we had to move dirty.  
Their was no water or electricity at the old place.   The
firemen told them to throw away all the food,
because the smoke would be toxic.   So I took Steff to
Costco and Winco to refill their pantry and fridge.  

Then they went to buy a new bedspring and
mattress.  

Then we started on the laundry.   Everything they
owned made of cloth needed washing.   We found a
quiet laundromat, and the owner kindly agreed to
stay open late so we could wash.   We had wet clothes
and blankets and linens all in big black garbage bags,
filling the back of Catherine's van and Chris's X-terra
SUV.   They threw away two bags full as they sorted,
and found another bag of smoky but dry clothes to
send to Goodwill.   We kept 7 washers running, and 8
dryers, for the next five hours, and left the
laundromat about 11:30 pm.  

Doug's parents, Mo and Lois, let us stay with them.  
With everything moved, the house starting to be in
order, and all the laundry done, the worst was over.  
Catherine and I drove back to Bend yesterday.

Last night, Doug and I saw Fahrenheit 9/11. My eloquent and amazing husband has posted his responses over at his site, Learn Something.

I am so fortunate to share my life with a man of such sensitivity and intelligence. His experiences as the son of a service man living overseas add extra relevance to his response. Go read it.

I have discovered the secret.

OK, one secret. A secret. Just a small one, really.

Ahem.

I have discovered the secret to maximizing the beauty of a Crazy Eyeball firework.

And, well, yes, ok, I really should give part of the credit to Doug.

I am the happy codiscoverer of the secret to -- ah, you know.

Oh, yes, what is the secret. I suppose I really should get on to that. Yes, well, it's simple, really...

Set the Crazy Eyeball on the bottom of a tuna can. Choose one of the ones with a slight rim around the edge. Light the fuse, and get away.

Instead of a sputtering, not-quite-spin, or an off and on spin, you get a beautiful, fast, even spin, a glorious wheel of light around the center. It keeps the firework neatly in one place, too.

Doesn't work on Crazy Groundhogs. They're too energetic to be contained by the mild restraint of an inverted tuna can.

Do use an empty tuna can, too.

And now you know.

Painted the door to the garage. Katie and I put on two coats yesterday, and one today. Funny how a little thing like that can make you feel better.

Of course, the previous occupants left the door a completely hideous mustard yellow, with cottage stencils in red and green, and the word welcome. Hmm.... welcome to our garage? Well, ok.

That door was a continuous small irritant. Now it's a dark brown, a neutral, pleasant color to me. Maybe one day, the next occupants will find it totally unbearable, but hey, it's my house. I expect to be here a while. So for a few years, anyway, it might as well reflect my taste.

Beginning to get things back in order after our vacation. Next Wednesday, the Amaranth fireworks sale begins, and it's already claiming planning time. It's our main fundraiser, letting us pay rent for our meetings, make donations to diabetes research, and otherwise continue our existence. It's my favorite of our fundraisers, too -- I enjoy working at the stand. It's well shaded and airy, and people who buy fireworks are happy and excited. We have a good time.

This year, I'm responsible for organizing it. I keep thinking of more details I need to attend to. It's coming along.

So, in my own way, I go on, cultivating my own garden, doing what good I can locally.

It's possible someone might interpret the previous entry as saying I'd argue with Wil Wheaton's politics if I had the energy. Not so. As further clarification, I offer the following, written back when I had the energy.

A sparrow trilled at sunrise you had gone to spank the sea
Gone to force your praises from the wild and foaming sea
Fooling half the people made you king from sea to sea
But you’ll never pull false praises from the wide unblinking sea
You let more filth into the air -- don’t we breathe the same as you?
Two million lost their jobs, but that’s no concern to you
While our soldiers die in Baghdad for stories told by you
America is strong enough to go alone, says you
For the smoke and the ashes are the price of being free
While your friends get tax breaks to drive SUVs for free
The Patriot Act steals rights away -- a strange way to be free
It’s becoming ever clearer, it’s from you I would be free
For the piper is totalling the price of what you do
And there’s none but you to pay it when the final check comes due.

Catching up on some blogs this morning. I feel like such a poser. A lame inconsistent low energy irresponsible slacking poser.

And there I go, breaking my resolution to be kinder to myself, too.

Listened to one of Wil Wheaton's audio blogs today. His voice has changed much more than his face since ST:TNG. I wouldn't have recognized it. Followed the link to the interview here, where he expresses so much political passion that the web mag put a disclaimer on it. I can't summon enough energy to make an argument out of it. Just drowning in -- what is it, anyway? Fatigue? Politesse? Despair? Not quite apathy. A complete disbelief that I can make any difference. Maybe tomorrow.

Or maybe it's work I'm drowning in. Massive housework, Amaranth drudge, stacks and stacks of papers and reading material that sounded like a good idea in some petrified past, the complete impossibility of exercise and good food and getting enough sleep.

Generally not good. So.

Another day, another day, another day.

Here is a Neil Gaiman essay about cities. It's lovely.

It seems strangely topical. Grandma died on Sunday. I imagine her, like a patient and suddenly mobile city, deciding to take a walk, and leaving us on a bereft, blank plain. She gave shelter to my life. She was there with a kind word, a listening ear, and time -- always time to be with me. I will miss her.

One garbage day, I woke to the sound of the truck in our cul-de-sac, and the illuminating realization that the crab shells sitting in the garage were getting pretty ripe. I threw on a sweat shirt, a pair of pants, and my shoes, dashed to the garage, twisted closed the can liner, hit the garage door opener, and wheeled the can out the door, still a little stunned from the fumes of crab and cat litter.

Too late. The truck had already departed our block.

The air outside was a fresh antidote to the previous olfactory assault. The sun lightened the sky from behind the horizon, leaving the world still crisp and new. I heard the truck in the distance.

I wheeled the roll can down to the end of our block, around the corner and up the street with a quick step. Good fortune! None of my neighbors were up to see I still had my hair in the sloppy topknot I sleep in. And I spotted the truck at the end of the next cul de sac.

I crossed the street, and stood with my garbage in the brightening day. The east began to turn pink. The truck made its way toward me, its mechanical arm seizing each can in turn and emptying it into the back as the top of the cargo area opened like a ladybug spreading her wings.

What engineering marvels these new garbage trucks are! No longer do men have to hop from the truck at each stop, exposing themselves to stink and dirt. We do make progress.

I stepped away from the can, to give the mechanical arm plenty of room to work. As the driver came by, I called, "I was too late this morning. I live on the next street."

He leaned out and said, "You could have just called! You didn't have to chase me down!"

I smiled.

The mechanical arm lifted and emptied my trash can. I rolled it home, and put out the recycling. That's always collected later. Mission accomplished. The sunrise bloomed magnificently, and I admired it.

Any day that starts like that is going to be a good day.

Today, I'm working on a spread sheet to add up my total poker wins, losses, and net win. The IRS apparently wants wins and losses totalled separately. The good news is, I won more than I thought I did. The bad news is, I've spent 8 hours entering session data and I still have three months of 2003 to go. Whew!

Meanwhile, this article gives good clues as to why poker players gain weight. There have already been studies that show that a poker loss reduces endorphins and other pleasurable brain chemistry. So it's no wonder a poker player who has just suffered a loss feels particularly attracted to eating something sweet and greasy. Add the stimulant effect of caffeine, and chocolate is practically a specific remedy for poker loss.

I put on some weight after the car accident mentioned at the beginning of this blog. Haven't been able to put it off again, but haven't gained more either. So it looks like I'm managing my poker related medical calories well enough.

Back to data entry. Take care, all.

Suppose you need to make a sandwich of balloon bread and lunch meat. Say, you're temporarily short of French bread and paté de foie gras. Or, maybe you're on one of those survival shows, and have to get by on what you can buy at 7-11. Here's the way to make the best of a grim situation.

Start by toasting the bread. Then coat each slice with a thin layer of mayonnaise. Add mustard to taste. Layer on the lunch meat, and cheese if you care to. Then assemble the sandwich. Take the assembled sandwich and press it. I like to lay it between two small cutting boards and lean into it, but the palm of your hand will do. Flatten that puppy out. Then slice into quarters and eat.

A sandwich like this improves remarkably over the untoasted, unpressed variety. I had several people at our poker party last Saturday asking if there was a secret ingredient or something. Very simple secrets like this should be spread as far as possible.

I'm hand-writing three pages a day in a journal for that class I'm currently taking. It takes a little wind out of my sails as far as blogging goes. When you've already written three pages of personal non-fiction, there's often not much more to say. In fact, I sometimes find myself writing nonsense syllables to fill a paragraph. It all works.

And now I need another sandwich.

Here's the snow we didn't get for Christmas. Several inches, so Pike looked like he was wading chest high, and still coming down thick. I can see 4 inches on parts of the tree branches. I'm going to skip going out to measure.

We had a great Christmas. Family around, nice lodgings at Eagle Crest, where someone else fights dwelling entropy, good food, good times. Our one-gift-from-each-to-each limit keeps the gifts manageable to transport. I know, I know, that's one of the most luxurious problems anyone could have.

Our stockings of anonymous gifts get more overflown each year. Each one has not just what will fit inside it, but also a pile below and around it, probably more than doubling the volume. This year, for example, I had three trade paperbacks and a package of windowpane textured towels "in my stocking". Loot! Definitely made out like a bandit.

Scored some successes with our gift giving. Those I've heard from appreciated their art books -- especially Dad, whose taste for Hispanic glamour was well met by a book on the tourist art from the days when Havana was a kind of more exotic Hawaii, and a calendar of Mexican art. A good score in matching gift to recipient really satisfies me.

I hope you all enjoyed your holidays. One more to come! Happy New Year!

I expect it's been a while since I wrote here. Things have been busy. Failed at Nanowrimo. Had a good family Thanksgiving here. Failed my poker goal, but still made $300. I don't think I get along well with goals. Might have written all this already, failing my goal of writing interesting blogs.

Went to Doug's parents's house for three days shopping in the big city. That was cool. I'm pretty sure Portland gets all their produce, meats, and fish a day fresher than we do. It's quite noticeable if you have sushi or go to the supermarket. I enjoy shopping. The crowds were at the pleasant, friendly stage, instead of the jostling so tight I can barely breathe stage. A few of the lines ran 6 people long or so -- not bad when they move quickly. All in all, a good shopping experience.

Class has improved. The sniping has dropped to negligable levels, and recent artistic exercises have been fun. Still feel out of synch with Julia Cameron, though.

That's about it. Happy holidays, all.

First day in a while I haven't had to go out and sweep snow. We've had steady dustings. Everyone travelled well.

We did our family Thanksgiving Saturday, so today is a day of rest for me. Doug is at work. I played a couple 7 card stud tourneys, one a freeroll, one with a five dollar buy in. Didn't cash in either one, but I did finish 4th of 650 in the freeroll and 13th of 28 in the other. Can't complain about that.

I'm not getting as much out of the Creative Process class as I hoped to. It's free, a work in progress, I expect, for the facilitator. So perhaps my expectations were too high. Another part is that I don't think I'm terribly compatible with Julia Cameron, the author of our text, The Artist's Way. It's a program that has done well for lots of people. It keeps feeling like a bit of a mismatch for me, though.

So I could probably get as much out of working through the book on my own as I am from this class. Since I might not discipline myself to actually do the work without the class, I'm getting that much benefit from it. But not much more. It seems that for every good insight some other class member comes up with, someone makes a catty remark I could just as well do without. Amazing amount of competitiveness, careless or unaware unkindness. Since I work under the principle that the more creativity there is in the world, the better it is for everyone, I'm a little surprised to find that some of my classmates seem to resent other people's success.

Well, so it goes. It's neither horrible nor great, and I get out of it what I put into it. So, what's new?

Meanwhile, having failed both my poker goal and the Nanowrimo challenge, I'm reminded that goals are not my strong point. A game plan suits me better.

And so it goes. Happy Thanksgiving, all. I'll be back in touch.

I give up. I'm just not going to manage NaNoWriMo this year. I went into it with too many simultaneous calls on my time and too little prep work.

It has been an amazing relief to stop. I suddenly had all this energy. I cooked and cleaned and made cat food. I felt much more enthusiastic about my other goals. I told Doug maybe I should over-schedule myself more often, just for the freedom I feel when I reduce my schedule. He said that was like the cowboy who wore too tight boots just so he could enjoy taking them off. It's a good point -- better not to get into the overscheduled situation in the first place. Still, I am really appreciating having breathing room again. So, I won't try to get myself into this situation again.

Hope I can remember the lesson, and continue to appreciate the space in my schedule. It's all too easy to start taking those moments of ease for granted, and stop appreciating them. I'll do what I can to enjoy the freedom to rest between tasks.

Monday and Tuesday Doug took the car to work. It's seldom enough he has it one day, much less two. Today I found myself very eager to be out and about. Ran some needed errands, played poker, wrote a bit, and then ran some quite unneeded errands. So, it wasn't critical that we have new soap dispensers. I wanted two, though -- one to replace the one Doug took to his new office, to sit by the sink there, and one to free the glass one by the kitchen sink, so I could put an experiment in it and watch the results. I found a couple I liked at the outlet mall.

Actually was hoping one would look good in the new office. It's bleak there -- but I'm going to need a deeper groking of the existing colors before I can perk them up. Neither of the two I picked up worked there.

Hmmm... likely more details about soap dispensers than anyone will care for. So it goes.

So then I emptied the dish soap out of the glass soap dispenser into the new yellow pottery one. Then I rinsed the glass one well. I recently received a number of body care ingredients from Cedarvale Natural Health". One of them was basic Liquid Castille Soap. My somewhat cursory reading on the subject lead me to believe I could add an oil to that to make a moisturizing hand wash. Another item I picked up from them was hemp oil. Since I didn't know the right proportions to mix, I wanted to use the glass soap dispenser so I could observe whether the combination separated. I put about two tablespoons of the oil in the bottom of the eight ounce soap dispenser, then topped it up with the liquid Castille soap. Hemp oil is a surprisingly forest-y green. The Castille soap, originally a pale translucent tanish white, took on a noticeable green cast. However, there is still a small puddle of green remaining on top of the solution. I couldn't shake the container too vigorously, since the pump did not make a completely reliable seal. It appears, though, that I overestimated the amount of hemp oil the Castille soap could take up. I'll enjoy watching over time to see if the green puddle on top grows larger or smaller.

I never got to take Chemistry. My very small high school only offered it on rotating years. The only year when it was offered _and_ I had completed its prerequisites, I was in another country as an exchange student. Didn't seem a priority in college. Oa knows I spread myself thin enough there without it.

I found the whole process pleasing and creative. Choosing colors, shopping for ingredients, mixing potions -- small acts of choice to improve one's home -- that's the fun part of homemaking. The dreary part is doing the same cleaning tasks, day after day after day after day.

The hemp oil smelled good. (Their website promises it's not psychoactive!!!) So I oiled my hair. The ends have really been suffering lately, and conditioning them doesn't seem to be enough. That was fun, too. Felt like I was participating in a beauty rite, a little gone out of fashion since ancient Egypt. Almost like a bit of time travel.

Well, well. Any readers still conscious are to be congratulated. By all means treat yourself to a little pampering, too.

Best wishes,
Anna

3516 words as of 11:10 today. Yesterday, I only managed around a thousand. So at this point, I've just completed yesterday's word count. Still, it's going well, and I'm fairly happy with my progress so far.

Also had breakfast, did Creative Process class homework, and shoveled snow off the walks.

Really need to find someone to do that for me. Outdoor work is just not what I want to spend my time on. Last year, we only had three snow shovelling occasions all winter. I've shovelled twice this year, and winter hasn't even officially started.

Time to update my word count at Nanowrimo. Haven't yet found a piece that looks like a good exerpt.

Take care, all.