Words!

7:44pm: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886
Peter Watts in full cry. Awfully funny. Awfully interesting. Awfully blunt in all the ways I love blunt.

I actually met him at Montreal WorldCon; I was walking and chatting with tL&Hs when H veered off and started a conversation with him of the 'hi, how are you, good to see you again' variety. I tagged along and H turned around and said, "Of course you've met Peter Watts."

Me: "No, but I read his books. They're good."

Big grin from Watts, the obligatory variation on 'aw, shucks' and a bit more passing-in-the-halls conversation, and gone again. Now I'm wishing I had the chance to sit down with a real conversation with him. Some folks are anti-mental rust just by *being*.

8:44pm: I was walking down Seventh Avenue looking at the trees the other day. We had a nasty cold snap a couple weeks back, and all the leaves are dead--but still on the trees. They're grey-green, instead of the usual yellow and orange, which is odd, because I keep thinking, "Water them and they'll turn green again."

I was also wondering about fall. With the leaves stuck to the trees, will 'Fall' actually arrive...?

Then a bus went by and its wake blasted freeze-dried tree dandruff in my face. *ptuf*

Ahem. Yes. Yes, it will.

4:08pm: Collective nouns -- the supernatural edition
I really like 'a lunacy of werewolves', but I do think it should be 'a rattle of skeletons'. YMMV.

http://wondermark.com/566/

H/t to Jay Lake.

8:15pm:
Earth was struck by a meteor October 8, and this is the first I've heard of it. Considering the number of cheesy news sites I skim over in the course of a day, I'm a bit surprised by the utter lack of tabloid interest. The thing blew up over Indonesia with the force of about 50 atomic bombs, scaring the hell out of the locals (they thought it was an earthquake) and setting off nuclear test detectors all over the place. The event was noted 10,000 miles away--which, given that the circumference of the planet is around 24,000 miles, really means 'all over the place'.

What was happening October 8 that kept the newsies away? Let's see... the wedding episode of "The Office"... A bus crash... The President's Cup matches...

Oy.

I feel even more badly informed than usual.

Check out www.spaceweather.com for more details.

8:31pm: Saw a bald eagle today. He was flying along the river from St. George's Island west toward Prince's Island; he went by directly over my head, maybe twenty feet away.

I've heard that the range of bald eagles goes this far north, and that they can be seen in Shouldice Park (where 'the only stand of virgin Douglas fir forest east of the Rockies' exists.) I've been down to Shouldice a few times, but I've never seen a bald eagle there--and yes, I've looked. But today, I was watching the female goldeneye in the middle of the river, and the flock of seagulls whirling up from the point of St. George's. And then this dark bird comes flying along the river, and after running through the usual silhouettes--duck, goose, crow--I realize, "Raptor." And then, "Is that a white head?" And, "Yes. It is."

The last time I saw a bald eagle in the wild was last spring, on the coast of the Quinault penninsula. The time before that, Glacier National Park. But in the middle of Calgary...? Only at the zoo.

I hear the zoo lets their raptors out to fly, sometimes. I don't know that I believe that, but... maybe. Just maybe....

9:44pm: (Put Cool Title Here)
I hate coming up with titles.

A title, IMNSHO, should sum up the story on some level--theme, plot, motif, etc. BUT... if I could do that, I wouldn't have written the bloody story in the first place...!

Grr.

*goes off to beat head against wall for a while*

7:36pm: Dove
I have a headache. Ergo, I am going to distract myself with silly memeage. Be forewarned!

Stolen from that 'Pryde person, of course.

1. Put Your iTunes on Shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write down the name of the song no matter how silly it sounds!
4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.
5. Tag at least 10 friends <-- This one ain't happenin'. Do or do not, there is no tag.

( Spam behind cut )

7:19pm: This one's for 'Pryde.
She knows why (and probably already knows the link, but hey. This way *I'm* sure she knows the link.)


www.glutenfreepasta.ca

5:10pm: Marking Time
There are a half dozen things which I should be doing, but I've already done (pieces) of them all today, so... I am now trying to figure out how to create rose applique blocks for quilting.

I can't point a finger and say, "That's why I'm doing this, right now." It is just the thing that has seized control of my attention, and I'm amused enough at the idea that I'm not willing to wrest control back from it. Such is my life.

( Beware: design and sewing instructions past cut )

7:30pm: Yesterday I walked to the grocery after work, and then back home, and both ways I saw the ants. The flying ones were out, swooping dizzily or marching along the sidewalk, or across the road. Wings... and those without wings, and those too small for wings. One wingless one carried another wingless one, the second still wiggling.

Today, I saw no wings. A few scuttlers. One marched uphill with me, before I left it behind. It bore something small and white and round.

I have to wonder if there is a smell in the air, a pheromone, that tells all of the ants, "Today, you fly." They're gone now, like the gophers. The crows are gathering in increasing flocks... any morning now, I expect to see them pass overhead by dozens and hundreds, and then be gone in their own turn.

The white rabbit is gone. He used to lie under the privet on the edge of Edmonton Trail, or feed on the green grass of the traffic island two lanes away. One day, I found his flattened body on that island, spreadeagled. Within a few more days, he became a tatter of hide, feet still attached, though all else was gone. A scatter of white fur marks his dying, like someone had a rabbit-fur pillow fight there, and one of the weapons burst.

I wonder how much of him the ants got?

11:23pm: Asked a question at ConVersion of one of the guests and GR, who was hovering behind my shoulder, said, "That's easy!" Whereupon I said, "Probably, but my math isn't good enough to both develop the data and check it for errors."

He said, "Ah," went home, and emailed me a spreadsheet... then another, and another. In the third, I *did* spot an error (Epsilon Eridani is only 0.5 ly from Sol? Uh...) which GR corrected. So... many thanks to him! I now have a spreadsheet full of data of the distances between the 100 nearest stars to Earth, and I have been analyzing it ever since (and thus amusing the hell out of myself, as well as gathering notes for the story that started this whole thing off with the need for the answer to the aforementioned question.)

Result: yes, I do need two separate means of FTL star travel. I could get by with improvements to one means, but I think it might be more useful to the plot for those improvements to arrive within the story and to the side which uses that method, as a reaction to the side that uses the other method.

More research. Oy.

7:47pm:
'Cause Troutkitty wants more posts... have a link!

This is one of the funniest webcomics I've seen--even considering my rather stunted sense of humor. And it updates regularly!

http://www.daniellecorsetto.com/gws.html

Read from the beginning... it does explain why 'Girls With Slingshots'. Which is its own bundle o' rah-rah!

4:11pm: Meme thingie
I like the idea of this one, although I'm not much of a joiner, so I'm going to shamelessly mangle it. The original is on the livejournal community 'glompalicious', for those who want the real and true and original.

Snitched from bentarc


1: Post a comment with your username
2: Post the link to your thread on your journal

(I'm skipping the above two steps, and counting this post as my thread.)

3: Your friends/random people/I can comment on your thread with what they think you should write next.
4: Anything goes. This is mainly a fanfic meme, but other things like poetry and original fiction are okay to suggest too.
5: PIMP THIS THING.


I don't do fanfic, so if you suggest it? I will probably blink at you in a blank fashion. If you know what I'm currently working on, I'll probably post a paragraph or two of new text. And if you suggest something new, I'll... um... try to get it done. (Yes, Andrew, I know I still owe you something from lo, many moons ago...)

8:10pm: They're digging up the pathway along the south side of the river on both sides of the Langevin bridge. Recently, they've cut all the trees down for a couple of hundred meters of riverbank, and man, does that make the place look bald. I've seen some artists' renditions of what the stretch is supposed to look like when the developers finish playing in the dirt, and extra-wide sidewalks, benches, lamp posts, plantings, and pavers on paths and walls seems to be a lot of it. I'm hoping a decent set of replacement trees is part of it, too.

At the moment, I think they're laying pipe of various sorts. They've dug a trench along the line of the path and different colors of PVC piping are strewn about. I imagine some are water (drinking, sewer, storm) and some are other things: laying pipe so that you can pass electric and other cabling through it seems smart, yes.  But... in the process of digging, they've exposed a number of concrete ... things, and now I'm wondering what those things are.

They appear to parallel the river. Retaining walls, maybe? The footings of them, anyway? Put there to keep the river where it is? Or are they the remnants of old buildings, long since knocked down to make way for the green strip along the river?

Probably the latter. There are two different types currently visible: a smooth wall, not unlike the concrete walls of basements I have seen, and a more complex wall, with foot-wide 'posts' every ten feet or so. The first looks recent to me; the latter does not. And I can well imagine someone building right there at the edge of the river, way back when. I don't think the Bow has ever been considered a navigable waterway, but it is a world-class trout-fishing stream, and between that and the convenience (and sheer purty-ness) of having water just feet away from your door...

And yes, there are fish there. I was walking across the Langevin bridge a week or so ago when I heard Ploop! I looked, and caught a glimpse of silver splashing back into the water just ahead of the rocks beneath the south pier. I raised both eyebrows, put my hand on the rail, and Ploop! Another one, ten feet or so away. Then, Ploop! A third one, jumping into the air, curving to splash down again.

It was raining a bit, just dots on the pavement, really. I wonder if the fish were striking at raindrops, mistaking them for insects landing?

4:21pm: Kneejerking
Yesterday I finished reading Charles Stross' GLASSHOUSE. Decent book; a variation of 'The Prisoner' done in Stross' inimitable SF style. I did have one heck of a 'BWAH?!' moment in the last third of the book, though...

( Spoilers! )

9:02pm: I did a long road trip on Wednesday and thoroughly messed up the body, due mostly (I think) to me forgetting to drink any water for the entire first half. On a day that was sunny and cloudless and varying between 13 and 22 degrees C, this was dumb.

It was a remarkably disastrous day, too, for critters and people around me. I hit a bird on my way out of Calgary. Didn't mean to, but the thing veered out of the path of the car beside me and WHAM! It bounced off the top of the windshield and landed on the road behind me, where a truck avoiding running over it. But since I was going about 110 km at the time...

Hit a gopher between Shelby and Great Falls. Sigh. Dude? Running across the road with your tail sticking straight up does not count as flagging down traffic.

Then, in Great Falls, I was watching this gold car. He seemed to be in a hurry, so I got out of his lane. I'm pulling up beside the truck in front of him when CRUNCH. I'll admit, it was a stop-and-go part of of a busy day, but I think his little more go meant a lot more stop in the end.

Hit rain and hail going through Claresholm on the way back. I slowed down for that; the idea of driving through fresh ice and water on new pavement struck me as a time to be careful. I will admit that the combination worked very well for cleaning bugs off the windshield. And I feel no guilt whatsoever for those tiny disasters, and especially no guilt about the one that ended up as a bloody smear.

Some brighter notes: lots of hawks--Swainson's and redtails, a couple of kestrels. Saw a weasel (!) cross the road north of Fort MacLeod--it held its tail straight up in the air, like the above-mentioned gopher, but it was a lot longer. I was thinking 'furry snake' watching it cross in front of me.

And I saw a pronghorn antelope south of Sunburst. I don't recall ever seeing a pronghorn out wild before.

An interesting day. Exhausting, though, which is why this comment is two days late.

10:18pm: The Vorpal Bunny of Bridgeland
Seriously.

No shit, there I was, ambling along Fourth, enjoying Saturday afternoon and wondering if I'd get to the bakery in time to get a ciabatta (I was! It was cheese. It was GOOD.) Anyway, on the way there, I'm looking at people's yards, looking down the streets... and I see a rabbit cross one of those streets. I make that mental check mark: tick! Saw a bunny today.

I might have walked on, but there was a moving truck on Fourth, taking up a driveway and all of the sidewalk and part of the street, too, and I figured I didn't want to walk around it, but maybe I could get another look at that rabbit...

Halfway down the block, an older gentleman and a beagle on a leash were both looking toward the place where I figured the rabbit was. The man was grinning; the beagle was pointing. I swear, I've seen pictures, but I've never seen a real live dog point before. His target, of course, was the rabbit, which was sitting on the grass being... well, a rabbit.

The man and I struck up a conversation, marveling over the oddness of the rabbit sitting there, in the presence of two humans and a beagle. He told me a story about a rabbit in the neighborhood that chased dogs---including the bull up the street. (Bull? Bull terrier? Bull mastiff? Pit bull? I think bull terrier...) I hadn't heard of it before, and he wasn't sure this rabbit was that rabbit, but it was a really interesting story, wasn't it?

Then the rabbit started chasing the beagle...!

The beagle was thoroughly discombobulated. The rabbit would head for his tail, and he'd duck behind his human, and the rabbit would stop, and the man would laugh, and the rabbit would head for that tail again, and the beagle would run away, and we'd both laugh, and the rabbit would stop...

Brown rabbit. Looked like the mommy rabbit from about four blocks west of that street; how big are rabbit 'territories'? Do they have territories?

When I walked away a couple of minutes later, the gentleman and his poor, beleaguered dog were going the other way, and the rabbit was still chasing that tail...!

Beware, Bridgeland! Especially if you're a beagle.

10:03am: Cliches and Mary Sues and sheer laziness, oh my.
A while back, tor.com had an article on Mary Sues which I found less than enthralling, although it was informative enough. I guess. It's just that it didn't say anything new, or at least, didn't say it newly enough, and I went blah, and thought about commenting, then about posting, and then about whether another dozen rounds of computer Solitaire was a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing that feeds my inner obsessive compulsive.

Well, of course, the Solitaire won. Meanwhile, all that stuff about Mary Sues sank to the bottom of the mind and composted.

I was thinking about cliches again the other day and how they're shortcuts, and how some writers use them as cheats. Cheats are okay, once in a while, if they're clever cheats, but face it, cliches are cliches not because they're clever, but because they're colorless. Clever and colorless aren't words that go together too often.

And then today the compost burped and I said to myself, "Hey. Mary Sues are a form of cliche. They're cheats, too--character cheats, whereas a lot of cliches are descriptive cheats. A cliche is a descriptive phrase (the burly detective, the silken-maned stallion, the (adjective/noun buzzword cluster)...) which is supposed to write the story for the author, so all he/she has to do is enjoy the praise. Ditto the Mary Sue: she's supposed to enthrall the reader for the author, so that all he/she has to do is enjoy the praise.

I don't really have any objections to Mary Sues or cliches--I use them in my own stuff on a regular basis, and I see them all the time in the work of various people, including published writers, many of whom I enjoy tremendously. The thing is, the ones I enjoy aren't cheating--the phrase or character is there for a good reason: it is pulling its weight. It might be a short-cut, but it doesn't have a spear-carrier following it around with a banner saying, "Pay No Attention To The Plot Hole Behind The Curtain."

I think I'll go back to compos(t)ing now.

2:59am: Time wastage
I'm trying to get words onto a screen, so of course I'm reading LJ instead. I think it's traditional.

Snagged from infintepryde, a meme (one I've never done before, because during its last go-round, I didn't have music on the computer): Randomise your playlist. Write the artist and title of the first 15 songs that come up (no editing, no cheating).

1. Rattle and Burn - Jesse Cook
2. Fallen Angel - Robbie Robertson
3. No Education - Apocalyptica
4. Rocks of Merasheen - Great Big Sea
5. Wanted Dead or Alive - Bon Jovi
6. Saor/Free/News from Nowhere - Afro Celt Sound System
7. Don't Stop - Fleetwood Mac
8. Feeling Good - Colin James
9. Blues Piano - Blue Rodeo
10. Out of a Deeper Hunger - Gowan
11. Strathspey/Reel Set - Slainte Mhath
12. Chafe's Celidh - Great Big Sea
13. Fare Thee Well Northumberland - Mark Knopfler
14. Casual Conversations - Supertramp
15. Brio - Jesse Cook

Hmm... that almost looks like the outline to a story: A problem, the complications that arise thereof, a major obstacle, things go to hell, Get Out Now!, scraping up info, more running, got a clue?, realize it's still going to hell, decision to Do Something, busy preparations, first tries, lose a friend, the opposition gloats, pull a win out with luck and cleverness.

Double hmm...

7:09am: More urban wilderness stuff
There was a presentation today by the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation (www.burrowingowl.com) at work, due in large part to work giving them a generous donation. There were presentations on environmental preservation practices used by the company and commended by the Foundation, and lots of stories about raptors, strygiforms, and people, and how they interact.

I got to pet a burrowing owl. :) And hold a Great Horned owl (24 years old!) :D

The star of the show, though, was Spirit, the Golden Eagle (yeah, well. They *do* depend on donations for their running budget...) Spirit was found on the side of a road. The woman who found him thought he'd been hit by a car, so she picked him up, put him in the back seat of her van, and drove him to the rescue centre. The head of the centre had a photo of the bird in the back seat, taken because he couldn't believe how calm Spirit was--nice, polite passenger, him. Eagles aren't exactly known for their biddable natures...

Anyway, it turned out he'd been shot and partially blinded. He will never be released as a result, because he can't see well enough to hunt, let alone defend himself. However, he's still pretty calm and polite, which is why he's now got a career as a teaching bird. He's got big talons (each as long as my little finger) but he doesn't bite and he will let people pet him. And it's an interesting experience, being that close to a bird that's as big as your torso.

The American kestrel, also in the room, evidently thought so, too. He panicked every time Spirit spread his wings for balance. :)

One thing I noticed: Spirit was always turning his head, back and forth, constantly. When I was standing closer, I noticed that he'd start to turn his head and then suddenly the movement would go flat and smooth, like a machine. I thought, "I do that, too, when I'm watching the floater in my eye," and when I asked, the guy holding him agreed that the bird likely had floaters in his eyes.

Connect!

*********

Saw my first bumblebee of the season today, wandering around a patch of dirt in front of the gas station at the corner of Edmonton Trail South and Memorial Drive. "Too early," I told it, because the people running the station don't plant that patch with wildflowers until after the long weekend... just like the rest of us.

Saw my first wasp on the weekend, though, and I Windexed it good (not as fast as Raid, but just as effective!) It was on the wrong side of the window, and there was no way I was going to encourage its relatives to come visit, too. I've had wasps on the deck two of the past five years. Dammit, no more.

Saw baby bunnies the other day, three brown ones and a white one. Mama is black-brown. Encouraging, but I'll only consider spring to be here when I see the gopher pups come out. Consider this my official 'I've got my fingers crossed' notice.

7:34am: Awright...!
This has got to be one of my favorite conversion toys evar...!

http://www.unitconversion.org/unit_converter/length-ex.html

6:19am: Compendium o' stuff
I cleaned up my deck today. It's needed it for (mumblety) long time, and the perfect storm of opportunity arrived: long weekend, beautiful weather, me in the mood. So now it is clean, and I'm thinking, "Does Lee Valley Tools carry a hose that will attach to the kitchen sink and stretch to the far end of the deck?"

It probably does.

****

I was watching an episode of Murdoch Mysteries the other night. A young woman had bled out for mysterious reasons, and Murdoch was discussing possible causes with the female coroner. The subject of hemorrhagic fevers came up, and she said, "They're extremely rare," and my nitpicker alarm went off.

Actually, there was one hemorrhagic fever common (or at least common enough) to Canada at the beginning of the 20th century, that being smallpox. Our Victim clearly wasn't the victim of it, but it is classified under that banner. Before I learned that, I hadn't truly understood why militaries and governments are so panicky at the mention of a weaponized version.

The trouble is, smallpox is darn near weaponized already, in its natural form. It spreads through the air, and the virus is so light it floats, like smoke. You can be shedding it--and infecting other people--for days before you show your first symptoms. It kills up to one third of all victims in *resistant* populations... it'll kill 90 to 100 percent in nonresistant ones.

I recall getting my smallpox shot, waaaaaay back when. I recall trying (and failing) to figure a way to avoid it, because that round of vaccinations was going to be the last available. I've been dismissive of smallpox since, because a: vaccinized, and b: smallpox is eradicated in the wild. Now? Apparently, a smallpox vaccination is one of those that wears off... and there are still stocks of the damn bug out there. If some radical group with an agenda, a hate, and a lack of moral rectitude gets their hands on it...

The hemorrhagic phase of smallpox is marked by bleeding into the conjunctiva of the eyes--the whites turn black. It is almost 100 percent fatal in that form, even among the resistant.

****

Played with the word counting spreadsheet I made up. Now I've got it totalling the words I do each month on separate projects... and I've discovered that my tendency to jump from thing to thing isn't as scattershot as I thought, at least not this month. 90 percent of my efforts are on one project, with the other 10 percent spread around to the others.

I feel reassured by this. I've read (multiple times, in multiple places) that one should do one thing at a time. Finish it, start the next. But I get seriously antsy when constrained in that fashion, which I blame on my contrarian nature. Nice to see that giving myself permission to 'go off the reservation' means that by and large, I stay on it.

****

Y'know which posts I'm always interested in seeing? troutkitty 's food posts. I never make what she's making (what, me *cook*?!) but I'm always fascinated, because there's always some ingredient which makes me go, "What the heck is *that*?"

10:36am: Various things.
I'm watching spring these days. Last weekend I walked through Bridgeland, comparing the north and south sides of streets: north side, free of snow and with the first green blades of grass sheltering under last year's thatch. South side, vast frozen lakes of water and slush, covering sidewalks sometimes five or more feet out into the road. Nothing like an ordinary city street to remind one that homogeneity isn't the norm.

And that was *before* we got 25cm (10") of new snow dumped on us.

The snow shows tracks, though. Goose tracks and duck tracks, wandering across the ice of the river. Rabbit tracks following the lines of fences and circling bushes. And... little rabbit tracks? Too small for the hares... but too big for mice. Gophers?

I thought I heard a gopher whistle on the south side of the Fifth Avenue overpass on Tuesday... which reminds me of Groundhog Day. Apparently, all three usual culprits saw their shadows last Feb 2, which meant quite a bit of wailing and moaning about six more weeks of winter. As a long-time Canadian resident, I say, "Is that all?"

******

I had an opportunity to see a performance of Vivaldi at the CPO, and AMB was kind enough to accept my invite to use the second ticket I'd been given. Much fun. The Vivaldi was marvelous--I may have to stop in at the shop in the Arts Centre and score me a CD.

The second half of the evening was Schumann, and... um... it was good, but not as good as the Vivaldi. My mind wandered, especially during the last half of the performance, comparing the various musical variations to the themes of cowboy serials and Disney princess movies. It hadn't occured to me before, but yes--a continuous musical tradition, and if the comparison holds in music as it does in literature, then ... I have a bunch more thinking to do. And a bunch more listening.

Also, the chick who intro'ed the show? Couldn't write a rousing speech to save her life. Cliches R Us, CPO.

******

Sercet msesgae to mockingspike: When you're all bundled up and cruising by on the bike, you're twenty feet *past* me by the time I figure out that strange weirdo waving "Hi!" is you, 'cause my brain doesn't work that fast, coming off a day of work!

Just sayin'!

8:29pm: Holy ...!
I've been short-listed for an Aurora: Fan Achievement (Other) for my work as IFWA Administrator (which I assume is for the In Places Between contest.)

Still... !!!

(I blame KG and his ravening hordes of Newfies and choir members, though I believe that family person belonging to queenzulu deserves some of the credit, too...)

9:46pm: I've been having some severe problems with the laptop, enough so that I had to take it back to the vendor for a complete OS re-install. No luck; the problems persist. I'll have to take it in again.

Meanwhile, I haven't written much. My 'official' word count for the month of February is only 1550 words. Which is a bit deceptive, given that I wrote about 6000 words, then re-arranged two different novel projects in one weekend, cutting about 9000 words in the process, and then wrote about 5000 words, which brings me back to the 1550. And the laptop meltdown, which happened directly after the rearrangements and new words, but before a backup.

Le sigh.

Anyway. Got the data off the laptop, took the laptop in for service, got it back, used it once, and it is le crash immense. Again.

So I (finally) set up the second desk top I have. It seems to be working splendid, so far--at the very least, it hasn't crashed yet. And I opened a story that I've been pecking at for lo, many moons, and pecked at it some more, and... click.

Seriously. My head went 'click' when I wrote the current last line, and the brain said, "Done," an d I said, "Huh?"

It's short, only 1422 words, which for me is a sneeze. But there's a beginning, a middle, and that burgeoning blossom at the end that I like to put into my stuff, where the world opens out and everything goes fluid. Anything is possible, and the story ends at the point where you know that but where the probabilities haven't yet solidified into fact. Which may be the problem; I'm looking at it now and thinking, "Did this sudden fountain of ifs set off the 'Done!' trigger when it shouldn't have? Or is this thing really done?"

Will sit on it for a few days. After all, it's sat for months, and I find it difficult to believe that the addition of 38 words was all it took to write 'Fin' to it.