I’m feeling in a less-than-communicative mood today, so instead of writing, here’s some pictures of our festive, Christmas décor, plus a couple of Hobkin, because he’s just that cute.
Hobkin is such a good boy! The flu-like symptoms I was having, well, seems they were a pretty low-grade flu . . . which I’ve subsequently conferred upon the poor fuzzwit. After dinner, he was cuddled up with me on the couch, and suddenly he jumped up and went scampering away. Now that isn’t an uncommon occurrence, so I didn’t think anything of it until the unmistakable sounds of a skunk being sick to his stomach started coming from the kitchen. I sprang up to check on him, and found him sicking up with his head in his litter pan. Poor lil guy.
Hobkin’s very good about running to his area to be sick (which has a nice, linoleum floor, making it much easier to clean than carpet), but this was the first time he was considerate enough to do so right in his litter box! I praised him effusively and gave him a mint sandwich (Pepto Bismol on bread) to ease his tummy.
Hobkin is such a good boy. And he seems much better today.
Word count: 500 on the SF WIP.
Club 100 for Writers
23/100
500/day
11
More Christmas shopping, check. No more flu-like symptoms, hurray! Could it be that my flu shot nipped it in the bud? It’s more likely I ate something that didn’t like being eaten yesterday . . .
Heard that the current managing editor of Tangent is stepping down in January. There’s some uncertainty whether the publication will continue after that happens. I guess they’re looking for a replacement managing editor, unless Dave Truesdale agrees to resume the helm he relinquished a year ago. I hope they find someone. I really have enjoyed writing reviews for them.
Word count: 500. Launching back into the SF story.
Club 100 for Writers
22/100
500/day
10
Accomplished some Christmas shopping over the weekend. There’s still much to do. I need another week in December to prep for the holidays! And I think I might be coming down with something flu-like, despite having received one of the rare and exclusive flu shots. Ugh.
Finished, at long last, my review for Tangent of this week’s Sci-Fiction story and emailed it off to ye olde editor.
Received a 33-day “clever but not for us” from On Spec. I think I need to really mull over whether it’s worth my while spending the oversea postage on the handful of foreign markets that don’t take electronic submissions.
Word count: 150 + (-)500.
Had an excellent brainstorming session with Matthew on the SF piece. Hacked off one of the sub-plot aspects of the story in order to give it better focus. Much happier with this approach. My hubby is quite clever. I think I’ll keep him.
Club 100 for Writers
21/100
500/day
9
Watched The Santa Claus 2 and Love Actually yesterday, both charming and utterly fitting movies for the season. During Santa Claus 2, high-pitched squeaks began at roughly one minute intervals. Sounded like a robot mouse was being systematically tortured. At first, we thought it was the DVD, but rewinding and fast forwarding didn’t duplicate the chirps. Then we thought it was the fiber optic tree over the mantle as it has a revolving part which causes the colors to change. We turned that off, but the electric mouse continued its intermittent shrieks. Spent the next half hour standing by the security motion detector, the glass break alarm, and finally the smoke detectors before determining that it was one of the upstairs smoke detectors. And it continued squawking after we disconnected it and removed the battery. I’m totally baffled at what powers the things now. But it quit its complaints after we put in a new battery.
There are a lot of devices in our home whose workings baffle me.
Saw on The Third Alternative‘s message board that issue #40 with my novelette “Running on Two Legs” in it is now at the printers and the editor hopes to begin mailing it out by next weekend or sooner. Squee! Also it looks like my story will be in the venerable position of last! I’m so excited. I really love this story.
Was treated to seeing a prerelease of Blade: Trinity by dire_epiphany, astralfire, and their son Blake on Thursday. Traffic getting to the theater was appalling. It took us an hour and a half to drive there, and under a half hour to drive back. Also felt rather queasy in the car. I think I was actually motion sick from all the accelerating and decelerating. Weird. I don’t usually get car sick.
Trinity (spoiler-free) was great fun. There’s a dearth in writing, huge plot issues, yadda yadda ya, but it’s shiny, and everyone is so pretty! Rawr. Ryan Reynolds’s character was the major high point. I think he got all the best lines. I giggled right out loud. And the Pomeranian! The Pomeranian was fantastic! Urg, I can’t say any more without giving out spoilers . . . um, LJ cut to the rescue: Continue reading
My lower back has been hurting of late, I suspect a situation aggravated by poor sleep (not to mention an utterly sedentary lifestyle). So I took some Ibuprofen and a Clonazepam last night to whammy my muscles into submission. It mostly worked, but left me feeling wobbly this morning. I therefore slammed two cups of coffee with breakfast and took an Aleve to dull the remaining back pains. Started having trouble breathing after lunch, so had a couple hits from my inhaler, which also is a potent stimulant.
I’m thinking it’s not the healthiest of practices to offset the effects of one drug with another. I spent today twitchy, nauseated, woozy, and sniffly. And my back still hurts.
Glad it’s the weekend. I need time to come down.
Received confirmation from Brutarian that my story was never received–probably eaten by the editor’s spam filter. Debated whether I should re-send, but did so anyway. But between their sundry editor/publisher dirty laundry issues and the difficulty of getting email reliably through to them, I’m thinking of knocking them off my “submit to” list.
Also 135-day “nice stuff here but . . . ” from Talebones with apology for the long wait. Sigh. At least it wasn’t lost in transit.
Word count: 500ish. Taking a break on the SF story as I’m supremely dissatisfied with where it’s going. Instead, I saw that both jack_yoniga and dys7topia are running flash fiction contests on their respective LJs. Flash brainstorming ensued.
Club 100 for Writers
20/100 – One fifth of the way to my goal.
500/day
8
I woke to much cuteness this morning when my alarm went off. Hobkin was curled up under my chin, snoozing peacefully. But I had to get up; the alarm was insistent about it. Except every time I started to move, the fuzzwit would burrow his nose deeper into my neck, paralyzing me with fluffy cuteness. I tried pushing the covers off; he snuggled in more firmly. After several similar efforts, I sighed, pet him, and waited, hoping he’d fall into a deeper sleep so I could escape. When I finally had to get up, I tried to substitute my warm shape with that of my pillow’s. Didn’t work of course. Hobkin immediately noticed the switch, awakened, and stared up at me with hurt recrimination in his little eyes. I felt so guilty I gave him a cookie before heading for the shower.
I’m a total sucker, aren’t I?
In amusing news, the skunk show britzkrieg and I went to got a nice write-up in Creative Loafing.
Word count: 500 on the SF piece. Entering the climax of the story, and I am massively underwhelmed by how it’s going. Hoping that something better will occur to me than the tripe I’ve currently got planned for an ending. Bah.
Club 100 for Writers
19/100
500/day
7
The colder weather has brought about another change in Hobkin: ice-cold paws. And he has a penchant for plunking those chilly paws on me, especially when I’m asleep. As if that wasn’t bad enough, last night he stuck one of his freezing paws in my ear as I lay snuggled up under the covers. Wonder if they make mittens for skunks . . .
Did an editing pass on the slipstream piece. It’s still not listed as up for this week on Critters. *sigh*
Word count: 1000+ on the science fiction piece, and yet I haven’t managed to hit flow. Still, I chug along. Chug-a-chug-a.
Club 100 for Writers
18/100
500/day
6
Definitely feeling better on the emotional front today, which has to be incontrovertible proof that my moods are totally unrelated to external life events as it’s Monday-after-a-long-holiday, normally prime time for de-motivation and doldrums. Or maybe it’s the Sudafed I’ve been popping like candy . . .
Did a massive edit on my princess fantasy story. Chopped out around 500 words. Now I’m trying to figure out how to count anti-words into the Club 100 and 500/day resolutions I’ve made.
Still no word from John Frost of IROSF. Glug?
Word count: 548 + (-)500 anti-words.
Club 100 for Writers
17/100
500/day
5
