The Observation Unit

#51.) Kelly Gay, The Better Part of Darkness

[redacted pending review elsewhere]

#52.) Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

Brilliant. Go read it now.

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Lovely evening today stacking wood and eating food with friends and family. Mmm, food.

Eeek! The spindle came!

And it brought a friend!



Thank you, thatpotteryguy! Did you make the mug? I am assuming. It's lovely!

Now to find some fiber.....

16 degrees this morning, 6 with windchill. We're waiting for the snowpocalypse.

tea today: peppermint
teacup today: the little orange and white Chinese teacup I got at a Chinese grocery in Ann Arbor.

Up too late last night and awoke too early this morning for somebody who's supposed to be sleeping off a sore throat, but I kind of forgot to eat dinner yesterday (yeah, swallowing when your throat hurts sucks) so I got woken up by being hungry. Leftover oatmeal is becoming blueberry oatcakes as we speak, though, never fear, and I am unlikely to waste away.

Tonight, we expect a great big snowdump (It's currently beating up my friends in Maryland and Virginia) and I plan to spend today on more reading. Didn't get as much done yesterday on that front as I wanted--got distracted with side projects, Shadow Unit-related work, and talking to friends about Major Life Issues. Like you do sometimes.

Also made the last December Non-Denominational Gift-Giving Day presents, which I need to package up today and mail out on Monday. Or maybe next Monday, because the nice thing about DNDGGD is that it's not any particular day at all, so as long as you get it done in December, you're all good!

I did read a wonderful very short story yesterday, though. Sherman Alexie's "Distances," which is science fiction and four pages long and one the best after-the-bomb stories I have ever read. Simply amazing. I wish I'd known of its existence when I was writing my comments on my story in JJA's Wastelands anthology, because it would have affected what I said.

But now you know, so you have no excuses. (I've read Alexie's YA fiction, but this is my first time through The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and it's just as good as everybody says it is. Not that he needs my hard sell)

I read it, told everybody on twitter how much I loved it, and promptly went back and read it again. It reminds me of, oh. "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." Except different and wonderful. But it hits me in the same place, and it's as tiny and perfect and beautifully made.

Got thirty farm fresh eggs at the agricultural co-op on the corner when I went in to see if they carry Ace's dog food (they don't) so I suspect lunch is going to be an omelette. *g*

And now breakfast is ready, so it's time to microwave my beloved barley neck pillow and start that reading.  Who would have thought I'd choose a career that was nothing but homework?

So here's the thing. One of the hardest things to deal with about being a science fiction writer is the scope of the material. Almost all of us cheat, because the universe is so... inconceivably vast that it's almost impossible to work with. So we work around it.

I keep hoping someday I'll write something that captures how that universe really looks and feels to me. I imagine if I ever swing it, it will be excoriated, but I still think it's a worthy goal. It's awfully neat out there, even if we don't, in the face of it, matter. (Am I unique in not finding that particularly bleak prospect? Sometimes, I think I am. The vast indifference of heaven feels rather inevitable, to me.)

Recently, I've been exposed to two pieces of art that capture that scale, in some regard.

One is here. It's called The Known Universe. 



It's a planetarium show from the American Museum of Natural History.

Another is a spoken-word piece by Peter Mulvey, entitled Vlad the Astrophysicist. You can listen to a live recording here. Right-click to download, and crank the volume: it's soft.

I wonder, sometimes, if that is why so many people cling to what they cling to, even when it's patently cruel or ridiculous. Because we are so small, and the universe is so very large, and we matter so little to it. And we are not adapted to deal with that. We are very, inherently, biologically, solipsistic.

But I kind of think all that emptiness is beautiful.

morning temperature: -1 (with wind chill), 8 without
tea today: bancha. I awoke headache-free this morning, and am declaring myself sufficiently detoxed, though I'm going to stay off the hard stuff for a while.
teacup today: a very pretty brown Chinese-style tea bowl my dad sent me from North Carolina.  It's slightly larger than a cannonical Chinese teacup, but smaller (though deeper) than a custard cup.

Still no fever, but the sore throat persists. I believe it to be the source of the cough rather than otherwise. No fever (99 degrees fresh out of a hot shower this morning) and no swollen tonsils. I did have a lymph node that was a bit poky-outy on Monday; suspect it was fighting a rearguard action against the virus. Poor noble lymph node. You will be recollected in the annals. (Mentioned In Dispatches. *g*)

Today, I still have no brain for storytelling, so I am going to work on my book review columns, which means trying to find something to read in this pile of somewhat scary books with naked backs and slave collar imagery that doesn't bounce off the nearest available wall inside of ten pages. Wish me luck.

In other news, a little link salad for a Friday morning:

Monster fireball dominates Geminid sky--a really spectacular APOD today. One of the few things I miss about Nevada is the stargazing. It's pretty much a wash out here. You can find places that are dark enough, but... actually getting a clear night in Winter?

via jaylake

Titan has lakes! eeeeeee!

One of my earliest memories is reading National Geographic with my maternal grandfather. He was a plumber and an immigrant, self-educated, and passionately interested in science and the natural world. I got my habit of reading encyclopedias from him. he never thought it was weird.

When I was just about knee-sitting sized, the Voyagers were passing the gas giants. And NG was full of amazing photos. I know this stuff is everyday, now. But back then... we'd never seen anything like it.

It still gives me a little tight feeling in my chest to see something like a lake on another goddamned planet.

We are tidal beings. In this case, that tide is galactic....

and via hominysnark:


...I'm kind of in love.

And this? This is hysterical. And so NSFW:

When two cats who don't like each other want to sleep on the same small wool throw, a monkey's foot works well as a Line Of Ignoring.

The Mythbusters attempt to polish, well... a turd.

This amuses me because "turd-polishing" is a common phrase bandied around SFF workshops, meaning the act of fiddling with the sentences and commas in an essentially broken narrative.

Even if you succeed, well. What you have is a high-gloss turd.

Time for a pot of what my friends and associates lovingly call Death Drops. (ecinacea, hibiscus, rose hips, ginger, lemon, red pepper, and honey.)

Cures what ails ya.

Or at least distracts you.

so far this morning: contracts and tax paperwork printed (4); epic battles with printer and TBRE's... idiosyncratic... wiring structures (6); epic battles with my own piles of office clutter (2); epic battles with kjitten over just who exactly gets to stand on the printer while it's printing (umpteen).

The printer router the beloved netcurmudgeon set up for me appears to have died the death (I wonder, somehow, if cats are responsible) so I had to crawl around under the desk and hook the printer up directly to the desktop, and then port files, and then--

And all this while not feeling so hot, and in the throes of PMI (Premenstrual incompetence. Hormones give me brain fog.). And then the dog decided that it wasn't too cold to go chase the ball for a VERY LONG TIME before doing his business, which meant somebody had to throw that ball. Somebody inadequately dressed, with cold hands, because see above brain fog.

So that was my morning.

Is it too early to start drinking?

temperature this morning: 15 wonderful degrees (-2 with windchill (F, not C: I'm an American barbarian.)
tea today: orange passionfruit
teacup today: asian (Japanese? it's kind of borderline in size and design) teacup from San Francisco

I'm in the midst of a caffeine detox, just in case the weird fits of anxiety I've been having are triggered by the buzz. (I suspect it's more deadlines and incoming! baby and deadlines and slow-paying publishing industry and deadlines and coming to terms with my spinsterhood and deadlines. But the caffeine is something I can control.) While I don't consume a lot of caffeine (I drink a lot of tea, mostly green, and occasional black tea or coffee) I've noticed in the past few months that black tea or coffee in the evening will actually mess up my sleep cycle, which is new and unexciting. And I did NOT react well to the chai I had on Monday, or the coffee Sunday afternoon.

Anyway, after 72 hours without my drug of choice, I am feeling the effects--those headaches, I tell ya. Stuff is vicious. And I appear to be coming down with something, given my absolute failure to perform at the climbing gym yesterday (hawkwing_lb had all my mojo. Don't ask.), the pain in my neck, and the occasional slight productive cough. No fever, though--I'm right on the money a degree low, just as I always am.

Given all this, the fact that Grail is sitting at 185 pages, and the Impending Hoolidays, I have decided to take an advance on my Time Off as sick leave cum lazing about. Today I will read contracts and make some notes on Grail because I was brilliant in the shower this morning. And I am going to cuddle up with a peppermint-and-lavender-soaked barley pillow. And if any writing gets done, well, it gets done. And if it doesn't, well, that's okay too.

Basically, I'm going to putter and not set any goals. And hope my headache eases up a little. (Today's tea is an herbal blend with a little bit of green tea in it, so there is some caffeine, but not so much I would drink it for the energy boost. But it will probably take the edge off the discomfort, anyway.)

Criminal Minds 5x11, "Retaliation," written by Erica Messer, directed by Felix Enrique-Alcata

( How long can you keep us safe?  )

( The size of your honor guard determines your status in Hell. )

1700 words today, when I had only promised myself 3 pages. I'm pretty pleased with that--and I got it done fast, by my standards, though not by those of people who write fast.

That brings us to a nice 37,000 words, and 185 pages. Maybe two more writing days to a vacation. OMG. (Yeah, my vacations look like other people's weekends. Such is life.)

It's very good to be back in the saddle again. I haven't written a whole new book since Chill, and it's amazng how much of my self-identity is locked up in being somebody who produces new novel-length stories.

Now, I get to eat some lunch and drink some tea and goof off until it's time to go climb. Then I shall come home and work a bit more, I expect, until Criminal Minds. The last new one for a while.

It's almost the end of the Naughties. I still have hopes of making the decade name catch on. After all, once we're out of it, we'll need something to call it....

(Yes, I know technically speaking 2010 is part of the same decade, but functionally? It's not. Nobody refers to 1970 as "the sixties." The map is not the territory, and trying to make the way people interact with reality conform to an ideal results in such crowning successes as, oh, Esperanto.)

First, in one week (more or less) we have new mid-hiatus Shadow Unit content--Sarah Monette's Very Special Holiday Episode, "On Faith." Yay!
 
Tea today is Roibos Pretoria (the last of it; time to shop for more--in the Mythical After Time, anyway: see below.)
Teacup is NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me"
Temperature this morning was 26 degrees. Would have been colder but I slept late.

Today, I am as bereft of ambition as it is possible for me to be. But I have a plan! A kind of overarching plan. My plan is to get to page 200 of Grail, which is, after all, only 23 pages away, and then take a couple of days off. After that, I will revise The White City and finish "The Unicorn Evils" with coffeeem and "The Forty Times Forty" and turn those in. And then I will come back and finish the second half of Grail, which might go more easily than the first half. (It often does.)

Then truepenny and I will write A Reckoning of Men, and I will write "Spell 81a" (with stillsostrange) and "Ligature" (all by myself). And then I will write The Steles of the Sky and these various short stories I owe. The space opera and the vampire thing and the other thing.

And today may be a writing-and-paperwork day rather than a writing day, as I have somehow again accrued an awful lot of paperwork. Although what I really want to do is drink tea and look at the Seeds of Change catalogue.

There. Plan. Now to start it....

In other news, jmeadows is evil and wicked. She's trying to convince me to take up spinning, you see. (I used to embroider. I do not knit. Or crochet. I cheerfully wear nice things that other people knit or crochet for me, however, so the idea of spinning for friends is not beyond possibility.) I keep telling her that my poor guitar needs me, and I do not need another expensive time-consuming hobby, but then she shows me things like this, or this. And I am sore tempted.

Thankfully, all discretionary purchases are on hold until the mythical After time ("After Tor pays me") and so I am safe. For a little while.

And maybe by then the urge will have passed.

meme.

First sentences, 2009!

January: The sun is melting the frost off the inside of the windows, the cat is complaining, and my toes are cold.

February: Busy but pleasant day today.

March: This is what rock climbing has done for me:

April: 9. All stories end the same way. It's easy when you know how.

May: At first, I thought the email was a very clever phishing scheme. [That was one of my rare locked posts, so no link.]

June: batwrangler has graciously posted her photos of the Wrentham dog shows on her flickr account, including some pics of the Giant Ridiculous Dog and the Lesser Ridiculous Dog.

July: Seattle, day 5. Still no bukkit.

August: I've been up and working since 6:30, and the dogge needs to go out and chase the ball and then have a walk and his breakfast, and so do I (I thought of something I really, really wanted to eat today last night and now I can't remember what it was, except it involved whole wheat toast. Maybe if I look in the fridge I will remember. Maybe I'll make home-made tortilla chips today, around reading my slush and finding some other Useful Work to do. Maybe I will clean the downstairs or something. Oh, and sending out some packages, because it's not actually Sunday, Bear.).

September: Forty-eight glorious degrees fahrenheit this morning.

October: O Perfect Timing!

November: Death to daylight savings!

December: Today I must:

Thank God for men with daughters.

It's not only you, mind. But overall, more often than other men, you guys make me feel like you believe I'm a human being, and other women are too.

Thank you for that, guys. Because I suspect you don't actually hear it often.

Item the first: yes, I have seen the new Simon's Cat. And now so have you. 

Item the second: I really, really, really did not want to work today. But I applied butt to couch and told myself I could quit after four pages, and by then my peeps had shown up and were working, so I got 2300. Go, peeps. Go book.

See? Progress? Progress is so comforting. Especially since once ashacat's baby comes, I expect there will be a week or so when I am being Baby Support and do not get much done. And I want to get a draft of this book finished (Even a Bad Draft) so that I can fix The White City and its chapbook "The Forty times Forty" and send them to Bill.

35300 / 100000 words. 35% done!

177 / 400 pages. 44% done!

Item the third: here's a cute photo of the existing beloved godchild, with me and The Jeff (not in that order).



That's what my hair looked like after the purple washed out. It's the Rare Good Photo of me, so enjoy it. *g*

Item the fourth: People turn around a lot in Greg Brown songs.

Yeah. All I got is 0.o.

Overheard on NPR this morning

Well, no. They have better Cuban food there, for one thing. And much nicer beaches.

Tea this morning: mango passionfruit
Teacup this morning: I rinsed out the kitty in filing drawer cup.
Temperature: 42 degrees. Hardly worth recording.

And now, yoga, and then slouching towards work. Time to blow up something. Possibly a space ship and a couple of world leaders.

...huh. I have this sudden sense I've got my grove back. More carnage: fixes problems every time.

Did I mention I climbed a 5.10 yesterday? (okay, yes, I'm still geeked. But then, when I started climbing, one of the things I said to myself was "I would like to be good enough at this to climb 5.10 someday." And while having sent one 5.10a on the slab in not the same thing as climbing 5.10, not really, it puts it within reach. It's visible now, in a way it wasn't before. So cooooooool.)

Coldest night of the winter, working up my farewell.
In the middle of everything under no particular spell.
Clouds roll in from Nebraska. Dark chords on a big guitar.

Ooops.

Realized today that I started Grail about 130 pages too early, and, in fact, the first scene is the scene I wrote today. Alas, the life of the working writer.

Howeveer, I may be able to recycle some of that earlier stuff. I just need to remember that in an interesting novel, terrorism comes before politics, rather than politics before terrorism.

On the other hand, that route was a 5.10a, and I sent it again today. Also got a new one I think is a 5.8, and while I did not get a hold higher on the sky wall monster, I did get unclipped today. Wednesday, the goal is two holds higher. Dammit.

Well, that's 1800 words for the day, and a third of a book by MS word count. And I appear to have finally found the plot, so if I can make the 150 pages of setup the readers will have to get through interesting, I may have a publishable book here eventually.

Mean things: epistemology, mind control, social tyranny, toxic memes, minority rule, oligarchy. The usual, really. I need to blow something up.

Maybe tomorrow, or Wednesday.

In any case, now time for a little nap or something before massage therapy appointment, food, and climbing.

tea today: market spice
temperature this morning: 34 degrees
teacup today: cat in a filing drawer

33100 / 100000 words. 33% done!

166 / 400 pages. 42% done!