If you want to be a writer, then why aren't you -- you know -- writing?

Monday Monday

Monday, August 16th, 2010

‘Can’t stand that day.’

Seems to be an off Monday all around. I have been having one and off headaches, while my sweetie-wife has been suffering from migraines.

I have managed to edit a chapter and a half tonight. (Typing in the edits is a fairly brainless job, as the hard calls were made when I put the changes down on the manuscript with ink and paper.) I have two new scenes to write for Chapter 7, but they will have wait for my faculties to improve.

As it stands I am about a third of the way through and I haven’t burned the manuscript yet.

16.08.2010 Writing, general, life No Comments

Glorious Sleep

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

So today they came and took away the blowers and the heaters (And part of the wall and the ceiling as well.) So hopefully tonight I will be able to sleep properly.

I have had a headache of some kind or another for two days now — perhaps three it is hard to tell — and I hope that a good night’s sleep will put me back in the right.

27.07.2010 general, life No Comments

Sneezing injuries are less than funny

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

It’s strange just how much my side hurts from the freaking sneeze injury. It’s worse that every time I sneeze I seem to re-damage the damn muscle. At this rate I will never recover.

Can you herniate a muscle with a sneeze?

I sneezed twice at work and boy you should have seen every suddenly looking at me. I nearly fell out of my chair with the pain.

However on the plus side my oral surgeon says my mouth is doing well and that it looks quite good from only one week out from the extractions.

I started the work up on version 1.5 of Cawdor. I’m not getting as much done per day right now because my day job is taking up CPU cycles from my writing time, but that special project ends on Thursday and then I can dive full speed into the 1.5 edits.

I have stumbled on a great resource for writers. Kristen Nelson, literary agent to Gail Carriger and others,  has posted on her site a number of query letters from clients. These are the actual query letters that got her attention enough to ask for submissions from these writers.

Kristen goes through most of the letters and tells you point by point why it worked for her. This is really really cool. Only the internet could bring resources like this to unpublished writers. You should google Pub Rants and follow her blog.

06.07.2010 Writing, general, life No Comments

Surviving, but not pleasantly

Monday, July 5th, 2010

So Today was my first full day back from the convention, but sadly it was not as care-free as I would have liked it to be. I injured myself at the convention and that injury has continued to plague me.

On Saturday morning my sweetie-wife and I were walking back from a spot of breakfast before the convnetion when disaster struck.

I sneezed.

Now you are probably expecting at this point something like I tripped while I sneeze and fell hard to the ground. Or that when I sneezed I lost track of where I was walking and walked into danger or some such exciting event.

Nope, I sneezed and noting more. When I sneezed a sharp pain stabbed me in my side. Very much like a cramp from running too far too fast and I thought I had triggered a cramp. The rest of the day it hurt to walk, to get up from sitting or to go down to a sitting position.

The next day, yesterday, I sneezed again and it was clear that I had strained a muscle or muscle-group in my left side. the pain continued throughout the day.

Today I went and saw Toy Story 3, a fine film and a worthy sequel, it was very funny. That turned out to be not the bets of things. It hurt to laugh. When I sneezed twice today, I really put pain into my left side.

There’s no doubt about it I have injured myself with the power of my own sneezes.

One the plus side I have a new idea for a short story; something fairly subversive in my opinion. It’ll be fun writing it when I am through with Cawdor,

05.07.2010 SF, Writing, conventions, general, life 1 Comment

This CPAP thing is getting kind of rough

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

So, I got a new CPAP machine last week. This one — the exact same model as my last one — is covered by the insurance because it came through their vendor. Since I was changing machines and vendors I thought I might switch masks as well.

I had been using what are called nasal pillows. As you can see it is a very minimal mask system. It’s light and when I tried it in the hospital during the study it seemed to work for me.

Alas at home i didn’t work out so well. I toss and turn a lot in my sleep and the nasal pillows would shift and move, breaking the seal and then jetting air outside my nose. I would also wake up to find the nasal pillow in my hand. I had taken them off in my sleep. No good.

So I switched to a nasal mask.This thing has two straps coming off the forehead piece, two more that come off the bottom of the mask making for a very secure fit. I was fairly confident that this maks would not slip as easily as the nasal pillows.

It doesn’t. However it seems in my sleep I do find it uncomfortable. I have awakened in the night, or had my sweetie-wife wake and tell me, to find the mask off and discarded. Last night it only happened once so I happy about that, but it’s a problem that is proving tough to lick.

I will have to lick it. Not only is sleep apena very dangerous to your health, I really really like the way I feel when I have gotten a good night’s sleep.

01.06.2010 general 8 Comments

Post Birthday

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

So yesterday was my Birthday. I celebrated by getting up early and going to see a sleep specialist. He informed me not only do I have sever sleep apnea but I have a jaw that is too small and is contributing to the sleeping problems.

However all was not lost. I did prescribed a CPAP machine and I was told I could pick it up right away. So I left the doctors office and drove to the company suppling the CPAP machine. That went well and from there I made a brief stop over at my work to bring home person items. (My day job is moving to a new location at the end of the month and bringing home your personal items is part of the process.)

I spent the rest of the afternoon with my sweetie-wife getting ready for Birthday celebrations for that evening. People showed up about six thirty and we had a very pleasant evening of chili, cake, conversations, and games.

I went to bed and slept my first night at home with the CPAP machine. It went pretty well, except once during the night I awoke to find I had taken off the mask. I slipped it back on and went back to sleep.

Today I am feeling more refreshed and more energized than I typically do so I think the machine is the right call for me.

15.05.2010 general, life No Comments

Ignorance was bliss

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

It seems that the worst sleep I have been getting has followed the diagnosis that I have sleep apnea. I’d swear that knowing I have sleep apnea has made it worse. The last few weeks have been the worst for unrestful sleep. Everyday I have been waking up tired and had to struggle through the waking hours.

Last night I went to bed at 8:30, got nearly ten hours of ‘sleep’ and yet I am tired. I can’t wait for my treatments to start this is really taking a toll on my quality of life and quality of writing.

21.04.2010 general, life 1 Comment

SciFi thought of the Day

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

I’m having a really bad arthritis knees day so I will leave you with this one thought.

How Many people live on Coruscant? Wikipedia lists the fiction planet as having a population of 1 trillion.

From the films we can see it is a densely populated world and we are told that the entire planet is one big city. (In George Lucas’ mind all planets have one dominate feature, Desert, Ice, Forrest or City.)

So let’s assume a population density matching that of Manhattan. (That’s a low ball figure considering the height of the buildings but it gives us something to work with.)

And a surface land-area equal to the earth’s.

Manhattan Density : 27,485 per km square.

Earth Land Surface area: 148,940,ooo km square.

27,485 X 148,940,000 =4.0936159^12 people. or 40,936,159,00,000 almost 41 trillion people.

Seems to me the wikipedia entry is a bit of a low ball figure based on the fantastic nature of the planet,

Here’s an interesting thing to run, given that population density how big of an area would the Earth’s current population take up?

Current population: 6,812,000,000 / 27,485 = 247, 844 square kilometers.

That’s smaller than the state of Nevada at 286,367 square kilometers. Every man woman and child on planet earth fits into Nevada if we all live like New Yorkers. That really gives SF colony designers something to think about.

31.03.2010 SF, Science, general 1 Comment

Exhausted

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

For whatever reason I am utterly exhausted tonight. (Could be why I am going in for  a sleep study in a little over a week.)

Anyway I did watch a Sunday Night Movie and I will write it up tomorrow.

See you kiddies on the other side of the terminator.

22.03.2010 Movies, general, life No Comments

Been busy

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

Well, I have been away from my blog for a few days as I have been busy.

Yesterday I had a doctor’s appointment with my Ear, Nose, Throat man. Dr Brian Weeks. IF you live in the san Diego region, have health insurance, and need any sort of Ear, Nose, Throat medical help I would highly recommend this doctor. His great at his work and hhe’s also great at talking to you about his work.

I may be having sleep apnea issues so Dr Weeks and I are setting up a sleep study to look into that. I’ll be sure to let everyone know what that is like.

Then I had to mess around with my bank. They got swallowed by a larger bank as part of the whole fun financial fracas and this week I got my new debt card. Worked fine as a credit card, but my pin number failed at ATMs. So it was sitting in the lobby waiting for a ‘banker’ to fix that issue. Finding out it was not fixed and being told that it should be fixed today. Joy

Today I sit around waiting for Fedex as I am expecting a DVD from amazon today.

20.03.2010 general, life No Comments

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