The Cantina Staring Back At You From The Abyss

[E.F.B.]

Almost down to 2k words left to cut in the WIP!

In weather news, it's raining. And raining. And raining. We're getting the remnants of the "cyclone bomb" that the west coast got. Nowhere near as bad as they got, though. Still, we made sure we didn't have to go anywhere today and can just be inside, warm and cozy. *lights a candle*

In parental health news, mom got to see some pictures of her ear surgery. Dad thought that was super weird and gross and refuses to look at them because it would upset him. (He also didn't seem to understand that they're pics of the INSIDE of her ear, not the outside where you can see her unconscious body, but mom finally got him to understand.) Apparently they had a teeny, tiny camera on the end of a thingy they could stick in mom's ear during the surgery to show what the surgeon did in there. I think that's good that they show you and help you understand exactly what what was done. I looked, and yeah, it was mildly yucky, but it's also good to see the before and after where there was all that infected tissue and then later it's all gone.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Meh. Friday morning, and still raining. Got up way too early on a day off to drive the garbage down the road (we don't leave it out overnight because bears and raccoons and other things that like to dig in garbage). Trying to decide if I have enough oomph to go anywhere today. I suppose I don't need to, so I probably shouldn't, but I haven't gotten out of the house without relatives (barring work, which doesn't really count) in long enough I've forgotten when that was. But it really is rather wet and dismal out there, and if I even thought the word "out" I'm sure relatives would jump on "just to get out of the house", when half the point would be "get away from relatives"...

Dang it.

 

[Friendly Frog]

Got my flu vaccine today. And the weekend is supposed to be rainy and dim so if I'm out of sorts because of the vaccine, I'm not missing much.

Got Junior Cat back too. Extra tests were not conclusive but they ruled out diabetis and chest tumors. He delevoped a fever so now they're looking into infections including menigitis. Got meds against fever and bacterial infection and the last results will be in Tuesday.

Apparently he woke up, crossed the room without falling over and BIT the vet in the leg. This is by far the gentlest cat I know. He's never even bit me (and every single cat we ever had has chewed on me so far) or anyone. Now if it was Senior Cat biting the vet, I'd be surprised but I could see it happen. Junior Cat? Not in a milion years.

Right now he's in his basket next to the computer. He ate alright and he kneaded his pillow so he does look a bit better than yesterday. Hoping the meds will help. Not looking forward to giving them though, they're oral meds. Joy.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Hooray for vaccines and returned cats!

Friday afternoon, and I got a little more ornament work in. The rain's letting up at last. May go out tomorrow if I can get out by myself; sibling went out today and Mom tagged along with her, so hopefully she'll be fine not tagging along with me. Right now, I need to make myself exercise, and in a while dinner needs to exist.

 

[MaeZe]

Boo for sick pets. My buddy relapsed today, or got reinfected. Started yesterday and I was hoping it was just me not letting her out soon enough. But nooo...

This time the vet at the emergency/specialist center let me bring her right in. Another antibiotic shot a culture and sensitivity this time and a plan if it is drug resistant and/or if she ends up needing a maintenance dose.

Boo for vet bills. On top of the thousand dollars so far it was another $500 today.

Yay for having the money and the money for $100/groceries and $50 for gas for my 'economy' car. In other words I don't drive a truck.

Makes me glad I'm financially okay at the moment but sad at how many people wouldn't have that kind of money.

And I suspect my aging dog is just going to get more expensive as time goes by. But she's my buddy and I'm going to be really sad when she dies.

More bad news, my brother's retina detached again. It was just fixed a couple weeks ago. So he's back in surgery right now. I have two brothers and that makes four detached retinas and two needing redos between them.

They put this weird thing in called a buckle. It's a belt thingy that goes around the outside of the eyeball to squish it in a bit. How that helps the retina is beyond me. It looks like something you'd have to get used to the feeling of. One brother already has one and the other will probably get one tonight.

Detached retinas can be hereditary. Both my brothers have had the raw end of the stick when it comes to health problems. They were born with a blood defect that makes their red blood cells round instead of donut shaped. And they had their spleens out as toddlers to keep it from filtering out the round blood cells. That caused them a whole lot of other health problems.

I have different health problems which right now I don't mind because I'm hoping I didn't inherit the retina problem.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Boo for relapsing pets and detatching retinas!

The retinal buckle is what they did to my dad when his retina detatched; IIRC, it worked fine and didn't leave the tiny blind spots that the other method they used at the time - basically "spot welding" with a laser type thing - would have. The theory, I think, is that the "ridge" from the band around the eye gives the retina something to adhere to, rather than the smooth interior of a sphere. But don't quote me on that; I am not an eye doctor, nor do I play one on TV, which is just as well because I am not an actor, either...

Anyway, 'tis later on Friday. Managed one quick transcription job. Considered grabbing a second one, but laziness won. Think I'll stream something tonight instead. Maybe a couple somethings; tomorrow's Saturday, after all. (In theory, I may be able to get out of the house alone tomorrow for a bit. We shall see if relatives remember...)

 

[MaeZe]

That's encouraging, Brightdreamer. Interesting how common retinal detachments must be but they seem to get repaired with good results.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Saturday morning, and for once it's not raining. Hoping to slip out of the house in a bit to run some errands and generally not be around relatives for a bit. Probably won't go too far...

 

[RaiscaraAvalon]

It's cold. I have to go out in the cold and I'm not looking forward to it. Also need some Tylenol or something for my headache. Meh.

 

[MaeZe]

Hooray for clear skies when a CME (coronal mass ejection) is about to hit the Earth sparking auroras as far south as Seattle and maybe further!

You never know with these CMEs until they actually arrive. It needs to be really big in order to see the aurora without seeking darker skies. And sometimes people only see it when they take a long exposure with a camera. Those amount to pink or reddish sky on the horizon and aren't very impressive.

I've seen the light show right out my picture window when we had a huge aurora back in 2001. It's addicting.

The lights glowed overhead similar to this video at minute 1:09. (The video is of a different solar storm.) I tried to get my son out of bed to come see it but he just wouldn't get up. He was 12.

 

[Gatteau]

Oof, sorry to hear of all the pet and vet issues! Hope all the little guys feel better soon! My guy is just annoyed that we don't want to go out in the kinda crappy weather and play with him more, when we both have the sniffles too. Just being a whiny little stinker...

Earlier this week we got literally the most rain ever recorded here in a 24 hour period. It did. not. stop. for a full day - that never happens. It turned to snow overnight and we got about 6-8 inches, so that was exciting to see. Good for the mountains (ski resorts opening early!) and the pup just loves running and squiggling around in it. His doggie snow angels are all wing, ha.

NaNo prep is going pretty well. I hit some moments of inspiration between moments of sleep early this morning and I'm excited about just diving into it starting Monday and seeing what happens. I've got a lot of research covered, and been working on a fair amount of backstory, but it was starting to feel kind of boxed in, and now I've remembered that I always have more fun with this if I just rush in with wild abandon. So I'm glad I've got a plan, but I'm going to just let it flow and get as weird as it feels like.

Disappointingly, the pretty new notebook I ordered this week is not scheduled to arrive until Nov 2 *groan* and I really wanted the neatness of starting off NaNo in a brand new notebook and having it all contained there. So now I have to decide: do I just do it all in a notebook I already have sitting and waiting (still nice, but not the one I was excited about), start in one and then switch, or wait a day til the new one gets here and lose the first day of NaNo...?? What to do, what to do...?

 

[Friendly Frog]

I don't want to jinx it yet but I dare say Junior Cat is starting to feel better... He ate, he drank (both only the good stuff, of course), he has washed himself and his fever is going down. Straight lines is still a bit of a challenge every ten steps, looking up knocks him over so we're carrying him up and down stairs in the evening after Cat Curfew and keep him in a room during the day.

He's decided I'm the human he'll velcro himself to so I'm currently not allowed to leave a room without him. Wonder how long that will take since I'm also the one holding him when dad administers the meds...

Sorry to hear your dog had a relapse, Maeze. I hope the new shot will improve things.

Yay for having the money and the money for $100/groceries and $50 for gas for my 'economy' car. In other words I don't drive a truck.

Makes me glad I'm financially okay at the moment but sad at how many people wouldn't have that kind of money.

Amen! But I'll join the 'boo for vet bills' chorus all the same.

Hooray for clear skies when a CME (coronal mass ejection) is about to hit the Earth sparking auroras as far south as Seattle and maybe further!

Wow, that's so cool!

We never have good weather to witness astrological cool stuff. No matter how I tried I didn't succeed in getting a glimpse of Neowise meteor earlier either.

Disappointingly, the pretty new notebook I ordered this week is not scheduled to arrive until Nov 2 *groan* and I really wanted the neatness of starting off NaNo in a brand new notebook and having it all contained there. So now I have to decide: do I just do it all in a notebook I already have sitting and waiting (still nice, but not the one I was excited about), start in one and then switch, or wait a day til the new one gets here and lose the first day of NaNo...?? What to do, what to do...?

Oooh damn, that's a proper dilemma.

If you don't end up writing too much the first two days, I'd start on loose paper and transfer it as soon as the new notebook arrived.

New notebooks are sooo enticing!

 

[Brightdreamer]

Hooray for healing cats!

Boo for late notebooks!

And it's later on Saturday. I did, indeed, get to go out for a while today. Hit three bookstores (and didn't find most of what I was looking for), got lunch, and hit a grocery store on the way home. Also saw part of a very fancy Indian wedding, complete with the white horse in fancy gilded trappings and the music, which was kind of cool. At least someone's presumably having a less sucky year.

And today in the mail I got perhaps the oddest thing I've ever recieved: a hand-written card thanking me for the purchase of a bidet sprayer. I did not have that on my bingo card at all... (They're asking for an Amazon review, which I really should get to, but still... didn't get one of those for the first sprayer we got.)

--

Sunday morning, Halloween, and finally getting around to the delayed room-tidying that I should've done yesterday but didn't. Also need to get the site updated for the end of the month. And of course the usual plans: ornament work, exercise, beating my head against the wall as I try to decide whether to expand that short sloppy story for NaNo throw something else down on the virtual paper and see if it'll stick for 50K words...

 

[MaeZe]

Boo for auroras that don't live up to the hype. I should remember that since it's very common on the spaceweather site to do that. In this case though, it was an X-flare (the biggest rating category) on the Sun that looked like it was Earth directed.

The report this morning says it was aimed a bit toward the south of our planet.

In
summary, the Halloween Storm of 2021 was more trick than treat. What happened? It's possible that the bulk of the Oct. 28th CME simply missed our planet. The source of the CME, sunspot AR2887, is located in the sun's southern hemisphere. When it exploded 3 days ago, much of the debris flew south of the sun-Earth line. Computer models suggesting a direct hit apparently gave too little weight to the CME's assymetry.

Hey, it happens!

I love that last comment.

It might have been disappointing anyway because a bit of fog began to collect after sunset. On the positive side, we are on the increasing side of the eleven year solar activity cycle.

The Sun is so fascinating.

I live next to a forested park. When the Sun is out like yesterday and today, and it is fall and the leaves are beginning to change, it is so gorgeous! The sunlight reaches between the trees and makes the forest look magical.

 

[Gatteau]

*Important notebook delivery update!* Because I know you're all dying to know, the tracking now says it is in town, handed off to USPS and estimated delivery moved up to tomorrow, November 1! So if I don't get up til about noon (as per usual), and the mail truck usually comes around 2 or 3 in the afternoon (I know because the pup always goes barky bark bark), I could have notebook in hand by the time I get around to writing, hm...

 

[Brightdreamer]

Hooray for early notebooks!

Halloween night, and I cleared my Lucifer rewatch tonight. Still a damned good series. Now I can get back to clearing Expanse S4 and 5 before December 10 (when the final season drops its first episode).

And I'm still on the fence about what I'm starting for NaNo tomorrow... part of me really, really wants to try expanding that short, another part thinks I'll muck it up if I try. I mean, it's not like I can't just ignore whatever verbal hairball I hack up in November and just stick with the shorter version, but still...

--

Monday morning, November 1, and weather's turning gray again.

Still on the NaNo fence insofar as what I'll write; will probably put that off until evening, poke at some last minute research first by way of procrastination...

 

[Friendly Frog]

I recently backed a kickstarter by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith and received in the stretch-goals a few free codes for some of their WMG publishing lectures. I will not be using all of them but I'm allowed to give them away. I just don't know any writers outside AW. So I hope someone here may be interested in them?

These I have codes for:

Pop-Up #46: How to Use Existing Systems to Add Tension
Pop-Up #47: How to Write Mysteries Without Murder
Pop-Up #48: How to Create Automatic Depth
Pop-Up #49: The Real Value of Your Writing
Pop-Up #50: Stamina and Strategies to Write a Lot

Feel free to message me if one of them catches your eye. Seems like a waste for me to keep and not use otherwise.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Mergh... Monday evening, dark and damp, and I'll be diving headfirst into the concrete pool of NaNo in a while, here. Decided against expanding that one short - if it happens, it won't be for NaNo - and am going with another idea I sorta kicked around some time ago and never finished. We'll see how that goes... The point is to word, after all, regardless of whether one words well or words poorly.

Tomorrow will be a shopping day. Yippy skippy...

 

[RaiscaraAvalon]

I have shopping to do too, Brightdreamer - but I do most of mine online, other than food.

 

[Brightdreamer]

I do a fair bit of shopping online, as well, but grocery and local stuff is still done manually.

That, and Mom "wants to get out of the house", and her car is currently nonfuctional (plus I'm not entirely sure she's up to driving anymore - she never was much on driving, anyway). So it's as much about her as it is about a need to eat.

Mergh...

And it's Tuesday morning. NaNo's off to an okay start as of yesterday. Right now I'm eating breakfast and waiting for the all-clear for the shopping trip. (We have to wait for the pest control guy to do his inspection before we leave; sibling's asleep and Dad isn't up to that kind of thing and is also probably still asleep anyway.)

 

[MaeZe]

Oh joy, not.

So the culture and sensitivity is back for my dog and the bacteria are resistant to almost everything. There's one drug left and it's a bugger. They no longer use it in humans though they used to. The side effects are bad. Hopefully they won't be so bad for dogs.

When I hear resistant to almost everything that makes me very nervous.

Aaand I get to go to the vet tonight to pick up the first few doses which they will kindly get the first dose down for me. It's already almost seven, I haven't had dinner, so it's not something I had planned to do tonight.

I've been trying to reach them since three this afternoon. If they could have gotten back to me sooner this would all be done already.

And she has to take it for a month, twice a day. More joy.

These are pills but apparently they can make it in liquid form at a compounding pharmacy that I can get in a day or so.

Poor baby. I know she isn't comfortable because she's whining instead of barking for me to let her out.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Boo for resistant bacteria!

Tuesday evening, and today has been a bit of a day. On the plus side, the store trip wasn't too painful (save a semi deciding at the last minute to cut in front of us at north of 70 MPH... thankfully, the lane next to me was open...). On the minus side, the sibling's weekly woodcarving class was cancelled yet again; last week, he was out of power and hadn't called to tell anyone until too late, and this week his wife forced him to cancel because he's been down with Something Not Good and even had to go on IV fluids for a while.

And the sibling's laptop is having Battery Issues, giving her something fresh to howl about... (And, no, just getting a newer laptop isn't an option; she has decided that anything after Windows 7 is the Purest and Utterest Evil Ever and refuses to touch anything new, even a tablet... trust me, it's the subject of many a howl.)

In any event, work looms tomorrow so I have to make word count on NaNo tonight.

 

[MaeZe]

Yikes! Especially about the semi but the rest sounds bad as well.

We are back, she's terribly restless and had a petit mal seizure when I was putting her harness on. Not the full blown kind but not her usual eye flutter/head shake kind either.

I'm afraid she's not long for this world. But we'll keep chugging along, taking care of what I can. Poor little Annie.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Wednesday morning, back to work, and it's generally after a week off that I realize how much I really, really don't give a crud about this job, even though I know intellectually I could be a lot worse off, and besides I'm really lazy because it's only a part time job anyway and that's a stupid thing to complain about, so I shouldn't complain.

Getting maybe three hours of sleep doesn't help.

And I have to shop my way home because we're out of dinner options.

Mergh...

 

[Friendly Frog]

Last blood work results in for Junior Cat. Surprise surprise: inconclusive.

Still, he's improving. He tips once maybe every thirty paces or so. He can look up without tipping. He washes. He manages to get into seats and on laps, and he has gone up and down the stairs several times without crashing. So we've given him a wider range of the house. (Senior Cat does not approve.) He eats well even if the meds do cause some digestion issues.

We'll have to continue the meds a little longer than we anticipated so we had to shift our routine a little so he isn't hiding when it's time for his next dose. Right now he goes from happy-to-see-you-and-running-towards-you' to slowly-backing-away-with-a-worried- 'I made a terrible mistake'-look.