A Professional Dilettante

A really interesting article in my local news, with an unexpected (to me, at least) conclusion.

http://mmjustus.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/more-earthquakes-in-yellowstone/

I have a bit of a personal dog in this fight, but I want to go on record as saying I don't think Charlie Stross was thinking through his pov on the subject anywhere near well enough, and I do think Cora Buhlert is spot on.

Is that they're addictive. But this is the last one I'm going to do until next spring, because I've got a lot of hand-quilting to catch up on over the winter [g].

The Seahawks/49ers Sunday Night Football game is not on rain delay. Not in Seattle, for crying out loud.

It's on lightning delay. We've had more lightning in the last three weeks than we've had in the entire twenty years that came before (she says, having moved here twenty years ago last month [g]).

ETA: The final score, after an hour's delay, was 29-3 Seahawks. Works for me...

Wednesday a friend and I went up to Crystal Mountain Ski Area just east of Mt. Rainier, and rode the gondola to the very top:

http://mmjustus.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/wow-what-a-view/

Photos do not do what we saw up there justice, but I did my best.

All shiny new -- well, not all shiny new. Much of the existing content is the same. But there's a lot of new content, too, including the first chapter of the work in progress, working title Cross-Country. And the first section of "Homesick."

But the links are all updated, so far as I have them (not all the sales links that will be there are there yet because the e-books haven't populated out to those sites yet, and the print books won't be available at all for a couple more weeks), and there are some format changes, most noticeably the fonts and colors to make things more consistent-looking with the book covers, and less generic.

And, speaking of print books, I ordered the proof copies of the three remaining books. So yay! They should be here next week.

That's all I have left to do on this mega-project until the proof copies come in and I approve them, and until things start populating out to other sales sites and I can grab the links and put them on the webpage.

So now I can concentrate on getting Cross-Country's draft done, and getting started on the new museum gig.

Oh, and celebrate by going up to Crystal Mountain and riding the gondola with a friend tomorrow [g].

http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/09/years-worth-mount-rainier-national-park-views-resident-rangers23855

Unfortunately, I can't find the embed code for this video, but the images are just stunning.

Oh, and the Seahawks just won their first regular-season game against the Carolina Panthers. It wasn't pretty (defensive slogs are not my favorite kind of football game, thxmch), but they won.

No, they don't really have anything to do with each other.

Now that I'm all but done -- or at least have reached a point where I can't do any more until I'm gotten back to -- with publishing four books in paper, republishing two ebooks (new covers, minor changes inside) and publishing two new ebooks, all at once -- now tell me why I did them all at once again???

Anyway, leaving that sentence fragment to dangle over its own cliff, now that I'm all but done with that, my website needs some serious updating. So that's what I've been working on all bloody afternoon. I'm making some progress, but I suspect this is going to take me the better part of a week's worth of afternoons (mornings are for actual, real, writing, as in putting words on the page -- over 70,000 on Cross-Country so far since the middle of July). I can do it, I just don't do it often enough to remember how to do it without a lot of trial and error and looking things up. I'm getting there.

And since my house has fallen to shambles in the last couple of weeks while I wrestled with InDesign, cover art, and headers and footers, not to mention CreateSpace, Amazon, and Smashwords, I think I'm about to call it a day and at least mop the kitchen floor.

Oh, and I woke up Sunday morning with my left knee hurting, right under (as opposed to below) my kneecap. It hurts to bend it and unbend it (although not to stay in either position, but it makes getting up and down stairs interesting), and so far it's not getting better. Ibuprofen helps the muscles around it not hurt, but not the kneecap itself. If I thought the doctor would do anything but prescribe stronger painkillers, I'd go, but I'm going to stick it out for at least another week before I do and see if it starts getting better by then. I cannot afford to continue to develop the tolerance for ibuprofen that I began when my shoulder ended up having surgery in 2005. I need that stuff for my migraines.

Anyway. Oh, and we had another round of thunderboomers last night. It sounded like Texas out there. The cats are not amused at all this rain, either. I suspect they're going to be really pissed by the end of October, and stay that way till next June.

On the bright side (there's a bright side?) I have another contract with Lakewood. Gonna build 'em another exhibit this winter. This one's about Lakewood's connection with the military and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, just down the street.

Repeating History's proof copy arrived today, and it's gorgeous!!!

At the risk of sounding like my mother (long story involving homemade bread), IT'S A REAL BOOK!!!

OMIGOSH, OMIGOSH, OMIGOSH!!!!

[bounce, bounce, bounce]





There are a couple of little things I need to fix before I hit the 'publish' button, but other than that...

But I found this very funny. Esp. because how often do you see references to The Road to El Dorado?



Ganked from kayshapero