A Professional Dilettante

I hate insomnia. Esp. when it seems to be attached to some sort of bug. I think I was running a fever again last night (I was too rattled to actually check). This is the third time since the first of the year that I've had this random mild fever and insomnia. The first two times it only lasted about 24 hours. I sure hope that's the case this time.

There's not much point in going to the doctor over it, because of the time frame. By the time I got to the doctor, it'd be gone.

But I really do hate this. I don't function well on less than eight solid hours of sleep a night, and I think I got about three perfectly useless hours last night, given that they were scattered in catnaps of about ten or fifteen minutes each.

Did you know that if you throw two containers of lemon squeeze Tillamook yogurt into your little Cuisinart ice cream maker (bought on a whim a couple of years ago and dusted off) you'll end up with an incredibly delicious frozen treat for two (or one now and one into the freezer for later [g])?

I didn't. Not till now. So much for making ice cream in my ice cream maker...

How do I leave a group on Goodreads that I have discovered I shouldn't have joined in the first place because they made me feel unwelcome with my very first post?

There doesn't appear to be a "leave group" or "unjoin" button anywhere on the group's page, or on my page or on the page listing the groups I belong to. Or an "edit groups" page. Or anything else anywhere else I can think of that would be remotely useful for the purpose.

I would like to get out of this group ASAP. Help?

ETA: Got it.

To everyone north of our mutual border, and especially to all those soaked Albertans. May you soon reach the ideal amount of water, not too much and not too little. And stay there for a good long time.

Boom!

(one of the many advantages of getting Canadian TV on my cable is that I get to watch your set of celebrations, then three days later go participate in my own [g]).

My new (as of last winter) next-door neighbor has just installed a very noisy room AC unit in his bedroom window. Which is three feet from my bedroom window. I just called his landlord and left a message, then went and fetched the president of the condo association to give me some backup when I went to him and complained about it. He said he'd do something about it. We'll see what he decides to do, esp. in light of the fact that his landlord evidently didn't tell him that the condo by-laws prohibit them upstairs for this very reason.

A quiet in-the-room room AC unit is one thing. This one sounds like a 747 in my bedroom.

ETA the next morning: Well, the unit's out of the window. I guess we'll see what happens next.

You know, this whole problem could be solved amicably if the weather here would just go back to our usual reasonable and normal summer 70s (dF) [sigh]. Two more days according to the weather people. I hope this is our only heat wave for the summer (hey, we only hit 90dF every second or third year, statistically...).

I hope, anyway.

Two things. I started writing Ghost Light yesterday. I don't think this one's quite jelled yet, but that's okay because

I had an idea for a short story/novella in my Yellowstone, er, universe (somehow that SF term doesn't seem quite appropriate in this context, but what the hey). We'll see how long it turns out to be, but since it basically takes place over a period of one day it can't turn out that long, right? [cue maniacal snickers] Hopefully not more than 20,000 words' worth, anyway, which I should be able to punch out pretty quickly. I wrote about 1500 words on it this morning, and I'll publish it as a freebie/99 cent teaser for the rest of the series. What the heck. It's from Will's point of view, and takes place between True Gold and Finding Home. Actually, during WWII.

I had an idea for taking all the material (rather a lot, actually, in several different venues and formats) I've written about my Long Trip and turning it into my answer to William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways. I've always sort of intended to do that, and I'll have to learn how to put photos into an ebook, which has always been what stopped me before, but, to repeat, what the heck.

Anyway, that, along with epubbing Finding Home (just gotta finish the cover now and do the final formatting) and doing paper versions of the entire trilogy (I'm going to be taking classes on how to design paper covers and interiors and using CreateSpace for POD), that ought to keep me busy while Ghost Light finishes percolating. Esp. since said percolating means reading all the research I've collected, too.

Oh, and speaking of covers, here's my first attempt at the one for Finding Home. Any comments and critiques are welcome. And, yes, I'm going to take another photo of those shoes after I drag them through the mud and rub a little sandpaper over them, perhaps sharpen a knife. But you get the gist.



Also, looking at this, please tell me what you think the book's about. Thanks.

First, there's this photo I posted over on WordPress -- http://mmjustus.wordpress.com. Bug people in particular might be interested [eg].

Second, does anyone know how to make a Wordpress (.com, not .org) post automatically repost on DW and LJ? I've got it mirroring to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but I can't figure out how to get them to post over here.

Thanks!

I will never look at Hodgins from Bones the same way again.

I love this. Ganked from Dear Author.

A comment I made on haikujaguar's site:

Lots of people (including me, sometimes, even though I know better) seem to assume that they know people online much better than they really do, too. I just received a rather nasty setdown from someone on LJ (who I have since unfriended) because I made what I thought was a helpful suggestion -- she was asking her FL a question about something that really was something she could only answer for herself, and getting the Jaguar's type 2 answers (practical responses) when it was obvious what she wanted was type 1 (to be listened to), and I made the mistake of pointing out, as gently as I could, that perhaps she wasn't getting what she needed because she was asking for something else.

Every once in a while I will put a foot wrong online that way and get yelled at for what I think is a perfectly reasonable comment, and it only serves to remind me that unless I've taken the time to really get to know someone online (as in personal conversations that go on for long periods of time), it's best to be careful and not say anything at all if I've got the slightest doubt, because I really don't know who I'm talking to at all.

Well, sorta.

My design wall died yesterday. What is a design wall, you ask? It's a vertical surface upon which to arrange quilt blocks so that you can stand back and look at them, and decide if indeed that is the arrangement you actually want to use. Normally they're made of flannel or quilt batting wrapped around some sort of hard surface. Mine was not. It was a commercial product made of thin fleecy fabric with a sort of removable adhesive on either side, made to be mounted on a wall. My mother gave it to me as a gift not long after I moved into this condo almost nine years ago now.

It worked really well for most of the time I owned it, and gradually collected a rather modern-arty-looking collection of threads which looked kind of cool. It also gradually got less and less sticky on the side that showed, and about a year ago I had to start using pins to hold the blocks onto the surface. Then, a couple of months ago, the thing started peeling off the wall. Yesterday, finally, about half of it came loose altogether and basically dumped itself onto my head. So I pulled the rest of it down (I will say one thing -- the package had said it wouldn't damage the finish on the wall and it didn't) and it went into the garbage.

Now, as far as I've been able to tell, they don't make this kind of design wall fabric anymore, and I don't think I'd buy it if they did because I didn't really like the sticky stuff. So I decided to make a more traditional design wall. I found a nice, thick, fuzzy flannel sheet at Goodwill this afternoon, then I went to McLendons (my local version of a cross between Home Depot and a real old-fashioned hardware store -- it has the size and prices of the former and the service of the latter, so I patronize them whenever possible). I asked about foam insulation boards, which is what's recommended for the purpose on a lot of quilting blogs. I was shown some -- very, very pink, but that's okay, the sheet will cover them -- inch-thick, two or four foot by eight foot sheets of insulation board.

I looked at them. I thought about my little Ford Focus. And then I looked at them again. I thought about anyone I knew who might have access to a truck, and came up empty. I wanted the size (AAMOF, what I wanted to do was tape three of the 2x8 foot sheets together to make a folding version), so cutting them down below six feet was not going to work.

Then I lifted one. They weigh practically nothing. And I thought about the mile and a half between my house and McLendon's.

And so, reader, I had the nice lady in the lumber department cut them down to seven feet long (to fit the height of the ceiling in my sewing room) and then wrap strips of shrink-wrap around them to bundle them together while I drove the car home and walked back, and then I carried those three bright pink panels of foam core home.

Gods know what the people on Canyon Road and/or the folks on the freeway (I had to cross an overpass) thought about the crazy lady and her sheets of bright pink foam core, but hey, it's not the most ridiculous thing I've ever done.

And tomorrow I will tape the foam core together (the guy in the fastener department recommended single-sided carpet tape as opposed to duct tape) and staple the sheet over it, lean it on my sewing room wall, and voila! I'll have a new design wall!