Category Archives: GeekWorld

Dogs, Family, GeekWorld, Third Phase, Travel

I Knew Her Right Away

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Spring                                                                              Bloodroot Moon

Home again, home again.  The dogs greeted me with unusual joy and vigor.  Vega spun round and Gertie jumped up, biting at me to come play.  Tumultuous.  And wonderful.

Kate came into the Loon Cafe and picked me up from the Hiawatha light rail.  She had on blinking ear-rings.  The server at the cafe, before I arrived, had asked her, “Is that how your friend will recognize you?”  It was.  I knew her right away.

She led us through the maze of parking spaces to the truck, not easy in the mammoth commuter ramps that collect cars from the western burbs.

The trip home had no remarkable moments, a good thing for travel.  I did use, for the first time, a bar code boarding pass on my cell phone.  Felt very with it.  You all have probably done it for years, but it was amazing to me.

It’s nice to use the full size key-board and not the 92%, slick metal keys of the netbook.  Having said that, the netbook has been the best single computer purchase I’ve ever made.  It goes everywhere with me when I travel.  It’s compact, picks up wi-fi with ease and has a 92% keyboard, which is why I bought it.  It’s allowed me to post on this blog from as far away as Cape Horn, south of Tierra del Fuego.

 

GeekWorld, Writing

III

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Imbolc                                                              Valentine Moon

Considering a strategy for revision.  How do I utilize the comments, opinions, various thoughts from my beta readers?  Where do I begin?  Do I proceed from front to back or do I manage certain structural issues first?  How much time should I give myself to complete it?  May 1st seems good.  That would give me six weeks accounting for the D.C. trip and beginning work in the garden and with the bees.

OK.  May 1st.  Beltane.  Finish revision III in time for the growing season.  A good time to start full bore on writing Loki’s Children.  And getting that revision in the hands of an agent.  I have a March 30 class on publishing at the Loft, so that should work well with that timing.

Given the time frame, which if you notice I set as I wrote, I can reason backwards to plan.  Review all the comments.  Have done.  Note down all that needs to be done.  Their ideas, my impression of what they mean for Missing, and my ideas sparked by the reader’s impressions, then set to work.

(note, I revised my ideas on revision after I found this handy pyramid.  I’m gonna follow it.)

Make sense to me to deal with structural issues first.  Transitions, movement of the story as regards John and the unmaking–their relative weights and interleaving.  The POV issue is structural, too, in this case.  Finding those areas where the action flags and cutting them out.

After those I can attend to the character development/recognition matters and the map/diverse number of places, plus revamping the action in light of the cuts above.

Finished up my computer upgrade this morning by installing the speakers.  Now I have a Pandora station playing, Early Music.  Nice with the snow falling.

Art and Culture, GeekWorld, Humanities, Media

Collecting

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Imbolc                                                                       Valentine Moon

Tumblr.  Addictive in a sense I don’t fully understand yet.  I’ve selected bloggers on Tumblr, largely where folks post images of one sort or another, who present art.  Over 100 of them at last count.  At any one time only a handful might be posting, so keeping up, or at least staying roughly abreast is doable.  The range of images that folks select is wide, one of  the charms of Tumblr for me, a chance to both get inside people’s heads as they choose images to post and an opportunity to see art that I wouldn’t have found on my own.  In that sense it’s a very eclectic museum.

(folder: architecture)

The addictive part for me is that I’m saving images, image after image, in those files I talked about reorganizing a while back.  Many, many art folders:  art contemporary, art Russia, art Symbolist, artist Blake, artist Matisse.  Cinema and television.  Natural world.  Cities.  War.  Travel.  So on.

Like a squirrel delighted with finding an abundance of acorns, I pluck these images up in my digital cheeks and carry them over to the small holes I’ve dug in my hard drives memory to cache them.  The folders have begun to grow fat with image after image.  Perhaps a hundred images or more in some instances.

(folder, art photography.  the pope’s apartment the night before his announcement about his retirement.)

My question is, why am I doing this?  Part of it is a desire to see again striking images or historically significant images or funny images or moving images.  That’s true, but mostly, like the squirrel, I dig the hole, then go on to dig another hole, often forgetting the one I dug before.  This is what oak trees count on.  How oak forests grow.  Of course, I know where all my folders are and I can open them whenever I want, but my point is that I’m more engaged in stuffing them full than utilizing them.

Utilizing them for what?  My first approach to answering this question will come on Thursday when I start reading the catalog for the Pre-Raphaelite show at the National Gallery.  I have a folder filled with Pre-Raphaelite art and will find images, I imagine, of most of the pieces in the show.  Perhaps I’ll curate them myself, re-organize them in different ways, trying to emphasize different aspects of this 19c phenomenon.  Perhaps I’ll use the images for comparison, for tracing the history of certain themes and techniques.  Or, I might just open the folder and look at them, one after the other, taking in their color, their subject matter.

(folder History England.  a 1920 poster for the tube.)

This is an activity only possible with the internet and large hard drives.  And a lot of time.  It feels important; that’s why I’m writing about it.  But why?  No idea.

GeekWorld, Great Work

Look. Up in the sky…

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Imbolc                                                                  Valentine Moon

A big day for Asteroid 2012 DA14, but an even bigger one for the Chelyabinsk fireball.  Must have a great PR agent.  Timing its fiery entrance as space shuttle sized DA14 passed by ensured the Chelyabinsk meteor, “only” the size of an SUV according to an MIT scientist, a forever memory in the hearts of all of us interested in astronomical phenomenon.

(Asteroid 2012 DA14, seen from the Gingin Observatory in Australia. Image via NASA.)

I heard a New York Times reporter ask the same scientist from MIT if Siberia attracted these kind of events, referencing, of course, the Tunguska event in 1908 that flattened an area of the taiga roughly 1,000 square miles in area.  No, he said.  Coincidence.

When asked about the how much we should be concerned about an extinction level event, the same scientist, dodged the question.  Didn’t make me feel secure.  Here’s a link to the article and the video interview.

 

Garden, GeekWorld, Great Work, Holidays, Our Land and Home

Pruning Weather

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Imbolc                                                                   Valentine Moon

Last of the furnace vendors.  Get your hot one, right here!  Red hot and cozy!  Discounted. Tax credited.  Rebate worthy.

We’ve made a decision.  We’ll go with Centerpoint, a dual-stage, variable speed motor operating at 95% or 96.5% efficiency.  A bit more with these options but they optimize the conservation of both natural gas and electricity.  Once we get it in that’s one less matter we’ll have to worry about over the next few years.  A good thing.

After Brad left, an interesting guy, knowledgeable about food as a former catering manager for Lunds, we put on our winter gear.  I got out the Sorel’s and clapped my work gloves on, wool hat and down vest.  Kate got ready.  She has less stringent requirements for work in the cold than I do.

Outside in the deep snow, bright with a clear day’s sun, we first cut back to the ground all the raspberries.  In clearing the snow with a coal shovel, I discovered that I could clear snow and prune in the same motion.  Kate went in afterward and cleaned up.

When I finished in the raspberries, I went to the tangle of grapevines that have grown on our front 6-foot chain link fence.  Originally a Celt (our first and dearest Irish Wolfhound) escape prevent barrier, it now serves mainly to give us an ample supply of wild grapes in the fall thanks to the volunteer vines.  Last summer though there were few grapes.

Lots of leaves and vine, not many fruit.  We’d never pruned it before, or if we did, it was a while ago, so it had overgrown.  I whacked away at the orchard side today;  I’ll finish it tomorrow.  Kate got after the bittersweet.  It was a good day for this work.

Back inside I had a snack of bacon and blue cheese with chestnut flower honey, the first installment in my birthday gift, a monthly specialty bacon club.  How cool is that?  Thanks, Kate.

Asia, GeekWorld, Latin, Literature, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Just Stuff

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Imbolc                                                                                 New (Valentine) Moon

The images, each moved from their numbered folders into new folders named for the organizational scheme that moved me at the moment, have a new home.  I’ve checked the prior machine for missing images, found a few and they’ll get added in tomorrow, but in essence the big image reorganization, self-inflicted, is over.

(Valkyrie (1908) by Stephan Sinding located in Churchill Park, Copenhagen, Denmark)

On March 1st I’m going to hit Missing with my third revision.  I’m hoping this one puts me close to finished that I can begin shopping it to agents.  I think it will, but until it’s done, I won’t know.  Research for Loki’s Children goes well, too. I’m almost done with all the Eddas, then I’ll go back over them again, looking at my notes and underlining, taking pieces here and there that I’ll use.

With the image reorganization I’ve felt a bit off my game this last week, but I’m back now.  Time to step up again.

Each day, though, I have (for the most part) finished a sentence of Jason and Medea.  That doesn’t sound like a very ambitious rate, but by the time a sentence is done, which can be between 2 and 14 lines long, I’m ready to put away the Lewis and Short, the Wheeler and the Anderson, close Perseus and go upstairs.  It’s a pace that, for now, allows me to work at an intense level, get work done steadily and yet allows enough time to do a quality job.

Been reading Civil Servant’s Notebook by Wang Xiaofang.  Author of 13 novels, all about Chinese bureaucracy, this is his first translated into English.  Published by Penguin.  Of all the material I’ve read on China of late this one seems to have the most insight into contemporary China.  Wang gives a satirical perspective on life inside municipal government, but he also strips the veins of a culture deep with history and short on ethical guidance.  I’ve read elsewhere of a moral aimlessness that inflicts contemporary China, but I was never able to put my finger on it until reading Civil Servant’s Notebook.  I don’t have it down here with me now, but tomorrow I’ll quote a few lines from it to show you what I mean.

Cinema and Television, GeekWorld, Great Work, Health, Latin, Our Land and Home, Translating Metamorphoses

95%

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Imbolc                                                                                Cold Moon

So the parade of salesmen has begun.  First up was Reliant heat and cooling.  They sent out a really good guy.  Told us what would fit, how much it would cost.  Very reasonable price.  Good furnace.  If I hadn’t had the others scheduled, I would have bought this one.  Still, we’ll hear the others out, too.  You never know.

This furnace runs at 95% efficiency.  As opposed to our current 80%.  Think about a difference of 15% less gas used.  Then multiply it by hundreds and thousands of homes.  Hard to believe.  Of all the strategies to combat global warming, the easiest and most immediate ones involve conservation.  More fuel efficient cars, furnaces.  Better insulation in homes.  Switching from coal-burning electricity generation.  Having cleaning crews in large buildings clean during the day.  Strategies that have broad application yet involve relatively straightforward choices and proven technologies.

Finally wrenched myself away from the image moving to work on the Edda’s some more.  Brunhild today.  A sad story.  Sigurd jumped into that burning ring of fire, but boy it really didn’t work out for him or Brunhild.

Also back to my one sentence of Latin.  Again, it seemed to flow today.  Based on past experience I’ll hit an impossible head-slapper tomorrow, but today.  All right.

I’m in my second week of rest for my patella-femoral syndrome.  I’ll start back on the workouts on Monday.  I’ll see how, or whether, this helped.

Been watching House of Cards on Netflix.  As the brave new face of television, I like it.  13 episodes up all at once.  We can watch it as we like it.  Cool.

 

Art and Culture, GeekWorld

Images, Images Everywhere

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Imbolc                                                                      Cold Moon

Did I mention I transferred all my images, thousands literally, to this newer computer?  Did I mention that for some reason the pictures library here rearranged them in a seemingly random manner?  Requiring my image by image attention to slot them back into accessible folders.  Did I mention that?

Well, if I didn’t, I should have.  It’s taking me a very long time.  A great time suck and for some reason an almost obsessive need for order has taken over.  I need to have them all sorted and back in their places.  I’m not normally like this, at least I don’t think I am, but until this is done, everything else is on the back-burner.

Geez.

On the one hand sorting the images is a sort of psychometric. I and only I chose to save these specific images.  Why?  What do they mean?  Why does the same image appeal to me over and over?  What categories have I chosen as important?  Images of our gardens and our home seem right now to be the largest single collection, though the art collection is very big as are the various travel collections.  Then there’s all those shots of the grandkids.  Animals.  Climate and weather.  Cinema and television.  And on and on.

Some strange satisfaction in seeing the image, deciding on its classification, moving it and going on to the next image has me in its grip.  Some sort of librarian impulse.  Or taxonomist.

Odd.

GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

Furnace Trouble

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Winter                                                                   Cold Moon

Of course, the only time you’re going to learn that your furnace has problems is in the winter.  So in that sense it’s no surprise that I’m sitting up waiting on some repair technician who has to work late on Sunday night, Super Bowl Sunday night.

(what our furnace is not doing)

Our home has good insulation and we keep it cool to begin with, so we’re not suffering in any way; but, it wouldn’t be good for this to go on for a long while.  It’s 10 degrees out now. At least it’s not last week when we were looking at -15.

You can just hear the Lakota and the Ojibwe, the pioneers and other early settlers chortle at any discomfort we have in homes of solid construction, with insulation of R-50 or better, central heating and cooling, indoor plumbing.  Can you imagine living in a log cabin or a sod hut when the temperature hits 30 below or more?  I can’t.

The really good news for us is that we have a reliable company that we’ve used for many years.  Centerpoint energy dispatched a person when I called around 7 pm.  Heat out is an emergency call here, but there are always multiple furnaces out.  So, you get in line.  Right now I’m supposed to hear before midnight.  Maybe.  It depends on how long it took to solve the person’s problem before us.  And you want them to solve the problem.

So. You wait and are happy to have someone to wait for.

GeekWorld, Latin, Weather +Climate

Off the Plateau

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Winter                                                             Cold Moon

Bitter this morning.  -15.  Headed toward a high of 2.  Which we might reach and we might not.

Awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night.  It happens.  Not often.  This morning I kept turning over ideas for rewriting Missing, rewriting ideas spurred by my beta readers. I’m not ready to get started on that because I’ve got other readers yet to report in, but already the feedback has been very helpful.  Their thoughtfulness will make for a stronger book.

This is a Latin day, a time with Greg.  I felt better translating this last chunk of Jason and Medea and the time with Greg confirmed that my skill level has begun to increase again.  I hit plateaus where I seem to slog along, not doing well, not doing poorly, then bump up to a different, higher capacity.  This was one of those days.  Feels good.

This afternoon I plan to reorganize my images.  I’m on a two-week layoff from working out due to knee pain, most likely patella-femoral syndrome.  Best treatment?  Rest.  So, I’m resting.  I don’t like it; I’m very attached to regular workouts, but the long term is more important than the short term.