Busy For the Next Week

Back in January I referenced, but didn't explain, a family crisis that I was working with my mom to fix. I don't want to get deep into the details, but the short version is that my 82 year old father, who has Parkinson's Disease, has degenerated such that he is no longer capable of handling the family's finances. We found this out when, unable to hide it any longer, he admitted that we were deeply in debt, were losing more money than we were bringing in, and that the family's savings were gone. Needless to say, this caused a lot of anger and resentment, and both my mother and I have had to learn the intricacies of our family's financial situation and try to figure out what could be done about it.

We've considered filing for bankruptcy, and we've considered getting a reverse mortgage, and we rejected both for reasons which are good but I don't want to explain. We've settled on trying to get the house refinanced in such a way that it will reduce our monthly bills (both on the principle payment and by using the money to consolidate and pay off credit card dept), but that requires inspectors to get all up in our bidness, as the kids say, and that means mom and I are busy cleaning up the house in preparation for a bunch of people to tromp through it and invade our privacy. That's basically going to be my life for the next few days.

Then Wednesday I'll be packing for my speaking engagement in Fredericksburg, VA, which I know shouldn't take all day but you don't know my life. Then I leave on a jet plane Thursday, speak on Friday, and then see some folks in Virginia on Saturday before flying home Sunday morning.

So I'm going to be quite busy and may not be able to post anything here until I return. Hopefully Salem will have something tasty for us on Wednesday.

On the Upswing

Last week was pretty bad for me, which is why I didn't write anything.

I'll spare you the details, but the general idea was "monthly depressive cycle coincided with some personal drama and the three-month anniversary of my attack, so I spent a lot of time either feeling sorry for myself or being angry at people for breathing too loudly."

Part of the problem is that it's mid-January and the swelling on my face, while slowly diminishing, still isn't gone. The plastic surgeon said it would be gone in January, although he didn't specify when, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that it MIGHT go away in the next two weeks. I'll book an appointment with him when it does, or when it's February, whichever comes first.

Someone bought me a package of ScarAway silicone sheets for Christmas and I've been using them. I think they're helping, but I'm not sure; it does feel like the bumps on my upper lip are softening and receding. I can't wear them as often as I'd like, because the scars are on my mouth, which means eating with them on is out of the question. I put them on right before bed, though, so I get at least 8 and sometimes 12 hours with them on.

I'm trying to carve out more time to write, especially fiction. I'd like to get back to doing that on a regular basis.

One thing that I have been able to start doing, and which makes me happy, is a return to blogging about preps. I've written two posts on Blue Collar Prepping since the New Year and I hope I can keep it up. I like how it makes me feel.

I'm not sure why I didn't post the links to those posts here until just now. Maybe it's because I feel strange about not being able to call them SHTFriday, or maybe I'm worried that I might not be able to keep it up.

I have been creative lately, though. I've been working more on my Pellatarrum setting... which is cool and all, although there are times I wonder why I do it. To say that fantasy settings are a dime a dozen is to severely devalue the dime, and other than you loyal readers I'm honestly not sure who else gives a crap about it. Why does that matter? Well, I had hoped to one day sell it as a setting on Drive-Thru RPG.

Truth be told, I've had a lot of hopes about being a writer and so far, they haven't panned out.

Sorry, I'm getting maudlin. Maybe I'm still not 100% over this depressive streak. Anyway, that's what is going on with me, and hopefully I'll have more interesting content for you tomorrow.

Be It Resolved

So, I seem to have made it through 2010 basically unscathed, which made it a lot better year than some friends of mine, sad to say. I had the usual ups and downs of life -- met someone, fell in love, had a lot of drama, got my heart broken -- and as a result of working for the Census, I had a really awesome injury, which now means I can tell the story of how I almost cut off my thumb for years and years to come. (Speaking of which: the skin in the affected area is beginning to tingle, ever so slightly, in a pins-and-needles sensation whenever I touch something, and that means the nerve is not only regrowing/reattaching but also reconnecting to the surface.)

My only real New Year's Resolution is to aggressively carve out more quiet "me time" in which to write, or just be alone with my thoughts and imagination. So far, this is working well. I hope that as the days stretch longer and warmer, bringing with them new distractions, I will have ingrained this behavior as a habit.

2010 was, in many ways, my own personal Year of the Phoenix, which is what I had meant to accomplish back in 2009 but couldn't quite manage. Or, I suppose you could say it was a two-year project. Either way, I feel like I am about to reinvent myself as a successful writer, and it is a thrilling prospect.

My goals for the year:

• Crank out chapters of Curse/Or at an increased rate. I'd prefer one chapter a month but that may prove unrealistic. 
• Put out more content for Pellatarrum. This last one is practically guaranteed since in a few days I will submit an article about it to Unicorn Rampant for publishing in their Claw/Claw/Bite PDF e-magazine. If it proves popular (as I hope and pray it will), then writing about Pellatarrum could become a monthly, paying gig for me.
• Devise an adventure outline for Raggi's LotFP WFRPG that he actually likes. This is harder than it sounds.
• Get out of my slump and update this blog more often. 3 times a week seems lazy to me. 
• Write more weird, silly, brain-breaking, or Discordian stuff. This blog has been too damn serious for too damn long. 
• Continue to be awesome and mind-blowing, and keep showing that punk Sortelli who's boss.

I will conclude with The Penmonkey's Paean, written by the brilliant Chuck Wendig. I'd get this as a tattoo if I could. (I'm thinking seriously about getting the first line put someplace I can see, like on the inside of my left forearm.)

I am a writer, and I will finish the shit that I started.

I will not whine. I will not blubber. I will not make mewling whimpering cryface pissypants boo-hoo noises. I will not sing lamentations to my weakness.

My confidence is hard and unyielding. Like a kidney stone lodged in the ureter of a stegosaurus.

These are my adult pants. The diapers have burned away in the fires of my phoenix-esque rising.

I will burn down the forest. As the conflagration rages, all my excuses shall come scurrying forth like syphilitic rats whose backs smolder with the smoky scent of my coming victory. When my excuses bound, shrieking and squealing, toward my feet, I shall use my mighty wordhammer to squash them all, ‘asploding each like a sausage stuffed with self-deception and disillusionment.

This book is not the boss of my shit.

These characters dance when I tell them to dance. They leap, cackle, fuck and punch because I jolly well told them to and if they don’t do as I say I will have them nibbled to death by marmots.

This plot is knotted tight in the configuration I demand. With it I shall tie a noose, and with that noose I shall hang my fears and uncertainties by the neck until they void their bowels and their legs quit kickin’.

These words march in the order I choose. They are my little bitches, cobbled together of letters and made to carry heavy notions and lofty ideas and character motivations and bad-ass non-stop mad ninja action. In this way they are like ants, carrying more than they should rightfully be able to carry.

They can even be forced into sentences that no one has ever written before. “Betty Scarpetti can take pictures with her robotic hoo-hah, and those pictures will steal your dreams and sell them to goblins working the Secret Carnival down in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly.” See? Nobody has ever written that before. Every word journey is a Journey West. I am Lewis, and I am Clark. I am not the Donner Party.

I recognize that writing a novel is hard. And I don’t give a lemur’s left foot. I don’t give a good goddamn. I don’t give two shits in a wicker basket. The best things in life are hard. Like hunting pterodactyls. Like getting married. Like climbing a mountain and building a ladder to the moon. Like raising children. Like raising robotic children. Like making a golem who will build a robot who will raise your robot children.

Writing a novel is hard because it needs to be hard. If it was easy, every jackalope with chalk dust on his fingers would write an epic masterpiece on his cave wall.

I am like a crazy mountain goat, clambering to heights no man should go.

I can almost see the top now. The pinnacle awaits.

I will sally forth until I have this book by the balls and by the throat.

I am the Commander of these words.

I am the King of this story.

I am the God of this place.

I am a writer, and I will finish the shit that I started.

Me Monday

I didn't post at all last week, and to be perfectly honest I'm a bit hurt no one even noticed.

So here's the thing: My splint came off last week -- huzzah! -- and immediately my Occupational Therapist (don't call her a Physical Therapist, oh no, she will cut you if you do) started laughing wickedly and began implementing all sorts of sadistic exercises for me to do with my thumb and hand. Most of these involved machines and weights and at least one contraption which I swear once belonged to Torquemada.

So anyway, for fir first few days my hand was really tired and sore and I didn't want to write. Okay, fine. But by about Wednesday, the inertia began to kick in: "Well, I really should write, but I've already missed a few days, so there's no big rush or anything, I'll post when I get around to it..."  In case you hadn't noticed, this is procrastination, my friends, and it is one of my worst enemies.

By the end of the week, though, I was starting to get a bit depressed, because I hadn't posted all week, and it looked like I wouldn't get to it, and why hadn't anyone noticed I wasn't posting? Didn't people miss me and care enough to ask if I was all right and would I post soon? Because as I have said before, I desire constant adulation from my readers.

Now logically, I understand that you folks are busy with your lives, and you probably read this blog through an RSS updater or email or Google Friend Connect, and you just didn't notice that I wasn't updating as often as I used to because you have lives and you were reading the blogs that actually did manage to update in a regular, professional manner. I understand that. But depression ain't rational, folks, and sometimes I just need a hug.

The reason I am writing this isn't because I love to complain (although that is a true fact). It's because I don't really feel like writing anything today, but I realize that I need to write something today in order to make it easier to write something worthwhile tomorrow. It's also a request for help from me to you: if you notice I haven't been around for a while, please drop me a line and let me know that you care I am missing.

Some days I just need a hug.

I'm not slacking

Really.

Yesterday was mostly spent deep in the bowels of bureaucracy (bureaucracy needs a colonoscopy, btw) as I dealt with the Social Security administration to prove that yes, I am who I say I am, and I was indeed born here.

Then I took the rest of the day to work on Ch 5 of Curse/Or. It was productive, but I have little to show for it, which is frustrating. I hope to have something bloggable on it soon.

And then I sat down to watch Chuck and Big Bang Theory. Guys, if you aren't watching these shows, turn in your Geek Cards right now, because these are two of the funniest, coolest, fan-friendly shows on the planet.

So... that was my Monday.

Palette Goes to Court

Sounds scandalous, doesn't it? I wish I could say this was the dramatic culmination of an illicit love triangle between myself, the lieutenant governor, and an aardvark, which resulted in a murder-suicide when the details were leaked to the press, and now I, the sole survivor of our star-crossed love, must now testify. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Unfortunately, I've only been called to jury duty.

The really annoying thing about this is that I can guarantee with near 100% confidence I will be excused from serving. The same thing happened two years ago, when I last was called to be a juror. Apparently, defense attorneys tend not to like it when you say that you know many of the sheriff's deputies personally, either having gone to school with them or them being friends of the family.

So anyways, that's the rest of my day shot. I hope the rest of you have a great Columbus Day and I'll see you tomorrow!

Allergies Suck

This summer has been kicking my ass like no other in recent memory. Let me try to describe it as partial justification for why I only posted once last week. This is kind of graphic, so the squeamish should take heed.

1. I awake with the peculiar feeling of the Sahara having taken residence in my mouth. This is because earlier in the night, while I was sleeping, my nasal passages closed and so for the past four hours I've been breathing through my mouth to avoid suffocation. My tongue has a delightful coating of dried phlegm along its surface whose consistency resembles epoxy. My morning coffee and grapefruit juice are at industrial strength just so that I can taste them.
   
2. My head aches almost immediately after I get up, due to the air trapped inside my sinus cavities. Said cavities also feel like they've been filled with cement. I have my daily fantasy of drilling holes into my skull and installing purge valves which allow me to rinse my sinuses with warm saline before vacuuming the mess out. I conclude that with body piercing and tribalism on the rise, I could totally rock the industrial-goth look with a rig like that and not look at all out of place. Perhaps even devise a line of fashionable valve accessories, like colorful caps which match my nail polish.
   
3. Now that I am vertical, the mucous within my skull sloooooowly drains under the inexorable force of gravity. Half of it decides to go out my nose, which I am constantly blowing and wiping. The other half goes down the back of my throat, requiring me to make that age-old female decision of spit or swallow? I go with swallow, because it's easier and over the course of my life I've already consumed liters of my own snot. But regardless of which choice I make, I will still sound like the worst cold you've ever had giving an exceptionally messy blowjob.
   
4. Oh look, it's noon. I've finally managed to expel most of the mucous from my head and am feeling mostly normal, but my nose is as red and raw as a W.C. Fields character. But god dammit, I can breathe now.
5. I have about three hours of grace in which I must perform all tasks requiring higher brain functions. Lotsa luck, Erin.
   
6. Around 4 pm, the Florida Afternoon Thunderstorm arrives. Now, I love thunderstorms, but these things push a pressure wave in front of them that causes excruciating headaches. Depending on my current sinus status and the direction of the storm, my head either feels like it's going to explode (low pressure front) or implode (high pressure front). I begin to ache fully an hour before the storm hits. Sometimes I take various painkillers but at this point I've built up a decent tolerance to anything that isn't prescription-strength.
   
7. As the storm hits, I crawl into bed with the lights out and desperately try to relax. This is roughly equivalent to not flinching after receiving a static shock. I briefly contemplate the virtues of monastic asceticism and meditation before realizing I couldn't last a day without an internet connection.
   
8. I wake up between 7 and 8 pm. Repeat steps 1-3, only this time now I have to deal with my family, walk my dogs, and fix and eat a dinner that's about 2 hours too late for my hypoglycemic ass.
   
9. Try desperately to be productive between 11 pm and 2 am, which is the period after my family goes to sleep but before I go completely loopy from exhaustion.
   
10. Say "fuck it" and play City of Heroes or Dungeons & Dragons Online before going to sleep.
    

I cannot wait for Fall.

Mondays suck

I don't mean a pull a Garfield on you folks, but Mondays just suck ass for me on some unquantifiable level -- which is why I'm writing this on a Tuesday.

I say unquantifiable because I really can't determine a reason why they should suck so much. It's not that I have to get up early, battle rush-hour traffic, and rejoin the workforce after two days off, because, as a semi-unemployed writer, every day is basically Thursday for me.

(Why Thursday? Because it occupies that nebulous place in space-time that is immediately after the halfway point, but an infinity before the end. It's the weekday version of the last 20 minutes of school, in which time ceases to exist as a measurable quantity and becomes a subjectively infinite purgatory.)

I mean, I determine what day it is by recalling what I watched on television the night before, so don't think I'm living some glorious slacker existence of unending summer when it's really that dreary span of time which lingers between dinner and whatever's on TV at 8 pm.

So with that established, Monday should be just another Thursday evening, right? Except it's not. 99% of the time, I wake up Monday morning feeling like ass microwaved on a stale waffle. It's kind of like being hungover, except with no nausea and shaking. Sometimes I have a headache, but sometimes not. I could understand all this if I had spent the weekend in debauchery, but since the dissolution of my real life social circle (long story) all I do Saturday is write, putz around online, and sometimes see a movie. Sunday afternoon, I do laundry, then watch three hours of television in the evening.

It's not exactly kicking, is it? And yet, come Monday morning, I feel like I spent 8 hours dancing on a stripper pole and giving blowjobs while wired on meth. Sometimes I wonder if I'm Tyler Durden, and my alter-ego has a better sex life than I do. If so, I wish she'd leave me some notes and maybe some scandalous photographs as keepsakes.

Anyway, the entire upshot of this is to tell you why I sometimes don't write on Mondays. It's not that I love my readers any less, it's that I'm fucking exhausted from what I can only assume is a secret life of mayhem perpetrated by my second personality.

I am trying to get better, though. Some of you have hopefully noticed an increase in writing lately. This is all part of a little something I like to call Operation: Stop Being Such A Whiny Bitch And Just Write Already Goddammit and is the first step in my personal Year of the Phoenix. The first rule of O:SBSAWBAJWAG is that I will write something every weekday. If I miss a Monday because I'm feeling shitty, then I will write something that Saturday.

The second step, of course, is to actually punish myself when I break this promise. Which, knowing me, will be pretty soon. The third step is actually pretty ambitious and boils down to writing X number of words per day. This is to condition me to get used to writing on what is hopefully a professional schedule.

The fourth step, which I may never reach, is "Make daily progress on your novel at the same rate that webcomics do." Step five is the fantastical "Finish writing that damn thing and get it published."

This is my life, and it's ending one minute at a time. And I'll be damned if I die on a Thursday, between dinner and Survivor.

The James Bond Kit

Those of you who are following my Twitter feed are no doubt aware that a week ago I received, as an early birthday present, a shiny new laptop: an Acer Aspire 5515. Unfortunately, it runs Vista; fortunately, it has 3 gigs of RAM so it's actually fast enough to run that beast at a decent speed. But its best feature, as far as I'm concerned, is an inbuilt wi-fi, because that means I can now escape to the nearest library or coffee shop and write without the constant distractions of my family, whom I love dearly except when they're bothering me.

However, there is one small, almost trifling problem: this laptop is too big to fit my old (non-wi-fi) laptop case.

You'd think this wouldn't be a problem. It gives me an opportunity to shop for accessories, and according to cliche', that's what women live for. And I do like looking for the right bag. The problem, my dears, is that I can't find what I'm looking for.

When I was 6 or 7, my parents took me to see my very first James Bond film, and like most children I was immediately captivated by all the gadgets. Not only by how nifty they were, but how small they were as well (this was years before the Transformers came out, by the way), and how they were used at precisely the right time.... oh, Eddie Izzard explains it much better than I:



Yes, quite. So anyway, after seeing this James Bond movie, one of my first acts was to go home and assemble what I called a James Bond Kit. It sounds impressive, sure, but really it was just an old tote bag filled with various toys that I thought could be marginally useful in a James Bond style scenario:

• a cheap flashlight
• a plastic canteen
• a toy compass
  
• a toy knife
• a jump-rope, which I could turn into a lasso, or tie someone up with, or use as a garrote
  
• a set of my mother's old crochet hooks, which I thought looked a little bit like lock picks
• some jacks, which I thought could make dandy caltrops

As you can see, it rather failed at being truly James Bond-ish, but you can't deny the thinking that went into it: These are things I think will be useful in a pinch, and I want them all in an easy-to-carry bag. I'd also like to note for completeness' sake that I spent my elementary school years on military bases in Europe during the Cold War, so that also helps explains why my kit was closer to a half-asses Boy Scout's rucksack than actual cool super-spy gear.

No joke: I actually grew up afraid that one day, we'd get a call in the middle of the night that the Russians were pouring across the borders, and that I'd have to abandon my dog and my toys to go hide in the countryside while my father went off to war. That probably explains quite a lot about me and my quirks.

Now, fast-forward many years. I'm older and more sophisticated, but I still haven't outgrown the notion of a James Bond kit. Nowadays, I have a backpack that I take most places (hanging rakishly off one shoulder, natch) that contains the following:

• first aid kit
• sewing kit
• duct tape
• electrical tape
• Leatherman tool
• wire cuttters/strippers
• 15-in-1 screwdriver/ratchet
• Swiss Army knife
• Husky multi-wrench
• carbide-blade pocket saw
• wrench thingie offered with above (sometimes you need 2 wrenches, amirite?)
  
• Emergency Pro hand-crank flashlight/cell phone charger
• portable World Band radio (chargeable with above item)

Then there's the stuff in the trunk of my car:

• bolt cutters
• survival blanket/tarp/poncho
• entrenching tool
• big-ass Mag Light flashlight

I don't do this out of paranoia. I'm not afraid that at some point I'll need to flee civilization and survive in the wild for years. (If I did, I'd own an off-road vehicle, and it would have camping gear and rations in it.) No, I just kind of pick this stuff up, because it seems nifty and useful and, well, James Bond-ish.

Which brings us back to my quest for the proper bag for my laptop. You see, it can't JUST hold my laptop; it also needs to hold all my other crap, too, because at this point I'm carrying several pounds of metal and I'm starting to get funny looks when I set my bag down and it goes clink.

I want a bag that can hold all this stuff, but more importantly, it can't just be thrown in there. Oh no. Because, you see, this is a JAMES BOND KIT, and that can't be girly. Stuff just tossed into the main pocket? Exceptionally girly, because that's just an oversize purse.

I want something that's tough. Utilitarian. Military. Perhaps even ridiculously macho.

I want this sucker to have reinforced grommets. I want it to be made from ripstop nylon. I want it waterproof, rainproof, bulletproof if possible. I want my laptop to be cradled in a shockproof cocoon of foam rubber. And I want it to have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of pouches, snaps, tie-downs, pockets, and those expandable holdy-things that can hold a 2 liter soda bottle but compress into a slot the size of a credit card.







God help me, I want a computer bag designed by Rob Liefeld, because there is something just obscenely decadent about each tool having its own little pocket, snuggled up asleep in an individual cocoon.

... okay, on second thought, having a little nest for every tool is actually pretty girly after all. I would indeed tuck them each into place, like a mother putting her children to bed at night. But I digress...

Still, the problem with desiring a Rob Liefeld Bag is that, much like his anatomical drawing, such things are clearly impossible to find in real life.

So I turn to you, my dear readers, to help me find the nearest equivalent of a Rob Liefeld Bag for my James Bond Laptop Kit. It doesn't even have to be an actual laptop bag (in fact, I'm pretty sure it won't, as those seem restricted to either "oversized purse" or "leather attache case" categories); I'm fine with repurposing bags designed for other uses.

So far, the closest I have come to fulfilling my design aesthetic is a SWAT Bag, but even that not quite what I want. I definitely feel that military surplus is the way to go, but am willing to consider other options (like what they transport camera lenses in) as long as they satisfy my "tons of pockets" needs.



Color, of course, needs to be either gray or black.

Price should be in the "expensive, because you're paying for quality" range, but lower than "Oh my God you paid HOW MUCH?",
which is probably in the $50 - $100 range.

I can't really promise any fabulous prizes for helping me find my ideal Rob Liefeld Bag, but as longtime reader Nathan Tamayo will attest, if you do something nice for me, I do something nice in return. So send me your ideas, your links, your witty comments, and not only will I write a follow-up post containing the best of these, but I will do or give something quite spiffy to the winner.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go put on my jam trousers.

Depression Monday

Hopefully this won't turn into a recurring theme like Dead Piro Days, but nonetheless I need to beg off of writing today's entry. My allergies have been killing me, which means I haven't been sleeping well due to not being able to get enough air at night. (Sleep apnea, whee.)

And in addition to being tired and clogged, my "Middle of the month, every month, like freaking clockwork" depression is back, no doubt made worse by exhaustion and oxygen debt.

I'm going back to bed. Maybe the world will end while I'm sleeping so I won't have to deal with this mess any more.