Scarlett Letters

You asked for it. You got it: pictures of the hand.

( And now you can all say you know me from the inside out... )

And yes, I'll probably make an icon, though I don't know how many more more hand posts there will actually be. We shall see.

I'm at 1,013 words on the new story. It was supposed to be done for tomorrow night's final workshop. It won't be--no champagne pour moi unless I come up with another 4,000 words tomorrow morning. Most of what's on the page was written bearing in mind Kristine Kathryn Rusch's motto, "Dare to be bad." After all, you can't edit if you don't have raw material first. And raw is all about being raw. I suspect I'm walking into the story, but if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. I'm much further along than the 250 words I had the other night, so that's something anyway. And I know where I'm going. And I know who the incidental characters are. I suspect I don't know my protagonist quite as well as I ought to. She may be too autobiographical. I don't care. I'm going to push along.

I'm not feeling well. Too much diet soda, I suspect, and not enough exercise but, also, my hand hurts. It was exceptionally bad this morning, only a little better tonight. I've got tenderness in four of my five fingers and they all look a little swollen to me--but it might just be that I'm tired.

Day job launches into a full 40 hours this week, possibly more. I could have done some extra hours this weekend, but I had personal commitments. I've been pushing back on personal commitments for weeks now due to freelance work; this weekend, the personal commitments pushed back and I let them. I wanted to celebrate mimerki's 12th birthday and oldmangrumpus's graduation. I wanted to attend the Vanguard party with jackwilliambell. It's entirely possible I overdid it, resulting in the hand pain this morning and my spending a relatively low-key day today.

In other news, my cousin E has sold her townhouse and moved into a rental apartment until the unit she's purchased in a retirement community is ready for her. She lives in the same area that kijjohnson will be moving to. This gives me two reasons to strongly consider a visit to the southeast. The coup de grace is that I've just learned that there's a conservation center not far from where they'll both be living. It looks like I may plan a trip to the region either late this year or early next. We'll see. Other things are in the offing in the meanwhile, which I shan't discuss just now.

The new season of True Blood has started and I no longer have HBO. ::is sad:: I shall have to try to find it online.

I'm dead tired. I think it's time for bed.

Photography: I've signed contracts for short stories and articles in the past, but yesterday was the first time I've ever signed a contract for a photo--for National Geographic! One of their designers apparently sniffs around on Flickr for source material. They found one of my Africa photos--no, none of the pretty wildlife pictures but, rather, the shot of the interior of my tent. They're going to use it for one of their educational programs. It's not glamorous and it's not sexy, but it's a sale to a venue I love and admire. It feels like coming full circle after spending time, as a kid, with my hobbyist photographer father reading NatGeo on the living room couch. I'll take it!

The hand: The hand heals apace. It appears to be stuck in a mild, semi-permanent Vulcan salute, with the pinkie and ring finger slightly separated from the middle and pointer fingers. I'm working to remedy this situation whenever the hand isn't in the splint. I should be getting to the doctor in a few days to get another x-ray to see how it's healing. I miss being two-handed: I hate the discomfort I feel when I drive, I hate the waste of using paper plates and plastic cups because I can't wash dishes, I actually miss housecleaning. And so I double-dose on the calcium and hope for health.

Book, publishing, and gaming: One of my recent freelance projects was editing The KOBOLD Guide to Game Design, Vol III: Tools & Techniques for Open Design and Kobold Quarterly. The book is on sale as a PDF now, and will be available in hard copy in a couple of weeks. If you have any interest in roleplaying games or designing same, you ought to check out this book as well as its predecessors (volume 1, volume 2). It includes essays by some of the major names in game design (including our own the_monkey_king whose work features prominently in the book, as well as folks like Ed Greenwood and Monte Cook), and nuts-and-bolts advice about game design. Pretty spiffy, if I do say so myself.

Foolscap's Twitter presence: Some of you may know that I'm on the con committee for Foolscap, a local convention that takes place every September. There's been a lot going on behind the scenes. I've been one of a group posting to our Twitter streams (@flatstuff, the fun one, and @foolscapcon, the informative one). There's been some great stuff on @flatstuff lately, including announcements of local genre readings, interesting articles from a wide selection of sources, live tweeting from other conventions and so on. Give it a look-see.

ETA: Zoo penny smashing: I've just heard that Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma has three new penny machines. It's time for a day trip. Anybody wanna go to the zoo in the next couple of weeks?

Bless me, LJ, for I have neglected thee. It's been three or maybe four days since last I posted. I am refining typing with one hand and a thumb to, if not a fine art, then at least to a fairly utilitarian skill. Beats the hell out of typing one-handed.

What have I been doing with my time? Well, let's see.

Science!: On Wednesday evening I had an entertaining and tasty dinner with irrationalrobot, wordknitter, miniBot, and Gnat. Afterwards, irrationalrobot, oldmangrumpus and I headed to the Theodor Jacobsen Observatory at the University of Washington to peer through its 118-year-old steampunk dream of a telescope and listen to a lecture about the Apollo space program. Sadly I have no photographs of the telescope (darn! Guess I'll just have to go back!). The thing is beautiful--large and slim and tapered, perfectly counterbalanced--with its clockwork counterweight system for tracking stars. I got to wind up the mechanism, which runs for 90 minutes at a time, and to view Saturn through its restored objective. What a wonderful experience! I'll have to plan a field trip back with folks when I'm at full operating capacity again to share.

Movie: jackwilliambell not only cooked me a wonderful steak dinner on Friday evening (with a mushroom, shallot, and pepper marinade to die for), but took me and his grandson R to see "How to Train Your Dragon" yesterday morning. The film was completely charming, extremely well-written, and featured some of the best character animation I've seen in a while. The story is your basic hero's journey, but it's done with both humor and compassion for its characters, and I was far more impressed with it than I expected to be. Lots of fun and really pretty fine storytelling.

Afterwards, we trolled through Daiso, where I purchased a little disply case that, upon returning home, I discovered to my dismay had a giant crack in it. We also made a stop at Costco, where I picked enough cat food, calcium, and light bulbs to last until Apocalypse.

In news of living single-handedly, I report that some paper plates can resist the onslaught of almost any food placed upon them. Plastic flatware isn't always as strong as one would hope. There are some things for which only ceramic dishware will do. Laundry is relatively easy to do one-handed; clipping cat claws is really, really not. Surprisingly, squeezing toothpaste from a tube is a pain in the butt with only one hand; tooth brushing is easy. And Spanky? Still too heavy to lift with one arm.

And now it's Sunday. I plan to do more freelance, shower, catch up on "Chuck" and "Doctor Who" and try to relax a bit.

In other news, irrationalrobot dreams of me in a funny and sadly accurate way. You'll be amused, really.

I give in. I'm going to see a doctor about the hand tomorrow. It hurts a little too much and it's still swollen. Spoke to the Nurse's Call Line at Swedish and they made a referral. I'll figure out the money later.