Woo-hoo!

I've got an interview!!! After three months of searching, it's nice to finally get a nibble. Unfortunately, the interview is next Friday, meaning I've got a whole week to wait (imagine a child sitting on her hands waiting for something she's really excited about--that's me). I don't want to say what the interview's for, as I'm suddenly superstitious. But I will have a full report next Friday.

More Betas

I forgot that I have more beta readers than I mentioned. Mark and PJ will be the only ones I give a hard copy to. I have several other folks willing to take a soft copy and do what they will with it. I don't mind letting other people see me work, really. I mean, until I get published (which may be quite some time off, and it may not even happen for HD) these are the only people who will see it. Writing for yourself is great. But sometimes you're writing for other people, you're writing to tell a story that you want to be heard, you're writing to let the world know something. It's hard to let a book sit in a corner collecting dust before publication in that case. Plus I've got great beta readers who know how to constructively criticize my work. Invaluable.

Ready for Betas

So I finished typing in all my changes to HD last night. It felt like a completed book, that it was really done. I'm not going to do another run through (I'm pretty good at catching my mistakes as I type). I'm just foisting it off on a couple of beta readers (my husband and our pal) and go from there. Feels really good.

Big News

No, still jobless. And the most recent job I was excited about seems to be slipping away. I feel like they wanted to hire within my company and yanked my chain around to make a show that they were considering others. Maybe not. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm pounding the Internet pavement again. Wheeeeee. But that's not my big news. My big news is that I finished all the major revisions of HD last night!!!!!!!! Now to type them in, run through the tome one last time for line edits and add some description here and there. And I'm done! Feels awesome.

Fun Quiz for Writers

My result for this quiz is hardly surprising, seeing as how I never scored below 99% percentile on language mechanics standardized tests. Yes, I am a grammar god. Bow before me and quake in terror at my amazing grasp of the English language! Tremble in fear at my use of the comma! Shudder in awe at my knowledge of what, exactly, a gerund is! Muahahahaha!

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Can vs Hand, or "Oops, I Did It Again*"

Ask and you shall receive. I posted yesterday about waiting for the next social encounter now that my brother's life had settled to a dull roar. Right on cue, PJ's regular Wednesday visit brought some fun times.

The day started out as nothing special. I wasn't very peppy, I read a book and watched some movies, ignoring my writing for a day. I went out to use my Bath & Body Works coupon and walked out of the mall with more than I should have, as usual. I started dinner after Mark called to tell me that he and PJ were on their way home. We were having a great conversation about the importance of Frank Herbert on science fiction and other literary things while I moved around in the kitchen. I think I was talking about the difference between style problems and grammar problems when It Happened.

The can of peaches was pretty unassuming, maybe a little sticky around one part of the label. It had a pop-top. As I chatted away about my issues with Crichton's style, the top started to pop off, my finger in its proper place in the metal ring. Well, something Went Wrong. As I pulled the top of the can off, it got stuck a little, and I applied a bit more pressure to encourage it along. Then it gave suddenly and sliced into the middle finger on my right hand. At first it felt more like a stubbed toe than a sliced finger, and then I saw the gash and the blood.

I immediately shoved my finger under running water and just started sobbing. Not from pain, but because I remembered all too well the annoyance of a finger injury from last year when I thought it might be fun to add my fingertip to the soup for some extra flavor. I'm not entirely sure of everything I said while I wailed. It was often "I don't want to deal with this" or "This is my writing hand" and on and on it went while PJ and Mark bustled around me trying to look at the wound and figure out what to do and take care of the half-started dinner. PJ, our resident Eagle Scout, decided that it looked sufficiently bad to warrant a trip to the emergency room. Thus started our evening.

We were quite a sight coming into the place. Mark was carrying my purse, my eyes were red and I had a distinctly defeated look on my face, and PJ was holding my hand up and applying pressure to the wound with a damp, purple-turning-maroon washcloth. For the first two hours we were there, PJ and I looked like we were square-dancing partners, waiting for someone to say "swing your partner, do-si-do." The waiting room didn't look too crazy. So we sat back to wait my turn, all the while PJ and Mark trying to keep me awake. They succeeded, but I sometimes tuned out what they were saying. Then another young couple came in, the woman holding a dark washcloth to her hand. Two culinary accidents at once. We bonded immediately.

Registering was a blast, trying to arrange our selves so PJ could still keep pressure on the wound, but I could sit and have my pulse taken and such. The best part was getting the insurance paperwork done. I had to give verbal signatures on everything - or else sign in blood. The best part of that experience was checking over the papers to make sure everything was correct and reading what the woman had written to describe the incident: Can vs Hand. How very, very appropriate. And if we had a sledgehammer, you can be sure that Hand would have won the second round.

After much friendly chatting and joking with the other wounded woman and the majority of those waiting for attention (it was a pretty nice and fun bunch; only one screaming baby and she was only there for thirty minutes), I was finally stashed in The Suture Room with another slice and dice victim - and her entire family. Three kids and a mother in addition to the patient, I'm pretty sure. And they had the Disney Channel on. Thus I got to see my very first episode of "Kim Possible". It wasn't too bad, actually. Some of it was rather clever. And I kept chuckling here and there. Which would explain why I thought it odd that the mother of the other vic kept saying how dumb the show was and how they would be gone soon and then I could change the channel. She also kept telling Mark and I about how long they had been there that night, that we should never have kids, and so on, embittered ramblings. Finally they did leave, and we switched it to the Cartoon Network, which was showing a Christmas episode of "The Family Guy." Now that was hilarious. The running gag throughout the show was the "How KISS Saved Christmas Special" - a perfect commentary on the commercialization of Christmas. As the show ended, my fellow culinary hatchetress and her husband took the place of the Moaning Mother and her brood.

By this point, I hadn't seen anyone but some nurse or orderly when I first got into the room. And all he did was take a look at my wound and leave.

The Avs game went on then, and the curtain between the beds was pulled back so we could all chat. Turns out my Partner in Culinary Crime has a lot more in common with me. Acid reflux, anemia, bum knee, master's thesis, teaching. We stopped after a bit for fear of ripping apart the space-time continuum. While we were chumming it up, my doctor finally came in. And was he cute. He was wearing scrubs that didn't have full short sleeves, affording me a very nice view of his arms. Have I mentioned before that I love arms? Some girls talk about the chest, or the eyes, or the rear end when it comes to what they always notice in a man. For me it's arms. Always has been. And no matter how much I love Mark, I will never be able to stop appreciating a nice set of arms on a man. And nice means just muscled enough to have contour and tone. The Rock and Ahnold are a bit too muscled for me to really enjoy their arms. Think basketball players for perfect arms.

I'm sorry, did I digress? Excuse me. Right, back to my bloody finger.

Cute Doc takes a peak, has me try to move my finger, pokes around the tip with the ends of a paper clip to see how the wound affected sensation, then tells me someone will come and clean the wound so he can take a peak at the tendon, and leaves. A woman who sounded just like Paula Poundstone and someone else I know came in to clean my wound (keep in mind that this sequence of events is by no means as quick as it reads). This started the bleeding afresh, obliterating all trace of purple in the washcloth. Cute Doc came back in and numbed up my finger. Mark said he used about 10ccs, which would explain the strange and grotesque bulge of liquid that suddenly appeared on my finger after the numbing. For all I know, it's still there under all this gauze. My cut had time to clot up again by the time Cute Doc came back to look at the tendon issue. He said I nicked the sheath a little, to have someone look at it in the next couple days, but that it didn't require immediate attention. Then he went to work sewing the damn thing up.

Four stitches. And I didn't look once while he did it. My finger was pretty much dead to the world, save for a few minor tugs I felts, and I was quite happy keeping it that way. I had no intention of watching the suture work and thus risking the sudden onset of pain once I was aware of exactly what was happening to that finger. Cute Doc had a few more words to say to me about treatment of the finger and left. Then Paula Poundstone came back to clean up the blood that had started flowing again during the stitching and bundle my finger up in a bunch of gauze. Remember how I said it was my middle finger? I leave this picture to your imagination. More instructions, more paperwork, put the maroon washcloth in a latex glove, Avs win, Avs win, and we're ready to go. Cute Doc finally had a chance to look at my fellow Domestic Goddess just as we were leaving. She's got my card, so I hope she'll be able to drop me a line soon. Did I mention it was the middle finger of her left hand she had cut while trying to pop the seed out of an avocado? Just imaging what that high-five would look like.

But the fun wasn't quite over yet. We had to get my prescription filled. So off to Walgreens we went, where we bumped into one of the other people from the waiting room. Luckily my meds only took about ten minutes to fill, otherwise I would've been reunited with my cooking doppelganger once more. Then we finally got home (four and a half hours later) to congealed, half-cooked chicken and an open can of peaches. Thankfully we had picked up some frozen pizzas at Walgreens. We watched Conan and then I crashed. Well, as much as you can crash while trying to keep your finger elevated and out of the way.

So that was my Wednesday night. Not a bad experience as far as emergency room visits go. Made some friends, had some laughs, ogled some arms, watched some good TV, saw the Avs win game one against the stars in the Stanley Cup quarterfinals, got a new scar in the works. And typing isn't as bad as I had thought it would be. Still, I'd much prefer not to have a middle finger that looks like a conehead and hasn't stopped throbbing. How was your Hump Day?

* The unfortunate Spearsian reference is entirely Mark's fault. Please direct all grumblings to him. It was his "clever" comment.

Minor Issues

Something about being unemployed sure has mellowed me. I find myself shrugging a lot. Now that things have settled with my brother, I'm just kind of sitting around, waiting for something else to happen. Oh, I'm writing and revising and catching up on my reading, so I'm not a slug. But it just seems kind of, well, blah. Last night I went to my critique group and had to spend quality crit time with one of our more, shall we say, colorful members. Don't get me wrong, color is a great thing in a writing group. But sometimes it's like finding a rainbow in the middle of the most hellish thunderstorm. Since Mark wasn't there and couldn't possibly understand the entire experience (and for that he should be grateful), one of the other members and I hung out afterward to just sit there and say, "Wow." And then I went home, told Mark the abbreviated version and went to bed. Now I'm just kind of sitting around again, waiting for my next social encounter and the life and energy it will bring before I go back into hibernation.

Something tried to stir me this morning. I went to my on-line crit group to find that one of our newest posters had pulled his story, citing he posted it somewhere else where he could get a crit in a reasonable amount of time. This is the same guy that peppered the entirety of his crits with a lot of "I need" phrases that hint at the sort of "I know how to do everything, let me tell you how it's done" attitude that, thankfully, I only bump into rarely with my writing. His crits did have a lot of good points to them, and I will let them percolate as I finish my draft of The Masque, but it was just so prickish. Like how he was trying to school me on lab techniques, then made a little note that he had read my bio and realized that I "was degreed enough to know these things" and moved on to the next piece of criticism. But things are just so blah right now that I debated whether I cared enough to post about it here. I decided to go ahead and blog it, just for the sake of something to do.

This is why a life as a writer is going to be a challenge for me. I need social contact and more than just a few hours a week. And yet I need to write and have more time to do it than I did while I was working. (People keep telling me I need to read that Catch 22 book.) I hope I figure out what to do with myself and my writing before I'm 60. It would be nice to have a good five years of knowing what I want to do with my life and being able to do it before I retire.

The Lazy Life?

Yesterday was my first day contributing to the unemployment numbers that have given Bush and Kerry yet another thing to squabble over for the next few months. It didn't seem like it. I went down near where I used to teach for an interview of sorts. So the Kelly Services temp agency has a scientific division, and they wanted to talk with me about a job opportunity with another company. They sent my resume on yesterday, and I was told I'd likely hear back about an interview with the company today or Monday. The woman I spoke with yesterday even mentioned something about starting work as early as Wednesday if they decided to hire me. This could be a quick stint as an unemployed citizen. Which is only bad in that I won't have a nice chunk of time to spend finishing up my HD revisions and such.

Yesterday also didn't feel like my first day of laid-offishness because I spent the bulk of the afternoon sobbing. I love my brother so much that it hurts me something fierce whenever I have to hear about things not going well in his life (which, unfortunately, happens much more often than anyone should have to deal with). It also hurts because Brad only wants to talk and have me listen, nothing more. I've been a scientist since I first took a chemistry class in high school, and I've been a puzzle-solver since my diaper days. It often takes more than I have within me to just shut up and hear about the things my Baby Bro has to put up with. (Not the least of which is the fact that his reserve unit's been activated and he'll be sending the second half of this year in Okinawa. If North Korea decides to mess him and the other troops over there, I think I might seriously start considering a career as a political assassin. Or at least have a grand time writing about such a person.) So our chat yesterday drained me and angered him and upset me to the point of wracking sobs and wails. I love puffy eyes, really I do.

So today will be my first day where it feels like I'm really unemployed. I just finished filing for unemployment bennies. I'm still in my pajamas, and I'm ready to be a couch potato. But I can't be idle for more than a half hour before I go mad, so I'm going to make today "Clean the House" day. Tomorrow I'll start the writing schedule and general "this is what I'll do with my life until I'm employed" schedule. That sort of thing is easier for me to do when I have a clean environment to do it in.

Off I go to be a Domestic Goddess. I might also try out the cliche of barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen were it not for the facts that I am not pregnant and my feet are really, really cold. Maybe another time.

Kellie 0, Potential Employers 2

The CU job that I've been excited about for over a month is a no. Finally found out yesterday that they had already filled the position. And I found out today that a medical writer job I applied for a couple weeks ago has also already been filled. I've got my resume out to three more places, and will fill out another application this week.

And the agent still hasn't responded to my query letter. *Sigh*

Cleaning is Grand

So today I went through and cleaned my desk hard core. It's almost completely empty. And I went through my computer, getting rid of any stray personal and/or useless files that may still be hanging around (resumes, etc). I found a link that I've been meaning to post here for quite sometime. It's a Grand Unified Theory for Everything in Nature. Very amusing, but I'm a nerd, so don't take my word for it.

Golden Onion

They've done it again. The headline for the Rover spoof is hilarious on its own, but you're really missing out if you don't read the entire article. Especially Golombek's quotes. My favorites of the Nanotechnology Infograph: "Mad scientists can build nightmarish, dystopic future too small to see" and "Scientists say nanotechnology could be used to fight terrorism, if that will get them some damn funding".

I have quite a few posts simmering in my brain, but this week has been pure and utter hell since Monday afternoon. I'm still in hiding a bit, hoping things settle soon.

Break Through

I finally pushed myself through my weird writing issues yesterday! It's been about a month since I've really done anything with my writing. Impatience to hear back from the agent or to hear about the job held me up for most of that time. Then finding out I'd been laid off get me away from writing the rest of the month. Finally on Friday I decided to change my attitude. The Waiting Game was making me miserable. I realized that I should just assume I would be out of a job for at least the month of April, and that I could use that time to write full-time. If a job possibility comes up to change that assumption, great. But I'm not going to count on it, and I'm going to stop hawking the phones and my email expecting it.

So I spent Friday evening and all day Saturday getting used to the idea of a Unemployed and Full-time Writing April. As Saturday wore on, I could feel the job impatience fade and the writing impatience build. But in a good way. Writing impatience as in my Muse saying, "C'mon, Kellie! Let me at 'em!" I should've guessed on Friday that when I got a decent chunk of inspiration for Strings of Betrayal that I would be ready to dive back into my writing. It's been a long time since I've received scenes for that book. Granted, it still didn't tell me much about my hero. That man's another tight-lipped ingrate like Darren. By Saturday evening, I told myself I was going to write on Sunday. I was just going to say "Screw it" to whatever hang-ups I still had about my HD revisions. I was just going to ignore the sense of "This is WAY too much work" that was bothering me about The Masque and look at some research ideas.

And that's what I did on Sunday. I even did a few things for Strings of Betrayal: I created a Write Way doc for it and started transferring the notes I already had into that doc; I redid the map so it was bigger and accurate to what I wanted; and I did tarot readings for the four main characters. I didn't have time to do any interpreatations, but I wrote down the results for a later interp. I did all the SoB (what an unfortunate acronym) work while watching A&E's The Last King. The only reason I watched it was because of Rufus Sewell. And my warped memory of history told me that Charles II was the king during the American Revolution. Isn't that the last king that matters to me? :) My AP US history teacher is weeping if he's reading this - as are any of my readers who have a passing interest in English history. I should've taken a moment to read the blurb about this show, or even to have looked up Charles II on the Internet so I'd have a better idea what I was going to devote 4 hours of my Sunday night to. Because as near as I can tell, the only big deal about Charles II was that he fought to stay out from under the thumb of Parliament. And it took him four hours of sleeping around with various women, watching plague and fire take London (which seemed to have nothing to do with anything about the Parliament buisness except to provide stunning dramatic "cliffhangers" for A&E to end an episode with), and yelling about how he would name his heir not Parliament or about how he would not stand for ill-treatment of Catholics. Overall, I was very glad I spent the entire four hours doing stuff for my writing and only half paying attention to the show. I would perk up whenever they took that God-awful wig off Rufus' head or when he was wearing somewhat revealing top or when he was fencing. But that's about it.

So yesterday was a stunning entrance back into the writing world. And it feels like it's going to last and that the attitude adjustment will help me immensely. I'm sure I'll have bouts where I just can't stand the fact that I don't have any Answers. I just hope they'll be much more short-lived than they have been until this weekend.

New Vocabulary

Via Joel, the NEW WORDS FOR 2004: Essential additions for the workplace vocabulary. (I've kept only the ones I liked or could add something to.)

SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard. (See this thread for some fantastic, writerly tongue-in-cheek sucking up.)

SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end. (Hmm, you think last Friday qualifies as a Salmon Day?)

CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.

CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously farting while passing through a Cube Farm.

PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on. (I'll be leaving the cube farm on March 31. I wonder if my next job will have the same opportunities for prairie dogging?)

XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one'sworkplace copy machine. (I wouldn't know anything about this word.)

IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The J-Lo and Ben wedding (or not) was a prime example. (Another good example: OJ Simpson Trial.)

404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message"404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located. (I hope this one worms its way into often-used slang. It's neato.)

GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and subdivisions. (Another good example: The Midwest.)

OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake. (I've experienced this due to an unfortunate goof with instant messaging. Note to self: do NOT send the venting message to your boss - the object of your vent - when you mean to send it to your pal.)

Oddities

OK, job-hunting means you have to get your jollies in the oddest places. The usual things might not be as amusing as they were before becuase, well, you have no job any more. And that's bound to put a pall over things, even if the job sucked. I suppose that might explain why Mark and I stayed up past midnight discussing what various tales were parodied in a few Simpsons episodes. Most likely everyone remembers the Bible Stories (Milhouse becomes Moses, Homer and Marge become Adam and Eve, and Bart battles Nelson in David and Goliath II). Mark and I remembered those no problem, but we were stumped on a couple of later episodes that spoofed tales from the public domain and American history lore. So after much poking and prodding of our memories, I finally announced that we had to go look it up on line or else I would never get to sleep. The amusement here was in remembering our favorite episodes. I laughed very hard when Mark reminded me about the scene where a naked Homer slides up the sloped glass ceiling of a church - while a service is in session, no less.

I also felt my fancy tickled ever so slightly this morning when I decided to grab a Linkin Park CD for the car. I have both Hybrid Theory and Meteora. Meteora absolutely floored me with its coolness. Sure, one of the lead singers often screams out you in a "I'm going to lose my voice in the next five years because of this" voice, but for the most part it works. But Hybrid Theory never appealed to me in the same way. I reasoned that it might have been because I first listened to it while reading some of Kushiel's Chosen and that music, good though it may be, does not go with that book. So I decided to listen to the album in the car on my way to and from my soon to be non-existant job. And darned if that CD didn't sound a heck of a lot better than I remembered from my previous listening. Moral of the story: location, location, location. And rap/metal music doesn't go well with renaissance-time fantasy. At least not to my ears.

And the final amusement of the day for me was looking at the Blogger banner up top of my blog. Under the two little adverts, there's a line that says "Related searches" and lists a few things that either would bring up my blog in a google search or some bot determined readers of my blog might want to do a google search on. One of the strings was, I kid you not, "backstreet boy fan fiction". My internet experience is now complete.

Happy Friday

That title should be read a la the Monty Python "and there was much rejoicing" enthusiasm. My Friday started out great. My mother was in town and we spent a nice day and half together. Did lots of fun tooling around the area yesterday. I dropped her off at the airport this morning and then went back to work for a half day. Remember those lay-off rumors I mentioned a while back? Well, they made the big announcement yesterday while I was away. So I returned to work to find out I had been laid-off. My last day at that job is the 31st. The good news is that I will finally be done with that job by the end of this month. That will go a long way toward helping my attitude and my life in general. The bad news is that I no longer can pursue another job in the leisurely fashion I've been. Of course, it doesn't help that I haven't heard back from the one job. I called this afternoon to see about getting a status, but no one was there. Hopefully on Monday.

Another piece of good news is that I now have a complete experience of Corporate America. And it's always good to add to that ever-lengthening list of Character-Building Experiences. Plus now I get to explore the amazing area of Unemployment Benefits (assuming nothing happens with this pending-job app thing before March 31st).

And there was much rejoicing. Yay.

The Value of Science

Last week's West Wing episode really did a neat job about the value of science and research. I didn't like that they made Ellie the stereotypical "give me a microscope and a solitary lab and leave me the hell alone" scientist attitude, but you can't win 'em all. I was stunned watching that episode when some congresswoman made a comment that revealed pretty clearly that she begrudged AIDS research - due to, I suppose, some implied perception of the lifestyle of AIDS-sufferers. I had no idea that certain people would willingly cut all funding for AIDS and HIV research. Granted, these persons would shove the money at breast cancer and Alzheimer's research and such, so they're not completely heartless, but still.

I saw this episode just a day after a two people in my crit group told me that they thought we'd be beyond Mars by 2075 and that it was silly to set my story there. They said it's been done to death, and we'd likely be someplace cooler. I was more than a little surprised at this response. I can understand the "it's been done, move on" reaction. But Mars isn't the point of my story. The point of my story is the social and scientific conundrums we'll be dealing with in 2075, a time that I think space travel will be moving out of infancy and into mainstream - or at least it's plausible for it to happen by then. And Mars and the Moon are the only likely places for us to be by then. I don't want my novel set on the Moon because that's too close to Earth. And I want it set on a planet, not a space station. So Mars is the only option. Unless we get some sort of miraculous discovery in space flight. I'm not holding my breath.

But their response got me thinking. Scientifically speaking, we have the capability to be on the moon already. We have the capability to have a better and bigger space station. We have the capability to have more drugs and cures for all sorts of medical maladies. But science doesn't exist in a vacuum (well, unless you're in space, I suppose). Science shouldn't exist in a vacuum. It's a bad idea for any one thing in this world to not have some system of checks and balances. Science is no different. If it means science gets held back in a lot of areas, we'll have to live with it and work with the reality of the world science exists in to make whatever progress we can.

That's why I don't get Andi's attitude about space exploration. I would think someone so concerned about the oceans would be very excited about the past existence of water on another planet. If we're so keen on saving Earth's waters, maybe it might help to know how the same waters vanished on Mars. But she's right, there are a lot of worthy causes that aren't getting funding they deserve. And it's a hard pill to swallow to watch money being spent elsewhere in a seemingly less important area of research. Here's the thing with science, though: it's hard to know where the big, life-improving, earth-conserving discoveries will come from. Science is nothing if not serendipitous. Who would've thought that past pollution of the environment with man-made chemicals would lead to the discovery of bacteria that can survive on such toxic substances? The negative effect of one area of research led to the positive result of another. Science is the pursuit of truth. Limit the scope of science, and you limit the scope of the truth you will find. Limited truth will not help humanity or the rest of the animal kingdom or the Earth as a whole. We have to go forward with our eyes wide open to everything. The little string that you find buried in the dirt could eventually weave its way far into the future where it turns out to be the trigger for a life-saving machine. To ignore the string when you see it out of the corner of your eye could be disastrous.

But watching good, promising research lose funding is hard. It's just as hard as watching education lose funding, or seeing the strange ways in which money is spent: billions of dollars for space exploration, but we've got a lower class barely surviving and the state of health care for even the middle class is frightening. If I had my way, we'd start our budgets by making sure good education and quality health care were available free for everyone. Then we'd hash out where the rest of the money would go.

Science has long-since gotten used to the vagaries of funding. Scientists know how to squeeze the most out of every dime. They know how to get to the bottom of their puzzles even with one hand tied behind their back. Every puzzle is worth studying. Even physics. I've hated electromagnetism since I first tried to learn about it high school. Yet here I am, applying for a job in a physical science department so I can help those scientists communicate their research. I have no idea why we should give a rat's ass about the heat capacity of a two-component superfluid Fermi gas. I can't wait to find out. Because science always has the potential for practical application. It may not be all that obvious, like the purpose of that string, buried in the dirt. But that potential is there, and it will be found and applied to something else that brings a step closer to something we need to know about the universe. I can't begrudge the funding this project gets just because a project that has a more direct practical application is losing funding. It's all going to balance out eventually. The truth will be found and put to good use. Maybe not in my day, maybe we'll get it horribly wrong in the process, but we'll get there and find a whole slew of new puzzles waiting for us.

Interesting Report

The Committee on Publishing Ethics (science and medical journals) reported on the fun things scientists do when trying to get their research into ink. For those of you who don't know, "publish or perish" is a very real thing for scientists trying to make careers for themselves in research. To make matters worse, the journals where you are published also factor into the way your career is perceived. There are tiers of journals: the excellent, the good, the so-so, and the jokes. If you've been published fifteen times, but only in the latter two of the four tiers, you ain't going anywhere. As the Nature Science article indicates, some scientists try to weasle their way around the system by getting one paper published in more than one journal. The numbers they toss out really are small. But it sounds more like this committee is focused on medical journals. I'd be curious to see the numbers on science journals and also read about what they deemed "unethical" and how they found their cases. There are a few subtle practices that aren't considered unethical, per se, but they certainly aren't above-board. I have no idea how some committee could ferret them out. And this report only studied cases where the editor of the medical journal in question smelled something fishy. It's great that people are looking into this and trying to find more ways to keep medical research honest.

Science ethics is a strange beast. And it's a bitch to study in your traditional lecture method. Case studies often evolve into an infinite series of "what-ifs" that drive even the most balanced person to strongly consider going postal in class. But if actually suffering through the class means we cut down on research misconduct, then I'm all for it. However, HD exists because of my own experiences with fellow students in a science ethics class. Some of the attitudes I heard expressed there truly terrified me - especially when we consider where science can take us in the next few years. Which brings me to the point of HD. Are we really taking the time and effort to ask the right questions of ourselves now?

Hmmm

I had a lenghty post started about things I've realized this weekend involving my writing, my identity, my career goals. But apparently my thoughts are still fuzzy on the matter because I got distracted in the writing of said post and couldn't get the train of thought back. Suffice to say that I'm fed up with the stupid things I've been doing to myself about my career goals, my identity, and my writing. They helped me deal with some big life changes, and they allowed me to get to this moment of reflection, but now they're just annoying and useless. And yet they're still hanging on. It's like walking around on extremely dry land in full scuba gear. Not helpful. More on this later.

Hooked

So when Mark and I made the "I'll read Clancy if you read S.L. Viehl" bet, I knew exactly what I was doing. I told him since the Clancy book was 800 pages, Mark had to read two 400-page Stardoc books. I did this knowing full well that the ending to Beyond Varallan is one that you can't just walk away from. I remember mentally snickering when we agreed on the reading deal, eager for the moment he would get to the last page of the second book.

It happened last night.

As I steamrolled through Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Chosen, I saw that Mark was getting closer and closer to finishing. When he was a few pages away, one big shock was revealed and he made a "hey, wait a minute" comment. I could barely contain my evil laughter. Then he finished the book, and, without a word, got out of bed, walked to the study, and came back with the third book, muttering, "It doesn't make sense. Why? Why? Stupid characters." He told me he had to read the third book if only to explain the ending of the second. I suppressed maniacal laughter again, because an explanation is not immediately forthcoming in book three. Poor hubby read about 80 pages, trying to get the explanation and muttering more when he didn't get it.

I'd say Mark is now well and hooked on the Stardoc novels. Just as I knew he would be after Beyond Varallan. I too remember reading Endurance and muttering vile curses upon Sheila as I furiously read that book and ignored my own writing, short-changed as much of my sleep as I dared, and delayed the eating of meals as long as possible. Her books are bad for my health. Very bad.

Middles

I'm not really in the middle of The Masque. I'm still threading cool things into the chapters and introducing the reader to a lot. I'm in the beginning. I'm very happy. But I'm definitely in another middle of my HD revisions. And that's why I'm frozen. That's why I was surfing the net and found this instead of writing something. I was reading that and thinking about HD. I think I'm going to go home tonight and look over the outline I put together for that book way back in Fall 2001 or so (maybe it was Spring 2002). Reading Holly's accounting of her middle troubles reminding me of mine. As I really immersed myself in HD, I realized that my book was going nowhere. I need something more. So Mike, my #1 Bad Guy, wanders into the story and mucks around in the plot. Denise suddenly decides that she isn't going to die at the beginning of Part 2 like I originally thought she would, thus taking the focus of the story away from Margie and Aidan, where it was supposed to be. Life gets really complicated for Aidan because not only is his mother still hanging around, but it turns out Mike is really his father, not Darren (long story, see Part 1). Plot gets mucked further. As I pushed my way through the revisions of Part 2's middle, guess what? Eugene decides that he's not going to die like I told him we would at the end of Part 2. I compromised with Eugene and informed him that he would live, but he would be mute and deaf. He agreed, but then when I wrote his very first scene in Part 3, the bastard starts talking and listening to someone else talk. I actually didn't even realize what had happened until I had finished the scene. That, and Denise tells me that she's going to unravel a different scientific quandry in Part 3 and ignore the one I originally had her working on.

Maybe I'll quit The Masque and leave it forever stuck in the beginning. I shudder to think what Deb's going to do once I get to the middle. And Baxter might blow up Mars and rocket everybody to Alpha Centauri if I'm not careful.