Just Tell Me When...

OK, so the word is that Brad and his batallion will not be staying in Iraq for the cleanup and stuff. So that means he'll be heading home at least by the end of May, if not sooner. Of course, this is all subject to change, and he may fly home instead of taking a boat. I just wish they would shut up about it until they had something definite so I could make my travel plans. Give me a date so I can book my flight. That's all I need to know - a date. Not speculation, not rumors, not anything else but when and where.

I've finally put my disk in the computer, which is the farthest I've gotten in my writing all week. Haven't opened up Part 3 yet, but I will. Soon. I promise. I've actually got more ideas for Chapter 3 now. And I'm looking forward to writing it. So it should flow now. Why haven't I written this week? Dizziness, fatigue, and picking up slack at the office. My usual coworker is out moving households this week. The woman filling in at her desk right now is, in a word, terrible. I've got lots of stories already. Friday will not be here soon enough.

Need a laugh?

I was cleaning out my email account today and came across a ton of emails from a friend that I've known for, goodness, 13 years now. (Considering I'm almost 25 and have never lived in one location more than six years at a time, that's long.) So this buddy had introduced me McSweeney's Internet Tendency, a website I found hilarious and then managed to neglect for quite some time. Finding those emails again brought me back, and I stumbled across something that made me laugh until my coworkers really started to worry. The satire by Marvin Applebaum and Ian Pinkner is called "Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer, 2002, For The Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series, Extended Edition) DVD Part One and Part Two. It's a bit long, but well worth it. Enjoy.

Nasty Internet Scamming Scum

I just found out that there are viruses being attached to emails with the subject "Son's Homecoming" that many loved ones of our deployed soldiers are receiving. They sure know how to prey on people just to wreak a little more technical havoc. Meanwhile, this email prompts the loved ones to call the unit contacts they can get in touch with, trying to find out just when their soldiers will be coming home. And the contacts can't do their normal jobs because they're answering about 500 emails and phone calls asking "When are they coming home? Where are they now?" And the contacts usually can't answer either question. Oct/Nov is the surest I've heard so far.

Letter from Brad: But I do have happier news. Christina (my brother's fiancee) received a letter from him yesterday. She graciously typed it up (minus the mushy parts) and sent it out to his family so we could hear from him at least in some form. The letter is dated 3/26, postmarked 4/8, and she received it 4/28. Better than nothing. Here it is:

...Sorry I haven't written in over a week. As I'm sure you can tell by the news we've been pretty busy.... currently my unit is about 120 miles south of Baghdad. I guess I should start from the 18th when this thing kicked off. Shortly after midnight the day before we were woken up and told to get on the vehicles and break out our ammo. then all the sgts went to a brief where we were told about Bush telling Saddam that he and his regime were to leave the country. After the brief I informed my scout section what was going on and my company moved up to the breach site. We waited there while the enginers blasted away at the burm so we could enter. My company was the first of conventional ground forces into Iraq. It seemed like something out of a movie with all of the explosions off
in the distance from supporting artillery. After we went through the breach we set up a screen line as security so the following RCT's (Regimental Combat Teams) could move in. Since then we've mostly been providing convoy security moving north. The few reconnaisance missions we've had have all been with no enemy forces nearby. Ten days of war and the entire time has felt like a training mission. I'm telling this because I want you to know that though they say a war is going on, it doesn't feel like it and you have
nothing to worry about.... The only interesting thing we've seen other than occasional shepards have been destroyed Iraqi vehicles that either artillery or air has taken out before we get there..... Mail had just started to get worked out when we left Kuwait. Hopefully it'll catch back up shortly.....

Something about the phrase "ten days of war" is just tearing me to pieces, no matter that it was followed by "the entire time has felt like a training mission." God, just bring him home, please.

A Case of the Mondays

OK, I haven't had a Monday this bad in a while. My back is nothing more than a mesh of twisted, knotted muscles. I've got a dull headache that's sort of hanging around, just being annoying. And the dizziness is making itself known a bit more than usual. All I want to do is soak in a nice hot bath and go back to bed. And then curl up with a mug of tea and play with words. Days like today, I really wish money grew on trees.

So I didn't write anything for Human Dignity yesterday. But I did write about 1300 worldbuilding words (what I was supposed to do Friday). And I really enjoyed it. I finished the creation story and moved on to the government and societal impacts of the governing. I really like where this is going. The ideas came pretty easily, too. I hope my muse is as kind to me when I start trying to describe the culture and regions of the world.

Speaking of my muse, she sure is an odd bird. She gave me a fantastic idea of Part 3, something to wrap up my theme and give Aidan something to do. But she was incredibly tight-lipped about how to get this plotline going in Chapter 3. Hence I didn't even try to write Chapter 3 yesterday. I had absolutely no ideas for it. Nothing. So I did the worldbuilding instead. So the day wasn't a total crapshoot. And I've got stuff to keep me busy today, so we'll see if Muse will be kind and send a bit of inspiration to me for tomorrow (which will hopefully be better than today).

Start the Day Off Write Again

I wrote Chapter 2 yesterday. 2400 words or something. And I liked it a lot better than I thought I would. I was able to give Jeff and Darren more character in those 13 pages than they ever had in all 213 pages of Part 2. Must fix the men in Part 2. :) And I've been trying to collect my thoughts to write an essay about rhetoric, especially the phrases "I support the troops but not the war" and "I have no problem with homosexuals but with homosexual acts." But I just don't think I'm up to it yet. And I have to find a way to organize those thoughts better or else I'll spend all day writing about that rather than just kick starting my fingertips for Chapter 3. I'll hold it in reserve and see where my thoughts on the subject go over the next week.

Start the Day Off Write

The goal is to write chapter 2 today. I got a really nifty idea for Chapter 3 (Aidan's POV), but I need to get a few plotlines going in Chapter 2 in Denise's POV. Chapter 2 most likely will be me just writing to get it done and I'll fix it later. Mainly because I'm not sure how she's going to come up with a cure that has eluded the scientific world for 15 years. (Well, longer, because her cure for Mike's Virus also cures AIDS - in at least one of my three different outlines for this part). So as I write this little essay here, maybe I'll come up with some ideas to fix the viral plotlines in Part 3.

One Voice in a Maelstrom of Sounds: So I wrote my congressmen this week. First time ever. It was a fairly lengthy letter about Senator Rick Santorum's now infamous AP interview. Much of the democratic party and the gay community is up in arms about his comments on homosexuality. While I had a problem with those tidbits, I was more concerned with the Senator's views on the right to privacy. He seemed to think that not only was it a fictitious right brought about by a contraception ruling, but that it was also causing the demise of society (more accurately, the demise of the American family).

So I wrote my letter, indicating my concern that a politician did not know the true origins of the right to privacy (I found them out with a very brief Internet search). I was also concerned that a senator high on the leadership totem pole would be interested in doing away with the right to privacy. (By the way, the Privacy Act of 1974 covers patient-physician and client-lawyer confidentiality). I expressed serious discomfort at the implication that Mr. Santorum would want to regulate my private sexual activities. Because he seemed to think the government needed to know whether or not Mark and I are doing anything sexually "deviant." Because such "liberal" acts were causing the destruction of society and had to be stopped. And so on and so forth.

But will either Senator Wayne Allard (R) or Representative Mark Udall (D) actually read my letter? If they do, will they find a poorly expressed sentiment or a wrong statement and harp all over it so they don't have to listen to what I was really trying to say? And if they do actually listen to my point and take it to heart, will they do anything about it? And if they do something about it, what will that be? Insist Mr. Santorum step down from his leadership position? The White House has already backed Santorum in this mess. But apparently they did that with Trent Lott at first, too. What it comes down to for me: will my letter make any difference to anybody but me? I wrote that letter feeling more and more powerless to do anything when it comes to politics and my government. I'm glad I wrote it. I would have hated to have gone through life never writing my congressmen at least once. But by the time I fired that letter off in emails, I felt resigned to the fact that Santorum would likely still be in his 3rd from the top position in the Senate and that if he and his pals decided to do away with the right to privacy that it would happen. I started out writing that letter hoping to feel empowered, that I had done something to make a difference, to let my voice be heard. Will it be heard? In the cacophony of opinions thundering through our nation right now, how is it possible that my one voice will be noticed unless I'm shouting the exact same thing as a large number of others in the throng?

I'm both dreading and anticipating a non-automated response from Allard and Udall. I'm eager to see what this entire process is like. But I'm also afraid of that response. Will it increase or decrease my annoyance with my government? Can I take another increase and still keep my sanity? One day when this nation isn't so battered by loud shouts, maybe I'll write my congressmen again and see how I feel. Maybe it is usually an empowering thing during peace and quiet in our nation. I hope so.

The Cats' Revenge and Other Stories

OK, as promised, I will now divulge the funny but, erm, not so funny pet story. It's Thursday morning. And I'm enjoying doing up my eyes with the new blue eyeliner I got a while back (I know, the excitement of my life approaches astounding levels). I'm admiring my straight lines when Mark yelps from the other room. Or maybe he just yelled "Argh" in true piratey fashion. The memory is beginning to fade. At any rate, I have to ask what happened. You just don't ignore either a yelp or piratey bellow that comes from somewhere in your own apartment. In an angry but oddly defeated voice, Mark yells, "The cats pissed on my bookbag!" At first I'm shocked. Any litterbox accidents are usually committed on a particularly clean and convenient spot of carpet. Then I remembered that we were a bit out of sorts Monday night, the usual Litterbox night. So I asked Mark if he had been able to clean the litterboxes this week. And he said no. This was when I started to laugh. Because it seemed that either or both kitties had decided to exact a little revenge on the man who had neglected their restrooms. I tried to stay my amusement after Mark informed me that the cats had urinated on the notes he needed for the paper he was writing for his class. My attempts met with varying levels of success. The least successful attempts, unfortunately, always occurred when I saw Mark that morning. I would move into the living room to look at the paper, see Mark, and giggle. I just couldn't help it. I did eventually tease a chuckle out of Mark, so I figured everything was good. Until he came home that night and proceeded to eye both Addy and Nosey with a suspicious gaze. I even began to wonder if he would take the kitties aside one by one and interrogate them, using Python's Spanish Inquisition tactics (which the cats would, of course, never expect). But this tale does have a happy ending. The (hehe) soiled notes have been copied (alas, the happy ending does not extend to the Xerox machine involved in said duplication), Mark has realized the felines are not talking, and the litterboxes are clean.

In other news, I was hoping to do a little worldbuilding today. I still may, but I'm dragging my feet. Which surprises me. I came up with some good ideas last weekend. Maybe it's just being tired and feeling a little down. Actually, I'm feeling pretty powerless about some work issues. Which, of course, I can't talk about until they are officially announced. Suffice to say, I may be looking for another job so I don't have to put up with the crap. But I really don't want to, because then I'd start trying to find a job using my degree, and I really don't want to do that. And Mark wants me to stay put so I can write as well (I still find it amazing that he can, without trying, remind me almost on a daily basis why I love him and why I married him). So more on that probably next week.

Finished Chapter 1 of Part 3!

Feels good to have it underway. And it's fun writing in Aidan's POV. Can't wait to see where that takes me. I'll save the funny, I mean, the, uh, not so founny pet story. Hehe.

Dizziness

This damn dizziness is really mucking things up for me. The doc on Monday was the best I've seen yet about this. He actually took me seriously, tried a few different reaction tests, and told me I had some symptoms of Benign Positional Vertigo. So the dizziness is actually a problem with my torturous inner ear canals. A piece of ear wax or somesuch crystallizes somewhere in the inner ear and gets lodged in a positional tube - the sort that helps tell you what end is up. The crystal throws this all off, causing this vertigo - my dizziness. The solution: some odd physical therapy that involves specific head movements followed by two to three days of sitting upright. Even while sleeping. But this treatment has often cured people of this vertigo for good. So I'll take it. A doctor once mentioned this to me in passing, but this is the first time a doc has actually worked seriously with me trying to fix this. It was a good feeling. Of course, the PT is very specialized, only one person at my clinic does it, and she requires all first time patients to meet for over an hour with her. Which means I couldn't get an appointment until May 5. So I have to put up with the dizziness that's being unusually persistent for a while longer.

And I found out yesterday that dramamine is not a good idea to treat my dizziness. I was barely able to stay awake until 8:30 last night, and I slept the whole night through. So I suppose I'll have to grin and bear it. Maybe I'll be able to get so into my writing that it doesn't bother me. But it does look like I'll have to slow down my time line for part 3 and editing. Which stinks.

Death

For once, the grey skies and rainy weather are welcome. Mark and I found out last night that his cousin Raes died Sunday night. He was 23. He was racing ATVs with a buddy and missed a curve in the fading light. Hit a tree. He wasn't wearing a helmet and, quite frankly, I don't want to know if the helmet would've saved him. In that knowledge lies the madness of "what if." He didn't die instantly, but was able to remark to his friend that he couldn't feel his legs. So we can hope that perhaps he couldn't feel the pain either.

Having just joined Mark's family a little over six months ago, I didn't know Raes very well. But I was able to spend a decent amount of time with him during our Thanksgiving visit. The day after Thanksgiving, we had a big family gathering with Mark's Dad's side. And Raes had a tape of his training to be a corrections officer in Georgia. He showed us his favorite clip a couple times - footage of him and three other officers getting zapped by a taser gun (part of their training is to experience the weapons they have at their disposal to use on the inmates so they know what sort of pain they're inflicting). All four the guys started on their knees and ended prone on a mat. But Rae was the first one back up.

Mark and I spent our last day of that trip with Raes, waiting for our flights. We played cards and board games at Nana's house, watching the Bills game on TV. And then we went to the airport and watched a blizzard pound against the runways. Raes, being a tall, baldish guy travelling alone, had been pulled aside for the "random" screening. And the security guard had slammed his bag around, breaking his bottle of Tommy cologne. I remember sitting with Raes at our gate, breathing through my mouth and helping him fill out the complaint form (Mark and I were listed as witnesses). We hunted all down that terminal, trying to find a plastic bag big enough to hold his stuff and another to seal up the doused bag. When that was finally taken care of, Raes and I realized that we had both been overseas at the same time, and that we likely ran at track meets together. I remember thinking - in my mushy newlywed state (OK, so that hasn't changed) - that Raes was a connection from my past that led back to Mark.

These are the things I remember about Rae from the very brief time I knew him. I wish I knew more. Godspeed, Rae. And love, thoughts, and prayers to your family and friends.

Good Laugh

Check out my link to The Onion. I personally enjoyed their spin on SARS and WMD. Heh.

Again with the wierd dizziness and mushy brain business. I've got an appointment this afternoon, but I'm not hopeful the doc is going to tell me anything useful. This will be the fifth or sixth doc I've seen in nearly as many years about my odd dizziness. The only time it ever did any good was when they found out I had anemia, which solved the worst of the dizziness for a few months, but then it came back. And my iron levels haven't dropped since. I've been told that it's because my inner ear canals are really twisted that I'm dizzy. One guy told me that it's because I'm blonde and fair-skinned (he said this caused my pupils to be really dillated a lot). Another doc did a CAT scan and told me everything was perfectly fine - and he couldn't find any evidence of the three sinus infections I had had in the nine months before said scan. So forgive me if I'm skeptical of this appointment. I wouldn't have made it, but enough friends have expressed concern that I'll go to make them feel better if nothing else. And who knows? I've yet to try a Colorado doc with this business. Maybe they know something here that the ones in Arizona and Indiana didn't.

Start the Day Off Write

Well, I'm not sure this is going to work today. I'm not entirely certain of my ability to string together words even into the simplest of sentences. I don't even want to know how long it's taken me to put this much together for my blog.

Last night was great. Sharleen is really cool and was happy to see me and the others of the crit group there cheering her on. And I bumped into a couple people that I haven't seen in about a year. That was nice. And I bought Terry Goodkind's first book for only $3. I figure I'll try any author for $3. And he's supposed to be a good fantasy author. The bad part about last night is that I was really dizzy. I mean, we're talking I wasn't sure if I would be able to drive back home dizzy. Sleep helped, but I feel like I need to sleep another decade to really feel better. I got eight hours of sleep, ate some breakfast, read the paper, then went back to sleep for two hours. Now I've been up for another two hours and feel just about the same. My brain is just mush, but at least I don't have the same dizziness as last night. Now I have to decide if I want to try to write today. I don't know if my brain is up to it. I think I'll write for a couple hours and see how I feel after that (and how much I've written - I'm not going to stay glued to this chair for six hours and only wring 200 semi-coherent words out of myself).

OK, so I was supposed to have done some worldbuilding today. But the file I need for that isn't on my disk like I thought it was. Grrr. I really don't like doing this. That and my dizziness is back. I'm just glad it left me alone for the past few days so I could finish up Part 2. I hope it goes away tomorrow when I start Part 3. Tonight I'm going to a book signing. One of the writers in my critique group has her first book out. It's called _The Canyon Wall_ by Sharleen Pendergrass. Buy it at Amazon.com. I'm picking up my copy tonight and hanging with Sharleen so she has company. Tres exciting.

PART 2 FINISHED!!!!!

Total word count is over 40k. Chapter 17 is 2550. I don't like these words as much as I liked the previous ones. It felt a little more forced and that I left out a lot of info. But it's done for now. I'll take care of it on the rewrite. Excuse me while I do the Happy Dance. :)

AARGH!

I left my disk at home! :( I still have my notes for writing out Chapter 17, so I'll still do that, but I was hoping to have all of Part 2 together today so I could send it to a few people. Gah! I hate it when I forget that thing. And work's going to commandeer more of my attention than usual today. So here's to hoping I still get through Chapter 17. I would just work on whatever I don't finish tonight, but I have a chorus meeting. Which, depending on how I write today, I may just bow out of.

Chapter 16 Done

I am now one chapter away from finishing a draft of Part 2. I wrote 2,571 words today. Can we say en fuego? :) Should be able to write Chapter 17 tomorrow. And then it's on to Part 3. Nice when it all comes together and decides to smack you in the fingertips.

The embedded reporters are coming home. Which means now I'll have absolutely no information about my brother. I hope he's had a chance to write Christina, or even call her. I wonder if he's been told anything about when he's coming home.

Part 3 Cometh

I finally got some solid ideas for Part 3. It's still kicking around in my mind a little, but I think this will work. It might be a bit more sad than I had originally intended, but the original concept for the book stemmed from a very scary thought and worry about the future. So I suppose it's appropriate. I'm just happy to have something written down and planned for the thing. I might even be able to push through a chapter or two of it by Sunday. Today I should be able to write Chapter 16, tomorrow Chapter 17, and then the first chapter or two of Part 3 on Saturday. Since Sunday is Easter and we're going to my uncle's for a big dinner, I don't think I'll get any writing done that day. I'll try, though. It's so exciting to think that I might have a completed draft of Human Dignity in as little as two weeks. And then it's all about the editing. And submitting. And facing rejections. And trying again. And again. And starting new projects.

Well, I managed to shake off most of the morning's strange feelings. And I finished chapter 15. Wrote 2,634 words. I think that's a personal best in a day at work. I'll have to try to outline my scenes more often. Makes things flow better. And I've realized that the inspiration I thought I had for Part 3 actually works better as a final chapter for Part 2. Still not sure where I'm going with Part 3, but I do know it's going to be short. Definately no more than 20,000 words, which would bring my rough draft word count to about 95K. Wow. Considering I started out 2003 with 34.5K words that I had been building since September 2000, I'm pretty happy. :)