Cats flock around me

I was in the Air Force Reserves for 20 years, and since I was an aircraft electrician, I had to take CPR (cardiopulmonary rescuscitation) classes every year (for in case one of my comrades should be electrocuted).

The last few weeks I've been watching several television shows that show medical procedures (House, Bones, NCIS), and I noticed that every time they show someone, supposed medical professional or not, administering CPR, they did it WRONG. They usually perform the chest compressions with their hands flat instead of using the heel of one hand and using the other hand to hold the fingers up out of the way. And they don't put any "oomph" into the chest compressions at all, or keep their elbows straight and rock to do the compressions.

Just as I was getting a bit bitchy about this ("can't they teach these people to even LOOK right? It's easy enough to do"), I read on wikipedia (and yes, they had a professional cite) that on television and in films they PURPOSEFULLY do CPR wrong, especially if doing it on live actors and not dummies. CPR is a last-ditch try to keep blood circulating through the body and keep the brain alive. It can cause damage to the body, and when performed on a healthy person can hurt them. So the actors performing "fake CPR" bend their elbows and don't put any real pressure on the the actor who's being the victim.

I feel better now. I was building up a great rant, but that explanation makes so much sense that it totally defused my rant.

I am often glad I learned English as a native speaker. It has terrible spelling and grammar rules, because it's such a mishmash of other languages. For some reason, as I was falling asleep this morning, I was thinking of the words "vacuum," "column" and "volume." When I was in the Air Force Reserves, the training records (generated by a computer elsewhere on base) all had volume spelled "volumn." It drove me nuts every time I had to review training records. I even went so far as to send a note to the place that generated the reports, asking if they could fix the spelling, but it never happened (and I got no response to my note--it was probably ignored as something coming from a complete nut). I've seen "vacuum" spelled "vacume" or "vaccum." The "uu," which isn't a common combination in English, must confuse people. From its pronunciation, one might expect it to be spelled "vacume." The odd -mn in "column" must also confuse people. Someone in the training office at my Air Force base must have seen that, and confused "volume" with something that ended with -mn (such as column).

And these thoughts go nowhere else, just this random musing on odd-spelled words.

Last night (Friday night) was UFO (Utah Filk Organization), our twice-monthly local housefilk. Mostly we practiced for our half-time concert at Mountaincon next month, but after practice was finished one of our members told us that he'd approached Geoffrey Landis at Denvention to see if he (Geoff) would mind us putting one of his poems to music and singing it. It wasn't written in a very precise meter, so putting it to music would require changing some of the wording, adding words, etc. to make it fit. We got permission for that, so spent the next three hours writing the music and changing the poem around to make it fit. It was exhausting but exhilarating at the same time. At the end (about 5 a.m.) we were pretty pleased with what we had. We decided to let it sit for a few days and then re-visit it to see if we were still pleased with it, or if our sleep-deprived minds had made it out to be better than it was.

Then we got ingredients for breakfast, made breakfast for those who were still there (Dawyna, her husband Shawn, Brook, my daughter Rowan, and me). We were pretty fried after that--our family has been up too much during the day this week, and all-nighters that would normally be no problem become tiring. So, despite the fact that it's Brook's birthday (the 23rd), we all went home and went to bed. Got up in the afternoon with a very sore throat, terrible headache, and sore everywhere (I'd also had a therapy appointment for my back Friday morning, so it was more sore than usual). Took painkillers. Went back to bed. We decided to celebrate Brook's birthday Monday when everyone will be home.

So I'll go over to Dawnya's Monday or Tuesday and we'll see if we still like the song! It's got some great places for harmony, and we want to start working those up.

UFO (that's Utah Filk Organization) will be doing a concert for "half time" at the masquerade at Mountaincon in September. That means that the next few housefilks will be spent practicing for said concert. We choose different types of songs for Mountaincon than we do for CONduit, as Mountaincon is more media and gaming oriented than CONduit is. So we tried to pick songs from Star Trek, Firefly, Star Wars, gaming, etc. Also, some general "fun" songs that might serve as singalongs. Our tentative list is "The Scotsman" (for fun), "Hero of Canton" (Firefly), "Always the First to Die" (gaming), "Hope Eyrie," (general space), "Fallen Angel" (Star Trek), "Phoenix" (more space), and "A Toast For Unknown Heroes" (more space). Hmm, heavy on space songs. So we may change the lineup on Friday, when we'll be going over them.

Daughter number one got approved for a car loan--she's been without a car since her accident at the end of May. So on Monday, which is everyone's day off, we went car hunting. However, daughter number two, whose student loan wasn't approved for her college of choice, also had to take tests to get registered at SLCC that day. So we ended up running around like headless chickens all day long. We are ALL night people, so being up all day was a bit stressful.

We found a nice car at the second dealership we visited. Ro doesn't drive stick shift, so wanted an automatic, and a smaller car. The first car she tried, although in her price range, didn't work. She's short enough that she has to sit on a cushion to drive most cars, and in this one, once she was on the cushion, she couldn't reach the gas pedal comfortably even with the seat as far forward as it would go. So it was Right Out. The second one was a nice Elantra wagon--a bit larger than she was looking for, but she could sit in the driver's seat and not even use her cushion! Much more comfortable for her.

Too late to get to the credit union to pay for the car by the time we found it, so we knew we'd have to get up early Tuesday to do that. Also, since Dani didn't take the test until Monday, she couldn't register until Tuesday. School started Wednesday, so she needed to get registered and get her ID and all Tuesday. So Tuesday was another busy day.

After a hassle with the credit union, we zipped over to SLCC. Dani and Ro were both able to get into the same Japanese class that their friend Al was already in (and which had been full, but suddenly had TWO openings!), and were happy. Dani registered and got her ID card, and we headed over to the dealership. Finally got stuff arranged, BACK to the credit union, BACK to the dealership, and then drove Ro's new car home. It has air conditioning! (Our car has AC, but it's currently not working and will cost something like $400 to fix, so not likely to happen this summer!)

Then Wednesday morning we dropped kids off at SLCC for their first day of classes and headed up to the Veteran's hospital so Brook could get some paperwork done. Back down, got extra keys made for Ro's car (which she named Shirayuki--it's white), then stopped at the college to pick kids up. Being the first day, it was a zoo, but we found a parking place in shade to sit and wait. Then home, and some SLEEP!

Haven't done any writing all week. Carried a ms. to critique around, but didn't get much done on it. Hope to get some done today, but won't have much time today or Friday. So this week's kind of a bust! Very busy, but not much of MY work done.

What do people blog about when they're not doing anything "newsworthy"? I quit my outside-the-home job and became a full-time freelance writer due to medical reasons; these same medical reasons make it difficult for me to get up and do a whole ton of stuff outside the home, because I'm just too tired or achy. So when I'm not in the throes of writing something really cool (and haven't just been reminded of another egregious mis-useage of the American English Language), I don't have much to write about.

My biggie for the week was driving over to FYE yesterday to pick up the copy of "Stargate Continuum" I had reserved a while ago. It's pathetic that my shopping trip tired me out so much I immediately dropped in bed when I got home (of course the fact that the store doesn't open until 10:00 a.m. and I'm usually in bed by then has something to do with that).

So later, after I got up, in the interest of exercising, I walked to the store my daughter works at, which is just over a mile from our house. I did this at 3:00 a.m., which is a wonderful time to walk. Not too hot (although I'm sure it was over 75 degrees F), no sun beating down, little traffic on the roads. Unfortunately the way to the store is all uphill from our house. So the walk up, wandering the store for awhile, and back to the house had my feet in complete agony by the time I got home. I'm now sitting back at the computer, putting off doing real writing by messing around on the Web.

So much for exciting or interesting.

Maybe sometime I'll have to rant about being a night person.

As I've said before, I have a HUGE playlist of all kinds of music: filk, show tunes, rock, classical, Celtic, oldies, etc. that I just leave running as background noise as I write. Neil Diamond's "Play Me" came up, and one of the HORRID bad grammar lyrics yanked me right out of my writing: "Songs she sang to me, songs she BRANG to me. . . ." Yeah, it goes on and uses the -ang rhyme scheme four times. Ech.

Of course "brought" would not have rhymed. No excuse! Don't use a totally wrong word just because it rhymes! Curse you, Neil Diamond (or whoever wrote that song).

(I posted this in my sff.net newsgroup, but thought I'd re-post here)

We have a new person in our face-to-face writers' critique group, and as I was going over his manuscript and thinking, "Oh, gotta go over filtration, and blocking, and scene dressing, and. . . ." I wished I just had a handout I could staple to the manuscript and say, "Here, study this stuff." And as I was fantasizing about writing such a handout, it occurred to me that although that might be a *bit* helpful, just as writing books can be a *bit* helpful, that it didn't help nearly as much as my "bleeding" all over the manuscript (I was bleeding with green ink this time, as my red pen got lost). I point out SPECIFIC instances of filtration in THIS manuscript. I note where the blocking has problems and give suggestions to improve it. I point out where the whole scene is talking heads and needs scene dressing. And all of this is specific to THIS manuscript. It's not just a general, "This is stuff to watch out for when you write."

Got to CALLIHOO and started my critique (of course with new folks, I always have to give the caveat that I'm critiquing what I see on the page, not the writer nor the story as he sees it in his head). And he kept nodding, and getting the "lightbulb going off" look on his face, and I realized that no writer's book could EVER do this for a person. This hand holding, this specific discussion--this is what settles in the receptive mind and makes a writer who will (very soon, usually) NOT have these problems anymore (at least not as badly). I've done it for those who weren't receptive, who just never did "get it," but our new person "gets it." Afterward, he said, "This is EXACTLY what I've been looking for. Everyone else who read this just pointed out a few small things, but not the overall, 'You need to start over and re-envision this' that you did in your critiques."

Happiness. This is the sort of "paying forward" that makes me continually invite new people into our group. It feels so good when you know you've helped someone who's a promising writer make her or his stories closer to saleable. I'm glad I continued my specific critique, and didn't just staple a "do this" generic handout to this writer's story. Because I honestly do think he'll take this home and use it and come up with something an order of magnitude better.

How could I have forgotten this one? Nauseous/nauseated. I'd say 99 out of 100 people use this wrong. Almost every book I've ever read uses "nauseous" when they mean "nauseated." When I am sick to my stomach, feeling like I'm going to throw up, I'm nauseated. NOT nauseous (pronounced "nah'shus"). Nauseous means "sickening" as in disgusting or awful. So if I say, "Oh, I'm nauseous!" I mean that I'm disgusting? ;)

This is a simple one, but OH, what a difference it makes! I had an ergonomic keyboard, which I loved, but it was getting very old and the keys rather sticky. That rather defeats the purpose of an ergonomic keyboard, so I finally bit the bullet and bought a new one (I usually don't do this until my keyboard or whatever actually DIES). It's not a very expensive one--I was just going to get a cheapo $10 one at Wal-Mart until I could afford a new ergonomic. But I found a $20 one at Wal-Mart that's close to ergonomic and has very, very good action. It's amazing how much more pleasant it is to write now, with that new keyboard. I keep thinking, "Wow, this is NICE!" I think my kids are tired of hearing how much I love my new keyboard.

Yeah, pathetic, aren't I? I really don't have a life.

I'm full of them this week!

This one I've seen in a lot of fiction lately. Who/that. People will write "The boy THAT lost his shirt. . . ." rather than the correct "The boy WHO lost his shirt. . . ." Tons of people who post online, and people who write for websites, don't seem to understand this one.

I have a huge playlist of everything in my music library, which plays music randomly in the background while I write. One song (which I didn't even know we owned!) just played, and filled up all my EEEWWW! receptors. It's called "Lay, Lady, Lay." So, the improper useage is IN THE TITLE. Because the verse goes on to say, "Lay, lady, lay--lay across my big brass bed. . . ." ARGH!

Is the difference between lie and lay THAT difficult to understand?

Of course, a song called "Lie, Lady, Lie" might sound like it has some entirely different connotations. . . . ;)

My laptop has a cool wireless mouse. However, it occasionally decides to quit working. So I have to unplug the little wireless nub that goes in the USB port and then plug it in again. This reboots the mouse (usually--sometimes I have to take the batteries out and put them back in again, also), and then it works again . . . for awhile.

Why should I have to reboot a MOUSE? That's just silly.

I have a new widescreen LCD monitor, and I love it for the task I'm doing right now--data entry. I can put the database software on one side of the screen and the source (a Wordpad file) on the other side and have PLENTY room for both of them. I did the same thing with my old monitor, but it was rather short of space, and I had to scroll a lot. Yay new monitor!

I come up with these while I'm away from my computer, and then forget to write them down. But as I was doing data entry for the NAR and listening to a very eclectic assortment of music, I remembered a few more.

The whole I/me thing. Why do so many people think "me" is an improper way to speak of themselves? "Give that to my sister and I." Say WHAT? Would you say, "Give that to I?" This one drives me nuts in songs, especially, where it's now in concrete and people will sing along and think it's correct. GRRR. To pick on a song from one of the filk albums I own, called "Only the Music," it goes something like, "There's only the music between you and I." That's in the chorus, so you get it several times in the song. It's got to the point where I can't listen to that song, it annoys me so much.

Then I saw one at the photo place at Wal-Mart yesterday. Don't remember the context exactly, but the useage was something like, "The best prices everyday." Okay, folks, there is the phrase "every day" and there is the word "everyday." They aren't the same thing. In fact, they're rather far removed in meaning. The first means it happens daily, the second means ordinary, normal, prosaic, perhaps even rather boring. "I wear my everyday jeans every day."

End rant. Back to NAR data entry.

My eldest daughter has got me hooked on a truly pernicious computer game: Virtual Villagers. Seven people get stranded on a desert island, and from there on you build up this village of people. They get to have babies, learn to farm and fish, build huts, and eventually (I assume) learn about the ruins on the island. It moves fairly slowly, and will go on without you if you leave it running, and it's oddly addicting. The computer names the children as they're born (actually, I think when they become age 2 and can run around on their own), but you can re-name them. So I have Aardvark, HulaHoop (she was Hula), Napoleon Solo (he was Solo), Obi-wan (he was Wan), Larry (I don't remember his original name, but it was stupid, and he wasn't doing much work, so I named him LazyButt and then when he started working he became Larry), Anteater, Sasuke (he looks like the emo kid in Naruto) and many more. My village is up to 31 people now--more than half of them small children. I'm saving up "tech points" to get an upgrade in engineering, which should make the island a little less primitive (maybe).

Luckily this doesn't need constant attention like, say, The Sims, so I can have it going in the background as I write. But even when it's minimized I can still hear the children giggle and all, so it's rather surreal.

Lovely way to waste time. No predators, it's always good weather and daylight. I'd be bored out of my gourd in two days there, but these villagers are cheerful idiots.

After I posted last time, I didn't go to bed. I stayed up and finished a first rough draft of the story. Very satisfying. After my writers' group Thursday and my filking group Friday, I spent all day Saturday in bed with some kind of 24-hour gambu, and got up today rather dizzy and stuffed up, but feeling much better. So I finished the first draft and uploaded it to my writers' group, to be critiqued next Thursday. Ended up 40 pages--8900 words. Why, oh why, do I write so long? Hope I can rewrite this one down shorter.

Nearly finished the story I've been working on. Got to the end of page 34, and I really need to get to bed, but I am in the middle of the climactic scene. (Kind of a bad place to stop, but it's got a lot of momentum, so shouldn't be difficult to go back to.) Yay!

Tonight is my writer's group, and they're critiquing the story I rewrote last week, so it's a busy week for me!

Was really in the zone today with my writing. Pulled out a science fiction story I've been cogitating on for a long time. I got 18 pages into it several years ago and realized I had no idea what was going to happen. I really liked those first 18 pages, though, so I put it on the back burner. Well, yesterday I got an idea for how to finish it. Wrote about three pages of handwritten notes (for some reason I brainstorm better on paper), then had to go to bed.

So today I re-read the first 18 pages and then started writing. I wrote 10 more pages, and I'm almost to the final scene as I've envisioned it. But I really need to get some sleep, so I guess it will have to wait until tonight to (with any luck) finish it.

I'm feelin' good, though. It will be great if I can finish two stories in one week! (Especially because I got another rejection today.)

Finished a rewrite on a story I finished several years ago. I've always liked the premise of this one, but everyone who critiqued it said the buildup took too long, though they all liked the ending. That doesn't cut it with editors, though--if it takes too long to get to the good stuff, they don't buy the story. So, I've rewritten it again. This time I did slash and burn, with mostly new writing, starting farther into the action, and only pulling in a few phrases I liked from the old version. Took 24 pages of beginning down to 15. Hope that's enough--it's the last 20 pages everyone liked best (yeah, I always write long). I'm sending it through my writers' group this week, and I'm sure I'll find out then if the slash and burn was enough!