Friday, July 27, 2007

Hello, Anyone Out There? *crickets* Hmmm, I Was Afraid of That.

Twenty days since my last post. I have excuses:

  1. The dog ate my blog
  2. Geordi LaForge reversed the polarity on my computer and my blog posts all ended up in the Mirror Universe (see #8 of that very funny link for context)
  3. I've been re-reading all the first 6 Harry Potter books, then the 7th and then I went into a post-Potterum depression
  4. 5 seasons of Babylon 5 on DVD
  5. Catching up on all the TiVo'd TV shows I missed because of 3 & 4
  6. Blog Writer's block
Guess the real excuses.

And the sporadic posting will probably continue for a while. Wednesday August 1 I'm flying out to St. Louis for NasFic and the week after that my husband and I will go to Las Vegas for our annual anniversary/Star Trek convention trip. This will be our first wedding anniversary, our 16th anniversary of being a couple and our 5th Las Vegas Star Trek convention.

Then, later in August my son will be visiting again. I'm hopeful my daughter will make it out, too.

So, if you don't see much of me here, don't worry, I can't stay away long.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Crabby suggested a number of things I could write about next, but one of them got a supporting vote from Kira, so the topic tonight is dreams.

I've always had trouble getting to sleep unless I'm ill or exhausted. I need white noise, like a fan, and near total darkness. Yet, even with that, I still have times when I watch the clock go five, ten, thirty minutes, then an hour, sometimes longer, before I drift off.

I have some mental games I've played to help fall asleep faster. The first one I remember using, and this was way back as a child, was an alphabet game. Name animals in alphabetical order, or flowers, or girls/boys names, that kind of thing.

When I got older and had read a lot of Science Fiction, I used to name all the SF authors I could remember for each letter. I think I had trouble with Q - as a matter of fact, I still can't remember one that I've read (and that's part of the "rules" - I have to have read something by the author) whose last name starts with Q. Sometimes I'd be so caught up in the game I'd get to the end of the alphabet and have to start over just to fall asleep. Most times I didn't make it all the way through.

Anyway, about two years ago, I started telling myself a story to help fall asleep. I pretty much kept telling it every night, each night starting at the last thing I could remember from the previous night. Sometimes I'd advance the "plot" other times I'd get stuck in a loop trying to re-tell the same thing. If I got stuck in that loop too long I'd start a new story. I have about four or five of them now. They're all Science Fiction stories, too.

You'd think that as a result of this, I'd have Science Fiction-y dreams, maybe continuations of the stories, but no, my dreams - at least the ones I can remember well when I wake, are all weird, but not what you'd call SF.

I do have a couple of dreams that seem to repeat, and perhaps that's why I remember them. One of the oddest is the one where I'm at my old high school. Thing is, in this dream I'm not a teenager, I'm grown, I know that I've been to college, but for some reason I'm back and I have to take classes and graduate - again. There's usually some part where I have to go to my locker and the locker hall seems to be a mile long - I know I'll never get to the locker and also make it in time for class. There's also the class I have to pass to graduate but I never go to. One of the reasons I never go is that I can't understand a word the teacher says. I keep wondering how on earth I'll pass the final.

Some of the other dreams fall into the realm of "too much information," so I'll spare you.

Back when my daughter was still in high school, I drove her to school every morning and we'd chat about different things, it was always a nice time to spend with her. I had about ten or fifteen minutes with her during those drives.

I remembered a dream I'd had one morning, so I shared it with her - and this is one I've only had once, thank goodness. I had this cage with bunnies in it. Now, these weren't your usual bunnies - they were very very small, they stood on their hind legs and they were a number of different pastel colors. They marched around in lines inside the cage and, like the various little cats that came out of the hat in the Cat in the Hat story, each was successively a bit smaller than the previous one. That was about it, just the marching pastel bunnies. She shared the story of my weird dream with some of her friends at school and I think they still worry about my sanity.

I either don't have, or don't remember, nightmares. I can read Stephen King's worst right before bed and I don't seem to be bothered by it. I consider myself lucky that way. I also don't seem to talk in my sleep, at least nobody has ever mentioned hearing me do so.

Just a couple non-dream things to share tonight. First off, thank you to those of you who commented with suggestions. I appreciate the kick-start. I'll try to come up with my own ideas, but I'm always happy to write on request if there's something about Dawno you're interested in knowing.

Next is a plug for my Drive By Booking blog. On July 11th it will be a stop on Christine Norris's Virtual Book Tour for her new book Return to Zandria from LBF Books. I hope you'll stop by, I've got an author interview and a review of the book to post that day. After that I'll be reviewing two books by Absolute Write authors - I'll post about that on DBB soon.

Lastly, today was the "Live Earth" concert. I didn't watch it, but I heard something on NPR last week about it that tickled me enormously, the continent of Antarctica was also a venue for a band named Nunatuk, comprised of British scientists at the Rothera Research Station - there's a video clip on the Reuters page.

Friday, July 06, 2007

The Lobster Purse and Other Things

The Lobster purse, suggested as tonight's blog topic by Cookie, has a history here on Dawno's blog. I first wrote about it in March of '06. A furry off-white lobster was discovered and I noted that someone had already created a plush toy of it. A Live Journal friend of mine named Cookie was hoping for a knitting pattern and I suggested it would make a cool purse. I never did get around to making it although I've said a couple of times that I might give it a try. Who knows, maybe after I finish the crochet scarf I was going to make for my daughter two Christmases ago, I'll embark on a 5 year mission to make the purse.

So as not to have another dinky post like yesterday's, I'm going to share some links that were sent to me today.

Technicolor Duck Isn't that a beautiful picture of a Mandarin duck? It would make a great subject for an appliqué on a green silk vest, I think. No, I'm not going to even attempt it. Don't suggest I even try. I wouldn't turn it down as a Christmas gift...size 10, long (I'm 5'7" and like the way long vests look)

Then there was this link. My corpse is worth $3950. Thankfully, my insurance will provide my heirs with a lot more than that, so they can afford a decent wake for me.

You might already know that I don't post much that's political here, but this link was sent along today and as I'd been reading some recent comments threads, with a number of folk expressing a very similar opinion over in Making Light, it seemed serendipitous.

When I got home today, I opened my office door and out leapt one of the grandkitties, Pudding. He'd been trapped in there since about 9:30 when I left for the office. He raced to the food bowl, poor dear. I am now certain I'll find something he peed on. I hope it wasn't one of my Buffy comics. This is Pudding in a typical pose. We call it "the bug" for some reason. Ok, I call it the bug and my husband kindly tolerates this, amongst other oddities of mine.




I mention this only as a very weak seque to this link of a comic I also received today about the one person's perception of the difference between cats and dogs.




How does my blog come up in a search for the answer to "why does only one nostril get block"? Nevermind, I don't want to know.

Tired of LOLCats yet? Don't click on that link.

Stumble took me to this fascinating view of the Imperial History of the Middle East. "5000 years in 90 seconds".

Lastly, I spent quite a bit of time on the National Geographic Genographic study site. The Interactive Atlas of the Human Journey is simply wonderful - if you only click one link here, click that one.

Ah, it looks like the first few episodes of Babylon 5 Season 2 have finally finshed downloading - bye!

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Thanks Sean, for My Topic of the Day

Sean (a writer and fellow member of Absolute Write forums) commented on my last post that I should write about the problem I'm having with my blog muse. In general it's probably pretty simple - I'm tired at the end of a day and would rather not think too hard - it's easier to surf the web, watch Season 1 of Babylon 5 (yeah, I decided to download it from iTunes) and post the occasional kitten picture on Absolute Write.

It takes mental energy to write anything, even a simple blog post, if you consider that there are readers. I have always thought of these posts as my side of a conversation. I try to put something out for you that you might enjoy reading, because it's something that interests me.

I can only hope that my mental energy returns and I can continue to find something fun, or meaningful, or informative to share.

eta: Thanks, Frank for catching the typo - more evidence that my brain isn't fully turned on at all these days.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

The Blog Muse...

...seems to have abandoned me. I'm reading so many other blogs and just feeling like it's all being said much better elsewhere. I don't want to bore folk but I also don't want to give up on the conversation.

So - you tell me - what should I blog about? Give me topics and I'll post something about them one a day, every day, for as long as the topics hold out.

I reserve the right to not post on topics I find inappropriate or icky.

By the way - Happy Fourth of July to my US friends.