Cat Logic

Grady says if you can't eat it or sleep on top of it, it doesn't exist.

Update, Of A Sort

OK, it's been, like, a year since I've posted anything.  My excuse is that a *snort* novel has eaten most of my brain and it insists on my total obedience when I drag my carcass home from work.  I expect it will be demanding a human sacrifice pretty soon.

I had written up to 180,000 words, then I realized nobody in their right mind would publish a first novel that large so it's been edited down to 105,000.  Still a little unwieldy, but I can whittle a little more off in the interim.  I'm trying to find a chunk I can post as an excerpt that would give a good idea what the book is about without giving too much of the plot away.  It's a horror comedy Young Adult, in case you were wondering.  If you weren't wondering, then you have more of a life than I do.

Sometimes I consider chickening out and just posting it as an e-pub on Amazon, but I'd really like to work with an editor.  A human one.  I've downloaded a few too many crappy e-pubs that are in dire need of an editor.  I'd rather the readers mocked me for other reasons.  So there. 

Don't even ask about the sheer hell that is writing an agent's query letter.  *shrieks silently*

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 

I'm designing a lace shawl which might be done in, oh, about three years.  I've knitted and frogged the center section maybe 27 times.  I finally said the hell with it and chose a leaf lace pattern and I'm about halfway through that part.

I still have some lace stockings I need to photograph and write the pattern for.  It was a little too warm to wear them last winter so I folded them up and forgot about them.  I blame the hole in my brain that the *snort* novel ate.

In my research on my *snort* novel I've read, like, 397 books.  About a third of them have been books on late 1970s punk and new wave music, specifically Southern California bands.  The rest are seemingly random things like one on Skylab, another on 1970s labor unions, and don't ask how many on clothes, TV and pop culture.  It's almost like even though I lived through 1979 I forgot all the good stuff.  I'll be posting a book list sometime soon.

I'll be redoing the blog sometime.  I'm a little tired of the background and broken links and such.

I'm sure there's some other crap, but my brain just now stopped working.

Maybe Can't Blame This On The Cat

Goodbye Irene. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

We got nearly eight hours of 35-45 mph sustained winds with gusts of 70 mph, something like six inches of rain, then it all abruptly stopped around 10:30pm and with the very occasional whoosh of rain and wind. Due to some magical meteorological anomaly, or perhaps The Vortex, we had stronger winds than Newport News did despite the eye passing right over them or near them or something. Somehow the power stayed on in my block so I have AC today and they say the water coming out of the faucets is OK to drink. Like it was ever OK to drink in the first place.

The winds sent a huge cloud of stink and haze up our way Friday morning from the Dismal Swamp fire. It's now completely out so I don't have to wonder if a sofa in my building is smoldering every morning when I leave for work. Probably had something to do with that foot of rain they got last night.

The worst was when the giant weatherman came along and slapped his hand right over Richmond. I hate when that happens.

Since my apartment windows face a church wall I had to go outside early this morning and wander around a bit to see what we had going on. The power is out everywhere so it's eerily quiet even for a Sunday morning. Except for the cicadas. How the hell did cicadas not get drowned in the storm? Do they have snorkels??? Did the rain wash new ones out of the ground during the night? Damn things are louder than my air conditioner.

There's a park a block or so east of my apartment and storms (or giant weathermen) usually knock a few trees down every year. There was a pack of homeless dudes on the other side of the park partying like hell so I didn't go any closer.

A casual walk a block or so west of my apartment shows more storm (or giant weatherman) damage and it's pretty minor compared to other parts of Richmond. I went out without coffee so I didn't go as far west as I had intended. I knew there was a huge tree snapped in two a few blocks further up but I kept having to walk out into the street to avoid tree branches and generators on the sidewalks, but then I'd have to get out of the street to avoid all the lookyloos in SUVs. See, I don't count as a lookyloo because it's my neighborhood.


The Spotted Thing was less than impressed by the whole thing. I guess if he couldn't bite it or knock it off the wall he couldn't be bothered with it.


Note added 12:26pm: Hurricane Irene has shifted The Vortex to another room!

Novel Hell

Randomly, here's giant monster Grady checking out the pile of notes I've scribbled to myself at work, stuffed in my pocket, then can't decipher when I come home and sit down to write. He's no help whatsoever because he inevitably tramples his way across the keyboard and I have several of his paragraphs I have to delete. See, he's not terribly good with dialogue and his grammar is haphazard at best.

Oh, and tropical storm winds are beginning to roll garbage cans down the alley because some butthead forgot to put theirs away last night. The doors on my floor are rattling during wind gusts so I suspect there is a window open on one of the other floors but I can't be bothered to go down the stairwell to check.


And for any of you who were concerned about The Vortex (you know who you are), the earthquake did no harm to it whatsoever and brooms still balance. The Vortex also still plays hell with Ocicats' little pea brains and renders them immobile when they sit in that very spot. Eerie, no? No.

Bored With Hurricane Irene Already.

Nine a.m. and not much tropical storm action yet, though the entire city descended upon the local supermarkets like lemmings and bought up all the bread and milk on Thursday. And creamer. I went in Friday morning on the way to work to get coffee for the weekend and saw that they'd wiped the bread section out completely and bought up all the good creamer. You know, the creamer they're discontinuing so I couldn't get the last couple jars and hoard them like a crazy person. Curses.

Don't know why people insist on buying milk when there's a storm coming because the power inevitably goes out. Might as well pour half that gallon jug down the drain first thing. What do I care? I just wanted my fake-ass vanilla caramel creamer, dagnabbit.

On the other hand, I still have cable so I get to watch weathermen getting blown around for a few hours. Instead of putting those little gale-force flags up they should just check the conditions by seeing how many weather guys get blown away. "It's a Two Al Roker storm out there!"

I'm feeling sure that I must've stolen that line from some comedian a few years ago.

This is the extent of my earthquake damage. One old plastered-over 3 ft crack that re-cracked. With every aftershock it gets a couple inches longer. Not my problem because I don't own the building.

Oh, and don't make eye contact with the evil smirking Edwardian child in the painting. Whoops, too late!

Apparently I can sleep through an earthquake. I've claimed that for years but never had the chance to put it to use. Early Thursday morning there was a 4.5 aftershock that I completely ignored. I'm sure if I had woken up I would've blamed it on the cat and yelled at him because having something to blame stuff on is the main thing cats are good for. Broken bric-a-brac, weird smells, that inexplicable sound in the middle of the night, blame the cat. Unless there's a guy around.

Grady says, "What, me? I'm spotted and I'm cute!" Ha! He bites like crazy and hurls his 17-lb. bulk around like a drunken fratboy. Earthquake? Feh. Sometimes I think I have a wild animal loose in the house.