Better?

I went to see the doctor, and got told it was probably allergies. I lacked a bunch of symptoms: very little sneezing, no runny mucus, no itchy or watery eyes. Just in case, I was told to use Nasacort, and it has been pretty good so far. The worst of the congestion has cleared out of my sinuses, and I feel like I am much improved. So, yay?

The weather, on the other hand, is still really a grind. I was walking through the mall across the street, and there are trees all over. It's a week in April, and half of the trees didn't even have buds. There were some with delicate new leaves, but so many were still hibernating. And it's been raining forever, and there is wind, and clouds all the time. When the sun comes out it's glorious, and the light lingers so late into the evening, but I don't know, it's just a long dragging misery.

I've had a lot of games to look over, some I've talked about and more: Hillfolk with Iron Age personal relationships, Esoterrorists with horrific conspiracies to bring demons into the world opposed by expert agents; Fear Itself, which is Esoterrorists but with normal people instead; Trail of Cthulhu which is Call of Cthulhu but with better investigation rules; Microscope Expanded, the broadening supplement for the brilliant Microscope; Owl Hoot Trail, D&D in the fantasy Wild West. So many games. I'm thrilled with it. This is a good thing.

Saw Logan. It was fine. That's all that needs to be said.

I'm reading what I wrote, 30K words to try to figure out how to fix it. But I'm more interested in reading Catherynne M. Valente's short stories in The Bread We Eat In Dreams, some of which are shatteringly good. The sort of thing that makes one want to give up writing because you won't be that good. I'm tearing through them. It's great stuff, but out of print, so that's bad.

Ugh. Still sick.

Nearly a month of illness by this time. Going to see my doctor in a couple days. Been feeling a little better the last few days, but still...sick.

Falling down on the writing as I reassess the work (terrible idea) and try to figure out how to make it into what I want it to be (good idea) which is a worthwhile way to make it work. I'd like more words and less thinking but so it goes.

Getting warmer. Still not drier.

Yet again sick

Another week, another post about being sick. Well, I still am sick, and there's no point living in denial. It's not very bad anymore. A little more coughing, a little less phlegm. I can do stuff without collapsing when I'm done. I only medicate once or maybe twice a day. All of this is good, and improvement, but I wish to be well.

Yesterday I went to see a play called Tribes at ACT. It was astonishing. The play is about a bitterly funny family of academics and creatives. The younger son is deaf but as raised to be "hearing" in that he had hearing aids that vaguely work, reads lips very well, and can speak. When he meets a woman at a party of mostly deaf people who signs at him, and reveals he can't sign, he enters into a steep learning curve about being Deaf (the culture) because the woman is hearing but raised by deaf parents. She is now, however, going deaf. They meet cute (so cute) and are dating very soon, and the son leaves his family to move in with her, which shatters the family entirely: they can't accept he's going, they can't accept he's becoming Deaf instead of just deaf, they can't accept his anger at how they cut him off from being Deaf all his life. It's brutal and sad and funny and incredibly human. As a person with significant hearing loss, I was deeply touched by the story of Sylvia, the going-deaf woman, who has lost high tones, and then music, and then her own voice. It's too sad for me to think about, really, because I'm half-way there (and fortunately going no further at any time soon, I think.)

I also saw the good but not great Get Out, which failed to hit me as hard as I think it probably should have. The main character is just too horror movie requisite in that he doesn't Get Out when the danger is evident and clear. It's necessary for the plot, but plot stupidity, even if slightly explicable because of circumstance, is still bothersome.

I'm writing and reading a lot, so that's good. Many words on the page, and many pages consumed, though it's pretty much all RPG books now: more of Esoterrorists; and also Red Aegis, Eyes of the Stone Thief, Fear Itself and Trail of Cthulhu in rapid succession. Tearing through the Pelgrane Press oeuvre is pretty much what I'm saying.

Warming up but still so much rain. We had a day of sun. Everyone went mad for a while. It's All Summer In A Day whenever that happens now. Ray Bradbury saw clearly this winter and how it would affect Seattle.

Still sick

Day 9 of my cold. It's less bad now than it was. I spent five days in bed, head so congested I couldn't hardly function. Now, I'm just sort of congested, and cough every so often, and it's a lot better. I wish I was fully well, but it's not the case, not yet.

The one thing that's gone well during this period is that I've been writing. I'm more than forty pages into something, and it's not the first time I've been more than forty pages into this particular something but it's the most successful version, to my thinking, that I've yet managed. So that's great.

Not much reaching has been done either, except on some tabletop game books. I'm digging into Pelgrane Press books; they do Dying Earth which I've owned for years and ran twice, I think, and wish I could have done more. It's based on Jack Vance's stories and novellas about a far future Earth of magic and decadence. They do 13th Age, which is delightful and I've run for a longish campaign, and will run again further. That's a D&D varient that combines the best parts of 3rd and 4th Editions with some new spins on things. And now I have Hillfolk--an Iron Age setting that focuses on interpersonal conflicts and the drama that come from such--and Owl Hoot Trail--a Western version of D&D, sort of?--and The Esoterrorists, which lets you play skilled investigators looking into esoteric demonologists, foiling them at every turn if you can. And I just ordered a couple more that look promising. I think I'm going in for the whole company, pretty much? (Not true, there's some stinkers there, but mostly it's good.)

Weather is warmer and wetter and continuing that way. Daylight Savings Time means that we've got late evenings starting again, but the mornings have gone dark once more.

Maybe next time I write, I'll be well again?

Head Cold, Day 2

Finally got a two day weekend, which began yesterday with me being full of phlegm, and ends tonight with me being...full of phlegm. I am not thrilled with this turn of events and hope it passes soon.

Writing is going well, I should note. Less these last couple days because I have been sick, but I'm still writing each day, and that is wonderful. And still on the same piece, which is great.

The news (CNN) is not bothering with both sides any longer. Instead of having a panel of four with two and two for each side, or at least one and three, it's now six people, all to one degree or another against Trump including the host, and they're just tearing at him full time. Question: why the fuck didn't they do this six months ago? Oh, right. They weren't threatened then, and somehow imagined they wouldn't be. Slightly better late than never, but only slightly.

Not reading much, because I'm watching tv while I'm sick instead of reading. This is sad making in a slight way, but I'm sick, so that's how I'm doing it.

March marches in

Garden show ended, which was good. It was full of small problems that will be easier to deal with next week, but for now have caused nothing but headaches. Still went fine, though.

Jeff Sessions spent his confirmation hearing lying blatantly and having his Republican colleagues obfuscate his lies (mostly about civil rights.) But now we know he lied about something else: having contact with the Russian government. No contact, he said, no dealings, nothing. Under oath, with direct questioning. Except he did meet with the Russian Ambassador, twice, during the campaign. So...that's lying under oath to Congress, or perjury, the same crime for which Bill Clinton faced impeachment hearings. And that was just about a blowjob, while this is colluding with a foreign nation. Jeff Sessions was in congress in those days (of course he was, because these villainous slugs all have been around since buggy whip times) and he was Very Seriously Concerned that Clinton lied under oath, and did interviews about how necessary it was to impeach him.

Resign, Secretary Sessions; that's the only sound conclusion, and it's likely what will happen. Flynn went down for less. Well, not precisely less. Essentially the same thing. Just this time with bonus oath breaking.

The sun is rising earlier every day. We're not far from the Equinox, three weeks essentially. Twelve hours of daylight is just around the corner. I am made so excited by that thought more than I probably should be. In three months I'll be slightly irritated that the sun is coming up at 5 in the morning, and waking my cat up even earlier than that (like 3 in the morning) and in four months I'll be fussing about the heat, but that light, that glorious light, is what I crave. I've often dreamed of having residences in the northern and southern hemispheres to gain those long days almost all the year round. Never going to happen, but it's a nice dream.

What are you reading? A history of the English Reformation, which is trying to be dry, and maybe succeeding. It's slow going. I re-read Was by Geoff Ryman, and it's less good than I remember. But it's the sort of book that has a huge impact on first reading it; something fascinating and unexpected that succeeds by being just that, but which cannot hold up the spell fully when examined again. The surprise of it is gone. It's still a good book.

Writing? Maybe. Five pages yesterday. It's progress of a sort. I may keep it going. I will try.

Weather, what it's like? Irregular bouts of snow once a week or so; cloudy; cool but not frigid. There was a lot of wind early yesterday, enough to send the trees into wild contortions and to howl against the sides of the building. It didn't stick around.

Garden Show 2017

I'm at the NW Flower & Garden Show all week, which consumed my days off and leaves me working seemingly all the days in a row. As a result, I barely have time to sleep, let alone post here. So this short message will suffice.

It's my 13th year there, I think? I didn't do last year, and then I think I did every year back to 2005 but maybe 2004, and then I worked one shift in 2001, I believe it was? The book store has a booth there every year, so down I have gone. It's nice and relaxing, except this year it overlapped with our annual inventory, and also with an intense period of preparing things for the adoption of a new inventory and POS system at the store, so the Garden Show got less attention than it normally would, and while it's still going well, it's more fraught, and as this year I'm in charge, I'm really feeling it.

I've got only three more days to get through and then we go back to relatively normal for a month and change, so there's that.

What are you reading? The Adventures of Alyx, by Joanna Russ, who was my teacher for Introductory Short Story Writing in college. I had no idea who she was, and didn't do what she advised me in regard to a story I wrote that she rather liked. What can I say? It was before Google, so I just didn't know.

The weather? Some snow yesterday, that amounted to nothing really, but there's more coming. Winter is lingering.