Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Phoebe (on the left) always finds Loki and cuddles up to him, which he doesn't mind.

In other sinking-money-into-the-vet news, Isis finally had her hernia repaired on Monday. She was very gaunt where she had her tummy tuck (she's skinny anyway) but she's eating okay now. We just have to keep an eye on her for a little while and take her back next week to have her stitches removed. She's pretty good at the vet. 

Loki's usually sweet Dr. Jekyll demeanor turns into a nasty Mr. Hyde when he goes to the vet, and it has ever since his first trip when he was 8 weeks old.  We're not sure why... he never had a bad experience to make him freak out in the first place. But the vet he went to for the first five years recommended that all four of his paws be declawed, which we did. He now hovers between 19-21 pounds, no matter what diet we put him on, and even with no claws he's still a monster of a cat to control while at the vet. So we'll be enjoying his mat-free existence for the next several months until it grows back in.

Here's a rare photo of Mr. Hyde revealing himself for a split second:

Posted by Yvette at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: My 3 Cats

Posted by Yvette at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: History & Genealogy | Personal | Politics & Religion

I didn't quite break the 10,000 mark for NaNoWriMo, even though I was on a really good roll the first week of November. I could spend the next three days writing over 40,000 words... but I'll be going to work and probably trying not to think about it again.

At least I've written more this year than I have in the past, which is the same thing that happened last year. And this year I think I have a pretty solid story. SO what's the problem? Why do I set myself up for this every year if I continue to disappoint myself and those who are cheering me on?

Maybe November is a bad month for me. I seem to go out of town in the beginning of the month (from the 8-12 this year), and then there's the hulabaloo of Thanksgiving and the introduction to the holiday season. This year I had a two-week cold that kicked my ass, and then before it was over I started a medication that is making me tired and very thirsty. It's so much easier to sit in front of the TV and let my brain be consumed by HD entertainment. Maybe if I had gone to the local write-ins that other NaNoWriMoers arranged I would have been more motivated.

The more difficult realization that I don't want to write here--because writing it here makes it more real--is that I have a serious problem with following through on promises to myself. Most of the time I can follow through with promises to others because they are holding me accountable. I just don't hold myself accountable as much as I should. How the hell do you change that kind of lifelong habit?

Step by step, I'm sure. And maybe writing just a little more each year for NaNoWriMo is the small step that I'm taking as far as that goes... so next year, I damn well better break that 10,000 word mark. At that rate, I might actually "win" it (by reaching 50,000 words) by 2020. 

Posted by Yvette at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Personal | Reading, Writing & Books

Ben and I made it known to our families, friends and coworkers that we would be spending Thanksgiving by ourselves this year. We made our trip to visit his family and my Mom in Ohio a couple weeks ago, and my dad drove to spend the holiday with my sister in Colorado, leaving us in solitude as we wished. Two of my coworkers invited me to come and eat Thanksgiving dinner at their families' houses, despite the fact that I had just said that we were looking forward to having time

We felt a little guilty for not spending time with family this family-centered holiday, but frankly it has been a long-overdue vacation for us and we've enjoyed it immensely. I'm 95% over my two-week attack of acute viral nasopharyngitis (though there's nothing cute about a bad common cold) and Ben is lagging behind, if lagging behind means eating breakfast, taking cough syrup and then falling asleep mid-morning on the living room floor (poor baby).

I bought a 4.75 pound boneless turkey breast from Sam's Club that suited us quite nicely for Thanksgiving dinner. We also ate mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing with lots of celery and onions and pumpkin pie for dessert. I spent a lot of the day cooking and preparing... as soon as the pumpkin pies were in the oven (did them first for a change so that they'd be plenty cool for dessert) I made a cheese ball and veggie tray for us to snack on throughout the day. I also made meatloaf, which was a nice break yesterday from our all-turkey-all-the-time meals. So now I'm happy because we'll keep eating leftovers for at least a few more days.

Other than food, I went shopping on Black Friday (that experience should hold me over for a few years) and we've watched several movies, many hours of the Heroes marathon that was on the new Mojo HD channel, played some video games and pulled out Christmas decorations. We went for a brisk walk around the neighborhood yesterday in the evening sun and chilly weather, and that was nice.  It's been a good long weekend for our emotional health as well as physical.

We'll be back to holidays with family at Christmas, and after a restful Thanksgiving, I know that at least I'm looking forward to it. 

Posted by Yvette at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Holidays | Personal

I can't seem to kick this bug that I have, so I think I might actually have to go to the doctor. I hope I don't have strep... though in a way I do, because then antibiotics will kill it. Otherwise, I get to stick it out with a sore throat, congested head and icky, hurtful cough. Green tea in the morning is not really helping.

I want to take the day off work, but I have to send out two email newsletters this morning and try to get other stuff done before Thanksgiving vacation. Luckily, Ben and I were planning to stay home this year without having any visitors. He started getting sick on Sunday, so we'll probably spend the day eating chicken soup, napping and watching movies. Maybe playing games if we're up to it.

There's nothing like looking forward to a four-day weekend when you know you'll be sick. 

Posted by Yvette at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Personal

Have you seen this cool selection of Science Tattoos? I like the DNA dragon one a lot.

Posted by Yvette at 08:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Geeky | Nerd Alert | Personal

Any magazine that uses the word "clusterfuck" in an article has my vote. BUST magazine is published 6 times a year and I love the ads almost as much as the articles themselves.

But what does it say about me if I reveal the guilty little secret that I also subscribe to Martha Stewart Living. The other print magazines to which I currently subscribe are Toyfare by Wizard, Smithsonian and Real Simple

I get the local Sunday paper, but other than that I read my news online. I subscribed to Wired for a little while, as well as Archaeology, The New Yorker and Creating Keepsakes (that was a gift subscription from work... I just read the scrapbooking industry magazines at work now because there are always copies floating around). I still devour magazines when they arrive, though sometimes it takes a couple days because of work and stuff. It allows me to get sucked into reading without the inevitable hours of time-sucking that occurs when I pick up a novel.

I also keep meaning to pick up a copy of Geek Monthly, but I mostly shop for books online so I don't go to bookstores very often. Maybe I'll do that this weekend. In between writing chunks of words to catch me the hell up on NaNoWriMo.

Any other suggestions for magazines I might like? 

Posted by Yvette at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Feminism | Reading, Writing & Books

I played the hobbit Dwalin in a 1993 high school production of "The Hobbit," and I think of this stanza when I see mist over the mountains here in Utah. (Is it geeky to know it by heart and repeat it to no end in my head?) In the play, the whole hobbiting troupe of adventurers repeated it during an exeunt with fade to black. The full poem is longer in the book. This photo is a zoomed image taken from our backyard after the first snows appeared.  

I'm back in the West now. The trip to Ohio went well. Effective communication astonishly occurred between me and my mother and between Ben and both of his parents. Ben wished he had spent less time fixing his sister's computer while we were there, but I know that she was happy just to see him again... and during my shorter time with her, I feel like we connected more than we have before. We all had a nice lunch at the Olive Garden on Sunday... me, Ben, my mom, Ben's mom, Ben's sister and his sister's friend instead of Ben's dad. Ben and his sister forgot to tell their mother what time to be there, though, so there was a lot of apologizing when she finally arrived.

We also spent almost three hours visiting Ben's grandparents, which we skipped last year while we were in town. I'm so glad that we went. We brought them fresh flowers (Grandma later told Ben's dad over the phone to save money and just bring short stem carnations next time, and only one... even though we'd only spent $11 for the fresh bouquet from a local nursery). Grandpa has had a couple strokes recently, but was doing way better than my step-grandmother had even 5 years after her stroke at a much younger age. Having asked my own grandparents about their family histories before they died, and being thankful that I did, I worked in a question or two that led to me and Ben learning more about his family history than he had previously known. That was cool, and Grandpa was more than happy to share what he knew... and both he and Grandma were impressed with how much he actually recalled.

Great, now I have two sides of family history to research, though I think a lot more of my own family history is recorded than Ben's. And Ben will probably be more interested in helping with the detective work of his own family.

I came down with a cold while I was in Ohio and I'm still feeling it. WTF? I rarely get sick and I've been sick with a cold three times in the past 6 months or so.  

Posted by Yvette at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Around Town & Beyond | Friends & Relationships | Geeky | History & Genealogy | House & Home | Personal

I had an early appointment this morning with my dermatologist, whom I’ve seen only once before. That was six weeks ago, and he was very personable. We talked about Ohio and where I went to college, what brought me to Utah, plus his own background and experience in struggling to start a family.

It was a complete change from my other experiences with dermatologists, who have been very clinical and barely interested in me as a person. You know, the typical doctor—treat the symptoms, not the patient. This new Dr. B is probably close to retirement, so being part of an older generation with a small office mentality may contribute to his excellent bedside manner. It’s probably also his personality.

Well, this morning’s appointment was tougher than the first (pain-wise), and I was glad that my new dermatologist was friendly and caring. I was a little miffed, though, because he asked questions that made it clear he didn’t remember much of anything we’d talked about only six weeks ago—what brought you to Utah, do you have any children, etc. At no point did any of my answers seem to remind him of our previous conversation.

The bizarreness of answering the same questions made me start imagining a life in which everyone but me had long-term memory loss, and conversations among people were rarely fresh. What would happen to me, the one person who could remember everything? Would I go crazy? Maybe the reason that I could remember is because I was the only person who didn’t drink the water or eat the tainted fish (a la Airplane!).

Weird fantasy worlds aside (have I been watching too much Scrubs?), I wonder if Dr. B will ask me the same ones again next time. He's a good doctor otherwise. His male nurse/assistant is roughly my age and surely remembered the previous conversations for which he was present, but he didn’t say anything.

I’m a couple thousand words behind on NaNoWriMo, but I stayed up last night to make sure I at least didn’t fall any further behind. Current word count: 6,955. I’m flying out tomorrow morning to visit Ben’s family and my mom in Ohio for a few days and hope to have some quiet writing time while I’m there.

Posted by Yvette at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Personal | Reading, Writing & Books

Ben and I finally watched the new Transformers movie this past weekend. We didn't see it in the the theater because Ben was afraid to be burned by the mangling of his childhood heroes. I had heard that the special effects were awesome, but the plot left much to be desired. Well, duh, it's a live-action Transformers movie.

But we both really liked it, and sideways glances at Ben sometimes reveals a partially-open-mouthed look that preceded a man-boy giggle and the words, "I just geeked out a little."

I didn't mind all the blowing up of things because there were neato transforming robotoids to watch, plus little nods to geekhood everywhere that even I, who didn't own a Transformer while growing up could appreciate (I didn't have Barbies, either, just Lincoln Logs, some Legos, one Cabbage Patch doll, a few generic toys and several books).  The Camaro Bumblebee hit an old yellow VW bug in the used car lot, for example. My head is still too morning-fuzzy to remember the other nods to geeks in the movie, but they'll come to me.

My first taste of the live action Transformers transforming was in early 2005 when I came across the new Citroen C4 ad online. What I found on YouTube made me geek out a little because I had never seen the intro to the commercial before! Watch this with the sound on for the awesome music. And then watch the parody version that someone made with an old Citroen 2CV! I wish I could link to higher resolution versions.

Posted by Yvette at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Geeky | TV & Movies

Well, here's a shot of my front porch. I took this photo a couple weeks ago when the sun was low in the afternoon sky. Ben bought three more smaller pumpkins the day before Halloween and put those on the porch for some extra festivity.

I think I had a wreath on the door for Christmas last year, but that's pretty much it. Even though I enter and leave our house through the garage most of the time, it makes me smile to see the fall colors on our front porch. What you don't see is the dead garden to the left of the door, or the mess under the tree that's making the shadow.

Maybe we'll plant some flowers this spring. Luckily, the previous owners planted a ton of tulips and a few daffodils in the front yard, so at least we have those annuals in the spring.

All this boring talk about house stuff... let me change it up and record for the ages that I have written 5,275 words for NaNoWriMo so far. To stay on track, I should reach 8,335 tonight. I'll need to take at least a one-hour break to watch Heroes, so we'll see how things go.

I'm proud of myself for staying on track (mostly) so far. I think by Day 5 in years past I've just about given up.

I have a pretty decent outline, so that's helping. 

Oh, and Ben: thanks for making me coffee this morning. <3

Posted by Yvette at 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: House & Home | Reading, Writing & Books

Thanks, Loki. That's encouraging for me. (That's an old photo from our apartment in Cincinnati... Loki still loves plastic bags to the point of our concern.) 

I wrote 33 words more than the goal last night, even though it was technically on November 2, not November 1 that I recorded my word goals on NaNoWriMo.org (which is still not showing up correctly on the widget over there in the sidebar, but hopefully they'll fix that today).

And it wasn't so hard.

True, I stayed up past my bedtime to write and am certainly feeling it this morning. More coffee is helping. I wonder how anyone could get through this challenge without drinking (or partaking in any other way) any caffeine.  

The hardest part for me about writing 1,669 words last night was to simply write the ideas that were coming into my head with very little self-editing. One of my biggest struggles, that probably plagues a host of other writers out there, is second guessing every sentence and tweaking the flow of individual sentences and word combinations. In college, I had a tough time deleting sections of stories or papers I wrote because I didn't want to just throw them away. But after being in the position of writer and editor at work for nearly two years, working on stuff in which I take pride but don't have an extraordinarily personal investment or attachment, it's easier to write a little more stream-of-consciousness because I'm confident that when I write stuff that sucks, I'll have the puzzle-piecing ability of a more seasoned editor to go back to junk and re-write as much as needed. 

Most of what I wrote last night will probably find itself on the "cutting room floor," to pull in an analogy from old time filmmaking.  But who knows. Maybe some of the scenes I write will be offshoots for future stories.

Last night's musical selection while writing: Canadian Brass, then the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra playing Copland.

I didn't actually start writing until about 11:00 last night. I was too nervous in the morning and didn't quite know how to start. I think they key is not to end a scene at the end of the night. It's to keep writing until you get to a point where you're not quite sure what is going to happen, but you've set yourself up for some nice action or dialogue. Then you read the tail end of what you already wrote when you return to writing, and you'll find yourself in the same spot with even more fresh ideas than the day before. Yeah, hopefully that's where I'll be when I start writing again this morning. Except it's getting to the time where I need to go to work and I'm procrastinating by writing the blog. But I think it's important to document how things are going so that I know how the hell I did it by the end of the month when I'm in a permanent caffeine-induced fog and only thinking about word count.

Last night, I nearly stopped at 600 or so. Then I pushed myself to continue the scene and found myself at 800, then 1200. I brushed my teeth at 1400, then came back and wrote up to 1656. "Ten away from the goal? Damn, I think I can write one more sentence before going to bed." And so I wrote a tiny bit more and made it to 1699. 

It's a lot easier to write blog entries about what I did last night than it is to write a compelling story. But hey, I remember from my college writing courses that it's about getting in the habit of writing. And I think I'm there as far as blogging goes. Now if I can just transition into writing fiction every day as well... 

Posted by Yvette at 07:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: My 3 Cats | Reading, Writing & Books

Well, I could have started writing my novel for National Novel Writing Month at 12:00am this morning, but I decided to go to sleep around 11:30 so that I could get an early start this morning. Have I written anything yet? No.

But it has been a productive morning and I'm jittery with ideas and the anxiety of possibly failing for the 5th time. By failing, I mean writing less than 50,000 words in 30 days. That's approximately 1,667 words a day, which doesn't seem like too much, especially if you break it down into two sessions of 833.5 words each. And there are still fifteen and a half hours left in my day, minus eight or nine that will be spent at work (where I probably won't write). Here's what I've done so far:

Made coffee and drank it in my NaNoWriMo mug from last year. Put away the dishes. Pulled Phoebe out of the dishwasher after she snuck in. Ate instant oatmeal. Took a photo of my mug. Read a few blogs. Opened up and cropped a few other photos I'd like to blog about soon. Threw Phoebe off my desk, away from my line of sight to the computer screen, multiple times. Started writing this blog entry.

And there you have 210 words that do not count for my word count. I have iTunes set to play randomly from my list of favorite alt rock songs, so I better freakin' get started. I might have to change the music to classical or Radiohead so that I can concentrate better, though. Marcy's Playground just turned into Nirvana that just turned into Alanis, and I sing along in my head too much to be able to write at the same time. Even though I apparently can do it while writing blogs. Huh.
 

Posted by Yvette at 07:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: My 3 Cats | Reading, Writing & Books