Beware of Flower.

I've been doing a lot of thinking, and have decided that National Novel Writing Month is a wonderful thing. Like many wonderful things it isn't for everyone, but here are a few reasons why I think it is often a wonderful experience.

• It teaches you to ditch perfectionism. I don't think it's possible to write a good novel in a month for moat people. I know one person who just might be able to, but she's a writing prodigy and somewhat insane.
  
• It gives you a goal. Sometimes people need a meaningful acheivement in order to boost their mood and self confidence. For most people 50 000 words in one month is a doable challenge. Reachable, but only with effort. This was the greatest gift an event has ever given me.
  
• It gets you writing, it may be something you never want to think about again after November, but you still sat down and wrote it!
  
• Spew writing can be cathartic. When you're busy trying to get as many words on the page as possible you don't have the time to judge each thought before writing. You need to allow your unconscious mind a certain amount of leeway. (How much depends on your writing style) It's also fiction. This combination lets you express things you would otherwise keep bottled up.
  

Somehow I can't really think of what I will write during NaNoWriMo as a novel. To me it's not a Novel until the dead weight is removed and what remains is polished into something worth reading. I think of what gets written during NaNoWriMo as a Spew Draft.

I wasn't going to do NaNo this year, but I asked the gods for a specific sign. And I received it, so now I'm obligated. So, next month 50 000 words of something resembling a novel will be written by me. I have a deadline, I wonder if it will make a lovely whooshing sound.

According to my daughter "the appropriate response is 'Squeee' "

Current Mood: thankful

That's when I turn 35.
5 years ago Sunday I was at the Toronto Pagan Pub Moot and would up speaking to a nice guy. We arranged to do something together on the Saturday and he would up ruining my NaNoWriMo plans for that year. Writing a cynical anti-romance while in love just doesn't work!

We're now living together in sin. Not that I really think of it that way, but there was a time when a woman living with a guy to whom she was not married was frowned upon. These days it's pretty common. Frequently I find myself very thankful to have such a wonderful lover in my life. I've been known to call him the best birthday present ever!

My mind has been going interesting places lately, not ones related to my growing older though. Places relating to how I feel in my body. I've decided to get into shape, and have made a commitment to healthier eating and to exercise regularly. While many people would think weight loss is, or should be, one of my goals it isn't. Sure I'm overweight by current standards, but I really don't care about that.

I have 2 goals.

First: Be able to do 100 proper push ups by Easter.

Second: To be able to complete a marathon. I don't have a time line for this one yet, and I'm thinking about breaking it down into smaller goals. Say making my first one to run a 5k next summer. I'm thinking this will be the harder of the two goals to accomplish. Partly because it's a bigger goal, and partly because my knees aren't always co-operative.

Anyone reading this has my permission to gently prod me about how I'm doing on these goals.

Current Mood: happy

I recently had a sense of a being, a noncorporeal entity who exists because we need him to. He was given form by a writer, as a character in a fantasy novel and then later in a series of them. Somehow our need has given him a level of reality, which I find highly amusing.

I am talking about a character who is an Anthropomorphic Personification, and in the setting from whence he hails all shall meet him sooner or later. I am talking about Death, the one from Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld books.

In this culture we don't like to talk about death, don't like to admit that it's a fact of life. The deaths we see are sanitized and made abstract so that we don't actually have to face our Mortality. But we do, and it is comforting to think that there is a gatekeeper who will be there at the end. One who, if not exactly kind, is neither cruel nor heartless.

He is as human as we need him to be, and as not human as we need him to be.

I saw an article today ( http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877155,00.html ) which bothers me a great deal. This is the arguement used be a judge to deny an atheist the right to adopt a child "the child should have the freedom to worship as she sees fit, and not be influenced by prospective parents who do not believe in a Supreme Being."

This wouldn't bother me nearly so much if it weren't for the significant number of theists who would be allowed to adopt even though their religion basically requires them to enforce it upon the children.

EDIT: I didn't pay attention to the date on the article, turns out it's an old case.

There's nothing like being without Internet for a month to make you realize how much you use it as a coping mechanism. Short version: we tried to get a dry line, found out we couldn't and it turned out that we lost our DSL spot. Naturally I am unhappy about this, but sometimes life sucks and there are worse things than living without Internet at home. (Like not having a home)

I have no intention of reading through my entire friends list between loss of access and now, so if there's something important you want me to read you'll have to let me know.

Of course if you don't live in or near Toronto this will be somewhat out of your way :D

The Vampires of London are being murdered and only the Angel of Death can save them!

Come on out and enjoy an evening out with Karen Dales, author of 'Angel of Death: Book One of the Chosen' and 'Changeling: Prelude to the Chosen' as we celebrate the Launch of these novels in one volume!

Sunday, July 5th, 2009.

Fox and Fiddle
1525 Yonge Street
(North of St. Claire)
Toronto, Ontario.

5pm to Midnight

Please come on out and bring all your friends for a fun night out.

Costume dress appropriate to the genre is always welcome!

In addition Karen Dales and Dark Dragon Publications is proud to announce that Marshall Dane, acclaimed "Best Live Electric Band" at the Toronto Independent Music Awards" will be playing at the Book Launch.
Check out Marshall Dane at
http://www.marshalldane.com

There will be -
* Author Reading
* Premier screening of Angel of Death Book Trailer
* Multimedia Presentation of Angel of Death Commercials
* Door Prizes and Surprises
* Yummy Fox and Fiddle snacks
* Bloody Cake Cutting Ceremony

Facebook group: http://tinyurl.com/cn27xa

Everyone Welcome! Please invite all your friends!

All Media Welcome!

www.thechosenchronicles.com

When I woke this morning I could remember my dream, which means it was significant. It also feels significant and wasn't one of the recurring themes that appear in my dreams.

It began with a couple angels and a couple demons trying to convert a little kid who was some sort of son of god or something like that. Fighting over him almost. For some reason I felt the need to intervene, to tell the kid not to blindly listen to either pair and follow his heart. I also mislead, without actually lying, the demons and angels into thinking I was something more than human. After all, what human would be stupid enough to get in the middle of an argument between such powerful entities? Anyway I managed to get them away from the kid (for the moment at least.)

In the next scene I was, for reasons unrevealed, with the Angels discussing the best way to teach the kid how not to get trapped in Hell (or the underworld I guess) should he go there for a visit. The idea we were going with involved the kid watching movies with a suitable theme. Showing a preschooler horror movies, even bad ones, really doesn't strike my waking mind as such a good idea, but to my dreaming mind it made sense.

This was interrupted by us somehow learning, being told I think, that the demons were trying to do something to the kid. I told the angels that it was their duty to stop the demons because I didn't want to let them know that I couldn't *poof* myself to the kid's location. Just my luck some entity decided to *poof* me there, I was not thrilled about this.

The next bit is blurry, but it involved a menu and going through a yard filled with thorny plants that I couldn't avoid. The ground was muddy and I could fly a little bit, but not enough to avoid the bushes. I had to go through them. Fortunately they weren't too close together, just close enough that there was no easy path.

The third part involved the kid and me needing to teach him how to pray. It's done from the Heart, not the Head. I was disappointed in the dream that his mother had not taught him this.

I'm sure the timing of the dream has something to due with my niece being baptized tomorrow. I just need to figure out what I'm supposed to do.

For reasons I don't feel like going into we've decided to switch phone companies from Bell to... we're not sure. Any suggestions?

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing to you today as many activities are underway to shape/reshape Internet use as you all know it. Over the last year some of you have been made aware and/or have seen activities on throttling in the news or in your daily lives. Another proceeding relating to the Internet in Canada required Telecom providers (Bell/Telus/etc.) to provide ISPs with wholesale service speeds that match those that they offer to their own retail customers. Specifically, Bell has been directed by the CRTC to provide matching speeds which would allow us all to have more flexibility in our day to day online requirements. Instead of adhering to these directives, Bell decided to take this issue to the federal Cabinet and at the same time file a tariff application with the CRTC proposing to introduce Usage Based Billing (UBB) on its wholesale customer accounts.

What does this mean for you, the consumer?

Bell provides TekSavvy with last mile, wholesale DSL access services, which TekSavvy uses to provide you with your Internet access. If Bell were to be allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards (multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs from month to month.

If you'd like to make your comments/concerns known about what Bell is attempting to do, please do so here:

http://support.crtc.gc.ca/crtcsubmissionmu/forms/Telecom.aspx?lang=e

Select the word "Tariff" from the drop down list.

Add the following in Subject Line "File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 - Bell Canada - TN 7181" and make your thoughts known!

The deadline for filing your comments is today at midnight, so hurry!

Regards,

Rocky


Rocky Gaudrault
Chief Executive Officer
TekSavvy Solutions Inc.
330 Richmond Street, Suite 205
Chatham, ON, N7M 1P7
Customer Service: 877-779-1575
URL: www.teksavvy.com

I haven't been here for a while due to computer problems. I don't feel like reading back through everything that I've missed, so if there's something important you think I should see from the past couple of weeks let me know.

My computer died yesterday - right now I've got my old one hooked up temporarily and am reminded of why I got a new one in the first place! This one is less than 1/3 the speed of the other one and has problems that go beyond merely being slow. I suspect that several of them would be fixed, or at least made less significant, by reformatting the hard disk and reinstalling windows.

I should look at getting my other one fixed or replaced, but I don't drive which means getting it to a repair person would be a pain.

A webcomic that works like a Choose Your Own Adventure, growing new branches on a weekly schedule - or something like that.

I'm thinking it might be too awkward to do unless you did something along the lines of releasing a 'book' every month or something like that. Having it continue with one, or even a few, strips a day would be tricky.

Any thoughts? Would there be any interest if I were to design something like this?

After reading this (including the comments) I wrote this:

Some people feel that marriage is about a woman giving herself (or her father giving her) to a man for his needs and pleasure. It is possible for a relationship like this to be healthy, although I doubt very much it can happen when one person is so arrogant as to think that it is their right to be “the boss” rather than seeing it as a gift that the submissive gives of her (or his) free will.

I don’t view prostitution as wrong, the trouble is that very few sex workers are in it because they decided it was a good way to make money but rather feel, rightly or wrongly, that they have no choice.

Comparing marriage to prostitution is, at best, an oversimplification. A “Good wife” is expected to do a lot more than merely have sex with her husband. She is expected to see to the running of the household and raising of the children. When a woman enters into this type of marriage she is contracting out more than her sexual services.

Like prostitution a lot of women enter into this type of marriage not because it is something they want but because they perceive, rightly or wrongly, that they don’t have a choice.

I don’t think the article is really about sex, but rather about a woman’s place being beneath her husband’s.

I'm not entirely certain why I felt the need to post it here on my livejournal as well an in the comments over at Pandagon. Perhaps I wanted to see what the people I communicate with here think about it. Or maybe I just felt it should reach a wider audience or that I'd be more likely to get a useful response here. Probably all of the above to some degree or another.

I don't like it. In a lot of ways it's good, and I want to like it but it won't let me adjust certain tabbed browsing related things. You see I've gotten in the habit with Firefox of middleclicking links in order to load it in a background tab. This enables me to finish the page I'm reading and then go to the next interesting thing. The drawback to this is summed up nicely here, and while I have managed to wind up with over 40 tabs at once it only rarely happens.

Chrome doesn't have a way to let me set it up so the tabs work the way I like them to. Which is a pity, because a lot of the features it has look to be pretty nice.

Okay, I'm not going to worry about keeping count and have decided that I'm going to post Happy Things every day I remember to. Unless I think of something better for a daily "I'm still here" type post :D

On Friday the Spawn and I went to visit Dan, Mark having gone on Thursday. He gave me Guitar Hero World Tour for Christmas. Spawn is doing the singing tutorial. This is a Happy Thing! Especially if it improves her singing :p May write up more complete story later, may not. Definitely will if three people ask.

I live within walking distance of The Danforth, where there are lots of nice restaurants and some nice stores. Notably Grassroots and Ten Thousand Villages. I'm sure that my liking those stores says something about me, and I hope it's something good. I prefer small stores to big stores or malls, and there being some nice ones within walking distance makes me happy.

The cup of Dark Hot Chocolate that I made myself is also making me happy. As will the coffee i bought when I brew up a pot tomorrow.

It looks like I missed a day, and I have two of these titled as "Day 2" Oh well, I think it's still serving the purpose I want it to which is getting me to look at good things in my life.


Tonight I am going to post about something that makes me happy: The Toronto Pagan Pub Moot. It's one of the few things that gets me out of the apartment and socializing. The regulars are all pretty cool and if not for the moot I probably wouldn't have hooked up with Mark. (It's possible, but unlikely.)

I'm very introverted and tend to avoid social settings. Unless I make an effort I will tend to spend all my spare time sitting at the computer or playing video games. This is very unhealthy and feeds into my depression. So, anything that will motivate me to get out and do something with people is good.

We had some friends over to plya Rock Band 2, It was fun playing on No Fail mode and trying songs at levels I wouldn't have had much chance of passing normally. That's today's Happy!