Bethanie's Brain

I love Boss Lady, really I do. But some days she just wears me out. Today would be one of those days. Why she cannot understand that it is bad idea for her to make changes to the same document that I am making changes to, I shall never understand. To the end of my days. Never. .

One of the many, many wonderful things that I love about working at Fabulous Private University are the benefits. They're seriously great. Seriously. Take the free health club, for instance. It's free! Anything and everything I could possibly want to do while there is free - machines, weights, showers, towels, lockers, a lock for my locker, and any of 28 different 'group exercise' classes. (Really, there are 28; I just counted.) There's aerobics. There's Tai Chi. There's Ab Blast. There's Upper and Lower Body Blast. There's Yoga. There's Power Yoga. And there's Pilates. And yesterday. I tried it. I got talked into it because a bunch of the gals in the office started going, and - in front of them - I opened my big mouth and started complaining about how slowly my efforts at Hip Reduction were going. So they bought me a mat and made me go. And so I went. And today.... it hurts to breathe . And you know those abs I miss so much ? I know...

OK, so Susan at West of Mars started this meme-thingy. Well, sort of. I guess somebody else started it, but I read about it on West of Mars, so that's what counts for me. :) Anyways. It sounded fun, and I'm always up for poking Lars with sticks (he deserves it, believe me). Some background: Lars is one of the original characters from Novel #1, which is a quivering mass of plot spaghetti, which is mostly Lars' fault. Lars is basically a sidekick to one of the main characters. Well, he was supposed to be... ******************************* 1. Perhaps it is merely a coincidence, but Lars is seven and a half feet tall, which is outrageously tall for his world. 2. Lars has outrageously unruly and very long, very red hair . 3. Lars has four outrageously strong-willed older sisters . They made damn sure he knew his place in the world ( well below them), no matter how big he got. 4. Lars is outrageously loyal to Fenn , even when Fenn doesn't deserve it (which is mos...

Yep. I did it. Couldn't take it anymore and hacked it off this morning. And I do mean hacked - take a close look at the upper end. It's been a long time coming - I've been threatening to do this for at least a year and the only thing stopping me was my general loathing of the whole hair salon experience. But I was feeling cantankerous enough to just go in and say "I don't give a hoot what you do, just fix the hacking". And so they did, and now I'm sporting something that is just on the cute and flippy side of '80s art gallery'. (All I need now is some pink hair dye...) Regrets? Are you kidding? Not a one. Well, only that it's not short enough in the back. But I suppose I can have them buzz it down when I go for a trim. Wonder if The Husband will faint when he comes home from his outings today. Heh, heh, heh... [*Bonus points if you can name the artist and song the post title is from.] .

I recently added a link to Lynette R Cook's Extrasolar Planets page under Brain Food, because, well, it's just damn cool. In the Time Before Children, I spent many chilly hours in my backyard with my telescope at night and many more hours (rather warmer ones) reading about extrasolar anything . The very idea of planets orbiting another star has been fascinating to me since the first time I saw Star Wars. So when I started writing fiction again a few years ago, the idea of an almost-but-not-quite Earth-like world was a natural springboard. Right about that same time there were a bunch of news reports on a whole new batch of extrasolar planets that had been discovered. In one of them was this image: That one image spawned a whole world. A world in which half the night sky was taken up by this enormous red 'moon'. A world in which the rest of the night sky, and some of the day sky, hosted a parade of smaller moons. A world which would be subject to the massive magnetic...

Here's another, more snippet-sized, bit of the Mutagens story. I just re-wrote it, but I'm still pretty zonked from the battle with the Evil Pollen Pixies, so things that suck or don't make sense, well - I blame the Zyrtec... ;-D In case you missed them, the first snippet in this story is here and the second one is here . . ******************************* Einstein was worried. He’d called warning after warning from his perch on the lamppost. ‘Get away! Get away!’ his raucous voice urged. He did it again while Corva waited in line at the water monger’s stall. ‘Get away! Get away!’ She ignored him. She needed food and she needed water and she didn’t have a lot of choices about where to get them. It was the market or stealing, and she'd already pushed her luck stealing the eggs. The market was safer. At least, it had been until she’d noticed the tall boy with the bow and arrows. She was sure he was following her. She finished trading her eggs for a beat-up two-li...

You see the picture up there? The one you click on to go to my profile? Yeah, yeah, that one. It’s there, in part, because I don’t actively hate it. (And there aren’t many pictures of me that meet that criteria.) It’s also there because it was taken Way Out West where part of my soul still lives. But mainly, it’s there because it reminds me that - once upon a time - I had abs. And you could see ‘em. However, that was 10 years, 1 wedding, 2 dogs, 2 cats and - perhaps most tellingly - 2 pregnancies ago. Hence, my Thirteen for this week… Thirteen Reasons I Need to Lose Weight 1. My arms don’t sit right on my body. Instead of going down, they go out first. Then down. I’ve never had that before. I don’t like it. 2. My fat clothes don’t fit. Last time my fat clothes didn’t fit, it was because I had lost so much weight they were too loose to stay up. Sadly, that ain’t the case this time. 3. Three years ago when I was back down to my high school weight, I bought all these great clothe...

Thanks to the Evil Pollen Pixies, I woke up this morning with my eyes stuck shut and otherwise looking like 2-day old roadkill. So I hiked over to FPU's Medical Center and got in to see one of the nice residents, who told me to take cetirizine (a.k.a. Zyrtec) and "hit the Flonase hard" (yes, those were his exact words). I already had the Flonase, but had never tried cetirizine. I got some and noticed that, compared to the 825 milligram antibiotics I was taking last summer, they're tiny : only 10 milligrams. Doubtful, I wondered if they'd do anything , popped one and went about my business. For about 20 minutes. And then I got knocked flat on my fat ass for the next 2 hours. The Husband claimed he called during this time and that I sounded "high as a kite". And perhaps I did. I don't remember much except having extreme difficulty concentrating on more than one thing at a time. By the time he got home with dinner, it was all I could do to stay a...

You see the eye on your right? That is actually the eye on my left. And yes, it is swollen and bloodshot and it itches so badly I am about to rip it out of my frikkin' head to end my misery. The Evil Pollen Pixies, as you can see, have finally found me. In June, it will be 5 years since we moved to Itty-Bitty City from Way Out West - 5 years that were blissfully sniffle and itchy-eye free. I thought perhaps the Evil Pollen Pixies had given up their search for me, that I was to be permanently spared their hexes and curses, that I would be forced (albeit willingly) to give up my long-held title, The Snot Queen. Clearly, that is not the case. Clearly, the Evil Pollen Pixies are far more persistent than I ever gave them credit for. Clearly, I will soon be (re-)embarking on my quest for the mythical Elixir of Relief, available only from the wise, wise Wizards of Scritch, Scratch and Suffer. Let's hope they have better drugs these days. .

So I have a religion or three that I need to flesh out for Novel #1. To date I've gotten away with peripherals - a temple here, a ritual there, a couple of priestesses and an Abbess thrown in for good measure. Fine, as far it goes. And then I ran into Luci and Lars. Luci is a priestess having a crisis of faith and Lars is ... well, Lars. And a pain in my ass. So it should have come as no surprise when he started dropping hints that he is, in fact, a Believer in his local religion. This makes me nervous. Religion, in general, makes me nervous, but the prospect of building my own is daunting, since as a failed Buddhist and the child of an athiest and an ex-Catholic, I have next to zero life experience with this 'Believer' thing. I mean, I went to Sunday school as a kid, but only when I asked to because my best friend from across the street did. When my interest waned, I certainly wasn't made to go. There was a brief spate of church-going when I was a teenager, but tha...

Today was one of those rare days in the learning-to-write life that was a really fun adventure rather than a damp and dreary slog through the Swamp of Despair. OK, so I didn't write anything on the actual story (and perhaps that has something do to with avoiding a trek in the Swamp...), but I DID finally, finally connect the ending of the dragon murder mystery, which I've had in my head for two years, with the beginning! And, more importantly, I finally, finally know Who-Dun-It!! Finally! And it's not who I thought it was... Which was shocking and weird, but in a good way. Now all I have to do is figure out all the details. Heh. Let's hope that doesn't take me two more years... .

Or: Off-Season Nanoism So I'm working through my issues with the dragon murder mystery using one of the tools from Holly Lisle's Plot Clinic which involves asking questions of The Muse. Now when I do this, I don't look at what I'm typing. In part, I don't look because I usually need to keep one eye on a kid, but mostly I don't look because if I do, I automatically edit and go back and correct typos and rethink what I've written, etc, etc. These things interrupt The Muse, who then gets pissy and shuts up. Which is bad. So I asked my question, which has to do with a hazy character, Etienne, who is trouble but I don't know why yet. I asked what he did for a living and I'm typing merrily along, one eye on Ms. Baby who is getting into her sister's art supplies, but not destroying anything yet. I glance at my screen, just to make sure I don't have my fingers on the wrong keys or something and see this: He provides for Robert and June, althoug...

In case you missed it, the first snippet in this story is here . This week's snippet below is actually intended to be the first scene of the story, so probably I should have posted it first. But I didn't. :) It needed some work and, since I was hoping to keep my Friday Snippets to around 500 words, it's a whole lot longer than I would have liked. But I couldn't find a good place to break it up, so here it is, out of order and way too long for a snippet, but whatever. ******************************* The Landis brothers. What a couple of freaks. Jonathan wished to God he’d never met them. Their five-gallon jug of water sat heavy on his dining room table, and he was just about done being polite about it. He gave the jug of water another shove in their direction and tried – for about the third time – to explain why they needed to take it and leave. “Like I told you,” he said, trying to sound testy. “I’m not interested.” They had stopped by late in the afternoon, Coli...

OK, I decided this Thursday Thirteen thing looked fun. No guarantees I'll actually manage it every week, but ya never know... Thirteen Things on My Beloved Subaru that Need Fixin' 1. The doors lock and unlock themselves. At random. For no particular reason. (And I thought electronic locks were so cool when we got My Beloved Subaru (MBS)…) 2. The headlights go out constantly. It's not the bulbs, though. The bulbs are fine. It's the wires that supply them with power. They keep melting. Yeah, I know, melting . 3. If the RPMs drop too low in 2nd gear, the transmission violently ejects the gear shift back into neutral. The transmission does this, I am told, because the “synchos are going”. Whatever that means, the results are rather alarming. According to The Husband, it is not actually harmful, although it is a very certain indication that the transmission is well on its way to being utterly useless. 4. Subaru Legacy wagons have half doors – just the lower half, wher...

So I have this collection of quotes that I like. I keep it in a Word document on my computer, which is nice because all the quotes are in one place. I have often wished, though, that I could display them somehow - have a new one pop up every day when I turn my computer on or something. I haven't found anything that will do that yet, but I thought, hey! surely there's a widget that I could put on my blog that would do that. I commenced searching. And I discovered that there are LOTS of quote widgets out there, but most of them are stocked with someone else's idea of a good quote. Now that is all well and good, but I wanted to load my widget with my own collection of good quotes, and short of learning java and programming a widget myself, it was looking like I was going to be out of luck. And then I found this: http://blogger-hacked.blogspot.com/2006/09/quote-of-day-widget.html Pretty much exactly what I was looking for! Now in order to add your own quotes, you do have t...

My Beloved Subaru turns 13 this year and her age is really starting to show. The list of Things That Need Fixin' goes on and on, and so we've slowly, reluctantly come to the conclusion that we will need to replace My Beloved Subaru and probably sooner rather than later. So I started looking at cars. We need something that will get me from the Heart of Suburban Hell to Fabulous Private University 4 days a week without costing us a gazillion dollars in gas. Yanno, like a Prius. We need something that will tote 2 little girls and all their associated crap and still have room for things like breathing. Yanno, like a minivan. Since my commute takes me into the middle of Itty Bitty City and I sometimes get stuck in traffic, The Husband thinks we need something with an automatic transmission. Yanno, like most people drive. We wouldn't mind having something that sits up a bit higher and therefore has a bit more visibility. Yanno, like an SUV. I want none of these things. The...

Welcome to my very first Friday Snippet! (*bites lower lip* nerves, nerves...) This is from a story called 'Mutagens' that I started a few years ago after having to edit a paper on childhood cancer. I had to do a fair amount of background reading on teratogens and mutagens and oncogenes and such like. Naturally, my imagination chewed on the science-y stuff, twisted it up with a bunch of other stuff bouncing around in my mind at the time - terrorism, homesickness, being a mommy - and next thing I knew I had this story idea burning a hole in my brain. This part is actually a bit that I cut when attempting to force the thing to be a short story, which it adamently refuses to be, so it will probably go back in in some form eventually. Anyways, here 'tiz: ******************************* She took James up onto the roof to play in the warm afternoon sun. So late in September the heat felt good, even though the light had taken on that glow that said in no uncertain terms that i...

I have this problem with finishing things. It is, unfortunately, inherent in my personality. Because I like learning new things, I like starting new projects more than I like finishing old ones. This makes it really hard to get any writing project from the Work-In-Progress stage to the Ready-To-Submit stage. It also causes me to flit from project to project whenever I get stuck (i.e., really, really often), which contributes to my tendency to never finish anything. That's what's happening now. I decided I wanted to focus on one thing: finish plotting the dragon murder-mystery, so I could finish writing it. And I did manage to put some time in on it every day last week. And then I got stuck. And now my mind keeps wandering off towards several other projects, cajoling me with thoughts like: "Hey! Remember that story about mutagenic water? That was SO COOL!" or "Oooo! Shouldn't we draw up ALL NEW plot cards for the vampire story? Yeah!" and "Dud...

So yesterday I got this invoice from the publisher of one of our papers, and they're charging us $3.00 for every correction we made to the page proof (a grand total of $117.00). Normally, I would have no problem with this -- I understand that it's a pain to change things once they've gone to the publisher. However. In this case, the publisher is charging us for correcting things that the journal changed when they copy-edited the paper and didn't check with us about first. THAT ticks me off. I mean, if you want to copy-edit the articles you publish, fine. GOOD, in fact, because another set of eyes looking through something is never a bad idea and if you want everything you publish to reflect your house style, that's fine, too. But if you're going to do that, fer Pete's sake, check with the people who wrote the damn thing to make sure you're not changing the intended meaning before you send it to your publisher. I know, I know - I'm ranting. But I...

I like coffee. I like it a lot. I like it black and flavored (think hazelnut) and really, really hot. Unfortunately, it does not like me that way. If I put a little cream in it, I can get away with drinking actual coffee-coffee once a week or so. More often than that, it tears the crap out my stomach. So I have to drink lattes ( have to - we don't want me going around without coffee, since I turn into a nasty, crabby bitch). Lattes work because the coffee bit is diluted enough to not bother my stomach -- if I use (or ask for) soy milk, since I can't drink milk-milk anymore either ( dang , but getting old sux). So lattes solve the stomach problem, but leave me flavorless unless I put syrap in with the soy milk. Usually, this is chocolate sauce, because my favorite form of flavored latte is mocha. Chocolate sauce is also cheap and easy to find -- on any given day, Wally-world has tons. But occasionally, I like to branch out: caramel, raspberry - even mint, when the mood s...

I was planning on posting an updated one-sentence summary for my dragon murder-mystery story today, but Ms. Five has been home sick for two days, and at the moment I’m tired and grumpy and can’t stand the sight of my own writing. So I’m going to talk about somebody else’s writing, instead. (Yes, I’m copping out. Get over it.) “Somebody” is Joely Sue Burkhart, whom I recently added to my “Brain Food” list. In a word, Joely is great. Her blog has become required reading for me, not only because of posts like the one I found so inspiring the other day , but also because of her snippets, which appear fairly regularly and are awesome. Especially the ones about Gregar. :-D Joely is a fantasty-romance writer and does a lot of things really well - many of them things I wish I did well and don't (yet). World building, for instance. The best word to describe it is deft. As a reader, you are imperceptibly drawn into the worlds her characters inhabit until you are there , no info-dump nece...

What is it about early morning joggers (or any joggers for that matter) that they HAVE to jog IN THE ROAD ? I can forgive them doing this when they are on the correct side of the road and going in the correct direction (that is, my side and facing me) when - and only when - there is no sidewalk available, which admittedly is rather more often than not in the Heart of Surburban Hell (HSH). But when there IS a sidewalk available - and it's ludicrously early and still dark and I've had maybe 3 sips of coffee - WHAT do they think they're doing in the road besides begging to be accidentally run over? NOT a good way to start anyone's morning, that's what I say... AN IMPORTANT EDIT Please read Susan's comment to this post and read her post on a similar subject: Dear Neighbor I had always assumed that traffic laws stated that pedestrians should walk facing traffic, but that may not be the case. I'm going to find out what my state says (unnfortunately, they have not...