Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 143

Appearances and Interviews

As I've mentioned repeatedly in various ways, it is time for me to clear out and catch up on all the things that got neglected in the past two months. Among the neglected things are some announcements which may or may not interest you.

Dungeon Crawlers Radio Interview: At ConDuit in May, Revan and Malak approached me to request an interview. When I regretfully mentioned that Howard was at Balticon, they clarified that it was me they wanted to interview. So I got to spend 17 minutes...

Cleaning a closet

I cleaned out the coat closet today. It was not a critical task, nothing depended upon getting it done. Sure it was annoying to have everything jumbled up on the floor of the closet, but we'd dealt with it for six months and could have dealt with it for many more. But today I had time and I felt like cleaning out a closet. Having time to ponder what I feel like accomplishing is amazing. For at least three months all of my "get stuff done" energy was spent on business or family critical t...

Change of pace

I think I've gotten to the point where all the "make or break" decisions are made. All that is left is to deal with the consequences. I'm mostly done organizing and planning, now I just need to execute. This is much less brain-twistingly stressful and is just merely busy. Adding to the relief is that some of the tasks, like book release shipping, are totally complete. The huge majority of those packages have arrived to their owners without incident. I can deal with the odds and ends....

I feel like I sighted a yeti

I just had a very pleasant experience with Comcast customer service. I didn't know that such things existed anymore. The tech was local to me, completely patient, and walked me through a dozen troubleshooting steps. As we did them, he explained why each step was valuable and what we hoped to learn. It turns out that our router may be feeling its age, but because the guy was so helpful, I now know how to do the electronic version of kicking it to make it start again. Yay.

Mirrored from a

Apricot Tree

Years ago we planted an apricot tree in our yard. It was a tiny twig of a thing, but we knew that if it survived it would someday bear fruit. Over the years it has borne fruit, ranging in amounts from five to 20 individual apricots. Apricot trees bloom so early that often the blossoms will freeze killing the infant fruit. But about one year in five, the blossoms do not freeze.

This is that year. It is the first time that the tree has been large enough and the spring mild enough to...

Retreat

Tomorrow I am on vacation. It is a retreat with some friends not the whole family. Retreat is a perfect name for it, because it is about time for me to admit that I'm outnumbered and overwhelmed. I need to get to a place where I'm not struggling to survive so that I can assess what to do next. A well executed retreat is often the key to winning the war.

Not that my life is a war. It isn't. No one is being injured and the enemy is stress, most of which I piled on myself. But getting...

A conversation on the stairs

"Mom, are you sad?" Patch asked as he hugged me around my neck. He'd found me sitting on the stairs with my head on my knees.

"I'm just tired." I replied, but then honesty drove me to expand. "And maybe a little bit sad."

"What are you sad about?"

I looked at his seven-year-old face and his big blue eyes. He did not need a list of all the things I still have to do, for which I have a short supply of energy. Nor did he need a list of all the things which I have completed which drained my...

Swimming in deep water

Dierkes Lake has an area set aside for swimmers. The shallow area is cordoned off by an orange mesh fence, while the deep water is edged by a long dock. One can walked the dock perimeter of the swimming area without ever getting wet. This presumes that one wears shoes. Otherwise one will walk about halfway around the dock, realize that the sun-baked dock is quite hot, and then stop to cool one's feet in the water. The focal point of the swimming area is the floating dock. The only way t...

Escape velocity achieved

The morning began with a trip to Alphagraphics for the final test print on the QFT cover. This was followed by a trip to the storage unit to pick up the last boxes necessary for Monday's shipping event. After that I emailed the last bits of paperwork to the kind folks who are handling the shipping of books to Australia. Janci arrived to work on postage printing, and I was done. I had accomplished every bit of work that it was possible for me to do before 8am Monday.

Normally this would ...

News of various kinds

So the news that I could not blog about last week is that my sister Nancy has been diagnosed with cancer. In the space between diagnosis and surgery she requested that I not say anything on the internet. Now she blogged the information herself. She seems very prepared to treat it all as an interesting experience. I look forward to reading her observations and hearing about both the good and the bad which will come from what lies ahead for her. Prognosis is good. It was caught early and ...