C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 210

some real interesting historical research…

One of the fun bits about genealogy as a hobby is that you end up delving into places and areas you've never remotely understood. And I always pooh-poohed any possibility of being able to trace ancestry back into the Roman Empire, but research got me into some really, really interesting characters, during the Really Dark Ages, when the Roman Empire was coming apart and the most loyal Romans were often provincials who'd never seen Rome at all. I'll give you a list of really interesting...

82000 words. I've written my little fingers sore. Well, that and…

…jigsaw puzzles. Online jigsaw puzzles and codebreaking is my downfall…

A pretty routine day, just more to do than any 6 people can do.

Plus Jane has launched us on a housecleaning kick: a room a day. I fear I didn't do a whole room—I've been tackling the bathroom, which has been a jumble of bottles. Tons of bottles. Even two women cannot use that number of bottles in a day.

There's a front coming in. Jane decided to run the ro/di filter at 3 am, having a headache, and being unable to sleep. I h...

81,000 words and we are beginning to make sense of it all…

It's been very hard to keep my focus and my momentum due to circumstances you all know, but I think I am over the hump and still making sense. I'll of course do a running rewrite to be sure everything makes the sense I think it does, but I think I am on track.

I wish there were more hours in the day. I take breaks, and appear not to be writing, but the hindbrain is working, and when next I key onto the manuscript, the resolution to what stopped me will be there: it's amazing how much complex w...

officially, I am learning to upload to the Closed Circle site, and Lynn and I…

…are exploring the architecture. Frequent e-mails, and substance is happening as she and I figure out what we want to do and where we need to put it to have that happen. I don't think you can see much of it yet, but there is stuff happening behind the curtain.

We're enjoying our second summer this summer: it's warmed back up, and the fish are eating like mad. I was saying to Jane this morning that this is the first time in my entire life I'm going to regret seeing the freeze and snowfall...

The fish are basking in renewed summer…and I am a tad too hot…

I try to keep an ear to the pond when I'm near it, and with warm weather comes clogged filters. I heard the telltale pitch of the pump motor last night when I was going to bed, so nothing would do but go out there in the tatty red robe we use for hair dye and barefoot and pull the filter in the dark…

Jane came out to bring me my sandals and offer common sense like "Cut it off until morning," —which I wouldn't do: I have this thing about our waterfall. It's like a talisman of peace and...

working on CC and the swine flu…maybe

It's not going to be too hard, actually—once I learn to tie pages together. We now have the print color straightened out. If the size is still too small, it's CSS and you should be able to scale it up, but if not, tell me and I'll fix it from my end. I'm working on what to do about the spare sidebars, but hopefully this will get fixed. The only one that needs to track us is the shopping cart and maybe a link to the blog and the website. It IS a learning curve. I read the instructions, but...

Nostradamus and nonsense…

Oh, you're going to hear  a lot of it approaching 2012. And I just saw one of the most atrocious pieces of reporting on the History Channel: they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

a. Ever actually read Nostradamus? He lived during the Black Death and right next to religious upheaval, the Inquisition, and other cheerful topics, not to mention oncoming war. He didn't compose this stuff in a paradise on earth. Small wonder he wrote what he saw—literally. AND his verses are couched in a one-size ...

a new perspective on emigrations and other mass movements…

You learn things chasing ancestors..things that aren't in the history books, nor quite spelled out in anthropology texts.

American kids hear a lot of Pilgrims seeking religous freedom in the Colonies, and not a great deal about the English Civil War, phase 1 and phase 2, which were about the same time. The two groups, the Pilgrims and the dispossessed landholders, hated each other, both settled in the colonies, and there was no great amount of trust. Ultimately the politics of the US...

76048, and FINALLY! I had a great day writing.

I've spent the last few days outlining to the end (after remembering what the end is, and relocating it); and simultaneously recovering the blown-up 72 generation, 40,000 person genealogy file, bit by painful bit…

It's funny. So much of the database work (genealogy) is just a matter of waiting for the db to wake up, then installing punctuation, all of it virtually hindbrain work, that I can actually do that and do some thinking, and all of a sudden pieces of the story were coming to me, even i...

So what hobbies do you have, or would you like to have if you had time?

You pretty well know mine: I figure skate, I dig ponds, I keep a reef, I look up ancestors, I look up other things, I follow physics and archaeology and dabble in languages, I draw, I photograph, I travel, I like code, crossword, and jigsaw puzzles, particularly the electronic sort.

Among things on hold, I love camping, riding, swimming, but haven't done it in years; I used to love fishing, but I've nursed too many aquarium fish by now. I'm only happy if I don't get a bite. I like model...