I’m NOT Dead

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I figure I should let you know I’m okay. It’s been an interesting day because yesterday was spent painting/cleaning and I did not sleep well. This morning, I had an interview to answer, and since I was writing in a hurry it’s immensely long.
So I haven’t been able to write here. I have guest posts but hate to “short” them on hours on the blog.

I’ll just give a quick update on where I am (I almost typed who I am, which tells you all you need to know.)

I am now off the pain meds except for super-motrim, and that for the anti-inflammatory properties. There are some hangover effects, though those are diminishing every day.  Just odd holes in my memory, but again, fewer every day.

The stitches are ALMOST healed, so I don’t feel like I should have a warning saying “cut at the dotted line.”

The infection is much better and I’m assured the antibiotic will act for another week.

Mind-wise, it’s coming back too.  I’m starting to get flashes of story, weirdly almost all short stories.  I think this is part of my mind KNOWING I don’t have the time to sit down and slam out a novel, or even the ending of one, while I’m fixing the other house.

That’s finally starting to show progress, after weeks of its seeming like I was working in vain.

Depending on when we can get a handyman in and if we can afford one, we should be done in another week or two.  A bit late, but since my surgery was FAR more invasive than expected, not too bad.

I have a bunch of donations to answer to — I am NOT forgetting you — it’s just the other house is eating all my waking time and Through Fire is getting the rest.

Once Through Fire is done there will be new stuff in the subscriber’s page.  meanwhile I’m contemplating starting to edit/add to drawer books, once the Darkships and Dragons are done, and that to will probably first appear in subscriber space.  Eh.  Maybe I should give you some shorts over there, in the mean time, as a way to scratch both our itches.

Okay, and now I have to (again) go paint walls.  Tomorrow there will be post, mine or guest.

137 thoughts on “I’m NOT Dead”

  1. So you were simply pinin’ for the fjords? Well, glad to hear that you’re on the mend.

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  2. “Maybe I should give you some shorts over there…”

    Do I need to send you my size first, or is it just whatever you have on hand? ;)
    (Sorry, couldn’t resist)

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            2. I know someone getting out of the Asian pedicure business before the State comes down on her too…

              I don’t know how well they ship, though.

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  4. I’ve been thinking about this, and I think I would like to buy your old house. There’s a couple of caveats, though:

    First, although I really would like to visit Denver, and from the pictures I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure I’d love to live there, I also happen to like living where I am right now. Would you be willing to deliver your house?

    Second, I would need to know how much you are asking for it. Although I have new employment, I also have gobs of debt to pay down, so I can’t afford much right now….let’s see, let me check my coin jar…would you be willing to sell your house for $7.43, a Canadian penny, an old washer, and a funky metal chess piece I once found in the road? I could also throw in a six-sided die I carry in my pocket ever since I found it in the parking lot several years ago. And I hope this will cover shipping and handling as well.

    Thanks! And I’m glad to hear that you are getting better!

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        1. Well, I liked the lines (heard different versions) that goes “You said he was dead! Answered by He was but he got better”. [Very Big Grin]

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      2. I’m dying, and have been for almost sixty-two years now. I expect, barring accident, misadventure or angry lovers, to continue dying for another twenty-thirty years or so. I guess that constitutes mostly dead right enough!

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  6. I’d volunteer to help a few other Huns and Hoydens paint for you, but I seem to recall the last time we tried that, things got interesting. And we’ve been threatened with [redacted] by [redacted] as well as the County Supernatural Sanitation Agency if we try to do more than one color per room. (Look, the mural was not my idea, OK? How many tines to I have to say and type that, huh?)

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    1. “The mural was not my idea, ok?”
      Right, and I don’t have you on tape, going “Let’s do a mosaic. Just an itty-bitty 20’x10′. After, we can do the fresco on the ceiling!”
      Pull the other one – it’s got bells on it! :P

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      1. Exactly. I said mosaic, not mural. Big difference. And I am the one who quashed the suggestion of doing RAH in the style of 1) a Byzantine Emperor or 2) the Pantocrator, remember. I mean, Elvis or Kit Marlowe riding a velociraptor and painted on black velvet is one thing, but really? The same pose as the Pantocrator? That’s just tacky.

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        3. RAH’s head would look awful shiny in a Pantocrator pose. And his mustache would be the size of somebody’s arm.

          It would be awfully funny to draw RAH and Ginny as Justinian and Theodora. Especially since Theodora was supposed to be a redhead, according to some.

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        1. We thought about it, but when the fist fights broke out as to whether or not Hera was blonde or redhead, that plan was kaput. I was for all for abalone & mother-of-pearl inlays, but some Ostreoidia-type fan was all “Triggery!Triggery!”, so that got voted out. Did we get the volunteer from the 8th dimension to bring us back the plaid paint, or did I just hallucinate that?

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          2. IIRC they were out of plaid, and no one liked the polkadot sample we tried.The spots kept moving and trying to form different shapes and rude phrases (like “Reid for President”).

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          3. Oh! I think that’s when I got distracted by the argument over whether trigger warnings should be for short pulls and light triggers, or for long polls, rough triggers, heavy triggers… I mean, I sure want a trigger warning if it’s going to be long, heavy, and so rough you want to try to shake the extra gravel out when firing the gun!

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      2. “Everybody being mooned”
        I thought that was the point. Mooned, or L-5ed or Marsed, anything but stuck on this rock.

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            1. That the squirrels are planning to invade is not really a secret. The dogs already knew that and have been telling everyone, at full voice, for ages.

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              1. yeah but teh squirrels don’t like it when I’m around. that’s why they leave the space on fail book alone. my pack likes squirrel snacks

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            2. It’s not an invasion, it’s training. My infiltration squads have to practice somewhere before they go after the SJW’s.

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              1. The aardvark wishes to inform you that he can tell, by the perturbed paths that the ants leave, where your squads have gone, for days afterward. Yes, it is distinguishable from regular squirrels.

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                1. Aardvarks? You’re deploying aardvarks? Well, we’ll see about that!
                  Post the parachuting platypi platoons!
                  We’ll see who laughs, then! :-D

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                  2. Oh, platypi! The aardvark promises to show them the back stairs.

                    And, BTW, has finished his inspection for ants and wonders if anyone realized that the circular stairs actually do lead back to the flight they started from.

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                    1. Some of us know. That’s why we recommend that certain select visitors use the circular stairs as the best way to get to [place irritating twerp/pest/salescreature/anti-fun activist is looking for].

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    1. I saw ZZ Top go through an airport once. They were wearing the sunglasses and such, but they looked so much like themselves that I thought it was a costume at first. Then I saw the newspeople. :)

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  15. You mean you’re NOT gathering background material for a new zombie story?
    Also, do those hangover effects help or hinder story creation, and which booze works best?

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  16. “I have a bunch of donations to answer to …”

    While it is presumptuous to claim to speak for the donors, my suspicion is that given a choice between a personal note of appreciation and completion of Through Fire there would be near unanimity in favor of your going Through Fire.

    Erp. I want to rephrase that but everything I can think of is worse.

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  17. Why is it that I didn’t discover your blog until after I moved away from Fountain?
    There is no justice. (Not in this world anyway.)
    Glad you’re feeling better. Keep it up.
    (Meanwhile, I have to figure out this WordPress thing. I like books, not computers. No offense to the IT Huns and Hoydens out there.)

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        1. Any suggestions for a viable alternative? I haven’t really even started yet, so it’s not like I’m invested.
          I’d just like my internet contacts/sundries a little better organized.

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          1. I’ve used both livejournal and blogger. They all do the stupid ‘improvement’ thing. Six o’ one, half a dozen o’ t’other, pick your poison. If you can find a programing team that thinks things should be put where you think they should be, go for that one. (This is why I use OpenOffice 3.3: everything is where I first look for it.)

            The biggest difference I can see is in the legalese. I used blogger back before google bought them. google has interesting ideas about who owns what. livejournal lives in .ru and who knows where the PTB would come down on a dispute, but their wording looks nice. They do occasionally come down with outages that get blamed on the Russian government by users, but that could just be a convenient finger-pointing target, because why not blame their government, instead of, say server migrations or something else equally plausible?

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  18. I chatted with Zombie Sarah briefly today, and was reminded I had One Last Thing to say on the Hugos. I’d like to think the TruFans would be more understanding if they could see from the outside what they look like. So I wrote down my personal story and relationship with SF, and why I think SP3 was the right thing to do to break open the insider cliques.

    https://substratewars.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/hugos-sad-puppies-3-and-direct-knowledge/

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  19. I’m NOT dead, either. It may be worth announcing, considering I may have been sucking in as much as 400 PPM carbon monoxide for much of the past two weeks.
    I’ve had migraines every day for those two weeks, and severe headaches the rest of the time. Today, I walked a block back from the laundry and saw a public utilities emergency truck parked in front. The girls at the beauty parlor below me had been having migraines and constant headaches those same two weeks, and though the lady in charge had scheduled an MRI for herself next Monday (presumably now cancelled) someone else had talked her into getting the CO1 level checked. The pub util man said it might be good to first check a part of the building not suspected of being the source. I unlocked my door, and he opened the door a few inches and stuck the instrument in. He said, “we have some here.” I looked over his shoulder and I’m sure I saw “0.04% CO1.” 400 PPM carbon monoxide. He said the one of the two overhead heaters in the beauty parlor that they were actually using was “pouring out carbon monoxide,” and it was leaking into the vacant store below and the two upper apartments. As no one there had yet fainted, I assume the level there was less than 800 PPM, but it must have been very high. And Wiki says 100 PPM legally requires a business to evacuate, now. I think I’ll make church next Sunday

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        1. Yeah. LOL. Got one. Downstairs business has a COMMERCIAL detector that rings at presumably the level at which the vulnerable will be dropping like flies. I don’t know where you get one that rings at 100 PPM, the point at which a business is supposed to evacuate.

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          2. The ones I have seen have two alarms. One is for the immediate concentration, while the other is for exposure over time. It will go off if the level is lower than the immediate level alarm, but it stays above the lower level for more than a certain amount of time.

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            1. She seems to be fine. Last Sunday, just after we all began having the constant migraines, she was peculiarly inactive, just lay on the bed waiting to snuggle at bedtime. Uh, Valeria is a cat, we’d probably better add. But, weird co-incidence, this was the day I came in to work and found Simone, the feral we fed and who slept in the warehouse, dead beneath the chair where she slept. We’ve fed her for years, but she never got within 20 feet or so of me. Barb, who helps us feed the ferals in the neighborhood, offered to take her to the Humane Society crematorium, and I noted that the food I’d set out that week just sat there, none of the other neighborhood ferals were eating here. So I just assumed that Valeria had picked up on my being sad about Simone and worrying about the other ferals; just seemed too much of a coincidence that there was another emergency hitting at the same time, at home. How’s your CO detection situation? My fire detector and the ones in the neighbor’s apartment and the empty store apparently don’t detect CO, and the commercial dedicated CO detector in the beauty parlor either did not work or is set to alarm at such a high level that the more sensitive will be fainting before it rings.

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              1. Some of the Huns might have checked out the photo story about the bookstore, so let me clarify: Valeria, the cat living with me, is fine. Pages, the cat in the photo, and her brother who live in the store are fine. Their mother and older brother who live with Barb are fine. All the feral cats we were feeding have died of the antifreeze the Post Office throws out of their vehicle repair station down the hill, or they have vanished, probably for the same reason.

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    3. Hurrah!

      Fun C-Oh-Two story: once a romance writer put carbon monoxide poisoning in her story and of course did the research. Somewhat later, she got a fan letter telling her about how the fan had settled down with said book and what she thought was the flu, but she had put the book down and hied herself to the ER after that scene for carbon monoxide poisoning treatment. . . .

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    1. Nah, Sarah writes books not games. So what happens is her Darkships met up with Dragons living in space. [Very Big Grin]

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                  2. I’d use my audio editing or video editing software. Probably just premiere, because then i could use automatic crossfades.

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                2. you know, I’d never considered using a google hangout for that… hmm. who here plays pen and paper RPGs?

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                  2. I do, though most of the ones I’m in and GM are on Haitians due to house hunting (me) and end of school year crazies (for the teacher in our group). I’ve done D&D 3.0 and 3.5, and the 7th Sea system.

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                    1. on hiatus? :D

                      I’ve played… many many systems. My particular expertise is the Storyteller system, a few of those books even have my name in em.

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                    2. I have heard of the Storyteller system, but never found it. And yes, on Hiatus. The teacher in our group is drowning under school stuff, we lost a member due to college graduation, and I’m buying a house, so… Hiatus until the crazy mellows a little. (But it does mean I have a ready made test crew. *shifty eyes*)

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                    4. I may have to try Trinity. I actually have done a little with Storyteller then (always identified to me as ‘the White Wolf System’) I’d love to see how it works in a different world. *quietly adds it to the amazon wishlist for next paycheck*

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                    5. Caution: its sci-fi superheroes and the setting suffers from typical 90s ‘first, the US turns into an oppressive fascist state’ setting.

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                    6. Thanks for the warning. It’ll probably save book-flinging and I’ll see how the system translates to sci-fi and may do a house campaign setting for a change of pace from the fantasy stuff. /geek

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                  3. I play with friends every other weekend, right now we’re running Margaret Weis’ Firefly game, based on Cortex Plus, but I’ve done AD&D 2nd Ed, Star Wars (WEG and Saga Editions), and have dabbled a little with Diaspora. But I’d love to play some Eclipse Phase or Atomic Robo.

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                  4. There’s actually a program designed for running RPGs over the net, Fantasy Grounds. I’ve been using it with several gaming groups for 4-5 years.

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                    1. Yes, but its designed for D&D… well, D20. Look s like some people have scripted adaptations to other game systems.

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        2. It would be more complicated because dragons.

          Put some squirrels in too because why not?

          Then when the invasion comes you can point to it and show how you’ve been a fan all along.

          I, for one, welcome our squirrelish overlords.

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          1. Oh sure, why not? Squirrelish overlords would be a big improvement over our current squirrely overlords.

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            1. We already have had the image of Squirrel shifters in beret and smoking gauloises. How does this become overlords.

              Sounds more like a set up for a group that has descended from one that may have once widely ruled, but only under the command of a chipmunk, who, while a fellow member of the family Sciuridae, is not a Squirrel.

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              1. Infiltrators have managed to discover the identity of the director of the Squirrel Army’s secret police,

                Here is video of the Knut Grabber Bureau boss in action!

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                    2. I think there has been some discussion, including buying one of the table-top units and then someone making little fish for the carpapult or trebucarp to hurl.

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