Did You Miss Me?

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Did you miss me? Even a little bit?
I’m back. Nothing got done due to technical difficulties, but I’m back home early and very glad to be back home.

More tomorrow, but for now, home safe and sound, and tomorrow will probably resume normal work.

…. and maybe more clanker work on the sound track.

Which you DO know it’s your fault, right?

91 thoughts on “Did You Miss Me?”

    1. I mean, even if we were some of us have poor distance vision. Trebuchet’s don’t have a one thousand mile range, either. Well, reasonably sized ones don’t.

      Now that I think about it, how big would we have to build it to have that kind of range? Is materials science up to the task even? Hmmm.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. The World War 1 Paris Gun had a range of 80 miles, and muzzle velocity of 5,400 FPS. Launching projectiles 1,000 miles would require much higher velocity. I’ve never heard of a trebuchet launching anything faster than a few hundred FPS.

        There is also the question of ammunition. Hypersonic Carp would almost certainly disintegrate within a few feet. You’d get a puff of Carp mush drifting away on the breeze.

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        2. Put the carp railgun on the moon.

          Of course the carp would be mostly high velocity carp flavored plasma when it arrived on target, assuming said target was on Earth, but it would still get one’s attention.

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      2. The aardvark informs you that the supplies in the basement are for the house. You have to get your own unobtainium.

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  2. Since you’re “Blaming Us”, I’m tempted to say “We missed you like we miss a headache”. [Very Very Big Crazy Grin]

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  4. Of course it was our fault. Very much our fault. There are lots of things that aren’t our fault, but this one we claim proudly. Just don’t look too close.

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      1. Same. Finished a chapter today, but it stunk on ice. Posted anyway. Now I have to get them out of the cliffhanger the seat of the pants got them into. Without excessive handwavium. Because the readers don’t want me to kill off a beloved character yet.

        Ah well. Things’ll work out. Books will get done. Babies will get born, kitties will get noms, the sun will rise and so shall we. Tomorrow.

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              1. It’s hard to lose them, but it’s worse if you drag the matter out too long. At some point you have to do that last act of mercy.

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          2. Dang. That is hard.

            Probably is going downhill which is harder to recognize when around 24/7. Take off for a few days and it become obvious. Feline kidney illness deterioration is slow, until it isn’t. Can you tell we’ve been through this with geriatric cats before, more than once?

            I’m sorry. This is never easy.

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    1. Ksssst. I have receipts and witnesses. We were all at the café together, then went to the concert. We were nowhere near whatever it was that happened, whenever it happened.

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  13. Since YOU brought up the clankers, my mind wandered to substituting into some well trod lyrics…

    So miss me, mama, like a wagon wheel
    Miss me, mama, any way you feel
    Hey, mama, miss me
    Miss me, mama, like the wind and the rain
    Miss me, mama, like a southbound train
    Hey, mama, miss me

    Oh, and welcome back, and what will it take for us to hear the story of the dead armadillo?

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  14. Welcome back Sarah & Dan. Glad to hear you’re back safe & sound. Sorry to hear about Havey. We had to say good-bye to 10 cats in our day. I’m off to TusCon on Friday.

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    2. It’s been a few years since I attended TusCon. Kinda sad memories, since that was the first time I was called home to be by what seemed to possibly be my father’s death bed. He hung around for another 4 years, but we didn’t know that then. Weston Ochse was very supportive.

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  15. I used to follow the Megatokyo webcomic when it was updating three times a week. (Still do, but now it posts a new page about every 3-4 months). At one point the artist and the writer had a nice little exchange: “Did you miss me?” “Yes, I did. Now hold still, I’m reloading.”

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  17. Welcome back.

    Reading No Man’s Land seems a lot like reading your comments and short things – you use a different ‘voice’ for most of your long posts, but to me, the Skip viewpoint sections would fit in here.

    In tone, not ordinarily the content he has!

    So, in a way, I’ve hardly missed you at all; you’ve been right here in my Kindle app all along.

    About a third through part 3. Well-done foreshadowing.

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    1. Skip’s narrative voice has Sarah’s humor, definitely. A small bottle of breath freshener!

      Really, Skip’s narrative, with its exquisite use of summary and digressions that hold the reader, is a clinic in narrative technique. Not that any could imitate it …

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        1. Pop shot “Distinguished Expert”, rifle and pistol, despite cross dominant. Training correctly overcomes it.

          Yes, you can.

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          2. Larry Vickers turned it into an advantage. Go from shooting your carbine left handed to transitioning to your pistol spooky fast.

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      1. I shoot Cowboy Action with a pistol in each hand (“Gunfighter”) My left eye aims the left pistol and the right eye the right pistol. Which is why I hold the pistols almost touching.

        it gets comments. (grin)

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      2. To be honest, I kind of like shooting left-handed because it’s brought me up to about 60-40 on the ambidexterity. My left-handed writing is still an exercise in concentration, and art must be right-handed, but I can do a lot with my off hand.

        Mostly archery, though. Archery is MUCH cheaper.

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        1. I shoot 2 handed. Pull trigger with right hand. The left hand holds the whole setup steady. Otherwise, as I’ve stated before, probably the safest place is directly in front of the target, from the lack of holes on the target itself. Yes, with a bigger board, and target, that probably is not true. Definitely not hitting the target. Probably should practice the reverse hold too. Yes, doing hand exercises to strengthen the hands. Reality check, small hands. My hand (neither) can wrap around a grip, even some of the small .380 or small 9 mil, let alone a larger handgun. I can’t (safely) lift dad’s “old” large revolvers into a shooting stance one handed.

          Well since arrows are generally reusable. I hope so.

          Reloading these days isn’t much less expensive than buying the bullets. Unless you aren’t the one buying the supplies. We’ve been getting them from BIL who is using up his reloading supplies. He can’t physically handle a handgun at all now. He’ll be selling all of his. He wants his wife to have a handgun, but she has the same problem I do with initial racking of bullet from magazine, clearing an incomplete reload, or just clearing the chamber, with all the handguns he (they) own. Part of it is her inexperience. She was 73 before she handled any gun. I at least grew up with guns. I’ve fired guns before I was big enough to hold them.

          Not that we’re going as often as we should be (PIA fishing the firearms out of the creeks and lakes where the boat accidents keep occurring). When we do, I tend to go through 200 – 300 rounds (4, 8 round magazines, loaded 8x’s + a few). Son & hubby have extended magazines with 16(?) rounds each, so they are shooting even more. My S&W does not have extended magazine options.

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    3. Another cross-eye dominant here. Never gave me any trouble with rifle or shotgun (also I started shooting rifle *very* early) but I have to work to overcome it with pistol shooting. Got through annual qualifications fine shooting left eyed/right handed, but now am trying the preferred technique of shooting with both eyes open, which is a learning curve.

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    1. Wait. I’ve heard me sing. Plan B would be let the clankers sing–and it might save me from worse than carp, too.

      If only I could figure out how to create a video of asteroid miners singing this in a bar on Ceres…

      The Belter’s Lament
      (Set to the tune of “Shenandoah” in D minor, 4/4 time)

      Out in the Belt where the cold stars burn,
      Elias carved his way through the stone.
      He struck a rich vein where the comets turn,
      And filled up his hold with more wealth than he’d known.
      He flew back to Earth with his fortune in tow,
      Married sweet Mary, their love all aglow.
      With children and laughter, a home soft and warm,
      He left the black void for a life safe from harm.

      Oh, the Belt calls with a siren’s wail,
      Through the silence where dreams rise and fall.
      Some find their peace, some lose their trail,
      In the Belter’s lament, hear the stars call.

      Torin left a job on a gray Europa plain,
      A desk and a pension, a life safe and sure.
      He chased the Belt’s promise of fortune and fame,
      But the rocks gave him nothing, his hopes turned to burrs.
      His house was foreclosed, his wife turned away,
      His lungs choked with dust from the grind day by day.
      Now broken and weary, he drifts through the void,
      A man with no home, by his dreams all destroyed.

      Oh, the Belt calls with a siren’s wail,
      Through the silence where dreams rise and fall.
      Some find their peace, some lose their trail,
      In the Belter’s lament, hear the stars call.

      Cassian hit the mother-lode, platinum and gold,
      His name rang in stations, his wealth overflowed.
      But the hunger for more burned his heart fierce and cold,
      He’d drill one more rock, one more tale to be told.
      No riches could sate him, no sum was enough,
      He shunned friend and kin for the next shining bluff.
      Now alone in the dark with his glittering hoard,
      He’s king of the Belt, but his soul’s been ignored.

      Oh, the Belt calls with a siren’s wail,
      Through the silence where dreams rise and fall.
      Some find their peace, some lose their trail,
      In the Belter’s lament, hear the stars call.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Echos of the California, Alaska, gold rush, and all current prospectors out there looking for Opals in the Australian Outback, or those looking for the lost mines of the southwest and Rocky’s. Need a final section on the ones who really made the money, the merchants who built trading posts (space stations) took supplies (all “kind” of supplies) for the minors to spend their riches on.

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        1. My beloved really enjoys the thought that the gold prospectors who got the Cherokee moved out of Georgia and then headed out to California had to resupply in….Oklahoma. From Cherokee grocers. I like to say there’s more than one way to scalp an Anglo

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      1. Phantom had to get them out of Canada?

        Guessing. But if Canada had a problem with the FemBots, unclothed or not?

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      2. I believe they were hiding from the blue mice and pink elephants.

        Particularly the mice. We knew they shouldn’t have been programmed with fear of mice.

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  24. Welcome back. You’ve been having a hard time of it. Maybe I could get to liking sciFi and Fantasy. I am slowly reading everything by Anthony Trollope and he did write one sci-fi novel The Fixed Period late in life. Mark Steyn serialized it. No, I haven’t read that or anything by you—yet. Family used to read SciFi and I would look at it. In the 1960’s other kids read Tolkien but I didn’t like him and gave up on The Hobbit at page 53 and never looked back. Sorry. For books I wished I hadn’t finished I nominate The Catcher in the Rye and Brideshead Revisited. Maybe I should read Sartor Resartus!

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