"All these things I should keep to myself
But I feel somehow strangely compelled...."

- Neil Finn, Sinner

A belated anniversary present - I think I ordered these a day or two before our anniversary, but was too cheap to pay for overnight shipping when regular delivery was free. Levenger had a sale on some really nice pens, so I got one for each of us. With initials even!

"Demonstrator" pens
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
31 May 2009

I did get runsamuck something for the actual day (a Jack Skellington t-shirt from Dismalland) and we did go out to a nice dinner sans kids. So a happy 14th was had, even with tardy gifts. How has it been that long?

Hmm, I'm not really a fanfic writer; and frankly, I'd sort of forgotten about this. I wrote it several years ago and though I meant to, never posted it anywhere; however I recently stumbled across it again in a little used folder on my harddrive, and was nudged to put it up somewhere. bakayaro_onna, I know you beta'ed this, and I think I incorporated most of your suggestions; unfortunately, there were a few I couldn't quite figure out how to do at the time, and in changing computers between then and now, I lost the document you sent me, so you'll have to forgive me. And megthelegend, thanks for inspiring this and letting me run it by you, too, even though you're not a Bebop fan (and hope you don't mind if I quote you).

This is perfectly tame general, although it could be a precursor for something JetxFaye (although I like JetxSpike, I'm afraid my own imagination left to itself is pretty vanilla...)

Distractions - Just a little vignette from a day in the life; Faye is a bit confused....
http://community.livejournal.com/creativebebop/63383.html

or at Fanfic.net:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4285714/1/

(Thanks in advance for reading...)

The Ship

One cold morning I was walking on a dock. Then I saw a ship floating on the sparkling ocean. Its boards seemed to be three feet long. Its hull seem to be so thick. The deck was huge.

When the ship dropped its anchor it made a huge splash. A wave hit the stern of the ship. The stern tipped up. I could see its rudder.

Clouds gathered. Lightning struck the dock. The dock started to break! At the last minute, I jumped onto the ship. The rope broke. We were cut loose from the dock. We were a piece of driftwood on the huige ocean.

The crew was running around with intense speed to get the ship back to land. One of the crew members yelled to another ship.

A crew member accidentally ripped a sail. The captain and crew had to repair the sail. It only took 45 minutes to do this. Then they spotted a dock two miles away. They hoped the patched sail would work. By now the ship had taken a real beating but the ship made it. A few weeks later the ship was struck by lightning. It caught fire and sunk (sic).

Gareth wrote this and had to copy it over for homework last night. Makes me think he'd like to read the Hornblower series someday. This harbor seems to be subject to some strange weather conditions, though.

I found Neil Gaiman's entry today, about his daughter Maddy, quite touching. Because that is exactly why I started this journal.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/12/replacing-something-that-doesnt-exist.html

"... in a few years Maddy will forget that she had ever existed in a flurry of self-referential notes, and I will forget as well. And sometimes this Blog is just a diary, or a reminder. You forget the things you were certain you would always remember, especially the tiny things, and all too often they're the things that matter."

(edit: ...and I'm tickled that I beat Will Wheaton to the punch in quoting this. XD )

I missed the dailyparagraph for few days:

( lightbulbs )

( mexico )

( fossil )

( rats )

( infomercial )

( potato chips )

Saturday's dailyparagraph:

The hawthorne hedge on the north side of the house is overgrown and needs trimming. These are one of the few original plants left from when my parents first bought the place. I hate to do it right now though; they're covered with a riot of pink blooms, and while pink is not my favorite color, they certainly look prettier than the severely trimmed hedges of my neighbors. I'll let them go until the flowers die back, and then I'll think about trimming them. Thing is, I think that's what I did last year.

Theme: bushes

I thought I might give dailyparagraph a try, maybe not everyday (this one was actually Friday's but I didn't finish it then). This one probably should be more than one paragraph, though...


A flash of white out of the corner of my eye as I bend my aching back over the herb patch again. Spot is stalking the resident black phoebe again, the logical skeptical part of my mind insists, and there really are more weeds than basil in this planter on the south side of the house; I bend myself to my work again, I've got to concentrate and keep to it or I'll waste the day daydreaming. More weeds than garden on the whole lot, really - the yard has been neglected since my mother passed away. It was always her baby. I love the idea of a garden - I buy books with garden plans and I peruse the catalogs that arrive by the basket in the spring, looking for the the most exotic bulbs and perrennials, or at least different from the typical impatiens, Nile lilies and other denizens of surburban southern California yards. I may even purchase them - but do they ever get into the ground? Rarely. The white again, just out of the range of my vision, and suddenly James Thurber's short story pops into my head - the wife yelling "You are a booby, and I'm going to put you in the booby hatch!" Why does the corner of the yard, where I grew the giant pumpkin last year, look greener than usual? I step over the weeds growing next to my father's decrepit RV I've been nagging him to get out of the backyard. Spot is nowhere in sight, but cats, even white ones, are pretty good at disguising themselves. But, uh, they don't have pointy appendages either; at least, the ones they do have are hidden most of the time, nor are they spiral and seashell-like . Spot's fur is also quite a bit coarser than the wisps of nearly colorless dandelion fluff stirring around that appendage. There's more, slightly visible through the tall grass, stirring a bit in the light breeze, a few feet away. I stand transfixed for a moment, barley breathing, then back away and enter the house; I could watch forever, but some things shouldn't be disturbed while napping...

Theme: There seems to be a unicorn in the garden...

I suppose it's more professional to write that boats came back empty from a fishing trip, in the monthly email update.

But darn it, it just sounds so much more colorful to say they got skunked.

We actually had a thunderstorm the other night at right around midnight. Exciting! It rained for about an hour afterwards, too. I asked at work the next day, and neither PH, who lives north of me in Westminster, or VT, who is south in Irvine, had noticed anything, except VT had thought the freeway was wet.

At the same time, megthelegend's post of a day or two ago inspired a couple of hours of craziness (changed because I was insane last week) in me. Maybe it was the negative ions from the thunderstorm. I don't know that this will ever happen again. Meg, and bakayaro_onna, when you get a chance, you might want to check your mailboxes, even if it's just to delete what I sent. No rush, I know you have other things going on at the moment - this is just a tickle...

Hopefully, I got that out my system anyway. Now, I've got to buckle down and concentrate on this sardine/mackerel fisheries presentation. Talking in front people - AAaaaggghhhh!....

For a challenge by megthelegend - who added me out of the blue a few months ago, and I'm ever so glad she did... :) I know this was due the week after you issued it, but it rapidly got out of hand and threatened to become novel-sized. I'm sorry it took me so long...

Meg sez...

senoritafish wants a non-(fiction)writer DARE.

I would love to hear about the birth of your kids. ::g:: I'm a sucker for a kiddie story, especially when it involves something that traumatic and amazing!!! Don't mention the actual labours if you don't want to, but I would love to hear, please, about the buildup and anticipation, about how the household adjusted each time.

OK, you asked for it. Actually I was planning to eventually post about this at some point. I'll try not to get too graphic, but there may be some TMI, and/or bodily fluids.

(  #1 - Nematode's Story... )

This one probably one won't be nearly as long. I'm a bit less clear on the details...
( #2 - Tardigrade's Story... )

This was the most recent- You'd think I could remember more. Then again, maybe you wish I remembered less! ;p
( #3 - Copepod's Story )

( Further Adjustments... )

I finally worked up the courage to post something in momlessdaughter, which I joined sometime ago. I don't have it on my friends list because it affects me too much to read it every day, but I do stop in from time to time.

(what I posted)

(  An excerpt - Some October thoughts... )

The last few nights, Angus and Gareth have been waking up in the wee hours and wanting to crawl into bed with us. With Angus, he woke up having to go to the bathroom, wanted Daddy to help him instead of me, and just had a total meltdown. I could not even figure out what was upsetting him, he was so incoherent. Getting him to snuggle with us was about the only way we could see to calm him down. Gareth on the other hand, often just sneaks in - we wake up and he's there.

John is very territorial about his bed and after three days of this proclaimed it off limits. This was after Gareth, who's only three but sleeps like a linebacker, pretty much shoved him out of bed.

I can hardly blame them. I remember doing the same thing. And they may have some dim memory of when they were babies, sleeping with Mom until they were about 6 months old. So comforting - l loved snuggling with them when they were tiny. Avalon has only recently started sleeping on her own, and my arms miss her.

But we all reach a certain age, and are commanded to sleep by ourselves, those few hours in our daily lives when we are really the most alone. And we continue to sleep alone as we get older, even in group situations. We separate ourselves by separate rooms and twin beds, sleeping bags and bunkbeds in dormitories. Until we find that one person we are willing to share our sleeping space with.

And it's like coming home. This is familiar. I am not talking about sleeping with someone as a euphemism for sex. Possibly not even snuggling. Just sleeping in the company of another, who can roll over and with a touch or a hug, tell you "it was only a dream." Sometimes shared body heat is enough to keep the nightmares at bay.

Oh, I know it's not nearly this simple. There are a lot of issues that go along with it, including hormones, snoring and the heat of summer . But very few other primates are solitary - and we really aren't either. I wonder if humans as a species would be a little less aggressive and warlike, if we hadn't started separating ourselves from each other and abandoned sleeping in piles like other social animals.

Just a weird thought. Maybe it was triggered by some stories I've been reading.

Interesting. For the pure hell of it, John did a search on my full name last night and one of the things that came up was this:

http://www.californiafish.org/1993_TrapAnalysis_DFG.html

I helped write this almost 10 years ago (the history section). I remember we did some studies on our small boats, and one cruise on the R/V MAKO. I was unable to go on the MAKO cruise because I contracted some sort of viral encephalitis, and spent the whole week on the couch unable to move because it felt like someone was hitting me in the head with a sledgehammer. And believe me, I don’t miss out on research cruises willingly.

The thing is, I don’t think this document was ever officially published. As far as I know, this was still an internal document, although my lead person at the time did present it at the California Cooperative Fisheries Investigations conference. I wonder where they got a copy.

On another note, I can’t believe I’ve been working in this place for so long.

Christ, lookit all them run-on sentences in that last entry. Val would kill me with a red ball-point.

Hey, I guess I'm a published author!


http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mrd/status/index.html

Scroll down and look under

Nearshore Ecosystem Invertebrate Resources: Overview
Ridgeback Prawn

This is kind of neat - so much of what I write just goes into filing cabinets. This is an actual book people can look at (even though it has a cheesy cover and a spiral binding - I'm sure it's going to fall apart in a year or so).

What I actually do most of the time is here (scroll down a little farther) but I didn't write them:

California's Offshore Ecosystem

Coastal Pelagic Species: Overview