Rumors of My Death…

 …if you’ve heard any, have been premature and greatly exaggerated. I am alive, and (relatively) well, but life has been… complicated.

It all started getting messed up when my husband came home one day and said, “I’m going to retire.” Well, yes, eventually I expected he would, possibly even this year, so I didn’t think it was anything to worry about, because his 62^nd birthday was still 5 months away. And then, a few days later, he added, “I can apply for social security 3 months before I turn 62. Let’s get the house ready to go on the market.”

In a nutshell, that pretty much turned our world upside down.

We knew we had to remove a lot of the personal stuff from our home, so we packed our book collection, our art collection, our video collection… We hired some young helpers to put these heavy boxes in our storage unit. He packed up everything in his office except his computer. I packed or threw out a lot of stuff from my office until I ran out of time.

We had a vacation scheduled for most of May. The paperwork for retiring was signed, and the day husband flew down to Orlando for that vacation was his last day of work. We spent a couple days in the parks and visiting friends while he tried to get his head around his new status. We checked out a few houses that were for sale while we were down there, and started the process of getting pre-approved for a mortgage.

And then… that infamous ‘hurry up and wait’ segment settled in. For the past 3 weeks (and probably for at least another week), the 2 of us have been living in 1 room while all the rest of the house gets fixed up and painted. While we are in that room, the only computer we have access to is the laptop we had in Florida, which I perch on a folding chair while I sit in an easy chair. Is it any wonder my neck, shoulders and back almost constantly ache?

It doesn’t help that I was surprised by a rush editing job just before leaving Florida; the 4^th manuscript in a 5-book series. I got that one done and back to the publisher, but I’m wondering when #5 will appear in my mailbox.

At first, we spent a lot of time in that room, watching various tv shows. By now, we have opted to spend our mornings at dospace (If you live in Omaha and haven’t checked out dospace at 72^nd & Dodge, you should – dospace.com); several afternoons of the week we go to the gym and work out; and at least once a week, we go see a movie – or 3.

Being confined to 1 room is mind-numbing. Most of the time, I just can’t concentrate. Oh, and if you are waiting impatiently for me to add another episode to MacOnFireball.blogspot.com, don’t hold your breath. I will get back to it, but guess what? The notebook holding the original story got packed when I wasn’t looking. Actually, I found the notebook, but the 10-20 pages I had out, next to my desk-top computer, to be typed in and tweaked… also got packed, and has proven to be elusive.

Eventually, the work on the house will be done. Eventually, our Omaha house will sell. Eventually, we will buy a new house in central Florida (we’ve been told it takes a minimum of 6 weeks from bid acceptance to document signing/closing) and can get the household belongings shipped down there. But right now, as the days grind by at a snail’s pace, ‘eventually’ seems a terribly long time from now.

Best Made Plans

Have you ever made plans that just didn’t live up to your expectations? Even vacations have bumps when things don’t go your way. Our last vacation ...

In Florida, every time I lay down, my sinuses immediately plugged up and I was soon mouth breathing. My cpap mask only covers my nose, so it was no help.

John had signed up to march in Disney’s StarWars weekend parades. He was up at 6 AM that first Friday in severe pain and unable to bend one knee. I took him to ‘urgent care’... which didn’t open until 8. He had to scoot in and out of the back, with the leg stretched along the seat. It was gout; they prescribed steroids and ice packs. (He did get to march the next day, and for the rest of the parades while we were there.)

To see the parade, I had to be at the gate by 7:30 (one never knew what time they were going to let people in), rush to one of the (2) benches along the parade route and park myself. The parade happened at 11. The humid heat did nothing for my stuffy sinuses.

I got a page written for my ‘Mac’ serial, but Open Office kept crashing and finally refused to open my ‘Mac’ file again. Unable to think, having no OO specialist to consult, I gave up. John, however, got his 2nd novel rewritten (2nd draft).

I finally let John take me to ‘urgent care’, and I waited 3 hours to see a doc. Then the pharmacy didn’t have the medicine! Augmentin was on back-order? The doc changed the prescription. To sulfur pills. My brother has to take sulfur pills. They work, but not quickly. Another week before I started feeling almost decent.

Friends spent weekends with us. On the last parade day, as everyone was getting ready, the wife fell and struck her head. The husband took her to urgent care, so John went alone to do the parade. Long story short, it was much more than a bump on the head; she ended up in the hospital for 2 nights before they could go home.

Wednesday, I started home, stopping to call my mother-in-law to say I was on my way. She had been taken to the hospital that morning. Frantic phone calls and text messages dogged me all the way home.

Thursday, the radio talked about severe rain and some flooding ‘in Missouri and along the Mississippi.’ I was in Illinois, about to turn west to St Louis. I called my son and asked him to research this, in case I needed to continue north and go through Des Moines. He said it was located south of I70 (the road I would travel).

East St Louis, Friday morning, heavy rain. Happily, the worst was over by the time I left St Louis. But EVERY river and creek I crossed was definitely over its banks! Like I wasn’t nervous enough.

NOT a good vacation. It wasn’t a bump, it was a series of steep cliffs the entire time. I suppose there’s bound to be a bad one every so often, right? But I haven’t given up; we plan to head for Washington (state) and an Alaska cruise in August. Hmm. Maybe it’s good we got this ‘bad luck’ over during this vacation.

A Comparison: Megacon vs Planet Comicon

Ten days ago, John and I went to our first Planet Comicon in Kansas City. For the past several years, we have spent time at this point in the year in Orlando, where we attended Megacon. Both are 'comic' conventions, but - as always - each has its own flavor. I could not keep myself from comparing them, and I'd like to share my thoughts with you.

A comic convention is, to my mind, a giant dealer's room first and foremost. A huge room, it contains dealers selling t-shirts, toys, models, comics and all sorts of retail items; artists showing and selling their artwork; authors selling their books; fans selling their craft items; fan groups looking for new members; media guests selling autographs and photo shoots; and at least one school trying to drum up new students. If I had to guess, I'd say Planet Comicon's dealer room was about the size of a football field. Happily, they did have some empty chairs lined up against the one empty wall, and I was not the only person who used those chairs. Megacon's dealer room is even larger, with more of all of the above types. There are no chairs along the wall to let your tired feet rest for a moment. I managed to get about halfway through Planet Comicon's dealer room on Friday before I wandered off to see what else was going on, and on that day, it was not horrendously crowded. Megacon's dealer room is always packed with shopping sardines, on any day, and I can't stand being in it for more than a few minutes at a time.

Planet Comicon also had a gaming room, 4 rooms for panels, and 1 room for large panels (panels, for instance, with the media guests tend to have a huge line forming in the hallway at least an hour before-hand). Megacon has a lot of rooms, of various sizes; rooms devoted to gaming, to anime, to costuming, to assorted and sundry other subjects. The largest rooms with the stages are for those panels with the media guests, of course, and there, too, you had better arrive early if you want a seat.

The food vendors at Planet Comicon were mostly brands I had heard of, and their prices were a little high, but not ridiculously so. The food vendors at Megacon are brands I had never heard of before, and their prices are sky high. The one time we bought something from a Megacon food vendor, it didn't taste any good, so we tend to fill our pockets with simple snacks and refill our water bottles from the water fountains.

After a long day at Megacon, one has to walk back all the way through the west wing of the Orange County Convention Center, find your way outside, take your bearings, and then - walk to the furthest end of the colossal parking lot to find your car. I always felt I was hiking back to Nebraska. If I had a similar thought at the end of a Planet Comicon day, as we made our way to our car, at least Nebraska wasn't nearly as far a hike!

Any comments on comic conventions you've attended?

Real Life

So much for getting myself organized. After recovering from my drive home from Florida, today I heard that my one remaining sister is in the hospital, having suffered a stroke. I haven't been able to complete a blog to post today, so this is a rerun from March 2010.

I keep coming up with ways ‘real life’ can be analogous to writing.  Well, give me a break; real life has conspired to give me a head cold for the trip home, and all my thoughts are sticky with ‘head cold goo’ and won’t move around well.

So, I started out in Florida, where nobody paid attention to the posted speed limit of 70.  The far left lane (of 3) was for those driving at 80+.  Then I got to Georgia, where the Florida Speedway quickly became the Georgia Parking Lot – miles of stop / creep / stop / creep.  I forget how many times it happened, pretty much the entire length of I75 through Georgia, except going through Atlanta.  And seldom, when you finally got to the point where you could speed up, was there any clue for the jam.

Did you know that if you enter Nashville on I24, and want to leave Nashville on I24, there is no lane you can get in and stay in and stay on I24?  I felt like I was playing hop scotch; skip left two lanes for a left exit, skip right one lane for a right exit, skip right another lane for another right exit, then skip left two lanes for a left exit!

Stories are kind of like that, don’t you think?  If there’s nothing getting in the protagonist’s way as you tell the story, the story zips along at 80+ mph and gets done quickly, leaving the reader to wonder what all the fuss was about.  If something does get in the way – whether you call them bumps, problems, challenges, or stalled trucks – the speed of the story will be inconsistent, and the tension will build.  Likewise, if your story line jogs here and there, as your protagonist tries this angle, and then that path, it will help to keep your reader on their toes, wondering which way the story will go next, and will the protagonist actually get where he wants to go?

So, ‘map’ out your story line, and don’t forget to add some difficulties.  Road trips never seem to go as smoothly as we expect they will, do they?  A story that travels a straight line to its obvious conclusion isn’t much of a story.

NASA News

Yesterday, my husband and I visited the Orlando Science Center. We'd heard they had a NASA person coming in to give a talk on Curiosity, their latest probe on Mars. Since we both had expected there to be at least one space station, a moon base and a Martian colony by now, we are always eager to hear if we're getting any closer to that.

The talk started with a few questions from the audience as the rest of the audience filed into the auditorium. One guy asked if it was true NASA had recently launched from some old base in Maryland, and young Samantha, the rocket scientist who had been with NASA for 2 years, said, yes that was true. Then the guy asked if Maryland was a better location for launches than Florida. No, she returned, Florida was the better location for an equatorial orbit like the ones they want. Then why launch from Maryland at all? Sam, flustered, turned to her older cohort, Rich, who promptly answered, "Because some Congressman told us to."

He went on to explain that this unnamed Congressman thought it would be a good idea for NASA to make some launches from his district, and because he thought that, they had to rebuild launch pads, construct a clean room and several other buildings, and finally, make a launch. Billions of dollars used for that effort that some people feel could have been used in better ways. My first thought was that it was no wonder NASA was 'behind', if they had to stop and fulfill every Congressman's egotistical whim.

They touched on the International Space station, roughly the size of a football field, counting all the solar panels, but the living space for the crew of 6 is about the size of the interior cabin of a 747. The ISS is expected to be decommissioned by 2020, did you know that? Well, the US expects to do that, but the Russians think it should be left there. The Russians tend to keep using what they have until it can't be kept in one piece any more.

There was a lot of information in that one-hour talk. Next week, I'll try to remember enough to talk about the Kepler telescope and the Curiosity robot on Mars.