Coming back online, and hurricane thoughts

I'm starting to get to that stage of recovery where I get up in the morning feeling mostly normal, feel like I can do a lot of stuff as per normal through the course of the day, find my attention wandering a lot, fritter the morning away, and then finally try to haul myself together enough to do something. I expect that in a little while I will be crashing for the afternoon nap, but until then, I hope to at least get an LJ post out, a few bills paid, the mail checked, and a word or two written.

My weight waffled back up a couple of pounds, but this seems to be in the normal course of fluctuation rather than anything related to the surgery. I've been hovering around the same weight I had before the surgery, which interests me since last year I had a big drop that I had attributed to system shock. Apparently my system is not quite so shocked this time around. I'm good with that.

I'm hoping to maybe walk to the bottom of the hill and back today. That's about a mile, and I could go to the mini grocery store and get Gatorade to help power me on the way back up the hill. It's either that, or treadmill. I want to do at least some form of exercise today, to try to get back into the swing of things. Of course, Thursday solarbird and I go to CascadiaCon, and I don't know yet what sort of exercise facilities they will have at the hotel, but hopefully there will be something.

I did actually write last night, which pleases me, even if it was less than two hundred words. Slowly, although plagued with an erratic attention span even now, my brain is coming back online. Minimal Percocet is helping with that; my throat has surprisingly not hurt much over the last couple of days. Mostly I've just been feeling the presence of the stitches, and getting a little queasy if I get too active.

It all gets put into perspective, though, when I listen to the radio reports and read the online news reports about Hurricane Katrina. I'm worried as hell about all the folks down there, because even though the hurricane itself didn't turn out to be quite the behemoth that was feared, it still packed a wallop. And all the post-hurricane flooding promises to be an even harder punch to the region. I'm also deeply concerned about what more might be on the horizon--I mean, hurricane season lasts until November. I very much hope that Katrina was the biggest beast this season had on the agenda. I'm not normally the praying type, but I do have a mental ping out to whatever Powers May Be that Katrina doesn't have a nasty brother or sister planning to follow her act.

To steal a phrase from a friend of kathrynt, it definitely puts all my recent adventures into the category of "petty First World problems" and makes me grateful that all I need to deal with is getting stitches out of my throat and taking Synthroid. Beats the hell out of having one's city effectively destroyed and facing the prospect of being without power or other utilities, not to mention a home, for the next many weeks.

Days without a rejection letter from Luna: 96
Days without a rejection letter from Nadia Cornier: 78
Monday miles: 0.2
Miles out of Hobbiton: 321.9
Miles to Rivendell: 136.1

Interests meme

Yoinked from shikyrie; I thought this one sounded kind of cool, and like a good way to say a bit about myself that folks reading this journal might not otherwise know.

Look at your LJ "interests" list. If you have fewer than 50 interests, pick every fifth one. If you have between fifty and seventy-five interests, pick every seventh one. If you have over seventy-five interests, pick every tenth one. If you have fewer than ten, pick all of 'em. List them here, and tell everyone exactly what it is about these things that interests you so much.

Barbara Michaels: One of the two pseudonyms of my favorite authors. Barbara Michaels books were among the first ones I remember reading and loving during my formative years, especially during high school years after I moved out of Louisville and no longer had band to occupy my time. Barbara Michaels, a.k.a. Elizabeth Peters, is also a huge formative influence on my writing in general.

Carbon Leaf: A band I've come to love thanks to my Great Big Sea fandom. Like GBS, they are sort of "folk rock", though closer to the rock side of the spectrum than the folk side. I'm grooving heavily upon them because of a lead singer with a distinctive, rich voice, a mandolin player with some incredibly talented fingers, lyrics with complex imagery, kickin' bass solos, and complicated, rhythmic melody lines in general.

Elfquest: My very first and longest-lasting Fandom, and the only comic book I've ever gone out of my way to purchase over several years. EQ is responsible for getting me into MUSHing, inspired my first and only attempt to be a GM, and even now retains a special place in my heart. I love it for Wendy Pini's history of lushly drawn art, memorable characters, and one of the most original treatment of elves I've ever seen in the fantasy genre, ever.

Flute: The first instrument I ever learned to play, taken up in fourth grade when I got old enough to start taking music classes in elementary school. It wasn't my first choice; I wanted to play drums. But my brother Donnie had already beaten me to it, so I punted to flute instead. I like to think I did well at it--first chair in middle school band for two and a half years does, I think, back me up on that.

Han Shot First: As a player of Han Solo on Star Wars MUSH, not to mention a self-respecting Star Wars fan in general, how could I NOT espouse the One True Version of A New Hope where Han did in fact plug Greedo first, no questions asked, no apologies, dammit?

Irish Flute: This is an offshoot of my interest in the flute in general. Irish/Celtic music is one of my biggest music loves, and I hope to get hold of an Irish flute someday to be able to play one myself.

Languages: This, I daresay, is an offshoot of my being a writer. I love words in general, and I love the whole idea of how they come together in different languages. If I had lots more time on my hands, I'd be spending it learning several languages I've wanted to learn for years now.

Nanowrimo: Short for "National Novel Writing Month", Nanowrimo is the means by which I kicked myself into gear to finish my third novel and the first one I've attempted to submit for publication since I was eighteen. I hope to try it again this year, at least 'unofficially', to get me moving farther along on the first draft of my current work in progress.

Polyamory: This is on my interests list primarily because I believe that it is possible for a person to have a loving, committed relationship to more than one person at once. Elfquest is actually a formative influence for me in this regard, as there are examples of three-way lifematings here and there in that series. Between that and examples I have come across in real life, I've come to believe that just because you love person A, this doesn't mean loving person B as well is wrong. The tricky part is dealing with it in an open and honest fashion. It's not about sex, for me; it's about having genuine feelings for and attachment to more than one person at once. And it's not something I'd recommend for everyone. People say relationships between two people are hard work; adding more people into the mix makes it all the more challenging.

Seattle: Even though I actually live in Kenmore now, I still feel like a Seattleite because I lived in Seattle for thirteen years--and Kenmore is so close to Seattle that it's really all part of the greater Seattle urban area anyway! The novel I've finished is set in Seattle, and if I sell it, I hope to write more to go along with it. What can I say--any city that has its own Troll just screams to be set in a fantasy novel. Yeah yeah yeah, I know it's been done, but hey.

Susanna Kearsley: Another author of whom I am very fond, and who seems to also have been influenced by Barbara Michaels; in fact, the novels of hers I have on my shelves have "in the tradition of Barbara Michaels" on their covers. Well, the English ones anyway. I have a German translation of a third novel of hers, Mariana, which I hope to work my way through some time soon by way of refreshing my German. See previous commentary re: languages.

Tolkien: Because I'm yet another Tolkien geek, because as with many other authors Tolkien for me is the great-granddaddy of modern fantasy, because I love his mastery of language, because I love the rich complexity of his world. I could go on and on, but all of you Tolkien geeks out there already know all this stuff.