Tag: nanowrimo2020

I Don’t Have Anything to Write About

November 10, 2020 1 of 8

I came up with all kinds of topics and am drawing a complete blank right now.

Last night, I dreamed I was marrying Prince. We were doing our makeup before walking down the aisle and his looked *so* much better than mine. I was seriously put out about this.

I asked him if he had a professional makeup artist on staff that I could borrow to give me a hand, and he said that he did, but she has the measles.

I don’t know. I can’t explain my subconscious.

Even though this hardly counted as a blog post, I’m still including a Gratuitous Amazon Link: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Volume 1: Squirrel Power, by Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Steve Ditko, and Will Murray. I didn’t really intend it to work out this way, but in my project of rereading all of my comics in order to put “read” dates on my Goodreads, I literally ducked into my bedroom in between the second and third paragraphs of this “post” and finished reading this volume. Now on to the next volume!

Lanuage Learning Progress

November 9, 2020 4 of 8

I made so much language progress yesterday while I was driving. I listened to my Pimsleur lesson (which I haven’t done yet today, btw), then I did five ChinesePod lessons (which I need to get back to downloading from the site — I was in the middle of the advanced lessons when I quit, IIRC (yes, I have a bunch ofover 400 advanced lessons to download, but it’s not a totally insurmountable goal)).

Then I listened to El Ladrón del Rayo for another few hours and once I was close enough to San Antonio to get 104.5, I went back to Spanish-language radio.

So that’s three languages (Czech, Chinese, and Spanish), and, with my foreign-language game playing, amounted to more than $5 saved towards my master’s in modern languages. I’m still not sure what language I’m going to learn.

This last $5 put me over the top to buy another CD (the investment kind, not the music kind). This will make it 14 CDs and 5 shares of stock. I’m trying to amass $16,000 in principal for this degree. I’ll get there someday.

Today I haven’t done nearly as much. 20 minutes of radio in the car, one Duolingo lesson. My foreign language game money. I paid myself before I did my Duolingo and Babbel lessons yesterday, so I do have that money coming today, as well.

Now if only I could remember how to open a new CD at my bank . . . .

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! Today’s book is Educated by Tara Westover. This is the story of how Westover, a homeschooled daughter of doomsday preppers, educated herself. She now holds a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

ETA: I once stumbled across another way to open that CD, but I couldn’t figure out how I got there. I finally just broke down and did it the old-fashioned way.

Longhorn Cavern State Park, Burnet, Texas

November 9, 2020 6 of 8

I think this is my 6th post for today. Maybe it’s my 5th. I was, like, well, I can always look at the place where I paste all of my posts for the month for NaNoWriMo counting purposes, then I realized that I don’t copy that part of the post over because I feel that would artificially inflate my word count. I’m not even that sure if my Gratuitous Amazon Links should count.

Agh. Never mind. Longhorn Cavern.

These are the stairs down to the caverns. My first picture showed more of the top of the stairs, but I was afraid that part would be too overexposed (and I was right — I mean, just look at the top of this picture) so I slid over to the right and took this one, which I also think is more interesting.

First, a warning. Since I had Mila with me, I couldn’t go in to buy a ticket for the tour, so I haven’t taken the tour yet. I do intend to sometime. Whenever I have the time and energy to go all the way to Burnet again.

I wouldn’t’ve been able to take her on the cavern tour anyhow (I just double-checked that with the tour website), so I definitely didn’t take the tour.

There are three things that make the park interesting. The first is kind of standard if you’ve been around here very long — the hiking trails. It was pretty warm, and while I’m getting Mila used to strangers, she was a little tense with strangers, since she was so far from home (I’ll bet that Burnet smells different from San Antonio to a dog). I’m hoping that she’ll get better about that, since I want to be able to use her as a travel buddy. As a result, we didn’t get to see all of the trails. We did the trail near the cavern entrance, and the Backbone Ridge Nature Trail. The Backbone Ridge Nature Trail connects the second interesting point:

There are a number of Civilian Conservation Corps (“CCC”) structures in the park. I believe that I’ve gone through this before, but given the nonlinear nature of this blog, I’ll do it here. The CCC was one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, and it may have been the one that was most popular with the general population. The men who worked for the CCC were housed in camps and given food, work uniforms, medical care, and an income that works out to less than $3 per hour in today’s money, quite a lot of which were sent to the men’s families.

The CCC was employed in building flood-prevention structures, reforestry, and also in building structure to improve public lands, including parklands. There are three CCC structures at Longhorn Cavern State Park. One, the administration center, is next to the visitor center at the park. This building has a deck that is reachable without going into the building, so Mila and I went up there. There is a cabin, and an observation tower. The cabin is used for storage and the observation tower had this metal spiral staircase that I didn’t like the looks of, so we didn’t go up there.

And, of course, the third thing is the cavern itself. Mila and I walked down to the entrance of the cavern, which has stairs and arches and things that I think are also by the CCC.

The cavern was formed by water filtering through cracks in the ground during what’s known as the “Llano Uplift,” which I don’t really understand and will have to research. I eavesdropped on one of the tour guides and he said that there are relatively few caverns formed this way, and even fewer (I think he said four?) are open to the public.

Now for the Gratuitous Amazon Link. I really need to catch up on my nonfiction reading, to give this section a little more variety. Alas, this is another kidlit book. The Secrets of Solace is the middle book in a trilogy by Jaleigh Johnson set on the planet of Solace. Interestingly it looks like the three books of the trilogy are independent stories. The first two certainly are.

Well, I Just Almost Had a Heart Attack

November 9, 2020 3 of 8

I wasn’t expecting one of my eight posts to be about my license renewal.

In the world of pharmacy technicians, there are two kinds of qualification, certification and registration. Texas requires registration but not certification, but if I want to leave Texas someday (and I do), I’ll need to maintain my certification as well as my registration.

I went to the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board website and realized that the renewal window for my certification closed on Halloween. This was the first, biggest, heart attack.

It looks like if I shell out another $25 I can apply for recertification, and I did shell out that extra $25, so hopefully that’ll go off without a hitch and I’ll be certified for another two years.

Then I went to the Texas State Board of Pharmacy’s website and applied there. They’re requiring refingerprinting for anyone who has been a technician for more than five years, and I’ve been a tech for six. But it didn’t say anything about it when I applied.

So I had another minor rise in my blood pressure over this. I thought that maybe they had put a hold on that project because of COVID? But then I got the email with the link to sign up for the fingerprinting. So I’m doing that one week from today, at 9:50 in the morning. The fingerprinting site said that there were 20 appointments in the next 7 days, but I couldn’t sign up for anything before next Monday.

Maybe there are 20 appointments next Monday? Who knows? All I know is that by Thanksgiving, everything should be fine.

Now to move on with my life, and get another Gratuitous Amazon Link in here. I don’t have any other way to monetize this thing yet, and I’ve made a whole $0.97 from Amazon here so far. Let’s see if someone will eventually make that, I don’t know, $10,000? $20,000? $100,000? Today’s link is Ms. Marvel: Time and Again, by G. Willow Wilson, Saladin Ahmed, Rainbow Rowell, and Nico Leon.

I Had So Many Writing Ideas . . .

November 9, 2020 2 of 8

Earlier when I was walking, I was, “When I get home, I’m going to write about this, and about that, and . . . .”

And then I got home and it all disappeared.

I was going to write about the recipe I invented by accident, but I’ve pretty much been writing about cooking while making the dish itself. I just texted Alex to see if he wants to have dinner tomorrow. If so, I’ll see if he wants that dish. If not, maybe I’ll stop and get chicken tenderloins on the way home and make it tomorrow night anyhow.

Oh, I was going to post about the weird dream I had last night. It was weird enough that maybe it could make a post of its own.

I also need to post about the two parks I went to yesterday.

As I said, I went for a long walk today. I think I’ve already posted about my greenway picture-taking project. Evelyn and I are looking for shady places to take the dogs for walks, and so I’m taking pictures every 10 minutes while I walk and am going to make movies of them so we can get an idea of which trails/parks are the shadiest. I’m up to 11 photos (the greenways are out-and-back, and I don’t take pictures on the way back. So 11 photos is 3.67 hours of walking.

Oh, and I’m working on my last? Next-to-last? hour of continuing education for my pharmacy technician registration. I need to knock those out tonight so I can get that together.

Since I’m on a Ms. Marvel roll with my Gratuitous Amazon Links, next up is Mecca, by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona. Technically, this should have come before the one I used for my first post today, but since there’s no continuity here, I don’t think it’ll matter.

Catching Up on My Goodreads Listings

November 9, 2020 1 of 8

Let’s see if I can actually make it to eight posts today. I’m off today; it’s 3:30 pm; that’s a little more than 1 post per hour.

While trying to get read dates on my dateless Goodreads listings, I’ve added dates to five Ms. Marvel compilations. There are also three more books that I didn’t even have on myGoodreads. I’ve read those and am adding them to my Goodreads account right now.

Or I will if my computer ever catches up to where I am. I really need to close all of my windows and tabs and restart once I’ve finished this post.

Oh, my God. My computer is so slow.

I’m almost caught up with the Ms. Marvel comics (though apparently there’s one more compilation, from when they changed writers from G. Willow Wilson go Saladin Ahmed, that I didn’t notice and that I’ll have to go back and read it.

I don’t know if my collection of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comics has read dates, but I know that some of my Avatar: The Last Airbender comics don’t, so one of them will be the next thing I read once I finish Ms. Marvel.

I have read a bunch just yesterday and today. I guess I’ll go with Teenage Wasteland, by G. Willow Wilson and Nico Leon.

Back from My State Park Trip and Boy Are My Arms Tired

November 8, 2020 1 of 8

Yeah, that title pretty much says it. I’m so tired I’m getting a little punchy.

I left the house at 8:30 this morning and picked up Mila at 9. Then we started on Blanco Road, which is a smaller street that’s less congested than US 281 closer in to the city.

We got to 281 and headed north to Burnet, where we tried to get into Inks Lake State Park. I say “tried to get into” because they were waiving entry fees today in honor of Veteran’s Day. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department website recommends reservations for day use, but reservations were effectively required. So that eliminated Inks Lake State Park and Pedernales Falls State Park. I didn’t even bother trying Guadalupe River State Park.

I also tried to sign up for a state park pass and accidentally made what I intended to make my password into my username. I have no idea what my password id. My mobile data connection was spotty that far out, so maybe I accidentally typed the wrong thing into the wrong field.

Um. Actually. I just checked my email and there is an email with the username I wanted to use and that has my info and the password I wanted to use is attached to that username. I’m so confused.

Okay, so I went and got my credit card and tried again. So I now have a state parks pass. I’ll have it in my hands in a couple of weeks. And if I want to go to a state park before then, I can always have the look up my pass number.

Not that that would have done me any good today, you understand. But it’s good to have in the future.

Originally I was going to do my annual national park this weekend, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. I wonder if Alex is off on the 12th, 13th, or 14th? I’m off all three and we’ve long had plans to go back to Waco to finish Cameron Park. We could hit Waco Mammoth while we’re there. He’s probably already busy then, but I can ask, right?

Content Creators: Slacktivist

November 7, 2020 3 of 8

I’ve been a reader and occasional commenter at Fred Clark’s Slacktivist blog for a really absurdly long time. I think I was still married to Thomas when I found him. I checked him out for the reason that most people do — his deconstruction of the Left Behind books.

In the very, very late 1980s, my college roommate fell in with a group of young women who believed that the end of the world was right around the corner. When Geraldo Rivera had his show on the now-debunked Satanic panic, they had a prayer meeting in my dorm room.

I’m a Christian, but I don’t believe that there’s going to be a physical second coming of Jesus. Most of the Bible verses that are used as “proof” that such a thing is going to happen at all are taken out of context. Personally, I believe that most of it was about the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD.

But anyhow, I’m getting away from myself here.

This whole school year, with the constant talk of the rapture and everything in my room, where the only way I could get away from it was to hide in a friend’s room, was pretty scarring for me. My floormates who were near it, but not right in the middle of it, developed an allergy to this sort of talk, as well.

Left Behind hadn’t been written yet when this all went down, but a lot of the things that Fred talked about, like the Scofield Reference Bible, were things I’d come into contact with during that year. His deconstruction of that worldview, and the community that built up around his blog, was very cathartic for me.

Over the years, Fred has covered a lot of religious topics, and also political topics, and he’s talked about his own life, and upbringing, and baseball and places where any and all of those topics overlap.

Frankly, Slacktivist is one of the first places I check out when I sit down at my computer. I have trouble keeping up with the comentariat, both in terms of how fast the threads go and in terms of what they talk about, and really that’s a great experience for me, because I’ve learned so much over the years.

So I highly recommend that you check it out. If you lean progressive for your politics, or your religion, or anything like that, I think you’ll enjoy it.

And for my Gratuitous Amazon Link, I guess my comic book reading project is appropriate for this post. I first learned about Kamala Khan, the current Ms. Marvel, in the comments of Fred’s blog. So today it’s Volume 5: Super Famous, by G. Willow Wilson, Takeshi Miyazawa, Cliff Chiang, Adrian Alphona, and Nico Leon

So, Biden Has Won

November 7, 2020 2 of 8

I seem to recall wondering how many words I can get out of “pleased astonishment.” I think I’m still in “stunned disbelief.”

I hang around with a lot of people with anxiety disorders and I’m starting to pick up on their attitudes I keep thinking that something’s going to happen. That there’ll end up being a lawsuit about this and the Supreme Court will decide that Trump won and then we’ll get the second Civil War that the people on the ends of the theoretical political horseshoe have been wanting.

I took this from inside the conservatory at the United States Botanic Garden when Alex and I were in DC in 2011.

What political horseshoe? There’s a theory that the people on the very farthest ends of the political spectrum are actually more alike than they are different. I’m not a political scientist, so I can see both sides of the argument whether there’s a horseshoe or not. Back in 2016, I did see people who at least claim to be on the far ends of the spectrum claiming that electing Trump would hasten the downfall of our current political structure and then we could build a new constitution with new rules. The problem is that I can’t see us coming up with a new constitution with new rules without an actual Americans-killing-Americans civil war.

And so, if the Supreme Court would decide that, then I can’t believe that the American people who voted for Biden would take that lying down. And the winner would be the side that has most of our armed forces supported.

I’d love to be able to breathe a sigh of relief, but I really won’t believe it until Biden’s inauguration.

Or maybe we could have a street party here in San Antonio, like they’ve had in cities like Philadelphia. Being surrounded by people who know that everything will go smoothly would probably go a long way towards that sigh of relief, too.

Since I’ve been on a comic-book-reading roll lately, this post’s Gratuitous Amazon Link is Volume 4 of the Ms. Marvel compilations, Last Days, by G. Willow Wilson, Dan Slott, Adrian Alphona, and Giuseppe Camuncoli.

They’ve Gotten Rid of Google Play Music!

November 7, 2020 1 of 8

I’m going on a road trip tomorrow. I’m taking Mila and driving up US 281 to probably Burnet and then back down, hitting all of the state parks on the way. So I’ll have some state park posts later.

Preparing for this, I’m downloading music, a Pimsleur lesson, and audiobooks onto my podcast phone (a Samsung S5 from 2014). And just setting this up is more of an adventure than I though it would be.

Until October, when I started focusing on Pimsleur, I primarily listened to ChinesePod in the car. And I used Google Play Music to play the lessons.

And now Google Play Music is gone. They say I have to use YouTube Music to play things from now on. Will I be able to use YouTube Music on my podcast phone (a Samsung Galaxy 5 that I got in 2014)? Will I be able to find my ChinesePod lessons on YouTube Music if I *can* use YouTube Music on my podcast phone?

Okay, so I downloaded YouTube Music (I was totally expecting Google Play to laugh at me for even trying it), and moved my next ChinesePod lessons into Google Drive. Then I opened Google Drive on my podcast phone and downloaded the files to my phone.

Where are the files in YouTube Music? I found them under Albums -> Device Files.

Welp, I ended up downloading most of them twice, so I have nine podcasts in that directory. Better than zero, I guess.

Great. I closed the app and now I can’t find Albums anymore. Ah-ha! Library -> Albums -> Device Files.

And the files play! And if I delete the extra copies from My Files, it gets rid of the extras. Yay!

Now, let’s get El Ladrón del Rayo sorted out. I need to download the book completely, because my podcast phone doesn’t have an internet connection; I have to use wifi.

Yay! It’s working!

Okay, so I have my Pimsleur lesson (half an hour), five ChinesePod lessons (another two-ish hours), and El Ladrón del Rayo (10.75 hours). Yeah. That should get me through the day. I’m only planning to go as far as Burnet, which is two hours to the north, but there will be some driving around in the state parks that I visit.

I also picked up my travel snacks — “wasabi” peas (they’re actually flavored with horseradish), almonds, Golden Grahams S’Mores bars, Skittles, pop, and water. Also, I’m going to bring dog food and two kinds of dog treats for Mila. I’m going to stop on the way for a Subway with veggies (spinach, green peppers, cucumber, tomato, black olives, and provolone cheese — yum!) Mila will want to eat my snacks, but she can’t have any of my snacks, except for the water. I’m trying to train her out of begging, but it’s going to be a long road.

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! For this one, it’ll be The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe by Ryan North and Erica Henderson. This one was awesome. I love The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. And she really is unbeatable. She wins by befriending the villains. This is a skill that more of us need. This is a skill that *I* need.