lait
Random word list:
Sergent
criminalistic
Pseudo-panamanian
lait
assures
Word chosen: lait
Definition: A marine gadoid food fish of Europe (Pollachius virens). Called also greenfish, greenling, lait, leet, lob, lythe, and whiting pollack. (b) The American pollock; the coalfish.
Free association word list:
lair
dragon
treasure
gold
silver
copper
platinum
electrum
alloy
steel
stainless
stain
grapes
wine
beer
mead
fermentation
yeast
malt
barley
water
hops
flower
smell
earthy
soil
dirt
earth
Earth
planet
Solar System
Sol
star
constellations
myths
Word chosen: dragon
Writing:
Gargaul’s treasure horde has been plundered while he was out mating with the nearest female dragon. He knew that this would happen when he left his lair, but the urge to mate was too strong. Gargaul has taken the form of a lithe human in an effort to track down his missing treasure items, and is attempting to retrieve them. Gargaul is being opposed by the people that bought the items from the dwarf Hastin who sold them to private collectors. Hastin has learned of Gargaul’s actions, and wants to protect his clients and his reputation. Hastin, an adventurer of great repute, is tracking Gargaul, and is attempting to kill him for the trouble that is being caused.
Huh. First time I’ve really tried that exercise. I’ve always come up with ideas in my head, and just thrown them at paper. Of course, none of them stuck. Not one. Live and learn, I guess. This story summary idea is a great one! I must do this more often as an exercise, and every time I prepare to write a story. Good stuff.
No Creative Writing Today
I was really hoping to dig into some creative writing today, but this is the first time that I’ve had a chance to turn on my computer all day long. Yeah. I know. Almost 24 hours without touching a computer. Strange for me.
It’s pretty exhausting being around a newborn. I managed to get quite a bit a sleep last night (6 1/2 semi-contiguous hours) as compared to Kiara (about 3 broken hours) before crawling out of bed for Kiernan’s first doctor appointment. That appointment went well, and everything checked out fine.
Then it was back home, and I ordered Kiara to bed for some sleep while I stayed up and played with Kiernan (as much as you can play with someone that is less than 48 hours old.) He mostly slept while I mostly watched TV. Thank God for TiVo-like devices. This allowed me to catch up on some TV shows, and pause them to tend to Kiernan.
You figure that he’ll cry a little, you’ll check diapers, swaddling, clothing, and pacifiers a little, and that’s about it. That’s really all there is to it (for the parent without the breasts that is), except for the holding, talking, bouncing, and general interaction. You figure that he weighs a little under eight pounds (yes, 8 lbs, 2 oz at birth, but most babies lose 10% of their weight in a day or two, and then start putting it back on) and handling something that weighs about the same as a large bag of flour wouldn’t really tire you out.
Think again.
Somehow spending 6 non-stop hours with a newborn can be really exhausting, but the lack of sleep can’t help either. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about having a newborn around. (I’m belly-aching a little, and looking for sympathy, though.) I loved every moment of those 6 hours that I had with my son. It was a great 6 hours.
Why only 6 hours? Well, that’s just the 6 uninterrupted hours that I had with him. Then came time for some neighbors to come by, a trip to the store for some stuff for Kiara, and easy-to-fix meals for those moments when warming a casserole donated by a friend in the oven just won’t work. Oh. And diapers. 80 of them. That might last a week. Yep. A week. Oi.
Once I was back from the store, we managed to scarf down some food, play with Kiernan some more, and get him to settle down for a while. Then I headed down to my office (where I’m at right now) to check email real quick, and post this blog.
I’m beat. I normally don’t get to bed until 11:30 to Midnight. It’s 10:30 now, and I’m going to crash as soon as I click “Save” and make sure that the post went through.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to do some writing. We’ll see how it goes. Yep. Maybe. Ha!
PS: I’ve been a member of the local writer’s group for a year now (and three months of showing up to meeting before I joined as a full member.) Yay. A year. Problem is that I’ve only had two submissions during those 12 months. Boo. Hiss. Even worse? It was the same short story (though the second submission was drastically different, and drastically improved thanks to my group’s feedback.) I’ve made a promise to myself that I will have close to 50 pages of submission (50 pages is the limit per member per month) for the next four months running, or I will severely flog myself with something painful… like writing romance.
Kiernan Is Home
It’s been a hectic day that started at 8 this morning when Kiara called to ask me when I was coming to hang out at the hospital with her. I told her that I would be there around 10, and promptly went back to sleep. About 8:45, I crawled out of bed, took care of the animals, and got on the road. I got to the hospital shortly before 10. I walked in just in time to talk to the pediatrician about getting Kiernan circumcised, and we scheduled to do it in a few minutes. I wanted some time to relax with Kiara and Kiernan, but that just didn’t happen. In the five minutes that I had to my family three nurses came in for various reasons. I don’t remember what, but it seemed to me that all three things could have been done by a single person on a single trip.
I went with Kiernan to have him circumcised, and it was actually not as bad as I thought it would be. For some reason I pictured a painted witch-doctor with a bone through his nose swinging a stone machete while chanting. I don’t know why I thought this. It makes no sense, but that was the image that I had. When the doctor turned out to be a grandmotherly type person with a warm smile, and a tray full of cold medical instruments, I was partially relieved, partially embarrassed at myself, and partially eager to see her use all of her tools. I’ll spare you the details, but Kiernan handled the entire process like a champ (yes, the local anesthesia helped), and we were back in our room again.
I was warned that Kiernan would be out of things for a short bit while he recovered from the circumcision, so I was ready to spend some time with Kiara. That didn’t happen. Another doctor, administrator, four nurses, and a cleaning lady all came in. Nope. Not at the same time, and not for the same things. It was all at different times. I never had a chance to talk to Kiara for more than two minutes at a stretch. This was pretty much the theme for the rest of the day.
The last nurse to come in asked Kiara if she wanted to take a bath. Kiara hopped (not literally, mind you) all over that idea, snagged her bath stuff, and ran (ok, shuffled) off to get bathed. One of the nurses that had come in had mentioned that Kiernan had some nose drops to help him when he became snuffly. I had no idea what the drops were, where they were at, or anything. He was starting to get snuffly, so I stepped outside to ask a nurse where the drops were. The nurses desk is right outside our room, but it still took me over a minute to get one of the nurses to stop their gossip long enough to look at me. I was just getting ready to give up when I got the attention of someone walking by. They stepped into their storeroom behind the desk and came out with saline in a tube. Same stuff I used on my eyes after my LASIK. I snagged the tubes of stuff, and walked back into the room. I looked down at Kiernan and was shocked. He was purple!!! Part of my mind panicked, but it was a tiny part. The rest of me jumped into action. He had thrown up some bile while I was trying to get the attention of a nurse, and he was choking on it. I snagged the suction bulb, and quickly went to work. Within a few seconds, he was breathing, sputter, coughing, and being fussy. Oddly enough, he had choked long enough to turn purple, but it didn’t really seem to disturb him too much because I was there.
With that scare over, and Kiara gone, I spent some time talking to Kiernan since this was the first time that we were alone together. I talked to him for about 10 minutes, and then he fell asleep. I guess I’m pretty boring.
Then I fired up my laptop and took advantage of the free wireless at the hospital. For some reason they were blocking every site that I tried to go to (even this one). I figured that their firewall had gone haywire, so I whipped open an ssh tunnel to my Squid HTTP proxy server, and pointed my browser to the ssh tunnel as my HTTP proxy for Firefox. Within a minute, I was browsing anything I damn well felt like, and in a secure fashion. My old server (which is still hosting everything I do) had to be rebooted this morning because of strangeness with the mail server. I’m having some sort of hardware failure on the box. It’s just having too many weird problems. That’s OK. I have a new server that is damn near ready to replace the old one. The big thing holding me up is the highly customized mail server. I’m moving from qmail to Postfix, and there are lots of configs to port over between the two totally different systems.
I spent the rest of the day alternating between working on the mail server (which is almost done), talking to Kiara, talking to Kiernan, and dealing with other 47 people that came into the room (including a maintenance guy that just had to check the serial numbers on the lights in the ceiling now, and no it couldn’t wait until after we were out of the room later that day.) It was actually a fairly frustrating day because I wanted to spend it with Kiernan and Kiara, but I couldn’t. No one would leave us alone in our room long enough for any quality time to matter, and I have to focus on my new server to get it up and running ASAP before the old one gives up the ghost.
Things finally rolled around to the end of the day, and we I clearance to take everyone home. Normally they want babies to stay 48 hours after birth, but Kiernan had no problems with breathing (other than a stuffy nose), activity, movement, jaundice, or anything else. Pretty much every nurse (there were about 30 different ones today) commented on how well he was doing and how he’s doing better than most other babies are doing after a week, and he was only 24 hours old. I’m pretty sure that this was because we didn’t do any pain meds, epidural, or anything like that. He didn’t come out of the womb with loads of drugs in his system.
Kiara and I were very glad to be leaving when we did. The rooms are nowhere near soundproof, and the lady that had just been wheeled into the room next to us was a screamer. I’m not talking in the porn-star-faking-a-climax kind of way. I’m talking in the I’m-a-crappy-actress-in-a-B-rate-horror-movie kind of way. While we were hastily packing and finalizing paperwork, we overheard that she was only dilated to 7 cm. That means that if she went on a “normal schedule” that she had at least another three hours to go before she could start pushing…. Yeah…. Three more hours of screaming before the real fun begins. I feel sorry for the people in the room with the screamer.
The drive home was pretty much the longest stretch of uninterrupted talking that Kiara and I had all day long. About 30 minutes of pure bliss other than the fact that I was worried about Kiernan. I guess he likes car rides (yay!) because he was zonked out the entire ride home. After the choking incident earlier, I was really worried. I managed to sneak my hand into the back seat, and put a finger in his mouth. He sucked on it a bit, and that assured me that he was fine.
Kiernan, Kiara, and I ended up getting home about 7 tonight. Kiara had to go fill a prescription, and I had tons of unpacking to do. It took me most of the night to get things unpacked between taking time to talk to our parents on the phone, a quick visit from our neighbors (who brought yummy turkey soup!), and taking turns taking care of Kiernan.
It’s been another long day (I’m sensing a pattern here), and it’s nearing 11:30 at night. Here’s to hoping that we can get some decent sleep tonight and into tomorrow morning. I’m going to try my best to let Kiara get more sleep than me since she put out more energy than I have the past couple of days. Unfortunately, we have to get up on a schedule tomorrow. It’s Kiernan’s first pediatrician appointment. Seems kind of fast to me, but that’s ok.
I’ll give an update tomorrow on how Kiernan’s first day at home went.
PS: The animals seem to be handling Kiernan with various reactions. The dogs are curious, and gentle. Two of the cats are curious and scared. Two of the other cats are so scared that they hardly come out. The fifth cat is too stupid to know the difference. The birds are pretty freaked out, which I think is a little funny. With time, they’ll all come to deal with Kiernan in their own way (except for the stupid one, which will just know that it’s another person to scratch his head.)
Kiernan Arrives
Kiernan (the online handle of my son) has arrived to the world.
First the vitals:
- 8 lbs, 2 oz.
- 21 inches long
- Born at: 2007-11-26 3:44 PM
- Apgar sccores: 8 and then 9 due to colorization.
- Song playing from my mp3 collection at the time of birth: Truth Hits Everybody by The Police
- As our doula said, “He has all of the factory approved parts.”
Mom and baby are doing wonderful, and I’m doing pretty good myself. Of course, I did lots less than either one of them, so I’m not taking any credit for anything other than being a cheerleader and water boy during the process.
The longer story:
Kiara woke me up at 3 AM today to tell me that she had been in early labor for an hour, and needed my help getting around. We walked around the house, laid in bed, tried various positions, and kept each other company until about 6 AM. That’s when we called our doula, and told her what was going on. She said to go back to bed, and try to get some rest because we were both going to need it. We laid in bed, and really didn’t get much in the way of rest.
8 AM hit, and the contractions got closer and closer. We called our doula, and asked her to come over. She got on the road, and headed our way. While she was on the way, I took care of all of the animals. When she got there, she started taking care of things. I was finishing up with the animals when Kiara threw up, but the doula came to the rescue to clean the mess. I managed to get a clean shirt on Kiara, and about that time the doula looked at me and asked me if I had eaten. This was about 9:45 AM, and I had not eaten even though I had been up for over 6 hours.
She told me to go into town to get some hot food, and I also had to get some gas, Monster energy drinks, and some cash from the ATM. I did all of this, and got home about 10:45. As soon as I walked in, the doula told me that we were going to the hospital soon. I asked how soon. She said, “now kind of soon.” I asked her if we could leave in 10 minutes. It would take me at least that long to get my stuff together for the trip.
Fifteen minutes later we were out the door. I still hadn’t had a chance to eat my food, tell anyone what was going on, or anything like that. The drive to the hospital was uneventful as far as the typical TV show drama goes. I managed to contact my mom, Kiara’s dad, Kiara’s doctor, and a few other folks on the drive to the hospital.
We arrived at the hospital a few minutes after 11:30 to find out that Kiara was fully dilated and ready to go. We got up to a room quickly, and labor and pushing started almost right away. It was a blur of four hours. Lots of grunting, groaning, pushing, holding of breath, cheerleading, massaging, positioning, and monitoring.
Kiernan finally came out at 3:44. Things were great, except for the cord around the neck. The doctor jumped on the problem before I even realized that it was a problem. Everything worked out, and the doctor’s calm and confident demeanor put me at ease. This allowed me to put Kiara at ease, and things were good.
Next came all sorts of action, and I really wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next. Our doula nudged me and told me to stick with Kiernan, and she would stick with Kiara. I did just that. Kiernan was being fussy because he had swallowed (but not inhaled) some meconium, and they had to suction it out of his stomach. He didn’t like the tubes, suction, and other handling, but so long as I was there talking to him, he would stay mostly quiet. I wish I could have recorded what I said because I honestly don’t remember. I just know that I was a proud papa to be looking down on my son.
Things calmed down after that, and we got to get a little rest before I started making phone calls to friends, family, etc. The phone calls were all pretty much the same as this post: vitals, short story, current status of everyone, and goodbyes so I could make the next call.
That’s pretty much where I’m going to end things for now. I’ll get some photos up as soon as I can, which may be tonight, or may be tomorrow morning. I’ll shoot for tonight.
reconstructor
Random word list:
cytomorphological
quasi-innocently
reconstructor
heredia
protoma
Word chosen: reconstructor
NOTE: None of the five above were in my dictionary searches as is. Reconstructor was the closest with….
Definition: Noun Related To: to construct again; rebuild; make over.
Free association word list:
reconstruction
Carpet Bagger
Civil War
economics
forced hand
forceful
coersion
interrogation
water boarding
torture
taser
death
final
goodbye
farewell
waving
hand
fingers
toes
feet
nasty
fungus
toenails
nails
tough
manly
macho
nacho
libre
Word chosen: torture
Writing:
Name: Kirtuk Mangil
Keywords: fat, bad teeth, horrible breath, fingers stained with drugs, shaved head, thin mustache.
First draft:
Kirtuk Mangil hails from the small desert nation of Pater where death by the worst means possible are common-day. This is where Kirtuk learned his skills as a torturer. When death is horrific, the threat, and delivery, of pain has to be even worse. The fat Paterian has horrible breath from his rotting teeth, and constant use of the narcotic known as grier. The tips of the fingers on his right hand are stained a dark brown from the constant application of the grier between Kirtuk’s cheek and gums. The only hair on Kirtuk’s head is a thin mustache that seems out of place on his rotund head.
Revision:
The fat torturer leaned closer to his victim and exposed his rotting teeth. The blast of hot, foul air that wafted from Kirtuk Mangil’s mouth would have made a normal person swoon, but Kirtuk’s application of pain on his victim was too complete. The torturer leaned back as his stroked the only hair on his rotund head: his thin mustache. While the poor man that was tied to the table writhed in agony, Kirtuk took a pinch of the narcotic grier between his stained fingers and crammed it between his cheek and gums. The stained fingers slowly slid from the pouchy lips of the sad, fat man, before they reached for his next implement of torture.
Ok. I’ve done a week or so of rambling about my past. I’ve done a week or so of poorly executing scenes. I’ve done a week or so of slapping some characters down on a page. I’ve gotten some halfway decent ideas through this whole process. Good stuff that I’ll probably continue after NaBloPoMo is over.
The upcoming week will be some efforts into story summaries. They’re supposed to be less than 150 words, but include information about the basic plot sitation, the name of ID of the protagonist, the protagonist’s goals, the name of the antagonist, why the antagonist wants to stop the protagonist, and how the antagonist is going to attempt to do this. Maybe I’ll get some writing ideas out of this next week.
Correction: Water NOT Broken
Kiara corrected me when I got home last night that her water had not broken. What had happened was that her mucus plug fell out. I’ll spare you the details of what a mucus plug is. If you really want to know, this page can fill you in.
When her water does break, I’ll make sure to let you know…
The panic can stop now… Back to your regularly schedule programming.
Water Broke
Kiara just called me. Her water broke. No contractions just yet, though. We’re still a ways away from greeting our son for the first time. I’m at Kolvedic’s and Jhianna’s house playing Alternity right now. We’re about to wrap up, and I’ll head home as soon as I can.
More news on the way as it develops.
Sorry to break from the NaBloPoMo pattern, but I had to share this news. I’m also dangerously close to hitting the Midnight mark for today, I just didn’t have time to do any character creation…
Think Green
I’ve been needing to do this rant for a while, but I’ve been putting it off because of my NaBloPoMo theme, and this just didn’t fit in. I just can’t hold it back anymore.
I’m tired of all of this “Think Green” bullshit that’s been going around. Two weeks ago NBC did a “Think Green Week” and all of their shows had some sort of environmental message. Every. Single. One. I watch a lot of NBC, so I had to swallow lots of Al Gore’s spew during that week. It was a sucky week.
I had to get some unrefined sugar (Jaggerty sugar for you brewers out there) for a batch of beer that I made today. The best place to find this kind of stuff easily is Whole Foods, Wild Oats, or the organic section of Safeway. I hate all three of those. I’m allergic to organic, all natural, never bathe because it requires soap, dreadlock having, hemp wearing, buck the system, defeat The Man kind of people. I used to be like those people (except for the lack of soap part), but that was when I was young and stupid. These hippies that are 30+ in age need to realize that it’s time to grow up, get a job, and pay their way through life….
Sorry…. Sidetracked…. Anyways….
I was in Wild Oats today getting my 2/3rds of a pound of Jaggery sugar (and some Chai something-or-the-other-in-a-purple-box for Kiara) and everywhere I looked was “Think Green”, “Save Earth”, blah blah blah blah.
I’m so tired of having this crap shoved down my throat. Enough already!
However, that is not my main complaint. That’s right. I’m just getting warmed up on this rant. My main complaint is that the freaks of nature that are trying to save this planet have picked the wrong color. Again. The. Wrong. Friggin’. Color.
Earth is not green. Plants are green. 2/3rds of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. That leaves 1/3rd where plants can grow and be seen. Plants don’t grow everywhere, which means less than 30% of the Earth’s surface is green. I’d even be willing to bet that the number is closer to 15% of Earth is green. See up there where I said that 2/3rds of the Earth’s surface is water? Yeah. Guess what color water is these days? It’s blue. Right. BLUE. Not green. Again. Not. Green.
All of these people running around screaming about the sky falling, the globe warming, carbon credits (what the fuck are those anyways?), CO2 emissions, methane clouds from cow farts, and all that crap don’t even know what color their own planet is. I bet Al Gore came up with that whole “Think Green” crap. Yeah. The only green he’s concerned with is the massive amounts of green that is pouring into his wallet from his book and movie deals, and he doesn’t want it to stop anytime soon.
Don’t believe me that Earth is blue? Hey. Check out these photos:
The Blue Marble. Yep. That’s what NASA calls this image: 
Here’s a page full of them. Check them out. All blue. Yep. There’s one that has quite a bit of green in it, but there’s still more blue than green.
I could go on. I really, really could. However, Kiara wants me to come to bed before midnight tonight.
Some parting words.
Forget green.
Think blue.
While you’re thinking blue, I’m going to be out back burning some used tires while pouring some old motor oil into the water table. I’m just giving Al Gore something to write his next book about. We wouldn’t want him to have to give up his private jet (yeah, how green blue is that?) now would we?
unrazored
Random word list:
yarn-mercerizing
Rhinelander
unrazored
parachromoparous
respell
Word chosen: unrazored
Definition: Not shaven.
Free association word list:
whiskers
beard
goatee
pointy
black
evil
necromancer
naked dancer
stripper
lap dance
pasties
g-string
shaven (woah! round trip from starting point.)
tuna
fresh
smell
raindrops
snow
drift
snow blower
24 minutes, baby!
Word chosen: necromancer
Writing:
Name: Malakos
Keywords: dark elf, mouse-like features, silver hair, red eyes, long fingers, skinny.
First draft:
Malakos stands against the wind as it whips his thick black robe about his sparse frame. The long fingers of one hand struggle to hold the robe closed against the gale, as the other hand shields his face against the blasts of rain. His red eyes glitter in the supernatural witch-light that suffuses the hills around his tower. He looks into the storm searching for those that he knows are coming.
Revision:
Malakos’ already pinched, mouse-like features tighten even further as he turns into the wind of the blowing storm. The long fingers of one hand struggle to hold his robe closed against the gale winds as the other hand shields his red eyes against the blasts of rain. The dark elf necromancer knows that the villagers are coming to his tower tonight to reclaim their children. It is too bad that the children have already had their throats slit, and have been reanimated as shuffling undead. Malakos’ white teeth shine in the eerie witch-light that emanates from his nearby tower as he ponders how many parents will be driven insane by facing the untiring assault of their own dead children. By the end of the night, the village, and its secret, will lie in the dark elf’s hands.
Malakos was a recurring villain that I used in a D&D game back in the early 1990′s. Even though it has been over 10 years since I have used him in an adventure, I still love him as one of the best villains that I have come up with. I knew that he was a high quality bad guy when the players would scream in rage when they would realize who was behind the slaughter of an entire village. The players (not just the characters) truly hated Malakos, and the mention of his name (even after the campaign had been done for over a year) would cause the players’ blood to boil. Muahahahahaha…. Yep. I’m proud of myself for creating such a mean bastard.
hyperdulia
Random word list:
uncoloredly
semi-idiocy
dirigibles
hyperdulia
Addie
Word chosen: hyperdulia
Definition: the veneration offered to the Virgin Mary as the most exalted of creatures.
Free association word list:
idolatry
sin
mortal sin
Hell
burning
torture
pain
suffering
forever
eternal
in passing
blink of an eye
temporary
transient
…. wow…. brain lock…. ummm……
…. shifting gears….
brain
head
skull
scalp
Native American
Word chosen: Native American
Writing:
Name: James “Eagle Tail” Redrock
Keywords: Old, broken, once proud, war hero, drunk, paralyzed, sharp eyes.
First draft:
James “Eagle Tail” Redrock sits in his wheelchair and looks out the window with his sharp eyes. He is broken by old age and too much drink, but he was once a proud warrior that fought in the United States Army during Desert Storm. That war left him paralyzed from the middle of his chest down. He is proud of his past, but regrets being forced to live in squalor even though he earned [insert medal here] during Desert Storm. He feels that the government owes him more than what he is getting from them.
Refinement:
Eagle Tail looked across the desert-like landscape of his reservation while taking another drink from his fifth of Jack. His vision brings everything clearly to him even though he has been drinking for the past three hours. A quick glance at the clock tells Eagle Tail that his Meals On Wheels people will be arriving with his lunch in fifteen minutes. They always call him by his white-man name “James Redrock”, and the old woman always tells the young boy that is with her that “James” is a war hero.
Eagle Tail looks at the small display box next to the clock on the wall of his trailer house. Just looking at the Distinguished Service Cross, three Purple Hearts, and Prisoner of War Medal made for an impressive sight, but the man that earned those awards no longer exists. He was broken and drowned under the weight of memories that can only be kept at bay by a steady intake of whiskey.
Eagle Tail sighed as he looked back out the window. He must have stared at the medals longer than he thought. He could see the plume of dust rising in the distance as his Meals On Wheels people drove down the long dirt road that lead to his isolated trailer. He knew better than to disappoint the young man, so he quickly hid his bottle of Jack, and headed to the bathroom to rinse his mouth with Listerine. By the time he was ready for them, the old lady and her tag-along boy would be here.
Ok. I like this character. I can feel him in some way. Maybe I’ll save him for later use. I could go on a bit longer, but I think I’ll hold off. It’s getting late, and I haven’t even finished one of my fourteen things that I wanted to do today. Huh. The list of fourteen should probably be spread over the long weekend, now that I’m looking closer at the list. Still…. Not even one done.
