I Make It Snow On Them... Drawers?

Lately I've taken to making snowflakes while I'm hold at work.

I've been on hold a lot, lately.

Like, a LOT.

That one on the left is actually from about three years ago... I found it when I was cleaning out old files, and it's what kick-started this year's snowflake industry.

They're just super-satisfying to make.

Every time I unfold a new one I feel like a freaking artistic genius.

A Matter of Taste

One of the fun side effects of my little food-allergy-adventure is that I don't have much in the way of a sense of taste anymore.  I can still smell, and I can sort of taste things as I swallow, sort of, but anything that involves the tip or top or sides of my tongue?  Nothing.  Which has led to a sort of interesting exercise in "What's worth eating when you can't taste it?"

As you might imagine, most of it comes down to texture and temperature.  Warmth is still very nice (especially as I have a raspy throat at the moment) so I'm drinking a lot of aromatic tisanes (if you can't taste 'em you may as well smell 'em).  But spicy sort of sucks, because there's none of the flavor, just a very unpleasant burning sensation.  Apples are no good, and much to my chagrin I discovered that my beloved Mighty Bowl is pretty non-appetizing without flavor (apparently I really don't like the texture of rice).  Yogurt is unpleasant, cheese is neutral, scrambled eggs are tolerable, saurkraut is actually pretty good because I can get more of a sense of the taste.  But winter squash is fantastic, because even if I can't fully appreciate the taste, I can fully appreciate the silky, mouth-filling texture.  Crushing things like fresh herbs between my teeth (cilantro and fennel, to name the two I've noticed) seems to work moderately well- I think because a lot of that comes down to scent.

I do hope my sense of taste comes back soon.  I feel like it will be difficult to eat a well-balanced diet without it, because I take four bites of whatever and am done- just enough to shut my stomach up.  I could probably just switch over to nutrient-drinks and call it good, if this keeps up.  Which really sounds like a terribly unpleasant way to live, given how much of our culture, socializing, and bonding is tied up in food and its preparation (especially amongst my nearest and dearest).  Still, I can't wholly regret this episode (going on for about a week now) as it's given me some insight into a different way of life, and that's all any writer could hope for (because when you're a writer, literally anything and everything can count as research).

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

This series first caught my eye more than a decade ago, while I was living in Birmingham.  I remember it quite clearly- attracted by the pipe-smoking woman on the cover, I picked a mass market edition up in the library, read the back and thought to myself, "Oh what an intriguing concept!"  But the book I held in my hand was not the first in the series, and so I put it back.  But I took note of what was the first book in the series: The Beekeeper's Apprentice.  I'm not sure why I didn't hunt it down then and there.  Perhaps I was getting an audio-book that day (back when I had a non-bike commute), or perhaps it was because, at that point in my life, I had not yet read any Sherlock Holmes*, and therefore didn't realize how much I craved exactly what it was offering.  Whatever the reason, I did not search the first book out that day, although it stayed firmly implanted in my brain, to the point where I have thought back to it time and time again over the past ten-plus years.

Well, I finally got around to ordering it from my library.

And I devoured it.

And I've put the next two on hold.  (That's the nice thing about waiting so long to actually get into a series- you get a lot more to read all at once.)

All in all, well worth the wait.





*It was actually a short story by Gaiman ("A Study in Emerald", found in Fragile Things) that finally prompted me to actually pick up a battered old collection of Sherlock Holmes while Nathan and I were traveling in the Southwest.  I tore through it and was promptly aghast that it had taken me so many years to discover the glory.  That Christmas, Nathan gifted me with a leather-bound copy of the complete collection.  Best husbeast ever.

Maybe It's Bromelain!

Spent this morning at the doctor's office, getting a referral to an allergist, to figure out what I've eaten twice within the past week to cause my tongue, mouth (and, more frighteningly, my throat) to swell up.  The kicker is that the most recent occurrence (at last night's party) was, well, at a freaking party, where I'd eaten small amounts of approximately twenty different things, in addition drinking at least three different beverages.  This did not make narrowing things down any easier, especially since some of those things I ate were things-made-of-many-things.

That being said, I told the doctor that I figured it was either something in a ground sausage type thing, or tree nuts.  Or, I added as an afterthought, pineapple, which had been present in the ground sausage type things.

"Ah," his face relaxed.  "I'm still sending you to a specialist, but I'd lay my money, as it were, on the pineapple."*

And then he prescribed me some steroids.  Woo!

The allergist's office won't call until the actual business week, obviously, but in the meantime I've busied myself like the good little 21st century patient I am by reading allllll about pineapple allergies.

Which led me to discover that pineapples (which I love, by the way) essentially are doing their best to digest you while you're eating them.  Say what?  It's true.  They have a little enzyme called bromelain that breaks down proteins.  You know, like the muscle that is your tongue.  It's used commercially as a meat tenderizer, if that tells you anything.  So lots of people tend to feel a bit of a tingling when they eat pineapple (I have myself, in the past) but I guess the bodies of some lucky so-and-so's get all suuuuuper sensitive about it.  Like giant jerks.

It was actually kind of a relief to find out about that, because one of the things bothering me about my "allergic reaction" was that I wasn't just swelling: I felt like I'd burned everything- tongue, mouth, tonsils, throat.  Burned to the point where I currently have no sense of taste, even.  It got me wondering if I'd somehow chemically burned myself on some spices in the sausage, but the whole pineapple-attempting-to-digest-me thing makes a lot more sense.

Of course, we'll wait and see what the specialist says, but in the meantime I'll be over here, not eating pineapples.




*all hail a doctor who actually listened to me, by the way.

Drinks With Santa

Company holiday party tonight- we had a holiday sock contest, so I wore leggings that said "Make it Reindeer" along with a pattern of reindeer and cash (appropriate for a financial industry party) topped off by Naughty/Nice socks.

Apparently Santa's a rum and coke guy, which makes those commercials make a LOT more sense.  (I had a brandy.)

A good time was had by all.

The Rewrites Begin

I have not, in the past, been a super big fan of rewrites.  Generally by the time I get around to them, I'm already starting to weary of the world I'm playing in.  I remember, back before I'd written my first long-format story (oh alright, novel, although I feel like a fraud saying that) wondering how an author could possibly make such basic mistakes as giving a character's birthday at one point in the series and then contradicting it later.  And then I wrote something longer than a short story, and came to realize that eventually it all just starts to overwhelm you, and you have trouble remembering what's on the page and what's only in your head.  And, moreover, eventually after all the re-reading and re-writing and editing-in-general, you begin to get very, very sick of the story, and just done with the damn thing, already.

Of course, in the past I've had a bad habit of editing-while-I-go, which means that by the time I get around to "re-writing", I've already read the thing more times than I can remember.  And I really shouldn't call it a bad habit, because for some people that works quite well.  For me, apparently, it leads to burning out on stories.

Which is why it's so interesting for me to begin the rewrites on Oathbreaker- I haven't read it over and over again: I just spewed it out onto the screen and moved on.  Occasionally I'd have to review a bit of what I'd written the night before, to remind myself where I was at in the story, but for the most part everything is still pleasantly fresh.  "Oh, I'd forgotten I wrote that!  That was clever."  (or, more often, "Oh shit that totally contradicts something I know I wrote later: better fix it.")

All this to say, I'm about 2500 words in to the re-writes, and am still feeling pretty excited about it.  Which is good, since I still have another 29 days of blogging left in this year's 366 project, and I might be able to utilize the one for the other.  Wheee!

Prize Fighter

Well, I did it.  I hit my personal NaNo goal for this year, and I'm feeling pretty dang pleased with myself.  I'd meant to start re-writes tonight, but technical problems got in the way of that, and as it turns out, that was a good thing, because it gave me a chance to get some truly excellent feedback from my Katie.  She confirmed some niggling concerns of mine, but better than that she gave me a freaking solution.  So I'm stoked to work that back in with all the other tweaks (/complete revamps) I have in mind.

Once I lumped everything together (including that bit I wrote back in October), The Oathbreaker came out to be over 20,000 words long, which is a perfectly respectable novella.  Perhaps even an anchor work for a collection of short-stories?  You know, the short-stories I, uh, didn't write because apparently I was too busy writing a novella...

::cough::

(It's cool you guys- I have plenty in the archives.)

Although the feeling of triumph I have over actually managing to fight through exhaustion/distractions/time constraints/illness/etc to write at least 10 minutes a day (and often closer to 20 or even 30) every day for a month is pretty damn rewarding, I also feel like maybe I should treat myself to a more tangible prize.  Something writing-related, of course.  Maybe one of those pens that turns longhand to typed words... mmm, luxury.