If I had it to do over again....

I wouldn't.

This month, a question meme made its way through livejournal.  Many of the questions posed to me were fandom questions, because most of my friends there are fandom friends: BSG, XF, BtVS, Farscape.  

One of the non-fandom questions this month was:  You have one real-life do-over.  Do you use it?  And when?

In fiction, I'm a fan of a character saying something to the effect of, "We got off on the wrong foot, so let's start over.  Hi, I'm x."

In real life, not so much.  Not because I've never done anything I regret, but because everything I've done or not done has brought me here today.  I may not be terribly enamored of where my life is at the moment, but I like myself, and each and every choice I made along the way had something to do with molding me into this particular me.  And my life being where it is at the moment is an opportunity for change and growth.  Neither growth nor change has been something I handled particularly gracefully in the past, but that's the joy of aging, I suppose, is the ability to look back and see that even the bad things have good consequences sometimes, and that the good things I worked so hard to achieve didn't always get me where I thought they would.  So growth and change.

I might like to have made more responsible choices with the money I had after selling the land I inherited (I'm sure Mrs. Potatohead would have appreciated us being less hand-to-mouth for those years.), but I did the best I could with the budgeting skills I had at the time (facility with math does not equate to understanding the concept of budgeting, parents).  It was so many small choices leading up to "Oh, wow.  Where did all that money go?"  (not that it was a lot, but more than I'd ever had at any one time before)  When I win the lottery, oh, the things I know now...

I'd rather go forward, using the things I've learned, sometimes at great expense, to make the future better.  I can't change the past, no matter how much I might wish to.

Yet More Random

I've decided that "because you kissed me backstage during a play in high school your freshman year" is probably not a good enough reason to friend someone on Facebook.  It was a memorable kiss, but it was over 30 years ago now.  Better to move on.  lol  Besides, I'm paring down my FB friends list, not adding to it.

Texts From Last Night is a never-ending source of amusement.  Some of them are just so far out I have to wonder if they are even real, and some remind me far too much of things that I did in my twenties.  I keep reading them, who knows?  I might even find something that inspires a story.  heeeee

I went to sleep and woke up with pieces of stories and lines of dialogue in my head, mostly stuff that can expand already existing prompts-in-progress in my working document.  One of them, I thought to myself, "OK, I just now started writing for the first time in my life, and you think I can tackle *that*?  Seriously?  Methinks you need some caffeine."  Yes, I really do think to myself that way sometimes, complete sentences and Shakespearean language.  

I noticed in a lot of fics lately that people use span instead of spun as the past tense of spin, and every single time it takes me out of the story.  I saw it again a couple of days ago, and finally went to look it up, because I just didn't understand how so many writers could be using the same wrong word. I'm reading through the definitions, yeah, yeah, I already know what span means, thanks, and then way down at the bottom, there it is: archaic, simple past tense of spin.  Color me surprised.  It still sounds wrong to me, and will probably always take me out of a story, but at least now I know from whence it came.  Yeah, I know I'm weird.

Dreams and Random Stuff

I had this weird dream just before I woke up this morning.  I'm a military brat, so I've been around planes my entire life.  Well, in this dream, I was outside, in front of my house, watching a plane fly across the sky.  Suddenly the plane stopped and hovered.  Not many planes do this, and certainly none non-military, so of course, I knew it was a military plane.  It was also carrying something on its back, a la space shuttle type thing.  Anyway, this hovering plane slowly turns exactly nose down, pauses for a very brief moment, then plunges to the earth.  Somehow, I was seeing this all simultaneously from directly below the nose, and also from a slight angle.  Don't ask me - it was a dream.  Anyway, as I see it begin to slow down before it turned nose down, I said, "Oh, shit."  Then as I watched it hit the ground, in my neighbor's front yard, I was just frozen.  Just watching it happen, like I had no sense at all.  Fortunately, though I watched the explosion in the neighbor's yard as if it were in slo-mo, I woke up before my dream self was dissolved by the shockwave of the impact.  lol  Sometimes, I don't know where my mind comes up with this crap.  I don't even want to know, for that matter.

The cough I got when I got sick at the first of the year has hung around.  Makes me short of breath several times a day, and I'm kinda weaker than usual, but otherwise, I'm getting back to normal.

I have two friend-dates to go see Die Hard 5 opening weekend, and I have another friend-date next Monday to have dinner to celebrate our upcoming birthdays early.  I have a $10 gift card for Cheesecake Factory that expires at the end of the month, so we're going to take advantage of it.  Love Cheesecake Factory, despite the fact that I do not love cheesecake.  Not even a little bit.  Not even at all.

I noticed in November that all I was doing on Facebook was liking a bunch of stuff and reading other people's posts, so I decided that I would check out for a while.  This was also at least partly in response to changes in FB and their incessant need to change their privacy policies for the worse.  Since then, I've been reading a very small list of people whose lives I actually care about, and not liking anything at all, and only posting a comment when I had some actual information to share.  Nobody's noticed I'm gone, and I haven't missed FB, so I've decided I'm going to trim down the pages I've liked (I've already trimmed down friends several times) and make what's on my FB pretty basic.  I haven't posted anything on my own page since mid-November, and I pretty much plan to keep that up.  I guess if somebody wants to know what I'm up to, they can get hold of me some other way.  In the meantime, I have more time to obsess about BSG and read BSG porn.  Thank the gods for smut!

Last but not least, my Firefox has gotten some kind of freaky thing.  When I click on something, a pop-under will randomly open up and redirect me to another page.  You might think this would be some kind of actual porn, all things considered, but the redirects are to Amazon, or search pages, or, about 10% of the time, to porn pages.  Weird, and unwelcome, and I have not been able to figure out how to get rid of it.  It doesn't seem to do anything, other than open a random page in a pop-under.  It never redirects the page I'm actually on.  At the same time this happened, I get ads randomly on livejournal, over the top of people's pictures, that I have to click closed if I want to see said pictures.  Have people begun to monetize their ljs?  Has livejournal started doing this to a random selection of people?  The two things may or may not even be related.  Maybe I should uninstall Firefox and redownload it.  ETA:  I did uninstall and reinstall, and that fixed the problems.

Huzzah!

(original post on livejournal 01/02/2013)

Or something.  lol

Got a wild hair last night and decided to hook up the landlord's A/V setup in the living room.  He'd been making noises about paying someone to come in and do it, because it was pretty complicated, and I just figured that I've hooked up some fairly complicated setups working for a previous employer, so I might as well see if I could do this one.  Turned out it wasn't so complicated.  I mean, everything was labelled and it was just a matter of connecting wires to the right IN or OUT from the right OUT or IN.  Besides, he only has a receiver, a combo DVD/VHS unit and a laserdisc player.  Two things to connect to a receiver then connect that to the TV.  Easy.  Speakers were already done, so Ta Da!  He still wants to get the whole thing connected to a computer, but he's lacking some pieces for that, so it's not on me that it's not done.  Having this all connected does give me the option of watching more things on a TV screen that's bigger than my laptop screen, and in surround sound.  Could make rewatching BSG better.   Or not.  When I watch on my laptop, I wear headphones, so I don't really miss any dialogue.  I might miss dialogue if I watch without my headphones.

Wrote some more stuff.  Posted it over at lucywritesfic.

I'm not making resolutions; I never do.  However, I do have mental sticky notes to myself all over the place, and one is to keep exploring this writing thing.  My pieces so far are short, mostly smut, and I'm unreliably stricken by the muse.  But it kinda feels good to finish something and be satisfied with it, even if no one ever reads it.  Not that I don't grin when I notice something has gotten hits over at AO3.  Heehee.

The person I've been bouncing stories off of has been in the midst of a brand-new love affair and her happiness over that has pretty much taken over her life.  I'm thrilled for her, and I'm also waiting for some of the shine to wear off so that there's room in her life for other things again.  Friendship can be so complicated.  :sigh:

Another mental sticky note is to write in my blog more often.  I use to have so many things to say and wanted to share them.  Maybe it's just December that sucked the energy out of everything fun.  For me, anyway.

Last year, in January, I won a Kindle Fire.  It took me a day or two to fall completely in love with the thing.  I never imagined I would find digital words as compelling as actual books in my hands, but truth is, in my efforts to downsize my possessions as much as possible, ebooks fit my new lifestyle so much better.  I still have thousands of print books, and I'm still reluctant to give up my old favorites, or the ones I haven't read yet.  No idea how long it would take me to get through my TBR pile.  There are dozens of books there.  Anyway, in the process of learning to love ebooks, I made much use of the local libraries' catalogs of works, and found a few that I could not access on my Kindle.  So I bought a Nook I found at a fantastic price.  It's the first-generation Nook with WiFi and 3G internet.  It does some things that my Kindle doesn't do, and BN lets people lend books to each other, which is pretty dang nifty.  Still, I don't love it like I love my Kindle.  Maybe I never will, but I wonder if some of it is that I just don't know all the things my Nook can do.  Does anyone have a Nook that they adore?  Can you teach me to love my Nook better?

Another of the weird things that happened in 2012 (how strange to type that instead of 'this year') was people finding my reviews on Amazon and emailing me asking me to review their stuff.  I thought I would love it.  I love reading more than almost anything.  Maybe not more than my grandson.  I also love sharing what I think about a book, or at least writing it on my blog where someone might or might not someday read it (lol).  When I first started getting these requests, I was really flattered and tried superhard to turn the review around within a week, and I did pretty well with that for a while.  I realized, though, that the request obligated me to read the book, even if it sucked, and I'm not really comfortable telling an author directly, "I can't finish reading your book and then reviewing it because it's just not readable."  Whether it's grammar or plot or characterization or spelling or whatever else, I don't mind detailing what I didn't enjoy about a book, and also sharing what I did enjoy, if anything, but I don't like telling the creator directly that I can't even finish it.  No matter what reason I give, the subtext for them is that the book sucks, in my opinion, particularly if I can't even finish reading it.  I also got bogged down because I read four or five books in a row that were just short of awful, but since I had committed myself, I had to slog through.  Avoiding going back to a terrible story made me read less, making it take much longer to finish each one.  The last review I did, a week or so ago, is from a request I got in October.  That's just too frakking long.  And I look at my list (yes, I had to make a list) and see three dozen books on there, and just don't even want to read anything on there, even though some of it's got to be good.

I made myself go to a Meetup last Friday.  I joined a social Meetup a couple of months ago, just ladies looking to make new friends.  I need to socialize more, keep myself from isolating so much.  I didn't know what to expect from a group of strange women, but I had a lot of fun.  Their Bunco rules are different from the rules by which my church ladies play, but not so different that I couldn't adapt fairly quickly.  Several of them were just as irreverent and raunchy-humored as I am, and I doubt a single one is under 40.  The only negative about it is that this group of ladies always plays in a back room at the local La Madeleine.  I may be the only person in the State of Texas who does not adore La Madeleine, but I just don't like the food.  On the way home, though, I decided that from now on, I can eat before I go and just get iced tea there.  That way, I don't have to eat something I don't enjoy, and LM still gets their toll for me passing through the doors.  On another note, their pumpkin pie was good.  They had a flaky yet moist crust that I've never experienced before.  Even my mother never made a crust like that!  The pie crust tasted good, not floury, and I need to know how they did it.

Enough rambling.  

Little update

So, last week, I had a little health scare and went to the ER.  This was a big deal for me, because I have no health insurance, and I'm still don't want to think about how to pay for it.

Anyway, I have a kidney stone.  Lucky me, it's 7mm, and according to the doctor, too big to pass naturally.  Yay?

I've also decided that I read way too many books to review each and every one here.  So, I might include what else I've read in a review, but I'm only going to actually write reviews where I want to say something about that book, unless it's one where I'm supposed to write a review, such as for bloggingforbooks or one of the other free books in exchange for review sites.

Also, I'm on G+, if you want to find me.

Thrilling Thursday

OK.  It's not really thrilling, but I like the alliteration.

I went to a book club meeting tonight.  Uh, technically, that would be last night.  I met several interesting women, one of whom is a local author, and got a bunch of suggestions for books to read or authors to watch.

It was a lot of fun to get out of the house, and it cost me nothing but a little gas money.  Or a little more, since I already had to go to the Post Office to mail a couple of packages ( stuff I sold!!!).

I plan to go again next month, and I have the next three months books saved on my Blackberry, so that I can find them at the library and read them before the respective meeting.

They even seemed slightly interested in possibly reading some of my mom's stuff, if I can get it into publishable form.  I have been thinking about that, since it was one of my mother's dreams to be a published fiction author.  The only thing standing in the way now is my lack of knowledge. 

It's been an ice cube, y'all!

No, not really.

We have had four or five days in a row with sub-freezing temps and lots of precipitation.  Though I spent four years in Missouri and can drive in this stuff, I chose to stay off the road, so that the other Texans, some of whom you'd think had never even SEEN snow on TV, would not kill me.  Therefore, I am still alive.

I've spent a lot of time reading, and playing with the grandbaby, and perusing pictures on AFWingMOMs' Facebook page.  If you know of anyone who has a relative in Basic Military Training at Lackland, tell them about AFWingMOMs, so that maybe they can see a picture or two of their loved one.  AFWingMoms also has a web page that is not on Facebook, so there are two places to look, and to give and get support while a loved one is gone for two months.  (It's almost like they disappear from the face of the planet, particularly if they don't write or call.)  There are also discussion topics for what to bring to graduation and what NOT to do while on base.  lol

I had several things listed on eBay, since they are doing their free listing thing, but only a pair of pants sold, and so far, I have not gotten paid for them.  I hate it when they don't pay for days, and I'm just about ready to report them for nonpayment, and then they pay and wonder what's taking me so long to get the damn thing out to them.  Brats.

Tomorrow is another Monday, lucky me.  I will try to get to those book reviews I still have to do.  Sheesh.  Just can't seem to make myself write them up.

Facebook Friends

There are some people with whom I do not wish to be connected on Facebook.  My ex-husband is among them.  I really wish that when I clicked the little X, he really would disappear from the people Facebook suggests, but no such luck.  He keeps popping up.

I'll be back

Yeah, OK.  It's not original, but it's true.  I took a vacation and then got busy, but tomorrow it's back to business.  Well, today, really.  But later today.

Now that four whole entire DAYS have disappeared....

I have nothing really exciting to report.

My feet are swelling up a lot.  I'm in a lot more pain than usual.  I'm not sleeping worth a damn.

But, on the other hand, I've been approved as an affiliate for Harlequin.  I'll put a few banners or buttons or something on here somewhere.   Fair warning.

I've been spending time with Baby Potatohead, which necessitates doing nothing else at the same time, in general.  I suppose I could do other stuff, but unless he's asleep, what's the point?

Speaking of Baby Potatohead, he's six weeks old, and I think he's started teething already.  Sheesh!  He can stand already, just not on his own quite yet.  He's almost sitting up, but still has problems with his balance.

He likes Madonna music videos from the 80's, probably because she makes some of the same sounds as he does.  lol  His favorite is Like a Virgin.  I like the song, but the video is a little bit, hmm, weird.

Anyway, I have other things to write about today, and have to pack for our turkey day road trip.  Our second annual trip to host Air Force recruits.  I really enjoyed Thanksgiving last year at my high school girlfriend's house, and plan to do this as often as possible.  I'll miss traditional Thanksgiving dishes at my parents' house, but won't miss the atmosphere of being the least favorite child in the family.

I'm International!

I've been viewed from Italy!

That's too cool.

Tuesday Topic

Just because I'm lazy and want to go to sleep, I'm stealing a topic idea from my e-muse buddy, Bonnie.  It's a question, instead of my own musings.

Congratulations!  You've won an unusual prize: an all-expense-paid billboard,
anywhere in the world you'd like to put it, with the message(s) of your choice,
for one year.

Where would you put your billboard, what would it say, and why?

OTrib and Facebook

What happens to YOUR Facebook?

This website has a new app for Facebook users that allows you to choose ahead of time what to do with your Facebook account after you are gone.

The Plan tab does have some really great articles on planning ahead topics - transporting remains, buying a cemetery plot, cremation, etc.

If you are the kind of person who thinks ahead, or has a reason to consider this information, please visit the website and check it out.

This is a BzzAgent report on Otrib.com.

Facebook v. Gather v. Classmates v. other social network sites

I like Facebook.  I've found old friends and classmates, and I get to "talk" to them daily.  Yes, I could go to classmates.com to find old classmates, but unless I pay classmates.com, the functionality of the site is limited for me.  And, there are just too many friends and family members I would never hear from if I weren't on FB. 

As for Gather, several times a year, I wonder why I'm even still there, since it's definitely not for the points.  It's been several years, and I've never been able to cash out.  Then November rolls around and ChristmasWishlist posts start coming in, and I find something I really love about it again.  I don't ever "hate" it there, but I can frequently find someplace else online I'd rather be.

As for MySpace, I recently closed that account, and won't miss it in the slightest.  Though I will miss my connection to GuyzNite, who did a song for the last Die Hard movie.  Love that song, and the guys are funny!