Year: 2009

New Year’s Resolution and Summary of Recently Read 2009

I’ve totaled up all of the books that I’ve posted about here this year, and assuming I don’t finish any more books in the next four days (no guarantees! Yep, I did after all.), this is my summary for the year:

Novellas: 4 (possibly more, because some of the short stories I read were quite long, but I haven’t counted those.)

Started and abandoned: 1 (Elantris.  There are lots of other books I started and haven’t finished, but I do expect to finish them some day.  I’ll post about them then.)

Comics: 2 (or 3, depending on how you count — and I’m only counting full-length books, not the flimsies.)

Books: 45 46

So, that’s nearly a book a week, not counting all of the other books I haven’t yet finished.  Whew.

—

My New Year’s Resolution: Not to acquire any books or stories of any kind for all of 2010.

I’m giving myself a moratorium on getting books.  I bought or have been given/lent so many books this year (and last year, and the year before that…), and I’m afraid I’ll never get through them all, if I keep getting new books at the rate I do.  So, 2010 is my year to catch up.  My goal is to keep posting these “recently read” posts as often as I remember, and to get through a large number of the books I already have.  This includes a number of books that aren’t as easy as my usual sci fi/fantasy fare, like The Three Musketeer, and a ton of books that I’ve started and never finished.  I may decide to restart some of those

Snowman

Ugliest Snowman ever?
Ugliest Snowman ever?

Today is the Family Fun Holiday Party at my company.  Apparently that means that all the craft supplies, gingerbread house makings, etc. are out.

So, here is  my contribution to the world of snowmen.  He looks a little mad, with his swirly eyes.  And I couldn’t find anything appropriate for a mouth.

If you were wondering, the gold glitter on his head was meant to be blond hair.  The blue glitter on his head, which looks kinda purple on my screen, was meant to be blue highlights.  Punk, or something.  I dunno.

And then came feathers.

Scary lady yelling at me

Gah, what a weird thing.

So, I’m in my car on my way out of work, talking to Ben on my cell (wearing my ear snigget). I pull out of the parking lot and up to the red light. I notice in the lane-going-straight there’s a car pulled up beyond the stop-line. That’s a little odd, but since the light rail goes through this intersection, the civil engineers left plenty of extra room, so it’s not actually dangerous. Then I notice that the dome light is on in the car. Hmm, not usually safe while driving. So, I pull up in the lane-turning-right (because I’m turning right), whose stop-line is lined up with where the car is stopped, even tho the car is beyond its own line, and I peer in the window. Just quickly, just long enough to notice there’s a woman driver, and she’s leaning over something. I assume she’s digging in her purse. And then I look forward again, and the light turns green. Still talking to Ben, I start going. And suddenly she honks, for no apparent reason, and I’m just like… wha…? And I keep turning, because she can’t have been honking at me, I wasn’t anywhere near her… and from the lane-going-straight, she turns right, following me. I wonder if she’s honking because she didn’t realize that I was in the right turning lane, and that there *is* a right turning lane, and she really meant to be going right and was mad that I was rude? I dunno.

But she pulls up next to me on my right (I had turned into the left lane, because I was going to go left onto the on-ramp onto 280), and starts yelling at me through her open window as we’re driving. I’m thinking WTF? (I probably even said WTF to Ben.) I can’t hear or understand most of what she’s saying, except that she’s calling me a bitch, and something about me looking at her. Seriously?

So, now that she’s next to me, I notice that she’s a black woman, seeming really big and definitely loud. And that’s all I notice, before facing forward again, figuring that ignoring her is the best option. As I pull up to the red light at the next intersection, I think about how to get out of this situation. How bad would it be to drive through the red light? Bad, don’t do that. How likely is she to get out and attack me? Well, I’m sure I can step on the gas faster than she can get out of her car and break my window. So I just stop at the light, facing forward, trying to stay out of it.

She’s still yelling, I can’t hear everything she says through the window, but really pissed, and “bitch” a few more times. And she says, “Oh yeah, now you can’t look at me”, so I look at her. And I give her the nicest smile I can muster, and I shout “Have a nice day” through my still-closed window. Niceness doesn’t seem to faze her.

And then she shouts at me to pull over–I’m still not clear if she meant to fight me or what–and I say no. I really don’t want to react, I’m trying to think how to respond without escalating the problem, how to not get involved. I’m thinking … dude, you’re big and scary, and I’m this skinny little white girl. I know who’s gonna win this fight, and it’s not me. And seriously, pulling over? What?

She keeps shouting, I dunno what, probably calling me bitch again, because* when light turns green I give her the finger as I start moving. I pull onto the freeway, and she doesn’t follow.

At about that time, Ben chimes in again. He says he could hear some of her shouts through the window, and says something like, “Well, don’t get any on you”. I’m pretty shaken, adrenaline pumping and that fear-feeling tingling through my back.

It took about half the drive for that feeling to subside.

And I’m thinking, is there really an expectation of privacy in one’s car in the middle of a public road? I mean… you’ve got these 360° windows at the same height as everyone else’s 360° windows. I was just idly glancing in, apparently peering a little more interestedly than I intended, because I was mostly paying attention to what Ben was saying, not what my eyes were looking at.  And really–pull over?  What on Earth for?

Gah.  Most people think I’m nice.

—

* Causality here because I must’ve been reacting to something she said if I finally decided to flip her off, and not any time before then.  I remember I didn’t just feel safer because I was driving–though that was true, too–but I was reacting to something specific.  I just don’t remember what.

Progress!

The first post worked, but I didn’t quite like the plugin, so I switched plugins.  But I didn’t like that one’s footer, so I’ve changed the footer.  Do I like this one better?

(I’ve also noticed that my website seems to either think it’s still in daylight savings time, or it thinks I live in the Mountain timezone, so all of my posts are dated an hour in the future.  And off by a few minutes.  Go fig.)

EtA: Trying again with yet another plugin.  I want moods & locations!

EtA: Last try… with a better mirrored line…

Trying a new thing…

For a long time, I’ve had a website, http://www.intelligentlizard.com.  For almost as long, I’ve been planning on finishing it and making it look pretty.  Finally I’ve given up on making my own, and I’m just using WordPress.  You could see that version at https://www.lizaolmsted.com.  (Much nicer looking, huh?) But I’ve always liked posting to LJ, and I have friends there.

So I’m trying a new thing: composing on my website in wordpress, and having it cross-post to LJ.  It should be just like posting in LJ directly, only not.

(Also: I need to figure out how to fill in “music” and “mood” and “location”.  Those don’t exist in my WordPress yet.)

So, this is my experimental post.  Will it work?  Won’t it?  Once it’s working, I’ll post about TGS.

Out with www, in with wp!

A long time ago, I started creating my own site in php.  I used to have some facility in php and enough of a grasp of css that I thought I could develop a whole site.  It would have a blog with site-specific news (that’s what this wordpress was for), and it would show my most recent posts on livejournal, and it would have pages about me-as-a-writer, maybe some of my stories would go up.  The other key thing was that it would have some of my non-writerly things on it, which would have their own color scheme and a different title.

I did amazingly well at creating a logo/title I liked and at setting it up to have a welcome/why-you-should-be-here bit at the top, and even succeeded at getting two columns to have site news and lj-blog news.

But the layout… not so much.

And then I wondered… why am I spending so much time on this, when wordpress is designed for this stuff?  Other people do *amazing* things with wordpress.  Am I too good for that?  Too lazy to figure it out?

Finally, I’ve thrown in the towel.  I’m accepting wordpress as my personal website-savior.  I’ll probably write some posts on LJ, some here which cross-post to LJ, and some here that don’t.  (LJ people don’t care when I update this site.  Then again, you might not either.)  So, I’ve added all sorts of nifty plugins which should make this look the way I want.  (Notice the nifty Haiku Corner plugin, which randomly displays an unformatted Haiku!  I could not, for the life of me, get it to preserve line-breaks.  I don’t know why either.)  It should accomplish all of the things I intended with my liza-developed site… only be easier to maintain, with all sorts of nifty features that I don’t have to develop.

Any day now, the index.php at www.intelligentlizard.com will go away, and for some time you will be redirected here, to www.lizaolmsted.com.  (Until I manage to move the contents of wp. to www., without losing anything important.  Wish me luck!)

I am excited by this change.  I’ve wanted to have a nice site for myself for a long time, so I could direct people to it without being ashamed.  Soon, it will be possible.

You marked this bug fixed.
I tried it in the new build.
Sadly you were wrong.

Haven’t made any changes. And it shows. :)

Yep, I have changed nothing here.

But I’ve changed things in the rest of my life. I’m living in a new home, and I’m going to have a new office. And I’m learning to balance my working life with my writing life… and so I hope this will give me more opportunities to improve this site, especially to make it look nice, or at least usable, and to add content.

Meanwhile, there are other things for me to be doing, and I don’t believe anyone is actually visiting this site anyway.

If you do visit, drop me a note, either here: www.lizaolmsted.com, or here: lizawrites.livejournal.com.

Your server is broke.
Tech support can hear your cries.
Here is a hotfix.