In a way it’s kind of reassuring, though, realizing I’ve picked up some kind of bug. It explains why I’ve been so extremely tired even days after I finished my Great Rewriting Siege, why in spite of that I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and, oh, yeah, why I’ve had an upset stomach the last couple days.

It still sucks, of course.

I’m not terribly sick. What’s worst is it’s just enough to make it hard to focus mentally. Which is making it hard to do the other urgent rewriting I need to do. Bitch.

So right directly I’m going to just go and try to get to sleep, see if I can make it a decent sleep. And get a running start on the morrow.

Oh – you may have recently seen something about recent claims that, not only are birds not descended from dinosaurs, but dinosaurs might be descended from birds. Here’s an interesting and persuasive smackdown to that idea, delivered courtesy of Smithsonianmag.com’s Dinosaur Tracking blog.

It’s a happy kind of head-slammedness, anyway. It results from my having finished the rewrite for my Deathlands novel, Blood Oasis, and shipping it off to Gold Eagle.

As rewrites go, this one went more smoothly than any I can remember. However, the intensity with which I rewrote (facilitated, lo, by that very smoothness!)  has completely fried me.

I always get a little nuts when I approach the end of a writing project. Okay, a little more nuts. I haven’t showered in like five days and have barely been out of the house (no doubt fortunate in light of the foregoing.) And getting one out the door, electronically speaking, leaves me spent and shriveled like a cast-off cicada husk.

You’re welcome for that visual. Oh, and the olfactory.

I cannot rest long on my … whatever cicada husks come to rest on; twigs, mostly, I suppose. I have to get back and finish the long-deferred rewrite of my Wild Cards yarn (sorry, George and Melinda!), as well as, yes, the rewrite of Dinosaur Lords.

I’ll actually try to get back on them today. Although I’m not sure how productive I’ll be, given my current state of having a flat head.

Or it might be safer just to play Torchlight and try to finish up watching Hatari! and the first disc of Outlaw Star, Season 2, so I can get ‘em back to Netflix. Still, I will try the Road of Virtuous Productivity first. My feeble efforts could be amusing if nothing else.

Anyway, I muster a feeble, yay!

More soon. Thanks for hanging with me!

Fast (Asleep) Friends

Anyway, I am still flying, and that’s good news. Just wanted to check in and let people know.

Just about ten minutes ago I saw the insufferably adorable pose above by TJ Cat and Emma Dog. So I snapped the picture with my cell phone camera. A moment later TJ got up, stretched, and wandered off.

It’s not much of a camera, although some may argue it’s all the more appropriate to my skill level for that. I’m foolish-minded enough to be grateful to have it for capturing moments like this one.

When Emma Dog and I arrived at the Rio Grande Nature Center wildfowl preserve – which is now referred to, it seems, as “Candelaria Farms“ – we found ourselves confronting this:

Crane jailbreak!

Yes, it was Greater Sandhill Cranes, clearly plotting to bust outta the wire.

The event is chronicled in this series of photographs, originally posted with Twitter and Yfrog: 2, 3, and 4.

In the end they made it out – with a bullet in their … no, actually, with no problems at all.

Clearly, I’m overly influenced by AC/DC’s “Jailbreak.”

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a fine New Year transition. Mine were quite pleasant, thank you.

I’m a bit slammed finishing an action/adventure novel plus my story rewrite for the upcoming Wild Cards book, Fort Freak. Been a bit under the weather: woke up yesterday to as nasty and intense a coughing fit as I can remember, followed by feeling miserable all day. Today I felt somewhat better, although not much.

Tomorrow I hit my stride again. Hit the ground running!

Literally, or close to it: for the past couple weeks every morning I’ve gone out for a short but increasingly long run right after getting up and feeding the critters. Didn’t do it yesterday or today, although I did obviously take Emma for a walk. Plan to get back to it tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Now I think I’ll go watch Cloverfield from Netflix and go to sleep.

Pictured: sheep

Oh, you do, do you?

Of course, I know the real lyric was “Oh we, like sheep” – punctuation matters! But I heard it the other way.

I wanted to. It was much funnier that way. And in all fairness, it did sound as if they were singing that they liked sheep.

I had a very good Christmas; hope you did too.

Dinner was great – turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, the works. John’s mother and aunt were there, as well as their friend Lynn Kaczor, who was supposed to be off visiting family. As I understand it, weather happened.

After dinner John’s mom and aunt took off. We watched the Alistair Sim A Christmas Carol, which wasn’t bad (the story’s not my favorite.)

The highlight of the afternoon was when Gail gave their cat Archie some of the home-grown catnip Lynn brought. Archie gobbled it right down. Then he dove in and rolled in it, getting big chunks all over his fur. Then he rolled on his back and rubbed it all over his big round face with his paws.

He looked like a 1980’s waterbed magnate who’d spilled his cocaine. It was great.

After the movie I went over to Steve and Kathy Kubica’s. ASFS stalwart Bill McClellan was there when I arrived. We were later joined by Craig Chrissinger and Jessica Coyle, then Kennard and Kristen Wilson – giving us the two co-chairs for Bubonicon 42 together in the room at the same time, a clear security risk. Lucky for us no provocateurs staged a terror attack.

We watched Castle, some Muppet shorts from the Web, and opened presents. Then we watched a Rifftrax of some old Christmas short films. All of which was mightily enjoyable.

So: good day, good food, good fun, good people. I got back to my animals and my “tree” – a foot-tall conical rosemary bush in a pot – just before midnight. An excellent Christmas Day, I’d say.

Hope you had a good one, too.

I really love and appreciate my friends, both human and animal. Thanks for being there for me. That really is my best Christmas present, always.

A Christmas filled with peace and harmony.

And a happy, healthy, and prosperous new Year.

You thought I was kidding, didn't you? Again.

It was brought to our Christmas meeting tonight by the incomparable Patricia Rogers – if you know her, that’s an of course – who had found it in a bargain bin in Target, of all places. Patricia has a great many gifts. An infallible affinity for the weird is definitely among them.

As well as the usual suspects, Melinda Snodgrass fell by for a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting. As always it was fun hanging with her.

Along with showing various short Christmas films (the rest were Rifftrax) tonight’s meeting was the occasion of our Annual Dessert Cook-Off. The “challenge ingredient” this year was coffee.

There were a number of wonderful goodies, both with coffee and without. I thought of adding some coffee to my red chile pumpkin soup, but desisted on the strong suspicion it would be vomitous. Despite containing brown sugar the soup’s not really a dessert; I brought it because, well, people kept asking me to. Which was quite flattering.

Unfortunately, and despite the fact that Randi Tinkham was kind and generous enough to lug her crock-pot all the way down from  Santa Fe for me to warm the soup in, the stuff stayed ice-cold throughout most of the meeting. Some brave souls ate it cold. It’s not bad that way; it’s just better hot.

I didn’t win anything – as I dolefully predicted halfway through the meeting, the soup indeed got hot just about the time to wrap thigns up – but I didn’t really expect to. Under the circumstances more than I expected got eaten

When I was transferring the soup back to my kettle from the crock-pot I somehow managed to slop some onto the counter and onto me. Wonderful. Fortunately it wasn’t hot enough to napalm my legs.

However, on the way home I had to stop off to buy cat food at Wally World. As I went hit the bright lights inside I realized to my horror that I totally looked as if I had yarped all over my lower pants legs and shoes.

Then I consoled myself with the realization I was almost certainly not the only person in Wal-Mart at 10:30 on Friday night who looked as if they’d thrown up on their shoes. But I was the only one who looked that way and hadn’t.

We now conclude this evening’s presentation of TMI Theater…

Update: Snapshot of tonight’s SF club meeting:

Woman: Did you just say, “Shit, I’m a banana,” in German?

Me: Yes. Yes, I did.

Oh, the weather outside is balmy/Killing terrorists is all that'll calm me...

Only the very prototype (and pinnacle) of the modern action film. Yes, Die Hard. What else could it be?

The best of the rest:

2. A Christmas Story – also read the book from which it came, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash.

3. Lethal Weapon – but any Lethal Weapon movie with a numeral is on my least faves list.

4. The Nightmare Before Christmas – my favorite part is the opening “This Is Halloween” number, to the tune of “Here Comes Santa Claus,” no less.

Seems to me there were more, but I draw blank here. I may add some in updates if I recall.

So – what’re your favorite Christmas movies of all time? Drop a comment and let me know!

PS – remember the mouseovers! There’re always mouseovers.