working out the kinks.

It's the home stretch as far as the book goes. I want to be done, it's time and so I have been madly typing and wracking my brain to get through the blocks and the hurdles and just do it.

It's been an amazing learning experience, writing three  consecutive books in a series that walks through what is essentially the universe of a thousand other people.  Trying to weave a story that spans nearly 20 years through the stories of a lot of other people in an established time line is not as easy as it sounds.

It started because I couldn't find the Star Wars story I wanted to read. Stories that saw the universe from the Empire's point of view. The closest that came to that at the time was Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" series.  And I fell in love with his main character as so many others did. What was not to love?

It took a while for this incarnation of Daughter of the Empire to get out into the world and as I re read the 1st book I see a lot of stuff that needs fixing.  But all in all it's a story I LIKE. That's cool, right?

Now I am at the end trying to wrap it all up in a way that I would like to read as well as the people who have stuck it out with me ( thanks everyone).  And then who knows what happens after this, I have other stories in my head and I like the whole share them on a blog thing.

it's all about the art, right?

In light of all the personal posts recently I thought I would put up some art. This is an old piece that was given to a friend. It's called computer bugs ( ha ha) and it small about 5"x7", acrylic paint, an eprom chip and some other chip, copper wire and shredded Deutsche Marks.

Like most of the work from the whole "Re-cycled" series it's a play on words within the computer jargon world. I always think these little chips that go or rather went on mother boards looked like centipedes and being able to glue shredded money on the canvas was just too much fun to not do.

Another piece from this particular run of paintings was this one. It's called "Ethereal mail." and I am pretty sure you all get that joke. ( e-mail shaped like a letter????)  I still have this because I really loved it. I have a tendency to keep my own art which is not so good for selling it but who cares. For me, it's not about the money anyway and it never was. Would I like to be able to make money off my art? Sure but it's not my ultimate goal. I make art period. And that's that.

after...

I live in the now, the right now. I don't tend to dwell in the past although I will dog-with-a-bone certain events and never let them go, but for the most part past is past. I tend to forget things that happened a lot. The same applies to the future. It hasn't happened yet so I don't freak out about it. There are a number of "what ifs" on my worry about list but generally I don't tend to consider the future much.  So what matters is the now, the right now, this moment.

This, of course, does cause some issues. For example when I feel ill it's ALWAYS the worst ever. I tend to forget that six weeks ago I had the same thing and it was also THE WORST EVER. Good that my long suffering husband gets this and knows what to say make to make it alright.

So here I am the day after the dreaded colonoscopy. I have to say the very worst thing about it was my imagination, seriously. Next time I hope I won't be such a babbling idiot who cannot string 2 sentences together. ( If there is a next time)

I'm in limbo this morning, the morning after, I'm tired and a bit down which might be a side effect from all the drugs, I tend to get really down after any "surgical" stuff though I couldn't tell you why. I'm gassy and crampy and it hurts but I'll live. I keep going over in my mind how stupid I must have sounded at the doc's when he was asking me questions. But I need to cut myself some slack : I was seriously scared, I hadn't eaten anything in 36 hrs, and trying to do all this in German is difficult when I get wound up...words Fiona remember your words. Easier said than done. I can can speak the medical speak in English but I forget the German words for things, in fact under pressure I tend to lose the German completely. I struggle to be coherent at all. Did I mention that I had a pulse of 120 when my normal resting pulse is 75. I don't think so well on no food, bad sleep and terror. LOL.

And by now you're all wondering what the lizard has to do with any of this...

When we lived in Switzerland lizards ruled the garden.  I miss the little guys a lot. I posted the picture because it was one of the few really good things about living in Ticine which is a place that damaged me. I had never lived anywhere before that did such a bad number on my psyche. Doctors who treated me like I was a hysterical, stupid housewife. No local friends, utter isolation and the sensation of never belonging as well as a language I could not seem to learn. All of these things changed me from a person who jumped off cliffs into the unknown to a person who hid all the time.

Now after 2 years of being back in Germany i am slowly finding myself again. Yesterday saw me revert to that person I had become in Ticine. I didn't like it much and now I am angry at myself for not being less scared and more coherent. I should be stronger than that, once upon a time I was.I don't know if I can ever reclaim everything that was lost but I'm working on it.

updatey

so the doc was fantastic, super kind and very gentle. I was a mess tho couldn't really string 4 words together and shook like a nervous puppy. I went out like a light and woke up dopey. Results , the prep was really good, colon was nice and clean , no poyps, no diverticulitis everything looked A-Ok. So this means all the abdominal pain is endo/adhesion related and that will probably require surgery. That I can handle.

Now I am tired and really dopey but in a good way. Some lingering cramps and a bit of gas, but some rolls and tea made the hunger go away.

So if I ever have to go through all that again I won't be so worried. I hope I don't have to do it again though for a REALLY REALLY long time.

C-day has arrived.

Day 0: Last of the bowel prep done. Harder to do than yesterday mainly because at 7 am I don't like to eat anything let alone drink a litre of stuff that tastes a bit like overly sweetened salty grapefruit juice with a hint of artificial lemon. Ugh. Even the do it your self enema was not so difficult. Not sure if I got it right and to be honest I don't really give a .... . Let's put it ths way liquid went in ... liquid came out. Which incidentally is the same procedure as the prep. I guess on the whole my guts weren't quite as clogged up as I had imagined them to be. And all in all the entire procedure was not as bad as I had thought. The worst part really was my overly active imagination ad the first few glasses of  the Moviprep mixture which sits for about 20 minutes in the stomach like a bowling ball. I felt suddenly very full very fast and then whooosh suddenly I wasn't feeling full any more. So it was doing what it was supposed to do.

We leave the house in 40 minutes to head out to the clinic in Lübeck. After that who knows and since I hope to be asleep for the actual procedure it's all a mystery from there on in.

I'm nervous but not nearly as wound up as I was a week ago. Though I am willing to bet at the clinic if they read my BP my heart rate will be through the roof, I am well known for that. I have a normal resting heart rate of around 75 at the doc's it usually shoots up to well over 100. You can tell I feel safe, secure and happy visiting any doctor on this planet, even the ones I like and trust.   None of this so far was as terrible as I had imagined it to be. There were no massively painful cramps, I didn't vomit and actual time spent sitting on the pot was less than 2 hours. Right now I'm a bit shaky but that's more from lack of food and nerves than anything else.

One of the more surprising side effects form this though is I stink. My whole body is letting of the slightly rotten fermented fruit smell. Weird right? Probably the aspartame and the whole "cleanse" thing. Get rid of the toxins... uh huh. What ever it is I hope it goes away sooner rather than later it's unpleasant for me to be around me. Oh and I'm all bloated. It's ikky but nothing I don't deal with on a regular basis. Oh and the very sweet saliva that my body suddenly produces which tastes a lot like the aftertaste one gets from drinking diet pop ( which i don't do because I hate the aftertaste). Still all in all not the end of the world explosive disaster I was half expecting.

So here I am getting ready to bug out and get probed. Yes I grin as I write this. The whole thing has a somewhat funny slant to it and I guess it's good I see the humour. I'll see even more afterwards if I get the all clear. So keep your fingers crossed.

Oh and borborygmus, I has that in spades...there's a symphony going on in my guts today. 

Cheers

written in the virtual stone

I have a friend who writes poetry almost every day and he posts his poems for all to read. You can go here to take a look... poetry by Ted. His poetry is touching, funny and often very thought provoking. There are times when his words have made me cry or laugh. To my mind this is a sign of a good writer. His words makes me feel something, anything.  It's a brave thing to do all things considered. I know this because I write books and I post them online for everyone to read and it is a brave thing to do too.

Today, as I prepare myself for the colon cleanse and tomorrow's colonoscopy I revisit my own books. I started writing the Daughter of the Empire series a LONG time ago, sometime in the mid to late 1990's to be exact. It was an idea fleshed out by the Imperial Order, an online star wars game club, and developed for my online persona.There were a lot of false starts as I tried to find my voice and it didn't really go much beyond the 1st chapter and an idea.

Then we moved to Switzerland and I suddenly had a lot of time. It began with the concept of blogging, fairly new at the time, and got off to a small start. I didn't share the link and I rewrote several times. Eventually I got past that awful hump I kept getting stuck at and busted through. After that I made the link public. And much to my shock and delight, people read it and some even liked it. The first book was started in 2006.

Now I am re reading book1 and I see the mistakes, the grammar faux pas and so on. I see what I need to fix. One of the things that I learned form doing this online publishing and writing as I go is editing. And I really like to edit. Whether or not I am any good at the whole editing process remains to be seen but I see patterns in the words and I am not afraid to hack and slash the chaff.

Book1...especially the early chapters see a lot of confused tenses and strange styles as I try to find Merly's voice. Now I need to rewrite, which I think will be a lot of fun.

So here I am putting the words out there. I hope that people enjoy them.

the promise of beauty...

Looking forward to seeing my Westerland rose blooming again. It has surprised us all by growing for 3 years on a balcony in a pot, then being transplanted to Switzerland for nearly 4 years then back to Germany where it now resides and probably will for ever. It grows like a beautiful weed and it is my baby.

moon moon

A shot of last nights perigee moon over Trenthorst, Germany. It was pretty stunning lighting all around.

And this is the red kite that lives around here, we see it often over the fields across the street. It's an amazing sight.

home

what can we do?

art by Dave Liew

The print is for sale for a good cause.

Nothing makes a person feel more helpless than sitting in front of the TV/computer watching a disaster of untold magnitude unfold right before their eyes. Personally I know how this makes me feel and somehow even adding money to one or more of the various international aid organisations around the world doesn't seem to be enough.

I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like to watch every single part of your life be swept away in an instant of time. One moment your home, your belongings and even loved ones are there and the next they are wiped away as though they never existed.

Now not only does Japan have to find its way back from being devastated by an earthquake and a massive tsunami but now it faces all the chaos of possible nuclear meltdowns. On top of this their infrastructure is broken. Electricity is spotty, food and water among other things are in short supply in some places, thousands of people have no where to go, no jobs to go to and nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Manufacturing of export items has also stopped and this will have long reaching effects

And it isn't just Japan, although right now the eyes of the world are there. There are terrible things happening to people all around the globe. So do what you can to help out when and where you can. Even a little bit can go a long way.

I know I consider myself incredibly lucky to have the luxury of clean water, good food, a roof over my head and all the toys I could ask for. I do not need for anything. Now imagine if something suddenly took all of that away.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

spring more

We gardened. I made brownies. I wrote. It's a busy weekend. I'd write more here but I'm actually writing my book. :)

a day of sorrow

There is nothing to say really. Japan devastated by an earthquake and tsunami while in other parts of the world people tear themselves apart.

It's art...isn't it?

I love playing with water colours, primarily washes. There's a real freedom in it that is utterly opposite to the medieval style art I do.  This one rather reminds me of Newfoundland with fog banks sitting just off the way waiting to roll in.

spring, sheep and the social media networks

And what do these three have to do with each other? Not a whole hell of a lot except that all three are in my life. I live in a rural little spot in between two big cities, Lübeck and Hamburg. We have sheep at the bottom of our garden area, they are not our sheep but they meander by daily as the eat ( cut) the grass. It's sort of cool to see sheep.

Spring- well that is just around the corner. I can feel it even smell it some days and on a day like today when the sun shines it's easy to believe it's almost here. It's been a long, cold ( for here) rough winter on oh so many levels. Since I've posted ad nauseam about these I won't repeat myself but suffice to say I rejoice in the thought of spring. The reality is a bit different since spring brings allergies but I can deal with those right?

And lastly the social media networks. I hang out on two. Facebook and twitter. I'm an old hand at Facebook but a newbie on twitter so imagine my surprise when I get notification yesterday that James Edward Olmos is following me. My very first thought was why? It's not like I am the most interesting twit in the world or is it tweeter I never get that right. Really on twitter I don't have much to say that I didn't 1st say on Facebook. But since I get points for tweeting on Empire Avenue I figured why not. Turns out twitter is interesting in its own way. Short sweet to the point messages from people all across the globe, many of them well known. It gives a little glimpse into their every day lives which is sort of cool. 

So via tweetdeck which has impressed me greatly I access both together on a continuous feed. I am connected. I am a geek. Oh boy am I a geek and I am proud of this lable. I use it and wear it like a great big badge of honour. After all it is the geeks of this world that have brought the world together under all these social media networks.

I think that without these social networks and the internet I would be a whole hell of a lot more isolated and I'd probably either do a lot of productive things or watch way more tv, I can't decide which it would be. I do know that through the social networks I get to share my life with other people friends and family on a daily basis and that, under previous circumstances, would not ever have happened. Everyone is now up to date with everyone else and I must admit this is a cool thing. I feel connected with the world, especially with my friends and I have re-found lost people in my life which has made me really happy since before facebook I would have had no idea how to find them and some of them even found me- how cool is that?

So between NASA TV and keeping up my stock price on Empire Avenue it's been a busy week. In between all the virtual social networking I have actually accomplished a lot of things - it helps tho that I feel a lot better this week. Let us hope this continues....

until then be excellent to each other!

yes we have no bananas...

So while the world is on space watch for the shuttle Discovery's last mission I have been keenly keeping eye open for the fruit that lands on the top of the work station at NASA. Yes I am weird and yes I find interest in the strangest things but there you go I never claimed to not be weird.

By the way if you are watching NASA tv today the Discovery undocks and this morning's wake up call will be special "William Shatner recorded a special intro for Alexander Courage's "Theme from Star Trek" - Discovery's 3:23 a.m. EST wakeup call."

Watching this stuff live via the web is exciting. Better than normal TV and it's real, like really for real. It isn't faked TV/movie land pretend stuff this is happening now, in space and live. That's about as cool science non fiction as it gets.

So while I joke about the bananas really what am telling you, the world, is that there is some really freaking cool stuff going on right up there above our heads and maybe it would be good if perhaps just once in a while we looked up and managed to muster some awe because really this is awesome stuff and when Star Trek 1st came out this stuff we are watching on LIVE STREAM was just fiction , a vision of hope in someone's head.

So on that note.... Be excellent to each other and remember there are people in space doing really cool things.

it's con time...

We are headed to Fed-Con in April. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I promised Marcus I'd make him costumes so double ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! On the to do list are Imperial Officer ( gulp) and  TOS. I still need fabric for the latter but the former all I need is courage.

Last year I did the Tusken and the two crew outfits. The tusken was fun ( I did not make the mask that was created by Martina from Italy) I could have but it would have been so much work that I would not have had the costume done in time so we bought it instead and I am very happy we did. However, everything else I did myself.

While I don't really enjoy sewing all that much it was a lot of fun to try and figure out how to make this costume especially with the materials I had on hand. In the end I was happy with the overall look. And while I got flak about the shawl not being perfect....personally I don't give a rat's ass. In my not so humble opinion the tuskens were nomads who scavenged what they could from the desert and settlers so none of them would ever have looked 100% alike and saying that my costume is wrong because it doesn't 100% match the 1 or two images out here is just stupid. It looks like a tusken female looks and I'm leaving it at that. It got approved and that is also fine with me. However it's a hot costume to wear so I don't wear it for long periods  at a time and since we are not staying at the FEDCON hotel this year ( sorry but I can't justify spending 210.00 euros PER NIGHT) for a standard double room in the Maritime we are now staying off site and that means being far more picky about costumes.

So I guess the next round of projects for me will be getting Marcus's officer's outfit done. He really really wants this and I am sort of scared to attempt it but I have the fabric, the pattern, the multiple advice form those who have gone before and I also have the skills ( mostly). So we'll see. I will keep the world posted tho...

Saturday

We woke up late.
The sun is actually shining.
NASA tv is keeping me sane.
Today is Marcus's mum's Birthday.
I'm still feeling like garbage.
I have had a very unproductive week but I learned new things.
Work was fun.
Be excellent to each other...

The machine is...

I've posted this before but I think it bears posting again. I have been thinking a lot lately about copyright and sharing and the world. When I see "This video contains X and is unavailable in your region" I get really cross. The internet has no borders, really so why do videos? And more to the point since my money has no borders and I can spend it in any country why does the video I want to watch? If a music / film company wants to encourage me to buy their product allowing me to see it would be smart. Shutting me out due to where I live is stupid and way behind the times.






I post images on the web all the time. They are mine. I created them but on the web they sort of become the world's. I'd rather not see someone take my work and make a lot of money from it but at the same time I can't really control that and I like the idea of sharing with the world.

My first experience with this sort of thing happened in High school where i designed the cover for the High school musical program for Guys and Dolls. Instead of asking me for the original to be reproduced in the year book someone else tried to copy my work and did a crappy job of it instead. I was pissed about that but in the end let it go.

Nowadays I think we've taken the whole copyright thing to the Nth degree and it has become stifling and ridiculous. I buy DVDs and have to sit through 10 minutes of do not steal this dvd infomercials...I bought the thing and I still have to watch that garbage. It's stupid and it is not really user friendly. On YouTube when I want to see a new artist's video to see if I like it enough to buy it I have to wade through dozens of not available in your country blank screens before I find one I can watch. Dear music companies by doing this you discourage me to buy said album. I can live without it, I don't need to give my hard earned money to people like you I will however be more inclined to spend money on companies that I see encourage world wide viewers, or sharing and so on.

Now with all the social media out there sharing has become easier than ever. I learn more about world happenings and new products, films, music and TV through facebook and twitter than anywhere else. I don't watch commercial TV anymore, I also don't listen to the radio either. Too many commercials and too much blah blah blah wasting my time. I have yet to find a radio station ( locally) that plays decent music ALL the time and where the DJs shut the fuck up. Little tip ( Alster radio morning show crew) you are not funny, you are mean and often crude and NO ONE CARES!



So now we have this massive instant way to share everything! Medieval manuscripts are online for those crazy of us who study them and we don't have to fly to some university somewhere, beg for privileges and don white gloves ( not that this would be a bad thing because nothing beats seeing the original) but now we have so much more access to what was once only available to the elite. Now anyone from anywhere with internet access can see the art wonders of the medieval world. And that makes me wonder what Monks would have felt about copyright....after all had it not been for copying we would not have the brilliant works of art to compare and look at today.

Lack of Endometriosis Surgery Reimbursement in the US

March is Endometriosis awareness month so expect me to post stuff on this subject. This video makes me insanely glad I am not living in the US and having to deal with this illness.

latest piece

So this is a backlog scroll which means it's already been awarded and the person knows about it. I thought I would share since I am happy with how it turned out. Acanthus leaves are the very bane of my scribal existence. But this was is pretty cool.  My calligraphy still needs work though.