It's cold and wet again, much as May in the northwet tends to be. I was up earlier than I wanted to be, but there rarely seems to be anything I can do to actually regulate my sleeping hours. If it's not a phone call, it's a dog nose in the face, or just nature calling. Oh, yay.

I had a lovely day in Mount Vernon with alfrecht and man_of_snows, though! I hauled Mandragora and man_of_snows's chapbook up with me and had various and sundry persons sign their bits. We had Chinese food and then wandered over to a place where we could just hang out and talk. I spent about three hours with them this afternoon talking about poetry and writing and education and publishing, and alfrecht talked about some of the sessions he attended at Kalamazoo last weekend.

I headed back early enough to make it to the AFK, but there was no steampunkery. I was not too surprised, but I grabbed a salad and a snort and talked with the staff. The red room is now the TARDIS blue room, with a huge dalek poster and other sundry things.

Sadly, gra_is_stor wasn't feeling well again today, and didn't come up for band practice, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see her, at Irish class. Thursday is a couple of VA appointments. I'm hoping that before I head down to Seattle tomorrow I'll actually get my arse in gear in do a little more work on pilgrimage and Europe stuff. I was told today that we have FOUR openings still, so if you are at all interested in going to Ireland, or you know someone who is, please do sign up or pass the word along! We'd love to have one or two more folks along for the trip.

I had been hoping to sleep later this morning, but the DoDC+3 got me out of bed at 11:30 wanting to go out. I hauled him around and then checked email and stuff, after which Geordie and I went for a walk around the lake. It was raining, but not too awfully, though I couldn't find my windbreaker - I think I know where it is, but I haven't had a chance to look there yet. Anyway, I came home kind of soaked and changed the wet bits of my clothes.

Geordie had a Greyhound ticket for 4:50 so I took him down to the station at about 4:20. We got to talking and the next thing we knew, he'd missed his bus, so I drove him up to Blaine and dropped him at the Subway there. The wait at the border here was over an hour and a half, and wasn't nearly that on the Canadian side, so his mom came down to pick him up. The drive up wasn't too bad. We continued our conversation and I stayed for a little bit to grab a sandwich at the Subway, but the weather on the way back, from about Bellingham to a little north of the casino was pouring down rain pretty viciously off and on. By the time I got back to Everett, it had pretty nearly stopped.

I'd been hoping to do some writing today, but really couldn't quite get to it. I'm feeling slightly like I'm coming down with something, but am hoping that if I manage to put myself into bed here shortly, I might be doing okay tomorrow. I'll be heading up to Mount Vernon to meet alfrecht for his birthday, with man_of_snows. I've got man_of_snows's chapbook for him to sign. Probably won't be making it to the AFK for steampunkery, but one never knows. I'll ping the list tomorrow to let them know that I might be late if I make it at all.

gra_is_stor will be up tomorrow for her band practice, but she has a key so if I'm not here, she can let herself in and out. I'll definitely be home by the time she's back from rehearsal. With luck, both of us will be feeling better, as we've both been under the weather lately.

In the past couple of days I've run into somebody over on Tumblr who speaks Irish (and is from somewhere in Offaly), so we've been having a rather rudimentary conversation. I'm not that good at it, but I'm working on it. It's nice to be able to try to use it a bit between classes.

And now, off to bed. Gotta be in Mount Vernon tomorrow by 3pm.

I was in Seattle today with Geordie for the second day of his permaculture workshop. I was really kind of half asleep for much of it, but it was a good session, and I was able to participate. As we were getting ready to wrap, I got a ping from lupagreenwolf about the Rose City Steampunk Film Festival, on the road in Seattle today, and we went over to have a watch.

There were some excellent short films, and a couple of longer ones, but one thing stood out as wonderfully freaky and hilarious - Doctor Glamour, a steampunk Lovecraftian psychedelic comedy musical. The trailer for the vid is on the website linked above, but there's another complete film on the website as well. It's called "Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer," embedded below for your hilarity quotient for the day. Rather NSFW, but sooooo much fun.



Due to the film festival I was out much later than I anticipated, but it was well worth it. And I got to introduce Geordie to steampunk in one of the most fun ways possible.

I'm doing better today. I'm at least no longer in agony. My ears mostly work again and the pain in my back was better enough by about 4pm that I was able to leave the house. I'd been wanting to get some Zombie Dice for a while, so I went over to the mall to see if I could find some at the game shop there.

The shop I'd remembered was gone. I asked at the comics shop, and she sent me over to the video game shop. The guy at the video game shop said there was a new game shop where the old Borders had been, so I went over there and, sure enough, Zombie Dice!



Not only did I get Zombie Dice, I got a Munchkin Cthulhu expansion set, and on a whim picked up another card game that basically is about building Rube Goldberg devices. Should be interesting.

After I got home, I got a text from Geordie (neither gra_is_stor nor I made it to his class today) hoping that I was feeling better. I pinged him and asked if he wanted to come up for the night, which would guarantee that I'd be at his class tomorrow, but also allowed me some time to run some of the pilgrimage stuff past him (I made some new notes, so at least a little progress was made today on it), and I was able to give him the old iPhone. We're not sure if it will function in Canada, as the old iPhones were locked, but AT&T says that they will unlock phones now, so he might be able to go to his provider and get it functioning. Even if not, he can use it for wireless access, calendar, and all that other stuff that an iPhone is good for.

So tomorrow I'm taking Geordie down to Seattle early to set up for his 12-3:30 class. We went next door for dinner and grabbed some pizza, then came back and poked around with the above-noted details. I'll be heading for bed shortly so that I'll be able to actually wake up in time to get us out of here by about 10am or a little after.

Nutshell: Doing better but not perfectly. Things got done. Yay me!

Last night one of my ears went all stuffy and started ringing. It's not sore, just stuffy and ringing, but it's also muffling my hearing in that ear. Nothing I've done has helped, though it's slightly less annoying now than it was earlier today.

I've also got a really craptastic cramp between my shoulders about two inches below the base of my neck that's making it difficult for me to lift my arms or move much without pain. It's been there all damned day. A long, hot shower helped some, but not enough. If it isn't better by tomorrow, I don't know that I'm going to be able to drive to Seattle for Geordie's permaculture workshop.

Due to all this, I haven't actually done anything at all today that I wanted to (working on pilgrimage stuff, primarily) but maybe I'll have time tomorrow if I'm not able to go to Seattle.

On the up side, I got a call from the Snohomish County assessor's office. They're going to combine the two property parcels with my condo and my garage into one for tax purposes to make it easier on everyone, and once that gets over to the main office (Monday-ish?) they'll start work on the process of getting the tax exemption sorted out. It sounded (though I didn't ask directly) like she thought it was likely to be approved, but I don't know how long that will take. I also got an escrow refund for about $80 from the mortgage, so I have to haul that over to a money god and deposit it in the bank at some point soon.

Today's mail brought a contributor's copy of Hex magazine, where they'd reprinted my Cauldron of Poesy article. I had forgotten all about that. They made a really weird stylistic choice for the font they used for the poem text itself - one of those Olde Englische fonts that's busy and not necessarily the most readable thing for body text. I'd have just gone with an italicized version of whatever font they were using for the body text, but I'm not their layout person.

Today was a pretty good one for the most part. I was really tired and gra_is_stor kind of missed one another due to texts not being noticed quite when they should have been, with extra tired heaped on top. I did get together with Geordie for a while at Travelers after group at the VA. I'm planning on staying home tomorrow. Right now one of my ears feels blocked and I'm not sure why; I'm hoping I'm not coming down with something. Maybe a little extra sleep will help.

Saturday and Sunday I'm going to try to make it to Geordie's permaculture workshop, particularly if I manage to get some rest and some writing done tomorrow.

Still alive. Had a pretty good, if achy, day. Spent time with Geordie and gra_is_stor and went to the Irish class. Finished reading Mandragora. Got group at the VA tomorrow.

Tired. A little chilly once it got dark, though it was pretty glorious today while the sun was out. Am really kind of thinking of not doing anything at all on Friday, as I'm pretty worn down, and I'll be out of the house early on Saturday and Sunday.

Ow.

Today I spent some time reading more of Mandragora, and I'm about three-quarters of the way through it now. Most of what I've read has been really good stuff. Ruby Sara's a very good anthologist and she's got an excellent eye for what to collect here. As always, a few things aren't quite to my taste, but poetry really is often so very personal.

Oryelle Defenestrate-Bascule had an essay in the book that was, in part, a discussion of his Orpheus ritual, performed at last year's Esoteric Book Conference, in which he made the ritual sound a lot better than my experience of it, but I don't find that terribly surprising. His experience of creating and performing it was going to be vastly different than my experience of it, and my experience was quite different than that of many of the others who attended. I wasn't terribly impressed, but his essay was fairly interesting, at least.

This evening I went off to dinner at Clay Pit and met paganpaul and his local sweetie. They really enjoyed the food (I was pleased that I found a place they liked), and we had a great conversation. A lot of our talk centered on writing and just being a writer; he'd received his first royalty check from Amazon in the mail just before he got on the plane to come to the US and had it with him. I remember being so thrilled the first time I got a royalty check. It really is something of a writer's initiation. There's a feeling of having passed through a significant ritual when it arrives, a sense of finally achieving a level of "reality" as a writer beyond just "yes, I write." It's a recognition from some other source that one's work is worthy.

Having that outside perspective is something special, I think. I was delighted for him. We had a great time at dinner and afterwards.

After dinner, we came back to my place for tea and further conversation. They stayed until a little after 9pm, and then I lit up the Brigid altar for my flamekeeping shift. gra_is_stor got back from her band practice a while later. I've been feeling fairly crappy most of the evening, what with cramps and such. I really wish my body would cooperate better. I'm sitting here with a heating pad wishing I could have a full-body transplant. Girlparts suck.

I'm hoping I'll feel well enough to make it down to Seattle tomorrow for Irish class and to pick up Geordie for a day or two. At this point I'm just not certain. I'll have to figure it out tomorrow after I haul myself out of bed. It may be several hours before I'll be able to figure it out, but these things are definitely more in-the-moment than decideable beforehand.

And now, I'm going to try crawling off to bed with more tramadol.

I hope y'all have a much better night than I'm having.

Today Mandragora arrived in the mail. I was, as one might imagine, utterly jazzed by the whole idea.



Here's me and Geordie at Travelers, waving the book with our stuff in it. We are happy. Sooooo happy.



And here's me and gra_is_stor at Travelers. She's happy, too.

But my deep, dark secret?

This is who actually writes the books...



The day was gloriously sunny and warm, and we spent a while having chai at Travelers. I showed Leon the book (he was duly impressed). When we wandered over to Edge, I showed it to everyone there, as well. It's kind of the thing one does, after all. The schmooze turned into a pretty good discussion of trees in Celtic lore, as well as a discussion of tree as cosmological center, the Jupiter Giant columns, and various and sundry sacred omphali. (I think that's the right pluralization.)

Tomorrow is dinner with paganpaul, who's in town from the Netherlands. Wednesday I'm picking up Geordie when I'm in town for Irish class and he'll come back up for a day or two. Stuff and things require doing, and we still have a fair bit to talk about. Much of today was spent with both of us squeeing about The Book. As you do when you're an author with a brand new pretty.

I'm tired and hoping that I'll actually manage to get some sleep tonight. I didn't sleep well at all last night and I was pretty creaky when I got up this morning. I'm hoping there won't be a migraine in the offing tomorrow, given how I felt for part of today.

When I have the Brigid and flamekeeping book together, I'm seriously thinking of approaching Scarlet Imprint to do the publication. I don't know if it's quite up their usual alley, but one never knows. They're already publishing my stuff, and some of the book will be ritual work, while much of the rest will be essays and other material about Brigid, about flamekeeping, probably about poetry, and about the whole complex of things from a CR perspective, or at least from my CR perspective (which is about all I can say about anything I write these days). Given that they're also doing paperback editions these days, it wouldn't price the book out of everyone's reach, and I'd love to have a gorgeous edition for the altar of the sort that they tend to produce.

Anyway, that's a concern for when the book is actually written.

A fair few of the folks who said they'd be along today canceled, but it was (a) Mother's Day and (b) gorgeously sunny and warm out today, so I was not at all surprised. I did have several people, though, and a wonderful time was had by all.

Geordie got here around 11 or so, and we hung out for a bit and then went for a walk around the lake to catch up on stuff. He's spent a fair bit of the day pawing through my library making notes for his herbalism class coming up next weekend. Tomorrow he'll be asking gra_is_stor for Gaelic pronunciation for some of the stuff in the Carmina Gadelica, which he also wants to use.

Folks started arriving about 4pm, and at 5 we started the movies. First up was The Call of Cthulhu, which I've seen several times, as had a couple of the folks in attendance. New to all of us was The Whisperer in Darkness, which was a fabulous 30s noir horror with a wonderfully creepy twist ending. The whole thing was really well done and I would highly recommend it for anyone who has seen the first movie and enjoyed it. You will not go amiss!

Most everyone bailed after the movies, but Brianna stayed and had dinner with me, gra_is_stor and Geordie. I made some curried lentils on basmati rice that turned out very well. We finished up the rhubarb cobbler for dessert. Upon finishing up dinner, we watched The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra before Brianna headed home.

We're currently winding down for the night. I'll try to get to some of the comments in the last few days of my LJ tomorrow before we all head down to Seattle. The schmooze is tomorrow, and Geordie will be coming down with us. He'll be staying in Seattle but will probably be up here at least once more before his class next weekend.

Geordie says he looks forward to "another action-packed day filled with adventure and colluding," so I'm sure we'll have a lovely time tomorrow.

The Medieval Women's Choir had their final concert of the season this evening. As always it was quite a treat. gra_is_stor went with me, and we met neo_lvx there. Sadly, tedgill wasn't in attendance, as Gamelan Pacifica was having a concert at the same time. This is one of those times I wish I had perfected that whole bilocational ability thing. I really would have loved to see both performances.

I hauled my library book back to the Suzzallo today, but I got there just after they had locked the doors. There were some book drops out between the Suzzallo and Allen libraries, so I just had to go around the building to drop it off. Got myself a hat, as well, more of the sort I'd been looking for when I ended up with the two I have right now.

gra_is_stor and I went over to Cedars at 50th & Brooklyn for a little food after the concert then headed back here, where I did a lot of cleaning and tidying, then stuffed a rhubarb cobbler in the oven.

I'm sort of more or less ready for my guests tomorrow. We'll see how many folks actually show up for my Lovecraftian soiree. I'm not sure what time Geordie is supposed to be arriving in Everett. I need to email him tonight so he gets it before he leaves Vancouver. I need to make sure he takes the right bus to get off at the South Everett freeway station, so that he can walk here if I've got a housefull of people when he arrives.

And, on that note, I'm away for tasty tasty hot rhubarb thingummies.

After dithering a bit, hanging out in a livestream with a fan artist and some fanficcers and other fen, I finally got down to messing about with my poetry manuscript. I selected four poems to send to Jason for Written River, their e-journal, and mailed them off.

My parts have been giving me a lot of trouble today and I spent more than half an hour lying in bed wondering if I should even bother trying to get up, but I knew I had things to do. A hot shower helped, but not nearly enough. Still, I managed to move enough to get started with the day. It took me several hours to get enough wherewithal to deal with the poetry.

By this evening I was feeling mostly okay, so I took myself over to the AFK for some food and Munchkin Cthulhu (and Cthulhu dice). Stayed for about three hours before I wandered home again.

When I got here, dishes needed to be done and trash had to be hauled out.

I got email from Geordie, whose ride down to Seattle decided she wanted to head south Sunday instead of tomorrow, so we won't be meeting him for the Medieval Women's Choir concert. I haz a sad. I still need to get down to Seattle early, though, as I have to pick up gra_is_stor before the concert, and to drop of a book at the Suzzallo. I'm hoping I'll be functional before 3pm tomorrow; that was about when I finally shook off my stupor today and managed to get moving and have a shower.

Sunday, it's Lovecraft movies!

Today's visit to the VA went reasonably well. The travel office computer system is still broken down, which means that fucking "take a number" system has gone back to the old, quiet way of "stand in line until it's your turn to go to the window," which I vastly prefer. It's so much quieter and calmer. I took a copy of the Hyperbole and a Half "improved" pain scale in to share with the group and everyone got a good laugh out of it. I was quite pleased.

After the VA, I hied myself over to Travelers, where I met isquiesque, who's back in town after her few weeks in DC for work purposes. We had chai, then wandered over to Queen Sheba for Ethiopian food for dinner. We had a fabulous conversation, catching up on life, talking about travel and global politics and writing and all that kind of stuff. She's wanting to go to some big roller derby thing up here in Everett, but doesn't have a car, so wasn't sure if she would be able to or not. I told her that, given it was the beginning of June, she could just come and stay here, because it's not that far away, and busses do run past my place that go into downtown Everett, where the event is taking place. She was pretty jazzed by the idea. It was really great to see her again. When we were done with dinner, we walked over to Elliott Bay and pawed around in the books until she headed back to Belltown and I scarpered for the car.

Upon returning home, I found I had an email from Jason Kirkey, my poetry publisher. I'd actually been talking with isquiesque at Travelers about emailing him to inquire about progress on Fireflies at Absolute Zero, so I was very amused (and thoroughly jazzed) to get an email from him. He's asked me to submit a few poems from the book for their summer issue of Written River, their online poetry journal, so as to get a little interest up for the book and start the publicity process. He's thinking probably the end of August (though it is possible maybe sooner) for starting the layout and cover design process, so we're still on track for an October release. I've emailed him back and said I'd go through the stuff tomorrow and select a few for them to choose from.

Before my friend joined me at Travelers, I scribbled a little poem together and sent it over to a website where they're having a competition for a free writing e-course. I thought it looked interesting, and I'm always up for learning something new about writing, so I submitted the poem and we'll see if anything comes of it.

Geordie will be in town soon -- he's arriving Saturday, and will meet gra_is_stor and me in the U District for the Medieval Women's Choir concert. We'll figure out other times/dates for seeing him while he's here when I see him then. I'm still hoping to get Mandragora before he arrives so we can swoon over it together, as he's got poetry in the volume as well.

So many friends, so little time!

This looks like a lot of fun for mid-May at De Laurenti's in the Market:

First on the docket is the Seattle Cheese Festival. It's May 19th and 20th here at the Pike Place Market. It's our 8th year as host and we're pumped to be welcoming you - and all the cheese makers back to Seattle for this great event. As ever, you will taste hundreds of cheeses, learn how to make mozzarella and burrata (from our very own Shane Wahlund), and watch and learn from local renowned chefs as they prepare amazing dishes with cheese. You'll taste wines from all over in our Wine Garden and you will learn, in detail, facets of the cheese business only gleaned from our remarkable Seminars. All the info and details are online, of course, at www.seattlecheesefestival.com. Don't forget to check out the winning Mac-n-Cheese recipe at the site as well!

It was another "wake up after 1pm" sort of day, but around 3pm I managed to haul myself down into Everett to the Snohomish County offices and talk to an actual human being about the tax exemption thing. Nobody was in line, so I didn't have to wait, though some folks came in after I did, and they had to while the clerk was talking with me.

I had pretty much all the information they needed except for one thing, which I could look up on my phone instead of having to go find paperwork somewhere. The online packet wasn't entirely accurate -- the extra page it gave for previous year refunds was not actually the form that needed to be filled out, but the clerk just had me sign, date, phone number and put my address on the proper forms and said she'd fill them out for me. This was good because just doing that little bit on three forms left me with my hand in a knot and my wrist aching. Yay carpal tunnel? There are reasons why I type instead of writing things by hand unless it's absolutely necessary. The clerk said they had "two and a half people" working on the backlog, but that it would take three to six weeks, "maybe less," for me to hear back about whether the exemption had been approved or not. She was pretty sure it would be. She said if it were approved, I'd get a letter from the county and then a check. If I'm lucky, it might get here before I go to Ireland, which would be lovely.

I did get down to Seattle for Irish class, which was nice. I also picked up paper for the printer and ziploc bags for the freezer, which I was out of. After class, I got some work done on my feet by Patrick, who says I have plantar fascitis in my left foot. The right wasn't nearly so bad. He asked why it might be worse on one foot and I explained that I limp a fair bit, and I tend to favor my left hip when I do, so that's probably what got it started. He suggested some exercises for it but I'll also talk to my doc in the women's clinic at the VA when I see her later this month. Maybe she can refer me to orthopedics or something.

Tomorrow I'm back at the VA for the weekly group. Saturday is the Medieval Women's Choir concert, and Geordie will be in town. Sunday is the Lovecraft movie afternoon. Monday is the CR schmooze. Tuesday I have dinner with Paul, who's visiting from the Netherlands, and his local sweetie. I'm not sure when Geordie's actually visiting me here and staying at my place, but I imagine I'll be hearing from him soon.

I have to do stuff. And things.

I got a slow start, not waking until about 1:30 this afternoon, but I didn't really even get to sleep until about 7:30 this morning, so I suppose that's fair enough. Today's post brought man_of_snows's chapbook, Slow Depth, which I expect him to sign when I see him again.

Dishes and laundry got done, though not much else in a physical sense. I spent a few hours today working on a response to Teo's What is the Point of Your Religion blog post that I'd mentioned a couple of weeks ago. I've posted it over on my Searching for Imbas blog. I got it together and posted just before I headed out to the AFK for the weekly steampunk social. One other person showed up and we had a lovely conversation.

Upon getting home, I finished up dealing with the laundry and stuffed it in drawers. Tomorrow I'm going to attempt to get down into Everett and talk to one of the clerks about the tax exemption. I'm not sure I have everything I need, but I can at least ask, and possibly get missing documentation together if I need to. The county office should have tax records, at least, and I ought to be able to obtain copies of them there somewhere.

Achy parts are aching and I ought to attempt to sleep tonight, though I will probably end up spending some time playing Plants v Zombies again. There has been zero effect on the speed of the intertubes through the wireless router, so I sent a note to that effect in the response email that Cisco sent me yesterday. I have no idea what good it will do, but I may end up digging around under the desk and plugging the cablemodem in there, rather than across the room, then wiring in ethernet and also having the router available for visitors at the lower speed. Regardless, I'm extremely disappointed with the Linksys router and it's lack of anything vaguely approaching an appropriate speed. Yeah, first world problems. I'm glad these are the most serious things I have to worry about right now. Things have been much much worse in the past.

It was in the 70s today and, those few times I got outside in the sun, it was quite lovely. My hips, however, are still giving me trouble when I walk, so it was hard to want to go anywhere or do anything. I hauled out trash and recycling and took the dog for a walk, but that was it while the sun was still in the sky.

I've finally finished reading Iona: The Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery, so now I can take it back to the UW library when I'm next in the U District. That'll probably be next weekend when I'm over there for the Medieval Women's Choir concert.

I did a little bit of stuff as far as posting to the pilgrimage email list, responding to a few emails elsewhere, and dealing with tech support for Cisco. I'll see tomorrow if it's had any effect on the wireless speed here at all. The tech said to give it 24 hours, though I don't get why changing settings should take more than a reset of the router and the computer to take.

Grocery shopping got done this evening and even that left the hips creaky. I forgot a couple of things, but those I can pick up over at the Safeway tomorrow at some point. I did a little bit toward starting a post in response to Teo's blog post on "What is the Point of Your Religion," but I'm still sort of in a note making stage. Too much pain, nightmares, and not enough sleep have really been taking their toll lately. I'm hoping I'll have a little bit of focus tomorrow. gra_is_stor is supposed to come over and she's got band practice tomorrow, while I have the steampunk social.

I still have other emails to respond to that I haven't yet, including a response to nancyblue's friend on the Isle of Man. I need a little more brain bandwidth than I have. Doing anything at all seems to take all my spoons right now. Part of me wants to curl up under the bed and not move for about three weeks, but that's just not a realistic goal. I have too much to do.

A question for my Mac-using friends. Does anyone have a suggestion for a good iPad app that will generate doc or docx files? I want to be able to transfer stuff to and from the iPad and the laptop, and Pages just isn't that good a program. It's barely functional for what I actually need as a writer. I'm willing to spend some money if it's a good app, and if it will preserve formatting like italics and such, so that I don't have to go through everything each time it's been transferred from one device to another.

I woke up several times last night from nightmares, the worst of which involved a friend's suicide. The incident was similar to something that actually happened, but with another person, and it was utterly senseless. That's always a hard thing to wake up to, not knowing for the first few minutes what's real and what isn't. Nightmares of pursuit, of falling, of other things, they're a lot easier to process because waking up in your bed means they cannot possibly have happened. Things like that, though, dig their claws into the psyche and you don't have an immediate way of knowing they're not true unless and until you remember exactly where and when you are. Even then, one never knows if it was some kind of premonition, and that's the worst thought of all.

If you want to know why I find it difficult to sleep and am always complaining of the insomnigrackles, this is one of the reasons. Waking up with a half-formed scream in your mouth, sweating, panting, heart galloping - this is not in any way happymaking. It makes for a lousy start to the day, particularly when the physical bits aren't working properly anyway. Waking in physical pain tends only to add to the unnerving sense of reality of so many of them.

A lot of my earlier poems deal with dreams and nightmares. The images are so vivid that it's often not hard to write poetry around them. It's not the sort of lyrical thing that makes people feel good, but it can be powerful. It can make your skin crawl, make your hair stand on end. Writing these things down might exorcize them or it might intensify them, and it's hard to know until you actually take that step. Writing and poetry can be healing activities, but so often they're the knife that lances the horror enough so that it can drain away. It's not painless. Life might be easier if it were.

I was doing better today, but not enough to leave the house. I did try to walk for a bit today, to go over to Emory's, but just those couple of blocks and back really wracked my hips. Needless to say, I didn't make it to the ritual this afternoon. I hardly had enough oomph to pop something simple in the oven.

Tomorrow, if I'm able, I need to get out and go grocery shopping. There's not much here right now that doesn't take a certain amount of actual preparation to turn it into something edible. I need Other Stuff soon.

I hung out in #writechat and #poetparty today and had some good conversations with other writers and poets. It's nice to talk with folks who do some of the same stuff that I do. I'm trying to focus enough to do a little writing but not having the best of luck. We'll see if curling up in bed will help with that any.

I woke up this morning to the dog being sick on the floor (at least he got off the bed first), and that stiff-neck-shoulders-ache feeling that I get if I'm pre-migraine, accompanied by vague nausea. I took him out but couldn't quite bring myself to go back to bed, even though I wanted to. I was worried he'd be sick again and I'd just have to get back up.

Tramadol was taken, which helped slightly, but I've been pretty dizzy and groggy all day and wasn't able to go out tonight as I'd wanted. I'm uncertain whether I'll be able to go down to Seattle tomorrow for the schmooze Beltaine ritual. I've already given the group a heads up, so I will post to them tomorrow to let them know with a yea or nay.

This was one of those days where I had to talk myself into getting into the shower before I got dressed, even though I knew for a fact that I'd feel at least a little better for standing under the hot water for a while. Most of my day was spent between sitting at the computer trying to do things and curled up on the couch reading. It's just been a really slow brain day and I'm still feeling out of sorts, 10 hours after I took the tramadol, so it's not all just the drug.

In the happymaking news mentioned above, Ruby Sara reports that she got her copy of Mandragora today, which means that my copy will be shipping any time now! I'm absolutely delighted about this and, as you can see from the photos at the link, this is an absolutely gorgeous volume. I can't wait to get my hands on it! Ordering information can be found here, and a paperback edition is due out later if the hardbound is a bit too dear for your tastes. Knowing that something with my work in it has been released is always a great way to make my day brighter, even when I feel like absolute crap and want to fall over and sleep for a week.

And now I need to try to eat a little more before I fall over.

The tech came over. It took him about half an hour to fix things, but fix them he did. Everything is working as it ought, now. The slowdown for speed is in the wireless router, which promises a lot more speed than it's delivering. I know there's some loss between the ethernet and the router broadcast, but the tech said it's only getting about half what it should be. I'll have to talk to the Cisco people about that and find out why their equipment is performing at such a substandard rate.

Anyway, that's dealt with.

While the tech was here, I spent time digging around in my files from 2008-present for the proper paperwork. I found the social security stuff but didn't find the annual notices about the amount of the VA compensation. I'll go down to the county offices first and see if I actually need those documents, given that they don't count that income for tax exemption purposes. I may actually be able to file with the documents I have, but it can't hurt to check into it. I don't think I have all the various documents showing what I paid in taxes for every year, but the county should keep records, and the clerk in the office should at least be able to tell me where I can get copies.

I was feeling rather better today, in addition to having the email working again, so I went over to the AFK for a bit to hang out with Gary and Melody and Bill. G&M will probably come over on the 13th for the Lovecraft movies, so that's probably about the limit of how many people my place can hold. We shall see what we shall see. The AFK was packed, given it was Star Wars Day (May the Fourth Be With You, and Revenge of the Fifth). There were a lot of cosplayers. Boba Fett was sitting at the table behind us, playing Jenga. It was epic win.

Tomorrow night, party with gra_is_stor. You don't need to know anything more than that...

I called the restaurant today and they did, indeed have my scarf so I stopped there on the way to the VA today. Group was pretty good, though the weather all day was kind of craptastic. I headed over to Travelers, where I ran into Dana. She'll be coming up to my place for the Lovecraft movies. Apparently the 13th is nathan_fhtagn's birthday, which I did not know when I was scheduling things, so I told her to let him know if he'd got back to me I'd have scheduled it for a different day (nyaah). She was heading over there after Travelers and they were on their way to a rehearsal. Given that meddevi will be in Seattle sometime soonish, I'll schedule another showing so that they can come. I can't imagine not wanting to see the movies again, after all!

I've currently got 9 people wanting to come to the movie evening, so I've maybe got room for three more. One wanted to know if there would be calamari. I said if anyone brought some, there would absolutely be calamari! Anyway, once I get a total headcount, I'll send out a note asking folks to bring things for snackies and if they'd like something other than booze or tea or water to drink, to please bring that, as well.

I still haven't finished filling out the paperwork for the tax exemption, but I figure I'll do that tomorrow at some point, probably after the Comcast tech heads out. I have no idea if the tech will be able to fix the problem, but at least an attempt will be made.

nancyblue got me in touch with her friend on the Isle of Man, so I've sent off an email and will see if she contacts me in return. I let her know what I was likely to be doing there, and something about the research I'd done toward finding sites. I hope that she'll be amenable to meeting with me.

Overall, it was a pretty good day. I got some needful stuff done, I'm not entirely too achy, and I might be able to get a little sleep tonight before the Comcast tech comes tomorrow, if I'm lucky. While the tech's busy with fiddling around on the computer, I'll probably take some time to do more work on pilgrimage stuff. So much remains to be done. I need to respond to some stuff on the pilgrimage email list, as well.

I actually had rather an interesting conversation with the neighbors about the various wildlife sightings in the area recently. One neighbor, in the little pocket house between our condos and the next set over, had apparently seen a bobcat a few days ago. She said it was a positive identification sighting, with the spots and the tufted ears and the bobbed tail. I can certainly believe someone in the area might have sighted one; there's enough scrub and bits of forest in the area to provide reasonable cover and food sources for a bobcat population.

There was an alleged cougar sighting (immature, most likely, if it was actually a cougar) by one of the neighbors in our condo complex. She said it was sunning itself out in front of Sally's place (my next door neighbor). I'm not sure this is likely. I don't know how much territory an immature cougar (which would presumably imply mature cougars also in the area) would require, or how much wild land it would need, but I'm not sure the Silver Lake neighborhood would quite do it. Then again, one sometimes sees deer, foxes, or coyotes in downtown Seattle. Stranger things have happened -- like deer and coyotes in downtown building elevators. Still, Sally called fish and wildlife and they said they'd have to take a report from the person who actually says she saw the cougar to determine if the sighting was what she believed it was. I'll be interested to hear if that was actually the case. I can report that I've been slightly uneasy walking the DoDC+3 at 2am the past few days, because if it really is a cougar, he's about snack sized.

The eagles are back in the area again. Apparently nesting crows have been chased off and the guy who lives next door on the other side has seen eagles in the tree where the crows had been nesting. He thinks there may be an eagle's nest there, but the foliage at this point is too thick to see if there is a nest structure. Eagle nests tend to be fairly large. We know there's an eagle's nest on the south end of the lake. I noted that I'd repeatedly seen ospreys in the area myself, though the others in the conversation hadn't realized that there were also ospreys in the area.

Anyway, that's the day's wildlife report.

I think I was still so rattled when I left the restaurant after I had lunch that I left my green scarf there. I'm going to have to drop by on my way into Seattle tomorrow and ask if they found it. That means I'll have to leave something on the order of half an hour early, I suspect, as I need to take a different route to I-5 than I usually do. Not looking forward to it, but I'm not interested in losing that scarf, either. I may just call first and see if anyone found it, to save myself a trip if they didn't.

Comcast left a voicemail message at 8:30 this morning, after I had explicitly instructed them not to call me until after noon. The voicemail was a tech telling me to do EXACTLY THE SAME THING EVERY OTHER TECH TOLD ME TO DO.

At 11:30, when I got up, I called Comcast. I talked to a tech and asked to speak to a supervisor. I asked how long it would take them to get back to me. She said about an hour. Two hours later, no callback. I called Comcast again and spoke to a tech, asking to speak to a supervisor. The tech attempted to tell me to do AGAIN what every other tech had told me to do. I said no, I wanted to talk to a supervisor, thank you very much. I was put on hold for 20 minutes. I hung up. I called Comcast again and spoke to ANOTHER tech and told him that I was going to speak to a supervisor. He said a ticket had already been put in and the supervisor had 24 hours in which to call me back. He attempted to tell me AGAIN what every other tech told me and I told him to STOP because I had already heard it and I wanted to talk to a supervisor. He put me on hold and came back a couple of minutes later said he couldn't get through to one.

I took the Comcast modem back to their service center in Lynnwood and talked to a guy at the desk. Guy at the desk asked a couple of questions, took the modem, and made an appointment for a tech to come out to my house on Friday and try to find out/fix what's wrong. He wrote a note on my receipt saying to prorate a credit for the time when I have NOT been getting the modem speed I am paying for (less than 20m when I am paying the bucks for 50m), and initialed said note. I'm supposed to see the tech between 1-3pm on Friday.

I went to get some lunch and decided that, while I was no longer in a frothing rage, I was not fit to be company for human beings today. Eating didn't help the stress headache, but I did feel slightly better.

The post brought the tax assessment for my condo for this year. The enclosed info notes that, as a disabled veteran at 100%, I can apply for a property tax exemption, which I wasn't aware I could do, and I can apply for a back exemption for the three years previous (if I am reading it properly). I dig out my files of my bills and such from 2009-2012 and have a minor panic attack dealing with the forms. They are currently partially filled out. I have dug out my VA award letter from 2000 saying I am 100% disabled. I have to find my SSDI statements for each of those years, as that is the only income they count, seeing as I don't really have any other income at this point. Their cutoff for income is $35,000 for an exemption. I qualify for the highest level of exemption (60% on my property taxes, and exemption from levies).

Dealing with the papers, even to the point of just filling out part of them, has left me a shaking wreck. I know the papers are just paper. I know the numbers are just a very simple string of digits. Dealing with the government and paperwork on any level does this to me and I'm not entirely certain how to not have a freaking panic attack. Now that I'm typing this, I've actually remembered I have some meds for moments like this and I'm going to go take one and see if that will help with the whole heart trying to make its way out of my chest feeling and the dizziness.

This, gentlebeings, is why Erynn does not play well with employment. Spending an hour on the phone with fucking idiots and filling out government paperwork leaves me completely useless for hours. Tomorrow I'm heading down to the VA for my usual Thursday appointment. I hope I'm up to leaving the house. I will still have to fill out the other papers at some point and take them down to the County offices in Everett to see a clerk at a desk and have them make photocopies of the relevant SSDI and VA forms, as well as get the clerk's signature and file everything properly. I have no idea how long it will be until I get a check from them, or how that will affect my mortgage payment every month. I am not looking forward to this.

Overall, the idea that I can get a huge whacking chunk of my taxes back for the past few years is awesome news. My body, however, does not believe me when I tell it this.

First off - I was nowhere near Seattle today, though I had friends downtown during the rioting. ingvisson had headed off before gra_is_stor and I got up. I could hardly sleep last night because I hurt too much, so I ended up getting up about 3am and staying up until around 6:30, though I think I got a little sleep between then and noon when the alarm went off. Ish. I think I remember getting one of those fecking robocalls from the VA reminding me of my Thursday appointment around 9:30, which is precisely why I turn my damned phone off most of the time.

While I didn't get a callback from Comcast today, somebody claiming to be from Comcast left a name and contact address on yesterday's entry, so I have sent a brief inquiry to that address to see if it's genuine or some weird phishing thing. If it seems legit I'll talk to them, but I'm not going to be giving any information that can be used for evil - no passwords, no financial information, etc. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

I re-read my essay in Disability and Religious Diversity last night while I wasn't feeling well, because I had to go over to UW Bothell today and talk at the class. This time I had the building and room numbers, so I actually got there a little ahead of time, as I had intended last time when I did this. The class was good. It's always difficult to talk about PTSD and sexual trauma in front of a group, but so few people are willing to do these things that any open discussion of it can only help to awaken people to the scope of the problem. I felt like I did a good job, at least, and a couple of people came up to talk with me briefly afterwards. It's always pretty emotionally draining to do something like that and I'm vaguely headachey at the moment.

When I got out of the class, I headed over to the AFK for the evening's steampunkery. I had enough time to be mostly done with dinner by the time folks started arriving. We chose a date for the Cthulhu film festival here (The Call of Cthulhu and A Whisperer in Darkness) -- folks will be coming on Sunday, August MAY 13th from 5-9pm, (August? wtf was I thinking?) which should provide enough time for both movies and some socializing. I need to send out a couple of separate emails, but the Steamrats list has been notified. I've asked for RSVPs so that I know how many people I'll need to stuff into my space.

Tomorrow I think I only have Irish class, which means going down to Seattle, but that should be after the worst of rush hour is over with heading south, given that class is at 7pm. I'm hoping I'll get at least a little sleep tonight at some point.

I got a callback from Comcast today, before noon, so it went to my voicemail. When I called them, I got a young guy who tried to walk me through the same shit as before, as though no other tech had ever thought of them previously and I was possibly too stupid to have followed directions if they had. He said he would have someone else call me back tomorrow before I leave the house, or later this week, but not on Thursday, given I'm away then. Next time I speak with anyone I'm demanding a supervisor and telling them to just cut my bill by the amount I'm paying to AT&T and call it done. It's a pain, but there doesn't seem to be fuckall they can do about it.

This evening I went with gra_is_stor and ingvisson to a small Beltaine celebration out in Arlington. It rained copiously, but we dashed between the bonfires anyway. It was a pleasant evening, given that I wasn't feeling all that well. Today has been a very down day (hormones, we hates them we does my preciousss), but I had fun anyway. When I got home, I made dolmas for dinner. It was 12:30 by the time I got them into the oven, but they were done with already mostly-cooked rice and lamb, so I only had to have them in the oven for half an hour. They were very tasty, though. Most of them are now sitting in the fridge for later.

Tomorrow I'm heading over to Nicole's class for 3:30, then to the AFK for the steampunk social. I'm not even going to try to think beyond that right now.

ingvisson accidentally caffienated the DoDC+3 (he left a tea mug on the floor where he was sitting when he got up and didn't think about picking it up before the dog got into it) and the beast was slightly overstimulated. He's currently in his crate, gnawing a bone and contemplating life. I'm hoping he'll be mellower in a few minutes when I head for bed.

I hung out in #writechat today, though I only woke up about halfway through it (1:30pm-ish). I had a pretty rough night and what sleep I did get was disturbed and filled with bad dreams. Nothing acutely nightmareish, but enough to leave me feeling exhausted and out of it when I did wake. I did a little talking with folks in #poetparty as well, this evening, but again only got in around halfway through, which was a disappointment; I'd been looking forward to chatting with the other poets who hang out there.

Today I tried a few things that I hadn't before when dealing with Comcast regarding the email issue. It's not just Seanet that's the problem. I tried adding my Gmail account to Mac Mail and that wouldn't send out, either, no matter what I tried. I'll tell them about that when they call back, as it means that this problem isn't isolated to Seanet but is a systemic issue.

I walked down to the store today to pick up kibble for the DoDC+3 and answered some email. I also got rhubarb for the cobbler I'm supposed to make for our Beltaine celebration on Saturday. Tomorrow gra_is_stor's bandmates will be having their Beltaine, including a bonfire (provided it's not pouring down rain), and I'll probably be going over there with her. ingvisson will be going as well, though we don't know yet what time things are supposed to be happening or the exact logistics of the event.

This afternoon when I was talking to the writers I hang with, I noted that Mandragora is supposed to come out on May 1st -- which I realized is Tuesday. I don't know when my contributor's copy will arrive, but that and Circle of Stones are both due out this month! I'm feeling excited and hopeful about the whole thing.

Tuesday afternoon I'm supposed to go over to UW Bothell and speak at Nicole's class about the geilt and PTSD thing again. I should probably re-read my article tomorrow after I get up to refresh my memory on all this stuff.

I didn't really get anything done toward the pilgrimage today, but I was feeling rather under the weather and didn't get much better as the day went along. Even the walk down to the store didn't help much to invigorate me. I did eat, but not a whole lot. I baked some veggies in the remains of the duck gravy I'd made, then late this evening had the last of the lamb potstickers. I pulled some ground lamb out of the freezer and am hoping to have the wherewithal to make some dolmas tomorrow, as I think I have everything I need. I know I have the grape leaves and I have rice and onions and garlic. It doesn't take that much else, as I recall, though I'll have to look up the recipe again.

I'm going to be crawling off to bed fairly soon and hope that I'm doing better tomorrow.

Today I swapped out the Comcast modem for my own and got everything sorted so that it works. This week I'll take theirs back and then they won't be charging me highway robbery for their unit. I also talked to tech support about the (continuing) issues with my Seanet email not going out through them. It's still only going out through AT&T. I've talked to a couple of different people now and they are kicking it up the ladder and I'm supposed to get a call back in the next couple of days. I'm definitely going to make them take some of what I'm paying for all this off my monthly bill if I have to maintain an extra account to send my mail out. This is ridiculous.

I got a packet of genealogy materials from mom in the mail today. I've been looking through it but I'll have to take a highlighter and mark the pages from the census where the relatives appear. The print is pretty small and I'll have to go at it with the bifocals. I have a lot more relatives than I realized, just on mom's side of the family.

Went off to a party this evening with gra_is_stor, her roommate, and her friend from back east. We had a lovely time, and I ran into an old friend I hadn't seen in some time, which was also nice.

Aside from that, not much happening today. I need to throw some food in my mouth and consider wandering bedward, as I woke up aching this morning at 9:30am and had to try pretty hard to get back to sleep again for another couple of hours. Also, I have to get dog food tomorrow. And there will be #writechat.

One thing I neglected to mention yesterday is that I've now seen the cover art for Circle of Stones and sent back my approval for the cover image. Only one of the three quotes I received would fit on the back cover, so the other two are going inside, but all three will be used, so thank you to everyone who sent them for me! I'm very grateful for your help.

I didn't get out to the party I wanted to this evening because after I went for a walk around the lake, the hips seized up again. I was hoping they'd feel better by the time I would have needed to leave, but even tylenol and tramadol didn't help much. They are still achy, but not quite at the stabbing me in the joints point, which was about where they were for a while. I am determined to be in good enough shape to deal with the walking I'll need to for Ireland and the rest of the trip. I do have an appointment with my doc to talk about pain medication and managing things while I'm overseas, but it's very frustrating.

When I would have been off having fun with gra_is_stor and her guest, I spent the time outlining a dream incubation ritual for the evening after we've done incubation ritual at Carrowkeel. I figured that some people might not get a lot of result during a shorter incubatory ritual (some don't), but that a dream incubation that night that takes us back to Carrowkeel would offer an opportunity to integrate the experience and possibly to come out of it with something. For those who do get more of the experience they hoped for there, the opportunity to do a dream incubation could deepen or expand upon their work there, and allow them time to process it more intensely.

That done, I spent time doing more online research and discovered references to three different church sites associated with Brigit on the Isle of Man, and three accompanying Brigit's wells, though I don't know that all of them still exist. I was looking at an online copy of P.M.C. Kermode's Manx Antiquities from 1930, and it's been a long time since then. I have the general areas that they're in, and can likely find them with maps and such once I'm actually on the island. There might be others, but I find the idea of three of them quite appealing for obvious reasons.

I printed out images of the crosses with canid/dog-head images on them that alfrecht would like me to find and photograph, then pasted them into my pilgrimage notebook with a few notes about general location. Again, I should be able to get better information about where to find them once I'm actually on the ground there and have access to the ordinance survey maps and the travel guides.

This has all been a really interesting process for me. I know that vyviane has taken care of the vast majority of the research for the Irish sites we'll be going to, but looking for the original Brigit's well in Kildare was a rewarding project, even when I found aspects of it frustrating. That feels like it will all come together when we actually visit the site, and I'm hoping we'll have enough room there to do our opening ritual at the original well, then carry it forward to the newer well, which has more stuff set up around it, with a formal circuit to follow.

Doing the research really is a huge part of what makes the pilgrimage such a profound process. Going into it not having done anything, expecting everyone else to have done the research and the work would make me feel like a tourist, not a pilgrim. Working out what we will do in different places, which topics to discuss, what tales or poems to read -- it's all part of the gestalt that is building up around this for me. On the other hand, I worry that the work I do won't built the proper framework to help provide the intensity of ritual experience that the participants may want. I know that I'm not anyone's gatekeeper for this, but I know that at least some of the folks coming along are doing so in part because I'm the featured presenter, and I want to do my best to give them what they are hoping for from my participation.

I worry that my health will fail at the worst possible time and that I will leave everyone dangling. I tend to be more inclined to let myself rest when I'm at home. When I'm working at a con or a festival, I will do everything possible to teach the sessions I've promised to, even if I don't feel very well and would otherwise be curled up in a corner with a squishy pillow under my neck. The fact that people have paid for my transportation, lodgings, and most of my food for the pilgrimage only makes me more determined to do give everyone my best work. I know that I'm going to end up pushing myself very hard while I'm doing this and I'm prepared to do so, but I'm also operating with the understanding that I'm going to be nearly useless for a few weeks after I get home, and that I may have days after the pilgrimage while I'm still traveling that I might not be able to do more than just lie down and sip some tea while I hope that the pain meds work.

I'm going to be on the road for a month, so it is inevitable that I'm going to have a couple of migraines, a couple of days with cramps bad enough that I'll barely be able to walk, and quite possibly other physical problems as well. Despite any of that, I intend to have the best possible experience I can. Just being there is going to be a huge blessing and I want to be open to all of it as it is happening, to be in the moment and to live it as fully as I am able. This is less "I am going to have a good time dammit" and more "there are moments of beauty in everything and I will do my utmost to be open to them regardless of circumstances."

This morning I went back over to Best Buy and traded in the modem that didn't work for another one of the proper type (DOCSIS 3.0). I'll do the installation when the Comcast tech calls me back on Saturday afternoon, then take their modem back to them so I don't have to pay rent on the damned thing.

Today's drive down to Seattle was pretty smooth except for about 10 minutes of near-standstill through I-5 in downtown, due to a stalled out vehicle. I got to my group on time, but only just. It was a pretty good group today - good topic, good discussion.

Once I was done at the VA, I headed over to Travelers and grabbed a chai and had some banana bread, as I hadn't really eaten much before I left. Upon finishing up, I pinged gra_is_stor to find out what our agenda was for the evening. Her roommate had the car, so I went and picked up her and a friend who is out visiting her from Boston. He's pretty cool. He also paid for our movie tickets this evening.

I really enjoyed the movie, as I always do. I keep forgetting how funny parts of it are; there's a fair bit of humor there that I like a lot. And yeah, there's no subtext between Rick and Louis at all. None. *snerk*

I updated the maps in my god of navigation today with US and Canada maps, and got the lifetime renewal option, so I can just download updates whenever they happen. In exploring the site while the downloads were happening, I discovered that (a) I can get an SD card with maps for Europe that includes everywhere I'll be going (for $99), and (b) that I can charge it on European current as well as US current. I already have the global adapters necessary, and it has a slot for a USB port, so I'll take along the camera cable that also works with the Garmin and be able to find my way around pretty well once I get where I'm going. It may not tell me every last detail about everything, but it should make finding things like restaurants and such much easier when I'm on my own.

Tomorrow I need to do some more work on the pilgrimage stuff, then I might head down to Seattle to see gra_is_stor and her friend tomorrow night, if my hip cooperates. It's been kind of stabby-pain lately, which is not pleasant, but so it goes.

I got email today from Nicole reminding me of my speaking engagement at her class on May 1st in the afternoon. The schmooze has scheduled Beltaine for May 6th, though I'm still waiting on a time to show up. I'll be providing the rhubarb cobbler. Arlen is not going to be deployed to Afghanistan again (yay!), so we don't have to worry about doing the warrior ritual for him at this time.

I'm sure there are a million things I'm forgetting, but I have had my dinner. I made duck and lentil soup, with leeks and mushroom, seasoned with rosemary, thyme, white pepper, and fresh bay leaf, and topped with feta cheese crumbles. It were YUMTASTIC. I am such an awesome cook. ;)