March 2006 – Thought Patterns Archive

Puppy Training

Posted on 03/31/2006 by PaulaO

From Elena, handler of Marley:

The best piece of advice I can ever give any puppy owner is to get a newspaper, roll it up very tight, secure it with a rubber band and leave it on the coffee table. Then when the puppy piddles in the house, chews up a slipper, or does anything it is not supposed to do, simply take the newspaper and bang it on the top of your head very
hard while repeating……..

“I should have been watching my puppy”
“I should have been watching my puppy”
“I should have been watching my puppy”

Speaking of pups, we had to take one of our dogs (Casey) to the vet yesterday. She’d gotten a splinter in her foot Wednesday night. I got the largest chunk out but a huge piece was still in her pad. They had to knock her out, cut open the pad, and pull the log out. Thing is, it took longer than they thought so they had to drug her twice. Normally, when a dog is knocked out to that degree, they stay for a few hours and when the owner picks them up, the dog is fairly awake. Being experienced dog folk, they let us take her home then.

Never again! Poor Casey was so stoned! Her tongue hung out the side, she couldn’t walk but a few steps before falling over. We called the vets office after two hours of this and they explained. We decided to never ever do this again. It was scary as hell.

Zen Enlightenment

Posted on 03/31/2006 by PaulaO

From CripHumor:

Be here now. Be a disability rights activist later. Is that so complicated?

Drink tea and nourish life. With the first sip … joy. With the second … satisfaction. With the third, peace. With the fourth, a Danish.

Wherever you go, there you are. Your DME is another story. [DME = durable medical equipment]

Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health or a life without problems. What would you talk about?

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single “ouch!”

The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not in pain.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the wooded glen. And sit up straight. You’ll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.

Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things faster.

To Find the Buddha, look within. Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.

Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

The Torah and The New Testament say, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” The Buddha says there is no “self.” So, maybe you are off the hook.

“So, if there is no self, just whose arthritis do I have?!”

[via Maurizio Mariotti]
Tweaked from ZEN JUDAISM by David M. Bader … Humorous haikus, combining ancient Eastern wisdom with timeless Jewish noodging. … the deep mysteries explored in “Zen Judaism: For You, a Little Enlightenment”

Mechanical Minds

Posted on 03/30/2006 by PaulaO

March came in like a Lion in terms of word count but it is leaving like a piece of wilted lettuce. My writing petered out mid-month and while I got some good thinking and planning in, I wrote very little else. I’ve got a second (3rd? 4th?) wind with a decent idea and hope to start writing about it tonight or tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a different project. At first, I was looking for a desk to use with my laptop away from home. You know, like down at the river or something.

Then I got my new chair and I realized I was going in the wrong direction. I needed a desk that attaches TO my chair. So I hit the ‘net.

I found some fantastic ones out there, like the Helpmate at the LapTraveler website; the CS2 Fold-down from DJTech; the DaeSSy from Daedalus Enterprises; and the MyDesc from Rhamdec. Problem was, the cheapest of these was $209 (the Helpmate) with little information to over $900 (the DaeSSy) with lots of useful information on mounting and use.

None of them seemed to have everything that I wanted. The ones that looked promising, wouldn’t have the mounting options I need. The ones that had mounting options didn’t have the maneuverability I was looking for. So I decided to make my own. I went to the PanaVise site (which is lousy) and then to PanaViseOnline.com since they have all the parts. I measured and sketched and thought and asked around and consulted and measured and sketched some more. There was the smell of smoke around my head from all the thinking I was doing.

The design is figured out now. All the parts will cost me just under $150 (before shipping) and I have the mounting figured out too. I put up a page on the internet so that others can see it and help out if they have any ideas. My final-ish sketch and links to the parts are there. I’ve got more text to add later as it becomes more clear. I may be able to order the parts on Monday.

Now, why am I so interested in doing this? Because I am a writer and I need to be able to work without worrying about how long I can go at it before the pain makes me scream. This new chair, with its wonderful tilt, can do that for me. But I currently can’t use my laptop and the chair at the same time. I need to remedy that if I want to write more. All writers need to be concerned about ergonomics. I just need to be a little more so.

Losing Interest

Posted on 03/29/2006 by PaulaO

I am bored today. Not only with the day, but with my WIP, BG3. I don’t care that much about them, whether or not they get together. I know how it ends. I just am bored with how they get there.

I think I am going to put it on the back burner if I don’t catch a spark on it today. Just thinking about setting it aside raises a slight bit of panic so there may be help for it after all.

I do this a lot, although not with my writing. I do this in real life. I get all wound up about a project, whatever, and I get it started then….I’m bored. For me, the joy is in the preparation, the planning. Sometimes I continue my enthusiasm through the building/creating of the project. But not often.

When we were kids, my parents got this roll of butcher block paper. We would lay out a big sheet and get our cars and crayons and markers and we’d make this town, streets and all. And as soon as it was finished, we’d maybe drive through it once but then we’d flip it over and start again.

Close to 50K

Posted on 03/28/200603/28/2006 by PaulaO

I got some good progress in today. Still had some shuffling between files, pulling together some scenes I had written and fitting them in. I’m sure that the WIP now would read like it was written by a drunk.

At any rate, I got over 1500 words today and BG3 is just under 50K again. Which means just 40K to go and I can put it on the back burner to simmer. Its going to be a bitch to edit, but then, isn’t everything??

Women’s Month

Posted on 03/28/2006 by PaulaO

Ya know, it seems as though I never hear that it is the month/year of the whatever until that month/year is almost over. I never hear ahead of time. March is apparently Women’s Month. Hey, I am one so why didn’t I know??!!

Anyway, Georganna over at Writer’s Edge had a post that I thought I’d share here.

Earlier this month I wrote about Wild Women and Books, by Brenda Knight in a post honoring Women’s History Month. Mary Mark Ockerbloom edits a website devoted to A Celebration of Women Writers. It’s worth taking a look. Mary says:

Since 1994, I have been developing an on-line resource entitled A Celebration of Women Writers. The Celebration links to thousands of pages about women writers, and more than 1200 complete on-line editions of published books by women writers. Editions of out-of-copyright works are also being put on-line at the Celebration by myself and others. In the fall of 1997, I began the Build-A-Book Initiative, soliciting volunteers via the web, selecting books, sending out chapters, and supervising completion of works as sections were returned. More than 200 volunteers are now engaged in collaborative development of on-line editions of works by women as part of this initiative. Over 140 on-line books are now available at the Celebration.

Writing Again

Posted on 03/26/2006 by PaulaO

I am writing again. I took some time off to goof as well as to play with my new toy. (play = scare the dogs and scrape doorways) :rolleyes:

I am working on BG3, still. But I plan on getting it finished in a few weeks. I need to get it done and move on to something else. It’s not that I no longer like Harri and Liz, it’s just…I’ve gotten tired of their story. Get on with it, will ya? Stop bitchin’ to each other and get over it!

There. That felt good.

We had snow the past few days. Several times a day. Isn’t it spring?? I took pictures of some of it. I’ll get around to developing it some day.

Thought for the Day

Posted on 03/24/2006 by PaulaO

Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.

Thanks to Winston who got it from Frank.

New Toy

Posted on 03/23/2006 by PaulaO

I brought home a new toy today. A Permobil C300 Corpus.

We don’t have a digital camera so it will be a day or two before I have pics of mine. But it has the blue shroud. They didn’t have any in yellow. 🙁 Although I can easily paint it. 😀

Tomorrow I’ll spend some time in it, getting used to the feel. Just like some shoes, it takes a while for a person’s body to adjust to a new chair or cushion. Plus, so much of it is adjustable and each person is different.

I think that’s all of them. It will take several days for some things and several weeks for others. The speed of the thing is also adjustable. It has five programmable “modes”. Each mode can be set individually. For example, some folks have a mode for indoors (slower fwd speed, slower turn speed, faster stop); a mode for work (faster speed, slower turn and fast stop); and a mode for haul-ass (fast fast fast).

The main problem for me is that this chair is a mid-wheel drive (some call it center-wheel drive). The best article is Understanding Powerchair Pivot Points by Mark E. Smith at WheelchairJunkie.com. I will have to practice so that I won’t take out another door like I did at the wheelchair place today. Sigh.

Interesting Survey Results

Posted on 03/23/2006 by PaulaO

Many of you, my invisible readers, are aware that I am an amateur radio operator. One of my daily RSS feed reads is from ARRL. I went to their site today to read an article on BPL. Being at their site reminded me I’ve not done their survey in a while. I looked over the ones I missed and the one below is interesting.

(source: ARRL website)

The current HAM population seems to be fluxating between the geek and the OMs (old men). Ham radio is a field that is can be quite geeky. We were using GPS before it became popular. We can set up a working station in the front seat of a pickup truck and be the vital link during emergencies. During hurricane season, often HAMs are the only working source of communication in many disaster areas.

So the idea that HAMs would prefer printed material over an e-pub is interesting. Well, at least to me. Reckon I’ll not plan on my ham-related books being e-books then.