Data, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

I love my iMac.  I really do.  99% of the time, it behaves flawlessly.

Tonight, however, it has refused to print and connect to the Internet at the same time (which, I presume, has something to do with a tweak to my network printer that I made last night to try to get Lore to use it to print).

It has somehow permanently hidden Final Cut, where I lost...oh, about five hours' worth of work for a video I was making.  FIVE HOURS.  I don't usually work THAT long on videos I make for the kids (this was for our Olympics paper), but I like the Olympics, and was having fun.  FIVE HOURS.

And now, it's not printing with the laser printer at all, no matter how many times I re-set the router, and I still have social studies stuff to make.

The Facts of Life

The song, I would wager, is imprinted somewhere in the backs of the minds of every child of the 80s.

You take the good, you take the bad
You take them both, and there you have
The facts of life, the facts of life

The good:

• I found laminate at K-Mart for almost half the Walmart price -- $10 for 50, versus $7.77 for 20.  Yay.
• I have finally finished cutting out all the new things for this coming year -- since we'll be moving partway through the year, the motto is "Portable, Portable, Portable."  Everything from the principal's recess chart to the lunch count is made to be picked up and carried from one room to the other.
• I finally chose our first book.
• My new desk has shelves for both printers and all my hard drives.  (Inkjet printer, laser printer, 1 TB network attached storage, 1 TB hard drive, 750 GB hard drive, 300 GB hard drive.)
• I figured out why my little desk fan wasn't working and fixed it.
• The desk is on wheels -- which will be useful come number 3 below.

The bad:

• I HATE SCISSORS AND LAMINATE AND VELCRO AND CARD STOCK AND CUTTING AND DID I MENTION THAT I HATE SCISSORS?  Hmph.
• The shelves on the desk weren't wide enough in the right places to put the printers on the shelves where I wanted them.
• The desk was about 2 inches too wide for the space it's in, which will necessitate moving of heavy things at some point.
• Did I mention that I hate scissors?
• Velcro dots are insanely hard to find unless you didn't have a brain freeze and remembered to order them from here.
• New Boy B from last year was supposed to go to School GG but they ran out of room, according to Program Specialist PM, so he might be coming to school -- maybe -- for the two weeks of school before he has brain surgery, at which point he'll be on home teaching and may -- at that point -- go to School GG but probably only if they transfer kids from School GG to my school at that point.  Eesh.
• I hate scissors.

Funny story, though.  I went back to Walmart for the third time in as many days (how is it, even with lists, I forget things?).  I tried to wake up Patrick to ask him if he still needed toilet paper, which I could get for him while I was there.

Half-conscious Patrick says, "I don't remember how to get there."

Me:  Uh.

So I try again.  He says something along the lines of, "I think I want an orange soda."

Me: Uh.

So I try one more time.  "I remember that you want an orange soda.  I'm asking if you want me to get toilet paper or if you want to wait and do your grocery shopping later?"

Patrick:  Incoherent mumbling.

Of Course

Because what you expect just after having your car checked over from front to back in preparation for a road trip is to have a dead battery.

Grr.

Grrrrr

Okay, I know Disney is Disney, but for crying out loud, people -- why aren't there coloring pages that aren't the Disney Hercules?

Part of the kids' journals each day looks like this:

One week I did an ocean theme, one week a sports theme, one week a Fourth of July theme...and this week, I'm trying to do a mythology theme to go with the stories we've been reading.  I did okay yesterday finding a picture of Zeus, but...geesh.

(By the way, I'm slowing increasing the size of the box for the period, to fade the prompt that it comes last.  So far, everyone can identify it.  :-) )

Well...back to google.

Ow

Note from me to Motrin: WORK FASTER PLEASE.

Note from me to science:  Please invent the fake pregnancy thingie Huxley talked about in Brave New World, 'cause then I wouldn't have to take 3 Motrin every four hours for three days a month.

Thank you.

So Close

(The IEP was 95% fine; it turned out as I wrote it that I did, in fact, have all her goals planned...just subconsciously, like normal.  I'd even taken the appropriate data.  I love how my brain works.  The 5% not fine was that the parents were excited to meet the middle school teacher -- who emailed me to let me know that she has been put on bed rest for the rest of her pregnancy.  Whoops.)

Anyway.

Picture this.

You're a mostly-shy, mostly-retiring girl who doesn't really enjoy the spotlight of lots of people.  However, you are pretty excited to have a family gathering of both sides of the family to celebrate your sixteenth birthday.  You, by a large margin, don't want to be the sole focus of attention...but it's a fairly small gathering of very familiar people, and you're mostly okay with it.

Except...

...that five days ago, these two people, that you've never heard of, were killed in Brentwood.

And the suspected killer -- who you had also never heard of -- is driving his white Bronco down a local freeway at 35 miles per hour, pursued by every CHP officer in Southern California.

And everyone -- everyone -- is glued to the TV.

You find yourself thinking things like: I know I didn't want to be the center of attention, exactly, but this is ridiculous.  It'd be nice if people actually noticed I existed.

It's not that I'm bitter, per se, it's just --

Okay, I'm a little bitter.

And then I hear that California was going to start issuing same-sex marriage licenses on June 17, and I thought -- finally, something good for people to associate with the day (which, of course, cheerfully ignores that not everyone shares that opinion, but that's a rant for another day).

But then I hear that San Francisco county officials asked if they could begin after the end of business hours the previous day, and so now county clerks across the state have permission to grant same-sex marriage licenses beginning at 5:00 p.m. June 16th.

Dang.

So close....

TMI

Dear reproductive system,

Really?

I mean...really?

First, you run a week and a half late and yet now you're right smack dab to-the-hour on time?

Two and a half weeks, reproductive system.  I want more than two and a half weeks.

No love,

Me

D'oh!

I have the horrible feeling that Patrick will wheedle his way into a Disneyland trip this weekend as well.  I have a gazillion and five things to do (my grand plan of getting ahead was called off on Monday when I found out about New Boy B, and my semi-grand plan of getting at least caught up was called off on Tuesday when Lore refused to mount my Boardmaker CD for about half an hour and made me work until nearly 11:00 to finish up the stuff I needed to make for him) and really can't afford the time.

But...they're the monorails.  They're Patrick's thing.

Sigh.

If only it were winter when our passes were good on Fridays...we could go for dinner, hop on the monorail (who am I kidding; every Disney geek within 4 hours of the west coast will be doing the same thing...it'd be more like "wait in line until closing time for the monorail and then go have McDonalds because you missed dinner."  Oooh, or Sonic.  I love Sonic. I'd kill for a sour apple slush right now. I wish we had Sonic...all those commercials on Time Warner cable are so unfair.).

Remember the good ol' days when I was at least a week ahead of the game for homework and journals?  Or two weeks ahead on News-2-You?  Or -- get this -- a month ahead with Charlie?

Yeah, me too.

Pictures and Suspicions

This is my favorite of the bunch (darn the hazy sky, though).

At Seasons of the Vine, in CA Adventure.  Right now, I'm enamored of playing with the aperture in order to blur backgrounds and such.  It's also very much hit and miss right now, but using the zoom lens seems to be a quick shortcut.

Yes, Patrick, putting your hand up will stop the giant wave of water about to crash on your head.

The full album can be found here.

In other news, Aide T was out today.  We (or at least I) knew that.

So when Male Aide J walks in (the space cadet one) and says, "I'm here for Aide J," I stared at him for a minute.

"You're here for...who, now?"

"Aide J."

"No way.  Are you sure?"

"Uhh...."

So I call the office and they confirm that, yes, he's there for Aide J.

A few minutes later, who walks up to the door but Sub Aide C, who has the unfortunate tendency to annoy many students just by her very existence.

"I'm here for Aide T," she said.

Good, I thought, because if you said you were here for Aide S, I was gonna go home.

We actually...survived okay.  I plopped myself down with Elastigirl on one side and M on the other.  Aide S sat with M on one side and Superhero on the other.  Essentially, I had Elastigirl, she had Superhero, and we shared M.

Mr. Voice had a happy morning because he got breaks unless one of the two of us (who have been DT trained) was available to work with him.

Space Cadet I sat with Princess and Sleeping Beauty, because C tends to set off both of them, and after the Sleeping Beauty Incident on Friday, that was the last thing I wanted.

So I put C with Angel, PH, and Bulldozer.  It was...interesting.

But, we did make it, with some reshuffling of lunches (the last thing I could do was News-2-You, which tends to be a troublesome time anyway, without ANYbody who knew either the kids or how to do News-2-You).  Funnily enough, we began with the familiar refrain from last year:  "Aide S, do you want Elastigirl or everybody else?"

Today, she took Elastigirl.

Anyway, that's the fourth or fifth time that Aide J has managed to be absent on a day when someone else was going to be out too.  Hmph.

And yet, that's not even the...best part...of the day.  I'm getting another new boy -- this one has multiple disabilities (no worries), hemiplegia (also no worries), and seizures (some worries).

Why some worries?  Apparently, noise level can be a trigger for them.

Err...y'all who made this decision (namely, Program Specialist SBS)...have y'all heard Mr. Voice lately?

Then, I spent 20 minutes arguing with my printer for printing blank pages, when it was a teeeny, tiny Boardmaker margin error where it really thought there was another page that happened to be blank.

Happy Monday!

Testosterone and Pollen

Mix the two above, add in a dose of constipation, and possibly dad issues (the quote is "Dad go away" which either means "Dad, go away!" (I'm mad at Dad) or "Dad went away" (I miss dad)), and you have a not-very-happy Superhero.

Add in a double-dose of Zyrtec (one at 11:00 last night and another after waiting for the buses proved too much) for me, and you have one exhausted teacher.

Oh, yeah, and the middle school teachers from SMS came to observe Angel and Sleeping Beauty today....

Ow

I'm lucky (if you tilt your head and squint really hard and remind yourself that there is something about a tendency to migraines that is "lucky") in that I usually get an aura before a migraine -- I nearly always get photosensitivity, I frequently get sparklies in my field of vision, and once in a while, I get this weird echoy feeling to my hearing.

I'm also lucky in that if I catch a migraine early enough and either medicate it or sleep it off, it usually goes away without getting too excruciating, which makes the auras a useful thing indeed.

So having one come on full blast without an aura as I was getting agenda books ready for next week?

I am not amused.

After a nap, I feel good enough to be bored (hence this post), but I've got the laptop screen (Data's big beautiful bright screen, even dimmed to its lowest setting, would be torture) dimmed to one notch above "off" and it's still too bright, so g'night all.

Living Up to His Name

For the life of me, I cannot get Lore to connect to my network attached storage...which is where I moved the school stuff so that the Windows programs (Boardmaker, Writing With Symbols) could do their thing, while the Mac programs (NeoOffice, Pages) could also do their thing.

Le sigh.

Easter, Writing, and TMI

So, as has been the case for a few years now, the only folks in my family nearby that celebrate Easter had other plans.  Which, to Patrick, means one thing: Disneyland.

But we did depart from our usual routine, and even had dinner at the Wine Country Trattoria -- which is a very nice table service restaurant with (get this!) reasonable prices.  Not just Disneyland-reasonable-prices, but semi-good-Italian-restaurant reasonable prices.  Wow.  Of particular interest is the orange sorbet dessert, served on a frozen navel orange.  Yummy.

Anyhow, it being a holiday, Patrick...ahem...permitted me to use (my) point and shoot camera to take a few shots, on the condition that I also shared the next in his self-portrait series.

(See if you can guess which shot is his.)

In other news, I have been writing up a storm.  I'm just not sure if it's any good -- it probably isn't yet, and probably won't be without a significant re-write, but it's nice to shut up my inner critic and just get the ideas out.

Meanwhile, I find myself watching the beginning of season 9 of Stargate to determine the extent of Cam's injuries...and 'cause that's when the whole Ori thing started.

(Did I mention I liked the Ori storyline?  Yeah....)

Now, as far as the TMI stuff....

Men are babies.

My grandfather has developed a touchy stomach in the last year or so, and often when he goes on dates with his girlfriend, he ends up throwing up the next day.

He threw up today a couple of times, and called my mom this afternoon to say he's going to go to the emergency room 'cause he just can't keep getting sick like that.

Now, far be it from me to be unsympathetic, but....

When I was in 8th grade, I had a rare form of mono that manifested itself with months of excruciating stomach aches that kept me up for hours at a time because the pain got worse when I laid down.  It was literally unbearable laying down; I'd have to walk in circles until it died down enough to sit, where I'd gingerly curl up with a pillow (because if I got too horizontal, it'd all start over again) and try to sleep.  A few hours later, I'd be able to lay somewhat flat.  A few hours after that, I'd go back to bed, only to get up an hour or two later and try to make it through a day of school.

Then, one Friday morning in...it must have been early February (the stomach aches had been going on since August or so), I was getting ready for a half-day of school.  My parents were picking me up afterwards, and we were going down to Anaheim to stay at the Disneyland Hotel for the first time in several years (my dad had started his own company four years or so before).

I woke up and threw up.

(I warn you -- I said TMI was coming.)

I threw up.  To the point that there was only stomach acid, and I kept throwing up.  I threw up until I was literally screaming from the stomach cramps as my stomach tried to keep throwing up when even the stomach acid was gone.

I didn't keep solid food down for a month.

But after that, the other stomach aches tapered off.  For years, I'd get one or two a year, always accompanied by other TMI symptoms that I associate with what was going on when I was in the worst of it.  Over the years, I figured out what I could and couldn't eat -- for instance, I can only eat kosher hot dogs because something in regular hot dogs will trigger a stomach ache.

I know it's no fun to be sick.  And I remember being in the middle of two or three of the worst stomach aches, wanting to go to the hospital -- if for no other reason than that they could sedate me and I wouldn't be aware of the pain -- but literally terrified of the pain that sitting in the car would provoke.

I remember that -- and I remember sitting on the steps outside of my Spanish class during lunch because the smell of the cafeteria was just too much, hoping the yard supervisors or whatever we called them, wouldn't catch me until the library opened for lunch and I could hide in there.

I remember when the fatalism caught up with me on Patrick's birthday and I figured, "What the heck.  I'll throw it up anyway; might as well have a hamburger."

It was the first solid food I kept down in 30 days.

And I know it's awful and uncharitable, but part of me says, "Give me a frelling break.  So you threw up a couple of times.  Come talk to me when you're throwing up stomach acid and not food."

Thank you.  I just had to get that off my chest.  This way, I can be the nice, sympathetic, dutiful granddaughter.

Back to your regularly scheduled program.

Almost Spring Break

So, the plan was to get most of the stuff for after spring break done over this past week, so that I could clean up the room and leave in time for my 3:30 appointment to get a hepatitis B booster predicated by the bite incident.

That was the plan.

I left around 3:15 or so and headed to the worker's comp doctor's office, where I signed in for my appointment.

And waited.

And waited.

And chatted (yay me with the social skills!) with the lady next to me, who had been there since one freaking o'clock.

At 4:45, I finally go back to an exam room, where they tell me that Bulldozer's parents had never given them the results of his blood test, so I not only get to get a shot, I get to have another blood draw.

Me = needle phobic.

Me = petrified.

Anyhow, I survived the booster -- which hurt a heck of a lot more than the first one did.  The nurse takes a look at my veins (after trying a "nifty new toy" -- a cuff for your upper arm, like when they put the latex band around your arm -- that clearly did not, and would never, fit my upper arm, short of emergency liposuction surgery).

Ahem.

Anyway, she takes a look at my veins and comments at how thin they are.

"Actually," I say, trying to be helpful, "the lady at the lab last time said they were just very deep, but she did go get to get a smaller needle."

The nurse looks at me doubtfully.

Me = petrified x 2.

She looks at my arm one more time, decides that she doesn't want to miss and "blow out [your] vein" and sends me to the lab at the hospital...again.

Where I am met by a different tech, who also has trouble finding veins in the normal place.  So, she takes my right arm, slaps it -- yeah, slaps it -- a few times to make the veins...puff up, I think is the word she used.

She sticks the needle in.

HOLY FREAKING MOTHER OF GOD!

Ouch!

So, at this point, it's 5:15, and I head back to school, turn everything off, and leave it in the disastrous state it was in.  I'll head back tomorrow to finish up agenda books and copy the beginning of Matilda, and then spring break'll start.

D'oh

So, I'm typing away at the adapted version of chapter 1 of Matilda, which we're starting after spring break.

I've already made the kids' book reports for Swiss Family, and am feeling rather pleased with myself.

Then, Sparky Junior, my poor, in-critical-condition computer, flashes what looks like a BIOS screen -- note...not the blue screen of death, and not a simple freeze -- and reboots itself.

So quickly that I couldn't read what the screen said (and I read fast).

All by itself.

As in, not even my Windows Me computer ever did that.

Sure, it froze if you looked at it wrong...but....

There's only one solution:  Buy nothing for the next two months and pray to the computer gods.

Eesh.

Meanwhile, I comfort myself with images of macho guys hugging cookies.

The Question

Since before your sun burned hot in space, and before your race was born, I have awaited a question. -- The Guardian of Forever

Maybe the Guardian could solve this dilemma for me. Which event to try and summarize in a single sentence (my favorite of this year is summing Stalin up with, "On blah blah blah, Russia's mean leader Josef Stalin died."):

• The Taiping Rebellion?
• The Treaty of Versailles?
• Legalized gambling in Nevada?
• Televised Academy Awards?
• Sarajevo reuniting?
• The start of the Iraq War (Version 2.0)?
• Or Mahmoud Abbas becoming Prime Mister of Palestine?

In a way, I prefer boring days. It's easier to summarize boring things like, "Montana became the xth state of the United States." But these? Eesh.

For the record, since I'm asking the kids to watch the news each week for election coverage anyway, I'll probably go with the Iraq War, but...well...geesh. Depressing much?

Edited to add: While procrastinating for this decision, I did a side to side comparison of a base Mac Pro and a high-end iMac, and the iMac is nearly $1000 cheaper, all told. However, once I upgrade the components up front that I would upgrade myself later on with the Mac Pro (memory and hard drive space), the price is nearly identical. C'mon, bank account....

(Also, my computer nerd mojo has deserted me. I just now realized that ETA = Edited to Add in blog-speak. I am shamed.)

Tech Woes

I got behind last week, while I was fighting off the insidious illness that had me flat on my back from 3:30 Friday afternoon to about 10:00 last night.

That means that I've been making today what the kids will be doing for their journals tomorrow.  Homework just got printed (fortunately, between our field trip and two short weeks, I had an excuse to make it a 2-week homework assignment).

I haven't been running this close since probably 2 years ago.  Lately, "behind" has meant "madly printing out next week's stuff Thursday evening so I can get it ready on Friday."  It's been a long time since "behind" meant "making tomorrow's journals."

But anyway.

My poor dying computer froze twice to the point of the mouse cursor not moving for five minutes twice today.  There was a POST-code-like beep (except I thought those only happened at boot-up) each time.

But that's not my main tech woe, other than it made it take way too long to get everything printed (I broke my no-school-stuff-after-8:00 rule SO hard today).

My tech woe is this, and pardon the second CAPSLOCK OF RAGE in two days.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE LORDS OF KOBOL (cough! Battlestar Galactica season 4 coming soon! cough!), I DON'T CARE IF IT'S THE PRINTER, THE PRINTER DRIVER, WRITING WITH SYMBOLS OR SOME COMBINATION OF THE THREE, OH-MY-FRAKKING-GOD WOULD YOU PLEASE PRINT THINGS CORRECTLY?!

Ahem.

In English:  When Writing With Symbols doesn't like a printer, it prints the first two lines on a page over each other.  Some mystical combination of font size changes, additional lines, and other random things sometimes help.

In all seriousness, I am now carefully weighing the various costs involved in between an iMac and Mac Pro.

iMac plusses:

* cheaper

* one piece

* purrrrty

iMac minuses:

* I would need an external DVD drive to run Writing with Symbols and Boardmaker concurrently ($$)

* I would have to buy a USB hub to connect my external hard drives PLUS the DVD drive ($)

* 2 core

* I'd have to upgrade the memory ($$)

* I'd probably upgrade the hard drive at purchase, 'cause it's harder to upgrade

Mac Pro pluses

* 8 core standard

* easy to upgrade (memory and/or hard drive space), so I can do it later myself and not pay the Apple premium

* multiple DVD drives

Mac Pro minuses

* more expensive

* I'd have to buy a monitor

      ** well, I wouldn't have to, but my measly little 15 incher would look pretty sad

At some point, I'll have to sit and do the math.  It may be that once I upgrade the iMac to the specs I'd want, the equivalent Mac Pro would be more or less the same price.

Here's hoping Sparky Jr. can hold on.

Now, about the epidemic in my class.

In my first year of teaching, we had this horrible flu bug that made the rounds among kids and adults alike for nearly a month.  Despite judicious application of hand washing, Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, etc., we just couldn't get rid of it until we had spring break and were gone for a week.

I suspect we've got that going on again.

Superhero was back today, but he wasn't here for more than an hour and a half before his fever spiked back up -- to about 102! -- and we sent him home.  Elastigirl was sick with M's stomach flu yesterday, was here for a while, then went to the doctor.  Sleeping Beauty coughed the whole way home yesterday and was gone today.  The Boss was grumpy, and I suspect she's getting it.

Oh, and Bulldozer and Mr. Voice were both warm, but not enough to show as a fever.

Yet.

Meanwhile, I'm mostly better.  I had to take a nap after school today and by 1:30 or so I was tuckered...but that was a lot better than making it to 8:15 yesterday!

Sick Days

I am not one to begrudge someone their sick days.

But if Aide J wasn't (1) vomiting all day, (2) delirious with fever, or (3) harboring something extremely contagious, like, say, ebola, she is On My List.

Last Monday, Aide S told me she'd be out this Monday.  She and her family were going to Lake Arrowhead for the weekend.

Okay, fine...put in for a sub...we'll survive.

Then, late last week, Aide T was not feeling well.  The doctor said she had to have a colonoscopy.

Okay, fine.  We'll sur -- it's on Monday?!  The same Monday Aide S is going to be out?

Aide T, bless her, tried to reschedule but couldn't do so.

So I packed up my stuff for today, and slipped a tape of The Jungle Book in my backpack, since I knew it was something Mr. Voice would pay attention to.

I didn't expect to have to use it, really -- we actually survived pretty well the last time anything similar happened.  'Course, we didn't have Mr. Voice then.

Then I get to school and ask if the positions had been filled with subs.

"Aides S and T have," our office clerk B says, "but Aide J's position is still open."

I - uh - eh - urrr - aide - ... -- WHAT?!?!

I was already not in the best of moods, because the muscle in the back of my leg is STILL kinda cramped (though it comes and goes now; it's not constant like it was).  Last year, I probably would have taken a sick day myself -- though not on a day with 2 people out -- to keep it slathered in Icy Hot, but instead, I took some Motrin, slapped on an Icy Hot patch (which had fallen off by 8:00), and grinned and bore it.

Incidentally, we survived.  If we hadn't had Mr. Voice, we might have even made it through a normal day, but he was the straw the broke the camel's back.  We got agenda books, journals, social studies, and Swiss Family Robinson done, but we also watched Jungle Book and played board games.

At one point, though, I was juggling Superhero, M, and Bulldozer successfully, so that's what I'm hanging onto for today.

I Hate Skies

So I'm trying to stay awake after my power nap turned into 2 hours earlier today by finally starting to cull out the really good Disney World pictures from this summer (yeah, I know)...and I've discovered something:  probably 1 in 10 pictures that would otherwise be awesome if I hadn't overexposed the darn sky.  This is more common in the morning pictures when it was gray and overcast, but it pops up just about everywhere.  Grrr.

By the way -- I have a million dollar idea I'm giving away for free: photography classes for people with intellectual disabilities...Patrick takes some very nice photos -- even the ones with weird subjects, as Aide T pointed out, show a good eye for lines and textures.  Plus, it's neat to see what he thinks is interesting and how he views the world.

(Once I pick out the 5 star photos, I'll upload them to Picasa so y'all can see them.  But I have 1000 more to go through.)

What Writer's Block Means to Me

I've started another video. It  all happened while driving -- my iPod was on random (as usual) and I heard "Don't You Need," and before I knew it, I had the insane idea to try to pull enough clips from "Blood Fever" to make a Voyager video.

Problem is, all the relevant clips from that episode are dark -- lit by the actors' handheld flashlights -- and they are filled with talky-face.  I may end up making slight exception, despite the generally accepted vidder's rule that talky-face is bad.

So now I'm left borrowing clips from other episodes -- mostly in the third season, when the producers randomly decided to go the Tom/B'Elanna route instead of the Harry/B'Elanna route -- while still trying to make the narrative make sense.

(The main narrative is, of course, the story of B'Elanna's increasing desperation as the pon farr makes her more and more...err...feverish.)

I don't have the series on DVD but of course it's -- cough -- available in other venues -- cough -- not that I would ever -- cough -- acquire the series that way.  I am, of course, simply -- cough -- story-boarding at this point.

Cough.

What was I saying?

Oh, yeah.  Writer's block.

So the other night, just for fun, I opened most of my active stories in Word and just cycled through them.  Lots of words.  Some in script format, some in narrative format, and some half-and-half.

Dialogue remains my weakness, as does my tendency be very straightforward and information-dump-like in my descriptions, so I have a few stories I'm working on specifically to force myself to describe things better -- in particular stories that force me to work within certain limitations (for instance, a Blood Ties story from Vicki's point of view in near-darkness (she has night blindness, or a Sue Thomas story where I can't rely on Sue picking up on tone of voice).

One thing I've learned over the past few years is that different things draw me to different stories, characters, and even shows.

For instance, the large majority of my Farscape stories are centered around a few isolated moments.

Like, say, Aeryn in "Till the Blood Runs Clear," because I find the interplay between her fierce desire to be independent despite her temporary blindness and her wide grin when Crichton compliments her ingenuity to be fascinating.  I saw a brief snippet of that episode when it first aired, and for years after -- even though I didn't yet watch the show -- my memory of Aeryn was her abrupt "Don't help me, Crichton!"  In fact, my first Farscape story was based off that moment.

Most of my other stories are centered around the following: Aeryn's breakdown in "The Way We Weren't," the aftermath of Moya!John's death (which is one of only two stories written from anyone other than Aeryn's point of view), the aftermath of Aeryn's torture, and the aftermath of John's collapse in The Peacekeeper Wars.

With other shows, of course, it's other moments -- but that's why I tend to write missing scenes and episode tags.  I'm drawn to the moments and want to explore them more.

So, anyhow, when a bout of writer's block comes along, the first thing that begins to happen is that I watch these moments themselves, or I'm reading something, or listening to a song, and start thinking: "Wow, if only I had that gift with language."

Which brings me back to the beginning of this.  I realize song writing is an entirely different thing than fiction writing or prose writing.  But when I read the lyrics to "Don't You Need," I'm invariably struck by the powerful imagery -- and it's something that always seems like it's beyond my reach.

In fact, imagery is one reason I've always been drawn to Melissa Etheridge's songs, ever since a friend gave me a copy of her self-titled album because it didn't fit on her CD case and I liked the song "Come to My Window."

(That song was immediately over-played and is probably one of my least favorite of her songs now, but whatever.)

So I've got these open files, especially the ones that are in script format, and I wonder: Can I come up with words to bring the images in my head into being on paper?  Lately, it seems like the answer is no.  The images themselves are as clear as ever -- I generally picture it like a movie in my head -- but when I try to describe them, it ends up sounding like an instruction manual.

Writer's block, for me, is not a lack of ideas.  It's not a lack of story lines, of plots, even of dialogue.  Writer's block is self-censoring.  It's me stopping myself from writing something because I know -- I know -- it's not up to snuff.

It's times like this that I have to remember what I did during the Summer of Drama, when I finished my first long story -- write a little, every day, on every story -- even if it's just a word, just a sentence.

Even if it sucks...because I can always go back and change it later.

Today's lesson in self pity was brought to you by the letters W and B and the number 47.

(W and B for writer's block, of course, and the number 47 just 'cause.)