"Seven times I went down. Six times I walked back."
Whatever this entry was going to be, well, we'll never know. I overslept, and then there was unexpected chaos, and then two days worth of backed-up email. I feel like I don't have time for much of anything. A quick weather report? Yeah, I can manage that. When I awoke, it was 39˚F with a windchill 28˚F. On April 9th. Since then, the temperature has risen to 40˚F with a windchill of 30˚F. There's no sign of spring out there. At least in Woodstock I had moss and lichen and a tiny bit of greening grass. Here, nothing, just the squalid, cold cityscape of Providence. Grey and brown and black, earth and sky. There's been no sun to speak of since the morning of the 5th, and there will be no sun tomorrow.
In Birmingham, it's sunny and 82˚F, with a heat index of 83˚F. The trees are green. The dogwoods, magnolias, camellias, and wisteria are in bloom. And that is spring. I have not seen a dogwood bloom in seven years. It's one of those things I always took for granted.
Right now, we're supposed to move in August. I just have to make it that long.
We left Woodstock about 3 p.m., and by the time we got home, around 7 p.m., I'd realized that there was something very wrong with the crown that Dr. Bruce Miller had put in my mouth. Sitting in his chair, it seemed to occlude properly, but two hours later I was lisping, and it just felt odd. I got in the house and looked at it with a dental mirror, and the thing is huge. The inner (labial) cusp of the premolar is at least a mm. larger than it should be. There's not an occlusion problem, because it's so large that the lingual cusp extends out away from the tooth below it (which causes the lisp and is beginning to rub and ulcer on my tongue). So, yeah, now we're talking to his office and trying to figure out how to handle such a fuck up. I mean, who is he having sculpt these crowns that they got it that off? Likely, it's will mean two more trips back to Woodstock - which I don't have the time for, and which I also simply can't afford. So, after more than two thousand dollars and four appointments, it's still not fixed. Likely, I'll have to find a local dentist to remove this crown and put on a temporary, until I can manage to get back to Woodstock, which could be weeks from now.
And then there's work.
The screenplay I went to Woodstock to write has hardly been begun (~11/250 pp.). I have a couple of deadlines that I'm months overdue one. Between now and the end of July I have two short story deadlines and a 25k-word novel to write. Sometime soon, I need to do a final proofreading on Beneath and Oil-Dark Sea, and I have to compile the ms. for Houses Under the Sea: Mythos Tales, and I have to deal with the ms. for the PS Publishing edition of A is for Alien. I desperately need to begin the next novel. I have to keep Sirenia Digest going, which means at least one new vignette or short story each month. And I can't just dash this stuff off, not caring if it's crap, as I admittedly did with Cherry Bomb. This is, in short, a nightmare.
Oh, and the taxes.
---
In the last few days, I've read "Fossil musk turtles (Kinosternidae, Sternotherus) from the late Miocene-early Pliocene (Hemphillian) of Tennessee and Florida," "A new aetosaur (Archosauria, Suchia) from the Upper Triassic Pekin Formation, Deep River Basin, North Carolina, U.S.A., and its implications for early aetosaur evolution," "Osteoderms of the titanosaur sauropod dinosaur Alamosaurus sanjuanensis Gilmore, 1922," "A reevaluation of Pliophoca etrusca (Pinnipedia, Phocidae) from the Pliocene of Italy: phylogenetic and biogeographic implications," "Trilobites, Cincinnati, and the 'Cincinnati School of Paleontology," and "A specimen-level phylogenetic analysis and taxonomic revision of Diplodocidae (Dinosauria, Sauropoda)."
I'd like to have time to write a short essay on the proposed conservation of the name Brontosaurus, because a lot of the press reports are misinterpreting the paper, and very few people understand the rules of taxonomic nomenclature, or the fact that all classifications are merely hypotheses.
---
I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to speak out re: my feelings on the Hugo mess, the SJW vs. "Sad Puppies" debacle. Likely, no one will like what I have to say, and it's probably best I keep my mouth shut.
---
My thanks to Jerad at Centipede Press for sending me a complete set of their out-of-print edition of Michael McDowell’s Blackwater, six beautiful volumes, slipcased.
And that's all for now.
Later,
Aunt Beast
In Birmingham, it's sunny and 82˚F, with a heat index of 83˚F. The trees are green. The dogwoods, magnolias, camellias, and wisteria are in bloom. And that is spring. I have not seen a dogwood bloom in seven years. It's one of those things I always took for granted.
Right now, we're supposed to move in August. I just have to make it that long.
We left Woodstock about 3 p.m., and by the time we got home, around 7 p.m., I'd realized that there was something very wrong with the crown that Dr. Bruce Miller had put in my mouth. Sitting in his chair, it seemed to occlude properly, but two hours later I was lisping, and it just felt odd. I got in the house and looked at it with a dental mirror, and the thing is huge. The inner (labial) cusp of the premolar is at least a mm. larger than it should be. There's not an occlusion problem, because it's so large that the lingual cusp extends out away from the tooth below it (which causes the lisp and is beginning to rub and ulcer on my tongue). So, yeah, now we're talking to his office and trying to figure out how to handle such a fuck up. I mean, who is he having sculpt these crowns that they got it that off? Likely, it's will mean two more trips back to Woodstock - which I don't have the time for, and which I also simply can't afford. So, after more than two thousand dollars and four appointments, it's still not fixed. Likely, I'll have to find a local dentist to remove this crown and put on a temporary, until I can manage to get back to Woodstock, which could be weeks from now.
And then there's work.
The screenplay I went to Woodstock to write has hardly been begun (~11/250 pp.). I have a couple of deadlines that I'm months overdue one. Between now and the end of July I have two short story deadlines and a 25k-word novel to write. Sometime soon, I need to do a final proofreading on Beneath and Oil-Dark Sea, and I have to compile the ms. for Houses Under the Sea: Mythos Tales, and I have to deal with the ms. for the PS Publishing edition of A is for Alien. I desperately need to begin the next novel. I have to keep Sirenia Digest going, which means at least one new vignette or short story each month. And I can't just dash this stuff off, not caring if it's crap, as I admittedly did with Cherry Bomb. This is, in short, a nightmare.
Oh, and the taxes.
---
In the last few days, I've read "Fossil musk turtles (Kinosternidae, Sternotherus) from the late Miocene-early Pliocene (Hemphillian) of Tennessee and Florida," "A new aetosaur (Archosauria, Suchia) from the Upper Triassic Pekin Formation, Deep River Basin, North Carolina, U.S.A., and its implications for early aetosaur evolution," "Osteoderms of the titanosaur sauropod dinosaur Alamosaurus sanjuanensis Gilmore, 1922," "A reevaluation of Pliophoca etrusca (Pinnipedia, Phocidae) from the Pliocene of Italy: phylogenetic and biogeographic implications," "Trilobites, Cincinnati, and the 'Cincinnati School of Paleontology," and "A specimen-level phylogenetic analysis and taxonomic revision of Diplodocidae (Dinosauria, Sauropoda)."
I'd like to have time to write a short essay on the proposed conservation of the name Brontosaurus, because a lot of the press reports are misinterpreting the paper, and very few people understand the rules of taxonomic nomenclature, or the fact that all classifications are merely hypotheses.
---
I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to speak out re: my feelings on the Hugo mess, the SJW vs. "Sad Puppies" debacle. Likely, no one will like what I have to say, and it's probably best I keep my mouth shut.
---
My thanks to Jerad at Centipede Press for sending me a complete set of their out-of-print edition of Michael McDowell’s Blackwater, six beautiful volumes, slipcased.
And that's all for now.
Later,
Aunt Beast