Some very random thoughts about my action packed last few days with strep throat:

What I've got -- it might not be strep, the urgent car clinic test came back negative, but the doctor treated me for it anyway -- manages to mutate just a little every day, putting mucus in new spots. Fun.

Somehow, in the three minute drive from the urgent care to the pharmacy at Target, I managed to lose my insurance card. I gave the pharmacist the scrips, said I'd have to go back to the car for the card, and then spent 15 minutes tearing the damn vehicle apart trying to find it. On the upside, I was so pissed, it was the first time in days I didn't think about coughing up green phlegm. The pharmacist called and got my number from the clinic, so I got to walk out with the meds.

I hate the meds. Specifically, the pain killer, which has the wonderful side-effect of causing dry mouth. Exactly what you want to go with a throat that already looks like ground beef with moldy white patches on it.

I had a mini-reunion with friends from high-school Saturday night. My buddy Bill, career military (and thus in sickeningly good shape) and father of eight, missed my wedding because he was in Bosnia (or Panama, I forget), and then was in Germany during our 10^th year reunion. For the 20^th, he'll be back in the damn Green Zone. I probably gave him and his six-month-old daughter Sophia strep.

I know I gave it to the wife. Whom I call Squanto.

As I left Target with my meds, I actually thought to myself, it'll be a shame I'm not going to be sick longer so I could lose some weight. I really do have to learn not think stupid thoughts. (But the pants I got for Xmas were tight, and now they're not...)

I miss chocolate. It hurts too much to swallow even water unless I'm on my prescription painkiller. The pain nicely radiates from my chest up to my ears. Even if I burp, it goes through my ears now.

You'd think sleep would be the respite from this, but it's actually the worst, I stayed up until 1:30am last night to avoid laying down, and I was up and out of bed by 4 as my chest was just jammed full of crud. Tonight, I'm sleeping upright in the recliner, see if that helps. But being prone just puts gravity and mucus in cahoots.

I've written nothing since Xmas day. Pathetic, but nice to have an excuse other than laziness.

I have, however, read the latest John Sandford novel and watched any number of bad movies, or a couple of okay movies (might have liked them better when healthy) that were chopped up by the networks but I didn't want to wait for them on Netflix. And four episodes of Samantha Who? And tons of episodes of Ben 10. I love that show because Ben may be the first kid with super powers who actually loves using them. He's a little turd most of the time, but not wanting superpowers? I just don't get that.

I took my first sick day from work in years yesterday, after some kind of uber-strain of cold virus attacked my head, and then my chest, and then my head and chest together, before finally settling in to my throat. Today I feel better, but I can barely swallow, which makes it hard to get the DayQuil down that I need to feel human. 12 hours of sitting in my living room watching crappy movies yesterday while I tried to keep mucus out of my lungs left me feeling like this guy:

Minutes after I shot and edited and uploaded this... I dropped Milk. And broke his stubby, Made-in-China legs.... god dammit.

Ah, memories. This is one written by my wife-- whom I call Squanto!-- to try and win a contest at work. She didn't win. Probably cause there's a mention of dog poop. I have edited this to add more.

Siren's Special Christmas Gift

Some 11 years ago, my hubby and I made the long drive from Massachusetts to central NY for the holidays. We had our then 18-month old lab puppy, Siren, in tow. As proud dog parents, we were looking forward to showing off our little charge, who had recently completed a series of obedience classes and was growing up to be quite the little lady. [[Editor's Note: Siren farts more than any dog that has ever existed.]]

One of many stops on our holiday circuit was for Christmas dinner at my cousin's house, a rambling country home with a huge, fenced-in back yard and acreage for his rescued mustangs. Siren walked into the house and immediately made herself at home, politely surveying her new surroundings and charming the rest of the guests, which numbered more than 20. She also made fast friends with my cousin's golden retriever, a goofy girl named Sunshine [[Ed. Note: Might have been Barney]] who happily led her outside through the doggie door for a merry chase around the yard.

When dinner was nearly ready, my cousin suggested shutting the two dogs into the safety of the mudroom, which had convenient access to the yard via the doggie door. Since Sunshine and Siren were getting along so well and the yard was secure, we agreed to let the girls hang out on the porch. Everyone sat down to a peaceful meal, and life was good.

Dinner came to a close, and once the kitchen was picked up, it was time to let the girls back in. Siren bounded into the house, thrilled to see us and all her adoring new fans. But all was not as it should be. A stench entered with her, one so foul it was hard not to retch. As my pretty little puppy grinned and wagged her tail at 20+ guests, I noticed that her neck and collar were smeared with something...putrid. Somehow, somewhere, in the safety of that backyard, my girl had discovered a ghastly doggie perfume to decorate herself with -- and she was clearly very proud to share this special gift with us. My face instantly turned every shade of crimson. Fortunately my family is a bunch of animal lovers, so the room erupted in laughter rather than groans of disgust.

Needless to say, our holiday festivities were put on hold while a certain little girl got marched upstairs for a much-needed bath. I also learned a valuable lesson--never, ever underestimate the amount of mischief a puppy can get into when left unattended.

I laughed, too. Until I had to go outside and hose the little bitch off in the snow before her bath. Oh yes. Good times.

To Squished Frog readers who prefer the LJ -- you know who you are: I still don't have a proper LJ, and probably never will, because I can't be bothered to post things twice. However, I did finally figure out how to post my RSS feed directly into LifeJournal so you can add it to your friends list and keep track of my blather without even coming to SquishedFrog.com. Which, actually means you'll miss out on... well, not much. So enjoy.

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/squished_frog/

This is one of those nights that's both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing: having a story drop fully formed in my head! Must. Get. It. Out! Have to get out of bed and make notes, and then that's not enough, it's 3:15am and I just wrote a 1,300+ word short story! Wee! (It's called Latoya and the Dane. For now.)

The curse: It's 3:15! Still wide awake! Can't get thinkmeat to stop working working working. Argh.

And this after drinking wine tonight. I should be out like I took a ball-peen hammer to the temple.

Even that story, wouldn't have even happened tonight were it not for the story cascade effect in my brain. It began because I finally (FINALLY!) saw the light on something screwing up my current novel and how to fix it. There's a single character who I've been writing as a total dickweed with no redeeming qualities (which is, to be honest, fun as hell) and my critiquers, bless them, have pointed out it just doesn't work. No one would hang with this guy. Especially my nice-guy protagonist. And I realized, well, what if that dickweed was actually the protagonist's bestest friend? Assholes have friends too! Especially when they can take advantage of friends who are nice guys like my protag. So the guy will still be a giant ass, but he'll have a redeeming quality.

That change got tossed over and over in my head like book salad as I looked for the holes, why it wouldn't work, what I'd have to re-write, and after hours of tossing and turning (and more notes made stealthily in the bathroom (so as not to wake the Wife) before I gave up to come downstairs and write), I think it will work. It has to work.

Of course, this fix means going back to page frickin' one and re-writing a ton of the 30,000+ words I've already got (which should be 60K by now if I had any work ethic at all). But better now than when it's 100k.

And while I work on all of these story bits, my thoughts drift back frequently to my first book, The Random Chance Chronicles, and cuts it needs, and how much I want to finish its half-written sequel. I'd say I need more time in the day. What I need is as much writing gumption as one sleepless night seems to have given me.

There's still time! Buy some wacky -- yet useful! -- upgrades for your computer, or someone else's, for the holidays. What unusual upgrades, you ask? Try some of these.

I've spent the last couple of weeks writing a story for work about the best operating systems, basically a Windows Vs. Mac story of the kind that's been going on since the dawn of computing time, untold centuries previous. But this one had one difference, at least for me, in that there's a viable third alternative now, an open-source (meaning  made by talented volunteers and given away for free) OS called Linux. Linux has a lot of what's called "distros" meaning you can get Linux in lots of flavors with different looks, even if the core (or kernel) is the same. The one we used in the story is arguably the most popular one around now, called Ubuntu.

Over the course of the writing, I installed it on a decent machine (I'd tried it before on an old Pentium 2, but it's sloooooooow even with this slimmer OS) and gave it a whirl. While I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the way it installs software and handles storage of data, I kinda like it. After all, it's another technology to master rather than do something worthwhile with my time...

Knowing my beloved laptop, Maui, has been getting a might run down lately, I said to myself, "Self, why not set it up to dual-boot so I could have Windows when needed, and Ubuntu for some speedy Web surfing?" After all, it worked fine on my old desktop (the one that crashed all the time with XP hasn't crashed once under Ubuntu, to my ever lasting disgust).

So I gave it a whirl

And I fucked it up.

I tried to take matters into my own hands by messing with the disk partitions once Ubuntu had already made one. My bad. I killed Maui's ability to see the boot partition, which would ask if I wanted Windows XP or Ubuntu 7.10. All I got was an error. No OS.

Enough was enough. I pulled out the original restore disks and nuked Maui back to the factory settings it came with in 2004. Several hours of installing Windows XP security updates later, I've installed Word and Firefox on her, and I think that's all she'll get. She gets to be a simple workhorse now, for surfing and writing. Nothing more, since that's 90% of what I do anyway. I'll leave the play with video, photos, and music to the quad-core. 

And that's how I spent my Sunday. Jealous?

Luckily, I also managed to write about 1,300 words in my novel, so I'm finally up to the number I should have been at this time last month if I'd managed to stick with the NaNoWriMo count. But I'm incapable of doing any work unless I know all my PCs are running right (or, at least, adequately. It's just a character flaw I've learned to live with. And my computers are the better for it. (Fellow VPers will recognize as a pathetic ritual I've yet to break.)

Prepare to be so disturbed you will never look at Xmas the same again.

The 20th anniversary of my escape from Hornell, NY, comes next year, and I've received word that my high school graduating class will again be gathering as it did in 1998.

Weight Watchers, here I come.

A couple days ago I read The Onion's 16 morally dubious holiday entertainments and was somewhat horrified to see them dis "The Year Without a Santa Claus" (as part of the explicit dis of more execrable Rankin Bass efforts). But I couldn't disagree with them saying: "Sure, everyone loves Heat Miser and Snow Miser, but is there anything [in it] that makes a lick of sense? Up to and including the idea that Santa would decide to take a day off on the ONE DAY A YEAR when he has any frickin' responsibilities?!"

Still, it does nothing to prevent the love I have for Snow Miser and Heat Miser.

That is, until today, when I discovered quite by accident that I somehow missed last year's NBC TV Movie live-action remake. Featuring none other than Harvey Fierstein as Heat Miser, and Michael McKean as Snow Miser. (Both former Edna Turnblads in Hairspray on Broadway, by the way.) How bad could it be, right?

Pretty frickin' bad.

Thankfully, YouTube delivers, and I was able to watch the only scene I would have cared about. An now, I never, ever, ever have to watch it again.

If you didn't rip off your own corneas with your fingernails, go watch the original version.

My friends Lauren and Elaine just got a new puppy. Her name is Gromit, and she's already taken a shine to technology. (I've little doubt she wants to take a wee on that laptop.)

(Photo by Elaine)

I found this on Bear's Live Journal. It is the awesome.