![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Holy Expletive Deleted! It's July Already!
Jul. 5th, 2011 03:57 pmTime flies when you're having fun.
Or not.
I've recovered from my exciting medical adventures...mostly. I have very little stamina after my illness, and all that time lying around. It's easy to overdo it, to work a little too hard and then wind up exhausted enough that I do little or nothing the next day. It's a fine line to walk; if you don't do enough, you can't improve your fitness, but if you do too much it wears you out and you risk losing ground while you recover.
Occasionally, if I squat or crouch to do something and then stand too quickly, I get light-headed and dizzy. And my sleep schedule has been all screwed up, too. While sick in bed, and then while in the hospital, I slept, basically, when I was too tired NOT to sleep. The clock had little or nothing to do with it. So now that I'm on the mend, I've had real trouble sleeping when I should.
I'll go to bed and lie awake forever, tossing and turning, and rotating like a leg of lamb on a spit (prone, one my left side, supine, on my right side, over and over again). Or my feet dance. The thing is, I'm sleepy when I go to bed, but I'm unable to relax and go to sleep. I end up restless in bed or I get up for a while. I've been getting to sleep (again, when I'm exhausted) about 3 or 4 in the morning. Or one night recently, not at all.* Last night I finally managed to get to sleep around midnight-thirty or 1 a.m. and slept til morning. So I hope the worst is behind me.
In non-medical news...
Snippy and I attended a Fourth (Third) of July BBQ hosted by one of our gaming group up in Vancouver. A couple of other gaming group members were there, along with a few other people. It was small, but very enjoyable. We ate, we drank, we talked about games and gaming and movies and television, and generally had a wonderful time. Snippy provided homemade banana ice cream for dessert, which was a big hit. After dark we set off lots of fireworks.
We really enjoyed that party. It was a very pleasant, relaxed time.
On Monday Snippy and I had a lovely picnic lunch together. She asked me to arrange it, so I did. We abandoned our plans to picnic at Happy Valley Park, which was teeming with Fourth of July celebrants. We drove around, visiting Willamette National Cemetary (which a very peaceful place, and lovely), and then had our picnic at another park a few miles away. We sat in the shade, ate our sandwiches (and chips), drank our drinks, read our books, and had some nice, relaxed conversations. Plus, lemon tarts for dessert!
That was another very relaxed, enjoyable outing. Our ideal outing is a trip to the coast, to the beach; but this was almost as good, and a lot easier and cheaper and less time-consuming to achieve. We'll be doing it again, often. It gets us out of the apartment, and just doing that makes it easier to relax. There's sunshine (or shade) and fresh air--and a delightful absence of visual reminders of all the endless chores waiting to be done. It's easy to forget just how oppressive that constant (but often unconscious) pressure can be. Getting out and away from it all is a big help.
Thursday evening, Snippy and I will be gaming. It's the second session of a new GURPS steampunk-style game. We're revising her character (a voudun) and I'm swapping out my original character idea (a ghost) for something else entirely. I designed him by 3rd edition rules, but I can't afford him under 4th edition--plus, he just wouldn't be as much fun to play as I'd imagined. So I'm bringing in a minor Spanish noble, a spy for the Spanish government tasked to obtain magical/high-tech treasures for his masters, to aid Spain in becoming more of a power in the world. He's immortal, having drunk from the Fountain of Youth centuries ago.**
This weekend I'll be going to the coast solo for a four-day writing workshop. Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Rusch are teaching a workshop on writing blurbs, story pitches, back cover copy and other promotional text to help sell your stories/novels. As I am currently self-publishing, I think I can use all the advice and practice I can get. There'll be a lot of writing involved, so I spent the morning making sure my laptop would talk to my printer (I'll be taking them to the workshop), which required buying a USB cable. But now it's ready to rock and roll.
*Well, maybe a few brief catnaps, but I never remember them happening. I laid awake until the sun rose.
**But, of course, in classic pulp fashion, either the fountain itself or the treacherous and unstable route by which one may reach it, was destroyed shortly thereafter, so no sharing its bounty with my friends and relatives....
Or not.
I've recovered from my exciting medical adventures...mostly. I have very little stamina after my illness, and all that time lying around. It's easy to overdo it, to work a little too hard and then wind up exhausted enough that I do little or nothing the next day. It's a fine line to walk; if you don't do enough, you can't improve your fitness, but if you do too much it wears you out and you risk losing ground while you recover.
Occasionally, if I squat or crouch to do something and then stand too quickly, I get light-headed and dizzy. And my sleep schedule has been all screwed up, too. While sick in bed, and then while in the hospital, I slept, basically, when I was too tired NOT to sleep. The clock had little or nothing to do with it. So now that I'm on the mend, I've had real trouble sleeping when I should.
I'll go to bed and lie awake forever, tossing and turning, and rotating like a leg of lamb on a spit (prone, one my left side, supine, on my right side, over and over again). Or my feet dance. The thing is, I'm sleepy when I go to bed, but I'm unable to relax and go to sleep. I end up restless in bed or I get up for a while. I've been getting to sleep (again, when I'm exhausted) about 3 or 4 in the morning. Or one night recently, not at all.* Last night I finally managed to get to sleep around midnight-thirty or 1 a.m. and slept til morning. So I hope the worst is behind me.
In non-medical news...
Snippy and I attended a Fourth (Third) of July BBQ hosted by one of our gaming group up in Vancouver. A couple of other gaming group members were there, along with a few other people. It was small, but very enjoyable. We ate, we drank, we talked about games and gaming and movies and television, and generally had a wonderful time. Snippy provided homemade banana ice cream for dessert, which was a big hit. After dark we set off lots of fireworks.
We really enjoyed that party. It was a very pleasant, relaxed time.
On Monday Snippy and I had a lovely picnic lunch together. She asked me to arrange it, so I did. We abandoned our plans to picnic at Happy Valley Park, which was teeming with Fourth of July celebrants. We drove around, visiting Willamette National Cemetary (which a very peaceful place, and lovely), and then had our picnic at another park a few miles away. We sat in the shade, ate our sandwiches (and chips), drank our drinks, read our books, and had some nice, relaxed conversations. Plus, lemon tarts for dessert!
That was another very relaxed, enjoyable outing. Our ideal outing is a trip to the coast, to the beach; but this was almost as good, and a lot easier and cheaper and less time-consuming to achieve. We'll be doing it again, often. It gets us out of the apartment, and just doing that makes it easier to relax. There's sunshine (or shade) and fresh air--and a delightful absence of visual reminders of all the endless chores waiting to be done. It's easy to forget just how oppressive that constant (but often unconscious) pressure can be. Getting out and away from it all is a big help.
Thursday evening, Snippy and I will be gaming. It's the second session of a new GURPS steampunk-style game. We're revising her character (a voudun) and I'm swapping out my original character idea (a ghost) for something else entirely. I designed him by 3rd edition rules, but I can't afford him under 4th edition--plus, he just wouldn't be as much fun to play as I'd imagined. So I'm bringing in a minor Spanish noble, a spy for the Spanish government tasked to obtain magical/high-tech treasures for his masters, to aid Spain in becoming more of a power in the world. He's immortal, having drunk from the Fountain of Youth centuries ago.**
This weekend I'll be going to the coast solo for a four-day writing workshop. Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Rusch are teaching a workshop on writing blurbs, story pitches, back cover copy and other promotional text to help sell your stories/novels. As I am currently self-publishing, I think I can use all the advice and practice I can get. There'll be a lot of writing involved, so I spent the morning making sure my laptop would talk to my printer (I'll be taking them to the workshop), which required buying a USB cable. But now it's ready to rock and roll.
*Well, maybe a few brief catnaps, but I never remember them happening. I laid awake until the sun rose.
**But, of course, in classic pulp fashion, either the fountain itself or the treacherous and unstable route by which one may reach it, was destroyed shortly thereafter, so no sharing its bounty with my friends and relatives....