Category: Sinus

What's Really Up

6/19/2014

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you know that I relapsed with my sinus infection from April. I didn’t know that was possible, but the doctor I saw told me that you really have to be diligent about taking care of yourself for up to a month after starting treatment for sinusitis to make sure you don’t relapse. I never knew that. I thought you were golden once the antibiotic was done, but that’s not the case. That would have been good to know two months ago. You learn new stuff all the time.

Writing wise, I’ve turned to promotion lately. The summer gets slow for this, but I have found a few things. I put Move on a summer sale at Smashwords through August 1. Go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/286425 and enter Coupon Code WW75A to get it for $1.50. I have a blog tour lined up for mid-July, and it’s also my way of thanking you for putting up with my miscellaneous ramblings while I work on the sequel to that novel. I hope to publish Obsidian by the holidays, so you can load up your phone/tablet apps or ereaders with a new offering for 2015. So get Move now, and now, and get ready for the adventure to continue in late 2014/early 2015.

The outside cat has a name! Rick and I finally found one that met all of our criteria and that we agreed on. The criteria was no Biblical names (because Rick said the girl name selection in the Bible is terrible) and nothing overused (in other words, we didn’t get 7 replies on Twitter that “I named my cat that too!”). The name we settled on is Genevieve. We’re calling her Gen. Now, her mission is to become the master of the woodland realm. In other words, stay back here near the house and out of the road, because if I have to haul her off the side of the road and bury her, I’ll be unhappy.

Before you ask, she’s not an Ollie replacement. She’s just around a lot and it made sense to have a way to identify her, and names are handy like that. She gets the supper scraps we put outside every night, and dry cat food on nights that we eat out. That’s life in the woods. Animals come, animals go, and that’s the circle of life. Rick is allergic to cats and we did encroach on their territory when we built out here, so we try to make their lives a little easier by providing some food here and there.

In other news, everything else is about the same. No news is good news, so I won’t complain. Really, there isn’t much to report since I’ve been sick this week. Oh well, a slow week never killed anyone. Nobody I know anyway.

That’s all today. Take care. Have a happy Friday tomorrow and a wonderful weekend.

Bye!

Yakkity Yak!

4/18/2014

Hi everybody, and welcome to Yakkity Yack. Basically, this means that I have nothing specific to blog about, so this entry will be a scatter shot of musings on this and that. I did an entry like this over at Conure Corner a few weeks ago called “Chatter With Chloe” and it seemed to go over well, so we’ll see if I can be as entertaining as my female sun conure is.

Spring fever has hit in the Southeast. Everything is turning green again, if you can see it beyond the yellow pollen haze. I’ll take some sinus drainage to see the world come alive again. Problem is, people don’t seem to be doing so well on the “paying attention” front. They’re driving as badly as they do over the holidays, and I’ve noticed a general decline in attending to and following instructions. I know you guys have better things to do than work and stuff, but that’s being an adult, folks. We don’t get spring break, summer break, and chances to shut the brain off. That’s called retirement, and if you aren’t there yet, then you’re SOL. Suck it up and keep at it. You’ll be glad you did later when you don’t have to correct or redo everything that should already be done. Or when you’re insurance is still nice and low because you didn’t have that wreck from pulling out in front of traffic like you usually do. Yea, you saw that car coming. You just thought you were bigger and/or faster. That’s as dangerous as putting money in the vending machines at work. It’s like playing the slot machines. Sometimes you win and get something out, sometimes you don’t and bam! Crash. Your money’s gone and you’re standing there saying “what the hell?”

So pay attention, follow the directions, and you’ll do well. You can use the time and money you save on buying a tablet or combination tablet/laptop device, and figuring out how the heck it works. That seems to be all the craze these days. Truth be told, I still use my laptop more than my tablet, because of my writing. The tablet is great for checking email and reading books, and it’s also good if you just need to get on the Internet or want to play games. Problem is, you can’t create and modify documents on a tablet, which drives me to the laptop a lot. I did look at the combination devices at Best Buy a few weeks ago, but I’m not impressed. Not that I can afford one anyway, but they need to upgrade and do some work on those before I’m in. Ditto on the SmartWatches. Rick has his eye on these, but I’m not interested. Frankly, my phone is the smallest screen I can handle. And I really wonder if those are going to get people wearing watches again. Maybe. We’ll see.

I’m not one to jump on trends. I like to keep my eye on things to see how/if they last and what improvements are made. Any first version of tech has bugs to work out, and later versions are generally better and faster. I know my Nexus 7 is faster than Rick’s iPad. All of us Generation X and older should remember the VHS and Beta thing, you know. Or 8-track tapes and cassette tapes. We learned early that what’s popular may or may not work out long term. Let’s remember that lesson.

Two things that have impressed me are ebooks and streaming video. Thank God for those, because I’m already running out of storage space for books and DVD’s, and the house is only six and a half years old. Digital anything makes me happy. The only thing is that sometimes, paperbacks and DVD’s can be cheaper than the digital versions. You really have to watch out for that one, especially when buying TV series or new books by traditionally published authors. So the bookshelves will stay in our home, but hopefully we won’t be filling them up as fast as we once did. I tell you, Cloud storage is probably the best thing to happen since antibiotics and the Internet.

So, Easter is upon us again. You know, I have a pretty big problem with Easter. The problem is that the holiday is more pagan than religious. Even as a child, I couldn’t understand what eggs and bunnies had to do with Christ’s resurrection – and then I grew up and realized that they had nothing at all to do with Him and are symbols of old pagan fertility rituals. Even the word “easter” is a translation of the original name of Austron (or Eostre), a fertility goddess with roots at least back to Babylon and perhaps even Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, no wonder that creepy bunny freaked me out! I know, it’s kind of like my objection to Christmas angels not being true depictions of angels because they’re really warriors and don’t have time to sit on top of your Christmas trees (which are also pagan symbols). You think I’m being ridiculous and don’t want to hear it. Well, fine. Have your egg hunts. And when the easter demon comes for us , he’ll find you first. Cause I know what that bunny really is. Cadberry, my butt! I’ve got a devil’s trap for that darn rabbit!

OK, rant over. I refer to it as “The Resurrection” and will refrain from my complaints. Until next Easter, at least. And if you’re still with me, let’s move on.

Let’s get back to the sinus and allergy problems. I’ve been pretty lucky, but others haven’t. There’s been a lot of sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy-head, fever, runny nose, watery eyes, why-can’t-I-have-bird-sinuses- instead going around (really, birds have a much more effective respiratory system – I envy Zack and Chloe that!). They say it was the brutally cold winter that caused excessive pollination. Too bad the meth heads inspired the politicians to make antihistamine/decongestants neigh on impossible to obtain. I swear, it’s harder to get Claritin-D (or anything-D) than it was with a prescription. Not only do you get treated like a criminal at the pharmacy for having sinus woes, but they never restock, especially Allegra-D. It’s a constant source of irritation for Rick, because that’s what really helps him. And yet we suffer while meth labs are still running. If the people in charge didn’t learn from Breaking Bad that the criminals will find other ways to make it, they’re as dumb as bricks. Lift the restrictions. They’ll just rob a train or something. And us law-abiding citizens will still be sneezing all over you.

I think most of us do the best we can, and that can work out alright. In the end, it’s best to know what is and isn’t your business, and tend to what’s yours. It might not be glamorous or fascinating. It may even be boring. But if you pray and do what’s right, you’ll be fine, both on the journey and in the end. You never go wrong by doing right. Turning tricks, laying traps, and weaving webs of deception are how so many people get and stay in trouble. Manipulation and deceit make for entertaining fiction, but in reality nobody’s got time for that. Webs tangle, obscure, separate, and destroy, but shooting straight keeps everything clear, whether you’re in the desert, the valley, or the mountaintop.

Well, I think that’s enough yakking for today. If you want to know what’s going on in my head, that’s it! I hope you enjoyed it, because I’ll be back in my own little world doing rewrites on Rearview Mirror next week (and trying to find a better title for it, too). Yea, we’re going back there again. It’s great fun for me, at least.

Take care, and have a great weekend.

Bye!

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