Day 219, realty and book

Tuesday, 7/9/2019

Started the day with a run, which felt not just normal but actually good. For an hour I worked on the book. Then it was time to drive to Tasso street to meet with Chuck.

There I met Sean, a tall, gangly guy with a wild blond hair and a gentle manner straight out of the 1960s. He’s employed by Deborah to house-sit for security. He’s been sleeping on the used McCroskey mattress and really likes it, so I suggested he talk to Deborah and buy it. (If he doesn’t, I’d just have to pay somebody to haul it.) When not house-sitting, Sean lives in the warehouse of a music store. He’s got a ten year old son in Munich and would love to go back to Germany, but he’s only just managed to qualify for SSI (bad back) and would lose it if he lived outside the U.S.

Aside from the mattress, there is very little left from the sale. All furniture is gone. The refrigerator is gone, and that pleases me; I had come to hate that refrigerator over the past six months and I’m glad it’s gone. Apparently they had trouble getting it out, having to remove not only the back door, but the refrigerator doors as well. But there’s a dusty space where it was. There’s yet another possible buyer for the washer/dryer coming Wednesday.

The only real surprise to me was that nobody wanted the Rorstrand dinner service. I really thought… well, what do I know. It was back on Day 6 that I started restoring it by ordering replacements for all the chipped plates. Then Denise didn’t want it. Just a surprise to me that nobody wants such a handsome, complete set. Well, I suppose it’s that anybody with a household, buys their dinner service early on, or gets it as a wedding present. And they don’t need another.

Chuck arrived and we went over the next steps. In order they are: To get Amy to take a quick look and decide what paint colors she wants; then to get the painting contractor scheduled. When the painting is done, or while it is done, get the area rugs removed. After the painting, to bring in a cleaner to polish the wood floors and clean everything. And then Amy does her staging. Last or nearly last will be to get Richard to apply a new layer of garden mulch, and maybe get someone in to power-wash the brick walks and porch.

Can all this get done in July? Doubtful, I think. Can it get done in August? It damn well better had, because on September 5 I am out of here for two weeks. I really, really want the house sale wrapped before September 1, and I need to push everyone for that.

After Chuck left, the guys from the fireplace contractor arrived, Jose and Noah. They opined that the only way to get electric ignition and a remote control, is to replace the burner and grate that is in place now. Their boss, Eric, is to send me a quote. They didn’t say how much it would be, but I’m predicting it will come in over $1200. Less than $2K I hope.

Back at C.H. I spent a couple more hours on the book. I resolved a nasty problem with cross-references. The publishing platform I’m using supports x-refs but I’m trying to use them within my end-notes file to do op.cit. references, that is, cross-references from inside one note, to another note. Their software wasn’t quite up to it, but I found a work-around and reported it on their user forum.

I am just about ready to generate a final, print-ready PDF, which I can then use to build a book on Kindle Direct or one of the other on-demand publishers, Lulu or Blurb. But I also need to prepare a separate PDF of the cover. To now, I’ve only needed a front cover because that’s all an e-text needs. But a print book needs also a graphic for the spine and the back cover. It will take a bit of creativity to generate those, working from the nice front-cover graphic I purchased way back when.

Ate supper alone at a table for one, reading, like a nerd. But dammit, by comparison, it is stressful to sit with other people and make conversation. Not difficult while I’m doing it, but in the moment of entering the seating area holding my plate of food, faced with the options of, A, going to one of the open tables and smiling and saying, mind if I sit here? and B, going to a small table on the side and sitting down alone and bringing out my phone and opening Kindle to read while I eat, well, A is more stressful and B, more relaxing. That’s being an introvert.

Day 217, half-busy Sunday

Sunday, 7/7/2019

As usual I wasn’t able to sleep past 6:15, but happily the Sunday paper was already under the door, half an hour ahead of the usual time. I made a cuppa and did the big crossword. Then I put the old subwoofer on the seat of the desk chair, and rolled the chair down the hall, into the elevator, through the maze to the garage and into the car.

I dropped the two items off at the Tasso street house, then went on to the old coffee shop in Midtown. I got there just as the cinnamon rolls were coming out of the oven.

There’s a nice Sunday morning, coffee and a cinnamon roll warm from the oven.

My plan was to go to Target to buy the stool mentioned yesterday, but I expected Target wouldn’t be open until, what, ten or so? But I got out Maps and checked and, hey! Target had just opened, at 8am! So off I went to Target in Mountain View, and by 9am I was back to C.H. with the stool in its flat box.

Now I started my laundry going, and then assembled the new stool and tried it out.

It is the correct height, and later in the day I spent about 3 hours all told sitting at the computer, and it was comfortable.

So by lunch time I had delivered items to Tasso, bought a stool, assembled it, and finished my laundry. I was going to the elevator in a happy glow of accomplishment and fell in with Craig and Diane on their way to lunch, and they invited me to sit with them. Nancy and Tom joined us later.

In the afternoon I finished editing chapter 8 and then edited chapter 9 of the book. One more chapter and I can generate a new PDF. After a few quality checks, I will be able to start the print-ready process through Kindle Direct, so that might happen next week.

I spent some time watching tutorial videos for my new favorite photo software, Affinity, and spent a little time with a game before retiring to the living room to watch TV.

Day 125, old stuff, museum, tools

Saturday, 4/6/2019

To kill time before going to the museum for the 12:00 tour, I read some more of my saved

work from 1985.

Parts are good; really good in fact. Unfortunately what I was good at, was working out the details of story backgrounds, the speculative technology and economy of some future time. I had worked out in detail what it might be like if there were human colonies on multiple nearby stars, with communications by laser, but physical transport only at small fractions of light-speed. Why would anyone travel, when a trip might mean being in a suspended animation pod for 40 years? I thought out a lot of unusual consequences.

Or, what’s a practical technology that allows regular passenger travel around our solar system? What would travel times be like; what would a passenger ship be like? I came up with some (I think) quite original ideas, worked them out in detail, and actually started what might be a young-adult story centering on such a trip. I’m keeping these notes, not tossing them.

Another folder is labeled “Fragments!” These were a writing exercise, to write the opening paragraphs of a story you’d like to read. Here’s one, a conventional story set in my birth-land of wet fir trees and tidal inlets:

The carcass of a frozen salmon made an awkward club; even so, Leslie managed three good swings with it before she lost her footing on the wet dock and fell sprawling amidst the shiny black shoes of the Sheriff and two deputies.

As I raced out toward them — the dock was linked floats that plunged and sloshed under my feet — I could see flashes of Leslie, a rubber boot, an arm in a maroon sweatshirt, behind a cage of khaki trouser-legs. Sheriff Townes was closing the second handcuff on her wrist as I reached the group.

“Tricky, they’re taking my boat!” she wailed as the deputies hauled her to her feet.

Would you like to read the rest of that story? So would I! but I had, and still have, absolutely no idea where it could go from there.

I tried fantasy as well. This one shows a strong influence of Samuel R. Delaney’s Return to Nevèrÿon series, which was new at the time:

Across a sodden field, a scrawl in black ink against a sky of plum and smoke, was a bare tree full of doves. The distant flock of them suddenly leapt into the air; their flutter caught Franla’s eye. As he turned to watch it, the spring wind threw a net of raindrops to patter on his leather hood and sting his bare calves. A line of riders was entering the field below the whirling doves. Some wore armor.

I carried that one on for another thousand words: Franla has just sold a flock of cattle to a dealer; he turns back to the village to warn the dealer and help hide the flock from being requisitioned for army rations. Hijinks ensue — or would have, could I have thought of any. But plot, actions, just came extremely hard for me. I hated sitting at the keyboard, cudgeling my wits trying to think up what happens next. Scenery? No problem. Future tech, future economies, even interesting people, all came easily and I could describe them in readable prose. But what those people would do in those settings — nunh-unh. And that’s what fiction requires.

So off to the museum to lead the

noon tour.

Yesterday I had a group of four; today it was over 30, although as usual with a big group, some peeled off early so I ended up with about 25 at the end, and they seemed appreciative.

Back home I found

a letter from Bernadine,

who had been looking through her mother Lolly’s photo collection and found several that featured Marian, from times in the 60s (probably) when she went camping with Lolly and her family in Yosemite. I had seen one of these in a tweet, and asked to see more. Bern enclosed the pics with a SASE.

I sat down at my computer and scanned them, touched them up, put them in the big folder of scans from last week (which I need to deal with shortly, so I can trash the slides). While the scanner was buzzing away I read another story from my 1985 work. I had completely forgotten that I placed two stories with Amazing Science Fiction magazine. I re-read the second one right from the pages of that issue of the magazine and damn, it was good. I re-read the manuscript of another, which was also very promising but unfortunately, was never finished. I still don’t know how to end it.

I copied the scans onto an SD card and included it in the return envelope with the pictures. Then I turned to another job,

triaging my tool collection

and putting the ones to keep into the new toolbox. This only took a couple of hours. Where I had duplicates, I put the more worn or rusty one in the old toolbox. Also there, tools for jobs I expect never to do again, like a plumber’s wrench, or an automotive 12-volt continuity checker.

Everything remaining is items I can imagine using when volunteering at a Repair Café or fixing some small item of my own. The new toolbox with everything in it weighs 38.4 pounds. I can schlep it but I wouldn’t want to schlep it far.

Somewhere in there I refilled the hummingbird feeders. Just about 1 cup of sugar remains in the canister, so the next refill will be the last.