Working as a dental assistant has been harder than I thought.

Today a man walked in and asked for multiple rows of teeth.

"Like a shark," he said, "but don't worry, I can sharpen them myself."

"Uh, we don't have the technology for that," I told him, "would you like to schedule a teeth cleaning session?"

"Nonsense," he replied, "We grow a second set of teeth for adulthood, right? Right? There must be some signal the body gets that makes it start growing that set of teeth. Simulate that, just find out what triggers it, what hormones or stem cells or whatever, and do that again like the first time. And then a few more times, so I'll have multiple rows. Like a shark."

"You'd be in constant pain, then, wouldn't you?" I replied, foolishly trying to reason with him, "Remember how much it hurt when you were a kid?"

"It would be worth it," he insisted.

"Also, your insurance plan doesn't cover demented experimentation."

"Look here!" he said, pounding a fist into the countertop, "I said I want multiple rows of teeth, not excuses. If you can't do this for me, I will go home and play Oregon trail. And name the characters after you. And keep playing the game really really badly until you get dysentery for realsies."

Whoa. Oregon Trail sympathetic hoodoo curses. Working as a dental assistant has been harder than I thought.

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Smart brain. Of course Danilaw likes 20th century rock music. First of all, it's a worldbuilding point (which I will not spoiler.) But if he speaks archaic English, however haltingly, it also lets him talk to the people on the generation ship, now doesn't it?

1629 words on Grail today--just over quota, but as soon as batwrangler gets here, I have to go to New Jersey. This is my last commitment for a good long time, though, and I'm looking forward to crawling into my hole and pulling it closed after me until I get a couple of these damned books written and revised.

The more accomplished I become as a writer, and the more confident I am in my skills, the worse my drafts get. In a lot of ways, this thing I am writing looks very much like a really elaborate outline. It's full of bracket notes that say things like [show don't tell] and [make these characters' voices sound different]. I'm choosing to believe that this is because my subconscious has accepted that there will have to be heavy revisions once I figure out what the book is about, and the only way I have ever been able to figure out what the book is about is to work through it.

Sometimes I outline. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I go back and outline stuff I've already written to see where it's going and get some distance on it. Sometimes I write out of order and sometimes I'm linear. Sometimes I scribble bits of scenes on scrap paper. There are no rules, only tactics that work or do not work.

Lately, my process seems to involve writing all sorts of sketchy things, bits and fragments and scribbles--and then later constructing a narrative out of them. This would terrify me, except I already did this on Chill and Bone & Jewel Creatures, and the final drafts of both books strike me as rather decent work.

Mean things: fears of the Other, barbarians, fretting by the phone.

16640 / 100000 words. 17% done!

Looks like last night's perfomance was enugh, and the Mrs. will be discharged tommorow morning.

Mom-in-law is at the house, and I'm taking the Wheel-Watch.

She's back on her meds, so she's a little woozy and she's resting now.

New roommate in (I have enugh roomie stories for a whole post.) I wish they'd stop arguing so she can rest.

Of course just as I typed this the EEG alarm just went off and the nurses had to wake her up to test her awareness.

Shhhh

-Weer'd Beard

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2:00 PM, plus or minus, and the world grows darker.  I think I'm gonna plunk myself in front of the TV football games with a jug of Jack Daniels . . .

Hi Ladies,

I've had my paragard for nearly a year with absolutely no problems until last night. My SO and I rarely have time for sexy time during our busy weeks, so last night we had quick, rough sex after a week without any sexual contact. I noticed that when he first entered me, there was a weird pressure-type feeling. Then, about 5 min afterwards, I got a HUGE piercing pain (to the right side of my uterus area) that spread to my guts and rectum. I was completely unable to move, had chills, and was light headed. The pain was so intense that I crawled into bed and fell asleep. I woke up two hours afterwards with the same stomach pains, but my cramps had subsided considerably to less-than-menstrual-cramp level. The only time that it really hurt in my uterine area was when I went to the bathroom. My past period was on time but "strange" in that it was just spotting, which is not normal for me (usually it's like opening the flood gates! Yikes!) so I took 2 pregnancy tests 1.5 and 2 weeks after the weird period, and both are negative. I think this sufficiently rules out ectopic.

Fast forward to today: I have tender breasts, the same urinary pain, pain with bowel movements... etc. These are ALL symptoms that match ovarian cyst rupture. However, I have not ruled out the possiblity of my IUD shifting. What do you think? Have any of you ladies had to deal with cysts/rupturing cysts? If I were in more pain I would head over to the ER but at the moment I feel like that's sort of overkill. I'm taking pain meds which manages my pain, and my stomach cramps are reduced to almost nothing. Thoughts? Advice? I'm so worried.

© Ольга Володина

Drink the Leaf Blood Orange Black. This one might be an acquired taste. http://www.teaviews.com/2009/11/14/review-drink-the-leaf-blood-orange-black/

Still processing the ending. Up until then, it's great stuff, but I'm not sure the abrupt change in tone entirely works.

On the other hand, Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris are beyond brilliant, and I did laugh, y'know, a lot.

Mostly, though, I want to see more of the Pink Pummeler.....

For anyone playing along at home, the case of Google v. Copyright proceeds.  Various links:

"Authors Guild" announcement:
authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/amended-settlement-filed-in-authors-guild.html

Commentary and analysis:
laboratorium.net/archive/2009/11/14/gbs_midnight_madness

One lawyer, knowledgeable on copyright issues, referred to the revisions as akin to rearranging the deck chairs on RMS Titanic . . .

"Show me the money!"

(I put "Authors Guild" in quotes as they have no basis to claim they represent me, or indeed any significant number of published authors.)