hrj

If you'd like to read the full entries from my blog's rss feed, rather than clicking though the links I post in my own account, here's what you need to do:

1. Go to the Dreamwidth feeds page: https://www.dreamwidth.org/feeds/
2. Where it says "Add Feed" and has a box for "feed url" paste in the following: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed
3. Click the "add feed" button.

Remember that I may not see comments posted on the rss feed entries, because there's no way for me to get notified of them. If you want to comment, please click through to the blog itself.

At some point in the future, I may find a way to export blogs automatically to Dreamwidth like I used to be able to do to Live Journal. But for now, this is the easiest way to read them.

ETA: Hmm, it looks like there should be an easier way to subscribe. If you go to the DW Alpennia feed page (https://alpennia-feed.dreamwidth.org) There should be a place up in the top header display that says "subscribe to this feed". If this works for someone, could you post a note here to confirm?

ETA (2018/04/16): I feel like I should note explicitly that I'm not regularly posting links to my Alpennia blog in this account. So if you're using Dreamwidth to follow my blogging, please use the RSS feed as detailed above. I sometimes post things here that are too informal or more personal than I want to put on the Alpennia website, so there will still be occasional content.

ETA (2020/04/15): Revised notional date to keep this at the top of the feed.

ETA (2025/04/15): One again revised the notional date to keep this pinned to the top of the feed.

The climate is definitely turning toward fall. For the last two nights I've layered on all the summer bed layers (sheet, empty duvet cover, plush blanket) and put on bed-socks as well. Today, I actually wore a jacket and gloves when biking! But I'm still holding out on turning on the thermostat and switching the bedding to the feather comforter.

I've also been contemplating unearthing my daylight alarm clock, because I hate getting out of bed when it's not quite light (if I don't have to -- and I mostly don't have to), but I'd like to get in the habit of getting the day started a bit earlier. That can wait a bit, since we're about to reset to standard time.

We're getting the brisk winds that make October such a nervous time (re: fires). I installed the Watch Duty app on my phone and periodically get notifications of semi-local events, but never close enough that I would ever need to be personally concerned. It will be interesting to see what El Niño does for the winter rainfall and snowpack.

I've started one of the knitting projects I picked up yarn for during the March Yarn Crawl -- the "pigeon sweater". I have some hopes of finishing it before the winter is over. Unlike my previous sock project, most of the pattern is straightforward enough that I can knit while doing other things.

I'm enjoying the (free) Tai Chi class I attend Monday mornings, with the understanding that I've made a one-sided bargain with respect to certain things. Like: I will not roll my eyes when things are described in a woo-woo fashion, because I understand that's part of the cultural tradition of the practice, but neither will I pretend to take them seriously. (I'm here for the exercise, not for a religion.)

The relatively loose "come as you are" structure of the classes generally works well. New people are welcome at any time and teaching is incremental with students learning one new movement at a time until the entire routine has been learned. Advanced students who have learned the entire sequence practice separately, refining technique and (well, I don't much know what else because I'm not in that group).

But this creates a certain bottleneck. On any given day, approximately 2/3 of the students are in the "advanced" group. Of the rest, a wildly variable proportion are brand new (1st-3rd class) versus in a "middle group" of students who have learned around 1/3-1/2 of the full routine.

Setting aside the advanced group, which is led by several assistant teachers, the primary teacher starts with the non-advanced students. The first few movements are taught in detail for the brand new students, going over instructions multiple times. Then the class proceeds through the following movements, taking extra time at any point when a movement is new for at least one student. This proceeds until every non-advanced student has learned at least one new movement for the week.

Once a student has learned their new movement, they're supposed to step to the back of the class and practice the sequence they've learned for the rest of the class period. Assistant teachers may join them to answer questions and coach. So the group actively being taught by the primary instructor gradually gets smaller across the class period until everyone has a new movement.

Now, depending on the number of brand new students (and thus the time spent on basic-basic coaching) and the distribution of progress among the "middle group" it's possible for nearly the entire hour to elapse before the more advanced non-advanced students get to learn their new movement. In the mean time, they can either follow along with the intermediate teaching (which can be useful to reinforce technique) or practice the parts of the routine they've learned, among themselves, sometimes doing peer-coaching. More rarely getting some coaching from the assistant teachers.

The attrition rate hits hardest on the brand new students. I'd say that maybe one in ten is still coming after the first couple lessons. There's also significant attrition among the 5-15 lessons group, leaving a fairly small number who are in the "middle group"--fairly committed but still adding movements. At a very rough estimate (and not necessarily representative) I'd say that today there were maybe 20 advanced students, 8 "middle group" students, 10 with a couple lessons under their belt, and maybe 6 first-timers. (Other weeks there have been up to a dozen first-timers.)

At this point I've ended up one of the more advanced "middle group students, with 1 or 2 regulars who are a couple moves ahead of me. I'm on movement #26 out of 37. That means there's a significant gap where there ought to be more "advanced middle group" students who are almost done learning the whole sequence. I haven't quite figured out the dynamics of this, though there are multiple possible explanations.

Today, the middle group was pretty much left to our own devices and I got some compliments from the others on being able to lead and demonstrate for the others. (With some cautions like "I still have no idea what my hands are supposed to do on this one.") Chatter has determined that mostly what I have going for me is actually practicing every day. LOL. That and having bought a copy of the lesson book, so I can check and correct my own form during practice. But what can I say? Nature abhors a vacuum and Heather abhors a power vacuum.

Every once in a while, I get the urge to do something outside my standard routine. Sometimes it's triggered by a specific event (like my "fun day" on May 1 when I decided to get up before dawn to see the Morris dancers in Tilden Park). Sometimes the urge builds up slowly. Sometimes I'm lying there in bed thinking, "I want an adventure."

So Tuesday, while lying in bed, I checked the open hours for Muir Woods, made a parking reservation, and confirmed that the park was covered by my Senior Lifetime National Parks Pass. Then I threw some snacks, books, and art supplies in a backpack and headed out. (I was technically late for my parking window due to the approach to the Richmond Bridge being a parking lot for half an hour, but nobody cared.)

After hiking for a couple hours, I headed for one of the less-crowded picnic areas and ate lunch while reading a chapter in the current LHMP book, then headed back down to the cafe near the entrance. I'd taken a few pictures, some of them with an eye toward doing a watercolor. I have this cute little compact watercolor set and a pad of postcard sized card stock for painting. While I was working on the picture at the cafe, I got into conversation with the tourists at the next table (daytrip from their cruise ship out of Vancouver) and the woman liked the painting enough that I gave it to her as a souvenir. It's not like it was anything special and as I told her "for me, it's about the making, not the having."

Complete change of subject.

You know the one chronic thing about my body that annoys me the most? No, not the nerve damage in my leg. Not the lingering mobility issue in my wrist. It's the fact that my tongue is too large for my mouth and I regularly end up biting it. Of course, having bitten it, it gets inflamed for several days, making it even more likely to get bitten. And if I've bitten it solidly enough, I'm pretty sure that it gets just a little bit infected, because I can feel the lymph nodes around my jaw aching and my ear feels weird.

And there isn't really a damn thing I can do to prevent it. Sometimes I re-bite it while sleeping (or near-sleeping) and I suppose I could get a custom mouthguard to prevent that. (I've tried some over-the-counter mouthguards and they didn't do squat.) But usually the initial bite happens when I'm eating, and it's not like I can stop doing that. The worst is when I'm chewing something that has the same approximate texture as flesh. (Like, for example, flesh.) Because then I'm likely to have started a solid chew before I realizing I'm chewing myself.

The one small ray of light is that when the lower right back molar, which is an implant, finally decides to let go of its foundation (which my dentist has warned me it will do eventually, based on xrays of the bone) I can just leave the gap. I did that with the left bottom back molar when it cracked and had to be extracted and I never bite the left side of my tongue any more.

Bodies. What can you do?

Today my physical therapist certified me as "graduated." While my wrist mobility isn't 100% yet, I've plateaued on what intensive PT can do for me. I'll continue with the manual exercises for another month or so (which is more like 30 minutes a day rather than 4.5 hours), but the Medieval Torture Devices (MTDs) have been shipped back to the rental company, in time to avoid a third month's rent.

Let's see what I can do productively with all that time.

Yesterday I needed to drop by my credit union to deposit some cash. (Going to all these book events, plus never using cash to buy things has meant that my wallet was getting ungainly.) While I was there, I only meant to ask some informational questions about opening a separate checking account for my writing/publishing. Instead I ended up opening it on the spot.

A separate account for the business stuff makes sense from an accounting position, but unless income regularly exceeds expenses, it can get messy for day-to-day logistics. But I'd decided that the expected windfall from the Anthropic copyright class action settlement was a good triggering event. I'd have enough of a nest egg that I could order inventory and pay self-publishing expenses without needing to dip into "personal money" as the royalties and book sales income came in.

On the other hand, I just recently transferred $700+ from my business PayPal account (from book sales and royalties) into my checking account, which should properly belong in a separate business account, so I went ahead and set it up with that nest egg.

That means that starting in 2027 I should be able to track my Schedule C expenses via the Harpy Publications account. It won't make that much difference to my process, since tax accounting is done via the category tags in my integrated financial database. Rather than using a commercial product like Quicken, I set up a financial tracking system in FileMaker that I built from scratch. Of course, this means that now I need to add the programming for the new checking account. In theory, this will simply mean duplicating the programming for my regular checking account, only with different field labels. But I've run into some issues when I set up the systems for tracking my PayPal accounts that I haven't entirely solved yet. So I'm not completely confident that the process won't have hiccups.

It's still slow, regular progress. Today's anecdotal proof-of-improvement was that when I rest my chin on my formerly-broken hand (so that the wrist bends backwards) there's no resistance and no pain. I'm still working on the wrist supination and I still have to do a bunch of fist-pumping to be able to close my fist completely. I did a bunch of continuous typing on Sunday and found I was aching after a couple hours. (So maybe I should go back to doing more longhand-then-dictation.) I'm plunging into the yard work again, though sticking to fairly short stints. Today, the weather seems to have turned from summer toward fall, so that should help with getting the yard back into shape. (The other thing that will help will be when I'm not spending 4.5 hours a day doing physical therapy.)

Book Sales

This past Saturday was the (new) San Jose Book Festival with the usual Bay Area Queer Writers Association crew -- a very nice event, held inside a shopping mall (which is a pleasant change from outdoor heat). BAQWA will be representing at two more local pride events this coming weekend (Martinez and Emeryville). After that my last book sales event for the year will be at World Fantasy Convention in October, where I'm tabling with the Liminal Fiction crowd.

After that's done, I'll do a post (probably on my Alpennia blog) summing up my experiences with event sales for this first year when I've been prioritizing it. Overall, sales have been better than I worried they might be. (In fact I've probably had the best sales of anyone in the BAQWA group.) But my net income (subtracting out table fees, financial processing fees, and cost-of-goods) has been highly variable due to radical differences in table fees. (And, of course, I'm not counting in any mileage costs or my time.)

In my usual data-nerdish way, I've been experimenting with several ways to track book sales data, which results in a certain amount of redundancy. There's the inventory database, which tracks all books in and out (even if they aren't technically "sold") and which I've expanded this year to itemize things like sales tax collected and electronic payment processing fees. (Some of my fellow BAQWA members think I'm silly for being all official with a business license and resale license and all, but since I'm working on setting up a sales portal on my website, it's best to have everything taken care of. Besides, I genuinely believe in the value of these parts of civic life.) Then there's the summary per-event table that also tracks tabling fees and calculates out the net per-event income (as well as providing a worksheet for submitting my sales tax report).

But separately, for each self-publishing project, I'm keeping a log of expenses and income. (I'll probably drop this at some point if I don't consider it valuable, but it's easier to maintain from the start than to reconstruct later.) This is all separate from the business-related data crunching I do for income taxes, though it helps sort out some of the details. (E.g., while the basic bank accounts database does the first cut on business expenses, I'll need the more granular data for things like "bank processing fees.")

I'll get to make use of a lot more of my potential business deductions this year to offset my expected income from the Anthropic settlement. (I generally pick only one major convention every year to deduct. Enough to get me under the self-employment tax threshold, but not so much I ping the IRS's "this is a hobby, not a business" radar.) Who knows, maybe some day, if I publish enough books, I can meet my stretch goal of having my writing entirely pay for my convention habit.

[Note: details of this post are from memory and may include minor inaccuracies.]

An interesting conjunction of events.

On Tuesday, my phone abruptly no longer had a working signal. Yesterday, after some troubleshooting and several hours at the local AT&T store, the problem was fixed: it turns out when I'd asked them to removed my iPad from my wireless account, they removed my phone instead (leaving the iPad as the only item on the account).

Fixing the problem meant that, several hours later, my phone was once again operational when my nephew -- having only my phone number handy of all the west coast family -- called to let me know that my brother Randy had suffered a massive heart attack earlier that day and died.

For those who take small comforts in such moments: it happened when he was on stage in the middle of dress rehearsal for a play at his beloved Railroad Square Playhouse. (He had bought the theater complex and refurbished it, in part, so that the various theatrical projects he was involved in would have a place to play.)

Randy was an amazing person. For those of you who look at my projects and think, "How in the world do you do so many things?" Well, that's how I felt about Randy.

He began with a career in computer science, teaching at various institutions of higher learning, eventually splitting a professorship with his then-wife at Colby College in Maine, where he was living when his son Ben was born.

But in the mean time, while at Ann Arbor, he and a group of colleagues founded an artificial intelligence consulting company -- not the current faddish "let's steal other people's work and build a stochastic parrot" type of AI, but "learnable systems" and complex responsive interactive programs. This became Soar Technology and, in parallel with his teaching and research, he became a public face of the company in addition to one of its star developers, presenting at conferences and pitching the company to potential clients.

Later, when the position at Colby was eliminated, he took up Soar duties full time. But Randy had also developed a love of amateur theater, especially musicals (despite growing hearing loss that eventually resulted in getting cochlear implants). He regularly participated in productions in Waterville, Maine and, much later when the theatrical group lost its usual performance space -- and having some money lying around from his part-ownershp of Soar having been bought out -- he purchased an multi-function theater complex in Waterville and began refurbishing it as a performance space, not only for live theater, but for other small-scale projects. (It's much more complicated than that, but this is high-level.)

He was in there with carpentry and sound systems and negotiating to rent out parts of the venue and being landlord to a small adjoining commercial complex that he'd bought in order to secure the parking lot that the two buildings shared. But wait...there's more.

When Randy married the love of his life, Lisa (his ???fourth??? marriage -- we joke that he was taking care of the average number of marriages for the whole family) they both had a dream of building a custom-designed house on a piece of rural property on Togus Pond. So he designed the house (I think from combinable design templates) and worked in partnership with professionals to build it. Followed by an unending series of minor building projects on the property to fulfill Lisa's visions for a life filled with gardens and livestock and then a second residence for some of Lisa's family (whom Randy embraced as his own).

I've left out so many things. His love of music. The way he supported my parents through our mother's cancer. (They had moved out to Maine to be near their only grandchild -- who is now married with a child of his own.) His enthusiasm for firing up the smoker to make pulled pork for visitors, even when it meant wading through the snow on the deck in the dead of winter. His tireless belief that he could logic friends on the internet out of supporting the current regime. And so much more.

When I took a trip out to NYC this past January, due to an intersection of several events, I included a trip up to Maine to finally see the Waterville Station playhouse complex that I'd heard so much about, and to have a chance to visit when it wasn't the entire Jones clan descending upon him (as we so often did over the years). I will treasure that memory, along with all the others.

Today's physical therapy appointment confirmed my subjective impression that I've been making steady progress on the range-of-motion front. For two of the three positions for the Medieval Torture Devices, I'm getting close to maxing out the adjustment. I knew grip strength was improving, based on the squeeze-ball action.

So now I'm off all official restrictions for activity and am limited only by returning muscle strength and remaining motion issues (mostly wrist supination). Tomorrow I'm going to add working with my 5lb hand weights to the mix. Eventually I'll return to using the gym machines.

We're hoping that at my next appointment in two weeks there will be enough improvement to ditch the MTDs. The rental is on a full-month basis and that would allow me to return them before the third month kicks in.

Worldcon is being enjoyable. It's hot and humid, which mostly is only a factor when walking between the Hilton (my hotel and the hotel where some programming is located) and the convention center (where most of the programming and the dealers/art/displays are). I packed assuming excess air conditioning, which is a successful tactic when I'm indoors, but less so when walking between, going to offsite food, or hanging out in the large "lanai" courtyard around which the room parties are arranged. I don't know that I'll wear all the nicer outfits I brought, but I'll wear some of them.

My original hotel roommate cancelled at the last minute due to life complications, but I was able to pick up a replacement who had originally been planning to commute and was finding that sub-optimal.

The online "Introverting at conventions" panel went well.

My reading was thinly attended (two people who came specifically for it and 2-3 who stayed over from the previous reading) but since it was scheduled in early evening I'm not surprised. What does surprise/confuse me is how my readings (in general, not just this one) often seem to attract a majority-male audience. Not exactly who I think I'm targeting. Don't get me wrong -- I'm delighted with my male fans. But it makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong with respect to my female fans.

I regularly dither over whether to sign up for an autographing session. It's useful for letting people know I'll be in a specific place/time to say hi, but let's be honest, I'm a c-list author, which is why I get scheduled for a 9am slot. But a friend dropped by to chat and stayed for he whole hour, and a couple other people dropped by. One was collecting signatures in an autograph album and also accepted one of my free chapbooks. The other was a random guy who ended up buying a copy of Related-ivity! (I've hand-sold three copies so far and a fourth is spoken for when we connect. Another person will be hunting down one of the copies at Larry Smith Books. So I'm doing rather well on that end.)

My online table talk (kaffeeklatsch, whatever) was cancelled due to no one signing up. I can't say I'm entirely surprised, but I am disappointed.

Otherwise, socializing has been enjoyable. The in-house dining options are friendly for casual connections. I got take-out for yesterday dinner and sat at a table in the lanai courtyard that turned into an energetic full-table conversation on everything from quantum physics to linguistics.

Today I have two in-person panels and will be daring to over-dress a little in honor of that.

Official release day today. Here's the universal book link page: https://books2read.com/b/31zplW

I'm still working on getting more links added. The page was being picky about me adding links manually the last time I tried, so I guessed it might be an issue with the book not being live yet and decided to wait to try again. But it's released through Draft2Digital and has a paperback through Ingram, so it should be available through all the standard outlets.

It's funny: My first two commercial self-publishing projects have both been ones where I'm not counting on actual commercial success. Skin-Singer both because story collections are tricky and because the majority of the contents are previously published. The Theory of Related-ivity because it's an extremely niche interest. This takes a lot of pressure off worrying about how well they'll sell, but it also means I don't have a good metric for what to expect with an actual first-release novel. (We're a long way away from anything like that happening, because the top priority for novels is the next Alpennia book, which I assume will be a Bella release.)

When I was first working on Related-ivity, I wasn't necessarily thinking about publishing it as a book, just as the blog series. But as it got longer, as the footnotes became a more significant part of it, and as I thought about how ephemeral attention to blogs are, I pretty much thought "why not?" Also, since D2D now has an annual threshold requirement for income to avoid the "maintenance fee" they added (to fight AI publications), every little bit of income helps. I didn't make the threshold this year, but maybe next year? I really need to promote Skin-Singer more online. It sells well at in-person events but I'm really bad about doing online promotions.

When I'm doing the PT sessions with my Medieval Torture Devices, it's absolutely essential that I be able to distract myself with tv, so I've been finding new shows to binge that have episodes in the 30-60 minute range. (The total PT takes about 90 minutes. I don't want to get involved in a movie, but I'm ok with hanging out to watch the end of an episode.)

I'm currently subscribed to BritBox which has been offering up some fun mystery series. My latest binge was "Hamish MacBeth" which had a delightful blend of humor, light fantasy (in the "could be coincidence" vein) and the occasional tear-jerker.

Currently I'm watching a show on Apple TV that isn't in my usual wheelhouse, but has the hope of being angry-satisfying (in a "fantasy of justice" sort of way) as well as having a complex time-braided storyline of a sort that I find fun to watch. "Bad Sisters" could easily be triggering to some, because it focuses on a group of sisters trying to dispose of an extremely toxic, emotionally abusive, manipulative brother-in-law. It's comedy, while also being an uncannily solid portrait of a particular type of personality. The type you want to punch repeatedly in the face. Or maybe murder. Which is the point of the show. In the process there are comedic hijinks, hilarious screw-ups, and the sort of embarrassment you get when everyone has personal secrets and will do almost anything to avoid having honest heart-to-heart conversations with their nearest and dearest. It's a very weird show. There aren't really good guys but there's one very very bad guy, and since the show opens at his funeral it's easier to make it through all the awful things he does in the flashbacks.

Getting my new internet equipment set up was both simpler and more annoying than expected. Here's a brief tour.

Equipment showed up late Monday

Decided to do my usual bike/coffee-shop routine (flanked by PT) so it was late afternoon before I began the set-up process. Per instructions, downloaded the "smart home" app and logged in to my ATT account.

The set-up instructions claim the app will provide you an "install equipment" button which will then lead you through the process. The "install equipment" button briefly flashes on screen as the app automatically logs you in and then is no longer visible or accessible. A search through every menu in the app fails to find any other method of getting the set-up instructions.

I called the "dedicated help line for ATT Internet Air" that was provided to me on my service call a week ago. The number is no longer in service and re-directs to the regular service phone number. That number offers a call-back appointment the next day. I hang up.

Now we're up to today. First thing, I called the ATT service number. "Call volume is unusually high, but we can give you a call-back in 15 minutes." OK. I have my phone and headset standing by. The call-back appears on my Apple Watch and I hit "accept". I can hear the ATT agent talking but evidently she can't hear me through the watch. She hangs up. I call service once more at they project a 10 minute wait time. I stay on the line this time.

I manage to short-circuit being told to do the set-up things that I already know won't work and describe my process history to the agent. He says, "Oh, it's just plug-and-play, there's no special process." Evidently the special installation instructions which have to do with verifying the optimal location in your house for the device are mostly unnecessary. We stay on the line while I plug in the device and verify that it's worki...oops. Got a signal then lost it. Reboot.

This time I got as far as logging in to the network on my laptop. Worked fine for about 5 minutes, then as we were moving on to the "register your device" step, the connection was lost again. Reset. No further drop-outs. Started the process to register my device (so it shows up in my ATT account) but -- as I eventually figured out -- every step in the online process has a lag time of about half a minute from pushing a button to getting to the next screen. By the time I figured this out and completed the process, I had let the agent go (after almost an hour on line). Did finally manage to register my device.

The next step is to change the new device's name and password to the ones I'd used for my old device. This will enable all my connected devices to switch over without the need for a new log-in. This actually worked as promised. Yay.

I still haven't placed my new device in its final location. At the moment it's standing in front of my tv, which is suboptimal. The instructions suggest that being behind an appliance can interfere with the signal, but I may try that anyway, since there's plenty of room behind the tv.

I have a different idea for a final state. My media center is an electronics cabinet with the big screen tv on top of it, flanked by two tall IKEA cabinets. I've been thinking for some time about using the space above the tv by installing a shelf between the cabinets. One thought has been to move my book "brag shelf" there, rather than being on the mantle over the fireplace. It would also be an optimal location for the internet device. Today I went off window-shopping for a shelf solution that would fit the space. There's room for a 24x48" shelf above the tv. (I wouldn't want one that doesn't go the full depth because that would ensure that things would fall off the back side.) But I'm not excited about supporting it with brackets that screw into the sides of the standing cabinets. I don't know how well they'd stand up to it. What I envision would be some sort of support structure shaped like this:

__ __
| |
|________|

that would rest on top of the tall cabinets (so I don't have to drill holes in them) with the shelf sitting on top of it. But this feels like it would involve metal fabrication. Alternately, perhaps a structure with horizontal beams across the top of the cabinets and three U shaped supports coming down from it. Like this;
_________________
| | |
|_____|_____|

Maybe I could do some nice woodwork on the visible side. Make use of all those power tools I have lying around. But as I was window-shopping possibilities, it occurred to me that I don't want to start any of this until I have full use of my hands again. So there's plenty of time to do more design work.

My normal (hah) daily routine is being disrupted by All The Online Things Happening In Sequence. Today I watched two panel discussions that are part of the Bookstore Romance event, with a third happening tomorrow. (There are more than these three, but they're the ones I'm interested in.) Today was also the monthly Bay Area Queer Writers Association business meeting. Tomorrow, in addition to my regular historic textile geeks group chat and the SFWA online writing date, there's one of the online events I signed up for during the Romancing the Vote fundraising auction. (I think I also signed up for a second RtV online thing, but I don't think it's been scheduled yet.) So between all those and my PT sessions, there's no chunk of time for a bike ride, much less bike + coffeeshop writing session.

All the zoom events in a row also means my wrist is going to compete with my laptop for the cold packs I keep in my freezer. Zoom makes the laptop run hot, and if the ambient temperature is above a certain point, I need to slip an ice pack under it to keep it from freaking out.

So far, accessing the internet via phone tethering doesn't seem to have been a problem for the zoom stuff, though when I don't have my own video on, it doesn't stress the laptop quite as much. But I'll still be glad when my new internet box shows up.

Bicycled to my regular PT appointment this morning, just to celebrate the fact that I *can*. Measurements showed 5% improvement on all my metrics since last time which evidently is satisfactory especially given that I didn't use the MTDs for most of last week. I confessed to my PT that I've been doing 20 minutes sessions for each position with the MTDs rather than the prescribed 30 minutes (because that's how long I can stand it) and she was ok with that. She also noted that although the manual PT app logs my sessions, she doesn't look at that data and offers no judgment. I mean, it makes sense that the incentive is improvement, not official approval, but I suspect that for some people the expectation of surveillance is a useful incentive.

I'm lifting heavier things with my off arm and doing more routine manipulations without awkwardness. Won't be totally off weight restrictions until the end of the month, at which point I'll ask about returning to using the weight machines at the gym. (Only about half the ones in my routine involve the arms, but I haven't been doing partial routines--just some treadmill to make up for the biking.)

It occurred to me at some point that all this embodied experience of recovering from arm injury will be quite useful in writing Barbara's journey in Mistress of Shadows, where she's dealing very intensely with the long-term consequences of her gunshot injury. I'd already been including some details but there's no substitute for personal experience. (Different injury, but many things can carry over.) Of course, she has the advantage of having a specific person to blame for the whole thing, even if she's been forbidden to take direct revenge...

I spent the last week in Orlando FL for the Golden Crown Literary Society conference (lesbian/sapphic publishing). I attended in 2014 and 2015 when my novels were first coming out and had such an unsatisfactory experience that I hadn't been back until now. This time the experience was more satisfactory, largely because I adjusted my expectations, and to a lesser extent because I applied more of my "introvert-at-the-con" techniques. It's still basically an insular "family reunion" sort of event, but I got more value out of it this time and plan to return because I'm laying the ground for more self-publishing and especially for the eventual LHMP book.

Traveling meant I went back to doing manual physical therapy (because the Medieval Torture Devices (MTDs) absolutely don't pack well). I was a little worried that I wouldn't make the desired level of progress, but I think I did ok. I've revised my plans for Worldcon and plan to do manual there as well, largely because I simply can't fit the MTD schedule in around a convention. Tomorrow I'll have my regular PT appointment and see how the progress goes.

I'm back on my bike! I got the ok at my last PT appointment but waited until after the trip to start up again. My grip is strong enough for the brakes, though I need to take a non-standard angle for doing the left-hand shift lever (between the lower and higher sets of gears). It's always been a bit on the stiff side to shift up, and I'm not managing with my thumb alone currently in standard position. But if I get a different angle so I'm pushing in line with my arm, I can manage it.

I've been having an assortment of tech annoyances. My Peet's Coffee app isn't recognizing my balance or points (although the barista confirmed they're there in my account). I'll try deleting and reloading the app.

More annoyingly, last Wednesday, while I was out of town, I got a text that my internet was out. Usually this is due to squirrel nests in the junction boxes, but that normally happens in rainy season. In any event it was still out when I got home. A couple tries at cycling the power or hitting the reset button had no effect and the online troubleshooting was no help. So I fought my way through the useless chatbot to eventually get a human being. (The human connection was not without frustrations as the combination a muffled connection, my auditory processing disorder, and her slight accent meant I spent a lot of effort on "let me repeat back to you what I understand you to have said.")

What it comes down to is there's an issue with the wiring. I'm on the old-fashioned copper wires. ATT is switching over to fiber and/or "internet air" (which presumably is functionally a personal wifi repeater for a wireless signal). So they aren't repairing issues with the copper wiring any more. Since an Internet Air account will cost me about a third of what I was paying previously, I have no serious qualms about switching except for the week it's going to take them to ship the equipment. (I'll get a discount off my bill, but that's a long time to rely on cafe internet and phone tethering.)

Oh, and the internet being out means I need to carry a garage door thingie when bicycling rather than being able to rely on my app. Sigh. The hazards of appifying one's life.

On the up side, I've been introduced to a new online game. Outlier (https://playoutlier.com) is an anagram-type game that gives you a grid of 25 letters (may include multiples--you can only use each displayed letter once in each word) and rewards you for how uncommon the ten words you find are. For particularly rare words, it tells you how many other players have ever used that word. My unique finds for today (though others may have found them after I played) are: onager, frumenty, trilby, and abominates. I suspect that you can get rarity points more easily for longer words.

I will eventually get tired of grumping about my physical therapy, but I need to let off steam and I'm less likely to get annoying unwanted advice here than on facebook.

The schedule is really onerous. That's it. That's the main complaint. I'm bleeping exhausted because even though I'm usually sitting in my recliner for the PT, the discomfort makes it impossible to relax. And then if I'm going to get anything productive done, it gets squeezed in between the sessions. And "anything productive" generally involves typing, which is also mildly painful (but also good as PT). So all in all I'm more exhausted now than I was with the manual PT, which at least was no more than half an hour sessions (3x per day).

I'll have a bit of a reprieve on my Florida trip, since I'll temporarily return to manual PT. Which is good because I want to enjoy the conference too.

Had another update with my physical therapist, with feedback based on 2 days use of the medieval torture devices. (I'd abbreviate that to MTD, but I'd have to explain it every time.) Still making better-than-expected progress. I whined a bit about the amount of time the MTDs involve and she acknowledged that I was secretly asking for her to say it was ok to only do two sessions a day rather than three, but she wasn't going to give me permission for that. We laugh regularly over meta-communication.

This time I brought a photo of my bike to ask again for permission and she was like, "Oh! Yes, that's totally OK! I just had no idea what "recumbent" meant." It's going to be a challenge to combine the MTD sessions with biking, and I think I'm going to wait until I'm back from Florida to start again. But that will be nice.

The logistical challenge will probably mean aiming for getting out of bed earlier. Do 2 hours of PT, then bike for an hour, then coffee shop writing for 2 hours, then bike for an hour, then it'll be time for my afternoon PT session. At the end of the day, the trick is to start the PT early enough that my phone/watch doesn't go to sleep before I'm done, making the timer inaccessible. (Yes, I could just change my programmed bedtime, I suppose.)

The MTDs--for all that the session is completely static--make me tired. I kept almost nodding off during my breaks between devices. But I will endure.

Met up with a former co-worker for lunch yesterday to get caught up on all the gossip. It sounds like the department is doing ok. They hired several new headcount including a couple people with solid experience. Some interesting changes on the production front, but ones that make sense--and I can afford to be neutral about them. Good to hear that the clinical production of the Parkinson's treatment is going well. (We hadn't quite gotten to the stage of treating actual patients yet when I left.) That is--I have no idea how the patients are responding (and since it's clinical trials, it may be that no one does yet), but on the production side it's going well.

1. The Theory of Related-ivity has a universal book link! https://books2read.com/u/31zplW You can pre-order the ebook at several possible outlets already with more to come. Paperback ordering is still pending. Publication date is Aug 25.

2. The medieval torture devices for my arm were delivered today, with a demonstration of proper usage. So I get to spend three two-hour sessions with them each day. Ugh. I think this means suspending my gym sessions for the interim, just to get the timing right. (Basically, first thing in the morning before my writing session, mid-afternoon, and evening.) The instructions are to adjust the device to "mild discomfort" as opposed to the manual PT which is briefer sessions at "slight pain." I won't be taking them to GCLS with me because they're very bulky, but I'll get a week in before that.

3. Other than a couple things that happen on specific days this week, I've completed all the tasks, preparation, and contacts needed for both of my August conventions. (Other than actual packing.)

4. Worldcon asked for a brief description of what people intend to read at their readings, so I took the daring step of listing my first-draft short story about the harpy moonlighting as a muse. Yes, I've actually written something new this year, though I tend to forget that (and have no idea what I might want to do with it).

5. Worldcon gave me a virtual "table talk" which could either be a fun chance to chat with people who aren't able to attend in person, or could be a really depressing session of me sitting in my hotel room in front of an empty screen. (At least with in-person table talks, there's the option of merging with a similarly low-attended neighbor.) I guess I'll have to do a lot of talking it up. Sooooo not my comfort zone. (Amusingly, my panel "An Introvert's Guide to Surviving Conventions" is also virtual, which is an interesting choice given that the ideas for introverting in person are quite different from introverting virtually.)

(Worldcon schedule will be posted on the Alpennia website when we get the ok to do so.)

Tired of me posting about my recovery and PT? Today I'm going to talk about the non-linear process of setting up a self-published book. The details I'll describe apply to the specific tools I use (Velum for content formatting, Draft2Digital for distribution, and various methods for creating the cover art).

Aside from the actual contents of the book, there are several key pieces of data necessary to complete this process:
* ISBN(s) -- included on copyright page, optionally on back cover, generated by Bowker
* Price (hard copy only) -- calculated by D2D based on size and page count, required by Bowker, optionally included on back cover
* Cover specifications -- calculated by D2D based on size and page count, required to create cover art
* Cover art -- required by D2D prior to generating cover art template (see the problem?), optionally uploaded to Bowker, optionally requires having ISBN and price

Are you getting the picture about everything being a pre-requisite for everything else? Fortunately, almost all these processes can be revised prior the the final go-live. So here's what the overall process might look like.

1. Assign ISBN(s) in Bowker. Wait on uploading cover. Enter estimated price.
2. Add ISBN(s) to book text in Velum and generate formatted files. Upload book file(s) to D2D. (These can be updated later if necessary, as long as the page count doesn't substantially change.)
3. Create dummy cover art. It should be an image of the words "dummy cover art" just to make things clear. Upload to D2D.
4. Have D2D generate a cover art template. (The key parameter is the width of the spine, since you'll have selected the basic dimensions already.) At the same time you can get the suggested hard copy price.
5. Create the cover art, optionally including the ISBN (for the hard copy) and the price on the back cover.
6. Upload the cover art to Bowker and adjust the price.
7. Update the cover art in D2D to the actual version.

Mind you, this is only the second time I've done this process. I may find a better workflow after I've done it a few more times.

Oh, and the current project is the book version of The Theory of Related-ivity, which I'll have out by Worldcon next month. (I love a deadline.) I honestly have no idea how many people will be willing to pay for this thing. The book version has substantial updates from the original blog series, but it also has and annoying formatting issue. The ebook format doesn't do footnotes, only end-of-chapter notes. So if you're the sort of person who likes to glance at the footnotes as you go (and many of my footnotes are meant to be read as you go), then you'll want the hard copy. But the graphs in the hard copy are b&w only (cost restrictions) whereas the e-book has lovely color-coded graphs. (I worked really hard to come up with graph formatting that would work for both.) So if you love staring at graphs (and my graphs are meant to be stared at) then you'll want the ebook. Obviously the answer is to get both.

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