Migraines make me stoopid

I mentioned yesterday that I lost a day to a migraine this week. I have learned how to keep the pain from being debilitating, so I can function somewhat, but I don't drive or operate heavy machinery when I have one. Baking is apparently on the list of banned activities now, too. I decided I wanted some scones to take camping. I whipped up a double batch in the evening and left them to cool overnight. The next morning I took one to have with my coffee and got a total of two bites down. I chalked the bitterness up to not having actually measured the lemon zest and composted the rest.

The thing with my migraines is that sometimes the stoopid stays with me for a couple days. It's like winter this year; it keeps hanging around in the background, stepping to the front occasionally just to make sure you know it's still here. I figured it was safe yesterday to try the scones again, but this time I was smarter. I did two separate batches, without lemon; one plain and one cinnamon. When they cooled, I broke the corner off one of the plain ones. It was bitter. Same with the cinnamon.

I took one of each with me when I went to load up food for the thing at church and asked the Boss if she had any idea what I'd done wrong. She pulled out her handy-dandy cookbook and saved herself the trouble of tasting them to diagnose. The recipe said baking powder. I used baking soda. Yes, I've known for a long time that they are not interchangeable. I've also known for a long time that baked goods usually need some baking powder. I figured I must have copied the recipe wrong, but I looked when I got home, and sure enough, it said baking powder.

Needless to say, not only will we not have scones in camp, it will probably be a while before I'm asked to make them at work again!

What's wrong with this picture?

I'd like to be able to say I'm having 'one of those days,' but it's more like 'one of those weeks.' Thankfully I got home in time to fix it and still be able to eat before evening commitments.

On the plus side, the Christmas tree is up and there are presents under it.

Math--not my strong subject

Last month, when I was setting up my writing spreadsheet, I copied my October page and pasted it into November, just like I do for every month. I decided on 500 words a day for the days I worked, gave myself a low word count for my birthday, and blocked out Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Then I divided the rest of the words between my off days, plugged in the numbers, and came up with a little more the 50,000.

I was sailing right along until last night. I got to the point where I had to scroll down to see the line for the day. That's when I found my mistake. November has 30 days, not 31. I've been behind the power curve all month. I have seven writing days left. I have to write another 13,000+ to be able to take Thursday and Friday off.

As of tonight, I have 32,704 words. I have 18,616 left to go. Any guesses what I'll be doing tomorrow?

Office 2007

My beloved geek sees to it that the computers and software we use are current and protected. For the most part it doesn't disrupt my life, and usually I can test drive software on the desktop and decide if I want it on my laptop.

A word to the wise: Test drive software whenever possible.

I upgraded Office on my laptop after playing briefly with Powerpoint. It was not my brightest move, but Eric was on the desktop, I needed to work on a Powerpoint, and Vicky said the new version had new backgrounds, so I popped the disk in. It took less than an hour to figure out the new backgrounds weren't so great and the new version was different to the point that it was difficult to navigate. I uninstalled, thinking it would revert to the old version; no such luck. Of course, we have the disks for the old version of Office. Where they are is beyond me. They're not in any of the places they should be, nor are they in off-the-wall places I've looked. My only alternative at this point is to stick with 2007. Yes, I know there's a way to restore the settings to a previous date, but I'm not willing to take the chance of losing data. It's easier to get used to the new software and keep the cursing to a minimum and under my breath.

The only thing that's totally chapping my hide at this point, having had a week or two to get used to it, is the Find and Highlight option. I used to be able to search for my weasel words and highlight them in my document, making them easier to spot and change if necessary. In the new version, I can Find and Highlight just fine, but the highlighting shuts off as soon as I hit a key. This does not help me much, other than telling me I have 'she' 2,336 times in a 90,000 word document. I even played with it a little to see if I could use Find and underline or change the font size and I haven't figured out how to make it work.

I'm not terribly desperate yet, but I could become desperate. If anyone knows how to get the highlighting to stay on in Word 2007 until I turn it off, leave a comment. If it works, I'll send you a copy of "A Writer's Space: Make Room to Dream, to Work, to Write" by Eric Maisel. If that's not your cup of tea, I have author copies of "The Dragon's Lady" upstairs, and I'll throw in a copy of the "Rogue Pawn" manuscript when I get it back from the beta readers.

Slimed!

In the course of my studies, I've found a few recipes to try. The first, a cleansing cream for my face, was pretty easy and I like the results. The second was a flax seed body lotion which required the soaking of flax seeds for 24 hours, and then boiling for 15 minutes. Soaking produced a weird goop, but I put them on to boil, set a timer, and moved on to something else. Five minutes later there was a strange smell. The flax seeds had boiled over. I turned them down and proceeded with the lotion, which was an unqualified failure. I can only guess that I lost too much goop for it to set up. (Also, I had to add vinegar while it was hot, and when I added lavender oil to make it smell good it got even stinkier. Eric came from the other end of the house to investigate, and the cats went upstairs.)

In all the excitement, I sort of forgot about the mess on the stove until this morning. (I know, you Flybabies are having conniptions.) I didn't have time to get to it before work, so I put paper towels on the mess so the water would absorb. It should have been a clue that it hadn't dried. Instead of hot and goopy, it was cold and slimy. It didn't absorb into paper towels; I had to sort of cover/grab/scoop. My babies produced things that were easier to clean up. At least it didn't smell bad. I'm not too sure I want to try the recipe again.

Not the best way to boost word count

I worked for an hour this afternoon on Sword and Scabbard, and I felt pretty good about what I'd gotten, but I felt like I needed to think through an argument before I went on. Knowing I was coming back to it, I left the laptop on and came downstairs to do some laundry, plant the garden, and format the blog entries to send to Grandma.

That's where I got into trouble.

A couple of years ago, we bought a wireless keyboard and mouse for the laptop. It worked so well, we bought one for the desktop, too. Everything was fine until we installed the wireless internet in the house and I had to move my desk upstairs to pick up the signal. It also put me in range for the keyboards to 'talk' to each other. I figured out the problem last week; I was working, Vicky was downstairs e-mailing a friend, and her message over-rode what I was typing. We had a little giggle, and I unplugged the keyboard until she was done.

Today I forgot to unplug the keyboard. When I edited the letter to Grandma, I effectively 'Selected all' in my document upstairs and deleted the whole thing. 96,000 words--gone. I frantically CTRL-Z'ed trying to get it back but it was too far gone. It was only by the grace of God that I'd backed up to my thumb drive Friday when I wrote, so I really only lost today's work, but that was over 1,200 words.

I waited until after we'd had dinner and run errands, and then I got a glass of wine, went upstairs, and reconstructed it. Of course I counted all the words again; it wasn't an exact reconstruction, but even if it had been I still would have typed everything twice. It did help me play catch-up from the weekend I took off, but it was too frustrating to do on a regular basis! I've asked for a new ergonomic keyboard--either not wireless or a brand that won't talk to our current one--for Mother's Day.

The moral of the story is to back up in multiple places. E-mail it to your mom if you have to. Do what you have to do to protect the work, and plan for emergencies. If your house burns down or gets flattened by a tornado, you don't want to have all of your work gone, too.

So much for being observant

One of my New Year's resolutions was to get better at communicating with loved ones far away. I started printing and mailing blog entries to my Grandmother since she doesn't have Internet access, and it was just today that I realized how big the blog has become.

I was behind, as usual, so I started copying and pasting into Word and not paying enough attention. Thank goodness I edit the format because that's when I discovered I'd copied and pasted some of March 2006 instead of 2007 into my document. I hate when I do that, but I love when I catch it before anyone else does! Perhaps I've had a bit too much caffeine just now...