Pinky Stuff

[Pinky]

Now I know why people disappear for a month or 6 weeks just before they announce they've published, lol. I'm getting great stuff back from beta readers, and if I'm going to handle crunch time, I may hafta stop doing all other writing, because my excellent feedback support is right, I need to tighten up my last revision. Thank goodness Walking Dead is on break now, and I've already stopped doing my other live tweet TV watches. I may be taking breaks from live tweeting radio links the rest of this month, too.

Wanna say thanx to everyone who jumped on my Walking Dead reviews, 200+ hits just yesterday, and over 12,000 on my Pinky Stuff here since I started doing this. None of this was intended to draw that much attention, mostly just needed busy work, distraction, and focus material to help me navigate all the crazy interruptions that go on in real life.

I don't mean to be rude, have been turning down a few writing offers from other people and have stopped replying to direct and personal messaging, and lately have started ignoring being tagged on twitter. I hope you all understand I'm up to my eyeballs in rewrite and formatting before I turn all my stuff in. Twitter has been crucial in my personal development and is part of my story, so I'm not abandoning anyone, and I hope to be back in full swing in a few weeks. My goal (tentatively, lol) is to get my manuscript handed in by the end of April before we go on vacation. I really really really hope I can do this, sure going to try.

I will probably continue doing a daily touch base on my Pinky blog which does not support mobile viewing, alas, but I probably won't be posting links on twitter every time I post.

My Kaspersky blocked a trojan while I was getting this picture, so I won't link the source and save all your lives. This is me being dragged away from social media so I can finish my book.

[Pinky]

Ladybugs.



NOT the cute innocent harbinger of spring many humans believe them to be.



Allow me to hint at what I put up with living so near a state forest. These pix click back to sources.





Imagine seeing stuff like that on your house. Imagine having to walk through or past something like that to get into your house. Imagine random idiots flying up your nostrils and clothing and into your eyes and ears while you're turning your key in the lock as quickly as possible, trying not to disturb them.

They don't bite or sting, but they are tenaciously clingy and about the stupidest bug on earth. They have absolutely no sense of self preservation and don't seem to have assessment skills, so they dive bomb straight into beverages and dishwater without hesitation. They get stuck in hair, cling to eyelids, march right into your armpits no matter how repellent you might think your deodorant is. They collect out of reach in light fixtures and ceiling corners and, until they simply dry up into piles of tiny carcasses, they randomly drop on you without warning.

Scott likes saving their tiny lives. He gently scoops one up and opens the door to toss it out and doesn't notice two more fly in over his head. Sucking them up in a vacuum grosses me out almost as much as spiders do.

Ladybugs show up in my survey blog every year, number 5 in this one, number 3 in this one. I get them coming and going, fall hibernation and spring resurgence.

The worst part is the little crunchy bits. They are so fragile they break into shards, and when they dry up you can't tell it was a bug. I keep all our food in sealed plastic bags and containers because of ladybugs. It's really gross wondering if you just ate ladybugs in your cereal.

Things to think about-
-I've never seen a chicken eat ladybugs.
-I've never seen a ladybug caught in a spiderweb.
-I've never seen ladybugs and ants cross paths.

I believe ladybugs are the zombies of the bug world. They are nearly indestructible unless they get smashed to bits, they don't seem to be capable of drowning, they fear nothing, they don't seem to be a food staple for anything else, and nothing you can do really stops them.

Ladybugs are evil. I bet you want one now. Click that to get one.



I'm apparently not the only person who thinks ladybugs are evil. Click this one to see more awesome evil ladybug pix.

[Pinky]

Locked in a standoff with my left eye. When I try to work it shoots darts in my brain and oozes down my face. When I play it's FINE. >=l Well, at least there's that. It used to be so bad I couldn't even play. I think I mentioned somewhere I had to stop reading and watching TV for a couple of years during the worst of the nerve damage.

So, what is up with this???





>=l The twitworth site is down today, so I jumped over to twitvalue and LOST $2264.44?????

My twittascope is only making things a bigger mess. What does this mean???????



I still haven't ordered the new coffee maker. I think I mentioned that somewhere. I'd like to get this one but holy cow, click the pic to see why I'm doing this. O_O



Yeah, the new trend is to ditch the reservoir and hook the water up directly. Really don't want to go to that kind of trubba. Now I'm running into a whole pinterest board devoted to under the counter coffee makers. Guess what, the reservoir merch links are broken. I may just have to cave to a counter top coffee maker for awhile. NOW the question is, do I get a fancy perk model (those used to smell so good when I was a kid) or just another drip? I'm not an espresso or cappuccino person. I'm more the mug collector type. I've had everything from Star Trek to Pirates of the Caribbean and a full range of holiday novelty mugs. My latest acquisition was Snarkalecs mugs (click the pic to get some)



and my next will be a Wireless mug from Andrew Lee Pott's Keychain Productions. Click the pic to see it/get it. I think all proceeds go to web series film production, or you can donate directly via link on the main site.



The way the filming is going, I think in the future fans will get tax breaks for investing in or donating to film projects as scheduling giants slowly cave to real time interactive media taking over the industry. In the meantime, people jumping on board NOW will be surfing the wave into the new entertainment mecca.

I really need to get back to work because my eye is clearly handling this now. If you still have another minute to kill on break, check out this cute fan-made Old Spice parody.

[Pinky]

Have to admit I was a little disappointed that after all the big Irish talk, only one person got this.





I need to start pushing my #MerLexxian hashtag again. Merlin fans, more especially Colin Morgan fans are very aware of Irish in film and what has been overcome even recently to break into worldwide fandom.

Check out this lengthy IMDB list of Irish born actors. Do some of these names surprise you? Such a tiny country pumping out so many really good actors.

For my scifi friends, if you have never heard of this gem, please to check it out. It's the most beautifully heart wrenching movie I've ever seen, filmed in Ireland, directed and played by Irish. Click the pic to see more about Parked.

And if you want the ultimate fan-made spoiler, click here. It will ruin the rest of your day if you have experience and cry easily. I can't even imagine not knowing where my child was, no matter how they disappointed me.

Make this a good year to be Irish.

[Pinky]

Burrito's mama is a professional sports and medicine massage therapist in a big health care system. She can't believe I'm continuing knee/leg ASTYM and strengthening on top of a full spinal whiplash on top of my fibro. I didn't mention this is also on top of other things in my life.

In the old days I used to have regular aspie meltdowns even on handfuls of meds because I wasn't aware that what was really happening was nervous system overload. Two key things to understand about aspies is 1- we can't shut that off, sensation overload is like an old fashioned microphone screaming through a set of speakers in a feedback loop and melts our brains, and 2- attempts to socially interact on any level beyond the basics during overload becomes catastrophic if the other person misreads tone, expression, bluntness, accidentally wrong words out of confusion, or attempts at redirection as emotions that must be taken personally. True, I am in 'KILL' mode when I'm in overload, but that doesn't automatically mean I hate people for no reason. I think I'm better at controlling meltdowns than some aspies because I was beaten through my childhood, but I don't think that's the proper way to handle a child in crisis, and only teaches violence as an answer to problems. Anyway, my point is that I have a lot of experience with friendships going wrong real fast, and I'm attempting to prevent that.

I normally break my public writing down into separate blogs for spoonie, aspie, Lexx, my daily planning, general writing projects, and occasional photoshopping. I also blurb stuff together here in this public forum. Today I'm blurbing. There is purpose behind this madness- no matter how long I stop interacting, people can still see that I'm doing ok if they want to check up on me.

I have to admit it was a little scary last night withdrawing from twitter for the second weekend in a row. Twitter has been a solid companion for the last 15 1/2 months when I first got my Droid and started joyously tweeting around the clock with my insomnia. That had such a positive impact on my depression that I threw myself even harder into twitter when my blogs went down for awhile last September. By this last winter my mention reach, according to Sumall, topped 1 million. That still cracks me up, the coolest most useless statistic in social media.

Several people on twitter have noticed that I seem to excel at keeping multiple convos in multiple and crisscrossing threads straight even over long periods of time. I am able to hop in and out of groups and lists like a hyper Energizer bunny. I don't always keep people straight, but I can sometimes remember things they tweeted in detail months later. I don't have a complete eidetic memory, but I once blindly went straight to a book on a library shelf I'd read excerpts from years before within a minute of walking in the door without remembering the title or author but only that one of the dogs was repeatedly drowned in lab experiments. Some people believe we are psychic and whatever, I just think that was already somewhere in my brain and I was able to bypass the stupidity of consciousness and access that info without my own conscious knowledge. A brain trauma therapist once asked me how I managed to hold jobs after she watched me introduce myself to the same person 3 times in 5 minutes at a charity function. I think it's pertinent to ask at this point how I manage to have friends at all being aspie with a glitchy brain, but I seem to have lots of friends.

After years of experience losing friends because of the second paragraph up there, I am trying something new. I have never done this before. I spent 7 years working very hard developing better social skills and it seems to be fantastically successful. However, I can still see me destroying these new relationships if I don't get them on the same page I'm on very quickly. I am in meltdown. I've been rocketing into overload for a couple of weeks and have been wracking my brain how to handle this. I do NOT want to lose friends over my different kind of brain function again. So here's how it works-

My live tweet and chat television/movie watches have been adding up to 10+ hours a week, and that doesn't include private interaction and tweet convos. I am also overloaded with increased pressures at home while I deal with burrito probs, job upheavals, cancer scare, and other family stuff I've never mentioned. I cannot play the social dance game in overload. I'm getting snappy over teeny things, and try as I might to hide it, I'm afraid I suck at pretending. I am NOT going to drag all this onto twitter or facebook, this is *exactly* what my blogs are for. I will link this on twitter. I will not explain any further there. This is it.

I see these things come through on facebook- who really reads my posts, leave a one word comment and repost, etc. I hate those. I feel like they are manufactured for lazy people to poke other lazy people with sticks for a response with the possible threat of unfriending from whomever doesn't respond. I will never unfriend people for not commenting or talking to me. I LOVE LURKERS. I've even had genuine stalkers, probably still do. I don't feed trolls and I don't bug people for attention. I would only ask that my friends not take it personally if I stop talking for awhile. That is the aspie answer to stress. I know I look really wordy right now and some people will actually feel offended that I could have put this energy into talking to them. But that's not how my brain works. I am the sort of person who is thrilled when my phone doesn't ring for 3 weeks, and no one emails me for a month, and it's not because I hate people. That I'm as public as I am is a true miracle, and I'm wanting very much to not rock boats this time every time people ask me individually on twitter and facebook what's up and expect me to type out the answer a hundred separate times. I snapped at someone I never dreamed I'd snap at yesterday, thank goodness it was private, but I feel really bad about it.

So I'm trying this new thing- I'm withdrawing from so much interaction BEFORE I start zapping people with lasers and side taking starts happening and mass confusion winds up in a 3 day brawl, because I seem to be very good at accidentally creating that kind of thing. I don't expect everyone to understand, much less actually read this, but at least it's here, and maybe in a couple of weeks or a month or two I can pick back up on live tweeting. I really really like the live tweeting and daily group convos, but I think that's what is draining this aspie, and I've gotta get my balance back. I will still be on twitter. I will still say hi. Ok, sometimes. But I may seriously fall way back down from that million mention reach, lol.

Remember- If I don't respond or talk to you it doesn't mean I don't like you. Thank you for your patience with me.

In the meantime, I'm WORKING.

[Pinky]

It's that time of year, everyone around me going antsy wanting to buy tomato plants. Between that and the question 'Where would you go during a zombie apocalyspe?' last night on Snarkalec Radio, I wound up mocking and arguing with a film director having conniptions about uncooperative tomato scenes in his attempt at apocalyptic filming in my dreams last night. Seriously guys, if you want ~messy~, go with organic ripened on the vine, they're redder all the way through and much softer and moister, and don't come crying to me how that's more expensive on a tight budget. Tomatoes grow like weeds, people can't get rid of the things and sit at little stands all day or sneak huge gift bags into churches because they can't bear to throw them away, there you go, cheap apocalypse filming. Now I'll have this song stuck in my head all day. My daughter liked for me to sing this with her when she was 5. It's way too early in the year for this...

[Pinky]

We seem to be getting through the initial shock ok. I think it's kinda like being too close to a blast point, you go temporarily deaf and don't hear anything else for a little while after that.

This is certainly more clearly defining some target dates for me, though.

I've got my biz accounts set up, made a couple of key connections, and surprisingly getting some 'silent' moral support via quiet follows. I'm terrified and ecstatic. I've got plenty of distraction to keep my attention focused, and Scott can figure out how to handle our boat tipping.

Now- can I *please* stop being hit with these super interruptions? This is ridiculous.

p.s. You really quiet people still hitting all my stuff- bless your hearts. Thank you. <3

[Pinky]

Thanx just rolling with it. Worse comes to worse I'll wind up in Houston with my daughter, but we're not there yet.

[myke]

Good luck Hun, let me know if I can do anything.

[Pinky]

Joke's on me. Scott boss announced today in a meeting that he's selling the company, sweeping changes are imminent. Scott is already talking about taking work on an oil rig and passing a test where a helicopter flies upside down and crashes into the water and everyone on it is timed how long it takes to get out of their harnesses and escape before they drown. Really hope it doesn't come to that...

My cosmic target point keeps being driven home. All this happening *right now* is almost too bizarre to wrap my head around. The timing is impeccable.

[Pinky]

This speaks for itself.







Remember the cosmic pressure I'm under? I said if even if people DIE I'm going to get this stuff written. So yesterday, on the very emotional ten year anniversary of the death of a child in my family, I officially went back on cancer watch and youngest daughter got official notice that her entire department is closing in her health system and she has three weeks to get another job, and this on top of her regular daycare closing this week so she's also looking for new daycare, and that on top of moving back to her apartment over the weekend because it's not working out with burrito's daddy, and her lease is up in two months, so we might be getting a burrito moving in here right about the time we go on vacation. I'm not allowing anyone to say *if* there is a vacation, because I wanna see zurrito's first birthday.

I defy anyone to tell me I can't do this. I wrote like a bat outa hell yesterday. IT'S ON. And it may be a double. My first contract is for two books. If I'm going to shred decency and tell secrets, I may as well rip the skies open.

Interruptions, pshaw. Ok, I take that back, don't want to jinx myself. Statistically, just because I've already rolled a car once in my life doesn't mean it can't happen again.

But the fires are stoked, blades are fanning the flames, I eat sleep and breathe this now or it's never going to happen.

WORKING.

[Pinky]

Oh, I'm not leaving.

[myke]

Nice for you that your old blog came to it's seances and let you back in, but I still think we are just as "real" here at SyFyDesigns.com

[Pinky]

I stopped posting here! What happened? Not to worry, my Xanga blogs are coming back up, huzzah!!! I have taken my daily blurbing back to a real blog now, and you can keep following what I'm doing there. This was today's post.

I'm being a bad robot skipping my daily planning strategies. That's a good way to get scattered. I did remember to check my fasting glucose this morning, got 91, yay! Supposed to be doing that once a week. Missed getting a birthday card out to a niece BOOOOOOO!

Right now is heavy snow showers and bitterly cold again from winter storm Nika. Catching up laundry and constructing a yummy pot pie. Haven't made any plans beyond that and it's already noon, but I've been very aspie super focused on slinging a couple of Lexx posts this week, and have plans for a Valentine pie post for yablo and hopefully a Valentine survey for bluejacky. I also put a Valentine post on my shop blog. Can you tell Valentine's Day is my second fave holiday?

This was my twittascope today. These things amuse me to no end. I'm all alone for hours and hours in the quiet snowy woods, the only noise right now is a woodpecker on the house, I just had hot chocolate, and my brain is scattering in all directions now. I'm so spaced I'm not sure I could have an emotion for awhile. I love days like this.



I was listening to this earlier.

[Pinky]

DYLAN DOESN'T KNOW DOCTOR WHO

A challenge has gone out, and I will be among the round table discussion this evening attempting to convince Dylan Lange of the radio show Dylan Knows why he should at least try watching some Doctor Who. He claims to never have seen even one episode, which is a pretty big claim since he's an aficionado of comics, scifi, and zombies in the entertainment industry.

I myself resisted all things Who until Eleven showed up in 2010. I had never seen one episode excepting as very brief glimpses in ad breaks during other shows. I knew immediately I'd never care for Daleks, and after all the scifi I've seen, it looked kind of ridiculous, like a step backward into shows that had retro space aliens. As the big budget movie series like Star Trek and Star Wars refined their mythologies and CGI, Doctor Who seemed more klunky and hands on, low budget, so I never gave it a glance. It reminded me of 1970's Saturday morning shows.

Wow, was I wrong.

April of 2010 was a bit of an asthma nightmare, and I wound up being zapped out on all kinds of meds on my couch when The Eleventh Hour came on my TV. It couldn't have been more perfect, because the first character I saw besides the newly regenerated Doctor was a little red headed girl. Since I come from a family of redheads (not sure how I missed being ginger myself), I was instantly amused at the funny awkward no-idea-what's-going-on see-saw dialogue happening around this little girl, and by the time the Doctor returned for her I was completely hooked. She was exactly what I always wanted to see in a human/alien relationship, so despite the bizarre aliens and hideous noises, I made it through the entire episode and set my timer to catch the rest of the season. When season break rolled around, I set the timer to catch all the reruns from the previous Doctor incarnations, starting at 2005, and learned why the world fell in love with Rose and Captain Jack. But the companions that really sealed the fandom feels down with a nail gun and super glue and duct tape were Donna Noble and her grampa.

I'm NOT a chick flick person. At all. I avoid feely chick shows like the plague. So why does Doctor Who suck me into that vortex with the TARDIS and wreck me into a mess the rest of the day? Because it's every day real stuff, all the things you wish you could really talk about with the real people who are supposed to love you unconditionally WHILE you are racing the clock to stop nasty evil aliens from killing everybody in London or wherever. Everybody wants to be swept off their feet into a really honest relationship that brings them to the brink of forever and forces them to become Someone Really Cool. And that's what the Doctor does for his companions. And they stand right up to his face and shove him right back. There's no head game playing in Doctor Who. If someone is coming back through space and time for you, you KNOW you're special and loved.

I daresay a whole bunch of us never felt that as children or significant others. And even if some of you did, you still *get it* about the Doctor. He is everything to everybody. Even Rory. I'll refrain from catapulting off into a Rory love fest, because he rocked companion coolness.

And the puns are cool, and the super twisted convoluted timelines are cool, and the time charts that people make trying to keep up with all this timey-wimey maze stuff are cool. The coolest part to me, though, will always be the companions. I love all the different things the companions bring to the TARDIS and pull out of the Doctor.

If you've never seen some of the charts, here are my favorites.

The Timeline of River Song Pop it into its own window and then you can magnify it.

Time & Space Visualizer This is one of many that help you wrap your head around it all.

A Detailed Chart of River Song & the Doctor's Time-crossed Relationship

Doctor Who Series 1-6 Timeline I love the genius of this one.

Doctor Who: 50 years of time travel in the TARDIS Give this one time to load, and it's browser-picky, so check the browser tips across the top of that graphic. They took complex and make it easier to see with an interactive element, so hover your mouse over the time streams and click to get more info on each one.

My very favorite Doctor Who episode is The Doctor's Wife because we finally get to really meet the TARDIS and get her point of view on the Doctor.

After Dylan's show is uploaded onto youtube I will include it here. I have no idea yet what's going to happen, but I'm betting we'll have a lot of fun. If you happen to see this before we go live at 9 pm Eastern tonight Dec 28th and want to watch, check my twitter at PinkyGuerrero for the live link around that time.