Anne N. Mouse: Blog

So it's been at least a month since I wrote even so much as a word on anything, even this blog, but yesterday one of my fans challenged me to improve A Bitch and Her Boy so that is what I was doing this morning. I can't promise anything soon, but hopefully I'll get something out!

Or the danger of driving two lane highways.... As most of you who follow my blog are aware, I drive the back roads. Not the dirt roads, but paved, two lane byways. One of those is US 97... 97 has to be one of the busiest stretches of two lane road in the nation. I was informed by someone I trust in the '90s that there was a tractor trailer rig every minute in both directions on the road.... Sometimes a lot more than one a minute, and sometimes a lot less....

However in its infinite wisdom the state of kalifornikation has set the speed for tractor trailer rigs at 10 miles per hour slower than for automobiles (not that I see either one obeying the speed limit...) which means that people get impatient (even I've been guilty of that) and pass tractor trailer rigs whenever there is a break only about three inches more than needed to make the pass. Which, I must say is frightening if you're in the opposite lane. Or if you happen to be like me when I'm driving (which I can't right now, but more on that later) my motorized roller skate. The other day (and part of the reason I'm not driving said roller skate) someone decided to pass me. Now I know I was going at least the posted speed limit (which in Kalifornikation is pretty much treated like a suggestion that no one will follow) when some person decided they just must pass me... I looked up and damned if I didn't think 'he' was going to do a header into a TT rig...!!!!! I threw the binders on and put my skate into a skid... When all was said and done I came out alright, but for some reason throwing the binders to the skate left it with a hard hop on the right front side... I haven't taken time to check the front end entirely, just de-torqued the wheel and re-torqued it in case I had a wheel slip slightly due to having lug nuts work loose. But that isn't the case, so sometime soon (very soon given the price of gas!!) I need to get the skate off the ground and crawl under it to see what else might be the issue...😂

But people are people and there is no turning lane on most of 97 (well it goes through some of the least populous areas of Kalifornikation, Orekaliforikated, and Washikalifornikated....) so the PTB don't see the need for such in most places, that suicide lane will do just fine... So today someone turned onto A-12 from said north-bound suicide lane with about 6-8 feet of clearance from me as I headed south-bound to visit the heat of the central valley... Not that I'm not sweating through my boots already...😢

More observations…. I'm awfully prone to bad behaviors. That is one reason why I agree with my mother when she says (or implies) that I'm lazy. I may not be entirely lazy, but I'm definitely apt to binge. I started this week reading one chapter a day of In the Navy, by Argon and then Monday I took a vacation day, but rather than do anything I binge read the rest of the published works in the Anthony Carter universe. I can't recommend them highly enough. They are some of the best storytelling I've read here. There remain quite a few inconsistencies between the books but given the length and breadth of the works I'd say that these are on par with anything you might read elsewhere that hasn't had at least two professional proofreaders go over them. Honestly I'm not complaining, though if I were to receive the current files I might take a whack at catching the errors and inconsistencies that I saw, and I did see plenty, but as I said, for free work, these remain among the best.

Now I've said my piece and made known how I wasted three days this week. I can read the whole (or most of a series) like that in three, or at most four days (considering that I wasn't terribly deep into In the Navy, though I'd read a couple of the shorter works in the series before starting In the Navy, therefore I must say that maybe a total of 6 days may have been spent devouring the series.

Given that, it seems I ought to be able to find proofreading gigs enough to earn a fair living, while vastly underselling what I believe to be a 'fair' price. Yet I've not seen anything I'd consider bidding on, nor have I of late even had positive response to offers to volunteer as a proofreader.

I promise I don't try to change your style unless I consider it utterly radical and in violation of the general rules for writing the English language as I understand them. I don't think I'm wrong about most of my corrections, that is that I wouldn't generally go against the Chicago Manual of Style, even if I haven't actually memorized it. I actually use Noah's guide (Webster) that is!

Reading of course isn't my only area of bingeing… I'm also apt to start playing video games and not stop until I'd be late to work on Monday if I don't get off them! Mostly I play Family Barn, but solitaire is another favorite, and I don't say lightly that I can waste severely hours (at least) a day on it as well. Maybe I could and should try to go deeper into the stack of stuff on offer at Up-Work…. IDK. I get discouraged easily, which, is another very bad behavior that I have. I meet the slightest resistance, and I simply stop trying at all. I don't keep looking. I looked at Patreon again… I'm trying to figure out, do I really have to pay a $10 per month membership fee to have a page there? That would mean that ten people would have to commit to giving me a dollar a month,, even if there are times when I go months and months without writing a word for me to break even…. That just doesn't seem fair to my 'patrons' nor really to me… I mean I'd be willing to post work there and work on the idea that they take 1% as a handler's fee (why so little?) Help the little guy win, like you started out to do!!!! DAMNITALL!!!!!!

Well it is 9:30 PM and I really do need, not want, to go to work, though I feel like the red queen in Alice Through the Looking-glass…. That is, 'The faster I run, the behinder I get!!!' At least financially it seems that way. Well I have two major holes in my budget, or three if I'm working where I work. First there is the apartment hole (I probably could give that up, but I don't want to be stuck always living with my mom, even if I think that a few months ought to break me out of that hole) Second (or possibly third) is the 'pie hole' the pie hole has approximately the density and gravity of a black hole, and as such it attracts every dollar that isn't spent on something else at the beginning of the month. Third (though it may be second, especially in a jobamahobiden economy) is the fuel and auto maintenance hole Fuel for sure a large nebulous item on my budget. But as I noted the cost has increased sharply in the past six months. If it continues to increase (price of fuel) that will definitely become the second (if not first) largest hole in the budget.

I picked up a Motorola schmardt phone today, though I haven't yet set the thing up…. To see if I can do two things, though I'm unsure of either. First is movies of trains that pass my work when I can catch them. Second is possibly to door-dash, though I don't know if that is feasible given the distance I have to travel to a population center large enough to justify dashing….

5/21/21

Back to that 'pie hole' bit, I know that I'm not spending every available dollar on food (though I don't know how much I am spending on food… however the issue is that I eat out as many as three meals a day, and often at least one meal twenty days of the month… or more when I work Saturdays… So that on top of whatever I'm spending for lunches and breakfasts makes for a huge hole in my budget. Indeed if I could get a handle on that, the apartment is cooked in the books so to speak.

But my job is so far from my 'apartment' that it makes the 'pie hole' much more apt to be an issue.... Where 'pie hole' equals eating at restaurants or other grab and go food.

I've had a bit of dessert at a local greasy spoon... Er truck stop... I'm glad to support them and consider it a shame that the govt didn't trust the public to make informed decisions and choices...

hyper inflation is here. If you don't believe me, consider the price of motor fuel. Up approximately 50% in six months....

Pandemic... Spam-demic Why do I put them together? So far as I can tell this 'pandemic has been mostly propaganda. Indeed I'd call it a very effective bit of psychological warfare by the CPC.

Why do I say that when somewhere over 600,000 people have died from the disease? Because I'm fairly certain that is a cooked number. That is that the govt (and media) have pushed everything they could under the heading of a death caused by COVID.

Oh if you want to yell at me I lost both an EX SO and a cousin. I miss my Ex SO more than my cousin. After all my EX actually talked to me occasionally and we compared notes on our kids.

Oh food prices are up too... But fuel and food are left out of the CPI that is used to tell us we have or don't have inflation... one wonders why and then wonders how else the govt and the media have lied to us?

Just how long have they known about space aliens?

Writing practice, etc..... I'm writing here, though I don't have much more than a few minutes, in lieu of writing elsewhere, like my journal. I didn't journal yesterday, 'cause I 'found' a ten thousand word story start that I made about five or six years ago... I'll have to check the original when I have time to put my flash drive back on the computer... :) anyway, as usual I can't read without proofreading.... So that took a lot of my time :)
And while I could give more time to writing, I don't have a lot of time that isn't actually used for something like driving... Averaging nearly 580 miles a week will exhaust anyone's time!!!