I was on fire last week!

In addition to having two new clients (see my last post), I'm excited about a prospective new direction that will combine some of the knowledge I've gained from freelance editing work and certain skills I honed in the human resources field. And that's all I'll say for now. I'll know a little more at the end of March.

In the meantime, I just wrapped up work on a fascinating book that's a series of true-life stories by pediatricians about their work, some of them deeply meaningful and moving. Plus, I'm working on a couple of books for educators that address diversity of brains and cultures, respectively, in the classroom -- a topic I always love to read more about. Last week, I finished a test-prep book for the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). So lots of variety, as always.

Now about that fire . . . I set the tea kettle to boil on the gas stove and reached up to grab a tea bag from the shelf over the stove. I felt the heat of the stove against my hip. I dropped the tea bag into my cup and relaxed, prepared to wait until the water got hot. But I noticed that the warmth, instead of fading, was becoming downright intense. I looked down and saw flames on the hem of my T-shirt. I quickly moved to the kitchen sink and shoved the cloth under cold water. The T-shirt had a 3" square hole in it. It was my Caesar's Palace shirt from last year's Vegas trip -- not a favorite shirt, but not a shirt I wanted to burn a hole in, either. The pajama bottoms underneath were only slightly singed, and my skin was untouched. This seems like the kind of thing that happens to elderly people -- setting oneself on fire. I'm not elderly, even if I do feel creaky some days.

Speaking of creaky, my ankle-nerve thingie flared up again for a couple of days last week. Not sure why. It was probably due to using the exercise bike, but I've been using it without the ankle acting up. Maybe I had the tension set a notch higher? Anyway, I clumped around in my big plastic "boot" (cast) for a couple of days, and it got all better. Having this thing, I totally get why people who don't know about nerves would think invisible demons or a pin in a voodoo doll was attacking them. That's what it feels like.

Been reading Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World -- great stuff about the first Europeans who came to this hemisphere (hint: they weren't the Pilgrims). He structures his narrative such that it's part history, part travelogue, and part contemporary sociology, simultaneously exploring the past and its impact on our present. By the way, every American and everyone who wants to understand America should read Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic. It's a brilliant exploration of the American Civil War and its continuing reverberations in the national psyche.

Been watching figure skating at the U.S. National Championships and tennis at the Australian Open. Regarding the former, I am thrilled that Alissa Czisny won the Senior Ladies event (click here for photos of this beautiful skater). Regarding the latter, I am grateful that Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer are giving us so many great matches, desolated that Federer did not win, and grateful that I can come back to U.S. Central Time after partially transitioning to Melbourne time. Ah what the heck: What do time zones mean when the earth spins continuously on its axis?

Fun:

• Local metereorologists were getting pretty excited a couple of weeks ago about snow rollers nearby. When the snow is sticky and the winds are strong, the wind can "roll" the snow into shapes like bales of hay. Here's a picture of some snow rollers.
• You can Obamicon a photo of your choosing. The website, put together by Paste Magazine, lets you apply the style of the famous Shepard Fairey Obama poster to any photo you want. I used it to great effect on a photo of Angel (the late Rottweiler). Then the site stalled out and I wasn't able to save it, but I'll definitely give it another try. She looked . . . presidential!
• After a few years away, I've gotten hooked on the Washington Post's Crickler puzzles again. Fun!

I cleaned the kitchen!

What did you think this post was going to be about? Last week, I cleaned the bathroom. Next up was the kitchen. This week, I cleaned the kitchen. Since the kitchen also functions as a mudroom for the dogs when they come in the the backyard, this is actually pretty exciting news. Especially having a clean floor. And clean walls next to the door, where they shake their jowls after eating grass and rooting around in the mud. Amazing what I scraped off those walls!

Next up: The dining room. This is the room where the mail piles up. We get an amazing amount of mail.

Bootsie: I'm happy to report that Bootsie the Cat enjoys figure skating. She especially likes it when the skaters spin. They must look like fluttering moths. I watch skating on my computer (though Ice Network), and Bootsie sits beside and behind the monitor and cranes her neck and watches the skaters for minutes at a time. She also likes the cursor, though, so I can't say her interest is really in either sport or in culture.

Work: I've had over a week now with nothing to work on, and I'm going crazy. Yes, I realize that normal people take a week's vacation now and then. In the last year, I've had two long weekends and a few days off here and there. Otherwise, it's been seven-days-a-week busy. But I don't have a job from which I need a vacation! I love my work! Still, judging from how much I slept last week, I guess I did need some downtime. Doug keeps telling me, "It's okay, honey. It's okay." He's a sweetie.

My e-mail's been down all morning. Maybe some authors have returned files to me, or maybe I've got some new projects. Not having e-mail makes me a little crazy. I just invoked my ISP's online chat helpline, and they know about the problem and have no idea when it will be resolved. Bleh!

Fun:

• The U.S. Senate race in Minnesota was so close -- only a couple hundred votes out of 3 million separated the two candidates -- that a manual recount was invoked automatically by law. So folks are counting ballots, and some are interesting. Apparently, filling in an oval next to a name is challenging for some folks. And then there's the Lizard People . . . See challenged ballots at the Minnesota Public Radio site, make your own decision, and see what other people think.
• This is interesting: Nanowrimo. National Novel Writing Month is what I've always known as a "novel dare," in which a group of writers challenge each other to crank out a novel in a compressed time frame. They often blog about their daily word counts and blockages and e-mail each other to show support. Nanowrimo is like that but with global participation. The year 2007 saw 100,000 participants with 15,000 crossing the finish line with a 50k novel. Participants can write by themselves or find others in their local area to meet up with physically. There are forums and other ways to bond (and procrastinate). The point is quantity rather than quality, to break through any blockages and just write-write-write. Since November has been a slow freelancing month for me for the last couple of years, perhaps I should plan to do this in 2009?

Maybe I Am a Workaholic?

In the last few days, I copyedited a couple of books and sent them off to the authors for review, and I did a little more work on the American Library Association database . . . and I currently have nothing to work on. Total panic! What do I do with myself? With free time? It feels so . . . unfilled, unpressured, unstructured! This can't be normal.

I've got a new manuscript coming in early next week. The two books in author review will come back. More work will come in. I still feel odd.

Is this what it feels like to need a fix?

Not that I don't have work to do -- housework. Lots and lots of cleaning desperately needs to be done in this house. Last time I focused on housework, I managed to get three rooms clean: the kitchen, the main bathroom, and the dining room. Those rooms were really nice. Nice to look at. Nice to be in. Nice. Now they're a mess again. Maybe I'll get them clean again -- and a fourth room? Can I get four rooms at a time clean? Check back next week to find out!

Election: Needless to say, I'm thrilled that Barack Obama is the president-elect of the United States. I don't expect miracles. I'm not that hopeful, and I know that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I do expect things to get better: our moral standing in the world to improve, our socioeconomic structure to rebalance in favor of the middle class, the Supreme Court and other federal courts at least not to get any more conservative (yes, I'm very socially liberal, though fiscally not so much), increasing environmental protections and a regearing of industry to be more environmentally progressive (if we don't take the lead on this, some other country will, and they'll become the economic power of the 21st century). The national debt and annual budget deficit drive me crazy. For those, I don't see a solution coming any time soon. We had a major interstate bridge fall into the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis -- there's some investment that needs doing.

I can't quite wrap my head around the financial crisis. Do that many Americans buy houses, and that many home buyers get mortgages they can't pay, that the whole world is going into an economic tailspin because of foreclosures? And I can't understand most of what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says. Throw money at it. Don't throw money at it. Does it matter? I suspect we're like a snake that's just eaten a pig -- we're just going to have to stretch out somewhere until it passes through.

Fun:

• Super-complicated cryptic acrostic puzzles from the Atlantic. OMG! Some of these are so hard! You have to be good at cryptic (British-style) crossword puzzles even to get started, and then these have an extra wrinkle to them.


• And check out Japanese figure skater Mao Asada performing this layover camel spin. Yes, she is spinning in place, meaning she's balanced over about an inch of 1/4" skate blade that's in contact with the ice. She's also got an amazing triple axel, which she's landed numerous times in competition. She'll be competing in Paris today and Saturday, and we'll get a chance to see her Tatiana Tarasova-choreographed programs. Tarasova has the ability to bring out the best in her skaters -- should be exciting!