Home Articles posted by KD Sarge (Page 2)

No More Mugs

In a tragedy that would hurt me daily if I didn’t work so hard at not thinking about it, I’m not allowed to buy more mugs. Not one. None. That’s been the rule for years…and yet, somehow, more creep in. I don’t know how. I follow the rules! Don’t let that rule make you think we’re a houseful of mug-haters! On the contrary! We drink a lot of tea. And coffee. Hot cocoa. And we love a good soup. So naturally we love mugs. Tall and narrow, short and fat, big or small (but not too small,) we love them all. And I mean, all. Let me explain. When I need pans, I buy them new—when I need pans, that means non-stick pans, because otherwise I have my glorious will-last-a-lifetime All-Clad scratch-and-dent from my wonderful father, which you can have when you pull them from my death-stiffened clutched fingers IF my roommate isn’t already there to defend them. I’m always down for a new kitchen gadget, and those I also acquire new. For reference, see my Instant Pot, my multi-cooker, the air fryer, the stand mixer, the spiralizer, my beautiful Vitamix… But dishes? Variety is fun, and also dishes are transient. We tend to be clumsy, you see, and we don’t really care. I figure there’s enough guilt in the world—no one needs to feel bad because they broke part of a fancy set of dishes. Chips happen. So in my house, the cabinet is full of thrifted dishes. Thrifting…

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Birthday Adventures

February is my birthday month. As a child I loved my birthday, but as I got older, it came to mean less. Lately, though, I’ve come back around. Who cares if anyone else is celebrating? My birthday is for me. My birthday, however, falls in the week Tucson celebrates the yearly Fiesta de los Vaqueros–aka Rodeo Break. Schools are closed Thursday and Friday. So instead of taking my birthday off, I’ve been taking the Friday of Rodeo Break, and going camping. Last year was the second time we went to Roper Lake during Rodeo, and friends, it was blinking cold. This year, I decided, we would go somewhere else. A little south of here! A new park, a new adventure, not so cold! I reserved a cabin at Kartchner Caverns State Park, back in August (you have to reserve way ahead.) Then my work adopted a new policy as of January 1st–everyone gets their birthday as a paid holiday, but you have to take it that day. Use it or lose it. You are darn tootin’ I am not going to lose out on getting paid to celebrate my birthday. I went to the desert museum for the Avian Adventure, and met this charming fellow. It was a great time! I will be showing off that picture for a while, let me tell you. Then Friday, I went camping. Poor me, already paid for it, can’t get out of it, sorry to take two days off in a week but…

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Technology, Y’all

Am I right? You know I’m right. Currently, I’m right about my fitness tracker. Which, you know, is a misnomer, but we’ll go with it. It has a silent alarm feature, which I’ve decided I don’t like. At least, not how I’ve been using it, to go off between 6:10 and 6:40 every morning. It’s supposed to be a smart alarm, but it never wakes me up because it only activates when it figures out I’m already awake. So it’s just annoying and I want to turn it off. My tracker, however, has been refusing to open the “alarm” app so that I can. So I went hunting on the internet, and the only thing that seems to work is a factory reset. Oh geez. Am I that annoyed by this alarm? Well, maybe. It’s been a long time that I’ve been meaning to fix it. The fact that I’m actually remembering at eight at night about something that happens in the morning, is a good sign that I do indeed find it that annoying. Factory reset, then. I steeled myself, and I did it. Now I’ve put my wifi password in three times, but my tracker can’t find my wifi (the router is five feet away, through open air.) So it’s updating through Bluetooth, and it keeps restarting. Currently we’re at 13% on the third try. Let us all pray to Saint Vidicon… Microsoft has been giving me similar hassles at work lately. Similar as in, not working. I’m…

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KD Boldly Ran Away, Away

For various reasons, the last few years have been a bit rough for me. To make things even better, my haven for so much of my life, my writing, has not come easily. It’s a problem endemic in writing books– if you want your characters to resonate, then even sci fi and fantasy must reflect reality, and reality has really not been something I wanted to think about. I like to write hopeful, I mean. And hope has been hard to find. Anyway. So there have been various crises. There’s been All The News You Need to Hide From. And then… I’ve heard there are people out there who just use Word to write books. I am not one of them. I remember the day I gave up on Word. I’d been typing up something for work, and three times in a row I typed “7th” and Word made the “th” superscript and then crashed because it couldn’t handle its own autocorrection. When I got done swearing the third time, I went and found and downloaded OpenOffice. OpenOffice was great! I was devoted for years–but then came the siren call of dedicated fiction writing software. I wanted. But I was poor, and it was expensive, and OpenOffice worked fine… Winners of NaNoWriMo 2011 received a code for (IIRC) 50% off a Scrivener license. People on the NaNo boards loved Scrivener. I think I downloaded the trial version halfway through, and then bought a license when I got my discount. Since…

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Tis the Season

To tell you the truth, I waffle a lot around this time of year. It starts at the beginning of November (but definitely after Halloween.) Gimme carols! Lights! All the pretties! Except–OMG, not that song AGAIN. What do you mean if I want lights, I have to go out to the shed and get them, and probably half of them don’t work? Look, if we put up a tree, it’s just a battle for weeks to keep the cat from eating it or taking it down. And our living room is small enough without putting a big tree in it. (My kid is convinced if it’s not scraping the ceiling, it’s not REALLY a tree. And don’t get me started on real actual go-pick-one-out-every-year formerly-live trees, and the fight there, to get one that will actually fit in the house…) I want to bake cookies! I don’t want to effort. And I really don’t need cookies around. I need to find the perfect presents! OMG, these people are so spoiled! I do everything for them and their legs ain’t broke, why would I give them presents too? I want to give everyone food and hugs! OMG, get away from me. And my bank balance weeps… Seriously. My Christmas spirit sputters like a candle in a drafty window, only it’s one of those joke candles that looks like it’s out, then comes back when you least expect it. Again and again. Christmas always wins. Then I’m that lady, looking for Christmas…

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An American on the Other Side of the World

One of the luckiest folk in the world, here, reporting on her return from one of the most beautiful places in the world. Did you know the Maori only found New Zealand 800 years ago? People have been in Australia for 60,000 years, but New Zealand…? Even the indigenous people have been there just eight centuries. Have another amazing fact—while scientists argue about exactly how New Zealand became so isolated, they are quite certain that only two mammals are native—and they are each a species of bat. (The fur seals don’t count, despite being super cute, as they live in the ocean and haul up on land.) So. Super fascinating, check. Astonishingly beautiful, check. Home of some super cool stuff? Oh yeah. One thing this country is not? Always on. There was a 24-hour kebab place near our hotel in Brisbane. (Australia.) I didn’t see anything twenty-four hour in New Zealand. Even the Denny’s (Yes, Denny’s) that had a “24 Hours!” sign, had a small paper sign next to it that they were open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. holidays excluded. Also, they sold booze at the Denny’s. In Christchurch, there was a pedestrian mall around the corner from our hotel, full of cafes, bars, restaurants, and souvenir shops. When I went in search of coffee one morning, the café I’d IDed from the internet that opened at 0730 wasn’t open at 0800. I walked on, desperate for coffee—and found several more cafés, all closed. I came back…and the one…

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I’m Going on an Adventure!

I, KD Sarge, seriously lucky duck, am going to Australia at the end of the week. Australia, then New Zealand. I’ll be gone for a whole month. Did I mention I am soooooo lucky? For reals. The plan was to go last October, but it wasn’t deemed safe enough yet by my traveling companions (those doing the planning!) I was afraid it might be that way, so I didn’t think about it. And then this year it was on, but another COVID wave could still cancel everything. Stuff could go wrong. I wasn’t the one planning, so I didn’t think about it. If it happened YAY!! If it didn’t–well, if I didn’t think about it, I would be a lot less disappointed if it didn’t happen, right? So here we are. I barely got my passport in time because I was working very hard at Not Thinking About It, but I did. I have it. I have all the other paperwork required. I’ve made my packing list, and done a practice pack to make sure I can take what I need within the weight and space limits. I have people set up to drop in on my kid. I have to-do lists written up, and rewards for doing the to-dos, and I am as sanguine as I can be about leaving her alone here for a month. Zoe: You sanguine about the kind of reception we’re apt to receive on an Alliance ship, Cap’n? Mal: Absolutely. [pauses] What’s “sanguine” mean?…

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I Am Not Prepared

Tell me I’m not the only one who lands in this boat every blinking time I/they turn around. I had every intention of being prepared. I like to write my TDP post on Sunday, edit it a bit on Monday, and go through it once more quickly Tuesday before I post it. Alas, that didn’t happen this week. I blame the shingles vaccine. Don’t get me wrong–I’m very glad to have the shingles vaccine! I’ve heard shingles itself is horrible. But I hadn’t planned to get the vaccine on Sunday, and then I did, and I hadn’t planned for it to knock me on my butt, since vaccines rarely slow me down–but this one did. I started dragging Sunday afternoon, and by Monday morning I could barely get out of bed. I told my boss if the zombies had come that day, I would have blended in just fine. So anyway. Not prepared. I didn’t prep my food for the week either, or get water and now I have to go tonight and it’s storming, and… Anyway. Speaking of boats, I’ve been watching Drain the Oceans on National Geographic. It’s more fascinating than I expected, though I’m not sure why I’m surprised–it has shipwrecks, secrets, archeology, and history. What wouldn’t I love about that? Last night’s episode (watched twice because I fell asleep watching it the first time, see above re: vaccine) was especially good, as they were searching for slave ships and other wrecks that illustrated that dark time…

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Smarter Than the Machine

Years ago when a friend bought herself a fancy new car, my favorite thing about it was the backup camera. I’m an aficionado of the “where’s this road go?” school of exploring, you see, and sometimes you need to be able to turn around in very tight quarters. And my usual partner in exploring is really bad at telling me when to stop. She’s afraid she’ll send me and the car tumbling down a mountain, I guess, so instead we get a move like this. I wanted a backup camera. Really bad. My car is a 2007 Corolla. She (my Precious) came with a three-CD changer as part of the stereo. So that led to…well, I don’t like to listen to commercials, and I hate DJs talking. HATE. So I made two CDs of some of my favorite songs, and stuck those and a CD of soft jazz for headache music in, and they stayed. For years. YEARS. Sometimes I’d put a song on repeat, and not notice for a couple days. Once the child and I were headed up the mountain, and halfway up she asked if we could please just turn the music off. She couldn’t take that song one more time. Recently I did something about both problems. I had a new stereo, with screen, put in my car, and I had them install a backup camera. When the tech was showing me the basics of my new system, he told me to “play something” from my…

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Running Away From Home

Home, in my opinion, should be a place one wants to be, not a place to get away from. But that’s just my opinion. Reality has no interest in my opinion. Reality, sometimes, actively has it in for me. So yeah. Sometimes, I run away from home. On Mount Lemmon, an hour’s fun drive away, the temperature is generally 30 degrees lower. And there are green things! Mountain air! Fewer people! More deer, bears, coatis, birds! (Especially vultures. Not sure why, but there are a lot of vultures circling on Mount Lemmon.) Anyway. You can see why running away has its attractions. As that’s as much brain as I have for words, I’m already two days late…please enjoy some pictures. These are all phone pics this week. I mean to take my camera up soon. Like…Sunday? That might be good. Since it’s still gonna be ridiculously hot down here… It’s been a rough week. Run away if you need to, friends.

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