AlexPGP's Corner

How did I do it?

2018-01-18T01:37:27Z

So the day started with my having to despeckle and send one document and then translate another, along with its graphics, despeckle the resulting oeuvre and send it off, too.

It's done.

And what is particularly gratifying to me is that the document that required soup-to-nuts treatment today weighed in at over 4,000 target words. I conclude, therefore (since I am not dragging myself around the house) that I must certainly be feeling my Wheaties!

I feel good, especially now that I've been relieved of this time pressure.

I was a little bummed that CBS decided to roll with repeats last night of NCIS and NCIS: New Orleans. Galina said it had something to do with being pre-empted, but the only thing I could think of that might do that was coverage of the ice storm that has had the area in its grip over the past couple of days. (Okay, it's not exactly Nome in December, but Houstonians are not exactly familiar with what is necessary to drive on even the slightest layer of ice on the road.)

Scans tomorrow. Go me.

Cheers...

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This and that...

2018-01-17T04:19:50Z

Sometime during the first week of the month, I read Michael Connelly's Two Kinds of Truth in three sittings over a three-day period. My view of /detective/police/mystery is that they are entertainment, and this one was certainly entertaining.

The next book in my pile of digital tsundoku was The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour, a story of naval action during the Battle of Samar. I could only take the book in small doses.

It pulled me apart, emotionally, every few pages. I felt pride, regret, remose, grief, determination, horror, wonder—and that's without really getting started.

Today was not as good a day as yesterday. I pretty much slept until noon, and then napped in the late afternoon. Still, I managed to get done what I had intended, in the translation end of the world.

I don't know if I will fall asleep quickly when I do hit the rack (which I plan to do within about 15 minutes). I'll give myself until midnight, and then do some of that good old replanning.

I don't know what book I'll read next. I have a pile of them.

Cheers...

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It's been awhile...

2018-01-16T03:18:35Z

...but I am still alive and kicking.

Today was a good day.

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Answering a question...

2018-01-09T17:44:37Z

In filling out a survey about memorization, one question asks, "What's one problem you hope to address by improving your memory?"

My response:

They say that if a shark stops swimming, it dies. All my life, I've felt that if I stop learning, I would mentally "die," an idea that became more acute after my mother (a college graduate with masters degrees, multilingual, who played a mean piano) developed Alzheimer's and eventually died.

Paraphrasing Tennyson, it is my wish to sail as far as I can in what remains to me in this lifetime. It may be that the gulfs will capsize me, and though much has been taken, much abides, and despite having been made weak by time and fate and not being as strong as I once was, I will not cease to strive, to seek, to find... and not to yield! For me, having an improved memory will improve both my outer life and my inner life.

Sorry to get all literary on you, but there it is.

Cheers...

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Of, of course...

2018-01-09T02:55:34Z

As soon as I open my big yap about how "normal" yesterday was, I hit a night where I could not fall asleep for love or money (an expression, as I have no idea how things might have to work out to make that literal).

Today has been a reasonable day, but while I really do want to go to sleep, on the one hand, I do not want to wake up at 12:30 am and then lie there sleepless until the wee hours, on the other.

First job of the year came in and went out. Always a good sign.

Cheers...

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It's been a few days...

2018-01-08T02:41:41Z

...but not to worry, I've been making scratches with ink and nib in a notebook in the meantime.

Just had to decline an Airbnb request from a guy who was just full of questions about our offering, all of which can be answered via the simple expedient of reading the listing description. This might have been forgivable, except for his third message sent within 10 minutes, wondering whether his messages were getting through.

It rubbed me the wrong way. Like, on Sunday night, after 8 pm, I'm supposed to be hanging out online or have my phone glued to my hand?

In other news, today was perhaps the first "normal" day I've had in a while, defined as one in which I take no painkillers, experience no overwhelming fatigue (nor any desire to sleep in), and muster enough energy to make another round of boeuf à la Stroganoff, which turned out well, spooned over buckwheat groats (which goes under the name of гречневая каша, грека, or just каша in my bride's homeland).

Galina's gaze is glued to the Golden Globes. (How's that for alliteration?) Me? I could not really care less. That said, I should probably go sit with her for a while before I pull the plug and go to sleep.

Cheers...

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I did not get much done today...

2018-01-04T03:18:16Z

I hope to do better tomorrow.

Cheers...

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Everybody wants a piece!

2018-01-03T00:49:06Z

It has been dawning on me, over the years, that January is really a killer month, because it seems everybody wants a piece of you in January—property owners associations, tax assessors, and so on.

This is going to be an interesting month, in that regard.

January is historically sort of a poor month for Russian-to-English translation (and probably in the other direction, as well) because on the Russian end, the holidays start with New Years' Day and go on through Orthodox Christmas (and in some places, Orthodox New Year's Day). Call it the first week to ten days of the month.

That makes for a short month.

But hey, look at me—I was moaning about poor billings up through the second ten days of December, and the month turned out not too badly at the end.

I went out around noon to get some stuff done and got none of it done. Computer issues here, excuses there. Came home, napped (slept) and then got up and got some of it done anyway.

Cheers...

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Happy New Year!

2018-01-02T00:38:37Z

Wow—2018! Time has put a real dent in the twenty-first century, hasn't it?

We had what my parents would've called a "party" last night. (Actually, it was a party, but not like the ones to which I remember my parents dragging me when I was a child—people there seemed to be having such a grand time, but I digress...)

Things were going along fairly well but I started feeling puny around 1 am, so I excused myself and went upstairs. During the half hour leading up to 1 am, folks were watching a recorded Russian New Year's program on YouTube called Голубой огонек (translated as Little Blue Light by the producers), which started out okay (for me), but then I noticed just how well the cameras were picking up all of the makeup on the performers' faces and how the cameras kept cutting to little groups of people who were clinking champagne glasses and (in my opinion) acting at having a good time.

I better stop before I burst out in a salvo of "Bah, humbug!"

I experienced today what must have occurred once last month, which consisted of religiously making sure I hadn't eaten anything for two hours and then, upon achieving that milestone, waiting one more hour before eating anything. What was wrong with the picture was not taking my cancer meds between the two-hour "before" period and one-hour "after" slot.

After waking from a nap at around 4:20 pm, I frankly could not remember if I had taken the cancer meds.

No, that's not it. I was pretty sure I hadn't, but how could I be sure? I certainly didn't want to miss a dose, but I absolutely didn't want to take a double dose, so I emptied the bottle on a clean towel and counted the number of doses left. It turned out I hadn't yet taken today's meds, so I'm taking them today, in a few minutes, after a two-hour "fast" (I must confess it is hard to not nibble at leftovers in the fridge).

Now, one might wonder how someone who engages in memory exercises might forget something like this? Easy.

After this happened last month, I should have implemented a little protocol that would force me to notice my taking my meds, but I didn't follow through. That ends today.

Anyway, I'm off to take meds and catch up on the day, which is largely gone.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Cheers...

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Zoom!

2017-12-29T20:41:44Z

Barring some kind of surprise last-minute item, the last assignment of 2017 has just been sent.

December, which was on track to be the worst month of 2017 based on billings through the 15th, ended up being the second best month of the year.

It occurs to me that such a statement is revealing, i.e., one can't say much for billings over this past year. It's true.

That said, I must express gratitude for having what I have. I don't know how other Russian-to-English translators have fared, but a number of English-to-Russian translators I know have really taken a beating this year.

Here's to a better 2018, for all of us in all areas of our lives.

Cheers...

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The big 41...

2017-12-29T03:22:48Z

Wow, what a day this has been.

Galina agreed to help out a friend who needed to be dropped off at a hospital (not MD Anderson) at the Texas Medical Center this morning and prevailed upon me to postpone picking up my meds until today, but we did not realize until last night that our good deed would entail a 5:45 am wakeup for me. I dropped off our friend and found myself orbiting MDA at around 7:30 am.

It turned out the MDA pharmacy opens at 9 am.

Had I been driving Natalie's Honda, I would have gone to ground in a coffee shop until 9, somewhere, but Galina had agreed to drive our go-to handyman Victor to Natalie's house to effect some repairs, and since Galina does not drive a stick (or claims not to, as our first car was a manual, which she drove perfectly well), I ended up driving back to Seabrook, swapping cars, and then heading back to MD Anderson.

When I stopped to get gas, I noticed one tire was perilously low, but when I pulled up to the air pump, a sign informed me it was out of order. The second air pump I stopped at had had its quarter slot jammed up with something, and a third was simply missing the valve hardware at the end of the hose. I considered buying a can of tire inflator, but the instructions said the contents had to be at 60°F or higher to be effective, and the gas station office was cold, so that was a no-go.

So I ended up driving to MDA at low speed, and I made it. I got my meds, found a gas station with a functioning air hose, and headed on home.

Galina got back shortly after 8 pm. A bouquet of roses, candy, and shrimp gumbo greeted her.

A heck of a way to spend one's 41st wedding anniversary, but there you have it.

Cheers...

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I hadn't noticed...

2017-12-28T01:59:18Z

It took a text from my client to make me aware that none of the email addresses associated with my domain had received any email today at all.

It didn't take much time for me to put my finger on the problem. I had just had my hosting account upgraded by my hosting company (amazingly enough, the whole thing pretty much was done via email, involving me and my hosting company's sales, billing, and tech support departments), and I had tested my Web access to files, but when I checked my mail program's mail server configuration and compared it against what it should've been, there was an, um, discrepancy.

It's fixed now. I was even able to create and install an SSL certificate on my domain.

And as a result, I am now aware of the two assignments that were sent to me at 5:30 am (and not only aware, but the files are sitting on The Plate™). Fortunately, since the English end of the document chain is on vacation this week, the urgency factor is not in tight-sphincter mode.

I got to thinking that perhaps I ought to have a separate journal for gripes. (My efforts to go 24 hours without a complaint haven't been getting very far.) But then I began to wonder if such a journal would serve the opposite purpose I originally imagined, i.e., a place to blow off steam and get it out of my mind. I ended up concluding it almost certainly end up being a place where it was comfortable to be and the ideal venue for an ongoing "pity party." So, I guess it's back to finding a way to not complain, at least not outside the context of figuring out a way to fix things.

Cheers...

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Trove...

2017-12-27T03:23:56Z

I've found some additional stories in my LJ tappings that completely blast the idea of titling a book of such tales "a baker's dozen" (unless we wish to invoke the rule of "there are three types of people in the world: those who understand mathematical concepts, and those that don't").

So right now, I'm at nearly 24,000 words (93 pages) in my book of short-short stories.

In other news, assignments received through December 18 suggested the month would be a genuine, 24-carat stinker, invoice-wise, but work that has arrived (and been completed) during the past five days has salvaged things to the point of making me breathe easier. It won't be a stellar month, but then again, 2017 hasn't been a year for stellar months of translation work.

Apparently, the folks on the Russian side of the equation are trying to pump things out before their holiday season kicks in for about a week starting with the New Year.

I'll not complain. Bring it on!

Cheers...

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Letter to Arnold Denker...

2017-12-25T23:27:29Z

Someday, I'll have to post a graphic of the letter that prompted this response.

Dear Arnold,

Got your letter doay; read it; left it at home. I'm writing this during a coffee break at work.

Controversy—I can take it or leave it; more often than note, I'd rather leave it. If your remark concerns Storch's letter about Vaughan: a) publication was discussed with VP Butler in your absence. b) Storch's allegations go deeper than some piddling rubber checks which, as we discussed on Labor Day, weren't really worth montioning.

By the way, one of the participants at the Crown Country tourney held recently here made the allegation that organizer Vaughan owes him prize money! Lack of concrete info and an overall weariness regarding Vaughan preclude publication of this tidbit.

If your remark concerns Ed Butler's apparently inappropriate juxtaposition of Vaughan and the Miami Chess Club, well, I do see how I could hav edited Ed's text better. Mr. Gittelson called to express his concern about what seemed to him to be a "singling out." and said he'd send a rebuttal for publication (not yet received, by the way, and FCN goes to typing this weekend!)

I'd love to print more games, if only I'd get some (and preferably, not games from Jacksonville players, nor games whose only redeeming feature is the loser resigning quickly after blundering away Queen, Rook, and Knight!).

But I'll tell you what I'd really like to see—essay-type material on subject's such as Florida's chess history ("Did Capablanca ever play in Miami?") and subjects like "How to teach chess to children."

Anyway, I've got to get back to work.

[AlexPGP]

P.S. I really enjoyed your letter from Merano!

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Okay, so it's Christmas Eve...

2017-12-25T04:23:57Z

The major accomplishment of the day was working my way through a set of instructions on starting with a ordered deck of cards (like what you'd find in a new deck) and end up with the so-called "Mnemonica stack," a concept that will be of no interest to anyone not interested in magic, and about 95% of people who are interested.

This process was not easy, as I screwed up the first five attempts, but I nailed it on the sixth (and I'm not pushing my luck any more today).

To any who read this—may the joy of this season be yours and may the idea of "peace on earth, good will toward men" (that last word in the classical sense of "all people") be realized.

Cheers...

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Sa-a-aturday...

2017-12-24T03:43:50Z

Not much to report.

One job left on the plate, which involves a bunch of OCR before I can start translating.

All the Christmas stuff has been put on display, and Galina and I have agreed that we've managed to spend enough money to consider various birthday, Christmas, and anniversary presents paid for and exchanged.

Dunno about that. :)

Cheers...

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Oh, happy day!

2017-12-23T02:43:32Z

I managed to get the "monster" finished and sent by about noon.

I have been noticing various aches and pains that are likely associated with sitting in an office chair for many hours during the work day. It would be nice to find an inexpensive way to configure my computers and monitors so as to be able to raise and lower them, depending on my mood and state of health.

The DNS problem I was experiencing with the domains I "resell" apparently was not solved, the fact of which was announced by the passage of 26 hours with no change in behavior when accessing the respective domain web sites. That problem has been solved, but now I've run into a problem that involves the version of PHP that I'm "allowed" to use, which is older than what the software I want to run requires.

Le sigh.

What was the good news today?

Well, I'm getting back in the swing of things. I read Andy Weir's Artemis and enjoyed it, and a couple more books have been started. In other news, I've gotten a good handle on the "Mnemonica" card stack (the dogs must think I'm nuts when I recite it as we walk), which I am doing to keep my mind in shape.

I am happy to be alive, and grateful.

Cheers...

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Seeing the light...

2017-12-22T04:22:59Z

...at the end of the tunnel. Pretty sure it's not a train headlight.

I'm within 500 words or so of finishing the 13,000 word job received a little while ago. More work has come in since then, so it's not like I'll be twiddling my thumbs over the weekend.

Wait...

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Did a little digging...

2017-12-21T03:30:16Z

And found that the Simonides of Ceos who figures in the grand tale describing the "method of loci" mnemonic technique is the same fellow who wrote the words

ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

My favorite translation of this line is

Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

That said, I am absolutely wobbly from all the different ways one can combine a relatively small set of words to create almost 9,000 source words of text. The translation is not particularly hard, but the subtle differences in wording have taxed my ability to concentrate.

Cheers...

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Checklist...

2017-12-20T16:11:13Z

Originator sends a document

having the same name as the previous version of the document
with page margins of less than 0.5 inches
with a text size of less than 10 points
with tables where some columns are just wide enough to accommodate abbreviations that must be expanded into English to make any sense to the client

Life doesn't get much better than this.

Cheers...

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Not sure if I'm coming or going...

2017-12-17T01:59:04Z

My client sent what is likely the last assignment of the year, a 13,000-word monster that will probably take me the better part of a week to complete.

Meanwhile, this evening, I made beef Stroganoff for dinner. I had to make one small change to the recipe that I found, which called for 2-1/2 pounds of beef tenderloin (aka, filet mignon). However, at our local meat market (which I am partial to, as my perception is that their meat is superior to what you find packaged in styrofoam and plastic wrap in most stores), said cut runs to over $20 a pound, which would have made the dish quite expensive. I settled for a cut of meat that cost less than half that amount.

The memoir is almost at 90,000 words, at which point I really must put the brakes on the writing part of the project and begin to seriously see about printing a set of proofs in book form. My previous estimate of somewhere around 200 pages was completely wrong, as the page size of my document was specified to be A4 and the font was suitably sized for that format, while the physical dimensions of the book I envision is 120 mm by 190 mm (4.72 in by 7.48 in).

In any event, after playing around with font sizes, I've chosen Times New Roman 11 as the font, which gives me a tentative (yet better) page count of just over 300.

I've also figured out that I cannot identify a path forward for my relatively unsuccessful novel of a couple of LJ Idols ago about a fellow named Feather (whose name is now Ike) without printing and reading the 17,000 words that have been written so far. I think the operative word, here, is "immersion."

I need to immerse myself in the story and see where I can take it.

If we assume the same font and page size, then I'll need somewhere just short of 60,000 words for a book 200 pages in length. The math says I need 43,000 more pages. Marketing says they must be interesting pages. Compelling pages. You get the idea.

I think I can do it.

Cheers...

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A missing story...

2017-12-15T01:53:08Z

The memoir is now up to 87,000 words and I'm realizing there are stories—important stories—that are missing. One of them is about the night Natalie was born.

I could have sworn I've written about it, but searches for individual words (about the extent of LJ Archive's capabilities) that I know I used in the story have come up empty, so let me tell the tale one more time.

January 1981 was a busy month for our family, as first of all, we had just moved from our apartment at 2800 University Boulevard South to the house we had purchased at 1873 Bartram Road. And when I mean "just," I mean that by the 20th, I had barely gotten to the point of setting up the bed that Galina and I slept on in the living room. Circumstances were not made easier by Andrew's being sick with something that had a tendency to dehydrate him, and the fact that our understanding of the doctor's orders to keep him hydrated had fallen short of the mark, and Andrew was now being admitted to the children's hospital that was just down the road, on Atlantic Avenue.

Andrew was twenty months old at the time and not a happy camper about the IV line installed in his arm. Galina and I tried to spend as much time with him as we could, but that was difficult for Galina, as she was very pregnant with our second baby.

Fortunately, the hospital had a policy of allowing parents to spend the night sleeping either in a chair (for free) or in a cot (for some nominal charge) next to their child's bed. We were living pretty close to the edge of our checking account, so that night of the 20th, I kept Andrew company and eventually, fell asleep in the chair.

Somewhere shortly after 2 am, I was awakened by the security guard, who told me I had a phone call. I had a pretty good idea who it was and what it was about, and my guess was right on the money. Galina's water had broken and we needed to get to the hospital. Although I was prepared to walk the few hundred yards from the hospital to the house, the guard insisted on driving me, for which I was grateful.

On the drive to the hospital, I silently prayed that no mile-long freight trains would be traveling down the tracks we had to cross to get to the hospital. My prayer was answered, and we arrived at the hospital at about 2:45 am without incident. I dropped Galina off at the ER entrance and went off to park the car.

Upon gaining the floor on which the maternity ward was located, I prepared to sit down and wait for as long as it took. I recall I had brought a cardboard chess set with me (one where pieces slide into slots) to help pass the time, but I was too excited to think about anything other than what was happening just a few dozen feet down the hall.

As it turned out, I didn't have to wait long at all. At shortly after 3 am, I was called out of the waiting room and introduced to my wife and new baby daughter.

After a little while it was time for them to rest and for me to leave, but I had no idea what to do with myself. I was too jazzed to go back to the children's hospital, and anyway Andrew was almost certainly sleeping. So I drove slowly back toward our house and stopped at a diner, where I ate breakfast and consumed several cups of coffee.

At around 7 am, I picked up a pay phone and called my half-brother Steve, to let him know that Galina had given birth. His reaction was somewhat reserved, as he let me know that our Aunt Bonnie, who lived down south of us in Bradenton, had succumbed to cancer the night before, at around 9 pm. Having exchanged our respective information, we said our goodbyes and I broke the connection. A little while later, I called my boss and let him know I would not be coming in to work that day and why. He congratulated me warmly.

The question of the new baby's name remained unresolved for some time. Galina and I had never discussed names, for boys or girls (we didn't know the sex of the baby until Natalie came into the world). After a week or so, Galina sugested "Natalie" and since that suited me to a "T" (it was, after all, my mother's name) that was that.

However, Galina also told me of a strange event at the house that had startled her greatly, which may have in turn triggered Natalie's birth. SHe told me she was sound asleep in our bed, in the living room, when a gust of wind blew open the front door, located a mere few feet from where she was sleeping. The strange about that was, continued Galina, that she was absolutely certain that she had closed and locked the door before going to bed. I have no reason to doubt the tale.

So, what? Were some kind of otherworldly forces at work here? The only reasonable explanation, given certain assumptions, was that Aunt Bonnie's recently liberated spirit had traveled all the way from Bradenton to Jacksonville over an approximately 8 hour period and got the ball rolling for our daughter to come into the world.

But that's nonsense, of course, because ghosts don't exist, do they?

On the other hand, if they did (say I, as an engineer and kind of nerd who took pleasure in expressing speeds in, say, "furlongs per fortnight"), what number would I come up with if I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that assumed Bonnie's spirit traveled directly over a "great circle route" from Bradenton to Jacksonville and was not stymied by natural obstacles such as rivers.

Approximately 200 miles over approximately 8 hours yields an answer of just over—67,000 furlongs per fortnight.

And why would I suspect it was Aunt Bonnie's spirit that hovered near Natalie that night?

Because in the short time I knew her, I found Bonnie to be independent, strong-willed, intelligent, well-read, opinionated, feisty, family-oriented, knowledgeable, generous, and kind. And believe me, as Natalie grew up, I saw a little of all those qualities come out in her and shine.

So, you may ask, do I really believe this story about Aunt Bonnie's ghost?

Well, no, not really. But on the other hand, I don't really not believe it, either.

Cheers...

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Wednesday madness...

2017-12-14T04:20:09Z

The past couple of weeks, I've had to wait for others to arrive at the spoken Spanish language meetup, so today I brought along the deck of cards I use for memorization practice (the deck has a hole punched through it at one end, and it lives on a looseleaf ring).

In any event, the deck eventually became the subject of discussion, but there weren't any native speakers present, and the results those of us who were there were getting with online resources were all over the map.

So, that'll be Something to Do™ if I get bored over the next few days.

The translation project that arrived in the middle of the day on Monday was completed today. The work did not go as quickly as previous work, but then again the subject matter was largely new and the tone of the documents I was translating was conversational.

Once Galina left for her "girls night out" meeting (for chatter and not Chippendales), I sat down and added some additional material to the memoir and—broke the 80,000-word barrier a little while ago. Based on the template I'm using, the resulting book will occupy 178 pages or so.

For me, 80,000 words crosses me over into territory where I can argue there's enough now to go publish some proof copies. I just need to go through the dwindling stack of index cards representing stories I felt belonged in the book and have yet to be incorporated. Some stories have since garnered a question mark as to suitability (e.g. "Victory Day in Baikonur"), and a half-dozen are lined up for inclusion, so I'll probably be closer to 85,000 words before publication comes up as an issue again.

Time to go get some quality rack time.

Cheers...

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With this information and a five dollar bill...

2017-12-12T14:41:24Z

My paternal grandfather died at the age of 49, before I was born, of complications following surgery.

My father died at the age of 51, when I was 8 years old, of a heart attack brought on by nature (hardened arteries) and nurture (copious quantities of alcohol and cigarettes).

My maternal grandfather died at the age of 65, when I was in my second year of life, of a heart attack, apparently. My mother and grandmother never spoke of an underlying cause, and maintained it was due to overwork, and I have no basis or reason to disagree with the proposition that the man was a hard worker.

Today, I turn 66, making me the first male to live to such a ripe old age in three generations. Go, me.

If there's anything life has taught me, however, is that racking up the years is not any kind of competition. Some live to be very old (John Gay, my great-great-great-great grandfather, who fought in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, died at the age of 102), and many others—don't, for so many different reasons that the mind boggles.

Is life too short? Many would say yes.

I am trying to let myself be guided by Seneca in this regard ("It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it"). I see the truth of his observation every day—more often than not, in my own life.

But maybe I waste a bit less time every day, and that's progress. Plus, wasted time aside, I'm nevertheless happy to be alive and grateful for it.

Having become the "old man" of the tribe (and having set the bar a bit higher for my offspring), I think I shall take a five dollar bill and go find a Starbucks somewhere. Our home coffeemaker doesn't do cappuccino.

Cheers...

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A shift in the wind...

2017-12-12T04:47:10Z

Up until this morning, the first third of December had netted me an average of about $3 a day in billings, and I was prepared for the worst, when the morning's email brought some work that just may push the month's billable total out of that crack in the gutter where the surface of the street meets the concrete of the curb.

In other news, I shared a marginally scatological cartoon with Feht via email, which caused him to declare my sense of humor to be "Rabelaisian," which is a word that's easily enough defined ("of, relating to, or suggesting François Rabelais, whose work is characterized by broad, coarse humor and keen satire"), but not easily grokked (at least, not by me). More research is required, methinks.

The memoir is at 65,000 words, after adding a couple of stories and stumbling through a couple of stories that needed to be combined. Having started with the "autobiographical" posts made to LJ Idol, I am finding that there is a lot of other untapped material in my journal posts that fills in some of the holes of the former items, as well as posts that have nothing to do with LJ Idol, yet which seem (to me) worthy of inclusion in a memoir.

This leads me to reconsider a line written completely in jest in my author's introduction, regarding the possibility of there being a volume 2 of my memoir, but... I really don't know.

On the one hand, just over six months from now, this online journal of mine (which I started on LiveJournal in 2000 in an account I still cross-post to) will turn 18. To date, I've written nearly 9,000 posts and the last time I calculated a word count, my tappings weighed in at between 5 and 6 million words (it was a rough word count). If Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") holds, that would leave about a half million words that might be suitable for publication. So if my current plan is to publish once I hit 80,000–90,000 words, do I have a potential second volume in the wings?

I would venture to say almost certainly, but it's going to take a lot of work to (a) find the material and (b) massage it into a manuscript. (Indeed, the latter point is the major obstacle facing me with the current effort, as my habit of keeping stories to under 2,000 words results in a kind of choppy presentation—or maybe that's just my imagination.)

All that said (and apologies for sounding a bit egotistical), I must say I'm not going to sweat it. Nothing I publish is going to hit the best-seller list in any event, so I should let myself be guided by the following lines, from the poem The Fence That Me and Shorty Built, by Red Steagall:

But one thing that I always got
From every job I’ve done,
Is do the best I can each day
And try to make it fun.

I can certainly do that.

Cheers...

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