Category Archives: Writing

critique group, Engineering, flood studies, Health, Writing

A Day Usurped

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Okay, so this morning I had two things on my mind–well, actually three:
1. Get the reanalysis done for my floodplain project so that on Wednesday all that would be left would be to have the CADD tech change the two maps and assemble a submittal to send off.
2. Attend writers critique group at 7 PM.
3. Help my wife decide on when to go to Oklahoma City: today with Sara and Ephraim; tomorrow the day after them; Thursday; or Friday.

Concerning the floodplain analysis, I had good success on Friday, completing 1/3 of it (as to total computer runs), and less success on Monday, due to interruptions, working sub par due to this cold, and to normal Monday inefficiencies. Still, the morning went well, and by a little after noon I had completed much, and could see my way to finishing it today or early tomorrow morning, making deadline.

I had a couple of conversations with Lynda. She felt she should go on Thursday, but we are under a winter storm watch for Thursday: 4-8 inches of snow, possible ice, possible rain. It all depends on the track of the storm. I suggested she go tomorrow. Sara called at 1:45 PM or so, when I was working on my analyses after lunch, and said they were going today and that Mom needed the cell phone (hers has never been replaced; I’m not going to do it) and would I meet them in Decatur, sixteen miles west. I hopped in the truck and met them to transfer the phone, and headed back to the office to check one thing in Centerton (right on the way) useful for my floodplain analyses.

Heading back to the office, about 2:45 PM I witnessed a four car accident right in front of me. I circled around the block and hung around about half an hour until I could give my contact information to one of the emergency workers, and drove the mile to the office. So far no one has called to take my statement. Others probably had a better view and so they may not need my observations.

So, with time lost but with no wife to go home to tonight, I decided I would stay at the office till 6:30 PM, rush to writers guild, getting Sonic on the way. That would almost make up for the Decatur run and the accident time. But no, the VP in charge of Production dropped by, asking me to assist that afternoon and help with an unexpected floodplain issue in Covington Louisiana. So from about 3:45 till 5:45 I huddled with one of the young engineers, then with the said VP of Production, including a conference call to our Dallas office where the project manager who botched–I mean supervised–the original work could hear our findings.

That done, I went back to my computer and saw an e-mail from another engineer, saying he knew I was busy but he had finally made the changes to the wastewater lift station project I checked last week and it had to go out tomorrow and could I look at it by mid-morning. He had the specifications done that I insisted he do before I signed off on it, he said. I told him to get it to my by 6:20 PM and I’d take it home. I also wished, by this time, I had not committed to going to writers guild, cause I sure could use the entire evening at the office.

The lift station documents in hand, and the writing I was to share tonight in the truck, I rushed to writers guild, picking up my discount Sonic burger along the way. And nobody else showed up. I waited half an hour, knowing there would be a message on the answering machine at home, saying it was cancelled because of people not being able to attend.

Had I known writers guild wasn’t going to meet, I would have stayed at the office until my floodplain analyses were done. But at that point, I was about a mile from the house and fourteen from the office. So I came home and entered the Dungeon, deflated from the day’s usurpations, very tired from the emotions, and possibly from the effects of my lingering cold, so I decided to not bother with the two articles I was going to write tonight. This post will have to do. I’ll pack a bag to take in tomorrow and spend the night in town, either at the office or at my mother-in-law’s so I won’t have to fight the snow on Thursday. I’ll stay in town Thursday night as well.

Right now, I feel both sad and mad: sad at the missed opportunities and the tiredness, and mad at the usurpations. My choices are to fight the emotions with food or with writing. About the only writing I could do tonight is to critique a poem over at Absolute Write, but the way I feel I’d probably dash some budding poet’s spirit with an overly-harsh critique, and I don’t want to do that. So the forage in the fridge it is. I seem to remember seeing some vanilla ice cream in it.

ETA: Oh, and when I got to the writers guild meeting that didn’t happen and opened up my Sonic burger with mayo and added ketchup and took a bite, it turned out it had mustard on it instead of mayo. The perfect unauthorized substitution for an usurped day.

Health, Writing

Marking Time

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My health is improving. The coughing associated with the pneumonia is gone, I think. I’m still on an inhaler that pumps some kind of medicine in me four times a day (when I don’t forget), and that will go on for another 84 pumps. Still sucking on cough drops and occasionally taking some over-the-counter cough syrup. But really, I cough almost not at all. The stomach flu I had lasted only 24 hours. I’m still fighting a garden-variety cold, but I think that is waning now. So, praise God for feeling better.

I think my immune system is below normal, so I’m not yet ready to go back to an exercise regimen. Perhaps next weeks I’ll resume light calisthenics and walking. I’d like to get back to purposeful weight loss efforts, rather than just what might come off as my body fights this or that illness. When the fight is over, the weight comes back on fast.

Writing is where I’m really marking time. The only writing I’ve done since Dec 17 is the one article for Suite101.com. I have three other Suite articles started, and will hopefully get them published within a week. Tonight I plan on going back to writers critique group, and sharing with them the 490 line poem from Father Daughter Day, “The Legend of the Mill”. I shared this last time I was there, but the poets in the group were absent, so I’ll do it again. Can’t say that I feel like doing much writing yet. Motivation must lag immune systems in regrowth.

Of course, having grandson Ephraim around is a pleasant distraction. He may leave today with his mom, or she might leave him for us to watch a few more days then bring to her and her returning husband next weekend. I got to rock him last night, singing hymns and praying with him. He always lays down and stays there when I do the honors, unlike when Lynda does it. He will usually object to being laid down and insist on more rocking. Must be grandpa’s touch.

Examiner, freelance writing, Suite 101, Writing

Sleeplessness

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After sleeping [cliche alert!] the sleep of the dead Wednesday night, which followed a day of mostly sleeping while my body fought the stomach bug, last night, Thursday night, started sleepless. To find the cause(s) that set my mind going so strong I guess I need to retrace the day.

  • At work my weight was down to an 11 month low. I’d have been disappointed if it wasn’t, after what I went through Tuesday night/Wednesday.
  • Also at work, I took a stand against a bad practice I feel another engineer was doing, refusing to approve something for submittal to a State agency, and that felt good.
  • By the end of the work day I (think I) figured out what is wrong with my flood model, which caused FEMA to reject it. Today I get to put that theory to the test. Unfortunately it’s going to be tedious work, model revision cross-section by cross-section, tweak upon tweak, plus adding about three cross-sections, which is tedious in itself.
  • At home I had a good evening playing with Ephraim, giving him his bath, reading stories, and rocking/singing him to sleep. He’s responding well to what I have him do.
  • After that, I completed an article for Suite101.com and posted it, the first article I posted since Dec 17. It felt good, and it’s the first of a cluster of four or five articles on the same topic that should go fairly easy.
  • Then I left the Dungeon, came upstairs and read 16 pages in my current reading book, The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. I’m not yet half-way through its 680 pages, though getting close to that milestone.

So, which of these things caused my sleeplessness, such that laying down at 11:45PM saw me still awake at 1AM? I suppose all of them. I had visions of Ephraim, knocking down the block towers I built, and asking me to do the “pokey pokey”. I had visions of a floodplain model, corrected and doing exactly what FEMA wants while at the same time providing protection and appropriate access to flood insurance for residents of the city. I saw a company that puts ethics above mere adherence to an arbitrary schedule, and engineers who knew the right way of doing things and did things that way. Strangely (?), I had no vision of any short story by Mr. Twain.

But most of all I saw writing projects, many of them. I saw a whole host of articles at Suite101, including rising page views and revenues. I saw my short story published. I had a vision of teaching a poetry writing class [this one is on-going, nightly], asked to do so based on my Suite101 articles on poetry. I saw Father Daughter Day published and a huge success. I saw the e-zine/magazine I’d like to publish, Technophobia, published, and a wild success. I saw my newspaper column, “Documenting America”, syndicated and a wild success, with spin off books as a result. And I saw myself writing for Examiner.com as the Northwest Arkansas Christianity Examiner, again with wild success.

All of this because I managed to get eight hundred words and change coherently put together and published, after a sickness-caused dry spell of a month. No telling what visions of failure will do.

So at 1:15 AM I got up, had a bowl of cereal with real sugar and cinnamon, watched a little of a news program replay, found a Writers Digest I hadn’t read yet and read an article about religious publishing wars (which turned out to be a bit misleading based on its title), and went back to bed around 2AM. Sleep came at some point, not sure when. The alarm at 6AM seemed a lot louder than normal.

Health, Writing

What the Doctor Said

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Pneumonia.

Yep. Went to see him yesterday. When he listened to my lungs he said he thought I had it, and ordered the x-ray. The x-ray showed less than he was expecting to see, but he said he still though it was pneumonia. Coughing without sinus drainage. No flu-type body aches. No fever. Just the persistent cough. They gave me a breathing treatment and a shot of antibiotic, plus prescriptions for an antibiotic, a home breathing treatment, and a strong cough syrup.

So, it looks like I’m home for a while, at least for this week. I won’t go back to work or church until the cough ends. I have gobs of sick time accumulated, so no worries there. Guess I’ll just lay around and rest, sleep, eat, watch bowl games, read, and play mindless computer games. Lynda is in OKC with Sara, Richard, and Ephraim. I’ve been reading a ton, mainly in the letters of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Also in the Bible.

Funny thing, I haven’t felt much like writing. Made a few entries into my journal, but haven’t felt like writing to this blog or any articles for Suite101.com or anywhere else. But as I was reading in Numbers this morning, my memory was jogged about a Bible study I had planned to write about Israel becoming a nation, taking material from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua. Perhaps tonight I’ll feel like at least outlining that. Maybe in a day or two, if the medicine kicks in like it should, I’ll feel like writing again.

Health, Writing

Weathering It

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Good morning, everyone. I’m back at work, my first hours here since last Tuesday noon. Fighting that cough last week I only worked 1/2 day on Tuesday. I had Wednesday scheduled as vacation, and we were off Thursday-Friday.

Weather reports didn’t look good on Wednesday as we prepared to drive 450 miles to Meade Kansas. We considered not going, but we got a local weather report that indicated things were pretty good there. So off we went, taking a southern route through Oklahoma and arriving in Meade about 8 PM. No snow at all on the way; Meade had only a dusting.

For the next three days I proceeded to do as little as I could. I parked my over-stuffed hide in a recliner and sat there. They didn’t want me in the kitchen, coughing all over the food. They didn’t want my on the furniture moving detail, since the exertion would set me to coughing. And they didn’t want me much in conversations and games, for the same reason. And I didn’t want that much either. Thursday I was mostly in a fog. I had no head cold, just the cough, but that was taking a lot of energy, so I rested. Outside the prairie winds blew at 40 to 50 mph for three days solid. The house shook and windows rattled. But with some senior citizens in the house the hostess kept the furnace cranked up pretty good and we were all warm enough.

I find that when I have a cough, if I just rest quietly, I can resist the urge to cough for a long time. After a cough I lay back, regulate my breathing to short breaths, and before long I can feel the air going after the tickle in my throat. Then it’s a matter of slowly letting my breaths lengthen, and restricting my air passage as best I can to minimize the irritation of the tickle. Knowing where the tickle is, and controlling my breathing, when the urge to cough comes I am able to endure the pain across the tickle instead of coughing. Eventually the tickle worsens, and I cough, but maybe it’s every 15 minutes or half hour instead of every three to five minutes.

I suspect that helps with healing, but it requires extreme concentration. I can’t read while doing that, for I will forget about the tickle and cough when I could have suppressed it. Even television is too much of a distraction. Don’t want to talk or hardly move at all. I can pray some while doing that, but even praying is a distraction that lessens the benefits of my cough self-suppression.

Of course, driving won’t work either. So Lynda drove on the trip home, and some of the trip out. We came back through Oklahoma City and picked up Sara and Ephraim to come and stay with us a few days. Richard is in Mexico with a group from their church and an extended group from the college on a mission trip. So they’ll be with us until New Years Day, when Lynda will take them back and I’ll batch it again for a few days.

During this time, writing went by the wayside. I hardly checked in at Suite101, didn’t check in at Absolute Write, and didn’t read, think about plots or story lines or poems. I think I need another day or two before I’ll be ready to think about words again.

Oh, yes. That snow that Kansas was supposed to get–Oklahoma got it, but a day later. On Christmas eve Oklahoma City got 14 inches and Tulsa 8 inches from a wrap-around band of the storm–the first blizzard ever in Tulsa. The roads east of Tulsa were still a mess when we drove them on Sunday. Lynda did a great job and we had no problem at all.

Health, Writing

A Mixed Bag

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It’s amazing what a white powder, pressed into oblong shape and put into a dose pack, can do to rheumatoid arthritis. After all the problems of getting my prescription–both due to doctor error and pharmacy busyness–the pills did an amazing job. By Saturday morning I was in good shape. By Sunday morning my hands were mostly healed. I say mostly because not quite. The stiffness I normally have was back to background pain. The extreme flare-up was under control. I was able to work again.

Except the emotional toll of the pick-up repairs, the prescription fiasco, Lynda’s lingering illness, and general lack of success with writing in general brought me to Sunday not feeling like doing much. So I did little except go to church and rest. I read a few blogs, finished a stock trading article at Suite101.com (an article I had started on earlier), and read. I read in two days Charles Dickens’ novella The Chimes, the second of his Christmas books. Tomorrow I plan on posting a review of it.

Speaking of Charles Dickens, my Suite101 article on him is one of my recent success stories. This article was picked up and linked by a Charles Dickens dedicated web site. Scroll down to the “Dickens in the News” section to see the link. The way the page is set up, this link should be public for quite some time. Given the season, this is having a positive impact on my page views at Suite.

Also positive is that I discovered a certain site, Investors Journal, is linking to Suite101 articles. Several of mine have been there, although they rotate quickly and none are listed at the moment. But my recent stock trading articles were there, Google still has those links, which boosts my article ranking in a Google search. This apparently was unknown to Suite until I discovered it.

A negative is that the rheumatoid is a bit worse today: same hand, same finger. I’ve worked my way down the steroid dose pack to where I’m not taking much now, and I’m hoping this doesn’t mean in a day or two I’ll be back to where I was last Thursday-Friday. But, to compensate that my weight is down some. I’ve lost about six pounds from the Thanksgiving overeating times, and am pleased with it. I’m right now five pounds above where I hoped to be at the end of the year, so a little exercise, reasonable eating, and the New Year should see me at my goal weight. Time to set a more ambitious goal for 2010.

Two positives are things I wrote at Absolute Write recently, one in a poetry critique and one in a comment on a public events topic. Both were thought excellent by others, and are being quoted. That’s a good feeling.

I suppose we should expect a mixed bag out of life. It can’t all be good. The trick is to not become emotionally down when the bad comes. That’s been my problem lately. Setbacks have set me back emotionally, when they shouldn’t. Hopefully, with a correct appreciation for the situation and expectation for outcomes, from this point on they won’t.

Suite 101, Writing

Good News to Counter the Bad

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Well, my arthritis in my fingers is still bad this morning. Saw the doctor yesterday. They x-rayed my right hand and found no trauma. His conclusion is a severe rheumatoid arthritis attack. He prescribed me a steroid and a strong pain killer. Went to the pharmacy later that evening and they had the painkiller but not the steroid. Seems something was unclear about what the doc wanted, and they wouldn’t fill it until he returned their call. Since the doc’s office is closed today (a special day off, it appears) I may not get that medicine till Monday. The painkiller is helping a little, I guess.

And I got my pickup back yesterday. New engine, rebuilt clutch, new warranty. I’m considerably poorer, though I’m glad to have this friend back who has carried me for over thirteen years now. Looks like I’ll have to take it back in tomorrow morning, for they failed to properly fasten the boot in the cab at the bottom of the gear stick. It’s kind of flopping around and I can hear all kinds of strange noises coming from below somewhere.

But the real good news is last night I had an e-mail from the Suite101 editor-in-chief. My article on homemade turkey soup was chosen as one of the winners in the Best of the Holidays contest. The announcement hasn’t been made publicly yet, but I imagine it will be today. The prise is $101, which comes at an opportune time, both in terms needing the money and needing the confidence boost.

Writing

Number 1 on Google

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Dr. Hook and his Medicine Machine may have fixated on getting their picture on the cover of The Rolling Stone magazine. Athletes hope for Sports Illustrated covers. I suppose politicians hope for the conservative or liberal magazine of choice. But for a writer who writes on the web and tries to attract readers through search engines, the goal is to be number 1 on Google for the critical search term(s).

My article, Book Review: Lost Letters of Pergamum, from June 2008, has for a long time been the most popular article I’ve posted to this blog. It’s companion, More Thoughts on Lost Letters of Pergamum, doesn’t get near as many hits. Some of my other book reviews get some traffic. Otherwise it’s a known reader in Rhode Island, a known reader in north Georgia, a mystery reader in Little Rock, and me who look at any of these pages.

I can always tell when some class somewhere has begun a study of The Lost Letters of Pergamum, for I get a few hits from that locale on the article. They show up in my sitemeter stats for a day or two, then things go quiet till next semester.

But Wednesday and Thursday I got a lot of hits on that article, many more than just one class studying the book. In fact, I think the hits came from five different institutions of higher ed. I wondered what was going on. At least one of the hits indicated they accessed the site after searching on Google for “review of lost letters of Pergamum”. So I did the Google search for that term.

And there I was, number 1 on Google. Even ahead of the Christian Book Shops page reviewing the book. Ahead of the Amazon.com page. Ahead of Barnes and Noble. Ahead of 12,799 other sites.

Those who have been at this Internet writing game for a while, and who know more about “search engine optimization” (SEO) than I do, say that somehow, through magical al-gore-ithms, Google can tell what is good writing and what isn’t. Or maybe it’s what is popular writing and what isn’t. Either way, my review seems to have passed Google-muster and risen to the top. It must have always been fairly high in a Google search, because I wouldn’t have been getting the occasional hits if it hadn’t. Research shows people rarely look past the first page of hits, and even more rarely go past page three.

But to rise to the number 1 position for the most important search phrase is validation. I must be doing something right. Since I wrote that article long before I had even heard about SEO, either I’m a natural at that new practice or the writing must be fairly good. Either way, I’ll take it. Time to get back to my SEO-based writing, trying to figure out how to write informative articles that incorporate search terms and that are written with excellence, not with mindless repetition of those terms.

It’s a good feeling.

Suite 101, Writing

Home Alone

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Well, it’s 5:30 PM Central time, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and I’m home alone. The holiday company have left, my wife taking our daughter and son-in-law back to Oklahoma City this afternoon. So I’ll be batching it for a few days.

Time to work on my writing, catching up on what I let go from Tuesday until now. I don’t know that I’ll do a whole lot today. I’ll probably write a second blog post a little later, and possibly I’ll work on and maybe complete an article for Suite101.com. My article on homemade turkey soup has done quite well there lately, helping to sustain my page views at respectable levels through the holidays. My revenue is also up, at the highest level for any month with three days to go in the month. I’m within striking distance of having enough to get a payout this month.

Tonight, though, I may take most of the evening to just relax. I’ll fix a thick turkey sandwich, complete with gravy and dressing, and watch Gladiator, which is supposed to be on one of the cable channels tonight with limited commercial interruptions. While watching that I might get my submittal log up to date, and take notes on a couple of Suite articles. I can multi-task, since I’ve seen Gladiator before.

I also have a new writing gig that I should take the evening studying, but I think I will put that off till tomorrow, and will report about it on this blog sometime later in the week. For now, this will suffice to get me back in the groove.

Engineering, freelance writing, Suite 101, Writing

Back On-Site, and a Writing Lesson Learned

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This morning the street superintendent of Centerton called. He needed me at a construction site. He was modifying something I “designed” a year ago and he wanted me to look at it. I put designed in quotes because this wasn’t a rigorous engineering design. A culvert wasn’t draining properly; erosion downstream had exposed a water line; wingwalls obstructed proper flow of water; he was tired of waiting for the highway department to fix it. So he and I met on site and I drew a sketch of what needed to be done. He hired a contractor and had it constructed. It has worked fine.

Well, sort of fine. The erosion control measures worked like a charm, save in one location they didn’t complete. The culvert drains as it should now. But a problem he has noticed since is that the flow entering the culvert, from the east and west and which turn and flows south, don’t work well together. The flow from the west is so much more than from the east that it overwhelms the smaller flow and creates backflow in that direction, over-topping the highway three hundred feet east. He wanted to put in a diversion wall and let the two flows get into the culvert with less co-mingling. I helped them lay it out, and hopefully it will accomplish what he wants.

I say hopefully, because once again this is not rigorous engineering. I get to do that this afternoon as I re-evaluate a flood study and respond to FEMA comments. But this approximate engineering is something I’m not as comfortable with. There’s no way to know if this will work until the next rain storm allows us to watch it in operation–and it needs to be enough rain to have the ditch flow at lest two feet deep. One of these half-inch rainfalls won’t do that. Much better to engineer something that works according to the laws of science and mathematics. Something I can reasonably predict how it is going to perform. Oh well, billable hours are billable hours. I shouldn’t complain.

It’s sort of like the difference of writing for a residual income website and a pay up-front website. On the latter I know exactly what I’m getting for what I have to write. For Suite101 and its residual income payment model, what I get paid is totally dependent on how many ads are clicked, which is somewhat dependent on what subjects I write about. It’s also dependent on how well I optimize the article for search engines. Maybe, over several years, it will amount to more than I would make writing for up-front pay; maybe not.

I’m working on my SEO abilities, but frequently find that butting up against what I consider to be good writing. So far, with one exception insisted on by an editor, I have always come down on the side of good writing. I hope I always will.