Author: Michael Seidel

Science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. Singer (sorry, no shows) & nudist (in my home). Beer, cat, cheese, coffee, pie and wine friend. Left IBM and Silicon Valley for the southern Oregon life but I miss the ocean. We're too far inland. Gotta move.

Monday’s Theme Music

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday –

It goes round and round with stifling tedium.

We travelers through time and space have landed on Monday. It’s May 1, 2023. As we expected. As ‘they’ planned it. Not sure if ‘they’ are Gods, Fates, machines, or some alien life form.

It’s cold today here. Our warm spell of sprummer has petered out. The autosystem has switched us to spring mode. 47 F now, the weather predictors tell us look for clouds. Check, got clouds. Ain’t no sunshine out there. High in the mid sixties Fahrenheit, and rain. We’ll wait and see, but they seem to have it right.

Finally got the new cable modem activated today. Called them up, read customer care the MAC and then waited for the cycle.

We live in the small town of Ashlandia in southern Oregon and use the local Internet provider. Town owns it and we’re trying to support the town. That means the minor sacrifice of not having a 24/7 response team. Shrug. How it goes. We went old school for the weekend, well, quasi old school, sneaking off to find public nets and use them to check email, post, catch up on news and games, lol. We also read, cleaned house, talked, and – gasp – watched over-the-air television.

Watching television was a hoot. We’ve been streaming over a decade. Turn on local channels for weather and local news, which is thinly and poorly reported. Just not enough money in it for the traditional local TV revenue stream. Change, right? There are whole channels dedicated to television shows from the day of yore. There’s a block of ‘war’ shows – Rat Patrol, Twelve O’Clock High, Black Sheep, Combat, etc. Another block is about westerns with Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, The Bounty Hunter, Wagon Train. It’s a true hoot visiting these blocks. Sometimes I wince at what I used to watch. Production values have improved, but they entertained me when I was young. Naturally, we also watched an episode of the original Star Trek.

For music, I have “Take it to the Limit” by the Eagles from 1975 in the morning mental music stream. The Neurons put it in the morning mental music stream while I was hustled through the house for the bathroom this morning. I don’t want to connect any dots there, though.

I’ve had coffee and brekkie. Getting ready to head to the coffee shop and begin round four of editing and revising The Light of Memories. You have a good one and try to stay pos. I’ll do the same. Here’s the Eagles.

Cheers

1

The Writing Moment

I finished the third round of revision and editing for The Light of Memories. Don’t think the title is ever mentioned in the book BTW. When I read the last chapter, a short but sturdy creature, I cried. Not sure if the crying was for the character, ending, or being done with the process again. There I was at the coffee shop, a few years short of seventy, looking at my laptop and struggling against tears. Fortunately, I don’t think anyone noticed because I’m a man a few years short of seventy at a coffee shop.

I saved the doc and closed it, and then resumed writing another novel. I don’t know if time waits for anyone but I do know that when the muses say jump, I jump and then ask, “How high?”

1

Belief

I’m a someday believer

A fluid self-deceiver

An optimist convinced I’m making it ahead

Probably be the way

Until that final day

When they solemnly announce I’m dead

But what will I find

Beyond that life and death line

Remains to be found I’ve said

Because I’m a someday believer

Thinking there might be more to conceive or

Even know beyond the book of dead

1

Sunday’s Theme Music

Spring is flirting with summer. It’s 60 now, but isn’t expected to be as warm as yesterday’s 83 F. Temperatures this week will be dropping. Rain is expected this week. It’s the last day of April, 2023 – 4/30/23 – and Sunday. Sunrise was between letting Papi out and letting him back in, sometime around six AM. Sunrise will come later, when it starts getting dark. Days like these are known as sprummer.

Fire south of us near Merlin, Oregon, in Hog Creek County Park, keeps the air from being fresh and clear. I was looking forward to the windows delivering cool healthy night air. Smoke from the fire kept that from us. Don’t know what caused the fire. News is delivered in drops, skating among titillating tidbits to keep us watching. “A race from another planet landed in the downtown area. But first, do you know what bees and spiders have in common? These stories and more, along with weather and local sports, after the commercial break.” By then, I’m long gone.

The news isn’t local, BTW, except in the sense that we’re part of southern Oregon, adjacent to northern California, an hour or two from the coast, a few hours from the capitol. That’s the stretch of our local news. Our local paper is gone; so is the larger one that served the area described. Our local coverage is due to be more truncated soon with the Sinclair Broadcasting affiliate being cut to one local news staffer. News from the nation and region will instead be delivered, unless that one person comes up with something big. See, we don’t have enough nation and region; the cable news channels can’t do it, no. Nor can all the websites and national newspapers. No, there must be another.

I later learned after the news posturing ended, the cause of the Hog Creek area fire is under investigation.

We still lack net at home. In our semi-smart home, this means we also lack all but basic over-the-air television, and our home phone line is down. So is our weather source, Alexa. We mock her but we depend upon her.  I’m at the coffee shop now, gone there early to surf before writing.

In many ways, being netless is like the good old days. What shall we do to occupy ourselves, we ask after cleaning. Clean more is suggested. Snide remarks and laughter come back. Read except, I’m short of reading material on hand. Guess I’ll hit the library today. I’ll also cut more grass, pull more weeds, trim more bushes, etc. Meanwhile, the situation caused The Neurons to dump The Stokes and “Someday” into the morning mental music stream.

It makes sense for once. We talk about the good ol’ days but they vary by age group. Saturday morning cartoons and breakfast cereal for one generation was going to the market in the wagon for another, driving to church for others, or fasting and praying. The good ol’ days are solid as slushy ice.

Been drinking my coffee. Time to punch on. Stay pos whatever happens to you, as best you can, if you can. I know, sometimes we just sink and there’s nothing we can do to stop ourselves.

Here’s the music. Cheers

0

Saturday’s Theme Music

Glorious summer day. 70 F by ten AM. We had the back door open to let warm fresh air swept through the house, which is naturally cool. We believed this would also allow the cats to go in and out. But no. Tucker, the black and white elder statesfloof, went into the master BR and retired behind the slider blinds. Papi the inimitable ginger power, went to sleep in the living room where he could eye the open door if he cared.

Net is down at our house. Using my detective schools and DIY ‘tude, I determined the cable modem was dead. It’s been five years since it was installed, and that’s the service life for a standard modem. We went off and bought a new one. Now I can see the net verifying it was the modem, but until the system adds the cable modem in, we’re dead in the ether. We went off to a public place to do a little netting and check news, ensure none have died on us, as the homeline is over the net. Our cells are not but not all have our cell numbers. People just lose them.

Since the net was out and it was a nice day and we couldn’t do nada on the net and had already done laundry and cleaned, we went off for an afternoon of dining at the local plaza, which is where we be, I with a locally brewed cold one fronting my space. Salads and burgers are coming.

It’s Saturday, April 29, 2023. It’s now 83 F.. The sun shone light on the situation at 6 something this morning and will go until after 8. Cooler weather heading our way.

The Neurons are staying mum about why but they have The Police serenading me in the morning mental music stream with “King of Pain” from ’83. Talk about the unexplained workings of the mind — which is what was said to inspire Sting to write this tune.

Stay frosty and pos. Make way as you can for this rotation of the planet and the next. Here’s the music. Cheers

4

Friday’s Theme Music

It’s Friday, April 28, 2023. If you had a goal to complete something by April’s end, you have until Sunday. Then April yields to May.

The sun isn’t yielding. It’s signed a contract extension for heat and shine. It’s 62 F in my Ashlandia, with focus set on taking temps into summer ranges of low 90s to high 80s. 6:10 AM signaled the sun’s rise into the blue and 8:06 PM will be seen before its last.

Spoke with a CASA volunteer yesterday. She said they used to have brown-bag lunches. That expression is no longer approved. Something about people’s skin color being compared to brown bags. Again, surprise was my result, but again, change is inevitable and we don’t always foresee how and why matters change. It is fascinating, though. In time, people will read about a brown-bag lunch in a novel and asked another, “What does that mean?” It’s going the way of using a dime to make a phone call at a telephone booth, the rotary dial on a telephone, the hands on a clock, padded shoulders, or the meaning of literally.

No news on sis to speak of. She’s always been very private and secretive. Won’t say what she was sick with but thanked me for the wishes that she’s feeling better.

Another health front had a friend telling us his wife had stage IV breast cancer and had a double mastectomy the night before. Another friend then mentioned she’s a two-time survivor of breast cancer and that her sister has survived stage IV cancer for four years. Involved discussions about her treatment and what she endured ensued.

You up for a little stadium rock? Today’s theme music was brought on by another’s comment. The Neurons heard someone mentioned they were taking a trip, nothing special, just to break the tedium because they’d been enduring the same ol’ same. A 1988 song, “Nothin’ but A Good Time” by Poison.

Stay positive and slay your dragons or at least tame them a bit. Here’s the coffee, here’s the music, and there’s the end.

Cheers

2

The Writing Moment

The final hundred pages were attacked. He brooded. My god, this was boring writing, wasn’t it? Did it advance the story? Not to his mind today. Slash, cut.

After tough decisions on two chapters, the rest went with stunning, engrossing speed. Fifty pages were read and edited in the next two hours.

Just fifty pages remained, for this go-around. Then there’d be another. Because he needed to ensure the book made sense with the cuts made. That he hadn’t inadvertently destroyed continuity and coherence.

But for today and now, he felt pretty damn good about it.

2

Contrafloof

Contrafloof (floofintion) – Actions, behavior, or sounds by an animal that are counter to expectations and confuse others.

In use: “With the door open to the outside and plentiful sunshine and warm air, the house rulers contrafloofed their human beans by selecting to nap in the house.”

1

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