Lakeshore

Mars Over the Allalinhorn — A rather nice photo from APOD.

The Accident: 1906 — An unspecified disaster at a railroad depot, via Shorpy. I find this photo haunting on several levels.

Smart cows — Another Criggo classic.

Who Would Want Credit For Iraq? — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison is startlingly wise about our war in Iraq. Much to think on here, whatever your political perspective.

?otD: Did you avert your eyes with shame?

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3/8/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1 hour
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 (solid)
This morning's weigh-in: 234.2
Yesterday's chemo stress index: 4/10
Currently reading: [between books]

Your Monday moment of zen.



Grain elevator, Fort Benton, MT. © 2006, 2010 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Yesterday, I posted about the outbreak of shaven heads [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]. I love you guys, but quite frankly, not everybody can or should shave their head.

So if you're feeling the cancer love right back at me, I have a couple of suggestions.

First off, if you do want to shave your head in solidarity with me or anyone else, consider donating your hair to Locks of Love. As their Web site says, Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 21 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. (For those wondering, I did not donate mine because my hair has been bleached.)

If you want to honor the fight that I and millions of others wage against cancer, I also suggest supporting the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund, which specifically supports writers in the Pacific Northwest in financial distress because of medical needs. That's my charity of choice.

As always, the American Cancer Society, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and many other fine cancer-related charities can use your help as well.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge that klages got more for her hair at auction than I got mine despite my hair's obvious glory, and that she is one of the finest, funniest people I have ever known.

Thanks, Ellen. You rock.

Weighed in at 234.2 pounds this morning. That's the heaviest I've been in almost two years. While on chemo.

Except, in a sense, I'm briefly off chemo. Moving infusion session five back a week so I could go to Rain Forest Writers Village means my body has enjoyed significantly reduced levels of side effects. (Other than the endless fatigue, drat it.) But I've been eating like a chemo patient, including adding in milkshakes lately due to my continued mouth distress. (Which is also ongoing.) That probably adds 500 to 1,000 calories every day I have one. Which of course reminds me why I stopped consuming them in the first place.

At any rate, I go back on the needle in four days, so I'm not going to sweat it. calendula_witch departs this morning, quite soon in fact. She'll be back for session six in two and a half weeks. shelly_rae arrives on Friday to help me make it through the weekend on the pump. Life is normal, in other words.

Also, woke up at 3 am (again), put in some time on Endurance, including processing calendula_witch's feedback and edits. She heroically finished them last night after I went to sleep. My intention is to get the book out to first readers this evening, but I may slip a day. Bonus round: in the car on the way home yesterday, we talked out Kalimpura (Green book 3), and I am ready to write the first draft of the book's outline now. Such timing, eh?

Meanwhile, I have a very sleepy witch to wake up shortly and take to the airport.

kenscholes with a sympathy shave.

Photo © 2010 Jen West Scholes, reproduced with permission.

I had planned to have Endurance out to first readers by today. I'm perhaps 90 minutes short of being ready to send the manuscript off, but am simply out of gas. Nonetheless, I got an astonishing four hours of work done today, an hour and a half around 3 am, and the balance since knocking off the Day Jobbe. I've been hammering at this book through chemo. calendula_witch has read it and assures me I'm not full of cobwebs. Tomorrow it will be away.

Then I'll turn quickly to write out my preliminary draft of the outline for Kalimpura. The third Green book is burgeoning in my mind. I won't start drafting it until I've done final revisions on Endurance for Tor, but still, that should be around May or June.

Feeling pretty good about this, for all that I failed to meet my original deadline for first readers.