Head down and the beat rolls on. Days are like that sometimes. I'm about 8700 words or so into A Wolf in Taos Valley. I think I understand more or less where I'm going, at least for the next couple of days. What happens after that, who knows? But I'll be there to find out.

The weather continues our spring follies, the cold fronts are still wandering through to break out the humidity and remind us that, while June and summer are there and waiting, it's not their turn quite yet.

I feel like I'm working on something else, the brain says "shh go away" whenever I try for something interesting to add. Hmm...

Nope, don't poke it yet. It ain't cooked, says the brain, come back later. I'll listen for now. Nervously...

Monday, Monday.... and I won't sing, because everyone hates it when I sing =>

Instrumentalist, not a vocalist. I can project, though! Heroic baritone, here, I can reach the cheap seats. Of course, I get to watch them cringe and run away (hey where are you guys going) whenever I do, though.

We had a quiet weekend, in preparation for a busy couple of weeks around here. This that and the other thing, most of it rotating around our teenager and her band business for the spring.

I did get a few more words in than I expected; A Wolf in Taos Valley us up to about 7700 words today, including the work I did today. Not much of a short story, now, and I'm fairly certain I'm about at the halfway point.

It's either that, or I've got the first part of a longer work. To be honest, I'm just not sure. It's got that feel where it's not ready, the characters aren't ready for me to finish with them, and they're doing their thing. I'm just along for the ride.

In other words, the fun part of the story, where I get to hang on and see where I'm headed when I get there.

A quiet Sunday, a quiet weekend. Just ramping up through the start of spring, spreading a little grass seed, a little bug deterrent, spraying the seams of the house. We picked a tick off one of the dogs last night. Just a couple days after we gave them their monthly flea and tick medicine, so she'd have to have picked it up just a few minutes before we found it on her.

So my chore today was to broadcast the granules and get the little boogers before they can get too well established this year. It's a constant fight, given that we're on the edge, between waterways and farm fields and subdivisions, the meeting ground for all sorts of beasties.

When we first moved in, I made a habit of taking our boxer for a walk first thing in the morning. She's more than a bit excitable, if you've ever owned a boxer you know what I'm talking about, so the only time I could guarantee she'd be able to have a nice quiet walk where she didn't get overwhelmed with joy every time a new peoples walked by was to get out there at five in the morning.

That came to a halt for a variety of reasons, but one of them was that the coyotes also make most of their movements, denning back up for the day, right at the same time. One coyote, a female boxer bigger than many male boxers, not much of an issue. Two or more, problem. And while the thought of more vigorous protection measures is logical under those conditions, the true strategy there is just to change the times we make walkabout.

Then, the coyotes can carry on about their business without the two of us sticking our noses into trouble for all of us.

If you're thinking I've left my neighbors in a lurch, understand that I also went to my HOA meetings, I said my piece and told them about the coyotes, among other issues I feel responsible for warning them about. They know they're there, and so far as I know, everyone else is being responsible as well. We've got a hundred or so houses in our little neihborhood, and we haven't lost any cats or dogs or kids to our four-footed neighbors.

It sort of puts the idea of them into perspective. Coyote is dangerous, do not mistake me, but he's also happy to mind his own business, if he's got the room to do so and plenty of places to hide. We've got a construction project coming down, though, the city's running a road through the farm land a hundred yards or so outside of our neighborhood.

The odds are that Coyote will move on, shift his patterns and his denning places as needed. They're "Wile E.", after all. But he's a nervous neighbor, and I may need to start making my walks again, not to protect my neighborhood, but to keep an eye on Coyote. Gauge how he's doing as things progress. And if necessary, be in a position to call the state and local animal control way before someone accidentally puts themselves or Coyote in a position to do unnecessary harm to either or both or innocent bystanders.

A few posts back, I introduced our "blink and you missed it" lady, i.e. our yellow rose with her (and our) first real bloom of spring. She's now about two years old, had her first real pruning this winter. Her first couple of years, she picked up her nickname because her blooms go through their process about three times faster than her compadres in the garden.

Basically, we have one day to view her blooms in full glory. After that, they're gone with only the memory of wonder left.

Here's another view of her, where I've tried to capture at least some of the effect.

She's not alone anymore in spring blooms. While none of our other roses have leapt to join in the fun yet, we have a new blueberry this year, he'll be in a container until next winter I think, but he's definitely joined in the fun as you can see below.

story time!

As in, personal story time.

Here's the setup. Way back in the mists of time (gather round children while grandpa chews his gums and reminisces), I remember all of the family getting my great-grandparents a VCR, the very first one they had.

So far, so good, and many of you reading this will have a similar story. Here's what I remember best about it, and it's something that pretty well nails down my music and niche, if you recognize the setup.

Ok, so we all get Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw a VCR for Christmas, and the first thing my aunts and uncles do is ask, what movie can we rent for them to watch. Someone says, hey, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas just made a movie, the two old farts came out of semi-retirement and had an absolute blast doing it. Comedy, Hollywood legends, we're golden.

And we were right. The movie "Tough Guys", if you seek it out, is a smiler, the kind of fun ride that old pros put together, hits its marks and bows out.

Now we get to the really fun part. I had to look up the dates, but I was about fourteen or so, and I had my own radio world. Needless to say, it overlapped with precisely nobody I knew, except for the one or two other kids at school that I traded cassette tapes and bootleg concert vcr tapes with.

This was the first rumblings of what would later become a roar. REM, Metallica, a vicious little snarl from L.A. that would turn into Guns N' Roses, the Seattle sound was hinted at, Queensryche was the forerunner here, Concrete Blonde, basically there was a group of us, holding tenuous hands around the country through tape exchange and bbs postings and so on, and we were so far outside of what people considered normal that Michael Stipe and REM making the radio was a shock beyond words.

What does this have to do with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas enjoying their golden years in a Hollywood comedy about the last two train robbers?

Well, the bit is that Kirk Douglas is trying to be cool and hip and date a much younger lady, one who's into the L.A. punk scene of circa 1985.

She took him to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. When, and trust me on this, absolutely no one (except for the handful of kids I'm part of, the ones who somehow connected across country and continents and were slowly morphing into something that other people would eventually accept under the odd label of Alternative, we didn't care because none of the bands and artists and writers we were part of cared if the straights *ever heard or saw anything we did*. Why care what the straights get up to?) had ever heard of this merry band of misfits.

Except for whoever had the mindflash to put them in "Tough Guys" and have Kirk Douglas try and dance to them => here's the YouTube Link.

And now we get to my part in the proceedings.

And that's the part where, a day after Christmas when we've rented "Tough Guys" for my great-grandparents to watch, and we get into this scene in the movie, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers come on the screen...

And everyone in my family turns to me at once, automatically, without thought at all, and simultaneously asks "What the hell is that?"

I'm just glad the Peppers had their clothes on. Because trust me, they're tame here...

p.s. I guess that means someday I'm going to have to tell the story of the little punk bar where I met Dave Grohl, when he was touring with his first band a couple years before he joined Nirvana...

A day consumed by passions... assuming that programming can be considered a passion. That's debatable, but only if you're not a programmer. Hacking new code has a tendency to consume all available thought, especially when it's a new project to dig your teeth into.

Such is life. I got words in today, A Wolf in Taos Valley is up to about 4400 words, so I call that a win, all things considered.

Oh, and part of what consumed me is that I dug into and figured out what the references I was dealing with were saying in their reports.

No, let me rephrase that. I realized what they actually did. Whether they understand that I don't know. I suspect it's a case where the very original algorithm developers knew what they summoned; those coming after may be dealing with forces they know not.

Obscure, necessarily, mostly because it's an odd little corner of the applied computational world, visited rarely but with intensity by those who do so. Most of the known applications I'm aware of, the distinction I'm making is of little practical consequence. In fact, the distinction is immaterial and can be well justified on both formal and practical grounds. It mostly leads to a matter of interpretation of results. Among those who know, a matter of words and emphasis, not of understanding.

A trap for the unwary, however... sort of like writing fiction, now that I think about it ;)

Oh, there are times where the gods themselves strive in vain against the efforts, not of fools...

but of those who will always leave key bits of information out of important reference documents, or who write that information in ways difficult to extract.

The obscurity of text and figures and parameters and and and...

Sorry, just going on about a project for the day gig, and the tedious business of figuring out just what it is that the long ago did, why and how, and whether what long ago did is wrong, meaningful...

or just an accident of "oh, we didn't put that in there?"

Yeesh.

Not much on other subjects tonight, though I did get my fiction words in today and yesterday, in addition to the little flash story I posted last night. A Wolf in Taos Valley is currently up to about 3500 words total. Moving along, moving along...