I woke up in the middle of the night, and couldn't get back to sleep, so, being the news junky that I am, I checked the news and ran across this lovely piece. It seems every time it starts to look like people are finally starting to except and understand transgender/differently-gendered individuals, something like this pops up to show you society hasn't come along as far as you thought.

I have a question involving the internet and there are people around here who seem knowledgeable. The small business I work at has been having trouble with the internet, being unable to bring up a page or access different things. We called the company that provides us with internet to find out what was up, and they said we were starting to max out our bandwidth. It seems what we have with them is a T1 and they said our company must have out grown it's original needs when it was first installed, and would we like to buy some more?

Today I stumbled across a article (via a article about ethics on Scientific American) written by Caleb Hannan at Grantland.com (some kind of Golf writers site I guess) The article is pretty much about how the writer investigated the maker of a new golf club, found out she had lied about her history, and education, and decided to out her to the world as trans. Oh, and she killed herself before the article was printed after trying her hardest to keep the writer from publishing it.

I probably should have said this already but I'm working on another writing project right now, so 'A Boy and his Dog' is on hold. I have every intention of finishing the story, and I have not lost even a bit of interest in it, it's just that this other project is taking precedent at the moment. I don't want to give anyone the impression that this is another story that will go unfinished.

I found a interesting interactive site while reading the news on the web. Its from NC State University and it's a survey of dialect and usage from around the united states. there are 122 different surveys, about half of them are how words are pronounced and half are what kind of word or expression are used, like Coke, pop, or soda. It is all shown on a map with shads of color matching the degree in which it is used. The maps have a composite view and a individual view.

Is it just me or do some blogs disappear before their time from the 'newstuff' page. You know, the page you get when you click 'more' under the recent blogs on the front page so you can look at older ones than the newest seven? Are people deleting their own blogs or do they get shuffled off before their time some how? I have noticed this happening to a number of different blogs in the past. Is it just me? am I going crazy?

I tried doing some writing again today and didn't get very far. Just sitting down and looking at the word document gave me a gut deep sense of revulsion. Like looking a mountain of house work when all you really want to do is something fun, only stronger. A real sense of repugnance for the whole thing. Has anyone else ever had that kind of feeling when they tried to write?

I was wondering how other authors handle writer's block? It is something I am experiencing a bit of a problem with now. I'm using the old trick of skipping ahead to another scene that is easier to write and hoping that after I have my creative juices flowing I can find a way through the part that was giving me trouble. Of course some times the writer's block is a bit more unwieldy and it is blocking any kind of writing. I usually resort to either just powering through it or taking a bit of a break from writing to see if time can take care of it.

So how about it, what do you do?

I started on a new diet today, or at least a new plan for how I will eat.

I have decided in changing the title of my story "A Boy and his Dog" due to the fact that there already is a book and movie with this title and with similar elements in the story that I had not known about until some people brought it to my attention. I don't want people to get the wrong impression about my story or go into it expecting something based on false assumptions, or god forbid, not read my story because of prior bad experiences with the title. :P