D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

Life in general

The Big Jump

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Not a writing post but about the life of this writer
Not a real cable bill

I knew it was coming. I knew my cable/internet/land line bill was about to go up in January, and by golly, it did. By $40. I also knew I’d promised myself a new TV in preparation for the final season of Game of Thrones. It was to be my last major expense from the money I’d inherited from a friend, the rest being set aside for day-to-day living on into my dotage.

The bill arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago. All right, now what? The deal was I would get a smart TV and figure out how to milk as much out of streaming services as I could while keeping my out-of-pocket lower than my previous charges from my cable/etc. company.

But what about broadcast stations, I wondered. I live in an apartment. We have no antennas and are prohibited from putting one up on the roof for ourselves. Inside antennas are questionable affairs, and they’re kinda, well, ugly as well—wires and flat pieces of plastic—ugh.

Game of Thrones © 2017 HBO. All rights reserved.

So, one day I decided to head over to my local Best Buy and handed my viewing plans over to a salesperson. He showed me a couple of 43” models, and when I settled on one, I set up an appointment for full installation. The two guys arrived on the date in question, and within a couple of hours, I had me a brand, ass-kickin’, ultra HD television set. It’s HUGE. And god, do Daenerys’ dragons look cool.

I did my research. I already had Netflix, but Hulu turned out to have a great deal with a nearly perfect plan including all the broadcast stations in my area plus many cable stations. I did the math and found I was still below my old cable charges. And…I’m getting everything in ultra HD now, rather than plain old HD.

Then there was the TV in my bedroom. I tried an antenna. It didn’t work. So I’ll be hooking it up to a Roku stick which should arrive sometime this week.

Oh, did I mention I’m also giving up my land line as well? Who needs both a land line and a cell phone anyway?

But…there’s still the thing. You know, the thing. The thing that says I have to call the cable company and tell them I’m done with their bundle and I only want the internet. Then unplugging the boxes and the phones, returning the boxes to the company and packing the phones up. I dread this part.

I promise. This week. Or next week. Or even the week after. I am, after all, paid up through the beginning of March.

Grand Canyon

 

Why, then, do I feel like I’m about to jump off a cliff?

In Which WTF Becomes My New Mantra

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My beloved 18-year-old Saturn died two weeks ago. She only had 31.5K miles on her, but when the dementia of a terminal electrical problem sidelined her, I knew it was time to put the old gal down.

She was a good car. I mean, 18 years. Come on. Only a couple of small problems over our time together. She even had her original brakes. I’d dubbed her “Bratgirl” because she looked a little like a sports car. I certainly felt like my ass was dragging on the ground when I drove her. But, she had to go. Here’s my last shot of her as I backed away in her replacement.

When I make a decision like buying a new car, I generally do a minimal amount of research and then go. Do it. Get it over with. Plus with an anxiety disorder that has left me mistrustful of automobiles in general, I needed to deal quickly with the reality of my fear of the car just stopping—STOPPING—in the middle of the road without power.

I began by looking at used cars offered by a rental company. I’ve known several people who’ve had very good luck getting a car this way. Then I looked at new cars and discovered that for only a few thousand more, I could get a brand new car with no mileage to speak of. Worth it to me.

So on the Saturday after the Thursday Bratgirl first crapped out on me, I forced her to take me to the local Toyota dealership where I abandoned her in favor of a brand-new, bright-red Yaris. I named her Ruby Saturday.

And here she is.

First new car in 18 years. Do you know how much has changed in that time? I got pretty much the cheapest car on the lot. It has Bluetooth and a push-button start and a backup camera. Standard. All of this advanced technology is great, but my driving skills have been truly challenged. Take today.

Today, I drove to my writing workshop, pushed the button to turn the car off and saw a yellow light on the start button. I’d never seen that before. What the fuck? What’s the yellow light for? I pushed the button to start the car again, then turned it off again. Yellow light remained. I looked around and noticed that the car was still in Drive. So my car was telling me to shift to Park. (The Saturn would have refused to give me the key, but Ruby Saturday doesn’t have a key to hold hostage.) Lesson learned.

Ah, but that wasn’t the end. When I came out, I got in, put my foot on the brake and pushed the button, and once I’d backed out of my parking space (with the screen displaying the backup camera’s viewpoint) and shifted into Drive, no music. What the fuck?

A big icon filled up that little screen telling me…what? I thought it was telling me the Bluetooth wasn’t working. So I switched over to the radio, but no radio. And the damn icon wouldn’t let me change things at all. I played with it for a couple of minutes (back in Park), but to no avail.

So I drove my brand-new, bright-red Yaris named Ruby Saturday back to the dealership and whined to the young man in the service bay, “I’ve only had it for a week-and-a-half, and this happened.”

And you know what he said? You know what he said after he said it wasn’t the Bluetooth? He pointed to the icon on the screen and said, “It’s on mute.” And proceeded to show me all the places I could turn the mute off.

Progress. We can’t live without it, but it’s damn irritating to live with.

War is Coming

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I am going to war.

I have been diagnosed with a left kidney stone that will kill me. Literally. Another infection caused by this stone blocking my left ureter could be the infection that turns into sepsis and kills me. So the stone must go, and my urologist believes the only way to get rid of it is to remove the kidney. But the surgery could kill me. So I’m going to war.

I write fantasy. I read fantasy. Ah, hell, I watch Game of Thrones religiously. I view my world through a veil covered with medieval figures loving and warring, and as I contemplate what I’m facing, I realize it’s a war, and I will either fight to the death or fight to survive.

I must train for this war. Hence, I must exercise my obese body. I must eat well in preparation for this war, and so I must cut certain foods from my diet. And as I step onto the battlefield (the OR), I will gird my loins to fight the good fight.

I cannot know the outcome. Everything in life is random. I may fall. But if I prepare the best I can, the odds may turn in my favor. I will not return unscathed, and the war will continue as I struggle to regain my life.

But damn it, I’d really like to survive to April 14, 2019 (actually late May 2019 when the series ends) to see the final season of Game of Thrones. So I prepare for war.

Hello Thursday (observations of a day)

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What do you have in store for me today? I woke up in my usually usual sad-ass state of mind, so just about anything that happens after that has got to be an improvement.

Here’s what I should do today: Vacuum, laundry, scrub a couple of small floors, exercise, plan excellent meals with only healthy ingredients, get out in the sunshine, clean up my porch. And write oodles of pages on my new WIP.

Here what I will do: Write a page or two, maybe. Oh, and submit another blog post. Yeah, this one. Here.

What is it about life that stymies me? I look out the window of my office in my apartment, and I can see the busy street of a very small suburban town on the outskirts of Los Angeles. I wouldn’t exactly call it bustling. The Village of Claremont and its multitude of colleges is not a bustling kind of place. More like a tortoise than a hare. Which is to say that things do happen here, just not very quickly.

Back to life. And Thursdays. Why is Thursday important? I don’t know. Just happens to be the day we’re in at the moment. And I have promised myself to write a couple of blog posts a week. To keep the energy flowing. I am a writer, after all.

Across the street, it’s gardening day at the Claremont Manor. The lawn mowers fill the air with the never-ending hum of grass cutting. Now “Claremont Manor” sounds ritzy, doesn’t it? It’s a retirement community, and an expensive one at that. Takes up a long city block, north and south, east and west. Its visitors include at least two ambulances a day and their accompanying fire department vehicles—small two-person truck and a ladder truck, because heaven knows you might have to climb up to the second floor, and finding the stairway blocked, what do you do? Call in the ladder!  Which brings up a question which has bothered me for some time now. Why do they send a minimum of three vehicles and six or seven personnel to a trip-and-fall incident?

Well, hopefully I’ve primed the pump now. Time to get back to the book eking its way slowly out of my soul. Perhaps next time we meet, I’ll wax philosophical. Or I will offer sage advice on the writing of novels. Or maybe I’ll just ramble on like I did this time.