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With coffee and writing implements at hand, I can determine the shape of today. |
| I tend to write in the morning. After morning coffee and writing comes whatever the day holds...work, more writing, family time, reading, maybe even some gaming. It just depends...but writing first, always. And once I start writing, I get an idea not only of what I'm writing about, but how the rest of my day will go. Hence, the shape of today. |
| So, yes, starting the week off with a bang. Literally. At some point during the night I had a particularly vivid dream of an earthquake...don't remember many details other than another person was with me, and we threw ourselves down on the ground. I'm not sure who I was with, but we were out in the open and this seemed like the thing to do. And the rumbling/roaring went on and on. I recall feeling very odd about it, but sleep (already screwed up because of DST) took precedence and I turned over and dozed off. Then came this morning, and me sipping coffee and browsing my social media feed. And on a local FB page, the news that much of the county had been awakened in the wee hours by a very loud explosion of some sort. We had no thunderstorms last night and I don't even think an exploding meth lab could account for the wide range this was heard over. Possibly it was a sonic boom or something caused by the Rangers doing their training. Or perhaps...it was something unexpected. When I tried to go to the Walmart shopping center to pay the phone bill this morning, I found the entrance blocked by the sheriff's department. Now granted...granted...the parking lot is being re-paved and I saw some construction barrels and equipment before turning away. So that's probably why the parking lot was blocked. Probably. But because it's Monday and I'm feeling silly, I jumped on the FB thread and started a rumor that a UFO crashed in the parking lot. Because somebody's going to be silly enough to run with that. Yes, indeed, this week is going to be productive!!! Now excuse me while I go mail my phone bill...  |
| I don't think I've mentioned my alarm clock yet. It's someone who either lives on this highway or else makes it a part of his daily commute. And I commit the dreadful politically incorrect impiety of assuming his gender because his vehicle sounds like someone's hot rod. It might just be a dying or dead muffler, but either way we can hear that thing approaching a good ten seconds before it actually passes the house. Which it does. Every weekday morning at 6 AM. Dad thinks he might have a job in a chickenhouse, but he could also be in one of the remaining factories in the area. Whatever it is, he clearly punches a clock and does so consistently, so he's got reliability going for him. Because of the situation here at home I'm usually awake by 6 anyway...it's gotten programmed into me. But if I'm snoozing longer than usual, I can rely on my alarm clock to go blatting past at sixish and rouse me. I choose to view this with amusement rather than exasperation, because it's a funny detail I might be able to use one day in a tale. |
| Made it to Thursday! Of course, the week is far from over...I have my "late" shift today, off tomorrow but with a plethora of errands to attend to, then work Saturday. It seems another round of rain is moving our way, which does not bode well for the literary festival tomorrow and Saturday. However, one of the local churches is hosting all the events so perhaps festival-goers will not be deterred much. The real star of the week for me is...a squirrel. The little fellow was hanging outside the library Tuesday, and found a large chunk of sub roll that someone had left out for the birds. He proceeded to bring it up the tree right outside the office window, and made quite an amusing picture snacking on a treat that was larger than himself. We all stopped working long enough to take pics with our phones, though my own picture was not as good as the one my co-worker took. I thought of my Peekaboo and her endless quest to catch a squirrel...she might have had some luck if she'd seen this guy; he must have been waddling by the time he finished. He finally took the remainder back down the tree and bounced off...not sure if he buried it or not. We didn't see him yesterday...he must have been sleeping it off. The only squirreliness was on the part of the patrons, who were much more random and needy than usual. Must be the weather. |
| So here is Monday, the most dreaded day of the week. On the itinerary are Dad's eye treatment and various other errands. However, compared with what some are facing today you won't find me grumping about it. ArenaNet, the company that brings Guild Wars 2 to the world, is apparently about to have some serious layoffs. This news broke late last week when someone privy to the info went running to a popular gaming website with the information. The result was a lot of Anet employees learning of this through panicked tweets and other third-party sources. Awkward, to say the least, because management was forced to 'fess up and confirm this is indeed the case. Looks like the decision is coming from NCSoft, Anet's parent company. Since then there have been a number of troubling signs from Seattle, such as the Friday livestream that never came off (it was three hours before it was even officially cancelled, much to the annoyance of the people waiting for it). I'm not going to speculate on how this will affect the game's future, though I can't see how it won't. I had already decided a year ago that GW2 is going to be my last game, period. Gaming is great fun, but it's expensive and time-consuming...and for me, that time is better spent reading and writing. especially writing. I'll remain in my pixelated playground as long as I can, but after that I'll be busy making worlds of my own. In the meantime...the day calls. |
| Oh, stop giggling. Not like that. This has been a rough week, thus far. We've been getting clobbered by round after round of heavy rain, with thunderstorms thrown in just for fun. One of these apparently took out Dad's desk phone and the cordless yesterday, I came home from work to find them both dead. I'll need to try and remedy things since the kitchen phone is the only operating phone at this time. The cordless phone is kind of a necessity now for Dad. Firstly, though, another technological issue of sorts: my SERVICE ENGINE SOON light popped on as I was driving through one of the monsoons Tuesday evening, about a mile from home. As I'd just had an oil change last week, service shouldn't actually be necessary. I tried re-seating the gas cap, but that didn't help so I spent my driving time yesterday with this automotive Eye of Sauron glaring at me, which coupled with the horrid weather did not improve my mood. I'll have to make a call or two (with my cellphone) and see if I can get this checked today or tomorrow. Gotta take Dad down to Georgia Retina Monday; I don't want to do it with potential trouble under the hood. I'm pretty certain it's just something that needs to be reset because I don't see, feel, hear, or otherwise sense anything wrong...but I still want a professional to look into it. And I'll need to visit the grocery store as well, several key items have run out or are about to. And dodge more raindrops in between, because this stuff is gonna continue until at least Sunday. Yikes. Yup, I've had enough of this "adulting" jazz... |
| "Update your blog," WDC support reminds me. Well, okay; the catch is that my upgraded membership had expired a few weeks ago and I couldn't update it because I couldn't access it for some time. Fortunately, WDC has its own sub-community dedicated to giving members some help with their memberships, and they came to my rescue this weekend. So here I am. So this morning, my post will be twofold: I'm practicing embedding videos, and I am also sharing a favorite video of mine. I found the link to this one on the Scrivener forums, and I watch it just about every morning to give myself some encouragement. Its name is "Writers Block: A Supercut" and it's self-explanatory. I tend to think of it as my "daily devotional": |
| Haven't been blogging much lately. Work and caring for Dad made their usual demands on my time, and this past weekend was dominated by NiaD (Novel in a Day), which I am proud to say I was able to take part in. I didn't find it easy and don't consider my contribution to be among my best work, but I was still able to submit my entry before the "soft" deadline Saturday afternoon. The weekend and yesterday was dominated by hype over an approaching winter storm that was supposed to have paralyzed us today. As is often the case, things haven't quite worked out. The NWS had gone so far as to issue a Winter Storm Warning for us and after all the schools and government offices opted to close today, the library followed suit. Then as I woke up in the predawn dark this morning I could hear traffic moving on the highway. Not very much traffic because everything is shut down, but traffic nonetheless. So yeah, another case of some weather nerd getting his boxers in a bunch. Some very cold air is supposed to move in today; I'm hoping they'll be wrong about that as well. In the meantime, I've got a free day off and the fixings for Fiesta Lime Chicken all ready to go into the slow cooker. Then maybe I'll get ambitious and clean off my desk or something. Time to make the best of this day. |
| Over the weekend I tried, with mixed results, to track down a book or two on writing...specifically, writing villains. There are not many books out there that deal with villains overall, which is surprising to me. I've been toying with the idea of writing a book of my own on villains simply because this rather vital aspect of a story gets neglected time and again by authors, TV and film producers, and game developers. The never-seen Sauron of LOTR, the heavily breathing Darth Vader, and Jack Nicholson's gleefully malevolent Joker in the first "Batman" film all drive the point home: if you don't have a good villain, you don't have a good story. I want my own villains to seem as menacing to the reader as they would be to my characters, so I want to sharpen my skills in that department. So far I've found surprisingly few books on the matter, but I did find one in the library's main catalog called Bullies, Bitches and Bastards. That one should generate some comment when it comes in the courier. But I'm also hoping it will generate some ideas that haven't occurred to me yet. In the meantime, it's a chilly morning, and a busy workweek is in the offing. It's time I got to it... |
| One early casualty this winter has been my slow cooker. It has a selector button for its cooking times rather than a knob that one twists, and this is no longer working correctly. It just sits there and blinks and won't let me set a time period. I've done some checking online and this appears to be a fairly widespread problem with that particular model of Crock-pot. I could hold forth a bit about the perils of relying too heavily on tech, but I think I'll just swing by the Palace of Earthly Delights tomorrow and pick up a new one for about $20--one with a knob, mind you. Then I'll have the amusing task of what to do with the old crock...still perfectly serviceable as a serving dish even if it won't heat any longer. Or perhaps a planter. Or... |
| On this first day of new year, I wish to report that things are looking clearer. Explain? Certainly. Yesterday, New Years' Eve, I took Dad down to the eye clinic for his monthly injections. It was a very unpleasant day...foggy, with the kind of fine misty rain that necessitates windshield wipers on their lowest setting...and all the while, they're making an irritating scraping noise. But what interested me was the fog...though forecast to be gone by mid-morning, it never went away at all. All the way to Forsyth County, and all the way back home, and all the rest of the day the fog remained, caressing everything in its drippy grasp. I rather like fog as long as I don't have to be out in it, especially driving at night. I always find myself thinking of classic weird fiction on foggy days...and yesterday was one for the books. I can't recall the last time I've seen it hang around all day like that. Today is at least starting out a little differently...the fog has cleared, and I can see a gold-peach tint to the clouds as the sun rises. More rain is forecast for today so I'm not sure how much sunshine we'll get. What I do know is this is my last day off before returning to work, and I should make the most of it. The clarification in the weather should be a clarification for my mind as well. There are many stories, at leas one non-fiction project, and at least one WDC writing contest waiting for me. I'm going to try to start by clearing this desk of mine. It seems a good way to start off the new year! |
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