Nature Roads

Well, it was too beautiful a day to stay inside, so I and my younger sister went for a hike through the nearby nature reserve. Anything that remotely resembled a path (i.e., did not immediately have a tree sprouting in our way) was walked on. When you're debating whether the thing you're walking on is a path or a riverbed, you are perhaps getting a little nuts.

We did about nine miles, round trip. We also found cool walking sticks. I count this as a good day. Now, I need something cool to drink (and a jug of passion fruit juice is calling my name) and somewhere to put my feet up, and a notebook. Time to do that writing thing I keep going on about.

...

I brought a camera while out there and thought, "Well, let's take a nice and interesting picture, to share with the world, indicating my cool and intellect. So I had my sister take this.

Not the greatest picture.

Then, because my cool and intellect usually lasts about as long as it takes for me to think of something funny...

The sun was bright. I don't ALWAYS look like an impish and slightly stunned Lemur.

And then, because it just seemed like a good idea at the time (and turned out to the best picture of the bunch...)

And there. I have other interesting pictures of mushrooms, butterflies, frozen lakes, and such...but honestly, how many pictures can you stand to see? So I'll leave it there, and go do something useful.

Abby Road

So, I was intending this post just to welcome the newest member of our household, but in the process of getting the pictures of her off the camera, I found lots of obscenely cute pictures of the cats. So they get posted too.

Let's start with Bailey.


Yes, the life of a Bailey is a good and happy thing, where the thing on his shoulders is only used for rubbing, and eating. And being licked by other cats.

He also kicks butt at Soul Calibur II.
So! That's our Bailey moment!

Now, let's move on to...Runt!

Arrrrrr! He do be wild! He'll conquer that paper, you wait and see. Yarrrr! Or he'll make a squeaky noise and wonder why no one loves him right this minute.

Let's move on to Toby. Little Toby, who was a stray that we brought in. He was the size of my hand, I found him one morning swollen and bleeding by the side of a freeway. It was the morning after a major thunderstorm, full of hail and lightning and tornado warnings. He was less than six months old, practically oozing worms and other viruses. Based on his vet bills, the Vetrinarian probably bought a Hummer.

That's a fairly big barstool. As you can see, Toby turned out fine.

Anyway, the thing about changing the batteries in the camera is, you suddenly discover that all of the cats, knowing this was going to occur, have become disgustingly cute. They do things like this:

They have no shame. That's Baily, Logan, and Toby by the way. You can figure out who's who.

ANYWAY. The point of this blog post was to tell you about the new member of my household.

My wife is a Professional Dog Groomer, which would sound way more impressive if she didn't come home smelling like wet dog. Anyway, she works in the grooming salon of our local PetCo. They sell rats. One of the rats, under six months old, escaped two weeks ago and spent the past two weeks living randomly in PetCo. Terrified, obviously, by customers and workers and slamming pallet jacks and all manner of things. She finally got caught yesterday and put up for adoption. She lost half her tail, presumably got it ripped or cut off somewhere in the store. She goes ballistic around loud noises and is terrified of everything right now.

No one would have adopted her. Well, probably some sick bastard would have, to feed her to his snake. So Renee and I took her home.

She lives in the big cage now with our other, older female rat, Emma. Emma is a wonderful rat, who took care of one or our other old rats when she was weak and dying. She's thus far taken very good care of our new rat too.

Her name is Abby. And here she is.

She's pretty small. I would have taken her out for the pictures, but she can't handle being picked up yet. Give us a week or so.

And for the morbidly inclined among you, here's what's left of her tail (healed over just fine; just short)

She's obviously had enough of me. And now, probably, so have you.

So I shall go for a walk.

Zombie Jokes!

I am not dead. As evidenced by the following zombie jokes, which I made up (despite my wife declaring that I didn't) and which I wouldn't make if I were dead, would I?

Q: Why didn't the zombie move forward with his lawsuit?

A: Because he didn't have a leg to stand on!


Q: Why should you never have a zombie roommate?

A: Because he'll always leave you in the lurch!


Ha! Ha! I am brilliance personified!

Yes, I'll go back to staring at pages of .php code now...

Where, oh where?

Where, oh where, oh where is PeeDee? Where, oh where, oh where is PeeDee? Where, oh where, oh where is PeeDee, where could he have gone?

Sorry, flashbacks to when my Munchkin was a much, much smaller Munchkin and we'd sing that song with seventeen BILLION verses... where are your fingers, where are your toes, where is your head, where is your nose... *thinks back fondly*

I suppose he's done another self-ban, but usually he's still in communiqué. :o( Boo hoo, I haven't chatted with Pete in weeks. Hopefully he's off being über productive and has a whole stack of fabulous stories done.

Thanks to some gentle prodding ("Go write something.") from my favorite PM victim friend, I'm working on a short story, which may end up being the start of my next book. I've had the book idea marinating, and now I'm working on a similar story that I hadn't originally been what I was thinking for the book. But it just might work. And if not, what the hell. It's writing, right?

Right now the sun is shining! It's chilly, but not as nasty cold as it's been. I'm going to bury my head in the sand and pretend this is a sign that the late-season snowstorm has been canceled. *grin*

Off to write!

Creative Creativity

It's probably just me being chronically restless, which I tend to be, but I love experimenting with different methods of writing things. I learned to write by hand, advanced to a manual typewriter, then electric, and then eventually found these computer things. I was very impressed with how fast and efficiently a computer could garble up and lose something I'd written. Way faster than a typewriter!

I never really switched modes because I had to. It wasn't Gee, I'd best start typing my stuff up so I can send it out. I just switched because I was curious, I wanted to experiment, and I eventually found a groove on each device and continued to use it until a new groove came along. I was always content in the knowledge that if computers irked me enough, I could go back to typewriting, and if that irked me enough, I could revert all the way back to handwriting. The versatility was important to me.

One thing I always do in art stores is ogle the sets of calligraphy pens which comes in attractive little packages. I like the pens with their fountain pen like points (being a sucker for fountain pens) and I like the little bottles of various inks. I always dream of scratching out a short story like this. I just never got around to buying any.

Fast forward to tonight. My sister, who has heard about this several times, comes out with a little bottle of black ink and a set of calligraphy pens and points and sets them down in front of me. I am busy sitting like someone in a coma, practically drooling, with a Hulkbuster of a headache and pain caused by the Brownian motion of air molecules brushing against each other.

Still, I'm delighted to try it. You're never too old to try new things! So I set aside my manuscript that I'm working on, by hand, and I put down a blank piece of paper and I go to try it.

I have no idea why I thought this was a good idea.

I scratch out one little line. And then, in the process of going to dip the pen into the ink again...I catch the pen tip on the edge of the bottle, upend it, and spill three fourths of the bottle of ink.

I spill it in a pretty puddle all over the table, two of my fingers...and three of my manuscript pages.

I haven't typed up any of this manuscript. I promised myself I wouldn't type it up until I'd finished chapter one. So you can imagine my screaming.

Fortunately, I only lost a handful of words, most of which I can probably guess. It's not like it blotted out half a page, said half containing such words of brilliance as to move the readers of the world to tears. I just have sentences that now go "You cannot be said with a flush.*

So, this proves that experimenting is a Very Bad Idea indeed, and I will now stick safely to the modes of writing that I learned when I was younger. No more of this crazy boat-rocking for me. Nossir. For one thing, it took me five minutes to scrub the ink off my fingers.

It did make me appreciate my cartridge-based fountain pen all the more.

And I think I should probably buy my sister a new bottle of ink, since her old bottle of ink is currently a large black stain (but it's on a large black table, so that's all right.)

* This is not an actual sentence. For one thing, this sentence is terrible, which is exactly the sort of sentence I don't write. So never fear.

Happy Easter

Unless, of course, you don't celebrate Easter, and which case happy everything is closed and we have nothing better to do but go out and eat day!

I'm off to eat excessively.

It's SPRING!!

At least until later this week, when we are to once again be subjected to nut-freezing weather. Not that I have nuts, unless you count the can of dry roasted peanuts in the cupboard. *grin*

I'm insanely busy right now. Work is maddening - there are eleventy billion end/beginning of the month reports that have to be done RIGHT NOW!! RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND OR THE BANK WILL IMPLODE!!! Yeah, right. If that were the case, I'd "lose" my files in the shred bin. OOPS.

This working thing sucks. (Yeah, I know. I get no sympathy but this is MY half of the blog and dammit I'm going to have a pity party.) I've had to almost completely eliminate my volunteering, which sucks. That was a part-time job in itself. The house is going to hell, and you want me to... what?? Did you say cook? Yeeaaaaah. I wouldn't be holding my breath for a home cooked meal.

My time online is ridiculously limited - it's even affecting poor Pete!

Not to mention I haven't been able to spend as much time polishing my shrine to RT, the object of my undying and insatiable lust. (He thinks I'm kidding because I confessed my secret desires on April Fool's Day. I couldn't wait any longer!) *grin*

A-hem.

Anyway.

So I've got spring fever in the worst kind of way, and I almost wish I didn't have the damn window in my office. I sit there, drooling on loan files, staring out the window at the sunshine (not directly at the sunshine, I'm not an idiot!) and thinking of the shitload of work I need to get done at home, but I can't because I'm stuck at work.

On top of all the work crap, there's my school volunteering which I'm still obligated to do, and I'm doing a piss-poor job at it, which is like nails on a chalkboard to my anal retentive self.

Oh, did I mention Little League?

And then hours of babysitting angst where my sitters (who happen to be close relatives) decided they didn't have time to babysit??????? It turned out ok, we hired a teenage girl who doesn't know we're ripping her off with the pittance we're paying. LOL

What? Did someone say writing? *convulses on floor, consumed by hysterical laughter* No, I don't think my book will get edited anytime this millennium. All my mental energy is being drained out of me. *poof* there went the last of it...

My Night

So! I'm sitting in the bookstore tonight, having done a great deal of work. I have half an hour to kill before I close, so I'm kicked back, reading a Terry Pratchett novel.

This gaggle of teenage girls comes running into the store, giggling like teenage girls, and they fall all over themselves and my counter. Scaring the crap out of complacement me in the process.

"DO you LIKE have ANY books for LIKE a DOLLAR???" one of them asks.

"I really don't," I reply, which is true.

Quick whispering in their midst.

The girl leans on the counter toward me and says, "WILL you SELL us that PEN for a QUARTER???"

Pen? Oh yes. Because there's a pen behind my ear. Where a pen seems to live.

What the hell. It's a slow night.

"Sure," I say.

"And we need to to write a receipt."

"Why not," I say. And I write a receipt that says "This pen is worth one quarter." and I sign my
name.

"You're the BEST!" she giggles, and they run out of the store.

Scavenger hunt.

I chuckle, terribly amused. I leave my boss a note that says I sold a store pen for a quarter. I will sell our carpeting tomorrow night.

I tape the quarter to the paper.

Then I go back to reading my Terry Pratchett book. I put my feet up. I settle in.

I have a heart attack when someone puts a hand on my shoulder.

It's another girl, much calmer than the first one. She says to me, in a quiet voice, "Do you have any books for a dollar...?"

"I really don't," I say, which is true.

"Oh. Look, can I like give you a quarter for one of your book marks or something?"

"Sure!" I say. Because I'm easily amused.

"Okay, I'll be right back, I have to grab my friends," and she leaves quietly, calmly. She squeezes my shoulder on the way out. Which was odd.

Presumably, yeah.

Thirty seconds later, she returns with HER gaggle of girls, and they are ALL giggling and hyper now. Most of them are moms, this time.

The bookmark doesn't work. It's not pink. It's not rough. They need one or the other.

Desperate, they look around the store.

"I know!!!" One of them exclaims, the light of inspiration in her eyes.

"Can we buy that red pen from you, mister? For, like, a quarter???"

"Sure...!" I say, and I hand them the pen and take the quarter. And I add, "Do you need me to write a receipt?"

"Yeah, and if you could put your name on-- Wait, how did you know that?" the first girl asks.

"Another group was in here and bought something already. Er. My other pen, actually."

"DAMN IT! THEY DID NOT!" The girls are agog. Then they settle. "Oh well, ours is PINK!"

I give them a receipt, they leave, I close the store. I turn off the lights. I go to leave, walking through an empty mall where the lights are off.

I am just nearly to the exit doors, when....

"EXCUSE me, SIR??"

I turn. Two more girls are running at me. If this were the bronx, I'd be macing people.

One breathless girl says, "Can we TAKE our PICTURE wiht YOU???"

Pete says, ".....sure. Um. Why?"

The other girl stands next to me, the first girl stands on my other side and holds out the camera. One of them says, "Well, red is like pink, isn't it? You have great hair."

"Thanks." I say.

And then, bemused and with a flash spot in front of my eyes, I head out into the rainy night and go home, and reflect that sometimes, real life is profoundly more weird than fiction.

BOOBS!!!!

Yes. Boobs. Just for you, RT, I'm going to talk about boobs.


People who yak on their cell phones while standing at the counter to order their freaking sub at Subway, and hold up their finger like "just a minute" to the girl at the counter. With fifteen people in freaking line.


People who drive 7 MPH. Unless you're in a buggy, drawn by a horse, that's just lame. (I live in Amish country. Lots of buggies... and they go faster than some of the idiots around here.)


On the flip side, people who drive 85 MPH down a residential street.


People who chew loudly in public places. *barf*


People who think their screaming children should be "enjoyed" by everyone because he or she is "so cute." Um, no. Rattlesnakes and scorpions are cute. Screaming children are not.


People who actually think their thong sticking out of their pants is attractive. Not to be repetitive, but *barf*.


The guy at Lowe's who thinks it's so cute when a "little woman" wants to buy a kick-ass drill. Yes, it's for me. No, my husband won't be allowed to touch it. Yes, you're a jerk.


People who say they'll do one thing and then wait until you're settled into complacency and then they yank the rug out from under you and leave you completely screwed and then get pissed off when you figure out a way to make things work without their sorry asses being involved at all.


Those are all the boobs I can think of for now. *grin*

A Movie All Writers Should See!

Writer's Block - a movie that is apparently all about ways to overcome writer's block - something all writers need help with from time to time, don't you agree?

Here's the fascinating blurb: Deadlines ... what a bitch! Apparently Jack, a highly successful erotic novelist, is under pressure from his gorgeous editor to complete his latest work, which is already overdue. Jack needs a little carnal inspiration to get the creative juices flowing. A steamy threesome gets him tapping at the typewriter in no time! It's amazing how a little - or in this case, how a lot - of sex can relieve all that tension, not to mention unleash those imaginative sparks. So if you've got writer's block and you're staring at a blank piece of paper, take a tip ... things'll start looking up.

Do not click this link if you are under 18. I haven't seen it (yet), but it's high on my list! (Right after Captain Hooker and Peter Porn and The XXXorcist.)

Doing "it"

You're all filthy, because of course, I meant writing.

Carrie (the other person who writes on this blog, obviously, do try to keep up) and I were discussing the AbsoluteWrite Writer's Retreat that's happening next year, and what we're actually going to write during the whole stay.

I made the comment that the thing about writer's retreats is, it's the only place where two people can come out of a darkened room looking messy and exhausted and very happy and people whoop and cheer and catcall...because they assumed they finished a book.

Carrie, who is wiser than I, pointed out that it's much more likely that they would believe it was sex, pure sex, regardless of if we brought out three hundred pages of manuscript and were stained with ink. She's right, of course.

TSUKI: Whoa! The bare-backed tango!

PETE: The what...?

RLLGTHUNDER: You got it on!

CARRIE: Yeah! On paper! Finally!

SPOOKY: Neat! How did it feel!

PETE: Great! It was like a big release! It was good to finally get it out!

HAGGIS: You dog! You DOG! Way to go!

CARRIE: It was longer than I expected!

PETE: Me too!

TSUKI: .....what?

PETE: But we got it where it needed to go, in the end!

HAGGIS: That tends to happen!

SPOOKY: WHOOO!

CARRIE: Now we just gotta figure out who else wants it.

DEAD SILENCE.

HAGGIS: Um. Er. Um. What?

CARRIE: Silly. We can't keep it all to ourselves. It's too good for that.

TSUKI: Neat!

PETE: I know! Now we just have to find a publisher!

THE RETURN OF DEAD SILENCE.

SPOOKY: Well, I mean, Hugh Hefner might know some...

PETE: Yeah! They put out a magazine after all!

THE SON OF DEAD SILENCE.

TSUKI: That magazine is hot!

DEAD SILENCE AND LAUREL & HARDY MEET THE WOLFMAN

PETE: So anyway, who wants to get their hands on it first! You guys got first crack!

CARRIE: I'm just glad to be done writing!

DEAD SILENCE IN 3-D

August Sixth

August sixth, two thousand and seven, will be a normal, average day for most folks. They'll be getting up and going to work...

But not me!

I just got back from the travel agency a little bit ago, after booking our CRUISE!

HUZZAH!!

I'm so excited. My husband, my offspring and myself will be taking a Royal Caribbean cruise to the Bahamas. It's a nice five day, four night trip, and I. Can't. Wait.

We've never taken a *real* vacation as a family. Unless you count the nightmare of a trip we took to Myrtle Beach, SC - if I had to relive that trip, I'd snack on arsenic and wash it down with Drain-O. It was that bad.

Long weekends are as fancy as it gets. Hubby & I took a cruise in 2002 and we've been itching to take another one. So now's the time.

I'm really looking forward to a nice relaxing week on the cruise.

Of course, I expect a huge hurricane that ruins all our plans. Or a typhoon. Or some freak crosswinds that blow us into Bermuda, where we vanish.

I wanna go NOW, dammit, not 5 months from now. *whine*

We even sprung for the Jr. Suite so we'll have our own little balcony. Last time we went, I spent every evening on the balcony writing in my journal. I can't wait. It's gonna rock. :oD

Dear America

Hi, America.

I'm over here.

You probably can't quite tell, since it's difficult to see with underpants on your head. But it's okay. I'm sure that's an acceptable look for you, and I won't even suggest you try and take them off without assistance.

Hey, you know that American Idol show thingie that you, America, mash phone buttons to vote on?

How about you...I don't know...like...vote the right people off, or something. Seriously. You voted off Sundance Head in favor of Sanjaya "I'm so pretty" Malakar. I mean, maybe you did really enjoy the strange songs in favor of a great version of "Mustang Sally," but who am I to judge?

(I mean, you should have kept him around because his name is Sundance Head! You don't get any cooler than that outside of the porn industry!)

No, it's okay, I just had to say something. You can go back to stumbling around with tighty whities on your head.

Here's my phone number, for you mash on your phone at. I bet I know someone who's certified to teach you baseball.

I Dream of PeeDee

No, he wasn't dressed like Barbara Eden. Nor was I.

I knew it was inevitable, that sooner or later he'd show up in my dreams. And last night, he did.

For some reason, I was standing on my front porch and Pete pulls up in a pickup truck. (Flashbacks from Variety Hour, perhaps?) He jumps out and is wearing a flannel shirt (gee, where'd that come from?) and jeans. (Even in my dreams, I can't allow my brain to imagine the stretchy pants. ROFL)

(I'm also thinking he's probably not as muscular IRL as he was in my dream, *grin* but that's okay.)

So I was all excited because I'm finally meeting Pete IRL for the first time! Yay! He gives me a massive hug and we jump in the truck and go to the bookstore, where we proceed to walk around, pointing out our favorite books, then we wander into the erotica section and point out passages to each other, giggling like a couple of junior high school kids. We were shushed by some snot-nosed teenager who was the freaking MANAGER. Whatever.

At some point, we ended up in front of the Terry Pratchett books, where Pete tried to convince me that MOST of the books were actually GOOD, unlike the one I had picked up. So I bought one. (I can't remember which one, though...) Then we went around pointing out books we knew were by fellow AWers. I convinced Pete to buy a book by Jacquie D'Alessandro. LOL

After all this excitement, we went into a restaurant that was apparently attached to the book store, where we ate and talked and laughed for quite a long time. I was just thinking that we should get together more often when I woke up.

Sorry, thrill seekers, that really was it. ROFL I'd imagine it was pretty close to what would happen, should we actually ever end up meeting. Except for the pickup truck. And possibly the flannel shirt.

Oh. And the muscles. BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Nanook of the North

So, I got to the used bookstore today in time to be handed a Memo from the mall office, declaring the mall closed. Everything was closed, not because of the snow we've gotten, but because of the impending storm.

So, happy and puzzled, I closed up the store and got a ride home with the girl I would have been taking over for. In the time I got there until the time I got home (maybe twenty minutes) an inch of snow had fallen. By the time I'm done with this blog post, another two will probably be down on the ground.

I cannot see across the street. I just see a wall of fast-moving snow mixed with ice that turns everything into an impenetrable wall when it hits.

The grocery stores are closing, the banks are closing, the mall has closed.

The city and county have run out of snow plows and snow plow drivers. The shift they have going now has been going since four this morning. They have no choice but to stand down and go home. They have no one else to send out. The roads and streets are therefore (as of four o'clock) completely unplowed until tomorrow, when this same shift comes back to work.

I LOVE IT!

I adore this kind of bad weather. I love bad weather in general. When thunderstorms turn the skies strange shades of green and yellow and silver, when the thunder is something you feel in your feet and the lights flicker in time with the lightning, I'm happy as anything and prowling the house. Or I'm out walking in it, if I can get away with it.

With blizzards, I would bundle up and go out, but blizzards like this one would white things out enough that I'm not confident enough to be roaming the country-side. I like the bad weather, but I'm not stupid. I have no desire to get turned around and freeze to death.

Still, I'm happy as anything.

We have over a foot and a half of snow on the ground. We're predicted to get another twelve inches, but the prediction keeps rising. The Doppler radar shows a long and mostly verticle strip that's passing up, straight through us. And it's swirling too, so it'll come get us before too long again.

Hooray!

I'll report further, unless the ice kills the power. In which case, I'll get my notebook and my fountain pen and get a ton of writing done instead. There's no downside here.