Sunday Serenity #173

Gustav Holst's The Planets Movement 2 Venus, the Bringer of Peace arranged by the Japanese electronic music composer, 冨田 勲 Tomita Isao.

Holtz's The Planets would be featured in the soundtrack I imagine for the screenplay I'm doing for Script Frenzy so I've been collecting YouTube vids of the seven movements to listen to as I write and think about the story. I discovered Tomita Isao that way and love everything I've heard so far. I'm now imagining that at least for some of the scenes it would be his arrangement on the soundtrack.

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Book Giveaway: Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow

I'm authorized to give away 2 copies. Rules for entry in the drawing are below. Please read them carefully.

Presumed Innocent
by Scott Turow
(c) 2000
Grand Central Station
Trade Paperback
512 p

Hachette is offering this giveaway in honor of the long awaited sequel, INNOCENT, to be released in May

PRESUMED INNOCENT brings to life our worst nightmare: that of an ordinary citizen facing conviction for the most terrible of crimes. Prosecutor Rusty Sabich is transformed from accuser to accused when he is handed an explosive case--that of the brutal murder of a woman who happens to be his former lover.

"He's an unmistakably literary novelist who has made himself a master of the mystery genre."
-San Francisco Chronicle

"Smashingly good...not only a well-crafted, deftly paced story but an intriguing commentary on the corruption of politics, the convolutions of love, and the ambiguities of justice."
-Newsday

Join Scott on Facebook

http://www.scottturow.com

"Superbly crafted, wonderfully written...high drama and suspense.... Scenes crackle with the amazing interactions of complex, fascinating characters...absolutely first rate...a great book."
-Library Journal

"Everything you heard is true...genuine, classy, four-star suspense, but also a dark, troubling murder-mystery, rich in character and psychology and pathos.... Several genres at their best-gritty city-government exposé, zesty courtroom strategy, sexy/sincere midlife crisis, Agatha Christie twister-and deserves the vast popular audience it's sure to find as book and film."
-Kirkus Reviews

Spring Book Tour for PRESUMED INNOCENT

Listen to an excerpt

Rules:

• Leave a comment in this post expressing your interest in entering the drawing.
• Provide an @ by which I can contact you in case of a win. Either in your comment or in an email to me at joystory AT gmail DOT com If you email your @ be sure to connect it to your entry. If I do not receive an @ your entry will be disqualified.
• If, in the case of a win, you would like me to link to your blog in the winners announcement post, provide your URL in your comment or via email. This is not a requirement for entering nor do you have to have a blog yourself in order to enter.
• Bonus Entries: If you blog or twitter about this giveaway or link to it in other ways (ie facebook, myspace etc), send me a link to the post or page and your name will be entered again for each case. Meaning, you can blog and tweet for two extra entries. (Multiple tweets will not gain you further entries as I do not wish to encourage twitter spam.)
  
• Deadline for entering is NOON PDT Saturday, May 1, 2010. I will select the winners with a random sequence generator using www.random.org.
  
• I will announce the winners in a post as well as notify by email. Winners must respond with their mailing info within two days or forfeit. In which case I notify the next entry in the sequence generated by random.org.
  
• Winners must provide a US or Canadian mailing address. Hachette is unable to deliver to PO Boxes. Also, for those of you winning the same title in more than one contest, be aware that Hachette may not deliver multiple copies of a single title to a single address.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Script Frenzy 2010 Kick Off

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It is the end of day two and I still have zero pages. Too many excuses as to why. I had a late start in prepping because I didn't decide to do it until less than two weeks before. Then the starting day coincided with the day my in-laws left town and that always changes the contours of my days as when they are gone Ed and I spread out into the rest of the house. We cook for ourselves. I take the opportunity to do chores like laundry and cleaning our room that are harder to do when they are home. It also coincided with payday and we went shopping yesterday and since we were out stopped by the library where we picked up more DVD. Ed had both days off work so we were doing stuff together we can't do on the days he works like watching movies which is a special temptation when his folks are gone as we can use the big screen TV in the front room and sit in recliners. We watched The Big Lewbowski last night and Ratatouille tonight.

I've been binging on DVD for a month partly in preparation for Script Frenzy. I do realize that I will have to curtail some of that if I mean to write a script. But I'm hoping I won't have to stop altogether as I'm finding it very helpful to watch with the eye of a writer who is learning screenplay formatting standards. I have long watched with the eye of a writer who knows how stories are put together but until last April screenwriting technique was a big blank space in my knowledge base. My main purpose in participating in the challenge is to take advantage of all the resources--the how-to articles and forums and the provision of motivation by it being a challenge and the community of fellow scriptwriters etc. It's a bit like having a free class or workshop.

Ed didn't go to bed until ten both nights which was two hours past his usual bedtime and thus cut into my writing hours by that much. And last night I moved my 'office' out into the front room as Ed was heading to bed and that took more than half an hour. Which brings me to the LOL heading this post which I captioned based on something my sister said in an IM when I complained about how long it takes to move back and forth between the bedroom and the living room.-round trip is at least 40 minutes and can be an hour. Which is why I only do it when Ed's folks are out of town because they don't go to bed until around 10pm and Ed's Dad can be up as early ast 4am. She suggests I move more stuff out of my room than is really necessary for the work I'm claiming that I'm intending to do. She further suggests that I should be able to fit everything I need, including the netbook, into one bag and make one trip.

She has a point. Maybe several. I'm pondering.

Meanwhile, I'm still struggling with major plot gaps in the story I chose for this year's script. It is possible this story just isn't ready. I'm going to give myself a couple more days to play with the concept but if I haven't started writing actual scenes say by the time my in-laws return on Monday then Monday night I'm switching to adaptation of one of my completed short stories like I did last year. That way all the story elements are in place and all I have to worry about is translating it from short story format to screenplay format.

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My Mind is Totally Otherwhere Right Now

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Lost in the maze of plot and traversing the welkin of dreams.

Today was day one of Script Frenzy. Afraid I haven't written any scenes yet. I had a few small details to work out first and there were other things on today's agenda--like a visit to the library and shopping--not to mention that my computer had its own agenda today insisting on downloading and installing updates right when I had the time to work on my script.

My mind has been otherwhere wherever I went all day. I seriously wondered if I should suggest to Ed that he put a leash on me to keep me from wandering in front of cars, taking wrong turns, bumping into shopping carts and shoppers, ladders and posts and displays in the middle of aisles. Visually impaired and distracted is NOT a good combination.

Ed said to me at one point that I walked like Stevie Wonder plays music. I said Hey, that's a good line. I might use it in my script.

Speaking of which....

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Did Someone Call for a Slugline?

Script Frenzy kickoff for me is about four hours away but I rather doubt I'm going to be able to stay awake for it seeing as how I've shorted myself on sleep every day since Sunday and sleep not at all in the last 28 hours. I think I'd be doing my script and story more honor by sleeping first and getting started tomorrow.

I spent part of this afternoon reading the how-to material on the Script Frenzy site, reminding myself of what sluglines were and their standard format, the fact dialog is indented nearly to mid page and single spaced without quotation marks unless the speaker is quoting someone else, that ever change of scene (place; location;) requires a new slugline establishing where and when and every slugline must be associated with action text also single spaced establiching what is happening on scene whether or not there is any dialog. Sluglines are all caps as are all occurances of character names and the significant action verbs.

INT* MOBILE HOME BEDROOM EVENING

JOY sits on the edge of the bed a netbook open on the tray table in front of her. She types at steady and considerable speed but frequently BACKSPACES to correct typos as her head TILTS ever closer to the screen. Suddenly she jerks upright with a START and a GASP. The cat curled against one hip sleeping startles awake gripping her leg with extended claws. JOY DISENGAGES the claws from the denim.

__________________ JOY

____________ Egads! I'm seeing two of everything! You've got yourself a twin Merlin.

_________________MERLIN

___________ Meow?


JOY SHAKES her head vigorously.

__________________ JOY

___________ Yikes! If I don't lay down, like NOW, I'm going to be drooling on my keyboard any second.

_________________________________

OK a bit silly and far from perfectly formatted which is hard to do in a blog post without tables but it gives an idea of what is entailed. And also dramatized my very real current situation.


[*note: INT = INTERIOR while EXT = EXTERIOR]

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Watchin Stuff

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Last night I was racing to finish a novel that was due at the library today. I finished but not until after dinner tonight so it didn't go back yet but will on Thursday morning before the library opens. Since our branch isn't open on Wednesday anything in the drop box on Thursday morning is checked in as if it were returned before midnight Tuesday. Yes, I do take advantage of that more than I probably should.

The next priority is the DVDs due Thursday. Over six hours worth won't renew as there are queues for them. I could, of course take advantage of the fact the library is closed until Monday morning so I'd be safe from fines as long as they are in the drop box before the library opens. But that isn't much help in light of the fact there are another 10 to 15 hours worth of DVD due between Monday and Tuesday. And the library is open on both those days so anything due on Monday must be returned before the library opens Tuesday.

And there are four more DVD waiting at the library for either me or Ed. Which well all be due next Thursday, all but one not renewable and that one only if no one gets in queue between now ant then.

There are so many at once because we have come to the head of several of the queues we've been in for weeks or months. Plus I had also sent for a bunch of others in my effort to binge on movies as part of prep for ScriptFrenzy which kicks off Thursday at 12AM.

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Looming Library Due Dates

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I have a slew of books and DVD due at the library in the next 8 days. And like an over-optimistic fool, I started a 500 page novel last night that is due tomorrow. So no time to chit-chat tonight.

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Sunday Serenity #172

As I discussed in last night's post, Holt's The Planets is going to be involved in my Script Frenzy screeenplay on several levels. Holst's organization of the movements will probably inform my own organization of the scene structure. The protagonist is obsessed with the piece because she is also obsessed with the planets and outer space. I'd like to imagine the music of The Planets integrated into the soundtrack of the film if it were to be produced. And last but not least, I've designated The Planets and Motzarts Jupiter symphony as two of the main CDs that I will listen to while writing as a way to set the mood for scenes and my own mind towards the project at hand.

The fourth movement, Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity, is accompanied in this video with images of earth from the space station. It is truly awe-inspiring and moving to watch and listen.

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Prepping for Scrpt Frenzy

The last 24 hours have been all about prep work for Script Frenzy which included research on Wikipedia on Gustav Holst and his symphony The Planets; on the planets themselves and on the mythological characters they were named for and a bit of astrology too since Holst named his movements based on the astrological significance of the seven planets.

I also spent some time on the Script Frenzy Writer's Resources page for a brush up on the rules for formatting scripts. And more than a little bit of time on Think Baby Names looking for likely names for characters.

But by a very high ratio, the bulk of that time was spent learning my way around the Celtx Media Production software in which I will write my script. It is the same open source application I used last year but it has upgraded from 1.0 to 2.7 and A LOT of new features have been added.



Here we are with the main script writing feature with both sidebars open. Either or both can be closed to lessen distraction if desired. One new feature is the Notes that can be inserted in the draft and an extra tool downloaded from the Celtx wiki community provides a color picker so the notes can be color-coded.

Technically I'm not supposed to start writing on the script until Thursday at 12AM so all I did in this was put in a possible slugline for a possible opening scene as an exercise for learning my way around the ap and for purposes of these screenshots for this post.

To really follow along you're probably going to want to view the image at its full size by right-clicking on them and opening in a new tab or window.




Celtix has a tabbed environment. All items opened from the Project Library in the left hand sidebar remain open until closed and can be accessed by the tabs across the top below the toolbar.

Above shows the Master Catalog opened. This is the database containing all items from Actors to Wardrobe. It is a long list and includes the categories of Character, Scene, Animal, Prop, Extras, Camera, Lights, Set, Location, FX, CGI, etc. Like I said, this is set up to carry a script from concept to screen.

My catalog so far includes only two characters and three scenes--opening, climatic and closing. I've selected Opening Scene and below the catalog list is the top of the form to be filled out with the info relevant to that scene. The form fills the screen twice:

My focus will be primarily on the steps from concept to first draft and I will try to refrain from playing too much with the director's and producer's toys.

By the way Celtx provides the industry standard for all major media production: TV and big screen films; Audio; Audio-Visual, Theater; Graphic Novel or Comic Book. It also provides an environment that fosters teamwork and collaboration on and offline from start to finish.


As you can see, it is possible to close the catalog list window, allowing the selected item's form as much of the screen as possible. And when one is working on a netbook screen that is very helpful.





And now we proceed to a character's form. Note how the forms for scenes have a green bar at top and those for characters have blue ones:


Again, the form for a character fills the window three times. At least on my netbook screen.



I was going to list the elements of this forms but instead I'll leave it to those who are interested enough in it to click on the images to see the 1200x600 version in which the fonts are readable.


Besides the script itself, you can have multiple text documents and other files in the Project Library. Below shows the one in which I dropped the text from the three flash fiction pieces I wrote previously in which the protagonist for my screenplay stars. I named this one Storyseed which is a term I made up years ago to reflect a barely begun WIP.






Above and below show two sections of the Misc text file in which I am dropping notes, thoughts, citations, links etc. Above is some of the info on Holst and The Planets including the list of movements with their full titles. Below shows me playing with the word 'hitch'. I'll be doing the same with the words 'glitch' and 'snag'. All three words are in my title as you have probably spotted if you enlarged the pics.





The calendar is a new feature in this version. You can set events as well as tasks with or without reminders. The task list in the left sidebar has check boxes and as you can see just above, when you check the box it also puts a strikethrough through the text. For demo purposes I checked as done the task of learning the Celtx application. I was thinking I'd uncheck it after this but I'm having second thoughts. I think I'm good to go and I now need to put my focus on the needs of the story itself.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Script Frenzy 2010

I took the plunge again. Was dithering right up until last night. But if I could do it last year while away from home helping to care for my Mom post surgery and stroke, I can do it this year even with everything I already got going. The key is to treat it like play instead of work. Thus, as last year, I'm not going to measure success by number of pages but rather by how much I enjoy the process and how much I learn about the process of script writing which is still so new to me I'm like a toddler learning to walk or work a hula hoop.

Last year, I chose to adapt one of my own short stories as my project so that I could put all my focus on learning the techniques of script formatting. This year I'm stepping out a little further. I'm taking a character for which I've done a few flash fiction pieces for fun and and developing a screenplay mostly from scratch in terms of the story though a scene or two from the flash fiction pieces might end up in it.

Since I set those pieces in the same mobile home park as my NaNo novel Mobile Hopes, which is much like the one I've lived in the past ten years, setting is also settled. Also a plethora of supporting cast is available. So plot is the issue I need to figure out before next Wednesday night at midnight.

As you might guess if you've seen any of the flash fiction I did with this character, (here, here, & here) this will be a comedy. As to whether it will also be a love story, I haven't decided. Probably. Since I can't think of any comedies that weren't love stories except for those in the Porky's genre which I've no interest in emulating.

So that means developing a love interest for a 40 something, never-been-married, visually impaired klutz with such poor social skills she won't look adults in the eye and carries on multi-syllabic conversations only with birds, cats, small children and her comatose (or otherwise aphasic) father.

Here's the link to my Script Frenzy profile, which at this point I'm still in process of filling out since there is so much I haven't settled on. I've no title yet. I'm also going to be changing the name of my character.

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Date's Been Set for Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon

The date has been set for Saturday, April 1o.

Can't wait.

Oh, but wait...

That means 24 hours without a crochet hook or needle in my hand. No DVD or podcast playing. Just me my book, my netbook and a bright light.

Oh but that does sound heavenly.

This time, I swear I'm going to switch my schedule in plenty of time to start out Saturday morning with at least six hours of sleep behind me. The last three times I couldn't sleep at all the night before and began the Thon having been awake over 15 hours.

The sign up post is not up yet but they are looking for volunteers for various organization tasks and offers to host mini-challenges and prizes for the challenge winners.

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Motivated to Finish

Here I am at my workstation for reading, writing, net surfing, DVD and podcast viewing, and sewing, and crochet. I've been on a finishing spree since the new modem was installed Monday. I'd crocheted the main body of half a dozen bookmarks over the four days I went without web access and since five of them were still attached to the thread spools until their tails were tucked so their borders could be crocheted on, I was motivated to get those tasks done so the colors would be available for new projects. I finished up the forth and fifth one today and as reward, I started a new one after dinner.

See the little drawstring bag hanging off my left wrist? That is a method for carrying single projects about in--as long as they use only one or two spools of crochet thread. I pull the thread(s) up through the top and as I work a gentle flick of my left wrist is usually enough to pull up enough thread for a couple more double crochets. Sometimes though I need to reach over with my right hand and give the string a strong tug.





Above is a close up of my hands at work with the bag hanging off my wrist. The crochet hook is in my left hand as I deal with a small snarl.

This has been nice for taking my work out on the porch this week. It protects it from Merlin our cat, dust and cigarette smoke.

It is working so well I'm thinking of making a bigger one that will hold up to four spools for those projects with multiple colors or for multiple small projects with one or two colors. I tried to get a third spool in this one but the fit was too tight, leaving no room for them to turn and release the thread.

I didn't make this one. It was just one of those container things I tend to collect (bags, pouches, purses, boxes, trays, envelopes, etc) in hopes of fining a use for them. Many such items tend to contain little but each other, serving as storage for empty containers waiting for uses. But this pouch, made of windbreaker material has seen much use over the last 6-8 years and I can't even remember where it came from or if I ever knew its original purpose.




Here I show off the bookmark in progress next to the half-loaded bag. This is the size of the variation of the one pictured below which I've been making this past week. The five I finished in the last two days were five different pastels where the purple is here and a pastel variegated where the turquoise is.

The week before I made two of the long ones with the bright Mexicana variegated where the blue is--one with red, the other with royal blue. And also the first of the short ones in yellow with the Mexicana. They are all ready for blocking and tassels. When finished they'll have the shape of this one:







The bookmark I started tonight is intended to accompany this Bible cover which I'm (still) making for my niece. It has a third panel for holding a tablet and pen. I finished the needlepoint on it nearly a year ago during my stay at my Mom's. I still need to sew the lining onto the back

I am motivated to get cracking on that this week as my in-laws are going to be seeing her on their trip next weekend. They are leaving Thursday morning so that gives me a week. As I confessed in this post last summer, I started work on this six months before her sixteenth birthday. I think it is her 27th coming up in July.

I think I may really do it this time.




That silver fabric is what I'm lining it with. It is stretchy which intimidates me. I'm not sure how to sew on it without puckering it. I researched the hand stitches and chose the backstitch done while the two pieces are facing each other. Which means it will be wrong side out until I have all but a few inches done and then I have to turn it right side out and sew up the remaining inches with a blind stitch. I had considered doing it right side out with the blind stitch all around but I'm sure the puckering would have been impossible to keep under control and besides it is not a sturdy stitch.

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Just What I Was Thinking

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WAS is the operative word there.

This would have been the perfect LOL to head Friday's post. I had even been plotting some on the theme for if I'd been able to visit icanhascheezeburgers.com when I finally gained access at the Ashland library Saturday. But with our arriving with less than an hour before the library closed, I didn't dare visit my kitties. Minutes just melt away when I'm on those sites.

But my experience of forced withdrawal off the net from midnight Friday through 2:15pm Monday (except for the minutes between 4:15 and 4;55pm Saturday in which I did nothing but put up three blog posts) I learned how pathetic my dependence had become and I'm making an effort not to fall into the same patterns.

For example, in the wee hours this morning before I lay down, I closed the browser which meant that I couldn't just lift the lid of my netbook to view my gmail, which I have been in the habit of doing several times during the hours I sleep and of course the very first thing when I wake up and multiple times per hour throughout my waking hours. During the day today I closed my gmail tab several times and made myself wait a minimum of an hour to check on it.

I also spent several hours on the porch crocheting this afternoon and another after dinner. In the process I crocheted one of the 14 row bookmarks, tucked its 14 tails and crocheted the border around it. Then I tucked the tails and crocheted the border on two more previously crocheted 14 row bookmarks. That makes four of those plus one of the 22 row version ready for blocking and application of their tassels. I have two more of the 14 row ones waiting to have their tails tucked and border crocheted.

At one point I had six of those waiting for tails and borders which was not very bright of me as each one had to stay attached to the spool until its border was crocheted on if I didn't want to have two extra tails to tuck by finishing off and then having to restart the thread later. During the time all those spools were attached to unfinshed bookmarks, I had to deal with about six major and three minor snarls. Because as much as I tried not to handle them, I was carrying them back and forth to the porch in the bag in which my crochet supplies were tucked in between the spools so the spools got disturbed every time I took something out or put something back. Also at least twice the bag tipped over on the bed and one, two or three of the spools would roll out.

I hope I've learned my lesson.

After it cooled down too much on the porch for comfort--which was about the time I lost light enough to crochet by--Ed and I returned to our room where we watched the movie, Fast Food Nation.

Last night after posting, I closed the browser and watched the rest of the extras on the Dr Who series 1 DVDs (watching the 13 episodes had been one of my occupations over the weekend) and then watched an episode of Lost at ABC.com. That last was more frustrating than fun though as streaming videos has never been smooth since I got my netbook last Janurary. Just about every video-even many on YouTube--plays a few seconds then loads a few seconds and plays a few seconds ad infinitum. With YouTube I can pause the vid and wait until the whole thing loads but with ABC streaming that only gains me approximately one full minute of unstuttering video.

I was hoping the new, supposedly faster, modem would have solved the problem which is one of the reasons I chose watching Lost over one of the library videos. Also, I need to watch a couple or loose my chance until they put them back up months from now as they only keep about five or six previous to the current episode available online.

Tonight before posting I was greeted with the news that updates were ready and when I looked at the record of updates since we got connected again yesterday I found there were quite a few--my computer had its own catching up to do I guess. I'm wondering now how much that had to do with the issues I had with the Lost episode. Also with downloading my podcasts on itunes. Because Ed has been raving about how much faster the connection is now but every piece of evidence I've had points the other way. Less speed or possibly the same. Some of the itune podcasts were taking twice as long as usual or more--a 40 minute news show that averaged 60-90 minutes before was taking 3-4 hours!!

One of the upgrades tonight had something to do with Aethernet and another one had something to do with the modem so I'm hoping.... At the very least I'm hoping some of the speed issues had to do with the updating and that that is done with for now.

It irks me that there was never any evidence that downloads were happening in the background.

Well, I'm planning to spend more time with the two novels I started over the weekend tonight. It is not typical of me to have two novels going at once. I was trying to decide between them and kept going back and forth that first night and next thing I know I'm thirty pages in on one and fifty on the other. May also watch a movie as there are two DVD that won't renew on Thursday and if I don't watch one tonight I'll have to watch two tomorrow night.

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Catching Up

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The new modem was delivered at 1:30 this afternoon and Ed had us up and running by 2:15.
The first thing I did was check my email and spend an hour reading and dealing with it. The next thing was check our library accounts to renew items, remind myself just what was due when this coming week and check on the availability of several more things ordering a few of them.

There is so much to catch up on after four days without web access. Blogs to read, news to read and watch. Data to look up. Questions to get answers for (llike where exactly in Africa is the Oldive, which figures in the navel I began Friday?). Reading and writing challenges to sign up for (ScriptFrenzy and Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-thon). Emails to write. LOLcats to look at and laugh. Blog stats to check on. Facebook and Twitter and Goodreads to check in at. IM conversations to engage in. TV shows to stream. My Book Drum profile to work on. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.



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But I did (maybe) take to heart some of the lesson I learned Friday about the addictive nature of my relationship to the Internet. I made myself go out on the porch with my crochet and books for about an hour before dinner.

Well, one could say it was our cat Merlin who made me. He sat beside my right arm for most of that hour I was dealing with email and kept grabbing my elbow, wrist or fingers every time I reached for the mouse. He had food and water in his bowls so I suspected what he wanted and sure enough when I got up off the edge of the bed he led me through the living room and pointed his nose at the front door. I said to him, You might as well be speaking English.

Spending time on the porch in the sun with either me or Ed or both of us was one of the fallouts of the dead modem for Merlin and it only took him three days to learn to expect that to be part of the afternoon. It would be good for both of us to keep that up.

Other lessons I learned: I can survive without checking for email or IMs every five to fifteen minutes. I don't need to check icanhascheezeberger.com several times a day or even every day. Ditto for Facebook and Twitter and even my blog stats. I learned how my frequently compulsive checking on such things has sucked time and energy out of my days and joy out of my endeavors. Especially my online endeavors. I hope I can resist returning to the status quo of last week.

Things I did instead of Internet between midnight Friday morning and Monday afternoon (besides fretting that is): Read in three novels. Wrote. Crocheted. Watched DVD. Sat on porch soaking up Spring. Sorted and organized some craft stuff--mostly related to crocheted bookmarks. Daydreamed. Visited with Ed. Watched a move with Ed--The Pursuit of Happiness starring Will Smith (talk about lessons to learn).

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Sunday Serenity #171 The Beautiful Ashland Library

The beautiful old Ashland Library which we got to visit Saturday. The only library in the system open on Sundays so I'm hoping that now Ed has discovered it's joys he'll be more willing to go more often.



Me climbing the steps toward the new addition where the adult sections and the computers are. Maybe someday i can get some pictures of the interior.

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My Modem Methadone

So obviously we got to some WIFI this afternoon. But Murphy's Law was still hounding me. Another long story could be told but we just got the fifteen minute warning that the library is closing and I still need to prepare Sunday's post and schedule it to post sometime tomorrow.

See you on the flip side. (Hopefully Monday afternoon)

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Of Snarls and Curses and Murphy's Law

3/19/2010 10:38:23 PM

As I write this offline in my WhizFolders ap knowing I can't post it any sooner than late afternoon or evening tomorrow (Saturday) I am suffering the pangs of a withdrawal from an addiction as powerful as any I've ever heard or read about. It's closing in on 24 hours since our modem died and not having Internet access for that long has me feeling tremulous, nauseated, fevered, headachy, anxious, agitated and not sure whether I feel more like curling up in the fetal position or punching pillows and cursing.

Pathetic is it not?

I've spent most of the last twenty hours fretting--first about what had gone wrong and then, while waiting impatiently for Ed to get up at 6am then waiting for him to troubleshoot and after he'd discovered the 3 year-old modem had died and that the new one Quest is sending won't arrive until sometime Monday even with overnight delivery because UPS won't deliver on a Saturday without tacking on an extra $15, I fretted about whether/how/when I could get Friday, Saturday and Sunday's Joystory posts posted so I wouldn't break a three year streak of never missing a day.

If only this had happened one day earlier!!!! We'd only be looking at one day without Internet and the Phoenix library with its WIFI is open on Thursday.

By 9am Ed and I had discussed the possibility of going to the Ashland library or some other place that had public WIFI but first I needed to get a few hours of sleep. Then this afternoon there was a miscommunication between me and Ed about timeframe and other things. He woke me at 1:30 saying get ready and we'll go to Ashland. He didn't give me a 'leave-by' time and what he meant by 'get ready' wasn't everything I understood it to mean. He meant get showered and dressed so we can walk out the door as soon after 2 as possible. I intended also to get as much of the prep work for three posts done here while in my comfort zone because I knew that my anxieties would be triggered by the library environment I had not been in for years coupled with knowing he would be expecting me to hurry and would have little patience for it taking more than an hour even though I average 3 hours per post on normal days.

I knew that the only way I could get three posts done in approximately one hour would be to have each one planned and as much of the work for them that could be done offline done before I left the house. So I spent close to an hour prepping three posts and an email which included setting up Whiz topics for each to drop notes into, collecting possibly needed links into them, listing a few thoughts and the things that would need to be done to accomplish them. Then I hibernated and packed up my netbook for travel and proceeded to prepare my self for travel and while I did that I continued to compose those posts in my head, especially today's. Which by the way wasn't this one because everything changed when I came out on the porch ready to go at 3:15 only to have Ed tell me it was too late because it was too close to dinner to make the round trip to Ashland plus spend an hour there.

We argued in soto voice there on the porch beside the open front door for twenty minutes before I conceded defeat and accepted his alternate plan to walk up to Jack-in-the-Box which he said had WIFI. It might sound picky, even petty, to most that I wasn't OK with using the near-by WIFI source over the one necessitating a 25 minute drive each way but see, the where wasn't the problem. I would have been fine with any place that gave access to the Internet. My problem was with having the plan changed which made 60 percent of my prep work useless and meant starting from scratch and needing an extra hour of time to get the three posts up.

Because the post I had planned for Friday was the story of the expired modem and the trip to Ashland and visit to the Ashland library for the first time since 2005 topped by a picture of the beautiful, historic, Ashland Carnegie library. The Saturday post I had planned was pics of the several crocheted bookmarks that I have in progress, all begun in the last week. And the one for Sunday was to grab a music video off one of my YouTube playlists for a Sunday Serenity post. And because we were walking up to Jack-in-the-Box instead of taking the car to Ashland, I didn't want to have to carry the crochet stuff with me along with the netbook which meant no pics and thus two out of three post concepts were done for. I couldn't get the pictures ahead of time because the camera batteries were dead so my plan had included sending Ed after batteries and having him take the pictures of the library and the bookmarks while I got busy online.

Another drawback to the change of plan that would also increase time needed to complete the tasks was that everywhere but at the library I would need to run on battery power which meant working with a dimmed down screen or a 45 minute time limit.

So on the walk to Jack-in-the-Box I came up with alternatives for both posts. Friday's would be similar in topic but topped by a tacky pic of a fast food franchise instead of the gorgeous stone and brick library. Saturday's would be a YouTube trailer for the movie Notes on a Scandal which I'd finished watching last night just before discovering that the usual flood of email that comes in between midnight and 2am had not which led, of course, to discovering the lack of Internet connection.

If not for this fiasco, Friday's post would probably have been a Friday Forays in Fiction post with Notes on a Scandal as a topic since it is a story that contemplates storytelling itself.

Anyway its all moot. Jack-in-the-Box no longer had WIFI.

On the walk over I had remembered that last November when I met my family who were traveling south over at the truck stop across the freeway from us, my nephew had gained access to the Internet with his new netbook while we were parked in the parking lot outside the restaurant. So Ed said we'd take the car over there after dinner.

It was after 6pm when I was finished doing dishes and 7 by the time we left.

But it was another wild goose chase. No free access outside the truck stop restaurant anymore.

Ed had one more idea. To drive over to the Phoenix branch library and see if their WIFI was active and accessible from the parking lot while the library was closed.

No go.

So we return home where we sit on the porch discussing my various obsessions--among them the need to not break the three year (as of April 6) streak of daily posts and why I can't just relax into a weekend off, letting the dead modem take the fall for causing the 'dereliction of duty'.

Then I leave Ed on the porch with his cigs and library book while I head inside intending to use the camera freshly loaded with new batteries to take pictures of my week's worth of crocheted bookmarks. But I encounter a massive snarl in my thread--two spools still attached to an unfinished bookmark with over a yard of thread between the spools and the inch long WIP had tangled.

So instead of getting the pictures taken before Ed needed to go to bed, I spent over two hours un-snarling thread. Ed had been snoring for half an hour before I got it untangled. (As I write this paragraph, I realize I should have just gotten the pictures, snarls and all because that would have made an excellent picture to head this post!) Now I can't get the pictures until after he gets up but if I'm at all sane I should be long asleep by then myself seeing as how I got less than four hours of sleep this morning.

Which puts me, upon waking tomorrow, right back in the same position as when I woke today--with no pics to head the planned posts except by then one post will already be twelve hours past due. I'll either have to use time before we leave or after we get to WIFI access (he has either the Ashland library or the Medford Starbucks in mind for tomorrow after he gets home from work) to take the pics and prep them for posting or use the WIFI access time to hunt for pics, LOLcats or videos to head my posts. Which points to another obsession--the need to head my post with pics or vids. Not only does having them increase traffic to Joystory, the ones without now look naked so the hunt for images or vids accounts for over 60% of the time invested in most of my posts.

Which, as I type that admission, I recognize as quite illogical and inefficient of me as well as topsy-turvey since as a writer wanting to showcase my writing I should be putting the bulk of the time and effort into the writing and because the hunt for images often exhausts me I tend to tack on a handful of choppy sentences that are too often apologies for not wanting to take time to write a post even though it probably took me over an hour just to find the image or vid.

So tonight, without Internet access to scavenge off icanhazcheeseburger.com or art.com or youtube.com etc or the ability to take pictures, I put the effort into writing up the events of the day and find that in a similar amount of time and effort I've reached 1700 words which is more than a NaNo daily wordcount quota. But no one ever reads 1700 word posts. And Google image search will never offer up such a post.

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Inspector Lewis PBS

Discovered a new TV series. Had checked out a DVD from the Library Monday with two episodes of Inspector Lewis a spin-off of the Inspector Morse series. Watched both of them back to back last night. 90 minutes apiece!!

It should be obvious what attracts me to this. It's set in Oxford an ancient college town and often the campus itself. The mysteries are smart with clues often rooted in literary reference, word etymology or history.



Above is a clip from one of the episodes on the disc: Live Born of Fire



Above is another local station trailer. Local somewhere not local to me.

Below is a fan-made trailer with clips from several episodes including the two I watched.



I was delighted to discover our library system has the complete first and second season available.Not full seasons at once but individual discs holding two episodes like the one I just had. Can't wait. But will anyway as I've got eight DVD items checked out currently and one is a complete season of Dr Who.

Thank God for libraries!!!

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Peace in the Valley

This is the version of this song that is in the closing titles of the movie Hounddog. It is sung by Melonie Daniels and the arrangement is quite unique as compared to any of the better known ones such as Elvis Presley's or Johnny Cash's.

A piece of this one--the open notes and first verse--also plays on the special features section of the DVD which is where I first heard it. I left the DVD on that section to listen to it over and over both before and after watching the film. And then I went back to the ending titles and played it over and over there and finally I went to YouTube to search for it. And boy was that a challenge. A plain old search for the song by title did not bring up Melonie Daniels version at all. I listened to a bunch of other versions and none of them gripped me like this one.

There is something about the rhythm being a bit jerky and the notes hit by the string instrument (guitar?) being in an unexpected key. Key? is that the right term? I'm not sure I have the vocabulary to talk about music with clarity. All I know is what I feel as I listen and those sounds call up something deep and both sad and hopeful at once. Which made it the perfect song for that moment in the film where Dakota Fanning as Llewellen began singing it as she walked out of the despair of her past into a possibly hopeful future as credits start to roll and this version begins.

As far as I can tell from listening to other vids of Melonie Daniels, this isn't a signature sound for her. So I guess if I want to hear other songs with a similar sound I need to find out who wrote the arrangement and who the musical instrument players were. Was it a group that plays together often or was it just for that one recording?

I remain haunted both by this song and by the movie itself more than twenty hours after first encountering them.

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TTYL

moar funny pictures

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