A Very Green Salad

Green salad by Joy & Cukes in Spicy Vinegar by Ed

Ed and I worked together at making dinner tonight.  First by walking up to the store after fresh ingredients.  This gave me some insight into all those scenes in historical novels or novel set in countries that still depend on daily excursions on foot to the market after that day's meal ingredients.  It can have its charms.

But I'd still prefer to have a kitchen stocked with a month's worth of staples and a week's worth of perishables and several months worth of frozen and canned.  That will take us some time to accumulate so we're shopping a few meals ahead and still usually find an ingredient missing for this or that.

Today Ed wanted mac and cheese and hotdogs which I did not want to fill up on though I do love mac and cheese especially when Ed makes it with real butter and half and half.  Sometimes with several kinds of cheese.  But that's got to be a side dish for me so I wanted a salad and one with substantial bulk, varied texture and flavors I liked.

So I walked up to Ray's market with Ed to pick out my ingredients in their produce aisle while he shopped for everything else.  They have a special section where you can get small 'servings' of the things you want.  A bit like a salad bar in a restaurant.  I selected a fistful each of snow peas, bean sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower from that salad bar and a bundle of green onion and a Romano tomato.  I already had avocado at home.

I also asked for a cucumber but not for the salad.  I wanted Ed to put together his cukes in spicy vinegar for me as a between meal munchie.  Not only do I love them but they are an appetite suppressant for me.  I can eat a couple of cuke coins and not need another thing for hours. I think it's the vinegar responsible for that but it helps to have to have chewed on something as well.

He spices it differently every time and its not pure vinegar but some ratio with water. As in tablespoons to cups or  something like that.  Salt and pepper are the base spices and sometimes the only ones.  Tonight he added garlic powder.  And the bowl was sitting there as I put together my salad and I got the idea of testing whether other veggies would be good after soaking in a vinegar bath so I tucked in a few snow peas and bean sprouts.

If I like them I'll start having him make for me or teach me how to make a vinegar bath with a variety of veggies.  I'd like to try radishes.  Because I don't care for radishes but I didn't care for cucumbers before I tried Ed's vinegared version.  Radishes would add some interesting color to a salad like the one I made tonight which was all green and white with a hint of purple in some of the lettus leaves before I added the tomato.  I meant to add some baby carrots which I already had in the fridge but they slipped my mind.  I wonder what carrot would taste like after a few hours in the vinegar?

I nibbled on the cuke while I made my salad (big enough for several meals as you can see as Ed isn't big on salad) and in the end I had a large serving of salad with Ed's honey-mustard vinegar dressing and a small serving of mac and cheese and turned down the hot dogs.

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Sunday Serenity #279 Laughter

cat barking like a dog

Reminds me a bit of my Gremlyn tho she never did it quite that loud. Her male peacock imitation was better. Tho to my knowledge she never had opportunity to hear a peacock. 

I got a good laugh out of that though and that perked me up.

Had a good day in spite of not sleeping last night. Got some more boxes and bags unpacked or sorted. A bit of light housework done and a shampoo. 

 It was a gloriously sunny day and I'd hoped to go outside to dry my hair but by the time I got out of the shower it was already chilling down outside. 

 Well I'm going to bed now as I can barely focus my eyes. It's either five hours early--or nineteen hours late. 

 I'm hoping to get out of the house tomorrow.  Haven't been further than the porch since i got home two weeks ago. We plan either to go to Walmart or to the library.. Walmart involves a bus ride and a quarter mile walk each way between bus stop and house and bus stop and store. The library would be a mile walk each way walk.  The both sound pretty daunting to me.

I just realized I have to do the 24hr awake thing again next weekend as next Saturday is Dewey's 24hr Read-a-Thon.

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The Joys & Annoys of Householding

Home Sweet Home  Umhmm

I used the word 'householding' (which is probably a neologism) because the word 'homemaking' has such a gender bias not to mention a 1950s June Cleaver ambience which is not what I want conveyed.

When Ed was setting up to make dinner Thursday evening (see not the least bit June Cleaverish our household) he discovered the sink was clogged.  Another first for our new house.  He had to put meal prep on hold and walk up to the store after Drano.  While he was gone I heated water in my electric teapot and poured it into the guck.  Once for each side.  And minutes after the second one the sinks drained.  But Ed still used the Drano as there was no way we could keep the hot water going long enough to be sure all grease was eliminated nor could we be sure it was only grease.

So dinner was two hours late that evening.  This was the latest of the snags we've encountered since moving in.  The kind of snags we weren't responsible for at his folks place.  Though he quite often did pitch in with the elbow grease or the driving or the know-how over there.

The experience had me thinking about all of the annoyances and comparing them to all the joys of having our own place again.  I though I'd share some of each.

First the annoys.

Don't mistake any of the following litany for whining. The joys still outweigh the annoys and I will not soon nor in this lifetime forget from whence we came.  The annoys of our new rental--our first in twelve years--were part of the package.  They were what made the deal doable for us.  The landlord is charging only what thee space rental costs him and no first, last and deposit to move in.  In return we are to take on some of the many, many issues the house has developed under the 'care' of past tenants.  Some of these are:

• Cranky plumbing
• Holes in the walls
• Stained, dirty and scorched spots on the walls
• Broken window blinds
• Missing screens
• Plugins that won't hold a plug or work intermittently.  That makes me nervous and I avoid using them at all tho Ed assure me there isn't a fire hazard
• Not enough light anywhere except directly over the kitchen and bathroom sinks
• A toilet that needs to think twice about complying with the command and clears its throat and swallows slow like an old man suffering from strep throat.  And you must hold his hand(le) until he's finished or he'll fall asleep on the job.
• A hot water tank that is so small that I could not get a shower and shampoo without ending up rinsing my hair in cold water.  In the winter!!  We have partially fixed that with an energy saver shower head.  I can now get through the second rinse with at least warm water if I stay focused and on task.  No more leisurely showers letting hot water beat on sore muscles for awhile.  We hope to install one of those new heat on demand heaters in the future but not the near future.
• The hot water hookup for the bathroom sink is defunct.  When we first moved in the landlord had been working on it and had it working--sorta--but the handle did not have a set off spot so you had to keep turning it back and forth to find the sweet spot where the water stopped flowing.  And even then you might come back later to find a thing trickle coming out.  While I was at my mom's this winter it quit altogether and Ed hasn't fixed it yet.  It is very annoying not to have hot water in the bathroom sink.
• As for hot water in the kitchen sink there is the issue that it is so far from the tank that it takes forever for the pipes to heat and by the time the water is running hot enough to rinse the greasy rag you just wiped the stove with you have seconds before its temperature is declining.  Thank goodness for the dishwasher as I don't think we could run one let alone both sinks full of water to wash and rinse a meal's worth of dishes.
• The floors aren't level.  And i don't mean there is a gentle slope in one direction.  I mean there are dips and rises all over the house that I need to navigate carefully to avoid falling are just getting a jarring by playing the pinball in the hall and doorways.
• The steps off the front porch are uneven and the handrail is full of jagged slivers.  A lethal combination for someone with vision and balance issues.
• The carpets in the living room, master bedroom and my office are nasty with stains that won't come out even with a powerful shampoo machine. Pet barfs, beverage spills, engine oil, are a few of the identifiable ones. A past tenant had been a mechanic and must have brought his work inside.  The last tenants had spent their last few months in here without electricity thus zero hot water and no vacuuming. 
• 
  
• Ed did the living room and bedroom while I was gone but left my office because it was full of my books and crafts and the book shelves.  A lot of stuff to move but not the issue for him.  It would have been an issue for me to come back to someone else's 'organization' of my stuff.   That's why I did the packing for the move and why I was doing the unpacking and placing of boxes and bags for later sorting and unpacking.  With my vision issues it is very frustrating to find something has been moved from where I left it or something placed on top or in front of it.
• Speaking of no electricity.  Think what that implies for the refrigerator and freezer.  I never saw.  I only heard it described.  That was one of the tasks Ed took on Xmas weekend as soon as we had the key.  He deep cleaned the entire kitchen and bathroom.  One of the annoys but a brief one necessitating a one time fix.  Well that is true of many of these it is just that the fix for the fridge and other appliances and floors in the kitchen and bathroom was all about water cheap chemicals and elbow grease.  Something we could afford immediately.
• One of the annoys isn't fixable or rather its part of the intended architecture and is only an issue for me because of my vision and balance issues.  Like the uneven flooring I will have to learn to navigate it.  It is the zigzag the hall makes just outside the bathroom where the laundry closet meets the hall.  When I come out of the bedroom or bathroom heading for the kitchen I am always running into the wall or corner where it zags: 
•                            _____
• bed____bath_____|        
• I hope the format of that little illustration is preserved.  If it is then where you see the vertical line is the wall and corner I'm always banging into.  It is straight on from the bedroom door.  It is two steps left of the bathroom door.  Directly in front of the bathroom door is the dryer.  The back door which we'll use only in emergency is just past the dryer and the light from it's window messes with my eyes in the daytime.  The glare is worse than full dark.  Above the top horizontal line is the hallway going past Ed's office toward the kitchen.  I will eventually learn.  The school of hard knocks has an excellent curriculum.
• The dryer in question was given to us by the landlord but its element doesn't work so we still have to do both the washing and drying over at the park laundromat.  An unpleasant place so I hear.  Ed used it while I was gone but we haven't been over since I got back.  That is supposed to be on the agenda for this weekend.
• Another architectural design that creates problems we need to work around is the fact there are no ceiling fixtures in any of the rooms except the bathroom, kitchen and laundry closet.  And there is only one plugin that is worked by the light switches in each of the rooms dependent on lamps.  We still don't have enough lamps to suit me and in the living room and bedroom there isn't a place to set the table lamps and our only floor lamp still has no bulb as it uses the old mogul (fat based) bulbs.  And in the bedroom the plugin operated by the light switch is on the wall opposite the head of the bed where our lamps are.

Well that's enough for now.  I haven't even gotten to the yard, the sheds, the porch and the outside of the house (roof, siding, skirt) etc.

And in spite of all of that we are still loving it.  The joys are enumerable but a representative few are:

• We can talk at any time of the day or night without fear of waking someone or being overheard when we don't want to be
• We set meal times and menus
• We can have the TV or boom box on any time and even cranked as long as its not enough to disturb the neighbors
• We can have the TV off when we don't want it on.  And have on what we choose subject of course to negotiation between thee two of us.  You can not imagine how important that is if you've not lived for years in a small house with a hard of hearing person has control of the remote and has the TV from 9AM to 9PM and almost never stays on one channel until the end of the program.  So don't bother getting involved in it if you're not willing to live with a permanent cliffhanger
• I'm not confined for most of the day and night to a 10X12 foot room with no place to be but on the bed
• I have a room of my own for my creative projects
• I can decide for myself how much light is enough in a room.  It is only a matter of time now not a matter of the preferences that by rights override my own
• My eccentric sleep/wake 'schedule' is no ones business but my own.  (well Ed's too to an extent and he knows I'm always willing to comply with requests to be sure to be available for events)
• Watching our Merlin living his joys: running free through the house with many windows to watch the birds and neighborhood animals from and lots of toys to loose and find and balls to chase and many places suitable for comfy naps

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Weird Sisters and Script Frenzy

William Rimmer's Three Weird Sisters

Wow time just got away from me today.  I've been so rapt (pun intended) up in my script I nearly forgot to post.

I wanted to provide an excerpt from the pages I adapted today but I don't know how to make script format in Blogger so I'm going to go post the excerpt on my profile at Script Frenzy where, last year at least, they preserved the format in their platform.

Here's the link to where that excerpt will live once I get it posted.  If it isn't there yet check back later.  It is interesting to compare the two versions side by side.

Meanwhile I am providing her the excerpt from my short story Of Cats and Claws and Curiosities which I'm adapting to film script.  The one story isn't going to be enough so I'll proceed on to Making Ragdoll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes when I've completed Of Cats.  Both stories feature the same three characters who I think of as my three weird sisters and the events in Rag Doll Babies take place a few weeks after Of Cats.

The reason for that will be made clear in the following excerpt

I've posted the entirety of both stories in serial outtakes before and the links to them can  be found here.


[Previous to this scene Faye had fainted in the back seat of her Chevy Belaire driven by her twin sister Julia and a passing state patrol car had escorted them to this diner where Faye had been brought in by the female officer and provided with a bowl of ice water and a rag by the waitress to cool her face and neck.  Meanwhile Julia and Faye's sister-in-law Wilma had remained outside to secure the car


This scene opens with Julia and Wilma arriving at Faye's table inside]

 “Well, land’s sakes Sister!  Looks like you’ve taken a shower with your clothes on.  Did that meter-maid have to throw water in your face to revive you?”
    “Really, Julia, you exaggerate.”  Faye lifted the cloth from her face.  “Try it.  It’s quite refreshing.
    “Thanks just the same, I’ll pass.”  Julia pushed the bowl of ice water away and slid into the booth beside Faye.  “A nice tall wine-cooler over ice is the ticket for me.  What an invention!  Even the name sounds refreshing.”
    “It will be the ticket for you all right.”  Wilma dabbed at a film of sweat on her lip with a fresh linen handkerchief.  “A ticket for drinking and driving, most likely.  As you are already called to the attention of the police it seems an unwise choice.”
    “Oh shwise, shmise!  A wine cooler has less alcohol in it than that cough syrup you swig.”
    “That is a prescription.  But you digress.  Driving under the influence of alcohol is against the law.”
    Faye was relieved to see the waitress approach. Those two could continue such exchanges endlessly, unsheathing insults like cats spoiling for a fight--or settling on ones lap to sleep.
    “I’ve orders to give you ladies first class service.”  The girl flashed a grin at Faye and with casual brushes at errant, rusty-hued tresses said, “At your command m’lady.”  Pad and pencil ready in exaggerated pose she deferred to Faye with elevated brow.
    Faye ducked her head to hide another blush, stammering her order for a cola and chocolate-cream pie.  What is it with these insinuating winks and grins implying non-existent alliances?  She only half-heard Wilma order unsweetened iced-tea, an unadorned bagel; Julia request cottage-cheese, fruit cocktail and the wine cooler she’d likely been jesting about before Wilma’s lecture.
    “So’s you know who to ask for, my name’s Sandra.  I work this here section.”  She encompassed the nearby tables with a wave and brushed at her hair again.  “It’s quiet now, but the dinner crowd’ll be here soon.  Be busy then.  But you ladies got my undivided.  Just wave.”  She gathered up Faye and Cassie’s iced-tea glasses and the bowl of ice water in which Faye had deposited the cloth.  With swift swipes of a damp rag, condensation rings from the glasses and splatters from the compress vanished.
    In Sandra’s absence Faye focused on the view out the window, afraid Julia or Wilma might see her discomposure and twit her.  Squinting at the sun-flashes off passing wind-shields, she recognized the Chevy by its distinctive outline rather than its garish color scheme, for glare reduced the purple to muddy gray.  A disparity kept her eyes straying to its silhouette--ah, no reflections of people or buildings on its windows as on other cars along the curb.
    “The windows are down!”  She turned toward Julia in alarm.
    “But of course!”  Julia replied.  “Who wants to return to that oven on wheels to the aroma of baked cat?”
    “A crack would have sufficed.”  Wilma said.
    “Toasted cat.  Roasted cat.  What’s to choose?”  Julia pulled the front of her tank-top out and fanned herself vigorously with a Nickel, a local want-ad paper she had picked up at the entrance where they were displayed under a sign proclaiming ‘FREE’ in foot-high letters.
    “But Sister, it’s inviting passersby to help themselves.”
    “Don’t be silly.  We’ve got clear line-of-sight.  If anyone did abscond with one of our fancy-sacks, how far could they get?  Relax!”  She gave Faye’s knee a constraining pat.
    Faye subsided into her corner, her ration of defiance spent.  She devoted attention to the Chevy, alert for any potentially suspicious move made by occasional passersby.  The trickle of late afternoon customers seeking refreshment and relief from the heat soon became a torrent, spilling off from the five-o’clock flood of pedestrians rushing by outside, impeding Faye’s view of the car--her brief glimpses abruptly cut off by pieces of bodies, purses, brief-cases, shopping bags.  She squirmed in her seat, leaned a smidgen left, right, craned her neck until it ached, all but stood on the seat to keep the car in sight.  By the time Sandra returned all moves had begun to look potentially suspicious so she was glad for an excuse to relax her vigil.
    Her view funneled between elbow and waist of an angular woman at a leisured amble amidst the hastening home-goers.  Faye watched her, intrigued by incongruities reminiscent of ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ games.  Spike-heeled sandals slowed her pace without detracting from the dancer’s grace of her carriage.  Golden curls cascaded down her back to pool in the hood of a knee-length black rain cape.  The cape, flung over the shoulder to free the right arm which supported a large canvas bag and held aloft an umbrella, flaunted a lining aglow in the sultry light with the hew of fresh blood.
    With rain-cape and umbrella on a warm, evening identified as the incongruity, Faye turned back to the Chevy.  But something niggled, fidgeting her eyes to the puzzling woman, whose progress was marked by the black umbrella displaying a pentagram delineated in a silvery substance that shot light-arrows into incautious eyes.  Like the last word of a crossword puzzle she couldn’t get because the clue wasn’t in her repertoire, the inconsistency continued to elude her.  Resigned, she shifted focus only to see the solution.
    As is usual when a woman of striking self-possession walks through a crowd with the svelte grace of a cat, many admiring glances were cast her way, but only from behind-those facing her kept their eyes carefully averted, except for one small child who gazed up at her with riveted awe in spite of admonishing tugs on the arm.
    Solving one puzzle created another.  Her insatiable need to watch people was shameless, but so seldom did she leave the seclusion of the estate, she must soak up sights and sound to savor in the solitude of long, somnolent evenings.  The novel and unique drew her, provided threads of exquisite mystery for weaving numinous dreams.  This woman would wander wondrous dreamscapes-forever faceless and eternally ethereal.
    Feeling regret nigh on mourning when she lost sight of the woman, Faye turned to her pie for consolation until Julia nudged her and jabbed her fork at the window.  “Will you look at that!”
    Faye looked and there was her mystery woman--cape, heels and umbrella, but now the umbrella was closed and dangling from it…
    “My bag!  The cat!”  Faye jumped to her feet, knocked her knee against the table, jarring the dishes into a jittery dance. X
    “She poked that umbrella in there, pretty as you please and out came the bag.  And staring straight ahead all the while too.  Cucumber-cool.”  Julia slapped the table and cutlery chuckled in counterpoint.  “She cased the car, walked by it three times.  I wish I could see her face when she finds out what she’s bagged!”
    “Aren’t you going to do anything?”  Faye was frantic.
    “What’s to do?  She hasn’t got anything valuable.  Let it be.  It’ll learn her a lesson.”  She ignored Faye’s attempts to get by.
    “One should not make a scene in public.”  Wilma cautioned.
    “Who’s afraid of a scene?”  I’d show you a scene alright if it’d been my boots she’d hooked.  Look, she’s coming this way.  I do believe she’s going to walk right in.”  Julia laughed
    Aghast, Faye watched the woman walk in, peer about, come right at them, and seat herself in a booth across the aisle.  The riotous curls framed an ancient face from which peered searing blue eyes like sapphires embedded in a walnut.  Withered lips parted over teeth like fine, white porcelain as she queried the empty air and nodded sagely at the answer.
    “Let me go talk to her.”  Faye begged an un-budging Julia.
    “Leave her be.  I gotta see this.”  Julia said.
    “It’s not polite to stare.” Wilma proclaimed.
    “It’s not polite to steal either.”  Julia said as Sandra brought coffee to the woman’s table and poured it without exchanging a word with her.  “Ah.  She’s a regular.”
    “Ladies.”  Sandra turned to them.  “Anything I can do you for?”
    “We’re fine.”  Julia answered, her eyes fixed on the woman.
    Sandra leaned close to whisper, “That’s Estelle Starr, a bit dotty but harmless.  Used to be a performer of some kind.  Shows up in Westmont last year and we took to watching out for her, but in such a way as saves her pride.  She’s partial to riding the bus ‘tween here and Vancouver.  Folk’s here drop tokens and coins in odd places she’s apt to be.  Fancies herself a witch.  Always muttering in rhyme and talking to invisible friends.”
    They watched Estelle’s animated conversation with her unseen seatmate, drawn by its dramatic expressiveness.  Julia’s mouth twitched with barely restrained hilarity and Wilma’s lips pursed with pent remonstrance.  Faye, quivering with indignation at her enforced impotence, had a mind to push Julia off her seat.  Such desecration!  All to satisfy Julia’s whim and sooth Wilma’s wounded propriety.
    “Westmont attracts her kind.”  Sandra went on.  “Ekcentrics, ya know?  We got a passel here abouts.  We’re partial to ‘em I guess.  One runs a cat ranch up on the ridge, drives this hotrod my kid brother drools over.  She’s a raycluse, doesn’t come to town much.  Even so stories of her doings would fill a library.  And if they’re all true she must be ancient cause my gramma tells some she heard as a girl…”
    Her attention riveted on Estelle Starr and the bag, Faye was barely cognizant of Sandra’s chatter.  Her feet fairly itched to march over there so she could spew out the words of accusation and condemnation that flooded her mind.  But helpless against the concerted front of Julia’s determination to be entertained and Wilma’s studied obliviousness, outrage withered and she sank in her seat with a sigh.  She filled her mouth with chocolate to calm herself as she watched Estelle fondle the bag--patting it and smoothing its creases.  Mesmerized by these motions Faye missed the moment she parted the lips of the bag to peer in.
   
    “There she goes.”  Julia’s voice conveyed a smug and eager expectancy.  Sandra broke off in mid-sentence and turned toward Estelle, briefly blocking Faye’s view.  Then with an exclamation of concern she was hurrying to aid a swooning Estelle as Julia gasped between exultant giggles, “Did you…ever see such…a sight for sore eyes!  It was better than I’d hoped!”
    At Fay’s incredulous, “For shame, Sister!”  Julia chocked back the giggles and managed to look chagrined.
    As Sandra rose from a recumbent Estelle to rush off, stuttering something about blood, paramedics, police and a Halloween Gagger Estelle stirred, muttering hectically.  Stray phrases reached their ears.  ‘…gouts of blood…the bloody business…wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep...craft celebrates pale…offerings…”
    “Methinks the lady suffers pangs of morbid guilt.”  Julia said.
    “As well she should for such mangling of Macbeth.” said Wilma.
    “Ah, our star speaks lofty words.”  Julia chortled.
    Estelle, struggling to sit saw her bloody hand and moaned.  “What hands are here?…Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?  No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.”  She commenced rubbing her hands together as if under a faucet.
    “The wine of life is drawn.”  Julia intoned, baiting her.
    Estelle turned sharply with widened eyes, encouraging Julia’s merciless taunting:  “We the three weird sisters be.  Let us meet and question this most bloody piece of work, to know it further.  Was there warrant in that theft?”
    “Fears and scruples shake us.  In the great hand of God I stand.”  Estelle clutched the ill-got bag with defiant courage.
    “Your cruelty shames me Sister, have you no mercy?”
    “Fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty!  Make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage to remorse.  That no compunctions shake my purpose.”  Julia intoned.
    Wilma winced, “If you must misappropriate the lines, at least refrain from misquoting them.”
    “Thou marvel’st at my words, but hold thee still, things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”
    During this exchange, Estelle dared again to peek in the bag.  Her shriek quelled the incipient quarrel.  “Avaunt!  And quit my sight!  Let the earth hide thee!  Thy blood is cold.”
    Julia meowed like a tortured cat.  “Thrice the brindled cat hath mew’d.  it will have blood, they say, blood will have blood.”  Her voice became a cadenced growl.  “Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble.”  At the sound of sirens wailing in the distance Julia chanted:  “By the pricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes.”  Then to preempt further protestation from Faye or Wilma she turned to them with:  “I am in blood stepped’ in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
    Estelle was again agitating her hands. “Will these hands ne’er be clean?…Here’s the smell of the blood still.  All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
    “Now does she feel her secret thievery sticking on her hands.”  Julia mocked, not hiding her glee with this impromptu game.
    Estelle trembled at the sound of approaching sirens, moaning, “How isn’t with me, when every noise appalls me?…Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath those clamorous harbingers of blood and death…Out, out, brief candle!”  so saying she once more swooned.
    “Now you’ve done it Julia.”  Faye remonstrated.
    “Thou canst not say I did it.  Never shake thy gory locks at me.”  Julia shot back.
    Sandra returned, ushering in the paramedics.  “Still out poor thing?  What a shame.  You ladies may want to stay put for a bit.  The press is swarming out there.  They got word of another Halloween Gagger incident already.”

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Undone

 I was trying to get this bookmark finished for the photo for this evening's post.  And I was close.  I was about to turn the corner onto the third from last row when I discovered a mistake in the row below.

It's time to go play in my story files again so I took the picture of the mess and as an afterthought I snapped a pic of the open book containing the pattern I was following.

The mistake wasn't made tonight but back in late February or early March.  The row showing as near its beginning was  nearly at its end when I picked it up this evening.  I had completed the last fifteen or so stitches on that row and turned and made it all the way back to twenty or so stitches from the end of the next row when I found the mistake so I had to take out most of two rows.

This is probably not kosher but I wanted to show what the pattern is supposed to look like.  Looks to me like I'm going to have to block and possibly starch to get it to this point tho.

The pattern is in Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet revised editon on page 155.

On each row one of the diamonds is growing while the other is shrinking and the pattern doesn't repeat for 9 rows so there is a lot to hold in the mind and a lot of counting.

The bookmark is only going to have the one row of completed diamond down the middle framed by the triangles and single crochet borders.  So the pattern isn't going to repeat.

I don't know if I'm going to make more bookmarks with this pattern.  It depends on how difficult it is to block it and get it to hold its proper shape.

This was an experiment to test out whether I would enjoy this pattern enough to do a big project like a prayer shawl or scarf using the hand painted silk thread I used on my MIL shawl last spring.

Still undecided but leaning toward yes.

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I Leave You With

After yesterday's epiphany, confession and recommitment to writing my stories I wanted to make sure that the bulk of my writing time today was devoted to my stories so today's post is of the flower and set of two leaves I crocheted today with as little commentary as I can get away with.

These are part of the set of flowers, leaves and bows for my mom's sweater.  A project I've discussed repeatedly here over the last three years as it morphed from embroidery with floss to embroidery with yarn to crocheted broaches.

These are fresh off the hook--the leaves within the hour--and still need to be dampened and blocked.  But the tails are tucked except for the one on the back of the flower needed to sew the button on.

The button is from Mom's collection of buttons that go back to her Grandmother, passed to her mother and now to me.  Each one adding buttons from their generation left over from projects or cut off discarded clothes.

I've already presented her with what I had completed by the time I arrived there in early January.  There are pics of some of the flowers and bows pinned to the sweater around her her 80th bday bash the second week of January.  I may go find the link later and update this post with it but I'm trying to limit the time I spend on this right now.

As I often do while working with fiber arts--crocheting, needlepoint, cross stitch, needlepoint--I daydreamed my stories as I worked today so I'm primed to work with them now.

I have decided that the best way to do that is to go ahead and work the script adaptation I had planned for Script Frenzy even though it is 11 days in and I've not written one word on my script.  I had contemplated just backing out of Frenzy in order to write fresh scenes in one or more of my novels but then it occurred to me that working on a script adaptation of a story that contains over twenty characters that pop in and out of the other stories and novels is the best way to get my head back into the story world.

I was never in Script Frenzy to win this year anyway.  For me it is an exercise in learning a new aspect of my craft.  I'm hoping though that by next year I will have gained enough confidence in my understanding and use of the format to aim for the win.

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Are You Or Aren't You?

'via Blog this'
Stephen King - Main - Neil Gaiman Interviews Stephen King:

Some things I learned from reading Neil Gaiman's interview of Stephen King:

~King is writing a novel named after me ;)  (Joyland) about a serial killer stalking an amusement park.  About time seeing how his first novel was name after my baby sister who wasn't old enough to read it at the time.  Not that she was a baby just a preteen and Carrie was definitely PG13.

~He lived in a rented trailer house with small children when he wrote and sold Carrie.  (I knew this but being reminded as I sit in my own rented trailer house gives it a bit of poignancy.)

He's only ten years older than me.  (Thus if I'd been on the same track ie had the same dedication I'd have published my first novel in 1987 or at least finished one.)

~Both of his sons are published authors and King thinks his son Joe Hill is a better writer than he.

He and Tabitha met in their University Library. (Ed and I, tho we'd seen each other around campus for years, first started talking to each other in our high school library senior year.)

~They have a large African turtle in their yard that likes to ravish rocks.

OK so some of the tidbits are of more significance than others.

The one that reached out and grabbed me was:

~He writes his stories every day between 8am and Noon.

That's the main reason why he's published novels in the double digits while I haven't finished a single one of the twenty odd I've started.

And the one that gave me shivers and got my head to nodding:

~He has an implicit trust that has yet to fail him that whatever his story needs will be there for him when it's time.  In other words, he doesn't wait until he knows every last thing about the story before plunging into writing it and doesn't let whatever difficulties with story elements that arise during the writing stop him from pushing on nor even keep him awake at night.

He and Gaiman share that trait.  The two of them talk about it as though there is something magical or mystical about it.

That right there is my major issue.  I don't trust the process.  I don't trust my stories to get themselves told.  I don't like the messes that get made when I loose control.  And once a mess is made I either avoid the file entirely or fiddle with surface details endlessly letting the heart and energy of the story die.  Like putting feathers and frills on and ugly child.

I talk a lot about writing my stories.  I write a lot about writing my stories.

It's time to put my paws where my mouth is.  To pause the talk about and apply all those thoughts, words, emotions etc to the stories.  It's time to plant my fingers on the keyboard and I don't mean to blog, chat, social network, email...

It's time be the storyteller again.

Or admit that I'm a fraud.  A storyteller in the sense of that word that rhymes with mire.

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It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.

I've been home a full week now and just today finally finished unpacking from the three month visit at my mom's.  That took so long partly because it was mixed in with unpacking from the December move, cleaning up after a husband who'd batched it for three months (Not so bad really. I'd imagined worse based on the past but the kitchen only looked like it had seen couple day's use and the bed was even made!) and catching up on sleep.

That last surprised me.  I am notorious for insomnia.  But I guess I had logged such a sleep deficit while at Mom's that even my insomnia bit the dust.  I had three 10 plus hour sleeps and have been finding myself needing a nap after dinner most evenings.  But it seems to be having a good effect as my energy, ambition and creativity are returning.

So it is time to get with the program again.

When I arrived home, I was met with a stack of five review copies:


This Mobius Strip of Ifs by Mathias Freese a collection of essays with which the author jousts with American culture with often acerbic and occasionally comedic tones.  One of his major themes is the necessity of the artist to escape the conditioning of society to work with integrity.

The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen  a novel featuring an unforgettable heroine in ten-year-old Judith McPherson. Judith, persecuted at school for her beliefs and struggling with her distant, devout father at home, finds solace and connection in a model in miniature of the Promised Land that she has constructed in her room from collected discarded scraps.

For obvious reasons, I expect to identify with this young protagonist.  Switch out the miniature model with stories both read and made up and that's me.

I expect to pick this up next.

The Variations by John Donatich  a novel about a priest who has lost his church, his mentor and his ability to pray

The Inquisitor by Mark Allen Smith a thriller featuring a torturer for hire with ethics

And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles Shields  -- which I've been reading for some time now and been posting on my adventures with it, the latest being last Friday

A few days later another arrived:

The World Without You by Joshua Henkin  a novel about the aftermath of a family tragedy in which siblings gather in the family home for the first time in years on the occasion of a memorial service for their son and brother who died in Iraq

That's besides these ebooks for review:


Written in the Ashes by K. Hollan Van Zandt a novel set in ancient Alexandria featuring the famous library burned by the Christians in the fifth century.  I have read this already but the blog tour is in May.  My review will go up on May 3rd.

The Concubine Saga by Lloyd Lofthouse   a combining of what was originally two novels covering the life of a British expat in China in the late 1800s and his relationship with a Chinese woman.

I'm also expecting any day now:

Sparticus: The Gladiator by Ben Kane.  a novel set in ancient Rome obviously.

Meanwhile I am currently reading (not a review copy) The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown a novel of three sisters who return home in their thirties to care for their mother who has cancer.  Each sister is in a crisis of her own.  They're father is a Shakespeare professor who communicates with quotes from the bard and the sisters having been raised with that often include quotes in their own dialog.  Anyone who has med my character Estelle would know why this intrigues me.

In the last month to six weeks I read and have yet to review:

The Red Church by Scott Nicholson

1Q84 by Haruki Murikami

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

House Rules by Jodi Picoult

Written in the Wind by K. Hollan Van Zandt

Except for that last one which is for a blog tour in May, does anyone have a preference for which one(s) I post in the next week?  I'd like to do at least two with The Hunger Games as a trilogy counted as one.

OK I was going to include cover images to most or all of these books but I've already but over two hours into this post and I need to let it go.

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Sunday Serenity #278 Have Yourself a Bubbly Bunny Day

May your Bunny Day be bubbly & bright
& all your dreams take flight
may every dish be a culinary delight
& every face with love alight
while all your hearts with gratitude requite

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A Vocabulary Lesson

Kitteh Misunderstood.  I think so.

Learning words eliminates misunderstandings.  Kitteh would not be so scared if he knew 'pedagogy' has nothing to do with stoking a dog.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: And So It Goes...and Goes and Goes...

Well I am going to start a new practice here at Joystory--when it comes to non-fiction I'm not going to wait until I finish a book to talk about it in the formal review. I'm going to start talking about it whenever I have something to say about it.  I'll be doing this at least with non-fiction as it fits so well with the way I go about reading it but I'm also considering doing the same with fiction.  But we'll see how it goes with the NF first.

So what am I doing talking about non-fic in a meme post that's all about fiction?  Well the book I'm inaugurating the new practice with is a biography about a writer of fiction and that makes it a relevant topic.

I've already written an involved post about my early adventures with this review copy. of Charles Sheild's And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life so I won't repeat all of that here.  The gist being that I received my first copy--an Adobe Digital Editions ebook--in November which timed out on me just after New Year's Day.  What with NaNo, my birthday, the holidays, crocheting Xmas gifts, three blog tours, the flu, the move into our new place and preparing to travel north to spend a month at my mom's there had just been too much going on.  I did start reading it but I didn't get past his college days.

So while I was at Mom's I wrote my contact to apologize and she ended up sending me a tree copy.  But to my Phoenix OR home over 500 miles away.  No biggie I thot I would be home in early February but my original two week visit was extended and extended again and then yet again until I'd been there nearly 3 months.

And So It Goes
by Charles Shields

Meanwhile though, I tracked down a copy in the Vancouver WA library system and my sister picked it up for me while running errands in the area.  That was about the time I wrote that post mentioned above.

So I have been reading it off and on since early February.  But I had to start over.  Sort of.  I was able to speed read over the material I'd already read but once he was in college I had to slow down.  Because of its bulky size and small print necessitating a magnifying glass for me I was unable to carry it around the house with me at Mom's to take advantage of those odd waiting moment elsewhere than my desk but by picking it up during those times when I was waiting on web pages to load, or my browser to unfreeze, or a download to complete I managed to plod my way through his college years, his war years, his early marriage and fatherhood, his journalist job, his PR job with GE, and his several years following the war of sending out unrequited manuscripts.

It was in the car traveling home that I reached the page where he made his first sale of a short story to Collier's magazine.  If I hadn't known my copy was waiting for me in the house it would have been very hard pulling my bookmark out of the Vancouver library copy.  I had finally reached the part that makes my heart go pitter-patter.

I didn't get my bookmark placed into my copy until Sunday evening though and still have not advanced beyond the page I quit in the car on Saturday.  I started to today but when I reread the paragraph about the sale of his first short story I decided to see if it was contained in one of our copies of his story collections.

And so it was.  Thus I spent my reading time today reading The Report on the Barnhouse Effect .

But that was so fun I've decided to make that a part of the reading experience with the biography--to hunt down copies of which ever short story, novel or essay being discussed as I advance through it.

Oh, wait, I did read a few pages past that first manuscript sale since I put my bookmark in my own copy.  I had reached the point where just a few months after his first short story sale he QUIT HIS JOB to write full time.  Now the writer me is thinking Hooray but another part of me is thinking WHAT?  You got to be kidding!! You have a young wife at home with two small children. This is the 1950s man! What are you thinking?

I'm also aware, tho I've not reached that part yet, that he is soon to have three more children added to his family when he takes in his sister's suddenly orphaned children.

So now I'm very anxious to get back to Kurt's story to see if he manages to support that growing family with his writing only or will he have to make concessions...

I'm going to have to come up with a label for these not-reviews to reference them and keep track of them.  After all they will have as much if not more info about the book as a formal review and more of my personal reaction to the books in the moments of encounter.  I would think that anyone interested in book reviews would find something of interest in them.

I'm thinking.

How about As I read [title]by[author][#]

I'm open to suggestions though.

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Google's Project Glass: I Want to Know

Of the many questions prompted by this intriguing video, one pops out and its possible answer excits me.  

I would like to know what would happen if he opened the book he pulled off the bookstore shelf and started reading it.  Could he use zoom and other camera features to adjust for visual impairment?  

In other words would I, with my advanced Retinitus Pigmentosa be able once again to pull regular print books off shelves at home, at the library and at bookstores and read them without a magnifying glass?  

If the answer is 'Yes' then I'm uber excited and only wonder if Google's future will get here in time for me.

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My Read-Write-Create-Recreate Room

 AKA Joy's Office.

I posted the pic of the one corner of my new fun room that I had ready for pictures yesterday--the read/write workstation.  Today I have the rest of the room ready for pictures.

Above is one of the bookshelves.   The top shelf is an eclectic mix of books that have special meaning to me so they're up there on display.  Second shelf down is all tradeback fiction and there is a row the same size behind it with a few paperbacks as well.  Third shelf down is half hardback fiction and half tradeback fiction set apart because they belong to my niece.  Forth shelf down i hardback non-fiction.  Bottom shelf is more non-fiction in a mix of sizes and hard/soft backs.  The ones in the boot box are borrowed from my Dad's personal library shortly after he died in 2005.  I haven't claiimed ownership of them as I consider them as belonging to my siblings and their kids as much as me.

To the right of the shelf in front of the window is my mini-tramp.  The desk is to the other side of that.

When I took that picture, I was standing in the corner seen below:

This is my fiber arts wall.  That stack of empty fruit boxes on the right is a temporary sorting station for all the boxes and bags from the December move and the going to/from Mom's afterwards.  So is the tray table with one of the boxes that just came home from Mom's with me on Saturday.

Most of those boxes were full of books.  We moved twelve that size full of books  in December.

The closet behind the little table is full of more stuff to sort including craft supplies, papers and a lot of empty containers nested inside each other intended for organizing and storing the stuff.

Here we are to the right of my desk.  The bottom box contains notebooks, folders and files.  The middle box holds books awaiting reviews.  The bunch on the front left are review copies to be read yet.  Most of them arrived here while I was at Mom's but one arrived today.  The stack on the right mostly belong to my niece.  There is more in behind those--a mix of owned and loaned.

I keep my coats, visor and white cane beside/on the door as the front door of the house is just outside the door to my room.

Here's my desk again.  This time I'm showing it as a reading station with a book on the book easel and my magnifying glass beside it.  Yesterday my netbook was on the book easel with its mouse beside it.  The netbook is now in the slot bellow the white monitor stand that once belonged to my dad's now defunct computer.

The books in the blue crates to the left: top-a mix of spirituality and psychology; bottom-a mix of reference specific to writing.  The shelves in front contain my Britanica Great Books set on the bottom two shelves.  Above them is a mix of soft back non-fic mostly related to spirituality, philosophy and comparative mythology and religion.  On the very top is my World Book Encyclopedia set, a 1999 edition bought from the library in 2005 for $1 per volume.  That is also how I got the Great Book set.

It took me two days and probably a total of over twenty hours to put this room together.  I had it all ready for the pics by 7pm this evening (Wedensday) but was exhausted and could not focus my eyes so I went to bed.  I got up again at 10pm but when I tried to take the pics I got one pic and the camera batteries were dead.  It took me a couple of hours to hunt down some batteries that worked.  I raided remotes and cat toys.  It was a cat toy that finally supplied me with some that worked.  It is now 2:30 am.

This habit of taking upwards of four hours to put together a post has got to be broken.  this is why I seldom have time left for visiting other blogs.  Besides, blogging was supposed to be a side-dish to the entrees of reading, writing, contemplating and creating.

It's OK if occasionally a special post takes extra time to prepare but I must get the average down to under an hour.  Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I could manage this?

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Workstation Recreation

No that's not a cushion on the seat of the chair.  That's Merlin.
When I'm sitting in the chair he is often up on the pillow behind my back.

This is the forth or fifth re-creation of a workstation for reading and writing since our move the day after Xmas.  The second one since my return from Longview on Saturday.  So at least three were created between Xmas and January 6 the day before I left town.

All of the ones I tried before had my desk against the left wall next to the window but that just wasn't working except at night as when there was any light from the window I could barely see my screen or anything else for that matter.  The lit up window just insisted it was the only thing worth seeing in the whole wide world.

I think this one will have staying power.  I'm sure I'll be tweaking it some but I doubt I'll be doing a major redo in the near future as I'm liking it already.  Though there is one big tweak I would like to do in the next couple of months.  I don't think it qualifies as a redo as it will be basically the same setup even though it means taking it apart and putting it back together with a board at least the size of a door.

I'd move that right hand green shelf to the right a couple feet or more and move those cardboard boxes serving as temp shelving up onto the board.  All cardboard boxes would eventually be replaced with something more suitable as well.  I have another stack over to my left behind me and out of this shot.  I have far too many books for the available shelf space and I refuse to keep the extras packed away.

The wall to my right features an old entertainment center repurposed for craft storage.  The wall behind me is the closet which is full of boxes and bags from the move awaiting sorting and unpacking--all of them office or craft related.  There is a window in the middle of the wall to my left and I'll be setting up my mini-tramp there as soon as I'm through traipsing back and forth across the room around boxes and bags and miscellaneous clutter.  To the other side of the window I have set up the other large book shelf but it is still empty.  I wore out.  Plus it was getting late if I wanted this post up by midnight.

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Bloggiesta Wrapup

I accomplished next to nothing of my goals.  I should have realized the moment I learned Bloggiesta was happening the same weekend of my return home after a three month stay at mom mom's that I wouldn't really get to participate.  But I couldn't bear to just give up as I'd been really waiting for it to happened.

I knew Friday would be all about packing and Saturday about the trip but I really though I'd have most of Sunday to devote to it.  Ha.  I should have known that I couldn't get away with holing up in my office incommunicado after three months away.  Even my husband, whose hermit tendencies are stronger than my own, needed more than a little of my attention on my first day back.

And the sandman too.  I had been dissing him too long and he caught up with me.  13 hours in zonk land Saturday night.

I understand the next Bloggiesta date has been set for the last weekend of September.  I'm marking my calendar now.

But I'm not waiting for the next Bloggiesat to do some of the work I'd hoped to do this weekend.  One of the things I did manage to accomplish this weekend was reading some of the mini-challenges, collecting links for suggested helpful sites or articles,  taking inventory on other blogs of things I'd like to do or have on mine, and adding to my todo list.  I plan to use the resources of the Bloggiesta posts. especially the mini-challenges, to continue to educate myself and to start crossing some of those items on my list.

Basically I guess that means I'm going to carry on as if Bloggiesta is still going on except I'll be partying alone and not quite as intensely.

Meanwhile this is still Script Frenzy month and day three just commenced and I've gotten zero words let alone pages.

I also came home to a pile of review copies and those are only the treebooks I've got several ebook review books either in my possession or on the way and I think two more treebooks.  So many that I'm having trouble keeping it all in my head and one of the tasks for this weekend had been to make a consolidated list for review commitments and stop depending on my email inbox for that.  That is a task I should not wait too much longer to complete.

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Sunday Serenity #277

Five Review Copy Books & New Lamp

 These books were waiting for me when I got home yesterday.  The are lit by the one of the new lamps my mom gave me.  Our new house has no ceiling light fixtures in bedrooms or living room and we had only desk lamps so we are loving these lamps.  This one here is one of a matching pair the third lamp is a floor lamp  A beautiful fifties relic which once was the main living room light in the house I grew up in so it is loaded with nostalgia for me.  I will post pictures later after we get a bulb for it.

Crochet Thread, Encyclopedia of Crochet, & My Dolphin Bracelet Crowning My Blue Mews.

That's the bulk of the thread my mom wound off the cardboard tubes for me over the last two months.  My sister bought the crochet book for me the first week I was there and I've learned half a dozen new stitches out of it.  Blue Mews is my muse for all things creative.  Also a pin cushion and keeper of my bracelet when I'm not wearing it.

Merlin and the Other Lamp

As you can see Merlin thinks the new lamp is splendiferous as well.  Now we need lamp tables.

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Home Again

I'm exhausted.  And I wasn't even the one driving for six hour and having to turn around and drive another six.  And that after packing the van twice and helping unpack it again.

But I've had about five hours sleep since Wednesday so I'm running on fumes.  Thus this lazy post with recycled pic and meandering words.

Where oh where is that blue sky we see there?  That pic was taken two days before Xmas, the day we got the key to our new place.  It was cold that day but sunny.  Today was blustery, grey, wet and cold.  AKA Oregon in March.

I came home with more than twice the volume of what I took with me.  Among that were three lamps--two table and one floor; kitchen misc and half a wardrobe of quality second hand clothes.  That last much needed after loosing 20lbs since Xmas.

Ed and Carri unloaded everything into the living room so after Carri hit the road again I started schlepping things to their proper homes in the house.  Am far from done but made a huge dent.

Just got word from my nephew that Carri has made it past halfway home.  On schedule for 11pm arrival.

I was hoping to stay up tonight to participate in Bloggiesta some more and then kick off Script Frenzy at midnight for an hour or two.  But I don't think that is going to happen.  And maybe it shouldn't.  If I sleep now and go with a fresh brain tomorrow I'm sure I'll be more productive and have more fun to boot.

So.  *yawn* Night all.

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Bloggiesta 2012: Goals etc.

I've been checking in on the Bloggiesta off and on all day but was unable to sit still long enough to make a post. I've just in the last few minutes reached the point in my packing for tomorrow's trip that I can start doing some things I want to do instead of the must dos. My sister is packing the van with my stuff as a type.

I'll have to shower and wash my hair in a few minutes so my hair can air dry before I sleep but then I'll have a few hours to play on my blog or at least do some more reading on the participant blogs gathering ideas and leaving comments.

Leaving more comments is my No1 task for Bloggiesta and going forward.  I am such a lurker.

2nd most important to me is learning some ways of putting posts together quicker.  The three to six hours I devote to my blog each night is not how I want things.  I want the blog be secondary to my creative work in writing, reading and fiber art.  I want to get where I can spend an hour or less per post so I can invest the rest of that time into writing stories and poems, crocheting book marks and reading novels.

3rd but related to above is learning how to whip out book reviews in an hour or less.  That is in addition to putting the post for the review together.  I have dozens and dozens of partially prepared book reviews.  Most are a collection of note, quotes, links and images related to the book and author.  Some have a good start at writing the review and a few just need final edit and fact check which often needs the book which is in the library.

Which wouldn't be an issue if I could get the reviews done before the books had to go back or failing that at least know which facts I'm likely to need so I'd have them collected in reliable notes.  Things like character names, occupations, locations, dates, page numbers.  I'm thinking maybe I need to create a form I can fill out for each book as I'm reading it.  Or is that getting too OCD?  Would it end up being just another task that would consume more time than it saved?

4th.  I want to learn how to use social networking.

5th.  I want to learn how to use the Pages feature that Blogger now has to organize my blog

6th  My side bar needs updating and decluttered

7th  I need to go into my archives and resize images and videos that are too big for the new template which I switched to two years ago.

8th  I need to label posts before 2007 and consolidate the labels I have which means rethinking many of the posts since I began using labels.  I've got so many labels that it takes forever to find the ones I want for the current post.  So sometimes I think it isn't there and I make it only to discover that I've added or subtracted a plural s or a capitalization so that my label list now has one of each:  i.e. label and labels or Label or Labels

9th  I also need to organize my blogging related email and create a calendar for commitments.  Earlier this month I lost an email in the clutter of my inbox that had the date I'm to post for an upcoming blog tour and I had to email my contact to get a reminder.  So embarrassing.  So unprofessional.

Well that is way more than I can hope to accomplish in this weekend seeing as how I have only a couple more hours to devote to it tonight and then can't get back to it until after my husband is in bed tomorrow night.  Still hard to believe that in only fifteen or sixteen hours I will finally be back home.

I hope to spend a lot of time at this on Sunday but that is also the first day of Script Frenzy and my first full day at home in three months.

So to summarize,  my main goal for this weekend besides breaking the lurker habit is to get educated on all of the above so I can continue to work at the tasks over the coming months.

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Script Frenzy Resources

Script Frenzy

Some resources I've been bookmarking for Script Frenzy:

• http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/howtoguides
• http://storymind.com/articles_on_writing.htm
• http://www.simplyscripts.com/WR_resource.html
• http://www.imsdb.com/
• http://thescriptlab.com/
• http://www.gointothestory.com/
• http://www.screenwriting.info/
• http://complicationsensue.blogspot.com/
• http://www.scriptwritersnetwork.org/
• http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/
• http://www.scriptmag.com/
• http://www.janeespenson.com/
• http://www.filmscriptwriting.com/basicscriptformatting.html
• http://www.justeffing.com/
• http://screenwritingtips.tumblr.com/

I'd planned to make nice text labels to hide the links in and add brief descriptive blurbs and then talk a bit about my Script Frenzy plans for Sunday but my browser has be bratty for the last couple of hours, freezing and java crashes and taking forever to load or to even do simple tasks in the Blogger platform.   A post that should have taken me thirty minutes to do has taken me three hours to just get this far.

Meanwhile, I can't afford to spend any more time on this if I want to do any Bloggiesta stuff before I have to sleep.  And I have to sleep earlier than usual tonight as I will likely get little sleep tomorrow night.  I still have much packing to do and need to have all but the last minute stuff in the van before my sister goes to bed tomorrow night.  We're leaving at 8:30 AM Saturday for Phoenix OR. That's about 33 hours from this moment.

It's about a six hour drive.  But we'll be in the Vancouver WA area for a bit before we hit the freeway south for real.  Then at the other end my sister, Ed and I will unload the van so Carri can turn around and head back north ASAP.  We are leaving Mom in her grandson's company for the day with meals pre-prepared and phone numbers he can call if necessary.  Including his mom's cell.

If all goes as planned, in less than 40 hours I'll be home.

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Bloggiesta Happening This Weekend

I just discovered this was happening this weekend.  Friday through Sunday, midnight to midnight or 12AM Friday thru 12AM Monday.  It is hosted at Suey's It's All About Books where you can sign up.

What is Bloggiesta?  It's a three day challenge and blog-a-thon in which bloggers devote as much time as they can to doing blog related work and asking for and giving help and doing mini-challenges.  And there are prizes.

I'm going to sign up but I'm not going to be able to participate the whole weekend.  I may get to do a little in the wee hours of Friday morning as it begins but then most of Friday and Saturday will be devoted the trip preparations and the trip home Saturday.  Then maybe Saturday night after Ed has gone to bed and if I'm not too exhausted I might get to check in for a bit.  But I will try to devote as much time as possible on Sunday.

Oh, Man.  everything is happening all at once.  The trip home that I was beginning to think was never going to go through.  Script Frenzy starts at midnight Saturday night.  And now this.

I don't know what to commit to working on.  Some possibilities:

• my sidebars are in dire need of attention
• checking out the mini-challenges 
• checking out other blogger participants to see what other's are doing and that I might like to try.  
• stretch myself socially out of the lurker mindset and leave comments.
• writing up reviews for the six books I read this month.  Which I could conceivably work on in the car Saturday tho I'm sure my sister and I will be getting our last visit in for most of that five or six hour drive.  

I know that somewhere in my notes is my todo list for the last Bloggiesta which was huge and not nearly completed so I'l look for that to remind myself of all those things I once thought were important to do or change or update ect.

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