D'Other Green Room

Yea gods, the catching up the teachers are going to have to do!

But at least our "school at home" day went very well, save a little typical frustration from Child, who hates (really hates) getting math problems wrong. It turns from "I'm so good at this!" to "This is BORING!" in a flash over a simple addition mistake, and then I know it's time for a break. Since infancy, my child does not learn or do anything new without a healthy dose of drama. ;^) "Reading class" went far less painfully, and he read me a story and a poem like a pro after.

His favorite part was "art class," during which I let him use my beloved Conté chalk pencils. Seriously, I've let no one else so much as touch them. But I trust my son, and indeed, he was gentle with them. Good boy. :^) Moreover, his Clone Wars pictures are awesome. He loved smearing the chalk to get a glowing lightsaber effect.

After "recess" (during which we ran over to Mom's to drop off the laptop I'd updated for her), there was "snack" and then I let him watch a movie and relax. Being totally adorable, he asked to have the movie on whilst he continued to draw. Awesomeness. I could hardly refuse. Meanwhile, I made tomato lentil soup and soda bread for dinner.

Again, an exhausting day, but a very good one. We'll obviously have to do this again tomorrow. On day 8.

Tomorrow will be day 7 of child being out of school. Wednesday looks no more hopeful. This is insanity.

So, I decided to bring insanity home. Tomorrow, we're going to play school. He will lead me through what they do during the day at school, and we'll go through the paces--but hopefully in a fun way. Three things I know I want to do with him: His math worksheets, which I printed out form a free resource and he's been doing very well with, catching up on his reading and a while at drawing.

Mainly, he wants to draw Star Wars figures; I've been craving a pencil in my hand and good sheet of Strathmore for quite a while now. I'd love to do some more illustration, really, but I think we'll end up doing just his stuff. I also promised to teach him how to use chalk pastels (my second favorite medium--I must get him his own chalks if he takes to them! Mine are too expensive! LOL). That should be fun.

So that should entertain us for a while, between breakfast and lunch and a little after. It'll do until I have to get dinner going, at least.

Puppy Bowl!

(I hardly watch the Superbowl, but I'll watch this start to finish every year. :^))

Northern VA and DC got slammed with what we were expecting. We got off easy with a 6" layer of snow yesterday, a few inches of pellets and icy snow overnight, and then some blowing snow today. Granted, it's a mess and the world must shut down because it's, you know, snow, but this is not nearly a repeat of our first big hit this season.

(from my kitchen window this morning)



Thankfully, we stayed on top of it shoveling and ploughing-wise yesterday and this morning, and so the driveway and walkways are not going to be an issue. :^)

Oooh, but it's going to be a way muddy Spring!

This story for help_haiti is progressing bit by bit, but it's nice to dive into the deep end and commit by posting a part. Helps keep me honest. Like with my other draft postings, things will likely change/grow before all is said and done. The posts will be updated.

So, without further ado, the promised 4K or so words of the offered 5K word fic. This covers the introduction.

( The Few, Part 1 )

Yep, I'm toasted for the night. Falling asleep while typing kind of says it all.

Eight to twenty-four inches of snow is on its way, starting tomorrow morning. We shall see what it does to us this time.

Now, I'll have to get creative, because I can totally see them calling off school Friday too, because the county shuts down for the threat of snow, too. *rollseyes*

My saving point this week is that Child has been on a low swing creativity-wise, so he's not totally tearing apart the house with projects and little pieces of this and that and the other thing, and barraging me with questions and favors. It's been just play with Lego sets, then his electricity set, and then pretending he's Aragorn or Legolas from LOTR while I let him see Fellowship again (2nd part today--and oh, his play acting was awesome! He used his lightsaber as a sword).

Then he went outside to throw snowballs to the dogs, and I joined him to go sledding for a while. That? was fun. The conditions were perfect for a fast hill. :^D

Tomorrow, I'll let him use my computer and play Jump Start 2nd Grade, which he's almost done with, actually, but needs a little help here and there. Then maybe I'll make a "picnic" and we'll read or draw for a while. He'd asked about drawing with me, and frankly, I'd love the chance to start another illustration. After that, we'll go sledding again. Maybe we'll hit the library, too...or save that for Friday.

Or maybe not. I need to stop by church and get some service music. (We're doing the Chant Mass for Lent, and the hymnal music notation is...not going to work for me.) Or maybe we'll go out both days.

Not that I'm all about keeping Child busy with learning activities all day, but I do have a big problem with him spending school time sprawled in front of the TV or staring at a computer, particularly after this many days.

I love snow, and I adore precipitation. After 2 1/2 years of drought, I'm thankful for every it of it.

But seriously? I'm starting to think that my child will never be able to go to school again. This little inch were expecting tonight, on top of the spots that haven't been totally cleared yet, will easily close school another day, I'll bet.

I will be absolutely stunned if there's just a two hour delay.

Thankfully, he's as good at going on errands and shopping with me as he ever was, so we were able to get out and get everything done in little time without any trouble. And he plays pretty independently most of the time and is a great helper. I still would like him to have one day of school this week. Just one.

ETA: The automated service just called. No school tomorrow.

Gosh, and for the second night in a row, I could easily go to sleep now, at only 8:40. Granted, my day starts early and the last couple of days have been rather busy, but I'm really wiped out. Maybe if I just go ahead and sleep now, I'll catch up with whatever my body is trying to catch up with.

****yawns****

In the spirit of leaving our dogs and cats home alone on Sundays...


moar funny pictures

We ended up with about 12 inches of snow over here.

Thankfully, the cold made it very lightweight, fluffy and easy to shovel. Back in the day, we'd have grabbed our skis and sprinted to the slopes to know 12 inches of this stuff was coming down. :^)

But anyway, the vehicles are cleaned off and the walkways are shoveled decently enough, and our road looks passable enough. It should be all right tomorrow.

It's not "done" done, but it's written.

It was tough because I have a ship and crew I'm still getting to know, and because the scene must happen quickly--in screen time, less than two minutes. That part of things I need to work on--tightening it up to make it move fast. That will come in bits as I go over it again.

Now to move on to the other technical stuff.

10,099 words, now.

...how difficult it is to write a battle/action scene?

Love/Sex scenes are far easier--and really, they're not a breeze.

I had a few of these to do for "Guerdon" and they took forever to get right. This one is turning out to be much the same. Mainly, it's very hard to maintain the tension and get all the details and the characters' responses and some feelings across. Oh, and then there's the mechanical correctness.

*puts head down*

One thing I do know: I need to switch it back to the iMac so I can view more of the text on this screen. Scrolling back and forth to see what I've written? Not working for me today.

It's been a lovely day. :^) DH got me an awesome iPod Nano that I've been playing with all day, and a sweet little teddy bear with a rose in her paws. I love my animals. :^) Child got me a card, with awesomely decorated envelope that's now on the refrigerator door, that made me weepy, and provided "Rosey" with a friend from his closet of "sleeping" animals, a small, white teddy with a heart-decorated t-shirt, whom he named named "Lovey." They are at present living on the kitchen table. My mother got me a huge pink candle. I am not a pink person, but it smells lovely when burned, so it'll get a home. I got plenty of time to write this morning and Thai food for dinner. Good times.

But of course, I have good times and so much love all year long. My birthday is just when I am wowed by the little bits of extra that these wonderful people around me give. :^)

Holy crap, the new iPad is so cool. If I'd have had the chance (i.e., my G4 hadn't busted until this month), I'd have grabbed this one hot off the presses.

I'd really like to have another 17" PBook. I miss mine terribly. I am smitten with the iPad's keyboard, though. I want to play with one badly, see how it feels. :^)

The help_haiti story is coming along, and the main characters are pretty well set (i.e., I already have my favorites ;^)). Problem is, I've only just gotten to the scene that sets all the events into motion--and yet I keep feeling like I want more detail and more background, mainly to show more of life of the Cato. Right now, the background of the ship and its purpose is quickly covered in some exposition. Maybe expanding that first scene to have the two characters walking up from the crew level with some inset narrative instead of starting them off already on deck one....

Its a disease, I think sometimes. But it's a disease that's worked well for me in the past. Hmm... No, I like that idea, now that I've written it out.

I'm determined to plough ahead, though, and I'm thinking of (after fixing that scene, of course) going at it NaNo style for a few days to see if I can just whack it out then go back and repair the damage. If I could get more than ten minutes in a row together to actually do that, it'd be a good day, though. I did tonight..but then I fell asleep. LOL!

Maybe tomorrow.

And I'm still curious if I should post it piecemeal.... Meh. Another thing for tomorrow. Time for bed, now.

We had a nice gush of rain last night when the river was already high, causing flooding throughout the county and effectively flooding us in. We do have an access road, but thankfully, we didn't need to use it. School was closed.

After the drought of two and three years ago, I really never thought I'd see this again...

( Cut for pics )

Thankfully, it should all recede by tomorrow morning. It'll be a muddy mess, but passable.

It was a misty kind of rainy day, not much good for anything, really, and yet it was still church and visitation day, so off we went. I had planned to go to the library and write after running a couple of errands with DH, but suffering my usual midwinter headache, I ended up at Loft for a while, where I got an adorable new skirt and tee for Spring with a coupon I'd just gotten for $20.

Then I hit the library and wrote for about an hour. It was productive, but the silence makes it difficult to write the way I like. I'm used to talking out the dialogue as I type it, and I always have a little mood-appropriate music going. I always forget how much I miss that when plan to write elsewhere. I should have stuck to the bookstore, though it was very crowded today.

Meh. But we got home in great time, and DH had a delicious dinner all ready, so I mourn nothing in the end. :^)

For that matter, I have my reference material here. I really dislike having to gloss though with [tech] notations instead of what I really want to say...but much look up to know what I really want to say. ;^)

I started writing a little of the help_haiti offering story, now that the characters and the name of the ship is chosen (and those take time for me--WP was incredibly difficult that way), and now that I'm stuck on my headers and codes, which I have the perverse need to have done before I can really start writing. I'll revise the summary a hundred times, but the ASC-style header must be all but set in stone.

Title: The Few
Author: D'Alaire M.
Contact: swiftian@yahoo.com
Series: OCC [ed., ASC's lovely code for Original Cast & Characters]
Rating: PG13/T
Codes: Gen; OCs
Part: 1/?
Summary: The crew of the USS Cato face off against an eminent disaster. [ed., Yes, it needs tweaking, but it'll do for now.]

And so, I'm a few pages in. There's a lot I'll have to go go back on, but honestly, it's the POV that's making me trip. I should just give up the ghost and go with the 3rd person omniscient narrator, but lately, I've been having fun limiting that in my WIP (the POD). If I didn't feel the need to get this written more quickly, I'd plan that out a little more. As it stands, I'll just try to take it easy on the introspection. I can go on for pages with introspection, once I get into the brains of the characters. Though I have good character descriptions of them, I'm not quite swimming with them all yet. I need to visualize them, too. I have only the captain and XO vaguely pictured at this point, and only written out descriptions for the rest.

But it's fun. I'm already coming up with little subplots and insights to investigate and the plot rolls on--the things that always screw me in the brevity department, but that I look back on later and am damned glad I included. I have my TNG Technical Manual out and at the ready for the upcoming [tech] I'll need, and I've pulled my Trek Geek bookmarks up to the top level folder.

For something I just threw together on the fly, I'm enjoying the creative kick I'm getting from this. :^)

A very typical executive family of the 70s and 80s, we moved every eighteen months on average. My brother and I came into new schools, new classes, knowing that we'd be leaving it and anyone we met soon enough. We didn't mourn this. It was the life we knew.

It certainly deprived me of close friends, and any real feelings of personal security until I was in my 20s. Nothing was steady, and nothing was known. Our family being rather dysfunctional did not aid this. To this day, I'm unaccustomed to being known, myself. I sometimes am not certain how to handle certain social situations, and often end up just ploughing head first into it, sink or swim.

However, to this day, I can walk into any room with nearly any group of people and be able to talk easily and feel comfortable for having to do so since I was rather small. I'm extremely adaptable to situations, having had to adapt to once school after another, one program and teacher after another. They all were different. It made me a very independent learner, for I was often ahead of the class, especially reading, so I tended to go off on my own and just show up for the test. Only math daunted me. I'm still very independent, and have to make myself ask someone for help, rather than going after the answer myself despite the extra time and effort it will take.