D'Other Green Room

And it's ended with me designing, cutting out and painting a Mayflower-ish ship for my son's Thanksgiving play next Tuesday. I wish I'd taken a pic of it. It turned out great. :^) Following him in as he proudly carried it to the oohs and aaahs of the other kids coming through the hall was worth every second I spent on it.

Less happy note: The local orchard is shutting down operation for winter after tomorrow. My words to them: "We're going to starve!" I should return tomorrow and possibly hit Drumheller's for Red Delicious and Staymans. It's the last of fresh fruit until almost June! For now, I have a peck of Fujis and a half peck of Pink Ladys. They stay quite well outside in the cooler.... Yes, another trip tomorrow.

Also? Why in the world on my son's 2nd six week report card does she say that he's "progressing" on knowing the seasons??? He's known the seasons, their order and each's weather on this side of the orange since he was three! Either they only test to a certain level at that time or they're asking weird questions.

Lots of stuff going on and a LOT of driving, but it's all now over. The men of the house are asleep, the dogs are konked out and I'm up for another mug of tea.

Everything went very well today. I had lunch at Child's school--their Thanksgiving lunch. The food was actually pretty good--a little salty, gravy-wise, but otherwise quite nice. DH had his operation, and Child and I drove down to C'ville to get him after school. He had not been expected to be able to talk, but he called me himself after some time on recovery. We all went out to Bodo's Bagels for dinner before heading home.

Now I'm definitely ready for that next shot of tea, a long night's sleep and one day this week where I don't have to schlep all the way down to C'ville. Saturday, Sunday and Monday, I have to again.

Ah well. It's pass by soon enough, and it was still a very good day. :^)

I've been neglecting my DW posting again. Not that I get feedback or any other pressure to post, but it does help me see errors and inconsistencies better and helps me move on mentally. Though I admit the lack of response is discouraging sometimes, it hasn't been a wash at all.

That said, I think after I've posted the first "book" (to ch. 7), I'll keep a wrap on it until the second is completely done. I have just too much to think about lately, writing has been coming in small bursts and "book 2" needs a lot of outline revision. Posting as I go will not be a good idea, there.

*fiddles for a while*

...And with that, Chapter 5 is a wrap. :^)

Shuttle launches never get old for me.

It's hard to think that the Space Shuttle program is ending, soon. They've been a part of my captive attention since I was eleven. It's been a helluva ride.

OTOH, I'm totally bummed that the government can bail out GM and Wall Street but can't find a dime for NASA. Shame on them. So much is out there to discover and do. Time to start calling my reps and putting in my two cents. It's the least I can do.

But all I have left for the holidays aside from stocking stuffers and the like is to pick up Child's new 20" bike from Toys R Us and order books from Amazon. Everything after that is wrapping...oh, and new stockings. :^)

I love it when a year comes together early.

Cripes, that's a difficult choice. My knee-jerk response would probably be Glenn Gould: Bach, Goldberg Variations. But then, my mind keeps wandering over to XTC: Skylarking.

I'd have to see what my mood is on that particular day of sacrifice. ;^)

I took Ciela for her checkup today and she's doing great. Though she's as active as and gets as much food as our smaller cat, Boots, she's packing on more weight than perhaps she should (just a pound and a bit right now), so I have to decrease her food a little, see if that helps. If not, then it's possibly time to find a wet food that she won't yack up.

Meanwhile, the vet has kittens there. They were found with their tabby mother and are 2 months old, one tabby, one coon, and a third calico. The girls are recovering from mild eye infections; the boy is feisty and social, and mom is frightened but sweet. They all now need homes. *sighs deeply* I have a neighbor that was thinking about getting the boy, but just now, he declined. He wants a cat that will live in the barn as well as the house, but he thinks he should wait until spring to acclimate a kitten to that.

Now I soooo want another...if not all four. :^( However, even if I could swing such an arrangement (for really, we ave a LOT of pets), Boots would absolutely slay me if another invasion occurred in her house.

Thankfully, the man who found them won't take them to a kill shelter (yay! good man!), but he simply can't have more cats, so he'll looking for homes or a no-kill shelter that can take them. And so now I'm on the hunt for prospective humans, too. *crosses fingers*

The short form of why in the world I started to care to bother as much as I do with fanfic.

And Mom is finished, with her Mediterranean Cookbook and a new CD from Raul DiBlasio, which takes care of the stuff I forgot at IKEA, and with free shipping. I'll be adding more as the month wears on, but I'm putting a dent in it with the intention of finishing in a couple of weeks, so I can enjoy December and its potential givings with naught to do but put up the tree and lights.

That was a great weekend!

I forgot to get the down filled slippers for my mother from IKEA, though. Arg. I always forget something. That's particularly grating, though. I really wanted to get those for her. I'm going to ask my friend if she can pick up a pair if she goes back before Christmas and post them to me. I have a pair, myself. They're wonderful.

But it was a lovely time. I dearly miss my friends: It's the only thing I do not like at all about living here, being so far from them. It was wonderful to reconnect and talk in person and really relax.

Child, of course, loved the Smithsonian, though a mild cold prevented him from really getting into everything he normally would. He even fell asleep in the Planetarium! But even he said he loved going, so it wasn't a wash at all, just lower-key. My friend a little birthday party for him that evening, complete with Star Wars 3-D party ware, organic pizza that was out of this world and a delicious chocolate cake. It was a great night. :^)

So now Child's asleep, off to school tomorrow, and I have my work cut out for me with all the stuff I need to get together form IKEA, including a desk for Child and another chair for the kitchen table. It's amazing I get out of there for under $500, but I managed to this time. I think it was only because I had to get us on the road at a decent hour, though. ;^)

Child and I are off for the weekend to visit friends, the Smithsonian and, finally, IKEA. Most of the excitement will be the Saturday, Smithsonian day, as promised for Max's birthday. Not that we ever need that much of a reason to visit there, but at this time of the year, right in the school year with the holidays coming up, it's a real treat.

It will be wonderful to visit with my girlfriend, too. I have really missed my friends since the wedding--heck, even the year before it. It's just been too hectic to get out of Dodge.

But anyway, see you all on Sunday!

Why, why, why did I forget to preview the last bit I posted over at Dreamwidth?

Half of that post was in italics, and I had no idea--because I didn't preview it. Thankfully, it's only been a couple of days, but... *headdesk* And not just one instance I found of not closing my italics, but TWO. *headdesk*headdesk*headdesk*

Where was my brain???

...how well I used to draw with simple crayons.

I really want to get back into drawing, but gads, I have absolutely no time for anything like that. I would spend entire days in front of an easel, with nothing but a big bag of pretzels and the coffee maker on a table nearby...back in the day. Back in the day.

Today I was at the dollar store getting Pine Sol and laundry detergent and I eyed the 64 pack of Crayolas and I almost picked them up, because I have some terps at home and I could make some really pretty pictures with an oil wash...with all the spare time I have, you know? And since I have no other projects on the block right now, right?

Maybe more bits like I'd done at Kellyz, like the above pic. Those were so much fun. I'd written down a lot of ideas.

I wonder if I could do any of those in crayon. ;^)

Child, upon finishing easting a chicken leg for dinner: I'm going to get this bone really clean!

Me: That's good, sweetie.

Child: I want to save it.

Me, incredulous: Why do you want to save the bone?

Child: Well, if I collect enough bones, I can build a whole chicken!

Brilliant!

I so, so love my little boy!

ETA: Tragically, the chicken-to-be did not survive its brief but meaningful meeting with the family dog.

( Also--Pic of the yearly field trip to the apple orchard down the road )

How in the world did I end up with an old version of Rul'siat chapter 3 in my working text file?

Thank heavens I've been posting the parts. I only noticed that my version was missing parts after a random check revealed a stupid amount of typos in ch. 2. After running through those with Word and DW side by side, I moved onto to next chapter and saw the differences between the text and posted and...

*bangshead*

Ugh. Well, at least it's fixed and I have the right file now. I really have to be careful how I transfer these files...maybe add the date to them as I'm working, because apparently, "date modified" doesn't mean much. If I liked to use Word for anything but a good spell check and to test my sentences, I'd track changes to some degree. Not that I trust its grammar check very much at all, but it does pick up those nasty repeated words and wrong words--"the" instead of "she," for instance. And then, tracking changes would be a bother, too. When writing, I like as little intervention by the program as possible, so I'm not distracted. WordPad was my program of choice on Windows. On Mac, it's BBEdit. Then I run it through Word to catch what I don't pick up by eye.

I'm still going to have to deal with typos, though, no matter what I use to root out errors. Heaven knows I found enough in ch. 2!

Anyway, I need to make a new plan for changed files. I'll try a decimal system, see if that works.

It's so lovely to be pointed out to a rec of something you've written.

But it kind of loses its charm when you notice that the link to said story is dead--and deadder still now that Geocities is no more. I admit, I'm lousy at keeping up my links page (I am still holding out for the revamp of my site), but the rec's not terribly old. I'd had a forwarding script on that particular story's page for at least seven years--and that led to a now defunct page on my Tripod site. o_0

Ah well. It' the thought that counts. :^)

In the drought years, I so, so missed the sound of a steady rainstorm--no thunder or violence, just pure rain, heavy on the roof, trickling down the gutters, pinging of the stove vent spout. Those were hard years for more than the obvious reasons. This summer, though we finally had one with a good amount of precipitation, the rains did not have that real presence.

It's there right now. It's wonderful.

I swore after the drought I would never take rain for granted again, and I haven't, no matter how inconvenient it can be for events or getting around. I always welcome rain. But I welcome even more this lovely drenching, that pattern and thudding and pinging.

I hope it's still like this when I go to sleep. :^)

So, the Word Painter PDF is up. Yay!

Whoever might download it, please let me know if there are any font or paragraph error--which are just par for the course when you're creating it with two OSs (Apple and Windows via Parallels), three fonts (Trebuchet MS, Aladdin and Zamf Humanist) and four programs (Firefox, BBEdit, PDF 995 and 995 Edit). Not to mention, printing to PDF is evil--but we knew that before we began.

But I would like to correct them where needed after I collect enough errors to justify it. Same goes for Guerdon. I'd be so, so grateful. :^)

But most of all, if you care to, enjoy. :^)

EDIT: And this is the part where I just have to laugh at myself: I made the PDF for Guerdon with files I hadn't updated, so there are a few recent edits missing. Oy. I am redoing it now. Thankfully, there's nothing to do but paste the sections in again and rewrite the bookmarks. No biggie.

I didn't think bowl drama was possible, but then, I've never had to hunt out Halloween themed bowls a week before the event with no party store in town. (Child's class is having a party.)

After three hours of hunting, I finally found at a Dollar Tree that I didn't know existed on that side of town some "Over the Hill" black bowls. I grabbed three packs before I could blink again--30 bowls, $3. All set, after scouring every store that should have had at least something orange for Thanksgiving--you'd think!

If you told me ten years ago I would willingly spend an afternoon on such a search...

It came up elsewhere that one of the only places to post fic anymore in my interest with any expectation of being read is at The Pit (aka ff.net). This is a sad fate, I think. It's a great resource and I have a few fics posted there, but I have never taken to the file manager there or, well, I have a lot of problems with that place.

Still, I will probably swallow my problems and pop a few more of my fics up there. I write for my own enjoyment, but I do like to be read.