Anxiety Dreams

Whew. I think I must have had several anxiety dreams rolled up into one last night. Old bosses, old schools, old jobs, and probably the Writers of the Future awards ceremony in disguise. At least I got to sing "I'm a fake, ooooh, I'm a fake" to pretty glockenspiel music -- or at least I was going to, but I never got past the rehersal stage.

I think this is a step up from a dream the other night where I mapped various people I know to Freud's classic id, ego, superego paradigm (I think). Don't ask, you don't want to know.

Pirate Dreams and Writing News

Really odd dream last night. Two characters had to make a deal with a pirate (no, I'm not a wild pirate fan). The three men stood about fifteen feet away from a mirror so they could all see themselves. This was some kind of a magic mirror which pulled things toward it. When the two proto-pirates nicked their fingers to seal their piratical deal with blood, the blood dropped horizontally toward the mirror and landed on the head pirate's reflection. Then it disappeared into the mirror. The deal was done, and the two were now bound to the pirate.


In writing news: I've managed to get a little farther on my "Love Life of Joe" series. We'll see where it goes. Mark and I were looking at a local music event -- he thinks I'd secretly like to go, but I assured him that if I did it would be for the wrong reasons (not to mention it's got an expensive gate). Anyway, I think I could use how I'd imagine the venue would be for a setting for the hapless Joe.


In Cafe John news -- evading late afternoon sunlight continues to be a challenge, and birds have found the chairs. But I have some real (OK, it's bagged) tea for tomorrow.

Tea. Real Soon Now.

Through a curious turn of events, we have only mint tea at our house.

Oh well. Mint tea and Pepsi will have to do. Cafe John has had several sessions of outdoor writing. The combination of the tin roofed overhang and a large umbrella provide adequate sun coverage -- although there's a period from about 5:30 to 7:30 where the sun slants in at and heats everything up.

The last few days have been computer support days -- both my mom and my sister needed help with their computers. I'd sort of forgotten how much of Windows support is sit around and wait for the machine to reboot. Anyway, it's good for me to do this sort of thing because it keeps my skills from completely rusting up.

Ah well. Back to writing.

Your Tea Is Ready

I left the semi-assembled cafe table out, and the new furniture, too.

So of course it rained last night.

This afternoon, I managed to get the table together. The instructrutions are laughably sparce -- just a caption reading, "Assembly Instructions" with a rough diagram of where to put the bolts, washers and legs. Never mind that there are two types of bolts; never mind that the some of the leg pannels go together much more easily one way than another (as I discovered after nearly straining my wrists trying to force them together).

But it's up. If I squint my eyes I can ignore the big box the table came in.

I've got my (mint) tea. I'm outside under an overcast sky with a 58 F breeze blowing (yesterday it was 80F). There are Anna's hummingbirds ten feet away sipping nectar, jays and crows sqabling for the suet in the cherry.

And the wireless network is coming through on my friend's borrowed laptop.

I intend to hang a few star-shaped glass lamps from the overhang for envening ambiance.

It's a good day. (Now start writing!)

Tea the Way it Will Be (Soon)

I finally did it.  I stumbled across an outdoor furniture sale and got some furniture for "Cafe John."

The wooden chairs are solid and comfortable, and I got them at half-off half-off price.  

The table is ... Okay, so the table is proving harder to put together than I had hoped.  By by tomorrow, I should be able to ... oh.  Damn, that's right, we're out of tea. 

Touring PeaceHealth

One of the big events around town is the opening of a new hospital.  Mark works for the lab connected with the hospital, so he volunteered to give tours.   I took one -- the catheter lab made me squirm, and I'm glad they didn't have life-like mock-ups of the surgeries in the theatres.

I figure I can use some of the pictures I took as setting prompts for stories.

Getting out of the house and into new environments is always good for generating story prompts, and I wrote down a few ideas when I got home.

Writing Progress

I've been plugging away at a critiqued draft of a short story.  It feels kind of nice to get back to short stories after working on a non-fiction piece.  I'm hoping I'll have the short story finished by the end of this week so I can send it out.  

The non-fiction piece needs to ferment a little so I can get back to it with fresh eyes.  Readers so far either really like the tone (the majority) or are put off by it.  

In the research department, I'm skimming through an old book on chakras by Charles Leadbeater -- useful for fantasy story world-building and interesting from a Neo-Pagan History standpoint.

Off to bed; I haven't been sleeping enough.  

Dream Scrabble

I dreamt that a middle-aged man and woman were playing Scrabble. They were in a kind of fantasy 1800s setting, playing in a smallish, but well appointed room with heavy curtains and Empire bric-a-brac. The Scrabble game was kind of chess like, and more of a kind of divination, as they were working on two two-row acrostics in the squares directly in front of them. His clues were geographical, I think, with names of citys and countries. Hers were personal, and she was coming up with the names of people for the Imperial Throne.

The Giant Drummer

In the dream department...

A new constellation played an important part of the dream, I just can't quite remember what the part was. The constellation was called The Giant Drummer, and was dressed in a bright red costume reminiscent of a 19th century soldier's or a marching band drum major's. He had a bright red coat with gold braid, and a tall flat red hat with a white plume on the front. His baggy red pants tucked into his knee-high black boots.

His drum, a large drum major's drum, was completely out of proportion: it would have been large by human standards, but was about the size of his palm. In the star chart I saw in the dream, the Giant Drummer was a circumpolar constellation near Draco the Dragon. He was shown bent over, as if picking up the drum from the ground.

Return of the . . .

Spoke too soon about the stomach bug. Oh well. Spent most of Friday trying to rest and reading Luck in the Shadows. The bad guys are pretty clearly bad guys. The good guys are a little more interesting -- there's some interesting homoerotic angles that are refreshingly laid-back-and-matter-of-fact, in contrast to "oh my god, look! some of the characters aren't heteronormative!" And not every good guy likes the other good guys, which is also fun.

Mark has been wonderful letting me rest, and doing things like Son of House Painting. It's true; house-painting season is back.

Writing Progress

Found an interesting site on the web this morning that could be useful for generating character prompts -- people go to it to apologize for things.  

Recieved a rejection in the post today; and critiqued a Wordos short story.

I'm feeling more like myself today -- I don't know what was bothering my gastrointestinal track, but I'm glad it's gone.

Today has not been so -- how shall I say -- restricted.  

I'm off to get my eyes checked.  It's a sad-but-true fact that I'll probably need to get bifocals.  You know it's bad when you can't read the ingredients lists on packages of food.  Not to mention in low light it's easier to take off my glasses and read things up close.  

I'm also experimenting with Google Docs to see how blog posts work.  It could be interesting ... although I don't know (other than font tricks) what using Google Docs over the built-in Blogger post tool buys me.

Uugh!

Bad day.  I don't know precisely why, but today -- well -- have you ever eaten a hotdog and then had a little burp that sorted of reminded you of it?  Todays many belches have been reminiscent of a a grease trap at a fifties-style diner formerly located on Mt. St. Helen.

We wont discuss my other end.  Let's just say that "Japanese Death Poems" have seemed appropriate.  

Not much writing done today.