Writing and Floss

Ah morning. I guess that I'm not much of a morning person. If I can set things up the previous day then I can glide through routines until I'm fully awake.

Last night I printed out my story marketing data so I have concrete goals for the next few days. Today is a backlog day -- there are several manuscripts that need minor tweaking so I can send them out.

Interesting dreams last night. I think my oral hygenist symbolized my anxiety about not "writing enough." OK, and I need to floss more.  Then there was the "returning to school" motif; when I tried to walk passed the art building my legs stopped working -- it was like walking through molasses.

I must not have been awake.

The serious manuscript became humorous -- as Mark often says, "I'm the funniest person I know."

More Writing

Whew. 

Getting ready for another day of writing looms ahead.

And I'm out of Ceylon tea (thank goodness for the UPS tracking site ... at least my tea has left New England and is somewhere in the midwest).

Ash Friday

Ugh.  Well... I've got the beginnings of something.  

I once had a calligraphy instructor who told the story about a painter who painted and painted and burned her practice paintings.  She had a lot of ashes. . . which was good, because that meant she was doing a lot of painting.   I think she kept the ashes in a clear jar on a shelf somewhere.

So today is what I call an "ash day."   Except that I don't have ashes in a... glass... jar -- oh, wait; now that I think about it, we do have Pickles' ashes in a crystal jar in the garage loft (along with the unfiled John crap and seasonal decorations). 

Muriel continues to be an irritant.

Let the Typing Begin!

Must. Not. Stay. Up. Late.

A rocky start this morning -- I stumbled around this morning and didn't quite get to writing at the stroke of 9 AM. Slogged forward, reminding myself to type when I stopped, and slowly the setting for a story on Mars is taking shape.

My little break is almost over, more later.

The Garage... continued

Wow, Mark. You're as right as right can be: there is a lot of my unfiled crap up in the garage loft.

Oh well, I think the art crap, camping crap, clothing crap, and cleaning crap is coming along.

I can see the floor anyway.

Writing. But first, cleaning

I've got the house to myself for the next nine days.

So today I'm cleaning the garage.

Oh. Right. The cat is reminding me that she's here, too.

Paint Break

Taking a quick break from house painting (for lunch).  I suppose that listening to Philip Glass's opera Appomattox on the radio while painting wasn't exactly the cheeriest of musical choices.

Oh well. I guess I'll have to get a copy of Akhnaten or something.

Back to the paint...

Footage from Shrewsbury Faire

Recovering from the Shrewsbury Faire.

I had a lot of fun singing with the Pearwood Pipers and playing the harp between gigs. Someone liked my harping so much that he offered to post me on YouTube; he turned out to be a friend of one of the Pearwoods.



The cool moments of the faire for me were walking to the privies at 4 AM in mist illuminated by the stars of Orion. Oh yeah, the full moon (nearly) was cool, too. There were a couple of faire guests who were simply thrilled to see a harper (especially when I managed to plink out the Harry Potter Theme for them -- OK, not quite period, but they were ten and decked-out from head to toe in Hogwarts-wear). There's also something to be said for singing madrigals with a choral of forty.

And at this year no one asked us who died as we danced the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance. 

OK, yeah; and I sang The Shark Song for the participant talent show (always a big hit).

Bingo Bugs

One sunny day, the bugs assembled to vote. They were not much larger than a fingernail and yellow, like fireflies, only with hard wings, like ladybugs. They liked being tapped on their backs, which would make them arch and half-open their wings. They didn't flash when they were tapped, but instead gave a strong impression of purring.

They gathered together onto bingo cards and we counted how many were in each cell. Quite a few didn't get into cells; they stood, straddling the line between two or more. When this happened, we bent the cards along the cell borders, trying to force the bugs to vote one way or another. At a safe distance, circling around us, black crows watched with keen interest. They wanted to eat the bugs and hoped to peck the straddlers off of the creased cardboard -- but they'd just as happily eat the other bugs, too.

We tried shooing the crows away, but they kept returning.

Romanes Eunt Domus

We're still painting the house. It's going about as fast as it did last year; but at least this time around we're using colors. On two occasions, I've painted "Romans Go Home" on an unfinished portion of house. It makes me chuckle when I see it, and then I paint over it. Mark, however, doesn't see the humor.

We asked some friends and three of them smirked. So now I'm asking my readers.

Mt. Rainier Hikes

Remember last year's project to paint the house. Well, we're still doing it. I will post pictures soon... but first:

Mt Rainier. Large, forbidding...



We did a lot of hiking last weekend for Mark's Birthday. He enjoyed it immensely, and we got to see all sorts of surprise people: his best friend from High School, Larry, popped out of our tent singing, "Is That All There Is?".

Our first hike was a warm-up hike before any of our friends arrived at the campsite; just a mile loop to see the Nesqualine Glacier.   I took a lot of pictures.  My camera has a great macro lens, so I was able to get close-ups of all the mountain wild flowers.  I think I liked the avalanche lillies the best because they poked up out of the snow banks.  

The second hike was with more friends -- Mark's favorite part was seeing two marmots.  I managed to get two photos of them; in one the animal is giving a "noble marmot" pose.   And we saw a cool looking flower that seemed to come straight out of a Dr. Suess book... maybe that was my favorite flower.  

My third hike was kind of a solo-hike, so I took the Wonderland Trail from Cougar Rock to Narada Falls.  There were several cascades and falls along the trail, which followed the Paradise River.   It was interesting to see the difference between the Nesqualine and Paradise Rivers -- the first is muddy with glacial flour, and the second was clear from snowmelt.  I hiked early Sunday morning for about two hours, and I think I saw about five people total on the trail.  It was very quiet and I got a chance to sit by Carter Falls and just write down my observations about the falls -- which means I have to re-read a recently written short story with a waterfall in it because it would have drowned out what the characters were saying.

Oh well.  Next time -- painting!

Dreams and Writing

Polished up a short story.  I'd thought about sending it to the Wordos tonight and now I'm glad I didn't because I tightened several points.  I should be ready to send it next week.  

In the dream department...

Over the weekend I had a dream that started out nicely -- five or so friends were using their super powers in a networking kind of way.  They discovered an underground hidden city of evil demons -- except the evil demons were kind of sappy new-agey artsy-folk.  

The dream got kind of nasty when one of the friends was killed (gruesomely) and replaced by a demon-clone... and one thing led to another and there was a kind of demon-pogrom in retaliation.  By this time, the demons had transformed from new agers to skeletal large-foreheaded creatures (now that I think about it, they were like very thin, albino Klingons).  There was a dream break, and then a lonely demon-child orphan was staring up from its hiding place in a basement, wishing it could play with the human child living in the house above it.

Monday morning, I had a really disturbing dream -- I was in some horrid little country run by a repressive government.  Anyway, a bunch of us were visiting a factory that processed cilantro (or some similar herb).  The factory owner was a woman who was a kind of a high-profile social justice agitator.  There was a raid on the factory, and I was nabbed by the secret police.   Somehow my shoulderbag had incriminating evidence in it.

There was an unpleasant interrogation dream montage, and I was rather worried that they'd find out I was gay.  I think they were more interested in somehow making me denounce the woman factory owner.  Somehow I wasn't killed, and I guess I held out long enough for the American Embassy staff to secure my release (and a ticket out of there).   

I'm going to guess that some of this dream activity is a combination of camping chocolate and a rocky forrest bed.

Visitors' Center

Planned for Hawaii.

Built on a mountain.

Scheduled for Implosion.

No. Really. There's so much snow in the winter that they have to spend a small fortune in diesel just to heat the roof so it doesn't collapse. And the wheelchair ramps are too steep (and long); it's too bad they can't turn it into a skateboard park.