Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Long holiday weekends always mess with my head. For the last couple of days I've been thinking it's Sunday to the point that today felt like an extra Sunday tacked on at the end. Not complaining, though...we had an enjoyable Thanksgiving at home (and we still have leftovers as of this moment) with an afternoon visit up to Petaluma to visit A's parents. We did a lot of walking, a good amount of shopping (for us and for Christmas presents) and errands got done as well. We also started watching The Beatles: Get Back (no surprise there) and I will of course be blogging about it probably later in the week (no surprise there either).

I am of course feeling itchy to get back to work on my writing. I've done little except do a recent re-read of Theadia (probably the last one for a bit, until I get closer to finishing this draft) and will be doing a re-read of Queen Ophelia after that, but I'm REALLY looking forward to churning out new words again!

We're hoping to get our Christmas stuff mailed out soon so we can avoid the delays that will most likely happen, and send them Priority so they'll (hopefully) have a little more attention paid to them. It's probably going to be a bit smaller of a package this time out, but that's kind of expected. We didn't want large packages to be sitting in delivery limbo for weeks. Anyhoo! I think we've got everything on our shopping lists, we're just waiting for one or two items to complete it all.

Other than that, not too much to report! Hope everyone had a good holiday weekend!

 'So far this month hasn't been all that bad. I've been semi-lazy in a few areas but quite productive in others, so it evens out. The long weekend promises some fun at Disney and meeting up with queenoftheskies but other than that, we'll be kicking around just having fun and relaxing. [There's also a chance we may go see the new Makoto Shinkai flick, Weathering with You, on Monday; I've been looking forward to it because he's one of my favorite anime directors at the moment.]

As for the writing? Well, I still need to get my butt in gear and do some submission prep work -- writing up a synopsis for Diwa & Kaffi and gathering the first few chapters together, mainly -- so I can get that out and away ASAP. That shouldn't take too long, however.  And semi-related, after faffing about and growling a bit more about being stuck in a rut, I returned to the College Campus story, which of course is in the D & K universe. I don't have a set main story just yet, but I've been writing flash fiction lately with some of the characters to be featured, and I think they're coming out pretty well. It occurred to me that what I should do is keep running with the flash until I have a goodly amount gathered, and see if I can make a novel or an anthology out of it. So as per usual, sometimes I just have to kvetch about it a bit, get that out of my system, and then I can move ahead again.

Hope everyone has a lovely long weekend!

It's a three-day weekend here, so we've been a) sleeping in for once, b) taking our time doing errands, and c) relaxing.  That of course doesn't stop me from wanting to Get Everything Done Today though!  Nothing big, just a lot of small irritations that needed doing, like getting the car washed (first time since November when we bought it!), grocery shopping, and so on.  We've interspersed that with A's binge-watching of various shows and a few college football games. Right now I'm in Spare Oom, having just culled a considerable amount of boxes and bags from the back closet that needed tossing. A took a big slice out of the mass-market paperbacks (I should probably do the same), and cleaning out my emails and catching up on blog entries.

So yeah, busy but relaxing weekend.  Can't complain.

Writing update: I've finally reached the halfway point in the revision of In My Blue World, and it's actually the same exact point where I realized I'd needed to go back to the beginning and make some serious revision notes before doing any rewriting.  It was a plot point that had always irritated me and stuck out in a bad way, but I've figured out how to fix it and surge forward.  I think the rest of the novel should be a bit clearer going for me, and I"m hoping I'll get started on the Big Rewrite in a few weeks.  If I'm not mistaken, the remaining half of the novel is much more on par with what I was aiming for, so hopefully there won't be any major surgery to do there.

Writing update 2: It's funny, but when I got to the point in the Apartment Complex story where the Big Life Changing Event In Act III begins, I suddenly found myself not writing my original idea, but instead came up with an even better one.  It fits so much better alongside the rest of the novel, and I've been kind of hinting at it throughout.  No spoilers, but I'll just say I'm glad I came up with it, an I'm really looking forward to releasing this one.  In fact, I'm so excited and proud of this one that I think I might actually submit this one somewhere instead of self-publishing it.  Not bad for a novel that I'd almost ragequit in frustration multiple times a few months ago!


Hope everyone's having a nice long weekend!

Woo! Long weekend for relaxing, doing fun stuff, and getting important stuff done before our trip! I'm keeping a mental list of things I (or we) need to do before then, and I'm sure something will be forgotten, but nonetheless, I'm planning on this weekend being a good one, especially since the weather is definitely in our favor.

Yesterday was a rather NOISY way to start, as we had a)the Blue Angels practicing overhead, and b)our building maintenance guy fixing our shower, as the diverter valve (the middle one that changes the flow from the tap to the shower head) was pretty much kaputt. He pretty much tore the old hardware out and replaced it with new hardware along with a new shower head, so much clanging, crashing, pipecutting and thumping (and whistling and singing in Polish, I should add) took place in the bathroom, all while jets were WHOOOSHing overhead. He was also gracious enough to fix a major leak in the kitchen sink as well, and recaulked around the sink itself as well, which was quite nice of him. A very odd and noisy Friday indeed, but a good one!

Today was spent heading over to the de Young Museum in the park, so we could see a few shows going on: a collection of modernist paintings and a retrospective about Rudolf Nureyev. The second of which, of course, made me think of the Love Tractor song of that bears his name.

After a bite to eat at our favorite restaurant (Q, down the other end of Clement), we headed up to the Laurel Village shops for coffee and a few small things, including an plug adaptor for our trip. We also stopped by the Books Inc there, where I didn't actually buy anything, but made mental notes to check out a few music books that just came out (Ann & Nancy Wilson, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and a collection of John Lennon's letters). After that we stopped at the OfficeMax for more shopping (Emm got a new toy and I got a messenger bag). And on the way home we stopped at a tiny bakery just off Clement that had some tasty looking cupcakes. I, of course, thought their cake scrap parfait (chocolate cake bits with layers of funfetti frosting in between) was the Most Brilliant Thing Ever and ordered it straight away. As of 6pm, we are both still full and have no plans on having dinner any time soon. :p

So yeah...busy Saturday! Tomorrow we don't have anything exciting planned, so it'll most likely be filled with more errands like food shopping and whatnot. I will also be continuing my crash course in Rosetta Stone French, a bit of writing, and laundry. I'm sure football will also make an appearance.

And yay, I get Monday off! That day will be spent dropping off the car at the Honda place downtown, taking the bus up to the Haight, and hanging out up that way for a bit. Amoeba doesn't open up until 10:30, so that leaves me about 2.5 hours to kill, but I'm sure I can find a coffeeshop I can hide in. And once I'm done there I can just take the N train back downtown and pick up the car from there. That reminds me--I should probably stuff the book and clothing donations in the car too, so I can drop those off on the way back. Get everything done! :)


So yeah...two more weeks before we head off to Paris. It's still weirding me out that we're going there on vacation for a full week (just slightly over, actually), but I'm really looking forward to it. My mind is racing with all the things that need doing before we head out, all the preparation and whatnot, and the anxiety that I won't do my name justice and speak French badly enough to get laughed out of town, but aside from that...I'm looking forward to it all. We're staying at this tiny little hotel on this tiny side street about a block and a half from the Louvre and the Bibliotheque, so we will of course be stopping at all the museums and the stores and the cafes, check out Notre Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower, and all the fun stuff. I've already decided that at some point we will hang out at a cafe on the Left Bank and I will do an appropriate Murph drawing and write a poem. Just to say I did. ;)

Woo, two more weeks! :)