Untweetworthy, Part the Fifth

It's been a while since I've done one of these, but I actually remembered a few of the anecdotes I wanted to share, and figured I'd write them down before they fall into the Black Hole of Lost Notions.

First of all, I've completed all outstanding CP reads, which means I get to go back to drafting! Wheeee! Since it's been a few weeks since I actively worked on the WIP, I decided to read through from the beginning to make sure I remembered all the necessary details. There were only 30 pages or so, about 7500 words, so it didn't seem to be much of a burden. Of course, once I started reading, I started editing. I can't help myself. By the time I stopped last night, I'd written another 700 words. So that project is getting off the ground like a zeppelin: lumbering and floaty, with just a hint of hot gas. I take that all to be a good sign of progress.

My cat has a fondness for bubble wrap. I heard a weird crinkling noise, and found him popping the bubbles with his teeth. So that settles it. EVERYONE likes to pop bubble wrap.

Right now there is a barred owl sitting atop my chimney, hooting. It sounds like he's in the fireplace. It's kind of awesome, actually.

I covered the back of my new phone with glow-in-the-dark stars, but I keep forgetting to leave the phone face down to "charge" them up with light. So I haven't actually seen them glow yet. Sometimes I seriously disappoint myself.

I have now had two separate conversations on twitter, with two different people, that incorporated the phrase "scallop gonads." I blame Stephen Colbert.

Snowquestration was a serious disappointment. We got several inches of snow, but it never stuck to the ground, and turned to slush almost immediately. At least I never had to shovel anything. And it's supposed to be near 60 by the weekend. So there's that. Lousy Smarch weather.

Can anyone explain this to me? This has been bugging me for YEARS. I have flannel sheets on my bed. Really heavy, thick flannel. I also have a fuzzy blanket, one of those microplush jobbies that feels like thick velvet. Needless to say, the flannel and plush tend to stick together like velcro. You can almost hear that ripping noise when you pull them apart. All that being said, HOW does Helper Monkey always end up with all the sheets, while I don't have enough to cover myself? At least he leaves behind most of the blankets. Somehow, in his sleep, he can overcome the laws of physics, negate the friction between the sheet and blanket, and pull JUST THE SHEET until it hangs down to the floor on his side of the bed. Since he usually sleeps during the day, and I sleep at night, I'm pretty convinced that black magic is involved. I reset those damned things every night. I just have no idea what he does in his sleep. Any thoughts? Remember, this is for SCIENCE.

We made pancakes for dinner the other night, and this is one of Lulu's favorite meals to help prepare. She likes flipping them. The two of us were in the kitchen yammering on and on, and Helper Monkey was trying to watch the news in the next room. The tv got progressively louder and louder, and so did our conversation. Eventually, he gave up, came into the kitchen, and went on a little rant about how all he could hear was us talking and singing. I can't even remember his exact words (something to the effect of BLAH BLAH BLAH BUBBLES BLAH BLAH MUTANT BLAH BLAH ALBONDIGAS BLAH *and yes, this post was edited to include Albondigas, which is Spanish for meatballs. Apparently Lulu and I were going on and on about albondigas), but Lulu and I spent the next five minutes laugh-crying while the last pancake burned. I love my family.

Cookie season is almost over, which means the temptation of boxes and boxes of Girl Scout cookies lurking out in my truck is nearly gone. If someone wants to take the rest of these off my hips hands, I'd be eternally grateful.

I know there was one more blurb I wanted to write, but for the life of me, I can't remember what it was. I'm sure it will come back to me eventually. If it does, I'll add it to the list. I vaguely recall it had something to do with socks. Strangely, the Lost Untweetworthy vignette is the one that prompted me to start this post in the first place. Ain't that always the way.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming, which is basically me hiding out with my laptop, hopefully writing and staying off twitter. Which means, I'll see y'all on twitter real soon. Urg.

In the meantime, please enjoy this sloth sinking the Titanic.

Editing, With Cookies

I've been doing a lot of baking this week. I made about 300 Christmas cookies, most of which I will be giving as gifts to friends, family, neighbors, and anyone else, because otherwise I would eat all 300 of them. But that's another story entirely.

This morning while I stood in the kitchen, rolling out yet another pan of cookies, I realized how much it reminded me of editing. I'll get into that in a second. First, for non-writer friends, or anyone who clicked through just to see pictures of baked goods, a little anecdote.

On Sunday, Lulu helped me bake the first batch of cookies, and I thought for sure it would take twice as much time to make today's batch by myself. Not so. Turns out, I'm pretty efficient on my own. It was, however, a lot less fun to bake alone. I guess that's why my mind wandered so far from baking.

So here goes, my doughy mashup of holiday baking and editing.

Sunday's cookies were green. We cut out trees and holly leaves, and dipped them in white chocolate. Snow, y'all! Today's cookies were SUPPOSED to be red, but even after using most of a bottle of red food coloring, they still look a little pink. I figured they'd darken up a bit in the oven. Yeah, not so much.

Sort of red.

So this is the raw material I had to work with. My original draft. I could have just wadded it up and shoved it in the oven as-is. It would probably taste okay, but there would be no beauty. Not to mention, it wouldn't bake evenly. There'd be doughy bits in the center, and the bottom would certainly burn. It needed zazz. It needed editing. BRING ON THE COOKIE CUTTERS!

I started the job with dough that was ALMOST the right color, but there wasn't really much I could do with it. I tried adding more food coloring, but it seemed to get a brighter and brighter pink, rather than deepening to a rich red. I stopped before I turned the stuff day-glo fuschia, at least. Knowing when to stop walking down a path that isn't turning out right is half the battle in editing, too.

So finally it was time to cut. I intended to make a batch of stars and then dip them in dark chocolate. I have a half a dozen different star shaped cookie cutters, so I got them all out. Some have five points, some six, and one even has eight points! Variety! I picked one out and set to work. Between the strange dark pink color and my indelicacy with a spatula, most of the first batch reminded me of Patrick Star.

Just add green shorts and a confused facial expression.

I saw my mistake. The points of this star were too long and thin. They tended to bend a little when I transferred them to the cookie sheet. I tried to straighten them out, but then I ended up with bloated blobby points. Not to mention in that first pan, I don't think I rolled the dough thin enough. They were still puffed up too much.

Same goes for editing. The first pass through a manuscript will be rough. Even the basic shape of it might be a little off. Big things are easy to spot and fix. The obvious. The glaring. Like, "Hey, that looks like a beautiful daisy!" "Uh, yeah, but it's supposed to be a STAR!" You see smaller things you need to fix, but you have to be able to see all the problems before you can fix them all. It was time to try again. Second round!

On the second try, I used a different shape. It had shorter arms, and they were less likely to end up looking like Patrick, but they were also more likely to end up looking blobby. Live and learn.

Sometimes in editing you make a change, and take it too far. You wouldn't want to remove ALL the adverbs, for example. The rules of writing exist, but that doesn't mean they are etched in stone and you'll be thrown out of the Temple of Publishing forever if you bend them a little. In fact, if you don't bend them a little, you may as well be writing technical manuals, not fiction. You don't want to give up the essential look of a star just so you won't have to worry about bending the arms a bit. Blobby stars were a no go. Time for round three!

This time, I tried yet ANOTHER shape. This one wasn't half bad. It was much larger than the first two, so I could fit fewer on the tray at a time. I started to worry I'd be in the kitchen forever unless I did something drastic. I crammed as many of the large stars as I could on the tray, and lo and behold, problems arose.

SMOOSH!

Same goes for editing. Work too fast, or try to cram too much in during one revision, and it starts to blur together in your mind. You have to keep characters, subplots, and scenes separate, or they start looking like one big character, one big muddle of scenes. Editing is not a time to rush. Your characters should be evolving and becoming more distinct, and your scenes should be clearer and more concise with each round. If you're racing through edits at a blur, that's how the story will look to your readers. On to round four!

Finding a satisfactory plan B.

By this point, I was sick of stars. They were hard to cut out and force them to hold their shape. What had become of all my brilliantly laid plans? Screw it! Time to make stockings instead.

Sometimes it's easier to just make a change when the reality of all the faults of your original plan seem to hit you at once. Sometimes a character needs to go. Sometimes, after several rounds of editing, you'll realize that one of your subplots goes nowhere. Sometimes you need to add in a new character, one who will help tie the story together. Whatever's wrong, sometimes it takes a big change of shape to set you back on the right course.

My stocking cookies will taste just as good as the stars, and they'll still get a chocolate coating, but won't they be a nice change from a mountain of stars? Okay, now that I'm really getting the hang of this, I'm ready for round five.

Oops.

Sometimes things go awry. When baking, it's easy to dispose of the evidence. Om nom nom. When editing, sometimes it's best to do the same. Eat those plot holes! CHOMP!

Eventually the ball of dough you have to work with gets smaller

and smaller

and smaller...

Until you don't have enough to cut any more cookies. With each pass of edits, there should be fewer and fewer problems. Less to work with, not in the sense that there are few words in total, but in the sense that there are fewer WRONG words to fix. It's quite satisfying when a pass through only leads to minor tweaking.

In baking, I take that scrap of dough and mush it into a flat blob, and bake it with the rest of the cookies. It's the BONUS COOKIE! My reward for finishing the job.

Now all the hard work is done. It's time to add the decorations. In the case of my cookies, that means chocolate and sprinkles. In the case of my manuscript, it means showing it to my critique partners. They will spit shine it for me, and point out all the problems I'm unable to see for myself. You wouldn't go to all the trouble to bake up those tasty cookies and then leave off the final decoration, that last step. Don't think your manuscript is complete without running it by a few trusted writer friends, either.

I haven't had time to dip all the cookies from today's round of baking, but the ones we finished on Sunday look adorable (and taste quite nice, too). I need to take a break from the kitchen for a bit, but when I go back, I'll be fully engaged with putting the finishing touches on those cookies. Just like putting the finishing touches on my manuscript. Sometimes you need to walk away for a bit, let things cool down, and take everything in with fresh eyes. The cookies will have had a few hours to firm up, or they would crumble when I try to coat them in heavy chocolate. By the time I return, they'll be able to stand on their own. :D

Hope y'all didn't get a stomachache from too many cookie metaphors. Now I'm off to dispose of the evidence that I'm clumsy at handling fresh-baked cookies. And then I need to do some editing.

Untweetworthy, Part Deux

The second in a continuing series of bizarre little snippets that proved too long, too silly, or too irrelevant for Twitter, but needed to be written down somewhere (if only to get them out of my overcrowded thinker).










 Without further ado, here we go:

1. Facebook calls it a timeline. Why? It's not even linear. I wish there were a way to make the posts reflect the accurate passing of time. The same handful of posts seem to stick to the top, and interesting things get buried deep in the pile. This is why I like Twitter better. At least it uses linear time to post updates instead of the mish-mosh method FB uses.

2. Rape jokes: NEVER FUNNY. Rape APOLOGIST jokes: BAZINGA!

3. Oh, Florida. I thought I left you because I was sick of hurricanes. Turns out, you were too disorganized even for me to tolerate living there. Someday you will learn how to hold an election at least as well as Washington, D.C. can (and DC was woefully underequipped, but still managed to get everyone to the polls and tally up their votes on election night).

4. Just when I thought I was done with political ads, I remember how far behind I am on the TiVo. Just watched a show from two weeks ago, and realized every show for the next few weeks will be progressively more stuffed with campaign ads. At least I'll be fast-forwarding through all of them.

5. I'm starting to get distracted from my WIP by the first novel I ever wrote (and then imprisoned under the bed with an armed battalion of dust bunnies to prevent its escape). I am SO TEMPTED to rewrite it, you know, without all the adverbs this time...

6. Why was this blog so lacking in funny .gif images before?

 

7. I love the people of Twitter. I think I got kinda lucky in the imaginary friend lottery.

8. Having manuscripts on submission during election season was awful. I reflexively answered the phone every time it rang, JUST IN CASE IT WAS AN AGENT. I can't tell you how many political robocalls I hung up on, but I think the number was in the kajillions*.
*In the interest of mathematical accuracy, this is a number larger than a berjillion, but smaller than a squintillion.

9. I'm not the first person to say this, but WHY is it always the tweet with the typo that gets the most retweet love?

So there you go, the random overflowings of my sad little mind. To make up for it, please enjoy this gif of a slow loris having its little armpits tickled. Thank you.

Ahoy! Tis my anniversARRy today!

Yes. I got married on International Talk Like a Pirate Day. This was unintentional. I swear.

No, our wedding wasn't pirate themed. We got married in 1997, and September 19 wasn't declared International Talk Like a Pirate Day until 2002. So. No pirate-themed wedding. But wouldn't that have been completely AWESOME?!

As it is, I am deliriously happy to have been married to the wonderful Helper Monkey for the last fifteen years. Without even realizing it, I honor September 19th all over my left hand. See?

Yes, that is Captain Jack Sparrow next to my wedding rings.

I've got pirates and my wedding all over the place. I never take those rings off (unless I'm making meatballs, or scrubbing toilets, or, you know, stuff like that. You know how hard it is to pick cookie dough out of Captain Jack's beard? Eww).

In preparation for this evening's festivities, Helper Monkey and I went out to run a few errands. We tried to get the truck washed, but the car wash place was closed. So we went on up to the grocery store for junk food instead. Now we have a celebratory pecan pie for dessert tonight, so that was definitely worth the drive.

We also went to the liquor store for something special to drink. While there, I saw some strange things. This included:

Donut and buttered popcorn flavored vodka. This strikes me as jarringly wrong. There were other alcoholic atrocities going on at the store, but this was the most...disturbing. I mean, donut sounds pretty good, but buttered popcorn? To drink? Ugh. What the hell do you mix it with?

So we got some normal Sam Adams Octoberfest beer. No weirdo dessert vodka for us.

One other strange tidbit before I sign off. I've had some suncatchers up on my front porch glass door since we moved here, about 6 1/2 years ago. Lulu made them when she was like 5 or something. For the last week or so, there's been one crazy hummingbird that comes and checks out the flower-shaped one nearly every day. I have seen him multiple times bumping his little beak up against the window, as if the flower were real and full of yummy nectar. Poor little guy. He's too quick to get a picture of, but I'll keep trying.

And no Progress-O-Meter for the last few days, because I've been wrapped up in CP heaven, reading the final draft of a brilliant R&R. Tomorrow it's back to work for me! In the mean time, hoist yer grog before I make ye walk the plank, ya scurvy cur! :D

Food, Kitchens, and Cooking

Okay, I understand that I talk about food all too often. I can't help it. Helper Monkey works at a grocery store, and we talk about groceries at least three times a day. I assume most people do. For some reason, today was particularly food-centric for me. Here I attempt to rehash the most relevant moments of foodiness from today.


Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I worked baseball games, and the guilt of not being home for dinner three nights in a row was starting to get to me. My poor family had to get by on pizza, breakfast-for-dinner, and the like. Last night I cooked. It was nice for me, too. I'd been living on french fries and chicken fingers at the park.

Today Helper Monkey and I watched Hell's Kitchen, thus starting the food fuss. It all went downhill from there.

Before dinner, I exchanged an increasingly dyspeptic series of emails with Fabulous Crit Partner, Feaky Snucker, about disgusting foods. This chat centered around beets, in particular, and why we both think they are The Devil's Food. Now that I'm settled in with a therapeutic bowl of ice cream, I can discuss beets without feeling the need to hurl. It was not the best topic for pre-meal conversation, though.

Also, while making dinner, and yet again being blinded by steam fogging up my glasses, I wondered if there were any professional chefs who wear glasses. I wonder how they manage. I mean, I really only cook one meal a day, and it drives me bonkers to be periodically blinded while handling boiling hot things. It leads to a fair degree of physical injury.

While I cooked, we discussed the fact that one of the chefs on Hell's Kitchen professed a dislike of cilantro. Helper Monkey hates the stuff. I tried to convince him that it had a respectable place in cooking. Let's just say the conversation devolved comically to the point where Lulu chimed in that we were acting in a fashion unbecoming parents. I think it was my "OH NO YOU DIDN'T" comment that pushed her over the edge.

I asked the Monkey what Pad Thai (a dish he loves) would be without a little cilantro. He answered, "Better." "OH NO YOU DIDN'T!", to which he replied, "UH UH GIRLFRIEND!" etc. etc.

The conversation went downhill from there, to the point we were quoting Geoff Peterson and doing the Secretariat dance. Lulu observed like we were an exhibit at the zoo. She's our own personal Jane Goodall. Someday I'm sure we'll be the subject of an academic paper. Or therapy.

Luckily, I can go back to editing now. I think part of my problem is lack of sleep. I was up until 1:30 last night revising, and then up at 6 am today. Food (and caffeine) is about the only thing keeping me from slipping into a coma right now. And on that happy note, back to editing.

This little snippet of my fascinating life has been brought to you by the versatile herb, cilantro. Suck it up, Helper Monkey!

Just for Fun: Query Wordle!

Thanks to the awesome Ink in the Book, I've been enamored with creating a Query Wordle. Without further ado - since I've already wasted at least an hour creating and tweaking it - I'd like to present the newest version of my query for Running Down the Dragon in Wordle form:

Aar, Mateys...Ahoy!

I signed up for the Buccaneer Blogfest and then realized I'd be at camp for the first week of posts. So here I am writing my first post days before it will go live. I didn't want to slack off before the ship even left port!

The first post is supposed to be about me. Well, I've written a lot of stuff about me. It's one of my favorite topics. Well, no, not really, but it's the subject I know the most about, so I tend to default to writing about myself on this blog. If you want an intro to me, please read the About Me and FAQ sections. There's a lot of stuff there that will explain who I am.

Sorry this post is kind of lacking in detail, but since I'm not here to see if there were more specific instructions or advice for this post, I hope this will cover most anything anyone wants to know.

If you have any questions about me, and are patient enough to wait until the weekend to get answers, please feel free to ask. I like answering questions! Hey, Jeopardy! champ here! Then again, I suppose that means I prefer questioning answers, rather than answering questions. I'll try to phrase my replies in the form of a question.

Thanks for playing!

I'm going off the grid. I hope I come back...

For the next six days, I'll be somewhere in the wilderness. Camp. It's always fun, but if nothing's changed since last year, that also means I'll be COMPLETELY DISCONNECTED FROM THE INTERNET! *feel free to panic on my behalf*

There's one spot at the camp, out back between the kitchen and the dumpster, where I can get phone messages if I stand on one leg, point my left hand due North-Northwest, and recite the alphabet backward in a Cookie Monster voice. Unless the Cellular Deities have bestowed new towers in the wilderness of the Catoctins, I'm afraid this will be the extent of my connectivity. One night we're planning to take the girls into Civilization to see a movie, so I might have a technology reprieve midweek. We'll have to wait and see.

In the mean time, I hope y'all enjoy the Internets without me. I'm going to have to figure out this newfangled thing called a "book." It's made of paper, but it's full of words! Just like the Internets! Unfortunately, I think I got a defective book, because there's no photos of cats doing funny things, or GIF's of Doctor Who, and no clicky-links! Gah!

Morgan: Defender of the Camp Shirts

Lulu is a counselor this year at camp. Her camp name is Bumblebee. There will be a hundred girls who won't ever think of her as Lulu, but for the rest of their lives will call her Bumblebee. She is okay with this. The camp already had a Darth Vader and a Voldemort, so Bumblebee was about the best name she could get. I leave you with The Bemittened One keeping her new t-shirts warm.

Third Post of the Day (I know, but this is worth it)

Okay, okay. Y'all are sick to death of me. But this is a riot. Well, this first part isn't that funny. Just delicious. Our raspberry bushes are finally fruiting! YAY! Now, on to the funny.

We went bowling today, and you must see Lulu's divine technique.

For a kid with dry spaghetti for arms, she makes it work.

At the end I show the scoreboard. She's Lulu, Helper Monkey is "Monky" because they only let you have five characters in your name, and I'm "Miten". Lulu spent the entire game calling me Might-en, and her father Mawn-key. Gotta love it.

The scoring table we were at was directly under the A/C vent, so it was the perfect way to prevent melting today. I hope everyone else out there is having a cool evening (in every sense of the word).

It's hard to stay cool in 100 degree heat

Obvious, right? But I'm staying cool for now. It's only 88 so far today, but it's supposed to hit triple digits. There's some great news to balance out the face-melting, hair-poodlifying weather, though.

The best news I've had in a while came yesterday around dinner time. I spent most of the day busy with stuff and things. I was feeling a little sad that Helper Monkey's vacation week was passing so quickly, but I was determined to enjoy it as much as possible. Then the major revelation hit. Helper Monkey let me in on the secret. Yesterday was WEDNESDAY! I spent the entire day thinking it was Thursday!

In one brilliant, shining moment, I experienced time travel! I gained a whole day! Even if it only happened inside my brain, it was a brilliant feeling. I can't even describe how happy I was.

But now it really is Thursday *checks calendar to be sure*. Yes. Today is Thursday. It's like Groundhog Day! But I only get to have two Thursdays this week (one of which, I know, was technically Wednesday, but humor me, please).

Unfortunately, the combination of heat and humidity does horrible things to my hair. This is Hat Weather. I look like a cross between Jimmy Neutron and an electrocuted poodle. During the winter, I can make my hair nearly straight. In summer it always looks like I had a drastic haircut combined with a bad perm.

So what do you do to avoid melting into the pavement on days like today? Helper Monkey has invented Oven Day Fun Time. This is similar to Rainy Day Fun Time, without the joy of putting on a bathing suit and running around the yard through a downpour. We play a lot of games. We watch movies in the basement, where it's always 15 degrees cooler than upstairs, and today, we might go bowling. Duck pin bowling. A.K.A., the GOOD kind of bowling. But I'm only going if they assure me their A/C is working, and currently blasting out snowflakes in addition to cold air.

Tonight, and I do mean late tonight, we might head over to the pool. We've only been a couple of times so far this year, and I have a feeling it will be as warm as bath water tonight. Maybe we can bring a few drinking straws, blow bubbles, and pretend it's a huge Jacuzzi.

Oh, and the editing is going like blazes! Sorry for the heat-related metaphor. Okay. The editing is going like water in a waterslide. There. That's more refreshing, right?

I'm half way through chapter two, and finding bits and pieces that need to be rewritten or moved elsewhere. I waited too long to explain a few things about the world, and I'm moving them closer to the front of the book. All this edity-wedity stuff is so thrilling! And I sincerely do mean that! :)

I love watching the story I love get better and better. :)


 I hope everyone stays cool today. Keep Cool and Have a Frozen Lemonade!

***Edit: It's easier to stay cool when I can sit in my chair and scroll through Tweeties. Also, Twitter is back now! Yay!

Mad Libs

Today's after dinner game was Mad Libs. We enjoy this one. Picking the most bizarre words possible to fill the slots becomes a competition in itself. We're all kind of geeky that way.

Some favorite lines from tonight's game:

From one about the three branches of the U.S. Government:

• The Executive Branch includes the office of Pig Wrangler.
• The Judicial Branch is responsible for upholding the Firefly, which was flown by our founding fathers.
• The Judicial Branch includes a Supreme Sasquatch, which rules on mottled issues.
• The Legislative Branch is divided into two puddles.

One entitled Impeachment, reproduced here in its entirety:

A cloud can be impeached for any number of reasons, including lying to the United States Fungus, arrogantly abusing his powers to jiggle sweaters, making smelly remarks regarding shoes, or otherwise behaving in a crusty manner. If the cloud is impeached by the House of Bowties, a trial in the Senate could follow, presided over by the Chief Bowling Ball of the Fluffy Court. After rapidly weighing the lotions, senators will raise their toenails and cast a vote of either "sticky!" or "not sticky!"

And finally, my personal favorite, a rewrite of Nixon's famous "Checkers" speech:

My fellow staples, I spin before you tonight as a candidate for Worm Farmer, and as a man whose cat and mouthwash have been questioned. Every scum that Pat and I have ever gargled is urgently ours. Pat doesn't have a mink squeegee, but she does have a muddy Republican cloth squeegee. I always tell her she would look cadaverous in anything. We did get one gift, however. It was a moist cocker spaniel boomslang and our little sky, Tricia, named it Checkers. And no matter what they say, we're going to smash it.

Poor Checkers! No wonder they impeached the jerk. He smashed Checkers! Not to mention calling his wife cadaverous to her face! For shame!


So there you have it. History rewritten by the Hughes family in postprandial repose.

We're still looking for some new game recommendations that aren't too complicated for an almost-12-year-old, and yet not stabbiness-inducing for the grown-ups. We all enjoy word games, card games, trivia games, etc. Pretty much anything is on the table (especially whatever game you suggest). If you've got a good recommendation, please leave a comment! Thank you!

On a more serious note, I have to thank Jessa Russo for actually getting me to write while the sun shone today. She held a 1k in 1 hour challenge on the tweeties, and I pushed my "real work" aside for a whopping 53 minutes. At the end of that, I had 1,070 new words, though, so it was an (almost) hour very well spent. I would have had more, but I actually had to stop to research something before I committed it to paper (or keyboard, or electrons, or whatever). The perils of writing about something technical and wanting to be sure my terminology didn't come off as hokey or just plain wrong. So I wasted ten minutes making sure I worded a description properly. Sigh.

I still didn't finish the project that will bring in actual cash money, so I have to kill another hour or two with that tomorrow, but then it's all about the new words again! And Lulu goes to the eye doctor in the afternoon, so another day cut short with errands and driving and spending money. But it's better than letting her suffer with headaches when a new pair of glasses will hopefully fix the problem. I'd bring the laptop along and write, but I don't think I'd have much of a chance to get anything done.

Also, thanks to Tumblr, I am now coveting a new fountain pen. And thanks to my addiction to Moleskine notebooks, I also covet a small, lined notebook the same size as my pocket planner (3.5 x 5.5 or thereabouts. And also a 2013 planner, since shockingly, things are starting to pop up that require planning more than six months out. Gah! who invented this kind of long-term advanced planning? I never got used to putting my calendar in my phone. I like having it on paper so I can just flip through and make notes, cross notes out, etc. It's so much easier for me. Plus, Moleskine addict. Need I say more?

I'll settle for this simple Pelikan model fountain pen. A bargain at $278.22 on Amazon! Yikes! And I thought my $40 Zero Gravity Space Pen was pricey!

Still, one more good day of writing to look forward to. Here's the current Progress-o-Meter:

Words: 50,721 (yay! Half way!)
Pages: 166