Had a lovely hour and a half with a librarian friend here this evening, which accounts for the Astronuts: it’s a brown beer made here. My friend and I have done this twice now: gotten together for a monthly beer to swill and swap gossip. Fun times, trust me. She is one sympatico lady and keeps apologizing for the fact I’ve wound up here 😉
THE DAY
Not a lot of drama. I have a horrible cold so slept fitfully and not well. I must’ve been up three or four times during the night. Hard to sleep when your head and throat are killing you. II I dreamt, I don’t remember.
Dragged out of bed when the husband did. Caffeinated. Made the supreme mistake of looking at Facebook and wasting a half hour before pulling myself away and reminding myself that I would only do this at NIGHT! When I was DONE!
So marched myself back to the writing computer and started in. I have no idea if this section will stay or not, but it provides a lot of important character stuff for me and was damn fun to write to boot. So, for the moment, even though the section’s not quite done (I estimate another four page or so), it stays. Then I jump over what I’ve done and dive into the middle part of the book. I’d say I’m about halfway through now.
Stopped at 1-ish when some deck people came to talk plans and estimates. Then spent another hour with the landscape design kid: nice boy; has an uncle who’s big into Star Trek, and he likes to read, so I gave him a copy of ASHES for the hell of it. I mean, why not? He was tickled.
Exercised two hours. Then to the bar where I met up with my friend for mutual schmoozing and a beer. Then home, cooked dinner, and now I’m doing this. Cats have been needy; right now, Winnie’s wondering if he can jump into my lap the same as he did during dinner. (He was summarily exiled.)
Pretty mundane day. That’s okay with me.
I have, however, put off a business thing I MUST deal with. So, that happens tomorrow, too.
***
WRITING OUT LOUD
FAR SIDE OF THE MOON:
Day 1: 4326
Day 2: 2085
Day 3: 3011
Like I said, a few more pages and then I jump ahead to the midpoint.
Blog Post: 1188
***
What I’m watching:
The Art of More: another episode and three-quarters down today. I’m thoroughly enjoying this thing.
I also heard about an ABC series that sounded interesting: The Astronaut Wives Club. Unfortunately, when I go on the app, there’s nothing. So I’m not sure it’s still around or not. Might do some more digging.
The Man in the High Castle: yes, I will get back to this; I swear.
Penny Dreadful: I’ve actually watched three episodes of this series. I like the conceit; in fact, I wish I’d thought of it. But it’s also hard for me to see where they’re really going with this, and I have to say that I find the Dorian Gray character to be . . . kind of meh. I mean, once the monster/Caliban showed up, I knew where that storyline was going. I may also be a total geek, but as soon as the Josh Harnett character was introduced as Talbot, and his dad’s name as John . . . I’m, like, hello, Lon Chaney, seriously? So I know that Harnett is the son of the Wolfman, and I”m not even through the first season. So I don’t know. We’ll see.
What I might give my eye teeth to see: third season of The Americans; sixth season of Justified.
I’ve watched Continuum in the past; made it through the second season and then got kind of fed up, I guess (but then again, I got thoroughly tired of Orphan Black after ONE season. I think I made it through two episodes of the second season.). But I might come back to Continuum; before it got predictable, it was good, and I’d like to see how it ends.
Another show I wish that would end up on Prime already: the six-episode third season of The Newsroom. Sorkin really knows how to do dialogue.
See? This is why I exercise so much. Otherwise, I’d never watch anything.
***
What I’m reading:
Finished a couple books yesterday so starting a couple new ones today.
Abandon by Blake Crouch (not necessarily my favorite cuppa, but Crouch can tell a good story, moves things along, and I admired what he did with the whole Pines Trilogy. So I figure I could learn a thing or two from the guy.)
Man-Eater: The Lives and Legend of an American Cannibal by Harold Schecter (I’m always interested in what happens to people in extreme situations and I’d say that the dead of winter in 1873, with no road, no supplies, no end in sight, qualifies.)
The Far End of Happy by Kathryn Craft (I’m not usually one for “women’s fiction,” but the premise–an estranged husband shows up threatening suicide–sounded interesting. But we’ll see. There’s already a little too much hand-wringing for me, but I might be rushing to judgment here.)
***
Just not that much drama today for which I’m grateful. Tomorrow, I’ve got some house things coming up and a late-afternoon visitor, so I shall have to plan accordingly. I’m thinking that I ought to be at the midpoint of the book by tomorrow night, too.
A fan wrote in to express her concern for how I might be feeling. I appreciate that, I really do. It takes caring and a fair amount of courage to reach out to a virtual stranger. But my feelings about blog posts are this: a blog is really nothing more than a journal made public. You can choose to self-edit (believe me, all appearances to the contrary, I do), or not. Right now, I’m trying to get myself out a bad patch any which way I can. That means this blog is my diary, I guess. Will I put down everything? No, of course not. But I think that if I had cancer and chose to document my struggles, people would tolerate a little bit of depression, sadness, anger. It would be expected. So I think that the same ought to extend to anyone trying to work through a bad patch, period.
Me, I happen to be struggling with finding my creative voice again and getting a damn book done. I also happen to be fighting with having made a move that isn’t sitting well with me, too. (Funny, but my librarian friend, who lives here, totally gets it; she wouldn’t mind getting out of this state herself, which might explain why we’re so sympatico.)
But a state of being also reflects a state of mind, and so I’m trying very hard to get out of the state of mind I find myself in these days. This is the way I’ve chosen, and I hope it works. In a way, this is just an accounting of my day to myself. Like I said: just writing out loud here.
