Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Image: captured on film, a surprised Ent (far from Middle Earth, in St. Paul, MN.)

Yesterday, around 10 am, my space bar stopped functioning on my laptop--a laptop that I've had less than a few years. I don't even know what to say. This is hardly the first of my computer woes--even my current laptop. It lost its "o" key and the "u" key some time ago.. As I have noted in the past, I am generally hard on computers for some reason. But, also I feel it is fully possible that this is an act of sacrificial revenge, as I once dropped a frozen turkey (unintentionally! But still,) on one of their brethren.

I'm ordering a new keyboard, because that's the cheapest and fastest solution.

It will be fine.

But, I'm having a sad because I feel a bit like the the universe does NOT want me to ever finish my novel. I've been working in it forever. It's still not done. And now this. 

BOO. (and not in the fun Halloween way.)

 
Image: purple garden phlox and orange day lilies.

My Asiatic lilies have all faded and are making way for the purple garden phlox and the orange day lilies.  

Today, everything started out stormy, but then the heat mostly broke (though the humidity lingered a bit) and it has been moderately decent. It is currently 83 F / 28 C. My house spy seems to think the temperatures might actually drop into the upper sixties tonight. That's good sleeping weather, so fingers crossed.

Since the temperatures weren't insanely hot (and I was up early,) I decided to try to make the lettuce soup recommended by dragonlady7 and pameladean ... folks, I think I maybe did something wrong or, it might just be that I don't like the taste of lettuce as much as I thought I did. Here's how it ended up looking:


Image: lettuce soup with flecks of... lettuce? (Although the flecks might be chives, honestly.)

Is this how it's supposed to look? I used my immersion blender and followed the recipe as closely as possible. However, I am the sort who will read and read and read a recipe and then discover I missed something critical like baking soda (obviously not in THIS recipe, just as an example.) So, who knows? My family and I all tried it at lunch, and it certainly used up a lot of lettuce. I'm down to a very reasonable amount to last until Thursday when the next CSA is scheduled.

It smelled AMAZING when I was making it. I'm not sure why did didn't live up to the smell.

The thing that did live up to its reputation?

BASIL ICE CREAM.


Image: home made basil ice cream in a sake bowl (on a red counter.)

Thank you sabotabby for convincing me that this was not as weird as it sounded!  My rather picky wife even ate a whole bowl. Mason agreed "not bad." So, we now have Thai basil ice cream in the freezer.

Which is good, because I may need some comfort food tomorrow. I got pressured by my boss to come in to work at White Bear Lake library tomorrow from one to five. I am... full of trepidation.  I mean, it's not open to the public (although apparently some branches are to some extent;people are being allowed to use the computers) but there is still a lot of handling of things that were in the extended possession of hundreds of patrons. The air will all be recycled, as "hermetically sealed" is actually the preferred mode when dealing with books. But, I kind of need to put in some hours, some time? Or they will drop me off the roster.

So that sucks.

We also failed to purchase Mason's computer twice again today, even with a banker sitting on the phone with us. We must have gotten tagged as fraudulent by the company we are trying to buy from because we tried unsuccessfully too many times. Damn you, American Independence Day! (*waves fist*)

However, we found the same laptop available at a local Best Buy, so we're just going to try walking in. We are still pre-approved for the spending, so... hopefully, it will work. Even if they don't have it, they can probably order it for us with better luck.

I can't believe it's been this hard to buy a damn computer.

Anyway, hope you all are doing good. How's things?

Last night, I tried to kill my phone.

Normally, I attempt drowning, everyone's favorite phone homicide method. Last night, however, I don't even know what I did, though I know that the result was that I SOMEHOW disconnected my phone from its SIM card. Of course, I only discovered this at 11:30 pm, having stumbled in from a late night anime gathering. Suffice to say, after several hours of panic-induced messing around, I thought to call customer service and, FOR ONCE, they actually managed to fix the problem.

What was profoundly stupid is that I probably could have come to this solution a lot sooner had I not decided that my phone was so utterly necessary to my life that it had to be fixed immediately, at MIDNIGHT. I don't know what I thought I was going to miss? A 2 am text? 

The good news is that everything is working again.

I'm fine. We're all fine here. How are you?

I notice that I have failed to keep you all updated on the other exciting developments of my life. One reason I have been lax in updating was actually intentional. Shawn had a cancer scare and we decided not to talk about it until we knew for certain what was going on. SPOILER: She's fine, no cancer. 

Ah, so, the whole story goes like this. I think one of my last blog entries actually blithely mentions "oh, ha,ha, Shawn is in for Yet Another MRI, oh ho hum, such is our life!" Well, a day after that MRI, we got a late night call from Shawn's neurologist. Late night. At home. In a shaky voice, Dr. Li tells Shawn there's "unusual imaging" in the bone of her spine and does she have an ONCOLOGIST she could see? Literally the words no one wants to hear, ever.

As you can imagine, our hearts were in our throats. Ironically, we did have an oncologist already in the vast stable of specialists that Shawn sees, because he is also a hematologist, whom she'd seen while in the hospital in July for her blood clot. By chance, Dr. Perez is one of the directors of the Minnesota Oncology Center, a Yale Graduate, who did one of his residencies at the Mayo. To have actually rolled a natural 20 in this fashion could not have been a better deal for us, because Dr. Perez just looked at Shawn, her history, and the image and said, "How good is your insurance?" When we said, "Hell, at this point, thanks to the hospital visit, everything is free," he smiled and said, "Okay, what I'm going to do is order a PET CT scan of your whole body. This will tell us everything. If there any sign of cancer, anywhere, we will know." Imagine this in a weirdly sexy Antonio Bandares Spanish accent, because as an added bonus Dr. Perez is a super hot immigrant from Barcelona. Also imagine us, two married-to-each-other women, but who are not immune to masculine charm, sitting there getting the "we still don't know what this is" bad news from him, while thinking, "Could you repeat that? Not only is it hard information to absorb because it is scary, you also make it sound really sexy... which is confusing my brain further than is strictly comfortable."

The worst part of this scare was all the waiting for news/waiting for tests.

It's also extremely scary how one is fast tracked the second they think they might find cancer, because we were at the PET CT scan by the beginning of the very next week. Shawn described the experience as weirdly pleasant. They give you a radioactive injection of glucose, but they have to wait an hour for it to settle in any "hot" spots, so Shawn read a book. Then it was no more than twenty minutes in a tube, which she was allowed to take Valium for which... let's just say, afterwards, she was very giggly and had no filters to the point where, when I took her out to lunch, she ran her fingers on the brick facing of a building and told me, "That felt JUST like I expected it to!" Oh-kay, baby.  When I told her she was pretty high, she smiled and lifted four fingers and told me, "I have FIVE more of these."  

So, I mean, there was a fun moment?

Then, we got the call the very next day from a technician who started the call with, "How are you today, Mrs. Rounds?" To which, Shawn instantly said, "I don't know. It's really going to depend on what you're about to tell me." The technician then told Shawn the results of the scan were NEGATIVE. There was no sign of any cancer. ANYWHERE.

We kept our appointment with Dr. Perez for Thursday just to make sure we were really all clear (and besides did I mention he was hot? And had a smoldering accent??? And is actually really funny, too, Shawn made a slip and asked him to continue her SUBscriptions to certain meds and he found this so charming that he repeated it several times.) At any rate, that's the long story of a harrowing two weeks or more of OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT that turned out to be what Dr. Perez hoped it was from the start: basically a birthmark type formation from blood cells (hemangioma?) that can be caused from trauma, like say, decades of a bad back.

Now that the panic is over, Shawn has been able to read the rest of the MRI report and wants to go back to Dr. Li and say, "Okay, but when were you going to tell me I had mild scoliosis? Or degenerative lumbar compression?"

Meanwhile, Mason got strong armed by his coach into going to a debate tournament last weekend. He's on the debate team and has gone to a few Friday night sessions, but he normally works on Saturday morning/afternoon and so hasn't wanted to set the team up for the default losses he'd get by not showing up for the second day of a tournament. But, the debate coach was like, "Mason, I can't require this, but could you please???" and so he took one day off work to go to the Regional Champs Tournament last weekend. Debate is usually a team sport, you usually have a partner for each session. Mason is a weird kid because he actually PREFERS to run what they call "maverick," which means he goes without a partner and does the whole argument, cross examination, and ending statement alone... usually against TWO others, who then have the advantage of tag-teaming him.

When he showed up on Friday he was not only maverick, as expected, but also, by chance, the only student from the Washington team who could make it. He didn't think much of it, because people have conflicts and his coach Maddy, figured a couple other folks would show in the junior division on Saturday. Nope. Mason was the sole--and I mean ONLY--Washington Tech debate team member for the tournament.

And he won.

The WHOLE thing. 

Thanks to JUST Mason, the Washington Debate team are JV  Division of the UDL Regional Champ victors. His trophy goes in the hall of trophies because he won it for the school, for the entire team.... by himself.


(Picture: Mason looking rightfully pleased with himself whilst holding a golden trophy)

I mean, I tell you this story because I'm insanely proud of him, but also because it's an insane story. I can't imagine how the other teams felt, given that they had literally every advantage over him.... including simply HAVING teammates.

So that's some of the insanity around here. I have other things to report, which I will save for another episode, which I will hopefully enter tomorrow. I've got my observations to report about having seen Terry Garey a few more times and also a rundown of my experiences at anime night.  

 If computers ever become sentient, I will probably be brought up on charges as a serial killer.

Always, too, the universe seem intent on destroying SPECIFICALLY anything to do with Precinct 13. The last time I had a major deadline in this universe, I dropped a frozen turkey* on my laptop and not only killed my PC, but also lost all of the 30,000 words of my novel I'd written to-date (or. at least, to That Date.)

This time, I was checking Facebook and liking pictures that my friend jiawen had posted of a trip out to dinner in Taipei, and I dunno, I guess I just had a flake. My brain sent the signal to my mouth; "open to receive delicious coffee" and some wire crossed and instead sent the command to my hand "open and destroy all the things." Thus, I dropped the entire, full cup of coffee right on my keyboard. Blam! There was so much liquid inside the computer that as I picked it up in a frantic attempt to turn it off before too much damage was done, coffee POURED OUT OF THE SPACES BETWEEN THE KEYS.

It should come as no surprise that the Mac suffered a complete and total loss.

I waited an entire twenty-four hours before trying to boot it up. It doesn't even try to turn on. It's gone to join the Choir Eternal. Kicked the bucket. It's dead, Jim.

Before you start filling my inbox with all the advice about what I should do to avoid data loss, never fear, my friends. THIS HAPPENS TO ME SO REGULARLY that I actually have a back up laptop waiting to take over should disaster hit. And, far more importantly, I had all the words of the current project safe and sound on a cloud. 

It's just... I mean... OMG, what it wrong with me???


*not a hyberpole. I dropped an actual 25 pound frozen turkey directly on my exposed laptop, which happened to be in the driver's seat well. The turkey rolled off the back seat and WHAMMO. It was spectacular. 

 Last night was the speculative fiction smut reading at Kieran's Pub.  I spent much of the day, yesterday, feeling very nervous about the whole thing. Nervous probably isn't the right word. I do a lot of public performance, much of it off the cuff, but I'm NOTORIOUSLY bad at reading naughty bits, out loud, in front of a crowd. I have _literally_ hired stunt readers, while rolling around in embarrassment under the table at cons during slash readings.

So...

A friend of mine who is an actor in New York volunteered to listen to my pieces and give critique to help improve my performance. They are also a Bleach fan, so we probably spent more of our time together lamenting the ending of the manga.  But, it was really neat to finally see them in person (we did a Google hangout) and put a face and a voice to text, as it were. But, knowing I was going to read to Taylor meant that I practiced both pieces several times, even before talking to them over Hangouts. 

Then, naomikritzer came over and, my random luck, I made an amazing "pot roast hash" out of some leftover rump roast and some veggies.  We chatted for a bit, but both of us had errands to try to get in before the snow started, so we said goodbye early and I headed out with Mason's laptop to Computer Revolution.

I totally recommend Computer Revolution in Roseville to local folks, btw. First of all, they did what we wanted the "Genius Squad" to do at Best Buy, which was test the cord with a voltmeter. The cord, they determined, was shot.  It is, of course, still possible that there is more than one problem going on with the ROG, but we have an easy place to start. Shawn ordered the cord as soon as I told her what I'd learned, since she'd already done all the research in case we might need one. I asked the guys, though, if the cord doesn't solve the issue, are there other options that don't involve replacing the motherboard as Best Buy seemed to suggest would be the only other issue (and far too expensive a prospect). They had lots of options, several of which were very potentially reasonably priced.  So, that's a huge YAY.

Mason came home a bit early from robotics, despite it being "stop build day," the day they have to literally wrap up their robot and put it away until competition, because he was feeling kind of sick. He seems to have caught a cold.  

After picking up Mason, feeding him, etc., I got dressed and headed out.

I got lost at least twice, mostly because I don't know left from right, but I managed to get there by 7:30 pm, which was perfect, as it gave me a chance to find a place to park and get in and get the lay of the land.

Kieran's pub is kind of beautiful. The Not-So-Silent Planet folks managed to have their own private section, a part of the pub that is legit called "The Poet's Room" and it has its own doors, own bar, etc. I was really sad to hear that they will be having to move the venue next season, because it could not be a more perfect place for this kind of event.  It's both public, but very intimate and private.



The structure of the show was that the first 3/4th were open mic, which... with erotica was.... kind of hoot? I mean, the first person up did two pieces, the first of which was revenge porn with implied rape and I thought "OH SH*T, MY HUMOROUS STUFF IS GOING TO BOMB" but then they did a second piece which was a clever story about an app that allowed you to experience other people's fetishes.  

The whole night was like that--some of the pieces were very INTENSE, some hilarious, several of them were body horror, a number were more traditionally romantic, and then, a few were... well, HOT.

I was horrified to discover, however, that I was scheduled to be the finale. I'm NOT finale material. So. NOT.  But, I did my best. I read a sweet/sensual piece from the sequel to Precinct 13, which is the book I just sold to Wizard Tower Press.  That seemed to go over well. I only stumbled over one line at the very beginning.  

The second piece I read (the first one clocked in at 4 and a half minutes, and I was booked for twelve, so I had to read something else) was actually bit of fan fiction of mine that involves kinbaku, the Japanese art of rope bondage. As noted at the start of this, I get very flushed and flustered reading anything erotic out loud. For a while, when I first starting writing sex scenes as part of my profession as a romance writer, I had to touch type them while LOOKING AWAY FROM THE SCREEN, I was so embarrassed. So, I decided to ask for some help from the audience--audience participation, if you will. So, I asked people to shout out a word for anatomy that starts with "c" and sort of looks like a single finger when I raised one finger, and another part of anatomy that is plural and is usually connected to the first one when I raised two fingers. The audience was very enthusiastic about this. 

But what was funny? I think they were quietly getting into the story, which was kind of unexpected?  I mean, it's out of context and there's some bits that can not possibly have made any sense, but the first time they did their bit and shouted out the words for me, I tried to make a little editorial comment about how wonderfully enthusiastic they were, but the vibe I got from the audience was very "yeah, yeah, get back to the STORY!!"

Which I mean... I guess it never occurred to me that the audience might be very _into_ the story.

I still think it worked pretty well. Having other people say the stuff that I find particularly difficult to say out loud without giggling or stammering awkwardly certainly made the reading more fun for *me.*  

But the unexpected reaction was just sort of funny.

Hopefully, it all worked, I don't know. Personally, I would not have had *me* go last, but people seem to expect great things from me. (You win one second place Dick....) In all seriousness, the other guests were much more polished and professional than I was and I was super impressed with them all. catherineldf read an amazing bit about being a temp worker in an office full of SUPER HOT vampires, which she delivered with her usual style and grace. Laura Packer performed (and I mean PERFORMED) this spooky, mesmerizing retelling of Snow White, where Snow White is the monster of the story. Tom S. Tea read tentacle porn to DIE for.... and then I bumbled in.  Still, the show was super. I am seriously considering making Not-So-Silent Planet a regular thing next season.

And now it is snowing buckets. 

Oh, and school was cancelled for today. Whee!

Like, who is still FTPing files to their websites any more? OH, THAT WOULD BE ME.

The ways in which I'm still living in the early 1990s astound me. I don't have a smartphone (we even still have a landline), I have no GPS in my car, and I still write my own HTML for my web site. I know my website kind of looks like it's from the early days of the Internet, and that's 100% because it *is.* On the other hand, it's mostly up-to-date as of yesterday. I'm still hunting through various pages trying to find out which links have broken due to time, but it's in better shape than it has been in a couple of years (at least in terms of the information.) I also had to email my ancient provider because literally no one FTPs any more and I could not get a connection, despite having updated six months ago.

So, yeah, that was like something out of Mousenet.

If you go looking at my web page and discover something broken or not working (or horribly misspelled), let me know. I'm trying to get ready for my MiniCON gig (March 30 - April 1).

That's been a lot of today, though earlier I had a doctor's appointment I'd been putting off for some time. Now, I also have to go back for a cholesterol test, mammogram, and the dreaded colonoscopy. ( under the cut for possible TMI )

Tonight was way too much running around. We had Mason's conferences at 3:30pm, which are still these ridiculous student led things. I've complained about these before. They take place in Mason's homeroom, which is a teacher who never sees him, except on Wednesdays. This time, his homeroom teacher looked at Mason's schedule and said, "Chemistry? Why are you in 10th grade chemistry?" Like we would know. The real question is, who decided to advance him in 9th grade to physics? (No one thought this was a bad idea, mind you. But it was still like, "Isn't one of the reason we go to conferences to know the thought processes behind our child's education??")

Then, because it seemed silly to go home, we killed some time at the library in Roseville (where I finally confessed having lost a book), SmashBurger, and then Barnes & Noble. Then, it was back to Washington to listen to the parent conference for the Mason's New York spring break trip with his Chinese class. My big takeaway there is that Mason is going to do a lot of walking... But, I'm sure he'll have fun.

Now I'm tired and want to collapse into bed.

 Hello from 1998 or thereabouts.  No, I'm not actually time traveling, alas, but my computer is. I'm on a super ancient (in computer years) Gateway, which I am using as a stop gap replacement until we can figure out a cheap new laptop for me.  

So what happened to the Mac? I wish I had a story as good as the time I dropped a frozen turkey on my laptop, but, alas, I think what killed my Mac as a combination of age and... abuse. Yes, it fell off something while it was running... But, thing is, I have dropped this particular Mac from the distance of my chair cushion to the floor multiple times and it's survived just fine. This time? Alas, this time it decided "Nope. Peace out."  Can I blame it? Not really. It's lasted far longer than a lot of my computers.  I'm hard on technology, fam. I just am. I drop phones into rivers in South Dakota and I pummel laptops with 24 pound frozen turkeys.

And, until Shawn can do some research into the best, cheapest laptop, I will be without... well, mostly Skype, it seems. Pretty much everything else can still be run from the 1990s. Once I downloaded a more up-to-date version of Chrome, I seemed to be able to  function pretty well on Facebook without freaking out every time I hit a graphic bundle. I have not tried Twitter or Tumblr, both of which might be beyond the capabilities of this machine.  Tumblr, I suspect, will be too graphics-heavy, though, with the new Chrome,, this guy was able to survive the new .gif and video things on Facebook... so maybe?  Not that I've been going to Tumblr much these days, but it is nice to check in now and again.

No Skype is a bummer. But, I'm hoping to have a new laptop before the week is out. 

I lost nothing of consequence, except a bit of the stuff I was trying to do to salvage a trunk novel for my agent who, for reasons known only to her, really wants me to to try to sell another novel to Tapas Media (that place where we sold Sidhe Promised, the app that made you pay as you go).  I had foolishly started working on that in Word.  But, most everything else I do these days I do on Google Docs, so it's automatically saved on the cloud or inside the brains of Google HQ or wherever that stuff goes.  At any rate, it was not ON my computer, per se, and that's good because it means I still have access to all my works-in-progress, even my Loft course proposals.

Yesterday was just bad technology day because Mason couldn't figure out how to get his Nintendo Switch remote charger to work.  (It may just be, we discovered, that Zelda sucks more energy than the charger can recharge, so he might have to just connect to the console or whatever if he wants to keep playing that particular game.)  But, there was a lot of swearing and reading obtuse manuals, etc. 

We also tried to do our usual Skype chat via Skype on Mason's ROG laptop, but Mason has disabled cameras (for reasons of being 14 and cyber savvy) so between that and issues on my folks' end, we had to give that up after a lot of swearing and reading Skype help pages, etc.

I am hoping today will be less technologically stressful. 

The good news is that my needs are low. I like to be able to check a few social media site, read a few on-line articles, and write in Google Docs. I can do all that from here. It's slower and clunkier, but it's very do-able.  I could complain, but why?

 I'm only on-line thanks to a roving xfinity signal and a free one-hour trial offer, and so I figured I'd get as much out of these few moments as I could and tell you about my day-OMG-MY-DAY.  

It started out at oh-f*ck-o'clock, our new start time at Washington Technical. Our internet was acting wonky since we'd gotten home, so I wasn't able to do my morning routines, but as a bonus we got Shawn to work and Mason to school in no time flat.  I decided to go in with Mason to try to sort out a scheduling snafu... this took MUCH longer than it probably should have, considering the result.  But, okay, here's the story in a nutshell:

We were going to be out of town for Washington Technical's Open House and this was only a problem because the Open House was the day that the students picked out their after-school program (which is a mandatory extra hour, but completely elective and ranges from everything from Spanish to Robotics to Swim Team).  So, I called the school to see what we could do to make sure Mason got into something he liked.  I was directed to talk to a counselor who read me the list over the phone and, I was assured, signed Mason up for Robotics.  BUT, lo and behold, when we got to school on the Camp Six day (the practice run for 6th graders going to middle school for the first time), his schedule was completely different--instead of Robotics, he was in "World Languages" which sounded suspiciously like a dumping ground for people who neglected to show up to the Open House.  

SO!  I went in with Mason this morning and first stood in a line only to be told that the person I'd been waiting to talk to couldn't help me because he only dealt with 8th graders and above.  He directed me to an EVEN LONGER LINE to wait to talk to the person in charge of 6th and 7th graders.  Fine, I had nowhere to go, except out for a cup of coffee, so I waited.  When I finally reached that guy, I was told, "Nope.  Too complicated for me, go up to the office."  WHERE THERE WAS ANOTHER queue.  I waited my turn in that line and finally got to talk to a person who ended up saying, "Oh, that?  We corrected it already.  His new schedule has him in ROCKETRY.  Will that be acceptable since Robotics was full?"  I was like, "Yeah, that's fine."  

I treated myself to TWO cups of coffee after that, I tell you.

Good thing I did, too, because dealing with our Clear (now Sprint) people was the next headache and a half.  Very, VERY similarly, I ended up waiting in a lot of "lines" or perhaps "on the line" a lot.  The annoying menu did not give me the option to say, "Yes, I've tried rebooting," so every time I called I had to listen to a Siri-like happy woman's voice telling me how to do the single simplest solution in the history of solutions, possibly in the history of history.  

Fine.

But I went through the whole thing with a Tech Support person again after happy Siri-lady because this person was in some country far, far away.  It may be a stereotype, but if this person was in this country 1) they could not deal with going off script even slightly and 2) they could not deal with *me* going off script even slightly.  WHICH MEANT I HAD TO FLIPPING REBOOT MY WIFI WITH THIS PERSON AGAIN.  Finally, when we were getting somewhere interesting, my phone battery died.

And when the tech guy called back?  He didn't leave a name or an extension, so I had to go through all of it again, except with a completely different Technical Support person.

OMG.

On the other hand, by this point, since my phone was only a tiny-bit recharged I ended up using my walk-around cordless phone only long enough to get through the push-button menu, and then switched to my hard-wired rotary phone.

Yes, that's right, I talked through tech support for my wifi on A ROTARY PHONE.

But, the best part?  Even after all that, they couldn't fix it.  They're sending us another one, which has already shipped (according to AN EMAIL they sent, because, yes, I am the last person on the planet without a smart phone who has no way to get email when, let's see, MY INTERNET IS DOWN.)  

At that point, I picked up Shawn from work and we both lay down for an afternoon nap before going back to pick up Mason.  Mason, meanwhile, had gotten a migraine at school, so he ended up crashing when he got home too.  On the flip side, Washington Technical seems to have spontaneously moved him into an 8th grade math class (he'd already been planning on being in the 7th grade one, so this is an extra bump we weren't entirely expecting.) I'm not completely convinced that Mason is 100% ready for this, so guess what?  I get to try to talk to a counselor tomorrow again, just to check in and hear what their reasoning is.  We'd all be super-happy if they have a good reason, but we don't want Mason to be pushed too far ahead, especially if it were to make him frustrated. 

At least this time I know that Mason's official counselor is Ms. Sanchez and where to find her.  So, that's half the battle apparently.  

Oi vey, what a day.

Last night, I typed my two favorite words in the English language: "The END." Of course, at this stage, the book is really not done in the least. My MVBR (most valuable beta reader), naomikritzer, has yet to read and comment on all the stuff I skimmed over, my embarassingly stupid misspellings, the plot holes, and the bits I blatently left out. Naomi is also wicked awesome at uncovering emotional themes that I didn't entirely realize I had going and giving me ways to bring them more to the surface. So, when she's done, I'll have some work to do.

BUT I can haz a working draft. A book what has a beginning, middle and end. For me, the hardest part is over, as I'm one of those writers who really prefers revision to writing (in some ways. It's at least a place I feel a lot less PRESSURE.)

To be fair to this WiP, however,I actually really enjoyed putting words to the page this time around, thanks, in large part, to my mother's advice to simply "embrace the cheese."

I will have to say, however, that I am never again naming any project with a title that includes the number 13. This book has been totally cursed. This morning, I got frantic email from Naomi telling me that the version I emailed her seemed to end in the middle of a scene. I went back to my computer and it looked like I didn't save all the words I'd written that took the story from that scene to "The END." I started to FREAK. Then, I realized that through some really weird accident, the final version of the book got renamed (of all things) "Maybe." (Explain THAT one, Dr. Freud.)

This was not the first computer weirdness I've had since starting the book. I'm seriously looking on-line for an "uninstal gremlins" button for the Toshiba.

Anyway, that's a big YAY. Shawn looked at me this morning and asked, "So what are you going to do with all your free time?"

For one, I need to start writing up ideas for more book proposals. I also have a short story percoloating in the back of my mind that I'd like to get down on paper for an anthology I was considering submitting to.

So... write, I guess. :-)