Day in the Life of an Idiot

Image: newest quilt, dinosaurs and gold & blue squares.

As I wait for some specialty fabric to arrive for the Star Trek gaming/pride quilt I'm making for sabotabby, I started this weird little baby quilt. I'm not sure about it. Is it too busy? Is the yellow right? Will I probably just finish it because I got this far and damn if those squares of squares weren't a pain in the butt to make?

Regardless, tell me what you think. I mean, if it is a baby quilt, I suppose it's fine to be this chaotic.

And I don't hate it. 

Sometimes, I even like it. 

Thoughts?

At any rate, yesterday was kind of a busy day for me. I ran around doing errands--one of which was buying printer ink. Shawn likes to do her reviewing of my manuscript on paper, so I printed out all of Lesbians in SPAAACE (aka Welcome to Boy.net) for her yesterday. Shawn is my Gamma reader (or whatever comes after Beta).  There will be other readers, most notably my editor, but Shawn will be one of the first to correct for spelling and to alert me to any last minute character/plot/continuity errors. 

So, now that the the book is sort of mostly off my plate (at least for the moment), I've been casting around for things to do. Of course, one of my first priorities is to plot out the next Alex Conner book, which is the next thing due at Wizard's Tower Press. But, in addition to that, I've also been goofing around with making the Thirsty Sword Lesbians mini-campaign I ran into something I could offer up as a kind of module on Drive Thru RPG or itch.io or wherever. That's been entertaining, if only because I could create characters and such all day.

It snowed here in Minnesota. I should probably plan something warm and Sustaining (as Pooh might say) for dinner tonight. 

How's by you?
==========

Addendum. I don't know why I keep having faith in the Internet community. I posted this same picture to Facebook and the MAJORITY of the people there said that they thought it was cute, etc., like you all did here. And, like, it's not that I feel particularly confident about this one, so that was nice to hear. But, the four people out of however many others, who felt the need to tell me how terrible it was... I just... WHY? Two of the four "advice" comments suggested different color arrangements, which is fine, though not helpful advice, really, because this is just my silly hobby. But, the other two who felt the need to point out how sloppily its put together really hurt my feelings. Like, was that necessary? Why would you do that?

I mean I think it comes from a genuine place? Where people who have expertise want to share their knowledge because sewing is something they also love, but I dunno, man, can't you just say, "Hey, nice effort! Glad you're in my fandom!"

The intrnet makes me feel twelve years old sometimes. 

 I have a lot of stuff I should be doing right now. 

I need to finish doing the dishes. Somehow, over the weekend, my family and I managed to make a LOT of dishes. I don't actually understand how that happened, especially since I swear I didn't skip doing the dishes at any point. Among the other household chores that need doing, I could also add: a load of laundry and taking out the recycling bags that have also mystical multiplied since the last time I took them out, which I would have SWORE was Friday (maybe we just recycle THAT much??)

I need to put more skim coats on the steps. Today is really the day to do that, too, since there's even more rain in the forecast after tomorrow. But, it's annoying work and I don't want to.

I need to be working on Unjust Cause, but I having one of those moments where I feel like, even though it's not quite yet noon, somehow the entire day is over and I might as well give up on everything. 

When my family has a huge to-do list, we always end it with the phrase, "and learn Sanskrit." This actually came out of Shawn's graduate school years. She was in the history of science program at the University of Minnesota. Shawn, who ended up writing a masters thesis on Sir Isaac Newton, maybe, was actually far more interested in ancient sciences and so was forever lamenting that she needed to learn Sanskrit. Since that never got done, it remains on the "to-do" list in perpetuity. And, has become one of those things you say when what you're really feeling is overwhelmed with all the things you need to do, but don't really want to do ANY of them for no particularly good reason.

So, that's me, today.

I got a late start today because I met up with a former student from one of my Loft classes who paid me to critique his short story. It was a lovely get-together, though it started in a very Monday-like fashion, wherein, I ordered a breakfast burrito and promptly dumped the salsa on my jeans. On the flip side, I wandered into the MN Book Arts store and bought several lovely cards that I intend to use to write letters to my various pen pals. I am always on the look out, very specifically, for unique and pretty images of Minneapolis/St. Paul and/or Minnesota, in general. I guess I figure that if I were a foreign correspondent, as it were, I would love getting images of the place that the person who is writing me is FROM. But, I also have a ton of cards that I've picked up at various estate sales that don't fit that bill... in fact, some are down right "vintage." 

Speaking of vintage, yesterday Shawn and I went thrift store shopping after dropping Mason off at work at the Science Museum. I found a Japanese language book at Good Will and Shawn picked up a number of household items including replacement wine glasses for those I have broken over the months. After Good Will, I talked her into trying out Magic Noodle, which is a new fresh noodle joint on University. Shawn was very resistant at first, because it kind of looks like a dive. But, the noodles are insanely good as was everything--but especially the garlic edamame (which seems to maybe have been infused with garlic oil somehow?? SO GOOD.) 



The cool thing is that you can watch them hand-pulling the noodles. The guy is behind a glass plate and so somehow I managed to get a weird flash across his eyes which looks like I intentionally intended to protect his identity. Which, I mean, other people were talking pictures, but I do feel strange about posting pictures of people I don't know, so this odd phenomenon makes me feel a bit better about it:



It was a fun experience and amazing food all around. Highly recommend. 

Fandom and Life, I should say.

First of all, I had to watch all of "Free!" or, as a lot of people refer to it, "the swimming Anime." I have to say? Free! is kind of awesome. It's possibly the gayest show I've ever watched, as I'm not sure how any of the plot make sense if you think those boys are straight. However, I recommend it without reservations. You could show it to your kids, honestly. The guys in the show read gay, but they don't do anything other than get *really* sad when one of them leaves for Australia to make me say that.

The other thing I've been doing with my life is trying to figure out the whole podcasting thing. I've got a bunch of material recorded, and now I have to sit down and edit it. I have been a little afraid to do that, honestly, but it's time to jump in and give it a go.

I also wrote a short story. As I just posted to Facebook, some day I hope to write a short story that doesn't "feel like the beginning of a novel."

Ah, well. It does have an end and I'm going to see if any short story publishers are fooled into thinking it's NOT the beginning of a novel. ;-)

Yeah, that's been my life. I need to go pick up Mason now, but I realized that I hadn't posted anything here in nearly a month.