Not enough brain cells left for a pithy title

Working on the movie and book posts for last month. Working on something I hope will end with good news. Waiting on something else I also hope will end with good news. Mostly working on work though, which is not so much with the good news. You know what I need? I need to see that hypnotherapist from Office Space. Life would be so much easier if I just didn't care so much about my job...

Some Cool Stuff I've Seen

I had a few days off of work before the Fourth, and aside from going to parties where I either knew no one or knew everyone but they were fundamentalists and I feared to open my mouth unless something horrifically pagan should just come flying out of it, I did do some cool stuff. Like take the boys to the beach. Although either the water level is really low this year or they moved the ropes in at Medicine Lake; even Oliver couldn't get in deeper than his hips, so I didn't bother trying to swim. I did bring a notebook with me and got a bit of writing done

(Mostly outlining. My original stab at MITWA ran aground. Someday I'll admit I'm not a pantser and stop trying to just plunge in and find my way. I carried that same notebook around all week, except to the parties. Because not even I am that socially retarded. Outlining has got me excited about the story again, which is good news. I hope to be at the point where I can start writing from word 0 again soon.)

We also took the boys to see the Star Wars exhibit at the Science Museum, which was cool. Now the previous museum exhibit I had seen for Star Wars was at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and focused on the folklore and mythological roots of Star Wars. Star Wars succeeds much better at being folklore than science fiction, and that prior exhibit was a better one, but that was when my firstborn was a wee babe and the second not yet a thought, so they never saw it (although I bought a stack of books at the MIA bookstore about Star Wars and myth, which they've paged through a million times).

This exhibit had props from all six movies plus little video segments with the special effects guys talking about how they designed the ships, etc. plus some more peripherally related segments about city design (tying in to Coruscant) or exploring the Arctic and Antarctic (Hoth, natch). Even cooler were the experiment stations where the boys got to try to build a mag-lev train and get it to work in increasingly more complex ways (loosely connected to Landspeeders), or to try to build robots that could stand on its own legs on flat ground or a slope, or build and program a more complex robot to navigate mazes. We spent a couple of hours there; it was very cool (although the more peripheral it was to Star Wars the more interesting I found it. Perhaps this is because at this point there is not much I don't already know about those movies).

Also Natalie Portman is teeny tiny. They had one of her costumes up on display and I'm quite certain I could fit her in my pocket. Samuel L. Jackson is pretty tall, though.

The other cool thing we did with the boys was take them to see the new Pixar movie WALL-E. Pixar doesn't make bad films (they are second only to Hayao Miyazaki in my book), so if this one wasn't as good as THE INCREDIBLES, it's still better than most other animated films. I particularly liked the robot EVE; she was a grumpy bitch blasting away at things which annoyed her and then quietly fuming. You don't get much of that in movie love interests, you know?

So anyway, June book and movie posts still to come, but this writing thing has me pleasantly distracted (so much nicer than being distracted by day job overtime, let me tell you).

After a week of parties, I think I'm in touch with this emotion:

Cordelia (at her party): Hi! Are you having fun?
Angel: Sure. This is, ah...
Cordelia: Your idea of hell?
Angel: Actually, in hell you tend to know a lot of the people.

I think I've finished my spouse-placating social activities for the rest of the year. My next week off is going to be just about writing, I swear...

So, we had some hail on Saturday

It was thick as snow on the ground, and the whole neighborhood smelled of wounded trees. Both of our cars got dinged up, not to mention the house (the insurance guys will be looking it all over later this week).

Thick as snow:


Rather freakin' huge:

And did quite a number on the leaves in our whole neighborhood (and a few trees lost whole limbs). Then everything started steaming:

By the time I got home it was sunset, and when I went out back to survey the damage to my garden (*sob*) it was very foggy. (Quin took these pictures shortly after the hail stopped, when it was just a touch foggy. I should have taken some pictures of my own, the light was really cool when I was walking back there).

So I'll have to go back to the garden store and buy more plants. My tomatoes and peppers are a wash, although some of the more expensive perennials I had just put in the ground seem like they might make it.

The hostas got pulped pretty good, and it looks like my rosemary plant jumped straight out of its pot:

RIP Mr. Eko

As it turns out, goldfish aren't good for frogs:



We have two left who are still swimming about, but one is moving pretty sluggish. I don't think the odds are good. They'll probably all be dead before our preying mantis egg sac hatches.

Here's a nicer pic: my boys working together on a puzzle book without bickering. A rare, rare moment:

Man!

Worked a bunch of overtime. Didn't even quite get that nice pay check in my hands before I had cause to spend it. Our oldest cat almost cacked last week. Many expensive little adjustments later he is doing much better (even bathing himself; he hasn't done that in months!). But he will be on thyroid medicine for the rest of his days and the vet recommended he only eat soft food (so he has to be separated from the others when he eats, because they have no qualms about knocking an old man aside and taking his tasty gravy-soaked meal).

I spent every spare minute I could find last week polishing up an old piece so I could have something to send to Writers of the Future by the 03/31 deadline. Then Monday came with lots and lots of sticky wet snow. I waited for my husband to get home from work with the car then tore off to the post office. But too late; I missed the last pick up of the night and my entry will have a 4/01 postmark. *sigh*. Well at least I have a nicely polished story already in for next quarter.

I have half-finished book and movie posts for March I'll be getting to soon, plus another about homeschooling and Heinlein. So hopefully that means you'll be hearing from me a bit more in April than in the last few months. Hopefully.

On an unrelated note, apparently African frogs don't like goldfish. Or more correctly, they like them a touch too much. (File under things which weren't my idea. My husband thought the tank would stay cleaner with goldfish in it. I was dubious, more animals would surely mean more mess not less, but since the first fish looked like this the morning after we put him in the tank, and the second fish got it on day 2, we'll never know...)

Which reminds me, I never did get that video clip online*

Trying to break into the world of writing can be a drag. You will be rejected a lot. Even if you are good, if your piece isn't quite right for the publication, you will be rejected. It comes with a territory and you either grow a tough skin or stop submitting (sadly I've known a few good writers we have taken the second option).

The one thing I always say to myself when I file away yet another "I really liked this, but..." rejection: at least I'm not an actor. I didn't have to actually be there when the editor read it, and I didn't have to endure a face-to-face rejection. Because it's the same thing: you could be good but just not quite right for the part, but rejection always stings. Man, actors have a tough fight.

So I'm really pleased that an old friend of mine who went to Hong Kong to pursue his acting dream is getting his first little taste of success:





The sound guy with the boom mic and the earphones on is my old kung fu compatriot Pete Wong. Being in a commercial is like the short story sale of the acting world, it let's you take the "aspiring" off your self-descriptor. Hooray for Pete!

*The final diagnosis was the PC was just too slow to handle the video; it was glitchy when I got it to work at all. But it occurs to me this shiny new laptop of mine has a DVD burner. Might be worth investigating how that will work. Then I could show you some sweet kung fu...

Updating this and that

If you're reading this from Myspace, perhaps you've already noticed my spiffy new layout with the red and the snowflakes. (I really like it, actually. I've been viewing my profile all day just to admire it.) The website is still a mountain of ugly. The text is very nice, I think; I wrote it myself. Then again I put the website together myself as well. It's abundantly clear I'm more of a text person than a visual person. As soon as I stumble across some extra cash, I'm totally paying someone to pretty up that website.

The other item of business was the picture of me that's on everything. You know, the one my mother hates. I have no good pictures of me anywhere, and having my husband take another one will probably net the same results as last time. So, having no other recourse, I did the camera-at-arm's-length thing. Not a particularly fun afternoon. I hate getting my picture taken; it seems I hate it more when I'm also the one taking the picture. I'm not sure if I got anything that's an improvement. So I'm putting it up to a vote.

Here is the best one from outside:

Which I kind of like. It's like I'm thinking about how incredibly tall I am, I can squash you like a bug. (Or something. It's been a long day.)

Here's the best one I tried taking inside:

Mostly I just look really pale.

I do have a good one that keeps turning up when I scrolling through My Pictures picking shots. Sadly it's not me, it's Malaika Arora Khan, just something left over from the desktop wallpaper wars (that when on so much longer than Gary Coleman and J. Lo, believe me). I probably can't use it, I suppose:

Back from the Zombieland that was the month of December

Someday I'll have a job like my husband's, where they strongly urge you to take the week between Christmas and New Years off since no one else is working anyway there is no reason for you to be there. In the meantime, I'm still in the world of health care where the only day I had off was Christmas itself (because that would mean paying double time), a day spent in a stupor watching my boys assemble some freaking huge Lego sets. Like a cargo ship and a pier with a crane to load 'er up.

So I'm still in the recovery phase. On the bright side, the health care holiday work load is still nothing compared to retail holiday work load.

I'm not even remotely going to try to catch up on two months' worth of news and books and such. I even abandoned my Heinlein marathon. Two words: Glory Road. Three more words: Pissed me off. It's one thing for a guy to threaten a woman with a spanking if she doesn't stop try to tell him very important information. It's quite another thing for this woman, the ruler of 20 galaxies or some such, to actually shut up and go all meek and "of course you're right". The fact that she had to have her ovaries harvested to stop her monthly cycle before she could become ruler, because clearly she would go nuts 3 days out of the month and be totally unprofressional, you know like all women do, am I right guys? That really pissed me off. But the part where one Heinlein woman tells another that a man who wants to sleep with you is paying you the most sincere compliment a man can pay a woman? That was just funny. So I took a break and read His Dark Materials instead, just so I could stop putting my hands over my ears and humming real loud to avoid spoilers, virtually impossible when there's a theatrical release involved. (I would highly recommend those books, except I'm pretty sure I'm the last person to read them, so that would be redundant).

We did finally figure out how many frogs we had in our tank when Spike shattered it on the floor 2 a.m. Christmas morning. The instructions that came with the tadpoles (you know, the ones that assured us we'd be lucky to see one make it all the way to adulthood) recommended not putting them in a tank with a filter, so they'd been living in a slimy green and orange cloud for weeks. People who came over were invited to nudge the rock they hid under and guess how many little critters were stirring up the murk.

As it turns out, we have six, five little ones and one big fella. (And we went to Petsmart and dropped a chunk of Christmas bonus on a tank with a filter and a pagoda, because clearly nothing is going to kill these frogs, not even a cat who took hours to come out of the laundry room ceiling, he was so freaked out by what he had done). I named the big guy Mr. Eko. Not Mr. Echo from the Young Ones bit, but Mr. Eko:

'Cause all I did in December was work and watch TV (that's pretty much my definition of zombie), namely Lost Season 3, which I got for my birthday.

Today was officially back to school day, but the elder fell mysteriously ill. Quin says it was because I laughed and showed them all this blog entry, but that couldn't possibly be it, could it? So he spent all day in bed and I just schooled the one. (Quin called it our soft opening, because after we were done with Lost we watched Ocean's 13). It was actually kind of nice; Oliver is transitioning from first grade to math to second grade and we decided to celebrate by having him start formally learning spelling. Which might not sound like a celebration to you, but then you don't desperately want to write but are self-conscious about your lack of spelling skills, do you?

Dinner beckons. But I promise to get back to an every-couple-days kind of schedule. And who knows? Maybe I'll even write some fiction...

What's so magical about 4 a.m.?

I don't know, but for some reason I just have to be awake every morning at 4 a.m. and lie there for an hour and a half. The spiders are growing, although I don't really worry until they get the size of cats. But then again, when I was driving to the library the other night I kept seeing the wings and talons of a dragon in my rearview mirror, so perhaps the spiders are no longer my best clue that things have gotten bad.

No, I don't do sleep deprivation well at all. I did take next week off of work to try to get myself straightened out. Sort of. It's terribly inconvenient to people in two countries when I'm not there working, and the best I could do was an agreement that they would put me down as off but if they need me they'll call and I'll get on and work. There's a pretty big downside to being as fast as two normal people; it's impossible to get away guilt-free ever.

I had entertained the notion of getting some writing done if I did manage a work-free night or two, but at this point I'd settle for catching up on sleep. I do have plans for at least one night, though. As Aidan gleefully informed me, Avatar season 3 starts on Tuesday, and now that I won't be working next week I can watch it with them rather than recording the episode and catching up on it later. Wu ha! They just better not call me until 7:30 on Tuesday. Say it with me "I'm sorry; my husband must have been on the other line and didn't click over. I only just got your message." What? I need the break! Plus, it's Avatar season 3.

Watch me try to tie this into Heinlein

So I've decided to go ahead and tackle those Heinlein novels. I've read some of his later stuff, but now I'm going through it all in chronological order. My husband is a big Heinlein fan. Back when we were just friends ("just friends" here means only one of us was crushing badly over the other. The other was bragging to his friends how cool it was to be platonic friends with a girl. I only occasionally rub his nose in that), we used to trade books to read. To start, I had him read The Power of Myth, and he gave me Stranger in a Strange Land. So that was the first Heinlein I read. We've discussed Heinlein's open relationships and lack of sexual jealousy back when we were "just friends" and again when we were married (we never really did date properly), and more recently as it came up again when I was reading For Us, The Living. I think it's a nice enough idea but totally unworkable for most humans, and the idea that people who are "more evolved" can handle it I find a bit repulsive. (And don't even get me started on the idea that everyone should be nude all the time. I have a prudish streak embedded in my DNA, this is true, but just speaking purely physiologically, I could not be naked all the time. 'nuff said).

My husband will say he is more in line with Heinlein's thinking than I am, but between you and me he really isn't. He did admit when I first read the book and came back to talk to him about it that on his first time through when he was a teenager, when he reached the scene with Michael and Jill and the circus performer he actually threw the book away. He didn't read it all the way through until he had left home (and more thoroughly discarded his fundamentalist upbringing). But it is his favorite book of all-time, and his cat is named Valentine for Valentine Michael Smith.

But he's not as "evolved" as these Heinlein characters. Now, it's entirely possible I've been having a bit too much fun at his expense of late. He caught me watching the movie No Entry while in my office the other day. I wasn't really watching it, it was on in the background for noise, but I saw his jaw drop in mid sentence and glanced over at the screen. It was this scene, with Salman Khan comes up out of the water, shirtless natch. Now, for my money he's much hotter when he gets out of the car at the hotel, wearing a shirt and a jacket, but Quin was so appalled I just had to rib him a little.

"I know, it's like looking directly into the sun, isn't it?" I said.

"That's so not what I was thinking. Good god, those are tiny shorts," he said. You should've seen his face.

So that night we sat down to watch Salaam-e-Ishq, which I was supposed to wait to watch with him because it has Govinda in it. It's an ensemble modeled after Love Actually (only it's nearly four hours long). We were about 30 minutes into it before Salman Khan turned up, and Quin actually pegged me in the head with a papertowel.

"You didn't tell me he was in this!"

"Yes, I did! Look, he's on the box and everything."

Then the DVD glitched halfway through (ironically enough just when Salman had taken his shirt off) and I have to wait for my replacement copy to get here before I can see how it all ends. Now we're watching Baadshah instead, a Shah Rukh Khan movie. He's fun too. He reminds Quin of Jerry Lewis from the old Martin and Lewis days. I get more of a Michael Jackson feel from him, but maybe that's just because he likes to sing and dance while he's chasing women down the street.

So you'd think that would be the end of it, but no. I woke up this morning and my desktop had been changed from this:

To this:

I haven't said a word. I did sneak over to his side of the computer and change his picture of airplanes to this:
Only because I couldn't find one where she was showing off her butt. I was looking to change mine anyway. I like darker colors on a desktop. This shouldn't offend, I don't think:

I wrote 3700 words yesterday...

...and looking them over this morning they mostly don't suck, so that's good. I celebrated with lots of dancing. Since it's been so unremittently hot I've given up treading the mill for the last few weeks, but what with all the dancing I've actually dropped a few more pounds (well, that and the lack of appetite I always get when it's just too hot). Oliver likes to dance with me, but Aidan finds it distracts him from reading the subtitles. He's trying to work out which Hindi words mean what in English. I guess he must be my kid after all.

You know, George Lucas has talked about watching Akira Kurosawa films before making Star Wars, and how he loved all the little rituals and things that a Japanese viewer wouldn't need explained, but as an American you don't know what it means but it surely means something. He was going for that effect in his first three films, that sense that this or that gesture meant something specific but didn't feel like he needed to explain it all. (Two problems with the second trilogy: he lost the sense of fun and he started explaining stuff instead of going for that sense of it all being foreign and cool. Mitichlorians, anyone?).

I only mention this because Salman Khan is in a Hollywood movie about Bollywood movies coming out next Friday called Marigold, and while I'll surely go see it, it looks from the preview that they missed that crucial fun element. It looks like it's going to be all explainy about what makes Bollywood great instead of just being a great Bollywood movie. (Like Moulin Rouge, which was essentially an English language Bollywood movie, and tons of fun. Baz Luhrman, where did you go?) Plus the MC seems like she really belongs in the movie Braatz. Personally, I'd rather see the new one he's doing with Govinda called Partner that just came out in India, but it'll probably be a year before it makes it to DVD here. Sigh. At least there's always You Tube.

Brief Notes

So this week is our homeschool vacation week, the only time I get these days to write. I'm not making any goals to finish anything, though. I'm standing on shifting sands employment-wise, which is making me panicky. Quin's career is taking off now, but it's not the meteoric rise we'd need to get by on one income, and it would be hard for me to find another work-from-home nights and weekends thing which is necessary for the homeschooling, especially as Quin sometimes has to go out of town overnight with almost no notice. I couldn't really do the overnight shift at the Red Cross again unless I was constantly calling in sick or something. I might have to work my way through less and less savory transcription employment (working for services, ugh, and just until they outsource out of country or replace humans with computers). I hope to milk out another six years. Ten would be nice. I could always go back to being a lab tech, although at this point it would be a huge drop in pay. I've gotten spoiled on this pay for productivity thing; it's easy to forget that most jobs you can't get more cash just by working harder and faster.

It's hard not to have the "what if I did this for a living?" fantasy about the writing, but I don't really find that to be a healthy influence; in fact the quality of the work suffers when I'm in any way thinking of who would ever want to buy it when I'm done. It's just not good for the writing to be looking at the WIP like it's a potential Powerball ticket where I can skew the odds if I just write really, really well. Because nothing can ever be brilliant enough for that, and it's leaving me quite dejected. So I've had to get my head straight and just focus on the craft again and not worry about whether or not it will sell. I haven't written any actual words for it in over a month, but I've come up with back stories on secondary characters I need to add to the second half, and also a sense of some other things which are missing. I'm focused to work now, but I'm not quite as joyful as I usually am when I write. Maybe I'll find the joy when I get in the zone.

On a totally unrelated note, Quin's company picnic is this Wednesday, and he's very excited for me to go. I don't go to any of my work's functions; since I work from home the only people I actually know are the other transcriptionists, with whom I have almost nothing in common, so there's very little point (plus, I just hate parties). Since Quin works for an engineering firm, his coworkers are all just like the guys I hung out with in high school, so that's cool for me (it's still a party, but a tolerable party). Quin is particularly anxious for me to go this time since he can dump me with his Indian coworker who has been lending me all of her Bollywood movies (almost all of which I went on to buy my own copies; those movies have an insanely high rewatch factor. I've had Hum Aapke Hain Koun on in the background while I've been working or doing whatever. I've only had it for two weeks but I've played it about 20 times. It's my favorite). Quin's not only been carrying these movies back and forth, but I have him ask her questions about what this or that means, or what other movies with the same actors are good. Then this became "Ask her which one she likes better, Aamir Khan or Salman Khan?" She says Aamir Khan, because Salman Khan has pictures taken with his shirt off and that's just so inappropriate in India. "Well, inappropriate photos aside, I like him in the movies. He's got this dorky-funny thing going on. He reminds me of a Hayao Miyizaki character, that big-hearted, opposite-of-cool vibe is just so... cool." Well, she says you may like Salman Khan now, but that's just because you've never seen Shah Ruh Khan. She doesn't have any of his, but here's a list of titles (none of which are here yet, so I still haven't seen Shah Ruh Khan). I don't know why he wants to get out of the middle of this fascinating conversation. I can't imagine a bunch of engineers giving him crap for discussing which actor is the cutest in this or that musical. Oh, wait...

Squirrels

They're so cute when they're helping themselves to your stale pita bread...



But then they do this to your (admittedly cheap) patio furniture...

I think there's a man-eating squirrel lurking just out of sight in my backyard.

This and that

Mostly links here.

First off, check out the latest issue of Fusion Fragment, which features a certain "My Bonny" by a certain J.F. Peterson, a fine tale from one of my favorite writers. This story came from the same Backspace contest as my own "Tale of a Fox". It's always cool how the same set of parameters can lead to such varied works.

This is why Ursula K. LeGuin rocks. The whole review Ruth Franklin did of Chabon's book is full of chuckletastic quotes like the one that set LeGuin off. Frankly I stopped being bothered by this "genre is crap" rhetoric some time ago. I just like to point it out and mock it.

And posts like this are why I love John Scalzi. (Someone in his comments linked to this Gandhi quote, and on days like today I can totally agree with him. But then I would, because apparently I am Gandhi).

(You can see the incident Scalzi is referencing on YouTube here. I find it just sad and upsetting. Actually I find most of CSPAN sad and upsetting, except their coverage of British parliament, which is fun and engaging, although the fact that none of what they're saying is going to directly affect me could be a contributing factor there).

Here's something more on the fun side: a clip from Boondocks. I'm anxiously awaiting season 2 on this show; it's funny but unlike most of Adult Swim it's gorgeously animated. The reflections on the hospital floor, the detail on every person in a crowd scene, Huey's anime daydreams; it's all good. And I love these two characters, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and Charlie Murphy:

Who reads this blog?

It's been a while since I checked in with my StatCounter (and I totally promise I am going to get some writing done today!). Myspace I like for having the little counter box right there in the corner, very convenient for obsessives. However, it doesn't tell you who stopped by or what they were looking for. I have StatCounter on my blogspot blog, so I do get that information. However, it's not particularly enlightening, is it?



All spanking, all the time. With just a hint of basketball (and the basketball searches are usually from Germany or Sweden. Actually, so is a lot of the spanking). (Hey, dude from Germany, if you find that Marko Jaric wallpaper, send me the link!)

I'm fairly certain the "Kate's blog" searches are looking for Kate Moss...

I've only just started getting stats on my website from Google Webmaster, and while it's not gotten very many hits, at least the hits in question have been for "Kate MacLeod", "Seagull and Raven", and "Fantastical Visions V". Those are probably relevant (although I hate the website in question. Now that I have the laptop paid for I'm going to start hoarding cash to pay someone to make my website look all spiffy. Me alone with Website Tonight just doesn't cut it).