At long last

Here's one of the family pictures we had taken at Christmas. I got the prints from Mom last week, and it was just today that I finally got to the store to have copies made to share and have them put on CD.

I have a busy day tomorrow and may not be back for a week. Y'all behave yourselves while I'm off in the 18th century!

Heading toward subarctic

It's 15* here with a wind chill of -5, but that's not the cold I'm concerned about. The thermostat on our (not even three year old) refrigerator has gone haywire, and food is starting to freeze. We've turned it off and left the door open for a few minutes at a time to try to get it back up to where it should be. Of course, it's a three day weekend, and I'm gone for a week. All I can do is get out the paperwork, hope it's under warranty, and let Eric deal with it.

This still doesn't make up for when the car died in Italy while he was away at a class.

Need a laugh?

Click here. Eric sent me this link today, and I've been giggling all afternoon. Enjoy!

Count down to Monday!

When was the last time you looked forward to Monday? I can't remember when I last did. This Monday I'm heading south to rendezvous with Dad. Believe it or not, I finished my sewing last week. I couldn't find the cap I bought last year, so I decided to make one. I also made a set of proper stays*. I had new lenses put into 18th century replica frames last year, too, so I'm in good shape. I made Vicky take a picture of me, but I should also have had her take one without the short gown** to show the stays. (Scandalous!)



I'm not terribly pleased with how the cap came out, but it's not as bad as I thought it was. Seeing the picture is different from seeing it in the mirror. Lucky for me, I went looking for something else and found my cap from last year, so I don't have to wear this one all week!

I need to remember to pack the camera this year so I can get more pictures. I need to dig out my jewelry, too. Time to go find my list.


*Stays evolved into corsets, which evolved into the modern bra. The sillouhette of 18th century costumes is all wrong with modern undergarments, and believe it or not, the stays are darn comfy!

**The short gown is the jacket. Back then, I'm not sure they had 'jackets.' Women wore gowns or robes, men had coats.

good writing day

I got a bit of a late start this morning. It was cold, and I didn't particularly want to get out of bed. Since I didn't have much of a choice in the matter, I got up, got everybody out of the house, and then brought my coffee back upstairs and curled up in bed to read for a while. It was going on 9:00 when I sat down to do my morning pages. I finished them faster than usual, and since I was on a roll I talked out the current plot that's giving me fits. In case I haven't mentioned it before, I really love the new version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I was able to untangle the plot while simultaneously leading Ryan on a wild goose chase with a laser pointer. The cold weather is making him froggy.

All total, I worked a little over two hours and got 3566 words. Almost half of that was on the story itself. I've been trying to come up with a working title other than the main character's first name. For the time being, it's "Collateral Casualties." I'm sure it will change three times before I find an agent. :-)

Wow!

A few weeks ago, I read the beginning chapters of "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron. She details the process she used to increase her productivity as a writer, but it's aimed at artists in general. I had no idea painters and sculptors could get blocked, too.

Her first assignment is to begin daily morning pages. They're supposed to be three long-hand pages of free writing, done every day, first thing in the morning. I did them long-hand to begin with, but I can't write that much at a sitting. Too much typing can cause a tendinitis flare-up, and writing long-hand for any length of time is almost torture. It's a challenge for me to write a personal letter, let alone three pages. I started doing them with Dragon and it's gone much better. I've been doing them steadily for two weeks now, and because I'm doing the word count challenge with Forward Motion I've been counting them for my words and time. I almost fell over when I recorded my pages this morning. Here are my mid-month stats:

Word count goal as of today: 7,560
Time goal as of today: 420 minutes

Words on the book (not morning pages or other stuff): 7,257
Time on the book: 309 minutes

Total word count: 17,523
Total time: 629 minutes

Analysis might look like I'm using the morning pages to bulk up my word count. However, last January I did 4,535 words and 447 minutes total. I didn't break 7,000 words in a month until April. The fact that I'm only 300 words from my goal just on the book is remarkable. I'd call this progress.

I guess I'd better finish reading that book.