A Twist of Things to Come

At work, we are in "closeout mode" which means there is not a lot of work coming in, but we have to work fast on what's there.

I am going into the office tomorrow, for various reasons. One is to pick up my first check! :D Who knows? Maybe I'll even get my name badge/security pass. That would be nice.

***

I'm having a bit of the famous post fic drop for my passive-aggressively homicidal math major in love story, Emergency Chocolate, but the cool thing is I got some nice comments and things on it today, which helps. I don't often have a story come to me like that, in a rush. Complete with a fairly clear idea of who a character is and all -- at least not and have it be that short. Like, really short story sized.

But it gives me hope. I think I will make something every year, like this. Something nice, and give it away. :)

Next year I hope it's a video. :D

***

The win for Best Song has had me listening to the Muppet soundtrack on YouTube. This one has been good for my mood. Though it wasn't the Oscar-winner, all the songs were written by Bret McKenzie, and they're awesome.



I think I'm going to need to buy that soundtrack.

***

MMmm. Baked chicken, mashed potatoes and strawberries with a sprinkling of powdered sugar for dessert. Life is pretty good.

I have been doing stuff, and not really feeling up to posting.

One of the things I have been doing is transcribing a mondo interview with Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who write as James S. A. Corey. The first book of their new trilogy, LeviathanWakes, is coming out this month from Orbit.

I interviewed them, like, months ago. I had intended to record it via Skype, but they didn't want to be on video. So I recorded the audio and had to transcribe it. I suck at transcription. That is part of why I didn't post for a few days. I was a) transcribing and b)trying to sleep off transcription-induced migraines. :P

So, finishing the transcription of the interview is Thing Eleven. WOOT!

***

Thing Ten was a lovely trip to the Hong Kong Market. It is an Asian grocery and collection of Asian food places that bought out the old Wall-Mart building on the West Bank. If you live in New Orleans, the West Bank is like Siberia -- stray too far and you might end up eating your dogs. But really, my oldest's orthodontist is over there. He had an appointment, so we packed everyone up with the intention of going to the Asian market after the appointment.

( Pictures and such below the cut )

Thing Nine wasn't really anything. I was proud of myself for going to gym and for opening up the file to start the transcription, but I ended up with a headache with nausea (which narniadear informs me is a migraine -- I had thought I'd had migraines before, when I was on the pill. Horrible light sensitivity and sort of ripples in my vision, couldn't do anything but lie there and twitch. Those went away when I gave up hormonal birth control for good, but I guess all migraines are not created equal.)

In any case, just getting to spend a little quiet time with my family was so delicious after all that. I couldn't do my bedtime reading with the boys (we're reading LOTR), but the hubby read. I got to sit in the dark and listen, and it was very good. :)

I've had a full day already and it's just past lunchtime. O_O

First, I walked to the coffee shop to meet my friend Andrina (a usual Thursday thing). We had some fruit tea and a chat.

Went home and set back out on a bike ride with the hubby. We went on the levee, which was a first for me.

But that's not my Thing. My Thing for today is that it was the first time I've ever ridden my bike somewhere for lunch. Back in Georgia, I'd go to the bike trail and ride 30 miles, but it just wasn't safe to ride on the streets. People routinely rode their bikes on the sidewalks, and no one got ticketed for it. The cops knew it was a self-preservation thing.

So, biking has always been recreational for me, not actual transport. In New Orleans, this is no longer the case.

( Photographic Evidence )

I loved the excursion so much that we spent lunch talking about how to trick out my bike for doing the food shopping and the like. The weather is about to get unpleasantly warm, but early morning and late evening rides will still be doable for most of the summer. It will only be rare mornings when heat stroke will be a risk (though midday heat stroke risk is fairly high by June).

***

I had to do my Thing early, because one of my NOLA writing groups has a meeting tonight with a guest speaker (a local literary agent), and I'm driving a carpool. :P That's also a new thing for me - driving a group to Mid City.

I feel as though I have become Action/Adventure Olivia.

Today, I made turtle brownies:



I have been threatening to do this for weeks, but I finally managed it. Also, so as not to feel a completely horrible mother, I cooked a great dinner, too. The Turtle brownies were served with ice cream for afters. ;)
( More pictures of food below the cut. )

We had talked about going to the Fake Jazzfest as extras for Treme, but didn't in the end because it was chilly (63*F in New Orleans in MAY? What the HECK?) and I had gastric distress of a kind best not mentioned.

***

Instead we stayed in and my hubby tried to school me in music, which is kind of funny. See, I've had more music classes than he has, but he can pick out any tune, by ear, on mismatched spoons or a rusted garden gate. His ear is supernatural. And there he was, basically trying to teach me to play a simple jug band sort of tune by feel. I really sucked at it, but it's going to make a great Thing for later in the week.

Then he curled up with me and we watched "Game of Thrones" (what there is of it so far) and he said he would be interested in watching the rest with me. It is a big deal when he likes something from television enough to watch it. Period. I mean, he won't watch Doctor Who or any of my crime shows, and he was underwhelmed by Sherlock. (!) We have been re-watching Farscape with the boys, though. It's been long enough that the re-watch is particularly fun, and it's a nice follow-up to the Firefly re-watch last fall.

***

Oh, and if you're enjoying my Things, you should check out narniadear's and new participant *waves* goody_scrivener's Things, too.

So, I went out with my friend Mer and her friend with the Aspie-ish little girl. We went to a place called Cafe Atchafalaya, which was a tastegasm of epic proportions. I had the pan-roasted chicken with market vegetable, mashed potatoes, shiitake mushroom cognac cream sauce. It took most of my will power to not lick the plate. The bartender made us special fresh ginger martinis, and comped us a round. It was lovely.

They had live music with an as yet unnamed band (standing base, lead guitar, and computer-generated drums/electronica riffs and a fabulous singer the likes of which one finds with uncommon frequency in New Orleans). They were kind of a soul/electronica fusion, a really wonderful and unique sound. Mer talked with them and found that they had only been together two months and had not yet decided on a name. We tipsily handed over our emails for a mailing list for their band news, and made another sheet that was all crazy band names.

Now, several weeks ago, I posted a link to feminist LDS article, and one of my friends (a somewhat strident atheist) posted a comment remarking that "religion is a pernicious mindfuck." I replied that "Pernicious Mind Fuck" was a great name for a band. Somehow that ended up on the list, even though I insisted that it shouldn't be because it would limit their marketing options because of the F word. Anyway, that was the one on the list that the band seemed most enamored with. Even though it would be cool to have named this awesome band, I hope they settle on something else.

The owner hugged us all when we left (and the place was packed - people wedged in every which way). Even though I spent more than I intended (we ended up dividing the tab in thirds, so J and I subsidized Mer's bill a bit, but she totally earned it *g*) it was a blast and worth it. Besides, there is a tax return wending its way to us, and it wasn't that much if you think of it as my eating-out budget for a week or so.

It was also walking distance from Mer's house, so no parking issues. It was just lovely all around, with people greeting us from their porches as we passed.

****

Back at Mer's, she showed me the Siren site at Bookstrand with a list of their submission requirements. Now, I still want to sell (non-erotica) books to 'real' publishers, but I do have a knack for writing the sexy stuff. It's not difficult, really, and I enjoy it. It's less work than my 'real' writing, and the pricing structure for royalties with Siren and other mainly ebook publishers is surprisingly generous. The minimum submission length is 20,000 words, which I can easily pound out and edit in a month.

Also, I need money, and there are worse ways to make it than spewing forth with wank fodder. I can't get hired at food service and retail jobs because of my education, and I really would rather not go back to working for the government because the position I held for ten years (and all positions like it) was specifically prohibited from accepting money for writing no matter what the topic. It's one of the reasons I left that job, because I could not make money as a writer while doing that work.

Which sucked.

Then there's the fact that I wrote fan fiction for years, enjoyed it and gave it away. I actually have several shortish stories I could put up under an erotica pseudonym for free (and Feedbooks lets you give away 20% of a novel before people buy it) which is a surprisingly effective strategy, if you have a enough stuff for people to buy and write well enough to get a following. Or so I'm told.



***

So, not a get rich quick scheme, but a possible way of developing one income stream over time. I do not have huge ego issues keeping me from from it, though my basic laziness is definitely in the "con" category. It gives me something to think about, anyway.

The writing circle went really well. Of the pieces we discussed, all were competent (at the very least) and two were well-written (but not so stunning that they seemed to have no need of a group). In other words, we were there to learn, all of us -- to get reactions and see how we were doing. (Well, except for one guy, fresh from Afghanistan with a hard mil scifi epic under his arm, which he described as an AK47 while telling me my story was more about feelings (from the three paragraphs I read aloud as a refresher, since he had *just* joined and had not received any of our work in advance).

That really amused me. I was less amused by the nice organizer, who came dubiously to my defense saying that we all have different styles, from Hemingway to Joan Collins. (I got the impression she preferred Hemingway, whom I only read when I could not avoid it for coursework, and whose stories tended to bore me until we got to the "thematic dissection" phase of lit class on them. I confess I really enjoyed Freudian criticism of his work, and not because I thought it had much validity.) I have never read Joan Collins, but I suspect she uses adjectives and adverbs. I try to avoid adverbs, but have no issue with adjectives, as long as they are not overused. (I mean, really? Adjectives are bad, now?) I probably have a higher tolerance for adjectives than the group's leader.

In any case, not having read any Collins, I wasn't sure how to take the comparison. Except I'm very glad not to be like Hemingway. SRSLY.

***

Had a long talk with hominysnark afterward. She asked incisive questions. Considering my past writing group experiences (crazy stalker men, sulky teens, early stage ESOL folks, and one guy who shoved a shotgun full of commas and shot his manuscript with it repeatedly), I was glad that the subs didn't suck and that no one was mean or creepy to me or anyone else.

So, when she said, "But will this group help you do what you want to do?" I had to think about it.
( Details below the cut to spare the disinterested. )

It was good to realize, yet again, that I can take criticism, and even better to realize that I can distinguish what is useful and incisive from what is personal taste, even when the critter cannot. So, baby steps.

***

Also, I am about to turn 41, and have finally reached the place in my life where I really don't give a flying fig whether everyone 'likes' me. Not everyone is going to like me, and it's not my job to make them. Life is too short for that crap.

***

My Beloved brought me a homemade waffle plate with blueberry compote in bed. (All of it he made from scratch, using fresh blueberries a co-worker picked and gave him.) Then he let me go back to sleep. When I woke up, he took me shopping for new summer dresses (my choice, since my birthday is this week). Hooray for Macy's One Day Sale. Once again I ended up with dark colors, but they are comfy like pajamas and look nice.

I am the luckiest beeyotch in Christendom.

But, I still got my words in. I think they were even very good words, full of lovely things going on and only one really lovely thing I didn't expect. So that's pretty good.



and overall:



***

We had a good visit with the in-laws. We ate out a lot more than I would have liked, and did lots of fun, touristy things. I couldn't get them to Big Boy's school's Crawfish Boil, but we went to Middendorf's. There are shrimp boats that dock right next to the place, so I ordered the peal and eat boiled shrimp, which was incredible. So, I still got to rip the head off something and eat it. ;)

This is shaping up to be a busy week for all of us, but I'm going to do my best to get everything done, for everyone. Oy.

I was so worried. I'm sure you all know Angry Cat by now, from my frequent use of him in Birthday greetings. He slipped out the garage door (I suppose the door between the house and garage had closed fully, because he's good at clawing it open if it doesn't catch) and out into the night when we got home Friday night/early Saturday. We tried to get him back in but he ran and we lost him in the shadows. It has happened before, but he's always been desperate to get back in after a short while.

I spent most of Saturday looking for him, checking the storm drains and side streets. Wee Boy went with a friend and his family to the pool, but ended up walking home crying. Poor woobie. After years of harassing the cat with too much affection, Wee Boy has finally got the hang of being good to the cat. They have actually grown quite close recently.

Then it rained really hard in the early evening, and I went to the front room where it's quiet to call the animal shelter and my sister (I knew she would understand my fear, and my need to put a brave face on for the kids). I'd just hung up when I thought I heard a meow. A moment passed and heard scratching, opened the door and in came my big, bedraggled fuzzy baby. Wee Boy's friend Jake immediately told us all "I TOLD you he'd come back when it started to rain!"

Such a relief not to need those fliers after all.

***

Had a nice weekend with the hubby otherwise. It was fun to cook good meals and feed him for a change. I went rather wild on the fruit at the grocery store Friday, so I threw a few raspberries in my banana/strawberry smoothie. It was yummy. Now I'm having raspberries with the chocolate drizzle that was left over from the bonbons I made for the party.

I even got in over 3000 words this morning while everyone was asleep.

Life is good.

I've managed to make some improvements to my home environment, so that the shared spaces are mostly neat. As tempted as I am to haul boxes of "stuff" out of the office and chuck them, I suppose I will wait until my Beloved is back.

Then I will nag him mercilessly until it is done. ;) Seriously, it should have been done while he was home the last time, but we did not accomplish much. I still have not done the filing. Perhaps if I do a little handful every day, it won't seem such an unpleasant task. Heh.

I've listed several small clearing-out tasks in the task manager of Outlook, scheduling one bite-sized bit of cleaning each day for the next two weeks. They are all centered in the kitchen. At that rate it will likely take months, which we don't have, but if I attempt a massive stuff reduction while on my own my wee ones will feel neglected, and i will likely get cranky. I think this baby steps approach is best for the harmony of my home.

***

Monday I mentally worked myself around to re-writing Shift as two separate first person narratives, but before I had a chance to actually get started, I began to waffle again. This re-write is killing me. If I chuck the third person limited pov, I wonder if it counts as a re-write, or a whole new novel. Argh! Let me not think on't.

HMOWK draws ever nearer to a close. At least that is something I can still write and not second guess every damned thing. ;) Plus, people still seem to like it, and I've gotten comments from new people. That's always nice. I should enjoy it now, because they are all going to hate my guts in a week or two. >;D

***

Big Boy emailed a (girl) friend of his, and asked her to his birthday party on Saturday.

So, I guess we're having a birthday party Saturday. O_O

Probably I'll just have cake and ice cream and take the lot of them to see Kung-Fu Panda, which was the plan, anyway. Only now it might be more than just family and one friend. Not that big a deal, but for a moment I had a rush of panic. Oy. (We want to have a big party when my Beloved comes back, to celebrate our birthdays as well as his return, so he doesn't feel like he's missed everything.)

***

Making dinner for friends tonight. Made the boys pancakes this morning. Life is good.
***

So, I've decided to eat good food.

This is a bit more revolutionary than it sounds. I have always eaten to live, eaten so I would not get sick, or whatever. I'm one of those weirdos who forgets to eat until she's weepy and strange in the head.

Really GOOD food does excite me, but it has never been a huge motivator. The kids are picky, the hubby is picky and none of them like the veggies and fruits I like (well, some of then like some of them, but, you know...)

Today I made sandwiches for lunch. PB&J for Big Boy, grilled cheese for Wee Boy, both on wheat, which they prefer. Mine was a ham and cheese with tomato, spicy mustard and baby arugula. We all had some corn chips on the side. I had green tea to drink and a bit of pineapple, too. Yum. When I was finished, I was happy I'd eaten it. It was good. I felt good. Nyah!

For dinner I cut up some chicken breasts into chunks and cooked them with a ginger/soy marinade. When the meat was nearly done, I stirred in some fresh green beans, just long enough to braise them a little, not cook them to mush. I cut up some potatoes and boiled them in chicken broth until they were tender and beat in a little butter and milk. Yummy. The boys barely tasted the beans, but I enjoyed them.

Then I had a couple of slices of California roll wrapped in shaved ginger. It was like an orgasm in my mouth. *g*

Food should always be that good-- make you feel that good. :) I enjoy cooking, and I have plans for the meals this week. Mmmm.

Boy Quote: Oh, my God! You're not going to believe this! The cat rang the DOORBELL!