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Tag: random thoughts

I suppose yesterday’s entry should have been called ‘Feast of Crows’, but now we’re at Day 70!

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Took it pretty easy this weekend  as far as writing was concerned. Did some paid work on the holiday Monday, but otherwise kept it fairly chill. We did some outdoor skating as a family, which was nice. Had a few family movie dates at home, which were fun. Obviously Encanto made the rounds – yet again. But the kids will watch it and sing along, so we don’t have to entertain them ourselves. Although I will say this, it has become very noticeable how well, and for how long the girls will play together without fighting these days. It’s slowly getting less contentious between them, which I love to see.

So things on the list for today, laundry, vacuum,  mop the floors, dishes (via dishwasher) and maybe sort all the loads and put them away. Will depend on how quiet my ‘work’ day continues to be. Partly why I worked yesterday, so I could clean while the house was empty of other people. So much easier that way. And a general tidy up of the main living space, as the toys migrate out here, and I step on them, and kick them, and trip on them, which makes me furious.

Had enough time to break down a bunch of card board. “Woah-woah” you say, save some excitement for the rest of us. Breaking down card board, cleaning, dude you could drown a toddler in these panties. But nay! I say. I can only stand so much clutter and ‘lived in’ mess before it drives me crazy. So not so much a ploy for sexy time, as it diminishes an anxiety I feel when I look around the house and see messes everywhere. Ugh! But still, we are working our way through the last vestiges of the Christmas present cardboard delivery box horde that I keep finding in closets and cupboards and on shelves. Our house is tiny, and clutter makes it feel even more so. At least in the summer we have the doors and windows open and the house feels less claustrophobic.

I think my next household purchase will be a big Hepa filter unit to gussy up the air quality. We have good filters on the furnace, but still. A dedicated upstairs unit moving the air around seems like a good thing for all of us in this older house. The furnace filters have really been given a boon since our elderly dog passed away. Far less hair in the vents, nor pet dander to screen out. I do feel a rather epic purge coming in April though. For as much stuff as we donate and give away, we seem to get back in kind. Which is awesome, but overwhelming in such a small house. When the price of plywood becomes more reasonable I am going to have to build some serious storage cabinets for the basement, and possibly, living room/dining room. Open concept it great, except if you want to store anything out of view. Then the lack of wall space becomes a liability. Plus sounds travels unencumbered across the entire house with no walls to muffle or dampen it. Nice and bright, but loud AF.

Like I said previously, not much writing done beyond the blog posts. Could change if I catch a thought that takes me some place exciting, or unnerving, or different. Stay tuned.

Holiday Monday! Also known here as Family Day.

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Woke up to some freshly prepared crispy bacon, and made myself a breakfast sandwich from as many strips as I could handle. It was delicious, if I do say so myself. Now we are watching The Spongebob Movie on Ytv.

I finished another book yesterday, and now I’m in a weird spot where I know the next book I want to read isn’t going to show up until the fifteenth of next month, but I don’t want to not read anything between then and now. So I’ll dig through my TBR pile for something short enough that I can read it before my next book arrives.

I went for a James A Owen book about dragons. I think the series was written in the early 2000’s. Each volume is made up of two or three actual novels. I can read the first one quickly, then the last one or two seem to drag on for months. They aren’t bad, but I don’t consume 1000 page novels like I used too. I’ve been gearing down to three hundred pages of fewer. Could be writing short stories has rewired my brain for quicker and more concise tales. Or I’m more distracted, and don’t have the attention span for massive tomes any more. Seems like a reasonable explanation. But I’m no scientist, and I could just be making things up as I go along.

My concentration is still good, do you want to know how I know that? My love of assembling thousand piece model kits on the semi regular. My office is crowded with Gundam kits that range from 1,500 pcs down to like 500 pcs. Assembly via pictograms and drawings, as I don’t read Japanese text, like at all. Lots of prolonged concentration. So I know I can still focus when I need to.

Time to take the kids skating. Have a good Holiday Monday people.

And on the sixty fifth day, He said, Oh – Lord, I have finished reading the last book in the series, and was at once, both elated, and forlorn.

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For it was a good series, of both length and depth, but now it is over, and where there used to stand a long winding road full of opportunities there is now only the hard cold truth of the back cover, closed and defined. Like a stone rolled over the door to seal in the freshness. I am sad. I do however have a new book to read, a part of another series I enjoy, plus next month John Scalzi’s new book will drop and I’ll likely enjoy that one too.

I wasn’t going to talk about books, I had something else on my mind which I was gearing up for today, but now that the power has been out since 2:00am, school is cancelled, it’s going to rain like cats and dogs all day, I had to change gear. I imagine power will be back some time between 9:00am and 12:00pm, so it won’t be an entirely lost work day, but with the kiddos home it’ll be a wash. No tv, no microwave, no toaster or fridge, no dvd player, and no furnace. Could potentially be a trying day for us. Oh joy.

Happy I managed to get through so much work on Monday through Wednesday. Could have been a disaster if I’d left it until later in the week.

Now that I think on it, I can’t recall – at all, what I was going to lead with today. Not even a scintilla of an idea of what it was. I know that yesterday afternoon I thought it was funny. But it totally escapes me now.

Oh, to be fair I was reading the Expanse book series, if anyone wanted to know. Book nine finished it all off. Although I did see that they have collected some peripheral short stories from the universe into a book, so perhaps we’re not quite done yet. We’ll see. I liked how it came together, so maybe I’ll leave well enough alone? Or not. I don’t have any other science fiction series that I have been following along with besides Matha Wells’ Murder Bot Diaries (which is also fantastic) oh and Mary Robinette Kowals alternate history A Lady Astronaut Novel series.

I have done some considerable thinking about my next few chapters. Was planning to write one today, but – kids home all day due to inclement weather. Stay tuned, things should get interesting!

54 tonnes, what do you get? Another say older and deeper in debt.

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What’s with all of the extreme cold warnings showing up only on the weekends huh? That’s like when it only rains on weekends in the summer. Very irritating. Things could be worse though. Have you ever gone skating in minus twenty four degree weather? I’m sure that’s positively balmy for anyone in northern Russia, or Denmark and what have you. You lot must be made of sturdy stuff. Or you know better than to go out in it.

Feeling a touch deflated after yesterday’s late night revelation. I’m not certain how I will make up a 35,000 word deficit for book two. Perhaps I’m placing too much pressure on myself. I spent more than a full twelve months to write the first book, so I don’t need to complete the follow up in three months. I just hate having projects stretch on for weeks and weeks. Gives me anxiety to know something isn’t done yet.

I should note that when I started to write it was to shake my depression regarding the Covid lockdown isolation I was feeling. I didn’t start out writing a novella. I just wrote a bunch of shorts and then – kept on going. Then I tried to write a sci-fi short which in turn sparked an idea, and it snowballed into a book of shorts. This time around I know I am attempting to write a companion book devoted to a somewhat singular story line. It’s daunting. Easy to get discouraged. Breaking it down into individual chapter stories has made it manageable, but even then, with the thought of doing a dialogue heavy section or an action set piece has given me cause to pause.

Today is Sunday, which means nothing much is going on. I did get last weeks report off to California on time, so I’ll issue an invoice for that tomorrow morning. Had more work come in late Friday evening, so I know I’ll have something to do this week. Should be quieter than last week by a wide margin. Some free time might spark up the bug to write more this week.

In other news I ordered Spiderman No Way Home the other day, should show up in mid March. I look forward to watching it and maybe doing a late to the game review. As an aside – is it weird that the first teaser footage for D Strange and the multiverse of madness looks kind of tv movie terrible. Not the acting, but the camera work and picture quality. Could just be my television screen, and monitor and phone…

The last frigid Saturday of January 2022.

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We are all nearly one full month into the year now. Heading into an equally cold February, but with paid work on the docket, and a healthy family – thus far.  Had a morning with cartoons and helping to dress the kids dolls in new clothes. Attempting to trouble shoot a doll whose eyes no longer open when it sits up, and making everyone scrambled eggs for breakfast.

Doing a lots of nothing, looking at memes and thinking about how to approach some new work that came in yesterday afternoon. I have all the ground work laid out, templates, tables and colour palette, and a new design based off of their supplied brand style guide. It’s going to be a real looker when done. I just need to give it a good think so that I reads properly and I don’t have to adjust it a tonne later on. Think it through now, will save a lot on revisions later. Is my thinking anyway. Doesn’t always play out as planned, but I think I can do a little extra on this one.

As a freelancer I work as the projects come in, so my days vary wildly in regards to how busy I am. When it rains it pours, and then I get streaks of quiet time in between. Allows me to do alot with my kids that I wouldn’t have been able to do in prior roles. All the better for me!

Come on springtime sunshine, green grass, warmth, and flowers.

So now the drum beats for all out war.

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I’m kind of dreading this part, as the scope could potentially be enormous, and I don’t know how to juggle something that large. I have a feeling – (“I’ve got a feelin’ woo-ooh, that tonights gonna be a go…) that I will introduce a massive scenario, pointing out some broad strokes, and then dive in, tight close up, on some unsuspecting persons face and have the world carry about them with nary a care for the finer points. It’s terrible, I know, but I just can’t seem to care enough to attempt to explore naval battle tactics in space when my current grasp of both the navy and zero gravity physics are tenuous at best, mostly zero at worst. So no – we set the scene, jump cut around it, and get to the point of my over arching story. Stop in for a few with some nice people, see how they are making out in the battle, and then carry on as you were.

For these next few pivotal chapters I’m going to have to revisit my point form outlines, as I have a number of threads to collect and tie together. I try not to get convoluted, even with my run on sentences, I know, I know. Trying to say too much in too short a space. But i think i can get this all tied up, and loop back to the earliest chapters, and some other threads that seem like they’ve been dropped, but i promise they haven’t. I’m trying to build to a big crescendo, and then maybe I’ll have a history professor teaching a class give some clarifying exposition at the end, so that it all makes more sense. Plus leave me some wiggle room to come back later to flesh out other parts of the whole thing that i skimped on, because i didn’t know how to tell that part at this time. Get me? You got me.

A word of warning though, some parts of this may turn into a blood bath. We are talking war stories, horror elements, body horror (potentially) although that feels icky to me. But could prove useful. Maybe a love story portion. All out despiration. Some courageous moments, and then some funny dialogue moments, and some far flung science fiction to wrangle the pieces all together. Sound like fun? Yeah – come on. Stick with me now. Book two has just finished chapter sixteen, you’ve got four to six chapters left in you right!?! I hope so. For my sake as well.

In other news, going to be a big football weekend again. So that will be fun. I wonder if these games will have the same caliber of excitement as last weekends games did. Whoo-boy right up to the closing seconds with the will they, won’t they story arc.

Also – as an aside. I’m finally getting around to painting last years two finished sculpts. The old man of the see, who has a passing resemblance to Christopher Plummer, was done as a faux bronze, and the Ogre is very blue. Maybe he needs a grey wash over top, not sure. Needs something to tie him together and be more than layered blue dry brushing. Keep on putting pens to paper!

This 45 doesn’t have an army of red hats. Thankfully.

The Chronic-What!-cles of the suburban dad.

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Ha. No, nothing that cool or awesome I’m afraid. Just me and my thoughts to keep us warm. Like a nice pair of wool socks but for your brain and eyes. We’ve had more snow, of course. Not the massive dumping of a week ago, but enough I’ll need to shovel out the driveway, walks and back patio areas to try to stop the basement from flooding during the February and March thaws. That’s the fun time of year when we get snow, then ice storms then heavy rains and a weird heat wave in the span of a week two months in a row, and it will wreak havoc on everything. But not there yet, still clearly in the midst of sub zero temperatures, wind chill, ice and the occasional snowfall. The wind chill also brings us great hits such as snow drifts on major roads, white outs, the nauseating feeling of traveling without moving when driving at night, and the snow is blowing through your head lights like stars as you jump to hyper space a la Star Wars. The only reason we suffer through it is that it kills off many warm weather bugs, spiders and snakes and such. If we still had Australia’s selection of deadly bugs and reptiles plus this bitter cold I’d have left years ago!

I think I may be closing in on forty continuous days of writing. Which at first seems like a lot, but most likely has accumulated little more than a few thousand jumble letters. I’m willing to bet that because I write on my phone rather that at a computer the process is slower than it could be, but if I’m at my computer I am usually working on paid stuff, so that isn’t a fun position for me to write in. That’s for working, writing is for fun.

I like to be able to curl up on a couch or chair and write at will. Perhaps my next step would be to set aside a specific time of day to write but I feel that as long as I am writing something I don’t much care when I do it. I also find that after I get my initial post put down on paper (such as it is – electronically) all of a sudden the pressure is gone and I can day dream about which in the current roster of characters can advance the story in a fun, or interesting manner.

The rest of this sunday will be spent preparing for my kids school week. Waiting on responses to work projects, either feedback or approvals and releasing work to commercial printers or external vendors and suppliers.

Lazy Saturday in mid January.

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With nothing much going on except for some story beats percolating in the back of my mind. And a fairly simple question to answer. Do I want to do a dialogue heavy chapter with a little bit of detail, or recount the scene as though it was historical fact via a third impartial party? That is my question.

Both options offer me a unique way to hit on some story points with more emphasis. It’s a good place to be stuck in, I’d rather be spoilt for choice than drawing a total blank. I could do it over two chapters and show the divide between what actually happens, and how history interprets what went on by the evidence that they can find and piece together. Hard choice to make.

Also I’m a big fan of switching up how chapters are told, which is why I like the short/micro story format. If I had to write it all from one point of view I’d likely cock that up something awful. I can be passive, first person, third person or an objective witness as I see fit. I am amazed at people who can write 250,000 word epic worlds teaming with characters and animals, machines and vast world building. Sounds like a tonne of fun, but also – so much work.

As a side note, which is off topic: my kids are in love with this Youtube character named Sammie (who looks like a modified pink & purple butt plug) whose human counter part does arts and crafts. And in that vein I have sculpted two plug like pink/purple/sparkly Super Sculpey Sammies with glued in eyes and sculpted lenseless glasses. My oven burned the rear side of the sculpey which annoyed me as I didn’t want to have to paint anything other than the sculpted glasses. So yeah! Two sculpting projects down for 2022! Small win for me creatively.