Patti O'Shea's Blog

I’m watching baseball and in between innings I see a commercial for a movie that looks and sounds so inane, I can’t believe anyone spent money to make it. And people wonder why I haven’t been to the theater since Titanic. Movies like this explain a lot. The title?

Snakes on a Plane

From IMDB:
Plot Outline: On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who’s a witness in protective custody, lets loose a crate full of deadly snakes.

And of course, there’s an official website for the movie.

You Tube calls it the “most hotly anticipated movie of 2006″ and there’s a parody trailer up there, though it’s not the funniest thing ever.

I don’t think I’m the target market for this movie. Maybe I’m wrong and it’s cinematic genius, but somehow I doubt it. Give me Airport with a mad bomber blowing a hole in the plane. Or Airplane with the blow up doll as the auto pilot. This is one movie I won’t be putting in my Netflix queue.

Yesterday after work, my dad brought the leaf blower over and we went window by window, blowing out any grass the wasp had left behind. I didn’t see any more signs of her, but then like I said, I can’t reach the latches to unlock my kitchen windows. My dad sprayed around the outline, though, after wasps turn in for the night, so if she was there, hopefully she’s dead. I loathe wasps.

That was pretty much the highlight in the day. I deleted some blogline subscriptions in order to keep my sanity. All writers are insecure and neurotic, it’s just a matter of to what degree and how well they conceal it. Unfortunately, every time I start to gain some confidence in my writing, something happens to knock it out of me, so I tend to be in the more insecure category.

I did watch some of the home run derby yesterday that’s associated with the All Star Game. I was hoping to see David Ortiz in the final round (he’s a former Twin and a current Red Sox player), but he didn’t make it. It ended up being between David Wright of the Mets and Ryan Howard of the Phillies. I went to bed before a winner could be determined, but there is one thing that floors me. All those kayakers in the river. They were jumping in the water after homerun balls. Huh? This is a big so what for me. There is absolutely no way that I’d jump into a river and battle other kayakers/swimmers for a baseball. Especially once it got dark.

And I just saw on ESPN that Ryan Howard won. He’s the one I was rooting for.

I’ve been checking the wasp window and there’s been no new grass there, but yesterday I grew suspicious. That queen gave up pretty damn quickly. Too quickly. I decided to do some more checking. I opened the window next to the original one. Clear. Then I opened the first window next to my china hutch. Pay dirt.

I grabbed my weapon–wasp spray–and saturated her grass. Then I moved on to the other window next to my china hutch. I found a little bit of grass up there. I sprayed that one too. When my mom came over and looked at it later, her first comment was I’d messed up my windows. My response was I don’t care as long as the wasp goes away.

Since I had the air running–it’s been hot here, though not as bad as it can be–I closed the windows up again. I also checked every other window in the house except for the ones over my kitchen sink. Damn it, I can’t reach the latches to unlock them and open them. I need to be like 2 feet taller. Anyway, I found one of my bedroom windows had a little grass in it too. I opened that one wide and let the breeze blow it away.

I kept getting up to check the china hutch windows and one of the times I opened it, the queen was there. Of course, I was unarmed. I’d have thought that saturating the grass would be enough. And I ran out of wasp spray!

I’m rearming myself and war will recommence. I take no wasp prisoners!

In other, non-stinging insect news, I was sorting through my computer room books, the ones I’d just jammed on the shelf without rhyme or reason, and sorting them. I have them broken up by subject and I started putting them back on the shelves. I also started going through my writing books yesterday, deciding which ones I’d long outgrown or which ones hadn’t been at all helpful. So far, I’ve got a small box to get rid of and I’m not done yet.

As I was sorting down my books, I found my copy of The Writer’s Brainstorming Kit or something like that. It comes with a deck of cards, and since I need a story for Maia, I decided to try this. I drew five cards like the book said, but the one in the 3 or 4 position just didn’t work for Maia or Creed, so I reached in the deck for another card. That dislodged another card that said “loneliness” and I had an epiphany. Maia was overwhelmed by loneliness!

I knew Ryne had felt that way, it permeated her story (the one I turned in at the end of June), but I didn’t realize Maia shared that sense of aloneness and that was stupid. She’s every bit as alone as Ryne was, maybe even more so since Maia ceded her powers and is closed off from her people in a way that Ryne isn’t. They also grew up with the same parents and Maia didn’t have anyone there for her the way she took care of Ryne.

I couldn’t believe I didn’t realize this. Talk about totally being blind, but I get it now. Of course, this still doesn’t give me a story, but it does give me some insight into my heroine-to-be. I’ve already had some important glimpses into Creed while I wrote Ryne and Deke’s story, so I think I’m good on the characters.

Yesterday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours on the 2006 movie, Tristan & Isolde. I realized as I watched that I’d forgotten a lot of the details from the story that I read in high school and I couldn’t tell when the movie strayed from that version. I’m guessing my faulty memory is a good thing, although I’m really tempted to go digging in my file cabinets and see if I kept my class notes from that HS class. I did several big purges, but I loved this particular class so much, I’m hoping I kept them. But I digress–as usual.

The movie opens with Tristan as a child. His father is trying to unite the tribes of Briton to stand against a ruthless Irish king. The Romans have pulled out and the country is in chaos as they try to fill the power gap. Of course, the Irish attack while the men are meeting and Tristan escapes death only because Lord Marke steps in to save him, losing a hand in the process. We see Isolde as a child as well, burying her mother, then back to Tristan. Lord Marke has brought him home to raise him as his own and we see that even as a child, Tristan excels in warfare.

Then we fast forward 9 years. Isolde has been betrothed to her father’s top general as a reward for service, something she is unhappy about. Tristan is a leader of men, and when the Irish attack again, he kills the Irish general, but is wounded himself and believed dead. His people, following their burial custom, put him on a boat and his body is sent out to sea.

Isolde finds him on the beach near her home–injured and unconscious, but very much alive–hides him from her people and nurses him back to health. The two of them fall in love along the way, though she gives him her maid’s name and doesn’t admit to being the king’s daughter.

After Tristan is home again, word comes that the Irish king will give over his daughter in marriage–as well as her dowry–to the man who wins her in some kind of fighting tournament. Tristan convinces Lord Marke to make deals with the other barons to unite the country behind him and share the dowry if they throw their fights and allow Tristan to win (he’s fighting in Lord Marke’s name). Tristan doesn’t discover who Isolde really is until it’s far too late.

I’ll leave the description of the movie there, although anyone who’s read the story knows what happens.

I thought the prologue scenes of the movie with Tristan and Isolde as children were unnecessary. It does help explain why Tristan loves and honors Lord Marke so much, but beyond that, it serves no real purpose and I believe these feelings could have been shown within the story rather than wasting so much time on the opening. Same thing with the fact that the Irish don’t want the Britons to unite and that Tristan’s father’s plan to do just that brought on the attack.

The battle scenes were violent, but seemed realistic enough. I spent a lot of time looking away when they fought so I’m sure they did a good job with this.

Tristan and Isolde falling in love–well, that wasn’t quite so good. I felt like I blinked and missed it happening. I should probably rewatch this part of the movie to see if it occurred as quick as it felt or if I wasn’t paying strict attention, but I doubt that I will. In any case, their relationship didn’t seem heart-deep to me and I was disappointed in this aspect of the movie.

There was intrigue going on–a power struggle between Lord Marke and this one particular baron–and this was the catalyst for some of the events in the story. There was also the very sexy Melot. Yummmm! Henry Cavill is the actor’s name and he is absolutely gorgeous. I lived for the moments he was on screen so I could drool.

Edited to add: The end of the movie left me with some unanswered questions. I won’t go into them since I don’t want to spoil anything for someone who wants to watch the movie, but damn it, I hate loose ends!

Overall, the movie was a pleasant enough way to pass some time, but I wouldn’t put it in the must-see category. My rating is 3 stars, which means I liked it.

Not tech related, this is pure writer geek.

At work, someone brought in their old magazines, including several issues of The Smithsonian, and I browsed through them. I started out by skimming through the article on Edvard Munch, the painter who did The Scream, but I was more interested in looking at the pictures of his other works of art than I was in his life.

The next article that I looked at, though, really drew me in. It was titled In John They Trust and it was about a cargo cult in Vanuatu. They wait for the return of John Frum who will come with cargo from America. The article suggests that John Frum may never have existed, but had been used as a way to get the missionaries off the island in the 1930s. This wasn’t the main thrust of the piece, though.

From there, I went on to an article about how coyotes have moved from the American West into nearly every city in the country, including Chicago, New York and Washington D.C. I knew we had coyotes around the Twin Cities, but I didn’t realize exactly how that had happened.

I’m not ready to subscribe to the magazine, but my geeky writer side was in heaven. Then it just kept going!

On the drive home from work, I was flipping through radio stations and stumbled over NPR’s Science Friday. They were talking about the mass extinction of amphibians that’s going on right now. I was like, wow, I didn’t even know that was happening! It has to do with some fungus that is suddenly on the upsurge. Even the call-in questions from listeners were fascinating. I actually sat in the garage and listened until the show ended.

Next up in my geeky day were online articles. I found links to these stories in the Most Popular section of some social tagging sites like Del.icio.us and Furl. The first was from a NY Times columnist who talks about a story she was working on about training exotic animals and how she put those techniques to work on her husband. It’s titled “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage.” You need to register to view the NY Times articles, just an FYI if you’re thinking of clicking over. As I’m reading this, I could see how this not only would be interesting to use with a heroine in a story, but that it might be interesting to try it out on people besides SOs.

Then I read an article from Yahoo News titled “Roots of the Human Family Tree Are Shallow.” Also fascinating about how everyone who lives on Earth now is descended from someone who may have lived around the time of King Tut.

My last foray for the night was an article on picking and remembering passwords. Since my day job requires that we pick a new password every 90 days, and since I’m running out of clever and memorable letter/number combinations, I figured this might be a good read. The author laid out some interesting ideas, but in the comments section, others suggested that her method would make it easier for hackers who came up with one password to come up with them all. There’s supposed to be a follow-up story and I’m going to try to remember to watch for it so I can make a decision on the password situation.

Did you notice how these topics are all over the spectrum? This is why I had 240 credits when I graduated from college (180 were necessary) and I didn’t have a minor or a second major. I find the damnedest things spellbinding and happily go off reading or watching or listening to whatever.

I think, though, that wide-ranging interests is a trait a lot of writers share. After all, you never know when something might be the piece that brings a book to life for you. I’ve told this story before, but it had to be 8-10 years ago when I was fascinated by nanotechnology and the possibilities for the future and that ended up coming back to inspire me on The Power of Two. The whole story was born around the idea of Quantum Brain Nanotechnology.

Today, I’m hoping to get to my writing chapter’s meeting, so I need to logoff and try to get moving.

My next Net Flix movie arrived yesterday–Tristan and Isolde. My plan for the weekend is to watch it. I also have a meeting on Saturday morning for my local writing chapter. I’m planning on going, though I doubt I’ll make it for the pre-meeting thing. I’ll be lucky to wake up and move fast enough to make it to the meeting. The program after the meeting, however, is someone I’d like to hear. Something about public speaking for introverts. Along those lines anyway.

The wasp doesn’t appear to have returned. Of course, I’ll have to keep watch on that window for a while and might have to spray the window again, but so far so good. I don’t like any bug, but I really hate those things.

Right now, my quest is to find space saver bags. I only need the size for clothes, not the large and extra large sizes, but most of them seem to be sold in assortment sizes, without giving the option of only buying the size needed. Another quest. The question is why does this even have to be a quest? It seems like the manufacturers would figure out they might sell more if they offered the option of buying only the size needed. Yes, my life is exciting. Sigh.

I checked into art classes, though. Do you know how hard it is to find anything? I want to take Beginning Drawing for People With Zero Artistic Talent, but community ed is offering nothing over the summer and the spring classes seem to be geared toward pottery and basket making–neither of which I have much interest in. There is one place that kind of offers something I might be interested in taking–I turned them up in an online search–but I don’t think I’d ever find their building. I’m directionally challenged. So where does someone find reasonably priced art classes for adults? They have to be out there somewhere.

It was kind of a boring day yesterday. I had so many things I wanted to get done, but I made the mistake of sitting down to read email and that took care of any ambition I had. :-/ I haven’t slept well all week, though, so it wasn’t surprising. The only amazing thing was that I didn’t fall asleep sitting up again.

Off for another day of fun and frolic at the day job.

Last year, I believe it was sometime in May, I dealt with wasp queens flying around the house. I think there were four or five of them, and since my fear of wasps knows few boundaries, some of the stories I posted here about my attempts to kill these things were probably pretty funny. But I have my new house now and I was hugely relieved that I wouldn’t have to deal with wasps again.

Guess what?

They’re baaack.

Not inside the house, though, thank goodness! It all started Tuesday. The temperature and humidity finally dropped enough that I could open up my windows again. I’m not sure how long I had the air conditioning running–probably less than a week–but as I opened the window, all these blades of grass fell on the other side of the screen. I look up and there’s all kinds of grass blades wedged between my window top and the frame.

Now I didn’t realize wasps used grass to build nests. I always thought their nests looked kind of papery or something. So I’m looking up at this mess going, what the hell is this? Of course, this necessitated a visit from my dad. He’s the one who used the dreaded wasp word. Shudder. He knocked down the grass collection with a piece of wood and that was that. Or so I thought.

Yesterday after work, I open that same window, and not only is there more grass up there, the queen bitch herself is on top of the window, hanging on to a long blade of grass. Of course, I don’t have any wasp spray. By the time my dad arrives with the insecticide, the queen is long gone. We sprayed the window up really good, though, and now I have rivulets of wasp spray running down my glass. I don’t care as long as these things stay away from me! I’m beginning to wonder if I’m cursed.

I know this story isn’t all that funny, but I wasn’t feeling particularly scared, not with a screen between me and the thing. Of course, this window is right next to my new deck, so I’m not enthusiastic about actually sitting out there anymore. I wonder how long that wasp will persist in trying to build her nest in my window? I mean, how many times can it be knocked down or sprayed, how many hours can she spend rebuilding it before she decides to cut her losses and move on?–hopefully not to another one of my windows.

The thing is, if this was one of my kitchen windows, I’d never know because I don’t open them. I can’t reach the latches to unlock them so I just don’t bother. Gah! Now I’m going to be running around my house, opening every window just in case.

There isn’t much else going on. Thankfully. Next up for movie watching is Tristan and Isolde. I’m really looking forward to this one. I’ve seen some mixed reviews and I’m a little leery because I read the actual story in a high school English class, but I’m thinking I’ve forgotten enough where that shouldn’t interfere. That’s my plan for the weekend.

I have to be brief this morning. It’s late and I have to logoff and get ready for work soon. Today was my day to blog over at 2 B Read and that always presses me for time in the morning.

Anyway, yesterday I did not make it to Ikea, like I suspected would happen. Instead I vegged out most of the day and felt like a slug. Finally, in the afternoon, I took a notebook and started making notes on the spin off book to the one I just finished. I have characters, but no story yet, so I was kind of hoping something would come to me. Nope, still brain dead. Sigh. I decided it’s too early yet to be pushing to come up with stuff so I started making notes about what to blog about at TBR. Not sure I was hit with anything too great, but at least it’s written and posted.

It was beautiful here yesterday, the perfect day out on the deck. My dad and I took down the thing the builder had blocking the patio door and I dragged a lawn chair out there. I wish I could have slept in this morning and wandered out there with coffee later on. Ah well, off to the day job.