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Archive for August, 2007

The Name Game

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

So I think I found the secondary character’s name. It does not start with an N or a T. Darn I hate it when they mislead me! As I was doing a general search through the name books, she liked Natasha with a nickname of Tash, but that wasn’t her name, but if this was “almost” it, it must start with one of those two letters. Logical, right?

With my own resources not providing the answer, I did an online search for “unique baby names.” I got a lot of hits and checked out the appropriate letters–and I still couldn’t come up with her name.

It went on like this for quite some time, then I clicked on a link that had all the names on one page, and there it was. Under the F’s. Argh! If she’d told me that from the beginning, it would have saved me hours of searching.

TBH, at first I wasn’t sure if this was her name for real or if I just thought it was because I liked it and I was sick of searching, but after a night spent sleeping on it, I think it is right.

Speaking of sleeping, I went to bed really early last night. I was so tired, I couldn’t think clearly enough to work on my synopsis and I’d had 2 nights with four hours of sleep in a row. Not good. I still couldn’t get up this morning, but I feel better. And just one day was enough to backlog me again. Too much to do, not enough hours to do it all in.

I did finish hooking up my cutting machine. It’s for scrapbooking and cuts out letters or shapes. I test cut a flower which I still want to refer to as a snowflake because that’s what it looks like to me and my name in the font I use on my website. It worked slick as spit and I’m in love with this machine. Now I just need to start scrapbooking again, so I can use it more. I’ll add that to the To Do List. Sigh.

Actually, I should make an effort to scrapbook more because I do think it helps me with my writing. It sparks my creativity, but it doesn’t use the same creative muscles in my head that writing does, which means it doesn’t drain me. The more creative energy flowing in, the better!

Tags: characters, names, scrapbooking, writing
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By Any Other Name

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

I’ve run into a problem. My very minor secondary character has morphed into a major player in my proposal and that means she needs a name. I’ve mentioned before that I never get to name the characters with big roles. They pretty much come in and either tell me what they’re called outright or they give me the starting letter and let me look through baby name books until I find the right one.

So anyway, my minor character needs a name before I can proceed with the synopsis. About now some people are probably thinking: why don’t I just give her any old moniker and change it when I find the right one? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way for me. I have to have the correct name or I can’t move forward, which is what I’m dealing with.

She hasn’t given me much to work on. I have a sense that her name begins with an N. Or maybe a T.

I’ve looked through pretty much every baby name book I own. I’ve combed through almost every name website that I have bookmarked. I’m not finding anything under N or T that made her say, “That’s me!” So I’m wondering if maybe her name starts with some other letter. After all, if I’ve gone through the number of names that I have and haven’t hit the right one, it must be because I’m looking in the wrong places.

I don’t know much about her yet. She’s quirky, changeable, and torn between loyalties. She’s a little on the passive side, but I think it’s because she’s been surrounded by such forceful personalities all her life. This woman is Shona’s (the heroine) best friend.

So that was my night. No productive synopsis work, but hours and hours spent looking through those darn name books. Finally, about 8:15 last night, I had enough. I wasn’t ready to go to bed (although I should have since I was exhausted!) and I decided to install my super cool new Silhouette cutter. For those who missed the original rhapsody about my online shopping binge, the Silhouette is a tool for scrapbooking or paper crafting. It’s hooked up to the computer and can cut out any true type font that’s loaded in a huge variety of sizes. It arrived yesterday and I figured I could install the software, plug in the machine, do a sample cutout, and be in bed by 9pm. I was wrong.

The software didn’t take too long to load, but installation on my dinosaur computer wasn’t as quick as I would have liked. Still not too bad, though. Then I had to download some program from Microsoft for the thing to run. With high speed, that took minutes. Again, it was installation that slowed me down. Then I was warned to download any new security patches. This is where the night started to go to hell.

First, I had to update the software that Microsoft uses to determine which updates the computer needs, then after that was installed, it scanned and determined I needed three patches. They downloaded in probably a minute.

And took 45 minutes to install!!!

OMG! I was getting so antsy. I have a patience problem anyway, but when it was 9:45 and it’s still installing, I really became frustrated. By 10pm I was swearing at the computer to hurry up, using the language I normally save for my commute to and from the EDJ (Evil Day Job). By the time I was able to get to bed, it was 10:20, almost an hour and a half later than I’d planned.

The storm rolled through at 2:45, waking me from a sound sleep. I got up, checked out the window and then crawled back into bed and fell immediately back to sleep. I didn’t hear the alarm.

No time for coffee, but I figured, I could skip coffee one day, and really, I should cut the caffeine out all together. I lasted about an hour at the EDJ, then I made a jumbo cup of coffee. Only now do I feel alert enough to blog–and that’s iffy. Guess I won’t be giving up my morning java any time soon.

Tags: computer, names, weather, writing
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Rainy Days and Mondays

Monday, August 20th, 2007

It rained all weekend. Sunday was supposed to be dryer, but it wasn’t. I’m not complaining. We’ve been in a draught and it’s badly needed here, but it kept making me want to lay down and take a nap! I guess I can’t win. If it’s bright and sunny, I want to go outside. If it’s gray and rainy, I want to sleep.

I wish I had an exciting weekend to talk about, but I really don’t. My local FOX station didn’t show the Cubs-Cardinals game on Saturday which was hugely disappointing. They actually thought that more people in MN would be interested in the Detroit-Yankees game because the Tigers are in our division. Yes, I emailed them to complain about their decision. I think they’re wrong. Even if the Twins weren’t 6 games out of first, I think most people wouldn’t enjoy a Tigers-Yankees match-up.

Here’s my reasoning: Nearly everyone who isn’t from NY hates the Yankees. Sorry, NY, but it’s true. I’ve become a Boston fan simply because they’re the Yankees arch-rival and I know a bunch of other people who’ve said the same thing. Now the Yankees are playing Detroit. Normally, I root for whoever is playing the Yankees, but now, being a good Twins fan, I want Detroit to lose. Talk about cognitive dissonance! This makes the entire game unfun to watch.

Anyway, I was so irritated by the choice of game, I turned the television off. And I love writing with a baseball on the screen.

I did not finish the synopsis for Shona and Logan this weekend as I’d planned. I was in heavy duty avoidance mode, even going so far as to clean the kitchen. I even scrubbed out the microwave, including taking out the glass tray and the turntable thingy to clean beneath them. Cleaning to avoid writing is desperate. I console myself with the fact that at least I wasn’t cleaning the bathroom. That’s the ultimate in avoidance.

I’m hoping to finish the synopsis this week, though. A conversation with a friend where we discussed and brainstormed helped gel things. I had almost all the pieces already present, but needed one more to make everything come together. I’m more excited now about this story than I already was.

Tags: baseball, weather, writing
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300

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

Last night’s movie was 300.

Basically, it’s about Sparta and a war with the Persians. It starts out with an narrator explaining how Spartan boys were trained to become warriors, then we see the king meeting with the messenger from the Persian god/king who wants Sparta to surrender and kneel to him. Of course, that message didn’t go over real well. The king, though, can’t take Sparta to war unless the oracle gives permission and the bad guy has bribed the oracle to say no. In order to circumvent that, the king takes 300 soldiers and calls them his personal bodyguard or something like that and they go off to fight the Persians.

I only made it halfway through this movie. Quite frankly, I was bored. This is the second of those graphic novels made into films that I’ve tried to watch and the second one that I didn’t particularly like. (The first was Sin City.) I’m thinking this will be the last of this type of movie that I watch because it apparently isn’t something that holds my attention. Or maybe it’s just graphic novels by Frank Miller that bore me. (Yes, I had to look up his name, but this guy did both 300 and Sin City.)

While I was watching the movie, I started getting up and wandering away. I checked out flowers online, I folded and put laundry away, I played Hearts. My interest had perked up slightly once the battle scenes began, but after the meeting between the Spartan king and the Persian king took place, my attention waned again. I went online and read the spoilers for 300 and I didn’t like what happened. I turned it off and did other stuff.

The other problem I had with the film was that from almost the minute it started, I kept thinking, “that’s not true.” It happened over and over. I don’t know if I was calling on knowledge picked up in a past life or from my tenth grade Social Studies class, but having that thought continually come up didn’t help me get into the story at all.

I’ve been considering this, wondering why this movie just didn’t do it for me, and I think I have the answer. I didn’t care about any of the characters. None. All we get is background about how Spartan boys are trained, then we’re right into the arrival of the messenger. There’s barely any personal glimpses given into any of the characters and it makes it hard to feel invested in the battle scenes. Actually, it was hard to be invested in any part of the story, period, because I didn’t have a connection to any character.

I’m not sure I should rate it since I didn’t finish the movie, but I will anyway.
2 stars.

Tags: Misc
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Ahhh, Saturday

Saturday, August 18th, 2007

It’s supposed to rain here most of the day today, making it the perfect morning to sleep in. Which I did. It’s also going to be a perfect day to work on the synopsis because there’ll be no siren call from the outdoors. Not that I’m exactly into the great outdoors and all, but sitting out on the deck on a nice, sunny day is always tempting.

Anyway, I talked to one of the guys at work yesterday about setting up a network in my house and he made it sound so easy, I decided I could hook it up myself. Since only my desktop with the hugely uncomfortable chair (think circa 1958 before the word “ergonomics” had been invented and that’ll give you an idea how crippling it is to sit in it for any length of time) has the high speed internet connection, I’ve fallen behind on a lot of things–like replying to comments. It takes forever for any website to pull up on dial up (boy, did I get spoiled fast!) and I don’t have the patience to wait. Which means I’m hugely behind sometimes. Okay, most of the time. But once I have high speed on my laptop, I’m sure I’ll be better.

I’d kind of been resisting networking because I write on my laptop, and right now, with only dial up on this computer, I’m not tempted to play online. Of course, there’s still Hearts and Mah Jong, but that’s another story. I kept telling myself that setting up the security on the network would be difficult and I didn’t feel like hiring anyone to come in and do it for me right now. My coworker blew that one out of the water. I’ve been reading articles about routers and networking and doing some pricing. Hopefully, I’ll be up and running before Labor Day.

In other shopping news, the shoes I ordered came. OMG, I think I fell in love with a new brand of shoes. Skechers! I have to exchange the pair I bought for a smaller size, but even with the shoe slightly too big, these were like the most comfortable things I’ve had on in forever and they are major cute! In fact, they’re so comfortable, I went online to see if there were other styles I wanted. I found a bunch and bookmarked them for purchase later.

Does everyone know about this brand but me? I’m a convert. Of course, I guess I should save my excitement until I’ve worn them for a full day and not just a few turns around the house, but they’re just like wearing tennis shoes, just more stylish. They have a few dress shoes (very few), but they have a really good selection on casual and tennis shoes. Try a pair on if you have a chance.

And no, this is not a paid endorsement. It’s just that I wish someone had told me about this brand before I stumbled on them on my own. Yes, I’m a total shoe slut. My walk-in closet has the shelving filled with shoes, but you can never own too many pair. You never know when you’re going to need the kelly green wedge-heels.

Tags: computer, shoes, shopping
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Cacophony

Friday, August 17th, 2007

I forgot I didn’t blog yet this morning. Oops. I ran out of time at home–which has been happening more and more lately–and while I was driving into work, I had this idea pop in my head. Once that happened, blogging was lost in the wave of what ifs that followed.

Anyway, this idea would be for a new series, completely unrelated to anything I’ve already written. I have to do some research, though, to see if it will hold up and I’d need to do some serious brainstorming to set everything up. It might not last beyond first scrutiny, which can kind of be a pain when something is intriguing and full of potential.

Of course, what I should be working on is my synopsis for Shona and Logan. I’m stuck because it involves plot stuff and I have no idea what happens in the section of the book I’m trying to synopsize right now. I know some of what happens later, but that doesn’t help.

The other thing that isn’t helping (aside from completely new ideas popping into my brain) is that Kel and his heroine (whatever her name is) keep talking to me. Logan’s story has to come first otherwise things don’t make sense in either book and these events are crucial to the characters and their arcs. I’m sure it will all shake out eventually, but it’s frustrating in the meantime.

The other thing that’s frustrating to me is how many people I have in my head right now. I think this is the most ever, and if my latest idea pans out, I’m sure I’ll shortly have more characters yakking away. And no, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I just wish I was a faster writer or that I had more time, so that I could get these stories down and clear out some of the mental congestion. I swear, the traffic pattern over O’Hare can’t be busier than my brain.

Tags: characters, ideas, writing
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Just Call Me "Nature Girl." Yeah, Really!

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

I bet you think I’m joking about the nature girl thing, right? I’m not. It was a seriously cool moment yesterday evening.

I went out around 7pm to water the flowers in my tree ring. I’m just standing there, not moving at all, and letting the water spray onto the plants when I see something to my side. I move my eyes since my head was already turned that direction and what do I see? A tiny little hummingbird hovering no more than five feet away from me!

That really surprised me. First of all, I’d never seen a hummingbird in real life before. And the second thing was how close he was. That was amazing. I kept expecting him to notice me and fly away, but he stayed there for a long time before landing on a tree branch. He was maybe there twenty seconds before he took off, but wow!

The only thing I can think is that he was attracted by the lilies since I’ve never seen one anywhere around the area before this.

Speaking of the flowers, my Sumatra Lily is about 3/4 open, but I didn’t take a picture of it. Not only is it not open all the way, but it’s droopy. The only thing I can think of is that the storm did that. The other storm damage I noticed was that a lot of soil was eroded and the tops of the bulbs and/or the roots of my lilies were showing. That means a trip to the store for more dirt to put down.

Tags: garden, nature
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Craft Day

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

It was Craft Fair day yesterday on QVC. Need I say more? If I was smart, I wouldn’t because it’s downright embarrassing how many things I bought. I knew I was in trouble when I woke up yesterday morning and saw the Today’s Special Value. It was a Silhouette cutting machine that hooks up to the computer and will cut out any true type font (letters or shapes) that you have. I’m a font slut, so I have many, many true type fonts. I’d been eyeing the Wishblade ever since I heard of it and the Silhouette is the same kind of machine. I was determined not to order. Absolutely not. I could wait. And I did.

About three hours.

Then in the afternoon came the sparkly 687 piece assorted theme rub-ons. Those looked way cool and I don’t have any rub-ons. Clearly, I needed some.

I vowed I was done shopping for the day. That was it; I’d spent enough money. But there wasn’t any baseball on last night. Nobody was televised. I had to watch something while I worked on the synopsis for my proposal, right? And I tend to default to QVC because I can watch without needing to pay strict attention. That’s when I saw the fall and winter themed 600+ piece self-adhesive chipboard kits. I would have been fine if the letters hadn’t been so cute. I caved again.

This was it, though. I was absolutely, positively 100% finished shopping. But as I was working, I saw this card making kit. They hadn’t even demonstrated it yet when I ordered, just previewed it. I love homemade cards with embellishments. Now granted, the cards I have were made by someone else, but come on, I can do this, too! I think.

See? This is why ESPN, TBS and WGN need to show more baseball! I only get in trouble like this when there aren’t any games on, and with the Twins playing on the west coast tonight, I was at the mercy of QVC. And they had none. They kept showing irresistible item after irresistible item. Only my incredible willpower (STOP LAUGHING!) kept the damage from being much worse.

In other news, my dad found my wind spinner at the bottom of the shepherd’s hook so I didn’t lose it. He also found my rain gutter extension in my neighbor’s yard. Those were two rough storms Monday night. Final total on the number of Twin Cities residents without power was something around 55,000. I’m so happy not to be one of them. Of course, it might be cheaper if I had been. No television.

Another flower bloomed yesterday too, bringing my total back up to five, although I think two will be losing their petals shortly. They just don’t last long enough.

Tags: plants, scrapbooking, shopping, weather
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Riders of the Storm

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

My goal was to get to bed early last night. I’d only had about four hours of sleep on Sunday night and I was beat. It was about 9pm that I logged off, but that was right about the time that all the local television stations broke in to announce this huge, dangerous storm was headed toward the Twin Cities. There were parts of the cell that were so filled with hail that it showed up eggplant purple on the radar.

This made me nervous. I don’t like storms anyway, but this one really was something. They’d measured winds that had gusted up to 100mph in the outstate area before it reached us. After about 45 minutes or so, it became obvious that it was going to pass off to the Northwest and I wasn’t going to get anything. Good, right?

Well, kind of.

You see, behind storm 1 was storm 2. At this time, it was still out in St. Cloud, but it, too, was barrelling South and this one was probably going to catch me because it was further to the west than storm 1. They estimated it would roll in around 11:15. At this time, it was 10:30 and I figured I’d better catch some sleep while I could. Storm 2 would likely wake me up and I might have to grab stuff and head for the basement. I have two folding chairs down there, so it could end up being a really long, uncomfortable night.

Of course, I was too keyed up, waiting for the imminent arrival of the second wave to really sleep, and sure enough, at 11:03, as the storm came in, I woke up.

Lots of lightning with this one again, lots of torrential rain, and lots of wind. So much wind that my hummingbird wind spinner is gone. I think it might be on the shepherd hook still, but down around the deck railing–I’m not sure, though, because even with my deck light on this morning, I couldn’t see that far out and it was dark!

I never lost power–definitely a good thing since the last report I heard said about 31,000 people were without electricity. I don’t make a good pioneer. I had little pellet-sized hail, but not the two inch hail that some places got–another blessing. The wind also left my trees alone–at least as far as I could see in the dark.

I spent about an hour–between 11:03 and midnight–flipping around the local television stations, trying to get the different opinions on how intense this thing was going to be. I saw that the freeway–my freeway–had flooded in a couple of places and that cars were floating. Now I have to begin worrying about the morning commute as well. Will this water drain away or am I going to end up detoured? As it turned out, it was gone when I went through although the pavement was still really wet.

As the storm eased up, I was finally able to sleep, but I’m hugely tired again today. I can also give you a report. Most annoying weather coverage: The guy who kept warning me to be “sky aware.” Over and over he said it until even the anchorwomen were using it. Grrr.

Second most annoying weather coverage was the guy with the co-weatherman helping him by controlling the radar. He had to keep telling his cohort to switch views and then thanking him. It got to the point last night where if I’d heard sky aware or the name Patrick one more time, I was going to lose my mind. Good thing the storm was abating by then and I could go to sleep.

Storm damage was out there. My neighbors across the street lost two branches off one of their trees–one of them was pretty darn big. There was also other branches down as I made my way to the freeway, but we probably won’t know how bad things are until the sun comes out.

And that’s my story for this morning. All’s well, but I’m darn sleepy.

Tags: weather
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To Mac or Not To Mac, That Is the Question

Monday, August 13th, 2007

One of the loops I’m on has been having a discussion about Mac versus PC. The focus is on laptops, but I’m to the point where I’m ready to replace my desktop and I’ve been curious about going back to Mac. You see, back a long time ago, my first ever home computer was a Mac. I totally loved it and would have stayed with them forever–except for one thing. Price. I needed to replace my Mac and I could get five times the computer for a fraction of the price if I switched to a PC. I did and haven’t looked back since then.

However, I keep hearing things about Vista, especially about all the security windows that pop up. Particularly for power users. While I’m not ready to join the Geek Squad, I am an advanced user. I also know those pop up security alerts would absolutely make me insane. So now I’m debating.

Mac has a program that allows use of PC programs on it, which is a definitely plus because I use WordPerfect and I intend to continue using WP until they pry it out of my cold, dead hands–to borrow a phrase from the gun people.

I spent some time poking around the Apple website and the iMac is way cool. The computer is built in behind the screen so that’s all I’d have on my desk (once I figured out where to put my current PC desktop). I’ve been away from the Mac world for a long time, though, and I’m wondering if this has everything I need? Do I want the cool iMac or the Mac Pro? That has a tower, but it almost sounds as if it’s for graphic artists or people who are going to do more film/picture work than I ever will.

Anyway, it’s something to think about, but I’m not going to rush into anything. My knowledge is PC-based and trying to relearn Mac… Anyone want to jump into this with a pro or con for me?

Tags: computer
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