Throwback Thursday: Chill Before Packing

Apropos of nothing, this is Tamino, my conveniently self-packing cat

Tomorrow I'll be flying into Milwaukee, Wisconsin to meet up with family for my youngest brother's wedding near Madison on Saturday. After the wedding, I'm driving back from Wisconsin to Western Washington with my sister, who is relocating out here.

The upcoming trip is just about all that fits in my head at the given moment, so it's what I talked about in between tunes while playing music with friends this past weekend.

We got to discussing various attitudes and styles of packing: last minute, weeks ahead, things that can go wrong. It brought to mind one of my worst packing moments: an anecdote I didn't get around to sharing, and which is a little hard to imagine in these balmy summer days.

It was January of 2003, and I was prepping to fly to Florida with two of my younger siblings to meet up with friends I mostly knew through an Internet forum connection it would be hard to fully explain without a lot more time: essentially, we started talking about a subject that interested us, and didn't shut up for years. And along the way, we got to know each other really well, and met up in a variety of "real world" ways. Still do, to some extent. Some of those folks remain among my closest friends.

That January, we all rented a house on the beach to just hang out for a week. It was a blast. Yes, it was the off season, and though we northerners were still crazy enough to go swimming, I don't think the temperature got much above the high sixties. But back in Vermont, it was -30 that week.

And that's where the trouble came in.

I am a procrastinator. I've admitted that here before. I will make detailed lists, yes. I will plan like crazy. But then...I will stall until the last possible minute. For this particular trip, I held off on washing some of the clothes I knew I was going to need until the night before we flew out, and then did a quick load late at night and stuck them in the dryer before hitting the hay.

That was my first winter in my little bungalow in St. Johnsbury, VT: A tiny place, but it did have a finished basement, where the washer and dryer lived. The basement was only partially heated: most of the heat from the furnace was set to blow upstairs through vents, but the previous owner had disconnected one of the heat vents and left the conduit hanging to blow a little warmth into the basement. It was never *warm* down there in the winter, but it was something.

The frigid morning of the flight out, I got up at oh-dark-thirty (we had to leave by about three to get to the airport), and made my way down to the basement to grab my things from the dryer. In opening the door, I quickly discovered two things: 1) In my sleepiness the night before, I'd forgotten to switch on the dryer after I put the clothes in, and 2) My still-wet clothes were frozen solid. In one giant lump.

I tried feebly to pick them apart at first, but it was not gonna happen. They were all stiff and intertwined. So I did the only thing I *could* do: I turned the heat setting on the dryer up, and turned it on.

OH MY GOODNESS THAT WAS LOUD. If you think about it, a dryer is essentially a large metal drum turning inside a large metal box. Putting a large, hard object in there and starting it up was startling, especially that early in the morning. Ka-THUNK, ka-THUNK, ka-THUNK! But it did eventually thaw out, though I still had to pack my clothes while they were slightly damp.

I'm sure I will find other ways to procrastinate tonight, but I did my laundry Sunday.

Just in case, you know.

How about you? What travel mishaps have you experienced?

Kaput

This is apparently Kaput Week around here.

This weekend I bought new sneakers. Because I am a knucklehead, Monday morning I went for a three mile walk in said sneakers, without having worn them around the house long enough for them to get used to me and I to them. Gave myself a blister.

I limped in to work that day to find that one co-worker had messed up his back and another had pulled a muscle in her calf and was also limping. And one of the uninjured had to leave early because her furnace broke down. Also, Comcast throughout the region had network glitches and intermittent outages most of the day. Not fun.

Well, I chalked it up to "Monday" and figured it was over. Bought blister bandages on the way home, and was able to walk as usual on Tuesday (albeit in old shoes). The work day was hectic, but without major outages. Everything seemed to be looking up.

Then this morning I stepped out the door onto the waterlogged front steps (which, I might add, I've traversed hundreds of times in far worse conditions) and my feet went out from under me. Came down HARD on my tailbone, wrenched my shoulder. It. Hurt. One of those moments where you can't decide whether to curse, cry, or maybe both.

So I'm back to limping.

Is there a lesson in all this? Not really.

Except that, maybe, though we've escaped the Polar Vortex, we in the Pacific Northwest are in the grip of a Vortex of Kaput.

Be careful out there, folks.

Bzzzzzz

Around here, they call them white faced hornets. Sounds pretty innocuous, no? Doesn't that name make them sound like delightful minstrel show or pantomime characters? All jolly and comical and innocent.

Or not.

I've had to deal with a steady plague of the things ever since I moved to my current home. I hate them with a burning passion hitherto reserved for things like spiders hiding under the sheets in my bed. I, to put it mildly, loathe them. Fortunately I'm not terribly allergic to hornets or bees, but nevertheless, hearing a nearby buzz is enough to make me freeze, skin crawling, blood roaring in my ears.

And it's as if they can sense my fear and are drawn to it. Last year they ended up practically IN THE HOUSE. There's a little tip-out portion to my house (an added on section where the washer and dryer go) with its own roof. Last year hornets found a way into into the space between the ceiling of that section and the roof and built themselves a giant hornet castle. They didn't make it into the house proper, but I could hear them buzzing as though they were just in the next room, and making chewing sounds, and tufts of the papery stuff of the GIANT NEST UP THERE poked out of the ceiling. I couldn't get to them well enough to do anything about them with my little wasp spray cans. Plus, they were very, very angry if anyone approached their front door, which happened to be just above my front door. It was...horrifying, actually.

Luckily my landlady has a friend who works with bees and who is also equipped to deal with nasty hornets. He took care of them once and for all and did a bunch of sealing things up. But oh man...there were a few weeks there where every evening as they all settled in for the night, I sat there listening with my heart in my throat, imagining them breaking through, imagining being swarmed by the things--in the house where I couldn't get away from them. Talk about your worst nightmare...

This year, they took up residence in the shed. They do this every year to some extent, but I guess last year more of them congregated in the hornet castle (and most of my fears centered around it), so the shed wasn't (or didn't seem) such a big deal. I sprayed a few nests and was done. This year was another matter. There were nests EVERYWHERE in there. It was a whole wasp metropolis. There were small bungalows by the door, a Grande Hornet Hotel under the eaves, clusters of hornet condos deep in the dim corners of the shed. And the more there were, the more I was afraid to tackle them.

This weekend, after much psyching myself up, I finally took 'em on. I waited until dusk, when they were mostly all in the nests and inactive, and then I busted in there, spray can blazing, holding a flashlight above the can as if I was some sort of anti-hornet SWAT unit. I went absolutely ballistic on the nasty critters, as only a fear-crazed woman can do.

The next day, when the foam had cleared and I waltzed in blithely to have a look around, I nearly walked right into an ambush. There were still more nests I'd not seen the day before, complete with glistening, buzzing, cranky hornets. *shudder*

So I bided my time until dusk and then repeated the commando routine. And when I poked my head in the next day, the place looked like a hornet ghost town. Mwuahahahah! I win.

For now.

*sigh*

Storms and Crashes and Grillin' and Marshmallows: What I've Been Up To

I am lame: no typecast, no pencast, no nuffin.  But there are pictures!  Lots of pictures!

The end of last week was rough.  Thursday morning, I was in a car accident on the way to work.  Another driver pulled into me from the side as I was going by, and the whole passenger side of my bitty car is scraped up.  Looks like someone keyed it with a Really Big Key.  Her insurance company and my insurance company are duking it out, and the whole process makes me queasy and uneasy.  I guess I've been really fortunate...aside from a few minor parking lot bumps and the one time I slid partly off the road in the snow and popped a tire, I've never had an accident.  And as accidents go, I guess it's pretty minor.  Still...oof.

And then Friday, I woke to news that there had been a major hail and wind storm back home in Northeastern Vermont, like nothing anyone had ever seen before: roads washed out, vehicles and homes flooded, trees knocked down.  One of the biggest roads near town (Rt. 5, which runs North/South) is closed down due to a major cave-in.

I've driven down this road I don't know how many times...it's hard to fathom this kind of damage.  And many of the smaller roads are at least as bad.

Closer to my own heart, the pond where we used to play growing up is gone--the storm took out the embankment that held it in place, and there's really nothing left but a big muddy hole with a little stream running through it.

The big gap left after the storm rolled through...



Obviously, it wasn't that big or that deep to begin with, but it's still sort of impressive that it disappeared literally overnight.


I actually shed tears, though I realize how silly this is considering that a) this wasn't even our property and b) others suffered far greater things.  Fortunately no one I know was hurt or anything like that.  Still...the pond!  I don't know how many hours I spent down there as a kid, skipping stones, catching bugs and frogs and salamanders, sailing toy boats, coming home muddy and smelly and wet...  Good times.

Apparently one of the neighbors on the road is hoping to start a fund to repair it, since the young man who now owns the land is likely unable to be able to pull it off alone.  Here's hoping it lives again.  Poor little pond!

But this weekend was good, if busy.  Things I did this weekend:

1. Played with inks, including the very pretty new Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses.

(Those of you on my letter writing list should have a chance to see this ink in person soon.  Yes, I'm actually getting caught up on letter writing.  Try not to faint.)

2. Planted a bunch o' flowers and herbs: petunias, alyssum, marigolds, basil, rosemary, dill, and a few random others.

Hopefully at least some of them survive.  I have a tendency to go, "Oooooh, pretty!!" whenever I walk into a greenhouse / garden center, end up purchasing more than I set out for, and then forget to water come July when Washington suddenly becomes high desert.  But for now, everything is doing well except the basil.  I'm batting 0 for about 5 where basil is concerned.  It's starting to feel personal.

3. Went on a nice long walk with thedog, down paths now green and leafy.  These pictures are actually about a week old, but I didn't think to take any this weekend...so you get old footage.


Gratuitous shot of the trees Jeff liked a few posts back.  I'm not quite sure what these are, actually!  They aren't the standard white "paper" birch we have back home, though in certain light, they do look like them.  But they're more silvery, and the bark is pretty solid.


4. Bought a bitty little gas grill, and after a day where I debated using it or taking it back (I sort of had post-purchase sticker shock, I guess)...I broke down, put it together, fired it up and was very pleased with the results.  Best grilled chicken I've ever made, by far!  And it's just big enough to make dinner with leftovers for the week without having to do batches.


I also grilled mangos (they're on sale this week, and ohh, I love mangos!) and avocado.  The avocado in particular was a revelation.  Cut it in half, took out the pit, brushed with olive oil and slapped it down on the grill for maybe six minutes.  It was soft and creamy and subtly smoky.  I put a little salsa and sour cream in the middle and...nom.  So good.  I'll be making those again.

And I didn't torch any major structures!  Yay me!

Now I have a very, very short work week, and then a brother I haven't seen in awhile and my baby sister will be visiting.  They'll mostly stay with another brother and his family up near Tacoma, but I may kidnap 'em for a day or so to show them the sights.  Next weekend there's a music festival in Winlock, WA, and I'm hoping to drag my brother to that.  It's maybe my favorite local music festival, for a number of reasons: first off, there's a wide variety of acoustic music from bluegrass to Celtic to...whatever.  Also, after the concerts, everyone hangs out to just play music for hours.  Also--and this is important--there's a pavilion with an open fireplace where you can roast marshmallows.  I mean, c'mon--marshmallows!

Speaking of which, I was at Fred Meyer this weekend and they had GINORMOUS marshmallows.  Like...almost-the-size-of-a-small-apple marshmallows.  What is this world coming to?  Aren't regular marshmallows more than enough sugar for the average person?  And yet...giant marshmallows are just awesome, especially if (like me), you're one of those people who toasts marshmallows by burning the outside, peeling it off and eating it, and repeating.  You could go a long time on a marshmallow like that.  Woo-hoo!  If, on the other hand, you're one of those weirdos like my Dad who like to carefully, carefully toast marshmallows to a perfectly even golden brown outside and complete inner gooeyness, I'd guess these'd get very messy.

I didn't buy any, but I keep thinking about that open fireplace deal coming up next weekend.  Hrm.

Update Just to Update: Self-Derision and Hot Coffee Edition

A Long Walk Makes Everything Better. Mostly.

After a very unrestful Sunday, I arrived at work Monday to discover that my monitor had gone kablooey (technical term), and the day pretty much went downhill from there.  And then this morning, I had to be at work at six.  Yes, I got some breaks during the day, and I got to leave early, kinda, but still...  And so I was crabby today.  And I took some of that crabbiness out on one of our own.  For that, I apologize.

However, we had a little sunshine today, and I got home early enough to take full advantage of it.  I grabbed Cisco's leash, waited a moment for him to come back to earth so I could put it on him, and set out.


It's approaching what I consider the most beautiful time of year here in Washington.  We're still a few days or weeks short--spring seems to have arrived late this year.  The deciduous trees are leafing out, but the leaves are still small.  The trees have an oddly unfinished look, like an incomplete painting: the shape and some under strokes are there, but the vital details have yet to arrive.

Spring is apparent in all sorts of different wildflowers, and other interesting plants.




But there are still signs of the winter we have just departed.  Ferns are still brown around the edges, lacking the green of new growth.


And though later in the year, the sides of the path will be overgrown, right now there are still things left exposed.  Bits of bare branches show, winter-bleached to the color of old bone.


And here and there, in the form of segments of rusted iron rails and wooden railroad ties, I come across signs of the trail's original purpose.


In a few weeks, the grass and weeds and brambles will have taken over again, but for the moment, the trail thinks back, and remembers.

And me?  Feeling more relaxed and less crabby...though less so than I'd be if the trash guys would actually take *all* my trash like I pay 'em to do, instead of only *half* emptying the can.  *sigh*  It's always sumpin.

Fountain Pen Love: a Cautionary Rant

What with my feeling cranky at typewriters right now, I've had the fountain pens and pencils out more than usual this week.  I've also been reading back through some journals lately.  I just passed the five year anniversary of my move to Washington, and the five year anniversary of starting my current job.  Time really has flown!  When I first moved out here, my oldest niece was a few weeks old.  Now she's a little chatterbox of a five-year-old and has been joined by several siblings.  When did all *that* happen?

Anyhow, in reading back through my journals, I'm again made cranky (cranky seems to be my theme of the week) by certain inks, which include some of those *most* recommended to fountain pen newbies!  Yes, they flow nicely, are relatively easy to clean up if you spill, and are more readily available than most.  However, they fade like the dickens.  Now...considering a lot of people seem attracted to fountain pens as tools for keeping long-term logs and journals, because they seem sort of romantic and old-fashioned and intimate, this worries me.  I realize I likely can blame some of my earliest troubles on bad paper and low quality ink--for example, here's a page I wrote in the late 90s using a basic no-name fountain pen and the washable blue ink cartridges that came with it, in one of those inexpensive, gaudy journals you can pick up in drug stores and Hallmark stores everywhere:

Can you read it without some sort of digital cheating?  I can't.  Not except for a word here and there.  And unfortunately, I didn't catch the disappearing act until it was too late.  I'm guessing the paper is acidic as anything, and the acid acted as a slow-mo ink eradicator.  It makes me sad.

When I discovered it, I (for the most part) resolved to stick with high quality paper and decent brand-name inks.  But, I discovered, that's no guarantee either.  Take this entry--nothing too earth-shattering if I lose it, but it's the principal of the thing.  It's not even five years old, yet it has already faded.  Waterman Blue-Black.  Exactly what the fountain pen folk would probably recommend to a newbie, no?  It's on Moleskine paper, which isn't great for fountain pen ink just because it bleeds and feathers, but should be pretty acid free.  And yet...

I have similar examples written in Parker Quink Black, Waterman Black, and to a lesser extent, Waterman Havana.  Granted, this example is still perfectly legible, but what will it look like in five *more* years, or five years after that?  My guess is that while these inks are wonderfully behaved and very pretty at first, making them great for short-term notes, you shouldn't depend on them to stick with you for the long haul.

As a side tangent, while Waterman South Seas Blue fades maybe a teensy bit, but strangely (considering how much lighter it is) is far less affected--I used a basic Waterman fountain pen (a school pen not available in the states) for quite a few of my journal entries when I was overseas, and while the Florida Blue entries are faded badly, South Seas Blue is still pretty bright.  (Even if it did fade quickly, you'd have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.  The stuff is world-rockingly lovely, though if you even *show* it a drip of water, it will flee the page without leaving so much as a shadow behind.)

Waterman South Seas Blue brush scribble--it's even prettier in person!

Now...I dunno that there are really any archive-proven fountain pen inks--particularly as most companies have changed their formulas over the years, and many of the big names today haven't been around much more than a decade.  You'll see lots of folks talking about family papers from relatively far back that are still perfectly legible though written in fountain pen ink, but my personal experience gives me pause.  Lately I've mostly been using pencil, though I admit, I've slipped a time or two into my fountain pen ways.  But I try to stick with inks that remain vibrant in my own older journals--it's not a *guarantee* of real longevity, but perhaps an indicator they'll be around at least awhile.  Most of the Noodler's colors are good, particularly their "bulletproof" or near-bulletproof colors.  I bought a few Private Reserve inks early on, and most of those look OK as well, though I found many of them more problematic than I cared to deal with on a regular basis (some colors are really hard to rinse out of pens, the inks take ages to dry on the page, and some ink colors faded or shifted in the bottle--Burgandy Mist, for example, turned to Industrial Sludge).  I keep wanting to try some other brands, J. Herbin and Diamine in particular, but it's hard to know (without risk) if their current inks will last a good while.  I'd be interested in the experience of others.  I don't expect my babbling to last centuries, nor do I want it to...but it would be nice if it at least lasted decades.

For the most part, I'm something of a Noodler's fan girl.  I've had good luck with most colors, and they seem to maintain their brilliance in my notebooks even after years on the shelf.  Right now, I'm really, really fighting the urge to order more colors: some Black Swan in Australian Roses (that color and the shading makes my heart go pitter-pat) and maybe some Zhivago (I'm a sucker for subtle near-black inks, and that one has been calling my name for years now--and speaking of names, I like the name of it, too!)

Bottom line: if you really, really want something to last, pencil is a great choice--even some of my journals written in ballpoint are faded quite badly in places, but my old grade school journals written in pencil have held up very well.  After all, they're pretty much written in stone, albeit stone in powder form.  Stone doesn't tend to change much over time, at least when closed up out of water and wind...  The paper will fail first.  Dip pens, with the ability to use old fashioned iron gall and pigmented inks, are also likely a great choice, and one I want to try out one of these days.

And if you (like me) are in love with the fountain pens and the wonderful rainbow of ink colors available, either assume your writing is likely to sneak away as the years roll by and just enjoy the present moments, or choose wisely, and (unlike me) think ahead a bit.

Woe.

Devastation (with updates)

To begin with, the Lettera 33 smells like Stinky.  But that, I expected.  Also, it was packed with *nothing* around it...a few folded pieces of brown paper that did nothing except maybe keep the shipping box protected from the dirty case.  And, though it may or may not have happened in shipping, it has several issues...and none of them things I feel hopeful I can fix on my own.  The biggest one is that the carriage feels sort of wobbly, and the draw band is off, and although the whatchamacallit the draw band winds around still feels like the spring inside is working, it doesn't feel...right.

*sigh*

I should know better than to go near eBay.

On the bright side...um...the bright side?  It came with a little Lettera 33 manual.  Yay.

I guess there's always Blue Moon.  Maybe this will have a happy ending after all.  In the meantime, I guess I can concentrate on cleaning the case.  I don't have the heart to work on the busted typewriter.

UPDATE (and this is precisely why I shouldn't work on my own typewriters): I fixed the draw band...sort of...for awhile...before everything went terribly south.  The first time, the tension wasn't high enough, I don't think, because it would go about halfway across and then sort of lose steam.  So I went to try again, and it was closer, but still too loose.  So I tried another time.  And *this* time, the screw I was using as a weight in order to lower the cord through the typewriter and attach it at the bottom of the carriage on the other side got stuck in the mechanism.  And I can't get it out.  At all.  No amount of jiggling and tapping and yelling at it makes any difference.  Neither did cutting the cord to it so the screw is in there all alone.  The carriage is jammed to one side with that screw in there, and so far as I can see the carriage will need to come off to remove it, and there's no easy way to remove the carriage when you can't *move* the carriage.  So not only do I still have to take it down to Blue Moon, but now I can't even take it in the case, and I have to admit what an idiot I am.   I spent the better part of the evening trying to get the darned thing out, so I'm tired and cranky and I smell like mildew and I want to cry and maybe punch something.

So there's that.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: I got the carriage centered again.  And I sort of rigged up a temporary draw band to let me play with it.  The draw band doesn't work quite as it should...I probably still have the tension wrong, or it's too short.  And the margins aren't working...maybe they weren't working to begin with, or maybe I busted 'em.  In any case, I'm not attempting any further fixes on my own.  On the bright side, from what little typing I can do...this is one comfortable, snappy little typer.  Maybe all will come out right in the end...?

The Downside

I managed to remember my lunch today (sometimes a rare occurance), but forgot my entire backpack, which contains my current reading book (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), my current writing books (journal, full sized notebook, the little brain dump notebook, and assorted index cards), and my box o' pencils.

I feel like I'm missing an arm.  And what am I gonna do during lunch??

If I lived in "the cloud," I wouldn't hafta be in mourning.

2010 NaNoWriMo by Pencil: Week Three Report

Whew, what a week.  I say this in both good and bad senses, but in all senses, it took away from my word production.

To begin with, last weekend my most local brother and sister-in-law welcomed their first son into the world.  What with waiting for news, fretting, and the flurry of phone calls and the posting of photos and everything else after his birth--plus all my usual weekend errands--I struggled to get much writing in.  Did OK, but didn't get caught up, as I'd hoped.

Monday, I thought.  Monday, I'll write like a mad woman.  I was going to hit that halfway mark by the end of Monday if it killed me.

And then the power went out.

Now, in some cases, this would be an opportunity for me to chortle with glee at the shortcomings of higher tech writing methods as I scribbled nonchalantly onward.  Couple problems with this: first of all, in Washington State in the winter, it's dark an awful lot of the day.  When it's pouring rain and windy, it's dark *all* day.  I do not currently own a battery powered lantern or a book light.  I couldn't see to write.  Tried writing by flashlight, but it really didn't work.

Secondly, within a few minutes of losing power at home, my pager started screaming bloody murder because the power to the data center at work had also gone out, and the equipment was Very Worried.   And it was my responsibility to calm it down and babysit.  I got some sleep that night, but the early morning hours and all the next day were spent dealing with the outage (over twelve hours at work) and its aftermath.

And then I had a reading assignment I had to finish.  So Tuesday night, with the power finally restored at home, I read until midnight, went to bed too keyed up to sleep, and then had to get up again Wednesday morning at five.  Wednesday morning I squeezed in a few words between the church thing and work, but in the evening, I had a dinner thing and didn't get home until about nine.  I crawled into bed and fell asleep instantly.

Now here, I'm sure someone is going to say, "Well, *I* would have stayed up until ten and gotten an hour's worth of writing in, you lazy good-for-nothing."  To you, I say two things: Well lah-dee-dah, and Bah!  I'm a morning person, and even on a good night, my brain goes into power-save mode after about eight, and that night I was so tired everything around me seemed sort of squished and muffled.  I could barely remember my own name, let alone put strings of words together.  I probably would have awoken in the middle of the night with drool on my notebook and graphite on my face and no words written.

I did, however, set my alarm for early the next morning, in hopes of getting some words in before work.  It was a futile hope.  I slept through the alarm.  I double-checked the clock when I did wake up, and it was set correctly; but I have absolutely no memory of it going off, not even as part of a dream.  *sigh*

I still managed to stagger across the 25k line during lunch on Thursday: the line I'd hoped to sprint across clear back on Monday.  Only three days behind.  Yay me.

I'll spare you the details of the rest of the week.  Let's just say the challenges continued.  I only get a thirty minute lunch but usually can cram writing in...but we were too busy for that this week.  And there was more family stuff.  Unexpected schedule changes.  Unexpected obligations.

I'm still hoping to finish this thing in time, but it's liable to be down to the wire.  The lack of morning and lunchtime writing time was the kiss of death this past week, so hopefully I can squeeze in at least some this week.  Thanksgiving will probably be a lost day, and I work Friday, so no extra time there.   There's next weekend, at least.

OK, enough of all that.  This week's stats:

• Composition book pages killed: I passed 200 tonight (I'm at 203), which would mean a new notebook if this one wasn't poorly made...but it is, so I got twelve bonus sheets / twenty four bonus pages.  I'll finish filling it up tomorrow or Tuesday.
• Pencils obliterated: the Helix Oxford is dead.  Or at least mostly dead.  I used it down to little more than a nubbin before reluctantly tossing in into the shorty jar.
• Word count: around 31465, which means I'm about two days behind.  However, on Thursday I was three days behind, so hey, progress!

Pencil Achievement Awards:

• Coolest ferrule: the classic Ticonderoga has an unfair advantage in this category.  I mean...look at it!  It has those distinctive and handsome yellow and green stripes, that textured band across the middle.  There is none cooler.  However, I would like to give honorable mention to the Mongol--that's it smack dab in the middle of the photo above.  Not only does it look interesting, but the eraser isn't crimped in, so you can yank it out and pop it back in.  It amuses me.
• For courage under fire: OK, so courage is a strong word.  So is fire.  But I would like to publicly apologize to the Palomino for calling its lettering silver when it's actually pale gold.  Also for breaking off a big chunk of lead this week because I was careless when sharpening.  Sorry, little guy!

The story is...going.  No, actually it's working pretty well, aside from the whole being behind thing.  As I mentioned in one of my comments on last week's post, I've settled into a different period and plot than I originally intended: I fell in love with a few of the characters in the backstory, so they've become the primary story line instead.  Why? Because I'm the author, and I said so.

Neocast: Confessions of a NaNo procrastinator

Well, I'm officially behind in NaNo world. This doesn't usually happen to me. I'm not one of those obnoxious overachievers who write ten thousand words in the first few days and finish the fifty thousand within the first week or two at most, but I usually stay slightly ahead of the game, coasting over the finish line comfortably ahead of schedule on about the 25th. But this year has been something of a struggle. In addition to my run in with the law, I've had quite a number of days when I wasn't able to get in a morning writing session because of appointments or having to be at work before hours. Lack of morning writing time is the kiss of death for me--I find writing in the evening to be a serious and often futile struggle. I've also not been able to squeeze in lunchtime writing--even fifteen minutes of writing by hand would help, but work has been busy and I've been trying to do the whole thing on the typewriter, which I can't easily use at work, so that's been out.

And now I have a cold. And my ribbon is getting light(er) but I feel guilty about changing it when there are starving writers elsewhere with ribbons in shabbier condition than mine, so I just keep using it and feeling dissatisfied. And I miss the coffee house but know I'd get nothing done if I went there with a typewriter--I'd end up setting it aside in embarrassment and diving into a book.

To add to my crabbiness, I'm now at that horrible part in the novel when I no longer feel capable of picking the perfect words--something that seemed to come easily in the first twenty thousand words or so--and the climax is still a long way away, and I have words to write in order to get there--necessary words, and I more or less know what events have to happen, so it's not just fill, but...ugh. I'm not feelin' it. And my characters keep babbling about nothing--useless stuff I'll have to chisel out later. And to add to the pressure, one of my characters invited a guy she barely knows to her parents' house for Sunday dinner (and there will be lots of extended family, too), and he actually accepted. We're all three of us surprised and nervous and are digging in our heels so hard it's a wonder we aren't going backward. If there's one thing I hate, it's crowds. And for sheer embarrassment and mental anguish, the only thing worse than crowds is a crowd of people who are all related to you: people with a special knack for embarrassing you or angering you because they know you a little better than anyone really has a right to--or think they do, which is even worse. And now I have to not only dive into this experience, but try to recreate it in great detail. I'm getting a headache just thinking about it. So I keep stalling instead.

Tomorrow I may take the Neo to the coffee house (and leave any books at home, so it's either write or sit there staring off into space with a funky looking object laying on the table in front of me) and see if I can dash off a few thousand words in the morning. OK, so it isn't a typewriter. It also doesn't weigh fifteen or twenty pounds, and I don't have to worry about carrying along paper or fret that I'm bothering people with my noisy clack ding routine. I would say it's the most practical writing machine I own (sorry gang, but it's true), and I should probably take more advantage of that. I'm not sure it's any less likely to make me a pariah, however. We need some special hats for Alphasmartians venturing off into public places, too....

Birthday redux typecast

The one musical artist I did discover this weekend was actually by means of the Alphasmart Flickr group: Gordon Bok was mentioned by one of the frequent posters, and I looked him up out of curiosity. I like what little I've found. Actually, he also got played in my Pandora mix, somewhere in the realm of Stan Rogers. He's a Mainer with a great slightly-rough-around-the-edges baritone voice who sings everything from sea shanties to ballads to original songs. I'll be looking deeper into his music.

Ah, and now we're back to Silly Wizard. I <3 Andy M. Stewart. *sigh*