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Entry tags:
Info dump of miscellany.
So, life is chaos right now. But I'm overall not unhappy with that. I've kind of come to terms with the fact that life is just going to be a chaotic mess right now. Doesn't make me any less crazy, but I'll own that crazy. We're in a good place with our crazy.
Also, I know I've said it before, but seriously, I'm reverse aging right now. I feel like I'm in high school again but I'm old enough to appreciate it. I feel like I'm digging around in the culture behind the persona I tried to construct. I'm finding another layer. I'm growing another ring, or something. So, really I guess it's that I'm getting older and probably has at least a little bit to do with my upcoming birthday. I don't recall ever physically feeling an anniversary... of anything. But there it is.
I'm kind of half-assed writing again. And I don't mean I'm not putting effort into it while I'm writing, it's just so on again/off again start/stop kind of stuff. I feel like I'm in heavy traffic, kind of and it's making me want to bang my head into the steering wheel more than just a little. I think I've got what I've heard called "Chapter 4 Syndrome". The enormity of the project you've taken upon yourself sets in and you begin to have doubts. I'm not in big sweeping changes to the storyline right now, which is what I've done up to now. I'm trying to write some of the filler (which is not really filler, it's important character building), but it's boring me to tears, which means it probably needs to be better. Half of me says, just get this down and move on and fix it in edits. Another half of me says, YOU CAN'T EVEN LET BETAS READ THIS GARBAGE! Although letting someone else read it might really help me fix it and move on. And the battle rages on.
That's in the draft though. In the outline I'm similarly frustrated but for different reasons entirely. I filled in a HUGE and important hole and began fixing some things before and after it which were affected by it. And then I tried to go forward again to fill in the next big hole. But I couldn't. I couldn't get my bearings. I kept trying to read large sections to get back into something somewhere, anywhere, but couldn't grasp it. It was just frustrating and disorienting and that's when I moved over to the draft to start getting chapter 2 down (which is what I was talking about being boring). Even with feeling stalled, I've pulled out probably close to 4000 words in the documents combined over the past week or so. I'm not really sure though because I was bouncing around so much and not keeping track of the grand totals to compare later. Whatever, that's of little importance, other than giving me a sense of accomplishment at the end of a session in the document(s).
Stats:
Draft = 9749 words, 33 pages
Outline = 39,442, 51 pages
Writing provides an adequate enough segue into music. I've been ravenously gobbling up artists I've not heard before. I've been hitting up the Amazon $5 mp3 album downloads every month. They've got 100 selections for $5 each that change every month. I go through and listen to samples of anything that looks moderately interesting. I started this mostly in the hopes of diversifying my writing playlist in order to make the Coldplay impact more subtle. Now I've got a diverse playlist of 315 songs, 30 artists and 44 albums. I had gone through and sorted it all out according to the appropriateness toward certain scenes, almost like a soundtrack. My hope was to get away from playing songs on repeat just because they helped drive the writing of a specific scene. But when I reopened the playlist after a restart, everything is randomly resorted. *iz annoyed at VLC media player* So, I probably won't bother with all that again unless I can figure out what went wrong and how to keep them in the proper order. I doubt I'll spend much time on it.
Of note on my recent music journey: Band of Horses, Iron and Wine (I keep typing Whine), Thom Yorke (being a Radiohead fan for so long seems like a big fat DUH that I'd love his solo stuff, but there it is), The Postal Service (there again, I love Death Cab and the Atari sounding instrumentals is just the icing on the cake), The Bird and the Bee, Jj, The Indelicates, White Hinterland, Wye Oak, Air, Céu, Rupa and the April Fishes, Eluvium, The Duchess and the Duke, and Ugly Casanova (which might as well be Modest Mouse, as far as I'm concerned). See? Ravenous!
In addition to just downloading music to listen to at home,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
branflake is coming to visit this weekend (YAY!) and I was browsing Now Playing Nashville to find some stuff to do this weekend. In that search, I was also just sort of looking up artists I'd never heard of to see what they're all about. Of note on that journey so far: Angel Snow and Devon Sproule and I've also found that I kind of like and would one day like to see my brother-in-law's band, The Clutters.
In other news, not only is our server so full I can't copy any of this music to it, every computer in our house excepting our laptops *knocks on veneered wood* has suddenly decided to explode. Not literally, no. But the server had been crapping out with increasing frequency in the past few months and finally got to the point where it just wouldn't do anything except stay frozen up. Chris thinks it was a double whammy with one of the two power supplies (or both, who knows) starting to crap out which in turn may have screwed the motherboard. The Hackintosh in the den, which is our media pc for that room, suddenly decided it no longer wanted to display anything when I started to try to do yoga one morning. I could hear the dvd playing, so I knew everything else was working, I just couldn't get a picture no matter how much I messed around with inputs and such. So, possible video card screwed there. I think the media pc in the bedroom is fine. But now Chris is running around trying to swap parts and see if he can't get things operational again. It's not fun, I can tell. And every time something like this happens, he swears he's going to buy some expensive solution that just works out of the box so he doesn't have to fiddle with this stuff anymore. But, to be fair, he last had to do something major (apart from just adding more hard drives here and there) to the server like 3 years ago. Admittedly, the Hackintosh has screwed up earlier than it probably should have. He just put it together last year, I think. It should, by all rights, be fine, but it's obviously not. Poor Chris. He's very frustrated with computers right now.
And last, because it's the thing I'm just sort of doing without much thought anyway right now, is gardening. I know, typically, I'm so enamored by spring and ready to get out and get dirty and plant some flowers and veggies and destroy my hands in the process. Maybe it's because we've been steadily doing projects since like February, but I'm just not in love with spring this year. We got our tomatoes and peppers put out last weekend. I'm still going to be on the look out for some varieties we're missing. We also got a ton of herbs to fill in spaces in the fruit garden. It is now nicely landscaped with blueberries, raspberries (which are bordering on becoming a nuisance, they're multiplying so fast) and herbs, along with a river birch and five skyrocket junipers (the fruit has been there for two seasons and the trees/shrubs for one). I wound up impulse buying a second $20 Japanese maple at Costco (seriously, awesome deal!). Now I just need to figure out where to put it (really, who impulse buys trees?). I also have two roses I need to put somewhere. I've got a Cinco de Mayo shrub rose that Jason gave me last year and an I don't even know what, random magenta something or other rose that was here when we moved in which I dug up and "temporarily" put in a pot 2 years ago because we were clearing and putting gravel down in the bed it was in (in the back off the patio, under the back steps). I have no idea where I'm going to put them.
Oh, also, I've fiddled with Brandy's wedding dress and planning for her bolero a little bit. I can feel the sewing bug biting, just a bit. But this week has been too busy to do much besides clean in preparation for her visit. Yesterday I had our neighbor's three year old daughter as well as Jonah from about 8:30am to about 1pm. So, my entire morning was shot. But whatever, they had fun.
Speaking of momming, potty training is going... well, it's going. He's reliably peeing in the potty when I make him go. And he gets excited and we hug and high five and he jumps up from the potty and yells, "I did it! I'm a winder!" (winner) and he gets his two jelly beans (one for trying, two for peeing and three for poop, which is still elusive). But, as I just mentioned, he still hasn't figured out poop. He's tried a few times, but it's a hard message to convey. I mean, when I try to describe to him what it should feel like and how to make it happen, I just don't know if he gets it. He says he feels like he needs to go poop, but "it's too hard, let's try amorrow" (tomorrow). He's also still not going on his own or recognizing when he needs to go and saying something. If I don't remember to take him every hour or whatever, he doesn't stay dry. But, it's still progress, and I'm not going to look down on that. We're a huge step away from where we were. We just need to stick with it and stay consistent.
And in the interest of Thursday being my bitch, I'm going to end here, make a second pot of coffee and clean until the time I hit my pillow tonight.
Also, I know I've said it before, but seriously, I'm reverse aging right now. I feel like I'm in high school again but I'm old enough to appreciate it. I feel like I'm digging around in the culture behind the persona I tried to construct. I'm finding another layer. I'm growing another ring, or something. So, really I guess it's that I'm getting older and probably has at least a little bit to do with my upcoming birthday. I don't recall ever physically feeling an anniversary... of anything. But there it is.
I'm kind of half-assed writing again. And I don't mean I'm not putting effort into it while I'm writing, it's just so on again/off again start/stop kind of stuff. I feel like I'm in heavy traffic, kind of and it's making me want to bang my head into the steering wheel more than just a little. I think I've got what I've heard called "Chapter 4 Syndrome". The enormity of the project you've taken upon yourself sets in and you begin to have doubts. I'm not in big sweeping changes to the storyline right now, which is what I've done up to now. I'm trying to write some of the filler (which is not really filler, it's important character building), but it's boring me to tears, which means it probably needs to be better. Half of me says, just get this down and move on and fix it in edits. Another half of me says, YOU CAN'T EVEN LET BETAS READ THIS GARBAGE! Although letting someone else read it might really help me fix it and move on. And the battle rages on.
That's in the draft though. In the outline I'm similarly frustrated but for different reasons entirely. I filled in a HUGE and important hole and began fixing some things before and after it which were affected by it. And then I tried to go forward again to fill in the next big hole. But I couldn't. I couldn't get my bearings. I kept trying to read large sections to get back into something somewhere, anywhere, but couldn't grasp it. It was just frustrating and disorienting and that's when I moved over to the draft to start getting chapter 2 down (which is what I was talking about being boring). Even with feeling stalled, I've pulled out probably close to 4000 words in the documents combined over the past week or so. I'm not really sure though because I was bouncing around so much and not keeping track of the grand totals to compare later. Whatever, that's of little importance, other than giving me a sense of accomplishment at the end of a session in the document(s).
Stats:
Draft = 9749 words, 33 pages
Outline = 39,442, 51 pages
Writing provides an adequate enough segue into music. I've been ravenously gobbling up artists I've not heard before. I've been hitting up the Amazon $5 mp3 album downloads every month. They've got 100 selections for $5 each that change every month. I go through and listen to samples of anything that looks moderately interesting. I started this mostly in the hopes of diversifying my writing playlist in order to make the Coldplay impact more subtle. Now I've got a diverse playlist of 315 songs, 30 artists and 44 albums. I had gone through and sorted it all out according to the appropriateness toward certain scenes, almost like a soundtrack. My hope was to get away from playing songs on repeat just because they helped drive the writing of a specific scene. But when I reopened the playlist after a restart, everything is randomly resorted. *iz annoyed at VLC media player* So, I probably won't bother with all that again unless I can figure out what went wrong and how to keep them in the proper order. I doubt I'll spend much time on it.
Of note on my recent music journey: Band of Horses, Iron and Wine (I keep typing Whine), Thom Yorke (being a Radiohead fan for so long seems like a big fat DUH that I'd love his solo stuff, but there it is), The Postal Service (there again, I love Death Cab and the Atari sounding instrumentals is just the icing on the cake), The Bird and the Bee, Jj, The Indelicates, White Hinterland, Wye Oak, Air, Céu, Rupa and the April Fishes, Eluvium, The Duchess and the Duke, and Ugly Casanova (which might as well be Modest Mouse, as far as I'm concerned). See? Ravenous!
In addition to just downloading music to listen to at home,
branflake is coming to visit this weekend (YAY!) and I was browsing Now Playing Nashville to find some stuff to do this weekend. In that search, I was also just sort of looking up artists I'd never heard of to see what they're all about. Of note on that journey so far: Angel Snow and Devon Sproule and I've also found that I kind of like and would one day like to see my brother-in-law's band, The Clutters.In other news, not only is our server so full I can't copy any of this music to it, every computer in our house excepting our laptops *knocks on veneered wood* has suddenly decided to explode. Not literally, no. But the server had been crapping out with increasing frequency in the past few months and finally got to the point where it just wouldn't do anything except stay frozen up. Chris thinks it was a double whammy with one of the two power supplies (or both, who knows) starting to crap out which in turn may have screwed the motherboard. The Hackintosh in the den, which is our media pc for that room, suddenly decided it no longer wanted to display anything when I started to try to do yoga one morning. I could hear the dvd playing, so I knew everything else was working, I just couldn't get a picture no matter how much I messed around with inputs and such. So, possible video card screwed there. I think the media pc in the bedroom is fine. But now Chris is running around trying to swap parts and see if he can't get things operational again. It's not fun, I can tell. And every time something like this happens, he swears he's going to buy some expensive solution that just works out of the box so he doesn't have to fiddle with this stuff anymore. But, to be fair, he last had to do something major (apart from just adding more hard drives here and there) to the server like 3 years ago. Admittedly, the Hackintosh has screwed up earlier than it probably should have. He just put it together last year, I think. It should, by all rights, be fine, but it's obviously not. Poor Chris. He's very frustrated with computers right now.
And last, because it's the thing I'm just sort of doing without much thought anyway right now, is gardening. I know, typically, I'm so enamored by spring and ready to get out and get dirty and plant some flowers and veggies and destroy my hands in the process. Maybe it's because we've been steadily doing projects since like February, but I'm just not in love with spring this year. We got our tomatoes and peppers put out last weekend. I'm still going to be on the look out for some varieties we're missing. We also got a ton of herbs to fill in spaces in the fruit garden. It is now nicely landscaped with blueberries, raspberries (which are bordering on becoming a nuisance, they're multiplying so fast) and herbs, along with a river birch and five skyrocket junipers (the fruit has been there for two seasons and the trees/shrubs for one). I wound up impulse buying a second $20 Japanese maple at Costco (seriously, awesome deal!). Now I just need to figure out where to put it (really, who impulse buys trees?). I also have two roses I need to put somewhere. I've got a Cinco de Mayo shrub rose that Jason gave me last year and an I don't even know what, random magenta something or other rose that was here when we moved in which I dug up and "temporarily" put in a pot 2 years ago because we were clearing and putting gravel down in the bed it was in (in the back off the patio, under the back steps). I have no idea where I'm going to put them.
Oh, also, I've fiddled with Brandy's wedding dress and planning for her bolero a little bit. I can feel the sewing bug biting, just a bit. But this week has been too busy to do much besides clean in preparation for her visit. Yesterday I had our neighbor's three year old daughter as well as Jonah from about 8:30am to about 1pm. So, my entire morning was shot. But whatever, they had fun.
Speaking of momming, potty training is going... well, it's going. He's reliably peeing in the potty when I make him go. And he gets excited and we hug and high five and he jumps up from the potty and yells, "I did it! I'm a winder!" (winner) and he gets his two jelly beans (one for trying, two for peeing and three for poop, which is still elusive). But, as I just mentioned, he still hasn't figured out poop. He's tried a few times, but it's a hard message to convey. I mean, when I try to describe to him what it should feel like and how to make it happen, I just don't know if he gets it. He says he feels like he needs to go poop, but "it's too hard, let's try amorrow" (tomorrow). He's also still not going on his own or recognizing when he needs to go and saying something. If I don't remember to take him every hour or whatever, he doesn't stay dry. But, it's still progress, and I'm not going to look down on that. We're a huge step away from where we were. We just need to stick with it and stay consistent.
And in the interest of Thursday being my bitch, I'm going to end here, make a second pot of coffee and clean until the time I hit my pillow tonight.
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Growing another ring. Love that! And I can relate.
Hugs you,
y
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Heh, I like it, too. Ah, serendipity. :) *hugs to you, too*
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Someday, when your son is a teenager, he's going to love hearing about getting jelly beans and high fives over going to the bathroom. :D
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Potty training is definitely a weird process. I'm sure his first girlfriend is going to appreciate my documentation of it. I hope he continues to give me material for Things Jonah Says for years and years to come. ;)
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LOL :-)
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And I'm guessing you aren't going to make it to the Saturday crafty thing?
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Wish I could have been there, but I had fun anyway, despite the horrid weather. Glad I wasn't running a marathon that day!
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Oh girl I have soooo been there! Don't worry, just keep plugging at it. It's kinda like eating an elephant. :)
And trust me, a brutal Beta is just what you need. Or a workshop.
You know, we really should do a girls writers workshop for a weekend this summer. I know the perfect B&B in Waynesville that would LOVE to host us!
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Yes, you're
probablyright. I'm almost to the point where I might start giving betas a chapter at a time as I finish them. Almost.YES!
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Yeah, chapters early on are painful. because they get shredded - but ultimately it's for the best.
At least mine & Yvette's did. Maybe you will spit our a perfect first few chappies. ;)