| Thank you guys |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|05:38 pm] |
To everyone who offered sympathy and open ended help, thank you. I am repeatedly awestruck at the number of totally awesome people who are my friends. You guys keep my faith in the human race from totally going ka-splat.
Also up there on the "keeping my faith in humanity" meter is the owner of Coopers Jewelry down in the Worburn Mall. Most of my "good" jewelry came from there over the years because Josh liked the location and the service staff. The owner spent almost an hour with me last night, printing out price paid and current value receipts for all the various pieces that were stolen. She even made copies of pages from the store's catalog so I could give the police an actuate picture of what was missing. She went above and beyond the call of customer service and she has my loyalty as a customer forever.
Other than dealing with the paperwork of being a robbery victim, life goes on. I'm trying to force myself to stop jumping every time I hear something outside. I feel distinctly vulnerable in my home now and I DON'T like it. We're getting ADT monitoring turned back on and I'm forcing myself to learn how to use the system. The cats HATE the alarm but hopefully I'll figure it out before one of them has a heart attack. I'm seriously considering getting a big dog to snuggle up/hide behind. The cats' will love that, I'm sure. I'll get over it and eventually it'll seem normal to have to type in a code every time we open a door.
My MIT class had its final today. Three hours of "let's see if you remember THIS" not-goodness. In preparation, I drugged myself silly with cold medicine last night in the hopes of actually getting some sleep before the test. It worked and I don't feel nearly as beaten by the final as I did the mid-term. Of course, that could just mean that my understanding of the test was so bad that I don't know how bad it was.
Tonight, wrapping presents and maybe going to see a movie. I haven't done that in a long time and now I have a good excuse to pay theater prices. It's not like I can watch movies at home at the moment. |
|
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| Well fuck |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|10:49 pm] |
Long and short of it: My house was broken into today.
Josh found the door kicked in when he got home from work. No one was hurt. All the critters are accounted for. They didn't destroy things. The police said that its pretty common for thieves to just ransack a place, up to and including harming the pets and that didn't happen here. They just got in, took what they wanted and left. On the grand scale of things, it's not that bad as robberies go.
On the down side, my house was broken into today.
I keep wondering if they'll come back for the stuff they couldn't carry out on the first run.
They took off with most of the small portable electronics; the playstation, the laptop, BlueRay player, all the BlueRay disks, the digital camera. They left the TV, the big server in the office and all the normal DVDs. The electron stuff is all replaceable.
On the non-replaceable list is an antique gold & diamond necklace that my Mennonite grandmother gave me that's been in our family for generations. Also the opal necklace and earrings Josh gave me a few years back and the pearls my other grandmother gave me when I graduated college. They took my jewelry box and ransacked all the "stuff" boxes in my bedroom, taking anything even vaguely sparkly. A lot of "worthless" jewelry and stuff that was near and dear to me is gone now. I know they'll just throw it out because its not "good" stuff and that makes me incredibly sad.
Oh, and the thing that brought it all home for me? When I realized that the DVD player contained a disk from my big boxed set of Buffy. So now I have an incomplete Buffy collection. What the hell do you do with a 7 season set that's missing one disk? |
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| Watching the masters |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|09:39 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | art | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  annoyed | ] |
What is it about my car that it wants to die in the middle of autumn? I went home for IlluxCon last week and when I came back, my car was dead. Oh, it starts and goes, just not very fast or very far. I rode my motorcycle into work on Monday (brrrrr), borrowed Josh's car on Tuesday and today I'm working from home while the mechanics rip'er apart. Poor old car.
IlluxCon was amazing as always. Got to see Donato do a demo on skin tones and portraits. Larry Elmore talked about the female form and how/where to find good models. Both he and Brom agreed, strip clubs are the way to go for a multitude of reasons, although your wife might complain if you're bringing too many strippers home. Lesson from Brom included the phrase "if you can't figure out what to do, putting an eye in the palm is the way to go."
Whelan and Chris Moeller did a collaborative painting thing. Vincent Villafranca did a live bronze pour on Friday night, which was pretty neat to watch. That is a LOT of heat, right there.
It was just all around amazing. Next year, I think I'll book a night at the hotel so I don't have to make that drive over the mountain late at night. I'd rather hang out longer and be able to partake in the festivities more. Still, money well spent. |
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| I'm not really here. No, really. |
[Nov. 1st, 2009|09:58 pm] |
I'm just pretending to be here for 10 minutes before I go to bed.
Things are getting crazier and crazier. Work is hitting an interesting frantic note that just may settle down into a harmonious hum of production or become a fevered scream of insanity. We'll know by Thanksgiving. Either way, interesting times.
My class has hit its halfway mark. The midterm was on Thursday and it kicked my ass. Hopefully it kicked everyone else's as well cause the curve? I'll be needing it. This is the first weekend in a LONG while that I wasn't staring down 10 hours of homework on Sunday and I very much enjoyed it.
My deck has decking AND stairs. Getting fancy, there. No railing or privacy screen yet but its coming.
The snow storm from the other week turned into a 70 degree GORGEOUS day for Halloween. Our party rocked, despite my cop out costume (Viper pilot, Battlestar Galactica). My ghosts are STILL glowing and waving in the wind above the new deck and all my little pumpkins are glowing.
Pony continued having allergy problems this autumn until we finally put her on horse antihistamines last week. Now she's doing MUCH better and is thoroughly enjoying all the apples from the nearby orchard. We've started doing walk to canter and canter to walk transitions. Marty has promised me long lining lessons this winter so Atisa at least will be ready for passage and piaffe, should I ever get all of my problems fixed.
Next week, requirement's review, design meetings, energy audit and then a trip back to the great Mt. Onion for IlluxCon. I think there's turkey in there somewhere. |
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| Not really still here |
[Oct. 10th, 2009|09:04 am] |
Work has blocked LJ and Facebook and most chats completely so my only time I can be on is during the evenings. Since I'm also building a deck and taking a class at MIT on top of my normal riding, volleyball and just general work work, my evenings are exactly long enough to make dinner and go to bed. Maybe it'll calm down once I figure out a real schedule.
So yeah, the MIT thing turned out to be my mistake. The course is listed under three numbers and I picked the one attached to the Sloan School of Management. They looked at my application and said "0.o", which makes perfect sense. I wouldn't let me into the Sloan School of Management. It just wouldn't end well for anyone.
So, after a few final snafus, I'm now signed up and paid for under the math department. Which is good since (on the advice of the prof and the head of the department) I've been going anyways and doing all the homework. It has been taking a pretty good chunk of time. I was feeling wimpy until Dr. K pointed out that it is 1/2 of a grad student's normal load for a semester. It's meant to be stompy.
But it's not raining now so I should go build a deck. Gotta get it done before winter smacks us and that could be any time now. This weekend - deck, pony, volleyball, apple picking and a horror movie. |
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| Going to da 'Burgh |
[Sep. 3rd, 2009|09:25 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
Finally bought tickets for Ross & Jenae's wedding.
We're only going for a day but I'm really looking forward to it. Hoping to maybe hit Phipps and Pamela's while we're there, not to mention catch up with bunches and bunches of friends. Might try to get down to the Tower of Ignorance and get some pictures. The main hall of that thing is just gorgeous and no one here believes me.
I love Boston but part of me will always consider Pittsburgh home. Every time I see a piece of industrial garbage turned into public sculpture, I get a little twinge of homesickness... |
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| tired |
[Aug. 21st, 2009|09:16 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | remember | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Find MY F*CKING LEG! | ] |
Spent the next to last day of summer hours putting in a silt barrier in my back yard between my swamp, er, pardon, WETLANDS and where the new deck/hot tub is going.
Note to self, Jo - Just because you are physically able to do something doesn't mean you should. There is no shame in paying big burly men to do that shit.
So yeah, 4 hours later I've a foot deep trench and a layer of hay bales between my lovely swamp and my building site. I also did my good deed and fed all the mosquitoes between here and Burlington.
During this process, I was reminded of a fact I had somehow forgotten in my years since leaving the farm - namely, hay bales come in three sizes: heavy, fucking heavy and oh god, no. At least I got them all installed and the spares under a tarp before the rain and wind started. As heavy as they were dry, I don't think I could have moved them wet.
Oh, and whomever decided to move Boston to Kansas? Needs to be smacked and I have just the tools to do it with. Could have done without the tornado warnings tonight. Have enough issues with that bastard Bill aiming at us this weekend.
And finally, warm beer just sucks. You Brits are cracked for drinking that. Just saying.
On the upside, Shipping Off To Boston just showed up on the Rock Band list. I need to invite people over so we can get a Proper(tm) chorus going. |
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| Long week and I'm beat |
[Aug. 14th, 2009|02:34 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | rant | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | tired | ] |
I'm so glad it's Friday.
I'm tired of dealing with the town over getting the permits to put in my new deck & hot tub.
I'm tired of bathing the pony*.
I'm tired of arguing design constraint vs. requirements with my coworkers.
I'm tired of IT trying to turn my work laptop into a glorified paperweight. Yeah, that's real secure, guys. If I can't log in, then NO ONE is getting my stuff.
I'm tired of hobbling about**. You don't realize how much you use your toes until one of them hurts.
I'm tired of eating instant food because I'm not getting home until 9 every evening due to work & pony.
I'm just tired cause I've been sleeping like shit this week.
I want to sit on my tush, drink floofy summery drinks and read pop trash in the sun. And I'm going to do just that, oh yes I am. Assuming I can find some appropriate pop trash. If not, I'll sit in the sun and write my own. Either way, sun and booze and tush.
* - And she's tired of it too. Even apples aren't making it all better at this point.
* - I tore a big chunk of out my right big toe on Monday. It was the finals for the sand volleyball league. This late in the season, the sand in the middle of the court is pretty shallow and I bottomed out during the first game. And of course, it was finals and we didn't have a sub, so I continued to play all evening with a big open pit in my toe. The thing was just embedded with sand and took forever to get clean. Bled like a son of a bitch, too. |
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| Bbbbut its COLD! |
[Aug. 10th, 2009|11:05 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | horse | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | cold & wet | ] |
I learned this weekend that THE most pitiful thing in the world is a pony whose owner insists on giving her a cold bath at 6 AM. Yep, absolutely heartbreaking, that.
So the plague pony is having an allergic reaction to ... something. Possibly the bugs, possibly her fly spray, something. The reaction manifested itself as huge strips of skin peeling off. Yep, it is as gross as it sounds. Imagine walking out to the pasture and seeing your horse with palm long sections of flesh dangling from her side. Luckily, it seems to be a lot like a sun burn in that the strips were fairly thin and the skin underneath it was fine AND it's not taking the hair with it. It's only the top most layer of skin coming off.
Anyways, I had the vet out. The vet uttered the dreaded "never seen THAT before" prognosis and now I get to scrub Atisa down with betadine and give her steroids for the next week.
All well and good except Atisa does NOT like early morning baths. Not in the slightest. And being the good girl she is, she voices this opinion by hunching up into a ball, doing full body shaking (including the quivering lip) and whickering these little, hopeful noises whenever I turned the hose off to scrub some more. Pony has the sympathy plea down to an ART, I tell you.
At least she doesn't hold a grudge. Poor plague pony. |
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| You want me to take this where? |
[Jul. 31st, 2009|10:29 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | school | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  nervous | ] |
I handed in an application to MIT today to take a grad course in operations research*. I am both proud to have finally taken that step and horribly nervous that they will reject me.
I am also vaguely guilty. If I'm taking more grad classes, shouldn't they be at CMU? Old (imaginary) grudges die hard, I guess.
* OR is describing the active world in terms of math. It is elegant and lovely. It is also bat shit on occasion but that's math for you. |
|
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| Today officially sucks |
[Jul. 30th, 2009|12:19 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | suck | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | sore | ] |
First, I need a root canal. Can't pretend I don't any more. I got the stern talking to and everything. On top of that, I might need two. In order to figure out which is it, I need to wait a little bit, get some other work done and see how annoyed tooth #2 feels about itself. So yeah, need a root canal but I can't quite have it YET.
Oh, and if an oral surgeon says "lets just test these for sensitivity", the correct answer is HELL NO! I'm pretty sure what he did there is outlawed in the Geneva Convention.
Second, pony is lame. Not lame as in stupid, lame as in can't walk straight. Last night she did the horse equivalent of rolling her ankle. Today, it's swelled up and she is lame. So now I got to go ice her leg and give her horse aspirin and see how bad it is.
Of course, thanks to the weather, pony has been locked inside the barn for last few days and is a right energy ball. Her being silly while I was riding last night is how we got into this mess. I'm pretty sure she's not going to appreciate being made to stand in a bucket of ice water, nor is she going to like only being allowed to walk around sedately. I wonder if I have any tranqs left ... |
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| Fluffy dogs |
[Jul. 19th, 2009|09:05 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | art | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | anxious | ] |
I don't normally do pet portraits.
In fact, over the last two years, I've barely been accepting commissions at all. Why deal with getting specs, getting line work okayed, sending updates, getting paid, all to paint someone else's idea when I can get paid for painting MY ideas and not have all the hassle? I mean, don't get me wrong, most of the people who have commissioned me have been absolute dolls to work with. The 5% or so who were bat shit? They were UTTERLY bat shit.
In order for me to take a commission anymore, it has to be both interesting AND the buyer has to be willing to pay a pretty hefty chunk up front. I know, I know, artists are notoriously flaky but that's the way I work and there are plenty of other artists out there if you don't like it. I'm not spending months working on your peacock-dragon-wolf thingy on a promise and a prayer. Not anymore.
So when my riding instructor came to me asking if I ever paint dogs (just normal dogs, please), my immediate answer was no. Then came the story and the puppy dog eyes and it's Marty doing the asking. I'd break an arm if Marty asked me to, I have so much respect for the woman. The painting was for her daughter, who had just lost the last of her three lap dogs and was heartbroken.
( So yeah, that's how I got talked into painting fluffy dogs. ) |
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| Onward! |
[Jul. 17th, 2009|09:56 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | pessimistic | ] |
I've just been given THE Software System Safety Handbook for this type of program. We're talking hundreds of pages of "thou shalt" goodness.
Funny thing is? The only part that is relevant to me is one section of one appendix, roughly 20 pages. And even then, I've been told, it should be taken more as a guideline, not a set of rules because everyone throws out the parts that are inconvenient for their particular project.
Sigh. |
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| OOOOh, you say it goes how fast? |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|05:44 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  energetic | ] |
Spent the day down in absolutely GORGEOUS Newport, RI visiting NUWC and getting to meet my new toys. I'm sure I won't find it so wonderful come mid-February when it's 10 degrees and the wind&waves are throwing spray up on us but right now? Sunny, warm and OCEAN!
I am SO twitterpaited with this project. Toys! Water! Naval funding and a sane schedule! Simulators AND actual hardware! What else could a girl ask for?
I know the honeymoon period will wear off eventually but I'm pretty revved up right now. It's been a long time since I was actually looking forward to getting into the lab in the morning.
On the way in to where the toys are kept, I passed a dock with a pair of massive navy ships parked on either side of it. The dock itself was probably six cars wide. There was a chain bigger around than I am draped about five stories up, tethering the ships together. I know we're always saying size doesn't matter but, ya know what? You can't really beat it for a first impression. |
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| Miracles and money |
[Jul. 14th, 2009|11:05 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | knees, work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | Rich | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Ice Queen - Within Temptation | ] |
Family has returned to points south and everyone survived. I think three days of entertaining that particular set of family members is just about the right amount. We did the Duck Tour and wandered around the various battle fields in Concord and finished the visit by making lobsters for everyone who'd eat one. (Gram Does Not Do Seafood!) So, yeah, good visit.
Of course, I got no exercise while they were here and ended up deciding that, knee be damned, I was going mountain biking after they left. I'm tired of fricken rail trails.
I spent about two hours out at Great Brook Farm, plowing my way through the mud and trying to remember the proper timing required to bounce down a rocky hillside trail. Lets just say the bouncing skill did not return as quickly as I had hoped. I did the Acorn Trail and Acorn Trail North loops, then finished with the Lantern Loop, which is fairly flat. I figure when I can navigate Blueberry Hill with stopping/crashing/falling over, then I'll be ready to expand my hill trail set. I am now covered in bruises and I am sore everywhere. Hopefully I'll get to go back and try again sometime later this week.
My knee survived just fine. It even held up to playing a couple hours of sand volleyball last night. In fact, my knee feels better than my shoulder does. It was not happy with how much bike carrying I had to do (much of the trail I choose was underwater, so there was a lot of "bike on shoulder, now play leap frog" work on Sunday) and did not like spiking last night, not One Bit. I guess I just need to keep timing things such that I don't do too much of any one activity on the knee.
edit - My manager just stopped by to give me a bonus for the What Were We Thinking Project. Yay, bonus! |
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| Not enough time to really panic |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|09:24 am] |
My Aunt Vicki called Sunday night to ask if I was going to be around. She wanted to surprise my grandma by bringing her up here to visit me. Grandma used to travel A LOT. She'd just pick up and go. Take bus trips, cruises, whatever, all on a moment's notice. I used to tease her whenever I came home from college about needing to set up an appointment to see her, otherwise she'd be off and running. But Grandma is slowing down. She doesn't travel much and she got herself a little lap dog, which gives her an excuse to stay at home. But she's been saying for three years now that she wanted to visit me in Boston. Apparently the stars all aligned and the right people have the weekend off to watch the house and puppy sit, so Gram and Aunt Vick and Vicki's daughter Peanut* are coming up.
Which is great. I used to spend at least a week or two every summer traveling with them. We'd go to the ocean, to the Smokey Mountains, out to Phili or Pittsburgh. They are wonderful traveling companions and all of them are history buffs, so Boston will be right up their alley.
No, the panic part comes from the fact that Mom is coming too. My mother is ... my mother. You know how argumentative and stubborn I can be? The neat streak that goes a mile wide? I came by all of those honestly and it wasn't from my dad, let me tell you.
So yeah, now I need to scour the house spotless, clean the fridge, the whole nine yards. Because my mom is visiting. And I have two days to do it. Eeep.
*Peanut's real name is Audrey. She got the nickname from when she was a baby and vastly undersized for her age. She has food allergies and, back in the early 70s, if you were allergic to wheat, dairy and nuts, then you were just SOL. Basically she was raised on ginger ale and vitamin supplements for the first year or so. |
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| Is there any way to say my bits are frozen and not have it sound dirty? |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|08:10 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | knees | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | happy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me | ] |
It seems that screaming at the sky DOES occasionally work. The weather cleared up for the first time in a month and we've had three whole days of sun and warm.
Friday a bunch of us piled down to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) omnia_mutantur's family home on the beach. We spent a couple hours goofing off in the water, despite the fact that that Atlantic is DAMN COLD. It seems all those storms generated some waves, a rarity around Boston. Nothing really big but fun, none the less. We swam until all our bits were frozen, then we went back and played games and cooked out and played more games and ran around the house in the thunderstorm and watched nuns SLIDE across the lawn and watched fireworks and tried to figure out what sort of monster was going to come out of the house at sundown. It was great and I need twenty more days JUST like it at least this summer.
Other than that, I've just been out enjoying the weather. Both yesterday and today, I biked down to Bedford and back. Yesterday I hopped on some of the mountain bike trails near my house and played around a bit but my knee isn't quite ready for that sort of work yet. Bouncing down a hillside just didn't agree with it at all. Today I went clear down into Concord on one of the rail trails. I ended up doing about 16 miles of mostly flat work in a bit under two hours. Lunch was in there somewhere but I didn't think to time that. Not bad time given how much mud I had to plow through. I ended up power spraying both myself and my bike off when I got home. You wouldn't be believe all the places I managed to get mud.
Right now, my knee is actually alright. Over the last week, I've spent 3 hours riding,2 hours playing sand volleyball and at least an hour a night on the bike on the off nights and my knee seems to be holding up to the work. Now if I can just get a little bit of weight lifting in there without it turning into a pumpkin, I might actually start believing that the damned thing isn't a lost cause. |
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| ARGH! |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|11:49 am] |
Okay, New England, ENOUGH ALREADY!
It is the first of July, for God's sake.
Can we PLEASE have one day of sun? Please?
It has rained for three weeks straight. My garden has rotted off. I haven't been on my motorcycle more than a handful of times. I've gotten to ride the pony outside maybe three times and even then, we were rained on. Heck, I had to go get my winter sweaters out of storage since it is not only raining, but it's cold! It was 42 degrees at the house the other night. In late June! ENOUGH!
I want clear skies, 80 degrees and the occasional thunderstorm. In that order. |
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| Winding down or free falling, you tell me? |
[Jun. 8th, 2009|11:20 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | exhausted | ] |
So work is finally settling out after months of complete insanity. The What Were We Thinking Project is in a customer enforced code freeze and all that is left is documentation. The WSF Project is completely done except for setting up one of the labs at the customer's location and documentation. Next week, I'm taking a road trip to wire computers together. Until then, I document. Easy, right?
Except I'm crashing. I mean, really crashing. After a six months of 60 hour weeks and being on call every weekend, I'm now scraping rock bottom, energy wise. I'm sleeping 10 hours a night and I'm STILL exhausted. I spent a good chunk of the last two weekends laying out in the sun, doing nothing and it still sounds like a fun way to spend a day. I'm normally not good at sitting still but right now, I just don't seem to have the motivation to do anything else. I can't tell if its allergies, a cold or just work related drain, but I have no go and no will to go. I'm just ... done.
On the up side, wandelrust & omnia_mutantur took us to DeCordova on Saturday. DeCordova is a 35 acre sculpture park in Lincoln. Not only is it a nice motorcycle ride from my house but it is one of the neatest museums in the Boston area, in my not so humble opinion.
It has PINE SHARKS. PINE SHARKS, people! The fact that someone got paid money to build 6+ foot long metal sharks and suspend them in a pine grove makes me SO happy. I want to go back in the winter and see the sharks covered in snow. PINE SHARKS!
Ah hem. Yeah. The rest of the park was pretty cool too. Obviously we didn't walk the entire 35 acres (see lack of energy) but we saw a good chunk of it. We'll have to go back later in the year and see the rest of it. |
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| Mental blocks are mental |
[Apr. 23rd, 2009|10:34 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | writing | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  creative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Burn You Down - Opiate for the Masses | ] |
So writing.
Yeah.
For the first couple of months, I was cruising right along. Got to 50,000 words pounded out without trying. Got the outline pinned down. Had a file of character histories and backgrounds. Had names on everyone, which is a huge step forward for me. Naming ... not my strong point. Knew where they was going and how we were getting there and how everyone changed during the trip. Even had a first cut of the second story's outline written. It felt good.
Then it stopped. I mean, really stopped.
I knew what I had to write. I knew what each scene had to accomplish.
I couldn't do it to save my ass. Everything I typed just didn't work. The characters weren't IN character. The action scenes lacked tension, movement and, well, action. The dialog read like something out of a grade school play.
I figured, eh, it can't always be easy. I started editing what I already had. Figured I might as well spend the time doing something useful while I waited for inspiration to strike again.
*Insert three months of nothing but editing here*
Yeah, so inspiration? Wasn't in a striking mood. I got to the point where I couldn't read certain sections anymore. I had edited them so many times that my mind was filling in what used to be there, instead of what was currently on the page. I'm pretty sure I actively hate a couple of the chapters, even though I know they are no worse than any of the others. Editing became really, REALLY frustrating.
Then the word count started getting to me. You know, the little tag down in the bottom left in MS Word that tells you how many words are in the file? It started ... taunting me. I'd write and write and edit and write but it never made progress. I couldn't break an honest 60,000. Sure, I'd get up above it briefly, only to yank an entire chapter due to the suckage it contained. I'd spend hours in the evening rewriting, only to have that damn counter smugly sitting at 59,600.
Do you know what numbers do to a trained mathematician? I mean, writing is supposed to be WORDS. I don't need numbers when I'm writing. I don't want numbers when I'm writing. Numbers click on a whole other section of my brain that I'm trying to turn off when I'm not at work. Heck, I steadfastly refuse to use the numerical representation of numbers when I write. I spell everything out alphabetically. Otherwise, my brain goes "ooo...what's that for?" and the analytical side of my head fires up and it's NOT HELPING.
After a month of that, I seriously considered just chucking the whole damn thing. I mean, it was supposed to be fun and relaxing and not cause me to tear hair out, right? I have the day job and the art business if I want to be bald.
Earlier this week, though, something happened. I started writing a necessary scene for the tenth time. I got halfway done with it and decided it was complete and utter crap. And then I finished it.
And I left it in the file.
Then I went to another scene that had been escaping me and I did the same thing.
Now, I'm well past the cursed 60,000 mark and the story is moving again. I know I'll have to edit the hell out of those sections to make them passable. And that's okay. They are doing their job to move the story along and it's not like I won't want to edit this thing over and over again anyways before I show it to anyone as a whole story. I'm obsessive. That's what I do.
And now that I'm reading over them again, well, they really aren't that bad. They need work but not as much as some of the earlier stuff did.
Moral of the story?
Write.
Even it it sucks, write it and leave it in there. You can always figure out what isn't working later but you can't edit a blank page.
And turn the fucking word count thing off. |
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