Pic Spam - Time for Pretty Pictures

I allowed myself to sleep in an extra half hour this morning which actually compresses my schedule. So rather than deep thoughts, philosophical arguments, or simple recaps of whatever junk happens to be at the top of the whirlpool of my brain, I thought pretty pics might be the perfect call for today.

Sometimes we all feel open to the elements. It's how we weather
those storms that makes us stronger.

We are shaped by the experiences of life and our sharp edges are slowly
worn away by the perspective of age.

Sometimes we achieve our current position by standing on the
shoulders of those who have gone before us. Sometimes we
are above the crowd because we are supported by our loved ones.

Sometimes we melt under pressure, but away from the heat of conflict we
can reform ourselves into a pillar of strength again.

Sometimes life throws rushing waters at us, requiring us to balance
delicately for a few days. But be strong, be rock. Even if you are pushed over
by the waters, just move with the flow until you can begin balancing again.

Under optimal conditions, even the immobile can develop
the skills to move into a new position.  Don't get trapped into
bad situations because you're afraid to move. Take the chance to
make things better. 

Let yourself be inspired by the rocks while you enjoy their beauty. I'll be at the Minnesota Mineral Club's annual rock show and sale on Sunday, looking at beautiful stones, seeing friends and customers, and watching my DH happily choose rocks to play with over the winter (he has new lapidary equipment to play with). Enjoy your weekend and I'll post again on Monday.

Frame Works of Life

In my history of learning many things, I learned how to be a professional framer - picture framer. I own some pretty amazing equipment for that including a very excellent mat cutter and a multi-purpose cutter for glass and foamcore called a Fletcher 3000. When I mention I own one of these to people who know what they are, jaws drop and the beginnings of drool appear. Fletcher wall cutters are pretty amazing. But to work properly they need to be adjusted properly and yesterday I found out that moving it to several different locations over the years has not been kind to my equipment and I'm not very happy about that.

The Fletcher 3000 is a premium wall-mounted cutter of paper products
and sheets of glass. I love my Fletcher. It's an amazing piece of
equipment, well designed, and works beautifully.

The key with the Fletcher is that the bottom, where the glass or foam core rests, must be set at an exact 90 degree angle to the cutting blade. Basic, yes? Well, I needed to cut glass for a broken window yesterday, and DH and I discovered that the bottom rest is off true by 3/16 of an inch. Not a lot, but when you're trying to fit an exact space, it's pretty major. I'll have to try and find some time within the next week or so to clean the area from all of the broken glass pieces and settle down and re-calibrate so that the blade is once again perpendicular to the bottom rest. Then what I cut will be accurate.

Crooked is not always bad. This is the beautiful Crooked Forest in Poland. 

Looking at the future retirement angle of my life, I have no idea where I will put my Fletcher. The possibility exists that I should just sell it and my other equipment. I have boxes of foam core, conservation glass, frame stock, the mat cutter and the wall cutter as well as wood putties in more than 40 colors and a variety of smaller, hand tools. When I first opened my business, I was much more of a gallery than a craft store and I did a lot of custom framing of art work as well as framing everything we sold from our walls. I've shifted my focus over the years and now rarely do any framing. I loved doing it, but things change, life goes on, and not everything should be held onto for perpetuity (which rarely works out anyway). I probably should look into selling my larger equipment. I doubt I'll be using it again. Maybe I'll discuss it with DH - maybe next year or the year after - LOL.

Happiness in Perpetuity by Paul David Bond
What a great picture and concept. 

Looking at the date, I have to get myself in gear on a story due next week. I've started it twice, but it still just isn't quite clicking. Today I'll push myself at the laptop to get this pounded out.

One view of the cemetery at Terezin. This "model" concentration camp
was originally a city of 7000 people who were evacuated. The city was
then made into a ghetto and a model camp where international agencies
investigating the very disturbing claims of mass murder were taken. It was
a showcase. My aunt, my father's sister, was in Terezin and managed to survive.

And last,, a shout out to my half-cousin Alex who phoned me yesterday morning. We had a delightful hour catching up. The last time I saw him was in 1972 - many years ago. He has been teaching at the University in Maine for many years now and I've been doing my own thing, yet we clicked on many levels. I can't imagine many people enjoying a conversation about the Holocaust, Auschwitz and Terezin at 8:30 am, but it was a great conversation. So thanks, Alex. It was fun and we really need to work on continuing our contact.

My cousin Alex teaches History at the University
of Maine. We haven't met face-to-face since 1972. I think
it would be fun to finally meet again.  Follow the link
for his faculty information page. 

Happy Friday, everyone!

Stress

How to reduce stress? It's a problem because we all have stress and we all deal with stress, positive or negative. Stress can be a driver in our lives, it can even be a lifesaver, causing people to do things that are almost superhuman in scope. It is that burst of adrenaline that can be caused by stress that pushes the rescuer up the ladder or across the raging torrent to rescue the elder, the child or the pet. Stress can be addictive - that rush can become something sought after. But like most addictions, a tolerance can develop that will require more and more stress to get triggered.

Stress can be minimized with practice and thoughtful choices. 

Over the past twenty years or so, I have tried to eliminate or at least decrease the stress in my life. I have enough outside stress factors - I don't need to be adding any internal triggers to my life. I changed jobs. I periodically cut the caffeine out of my life (and usually allow it back in after six months or so). I stopped listening to angry or sad music (rap, country, etc) and went back to the classical music I've loved all my life. I've tried to train myself to look at the beauty in situations instead of the frustrating parts of traffic jams, etc. But stress always seems to work through the chinks. I handle my stress pro-actively. I think about my stress and change things when necessary to lower my levels. My DH, on the other hand, is drowning in stress because he looks at the details but misses the big picture. So it's time for me to step in and put my foot down with some force, and I hate having to do it.

Usually when I have to run an intervention, although things end up good overall, the tensions are high and a fight is in sight. Since I want to have a nice weekend, I'll have to address this quickly - probably today - to get the rusted stress wheels moving toward resolution. If I time things just right and say things just right, it will all work smoothly. Otherwise it will be impossible and one more time of hurt feelings will be written into our history.

I hate tiptoeing around issues. If there's a problem, I want to know it. If something needs resolution, I want to talk about it. Just don't sit and stew about it, expecting me to pick up on the fact that there is a problem because of the way you are acting. Good grief!

I hate it when adults turn into petulant five-year-old children. 

We're so close on his father's house, and I have a suspicion that the final bit is unconsciously being held back because it was his childhood home and some part of him doesn't want to see it go. He has always had a problem letting things go and this is a big one. But there's a window that needs new glass (I'm going to try and convince him to just call a glass repair company rather than doing it himself), there's a little bit of stuff in the living room that needs to be donated to Goodwill, and the kitchen counter needs to be cleaned off. The larger living room TV (old, but functional) can come home with us to replace a TV that isn't working any more, and that will do it.

I would rather let a professional fix it right the first time
and just write him a check from the estate. It just makes sense!

Now to just get him on the same page, sign the contracts, and allow Mary to actually sell the house...

Family? and Day Off?

Family? I have one. I don't have a lot of members - the Nazis managed to wipe a lot of us out very effectively. But I do have one. And the members of that family do know how to get in touch with me. They really do. They have emailed me now and again and have contacted me sporadically over the years. But in today's Email I had a communication from my half-cousin who teaches at the University of Maine, asking about my aunt - my father's sister. Apparently there was a family get-together this past year of descendants and farther flung relatives on my father's side of the family in Prague. "I'm sure you got the invitation," my cousin wrote, before getting into his question about my aunt.

Why didn't I get an invitation to this family gathering?

Well...no. I didn't get the invitation or any information about it at all. And I find that quite curious since it was my family's get-together and my father and aunt were the original two children of the father's first marriage and I was the ONLY child. The one and only!

This is leaving a really bad taste in my mouth. 

So I'm left with a rather bad taste in my mouth and the feeling, once again, of having been thrown out with the bath water because I don't live in Germany, because I focus on my current life, not the past, and because I don't communicate BS back and forth with people.

I plant deep roots.

If I was hard to find, I could understand it. But I plant deep roots and I'm really, really easy to find. I've been in the same city since the late 1970's, lived in the same house since 1987, had the same business for 26 years, and I've been in touch via email over the past five years with the organizers of this event for different reasons. But I wasn't notified about this gathering - at all.

Call me disgruntled, crabby, angry and a bit sad. It would have been nice to meet some of the other members of my family. I probably would have enjoyed it.

I'm happy to reach out if I'm met half-way. 

But my half-cousin wants to phone me and talk about my aunt, and I'm fine with that. I'm trying to set something up for next Wednesday at a time that won't interfere with my weekly call with Aearwen.

Time to multi-task again...

Today is my "day off" and I have two repairs to do, an art piece to work on, two fics to finish and a list of errands as long as my arm. To get everything done I'll have to be super efficient and everything will have to fall into perfect place. Think of today equating with those wonderful domino falling events. When I leave the house, I'll be working on time schedules for each place - X opens at 7 am and so does Y so I can do those first. I have to be at Z at 9, but I can combine Z with A because they deal with the same people. B and C can happen on the way back home, with a side detour for P if the weather is cooperative. Then there is grocery shopping, three loads of laundry, changing the sheets and making dinner.

I think I want one of these...

Can I just play turtle and pull my blanket over my head, hiding from the world for 24 hours instead? Dreams! Pipe dreams...

Interruptions and Writing

Interruptions are a fact of life, and I (like many of my readers) operate better without outside interruptions, conversations or sounds. I have trained myself over the years to ignore the television sounds in the background, so I usually can tune those out successfully. I like having the news on in the background in my early morning hours, it brings me back up to date on world events and current temperatures and weather. But I cherish my quiet time in the early morning. My time from waking up until 6:00 am is my time to think, to read my emails and LJ posts, and to write my daily blog. It's my thinking time, my viewing pics time, and my catching up with friends time. It is NOT my 'socialize with DH' time.

Socializing is not always what I want to do.

Lately he's been sleeping less, been more restless, and has been waking up earlier. Today he was up at 3:30 am and by 4:30 am he was in his chair in front of his computer playing LOTRO. I wouldn't care, but his chair is less than six feet away from mine, and I am attuned to pay attention when he talks, mumbles, complains, or otherwise vocalizes. It is inhibiting and I am not happy.

Normally I would leave. I would grab my laptop and flee to my local coffee shop. Unfortunately they don't open until 5:30 am, which is still one hour away from now. So I have to put up with him and I'm not happy. But, I remind myself, it's just an interruption *sigh*.

Tables, plugs for my laptop, coffee, oatmeal. I do a lot of my
writing at my local Caribou Coffee.

Fall has finally arrived here in the Twin Cities. Sunday was glorious - blue skies, autumn colors displaying their best and mild temperatures. Yesterday and today are the first days that my heaters have been on in my house and my business. It's been cold, it's been wet, it's been grey skies, rain, wind, and the leaves that looked so glorious on Sunday are being driven to the ground in droves. Soon we'll be raking this deciduous throw-off and adding huge piles of dead leaves to our compost piles.

The colors along the North Shore in northern Minnesota can be
spectacular. This year was a good year for color.

I'm getting geared up for NaNoWriMo and I'm getting really excited about diving back into my novel and finishing it. There's still so much of the journey that my characters have to walk. I downloaded a sample/trial copy of Scrivener last night and I'll do the second half on this program. I'll merge the two halves after the end of this year's NaNo and then start the editing. If I have anything left to write, I can do that in December/January. Then it will be time for editing. I'm really looking forward to pushing my editor into his box and not letting him out until December. There is something rather liberating about allowing myself the freedom to just write words, followed by words, followed by more words.

Happy Tuesday to all!

Character Voice - A Small Discussion

"It's alive!"

"I'll think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day."

"I am glad to be here with you, at the end of everything."

A sentence can be recognized as a character for many reasons, but most of all because of patterns of speech and cadence of words. The difference between Doctor Frankenstein in the first quote, Scarlett O'Hara in the second and Frodo in the third are not just that they are at the culmination of their tasks, their moments of triumph in essence, but that their words are formed in the way that their character would expect to speak.

Sir Winston Churchill had a distinctive speaking style
and word usage pattern. Would his manner of speech
correlate well with any characters you are writing?

Think about character voice. If Arwen was asking a gardener for advice on growing roses, would she ask in the same voice and words as Galadriel? How would Sam's Rosie approach the subject? And how would Gilraen phrase it? Would Eowyn even be interested in roses instead of horses? Each woman would ask for the advice in a different manner, probably using different words, yet the goal of their words would be the same.

So how can you develop character voice for your own characters? I think it is one of the most difficult things I've dealt with in the times I've been writing. I find it much easier with my original fiction because then I am developing the characters from the ground up, When I write fan fiction, I find it much harder. It is difficult to make Aragorn sound like the somewhat pompous and overly wordy person he often is in Lord of the Rings, but easy for me to characterize the servants and general populace he is addressing. I guess I can put myself into the shoes of the common man a bit easier than wearing the velvets of the newly-crowned King.

Jobs in a medieval castle were pretty standard -
soldier, general workman, hunter/tracker and
house staff like baker or cook. 

I'm writing a small story now that is causing me problems with character voice. I know the story line, I know who the characters are and the timeline, I know what I want to say - even to the point of drawing out the major plot element yesterday afternoon. I just can't get the voices right. And because I can't do that, I can't finish the story. I'll sit down with it again, I still have some time, but I want to do this little tale and it's fighting me every step of the way. *sigh*

Even opera singers warm up before going on stage to perform. Maybe I'll
just consider my efforts to this point as being my warm-up before I actually
wrote the story. 

On a different note, I will again be wearing my Denver Broncos jacket today. Denver is one of only two undefeated teams remaining in the National Football League. Unfortunately, the other undefeated team is the Kansas City Chiefs, their arch-rivals from their own division.

Denver will meet head-to-head with Kansas City twice this year, on November 17th and December 1st. I hope I'll be able to watch the games, but whether they win or lose, nothing will change the fact that I'm a Denver Broncos fangirl.

Happy Monday to all!