Small Detours

As I write, I find myself having to take small research detours which dig into my time. Today's was double-checking a city map for the town where the characters were interacting. I needed to remind my own memories of reality, true distance, and some landmark names. I knew all of this because I'm very familiar with the location, having grown up there, but childhood memories can be fuzzy. So I had to take time away from my story to make sure my story was accurate. Thus - I'm behind time again and slightly behind on word count. I'm 789 words short of my planned schedule, so that's not too bad. I'm keeping up with things on the writing front.

Maps can be amazing tools. Right now I need a map for
my town to be able to make sure I remember things accurately. 

I looked at my beadwork project last night and quite plainly - it sucks. I'm seriously contemplating ripping it apart or making some major changes. Of course, if I do that, I'll miss the deadline. But I'm thinking that turning in a really crappy design would be worse than missing the deadline, so I may attack my project with a razor blade tomorrow morning. There's something so cathartic about destruction, but I have to take a very careful look at whether I'd be making the correct choice or not since I would be undoing at least a week's worth of work on the project, requiring a serious alteration of design and more than likely resulting in another year's missed deadline. *sigh* What to do...what to do.

I'm very disappointed with my beading project. I may well have it
in pieces by the end of the weekend. 

Happy weekend, everyone. I'm going to join Chickie at 7:00 am for a nice birthday breakfast at Twisted Fork before I head in to the shop for another day of work. Enjoy your Saturday and Sunday.

Too Much Writing, Too Little Time

I totally immersed myself in my NaNo this morning, thus are running about 20 minutes late for this blog. Let's see if I can do this in record time.

Yippee! I now have WiFi at home, something I've actually wanted
for a couple of years but was hesitant to actually implement. 

The only thing of import that happened (besides getting my word count to more than 11,000 this morning) was the successfully installation and tweaking of my new wireless router/modem. I'm delighted. I now have WiFi in my home for all of our secondary devices and my main computers are still hard-wired to the modem, which is my preference. I named my network STUBBORN because that's how I have to be more often than not. It seems to be working great, so I'm very pleased.

There are still some things I want to do to increase my security on the
WiFi, but I made a very good start on it yesterday. Now to fine-tune it all...

Yesterday was a bit trashed because of the modem installation, though. I had wanted to be up to 10,500 words by the end of the day but was 1000 below that because of two hours getting the modem set up, recognized, authenticated and initialized by Comcast, and then figuring out how to set up the security on the modem so that I had a locked and private network. But I'm proud of myself nonetheless. I even managed to get some good beading done while talking with Aearwen in the afternoon.

Have a Happy Birthday, Chickie!

Today is Chickie's birthday and I'm joining other friends of hers for a birthday dinner at a Minneapolis Mexican restaurant. I'm really looking forward to it. Their food is wonderful. Have a great Thursday, everyone.

Weekend Warriors

Sunday didn't turn out as expected. I wasn't able to write anything (bummer). But DH and I had a nice breakfast, his football team won (mine lost - boo hoo), and we cleaned the kitchen eating area. It really needed it and we accomplished a lot. Next weekend we'll be raking leaves, so I hope the weather will be warm.

My story has a performance of Saint Saens fabulous organ
Symphone No 3 in it. I was listening to it this morning while typing. 

I did finish the neckstrap of my beading projects, though. And I did get more than 2000 words done this morning, so I'm feeling happier about where I'm at right now. I suspect that a great deal of what I wrote will end up deleted when I edit, but that's not unexpected. It's the way I write.

I ended up ordering a Toshiba Satellite laptop. They threw in a 1TB
hard drive and an 8GB memory and I was able to swing the programs
I needed. It won't have my Photoshop on it until I get more funds, but
it will be able to do my editing and writing projects as well as other
tasks. I'm pretty happy with it. 

Being utterly frustrated with my inability to get my laptop to do much of anything anymore, I checked my finances and ordered a new Toshiba which I should have by mid-month. It's not everything I wanted in a new laptop, but it's really not bad. Once I have that, I can get rid of a bunch of crap from my old laptop and just keep it for working on my website (if I can ever get access to that again).

I'm working on the contemporary portion of my novel this year. My main character
in this part is a musician attending the Aspen Music School. It's been upgraded
quite a bit since I first roamed these grounds, but it's a totally magic place. 

Have a great Monday.

I Was A Good, Bad Girl

Yesterday was my "day off" and I beaded, and beaded, and beaded some more. I got a lot done on my project and realize how much more I need to do. And with NaNo breathing down my neck and scheduled to start on Saturday, I also have to do some prep work before I dive into that as well as a repair that I didn't even touch on Wednesday and that's due to the customer on Friday. O M G ! There's just not enough hours in the days any more!

Time is never my friend, but now it's my active enemy. 

I'm having breakfast with Eleanor today. It will be the second time we're getting together since she told me to jump off the nearest cliff several years ago. I'm not as unsure as I was last month when we got together, but I'm still not sure if we have a lot in common any more. Still, she replied to my text invitation promptly and breakfast is always a good thing, so I'll make it work.

Coffee is always a good thing, and when shared with
friends and talk, can be the best thing EVER. 

I'm just going to remind my readers that beginning on Saturday and throughout the month of November, my posts will be more truncated and I'll have more photo blogs than usual. Basically, what's going to happen is a shift in schedule. I'll be writing my daily word count for my novel first thing, then doing a quick blog post and finally I'll be catching up with emails and other people's posts and fics after I get to work and set up my laptop. I know this schedule works, but I also know that I don't like it on a permanent basis, so it'll do for one month. But then my novel pulls back and sits on the shelf once again - not really what I want, but the way it seems to work. *sigh* I really need to retire so that I can work. Oxymoron - much?

Although it would be pleasant to spend non-scheduled days when
I retire, I suspect I'll make my own schedules anyway. No sitting
and relaxing for me - no sir! 

So have a great Thursday. I am actually running ahead of time today, so I'm going to get this posted and then see if I can get a quick 30-45 minutes of beading down on this monster project. Enjoy your day!

Beading and Reissues of Some Older Writings

My day off is today and after I finish with my errands, I'll settle down with my beadwork and bead, bead, bead. I have been afraid to check the absolute deadline for my piece, but I know I'm pushing into November and it's due relatively early that month, so I'm really hauling to get this done. With several hours today, I should be able to get quite a bit accomplished (along with the shopping, laundry, and cooking dinner aspects of a normal Wednesday). I also have a repair that needs to be completed by the end of the week. I need the money that will bring to me, so I'll be taking a closer look at it today and try and whip it together tomorrow morning.

This is another piece from the 2013 Challenge. This small
handbag was beaded by Hannah Rosner. 2013 was the third
year of the Toho Bead Challenge and the first year I signed up
to participate. I was unable to finish last year, so I'm determined
to finish this year. 

I got notification from one of my craft publishers that an old project of mine is one of a dozen chosen for a new holiday e-book they'll be putting out soon. Happy me! It's a Holiday ornament cover that I designed to go over a shining Christmas ball. In fact, I have one upstairs,since I gave one to my mother-by-marriage and inherited it when she died. I designed it so that if the ball broke, the cover could be easily removed and put onto a different ball (I had cats at the time I designed it). Anyway - a few more small royalty payments for me when they release the e-book in a week or so. Yeah!

When I was still teaching classes, I designed a Christmas Tree ornament
each year. This one I submitted for publication and it was accepted. It's
been popular ever since. I wanted a Victorian look with a no-muss,
no-fuss cover that could be replaced on a different ball in case of accidents. 

And also on the re-release end, "Dragonthology" is available at no-charge through Amazon until the end of the month. It's a special "Halloween" offer that my publisher arranged. I won't get any royalties from this one since it's for free, but if you were ever interested in reading my story "Dragon Seeks a Wife" or one of the other stories in the anthology, it's a great time to pick up an e-copy.

I was thrilled to have my little story accepted in Dragonthology and
even happier that many of the reviewers loved and mentioned my
tale. It was fun. It's not the best publisher in the universe, but
hey - it looks great on my short resume - LOL. 

Not much else to say today, just trying to figure out my schedule and the best way I can accomplish maximum errands in minimal time. My usual Wednesday conundrum. I'll be talking with Aearwen later today and I'm sure we'll be talking about NaNoWriMo and writing in general. She's signed up for NaNo this year. Are you? If you are, shoot me your NaNo name and I'll add you to my buddies. It always helps to have another cheerleader and NaNo buddy.

Once again I'll be diving into NaNo. Every year I approach it with fear and
hesitation, but I always figure that at least I'll get something written in my
novel and something is an improvement over nothing. Thus - once again I
step into the breech. 

So, on that note, as the days get shorter and colder, fall seems to have moved in and winter is perched on the doorstep. Chickie's birthday is next week and we'll be celebrating with a fantastic dinner at one of the local Mexican restaurants. It seems that everyone from my end of town wants to ride with me. Oh well - at least we'll all be late together - LOL. But that's upcoming, not today, so I'll bid you all a wonderful Wednesday and I'll be back tomorrow.

Face Off Season & final contestants were, Dina Cimarusti, Cig Neutron and
Drew Talbot. Of course, one of these three won, but I'm not going to spoil
it for those who may have missed the finale. It was a great show, though,
so catch it on on-demand or re-run. 

Oh - and I'm SUPER HAPPY that my favorite makeup artist on "Face Off" won it all. I liked him/her from the very first episode and couldn't be happier. Great work and a great season! (How's that for being murky enough that no spoilers can arise from my words - LOL.)