Playtime is Fun Time - A Hectic and Wonderful Day Off

Although my normal "day off" schedule is a bit wonky today, it's SO worth it. I'll be picking up an on-line writing friend who is in town for a short visit, just after noon and then we're off to the Science Museum of MN for an afternoon with dinosaurs and other fun things. I love meeting on-line friends - over the years I've had the pleasure of meeting a lot of them and many have become friends for many years now. Today is a play day and a day to allow my inner child to come out. I'll have her back to her side of town late this afternoon and, with luck and smooth traffic, will have just enough time to pop the chicken into the over for dinner.

We all run in our various human hamster wheels. If they were all
as attractive as this one, maybe it wouldn't be as hard to do.

Of course, having an afternoon away from the house on my day off requires some schedule shifting. I still need to do three loads of laundry, grocery shopping, turning on the computers at the store and making sure things are ready for the day's business, and a quick run to Target. I started one load of laundry at 4:00 am and just put it into the dryer. That will give me one completed load before I leave at 6:00 am. I'll need to squeeze one more load in during mid-morning, and the final one will be done tonight after dinner. If this doesn't work, I'll have one load to do tomorrow.

Loved this little cartoon of Olive Oyl doing laundry. Her
question is a good one - "How DOES Popeye get his
arms out of such a tight shirt?" 

I won't be writing today, although the experiences we have may end up on paper at some later time. But it isn't possible to write at the same time that I'm wandering through a museum. I'll collect people, though. I think we all tend to do that. We see a person who looks interesting enough to put them into a story, or we hear an accent or phrase that catches our ear and becomes the dialect for a character a few days, months, or even years later. Such things can make a character live and jump off the page into a reader's heart.

Have you ever seen or met an unusual character who seemed to leap from
/Real Life onto the pages of your latest novel? Remember that less is more
when it comes to writing dialect. Don't abandon the reader in a mire of
linguistic quirks. 

Well, I'm too focused on my day to write a lot more, so I'll keep this short and simple. I hope all of you have a great Wednesday, because I know mine will be!