Things I Know I Know

1. I worked two weekends ago, I spent last weekend mostly on my back because I hurt it the weekend before, and I have to work all weekend this weekend. In other news, I'm pretty sure I'm going to take the Thursday and Friday after the 4th off.

2. I sat down after work and decided to write out the plot so far in the Sucky Novel of Doom. Imagine my surprise to discover that there is no plot! This may be why it sucks. I have premise, characters, backstory and stuff-that-happens. I believe I might profitably spend a couple of days thinking about the plot.

3. I finished converting 'What Makes a River' to past tense and cutting a little though perhaps not enough. Why I am working on this story I don't know since I can't sell it unless I sell 'How to Hide Your Heart'.

4. Started a new story, which may turn out not to be a story and almost certainly won't be finished for awhile and got (what I hope is) a decent idea for how to make 'Interacting with the Neighbors...' work as a story.

5. While I was lying on my back I watched 42- and 49- up. Someday I will have an actual post about these movies. For now, I'll just say that though I identify most with the Yorkshire farm boy gone to academia, I fear my life most resembles that of the not actually crazy (probably) guy, except that I have mostly always had a job.

6. Since I gave a talk a couple of weeks ago on social networks, I've started playing with Facebook and LibraryThing. It's extremely telling that the thing I like the most about LibraryThing is that I can go in and select the 'right' book cover for my books. Because if they don't have the right cover, it's as if they aren't even my books.

It will come as no surprise to learn that my inner book locater is completely visual and spatial.

7. The Ames School District closed two elementary schools two years ago and now are proposing to bus elementary kids five miles out of town to another district for a couple of years so they can remodel and relieve overcrowding.

8. They are also proposing to build an aquatic recreation center on the flood plain (which, while weirdly appropriate is stupid and annoying) and to tear down 8 houses to build a left turn lane. The people whose houses are being offered up for sacrifice are really, really annoyed (and in many ways it's hard to blame them because they will go from having a decent centrally located home to in all likelihood being unable to afford to buy another home in the city at all). Also, I go through this intersection every day at 5:00 and, really? Not the traffic problem of the century.

9. I actually don't have a number 9 (or a number 10 depending on how you think of it), but by the time I got to about six things I decided to see if I could get to 10.

10. If I were on LJ and could lock posts, I'd tell you other things, but one of them is sad and the other one is whiny so consider yourself spared.....

Posted by debco at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My new theory of the Internet is that everyone eventually ends up looking at happy puppies. You'll be doing research or looking for information or just randomly clicking and suddenly...OMG Happy Puppies!!!!!

It's what glues the Internet together.

I would put pictures of happy puppies in this very post, but I'm too lazy to get up and get my camera and cable and transfer said pictures over.

I have had a weird couple of days, some of which I can't comment on, some of which I don't want to comment on yet, but will at some point. Among other things, I gave a talk at a national conference but because I couldn't actually be at the conference I did it via videoconferencing. Word is that it went really well and I got great feedback, but really, don't ever do this unless you have no other choice. If you rely in any way on audience response (eye contact, smiles, nodding heads, frowns, crossed arms, sleeping in the back of the room) and I do, well, you get *nothing* from a video conference. There's no audience response. This particular talk was compounded by the fact that I was showing two videos that were several minutes each and at my end that was just blank silent time. So, yeah, you're giving a talk and then you stop in the middle for five minutes, then you start up again, and then there's time for three questions and some talking in the back of the room that you can't hear and then you're done.

It's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, though.

Just in case you were wondering.

Okay....one Happy Puppy picture:

Posted by debco at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A month or so ago, I lost an insurance reimbursement check. And, although it wasn't a huge check, I really could have used it, seeing as how I owned two houses at the time. I knew that assuming no one else found it and cashed it, that the insurance company would reissue it, but I hadn't pursued that yet, though I did occasionally think fondly of that check and the things I could do with the money, if I had it.

So, today, I was taking some things out of my knapsack from this weekend and putting them in my purse for tomorrow and I looked down at my hands and there was the check.

In my hands.

From out of, apparently, nowhere. There would have been no reason on Earth that it would have been in my knapsack. And it wasn't in my purse (because I looked in there a hundred times). And I didn't actually pull it out of my knapsack, anyway. It was just there in my hands with my phone and my wallet and my notebook.

Oh, mysteries of life, never stop messing with my head.

Posted by debco at 09:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just wasted precious minutes of my life trying to post comments to SarahP's journal. They were Brilliant comments, too, with a capital 'B'. They would have changed lives and altered the course of nations.

Angels might also have cried.

I spent this weekend scorekeeping for a local agility trial. Billie got to hang out with me there, though we did not run. She is not really a master of coordination (because: medication) and, frankly, neither am I. I managed to get lost on a simple right turn last year at a Rally trial. But it was fun and it mostly didn't rain and it wasn't too hot, which in Iowa is about all you can ask of the weather in June.

I've got approximately 3,800 words written on the new novel. It's currently titled 'The Ghosts of Fear' but I'm considering changing it to 'Resolutions'. It may change titles several more times before I'm done.

Posted by debco at 07:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)