Why do so many people have so many quiz results as blog entries? Sometimes people have entire entries that are nothing but quiz results. This confuses me but I'm about to do much the same thing.
Reading someone's blog tonight, I see another of those "lists" is going around. I've never done one before but I feel bloggy tonight with nothing particular to talk about, so here goes. (Except that these lists are always so positive and I'd rather be more balanced, so I'm including mistakes and disasters.)
Best story I think I've written: Ummm...I don't have that high an opinion of my stuff, but I have an invisible sister who insists that I list "Alley Trap."
Favorite story of mine: "Billowing Seas"
I had more fun writing that than anything else I've ever written.
Most underrated story of mine: Dunno
I doubt it's possible to underrate one of my stories. Maybe "Billowing Seas" because I thought it was funny when I wrote it but only one person read it. (Can something be underrated if it's completely unread? Or does "underrated" have to be something people have read and didn't think much of? And how would you know if you don't get feedback on anything?)
Most overrated story of mine: "Going Deep"
I've had a dozen feedback notes on that one, which is some kind of record for one of my stories, but it's sadly flawed, the sex doesn't fit the characters, and the plot just sort of fades away without a proper resolution.
Story of mine I can actually re-read and enjoy: N/A
I've never re-read one of my own stories, sorry.
Story I most regret trying:
The NaNoWriMo psuedo-novel I just wrote. (I don't think I wanted to know that I could write that badly.)
Technique I most regret attempting: SM
Shudder. I should never have done it. What a load of crap I churned out during that experimentation. I am irretrievably vanilla and at peace with that. (Although, a little light bondage....)
Worst story I ever wrote: Tie
That's a tie between a challenge-induced Methos/Richie attempt (Shudder.) and an SM Skinner/Krycek thing.
I may, finally, have found a critical "bonding point" with the Chipmunk. He's supposed to be visiting our fair city, and office, in a week or two and I discovered this morning that among his other charms (like, he hasn't called us for a week because he took the week off without informing anyone so we've been thinking he was down there working and he's really at Disneyworld or something), he has a daughter who's in competitive figure skating.
As some of my friends know to their dismay :) I am something of a fan of figure skating and if I can't create a bond with this fool on the subject of his beloved daughter's pastime, I'll hang up my B.S. shoes and retire from the business.
Hmph.
Because I'm not a nice person, I'll mention that it continues to be good news to me that Alvin's dissatisfaction with the progress of things around here is centered upon the Chipmunk and not on my probably-equally-as-culpable self.
If Alvin were aware, of course, that I'd composed the larger part of a 50,000 word novel while sitting at my desk over the last two weeks, he'd feel differently, but I'm actually dishonest enough to be okay with that.
Ah. The novel. It's done. Or, as done as it's likely to get. The weak attempt at plot I scrounged up was enough (with the addition if yet another gratuitous sex scene, bringing the novel's total, I believe, to six) to put me over the mark. It's not what you'd really call a 'novel' in the strictest sense of the word since it's characterizationally appalling, structurally aimless, and stylistically schizophrenic, but since I don't intend that any human being on the planet will ever read it, I don't care.
I wrote the bloody thing in 18 days and that's enough for me.
Well, okay, I didn’t write all of it in 18 days. When I was racking my brain for a plot to use to pad out the word-count, I happened to remember that my first, never-to-be-completed, Highlander story had a scene in it that would be easily adapted for my purpose, so about 3,000 words of the 50k were written ten or more years ago. Similarly, one of the sex scenes was lifted from another abandoned story and adapted. Hmmm...okay, so I'm short of "new, original" material by about 5,000 words.
Sue me.
Life is fairly peaceful on the urban front at the moment.
As I was getting this morning's coffee (stop me if I've mused on this subject before) it occurred to me to wonder exactly when I became able to carry on a conversation with a man wearing two heavy silver earrings, about five bracelets, and two silver necklaces and not even notice anything odd for about five months.
I spent the morning printing the documents I'm going to need in New Orleans next week and putting them in some kind of order so that I could find what I need when I need it.
I've decided against renting a car, what with my complete inability to navigate and all. A visit to Mapquest proved that four of the five offices I have to visit are less than 5 miles from my hotel. That means taking cabs will actually be cheaper. Hooray!
I'm staying near the Superdome, which is a crummy neighborhood, and staying in a Ramada Inn, and I hate two-star hotels, so I'm massively cranky about the whole trip even before I start. The good news, so far, is that I did manage to find a direct flight so I don't have to deal with one of those annoying layovers in the airport in Houston.
If I never again see the shrine to the Bush family that they've erected there, it will still be a year too soon.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:13 PM
No Mo' NaNoWriMo!
Yep, I finally crashed the 50k barrier!
Blogging upon other subjects will now resume. At least, probably not today because I'm one of those who has to work today, but soon. Very soon.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:55 AMUpdate
I cracked 45,000 words last night. I'm actually sort of impressed. I didn't actually start writing until around November 8, and this is a lot of words in that amount of time.
It's amazing how fast it comes when quality isn't an issue.
I think I'm starting to understand why many of the very worst TypoidMarys(tm) in fandom are so incredibly prolific. If you just sit down and type any old stream-of-consciousness crap, you can churn out a lot of it in a short amount of time!
Posted by AnneZook at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)
I'll be glad when it's over! NaNoWriMo Ate My Month!
Thanks to last night's writing sesson, I'm at 43,860, and where the remaining 6,000 words are going to come from, I don't know. I've already included about six essentially gratuitous sex scenes and I really think there has to be a limit to that kind of thing. In sheer desperation I introduced a kind of plot complete with demon-worshipping priests and a rejected and insane ex-lover. I had to be desperate to introduce plot. I suck at plot. Fortunately I'm sure I'll reach the 50k long before I have to come up with a satisfying and believable resolution for it.
And I found out todat that I have to go out of town again next week. The same clients I visted two weeks ago are still having trouble so I have to go down there Tuesday and I won't be back until Saturday. No net access. Waaaaah! I think Alvin is feeling smug because he doesn't have to go. My original plan was to send him but let's face it. He's a programmer and I was hired to deal with customer inanities.
I don't have to like it, though.
Haven't talked to the Chipmunk since I sent him an e-mail a week ago asking if he minded if I edited an article he wrote. Maybe he took offense? (People should never ask me what I think unless they're prepared to hear the unvarnished truth.)
It occurred to me today that it's already near the end of November and I haven't booked my air tickets to Escapade yet. I need to do that since the airlines are running sales right now but the money I would have used for the purpose just got eaten by this trip down south, so I'll have to wait until the expense reimbursement comes in.
One of the things I hate most about the "new business climate" that we cycled into in the 90's is the expectation of companies that employees will and should front all travel expenses for company business and then wait 30-60 days to be reimbursed. I haven't seen the $700 I laid out for the last trip yet and now I'm having to kick in in another $500 or more for this one. Pisses me off.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:38 PM
You'll be glad when it's over
But I'm telling you anyhow that I cracked the 35,000 mark on my novel this weekend. McSwain! cracked 40k! And Kormantic, by dint of a huuuge effort, jumped from 14,000 up over 30,000!
Unfortunately, I'm busybusybusy at work today and no time to blog anything else.
Not that I had anything else to say.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:10 PM
NaNoSomeMo
28,061 by the end of the day yesterday.
I'm not sure if it's good or bad that I have actual work that requires to be done today and I'm not likely to get much writing done while I'm at the office. Only nine days left, including today, and I have 22,000 words still to write!
Probably good. That's what they're overpaying me for, right?
I dunno, M. I might find room for a rentboy. Heh. Why not? So far this thing has every other sucky writing cliche in the book in it, after all.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:23 PMAlvin called in this morning and said he'd be working at home, so it's very peaceful in my little corner of the office. I'm actually working for a change, too.
I'm not being as productive as I could be since IDoJeannie sent out an e-mail at 10:00 announcing that she was leaving for the day at 10:45. I had some stuff to be packed and shipped, normally her job, that I consequently had to drop everything else to handle myself. It's not that I'm not up to the challenge of sticking things in a box, you understand, it's the frustration of knowing that my company pays the parent company a fixed sum every month for IDoJeannie's assistance answering phones, shipping packages, etc., and she's not doing any of that.
Darrell very nearly spoke to me this morning. He was walking an interviewee for his company around, showing her the office, and he said, "And this is...." proving that he does know my name. He didn't seem to feel it incumbent upon him to share any further details, like my job or the (separate) company I work for, but at least he was forced to acknowledge my existence, right? That felt good after I'd spoken to him a couple of hours before and received no answer.
Conversational gambits from The Other Brother Darrell have become too common to mention. He's actually quite chatty any more, speaking to me freely three or even four times a week.
In the whoa! department, a guy on the elevator a couple of days ago asked me if I lived in ______ Apartments, which I do, and said he'd seen me there when he went to visit friends. Regardless of the fact that I've seen this no-doubt perfectly harmless young man around the building before, I'd rather not have strangers knowing where I live, okay?
Of course, my attitude could be colored by the fact that I've been reading a fascinating conspiracy-theorist book recently (They really do control the world!), but I don't think so. There are too many nutcases in the world today.
Sorry about the broken links to the graphics at the top of this page, by the way. After moving ISPs, and computers, I've realized that I only seem to have one of the two graphics needed for the banner and I can't, embarrassingly enough, figure out why even the one I've tried to upload doesn't appear.
I'll find some time to work on it one of these days soon, I promise.
Blah, blah, blah
I guess I really didn't have that much to say, did I?
Posted by AnneZook at 12:40 PMThis morning at the coffee shop, I saw a man wearing a demin jacket that said, "Scum of the earth" on the back, but he was just bragging because I've seen much scummier people than him, so he was really just a scum-wannabe who thought the jacket would give him cachet.
I thought it was just me who found the Harry Potter movie(s) sort of boring but yesterday I read a review where the reviewer pointed out that to make a "great" movie, you have to move beyond the source material and bring something new to the screen. Which I agree with, and which is why while I think the movies are "watchable" they're not incredibly "re-watchable" in my book. There's too much emphasis on the eight year-old audience and the desire to bring the source material and nothing else to the screen. If you've read the books often enough, and are old enough to view the films with a critical eye, there's nothing new in them.
So far I've amused myself during both of them, as I saw them in the theatre, by counting up scenes in the books skipped in the movies and watching to see how they were going to bridge the plot gaps.
They're better for home than the theatre so you can take a break I the middle, too. A movie has to be far more engaging than these have been to keep me riveted to the screen for 2-1/2 hours. Also, I regret that these are being made by American production companies and not British, because Gilderoy was a much bigger poseur in the book than he is on-screen and I was looking forward to seeing KB in the role, but in the end the character was played very straight and not half the egocentric ditz he seems to be in the book.
The FX are really superb, though.
I've been working lately, not much time to blog.
Okay, mostly I've been writing, but I've worked a trifle.
As I was telling someone this morning, a friend made a remark about men, underwear, and going commando that abruptly made me regret, deeply regret, that my AU Fantasy NaNoWriMo novel is so "straight." I mean, yeah, my hero is turning out to be gay, but smut is what I write, so that's not unusual.
No, this morning it occurred to me how much more fun this would have been to write if I'd just gone all-out and made the characters swishing, flaming, teasing whoreboys. I'm a little bitter that this didn't occur to me two weeks ago but it's too late to change tracks now! I'd have loved writing that novel, though.
Maybe it's not too late. I could introduce a swishing, flaming, teasing whoreboy as a secondary character, right?
Maybe not. As I had to tell the Docksider Dame, jello doesn’t fit into my AU world. Regretfully I think I have to admit that a drag queen, or a tight-assed twinkie, would be equally out of place.
P.S. This morning's wordcount was 24,352, proving that I did almost no productive work yesterday. I, and not the man with the jacket, am Scum of the earth!
NaNo!
I'll bet those of you uninterested in this contest are tired of hearing about it, right? I must know of ten people who are participating, but I haven't forgotten that most of the world couldn't care less.
19,183 words by the end of the day yesterday. I need to be over 30,000 by now, but whatever. I will not write at the office today! I have got to stop doing that, I have real work to do.
I'm reconsidering reconsidering adding the smut. I know, it's still cheating when the rest of the world is writing "real" novels, but over half of the content I currently have is smut-related.
The question is, is it better to finish what I started, or should I be more concerned with "doing it right"? It's very puzzling.
I am still finding it worrying that I have nothing to say if I'm not writing smut, though. Once I finish this contest, I'm going to sit down and think seriously about writing an original story that's smut-free.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:20 AMADDENDUM
As I told someone else a little while ago, I'm rethinking my, "pad out the wordcount by adding reams of smut" approach to the NaNoWriMo contest. Seems like cheating when everyone else is writing a real novel, or something resembling one, you know? So, I'm going to have to delete about three thousand words (and I was up to 16,526, too! Wah!) but I think it's a more honest approach.
I will never reach 50,000 without smut, though. Of all the things I've learned (which aren't, actually, many) in this contest so far, the fact that I don't really seem to have anything to write about if I'm not writing smut is the one most guaranteed to convince me that I shouldn't quit my day job, you know? This novel was going nowhere and it was going nowhere in a particularly badly written fashion until I stuck the smut into it.
I think that's rather sad.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:43 AMBlog-free zone
14,067 words on the novel. (I realize this is of little or no interest to most of you, but it's my blog, after all, and I can write what I want, right?)
Tonight we're supposed to go see the new Harry Potter movie.
In my refrigerator at home is a package of meat that's probably going to develop intelligence and take over the world if I don't throw it away pretty soon.
Last night I ate ice cream for dinner.
That's pretty much it for excitement in my life.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:14 AMHah! again
12,753 NaNoWriMo words!
On the one hand, I know that I shouldn't be writing at the office. On the other hand, now that I've committed to do this thing, I want to finish it properly and there just isn't that much time in the evenings. I ran the numbers and I have to write 3,104 words a day from now on in order to make my 50k. Sigh.
I'm feeling a little bitter at the people who, unlike myself, didn't procrastinate for the first nine days and who are not, like me, frighteningly behind. (I always prefer to blame others for succeeding as opposed to blaming myself for failing.)
This weekend I was virtuous, even if I didn't write. Cleaning, giving away furniture, taking out trash, doing laundry, all of those things.
Today, Goldie is back in town for three days.
Goldie used to be Buehler's assistant before she decided she missed her family and missed New York and moved back there to work with another company that Buehler is also associated with. Goldie was a favorite around the office, one of those perky, cute young girls that make the guys stand about three inches taller and the women look forward to seeing her. I was never one of those perky, popular girls but as a gulp rapidly-approaching-middle-aged woman, I'm not immune to the charm of having a bright, young person interested in what I'm saying.
Anyhow. Everyone's in a good mood because Goldie is in town. Buehler has been walking around, cracking jokes and smiling. Alvin has stopped work three times just to chat with her about nothing in particular. I think he's stopped work to chat with me about nothing in particular three times in the five months I've been here. Maybe. Even Darrell came over to talk to her for a while. I didn't know he knew that many words, but there he was, chatting away with her for at least five minutes. (When I had to excuse myself to walk past him to the printer, he didn't say a word to me, of course.) The Other Brother Darrell wasn't working here when she was here before, but he didn't let that stop him, no, he managed to find several topics of interest.
She's...you know, Nice. She's a genuinely nice person. (Another thing I never was.) And she's attractive, which explains why our largely male office is so psyched at having her around again for a few days.
I'm not bitter, though. Not at all. I have, you know, other qualities. Sarcasm, bitterness, rudeness. Stuff like that.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:01 PMHah!
9,497 words on the NaNoWriMo effort!
It's pretty exciting to be only 12,000 words behind schedule, you know.
Today I ordered a power cord for the printer to replace the one I accidentally threw away when hooking up the new computer. $80. I bought four books. $47.54. That's a pretty cheap day for me.
I don't know why I felt compelled to share that. Just padding out this short entry, I guess.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:27 PM
Look, Ma! I'm bloggin'!
Owing to a complete absence of anything resembling a work ethic, I worked on my NaNoWriMo novel most of the day yesterday. Not all of the day, but a substantial portion of it. My word count is now at 6,101, meaning I'm only about ten days behind the schedule most people are keeping.
Let's put it this way. To have a reasonable chance of finishing 50k by 11/30, I'd need to be sitting right on top of 15,000 words today.
The good news is that the smut idea worked and that yesterday's significant jump in verbiage is directly related to My Hero's first encounter with a Gayboy. No actual smut ensued, but his world was rocked anyhow and the ground is laid for The Next Big Thing.
It's sort of a pity I signed up for this thing since it means that the OaT idea I've been dabbling with has to wait for a while, but even when goofing off for most of my work hours I can only do so much writing in a day. When you consider that I blog about 2k a day on politics and current events, it's a wonder that I have time to work at all.
Oh. Wait. I haven't been, have I? I'd better go do something about that now.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:26 PMI never wanted to work in a company where words like, "spondyloarthropathies" would cross my desk routinely. Nor has it improved the quality of my life to know that, "[t]raditional nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs ... inhibit both isoforms of the enzyme cyclooxygenase", okay? "The term angioedema denotes a well demarcated, non-pitting edema that occurs as large erythematous areas in skin and subcutaneous tissues" but I don't really care.
I don't feel I need to know these things. This is why, even at one point when I was in the eighth month of a job-hunting cycle, I never read the Help Wanted, Medical section of the newspaper. An obsessive hypochondriac doesn't need to know everything that can go wrong with the human body.
The only saving grace is that I only understand about one out of every four words that I read on the job.
Anyhow.
Alvin's off for Georgia today. He's meeting the Chipmunk there and they're doing a presentation to someone we hope will become our star client. Fingers are crossed that they love what they see. And that the project's sponsor quits dinking around and turns loose of some more money. Let's wish for lots more money, while we're at it. I'd like to get rich off of my stock options on this job.
The Chipmunk has been acting very oddly recently. Maybe Alvin told him I was aware that we were having "issues" and he decided he didn't feel like a confrontation (Hee. Hee. Fool. I haven't confronted anyone about anything since about 1979), I don't know, but he's been simply charming ever since he heard that our southern clients had dis-invited him from addressing them a second time and requested my presence instead. He actually talks to me when he calls the office and when I call him for information, he doesn't have that, are we done yet? note in his voice.
Trouble in paradise? Darrell and The Other Brother Darrell don't seem quite as inseparable these days as they used to be. TOBDarrell keeps coming over to Alvin and wanting to know if he wants to walk over for coffee, when previously you never saw him without his shadow.
No one ever comes over and asks me if I want to walk over for coffee. What's up with that? I had a bath.
IDoJeannie supposedly handed in her resignation, but she's still here. What did she do, give six months' notice? I've quit covering for her on the phones. Just because I'm the only other female in the office doesn't make me the back-up receptionist, okay? Hmph.
I did notice that Jimmiedean has quit talking to me since I stopped playing receptionist for his company during the many hours that IDoJeannie spends out of the office, which is a shame because he was fun to talk to, but whatever. I have blogs to write and e-mail to answer, so I don't have an unlimited amount of time to chat with people around here anyhow.
I think Buehler likes me, though. He's taken to asking me what's happening every day and seems to find it amusing when I insist that ignorance is bliss and if anything is happening, I wasn't there and I'm not responsible. He also likes the, "I read banned books." button on the lapel of my coat. His approval means little in the scheme of things except that on the days he's in the office, I can count on at least one person besides Alvin actually speaking to me.
Back when they hired me, Alvin and the Chipmunk mentioned that they thought a newsletter, quarterly or monthly, would be a good way to stay in touch with both clients and prospective clients. A few days ago, the subject came back up so I sat down yesterday and wrote the first four. I have to send the first one off to the Chipmunk via e-mail today so he can write the article for the space I left him. We'll see how he reacts. I tend to get comments about the ahem informality, not to mention jocularity, of my writing style from people I work with. I tried to be restrained this time although I do hope the history of paper article in the second newsletter makes it past the censors.
NaNoWriMo Yeah, I joined. No, I'm not doing very well. My work count staggered up to 2005 last night. That means I'm only 19,662 words behind. And I've been writing with pen and paper, so even if, by some miracle, I reached 50,000 words, I couldn't prove it.
Plus which, in some ways it's liberating to write something where quality is completely irrelevant, but in other ways it's entirely painful to write something so entirely awful and not allow myself to tear it up and start over.
Nothing new on the dissing fanfiction front since A Kind Friend traumatized me with a line from a story about someone's ass "throbbing in anticipation of being filled again after so long" or some such crap. I know where she lives and if I suffer a breakdown as a result of these little excerpts she favors me with, I'm taking myself off to her house for an extended recuperation. I'll make her read me "Winnie The Pooh" and "The Wind In the Willows" every day for six months or something.
(There. I just wrote about 900 words. If I wrote on the novel this way, I'd be caught up in no time!
But I did think of a plan to stretch it out last night. I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I'll make my protagonist gay and then I can pad the word count with numerous smut scenes!
It's so obvious, now that I've thought about it.
What I need to write is a fanfiction-style, i.e., not realistic, coming-out story where my guy realizes that the reason he doesn't want to stay down on the farm and marry his best friend's girlfriend's best friend is that he'd rather shag his best friend, right? I can do that in my sleep.
After all, the guy's name is already Mercutio, mainly because someone wrote on a list somewhere recently that you couldn't viably name a character something unusual like "Mercutio" these days and I instantly thought of a way it could work but the point is that if he's named "Mercutio" he might as well be gay.
Especially since it's an AU Science Fiction story anyhow because I always wanted to write a story where people could work magic except that it only does little things so it can't be used to change the fate of the world or anything. If you're thinking that this entire premise sounds pretty sucky, well, just be grateful I'm not posting exerpts here.)
Posted by AnneZook at 01:29 PM
Naughty Boys
Something I find amusing although I shouldn't is the saga of the U.K.'s royals.
Like many in the (former) Colonies, I'm something of an Anglophile but I hadn't thought much about the Windsors until the subject of fish-faced Charles's engagement to Diana Spencer hit the news. While not succumbing to the temptation to fixate on the Princess of Wales's career and tragic death, I have followed the ins and outs of the Windsor lifestyle in a casual fashion.
All of which verbiage is leading to the fact that the UK's Guardian has printed a scorecard of who's who in the latest scandal, for those who haven't been following closely.
Another article offers a Who's Who of a few of the participants.
It's all the more amusing to a mystery aficionado to realize that the butler, a gay, old dog by most accounts, might have done it!
Done what?
Practically everything, except steal items from Diana's estate, a charge of which he wascleared by the Queen's belated memory of his having informed her he was removing some items from the palace for safekeeping (and, yes, there's an allegation she did it For The Family and not because it was true).
Other than that, "his own enemies, who include a former (male) Australian lover and the divorced gay comedian, Michael Barrymore, insist that the butler - who is married, with two children - is himself untrustworthy, having airbrushed a strenuous-sounding gay past from his CV which doesn't seem to be connected with the recent accusation of homosexual rape one male staff member has brought against another ( Now, it may be possible, as Mr Smith claims, to be anally raped while asleep – though an unlubricated entry into your virgin back passage is the kind of thing you would wake up for, I'd have thought, even if you had overdone the Bollinger. ") and allegations that smuggling gay, male prostitutes into the palace was a regular occurrence.
Anyhow.
There's missing treasure, or maybe blackmail material, it's hard to say, possible previous knowledge on the part of the queen (who, after one reputed orgy somehow involving a substantial quantity of gay porn and a royal yacht, is said to have advised Burrell, the aforementioned butler, that he should consider marriage because in the UK all men are gay but the respectable ones get married and no doubt it's coincidental that there's a rumor of evidence as to some kind of monarchy-destroying hijink on the part of one Royal who was apparently sighted by the butler! in a "compromising position" with a staff member with the insinuation that we're talking hot, man-on-man loving with an insinuation in a different article that it's the much-discussed Prince Edward being referred to although it could be the Queen and someone, I guess) as to some of the shenanigans and I don't know what-all else.
There are also minor revelations of life beside the crown including Di's penchant for getting the butler! to buy nudie magazines for her oldest son (in an article titled, ""Porn with a silver spoon""), which round out the magnitude of this particular melt-down, as does the news that Diana was in the habit of sending people off to sell her old clothes so she could scoop in some cash.
Prince Charles has ordered an "internal review" so I'd imagine this story isn't over yet.
It's been amusing me, okay? I have a slight head cold and I'm entitled to laugh at people to make myself feel better.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:36 PMIt's been One. Of. Those. Days. so far.
One of those irritating, annoying, niggly days that don't quite go to hell but do teeter on the brink hour after hour.
I bought a new rolling bag to tote my stuff to and from the office with (and because I decided my old one wasn't "professional" enough to take on the road last week and because I just like to buy new things, okay?)
Anyhow, the new one is very professional. but when I left for work this morning, I was dragging it and carrying my purse and lunch sack because they wouldn't fit inside, plus a cup of coffee and somehow by the time I got to the car, it seemed like a lot of crap to be hauling around with me.
The old bag might have looked liked something a high school kid would have, but by gosh it would hold the computer, power cords, purse, and lunch sack with room to spare. Maybe I'll save the nice one "for good".
I bought a new purse this weekend and while it's gorgeous and wonderful, for some reason it wouldn't stay on my shoulder today so every two steps it was sliding down to my wrist and dragging on the ground behind me which is no way to treat a brand-new leather purse.
And when I got to the office, I didn't have the key to the parking garage so I parked in the lot and dragged all of the stuff to the elevator, intending to take it upstairs and get my keys out of the desk except that halfway up in the elevator I realized all of those keys were on the same key ring and I wasn't going to be able to get into the office, so I had to drag it all back out to the car. I tore apart the bag and finally located the keys in one place I could have sworn I'd never put them.
The only trivial disaster that didn't befall me on the way to work today was spilling coffee on my white sweater. I did not do that. I brought cream of potato soup (Home-made, McSwain! Soup!) and applesauce for lunch, so the sweater may make it through the day unscathed.
I'm having an icky hair day, but I have an appointment to get it cut and colored tomorrow.
IDoJeannie has pretty much worn out her welcome in my life. She called in sick three days last week because one of her kids had the croup.
Now, before anyone jumps my case, I do think sick kids belong at home. With their parents, even. (Or, rather, their mother, because the number of fathers who would stay home with a sick child constitutes a vanishingly small percentage of fathers.) However, as I've complained before, IDoJeannie is always missing time for some reason. She's one of those types who'd probably collapse in exhaustion if asked to work a 40-hour week. She shows up late and leaves early on those days where she deigns to show up at all. She misses at least one day a week for sickness, car problems, death in the family, or some other reason.
And, as I've also said before (if not here, then elsewhere), it's not that she's gone on the average of two days a week that I mind, it's the fact that she seems to sneak in an out on the days when she does show up, making it impossible to know if she's here or not.
Basically, last week I just quit answering the phones when she wasn't here. The calls were never for my company anyhow (we have a separate phone line from the other two companies that share this suite) and just because I'm female does not make me the automatic back-up receptionist for everyone in sight.
Anyhow, the reason I'm whining about it today is that she disappeared for an hour or two this morning, just about the time a couple of guys showed up to deliver a new refrigerator for the office. (The last one started leaking freon or whatever they use inside of those things any more.) Naturally when she unplugged the old one last week, she didn't ever bother to go back in and clean up the water, so it was full of water and puddles of coolant or freon residue today when the guys showed up.
I've washed my hands four times and I still can't get the smell off.
In the good news, Darrell actually spoke to me on Friday! He said, "I'm sorry I bothered you" when he asked me where someone was and I said they weren't in. The Other Brother Darrell walked over to get coffee with Alvin and me this morning. I don't know why I thought that was worth mentioning, except that he didn't speak to me the entire time which could easily be explained by the fact that Alvin and I talked incessantly about last weeks' various meetings.
And I did finally manage to get my hotel reservation for Escapade made, thanks to M nudging me.
It's 1:21 and I'm going to go eat lunch.
This is why I haven't been blogging much. (Besides having been out of town with no net access for three days, I mean.) Nothing to say.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:28 PMI mean, if for some reason someone is really hard up for something to read, I could post the opening scene from my new OaT story.
I'm theoretically writing a novel for NaNoWriMo too, but no one is going to see that. The key to NaNoWriMo is verbiage, which should be as excessive as possible in order to reach the 50k mark. Quality is completely irrelevant.
Anyhow. You'd have to be pretty desperate to read either one I'm thinking.
I had one Friday.
I think that pretty much covers it. Except to say that the sweet-faced girl in the short black dress, clunky black platform sandals, and big, black tattoo was trying way too hard to be radical. Her face had "future PTA Mom" written all over it and the sooner she accepts her fact, the easier it will be on all of us.
Downtown Denver isn't downtown Washington D.C. folks. No primly suited management fast-trackers here, no Wall Street Bulls and Bears. This is Khaki Country.
I'm not sure if the abundance of khaki-clad business people downtown are dressed that way because because Denverites honestly love khaki or because they don't know that you're not really supposed to wear blue jeans with your tuxedo jacket when you attend a black-tie party.
This is a blog.
This is me, updating my blog.
Dissing me
The Docksider has been, I mean. Because I haven't updated my blog since my birthday.
I didn't get back from New Orleans until late Thursday, okay? And then I had to work Friday and by Friday evening I was exhausted because I never sleep well on the road and then yesterday we went to the Holiday Food & Gift Fair and then out to lunch and then to the grocery store and today I cleaned house and carried five loads of trash out and dusted and did a little vacuuming and cleaned out all the old disks from software we don't own any more and I've been busy, okay?
Stay tuned for further bulletins of little or no interest.
Sheesh.
Happy BIRTHdaaay to ME!
Heh.
Now that the celebration is over, I have to go get on a plane. Sigh. No internet access until I get back at the end of the week.
Y'all behave now, ya hear?
And, while I have your attention for a moment, why don't you go and vote?
Posted by AnneZook at 07:36 AM | Comments (0)I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I see the Sydney Morning Herald is featuring Fanfiction in one of today's on-line articles.
I'm not sure if I'm eager to read it, or frightened, knowing that the overwhelming number of half-wits in fandom have buried the decent fanfiction under a tidal wave of crap that no newspaper journalist would have had the time to wade through.
I have a vague feeling there's something grammatically wrong with that sentence. Checking.... Half-wits, tidal wave of crap, those look okay.
Well, I'm sure someone will tell me. In the meantime, I'm off to go read.
Update
Well, we're all in trouble now. The article is actually All About Fanfiction.Net and it leads with a (clearly underage) slash story feature Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy.
And the writing quality of the excerpt? Kill. Me. Now.
(P.S. As soon as I hear from the people who host my webpages, I'll fix the missing graphics thing.)