Category: Thoughts

Thursday Thirteen: Greatest(?) Hits

 

13 Searches That Found My Blog

 

It sucks that I know most of these are image searches, but hey, eyeballs are eyeballs right? Throw enough of them against the wall and one or two are bound to stick, right? Ok, with these searches, probably not. And that’s just a gross image. *grin* I know. Post more regularly too.

I was pleased to notice that my Regency Resource pages have been seeing more traffic lately, especially the sections on regency slang and how to tie a cravat in either a mailcoach, a gordion knot or a mathematical. That Neckclothitania image was a good one to include it seems.

1. Jamie Hewlett just happens to share my exact birthday so that TT has been hit 1,192 times for his picture.

2. My post about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel has only been hit 320 times for the picture.

3. Apparently people like to search for images of the number three. They’ve found me 269 times with it.

4. Similarly, the void is also 254 views worth of popular.

5. Once upon a time I was one of the 215 seeking a picture of drama masks

6. It’s nice to see that the Divas’ free reads from last Valentine’s Day have gotten 71 views.

7- 9. Several people are looking for information on dialogue, the three act structure and how to put together a story arc. Maybe even many of the same people.

10. Also on the Regency-Specific resouce pages people are looking for information on regency slang.

11. Another image search: perfection game Wild… I used to love that game…

12. It’s kind of cool to see the blog title come up a bunch too. Neat.

13. I still think my favorite image is the one of the fighting mouse. I was surprised at how many others also search up for that poor little rodent.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1 Nadia 2 The Pink Flamingo 3 Kimberly Menozzi
4 Tempest Knight 5 Stephanie Adkins 6 Jennifer McKenzie
7 Qtpies7 8 Savannah Chase 9 Paige Tyler
10 Brenda 11 Myrtle Beached Whale 12 Debbie Mumford
13 Vera 14 15

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Thursday Thirteen: No Time!

 

13 Things I don’t have time for today…

 

1. Finishing the short story I’m working on. I’m about halfway there and man, it’s kicking my butt every sentence.
2. Doing laundry.
3. Cleaning out all the junk mail in my inbox.
4. Cleaning out all the non-junk mail from mailing lists I’m normally interested in, but don’t care about today.
5. Emptying the dishwasher. Ok. I probably could have done that instead of this, but this is more fun.
6. Stopping off to buy a Lottery ticket… oh wait. I don’t play anyway. No wonder I never win.
7. Properly keeping up with all the posts on Romance Divas.
8. Taking the kids to martial arts class — we usually go at least two days out of MWF, but we went last night instead.
9. Feeding the fish until we get home later tonight and hopefully before their light goes off.
10. Whipping the kids into submission so they do their homework. Or is that patience? *sigh*
11. Cooking a homecooked meal before Back-to-School Night. The question is, who’s feeding us.
12. Coming up with 13 things for a Thursday Thirteen list…
13.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1 marcia@joyismygoal 2 Jennifer McKenzie 3 Qtpies7
4 Robin L. Rotham 5 Paige Tyler 6 SavvyOne

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Into The Woods

Last night, we took the kids to see “Into the Woods” at the Starlight Theatre here in Balboa Park. We’ve been there several times and I’d never realized there was an outdoor ampitheatre there. Apparently, the theatre has been a San Diego tradition for over 40 years. The seats are darned uncomfortable, but that’s expected. We’d also anticipated a sold out show from the ticket ordering choices, but a good number of seats and sections were empty around us.

I’ll admit I’ve been spoiled by the Broadway cast recording and DVD. We saw the show originally on PBS in Alabama in the early 90s and we finally broke down and bought it on DVD a couple of years ago. The kids had watched it with us then, but hadn’t been too excited about it. DD has discovered musicals: High School Musical, Camp Rock, you’d expect those of a tween, right? But would you think of Sweeney Todd, Rocky Horror, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Musical episode, and now Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog? She likes dark stuff and loves horror movies. We keep teasing her she’s going to “go Goth on us” in a couple years. I don’t really think so.

Anyway, she really enjoyed last night. She wanted THAT performance on DVD too. See there’s another tradition at the Starlight, besides the little red box that’s appeared in every production since 1946, that’s the “freeze action” when the planes come in for a landing at Lindbergh Field. Yep, the nice little outdoor theater is RIGHT under the flight path. The actors “are specially trained” to freeze when a plane comes over and then continue on once the noise levels allow. This is controlled by the conductor, who apparently makes a game out of it, trying to catch the actors in awkard poses. Imagine trying to watch a movie, and having your 3 year old in control of a pause button. Luckily it turned out to be more amusing than annoying, but DS counted at least 28 planes go over in the 3 hours we were there. DH said there were more. We can say we did it and check off another requirement in his Webelos book.

Me? I’m going to watch the DVD as soon as possible. I’ve had the songs stuck in my head all last night and really need to hear the witch’s song about the greens in her garden done properly. The wolf’s “Hey, Little Girl” needs some refreshing too.

Balancing Act

19th C. English Libra scale
19th C. English Libra scale

Time-Management, Procastination and Perfectionism.

Ok, I’m trying not to whine or moan here, but galatic forces have been pushing me to think about how these are related. Yes, Bria and Andi can now consider themselves part of the galatic forces. I don’t know if there’s a uniform or even a t-shirt, sorry.

The Acountability Corner thread Bria started has helped me move from thinking only of what I’m going to do the next day to thinking about a week at a time. I need to wrap my head around the non-writing things that also have to be factored in there. I’ve never been good with calendaring. If I write stuff on it, I never remember to check it. I have been using the calendar in Entrourage (Exchange lite) more since I’ve been using the laptop and taking it with me more places.

Bria asked me if I ever set myself deadlines and I’ve never really tried. Internal deadlines don’t have any sort of urgency or consequences for not meeting them. External deadlines work wonders, like the landlord coming to visit her house next monday and the appointment for the carpet cleaners to come next Thursday. Those are concrete and real to me. They scream, “GET MOVING!”

Andi has been pestering me about my perfectionism which is also tied very closely to my procrastination habits. And she’s right, I do have time management skills, I just don’t usually USE them. I use them to make sure the kids get out the door in time for school and to martial arts class on time. Outside of that… not so much.

So, how does being a perfectionist feed into procrastinating? Several ways. If you don’t start, how can you fail to meet your goal? Ok that seems like an oxymoron, but it’s very real. Not trying is very different from putting yourself to the challenge and failing to meet your own high standards.

This concept was brought home watching an Ira Glass video on Getting Creative Work Done that Bethanne posted at Romance Divas yesterday. He mentions that people attempt to produce creative endeavors because they love a particular form and they have good taste concerning it. Getting past the point where the gap exists between your ability to create and the quality standard imposed by your taste is where the hard work lies.

This is exactly the problem that perfectionists who procrastinate face on every level. It’s much easier to ignore a problem or situation that you know you can’t fix or change to be like the ideal to which you aspire. This even applies to housework and CHAOS (Flylady’s acronym for Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome).

So… balance. Every member of my family needs to find a better balance between obligations and leisure. We run the full gamut at our house and I understand the reasons for the individual choices. I fall somewhere in the middle, but because I’m such a practiced procrastinator, I fall closer to one side than the other. What I need to work on is finding ways to motivate myself and everyone else so we have more quality leisure time together and can learn to meet internally imposed deadlines to meet goals instead of surrendering to the stress and panic of externally imposed deadlines.

I think even if it’s unofficial this round of AC, I’m going to start trying to build in some shorter term deadlines and goals for myself that may or may not directly apply to writing. The less I have to worry and stress about little things that build up to giant things, the more regular time I’ll have to put toward writing without added guilt.

I have to keep asking myself, “Are my routines working FOR me?”

Happy 4th of July!

Fireworks over San Diego Bay
Fireworks over San Diego Bay

Happy Independence Day
to everyone in the States!

We’re having Bacon Cheddar Burgers, Watergate Salad, Broccoli Salad, Macaroni Salad, probably some chicken and/or shrimp thrown on the grill as well.

We’ve often gone down to sit at the intersection across from our high school to see the local fireworks display, but we realized last year we can see three separate displays from our house. Escondido and Poway from our back patio and the local one from our driveway.

Hope you all enjoy a great
3-day weekend with lots of fun, food, and friendship.

Opaque

Dining in the dark logoLast night we dumped the kids at the martial arts studio’s beach party and went downtown to eat at Opaque, one of those dining in the dark places. We were early for our reservations, so we sat in the lobby of the local W hotel and drank $10 cocktails.

The décor there was cool with some bright beachy colors and three giant rear-projection screens showing local surfing movies off-set by about 30 seconds each beneath a wall studded with surfboard fins. The neatest thing was the second floor walkway that ran along one side of the lobby. Every five feet or so, giant circles of a frosted translucent material punctuated the floor/ceiling. Whenever someone walked across, you could see the soles of their shoes fairly clearly and the rest quickly blurred.

Continue reading “Opaque” →

Back for a bit…

The boy hiking at Mataguay.It’s a crazy time at our house. We just spent the weekend camping with the Cub Scouts. We had mosquitoes galore, a missing piece of our grill (no fire! ok, we borrowed a stove from someone else), and a loud noisy pack across the road from us that decided to use their bullhorn and ring cow bells at 6:04 AM. Ugh.

Tomorrow, DD and I are off to Riley’s Farm with the rest of the 5th grade. We’ll spend about 4 hours on the road for this trip. At $4.21 a gallon for gas, it sucks that I’m going to have to drive myself.

DS is probably staying home from school tomorrow (again!) since he is feeling feverish, with a nasty headache and was sick on the way home from camping. Oh joy. This figures since I’ve already paid for him to go to the martial arts studio after school program for the day.

We’ve also got several end of the year concerts and programs coming up this week as well.

Then this weekend is another belt test for martial arts on Saturday and the family picnic and rain gutter regatta for the Cub Scouts on Sunday. Next Wednesday is the 5th grade promotion ceremony and Thursday the 12th is the last day of school where the 5th grade has a 3 hour pool party instead of school.

I hope to be back posting more regularly after next week!

The Dress

Colonial dress for 5th grade speechThis is the infamous “dress” that has been keeping me busy and not writing lately. I started laying out the fabric and pinning the pattern to it on last Saturday morning and finished hemming the skirt on Monday afternoon. You can’t see the slip I also made to help poof the skirt out for her — Just a wide band of elastic with a length of material 4 times her waist gathered onto it that barely comes to her knees.

The shawl and mobcap were made earlier last week and the shawl was seen modeled around town quite a bit. It apparently goes well with her orange paisley summer dress too. Imagine that. Only about 2 centuries to straddle there.

The 5th Grade at DD’s school studies Colonial America and they’re required to do a speech based on a real person from the time period. They have an array of personalities for the kids to choose from and she really wanted the tavernkeeper, but got the milliner instead. The woman was a widow, so we needed dark colors and nothing at the thrift shop looked appropriate for what we wanted to do. I found a pattern in the Simplicity costume catalog and figured, I can do that. I was a little nervous about the sleeves since I’ve never done that type before where it’s set into the shoulder (Sun dresses for little girls don’t have sleeves like that!)

She loves it and it was quite a hit at school yesterday when she gave her speech. It’s a good thing the only award I was looking for was to make her happy. I need to find my seam ripper or go buy a new one to make one of the fixes. I’m not doing it again with a straight pin. Nosireebob.

Lessons learned:

  1. If things are going together too easily, stop, check what you’re doing, there is a big problem.
  2. Sleeves aren’t bad, but you should put them on the correct sides.
  3. Check your hems before you sew it, this one could have been slightly higher still.
  4. I still hate putting in zippers and 22″ zippers are even worse.

Anyway, I’m not sure why she’s got it twisted around her middle a bit in this photo, but that is how she went to school yesterday.

Tagged! Twice!

Life’s been crazy again with all the end of the school year stuff going on. The monsters are in school until June 12th, and you better believe I’m counting the days. Why does life always have to happen at once? Hrm.

Seems while I wasn’t looking, I got tagged twice. Ok… catching up with those first!

 

Meme #1

We’re playing Telephone again, only this time Alice is calling it “Whisper.” So you can’t pound the keys–type lightly or the spell will be broken.

The rules:

1. Make a change in the paragraph below. It can be as little as a single word or almost every word, so long as we can still recognize the paragraph you received from the person who tagged you ( me, Kaige), not the original paragraph (by Alice).

The paragraph I wrote based on Andi’s:

He came from the bathroom, a plunger in one hand and a tool chest in the other. His name was Mario, but she’d always called him El Cabron. She said he could ¡vete a la mierda! Instead of cursing her, he took her in his arms and plumbed her depths.

The paragraph I wrote based Dana Belfry, Kelsey Simmons and Jennifer Leeland

3. Also link to the person who tagged you ( me ) so the chain will not be broken.

4. Go to the original paragraph at Alice’s Restaurant and let her know you did it so she can link back to you. For extra credit, head over to http://AliceAudrey.wordpress.com around June 9th for the contest based on this meme.

You could win a $20 gift certificate!

 

Meme #2

Dana added to my obligations today. But it seems like a quick easy one and to do it, I had to do the other one first.

This one is called the 1-2-3 tag (hey, stop complaining it’s a short one!) and it goes like this:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people: Bethanne, Kat Oxley, Gina Ardito, Dayna Hart and Andi (hey, fair’s fair).

From Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother

Dad was driving me nuts, though.
“You’re being paranoid, Marcus,” he told me over breakfast one dayy as I told him about the guys I’d seen the cops shaking down on the BART the day before.
“Dad, it’s ridiculous. They’re not catching any terrorists, are they? It’s just making people scared.”

Luckily, I was a bit farther into the book than this. I’m really enjoying this read — very techie and very liberal, but the narrator’s voice flows so smoothly through the minefields of current politics.

A little knowledge…

forms of knowledge… is a dangerous thing. Maybe this is what Andi and Bria were getting at when they asked if I thought too much craft info stuffed in my head was a bad thing<tm>.

I admit I was pretty bored with the workshop on Saturday as the nuts and bolts were gone over. It’s a good thing the personality of the speaker was engaging and funny. Also, I think Dana Belfry was highly amused by the little origami boxes I made out of Hershey’s Treasures wrappers during the talk.

In a way, I was appalled that the workshop was so nuts and bolts in its approach. Maybe I just assumed the audience for it should already have known the basics of having two of their characters speak to one another on the page? That doesn’t seem like that outlandish of an assumption.

On the other, maybe my expectations were just too high. Did I really expect the speaker to simply download her brain to ours? I don’t know, but I know there was a definite disconnect there. I don’t consider myself to be an expert on dialogue by any means, but the basic mechanics of it have been pretty obvious for a while now.

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, “Gah! What a snobbish bore!” you can relax, because I’m definitely running into my share of challenges in the Deep Editing class, Bria talked me into taking with her. I’ll be the first to admit that editing is brand spanking new to me. You mean there’s more to it than fiddling with a word choice here and there? Cool.

Anyway, I’m learning technical terms for all sorts of rhetorical devices I knew existed, but never played with on a conscious level. I can hear my DH yawning right about now. Yes, dear. Old hat for you, but I was taking econ and business classes instead.

I think my favorite quote from Saturday’s workshop will always be, “Do it well, but don’t do it often!” That seems to apply to these rhetorical devices. I think the do it well part means you have to make it blend in with the writing around it too. It can’t just stick out like a sore thumb on the page. Otherwise, it just looks a bit purple.

I do feel I am learning from the class (yes I just signed up yesterday), but the EDITS system and taking a highlighter and painting the different sections (dialogue, description, internalization, emotion, and blocking) different colors really lets me see why I like and dislike various sections. Clumps are bad. A nice smattering of everything reads much better.

In other news, I’m over 10k on the Flower Queen’s Daughter story!