Snow!

At last! A snow day. One that caught the county unawares, to boot. Last year, they salted the roads at the slightest suggestion of snow and looked right fools when nothing happened. This year, they ignored the forecast and dear god! the roads were adventurous driving into work. Granted, it didn't begin to snow until 8:15 and the schools were already in session or about to start, and that just added to the ZOMG!SNOW panic of some. It was amusing.

Schools closed 3 hours early. I decided to leave work at lunch time, as the state highway administration had begun salting the roads and I didn't want to be driving home through the half-frozen slurry with everyone else. I need not have planned. Our new director, a very wise and astute woman, decided to close the museum at 11 am.

The beasties made a snow fort around the fox holes they've dug in the woods [don't ask] and enjoyed snowball fights with their friends. I was going to try and catch up, but I pulled out my notebook for The Four Cities and spent the afternoon getting it ready for March's novel-in-90 efforts. I feel very accomplished and energetic about that WIP again. Isabel wants to know if I am "happy now, and can we please get back to focusing on me now?" *pets her* Yes, we will do that, and I have the next leg of Roberto's story tickling the back of my mind, as well as ideas to feed Roberto as to certain nefarious activities occurring in Venice. *remember to print out e-mails at work tomorrow*

Speaking of e-mails, I watched Apparitions today, too. You're right, it is very interesting and I hope that there will be a second series [unlike poor Ultraviolet *sad face*]. Oh, and Demons ep. 4. Much better than ep. 3 and Mina's background was delightfully explored and not maudlin.

Uh, I think that is all on the state of things. Slowly easing back into the normal routine *knocks wood* and letting the thoughts flow as they will. Another low-key and subdued night tonight is in order, the in bed by 11 has helped a lot, giving the body the chance to give the pneumonia the final heave-ho, and I look forward to getting back into the mix tomorrow night.

FYI & Out-of-my-shell

PEDTM posts could look something like this, too. I think that I am going to take advantage of this visit and go to the reading.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland's Department of English, the Arts Alliance, the LFA, and VOICES Reading Series proudly present Poet Ann Buechner.

Thursday, January 29
8:15 PM, Daugherty-Palmer Commons

Ann Buechner was born in South Korea and grew up in Madison, WI. She has taught at Cornell University—where she also received her MFA in 2005—and at Seoul Language Institute in Busan, South Korea. Her poems have appeared in The Madison Review, Equilibrium, and Barrelhouse. Poems are also forthcoming in Patrick Somerville’s novel The Cradle, which will be published in March '09. Her work is mainly concerned with collisions and elisions; she is fascinated with the way we pull meaning out of (or push meaning onto) stories, so content-wise, she works a lot with fractured narrative, in which the relationship between existing stories (whether they be pulled from folklore or religion or popular culture) and "real" stories is blurred, forced together, and pulled apart. Because of this fascination with such "mythologies," she is also obsessed with the manipulation of the image and the icon—nothing is particularly sacred for sacred's sake. Ann aims for synesthesia in her poems. She hopes that they feel like a group of strange people in a waiting room: layered and varied in story and stance, tone and voice.

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This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served after the reading.


ETA: After a Google search and seeing this quote, I think that I must go.

She also has the brilliant habit, of which I am undisguisedly envious, of summing up her reactions to movies in single, hilarious sentences. Most recently, after Crash, which I liked and she didn't: "I feel like Paul Haggis is sitting at his typewriter, calling over his shoulder, 'Hey baby, can you help me think of something racist to say to an Asian person?'"

Questions~

They are coming and so are the answers for Mysteries of the Dark Moon. This week just threw a curve ball my way, and I am taking my time to rebound from it and not getting myself all stressed out over the rebound period. My copy of the book looks rather festive right now with the little coloured post-it flags decorating the pages that have the questions on them. It's fairly cheerful sitting here on my desk.

Instead of looking at myself as falling behind in so many areas, I am looking at this as myself on a treadmill. What I miss this round will come back by and be addressed then... or not, and will be let go until the next cycling.

Also, to the absolute jackass who initiated the festive season beginning with a parade leading to his store front the day after Thanksgiving... you, sir, need to roast slowly in hell in your own juices. The Yule season should be 21 Dec - 8 Jan, thank you very much.

Slightly more productive weekend

I got some blocks dissolved and some more resolution with issues that are nagging at me, which overall makes me a very happy camper. I've made it up to the portion on Hekate in Mysteries of the Dark Moon but have just been riding more on the energies of other areas so that I haven't posted my answers. I hope to get that done tomorrow whilst the beasties are at the orthodontist.

Once more there is a strange time warp where it goes from 6 pm to near on 9 pm in the span of thirty-forty minutes, so whomever is responsible for that, please to be stopping it. Thank you.

My mother was funny tonight on the phone. She said that if Bowe's [the game shop where the beasties play their WarHammer40k stuff] was open on Saturday that she wouldn't be upset if we came home early from the Christmas visit. I think they may have overwhelmed her with their boyish beastie outbursts over Thanksgiving. I might do that, and let beastiette stay up a few days before going up and collecting her. She adores the one-on-one time with her Nana, and at 11 is about all the boisterousness my mother can take for prolonged times.

Going to run the dog out for the last time, it is winter out! and then make some tea and settle in for my relaxation time.

As close to 'Fin' as it will be

Stayed up chatting last night so that I could validate the behemoth. Cheers! Yes, I could have cheated and entered an Atlantic time zone, gotten the purple bar, and then changed time zones back again... but that would be no fun and that would be cheating. Cheat once in NaNo and might as well cheat the whole damned month.

Am not writing on Punctuated Reflections today. I might get a few more words in between Wednesday and Sunday, but I'm not going to be bothered one way or another if I don't. It is, for all intents and purposes, finished and ready to be put to bed until editing in February.

In fact, I might use the remainder of the month to rethink the writing approach and plan for 2009.

But first, I am getting more coffee.

Writing vent

While I will rarely do this, sometimes I need to vent in a safer space where I know who is reading. Today, I did so in an entry over in my IJ [also called Nanny Ashtoreth].

I did debate for a while whether or not to post it into my PanHistoria blog, but then thought it was well enough where it was as a pressure release. It served its purpose and now I can turn my thoughts to more fulfilling creative endeavours.

I iz a NaNoCat

Cutest word tracker, ever.

Dr Wicked

Wow. I think that I have found the Grail of smashing writer's block.

Write or Die!

Off to give it a go.