Shopping for a new car hell

I try to keep an open mind. I don't care about color as long as the price is right, it has cargo room, and the gas mileage is good. Used is still new to me. So it ought to be easy to find me a damn car, right?

Course it doesn't help when I start getting cranky and ill because my neck and back hurt. And my pecs but that usually doesn't happen unless I use those muscles.

I didn't get to pick out the Hyundai Accent. And the plan was to drive it till it dropped after I had it paid off and had saved up a down payment. So I would actually enjoy car shopping the second time around.

It's the oh-god-I'm-spending-too-much and the it-costs-how-fucking-much all rolled into one. And I have to call the bank and the insurance guys tomorrow. So looks like I'm going back to work Tuesday.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

How Do You Really Do It? Project

Okay, time for the project I kept say I would explain later: "How Do You Really Do It? Living the Writing Life" over at Discipline Under Fire.

Basically, I want an autobiographical how-to that's more concerned with the living part rather than the writing part. Comments are turned on for those entries, and I'm looking forward to see what develops.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Pain is bearable

So what happened yesterday. I was running late, but was not tailgating. In fact, I had just congratualted myself on leaving lots of room in front of me. Had already called work and said I was running late. Car to the left in the median between interstate lanes, corner damaged, must have clipped the light pole. Brake lights. Me slam on brakes. Airbag in face.

Airbag defaltes and I get the car to the shoulder. Get out to get away from gritty airbag dust. Five or six people all asking if I was okay. Arms felt scraped, chest hurt, back and neck don't hurt yet but they will. Other car has only bumper damage and that mostly looks like my white paint. A Motorists Assisstance Patrol guy sees us from the Eastbound side and soon joins us. It's about 7:40 am.

Call work, call home. Mom calls Dad. Wait for cops. Wait for on-duty cops (yes, off-duty ones stopped and got our hopes up). Two sets of firefighters and a set of paramedics stop to see if we needed to go to the hospital. Later we find out that the radio traffic people say ours is an accident with injuries. A state trooper finally shows up. Oops you are ten feet too close to O'Neal Lane, you need city police. He forgets to call them in. M.A.P. guy has to do it.

Dad shows up. I call insurance, city police show up about 9:30 am. No ticket for me. Finally eat breakfast, and finished talking to insurance, have to go to the wrecked yards and sign a release so the body shop can get car. Arrange for the rental, get a doctor's appointment, starting to hurt.

Call Chad. At noon, Dad's gassing up at Denham Springs and we run into M.A.P. guy at the same gas station. Get rental car. Go to doctor. Muscle relaxers and ibroprfen and x-rays and appointment for next week.

Muscle relaxers make me loopy but I'm going back to work tomorrow. Go to bed at 7 pm, don't hear the phone next to the bed when Chad calls. Still going to work until I wake up at 2 am and can't move my neck without pain. Call in sick.

Today I picked up the living room mess Mustard had made by knocking over the table filled with board games and books. I have never seen anything scatter in a circular pattern before. And I finished shelving and correcting the BookCat database of obvious errors. I think I need to send them an email to find out how I can break my fiction into genres and create a printed report from that.

I also discovered I have two projects I want to do: How do you really do it? (which I will explain later) and resurrecting the Reader's Diary. I just reshelved 1247 books and found plenty that I haven't read yet. Also I need to be honest, if I don't reread them, do I need to keep them? And some of the nonfiction is just bizarre. Will I ever do anything on the Biodome project?

And the insurance called and my car is a total loss. So now I have to go buy a new one. Luckily, the settlement will pay off my car loan, so I'm not in the hole. But I don't have much of a down payment.

So tomorrow: call insurance, double check their figures. Call bank and get pre-approved for car loan. Then maybe go car shopping.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Not what I had in mind for when I got back here

But I had another wreck, me at fault. Front-end smooshed. Hopefully repairable. Sore and also on muscle relaxers.

Mustard made living room mess worse. Not a good day at all.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Getting back to normal

Things are returning to what passes for normal at my house. Saturday saw me get a great word count (4101) while crossing other things off the to-do list until I hit upon "clean office." That gave me the brainwave of moving the black metal shelves so I could move the tall filing cabinet so I could put a set of tall shelves where the filing cabinet once was. So now I need a new set of shelves for the living room.

Second point to moving shelves is moving books and putting the piles of unshelved books back in order. That ate up the time on Sunday, once I figured out how to get a report sorted by Dewey Decimal numbers out of BookCAT. Actually, shuffling the books around is the easy part, correcting the BookCAT database when I founf errors took time. I still have the 000s and fiction to do. The clean the living room and kitchen messes. At least the kitchen mess is unrelated to the rest of the mess.

Course it didn't help I found a new website to distract myself with: Cat-Tales. It's Batman universe fanfiction that takes the stance that the comics are tabloid versions of the characters. Selina and Bruce are together and know each other is Catwoman and Batman. Hysterica ensue, but they are good for each other. Some of the male Rogues Gallery descending to tell Bruce Wayne how to deal with Catwoman is still my favorite scene. COurse they all think she's toyinh with Bruce and Batman, and it's not really fair. Gaslighting the Joker so bad he checks into Arkham was a good story too.

Back to the word count, apparantly the contract is finally showing some effect. I finished a scene in Zy's Novel and then breezed through a scene in Strix, even typed up background notes and worked out what the vampires were doing and who they pretended to be timeline. I have to go back to Zy's Novel, but it doesn't seem too bad.

I also have a third project semi-started but I'll go into that later.

Read Free!
The BookWorm


Progress Bar from Writertopia

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Son of Indy?

I've long said that would be a good idea for the fourth movie, unless they did something with the "Young Indiana Jones Adventures." And now they've cast a 20-year-old. http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/13/people.shialabeouf.ap/index.html

Not that I try to second guess movie choices. I'm just happy that Speilburg and Ford are involved so the dialogue won't suck like it did in three recent Lucas films.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

How Much Is Slander Worth?

Or does email fall under libel laws? Not that I'm planning to sue; it's more satisfying to watch things explode from a distance. And I don't know how entertaining this will be with how much background info I have to put in.

May 17, 2005: Vacation From RenFaire My posting on quitting Louisiana Renaissance Festival. Notice I never said anything bad about anyone, choosing to say it was my burnout. Burnout caused by becoming increasing demoralized by working for LRF and most of it I put on not being supported as management by the owners because I'm female. There was bickering and clicks and high turnover among the cast that never seemed to stop. It had stopped being fun long before I quit, but I stayed out a sense of obligation and I enjoy reenacting. Though by May, that joy wasn't enough to keep me going.

Chad's final straw was when there was a masturbation/flashing incident on one of the School Days, and at least one of the owners refused to have any of the rennies ("rennies" are people who travel from festival to festival to be hired on for whatever jobs are available) checked out by the witnesses or the police. And tried to put the blame on the chaperone because she didn't find a cop and it had to be someone from the outside. General public isn't allowed in on school days.

That was 2004. And it was what prompted Chad to start his own faire--an idea he's always had in the back of his mind. School Days was Chad's invention and the public would eventually hold him responsible should something worse happen. Katrina at the end of August 2005 started the ball rolling for what became Acadiana Medieval Faire. Population shifted across the state of Louisiana; Chad moved to Lafayette. Chad finished the 2005 season for them, including two School Days, because it was the professional thing to do. Chad quit very diplomatically, and was upfront about his plans, so we could all work together in the future.

Renaissance Living History Center was a group Chad help found with other LRF cast members who wanted to preserve LRF when it had looked like year 2002 was going to be its last and to promote a more historically accurate reenacting. They didn't want to start a new faire in a medieval period, so Chad resigned from the group, too, so there would be no legal questions over the ownership of Acadiana, hoping they would come play too.

I'm still annoyed they cheated Chad out of his paycheck for 2005. I think I'm supposed to drop it, since Chad is happy with the used desktop computer system and software compensation--but there should have been cash to make up the difference. Yet, I should have remembered this is the same group who said they were not paying me to write LRF's 2005 Educators' Guide because the deal was between Chad and me. That's fine now because Chad put a down payment on it out of his pocket, and they have no legal rights to use it. And I will litigate over that if it ever is used without my permission.

So the six months sped by with the Acadiana posters I and the others on cast put up at SLU torn down, and some complaints from our Yahoo group members of getting spam from LRF. It was rather low on our priority list with everything else we had to do, but odd. Even more odd when everyone in Acadiana was spammed for the independent film shoot at LRF's site April 1st--our opening day. We didn't miss them with 1700 people to worry about.

They showed up in mass Sunday to scope it out. And yes, it was a spying mission because if you are supporting a new Faire, you ask for permission to come play--i.e. work on the street cast--and you show up in garb. Everyone in one travel group, including ones we thought were our friends in RHLC and just didn't like the medieval period showed up in LRF T-shirts. Only five people showed up in either garb or street clothes.

Since the lawyer didn't name names, I guess I won't either. A representative of LRF came back on Monday, our school day and wondered around the parking lot. I think he told the schools we had complaint issues with exactly what to say about our Faire because it was the same stuff that he brought up Sunday to all our merchants--like calling the board of health because we didn't have enough port-a-johns, Chad over booked the space, there was no way we'd have over 2000 kids in this site, there was false advertising claiming rides that we're there. When a stranger from Lake Charles (on the Texas side of the state) starts spouting off the same stuff, you have to wonder. Yes, I know who the representative is. I'm the one who alerted the cops that he was trespassing. Not that they did any good; Hannah (Chad's mother) threw him off that day, and told him to grow up and end it.

Here's the post I made publicly about our first year: April 6, 2006: Acadiana Medieval Faire Year One. I didn't bring any of that up at the time because I figured they showed their colors and there was no point in pointing out depressing human behavior.

After all that in April, Chad caught them trying to impersonate him via email accounts in May. After Isaac's drowning accident, we were informed we could only go to the memorial service on LRF's site as long as we were escorted. We didn't go because a) other plans and b) weirded out by having the service at the site of his death.

There's more I'm forgetting, but I had other things to worry about with Chad's health, my grandmother moving in with my parents, my sister having a baby, school work, the Thanksgiving crisis, and building a new Faire site for year 2. Which brings us to the end of March 2007, AMF's second season. With a lawyer's legal input, we drew up a behavior contract for LRF/RLHC management to sign. All it said was a representative on LRF acted like an ass last year and we wanted a signed promise that the signer wouldn't repeat the behavior and would act like they would at any other Faire but ours (translated from the legal-ese). Yes, there was a scene on Sunday caused by those who refused to sign. But by not signing, you only proved you were there to cause trouble for us.

Then the mudslinging through an email group was brought to our attention. Granted they weren't happy about the behavior contract, but no one asked why we had one for them. The one who called us troublemakers and accused us of having "egos, swollen heads, and hurt feelings" has apologized for that outburst, but it hurt to see what my five years of hard work for them was reduced to. And I worked hard. I stage-managed the joust for four years and kept drunken patrons from getting hurt by draft horses. I organized the crew of squired and helped build a new stable for the joust team when everyone else said, "let the knights do it." I did tear down a fence with good intentions for a better one that did not happen and replaced it. I helped build benches and move them around stages. I suggested using King James I for year three and four because they needed a tie-in with Shakespeare. I helped RLHC build on the Inn, and helped build the gypsy vardo and the pirate camp. I never asked for money or recognition beyond the little bit given out on awards night each year.

But I was there at year one for LRF. I signed a contract not to play my character at any other Faire, when the closest competitors were in Texas and Mississippi and nobody had a school day. So that does not match what was said in this email.

Clearing Up the Contract Hoopla Email dated April 6, 2007

Many people have worked years to develop LRF into the quality event it
is today. We spend a lot of time and effort choosing merchants,
entertainers, and training volunteers. We provide professional
training for our cast. We teach many skills such as: character
creation, character development, acting, and how to make garb, etc.
We all volunteer a lot of time, we invest a lot of effort, and we want
to protect our investments.

Since LRF is six weekends long the public can attend any other weekend
event in Louisiana and still attend LRF on a different day. School
fieldtrips are different. Schools can only take one fieldtrip a year
to an event like ours; if a school takes a second fieldtrip it will be
to a different kind of event where students can learn something
"different". In other words schools have to choose between LRF and
AMF. This makes us competitors to each other, and only because of
school days. The Acadiana Medieval Faire is the only event that
prevents students from attending our student days. Therefore, most of
the people we train must refrain from contributing to the competition
for a short period of time. Although we have made quite a few
exceptions for our participants when they have a valid need, or
hardship.

Having the cast play improv at more than one event only improves the improv. Many Faires allowed cast members to play at LRF in 2005 because we lost so many people with Katrina. We are two different eras as well as two different geographical locations.

Course this is only addressing participants here. Vendors and acts come up later.

Clearing Up the Contract Hoopla Email dated April 6, 2007

Apparently this past April AMF made some people entering their faire
sign contracts saying they would not "hurt" their faire. I was not
asked to sign such a contract. I can only speculate as to how or why
they would do this.

IN MY OPINION: it doesn't make sense to make customers sign a contract
limiting their freedom of speech (and yes they can legally do that if
you sign the contract).
I'll break this down:
1. A malicious person doesn't need to visit to say hurtful things.
2. Slander is illegal, a contract doesn't help prevent it.
3. It would only limit one from telling the truth, if "hurtful" to AMF

Of course there could be a completely valid angle I don't see.

"ANY TIME YOU GET ONE SIDE OF THE STORY IT WILL BE ONE-SIDED." (Alvon
Brumfield 2007).
Consider the sources of your information; if a company/politician
makes a Negative claim about a competitor, can you trust it?
Please base your opinions on the evidence you see, not on rumors or
one sided stories.

The only thing we asked participants to sign is paperwork for the insurance company. And nobody asked why the behavior contract was necessary. I suppose they think we should give out comp tickets to those who want to sabotage us, but I think our piece of paper that says "we know what was said last year and we won't stand for it" works better. But I do admire the attempt to try to say, "oh something must be wrong with AMF look at what they are doing. Let's use "A Few Good Men" quote."

I actually agree with the last line, view the evidence.

However, this is where it is no longer agreeable. Someone expressed regret over the state of things in the first part of the following email. It is marked with the standard more-than signs. My responses to the emailed response are highlighted in blue.

Festival Rivalry April 7 and 8, 2007

> I just want to say it's so sad to hear all this dissention between two
> faires that are a good distance away from each other (around 3
> hours?), and in a state still crippled by the devastating effects of
> two hurricanes, almost 2 years ago. Lots of people are still hurting
> and I wish we could all just work together to iron our our
> differences. Many of us trained together at one faire and have become
> friends and are now branching out into other realms. Most of us need
> money, and more of it (who's insurance didn't go up since the
> hurricanes??) Anyway, I wish all faire vendors, entertainers,
> merchants and volunteer (unpaid) cast were free to do ALL faires they
> want to, to contribute to as many or as little as they desire, and not
> be restricted by a 'contract.' I don't understand the whole school
> days problem--how many schools are involved? It can't be more than a
> few as these faires are in different geo. areas.
> Like I said before, this whole situation is SAD.
> :(
>
Before AMF everything we did went into providing more education, more demonstrations,
and better facilities; everyone volunteered.

I wish greed would not have caused a second faire and all this animosity. I wish they
would have talked to us before the split, or after.

GREED? We're greedy bitches? Oh nothing about the fight every year for being more historical and us being told that "you're trying to turn LRF into a museum and nobody likes museums." I pretty sure Chad emailed LRF owner 1 and I was present at the meeting with owner 2 and Chad. We had it at the Green Leaf and Chad hoped we could all work together again.

But yes, for a paycheck. We're greedy because my writing time is precious and Chad is trying to make this his freelance career. We're greedy and we want to eat and have a house together someday.

I have tried dozens of times to communicate with AMF, I have yet to get a single phone
call. I agree its sad: Its sad they broke away to compete. Its sad they refuse to work with
LRF.

I really don't want to cuss, but that is a sad attempt to call it forth. Chad has told me he has talked to you on the phone; maybe not recently but certainly since we started last year. And gee, we're supposed to work together after a representative from your Faire spent his entire Sunday trash talking us to our merchants? Yeah, our time and expertise is really valued and desired by you. Well, it probably is as long as it is free and we don't try anything like financially breaking even.

Its sad their greed got in the way of doing good. Its sad we have no choice but to
protect our school program. Its sad that this even has to be explained. And, It's a tragedy
that our students are being deprived of educational opportunities.

If a faire is providing ADEQUATE entertainment, demonstrations, and facilities to students
there is a very narrow margin to cover expenses. Adding more faires limits the variety of
educational information each one can provide. Example: If students were evenly divided
between fifty faires, it would make each school program very weak. As a merchant you
would have to work fifty faires to reach the same number of customers.

Most companies do not allow you work for their company store and one of their
franchises, at the same time. They don't let you work for the competition either! This is
common practice and common sense.

Oh BULLSHIT! Louisiana is a right-to-work state. NOBODY can tell you who you can and cannot work for. But if you are working full-time, you usually don't have any more time available for a second job for a competitor or not.

As for the students argument, schools have to make field trip choices all the time. Just by providing a school day, you are stealing education time away from the zoo. Many schools pick something different every year to deal with that issue. The problem is I don't believe you have the students' best interest at heart. See the pedophile issue at the beginning of this post.

Now let's talk about the vendors and acts. You refuse to let your vendors or acts work at AMF (despite that I'm pretty sure this is illegal in Louisiana). To quote a letter Chad sent out:

I wasn't sure that I should forward this to you guys, but it is pretty indicative of the problems that we have been having with the faire in Hammond. If you know of any craftsmen who may be interested in joining on us I would appreciate it if you would pass the word on to them and that we would never do something this unsavory to them.

>Chad,

>Some how or another someone told Rick and Alvon we were discussing me coming >over there also, and they sent me a copy of my contract and a nice little letter >about the "other fair clause" that you had mentioned. So until I can find a way >around that, I think I will have to wait. I will discuss it with them, but it will not be >until after the new year.

>Sorry for the trouble.

I'm not entirely positive but I think the "other fair clause" threatens not coming back to LRF and losing any permanent booth a vendor has built with their own money. These vendors travel from faire to faire, pretty much on what they make at each one. I'm glad AMF will not exploit them that way ever.

Performers fall under this too. Not that we can use many of the acts LRF hires--Renaissance theme doesn't work with a medieval theme--but you threatened the one act we did share despite the fact he wrote a completely medieval show for us totally different from what he performs at LRF. But again hurting people's livelihood so you can maintain an exclusive status; this is a good thing how?

We're three hours away from you. So is Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Are these games played with them despite the state line?

Thank you for slogging through all that patiently. I wish I had a funny payoff at the end. I wish I hadn't seeded to write all that out. I was raised with the principle: "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." But I'm also not a victim and I refuse to take abuse any longer. If demanding that children have a safe environment to play in while learning hands-on history and everyone makes a little money and has fun during it makes me a greedy bitch, I'm PROUD to be a greedy bitch. But I'm also not taking any of this personally. The writers of the emails--especially the hurtful ones--have to answer for that just as I must answer for my actions. Karma is slow but fair, and the wheel of fortune acts on us all in turn. Yet the truth shall set you free.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

I'm home again

2000 - 2500 in attendence this year. It rained Saturday and Sunday which hurt us, but everyone that came stayed until the rain drove them away. And the paying public didn't complain.

I'm still debating on how to report the connected but not so good stuff. On one hand, I don't want to participate in mudslinging--or anything that looks like mudslinging. On the other hand, I want the facts to be told and to respond to allegations made.

So let me know what you are in favor of, and I'll see to it.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Literary Meme

Look at the list of books below.
* Bold the ones you’ve read
* Italicize the ones you want to read
* Leave unchanged the ones that you aren’t interested in.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austin)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

What's scary is how many of the want-to-read list I already have. I think I may need to join LibraryThing so I can share my library better.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

ACADIANA MEDIEVAL FAIRE MARCH 31 - APRIL 3

And April 4 - 8 is reserved for breakdown of said Faire and boyfriend time. Provided there is no implosions of any sort.

Not that I'm expecting implosions or explosions of any kind, but I find it best to be prepared.

So I'll more offline than on during this time period. *headdesk* And I forgot to pack the camera. Damnnation.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

P.N. Elrod has done it again

Barbara B is suing people. P.N. Elrod has illustrated how the case may go once it gets to court (we can only hope).

The Trial of Agent B

And yes, Miss Snark is listed as a defendent.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Turtles in a half shell...

You know this Friday night movie thisng is a really good idea. There's a Rave theater I must pass on the way home. They usually put a show I want to see at 5pm or 5:30. I swing in after work, see the movie, eat supper, and go home at a not too unreasonable time. This was also how I saw "Pan's Labyrinth" and probably how I'll get to see "Bridge to Terabitha" and "The Last Mimsy" pretty soon before they go away.

So last night was "TMNT," all CGI and not fighting the Shredder. The funniest part was running into two pals I hadn't seen in months at the same showing so we got to see it together and eat dinner afterwards.

Thoughts on the show. I'm ready to see it AGAIN! But I did have four issues.

1). You so totally didn't need the narration at the beginning. Yeah it was Laurence Fishburn, and I'm sure some studio head asked for it, but that time could have been better used focusing on character stuff.

2). Leo and Raph have been sparring partners and training their ENTIRE LIVES. Sorry, I can't buy that when the fight between Leo and Nightwatcher went to fists and feet, that Leo didn't recognize Raph's fighting style until the helmet came off. And CASEY recognized Raph but none of his family did? Though my friends and I came to the conclusion that Splinter knew but was waiting for Raph to admit to it.

Though the above in no way takes away from the awesomeness of that fight.

3). The Mayans didn't have metal for armor. That just annoyed the historian in me in the beginning sequences. I like the design of the 5 Generals and could have excepted that maybe they had figured out this thing called metal armor, but even the guys they fought looked like medieval knights on foot. Meh.

4). TOO SHORT! More Mike and Donnie would have been nice and some what's her face and Leo interaction would have been good too.

There's was oodles I liked.

A). Mike's skateboarding sequence. That scene alone proved why this had to be a CGI movie. There's no way--even if it was Tony Hawkes in the suit--that could have been done live-action with a stuntman. The fight scenes were just even more added bonus finally getting to move like they should.

B). Patrick Stewart and Sarah Michelle Geller's performance were stellar. Course I cracked up the first time Winters opened his mouth, cause all I could think of was this was the only way to give Patrick Stewart hair. I bought Sarah Michelle Geller as April.

C). The 13 monsters are cryptos. The little red one Raph fought is supposed to be the Jersey Devil, and we're guessing the first one they fought is supposed to be Bigfoot. Want to see it again, so I can figure out the rest.

D). Splinter is a fan of "Gilmore Girls." I can't wait to tell my sister who is a fan of that show. LOL

E). April's yellow catsuit was a nice homage. Poor girl will never get away from that color will she?

F). I want the soundtrack.

It's a good movie, even for those just wanting an action film. Chad's willing to wait for DVD *eye roll,* but I'm going to see it again.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Annoyed with school and writing

Annoyed with school because they apparantly lost my withdrawal paperwork last month and I'm giving them one more day to get that class off my record. In other words, I'll call them tomorrow at some point. Annoyed with writing as you can see with the rest of the whine below.

For ENGL-646

I don't blame anyone if they don't read the following. I had to vent.

My writing process, maybe I should give it some deeper thought. Constantly daydreaming plots and characters hasn’t changed, but I remember sitting down no matter where and writing. Now it is too easy to be distracted from the page, to get out of the chair to do anything else, can’t write until the deadline pressure explodes. Why did it change? How do I get it back?

If I’m writing constantly in my head, which is what I feel the daydreams are, and I hear the words in my head before typing them, why do I have such a disconnect with putting it on paper? Once I get going, it’s smooth. It’s not like I’m gnawing on a pen or keyboard because the words won’t come. I do stop and reread when I don’t hear anything else in my head. I just noticed that with writing this. I’m playing with objects on my desk because I don’t know where to take this response next.

Maybe I like stressing myself out over my writing? In a weird way, that almost makes sense. Could I have addicted myself to stress? Is that even possible? I don’t want to think it is possible, but maybe it is a variation of the busy drug, the procrastination buzz. Maybe it’s time to start a new schedule. (A little voice in my brain just went ugh, that never works.) And it’s right, I’m notorious for making and then break schedules. But I want the writing practice Natalie Gold… (Had to stop to look up her name) Goldberg. I want less ego-centric head trips. So why does the doing step always break apart? I don’t think I’m a flighty mess, so why do I keep acting like one?

And why does this examination of how I write become a moan session about my lack of discipline? I’m afraid the answer to that is because my work habits affect how I write, and I don’t feel I have been writing. It’s not true: I just finished eight cooking show scripts (that I should have had done last month), the lesson plan and the mini-lesson plan assignments, and revised the old Dante paper (but apparently not enough) within the past two weeks. I have been ignoring the fiction, and that makes me feel like a horrible, non-committed writer.

I’m not a horrible person and I can do the practice everyday at lunch until it becomes a habit. Free writing for five minutes starting today.

Good news, I did get the five minutes in and feel pretty good about it. Now to more structured writing.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Why I picked this department again?

I'm just a little disgusted right now. I think I ate too much at lunch and now it's disagreeing with me. And I opened up my email to find that the struggle to the post office that ended up making me late for work was all for not. The professor doesn't believe the Dante paper is ready for publication. Yes, the same Dante paper that nearly killed me last year.

SLU puts out the Pick, a publication of student school work. Well, a couple of the people who work on it are in my Wednesday night class and said they needed more graduate student submissions. So I said what the hey, I'll turn that one in. Maybe somebody will see it and do the idea the justice I don't seem capable of.

So then it was a struggle to get the damn thing together before the deadline. And then I find out I have to have the instructor's approval. And because I have to work when Southeastern wants to conduct business, I had to mail it to him the same morning I had to stop and get more glucose monitoring supplies. Yes, thirty minutes late to work. All that insanity to find out it's not up to academic snuff.

I feel like Adam Sandler's character from the Wedding Singer: "That information would have been more helpful YESTERDAY!" Only in my case, the end of Spring 2006 semester, so when I pulled it out I would have MADE the edits that it apparantly needs.

It briefly sent me into the "I'm no academic, why do I even try" spiral. Luckily, that didn't last long. I'll take the damn paper to class (which is what I had decided to do before I found out the deadline was yesterday) and let a group see it. I feel sorry for my group. They don't know what to make of Zy's novel, and I'm getting really tired of saying "yeap, I did that to fix it in the second draft." They probably need a finished academic paper to polish.

In good news, I realized that I haven't put up February's totals.

Zy's Novel

Progress Bar from Writertopia

MONTHLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

I finished the cooking scripts in March and I need to finish a couple of homework assignments, so March's numbers already look better.

In case anyone is interested in seeing the cooking show: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4 (which is having uploading problems).

Enough bitching and moaning from me. I have a lot of homework left to do as well as get some other things finished so tomorrow is free to build stages.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Taking a break

Mostly because I've hit a receipe that is defying personal restrictions on the cooking show. How do I get around handling raw chicken for a roast? Right now it's just making my brain hurt. I have a new respect for cooking shows, these scripts are hard than they look and I expect to be improving my way through them.

Got the glucose monitor yesterday and started monitoring the blood levels today.

This might work: the chicken is already roasting on the spit, and the volunteers just get to make mortreaux. Okay, I'm going to try that. I'd like to get the scripts done for day 2 today. That'll leave 3 and 4 for tomorrow, and can start on the shopping lists. The kitchen supplies keeps getting longer.

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The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Yo Mez!

Apparantly, your blog doesn't like Firefox any more. It used to like it; I don't know why it won't let me comment now.

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The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Crazy weekend

I will post pics showing the progress on the faire site one day in April or May. Crunch time is here, and Goddess grant me strength not to act like a jealous idiot, and give into the desire to nag.

I don't like to nag; I really don't! But I have to wonder if it's some twisted destiny thing that you inherit the things you hate worse in the environment you were raised in? Or that the trait you do admire most about someone is the same trait that makes you want to strangle them?

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Hopefully with a couple of Aleve's it'll all be better

I feel like crap, paying job is setting my teeth on edge, and even the London Symphony orchestra playing classic British rock songs isn't helping.

After I switched Strix soundtrack CD for BMFM soundtrack CD, I finally dug out music to inspire Zy's novel. Nothing has really sunk in yet. However, I did get a beginning to the cooking show scripts started yesterday. I think a fair bit of it is going to have to be improv, and oddly enough I'm more at ease with that than actually following a memorizied script.

Also I have a couple of editing projects that need to be done. One a homework assignment, and the second is a paper I'm going to submit to the Pick (a journal for student papers Southeastern puts together) that I will take to class next Wednesday to give them something to revise. I don't think they're getting Zy's novel and it's really too rough to benefit from any revision at this point. Anything they point out is a "I did that because I have to go back and figure out mannerism/language/pysiology/planet after I get the first draft done" response. I'm tired of saying it even.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Nope, turning thirty didn't kill me

It just got really ugly at work for a while. Ugly as in mail pouring out of our ears. And since I do most of my blogging at work *shrug.*

Healthwise: hormones seems to be under control so far. Not loosing any weight, but I'm not trying to either. Finally got my sleep back under control, though that was a simple fix--I was drinking too much caffine and it was keeping me up. Haven't felt the need to rip anyone's head off when I got upset (and last weekend was bad with that).

Writing: Breaking Bejamin's CD "Phobia" is part of the soundtrack for the Strix universe. Listening i the car and things started falling into place--especially on the backstory I had gien up on. Ferris is a nerd from the 1950s, and I'm picturing a guy like Stuart from the Frighteners.

But I'm not working on that until I get some work on Zy's novel done. I'm in Chapter 10 now, practically to the part that has never been written before. But the paying job swarmed and I haven't accomplished anything. I just went through my CDs and I don't have anything for Zy's Novel. *headdesk* My plan is to do some longhand composing today and get me into the mood. If I get through the first point on my outline, I'm going to reward myself with some Strix stuff.

Things to remember to do:

1. Check trunk for Mary's dishes
2. Check costume closet for Merlin outfit for Scarlett

I keep forgetting when I go home. Price for actually getting up on time.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

"Today is your Birthday"

Three decades on the planet today. I thought about doing an introspective, where did I think I was going to be, where do I think I'm going to end up. But now that sounds horribly depressing.

So maybe I'm ready for a things I'd like to do before I die list. That doesn't sound cheerful either. Finish formal education, travel, and get published; it really hasn't changed since high school. Add get healthy to leave longer--I didn't forsee being in as much pain as I'm in now.

My coworkers are treating me to lunch. I'm probably going to treat myself to dinner and a Ghost Hunters marathon unless my parents have other ideas for tonight. And memorize Bilbo's birthday speech. That'll be fun for my 40th.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Maybe I grossed everyone out

Hormones are finally balancing out through birth control chemistry. I also cut back on the caffine today, been having way too much lately.

So homework-wise, I've got progress! Finished this week's readings, finished the reading response, have the rough draft of the mini-research project done. What's left to do is 500 words on Zy's Novel and I'll be done for the week. Now I do have to get the cooking show scripts mostly done before I can do any more homework, and that's pretty much the end of the list.

I am worried about the cooking show, that's why I've procrastinated on them so long. I've never written anything like that before. All my other scripts have had a concrete location and characters. And of course my perfection gene is rearing it's ugly head. It's my baby, it's never been done on the circuit before, it MUST BE PERFECT! Yeah, a perfect receipe for writer's block and stage fright.

Anyways, the sixth reading response for ENGL-646.

I’ve given up trying to discuss this class with my boyfriend. Every time I get the grumpy old man response: “those stupid brats know nothing so they are being taught nothing; fire everybody and start the brats over with the basics because the stupid brats don’t know any basics and will remain stupid until they master the basics.” Not in so many words but that’s the attitude. And how many agree with me that 35 is too young for the grumpy old man routine? Judging by all the reading we’re doing, it’s a common feeling out in the public and maybe too common within. All the slang, all the leet-speak, all the text message shortcuts; we’re raising a pack of wild animals that will turn on us like Lord of the Flies. They’re not human; they can’t communicate. And it’s the teacher’s fault they can’t communicate.

Ignoring the blatant ageism to think about it logically, there are problems with teaching and improvements to be made—there always is—but are kids fundamentally more stupid than the generation before? As a group of course not. Are teachers deliberately teaching bad writing? No of course not, but that is what the back-to-basics argument implies. And how many doing the yelling want to fund actual reform that doesn’t look like anything they had going to school? One of the articles that I found doing the mini-research project proposed a solution of separate classes in high school instead of the broad “English” class that has to cover everything: a literature class, a grammar class, a writing class. Because they are different things. I think it was the same article that claimed most parents dismiss any changes or modernization to the classroom because subconsciously they feel it invalidates the experience they had. Maybe the joke “you have to suffer through school because I suffered through school” really isn’t a joke.

The only teaching I have done was the writing tutorials on writing fanfics, and I didn’t introduce grammar elements until after we had covered brainstorming, plot, characters, description, scenes, narration, Mary Sues, etc. and the ESL writers asked for more clarification on terms. So my own experience matches whichever article we read that said you can’t teach editing until there is something to edit. With that in mind, the essay I liked best out of this week’s reading is “The Study of Error” by David Bartholomae. The first of his points to strike me was how we as readers turn off our critical skills and dismiss writing with errors as rubbish and the writer must be an idiot to write rubbish, which is what I think my boyfriend is doing. Study the errors (Bartholomae gives a good breakdown to how to start doing that) and figure out where the real problem lies. My tutorials were a crude method of doing that, since so many of the errors I saw were not understanding the fundamentals of telling a story.

I may have exaggerated Chad's grumpy old man routine, but it does get damned annoying. While I have no particular desire to reproduce and raise, I don't hate kids. Some of it may be ex-teacher bitterness too. *Shrug*

What I'm finding rewarding about this class is how it is validating my personal experience. Despite the lack of feedback in the end, despite the occassional nasty replies calling me a language fascist, despite my unpublished expertise, I was doing good with those tutorials. Maybe even some theory-sound work without getting bogged down in the theory. Mind you, I'm not ready to pick them back up and start writing them. But at least I don't feel that they were a total waste of time and just me preaching to the choir.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Lousy timing

At the risk of turning off all male readers of my blog (I actually think I just have one and he just had a baby), I need to bitch about my damn cycle.

Haven't had one since November, explained the condition, and got some progestern from the doctor to kick start it. Took the medication but nothing happened, so by this morning I'm contemplating having to go back to the doctor when I get the clean bill of health on the pap smear and HPV test. Head to work, running late thanks to stupid wreck ahead of me, and feeling lousy thanks to those proto-starting cramps. Those have been giving me false alarms since last Friday, but today it's actually productive.

Yeah, no doctor trip. Boo, I have no pads in my black laptop bag. None.

I find one in the car. My last one and it's for a thong. Course, I'm not wearing a thong today, so I can only hope it will last until I get home, where I have a stockpile of them. *Sigh*

In other news, I think I figured out what was going on with the scene I was stuck in. I'm at home this weekend due to weather, so I'm hoping to get a huge chunk of writing and homework done. At least get Chapter Nine done, and read what other people have submitted for revision.

Not really news, but the Doctor Who obsession continues unabashed. I figured out a crossover with Biker Mice. *Headdesk* Oh, I'll never write it--mainly because the Plutarkians aren't a worthy adversary for the Doctor--but I'm considering a cameo for the last Biker Mice story in the Wars Are Won series. Still I like this exchange between Throttle and the Doctor, and figured I'd share since you put up with me grossing you out.

Throttle: "But you're a Time Lord. You could make sure this whole mess never even started."

The Doctor: "And if there had been no war with the Plutarkians, where would you be? I doubt with an Earthling mechanic in Chicago would be one of your choices. Besides, I am the last one you should ask. All of my people sacrificed themselves to stop the Daleks in the Time War and those exterminators still pop up. Get rid of the Cybermen and somebody reinvents them. Deal with the Plutarkian menace on your own, you stand a better chance of defeating them for good. And you will defeat them."

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Is there a rule it has to rain on Ash Wednesday?

I know it's the one weather pattern you can count on in Louisiana, but I think it has been a trend for the past few years. And it's hard enough coming back to work with an odd day off without the wet stuff.

Tomorrow I should be withdrawn from the Thursday night class. Despite how I feel about the class, my schedule isn't cooperating and getting out before I do something to a professor is probably for the best. I would have already done it, but the paperwork requires more signatures. And he doesn't have office hours on Friday, Monday, Tuesday was a holiday, and couldn't get an appointment for today. So hopefully I can drop in tomorrow and then turn in the sheet. And if that doesn't work, I'll go with a medical stress leave.

Okay, back to writing. I need 500 words before class.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

More health fun

Got the dreaded pelvic exam over with yesterday and got diagnoised with PCOS. The short answer is my hormones are out of whack due to insulin resistance and messing up with my ovulation. What does that mean specifically for me? I get all the fun shit like pimples and PMS but no bleeding to show why I need to bite people's heads off, and a four month wait till my appointment with an endocrinologist. And they want me to start pricking my finger every day.

And a happy Valentine's Day to you too.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Damn almost two weeks

Since my last update. No wonder I'm getting emails. ;)

Actually up to the eyeballs in reading assignments. ENGL-646 "Teaching Creative Writing" is actually turning out to be a good, useful class--even if it's bogging me down with the reading right now. ENGL-650 "African-American Drama" is not, and I'm ready to disengage. Unfortunately, I can't withdraw and have to pay back the financial aid I've already spent. Current plan is to suck it up until March, when it will be too late for Financial Aid department to demand it back.

Writing has gotten distracted by a Doctor Who fest. I've been bad. But I surprised myself actually. I was one of the Americans introduced by Tom Baker via PBS, but when I actually caught an episode (they aired it insanely late in those days) I loved to watch it but always felt that I was never in the know. I wanted to be sucked in. I was a sci-fi fan and demanded to be sucked in, but it never clicked. The Eighth Doctor's TV movie floored me, but nothing ever happened with it, and I moved on. Fell in love with "Doctorin' the Tardis" during college days. Vaguely, heard about a new series and Ninth and now Tenth Doctor, and "oh well, I'll get around to it eventually."

Then Andrew Sullivan posted a fanvid blending Delak from the new series with the French soldier's dialogue from Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail. It's on YouTube, go looking for French Delak. Then I went clicking on other YouTube fanvids. And found this one.



Friday I bought the 2005 season on DVD and had to reason with myself not to buy 2006 because of funds.

Now having finished those episodes I'm so very thankful for British eight-year-olds. The producers aimed the very intelligent show at them and knowing that all they would know (if anything) would be Doctor is an alien and time travels in a blue box. There's still the mystery and the wonder and the excitement that I picked up on as a kid, but no longer the sense of missing something.

Okay, and it doesn't hurt that I wouldn't mind jumping Nine or Ten's bones. Sorry, Four, you just don't ooze sexy.

Ahem, also spending more time in Lafayette. I was there yesterday, and got a reprieve for today because of the massive piles of reading. We're having to do massive amounts of cleaning to the wooded area, but it will be worth it. I will post our work-in-progress pictures when I get some.

And my friends Billy amd Misty have successfully reproduced. Kay Lily born February 9th weighing 9 and half pounds. I'm going to have to get some time to travel to Florida, but I also have time to make the trip, since I'm perfectly willing to let Misty's family go first. Though I feel bad about not being there as backup to send them back to Louisiana.

Drat, have laundry to deal with and then I need to go to bed and get my schedul back on schedule.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Monthly totals

I doubt I will have more to add. But I'm pretty impressed with my January numbers regardless.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Zy's Novel

Progress Bar from Writertopia

WEEKLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

MONTHLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

So now I'm here

Got everything I needed to get done today done. I can't seem to kickstart the transition into my next scene for Zy's Novel. And the play I'm supposed to read for homework sounds even less appealing. So now I'm here.

I suspect the sloggish feeling I have is because it's ten minutes to lunchtime and my energy level has drooped. But I need to kick around a few things and this is the blank space to do it in. I apologize for the disjointed paragraphs ahead of time.

Trampoline. As in a totally irrationally want to be bouncing on one right now. My very own, in my own yard, reenacting battle scenes that I'm writing. And that part is arguing with the responsible part that wants to spend the money on a house note that a trampoline will help me lose weight. Now that stance isn't fair.

Ashe Cultural Center down in New Orleans is my topic for the 15-page paper. I have no idea what I want to say about it. We have to have a stance and argue it. They provide a positive African-American voice in the arts in New Orleans. Fine arts on the decline in schools and the community stepping up to the plate. I just feel like I'm spinning my wheels.

Okay, let me wrap up Zy's Novel for class tonight. Maybe noww I can concentrate on it.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

A little self-reflection is a good thing

For ENGL 646

Creating a list to answer the question “why do I write” didn’t work. Lists are for work; things to do and cross off. “Why do I write” requires sentences and paragraphs.

Why do I write? The quote “my job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable” makes me giddy when I use it to explain why. I want to connect to people, to evoke empathy and to make them squirm. Fiction holds up a mirror to the world with all the black and white and shades of grey present in real life. Escapism is valid, but it is better when you can escape into an ideal of how the world should be. Most of the fiction I write is escapism—science fiction, fantasy, mystery—and I’m not ashamed of that. The world needs idealism.

I have been made ashamed before. I started writing stories down when I was eleven-years-old, mostly reworking books I had read. Richard Peck’s ghost stories enamored me, and I created my own psychic protagonist trying to deal with the evil things that go bump in the night (had Ghost Whisperer beat by a few decades). That series no longer exists because I went to a church-sponsored youth retreat that convinced me that writing about psychics was Satan’s work. So the good little Christian that I was burned those stories and cried. No surprise that I later opted out of organized religion.

Teaching of writing should avoid making any child feel ashamed of what they write. Plenty of people out in the world will fill the position. Janet Emig’s essay stressed the positive points for writing as a function of learning, but overall, I wasn’t impressed by it. I know I learn by writing, so I don’t need to have it proved to me with scientific studies. Yes, I know, academics need studies.

The strongest resonance with Natalie Goldberg is her stance of writing through pain. I can’t point to the section in the finished novel, but I remember riding a bus to my car after spending the day at work and watching the World Trade Center buildings fall and feeling so numb as the bus TV was set to even more news. I pulled out my manuscript and wrote, suddenly blitzing through a scene that had given me so much trouble. I could control the words, even if I didn’t understand anything else taking place.

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The BookWorm

WEEKLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

MONTHLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Catching Up Before I Get Behind

Projects for ENGL-646

• Reading response journal - due weekly


• Ongoing writing project = Zy's novel Chp 9 - 11 - due weekly


• Mini-research project - due ?


• Book project & presentation - due ?


• Mini-lesson plan & presentation - due ?


• Lesson plan & presentation - due ?


• Final paper/final version of ongoing writing project - due ?


• Final exam - due

Projects for ENGL-650

• 15 page research paper - due March 15/March 22


• Class presentation of research paper - due March 15/March 22


• Two 3-page play analysis papers - first due March 1


• Journal with 10 reaction entries on classmates presentations - due weekly


• Attend at least 2 Black History Month presentations for Feb 8th class - due ?

I need to have everything written before March 31st - April 3rd. I don't plan on missing class April 4th or 5th, but I'm not giving myself any presentations those two days.

ENGL-646 projects I think I'm going to hold back so other classmates with thesis and comps and more strenuous papers can go first. Though since I got this weekend free (bad weather again), I'm proably going to be working on homework. Get as much written as possible before it's actually due.

Also need to write the cooking show scripts.

Research topic: why is picking one in this subject so hard? I guess I'll start with Ashe Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans and have Zora Neale Hurston as my backup. Third choice is "Myth of the Negro Past."

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg is one of the required readings for ENGL-646. I think it's been recommended by just about everyone who has written a how-to-write book. It's simply about how empowering the act of writing is, how the only rule is practice everyday, how to care about the process and not worry so much about the product, how to get into the Zen state of writing. Powerful little book.

For the writing project inside of ENGL-646, I'm going to use Zy's Novel--at least the next few chapters. I already finished my outline: concrete details for Chapter 9 - 21 and no blank chapters now. If I need a break a break in the prose, I can fleshout the aliens and other background material tasks.

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The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

In honor of Barbara Seranella

I don't think I read her works and I'm already an organ donor, but if you are not, you should sign up. She died waiting for a liver transplant. MJ Rose put out the call on her blog. Sign-up for the organ donation here.

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The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Writing as meditation

For ENGL-646

Writing Down the Bone was always on my list of will-read-someday books. Recommended by Heather Sellers (Page After Page) and other writers, but I never remembered to seek it out. I don’t know why I waited with as much as I highlighted in the first half. Like The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by John Daido Loori, it reminds me of the Buddhust practices I want to turn into habits for my life: more meditation, less ego-centric head trips. But I’m finding lots of writing tips as well.

I started timed writing practice this morning and my hand cramped up with five minutes. It was hard sitting down words without a planned “this is what I want to write about.” I know I need this practice time to help me not get wound up when I’m actually working on a composition. The “Fighting Tofu” chapter touched on what has felt like my writing problem for the last few years. If I get froze up over writing, I try to use discipline to beat my lazy half into working and then just feeling more guilty when that doesn’t work. I love the idea of writing out lists of your obsessions; maybe, part of the reason why fanfics have been so easy is the degree of obsession involved.

Okay, my bias is improving my current work habits. I can see using the practice technique in a classroom setting to get used to the idea of writing before scaring students with structure like plot, scenes, and characters. Goldberg’s ideas fit in with Donald Murray’s implications that you need to teach writing as a process and not a product. Looking back at my own grade school experience, I remember lessons on brainstorming and essay form (prose fiction I learned outside of class), but no lessons on rewriting. Almost like the implication was we are supposed to write a perfect first draft and just look over it for spelling mistakes. I know later when I was helping people write fanfics with a series of tutorials, editing was the part most understood the least.

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The BookWorm

WEEKLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

MONTHLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth deserves all the awards it has gotten so far, especially since that caused its US partners to release it near me, yeah!



I got to see it in Baton Rouge right after work. The trailer only gives you a glimpse. I'm guessing the Fascists in Spain are about the same stripe as the Nazis in Germany and the Fascists in Italy, but my Spanish WWII history is practically non-existant.

But this movie... I want to write a del Toro fantasy and have him film it.

He also directed Hellboy.



Yes, I am having fun with YouTube; why do you ask?

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The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Read now!

Now if only Lucas had been actually writing this story....

A New Sith or Revenge of the Hope

It's not enough to make me actually like Episodes 1 - 3, but it helps. It made me giggle.

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The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Nobody yell at me

No outlining plot didn't get done this weekend. Instead I finished entering last year's bank data into Quicken, reconciled all the statements, and hit the budget button. I need to fine-tune the budget, right now it's just telling me what I spent last year and I overspent by 412 dollars each month. I need to tweak it into what I want to spend within my income levels before it becomes a Secret Plan for financial success.

I also need to read the For Dummies book on Quicken 2007 to make sure I know how to do that.

But it's not happening now. Eyeballs are crossing from too many numbers. But I think I found some big tax deductions besides my house. Yeap, that's the next number crunching to do. After budget.

Oh and the Saints aren't going to the Superbowl, so the Universe is off the hook for imploding now.

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The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Writing Weekend

Though I may have to add clean the office to it so I have desk surface to work on writing with.

Yesterday and Friday were nil in terms of actual writing, but I did get the outline typed up in the manuscript. And then I went digging into my files. What I had a suspicion about was Family, Friends, and Foes, a fanfic but the last work of fiction of size and scope (over 126,000 words), and resembling what I'm attempting with Zy's Novel.

What I did learn from the freelance gig was outline made everything work out better. Zy's Novel outline on Chapter Nine - the end make up 2 pages and a paragraph on the third typed. Family, Friends, and Foes's outline had 13 pages including a timeline of the novel, characters list, plot and subplots lists.

Even with a couple of timelines figured up in Excel, my outline is hardly there. Which I guess means I shouldn't be surprised when I dig into my brain and find the story barely there as well. So really this weekend is going to be getting my vague notions on paper, where I can and probably will deviate from, but at least I can say "yes, that resembles a book."

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The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Important Questions for today that I'm in no mood for

#1. If I hadn't come to work, would the leftover UNIX have ever been done?

#2. How much more annoyed can I get in one day?

I'll explain later.

It's later. But where to start? UNIX is the manual way of processing checks on my job. Yesterday, I had a check that wouldn't scan and didn't get a chance to put it in UNIX myself. Okay, it has to be done in the morning today.

I didn't get into work until 12:30p.m. And the check is still in the bucket to be done. *Sigh* Yeah, the supervisor says she's going to talk to the rest. Probably on Tuesday at the office meeting. Maybe one of these days, I'll actually listen to myself when I tell myself that I don't give a damn about this job other than doing what I have to do to get my paycheck.

So the rest of the day: the bank aggravation grows. I'm P.O. at Capital One for no contact but I may have to keep the account open while I attend SLU. They closed my account due to lack of funds Friday, Jan. 12th, and I didn't contact me. Had they contacted me, I would have told them I'm expecting a direct deposit of my financial aid refund Jan. 15th, the date according to SLU (and they have an exclusive contract with Capital One).

So I only discovered this fracas over the holiday, and basically got word from the national customer service that I'd be able to get my money Thursday morning. So here it is Thursday morning, wet, nasty, and about ten degrees warmer that it has been. Lobby doesn't open until 9am, guess who thought it was 8am and had to wait in the parking lot for an hour? Only to be told there is no deposit anywhere in the system. Go see Southeastern.

Now I'm getting panicky because I told everybody I owed money to I could pay on Thursday. Southeaster says they haven't sent out any refunds and lender's checks are probably arriving next week (Controller's Office), don't cancel direct deposit because Capital One will reopen you account (Payroll and Capital One workers at SLU), and lenders checks will be cut on Friday, bitch (Financial Aid). Actually, "bitch" wasn't said, but implied.

So I didn't cancel the direct deposit and have no idea when my money will arrive. I'll keep the account open with $100 but I don't trust it with anything like my bills again. And since I will be sticking to my budget this year and not loaning out any money, I shouldn't run dry in August and December again.

Luckily, this week is a payweek so I was able to pull out cash and pay the most pressing bills and buy books for school. My mystery class tonight is African-American lit, which I'm having a hard time building up any enthusasism about. I still haven't been paid for my freelance gig. I don't know if I got rooked but I wish I had used the escrow account now so I could complain.

More later: The class is actually African-American drama/performace art. I don't get any credit for it due to sharing a number with another class I took, but since both classes qualify as electives, I don't feel like finding another. Teaching Creative Writing is the Wednesday night class, and looks to be interesting. I'm debating whether to use the Mary Sue stuff for BMFM as one of the "lectures." The class ended up being fairly split between not-employed-by-the-Dept. of Education and employed-by-the-Dept. of Education, so the prof. is giving us some leway in what we present.

Jan. 20th: It's much later, and I'm still waiting on school money that SLU says they released Jan. 18th. That's right, the same day I went looking for it and nobody can find it. I think Capital One has it now, and are holding it until it clears. Now why this takes them a week when at my job it takes at the most 2 days to get our electronic deposits cleared (and it looks like they're bringing that down to one day at the bank's end), I will never understand. Still waiting for my freelance money. And hopefully Wednesday will have my student meal plan and Laignnaipe account reopened. Yeap, Thursday had them unusable after I made my fuss and everybody in charge should have known I was getting money.

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The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Today's progress

I have class tonight if it isn't canceled, so I doubt I get to work on the total anymore today.

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The BookWorm


Progress Bar from Writertopia

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Plan of attack

348 words yesterday, and I got started while juggling job assignments. Not to bad. I still feel bad about my fill-in-the-blank aliens though. So here's the plan for today:

• Finish typing what I have written


• Type out the outline as it stand now for the rest of the book in the manuscript


• Check with Writerly--or whatever Google is calling it now--and see what I need to upload to bring it up to date


• Work on alien creation and finish filling out my describing sheet on at least one of them.


• Eventually need to start working on cultures and languages

Not too overly ambitious, I hope.

I also remembered this morning, after fighting with my computer, why I wait so long between backups. There's no bloody way to do it cleanly. So I guess I'll just have to be content with saving the My Documents and Program Files sections, and hope that those recovery points actually do something when I need to reboot the computer from scratch.

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The BookWorm


Progress Bar from Writertopia

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

U2 and GreenDay The Saints Are Coming - LIVE - New Orleans

I'm not a sports fan. But even I'm getting excited with one game away from the Superbowl. If they actually manage to go, Hell is freezing over. If they win, the universe will implode.

Yeah, it's a big deal down here. And Greenday and U2 gave us the anthem for the year at the first game to open the Superdome. (Yes, I know it's a remake but that doesn't matter.) Actually, you get a pretty good selection from their concert in this clip.

The video is up at YouTube too, but more political than I feel right now.

How much crap have I been hauling around?

I'm pretty sure my problems are at least PMS crankiness, but I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize for yesterday's phone call. Only if I get an apology for suffering through constant telephone conversations with a partner who suddenly only has a five-word vocabulary. ("Yes", "no", "stop", "ditto", and "what")

Yesterday was just bad. So in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't try to do anything beyond reading, even though I had a list. The bank upset me--and now my refund should be there on Thursday so I can get the cash in my grubby paw and move it to my credit union (that has issues but at least communicates with me). I didn't eat right all day. Chad been logical and obtuse didn't help the emotional breakdown. So I sulked, had a good cry, got my back popped, had Mexican, and went to bed early.

Today, I'm marginally better. Maybe the cold front helped. I'm still sulky towards Chad about the damn phone thing (Why am I being punished for your decision to hate phone calls? Have to remember to ask him that.) but less sulky towards life in general. I should write today. Not that knowing that I should makes it any more likely that I will write.

Then Wil Wheaton finds the formula for procrastination.

I got nothin'.

I'm going to go write. And if the sulky mood still makes me cause the planet to die in a supernova, I fully expect somebody to tell me it doesn't work and I need to try again.

I'm at least typing today on the stuff that I had written previously. And the title of the post refers to what I said when I dumped my black bag out at work. Two of the folders in it I thought were lost in my office.

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The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Now that was romantic

Websnark: Submitted Without Comment: The Most Important Post I Will Ever Make. Especially when set to music. Hint, watch the MP4.

The overall feast was fun, mixed with a couple of bad pangs of feeling like a damn third wheel. I'm beginning to think I need to see a shrink over my inferiority complex that keeps popping up. Wasn't made too much better this morning by my man declining to have breakfast with me so he could finish sleeping off his legally prescribed medication. Which part of me wants to be reasonable and understand since an allergic reaction almost sent him to the hospital last week, and part of me wants to whine "He's so selfish. It's always what he wants and my sleep schedule and when my body is used to eating should conform to his sleep schedule." I don't think the second half got enough sleep last night.

*Sigh* I don't know what's wrong with me besides loving a man who once demonstrated an awkward romantic side that matched mine, but has since moving back to Lafayette has turned it off completely. And I want more romance; or if he wants us to act like the old married farts everyone assumes we are, I WANT THE MARRIAGE AND THE CO-HABITAION AND SOMEONE TO GO HOME TO BESIDES MY CAT! Considering if I had all that, I probably wouldn't be so icky girly touchy-touchy in public with him (which is what he seems to have issues with). And maybe I was less publically demonstrative when he lived in Hammond and I was seeing him everyday, so he should understand why that's not the case anymore.

Or on last note, this could all be PMS fueled and it's just the hormones talking.

So I arrived home not really in a mood to do anything but play on the computer and read. So I'm playing on the computer and reading. Yeah, I'll end up doing something work-ish related, but not anytime soon.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

My first freelance gig

It was the EBook on organizing. Final word count as of last night: 11,116 words. I'm pleased with the results, but it's not done until my employer say so. I won't know until Sunday, Saturday is booked this weekend.

What I have learned about my first freelance job? Actually having a final word count helps work out how long it will take to do the job. I roughly write around 400 words an hour, but it goes much faster with an outline. Scary fast, and I think I may end up in my fiction doing what I did in this project: inserting a bullet list of points to hit that get deleted as they're hit. I usually put fiction outlines elsewhere, but getting Zy's novel worked on....

Hunting show news: 5 men illeagelly killed 10 deer and an alligator because they had nothing better to do. Yes, I want to smack them too. This is about the only time I listen to talk radio, and this station has interesting shows pre-seven a.m.

So today is Saturday: I have to go to Lafayette for a cast meeting and then a garbbed Twelfth Night feast. I'll probably come home on Sunday to work on office paperwork. Yeah, it's a three-day weekend this weekend, but we got the camping site clean-up next weekend in Lafayette, and I need to write fiction and the cooking show. Plus getting ready for school and cook some meat I found in the back of my freezer.

My weight is hideous. Not my all-time worse, but damn it keeps creeping up. This past week had me coming straight home for two to three hours of writing time to get my freelance job done. But I need to go to the gym to workout because working out at home I just don't do it. I'll figure something out on it, when I can think about it. I guess on Sunday or Monday. Hopefully practicing the dance for work will burn some off. I have to start that on Sunday too.

That's all I got for now. Time to get chores done and pack the car.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Yes, I know I've been hiding

And I'll tell all about it later. For now just gaze at these lovely, lovely, lovely totals.

WEEKLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

MONTHLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

Yes, I am immensely pleased with myself. Now I have to edit.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/

Busy holiday

I haven't been on my schedule since Thanksgiving. Chores have been done in splurges, usually on the weekends. Paperwork and the back bedroom stacks threatened navigation through the house. Cleared space to work in the kitchen shrunk, but was still wider than the clear space in the office. The house and I limped through Christmas. Chad coming over for New Year's inspired me to find the vacuum cleaner lest his allergies send us to the emergency room.

Since being broke really does limit what you can do to entertain yourself, I ended up cleaning. The back bedroom wasn't that bad. The stacks I had made were just right in the door and I had to pull them out and rearrange. Some stuff did end up in the closet that will disappear with the bathroom remodel, but since I don't know when the bathroom will be remodeled, I might as well use the closet. Paperwork got sorted and tossed and some filed, though filing is going to be a work in progress for a while yet.

On Tuesday, Chad went home and I checked off everything on the chores checklist. I sat writing on my freelance job with one ear cocked for the Twilight Zone theme to start playing. Wednesday went equally well, though I have to finish up some new Wednesday chores tonight. It's computer stuff: weekly backup of My Documents and Quicken entry.

Mustard has claimed the back bedroom bed as his. If he's not in my face, he's curled up on it asleep. I haven't had the heart to shut the door and cut off his access.

I got a freelance job, yeah, and it's cruising right along. I want 2007 to be the year I meet my writing goals steadily. So far so good.

Upcoming agenda:

• Finish personal financial outlook with Quicken and new workbook


• CHORES! Catch-up


• Website updates


• Help Mom just short of going nuts


• Writing list
  • Uncle Keith's obit - Mom needs to edit
  
  
  • Alien species outlines for Zy's Novel
  
  
  • Alien languages for Zy's Novel
  
  
  • Pages in Zy's Novel
  
  
  • Editing Blue Man
  
  
  • Editing Covenant
  
  
  • Outlining webcomic project
  
  
  • Printing and double checking June mailout
  
  
  • Research markets
  
  
  • Goto State Library for research
  
  
  • Finish freelance job


• Find dice for Eric's Twelfth Night Feast


• Drink more water and go to the gym


• Buy 2 more Ikea shelves


• Sort File papers


• Get give-away box put together


• Take all give-away boxes to Mom's store


• Apply for gas card


• 15 minutes on back bedroom, office, and kitchen


• Time myself on writing up a subject so I can figure out what prices to charge.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

WEEKLY GOAL

Progress Bar from Writertopia

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/