98 posts tagged “my warped self”
I just printed out and filed into a manila folder, the latest e-mail on the "Paperless Office Project" that our IT person is trying to get going in my workplace.
I think she's got her work cut out for her.
Disclaimer: Trust me, I'm very environmentally conscious in many other ways -- I walk everywhere, canvas bag my groceries, re-use plastic bags, recycle everything I can, use both sides of the paper (and take one-side used office paper home from work for printing there), etc. But so many people come to me for so many things at work, this is how I need to organize to put my hands on stuff in a jiffy. And I can't drag my computer with me to an out-of-office meeting.
I don't usually write on weekdays. I usually don't have the mental energy around my day job, and I also try to use lunch hours and evenings to catch up on other chores and obligations to keep more of the large chunks of weekend time to write. I have writer friends who get up an hour early on work days to write before getting ready for work, but I'm an insomniac, and if I set my alarm for 6:30, I can't be sure I'll have had enough sleep by then to function, let alone be creative. I often really need that last hour before the alarm. But since I'm all fired up on this new novel, I'm going to try and do 1 hour for 500 words a few times a week to augment the weekend writing. That means either writing on my lunch hour, or popping into a coffee shop with my laptop on the way home from work to write. A target of five hundred words in that time means I can't stop and think too long, I have to just let fly, which can be a really good thing, because it disengages my internal censors a good bit.
So here's an FSotD from today:
I decided maybe this wasn’t going to be the moment to satisfy my curiosity about the re-opening and reburying the coffin every time they got a bit of her back, as well.
Hopefully, more tomorrow.
Here's the first one from the novel today. I'm letting myself have one per thousand words, and I'm planning to do two thousand today.
In my experience, people would be further ahead if they spent as much time studying their social circle trying to peg the hidden freak that’s statistically proven to be there, eyeing their kids, as they do finding the right spot on their property to put the motion-activated floodlight.
More evidence that the tone of this book is going to be way different from the last one.
What would you like written on your tombstone?
"Finally, a good night's sleep."
Final FSotD for the first draft of Scamoche, before I start sending it to writer friends for critiques.
Scamoche turned up in the arms of Valeria, astonishingly docile in her grip, but really just grateful for not having to overhear the anticipated round-robin of excuses why no one wanted to take him permanently now that the office was closing
I'm giving myself a weekend off any new writing (well, two, because next weekend I go to visit the Cap'n), and have bought myself the DVD set of the first season of Breaking Bad, an amazingly good drama series that aired on AMC last year (new season starts March 8). Seven episodes only, and well worth the price to rent or to buy.
I have all the time in the world to watch it today, and somehow, just haven't managed to start it yet. The idea of popping a DVD in for leisure watching before noon on a Saturday does not compute easily in my head. As a kid, Saturday morning was when I did my weekly trip to the library for an armload of books. Now, Saturdays are usually chore days, or chore half-days at the very least. I used to have yoga class on Saturday morning (before the fitness facility was torn down). With or without yoga, I'd always have grocery shopping on Saturday mornings, if nothing else. This week, I shopped last night, because it was going to be so cold this morning. I have to go buy some cat food, but since I'm heading out for hot chocolate later with a cat-trapping friend, I'll do it while I'm out for that.
All systems should be go for this Breaking Bad indulgence. I was up before eight, did my personal chores and read the paper by 11, and even set the Roomba up to vacuum the bedroom for me (regular vacuum still not fixed, nor even headed for repair place yet), and even pulled some books off my bookshelves for the little condo library downstairs. But some part of me isn't trained to slack off so early, i.e. before lunch, on a weekend (qualifier: at least, not when I'm alone). Or maybe I'm just not used to watching TV with the morning sun pouring in. Whatever it is, this is clearly a serious personality flaw.
Well, now it's officially noon. Maybe my brain will let this happen now, because this really is the best show I saw all of last year.
Which cartoon character best represents you?
The first time I saw this show, I was agape. We not only look alike, but she was having my exact high school experience.
Here is a great little giftie cranky gave me, because she knows I like stone lions. It's a little plaque to go on my wall.
Note that right below cranky's lion is the mini Anne Bonny action figure that I picked up at the memorable Boston Squee Party this summer. (I think it was cranky who found it in the Aquarium gift shop.)
Here's more of the whole wall arrangement. That's another skeleton cut off on the top, and a Blackbeard action figure cut off on the far right.
Complete change of subject, for you dog lovers out there, this is Missy, a dacshund/terrier cross puppy belonging to one of my co-workers, who came to spend the day at the office yesterday.
The only way I could get a photo where she wasn't a blur whizzing by was to wait till she exhausted herself after the first couple of hours of running around exploring everything.
And finally, for mariser, photos of the new sweaters I bought recently, that she wanted to see. I'm wearing the yellow one today. The cable knit one has angora in it.
It has been really hard to find that bright yellow color for years. I had to ditch a sweater that color 10 years ago because it got a stain on it that wouldn't come out, and have been keeping my eyes peeled ever since. (Sorry, it looks a little greenish in my crappy bathroom lighting. Trust me, it's a gorgeous egg-yolk color.)
This pile of stuff on the street last week made me think of vertebrae and other bones. And a stupid little poem that I thought up a whole lot of years ago that just came back to me today:
Yum, yum potassium
Apothecary Jones
Left his skin in a garbage bin
And went to bed in his bones.
Today was one co-worker's birthday and Wednesday is my good friend/co-worker's birthday, and I always get her a little something. This year I decided to make her a treat, and bring it in the day between the two birthdays (i.e. tomorrow). And being the warped person I am, and it being near Halloween, and these two people being able to take a bit of a joke, I decided to steal Peg of Tilling's idea from some months ago and do brain cupcakes.
Of course, they're red velvet cake inside (still using those mixes up, Mariser!) For some bizarre reason I decided they had to have marshmallow frosting. This involved, among other things, most of a tub of marshmallow fluff, buying a whole spice bottle full of cream of tartar so I could have 1/4 teaspoon, and beating the frosting while it was in the top half of a double boiler till it got stiff. And while Peg thought her frosting came out too brown, I tried for gray and only got a grayish white before I decided I'd beaten the living hell out of it enough adding combinations of red, blue and yellow food dye in drop by drop, so I quit while I was ahead (no pun intended).
I'm no cake decorator like Peg, either, so I just piped straight lines across back and forth, then dragged a toothpick down the middle to create hemispheres. Here's the final result:
I think they look kind of brainy.
"What's your favorite scent?"
Funny this QotD should have come along in the past few days. I've just been reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, about a man and child wandering in the nuclear winter of a post-apocalyptic world. The book is full of loss. This line really struck me:
He could remember everything of her save her scent.
Scent is a powerful memory trigger, which is why my answer to the QotD is:
It's on a shirt that isn't mine
That I asked be left behind.
And to close with another line from The Road:
Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.
