Castle in the Clouds

I use Google's personalized homepage feature and I love it. I've customized it with links, daily quotes, weather, and games. Yesterday I found PacMan. I don't if you're old enough to remember PacMan but it was perhaps the most popular video game of my youth. I remember playing it in the arcade with my brothers. And, if I remember correctly, it was also on the Atari system we owned. Geesh! That makes me sound so old! Although PacMan is great, I'd love to find Centipede again. That was my all-time favorite arcade game.

Christians - By Maya Angelou (I thought this was actually someone else's poem but I could be wrong! If I've given credit to the wrong person, please let me know and I'll change the byline.) When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin'." I'm whispering "I was lost, Now I'm found and forgiven." When I say... "I am a Christian" I don't speak of this with pride. I'm confessing that I stumble and need Christ to be my guide. When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not trying to be strong. I'm professing that I'm weak And need His strength to carry on. When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not bragging of success. I'm admitting I have failed And need God to clean my mess. When I say... "I am a Christian" I'm not claiming to be perfect, My flaws are far too visible But, God believes I am worth it. When I say... "I am a Christian...

Yesterday I had spare time and an urge to write. I turned on the computer and then went in search of my thumb drive, which holds all my current WIPs and so much more. I looked in my purse. I looked in my bag. I looked in my coat pockets. I looked in my purse again (this time dumping everything out). Again the book bag (also completely emptied). The thumb drive was nowhere to be found. I had left it at work. I had tried working on the WIP over lunch on Friday and I had forgotten to grab the drive before turning out the lights and locking the door. Damn. Doesn't it just figure? When the urge is there and, even more impressively, the time is there, I would forget the WIP at the office. Self-sabotage? Not intentionally but you have to wonder...

Well, not really. I'm not going to pull everything out of the cupboards or start washing walls anytime soon, but I certainly had an itch to get all the bedding in the house clean. I haven't touched anything but blankets, sheets, and pillowcases all weekend. In fact, after the blanket in the washing machine is done, I have one more blanket to wash. Then and only then can I move onto things like jeans, underwear, socks, and shirts. In the meantime, I'm going to go scrapbook with my boys in the basement.

Just so we're clear, I think sports should stay on ESPN and the like. I hate it when they bump my shows off the air. Stupid, retarded basketball anyway!

Last weekend (or was it the weekend before?) my husband had to reformat the harddrive on my desktop machine at home. The darn thing kept locking on me. I couldn't have more than one program open at a time because multi-tasking seemed to throw the CPU into a hissy fit. If the program dealt with graphics or images, there was no guarantee it wouldn't lock up even if that's all that was running. So he reformatted the beasty and things are much, much better. The only downside is the time I have to spend reinstalling software and documents. I've been attempting to get things back to normal for a week or so now but I'm still far from satisfied. All the fonts I've downloaded need to be reinstalled, as well as my Daz software and a few other applications. While all my pictures have been backed up on numerous discs, I have to figure out what ones need to be put back on the harddrive for scrapbooking purposes. Then there's my music. I hate having to reload them...

 A winter's bonfire. 

  My little guy all doped up on "happy juice" just before his surgery. 

The group I went scrapbooking with a few weekends back. Thank you, ladies! It was a blast! 

In my last post I mentioned how happy I was with the new beginning of an old story. I felt I had accomplished something worthwhile. Well, that feeling faded pretty quickly. There was a nagging sense of having botched a significant detail, one the reader needed to be made aware of within the first few paragraphs of the story. Since this feeling persisted, I asked a friend of mine to read what little bit I had. When she finished I had only question for her: Why is Seanna leaving? Her answer confirmed my suspicions. I've since added and deleted some elements. Yet, overall the scene has stayed the same. The only difference between the original version and this one is a whole lot of exposition. Of course, this makes me nervous, too. I don't want to bog the reader the down with explanation. I believe there has to be a balance of exposition and action. In the past my inclination has been to provide more action than exposition. Perhaps this story will teach me how to wea...

Yes, it deserves two exclamation points. It's been a long time, people. This writing isn't for school but for pleasure. I didn't get as far as I would have liked but it was a GOOD start. A very good start. The story is an old concept but the writing is new. In fact, I think I accomplished three of my main goals for an opening chapter: provide characterization, conflict, and ground the scenes in a concrete and vivid setting. For once I think I actually started the story in the right place. This never happens to me; I always start writing too soon or too late. I also managed to write a proactive character. My heroine isn't passively letting things happen to her. This is vast improvement over her former incarnations. In previous attempts at writing her story I found myself getting annoyed with her.