I continued this week with the daily morning writing practice, although it was less a timed 10-minute exercise and more a half-hour to one-hour one. This is partly because I was on vacation and had the time, and partly because I'd gotten far enough in the story last week that I could start folding in many of the fictional prose blurbs I'd written in the last year and that took a bit of time. The half hour or hour consisted of me digging through my old blurbs, finding ones I could use, altering them a little, getting distracted by the internet or TV, then altering them some more to expand the story. There were some new bits as well.

I'm still finding the story and still trying to bond with the story, but keeping to my daily practice keeps me focused even when I feel a bit like this isn't going to go anywhere.

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,
With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.
O'er the world a star is sweetly gleaming,
Now come the wisemen from out of the Orient land.
The King of kings lay thus lowly manger;
In all our trials born to be our friends.
He knows our need, our weakness is no stranger,
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!

Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
With all our hearts we praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
His power and glory ever more proclaim!

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
Jack Frost nipping on your nose,
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir,
And folks dressed up like Eskimos.

Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe,
Help to make the season bright.
Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow....

Record needle scraaaaaaaaaaattttttchhhhhhh!!!

I have no tiny tots with their eyes all aglow this year! I feel gypped! I want a full refund on Christmas!

Ha ha, I wish. Aherm, back to the Christmas cheer....


...Will find it hard to sleep tonight.

They know that Santa's on his way;
He's loaded lots of toys and goodies on his sleigh.
And every mother's child is going to spy,
To see if reindeer really know how to fly.

And so I'm offering this simple phrase,
To kids from one to ninety-two,
Although its been said many times, many ways,

A very Merry Christmas to you!

It's raining! It's raining! Weeee!!!!

And now it's over. Sigh.

...Ooooh, thunder.....

Continued with my morning writing this week. I am still working on the parts I outlined as "the beginning," and much of it is still awkward and uncertain. I'm also still finding myself starting the various threads of the story in scenes that occur before my chosen point-of-view characters enter the story.

I'm starting to realize, however, that none of this matters. Whatever gets me into the story is good, and can be taken out later if need be.

The goal right now is just to write and get a practice going.

...because work is a bear and I'm sick.

On the plus side: vacation next week, come hell or high workload.

Dear Santa... Dear Santa, This year I've been busy! In October I put money in hjcallipygian's expired parking meter (14 points). Last Tuesday I gave etrangere a kidney (1000 points). Last month I ruled Canada as a kind and benevolent dictator (700 points). In June on a flight to Bangladesh, I stole the emergency flight information card (-40 points). Last Wednesday I didn't flush (-1 points). Overall, I've been nice (1673 points). For Christmas I deserve an XBox 360! Sincerely, masqthephlsphr

Write your letter to Santa! Enter your LJ username:

Aren't you hosers glad you gave me citizenship?!!

So it turns out that, while less expensive, fake Christmas trees you inherit from your mom do not exude that pine-fresh scent.

And I WANT IT.

So I got obssessed with went on a mission to find it.

I tried scented candles. They aren't particularly pungent, it turns out. At least not in a large room with twenty-foot ceilings.

I tried incense. OK, first off, I had to go to a number of stores before I even found one that sold pine (or any evergreen) -scented incense. And this is Christmas time! And *then* I had to buy a bunch of other scents as part of a "multi-pack", and being rather scent-sitive, I don't burn much incense. Lastly, while pungent, it turns out most incense, no matter what the aroma it says it is, just kind of smells like incense.

I tried air fresheners. See above re: nobody sells pine or evergreen-scented air fresheners. Some of the aromas I did see, though, would be worse than the scents one was covering up. Trly.

I tried those reed-thingies that poke out of jars of scented oils. Those things are damned expensive. And they usually give you no way of knowing the scent in advance of buying it. Not the best marketing strategy in the universe. I bought one for more than I care to say, and it did NOT smell like "fir". It ended up in the guest bathroom, battling cat turds. Finally, I broke down and bought another which claimed to be "pine/cedar," and hoped for the best.

Victory!!! Tree-like *and* pungent.

Life in these modern times remains existentially absurd, as usual.

ETA: On the other hand, you can click the link and get this printed on a T-shirt.

I haven't posted much this week. Work has gotten very busy all of a sudden, in a way where I'm not sure I'll get my current project done before I go on vacation next Friday. And while I could descend into a small rant of complaints and worries here, I just feel that the more you complain (or worry) about something, the more power you give it. Suffice it to say I will finish this project on time if I have to sweat blood, because it's my job, and my job keeps the roof over my head and me in Home Depot receipts.

And, *oy*, I've done ::no:: Christmas shopping yet. Not a smidge.

However, I did put up lights on the front of my house and put up my mom's small (fake) tree, with a few decorations. So festiveness is ensuing.

Sort of.




Bro, SIL, and kids
Mom
Nephew #1 and family
Sister
Sculptor
Secret Santa recipient

Gift cards fix everything!

It's supposed to rain today. So far, it hasn't. Nevertheless, I am grateful simply for an overcast sky. They are so rare here. So calming compared to the usual glare.

Wanted to thank marciaelena, darlas_mom, cornerofmadness, and midnightsjane for the Snowflake Cookies. Between them and the weather and scaling to the roof of my house to muck with colored lights, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

So there I was, enjoying a cozy evening with Thai food, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and the Sculptor, trying to ignore the wild party going on next door (complete with Very Loud country music wailing), when suddenly a wild party erupts in my house. I had put a log in the fireplace, my third cozy blaze of the season, and the flames had really started to amp up and then suddenly, the smoke alarm goes off.

That thing is frigging *loud*. And, oh yes, I think I mentioned at some point, it is twenty feet up on the wall in my front foyer. I had totally forgotten to open the flue in the fireplace, and had to do it with with two-foot flames bouncing (this is one good use of those iron fireplace tools). Ooops.

So I opened the flue, the patio door (cue Loud Country Music), the front door, and turned on the ceiling fan. Brrr. The Sculptor ran out and fetched her extension ladder, because as fortune would have it, I had asked her to bring it over so we could hang Christmas lights that afternoon. So she set it up again indoors and heroically climbed to the top to turn off the alarm.

Then we sat and shivered for a while with Loud Country Music playing waiting for the smoke to clear out.

Ah, good times.

I had planned on starting to write this week, but realized that simply finishing sorting all my story ideas was not enough, I had to look through them and decide which ones I liked best, to give me a place to start writing. So that's pretty much all I accomplished this week, what with work getting busy and family stuff, good and bad.

I will start writing this coming week. I will!

Ganked from marciaelena



LOLOL

ETA: Doesn't anyone care about the poor DVDs??

Got this in my email this morning from my mom:

"To the new great-aunt and great-uncle. Jeremy called me at 1:30 a.m. to tell me that Jayden had arrived safely. He is 7 Pounds, 2 ounces, and looks a lot like Allison, but you can see jeremy in him also. She started having contractions very severe ones about 8 pm, and they went to the hospital -anyhow, she hardly had any labor there and gave birth right away - don't have the timing down, but it looks like another November birthday. Doe was there, but was still in the parking lot at the moment of birth, so she missed that. He is going to send me pictures over the internet. Love, Great grandma"

Sorry my sister missed the birth of her grandchild since she is quite the obstetrics nurse, but maybe that's for the best, too! ; )

Still organizing and sorting my story ideas, but I'm almost finished and December is upon us. So that means writing already, damn it, and the plan (I think) is this: morning pages. That seemed to work well for me when I was generating ideas, partly because the first-thing-in-the-morning thing kind of bypassed the critical left brain, and partly because it was only ten minutes. You can do ten minutes, can't you? Less pressure. The other thing I'd like to try is to stick to a chronological narrative. In my earlier writing attempts on this story, I worked off prompts of various sorts, and that produced a lot of random bits. That was on purpose to generate ideas. But now I am thinking that if I want to keep my interest in the writing going, I need to tell myself a story. As in, "this happens, and then that happens, and then, what happens next?"

So that's the plan.

(1) Mom - ??
(2) Sis - card
(3) Bro - ??
(4) SIL - ??
(5) Nephew #1 - gift card of some sort
(6) Nephew #2 - ask SIL for ideas
(7) Niece - ask SIL
(8) Sculptor - ??

I am staying home for the holidays this year. Yay. Which means putting up some sort of tree, finding a way to mount lights on a stucco house without eaves, and paying shipping charges.

No shopping for me today. I don't have a clue what to buy yet.

Every once in a while, one of my flisters does a rant post about the idiocy of fandom in whatever particular fandom it happens to be that day, with ::shuddering::brainesploding:: exemplars. And if it's a show/book/movie/whatever I myself follow, I'm always a bit (unpleasantly) surprised, because I have been lucky not to come across said idiocy myself.

I wondered why that was, but it's really my general misanthropy. I don't go poking around fan boards in search of fic or discussion because I tend not to care about such things. I stick close to home and read the LJs of pre-existing friends. This is easy to do when you have gathered a bevy of smart, fun people around you who know yet more smart, fun people.

As a consequence, I usually end up going to certain LJs after viewing new episodes of shows I like. Of late, that means matociquala for Criminal Minds, selenak for Dexter or Lost. The discussions are civil, insightful, and critical when they need to be. They remind me of the good old days.

Happy Birthday, londonkds!!!

Happy Birthday, butterfly!!!



And Happy Turkeys to my fellow USians!