Nearly every morning on my way to work, I pass this man who takes a walk. Usually, he has his dog with him, but not always. He's started to wave to me when I pass him--I guess I'm a regular now--but the thing that I really like about this guy is how he takes care of his dog. Although he should have her on a leash and doesn't, what he does do is stop walking and stand holding on to the dog until I'm past. I like his concern for her.
Yesterday on my way home from work, I saw this big bird flying overhead (I couldn't tell what it was, maybe a duck or a goose?) and a smaller bird was flying with it. At first, I thought they were just flying together, but then I realized the little bird (maybe a crow) was attacking the big bird who was flying evasively to try to elude his pursuer. Sometimes nature isn't a Disney cartoon.
In continuing with my random blog for the day, we haven't had hot water at work for more than two weeks. Some people are saying a month, but with all the vacation time I've taken, I don't know about that. When the machine that prints our paychecks (direct deposit notices) broke, the company sent out an email saying that from now on, we will get our pay stub electronically and that if you wanted a hard copy, you had to write a letter requesting it. A couple of days later, they sent out another letter saying that if you live in a state that allows electronic pay stubs, to not even bother writing the letter because your request for a hard copy will be denied. MN would be one of those states. You gotta love it. Now the joke is that they're not going to bother fixing the boiler for hot water, after all, we don't really need hot water, right?
Continuing with that theme, one of our soap dispensers in the bathroom has been out of soap for weeks, maybe more than a month, and we never get more soap. Hmm. No soap, no hot water--maybe the company is trying to kill us via the spread of germs.
Yes, I am tired and yes, I know that's a pretty lame attempt at humor. I'm leaving it in anyway.
On Thursday, I had the air conditioning going. Friday, when I drove home from work, I had my heater on. It got that cold.
Does anyone remember that comic, Stephen Wright? He just kept making random jokes with no transition between them? That's how I feel this blog post is going this morning.
Finally, for those of you who made it this far and aren't sick of hearing about the writing of the novella yet, I finished a version of chapter 6 that makes me happy enough to move on to the next chapter. It still needs work, but it's okay. Before I quit for the night, I cut everything I'd written in chapter 7 and started over. It was that logistics thing again. Because of the novella being so short, I didn't think I could afford to pick up right after the end of chapter 6 like I was trying to do and then get Nic and Kimi to where they needed to go next. I'm going to start chapter 7 with them almost to the next location that should save pages and keep the story moving.
The goal is to finish chapter 7 today and chapter 8 and the epilogue no later than tomorrow evening. Then, with the first draft done, I can print out and read it as a whole story and see where and what I need to revise. Keep your fingers crossed for me that all goes well. I have to mail this story off no later than Wednesday and sooner is better than later.
