Yesterday evening, I printed out my synopsis and took it out on the deck to read. It was a glorious evening--not too hot, not too cold, not too humid. Rare for Minnesota. :-)

I went through the hard copy twice, and I found some mistakes that I never saw on the screen. (For example, I said herself not himself in relation to the hero.) How does something like that slip past? I know, the mind fills in what it should be, but still....

Anyway, I made my corrections and printed the darn thing out. Final count: 20 pages. Gah! I really did try to cut, but I do I do a detailed synopsis with fewer pages? What do I leave out? I figured 10 pages counted as detailed, but well, it wasn't enough. :-( I'll get this out to my agent today and I'll have a guilt-free weekend. There's a family wedding Sunday, so not trying to cram in work on the synopsis is a good thing. I'm still going to be working on some world building, but that's thinking, not computer work.

World building is a funny thing--for me at least. Some of the details come fast and furious and it's all I can do to get them down. Other details don't come and I have to spend a lot of time thinking about them. This is great take a pad of paper out on the deck stuff and I wish I was going to be able to do that this weekend.

This is the idea that had me reading up on quantum mechanics, and at last, I'm free to think about it. Actually, information started coming in this week, probably because I had the first draft of the synopsis down and all that was left was fine tuning it. I'm even starting to get details on the characters for the first book and that has me even more excited. No matter how cool a premise is, I know it's going nowhere until I have both a hero and a heroine and a general idea of their story.

Now, though, I have more research to do. I swear I'm reading non-fiction more widely for this book than I have for just about any idea I can recall. Of course, some of what I'm looking at is to see if a thread in the world building will work or if I have to keep looking, but it's interesting to have an idea that's so wide ranging.

Yesterday, I bit the bullet and restructured the synopsis. I was not looking forward to this, but it ended up being reasonably painless. Not quick or easy, but not horrible. I managed to finish that just as my lunch hour ended and then I cleaned it up when I got home from the Evil Day Job (EDJ). That probably was more time consuming than the restructuring.

I also worked on cutting. I was up at the 24 page mark and that was just too long. Besides, giving too much info isn't necessarily a good thing. I got it down to 21 pages. Still too long and I have one section I'm thinking about, but haven't decided what I'm going to do about it as yet. My inclination is to cut it or be more vague, but I'm not sure that's a section I can do that without raising questions.

I'm beginning to think my goal of printing this out tonight and sending it off to my agent tomorrow isn't going to be met. :-( Might have to be next week.

Is anyone else watching Design Star? It's on HGTV and the winner gets his own decorating show. I accidentally found it last summer and loved it! This year, though, they eliminated a whole slew of contestants in one fell swoop. I didn't like that. I'd rather see the show eliminate people more slowly, no more than two at a time, like they did last season. It's like they're trying to hurry through this run of episodes or something.

My favorite designer is Todd. I fell in love with his style when he decorated his space by painting a great big ocean wave on the walls and on one side, tearing up the furniture. It totally rocked!

I've missed a fair number of episodes which kind of bums me out. They run first on Sunday nights, and I always forget. The replays don't seem to be on very often and it's more of an accident when I actually see one. I wish they'd do a marathon where they played episode after episode. That's how they hooked me last year. :-)

The storms that rolled through on Monday night didn't cause any damage by me, but less than 10 miles to my east, they sure picked up steam. When I drove into work on Tuesday morning, NWA had about half a dozen trees down and some big branches as well. That was my first intimation of how severe the weather was.

Then that afternoon, one of my tech writers was telling me the storm woke him and his wife up. They saw the large tree in their backyard at a 45 degree angle and headed for the basement. Wow. Last night, the news was full of damage reports from the Twin Cities. The weather guy said the straight-line winds were around 71 mph when they went through. Double wow. Since I fell right back asleep after noting the storm, I'm glad it wasn't severe like that in my area. Yikes!

Before I went to bed last night, I turned on the Weather Channel. I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to have another middle of the night wake up call.

It's really odd. We were in a draught for most of the summer. People kept walking around saying, "when are we going to get some rain?" Now we're walking around going, "I can't believe we got another storm." Rain totals for August are 9.29". The all-time record for the month is 9.31" and average is 4.something".

Enough about weather, right?

I stop by my parents' house almost every day to see them, check in on them, etc. I usually stay about an hour or so and then go home to write. Last night, my mom asked me if I had time to give her my opinion on what she wanted to wear to the wedding and rehearsal dinner this weekend. I knew this wasn't going to be quick and I was right.

Picking out the outfit for the wedding actually ended up being pretty easy. Time consuming, though, because my mom has slowed down so much in the last six months. If only it had been that easy with the rehearsal dinner choice.

She comes out in this awful dress. Now I'm not exactly a fashion maven, but I took one look and said, "no." That wasn't good enough. I had to zip up the back all the way because clearly that was the only reason the dress was hideous. NOT! It didn't look any better zipped. Talk about a Glamour Don't! I told her so and she argued with me.

First of all, it was far too big for her, especially on top. Secondly, it was too long, almost coming down to the floor. If it had been a straighter cut on the skirt, it might not have been a problem, but it wasn't and it just looked wrong with that style.

The worst problem, however, was how ugly the pattern on the dress was. It looked as if she'd stolen someone's brocade drapes and had them made into a dress. I told her it was like the Carol Burnett take off on Gone With the Wind. Mom didn't find that funny.

She went and asked my dad for a second opinion--I guess she really wanted to wear this dress because she kept saying, but I like it. My dad told her it was too big, too. She argued a bit longer before conceding.

Rehearsal dinner outfit two was better, but it was slacks and a matching blouse with a pattern on it. It was far too much pattern. She gave up this argument faster. I told her to wear wedding outfit 1 as the rehearsal dinner outfit, but she didn't want to do that. Sigh. She said she's going to keep looking, which will probably mean more fashion shows for me. I ended up spending two hours over at the house and didn't get the amount of work done on the synopsis that I was hoping for. Sigh.

As I was winding down for the night, I found a show on E! called Crimes of Fashion. It was about celebrity Glamour Don'ts. Definitely ironic timing.

I read through the synopsis again--all 23 pages of it--and I didn't think it was bad. I tightened up a few things and rephrased what didn't make sense or seemed repetitive. Unless my writing buddies come back with something big, I can't imagine not having this new story ready to go to my agent by the end of this week. (Note to the universe: Please don't let them find anything major.)

The big bummer? I didn't cut much. Maybe a couple of sentences. And I couldn't see where I could delete a whole lot. I've heard authors say that it's never a good thing to give too much information in the synopsis before writing the book, but I'm not sure what I can leave out.

Anyway, I just want the synopsis done so I can move on to other things. I've got too much I need to do and not enough time to do it in and I'm just talking about my writing, not the gazillion other things that are on my list. (And I seriously want to find out if I have a story to go with all the research I did on quantum mechanics!)

My new shoes came yesterday! The left one is completely comfortable, the right one rubs against my heel. Grrr! I'm going to keep them and hope that as I break them in the rubbing stops. They're so comfortable otherwise. Plus, they make my feet look small! That's always a good thing.

There were more computer issues to solve yesterday. I couldn't get MySpace to pull up in Firefox on the laptop. That was no biggie while I didn't have high speed on that computer, but once I did, it didn't take long before I got tired of using IE. Besides, how long could it take to solve this issue? It had to be cookies or one of my add-ons, right? I cleared all my blocked cookies. Nothing. I turned off all my add-ons. Nothing. I cleared all my cookies, even the ones I wanted on my machine (and that meant reentering passwords later). Nothing. So much for quick and easy. I finally figured out it was some third party cookie issue, but that took time and I don't have it to waste. How do computer issues expand from simple to time consuming?

The storms rolled through at 2:55 this morning. I'm exhausted.

The first draft of the synopsis came in at 23 pages. Not 22 1/2. Exactly 23 pages. One more line and I would have been on page 24. I sent it off to my writing buddies for their feedback, and with a little luck, I'll have this fixed and ready to mail to my agent before Labor Day weekend. I guess, though, that's going to depend on how much work I need to do on it.

You notice there's no picture of my flower with the three blooms on it posted here. That would be because the oldest one lost all its petals before I could get down there with a camera. For one bright, shining moment there was one plant with the trifecta going on. Bummer that I didn't capture it for posterity.

I didn't get much done besides the nearly eternal synopsis (geez, I thought that thing was never going to end and I was going to have to drive a stake through its heart), but I did get some more of my stuff put away in the new cabinet.

I also tried to set up my other laptop with it's wireless card to work on my network, but it won't. I can't figure out why and it's making me nuts because I want to update that particular laptop and not over dial up. This is the computer that was wiped clean, so I have like 3 years of updates for Windows and then there's antivirus and firewall too. Plan B was to plug it in directly to the Ethernet cable, but I couldn't hook it to my cable system, and the disk wouldn't install on that laptop either. What's up with that? At the rate I'm going, I might be dragging the POS laptop home from work and taking that with me because at least it's set up and up to date.

Um, what else. I did a quick little update to my website and also updated my personal website where I keep the pictures of the characters I'm working with. I don't have permission to use those pictures so I can't post them anywhere they're likely to be spotted, but my personal website doesn't appear in any search engines and I need access to the pictures sometimes while I'm working away from home--like at the EDJ (Evil Day Job).

And last night was frustrating. First, this bizarre dream about kittens wakes me about about 11:45, then, about 2 hours later, the thunderstorms rolled through. I'm tired!

I'm on page 18 of my synopsis now. Do you think I'm overdoing the "detailed" part? I honestly don't know how it ended up being this long and I'm still not done. Once I finish the first draft, I'll send it off to my writing buddies and see what they say, then I'll working on tightening it up by cutting and plugging any holes they find.

I didn't get much work done on it yesterday. The only time I could get my hair cut and highlighted was at 12:30, which is smack dab in the middle of the day. I couldn't work in the morning because my dad came over to replace all my smoke detector batteries and he finished just in time for me to get ready to leave. By the time I got home, it was nearly 3pm.

My goal for today is to finish the first draft of this damn thing. I refuse to go over 20 pages--at least not by too much.

So far this morning, I put away some of the office supplies that were blocking my reference books on the shelves in the computer room. I'm torn between wanting to put more stuff away and get that all looking neat, and working on the synopsis. I know. Synopsis comes first. But the office has been in chaos since I moved in last year and it's making me nuts! Okay, more nuts.

The final lily bud bloomed this morning, and for right now, I have three flowers on one plant. It won't last since one of the blooms is old and the petals should be dropping off of it soon. I'm going to try to get over to the tree ring today to take a picture before that happens. And of course, I'll post it here. There can never be too many pictures of my lilies up, right? ;-)

My filing cabinet arrived yesterday, and guess what? They cleaned all the adhesive off before delivering it! I really thought I'd be spending the weekend trying to get that crap off. And the other cool thing is that the unit matches the small, two-door filing cabinet I already have in the room.



Now I just have to get all my stuff arranged in there. Unfortunately, I have a lot of it, so this isn't necessarily going to be quick or easy. I might start with the mish mash sitting on my bookshelves now because I had nowhere else to put it. That's been one of my biggest frustrations--trying to get to my research books with all this other stuff around them.

My mutantly large lily bloomed this week! I don't know if you can tell how much larger it is than the other lilies from the pictures, but it must be like 15% bigger. It's been a hard-fought war with the rabbit, but the fence did the trick. I have one more bud left to bloom, then my flowers will be done for the year.

First, here's a typical lily with a ruler next to it so you can get an idea of the size.


Now, here's the mutant lily. Sorry, no ruler. There wasn't one handy.


Mutant Lily from farther away.


Mutant with another flower. I'm trying to show the largeness of the bloom, but I'm not sure it comes across in this shot.


And finally, here is another plant with two flowers on the stem. It also has one more bud on it, which will be my last flower of the year.



I don't have any pictures of them, but my three surviving Toad Lilies shot up a lot in the last week or so. I'm thinking all the rain we've had helped them. Most of the flowers in the deck boxes are okay. The pansies look like they've had enough, but everything else looks okay. Next year, though, I'm not planting any wussy flowers. Those impatiens and begonias wilted all the time if they were even slightly dry. Petunias, though--those are hardy plants. :-)

First, before I start my topic of the morning, I want to announce that I fixed my email settings and I can now send email again! Hurrah! It was a pain to figure out, but after checking out the help screen on my cable provider's website, all is well. Yes, yes, I know, but I have a motto: If all else fails, read the directions. All else failed.

Okay, now let me talk about research. I love being a writer. Not just because I love telling stories, but because I never know what I'm going to be learning next. Like for The Power of Two where I dealt with quantum brain nanotechnology. I had some basic information on nanotech because I'd found it interesting years earlier, but I had to really dig in deeper than I'd gone years previously.

When I worked on Through a Crimson Veil, I read up on demons--and found some scary stuff that I never want to find again. I've had to tread into this territory again with my Light Warriors series, only this time around, the demons are the bad guys, not the h/h. I've also been researching for Shona and Logan--gemstones, dragons, etc.

But I think my latest research takes the prize. For the last two weeks I've been reading about quantum mechanics, string theory and M theory. It's fascinating stuff, but if you'd asked me two years ago, heck, even one year ago, if I had any interest in reading on this topic, I would have said no way! I've barely scratched the surface, but I think I'm reaching a point where I need to home in on what I specifically need to know for the idea I'm tossing around.

I even research little facts, things I end up not even needing to know. For example, in In the Midnight Hour, my h/h fly to LA. I looked up the kind of aircraft NWA flies between MSP and LAX on the computer at work. I never used it. If you read the book, you'll see that there's absolutely no mention whether or not the plane is a wide body (2 aisles) or a narrow body (1 aisle). All I mention is how they had middle seats and couldn't sit together. I do this constantly, research little tiny facts that either don't get spelled out or don't really matter anyway. Shrug. I can't help it. I want my work to be "right" unless I choose to deviate.

To round back to my point, this is one of the reasons why I'm almost never bored. If I'm not listening to the people in my head, I'm reading up on a huge variety of topics. From pyramids to demons to nanotechnology to M theory. Wow. And who knows what it'll be next. How totally cool is this? Yes, I am a complete geek and I loved school. :-) I like the fact that I get to learn new things with every book. Even if quantum mechanics makes my head hurt.

Okay, so I ran into one glitch on the new network hook up. I can't get any email to send off my laptop now unless I use my cable internet account. I totally don't get this since I've been sending messages from my desktop computer off my old email addresses and the settings are exactly the same. I even wrote it all down just in case my memory was faulty. This is going to be a pain until I can figure it out. I don't want to change my email addresses so that means I have to get it to work. Anyway, I got tired and gave up, but today is another day.

So what happened on Wednesday that was so exciting? Besides the high speed on my laptop, I mean. :-) After work, I went to an used office furniture place and got my five drawer lateral filing cabinet! I've been wanting one of those for like a year now, and while it's a little banged up, it was also 1/3 the cost of a new one. I can live with the adhesive residue on the exterior for that kind of savings.

Then, while I was there, I spotted used desk chairs. The really nice ergonomic kind! I've been sitting on a office chair from probably the 1960's, long before anyone had heard of the word ergonomic. I would literally hobble after I'd been sitting in it for any length of time. The chair was twice the cost of the cabinet, but once I get it all set up for me, it'll be worth it. Plus, now I rolled the $5 chair into the scrapbook room. :-) Now I can be hobbled if I do crafts. Anyway, if I'd bought it new, the guy said it would have been like $1000. =8-O Used is a good thing.

I also got my really cool chipboard letters and figures yesterday and my card making kit. How cool is that? With a chair, a cutter, and those super fabulous letters, I seriously need to get scrapbooking.

And yes, there was writing done as well. I finally felt as if I made some good progress yesterday during lunch. Of course, I got very little done after all the running around and installing that I did, but I'm hopeful that at lunch today, I'll start chugging right along again.

Originally, I'd planned to talk about the joys of research today, but I guess I'll try to remember to blog about that tomorrow.

OMG! I can't even believe this. I networked my computers myself in less than 15 minutes (including setting up security) and now I have high speed access on my laptop! I'm so excited! Only someone who's suffered through years and years of dial up can understand my complete elation at this moment. :-)

So I think I found the secondary character's name. It does not start with an N or a T. Darn I hate it when they mislead me! As I was doing a general search through the name books, she liked Natasha with a nickname of Tash, but that wasn't her name, but if this was "almost" it, it must start with one of those two letters. Logical, right?

With my own resources not providing the answer, I did an online search for "unique baby names." I got a lot of hits and checked out the appropriate letters--and I still couldn't come up with her name.

It went on like this for quite some time, then I clicked on a link that had all the names on one page, and there it was. Under the F's. Argh! If she'd told me that from the beginning, it would have saved me hours of searching.

TBH, at first I wasn't sure if this was her name for real or if I just thought it was because I liked it and I was sick of searching, but after a night spent sleeping on it, I think it is right.

Speaking of sleeping, I went to bed really early last night. I was so tired, I couldn't think clearly enough to work on my synopsis and I'd had 2 nights with four hours of sleep in a row. Not good. I still couldn't get up this morning, but I feel better. And just one day was enough to backlog me again. Too much to do, not enough hours to do it all in.

I did finish hooking up my cutting machine. It's for scrapbooking and cuts out letters or shapes. I test cut a flower which I still want to refer to as a snowflake because that's what it looks like to me and my name in the font I use on my website. It worked slick as spit and I'm in love with this machine. Now I just need to start scrapbooking again, so I can use it more. I'll add that to the To Do List. Sigh.

Actually, I should make an effort to scrapbook more because I do think it helps me with my writing. It sparks my creativity, but it doesn't use the same creative muscles in my head that writing does, which means it doesn't drain me. The more creative energy flowing in, the better!

I've run into a problem. My very minor secondary character has morphed into a major player in my proposal and that means she needs a name. I've mentioned before that I never get to name the characters with big roles. They pretty much come in and either tell me what they're called outright or they give me the starting letter and let me look through baby name books until I find the right one.

So anyway, my minor character needs a name before I can proceed with the synopsis. About now some people are probably thinking: why don't I just give her any old moniker and change it when I find the right one? Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way for me. I have to have the correct name or I can't move forward, which is what I'm dealing with.

She hasn't given me much to work on. I have a sense that her name begins with an N. Or maybe a T. :-(

I've looked through pretty much every baby name book I own. I've combed through almost every name website that I have bookmarked. I'm not finding anything under N or T that made her say, "That's me!" So I'm wondering if maybe her name starts with some other letter. After all, if I've gone through the number of names that I have and haven't hit the right one, it must be because I'm looking in the wrong places.

I don't know much about her yet. She's quirky, changeable, and torn between loyalties. She's a little on the passive side, but I think it's because she's been surrounded by such forceful personalities all her life. This woman is Shona's (the heroine) best friend.

So that was my night. No productive synopsis work, but hours and hours spent looking through those darn name books. Finally, about 8:15 last night, I had enough. I wasn't ready to go to bed (although I should have since I was exhausted!) and I decided to install my super cool new Silhouette cutter. For those who missed the original rhapsody about my online shopping binge, the Silhouette is a tool for scrapbooking or paper crafting. It's hooked up to the computer and can cut out any true type font that's loaded in a huge variety of sizes. It arrived yesterday and I figured I could install the software, plug in the machine, do a sample cutout, and be in bed by 9pm. I was wrong.

The software didn't take too long to load, but installation on my dinosaur computer wasn't as quick as I would have liked. Still not too bad, though. Then I had to download some program from Microsoft for the thing to run. With high speed, that took minutes. Again, it was installation that slowed me down. Then I was warned to download any new security patches. This is where the night started to go to hell.

First, I had to update the software that Microsoft uses to determine which updates the computer needs, then after that was installed, it scanned and determined I needed three patches. They downloaded in probably a minute.

And took 45 minutes to install!!!

OMG! I was getting so antsy. I have a patience problem anyway, but when it was 9:45 and it's still installing, I really became frustrated. By 10pm I was swearing at the computer to hurry up, using the language I normally save for my commute to and from the EDJ (Evil Day Job). :-) By the time I was able to get to bed, it was 10:20, almost an hour and a half later than I'd planned.

The storm rolled through at 2:45, waking me from a sound sleep. I got up, checked out the window and then crawled back into bed and fell immediately back to sleep. I didn't hear the alarm.

No time for coffee, but I figured, I could skip coffee one day, and really, I should cut the caffeine out all together. I lasted about an hour at the EDJ, then I made a jumbo cup of coffee. Only now do I feel alert enough to blog--and that's iffy. Guess I won't be giving up my morning java any time soon.

It rained all weekend. Sunday was supposed to be dryer, but it wasn't. I'm not complaining. We've been in a draught and it's badly needed here, but it kept making me want to lay down and take a nap! I guess I can't win. If it's bright and sunny, I want to go outside. If it's gray and rainy, I want to sleep.

I wish I had an exciting weekend to talk about, but I really don't. My local FOX station didn't show the Cubs-Cardinals game on Saturday which was hugely disappointing. They actually thought that more people in MN would be interested in the Detroit-Yankees game because the Tigers are in our division. Yes, I emailed them to complain about their decision. I think they're wrong. Even if the Twins weren't 6 games out of first, I think most people wouldn't enjoy a Tigers-Yankees match-up.

Here's my reasoning: Nearly everyone who isn't from NY hates the Yankees. Sorry, NY, but it's true. I've become a Boston fan simply because they're the Yankees arch-rival and I know a bunch of other people who've said the same thing. Now the Yankees are playing Detroit. Normally, I root for whoever is playing the Yankees, but now, being a good Twins fan, I want Detroit to lose. Talk about cognitive dissonance! This makes the entire game unfun to watch.

Anyway, I was so irritated by the choice of game, I turned the television off. And I love writing with a baseball on the screen.

I did not finish the synopsis for Shona and Logan this weekend as I'd planned. I was in heavy duty avoidance mode, even going so far as to clean the kitchen. I even scrubbed out the microwave, including taking out the glass tray and the turntable thingy to clean beneath them. Cleaning to avoid writing is desperate. I console myself with the fact that at least I wasn't cleaning the bathroom. That's the ultimate in avoidance.

I'm hoping to finish the synopsis this week, though. A conversation with a friend where we discussed and brainstormed helped gel things. I had almost all the pieces already present, but needed one more to make everything come together. I'm more excited now about this story than I already was.

Last night's movie was 300.

Basically, it's about Sparta and a war with the Persians. It starts out with an narrator explaining how Spartan boys were trained to become warriors, then we see the king meeting with the messenger from the Persian god/king who wants Sparta to surrender and kneel to him. Of course, that message didn't go over real well. The king, though, can't take Sparta to war unless the oracle gives permission and the bad guy has bribed the oracle to say no. In order to circumvent that, the king takes 300 soldiers and calls them his personal bodyguard or something like that and they go off to fight the Persians.

I only made it halfway through this movie. Quite frankly, I was bored. This is the second of those graphic novels made into films that I've tried to watch and the second one that I didn't particularly like. (The first was Sin City.) I'm thinking this will be the last of this type of movie that I watch because it apparently isn't something that holds my attention. Or maybe it's just graphic novels by Frank Miller that bore me. (Yes, I had to look up his name, but this guy did both 300 and Sin City.)

While I was watching the movie, I started getting up and wandering away. I checked out flowers online, I folded and put laundry away, I played Hearts. My interest had perked up slightly once the battle scenes began, but after the meeting between the Spartan king and the Persian king took place, my attention waned again. I went online and read the spoilers for 300 and I didn't like what happened. I turned it off and did other stuff.

The other problem I had with the film was that from almost the minute it started, I kept thinking, "that's not true." It happened over and over. I don't know if I was calling on knowledge picked up in a past life or from my tenth grade Social Studies class, but having that thought continually come up didn't help me get into the story at all.

I've been considering this, wondering why this movie just didn't do it for me, and I think I have the answer. I didn't care about any of the characters. None. All we get is background about how Spartan boys are trained, then we're right into the arrival of the messenger. There's barely any personal glimpses given into any of the characters and it makes it hard to feel invested in the battle scenes. Actually, it was hard to be invested in any part of the story, period, because I didn't have a connection to any character.

I'm not sure I should rate it since I didn't finish the movie, but I will anyway.
2 stars.

It's supposed to rain here most of the day today, making it the perfect morning to sleep in. Which I did. :-) It's also going to be a perfect day to work on the synopsis because there'll be no siren call from the outdoors. Not that I'm exactly into the great outdoors and all, but sitting out on the deck on a nice, sunny day is always tempting.

Anyway, I talked to one of the guys at work yesterday about setting up a network in my house and he made it sound so easy, I decided I could hook it up myself. Since only my desktop with the hugely uncomfortable chair (think circa 1958 before the word "ergonomics" had been invented and that'll give you an idea how crippling it is to sit in it for any length of time) has the high speed internet connection, I've fallen behind on a lot of things--like replying to comments. It takes forever for any website to pull up on dial up (boy, did I get spoiled fast!) and I don't have the patience to wait. Which means I'm hugely behind sometimes. Okay, most of the time. But once I have high speed on my laptop, I'm sure I'll be better.

I'd kind of been resisting networking because I write on my laptop, and right now, with only dial up on this computer, I'm not tempted to play online. Of course, there's still Hearts and Mah Jong, but that's another story. I kept telling myself that setting up the security on the network would be difficult and I didn't feel like hiring anyone to come in and do it for me right now. My coworker blew that one out of the water. I've been reading articles about routers and networking and doing some pricing. Hopefully, I'll be up and running before Labor Day.

In other shopping news, the shoes I ordered came. OMG, I think I fell in love with a new brand of shoes. Skechers! I have to exchange the pair I bought for a smaller size, but even with the shoe slightly too big, these were like the most comfortable things I've had on in forever and they are major cute! In fact, they're so comfortable, I went online to see if there were other styles I wanted. I found a bunch and bookmarked them for purchase later.

Does everyone know about this brand but me? I'm a convert. :-) Of course, I guess I should save my excitement until I've worn them for a full day and not just a few turns around the house, but they're just like wearing tennis shoes, just more stylish. :-) They have a few dress shoes (very few), but they have a really good selection on casual and tennis shoes. Try a pair on if you have a chance.

And no, this is not a paid endorsement. It's just that I wish someone had told me about this brand before I stumbled on them on my own. Yes, I'm a total shoe slut. My walk-in closet has the shelving filled with shoes, but you can never own too many pair. :-) You never know when you're going to need the kelly green wedge-heels.

I forgot I didn't blog yet this morning. Oops. I ran out of time at home--which has been happening more and more lately--and while I was driving into work, I had this idea pop in my head. Once that happened, blogging was lost in the wave of what ifs that followed. :-)

Anyway, this idea would be for a new series, completely unrelated to anything I've already written. I have to do some research, though, to see if it will hold up and I'd need to do some serious brainstorming to set everything up. It might not last beyond first scrutiny, which can kind of be a pain when something is intriguing and full of potential.

Of course, what I should be working on is my synopsis for Shona and Logan. I'm stuck because it involves plot stuff and I have no idea what happens in the section of the book I'm trying to synopsize :-) right now. I know some of what happens later, but that doesn't help.

The other thing that isn't helping (aside from completely new ideas popping into my brain) is that Kel and his heroine (whatever her name is) keep talking to me. Logan's story has to come first otherwise things don't make sense in either book and these events are crucial to the characters and their arcs. I'm sure it will all shake out eventually, but it's frustrating in the meantime.

The other thing that's frustrating to me is how many people I have in my head right now. I think this is the most ever, and if my latest idea pans out, I'm sure I'll shortly have more characters yakking away. And no, I wouldn't have it any other way. I just wish I was a faster writer or that I had more time, so that I could get these stories down and clear out some of the mental congestion. I swear, the traffic pattern over O'Hare can't be busier than my brain.

I bet you think I'm joking about the nature girl thing, right? I'm not. It was a seriously cool moment yesterday evening.

I went out around 7pm to water the flowers in my tree ring. I'm just standing there, not moving at all, and letting the water spray onto the plants when I see something to my side. I move my eyes since my head was already turned that direction and what do I see? A tiny little hummingbird hovering no more than five feet away from me!

That really surprised me. First of all, I'd never seen a hummingbird in real life before. And the second thing was how close he was. That was amazing. I kept expecting him to notice me and fly away, but he stayed there for a long time before landing on a tree branch. He was maybe there twenty seconds before he took off, but wow!

The only thing I can think is that he was attracted by the lilies since I've never seen one anywhere around the area before this.

Speaking of the flowers, my Sumatra Lily is about 3/4 open, but I didn't take a picture of it. Not only is it not open all the way, but it's droopy. The only thing I can think of is that the storm did that. The other storm damage I noticed was that a lot of soil was eroded and the tops of the bulbs and/or the roots of my lilies were showing. That means a trip to the store for more dirt to put down.

It was Craft Fair day yesterday on QVC. Need I say more? If I was smart, I wouldn't because it's downright embarrassing how many things I bought. I knew I was in trouble when I woke up yesterday morning and saw the Today's Special Value. It was a Silhouette cutting machine that hooks up to the computer and will cut out any true type font (letters or shapes) that you have. I'm a font slut, so I have many, many true type fonts. I'd been eyeing the Wishblade ever since I heard of it and the Silhouette is the same kind of machine. I was determined not to order. Absolutely not. I could wait. And I did.

About three hours.

Then in the afternoon came the sparkly 687 piece assorted theme rub-ons. Those looked way cool and I don't have any rub-ons. Clearly, I needed some.

I vowed I was done shopping for the day. That was it; I'd spent enough money. But there wasn't any baseball on last night. Nobody was televised. I had to watch something while I worked on the synopsis for my proposal, right? And I tend to default to QVC because I can watch without needing to pay strict attention. That's when I saw the fall and winter themed 600+ piece self-adhesive chipboard kits. I would have been fine if the letters hadn't been so cute. I caved again.

This was it, though. I was absolutely, positively 100% finished shopping. But as I was working, I saw this card making kit. They hadn't even demonstrated it yet when I ordered, just previewed it. I love homemade cards with embellishments. Now granted, the cards I have were made by someone else, but come on, I can do this, too! I think.

See? This is why ESPN, TBS and WGN need to show more baseball! I only get in trouble like this when there aren't any games on, and with the Twins playing on the west coast tonight, I was at the mercy of QVC. And they had none. They kept showing irresistible item after irresistible item. Only my incredible willpower (STOP LAUGHING!) kept the damage from being much worse.

In other news, my dad found my wind spinner at the bottom of the shepherd's hook so I didn't lose it. He also found my rain gutter extension in my neighbor's yard. Those were two rough storms Monday night. Final total on the number of Twin Cities residents without power was something around 55,000. I'm so happy not to be one of them. Of course, it might be cheaper if I had been. No television.

Another flower bloomed yesterday too, bringing my total back up to five, although I think two will be losing their petals shortly. They just don't last long enough.

My goal was to get to bed early last night. I'd only had about four hours of sleep on Sunday night and I was beat. It was about 9pm that I logged off, but that was right about the time that all the local television stations broke in to announce this huge, dangerous storm was headed toward the Twin Cities. There were parts of the cell that were so filled with hail that it showed up eggplant purple on the radar.

This made me nervous. I don't like storms anyway, but this one really was something. They'd measured winds that had gusted up to 100mph in the outstate area before it reached us. After about 45 minutes or so, it became obvious that it was going to pass off to the Northwest and I wasn't going to get anything. Good, right?

Well, kind of.

You see, behind storm 1 was storm 2. At this time, it was still out in St. Cloud, but it, too, was barrelling South and this one was probably going to catch me because it was further to the west than storm 1. They estimated it would roll in around 11:15. At this time, it was 10:30 and I figured I'd better catch some sleep while I could. Storm 2 would likely wake me up and I might have to grab stuff and head for the basement. I have two folding chairs down there, so it could end up being a really long, uncomfortable night.

Of course, I was too keyed up, waiting for the imminent arrival of the second wave to really sleep, and sure enough, at 11:03, as the storm came in, I woke up.

Lots of lightning with this one again, lots of torrential rain, and lots of wind. So much wind that my hummingbird wind spinner is gone. I think it might be on the shepherd hook still, but down around the deck railing--I'm not sure, though, because even with my deck light on this morning, I couldn't see that far out and it was dark!

I never lost power--definitely a good thing since the last report I heard said about 31,000 people were without electricity. I don't make a good pioneer. I had little pellet-sized hail, but not the two inch hail that some places got--another blessing. The wind also left my trees alone--at least as far as I could see in the dark.

I spent about an hour--between 11:03 and midnight--flipping around the local television stations, trying to get the different opinions on how intense this thing was going to be. I saw that the freeway--my freeway--had flooded in a couple of places and that cars were floating. Now I have to begin worrying about the morning commute as well. Will this water drain away or am I going to end up detoured? As it turned out, it was gone when I went through although the pavement was still really wet.

As the storm eased up, I was finally able to sleep, but I'm hugely tired again today. I can also give you a report. Most annoying weather coverage: The guy who kept warning me to be "sky aware." Over and over he said it until even the anchorwomen were using it. Grrr.

Second most annoying weather coverage was the guy with the co-weatherman helping him by controlling the radar. He had to keep telling his cohort to switch views and then thanking him. It got to the point last night where if I'd heard sky aware or the name Patrick one more time, I was going to lose my mind. Good thing the storm was abating by then and I could go to sleep.

Storm damage was out there. My neighbors across the street lost two branches off one of their trees--one of them was pretty darn big. There was also other branches down as I made my way to the freeway, but we probably won't know how bad things are until the sun comes out.

And that's my story for this morning. All's well, but I'm darn sleepy.

One of the loops I'm on has been having a discussion about Mac versus PC. The focus is on laptops, but I'm to the point where I'm ready to replace my desktop and I've been curious about going back to Mac. You see, back a long time ago, my first ever home computer was a Mac. I totally loved it and would have stayed with them forever--except for one thing. Price. I needed to replace my Mac and I could get five times the computer for a fraction of the price if I switched to a PC. I did and haven't looked back since then.

However, I keep hearing things about Vista, especially about all the security windows that pop up. Particularly for power users. While I'm not ready to join the Geek Squad, I am an advanced user. I also know those pop up security alerts would absolutely make me insane. So now I'm debating.

Mac has a program that allows use of PC programs on it, which is a definitely plus because I use WordPerfect and I intend to continue using WP until they pry it out of my cold, dead hands--to borrow a phrase from the gun people. :-)

I spent some time poking around the Apple website and the iMac is way cool. The computer is built in behind the screen so that's all I'd have on my desk (once I figured out where to put my current PC desktop). I've been away from the Mac world for a long time, though, and I'm wondering if this has everything I need? Do I want the cool iMac or the Mac Pro? That has a tower, but it almost sounds as if it's for graphic artists or people who are going to do more film/picture work than I ever will.

Anyway, it's something to think about, but I'm not going to rush into anything. My knowledge is PC-based and trying to relearn Mac... Anyone want to jump into this with a pro or con for me?

My parents came over for dinner last night, but they didn't stay long. There was more severe weather coming in and they wanted to get home before it hit. I think they just made it. :-) The severe weather is also why there's no movie review today. I wanted to keep an eye on weather alerts and wouldn't be able to do that without stopping the DVD. So I watched Speed on FX and flipped to local stations during the commercials to keep up on what was coming in. Despite the dire predictions, the storms weren't as bad as what hit at 3am Saturday morning. :-)

Speed is one of my favorite movies of all time. Not only is Keanu Reeves hot, but it's got action, adventure, and romance. My favorite combination! I never get tired of watching it.

While it was on, I also continued reading one of the dragon books I have. I found some great information as I researched that got me all excited. Maybe it'll spark a few more ideas. Today, BTW, is the day I get to work on the synopsis for the book for which I've been researching all these things. I joined my chapter's Book In a Week group to get me going on it, but I haven't been approved yet. Oh, well, I'm going to get started even if I don't state my goals on that loop. My goal for the week is to finish a detailed synopsis of the new WIP. I think I maybe have a title, too! I have to think about it for a while, though, and see if I still like it before I share here.

Another new flower this morning! Yea! This makes 5 now, although, unfortunately, the first one is fading away. I'm sure the storms we have didn't help it either since the winds were so strong, and so was the rain last night. I should take more pictures! I know you're all dying to see them. ;-) Just kidding. I might take more shots for me, but I won't bother to post them since they all look pretty much like the first flower pictures that I shared. Now, if the Sumatra Lily blooms, I'll post those shots here since it's a different plant.

Guess I better get moving since I'm working again today. Fingers crossed that it goes well.

Sorry about posting so late today. I ended up horribly rushed this morning and I'm just sitting down to the computer now.

Today I gave a presentation to my local writing chapter. Each month (or nearly every month) we do something called Journey of a Novel and I talked about In the Midnight Hour. I think it went okay, although I sure hope I didn't bore anyone too much. I'm not much of a public speaker and I was pretty nervous. No one got up and left, though, and I take that as a positive sign.

Anyway, JoaN started at 9am and I wanted to be there a few minutes early, so I had to leave the house by 8:30 or so. Since I didn't get up until after 7:30, I was pushed for time. These huge storms rolled through about 3am this morning and woke me up. Yeah, here I go, talking about the weather again. I can't help it. This was like the weirdest storm. I have never seen so much lightning before. It literally kept the sky lit up continually for about half an hour or so and the thunder kept rolling and rolling and rolling. No damage, but after being up for more than an hour with the storm, I had a heck of a time getting out of bed. Especially when I was up late last night putting together all the papers I needed for the presentation.

Yes, despite talking about being prepared ahead of time, I once again ran around at the last minute getting everything I needed together. At least I was smart enough to put it in one place last night so I could just grab it on the way out the door this morning. Last time I spoke, I forgot to bring something I really wanted to talk about. So I count myself ahead this time around because everything came with me that I needed. :-)

Now that I'm home, I've started laundry and I have half a million other chores to take care of. I'd like to get it all done today because I want to start working on the proposal for a new book tomorrow. I've been talking about Shona and Logan, researching and mulling, now it's time to get it down.

For reasons known only to my dad, he decided last night was a good night to resume watering the lawn. Keep in mind that the grass is yellow at this point because we're in a horrible drought and we gave up on the sprinkling about 2 weeks ago since it was impossible to keep up. But last night, I hear the water spigot and look outside. My dad was over arranging the hoses. When I get home this afternoon, I'll have to remember to look and see if it did any good or if the grass is still as yellow as it was.

I have a brand new lily! It bloomed sometime yesterday and I saw it when I got home from work. I would have taken a picture of it, too, although it's unlikely I would have subjected any of you to it, but it was too close to the chicken wire to get any decent shots. But I have two flowers in my tree ring and the promise of more to come! I can't wait for the Sumatra Lily to bloom--that's a ways a way from the looks of things, though.

And to round out my day, I shoe shopped online. I'd been flipping around while I waited for the 6pm news and landed on QVC. No, I didn't buy shoes from them, but that had some cute stuff from Skechers on. Whenever I see shoes on QVC that I like, I always check online because Zappos and Shoebuy have free shipping and free return shipping. And as luck would have it, Shoebuy had sent me an email coupon yesterday. Since you saved $5 with one pair and $15 with two pair, I made sure I found two pairs of shoes I liked. :-) I know, I know. But two pair really were the best deal. Besides, I'm picky enough about shoes that the odds of my keeping both pair are about zilch. Actually, the odds of my keeping either pair aren't that good. This is why I try not to buy shoes online, but it's oh-so-tempting--especially since I hate shopping.

I'm guest blogging today over at the Romance Reader at Heart blog! If you have a chance, stop on over and leave a comment.

Sorry about kind of not posting yesterday, but maybe y'all can consider the flower pictures as my Wednesday post since they went up so late in the day. Yes, I overslept again and I've been busy at work and I was busy all through lunch, too. I never even had time to crack open my research book on dragons.

So my mom got this catalog in the mail from this flower place and she handed it off to me. OMG! There are hugely cool plants for sale here. I could just go wild if only I had room to put all those flowers. They have black tulips, these snow drop flowers that bloom in way early spring (like when there's still snow on the ground), these greenish flowers with maroon striping (and $60 for 3 bulbs if you order early. These bulbs also have to be lifted in the fall because they're wussy flowers), and some big huge, round flowers that come in purple or blue or other colors. They had other items too, but these are the things that really stood out for me.

Anyway, I'm eyeing the tree ring, trying to figure out how I can fit all these bulbs in that small space. And I can't believe that when the tree ring was first built, I was wondering how I was going to fill it. :-) If only my dad hadn't transplanted a dozen tiger lilies. I'm thinking of getting some big, deep planters for the front yard and putting some of these bulbs in there. I swear, I never gave a rip about flowers until this year. It must be something about owning a home.

I still need to write my speech for my presentation on Saturday. Wednesday evening, I worked on the time line of what happened when with In the Midnight Hour, but tonight I'll really have to get to work. I'd like to actually have a chance to rehearse before I get in front of an audience.

I hate how dark it is in the morning again and how early it gets dark in the evening, too. Come back, summer! Don't leave! If only I could control the axis of the earth. Um, sorry Australia and others in the Southern hemisphere, y'all get perpetual winter because I want long days. :-) Warm weather, too. I guess I'll quit here or I'll be whining about winter when it's still August and I'm running the air conditioner. :-)

Starfighter Lily Behind Bars

Here's a close up without the protection


And closer yet



Hopefully, I'll have one or two more this week.

I'm feeling harried again. I have two things on my Must Do List for the week and at least one of them will be extremely time consuming.

Part of this stress is my own fault, I know it. If I'd worked on either one of these things over the weekend, it would have helped a lot. Of course, I didn't and yesterday afternoon, my "quick" lie down ended up lasting an hour and a half. Needed, I guess, but it didn't help with the list. (List is starting to sound ominous now.)

The biggest item is writing a presentation for Saturday. Yep, nothing like waiting until the last minute, but at least this time I plan to be better prepared than last time. Then, I had an outline of what I wanted to talk about and it didn't have enough for 45 minutes. Fortunately (I guess), when I get nervous I talk more, so I just blathered on and on. I hope to do better this time around.

One cool thing, though, is that I have a story coming together for me--finally! After Creed and Maia and all the trouble I had with them, this has been a welcome change. I still need to do some research for Shona and Logan, but I'm thinking that as soon as I get the big stuff off my To Do List that I'll start working on getting this proposal down in writing instead of just in my head. :-)

As you might recall, in the last episode of Rabbit Wars, my dad had fenced in my tree ring in an effort to save the flowers from vicious and unprovoked rabbit attacks. From the title of this post, you can guess that the attempt wasn't completely successful.

One of the lilies was near the edge of the fence--in fact, one of its little flower buds was sticking out a hole in the chicken wire--and that's the one that was eaten. I went down to water the flowers yesterday (no need on Saturday since it rained) and saw the fence didn't look right in one area. Closer examination revealed that it was pushed in and the bricks my dad had used to hold it down had been forced farther inside the ring. There was now a gap between the ground and the bottom of the fence.

I immediately examined my flowers and discovered that the one flower bud that had been poking out was gone. Eaten. Just an empty socket where there had once been the beginning of a bloom. Fortunately, nothing else appeared to be destroyed.

I fixed the fence and called my dad. We began to discuss the cayenne pepper suggestion. :-)

In better news, two of the buds look ready to flower! I will, of course, take pictures and post them. This will be a monumental occasion--especially considering I'm in rabbit hell.

Last night's movie was The Queen starring Helen Mirren in the title role and Michael Sheen as Prime Minister Tony Blair.

There aren't any real spoilers that I need to worry about giving away. If you were alive in 1997 and had the TV on during the time of Princess Diana's death, you pretty much know the sequence of events. The movie opens with Tony Blair being elected prime minister in a landslide and his first visit with the queen. She allows him 15 minutes before excusing him.

There's a montage of Diana taken from real sources in that time period and then the story resumes with news of the accident that Diana was involved in. Most of the rest of the movie shows the royal family's actions/reactions to her death and how out of touch they are with the mood of the rest of Great Britain. In fact, the queen greets Blair's calls to her vacation estate in Scotland with irritation. She doesn't appreciate his warnings and dismisses the coverage she sees on television and the newspapers as the media trying to sell newspapers. In the end, however, she does listen to Blair and brings the royal family to London.

This is a dramatized version of real people and real events, and I couldn't help but wonder how much of what I saw was true. I mean of the personalities of those involved, since I do know the public events occurred and it's doubtful that anyone knows about the behind-the-scenes events since sometimes there was no one present except the actress playing the queen or some other royals, and certainly they're not going to share this information, so I had questions. Is Prince Phillip really a jerk? Is Charles really that ineffective and wussy? Is the Queen Mother really the way she was portrayed? Or Tony Blair and his wife? I don't follow the royal family or British politics enough to know the answer to any of these questions, but I'm curious.

The Queen wasn't a movie that I'd had any great desire to see. I added it to my queue at Netflix because I wanted to make an effort to see some of the films that were nominated for Oscars. No one is more surprised than I am at how much I totally loved it! Helen Mirren did a brilliant job and it's no wonder than she won for Best Actress. I believed she was the queen from her first appearance and she managed to convey so much emotion even while keeping her facial expression neutral. That couldn't have been an easy thing to do, but she pulled it off.

Again, because everything revolves around events that really happened, there are no sudden plot twists. What carried this movie was the actors involved--particularly the queen and the prime minister. The bulk of the movie really seems to revolve around their relationship during the time of Diana's death.

As soon as I finished the movie, I thought about watching it again (I didn't because of how late it was), that's how much I enjoyed it. For a good, well-acted, character-driven film, I highly recommend The Queen.

My rating: 4.5 stars

I've seen my ad for In the Midnight Hour twice now--once on Lifetime and once on Sci-Fi Channel! That was totally, completely cool. I wish I could have afforded broader television coverage, but I did manage to catch a number of cities. I still can't get over the fact that my book is on TV. :-)

I actually have real copies of Midnight Hour in my hands now, and that means I need to sit down and read it. :-) I always read my books when they first come out. The problem is going to be finding time. I have to clean today and do laundry. I have a memory foam topper for my bed that I need to put on. Another writer said she's had trouble with her fingers going numb and that this ended the problem for her. I've been dealing with this since last fall or winter while I was working on In Twilight's Shadow and I want mine to go away, too. Some other writers have recommended these shapeable pillows, so I'll be trying one of those as well. It's hard to feel creative when you can't sleep very long, even on the weekends.

I also need to do some research, particularly on dragons, and write my speech for next Saturday's Midwest Fiction Writers' meeting. I'm doing Journey of a Novel and talking about Midnight Hour. Oh, and I need to write a blog entry...on something. And what am I doing? Sitting and watching more bridge collapse coverage. I really have to stop doing this.

One of the big tasks for the day, though, and among the most important, is figuring out how to use my DVD recorder so I can save my TV commercial for posterity. :-)

The last two mornings as I drove to work, I've been very cognizant of the bridges I drive over. I'm not scared, I don't hesitate, but I do think about it. Of course, it doesn't help that one of the electronic traffic alert signs announces that 35W is closed at a certain point. A reminder of what happened--as if we needed it.

I turned on coverage of the bridge collapse as soon as I got home from work yesterday and watched for hours. I'd intended to get all my email answered--I even spent nearly my whole lunch hour trying to get caught up--but I couldn't reply to anyone while I had the news on. I finally forced myself to turn on a baseball game and watch something happier, then I could get to email.

It was one of those nights where as soon as I thought I was done and could go to bed, something else that had to be handled would crop up. I didn't make it all the way through email, but I'm almost caught up.

Now for something completely different.

Do writers really believe that it's okay to do research from FICTIONAL sources???

I put my request for dragon information out on one of my writers' loops and half the people who replied (okay, it was only two, but still...) suggested I read fictional sources!!! =8-O

That stunned me. Absolutely, totally floored me. I thought it was basic, elementary knowledge that you never, ever used fictional work as the basis for any kind of research and yet these people suggested it as if everyone does it. What? Okay, some don't believe dragons are real and that everything about them is made up, but still this isn't right.

Do they not understand that 1) the author who wrote the fictional work might not have used reliable sources in her research or that she might not have researched at all? 2) that even if she did solid research that she might have changed things and/or made things up to fit her paranormal world? 3) that building off someone else's imagination is wrong?

If we'd done a research paper in school--yes, even on dragons--and tried to use a fictional novel as a source, we'd have received a failing grade. That doesn't change when you're an adult. Research should be from non-fictional sources ONLY and always verified with multiple sources.

I was so appalled that any writer at any point in their journey believes it's okay to use a novel for research. Gah!

It was such an ordinary day--at least it was for me. I'd gotten home from work, handled some chores, and ran over to my parents' house. When I got home, I watered my flowers in the tree ring, the front porch and the deck. By the time I sat down and booted up the laptop, the 6pm local news was on. My plan was to download email and answer it, and also handle all the blog comments I'd gotten since lunch.

I was barely online when the news anchor said there was breaking news, a bridge on 35W had collapsed. I figured a section of the bridge had buckled from all the heat we'd been having (Yesterday was particularly bad) and while a couple of people had maybe been hurt or killed. That would have been b