word count at 3650

I am following along with Raven, who is living alone on Saltspring in a rented cottage, and Pharos, who is attempting to do a podcast while his little brother messes things up at random, and Theo, who is trying to understand how humans do medicine.

The writing is going reasonably well, not as voluminous as one would like of course, but that’s hard to manage all the time.  Sometimes the writing seizes you like this, but mostly it doesn’t.

Wrenchingly sad about Paris, but not enough to drape my blog with red white and blue.

 

Beautiful evening

3381 words so far

Mike took me to Horizons restaurant for an early birthday dinner.  I had arctic char and the chewiest – and I mean chewiest – brussel sprouts I hadn’t actually picked myself.  The waiter took them off the bill (sides are extra).

Anyway I’m back at home after breakfast at Amelia’s.

I am feeling very good.  Mike and I played and sang for a while this morning, and I recommend it as a way to start the day.

I was horrified and saddened and filled with the desire to be kind and compassionate and generous in response to the Paris attacks.  Life on earth is uncertain and never long enough. Love each other while you can.

 

 

Black Sails

Black Sails Season 1 overview (no spoilers).

1. Like other historical and pseudohistorical shows, dialogue is a blend of the high-toned and the many bad swearz low-brow. Both have their charms.
2. Costumes are not 100 % but close enough that you won’t want to kill the designer. Guys look good with open shirts and neckerchiefs, okay?
3. Anne Bonney is played by a tiny little woman with a deep, deep voice (Clara Paget). Heart. Who has a BDSM relationship with her partner. Yeah.
4. SO TIRED OF THE MAGICAL NEGRO CHARACTER. I mean no disparagement to Hakeem Kae-Kazim, classically trained Old Vic actor, but it’s a one note character so far (must repay the woman who taught him to read even if her plots etc etc) although they do manage to subvert the ‘I will suck up anything as your faithful family retainer’ meme a teeny bit.
5. SO TIRED OF THE MAGICAL WHORE CHARACTER. But DAMN she is hot, and Canadian. So. She ain’t Inara but she’s mesmerizing.
6. Despite this show being Long John Silver’s backstory (yup!) there are long stretches when he doesn’t appear. When he does appear, he prods the plot along like Satan himself. And he’s played by a fresh faced Australian lad who’s also quite cute.
7. They save it until later episodes, but there is peen.
8. Don’t even try to predict what will happen next.
9. Scenes of pirates putting in their false crazy teeth before a fight heart heart heart.
10. REALLY REALLY AMAZING FIGHTING SAIL SCENES. Like the best ever shown in a tv show. If you like Patrick O’Brian you may enjoy the show just for that.
11. Guns misfire. BWA HA HA HA HA !
12. Ship’s kitty! d’awwww
13. Ew, 17th century medical procedures.
14. As previously mentioned, somewhat period instruments orchestrated by Bear McCreary for your musical pleasure.
15. And otherwise, very evocative and clever sound design.
16. If you can go longer than 15 seconds without thinking that Hannah New playing Elinor Guthrie (previously she was the Princess from Maleficent) is actually a smarter and nicer version of Cersei Lannister, you’re a better person than I am.

 

Also 310 words yesterday.  Something very weird happened and now I am wrassling with my characters for control.

Clouds

Check it out. I remember the time mOm and I saw a wide assortment of lenticular clouds, including the classic porthole UFO and airship models….

We’re gonna have a wet winter…. I can feel it coming on.

Word count was 650 yesterday on the new novel.  I promptly took a wrong turn.  I may have to rip it all out like a lousy knitter. Word count each day until it’s done is 603 – that will get me finished for the 1st of April next year.  I nearly clarned Keith when he said, “How apropos.” OR I could tell myself word count is 4400 words a week and not worry too much about when I do it.  Somehow I think writing every day is better, but I cannot really understand why that is.

Keith came over last night and I sprang for Chinese food from Spring Garden, our restaurant since Chong Lum Hin closed (still not happy about this).  I also just learned that Roundhouse Pizza, reliably the best ‘za in the ‘hood, has closed. VERY VERY SAD. Must find replacement, and that will not be easy because it’s all institutional crap like Domino’s BARF and Panago DOUBLE BARF.

Anyway all of the food was delicious, but the man who delivered the food was so cheerful he literally put a scare into all three of us. I wish I was kidding.

Today I’m having lunch with Sue at IHOP and having thinky thoughts about remembrance.

Lovely walk

The sun came out yesterday and Paul and I walked in the neighbourhood and had a little snack afterwards.

Today I am cheerfully assembling book II – the chapters need to go in the final order. I know that you’re supposed to write things in sequence, but that’s not how I do it.  So I read and review and add and cut and try to get it into a reasonable order, and mix up the fast with the slow, etc. I’ve already been at it for an hour.  —- and a couple more hours go by and I’m done.

When it’s the right time it’s easy.  mOm you can expect the mss soon by email.

Happy sad happy work happy

Some dumbass jumped off BC Ferries yesterday and triggered a full on dual ferry search and rescue mess.  SO GLAD I WAS NOT ON THAT FERRY going to see my mOm.

I am eating coffee and pecan pie for breakfast.  This makes me evil but that’s okay.

SADFACE no Alex today.  He and Katie have a chest cough and I do not want to get it or bring it home to Jeff, so maybe later.  And later runs into Victoria trip, and like that.

Yesterday off to Mike’s for the afternoon, then we had an early supper at the Korean ramen place across from his apartment on Kingsway.  The gyoza were good but I’m glad I didn’t order what Mike did, because if that was spiced mild, the hot could be used for spot welding.

NOW I AM GOING TO WRITE I HAVE NO EXCUSE ALEX IS NOT GOING TO BE HERE TODAY.

221 words yesterday

Not much but Little By Little I guess.

Raining very hard here for quite a while, it’s ever so dreary outside.  All I want to do is jump in the car, drive to the place of foodicles and buy 200 DOLLAR WORTH OF JUNK FOOD AND NOMschlurpNOMNOMschlurpGROWLshlurp IT ALL DOWN NAAAAOW!

I get to see Alex tomorrow.

Margot appears to have completely recovered from her surgery.  Her eyes are bright and her demeanour normal.

I think I have fixed my laptop overheating problem with Jeff’s input.  I knocked down everything in Chrome that could be heating things up in the background and now my average running temperature is literally 30 degrees C cooler than it was day before yesterday.  This means my laptop is no longer likely to just DIE abruptly although I’m sure it shortened the life of both the battery and the CPU.

 

Little bit of Alex, no writing

Oh, it was so good to see baby Alex today.  He was in wonderful shape, running and playing and being cooperative and stubborn in pretty much equal doses. Paul fed me and the kids and Alex and we had a quite jolly get together. Keith has set up a meditation room, and I approve.

I have a really bad case of dyspepsia that’s lasted 24 hours now.  I may be breaking out Tums before this is over

Full breakfast, no words

I didn’t write at all yesterday but that’s because I was too busy napping and getting fed and irrigated.  I am now awaiting brekky at Mike’s place, having consumed my morning cawfay.  Mike took yesterday off, which is good because he was feeling crappy.

Starting to feel healthier now that I’m not welded into my beddy bye.  You can make neck muscles either seize or hypertrophy and that affects your carotid arteries which is not to put too fine a point on it hard on your brain.  Immediate result my low level migraine crap has more or less stopped, yay.

This was the view from Taverna Greka yesterday.

View from Taverna Greka Nov 2015

 

 

421 words yesterday

86927 is the current word count.  What it will look like after editing – generally things get shorter – is anyone’s guess.

Went to see Otto – my friend, not my mandolin – for coffee yesterday.  He has hopes, having lost the lease on his ceramics studio, to getting another one in Port Coquitlam and I really hope so because it’s only two minutes from a kiln and he’d have 24-7 access to it.  He gave me a lift home.  It was very wet yesterday and I walked down to Coming Home Café and got wet from my crotch to the ground; the rain was coming in sideways under the umbrella.  Fortunately with my current temperature control issues I merely felt pleasantly cool.

Working in clay, boy howdy. If I feel like getting up in the middle of the night to write (at my grandfather’s desk – you will all be happy to know that I am no longer writing or internetting in bed, guh — but I am allowing myself to read in bed) it’s easy to do.  I stumble across the room, fire up my brand new ceramic heater because by gadfrey it’s chilly in here and then I write, or pretend to.  Right now rather than pretending to I’m going to get up and get the coffee I forgot to bring upstairs when I went downstairs to practice.

ZEEEE! but first a few words about our sponsors, the cats. (Sorry, I’ll hack my feet off and eat them before I insert sound effects in my blog, so the ZEEEE! was an attempt to jam in some old-fashioned imaginary radio magic. Okay, it didn’t work but goddamnit I tried.)

MAN the cats love the new regime of warm and cold wet cat food in a seemingly endless supply.  They are used to one can every two months and the rest of the time they are on kibble; and solid snax. Buster now does the leap in the air and clap his paws together almost every time I give him the snackies, except about once in ten he’ll roll on the carpet and with one slitted eye commanding my compliance direct me to just drop it now, there’s a good chap. This is usually when I try to snack him up midday, when he’s normally up a cat tree and out cold.

He is so cute when he sleeps on the couch downstairs.  Sometimes nobody but Jeff will do, and Jeff obligingly holds himself so as accommodate whatever bizarre assemblage of furry cubist limbs Buster’s arranged himself into this time. Other times he Wants Mama’s Skritches and I become increasingly deranged in my attempts to scratch his chin while Jeff looks on with alarm. He extends all his limbs like Nijinsky, flops around with so little regard for feline dignity that it seems clear his early socialization was with very good tempered dogs, and cares not for what you squeeze or touch, almost as if he’s in some kind of neurological state of pleasant inebriation.

Margot is shedding like crazy.  I had noticed that stressed cats do this, but this is like the February snow storm of cat fur came early, and I am disgust.

FML, back to work. Or not.  WHo is it tHat mesSAges me? I hear the ting ting that I’ve gotten a message. Forget message get coffee. ARGHH TOO MANY DECISIONS.

Rain wind and firecrackers

We had lots of it all. No goblins though, I couldn’t handle candy dispersal.

Margot is missing the lower fang that was abscessed but she is MUCH  better today.  She is very much enjoying how much soft food she’s getting but I’m not cause that stuff REEKS.

288 words yesterday.

A tropical storm has formed in the Pacific which is headed straight to Yemen.  Current forecasts indicate that four to five times the annual rainfall will come down in a 48 hour period; given that Yemen is one of the most vile places to live in the world on any number of scales, (yes, the people have a tradition of hospitality, it’s true) and suffering from a multi-faceted insurgency, messed over by Saudi handouts, jammed with internal refugees, I suspect many people are going to be wiped out in flash floods both financially and literally.

Those weird trees in Socotra may come down. I have the weirdest ideas about what is important.

488 words yesterday

Not enough production to send stuff off to mOm, but some, anyway.  Had the worst burger in many years at Anny’s.  I SHOULD HAVE HAD THE PUTIN. I mean poutine.  I mean the smoked meat sammie.  Anything but what I ate.

The food was not cooked with love.

I shouldn’t complain, a friend took me out to dinner.

MY WRITING DESK IS SET UP.  Yay? The wireless barely works there, and yet it’s less than two metres from where I usually surf.

Happy Halloween for those who care.  I’m not participating this year. It’s the new Grinch look on me, what do you think?

500 words yesterday

I was too worried about Margot, who is recovering nicely, to do more. Lovely walk and lunch and music and Margot fetching with Paul in the afternoon while it wasn’t raining.

Jeff had an encounter with a skunk this morning when he went to fetch Margot soft food.  Fortunately his kindness was not rewarded with a (E )-2-butene-1-thiol and 3-methyl-1-butanethiol cocktail.

I’ve already written some this morning, so that makes me happy.