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I am getting *really* badly spammed by comments spam. This is really, really frustrating. Stupid, stupid bastards. :( I have turned off comments on any posting more than 1 week old. I'll be doing this every week, I guess, so if you've got comments on older postings, just put them on the latest entry. :(

Home again, home again, jiggity jig!

Not lots to report, except Ted had roses for me at the airport *beam* and it's really gorgeous out and Chanti and I just went for a nice walk that made my feet hurt. Stupid feet. I'm glad to be home.

I have declared that the next 3 days are For Reading Only. Well, not *only* only, but I'm not going to worry about writing and I'm going to read the rest of the Luna books (I've read, um, 2 of them now! o.o) and I'm going to read whatever else strikes my fancy and enjoy it, darnitall. :)

miles to Lothlorien: 11
ytd wordcount: 192,900

Cutting out of work early to go finish up the book and put it in the mail (yay!). Also I just discovered that Caltrain's not RUNNING on the weekends right now, which means I /have/ to get a stupid hotel bus to the airport tomorrow morning, but at least it's cheaper than a cab. Hrmph. And then I think I'll go up to Fisherman's Wharf (this is not one of those paragraphs of which an English teacher would approve) and do some shopping and eat some dinner and maybe I'll catch a movie before tudding into bed tonight.

This has been a very fine week. :)

I will almost certainly not have time until I get home to write up as thorough a review as I would like to, but I went to see The Lion King last night and it was spectacular. Frankly, the opening scene, which literally brought tears to my eyes (and cheeks, for that matter), is worth the price of admission. I don't know what it is about that piece of music and its vibrancy and harmonics, but I've found it emotionally overwhelming ever since it was used as the trailer for the movie, a year before the cartoon was released, and it's just that much more powerful on stage.

I got down to the theatre early and sat around on the concrete waiting for the box office to release the seats that hadn't been sold or had been cancelled, and boy am I glad I did. The house was packed, but not quite sold out, and I still got 6th row center orchestra seats. Not too shabby. I suspect about four rows back are the best seats in the house; you couldn't quite see the feet and when people were lying down they were invisible, from my seat, but that didn't happen too much, so it was okay.

The real reason to see this show are the costumes, which are simply incredible. I thought the lamest of them by far was Timon, who is propelled by an adult voice actor behind a 4-or-so foot meercat puppet. I found the human behind the puppet to be too distracting from the puppet, which is what you're supposed to be paying the most attention to. Whenever another character addresses Timon, he addresses the puppet, which helped a little, but not enough. The puppet was entirely too static compared to all the rest of them; his vocals are, I think, supposed to overcome that, but instead I kept getting distracted by the actor. Who was costumed and face painted entirely in green, which I also didn't get. I think it's supposed to help him blend into the jungle-green sets/backgrounds that they're in for most of his part of the show, but it didn't work for me.

My second-least-favorite character was Scar, which is a pity because he's quite wonderful in the movie. He didn't have any of the sensuality that Jeremy Irons voiced in the film, so I found him disappointing. I also thought he, and -- well. A lot. Of the characters. Not all, but a lot, were too over-played. I thought if they'd been reined in a little more they'd have been better, and it'd've felt less like Acting. It's, hm. The show is nearly a caricature, because it started *out* as a larger than life cartoon, and they're playing it too big, I think. A little more restraint and a little less obviousness wouldn't hurt any of the characters. It's a stylistic choice, and I suspect most people wouldn't be bothered by it (my family, however, would all be).

Despite those flaws -- and the fact that the little boy playing young Simba wasn't much of a dancer (I think again this was partly stylistic, a way to show off energy, but I thought a little more finesse would've been appropriate) -- it was an amazing show. Raikki (I think that's the spelling; the baboon shaman) was ... overwhelming. Her voice was just *incredible*.

Ooop, coffee break!

wah! Somehow I just killed what I'd written! Wah!

What I'd written was fortunately short. :) One of my coworkers just came over to ask what I was doing, and in a fit of honesty, I said, "Writing down the books I've read this week." There was a pile of 8 books at my elbow. He stared at them and at me, then said, "I'm just leaving now, 'cause I've been reading the same book for like the last month." *laugh* I hadn't meant to read quite that many books yet this week, but I accidentally read all the words in the Ethshar novel I brought with me on the train yesterday (I expected it to last longer!) and I read a book while I had dinner on Wednesday, so, well, oops. :)

Dinner last night was lots of fun! I had a Carl and a Starling and a Trip and an Angie and an Alix and an Air! And we ate a GREAT DEAL of food, including about 9 zillion crab cheese puffs, and then we went to have gelato and I got on the train and slurped it up and read part of the book I'd been forced to stop at Tower Books and buy, because the words in my other one had run out.

Then I got on the right bus but going the wrong direction and took a 90 minute ride around San Francisco before getting back to my hotel. *groan* I am very, very tired this morning.

But dinner! Dinner was fun! Carl *laugh* said he's been sorting his comics, and he said, "You know the bit in Independence Day where you see the alien ships for the first time and everybody is staring up into the sky in complete horror, because it's just so *big*? That's what getting my whole collection out was like." *laugh* I told him when he was done, he should come up to Alaska and sort Ted's comics. :)

Angie hasn't quite settled on a scholarly path, but is pretty sure she's going towards environmental studies/preservation stuff, which is completely awesome. She's thinking she'll be going to school near Santa Cruz for a while, not that I can remember exactly where, and my goodness, her hair was perfect last night. Completely and utterly teal in this startlingly normal way. I don't think I'd ever seen her hair look quite so much to me like it probably just *grew* that way. And! And she brought me birthday gifts, from a wonderful magnet with a quote that says, "Some people walk in the rain. Others just get wet," which I liked a great deal, to a *ridiculous* pair of bright green frog socks which will desperately disturb Ted every time I wear them, and a lovely Marith scarf which is now adorning my hat, and a birthday card that says, "It's okay to wake up laughing," which I liked a lot. :) I have the coolest friends!

Starling looks woooonderful. Starling also seems to be laboring under the misapprehension that she's a cat, given how much trilling and purripping she did. *giggle*

oh! oh! Skip is in! Yay! He's one of the guys who got laid off last week and I didn't think I'd see him. Oh, good, I'm glad he's here, yay! Ok, now I've completely lost my train of thought, so I'm going to have to write more later. But last night was a lot of fun and I'm really really glad to have seen people. Thanks for coming to dinner with me, guys!

*laugh* Starling took the bill -- actually, they gave us the wrong one to start with, and she and I were staring at it going, "Erm. How can it possibly be only $60?" And after a while we determined it was the wrong one and they brought us the right one, and Starling said, "Ok, everybody can either throw in a $20 or it's $130/7." And there was a sudden *flurry*, as four or five people at once threw twenties onto the table, which made us all laugh a whole lot. Yuppie food stamps! We couldn't have done it that smoothly if we'd tried. :)

Ok, off to coffee now. :)

miles to Lothlorien: 7

I've spent the entire morning looking up fiddly details for this book. Very fiddly details. It was surprisingly hard to come up with a private school for Suzy to go to, but I've accomplished it in a very satisfactory manner. And I don't even have to feel guilty about it, because Barb told me I could work on my book if I needed to. Hah. :)

WHEW. Okay. The rest is putting these details *in*. Noooo prollem.

I'm the only person in the office who thinks it's anything like warm enough to be wearing a tanktop. *snicker* I did bring my jacket with me, because Caltrain is usually cold, but the orofice certainly isn't.

Snif. I got to the theatre too late last night to pick up last-minute tickets for The Lion King. I'm going to cut out of work a little early on Thursday and zoop over and see if I can get a good seat.

However, instead of getting tickets for TLK, what I *did* do was get all of Laura's edits done, and finished up the last of Dad's, except for a few things I'm going to look up and take notes on in a minute here. There are one or two points that both Laura and Dad wanted me to clarify that I haven't done yet 'cause I left to go see if I could get tickets to TLK. And odds are that I won't get 'em done tonight, because I've got to go out to Mountain View and have dinner at Chef Chu's (aww, POOR ME!). So I'll do them in the morning and if I'm up early enough I'll go over to Kinko's and make a disk copy and SEND IT TO NEW YORK AHAHAHAHAH.

ahem.

Otherwise I'll send it Friday morning.

Must go to the post office today and get a box for 1. books and 2. the shaman rattle. Possibly just one box, mind you, but I must do that so I can pack 'em up and send 'em tomorrow and not have to worry about them. The rattle is *so* gorgeous, and I doooooooo not want to trust the airlines with it in any fashion whatsoever.

Okay, work stuff.

Which is to say, I'm posting more about work.

We met with the consultants yesterday, the HTML group did. Barb was VERY down after talking to them, although I was less so, because it sounded pretty clear to me that the new company *doesn't* have people in place to do the job that we do. That may be meaningless, because hey, they might just hire new people to do it, 'cause they obviously want our content and seem to be less interested in *us*, but I prefer to take the more positive point of view. After all, it doesn't hurt to do that.

Rumor has it that the new boss knows that all the uncertainty is morale-busting and that he hopes to announce what'll be happening within a few weeks. In the meantime we're to proceed with business as usual, although *my* boss (not Barb, but Steve, the department head) told one of the engineers that if he were her, he'd be looking for a new job, so there's not a lot of positive feeling going around here.

But hey, I see PangoMedia is hiring. Not for a web person, but sysadminny/hosting stuff that I could almost certainly handle. I'll talk to Geoff and apply, because What The Heck, right?

Um. Hrm. Let's see. What else? I'm sure there's more to say about work, except there really *isn't*. Nobody knows what's going on. Eventually we'll find out. And that's pretty much the long and the short of it.

miles to Lothlorien: 5 (out of 477)

Not dead!

Very bloody sleepy, though. I think I must've walked about 5 miles yesterday, up and down Fisherman's Wharf three times and all around and stuff before and after that.

Dinner with Sarah was fun. We ended up going to the Hard Rock Cafe on the pier, which I don't think was there last time I was, and the food was fine and the company excellent. And then we trundled back down to Ghiradelli Square for ice cream, but you wanna know the truth of the matter? Hot Licks' Prudhoe ice cream and hot fudge and raspberry sauce is unquestionably superior to Ghiradelli's chocolate ice cream hot fudge sundae. Unnnnquestionably. :)

Sarah gave me a perfectly gorgeous shaman's rattle for my birthday. I'll take a picture of it when I get home. It's amazing. Wow. O.O

Work's the same. Nobody knows what's going on and everybody's saying how they don't know what's going on. I want to talk some more about it but I've got to actually do work, of all the silly ideas. Barb and I are working on Q2 stuff and I'm actually learning things, which is nice.

HEY! I made it to Rivendell! *falls right over!*

miles to Rivendell: FOUR HUNDRED FIFTY EIGHT!!!!

Against all odds, we got some work done today. Yay us. :) I was going to set up a remote desktop, but sigh, you have to have the professional version of XP to do that, and I don't have that at home. So tomorrow morning I get to spend a bunch of time setting up Homesite with the right sites and all. Do I know how to have fun, or what? Yah, or what, that's what I thought too.

I'm tired. Which is not really a surprise, given that I got up at about 5:15 my time. I wasn't tired *then*, but I also went to bed very early my time. But! Soon I shall be hanging out with Sarah, and then the tiredness will be gone for a while. I expect to crash hard tonight, though. :)

Let's see. Um. Eh. I'll write more about the work situation tomorrow, I think. We get to meet with the technical consultants they've brought in at 4pm tomorrow; I think I shall not be quite so enthusiastic in showing up at work at, er, 10 to 8 like I did today. o.o And, let's see. *looks around* I guess now I'll go put some sunblock on and put my contacts in (not necessarily in that order) so I can go out into the cruel daylight to catch a bus and find Sarah.

Oh: I must remember to bring my memo...my memory stick. Hrm. *checks the back of the computer* Heh. Ok, I must remember to ask the IT guy to hook me up to the printer, because I got Laura's edits and have no way to get them to ... oh. I could go to a Kinko's and print them out from email there. That's what I'll do.

Wonder where a Kinko's is. *checks the web* The computer I'm on is so old it hasn't got USB ports, just serial ports. Ah, there's a Kinko's at 50 Fremont, south of Market near 1st. I'll go there, mebbe tomorrow morning.

Ok. I'm off.

I'm here! I'm in one piece! I have the smallest hotel room known to man! I mean it, I've never actually seen a hotel room that didn't have a dresser, before. But it does have a very deep tub. Not that I put my clothes in the tub, but you know what I mean.

It appears that using my regular email is going to be way, way too much of a pain. If you want to email me, please use mizkit AT hotmail DOT com, and Laura, I have not received your edits. Possibly the file's too big to go into my mailbox? I'll email you in a minute.

The flight down was very nice, actually. I upgraded to first class and it was probably the most comfortable flight I've ever had. I read 6 books, which is always a plus. :) Oh, and they've finished the BART terminal at SFX, so it was really really easy getting from the airport to my hotel! I was all, "YAY! I can do this Sat--oh. Doesn't start til 6am and my flight's at 7. Damn." Snif. So I'll have to take the shuttle or figure out Caltrain, which is less convenient but cheap. :)

San Francisco is all different! The SKY/GROUND building has been knocked down, and the giant hole in the ground on 4th is now the Moscone West convention center! I was walking to work this morning and I went by the building and I was like, "...hey. That used to be a giant hole in the ground!"

Getting to work was like old home's town with seeing everybody! *laugh* Some people have different hair, other people look exactly the same, everybody's making big buggy eyes as they talk about What's Going On. Not that anybody *knows* what's going on, which is, y'know, most of the reason for the buggy eyes. We had a 90 minute coffee break meeting with Barb this morning and talked about, well, all sorts of things, from the company to gossip to what we were going to do this week, so that was cool. We'll be going out to lunch with everybody, where 'everybody' is, I don't know, HTML and Caia, at least, in a while here. :)

Veronica cleverly set up a remote desktop for her home computer so she can just access it through the desktops they've set up for us here. I might have to call Ted and see if he can do that for me, because it'd be way less of a pain than trying to get this thing configured the way I want it, and I don't have any idea how to do it myself. Next time I come down here (if there is a next time) I'll have to do that preemptively.

I went through a bunch of Dad's edits on the manuscript this morning and have another um 150 or so pages to go, so *almost* done there. And hopefully I'll get Laura's edits. Wretched email.

Uhm. Seeing Sarah tonight! Yay! And, um! That's about it! I'll write more later. :)

miles to Rivendell: 453 (Rivendell in sight now. Looks suspiciously like San Francisco. Who knew?)

I'm basically off to San Francisco at this point, as I doubt I'll be checking my email in the morning. Laura, I didn't get notes, so if you sent them, um, they didn't make it through. I donno why. If you didn't send them, that's why. :) I should have access to my mizkit and cemurphy accounts while I'm gone; if not I'll post a note here and let people know to use a hotmail account.

Uhm. Yeah, that's about it. I'll have net access, obviously, so no doubt you'll hear from me again on Monday.

Buh bai.

Done with Mom's edits. Waiting on Laura's and Dad's, now, and then DONE DONE DONE I'M REALLY DONE. :)

We went to Shrek 2 last night. I think I liked it better than the first one! Puss In Boots was very, very funny. :)

Chiro appointment in a couple of hours, because I know how to have fun before I go to San Francisco. :)

miles to Rivendell: 450

Guh. The trees are apparently having a lot of sex today. I have been sneezing and blowing my nose in such volume that it often feels as if the brain cavity behind my left eye has been emptied out entirely.

I was an utterly lazy bum and didn't do any editing last night, but this morning I got through the first half of Mom's edits and I'll finish this afternoon, because they went blessedly fast. So far everybody's edits are going quickly, which suggests I haven't got too many mistakes. Whew. :)

Guh, my head.

miles to Rivendell: 449

Since we paid off the Jeep, Ted called up our insurance company and took the Acts Of God coverage off it, which will save us approximately a jillion dollars a year. Which is quite a lot! Yay!

There are exciting goings-on at my work. Our parent company merged with another company a couple months ago. People have been laid off. Evidently they're doing one on one meetings next week (while I'm there), and everybody in the office is *incredibly* nervous about it.

I got my batteries for my computer. I also got ... ok, look.

If I say to you, I need a battery charger for a (whatevertheserialnumberis) battery, does that not sound as if I'm looking for a separate unit, the express purpose of which is charging batteries?

Because what Sony sent me is a battery charger which also plugs the computer in. There is no way to charge a battery with it without having the battery in the computer, which is exactly not what I wanted; the whole idea was that I would have a charger so I could charge the battery I wasn't using.

*Furthermore*, this unit DOESN'T EVEN FIT INTO MY COMPUTER. I told the guy very *specifically* what type computer I had, and that it was several years old, and he sent me a unit for a newer model Sony Vaio 505 which has a completely different interface method. YARGH. VERY frustrated! So now I have to send the stupid thing back, because it is in *no way* what I needed. :P

Hm, rejection letter from SCIFICTION, which I expected a couple weeks ago. And Mom's brought by her copy of the manuscript, so I can do those edits tonight. Yay!

And I think that's about all I've got to say now. :)

Didn't get up very early this morning, but got up early enough to put Silkie's edits into the US ms, and the first 5 chapters of Sarah's edits. V. good. Mom says she's got her edits done and I'm going over tonight to steal the manuscript whether Dad likes it or not, because the fewer copies of the bloody ms that I have to bring with me to SF, the better. I would .so. .very. .much. like to get this thing into the mail Saturday night or Sunday morning before I leave for California. (The 24 hour post office next to the airport does make this a more likely possibility than, um, non-24-hour post offices.)

I am so close to finished that I'm just itching with impatience to get people's notes so I can *send* the damned thing and have done with it.

So far my favorite error is one Silkie caught, where Jo goes to get "a glance of water." :)

miles to Rivendell: 448 (10 more!)

Email from Mom:

So I went to Natural Pantry a bit ago to buy some organically-grown produce. A kid of about 19 was the checker. He entered one code from the fruit and the register rejected it. So he said, "What kind of apple is this?"

I said, "That kind of apple is called a tomato." :)

I do wish people would implement the appropriate, non-hacky HTML fix I give them instead of instigating a hack of their own.

Stupid orcs.

I think I'm starting to get over this cold. I'm starting to be able to smell things again, and my cereal had flavor this morning. And I was actively hungry, which I haven't been, although that went away after about five bites of cereal, so go fig.

Ted and I had a very nice evening last night. :) We went out to dinner at Sorrento's, which is a too-expensive Italian place, and then had dessert at Hot Licks, where I ordered a sundae that was MUCH too large. I persevered, though, and managed to eat all the hot fudge, at least. :) (Ted was more restrained and only had a small sundae. But he ate more dinner than I did!) We decided we ought to rent The Rocketeer, The Shadow and The Phantom, only Blockbuster didn't have any of them, so we went and bought them instead. o.o And watched The Rocketeer, because Shaun wasn't home when we got home so we couldn't watch Alias. :) It was very nice!

I am getting notes from people on URBAN SHAMAN. They are very useful detaily notes, just the sorts of things that I need. Yay!

Let's see, what else. Daniel is a bad cat. He knocked the vase of flowers over and spilled water all over the entertainment center yesterday, and this morning there is a kitty paw print in the brownie frosting. Now he and Zilli are in Shaun's tub trying to kill one another, from the sounds of it.

Um, what else. My sister and her family are moving to Montana on the lure of gold (at least in a high concept way), and somebody stole my Dad's bike. And I think I had other things to mention, but I can't remember them right now, so this'll have to do!

miles to Rivendell: 445

Happy anniversary to us! It's 7 years, for goodness sake!

Being done with the book is confusing. I got up around 6:15 this morning and didn't know what to do with myself. (I figured it out; I played City of Heroes for a little while.) My intention is to read some books. Of course, that lead to volunteering to read papersky's book she just finished (she started writing it April 28th and finished this morning!), and I'm reading Sarah's WiP. I'm not *exactly* sure that's what I'd been thinking of when I determined I was going to read some books, but hey. :) And my brain won't let writing go; I more or less woke up thinking about how to rewrite the chapters in Heart of Stone from how they are to how they ought to be. I think I need to give Alban a piece of information he doesn't have yet, because without that piece of information there's no way to move into how it ought to be. I should... *looks around* I should print out what I've got rewritten and look over it, shouldn't I.

I'm rambly. My mind is still in some kind of weird zoned out place that has a lot to do with putting words on a page and not nearly as much to do with reality.

Ted made shrimp & steaks for dinner last night, and Shaun's parents and my parents came over to eat. It was wonderfully good. How spoiled I am. :)

Still so very tired.

Done. My god. So tired, but done.

The manuscript is 442 pages long. I added 31 pages; 12 on this second revision round, and 19 on the first. It is *so* much better than it was before. I am very, very pleased with it. I am very, *very* tired, but I'm very pleased. I feel as if I've accomplished something fairly worthwhile with this book.

I've just done a spellcheck and posted it to half of my test readers, asking them to check it for continuity. I think I've cleaned up all the continuity issues, but I've also read it five times in the last four weeks, so the fresh eyes will almost certainly catch things that I'm too tired/too familiar to see now.

I have caught a cold on top of my allergies, and we're babysitting Emily's cat while she's Outside playing with Common Rotation and UFD (biyatch). The combination of an extra cat, a cold, and the allergies sent me into an asthma attack last night, and I slept for absolute shit. I'm completely exhausted.

But I am .done. with this book. And it's good. And I'm happy about that.

G'night, Gracie.

6 chapters left. One more bit that needs noticeable work. I seem to have added another 11 pages so far on this revision, although I might've miscounted.

6 more chapters. Maybe I'll finish tonight.

miles to Rivendell: 443

--you'll escape in the final reel

I cannot remember the last time I saw a movie I enjoyed as much as Troy. I have gone completely fanboy on this. I will see it again in the theatres at least twice. Possibly more. Very likely this weekend. It was, as I just told Sarah, wonderful, delicious, bronze buff TRAGEDY. Oh. My. God. And then some. My *God*. It was of the we'll sell you the whole seat, but you'll ONLY NEED THE EDGE! ilk. It was AUGH and it was *AUGH* and it was *wonderful* and I would have literally turned around and gone to watch it again immediately after leaving the first showing.

There was no one who wasn't wonderful. Eric Bana as Hector was heartbreaking. Peter O'Toole as Priam was heartbreaking in a different way, and my god, the emotion the man can convey without even changing expression. Orlando Bloom as Paris was nicely craven and went through a believable and necessary character development arc. Brad Pitt was a fantastic, golden, beautiful, arrogant Achilles, and Rose Byrne, whom I've never heard of before, was a truly lovely Briseis and Achilles' ... well. Heel. :)

Every single fight scene had me half hiding my eyes and clapping my hands over my mouth and wailing with dismay. It didn't matter who was fighting and it didn't matter that I knew who was going to die: I *desperately* wanted them to all come out alive, and WAAAUGH! *WAUGH*!

There was more naked Brad Pitt and Dangerously Low Camera Angles than I expected. Like, you kept kind of thinking that if you just sat up a little straighter you'd be able to see further down the screen and ooh la la. There was beefcake all *over* the place. Beautiful, beautiful people in not that many clothes, or in wonderful flowy drapey clothes on men, very different from what we're used to, *very* sexy, and this movie had I think the hands-down most erotic seduction scene I've ever seen. My God. There were all these nervous high-pitched titters from the women in the audience. My *God*. O.O

I really, *really* liked this movie. o.o It would be too icky for my mommy and daddy to go see, because there's a lot of quite horrible war scenes, but the *story*, my God, the story. *swoon*!

Congratulations to TRIP, who has recieved his VERY FIRST rejection letter! Trip is Officially And Without A Doubt A Real Writer now! Yay Trip! *laugh* *hugs*!

I am reviewed! And it went very well. At work, I mean. So good, that wasn't too traumatizing or anything. :)

*jitters around* Jit jit jit!

Laptop dithering has ended. The sheet batteries do not work for Little. Cleverly, I called Sony and asked *them* if they had a battery charger for the batteries that *will* work for her, and they did. So I ordered one. And then I ordered two more batteries, a small and a large, and it cost $200 less than the sheet battery and feels entirely justifiable.

Besides, it's a writeoff. :)

Today, we have laptop dithering.

I am going to need to bring my laptop with me to SF to work on this book. I've got 6 or something hours of flight time both ways which I could use to work on the book, but I have about 6 minutes worth of battery for Little, which is my 5 year old Sony Vaio laptop.

I can't find battery chargers for the smaller Vaio batteries that Little uses. This means I need to either suck up the fact that I'm going to have to buy a heavier, longer lasting battery that can be recharged while Little's plugged in (which I don't want to do, because the larger batteries prop the computer up and change the angle of the keyboard, and I'm *used* to Little as she is) or a smaller one like she's got now which only holds 2 hours of charge. There's no point in buying more than one of either of those, because I can't find chargers for them, and it's bad for batteries to just hang out unused and uncharged.

I've found 7 and 10 hour sheet batteries which would certainly add to Little's weight (she weighs less than 3 pounds), but would provide all the power I needed for flights and stuff. They have their own AC adapters, so I could also get a small battery like she's got now, and all would be well. Except the sheet batteries say they're good for the whole 505 series, but my specific 505 isn't listed, so I'm dubious. I have a phone number and I'll call in a few minutes.

The thing about those is that they cost between three and four hundred dollars, which is a third of the cost of the original computer, and if I also got a second smaller battery (which I would), we're looking at a third to half the price of a *new* laptop.

*Dither*.

In Little's favor are the facts that I cannot buy another computer like her. Little is the most scaled-back laptop I've ever seen. She has no CD/DVD-ROM, no disk drive, no internet connection. She weighs, with her battery, 2.7 pounds. She has 6 gigs of memory, which is way the hell more than I'm ever going to need; I use her for writing. Period. End of sentence. She's a wonderful little computer and she has none of the temptations that a newer model would have. I really *really* love this computer. Presumably with another long-life battery, I could get at least another 5 years worth of work out of her; the only thing I might need to upgrade would be the Word version I use on her.

In the corner against her, she is five years old, and it'll probably just get harder to find power sources for her. But...that's really the only down side.

I guess I'll go call and see if this sheet battery will work with her, and then I'll...dither some more. o.o

Today, Ted and I went over to the credit union and PAID OFF THE JEEP! This is PRETTY EXCITING, if you ask me! YAAAAAAAY! One loan down! Four to go! WOOT!

Also we went and bought second season Alias and watched the first episode. :)

Oh! And I finished the on-paper 2nd revisions for US. Started putting 'em into the computer. With luck I'll be done by Monday morning and can send 'em out to get people to read for continuity/clarity, although... man. There's no way I'm lugging three copies of the manuscript with me to San Francisco. I may have to ask people to write their notes on a separate page, or something, so that I can bring those with me instead. Busy busy busy!

miles to Rivendell: 441

*Grntlglghtggggh* I just spent the last hour chasing stupid, stupid Zilli all over the back yard. He got out when I put the stupid dog out and she ran around like an idiot and the cats ran out. *Grhglglhgg*

40 pages left on US. I keep waking up all wide awake at 5:30 and not getting up, which is, of course, foolish, because then I don't want to get up until like 8. If I wake up at 5:30 tomorrow I shall endeavor to get up.

Um! No real news today! ('cause, you know, usually what I have to say is earth-shattering in its importance.) We watched the last 3 episodes of season 1 Alias last night and spent most of it going, "AUGH! DOOM! Doom on a STICK!" which was pretty entertaining, and then we were obliged to go to Hot Licks for dessert. :) Yep, that's about it!

miles to Rivendell: 439

!

I fit into all my size 14 jeans! All 3 pair!

!!!

I love the internet sooooo much. Jo drives a 1969 Mustang, and what I don't know about them fills volumes. So I went and found a 1969 Mustangs site and put a bunch of questions to them on the forums, and despite me being VERY NERVOUS about doing this (I'm not sure why) someone answered with all the answers I needed, plus *pictures*, and told me if I had more questions to go right ahead and ask. *foolish grin*

130 pages left to go on the re-edit. Is it a good or a bad sign that I don't hate the book? I'm a little tired of it, but there are parts that still make me laugh. I've had another couple of epiphanies about how to flesh things out and bring them around (causing me to write notes like, "CATIE, YOU IDIOT, USE THIS AT THE END" on the manuscript), and I just went through a bit that I remember distinctly thinking, "Ok, I'm too tired of this section to do it now, but I need to delve into stuff a little more deeply right here," but now I don't know what I was going to do. Damn. Maybe when I move to pixels I'll figure it out. I'm going to try to finish the paper edits tonight so I can work on moving them to the computer and have this done by Sunday, and then I'm going to make Another Printout and give it to Mom and Dad and Ted (and if Sarah and Silkie and Stella wanna read, lemme know) to read for inconsistencies. If they find many, I will probably end up taking the whole smegging manuscript with me to San Francisco, 'cause it's supposed to be back in NY by June 1 and I'll need to work on it while I'm Outside. If they do not, with any luck I'll just send it off on the 21st and not worry about it anymore. I hope. :)

miles to Rivendell: 437

Oh my, oh my. Shaun's daddy just called to tell us that he's sending a package of fresh frozen cod up to us, and he threatens that the next package will be *swoon* king crab. We've still got--scallops? I can't remember. No, shrimp! Frozen in the stand-up (as I call it) freezer. Hm, if the weather gets nicer this weekend maybe I can talk Ted into grilling a bunch of shrimp. I believe Shaun's parents'll be here, and my parents, and Emily's in town, and we can get Coby to come over... we could have a regular little party of it! MmmMMMMmmmm.

current mood: avaricious
music: Jim Byrnes, Fresh Horses
miles to Rivendell: 436

It is cooooold and nasty out, and yet I'm in quite a good mood. I have a Whole Bunch of work to get done today, so expect it to be generally pretty quiet on the western front, but I thought I'd at least post to say I'm alive.

It's AAAALIIIIIIIIIIVE!

I liked Van Helsing better the second time, but then, I thought I would. :)

*So* sleepy. Donno why exactly. Just am.

Stupid allergies are kicking my butt. Not sleeping particularly well, which, y'know, probably has something to do with the so-sleepiness. o.o I've got Allegra, which is helping, but I'm still feeling snorfly. Stupid allergies.

Mom and Dad came over for dinner last night, for Mother's Day, and Ted made a completely astounding rockfish 'in paper', which is basically a light poach with onions and garlic and fennel and some lemon juice and put it all on top of parmesan risotto, and it was *incredibly* good. *Insanely* good. And I made a lemon cake that turned out very nicely. :)

Other than that, yesterday was the Day Of Housecleaning. That's really about all we did. Not very exciting, but the downstairs looksmuch, much nicer.

Maybe it's partly the Allegra making me so sleepy? Or maybe I'm just lazy and tired. I did a final editing pass on the first 100 pages of US this morning. I'd like to get through page 200 tonight.

miles to Rivendell: 435

You know how Highlander IV was a surprisingly good movie until about the final third, where it all inexplicably fell apart? Well, probably not, because I think I was one of the six people in the world who saw it, but nevermind that. The theatre release (I haven't seen the director's cut) just dissolved into a total lack of a story in the last act.

Van Helsing was like that, except exactly the other way around. It was unmitigatingly awful and then somehow pulled it all together for a startlingly good final act. I spent a serious chunk of the movie thinking, "Man, this is the worst movie I've seen in a *long* time," and by the time it was over I was thinking, "OK, I'd probably go see that again."

Now, I went in expecting it to be terrible. Enjoyable but terrible. I loved the opening sequence (which was not separated from the rest of the film by the credits; there were no credits for the movie until the end. A good thought, I think.), which was filmed in black and white and which was melodramatic and over the top and quite wonderful 50s horror pastiche.

Unfortunately, at least for me, most of the characters continued in the melodramatic over-the-top horror pastiche vein, and while I like a good melodrama as much as any theatre geek, it was all A Little Too Much.

And then the end totally pulled together. I don't know if I suddenly got used to it or if it got toned down, but with the exception of one shot near the very end that I found actively offensive, the last thirty minutes of the movie completely rocked.

There were *many* moments of quite wonderful special effects. The Brides were great. The Frankenstein Monster was not only well done in SFX terms, but was heartbreaking in characterization. Very, *very* nicely done. Van Helsing was pretty damned entertaining with his smart-ass dry wit, and the guy who played the sidekick whose name I don't know (but he was Faromir in LotR) was terribly cute. Kate Beckinsdale was awful, and for anybody who's keeping track, Selene would totally kick Anna's ass. :)

But I've got a date with Deen on Monday to go see it again, and I'm kind of looking forward to it. :)

Ok, time to print out US.

miles to Rivendell: 433

I will be in San Francisco from May 24th to May 28th. I intend to have dinner, probably on the 26th, at Chef Chu's. Would anyone care to join me? :)

The roofing guys are listening to a modern rock station today instead of the 80s station. Now I'm listening to them hammer with the beat to Britney Spears' Toxic. :)

I am glad I have a chiro appointment in half an hour. I donno if I've overdone it (well, apparently I have) or if it's just that any sort of regular exercise makes my back slide out of place, but I'm going to get it fixed so I don't end up crippled for ten days again. Stupid back.

I just realized I get to update my wordcount. Yay! 1/3rd 'edit credit' for the revisions.

Soooo sleepy!

ytd wordcount: 170,600 (WOOT!)

DONE! Done done done done DONE! DONE!

Except for all the little stuff I want to go back through and make sure of, of course. But the major job is DONE! 430 pages, which is +19 from the original, and DONE! Did I mention DONE?!

Just two chapters left! If I get up in the morning like a good Kit, I'll be done before work! Yay!

Watched two more episodes of Alias. Dat am a good show. And the boys are playing CoH, but I'm going to be sensible and go to bed as soon as I'm done writing this entry. *yawn*

I biked 7.5 miles tonight and made a chiro appointment for tomorrow. I don't think I've overdone it, exactly, but my back's feeling thick and that's usually a precursor to worse things, so I shall nip it in the bud so I can continue exercising. *yawn* Yah, I need sleep now. *yawn*

Um. Night, then.

miles to Rivendell: 432
ytd miles biked: 83.2

*laugh* The roofing guys just came back from lunch and turned on their stereo again. It drowned out mine (which is pretty lame, given that mine's 5 feet from me and theirs is a hundred). I got up grumpily to slam the window shut, and found that I'd stood up just in time to watch one of the roofing guys pull his shingle-removing shovel up at a dramatic angle, as if it were a woman he was dancing with, and to take a slinking tango step with it across the battered shingles. The second visible roofing guy, who is wearing a grubby grey sweatshirt and a very red bandana headband, performed an arabesque with his shovel a moment later.

Now how can I stay grumpy at that? *beam*

Oh my. The house next door is being re-roofed. The roofers must all be in their thirties, because they're playing "Carry On My Wayward Son" full blast on the stereo they brought with them. I'm thinkin' I'm gonna be getting a week worth of 80s music pumped through my window.

Could be worse. :)

It's definetely summer. I can tell, 'cause I have a sunburn. :) I bought sunblock last night. o.o

Got another chapter of US revised last night, and watched two whole episodes of Highlander. Ones I hadn't seen, in fact, so that was cool. And biked and walked the dog and stuff. Twas a good day. And, oh, we picked Mom and Dad up from the airport, so they are arrived home all safely, and all is well. :) And oh, again! Shaun got his computer working. When I went to bed at midnight-thirty he was sixth level. Geek. :)

The leaves are greening. Yay! *beam*

music: Jim Byrnes, Fresh Horses
miles to Rivendell: 431
ytd miles biked: 75.7

Oranges: good. Mint-flavored dental floss: good. Oranges followed by a mint-flavored dental floss chaser: bad. o.O

Making an excellent case for myself, I managed to do this project I've been farting around on for a month in about 4 hours this morning. Of course, there are at least two more projects I've been dinking around not doing, and they're both bigger than the one I finished, so while on one hand, woot! go me!, on the other, not done yet.

Poor Shaun is having computer hell. He bought a new computer so he could play City of Heroes, but it turns out he needs a new graphics card for the new computer. Wah. Stupid computers. :(

Today, meantime, is one of Ted's 5am to 11am shifts. I will note that it's now 20 to 1, and he's not home from work yet. Since his 5am-1pm shifts have been running to 2 or 3pm, I'm guessing it'll be another half hour, possibly considerably more, before he makes it home. Snif!

Hey, apparently we set a record high yesterday, 66 degrees! Woot! :)

Ok, there's the work email I was waiting for. Back to the grindstone. WHCHA!

I'm fed up with my ability to screw around all day and not accomplish any of my actual work. Because I seem to lack the discipline to be logged on to my social mu*s and work at the same time, starting immediately I will not be logging in to Too until I've finished my work for the day. This has been a public service announcement.

A couple of days ago Ted, who was wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, turned on the back porch light, only it didn't turn on, so he thumped the wall and it clicked on. He whipped around, did a thumbs-up, and a Fonzie, "Yeeeaaaah!" which made Shaun and I laugh so hard we nearly cried. *laugh* Funny, *funny* Ted. :)

Last night's walk was bloody gorgeous. It was actively warm out and there were zillions of people out, and I saw a woman with hair like mine. I said to her, "I like your hair!" and lifted my hat off my head so she could see mine, too, and she said, "Thanks!" and then she laughed a lot. :) Her bleach job was better than mine, though; it's a nicer, paler color.

We seem to have mice in the garage. Shaun went on a cleaning frenzy yesterday and plans to do more today, and then we're setting Lucy loose on 'em. Why have cats and bark yourself? Erm. You know what I mean. o.o And speaking of Shaun's cleaning frenzy, he hath raked up the entire back yard and trimmed the wildly flowering (not yet; last year) Pink Trees and it all looks quite wonderful. Then he cleaned the kitchen, including the microwave, which was really disgusting. I told him we're going to have to keep him. He said, "Thank GOD!" *laugh*

I'm in a pretty good mood this morning. :) I think I've got to get Ted to start leaving the bedroom door open when he leaves at 4:30 in the morning, because the damned room is so warm during the summer that the weight of heat pins me down and I don't get up. In other words, there was no writing this morning. I did finish last night's edits, though, so I've only got 5 chapters left. Yay!

I got a lot of the stuff on my to-do list done yesterday. Not, mind you, the thing that prompted it... *goes to email that guy* There, that's done. And I forgot to do laundry, so I need to start that, and I don't know where the vacuum went so I can't vacuum the upstairs. But overall it was pretty productive.

Ok, to work now.

miles to Rivendell: 429

Waugh. The problem with getting up at a reasonable hour, where 'reasonable' is used in a way that I find alien and abhorrent, because it means 'at 6:15 in the morning', is that by 11:30 I'm quite sure it should be about 1pm, and I'm damned well ready for the day to be done. The work part of the day, anyway. It's *beautiful* out. I want to go *play*.

current mood: whiny

Meet Risqe.

Natural scrapper (ie, human martial artist). She's as close to Chance as I could make on CoH. :)

Erm. Um. V. small brain right now, for no real reason. *stares around* *laugh* Neither Ted nor Shaun noticed my new hair until they saw the picture on the website. Well, Ted sort of did, but he only had about 3 hours of sleep, and when he came home from a like 10 hour day at work he stood there and froooowwwned at my head in great uncertainty, and opted not to say anything. Shaun just plain didn't notice. *laugh*

Got up early enough this morgle to get a couple more chapters edited, yay me. I think when I reprint this thing I'm going to start my last set of edits with the second half of the book, 'cause my brain is usually gooey by the time I get that far.

We went and deposited my advance check yesterday. The teller had to go get her supervisor's approval. (Ted, who was very tired, was somewhat annoyed by this: "It's from Chase Bank, for God's sake. In New York. What, hasn't she heard of it?" I, on the other hand, thought it was kind of cool. :)) And then we went and bought me a new graphics card and City of Heroes. *laugh* Dooooom! :)

Um um um. I need to email the business card guy about the cards and see what's up with them. Perhaps I need a to do list for the day.

thinks to do:

1. make bread
2. clean kitty litter
3. laundry
4. vacuum upstairs
5. finish editing 23-25
6. walk the dorgy
7. maybe go for a bike ride
8. maybe make cookies

miles to Rivendell: 427
ytd miles biked: 69.5

Speaking of my pudgy self, I couldn't stand it anymore and rebleached my hair:

The disadvantage to the hotel stay was that there were a zillion mirrors in the room (ok, 3) and I couldn't do much of anything without having my pudgy self reflected back at me. I'm certainly feeling inspired to go to the gym now, at least. :P I have felt >< far from cutting my hair all weekend, but it's not my hair I'm unhappy with, it's my weight. Stupid brain.

Got up late this morning and only got half a chapter revised, so I'll have to work on that tonight. Um, let's see, don't let me forget that Michele Hauf's Luna chat is tonight at 4!

It was an insanely productive weekend. Furthermore, at the end of the insanely productive weekend, I came home to a check from the Donald Maass Agency for more money than I have ever actually seen before at one time in my whole life, so I am *vastly* rewarded for hieing my ass off to a hotel and putting in some 20 hours of editing work over a 41 hour period of time.

This was, in short, a Damned Good Idea.

In longer, Ted and I went to see Laws of Attraction on Friday night. This may be the first movie I've ever actually liked Pierce Brosnan in. It was very cute. After the movie, Ted dropped me off at the hotel, where I ordered room service soup and salad and went to work. Room service was the way of the weekend; it was simply the most efficient way to feed myself. The whole idea was that I was there to work, not spend time in the overpriced hotel restaurant. Worked, too.

I did a second read-through of the whole book on Friday night and Saturday morning, doing more edits. I found a rather significant continuity error that nobody'd caught. I went GACK. The second read-through took about 5 hours, not including the walk and the nap I took during it. :) (Apparently I got up too early Saturday morning.) At 1pm Saturday, I broke the book down into 5 chapter chunks and started revising.

By 2pm this afternoon I'd completed 2/3rds of the revisions, added about 15 pages, observed things that I still had to fix but no longer had enough brain to, and was on my way home. I was going to do one more section this afternoon, but after vacuuming, playing City of Heroes, removing the virus from my computer, making dinner, riding my bike, walking the dog, watching Law & Order and picking up dog poop as ways to avoid doing any more editing, I decided I probably wasn't going to do any more work and that that was okay. :)

It was a good weekend. I'm *really* glad I did this; it really was exactly what I needed. I brought a book with me, but I didn't read any of it. All I did all weekend was write. Well, and eat and sleep and go on a couple of walks, but mostly I wrote. :)

If I get up in the morning and work on it for the next couple days, and spend a couple hours in the afternoons working, I should be done with the major revisions by Tuesday afternoon. Then I'm going to print it out AGAIN and do ANOTHER edit, fixing the stuff that I currently am aware needs fixing but I have too little brain to deal with, and then...

Then I shall print it out YET AGAIN and give a copy to my mom to see if she'll read it for continuity, and I'll probably ask Sarah and Silkie to do that too, and ... then I'll be done. *tud* The goal is to be done by the 15th. Yep. That's the goal. o.o

It was a good weekend. :)

ytd miles biked: 64.5
miles to Rivendell: 426
ytd wordcount: I'll let you know when the revisions are done.