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easter holidays
Indy’s on Easter holidays, which is 2 weeks off, and I’ve basically been convinced it’s the weekend since the 8th of April.
Strangely enough, it has not been the weekend since the 8th of April, which has led to some deep confusion on my part. I suppose I’ll get back in the swing of things when school starts up again, but this bodes ill for my brain over summer vacation.
We went down to Fota Island for a day, and I took some pictures.
Indy was thrilled beyond comprehension to see REAL! CHEETAHS!
He raced the cheetah. The cheetah chased him, in a desultory fashion. :)
Just some pretty flowers.
The white-handed gibbons were in fine form, giving out to one another…
…singing…
…and playing…
Indy making a wish at the wishing well. (He wished Fota Island would have 130 cheetahs. They apparently ALREADY have THIRTY-NINE!)
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holiday coloring
I did a little coloring whilst in Amurrica. I might’ve done more, except the next few pages I can do with crayons and I didn’t have any. (More accurately, I only had access to 24, which is totally not enough. Also I screwed up and didn’t put a color-catcher page between two of the pages so I need to see if I can erase the colored pencil shadows that got pressed through onto what’s supposed to be my next page to color.)
(Other people don’t worry about things like this, do they? Oh well.)
Indy: How come you didn’t color the lady?
Me: I did. She’s just really really pale.
Indy: *looks so dubious*
There are like…four versions of the swooping off with Leetah scene in this coloring book. I mean, okay, one is Leetah saving Dewshine from the zwoot & her and Cutter being all sexytimes above it, so it’s not exactly the same, but it’s damn close, and then there’s this one and there’s another one with Cutter snatching Leetah & breaking Rayek’s spear and then there’s a THIRD that’s a simplified version of the scene/emotional content that was done for a potential, not-using-the-book-art coloring book that never happened, and honestly, one of those would have been enough. It’s a like 32 page coloring book, it really didn’t need four versions of that scene. Or two. Especially when I can think of dozens and dozens of frames I’d have loved to have seen in the coloring book.
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Stranger in a Strange Land
We’re on holiday in America. Flew to Michigan, then drove to North Carolina. The first night in the RV, we stayed at one of those RV campground type places that feature heavily in horror movies. Obviously we survived, but Ted and I kind of went O.O at each other. Also I flooded the back of the RV by over-flushing the toilet! Go me!
But fireflies! I’ve finally seen fireflies! They’re goddamn magical, OMG. Wow. Wow. SO COOL! Also cardinals and bluebirds! I’d never seen them before! (My high school was the Kenai Kardinals. I honestly thought ‘cardinal’ was spelled with a K until I was about 20, and spent a fair number of years wondering why the cardinals in Pamela Dean’s Secret Country books were mis-spelled. #blush)
Thunderstorm along with the first fireflies, too. Lightning in the background, flashing purple against the clouds, with golden lightning bugs scattered thru the trees in the foreground. So beautiful. I wish I had the photographic skills to have captured the imagery.
Driving through MI, there are all these great little red-winged blackbirds all over the place. Very crisp coloring. “They look like little fascists!” said Ted.
“Well-dressed ones,” I said.
“Aren’t they all?” Ted asked.
Me: JESUS CHRIST GAS IS 2.49 A LITRE WHAT THE HELoh that’s a gallon JESUS CHRIST GAS IS 2.49 A GALLON WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY
Also me: oh 57km to Madison oh that’s not ba–oh wait that’s miles i really don’t belong to this country anymore
Northern Tennessee, I guess. Driving thru soft misty green rolling hills. Strikes me that maybe I’m sposd to see them as mountains & that we’ve reached the Appalachians. (TBF, they were probably the Appalachian foothills, as the Appalachians proper are somewhat more mountain-like. Wee soft things, but still, pretty definitely mountains.)
Americans are so…American. So friendly. Much smiles. I’d forgotten how when you’re on a walk most of the drivers will wave at you as you go by.
And the food. Weird goddamn flavorless anemic American butter. Weird goddamn cloying corn syrup American Pepsi. O blessed American root beer. O god, the land of 40oz “medium” drinks, wth, America.
Everybody in NC: OMG YOU SO PINK YOU BURNING
Me: I’m fine, I’m sunscreened, I just turn hot pink in the heat.
(I am tanning, though. For my value of tanning.)I don’t want to live in the hills of North Carolina myself, but I can understand why people do. None of it’s anything like Alaska, not really, but it reminds me of home in its way, and it’s beautiful. I’d be really happy to come out here for a month or so to write and let Indy run around in the sunshine.
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many days at once
I had a rather good dream that had the bones of a MG/YA thing, in which there was a (difficult to access) window that led to another time period, and in which Amanda Palmer was the rather alarming Queen of Faerie. The sort you don’t mess with. I can’t, of course, remember any details, which makes me wonder once again if one could achieve dream recollection through hypnosis…
We arrived safely in America, after the excitement of discovering, the night before we left, that my US passport had expired five days previously. Fortunately, the nice US embassy man at Heathrow arranged to extend it through the 11th, and suggested I wait until I get back to Ireland to get a new one. :)
On the plane from Dublin to Heathrow, the man sitting next to me was reading
/Kate Elliott’s COLD STEEL, which made me squeal, “Kate is a friend of mine!” in pure giddy delight. :) Then at WH Smith in Heathrow I saw a familiar face and gave a decisively friendly, “Hey, mate, how are you!” kind of nod before realising the face belonged to Martin Hayes, world famous fiddler, who presumably has absolutely no idea why I nodded at him like we were old friends. :)
I spent quite a while raking leaves yesterrday, and silently apologising to the trees for messing up their patterns, a peculiarity I have had most of my life and for which I blame Diane Duane. Those of you who know why will understand. :)
Let’s see. I’ve got a bunch of Recent Reads I should write up, but just in case I don’t let me like picoreview them here:
KING KHAN, by Harry Connolly: I think this is far and away the best of the Spirit of the Century novels I read. I thought Harry really nailed the outrageous leaps from one pulpy set piece to another, while putting together a story that could *only* work in pulp fiction. Also, the in-jokes and nods to various names and creations were just terrific, so my hat is off to Harry.
And since I’m mentioning him anyway, his Kickstarter has 6 days left and has just hit $35K. I have hopes of seeing it hit $40K, for the delight of seeing Harry’s head explode. Again. :)
THE DEAD GIRLS’ DANCE, Rachel Caine: I’m more than a little late to the Morganville Vampires books, what with there being like 15 of them out now, but they’re really entertaining YA urban fantasy. The lead is a precocious 16 year old who’s gone to college early, only to find the school she’s been accepted to is in the heart of a vampire-owned town. Things pretty well go to hell, and they’re fun reads.
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words, glorious words
The Tesla Museum crowdfund broke a million dollars yesterday. Everything they make above and beyond money to purchase the land will go to preparing the land, building the museum–however far the money will take them, that’s how far they’ll go. Me, I’m hoping it hits $2.5m.
Yesterday or the day before I said to Ted that I was having a strange experience writing this novel: I keep feeling like I want to go *read* and find out what happens next, rather than writing it to find out what happens next. I’ve never had that particular mindset before. V. strange. I guess I want to find out what happens. :)
Today we did nothing in particular, because we needed to shop for food. That took up the morning, and the afternoons are just too damned hot to think. So I’ve been writing all day, and if I can convince myself to stop dorking around writing a blog post I’ll maybe finish this last chapter before bed.
(moments later): feck it. That’s a chapter end. It may not be the right one, and the chapter is short, but it works because it gives me a launch point for the morning’s writing. If there’s a better chapter end I’ll find it tomorrow. A 7K day is enough. Especially when I’m melting.
25418 / 70000 words. 36% done!
