Drops of Silver

I have figured out how to set up the perfect set of nested playlists on this randomly acquired, totally free, second hand iPod. I am a fucking genius. At least I think I have figured out the playlist setting up of.  I haven't transferred the music to the iPod yet so I can test it.

I only figured out with much frustration after several hours how to delete the music from the previous owner. I'm still getting all the importing the music from the stack of CDs I have, which were also randomly acquired second hand and free. Cheap at twice the price.

First, there is the master "Massage Music" playlist. Which you can put on shuffle and get all the different styles of relaxing music. Then from that playlist there will be the option to choose differently sub-genres such as classical, nature sounds, Native American, Enya, guitar, piano, and so on. Each of those can be put on shuffle. And lastly there is the option from each playlist to put a specific album on shuffle.

I rule. Though I have no Nelly Furtado music.
That makes me sad. But not too sad. Just a bit sad.

Also...

HOLY BALLS! This iPod nano is still going for forty bucks on Amazon. And that's the cheapest price! I'm glad I didn't know that before now or I might have sold it and not had a nifty little 4GB music maker for my massage music at my awesome new job. Though I doubt I could really get $40 for it, it's all scratched up. 

Insomnia can lead you to read books. I didn't sleep at all last night.

At the Massage Envy where I used to work, we had a break room. In this break room was a small collection of books and magazines. Most of the books were reference materials, pertaining to things massage therapists might need to look up, the better to formulate a treatment plan for their client.

Also, there was this book. "The End of Eve" - A Memoir by Ariel Gore. It showed up on the break room table one day, nobody knew who left it there. It was published in 2014. But I don't remember precisely when it showed up on the table. Our break room table was not that big, so the book got stuffed in with the reference books. 

Not this Eve.

Nobody ever did anything with it. It just sat there in the break room, hanging out with the reference books. A few times over the year and a some months it sat there, I considered reading it and picked it up and read (and reread) that it was about a the last days of a slightly crazy woman dying from cancer. Okay, more than slightly crazy. The author, her daughter, doesn't really go into the rest of her mother's life in great detail. 

So I would remember that I didn't want to read this book and I'd put it down again, back with the pathology reference book and the trigger point chart. On my last day of work there, at the Massage Envy in Algonquin (in November 2015) I just appropriated the book and took it home with me.

The book itself, as just a book, is slightly intriguing. It has a sticker on it. It says "in lieu of galley". I don't know what that means. It's also been read by someone, because it has sporadic underlining. But the underlining doesn't seem to have any reason behind it. The underlined bits don't really seem connected to each other and don't appear significant in any way to me. But I guess they must have been to who ever read this first.

Ah. I looked up "in lieu of galley". If you submit a book for review somewhere and send the actual finished book instead of a bound manuscript or a galley proof, you put that sticker on it. 

There's an inscription in the front. It's difficult to read, the handwriting looks rushed. It sort of looks like it says, "Dear June - Jan. 28 or feb 11 rebs!" with an unreadable scribble of a name (I'm assuming) below that. I have no idea what that means. I don't think the name is the author. The first letter of the name looks the same as the "D" in what I think is "Dear".

It was an interesting book, not a hefty read. But odd, very odd. I'm not reviewing the book. I'm not coherent enough to do that, given my insomnia of the past few days and my raging writers block. Also, I'm not really sure how to review books in the manner that people who know how to do these things do these things. I'm also not good at synopsisizing or summarizing or anything that needs to be concise yet informative.

  ___________________________________________________

I still have fucking writer's block and I'm damn sick of it. It's making me crazy. I miss my characters but they won't come out and play with me.

Copyright Sathis Ragavendran

Baltic Amber Cognac Necklace

These two things will make more sense later. Trust me.

I'm going to the Friday morning MA class. Hopefully that will wear me out enough to sleep. Also, I just need more than two classes a week if I'm going to show any improvement. I was supposed to be on call for the chiropractor on Fridays, but he hasn't texted me or called me in over a month. I'm not sure if I even work there anymore. I'm going to have to deal with that soon because I'll need my 1099 for filing our taxes and also I have some supplies there that I paid for.

I'm going to class. It's at nine am I think and it's a two hour class. That should work.

_________________________________________________

Or perhaps not. I was sitting here, having a snack before class so I wouldn't faint and I'm crashing. I doubt I'd be able to get up to the dojo without having to pull over. No class for me.

Write, edit, rewrite: that's how the story goes.

Do you ever have the nagging feeling you're supposed to be somewhere?

It's nine am and I'm not at work, at the Massage Envy Spa at which I was employed. Barring holidays, I have worked 9am -2pm for two years.

So, I finished NaNoWriMo. I won! That just means I successfully completed the 50,000 word goal. Printed out it's 100 pages, plus a few hand-written pages I haven't gotten to yet because I've been working on the map of my world and the life timelines for the three major characters to show major life events and intersection points.

I need the map to show nexus power points, rivers, boundary lines for the various barons' territories, etc. Helps me plot who did what, where, and why. Just drawing the map has helped me with the political plot line (as opposed to the romantic plot line, which intersects at various points), because that was very weak. Basically it was, "The duke tries to take over because reasons." Now the dukes plans have been going on for awhile

I have this nagging twitch that I should actually be at the computer starting my first rewrite, but these timelines and maps are important. In fact I keep jumping up from writing this update so I can fix something I just thought of. I need to firmly establish dates and places so I don't confuse myself. I need to know exactly when events happened so I don't have a, "Hey, earlier they said they didn't meet until a year ago, now it's two years?" I don't like when that happens. Sort of pulls you out of the world of story.

Oh and family trees for the three major characters and the three strongest supporting characters. And I still need to work on the history timeline of the realm, that's important too. When the historical invasions, wars, and peace treaties happened, when major cities were established, when the major keeps and castles were built. Also when the magisters guild was established.

So I am working on the story. These will all help me do the rewrite much more quickly, being able to reference a timeline instead of digging through pages of notes.

Now I'm going up to town to see about possibly having my rough draft bound, maybe spiral bound, so it will be easier to type from.

I'm really doing this. I really am writing a book.

I'm going to have a busy rest of my life.

Novel ideas:

·        Space Station Kittinger: A space station! Ooh! Maybe the station is a mining operation on an asteroid or near an asteroid belt, maybe the station is a preliminary construction for a mining operation on a planet, maybe for terra-forming. The station and transports are run by the evolved Earth planetary military, a combination of army, navy, and air force. This is because the training, discipline, and drive are the highest quality. The station is funded by a corporation. No, not a stereotypical greedy corporation, a perfectly nice one. This is a fiction in itself, I know. Shut up. One of the main characters is Zee, the red-headed running woman. She’s the station massage therapist, yes this is what I do for a living, but you should write what you know and after doing this for three years I really think a massage therapist should be included on the staff of these expeditions. She’d be trained in other areas of course, definitely medical emergency training, maybe in physical therapy too, or counseling. She’d have unarmed combat training required. Side note: I’ve decided that since running and pushing yourself past comfortable limits will be a theme in this book, I have to take up running myself. I have to know how it feels from the inside. Sigh, okay now that I’ve said it out loud I have to do it. No excuses. No, I probably won’t be running any marathons, except for maybe the Dirty Girl Mud Run, because damn that looks fun. 

·        One hundred and seven years into our future. Because I had to pick a number. A new, habitable world is found in another galaxy. There has been one small advanced survey team to the planet to observe it for two years from space, with short ground trips of two weeks in many different areas. They’ve also observed the surrounding space to check for “neighbors.” Now, we’re sending a settlement ship. We’ve discovered an engine drive that can get us there, near light speed, or fusion drive, or what have you (note to self: long consult with JB required), in thirteen years. The ship will be maintained by a crew and a second “crew” of children to be raised in space so that when they reach the planet they’ll be around ten. Main character is an older woman. She’s had her own family (three grown children and four grandchildren). She’s an anthropologist, an expert in all those things people had to do before technology. She’s also level-headed, rational, kind, patient, determined, curious…if we have a mystery? She’ll solve it or find a person who can help her solve it. Jim…I’m naming the ship’s computer after you.  Be prepared.

·        Fantasy novel. Dragons. Not your ordinary dragon kind. This one is hard to synopsisize (spell-check is telling me that’s not a word, I say it is now)…there’s so much in my head about it, so much of the beginning of the story already it’s interfering with trying to describe it in general terms. There’s dragon kind (which I will come up with an alternate but similar word for, in their own language…or maybe I’ll just take the easy route and use Latin) and they have three forms. Their dragon form, a humanoid form, and a third in between form. There are humans that inhabit this world too, but they have very little contact with the dragons because that’s the way the dragons want it. In the recent (for the dragons, maybe 200 years prior) past they’d had more contact, but not now. The dragons are an ancient race (of course). Events occur that bring the two races back together. It will be very involved and probably take me several years to finish.

 
 

Richard Feynman: Dimensional Awesomeness

          Scifi/fantasy mashup, dimension crossover. A wizard (sorcerer, what have you, but not an ordinary sorcerer…I’m basing him on Richard Feynman…so there…there will be awesome near-science stuff involved!) casts a spell to bring an answer to a group of people in desperate straits because of the villain. The answer is a person, a woman snatched from another dimension. She is not what they expected. Adventures ensue. Strengths will be found, battles will happen, love occurs, respect is earned on all sides, etc.

Neither here nor there and yet everywhere.

Last night I dreamed a stranger (a person unknown to me in real life) read my blog and liked it and put me on his list of blogs to read. It’s called “following” on Blogger for any friends and family possibly reading this, so if I say I have a new stranger following me it doesn’t mean I’m being stalked, just expanding my sphere of influence. Insert evil laugh here!

But alas, c’est pas vrai. It is not so. Not today at least.

I am not feeling the flow today, the mental flow. Perhaps because I am feeling the physical flow instead. Making lots of spelling and grammar errors. Unintentional ones, not my regular ol’ pinball brain slang. Meh. Having a hard time concentrating on spoken words too. TheMan is telling me more about Jim Croce and as I only know his two most popular songs I’m trying to listen because I really do want to know. I find myself having to pay attention to individual words and repeat the sentences in my head. I’ll probably have to do that at work too. I know I frown in concentration when I do this; I’ll have to try hard not to. Don’t want clients thinking I’m not happy to be there.

I met the most interesting client yesterday. I wish I could describe this person, but my code of ethics as a massage therapist does not allow it. I can’t even tell you the gender of the person. But the person was dressed uniquely and had definite flair. Casual flair, inexpensive flair, putting together the simplest of garments and yet drawing the eye (mine at least) while being a quiet person. Usually that sort of confidence and ease of style comes with maturity but the person was quite young (to me). I know the persons age; I just can’t tell you the exact number.

 I really like my job. I meet people one-on-one and interact with them in a way that delights my introvert soul and helps them renew and heal themselves on both physical and emotional levels.

Must eat and get ready for work now. I work every other weekend ten a.m. to four p.m. It’s two long days but good for the paycheck. I like that too.