Grasping at Grace (and Growth)

Writing, Chihuly, Temporary Ailments

In reverse order:

1) I finally got something written, a drabble for dw100 . Drabbles are my most difficult challenges, because I write long, not short. 
2) The four of us went to the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum, right below the Space Needle. It was wonderful - shapes and colors and textures that were amazing, and a garden where Chihuly's glass art interacted organically with, well, the organic garden around it. I didn't take many pictures, and I was ultimately glad; the place was full of people who seemed to want to do nothing more than take selfies, or have people take pictures of them, in front of the art - but very few of those people seemed interested in actually looking at and experiencing the art. When Andy convinced me that he could send me pictures from one of his earlier trips to the museum, it was very freeing. 
3) I appear to have successfully fought off some sort of stomach and gut-based bug that bid fair to make the day miserable for me. Hurrah for medications that kept that at bay!
4) We went to the Ballard Locks tonight, to watch the sunset, see salmon swimming up a ladder around the locks, and see boats sailing out to Puget Sound. And then we found a very nice Tex-Mex place to have a late supper and talk about music (Harry Nilsson, John Lennon, and such, because we're old farts.) Totally enjoyable.

And tomorrow is my 63rd birthday. 

 A fandom_stocking  Apology

Folks, for the first time since 2011, when  I fell in love with fandom_stocking  - the only "-athon" I write for, and the one that has given me such joy - I am most probably not going to be able to fill anyone's stocking. 

When I signed up myself, I was full of plans; I'd just finished the last two promised 2015 stocking stuffers, and I'd thought that had primed my creative pump. And, as I always do each season, I thought perhaps this was the year that I could focus on drabbles, or at least shorter stories. Plus, I had my vacation coming up, and I'd be able to write something every day ....

Yeah. Didn't happen. I can't even figure out definitively why, although last night I told BB it might be that finishing up those 2015 stories had, instead of priming the pump, run the well dry. God knows, this has been a terrible writing year for me; it's the first time since 2007 that I haven't been able to get at least one chapter of Hearts & Moons completed. 

The events of November also have affected me, perhaps more deeply than even I thought. 

Yesterday, the day before my vacation ended, I suddenly wrote two paragraphs of something, and I thought, "Aha! Adrenaline junkie time! You can at least get two stories done before my vacation, and perhaps a third one before the stockings go live ....

And then this morning, I burned my left index finger, ironing a shirt. It's bandaged up now, and doesn't hurt too much, but the bandage makes typing incredibly frustrating. I'm down from 80-plus words a minute to, I don't know, 30-40, what with having to fix up mistakes. GAAAAAAaarrrhh!

tl;dr - after burbling about fandom_stocking , and looking forward to it, I don't think I can take part. I don't say it can't happen. Anything can happen, of course, and one never shuts the door, but - and there's an end to the sentence. 

Perhaps next year more of us can hang stockings, and I can fill all of them. 

*sighs, heads off to the grocery store*

Don't Like the Weather? Wait 5.25 Minutes ....

Over the past week, I've noted that Chicago weather has been tremendously unsettled; the old joke that's usually ascribed to whatever location the teller is in - as mentioned above - was bewilderingly accurate. For the last six days, we've had 15 minutes of sun, followed by 15 minutes of extreme thunderstorm, followed by more sun, followed by high winds and scudding clouds, followed by sun, followed by dark grey overcast, followed by, yes, more sun.  And it's left me unsettled; I like having weather that's easy to predict. That's just how I roll. 

And today was weird enough to get noticed by more than me, at least judging by Twitter; blowing snow, followed by sun, followed by a full-fledged 15-minute snowstorm, followed by blue, blue skies and sun, followed by yet another snowstorm, followed by wind and scudding cloud, followed by sun ... lather, rinse, repeat. 

So, rather than focus rather unhealthily on the weather (really, kaffy_r , it's weather), I decided to salvage whatever salvageable tomatoes from amongst the many unsalvageable ones slowly decaying in the vegetable crisper (and was there ever a more misleading name?) bin in the bottom of my refrigerator. 

The end result was pretty decent, although I had to augment my tiny bit of sauce with a can of diced tomatoes, so it's not completely from scratch. I was surprised and disappointed that I didn't find a single recipe for making tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes in any of my recipe books. Not even Joy of Cooking, for heaven's sake! All the recipes made use of canned tomatoes. That ought to tell you something about the evolution of Western cooking ... So I just winged it. It's been years since I actually made a basic tomato sauce, as opposed to many of the other sauce-y things I make, but I'm pleased. Dehydrated onions, ground celery (as opposed to celery salt), salt, garlic, pepper, Italian seasoning and fresh-ground fennel, they all go together so well. 

What's that you say? That I was supposed to be writing today? 

Ahem. 

Well, actually, I did do some editing of existing words and paragraphs. Does that count? And I think I managed to move our heroes further along their  way. 

Yeah, I got nuthin. Maybe better tomorrow?

 Final Day of Vacation

It amuses me, or pleases me, that I have had a vacation with two miserably painful days spent in bed, thus rather thoroughly bollocksing a large number of my plans, and can still say at the end that it was a good vacation. (Yes, I still have the weekend, but that's the weekend. Hush.)

I'm actually up and dressed today. While I can still feel the back muscle complaining, it really is not enough to keep me abed. And I swear that today I'm going to do the work mail recovery thing I'd pledged to do. Over the weekend, I am going to organize at least the top of my desk.

And I am actually writing some fic. Or, to be more precise, I've returned to a Brian, Gus and Tabetha post TATM fic in the canon worldview that I completely reject in my head.  My worldview has the Ponds, Eleventy and River going down the pub after their cemetery encounter, because River has come up behind that pesky Angel and bashed it to granite dust, having used her vortex manipulator to go and change the timeline because RIVER CAN DO ANYTHING HUSH. Still, it has the feel of a potentially good fic if I can figure out where the hell it's going.

(Why kaffy_r  will never be a professional fiction writer. She Does Not Do Outlines, because she's an idiot, and doesn't mind remaining one.)

I think I mentioned I saw Agent Carter a couple of nights ago, but I didn't talk about it much. 

HERE BE SPOILERS

( For those who haven't seen Episode 5 )

[Error: unknown template qotd]I like them when they're on Delgado's Master. I like them when Toshiro Mifune wears them. I like Admiral Adama's New Caprica 'stache. And when my Best Beloved chooses to wear a beard, I love him. The most recent beardly iteration actually looked rather good.

Absent those three? No. Nope. Nyuh-uh. They hide the shape of a man's face, and muddy up the reality of who he is for me. And most men look far more attractive, in my eyes, without facial hair (Aragorn, Boromir and such notwithstanding.)

I'm perfectly aware that for some guys, the facial hair is part  of what and who they are. I'm also aware that some facial structures might be improved by a bit of camouflage; if either of those things obtains for a gentleman, who am I to dictate my personal tastes to him?

Still ... hirsute? Not here.