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 |  Daily notes and timed freewrites but mostly my blog |
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All comments are encouraged, I am interested in what others think and feel along the topics I choose to write about. Highlighted entries: [#732826] "In Memory"        ![Merit Badge in Supportive
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Thank you for participating in [Link To Item #1157596] 2014 competition and for winning 3rd Place! *^*Trophyb*^* As a group, you guys did an amazing job! You should definitely be proud of yourself for all your hard work. *^*Glass*^* Here's to a successful year and I hope to see you in 2015! Cheers! ~ Gaby](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-G=46_o=46_T=46-1970219_14.gif) ![Merit Badge in Dark Dreamscapes
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Thank you for you participation with [Link To Item #1157596] and for supporting [Link To Item #dreamscapes] as a member of House of Baratheon.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Dark_Dreamscapes-1982963_14.gif) ![Merit Badge in Short Stories
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Thank you for your participation in [Link To Item #1157596] with written pieces. Whether you wrote poetry or a short story, doesn't really matter. I just want you to know that I appreciate your time, effort and working with short deadlines. You did great! ~ Gaby](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/type-Short_Stories-2180.gif) ![Merit Badge in Generosity
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Thank you for your steady participation in your campfire, as part of [Link To Item #1157596] ! You've shown courage and originality, and you've stepped up to the plate when it was needed. Kudos to you! *^*Thumbsup*^* You're one of the few who are receiving this special MB as a thank you for your teamwork. ~ Gaby](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/type-Campfires-2180.gif) ![Merit Badge in Good Deeds
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| Sweet! I'm at my sister's house and have access to WiFi for my tablet. When I really need to use my tablet I now know where to go. LOL Well, we have pie. Will talk later.  |
| I have finished reading the gigs, now to responding. I have organized the manuscript into 8 sections and I will be focusing on each section as I would if it had trickled in one 5,000 word section at a time. Then I will give an overall commentary on what works and what needs work.if Having a good weekend as far as production off site. It's windy and raining at the moment. My outdoor cat has sought refuge inside today and he's demanding to be fed! |
| Today I am doing some needed organizing (all off site projects, but still dealing with reading and commenting). I was passed the distraction phase for this time of year, yesterday (11-7-14) and actually have returned energy to attend to projects partially ignored through the last week. I have set up my multi-gig project into 8 sections. Each section consists of 5k words give or take a couple thousand to complete chapters. Several are less than 5k and two are over, so pretty evenly spaced. I have been reading okay, but I am behind by half of where I should be. Today, I play catch-up and hope to finish reading the next section that is equivalent to gig 5. This will put me right on schedule. Tomorrow I plan to finish the reading and start on the evaluation phase. This will give me five days to finish my 10 day goal (6 days early for standard timing). Even if I go a couple days over my personal goal, I will have delivered well within my advertised time constraints. I have basically played a "Scotty" card to make myself look like a super hero for gig production...LOL...I admit, I didn't plan on the personal emotional hurdle, so I am very happy I exaggerated the time I would need to finish this project. Grief is a persisant condition. This January will mark four years since my son's passing. As usual I didn't realize 'why' I was having problems focusing all last week until 11-6-14, Chris's 35th birthday. Then I understood completely. I have this special talent of ignoring 'time' until it smacks me in the face. I am usually so focused into my daily routines that everything outside the here and now have to be triggered into consciousness. Chris's birth date is such a trigger. 11-5 means nothing; not even a warning. 11-6 on the other hand is an unlocked door opening and all the memories tumbling out. Chris is frozen in time, of course, and shall never age beyond the 31 years that we knew him. Our memories keep him 'alive' in our lives. Our grief is our reaction to his physical abscence in our lives. (I say 'our' and not 'my' because he was loved by many more people than me.) An interesting thought just crossed my mind...regarding the imprint that individuals have on other's lives and the ripple in the pond effect. This thought, of course, is as old as the origins of mankind. I am as close to making myself a recluse as I can possibly attain and still be self supporting with a job outside my home and contact with neighbors and family as it occurs. Also, my sharing on writing.com, fiverr.com, and facebook most likely impact in some way, to a higher degree than I could imagine. So, even with my stay at home alone attitude, many people know me or at least know of me...I'm not the hermit on the hill whispered about in gossip circles and known about only by name within a small community and by what third person stories have been told about me. I'm still on the grid, so to speak. And yet, when my time comes to experience the next adventure of existence, there will be many who will grieve within their experience of my impact on their lives. Like the inner ripples are taller and smaller--those closest to me, will have the most long lasting memories and intense emotional energy. While the outer ripples are shallower but wider--those only with the knowledge of some of my activities may have a passing thought regarding my abscence. Another idea crossed my mind this week in regards to a story topic/content/theme. It went something like this...the combination of the idea of my Institute stories and the STNG Holo-Deck technology. A prison/hospital combination system the mentally disturbed or criminally maladjusted with the 24th century goal of rehabilitation and reintegration. Basically, each cell would be individually adapted to the emotional healing/mentally reprogramming needs of the person incarcerated. This crossed my mind when I was thinking, how could I make the stories believable enough for a reader to connect with the characters. The biggest obstacle to believability was to explain why each individual was having their particular 'prison/incarceration' experience. The Holo-Deck technology would actually aleviate all the believability issues. Okay back to work off site...Have a great week end every one. |
| I've had a long day of distraction. November 6th (35 years) ago I gave birth to my first born son. I celebrated his 'birthday' by carrying on as usual. I went to work and read. I fed the cat and played a game. I filled up the gas tank and watched television. (The fact that this list isn't written in any order shows somewhat the level to which I am distracted.) I have tried to recount my routine in some kind of order, but have found it easier to let the list tumble out as if my thoughts are Yatzee dice thrown from a cup. Let them land as they will. Time for bed, past time actually. I am more tired than usual. Tomorrow, I work from noon until after six pm. I hope to have more energy and less emotional/mental distraction. It could happen. I find myself thinking of my son often, but birthdays and such find me dwelling on his absence and on how much I miss him. |
| An idea just now struck me. All these years I have persisted in writing a novel; actually I've visualized maybe three if not four novels in series to tell Malyn's story. The idea is so very simple and Malyn smacked me up side the back of my head for taking years to settle on it: ('it' being this "not a novel" idea). I have written chapters that could as easily be completed as short stories and some combined into one or more novellas. If I place these short stories and novellas in order I'd have only a few more short stories to patch in holes to make a decent anthology that say a traveling Bard could make a decent living. (I'm thinking of something like the "Thieve's World" anthologies edited by Robert Lynn Asprin, which revolve around a single theme, a specific location where unsavory sorts have congergated. Only, instead of having many authors contributing, I will merely avail myself as a scribe who is privileged to transcribe these soon to be famous characters into the annuals of Bardic Tales. After all, these characters did have a major role in saving all of Cerilia. They deserve our respect if not our gratitude.) Malyn never wanted fame, nor did she ever seek to become a hero, yet she has always wanted her story/stories told. Other characters who share her story however, want very much to bask in the flame of fame and fortune. For them it's a matter of good business and or family or national pride. Well, Malyn as well as Trellen, Vollig, Brenda, Cayen, and Britta are rolling their eyes at me. I'm thinking they are wondering how anyone can be so thick! |
| I had hoped to write a bit today. Instead, I've acquired an opportunity to work on a huge Beta-read assignment. This B-r project is huge and will take about 10-16 days to complete. This particular project also promoted me to level 1 on fiverr.com gigs. I'm excited. It feels funny to receive money for doing something I love to do...but hey, I won't quibble about it. Well, to bed. To sleep. And tomorrow, read a bit then to work. Then home and read some more. My personal goal is to get the project presented within 10 days. But I will have to push myself to focus only on the gig to accomplish my goal. |
| Still November 1st here, barely. I am revisiting an old friend. Malyn's story is one that persists even when my muse is distant and cold. I often equate Malyn as the name of my muse, but I think she is more than just an urge to write. For me, especially this time of year when writing.com is all a buzz with NaNoWriMo, I find my thoughts turned toward three characters whom I've the most intimate knowledge: Malyn the Vosian barbarian tseravas born from a DND Birthright game; Cassini, a half gypsy and half Morevni wainwright with a bit of background with the local thieves guild; and Gwendyln, a Celtic styled Cleric whom was chosen by her Goddess, not the other way around. Of the three characters, Malyn is the one with the strongest pull upon me. Tonight, once again, I've written another intro to a story that wants to be told, a story only I can tell, yet, has successfully evaded the telling over the years. Malyn was created in the fall of 2000, a year before I even knew of the existance of Writing.com. A hush had fallen on the small five wagon caravan. The barbarian warrioress looked up briefly and caught a patch of bright blue as she rode slowly along side a covered wagon. The forest road was nothing like the taiga of her own country, yet she found a comfort in the closeness of the trees. And, even though most of her life had been spent in a small village surrounded by wind swept tundra and rolling hills at the base of the mountains of the Gnollfells to the North, she had opportunity to travel to the southern forests of Rzhlev and hunt the venison and bear found there. The Forests of her lands were a subartic coniferous evergreen wall dominated by firs and spruces. This forest was adapted to the warmer climes and though still coniferous and evergreen, the trees dominating were pines and larch. The smell was familair but wrong at the same time. Malyn looked for the crow, raven and blackbird she was used to seeing, but they were fewer in number. The birds in this southern domain were brightly colored and melodious. A warrioress a long way from her homeland, Malyn rode as a flanking guard for the train, as one of five mercenaries hired to protect two families and a Dwarf Priest of Moradin on their journey to a place called the Giantdowns. She knew nothing of these lands and found herself wondering at the circumstances which had brought her to be working as a mercenary guard on the other side of her known world. She'd started out as a standard guard and guide for a merchant train of Brecht Traders. Malyn had accepted the offer to act as a guard through the Voslands of Rzhlev with her cousins Bohan and Yasha after her Uncle had come to them and said the Brecht traders needed safe passage to the capital. It was a pleasant couple weeks and Malyn needed to leave the village after the shock of her Mother's death, early that spring. Malyn remembered looking at each house and warehouse and official building and the faces of every villager as they passed through on their departure. She knew that she would not be coming back. She had no plans to return and could not visualize her return, so Malyn knew she would now leave the only home she'd ever known. But it was an unsettled feeling because there was no vision of where her path would lead. She was drawn along as a toy pulled along by a string. Her feet placed distance between her and all that she had known, but Malyn felt she had no control over the compulsion and that she must obey. She knew she was on the road to find herself. She suspected she was on the final journey of her existance. 471 words |
| Oh my! Two days visiting in a row. I think I will write here today. Lately, it seems when I peruse WdC I am so sidetracked that I don't write anything. Halloween, the Celtic New Year, is nearly upon us. Images of ghosts, vampires, Frankenstein's Monster, werewolves, zombies, animated skeletons, jack-o-lanterns, witches and black cats are everywhere. The harvest season is in full swing. Corn stalks are added to decor for parties. Bobbing for apples comes to mind, although I was never very talented at that game. St. Mary's peak has snow on it warning everyone in the Bitterroot area that winter is just around the corner. I am looking forward to the cooler weather (the heat of the short summer is nearly too much for me). I have finished reading Alastair Reynolds's book The Prefect. If given five stars to rate this story, I'd give it four and a half. The story was interesting enough for me to read it during my breaks at work, but not so captivating as to demand my attention when I was back home. However, the details of people, culture, and the unfolding mystery to this space aged cop on a beat story did hold my interest to the point that I looked forward to work so I could read more. Overall a good read. I found myself thinking this is the same quality novel I could produce. The story sequence is linear and the four character views (two good guys and two bad guys) give the story depth and a sense of realism. I know this novel will influence any future writing I accomplish. This book has structure. |
Well, here I am.  Now to discover what will happen...besides reading, that is.... |
| Sixteen days ago I made an entry expounding upon plans to do something, any ol' thing, after work. However, actions never really materialized. I have found myself exhausted after a work day; mentally exhausted, that is. The job is very mentally demanding...it is also demanding in a creative way. So when I come home I have found myself too tired to do any writing or 'evaluating' in the form of reading and reviewing. At this point, I am too thankful about being employed to begrudge my lack of creative gusto here on WdC. I do miss participating, however. I am hoping that as the job becomes more familiar and routine, I will find the energy to participate more and more here. I have a severe case of the droopy eye syndrome as I write tonight, so once I reread for any spelling mistakes I plan to get some shut-eye and return in the morning. Goodnight WdC. |
| The last Sunday of September. I have been absent for much of this month and last month. My life took a bit of a tumble when the place I worked closed their doors. Then my truck chose this space of joblessness to breakdown. There went what cushion I'd managed to save in a matter of a few days. Money woes always set me into a tail spin and the last two months have really drained me. Then my cat, Nawla, died while I was visiting my sister and brother last weekend. You could say things hit a very low shelf last weekend. However, the sun rises every day and new opportunities seem to crop up like blessings. I have another job and I've been promoted of sorts...no raise in pay but there is the promise of a permanent position. I'm finding myself breathing easier as I look forward to my immediate future. Life is looking less scary every day. So come on October! I'm ready for ya! I won't promise miraculous activity, but I wished to let everyone know things are again looking up. Oh! And PS: Thank you 🌑 Darleen - QoD   for this wonderful mb.![Merit Badge in Special Appreciation
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Thank you so much for being such a beacon of light in my life as a friend and confidant. I appreciate all you do for me and for [Link To Item #dreamscapes] . You Rock!
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Original Hershey's Cocoa Fudge 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Hershey's) 2 cups white sugar (next time I will use even less) 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon light corn syrup (I used Maple Syrup) 1 cup milk 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 2 tablespoons butter Directions: In a medium saucepan, stir together the cocoa powder, sugar and salt. Mix in corn syrup and milk until well blended. Add butter, and heat to between 234 and 240 degrees F (112 to 116 degrees C) on candy thermometer, or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms a soft ball that flattens when removed from the water and placed on a flat surface. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat and beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture is thick and loses its gloss. Stir in vanilla, and pour into a buttered 9x9 inch baking dish. Let cool until set. Cut into small squares to serve. Notes to self: Next time decrease the sugar to 1-3/4 cups or maybe 1-1/2 cups. Didn't have any light corn syrup so I substituted real Organic Maple syrup. Was also out of milk, so I substituted condensed milk to make 1 cup. The Fudge came out fine...but then ask my brother how that works, since I have a very poor sense of taste; what tastes good to me is inedible for others who have normal tasting abilities. I lost about 90% of the ability to taste when I had the double bout of Bells Palsy in the winter of 2013. |
| Mid-September all ready. This year is flying by and I can't stop it! I've just finished a second gig assignment and proofing it now before sending it off. Feels good to be writing professionally. Will be spending the rest of the day getting ready for my work week. |
| Gooooood Moorrning, WDC! Yeeup, I did a Robin Williams marathon movie weekend... Good Morning Vietnam Hook World According To Garp Mrs. Doubtfire Dead Poet Society Cadillac Man One-Hour Photo Jumanji The Big White Bicentinnial Man House of D Flubber Birdcage Jack Wow! Of course, these are just the movies I have in the house. I thought I had a couple others, but couldn't find them: 1) Awakenings with Robert DeNiro, and 2) the one where Robin plays the support to Beau Bridges main character--Beau played the radio disk jockey who's flippant advice inspired a nut case to open fire on a night club--Robin plays the man who lost his wife in the shooting event. If I could remember the name of the movie, I might find it yet--LOL...maybe not, though. |
| I had plans to participate in the activities on site today, my computer had other ideas. I did accomplish posting a review. It was a random pick and just as I clicked to send the review off, well within the time limit, my computer crashed. (Good thing I remembered to copy and paste my review into a wordpad doc before clicking send, or I'd have lost everything) I'd forgotten just how frustrating this ol' girl can be. Well, I've spent all day just trying to get the review accepted and then another couple hours getting my post into the Dark Dreamscape Review forum...my computer connection was more than a challenge today. I was high energy this morning, excited about reviewing and the opportunity to write a little bit: right now I'm just numb between the ears. My hard work: Invalid Review  .It doesn't look like much, but if I wasn't a tenacious individual this wouldn't exist. Goodnight and have fun everyone...I'm done for the day...it seems. |
| Had a rough week with emotional stressors last week. My auto broke down and was laid up at the mechanics for eight days. That left me scrambling to find transportation to get to my new job. The resources are very limited where I live and I ended up losing money. The rental car I ended up getting took pretty much all of my wages for the week. However, although I was stressing over the money, I did manage to make it to work, on time and every day, so I met my main goal to keep the job I just acquired. Tomorrow starts a new week and I'm driving my own repaired automobile. Time to breath easier. |
| I have to place my Two-Word Tuesday response here because it might not fit the rating limits on Community Feed. Supposed to give two words that describe a fairy. My first thought was--My Brother. Not politically correct, I know. That is why I put my response here. My second thought after I stopped laughing (I really cracked myself up) was Tinker Bell...just possibly the most famous fairy around! |
| I worked at my new job for 4 hours a fifteen minutes. Therefore I'm of the sound belief that job spells relief. |
| Spent all morning and afternoon doing job search research...Tomorrow I take my notes to the local JS office and put the research into action with filling out the job apps--at the moment I'm too exhausted to follow up today. It is a scorcher out right now. I have a low tolerance for the heat and I'd rather go out tomorrow morning before the heat of the day to be presentable. Three apps to fill out and take to potential employers. Wednesday, I pick up my last pay check from my last job site and Thursday I plan to leave the state and visit family and attend SpoCon for four days. Back in time Monday to start serious job searchs and hopefully be refreshed from time away from this depressing business of joblessness. One app is a long time dream job I've wished for since I was a teen. Laughably, everytime I've applied over the years, I'm never considered qualified. The job service, once again in their infinite cruelty, says I could qualify and have sent me this app as one of my mandatory "apply for this job' or don't qualify for benefits. I refuse to get my hopes up that I'd actually qualify this time, and hopefully avoid the disappointment if I don't qualify as expected. Leaves all the room for a fantastic day of surprise and delight if I do qualify and get the opportunity to land a job of my dreams. If I did get it, this job would net me 3 times my monthly wages and would be loosely related with my college degree in biology. Like I said, job of my dreams. I've only worked 1 job that was related to my degree and that was in the 90s. A year and a half at a juicing plant as a bio-tech Quality control Engineer. Turns out all I needed for that job was a HS diploma. But my college experience helped me get the job, thankfully. So fingers crossed tomorrow. In the meantime, I need to attend to an overdue deadline here. Eleventh of August--four days spent trying the complete what has turned out to be a mammoth task. Dealing with 33,000 words gives a hint to the size of the project--silly me, I thought I'd have it finished over the weekend. Got half of it accomplished so Will probably post what I have with the plan of posting the rest next week some time. |
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