I now have access to a Kindle. Seeing how it actually works is helping my ToC problem tremendously. All the links WP created were actually just fine. It was the table I’d made for formatting the ToC that was screwing things up.
We’ve made headway with the taxes….
The sun is coming out to dry up the front lawn…
Life is GOOOOD!
The Table of Contents for Ring of Intrigue is giving me fits. It’s gorgeous in Word Perfect, then I let WP “publish” it to html…which worked like a charm with RoL…and it’s a bloody mess! Half the pointers were screwed. They’re fine in pdf, but not in html. And to top it off, Namo, my WYSIWYG html editor is chugging away like it’s filled with mud. Yuck! Just moving the curser from one line to the next means a wait of several seconds. I don’t know what’s going on.
Boo Hiss. All evening on something that should have taken no more than an hour.
We got the evergreens in on the side of the house, some of the grass pulled, and some primroses in just to brighten up the street-side of the house. And I got some work done around the pond…a couple of plants in…heather, a pretty blue-toned low lying (and prickly) evergreen, and something else I can’t remember the name of.
And I’ve finished the run-through of Intrigue so it s/b up soon, though I want to do an after word for it. And Destiny shouldn’t take as long.
Mostly I’m still jazzed over Daisuke Takahashi’s skate last night. For someone who didn’t know a year ago if he’d ever skate again, he was amazing. Heck, he was amazing no matter how you look at it. He’s been a favorite of mine for years and years and it’s wonderful to see him finally get his due.
Well…back to Intrigue….
Yesterday, we paid to have our front lawn turning into something resembling a dog with mange. Part of me just wants to scream. I listened all morning, while working my tail off to get an area in the back prepped for receiving sod, to the guys puzzling over the fact that the sod was coming up in pieces, rather than nice rollable strips, and blaming the already rather patchy grass. Now, being a logical person, I assumed (silly me) that they’d put the blade of the sod-stripper down as deep as it would go, and the machine still wasn’t doing the job. As they were packing up to leave, they point out to me a spot where they’d finally put the blade all the way down, saying, I kid you not, Look how deep it could go.
Gawsh. And you didn’t put it down that deep from the start why?
I’m in such a quandary. We hired these guys to do a job. They gave us a quote. we agreed. And they didn’t do the job. But if I complain and make them redo it, which I could, they’d be in serious trouble. They’d have to hire the stripper again, bring the crew in…again. This is a guy running around with a small crew, trying to make enough to keep his head above water. His prices are very reasonable….But…dammit. I wanted those roots out.
Having dug out there this evening, however, they’d have had to go down six inches to get all these roots, and then, there’d be no dirt left, just rocks. So…Heck, we’ll let it bake a while…if we don’t water it, the grass isn’t going to grow…and after its nice and toasty-dry, we’ll till it, get out the worse of the roots, then weed cloth and mulch it. Given time, no light, and minimal water, it’ll croak.
Any place we actually put in plants, we’ll clean out all the roots, like we did in back. Maybe we’ll zero scape a lot of that side.
Meantime…Anybody got any ideas on composting sod?
If there’s anything worse than a relapse of The Crud, it’s a relapse the same day that you realize you’ve done something unimaginably stupid…not to mention expensive.
I’ve lost my Wacom Pen. $100 down the drain…just like that. I’ve looked everywhere. I know where I used the board last and have scoured that whole area, practically stripping the chair I normally sit in. I’ve searched every counter in every room, looked under everything…it’s just not here. I’m really really afraid that sometime in this last week, in one of my exceedingly stupid moments of trying to do something useful without benefit of a brain, that I might have gathered it up with snail-mail detritus and thrown it out.
I’ve been thinking of getting a second pen, but now the choice has gone out of it. I’m coming up on needing to do more covers and that’s just not possible without the board. I was thinking of trying the “art pen,” but if I don’t like it…then I won’t be any better off than I am now….
ARGH! I hate making decisions like this. I wonder if Amazon will take it back if I don’t like it?
I’m going back to searching….
Gawd…I’m so far behind….Guess we’ll do the pond opening first before OSG sets the Assassin’s Guild on me.
I don’t remember when it was…A week ago Friday? That must’ve been it. We got the pond up and going. Typically, it was not without glitches.
In theory, starting the pond up and shutting it down is easy. You turn off the pump, dive into the skimmer basket where the pump is, punch a couple of buttons, lift a couple of widgets and pull the pump out.
The problem is, you can’t see a durned thing, the water is FREEZING, and there’s no picture of the pump, so finding those little bitsy buttons, in the dark, with fingers on the verge of frostbite, while squatting on the ground with the lovely aroma of stagnant water wafting up into your nostrils…is an adventure. And there’s nothing anyone can do to help. This time, I’ve made a little note as to where the buttons are, but I’m not sure that’ll help. Even knowing, it’s hard to find and press them to release those little levers.
Maybe I should just make a point to do it once a month until the routine is ingrained in my hindbrain.
Ah, well…I got it in, eventually, and OSG took pics, and the lovely sound of running water has returned to my workstation beside my bedroom window.
Oh, and my fingers have finally thawed out.
OSG also got a couple of really good shots of our reef fishies. Mika, in all her glory, and K…with uncharacteristically spread pectoral fins.
Lessee…oh, yeah, the other pix are of my last couple of days’ work. I got the little greenhouse up for the seedlings, and decided to redo the storage units area on the east side of the garage (in the L) area….Yipes. Just realized I never took a picture of what it used to look like! WAH! Well…You can see that now both storage units, tall (garden tools) and short (garden chemicals) are now up against the garage wall. The short one used to be turned 90 degrees and provided a support wall for the built up dirt, both behind and on the right side. It was kind of intrusive, visually, and I wanted to start putting plants into that area…Like blueberries and raspberries!
So…we picked up some of the little self-locking retaining wall “stones” at Lowe’s yesterday and I went to work moving dirt. A fair amount of dirt, especially considering I was in a space barely big enough for me and my feet, let alone a shovel. You see, I didn’t plan ahead. I just emptied the unit’s contents onto the surrounding area and trapped myself. Clever, no? I got the immediate dirt into a couple of very large buckets, then realized where they were sitting was going to have to come up as well to accommodate the retaining wall. So…I worked my way out of my hole and dragged those buckets away, raked the mulch back and got a place to put the much larger amount of dirt I needed to excavate.
Miraculously, I got the area into which I needed to move the unit level and Carolyn came out to help me lift it up and rotate it. Unfortunately, OSG was not available to record this gymnastic stunt for posterity. Then, it was more dirt moving and leveling and putting the retaining wall stones into place…and leveling and straightening…hopefully it’s not going to settle a lot, cuz it’s nice and level right now…Should’ve used sand….hmmmm…ah, well. It’s going to get disguised by growing things.
Hmmm…what else. Oh, yeah. The walking stick. To my gardening buddies… I don’t know about these little growths at the base. Should I pinch those off? (Not that the camera focused where I wanted it to…) and the other one’s just kind of a cool pic with the mural behind.
Anyway…here are the pix…
Cease to be amazed by the tenacity of life.
I’ve just come in from the first run-through of the pond/garden…pulling the weeds the mild winter failed to zap, raking away the mulch from the base of plants, checking out the new buds…and a good half dozen…maybe twice that…plants that I wouldn’t have given you the proverbial plug nickle for last fall are showing, not just life, but some pretty lively life.
I ordered some end of season cheapies from Wayside gardens and, frankly, when they came, I pretty much decided never to order from them again. Most of the “plants” were, like, three microscopic roots peaking out from the dried-grass packing material. Well, I figured better in than out, so I planted them, leaving the packing material around them to mark their graves, and low and behold, I think most of them are going to at least make a stab at growing! They’re still woefully puny…but they deserve all the help I can give them!
I got some other “end of season deals” that required serious root detangling that I figured would do them in…a couple of really sad Clematises, and by golly, they’ve got sprouts coming up as well!
GO WORLD!
Do all authors have these problems with their characters? I mean, Carolyn really doesn’t seem to, but then, hers are overall a pretty well-behaved lot…
Ever since I began writing, my characters have had this insidious way of infiltrating our lives…not in a good way. First, it was Wesley and the computers. We have the weirdest things go wrong with computers every time I’m working on that series. Then, there was the time the house was hit by lightning…when I was working on Ring of Lightning. Mother at her finest. Zapped … what was it, Carolyn, Fortress in the Eye of Time? Or Dragons? Anyway, it zapped Carolyn’s HDD and Lynn and I were kept out of trouble for days OCR-ing the printout while Carolyn tried to continue on from memory. I’d just zapped Mother’s node in RoL and she was seriously PO’d…so she zapped the house.
This week, it’s been Khyel’s turn. Those of you who’ve read RoL know he’s got this problem…he’s a sort of empath, but only where it concerns his bros. When they hurt, so does he. He doesn’t manifest the wounds, but he sure absorbs the ouchies. Well…I can’t say I’ve been sick. My nose has never been stuffy. I’ve never suffered the nausea…but I’ve sure had every other ache, pain, and lethargy of Carolyn’s Crud. This morning, suddenly, Carolyn’s feeling better, and MAGIC: so am I!
DARN YOU, KHYEL! I’M WORKING AS FAST AS I CAN TO GET TO RING OF CHANGE AND YOUR HAPPY DAZE!!!!! Quit making my life more difficult!
Ahem…back to work…
Characters. Can’t live with ‘em, sure can’t live without ‘em.
Lynn’s got her first book, Daughter of the Bright Moon up and ready for download!
We’ve all got to coordinate our page “excerpts” with the CC site, but in the meantime, if you go to her site, Lynnabbey.com and check out the Bibliography and “Rifkind saga”, she’s got an excerpt up there. I know, I know, it means lots of bobbing back and forth, but you’re all big boys and girls and net-savvy, so you can manage. (She says, running back to her own site to start coordinating links back and forth. Ooopsy!)
Enjoy!
Goes to Star Trek.
WOW! this is probably old news to most of you, but if there are other fans of the one and only, i.e. the original Trek, out there who have avoided this movie, having grown exceeeeeedingly gunshy over the past million years of weak ripoffs…I can’t over-recommend this movie. It would be good with just the casting, which cast very believable “young” versions of all our beloved characters. Good with just the SFX, which were beautiful and make me regret not seeing it on the big screen. It would be good with just the caliber of acting of every single speaking part. Good with just the directing and cutting, which made for a slick, seamless, experience, with a superb balance of tension and comic relief, good with just the sound which for once kept the sound effects eerily proper for a space-based story (the only one to use it as effectively that I can think of was 2001) For the sound balance which, such a thought, kept the focus on the (gasp) DIALOG.
Of course, they could do that because they didn’t have a single syllable to disguise…
Because the real star of this movie is the writing. OMG. One of the best parts of any story about characters is the way they meet and how the relationships develop. One of the hardest things to do is a prequel to a well-established universe. They solved the prequel problem brilliantly and believably and just allowed us to sit back and revel in those magical “beginnings” I don’t want to say too much, because I don’t want to ruin it for those who haven’t yet seen it, but bottom line, it was one of the best movie experiences I’ve ever had.
I wish I knew a bunch of people who haven’t seen it so I could watch it with them and share the joy all over again, sort of like we did with Star Wars.
Hmmm…I wonder if OSG has seen it…..
