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| The first draft of "The Benevolent Dictatorship of Oz" is finished, and clocks in at around 28,000 words. I've already started going back through it electronically and making changed. My first drafts are always soft and squishy, and this one is especially so, meaning I'll be doing a lot of tweaking and rewriting before it's firm enough to print out and mark up. Anyhow, YAY, first draft done. First drafts are a bitch to write, and editing, though it takes longer, is much easier.
Scraps is so damn much fun to write.
I've been a bit worried about someone who I found out last week was going to come to the SEC to meet with them, meet with me, generally talk about contracty stuff. Fortunately, things went much better than I expected, everyones happy with me, and I'm happy with them. Yay for fears turning out to be unfounded.
Boo to mosquito bites that won't stop itching. | |
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| I have a hot date this weekend.
With an eye doctor.
Maybe I can find some glasses frames that are even bigger than the ones I have now. | |
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| Whew. Finally made it to the holiday weekend. I mentioned earlier that the fatigue toxins were building up because I didn't get enough rest last weekend. (I get 4-5 hours of sleep on weeknights, and make up for it on weekends. Hey, it works.) By Friday evening, it was so bad I felt sick - exhaustion, chills, vile headache - and went to bed a few hours early. I kept waking up because my body was all confused. "5 hours of sleep, time to wake up, right?" "5:00, time to wake up, right?" "Sun's shining, time to wake up, right?" But I finally got about 11 hours and all is right with my world. I've BenDicOfOz is a litle over 25,000 words now and I've hit a fun part. Scraps, within the space of a few pages, gets smashed flat by The Cowardly Lion, chases the Scarecrow through a cornfield ("Marco!" "Polo!"), smashes a window to break into a castle, and seriously invades the Tin Woodman's personal space. Ah, Scraps, you are the Hexadecimal of Oz. But I have to throttle her back, because, also like Hex, she's like kudzu. Speaking of Oz fic, I posted Labor of Love and didn't mention it here. Well, it's up, both in The Negapage and in fanfiction.net. And now to do a lot of baking in preparation for tomorrow. | |
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| What I've been up to lately... - Working at the SEC. I'm getting the hang of the way documents are handled and processed. Thank God for patient people who know what they're doing and are willing to explain things in words of one syllable. I swear I'll get up to speed yet.
- I love the short commute on SEC days. 45 minutes after I leave the office I walk in my front door. Compare that with 2 hours both ways - 4 hours total - on regular office days.
- This past weekend I judged RHPS auditions. I am officially sick of The Time Warp and The Floor Show.
- Being able to archive old VHS tapes onto DVDs is officially cool. I have stuff that isn't on DVD and isn't likely ever to be, and being able to preserve them is quite nice.I hope the cases I ordered come in soon.
- I'm 22,000+ words into The Benevolent Dictatorship of Oz. It's now the longest story I've written, and it looks like it's going to finish up somewhere between 26,000 and 30,000 words. That makes it a novella, and originally I was hoping it would turn out to be novel length, but oh well. I start at the beginning, write 'til I get to the end, and then stop rather than trying to hit a word count. Not gonna stick in filler chapters to stretch it out, even though that would be faithful to Baum's books.
- I may go whole hawg and do some B&W illos for the above story, then put the inline with the text. Hmm, a PDF version could have a "This printout belongs to..." page. Snerk.
- This weekend can't come soon enough. Not just because I'm looking forward to July 4th, but because the fatugue toxins are accumuating rapidly and by tomorrow I'll really feel wiped out.
Tired. Bed now. | |
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| Skirt peeks are annoyingly popular in fan art. Ooo, look at the butt cheek, tee hee! Whatever.Scraps, the Patchwork Girl from the Oz books, spends a lot of time doing cartwheels and walking on her hands. Yet there are precious few illustrations of her upside-down, and in the only one I can recall her skirt defies gravity, standing stiffly up to hide her legs. I think that is more the result of the illustrator's modesty than Scraps's. Well, I ain't so modest.  | |
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| Last night my VCR gave out. Hmm. Some time ago my father sent me a DVD/VCR thingy, saying that it didn't duplicate well, but at least it was a player and it could decode HD-TV signals. I'd never set it up because I already had a working VCR and DVD player.
So, I connected the thing up. No connecting cables, but that's OK, I have the ones from the old machine, plus some spares. But the VHS tape door is blocked, like there's something soft behind it. I finally get it open and see... styrofoam packing peanuts.
PACKING PEANUTS. The machine is full of packing peanuts, in the area where the tape goes, and all through the electronics behind that. Why on earth would anyone cram a machine with moving parts and electrical bits full of those?! It just doesn't seem possible that it could have happened by accident.
Anyway, with much effort I got all of them out - I think - and tried to play a tape. It would play, but very statickily. Screw that. That hunk of crap went back in the box.
This morning I went to Best Buy to get a plain ol' VCR. Guess what? Those don't exist any longer. (I wouldn't know; I've had no cause to look at those machines in over 10 years.) So I ended up getting a VHS/DVD player copier, which is a good idea anyway, as I have some things on tape that I don't expect to ever see on DVD unless I make my own. And it did simplify some connections, once I took down both the dead VCR and the working DVD player, which I guess will be a backup or something.
Now to price writeable DVDs... - Tags:dvd, vhs
- Mood:busy
 - Music:"V for Extreme" by Chopin
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| Pluses: It'll keep your hands clean, and it's a boon if your arms are 6 inches long.
Cons: You're gonna have to clean that thing once in a while, and where ya gonna stash it between uses?
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| I've been on contract to the SEC for the past few weeks. That's the Securities & Exchange Commission, for those who know what that is. I'm surrounded by lawyers and paralegals. And it's a really nice, friendly place. People have started giving me work to do, and as I'm still trying to get the hang of it... well, it's a challenge, but people are helping me get up to speed. I'll fit in yet.
Today we had a Pride assembly in the main conference room, where we ate bagels & fruit & doughnuts and watched an hour-long address by Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Congresswoman and the first open lesbian in the office. It was well attended, and the address and subsequent Q&A were well worth listening to. I don't know - this is the first place I've worked that took pride seriously as opposed to tolerating it. Maybe this will sound silly, but I was touched. | |
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| An inspirational pic for a story I'm writing now...  "When I had a heart, I relied on it to tell me right from wrong. Now that I no longer have one... I find it doesn't matter." This is not a good thing to hear when the speaker is is armored and carries an axe around, and you have just given him good reason to want to do you grievous harm. He los this arm, but the bow tie survived. Go figure. | |
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