Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.
— Ambrose Bierce
With great power comes great electricity bills.
— unknown
So many power outages lately
No one wants to shed light on the matter
—upjoke
It’s Friday night and I’m sitting here writing this in the dark. It’s evening time and our power went out about 45 minutes ago. But one of the reasons I went with Lenovo the last time I bought a new laptop is the awesome battery life. Because I have no access to the internet (which sucks up energy), I have just over 7 hours of battery life. This is the perfect opportunity to get some writing done, don’t you think?
The thing is, I had already planned on working on my Sunday post tonight, because tomorrow (Saturday) we have a barbeque to go to that’s going to cut a big chunk out of my day, and I really wanted to get at least the first half of the post done instead of leaving it for the last minute like I usually do. So here I am, rambling away in the dark.
If I had any games on this computer, I’d probably play them instead of trying to get something constructive done (like this blog post), but this is supposed to be my working computer and the only games I have access to are through the internet. Which, of course, is down because of the power outage.
Okay, that’s a lie. I do have one game saved on my laptop. It’s called Nethack, and it’s old as dirt. It’s a single player game and the object is to work your way from room to room, fighting monsters and collecting loot, looking for the stairs that will take you down to the next level in search of the Amulet of Yendor which is somewhere around the 20th level. The graphics are really basic, but it’s still kind of fun.
The daughter’s been texting me as I type this. She doesn’t live too far away so her power is out too. She was
My suggestion that she use her phone as a, you know, phone and call for delivery was met with derision. Apparently, that’s not what a phone is for these days. Anyway, she got through and got her pizza ordered. Looks like the outage is only at our end of town.
Wow, it’s really dark out there now. It was pretty overcast today, so the solar lights didn’t get to build up much of a charge. I’ve had to turn the brightness of my laptop way down – it’s the only light I’ve got right now and I can’t see anything beyond the screen. I should really go light some candles so it’s not pitch dark in here.
One of the cats is cuddled to my legs; I have no idea where the other cat is. She’s mostly dark in a dark room. If she’s smart, she’ll take advantage of the cover of darkness and she’ll be sleeping on the dining room table, where she’s not allowed to be. See? There are advantages to a power outage . . . if you’re a cat.
At least this isn’t the dead of winter, where it would be starting to get a mite chilly by now. And thanks to the storm front rolling through last night and the high winds we have now (which probably helped with the power outage) we’re not suffering from the heat. We haven’t needed the air conditioning on all day, and the wind coming in the deck door is nice and cool.
AND when I replaced my Kindle a year or two ago, I was smart enough to get a Paperwhite. Its lit up screen makes for easy reading, even in the dark.
Now, if the power would come on long enough for me to make a cup of tea, things would be perfect.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
WORDAGE REPORT
THE WEEK IN REVIEW
The word for last week would have to be surprising.
It was surprising in that although it was another week of babysitting, I got my blog posts done super early. Even this one. Mostly. The installment for Winter’s Child wasn’t early, but I didn’t stay up as late finishing it as I did the week before.
The week actually went by fairly quickly and though I did spend a fair amount of time reading, I found that I spent way less time on games. This bodes well for the week ahead, don’t you think? And I spent a little time in my office, so hopefully that’ll carry through to next week too.
No company to distract me last week, but I did have a couple of social obligations – one was the stitchery luncheon, and the other was lunch out with a poetry friend. I was gone for most of the time the granddaughter was here the day of the stitchery thing, but apparently she and Grappy really enjoyed their one on one time.
It’s so hard to believe there’s only a couple of weeks left in August!
NEW WORDS:
2214+720+244+904=4,082
DOWN 108 – words from last week
I’ve been pretty consistent with my words the last couple of weeks. It seems like I’m staying within about a hundred words, either up or down. I think consistency is a good thing though, don’t you?
Yes, it really did help that I turned off the upstairs air conditioner when I went to bed last week. It wasn’t really cool enough (until Friday night) to sleep with the window open, but at least keeping it shut it took longer for the bedroom to warm up.
I forgot one night, and left it on, but that’s a mistake I won’t be making again. The quality of sleep I got that night was terrible. I was tired and had low energy (and motivation) for the rest of the day. Lesson learned.
I finally realized the secret to getting this Sunday post done a little earlier, so I’m not staying up super late Saturday night or scrambling to get it done Sunday morning, is to come up with a topic for the first part earlier in the week. Normally I do the wordage report first, and hope something comes to me. Some times it works, most times it doesn’t.
Maybe if I started working on some of those exercises I keep saying I’m going to work on, I’d have something legitimate to talk about.
Goals For Next Week:
Work on some exercises, get blog posts done early.
EDITING:
Two pages!
Okay, maybe two pages isn’t exactly exclamation mark worthy, but it’s better than I’ve been doing the last few months. Having the manuscript printed out and keeping it in the living room instead of in a pile of stuff on my typewriter really did seem to help. I managed to mark up those two pages pretty good while the granddaughter was focused on the exploits of Captain Underpants.
Goal For Next Week:
Keep marking up Elemental Spirit.
POETRY:
Another pretty easy form for the week. But trust me when I say it wasn’t a deliberate choice. I have a list, in no particular order, of forms with brief descriptions, and that one was the first one to catch my eye.
I almost went to the monthly poetry reading, but I wasn’t sure I could handle that many people. I’d already had one people-y event under my belt for the week, with two more coming up. I can only take so many of these things before they adversely affect me, and I’ve been doing pretty well lately so I didn’t want to take the chance.
In any case, I should have more time for writing this week, so maybe I can finally start updating that big book ‘o poems I have and start cherry picking them for the anthology I keep talking about. I’ve got to start somewhere, right?
Goal For Next Week:
Get a new form ready to share, update my big book ‘o poems.
CRAFTING:
I was all set to try the papier mâché on Monday, but it was kind of a slow day and the granddaughter wasn’t so keen.
Tuesday I had a potluck garden party with the stitchery group. I have to say, we’re a fun bunch of ladies. Of course there was a lot more socializing than actual stitching, but the rain that was forecast held off until much later. We had some guests from another couple of guilds and there were a pair of ladies who have a mobile stitchery supply trailer and did some brisk business during the afternoon.
I finished the floral kit I was working on, and started the next one (it’s a series of four). When I started the first one, I figured I’d offer the whole series up for sale at the Christmas craft sale. However, I learned at the luncheon that the group isn’t participating in the sale this year. So now what will I do with them?
Thursday I had everything ready for granddaughter and I to give the papier mâché a try. We squeezed as much water as we could out of the paper (that had been soaking in water for several days by now) and added the glue, and had fun squishing it around. However, the consistency wasn’t good and it was very clumpy. In other words, it was a bust.
But Gramie had a contingency plan. I’d bought some air clay, which was more like soft modeling foam, and we had a lot of fun making stuff out of it. She even convinced Grappy to give it a try. :-)
Goal For Next Week:
Organize my jewelry supplies, figure out what’s next with the zentangle sampler.
WHAT I’M READING:
I’m still reading Stories With Bite, a collection of vampire stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s really slow going, because honestly I have to be in the mood for something like this and I haven’t been.
I finished Pushin’ Buttons, the first in the Boot Knocker Ranch series by Em Petrova, and followed up with Body Language, Reining Men, and Ropin’ Hearts, also by Em Petrova. Now I’m about halfway through the fifth in the Boot Knocker Ranch series, Rope Burn.
Goal For Next Week:
Work a little harder at reading Stories With Bite so I can move on to something else.
THE WEEK AHEAD:
This week I no longer have babysitting as an excuse for not writing more. The granddaughter has day camp, so I only have to worry about picking her up when it’s done. And considering I’ve been doing better than I expected while looking after her, I have high expectations of what I can achieve this week.
I do want to organize myself a little better for crafts for us to do together our last week of the summer. Since we had so much fun with the foamy clay, I might try finding some regular modeling clay for us to play with. I already have another tie dye kit – this one using regular dye – and I’ve ordered some items online for us to dye. Hopefully they arrive by then.
And I really do want to prioritize my crafting, keeping in mind that Christmas is coming. I’m kind of scattered when it comes to crafts, which is why none of them get done. I’ve learned it’st not enough to be organized, I need to pick a craft or two and stick with it.
Winter’s Child isn’t exactly turning into a whole different story than it started out to be, but the focus has changed. It’s surprising me, to be honest, but in a good way. But I’m coming to a part of the story where I have a decision to make, which will have an impact on the rest of the story.
My idea of keeping my mark-up copy of An Elemental Spirit in the living room was obviously a good one, even if I only marked up two pages of it. I think for the first run-through I’ll continue showing my progress in pages, and with the second run-through I’ll switch to hours. In any case, I want to see a minimum 10 pages marked up this week.
It’s pretty obvious that I’m enjoying the Boot Knocker Ranch series on the Kindle. But I’ve halfway through the fifth book and there are only six in the series. Pretty easy to guess that I’ll be looking for a new e-book early in the week. So maybe it might be a good idea if I keep the e-reading strictly to the exercise bike so I can make some progress on reading Tales With Bite.
I feel like I made better use of my time last week, so let’s see if I can do even better this week. With the granddaughter in day camp for the week, I’m once again faced with a lot of time on my hands. Let’s see how many days it takes before I’m back to my old habits.
Bets anyone?
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