This evening I got into a discussion about high school yearbooks, and specifically about the writing style of girls in high school year books. I think a communications major should do their masters thesis on it. It's a style all its own. The subject came up as I was talking to a male friend about how to write like a high school girl for an excerpt in a fiction book he's working on. He had dug out his old high school year books to look at examples, and I was trying to tell him that wasn't necessarily a representative example. I couldn't put it into words very well at the time. Anyone want to give me a grant so I can study it in depth?

Maybe I'll see if I can find some journal entries from my own high school years, just so I can see how my writing style has changed and maybe show him an authentic example. I really fear it hasn't changed much at all. My spelling is probably better, though. The immediate feedback from them newfangled auto-spellcheckers has made it easier for me to learn the correct spellings of difficult words like "water."

Oh, you really should go take a look at www.mutantx.net soon. A guy on my staff worked hard yesterday and made it purty.

Bah! I posted this on the 29th. I don't care if the blogger clock thinks I'm 50 seconds late.

Anyway. Had a staff meeting today with my boss and 'peers.' Boss says she'll be paying more attention to us now. Is that a good thing?

I'm having a hard time focussing on my blog entry. Sleep deprivation plus illness. Plus crazy stuff at work today. (Wait a minute, I thought I paid people good money so I don't have to do this.)

My sister bought a new gerbil today for her family. Gerbils are good housepets. They stay in their cage, but you can take them out and play with them if you want. They're cute and fuzzy and will tolerate a lot of neglect. I used to have two gerbils. My sister liked the idea and got herself two. They were named Sugar and Spice. Sugar died last week. Spice was still in mourning. So tonight Cinnamon came to live with her. They're being kept in the same cage, but divided by a wire screen so they can get comfortable with each other. Spice seems to think it's her duty to dig the poor baby out. So far, the introduction seems to be going well.

I know, you all care deeply.

The books: Slow going. One of my characters got up on a soap box and I'm having a hard time getting her down. She just keeps going off on tangents, and since this one chapter is done from her point of view it's very distracting.

So I saw Planet of the Apes today. I was so looking forward to it, too. Every other "big summer movie" that had anything sci-fi about it just tanked this year. Not to be out-done by such gems as AI, Jurasic Park III and Tomb Raider, Planet of the Apes is one big stinker.

You know how the original Planet of the Apes is good in the very beginning, just strange and creepy in the middle, with a way cool "wow" ending? Well, this isn't the same story, though it does have a bunch of talking apes and social messages for them to club you over the head with. The new version has an ok beginning, a long boring middle, and an ending that makes you wonder why you just spent that much money to sit through such schlock. Someone forgot to tell the director that this wasn't supposed to be a comedy.

Alas. Now there's only "Ghosts of Mars" to look forward to. And you know how the last two mars movies turned out....

Launched www.mutantx.net tonight. Everybody go click on it and give us lots of hits. I have to admit I haven't done most of the hard work on this one. Someone on my staff has been working their butt off to get it done. They even worked a long, stressful day, then went home to relax and got called back in at 9pm for an hour or so tonight. I just did some client wrangling. And found a broken link.

Remind me again why I have a cell phone? So my client can call me at 11pm on a Friday and talk business? I am just not hollywood enough. It makes me tired.

I did manage to watch Thirteenth Warrior between phone calls. That's an interesting movie. Can you draw sounds?

It was research. More research tomorrow. Planet of the Apes, I hope. And maybe Circque de Sole. (It's almost 2am. I don't care if I spelled it right.) And yet I hope to get a chapter written before then.

I need a vacation. I'm burned out. Bad place to be right in front of the hell months.

Long, long day. Working at an Internet company is full of ups and downs, isn't it? Intense, late hours. Good fun. Last-minute panic. Somber meetings about lines going this way when they should be going that way. Law suits. Law suits averted. That's been my day.

So anyway, then I went to the gym and made a serious tactical error. They had "West Wing" on the TV. But it was a re-run. I'd seen it before, but I missed a few minutes of the beginning. So I decided to tune in my handy headphones to that channel and end my day with some witty banter from people with worse problems than me. I'd only planned on being there another twenty minutes, but I'd seen this one before. I could stop anytime.

Yeah right. Let's just say I overdid it on the treadmill tonight. Brain stopped listening to the whimper coming from my tired body. I was laughing too hard at CJ saying "Pwesident" and "bweefing" because she'd had an emergency root canal.

So now I'm beyond tired. And I still have two chapters to write -- a party to crash and a rewrite of a camping scene from a new point of view. And if I have time, I'm also rewriting a chapter that I decided yesterday to move later, so it's not chronological anymore.

And did I mention I have laundry to do? Otherwise I can't get dressed tomorrow.

Today is one of those days where I think back on the morning and it feels like it must have been yesterday. I had several meetings and a lot of work to do. I did reduce the number of e-mails in my inbox at work from 15,000 to just under 2,000. Didn't delete them all, just organized them. I hope I can still find the things I need. I've already had a little trouble with that, but I got by. I hope the mailserver guys appreciate it. ("Dude, what just happened? We just gained like two gig. Did some business unit fall off the exchange server?")

I was feeling pretty run down by the end of the day. Got a little more cranky than I should have. But I guess since I'm the boss I'm allowed that now and then.

I got my tax refund check yesterday. Part of it is going toward the ticket I got the other day for having a crack in my windshield more than six inches long. Yeah, they serve and protect.

The book: After a meeting tonight with my reader I decided to change a scene around and do it from a completely different point of view. So much for those four pages. Maybe they'll show up on the web site someday.

I went to the gym tonight. I don't feel like writing a blog entry, but I am anyway. I'm quite tired. The heat is oppressive. The thunderstorms are nifty, but since they don't really clear any humidity out of the air it hardly seems worth it.

Had a long day at work. Have I mentioned here that Hollywood is insane? Well, it is. Certifiable.

Oh! Exciting news. A friend of mine from college who swore she'd never get married told me today that she's engaged to the guy she's been dating for a year or so. Congrats! I wish you a long, happy life together. (I told you that you'd find a nice guy and tie the knot.)

The books: I've got two chapters half done. The goal is to have them done before tomorrow's meeting with my writing partner. I hope they're more fun to read than they are to write. I feel like I'm slogging through these chapters.

Ok, this party Sarah threw was very well-attended by people who write web logs. I am having a great time reading everyone's accounts. And now I'm going to use this space to set some of them straight. Note to reader: I don't drink. Consider that as you decide who to believe. I'm not saying the others are wrong, just that their memories might be clouded.

First of all, Sarah's parties are usually very well-attended. So it's perfectly natural for her to be confused and disapointed when only one person showed up within the first two hours. Don't mind the wild mood fluctuations on her blog. They'll be over in a few days. For those of you wondering, (including Sarah) the Buffy game isn't any easier to understand when you're sober. It's trying to be D&D for sixteen-year-old girls, including spelling the word majik. And trust me, that's not really a good combination. D&D is a good thing. Sixteen-year-old girls are not a bad thing. I was one once. But when marketers try to combine the two it really doesn't work. Trust me. Either they remember how to daydream or they don't. They don't get into dice.

Mary also wrote about the party. She claims you have to go through the gheto to get to our house. That's not true. It's one possible route, yes, but so is going right from richer-than-god-city through drink-yourself-silly-ton along the edge of hip-and-trendy-ville right into my neighborhood. She had options. She chose the scariest one. Please note that by the time she arrived, she had freaked herself out enough that two little yippy dogs that belong to our neighbor had her yelling "rat!" and she thought the old men playing dominoes in front of their house were gangbangers. She also seemed to be feeling self-conscious about the amount she ate. Obviously she missed the part where I downed half the brie and half the guacamole.

One last note about a game called Celebrities. Mary and Andy, I know you haven't tried to talk movies with me before, so I don't expect you to realize it, and Andy, I'm sorry you got stuck with me as your partner. But Sarah, you really should have known better. How many times have I stared at you blankly when you tried to talk about an actor or a prominent political figure? Part of the game is writing down the names of ten celebrities. I'm the one who wrote down Zeus. And I knew who Ford Prefect was. You seriously handicapped poor Andy.

I didn't get my laundry done today. Someday I will be rich enough to own my very own washer and dryer. A set I won't have to share with anyone. This is one of my dreams.

I did get my filing cabinet put together. It drew blood. I missed the fight somehow though. I just looked down at one point and realized there was blood all over the place, and it was probably mine, since particle board with pine laminate doesn't generally bleed. I went and washed my hands and looked for cuts. I really couldn't tell where the injury was. Finally I found a tiny slit on my thumb. It doesn't hurt, but aparently it's deep enough to hit an enthusiastic vein. So it fought bravely and drew firstblood, but I won. It's now taking up some space on that empty wall in my dining room. I'm quite happy with it.

And yes, I went to Sarah's party. I had a good time, personally. I'm easy to please, though. A little chocolate, a little brie, someone to talk to, and I've had a good time. Sarah was a little disapointed because not a lot of people were there, but I prefer small groups, myself. I got to meet some of the people Sarah writes about in her blog. Andy and I got to fight out the write/talk dispute in person. (I won). Newton called Sarah from Ireland just because he read about her party on her site. A good time was had by all.

The book: as I discussed various computer crimes with my friends, and sent myself some notes via e-mail, it occurred to me that being a writer can implicate you in all kinds of interesting crimes. I've checked out books on poisons from the library. I surf websites about guns. I own a printing of the US Army survival guide. Fun stuff.

I went to see the movie Final Fantasy after work today. The aliens were awesome. The animation in general was ground-breaking. There were times I could forget I was watching animation. But not enough times, I'm afraid. Objects still don't seem to have weight. That was fine when they were on space. Not so fine when they were on planets. Also I hate to admit it, but the plot lost me a couple of times near the end. I'm usually pretty good at keeping up with the metaphysical plot twists, but I guess I'm a little slow with the representation here. Wait -- if you shoot that, won't it die? Yeah, OK, it did. No wait... it's back. No, now it's venting into space. Huh? Wait, does that mean he died? Or is that the bad ones that are now blue? I was confused.

I'm curious to see if the animation of the people looks even better on a TV where the resolution isn't as good. Maybe I'll rent the VHS someday.

Before the movie there was a preview for the Spider-man movie next year. It was cool to see it on the big screen. Parts of it looked good. Parts of it really didn't. Movie going is such a gamble.

There's an "excessive heat watch" for this weekend. Sounds like I'll be huddled in front of my air conditioner. I so hate the heat. Tomorrow I get to put together a filing cabinet. And you know what that means. Power tools. Muahahaha. It will be a fun project. Bring back fond memories of days spent under foot in my dad's woodshop. And when I'm done I'll have someplace to put all my piles of paper I'm so fond of.

The book: well, my first-draft reader convinced me to expand the new chapter I just wrote. I'm trying to decide if I should do that or read another Sherlock Holmes story. Apparently the reports of his death were greatly exagerated.

So I think I'm back among the living. Three solid meals today and no queaziness. Yay! I've been staying up pretty late the last couple of nights working on my book though. I write a lot slower when I'm ill. My goal is four chapters per week. It's not easy to do with a busy full-time job, but I need to get this book done. That's a great feeling. I've had that urgency about getting a story done before, but mostly those were short. In the past I've had a hard time with the details of getting a novel done. But now I'm to a point where I can see it all laid out in front of me, chapter by chapter, and I have to get it out on paper. It refuses to stay cooped up in my head. I have to be able to show it to other people. The story wants to be told.

So I got one new chapter written last night, and a previous chapter rewritten. I have to work extra hard on fight scenes. I'm going to have to do some research for the next two. So let me warn my friends -- I may be asking some weird questions over the next few days. One thing I've discovered is essential for a writer -- having a lot of friends with varied backgrounds. It makes research much easier and more fun. The next two chapters require camping and hacking.

No matter how many times Sarah calls me a geek goddess, I'm not going to rely on first-hand knowledge of hacking. Not where this book is going. The camping, though, I think I have covered. And if not, I'll just ask my parents. They went camping last weekend. Senior Citizens both, and they slept out on the ground in a tent in two Montana campgrounds. (That's a lie. I think one of them was a Wyoming camp ground. Anyone want to double-check where 'Dead Indian Creek' is?). My parents rock.

Sarah mentioned on her site that I watched "Mists of Avalon" with her, and she slammed my knowledge of the Arthurian legend. I feel I have to defend myself. It's not that I don't know the legend. I know who Arthur is, and who Gawain is, and Lancelot etc. I don't know all of their soap opera relationships. That's not what I read fantasy for (and oh yes, I read a lot of fantasy when I have time.) The problem is, I know that it's a legend, and that every writer makes up new stuff about it as they go along. So why bother keeping track of things that are subject to change by the next author? I readily admit that I'm not a fan of the legend. Everyone in the story ends up either miserable or dead, and if I wanted that kind of ending I'd read Shakespear, because at least he's guaranteed to be good at it. Absolutely nobody wins in this story. They can't. They're set up to fail. Kind of like Titanic. The ship is going to sink. Camelot won't last forever, magic is going to die, you can't trust anyone, blah blah blah.

I've never read the book "Mists of Avalon." I think it's interesting that some people tell me I really ought to, I'd love it. And others tell me, "don't bother, you'll hate it." And they're not talking about how good the book is. These are just their opinions based on their knowledge of the book and of me. I'm fascinated that people can have such different opinions about me. If the TV special is any indication of what the book is like, I think I'd hate it and I'm glad I haven't bothered. (Once again, don't get me wrong, they did a great job of producing the story -- good lighting, music, costumes, actors, script (mostly) I just don't like the legend so I'm going to mock it.)

I'm sure Sarah enjoyed the second half more without my running commentary.

I haven't posted here in a few days because I've been ill. Blogging isn't high on my list of priorities when I'm ill. My highest priority is usually sleep, closely followed by not-throwing-up. Sleep is usually elusive, so I spent the last few days watching movies and reading books. I finished Batman: No Man's Land on Saturday. I started it on Saturday too. Anyway, it was good. Very good. (Pardon me, it's time to go throw up dinner.)

I hate that stage of being ill where you're hungry all the time, but can't keep things down.

I think I'll scan my e-mail, finish this post, and go watch a little more of Pride and Prejudice while I hunt around for some sleep. I've got work to do tomorrow.

Sarah says we live "west of hip-and-trendy-burg" which is a cool way of saying it. She goes into more detail at her site, where she is trying to convince people to come to her party. Just don't put the address on your site, ok Sarah? There are some people I don't want to invite.

I did invite the people I hang out with at work (that Sarah hadn't already invited) including my boss. You can tell she's just barely in the next age-group from us because she actually RSVPed. That was cool. (She can't make it, though she'd be a kick to have at a party. She went sky diving last week. My boss is cool.) None of the other people RSVPed. As usual, I'll just show up at the party and hang out, wondering if anyone I know will make it. Fortunately, as I told the people I invited, everyone who shows up at Sarah's parties are interesting to talk to. Her parties confirm to me that there are some seriously wacky people in this world.

Another thing I'd like to say to all those people getting freaked out by the drug bust next door during our house-warming party. That was a year ago, and our neighborhood really is changing. Which means it's not as bad as it was last year. Even the fourth of July was more calm this year (in spite of the fact that it freaked out Sarah more.) They didn't use the flash bombs this time. Also, in that time a trendy little restaurant opened right around the corner from us, and people are actually mowing their lawns this summer. Wacky things still happen, but they're generally wacky, not scary. (For instance, someone stole the rock I was using to prop open the back gate. Why steal a rock? It's just a rock.)

Anyway, I spent the morning being sick, but knew I needed to drag myself into the office even before my cell phone started ringing with problems in LA. I had several meetings in a conference room called "classified" where the walls don't go all the way to the ceiling.

Now I have to fix a pick-up line, orchestrate a gang war, and make some kids fear for their lives. But maybe I should have some dinner first.

I miss the mountains. Someone made the mistake of asking me about some Yellowstone trivia today. I've already been feeling lonesome for home, and this question got my mouth moving. I spent the entire evening boring my dinner company with bear stories and explanations of wacky geology. (see Yellowstone Caldera for some wacky end-of-the-world fun)

So now I'm looking at Montana real estate sites on the web. Anybody got a couple mil I could spend on a ranch? (I can hear my dad now, "You wouldn't want a ranch. Too much trouble.") Ok, I'll take a little, warm cabin somewhere. With electricity and plumbing. Maybe something like the ones on 'mission creek' on this page. Don't forget to scroll down and see some things available in the little town I went to high school in. There are houses listed that I drove past and wondered about for years. Now I know how much they're worth. All the realty sites based in Montana seem to use the color brown.

At work today, I saw the pilot for a show that's coming out this fall. Looks like there will be something to watch on TV this year. We wondered there for a while.

The book: spent some time doing characterisation stuff. "Casting the movie." Making sure I have a clear idea of what characters look and act like. I was hoping to get some writing done tonight, but let's face it. I'm not. I'll organize some notes and see if I can get something done tomorrow.

Ok, I went wandering around some of Sarah's friends' sites just for fun. Sarah, please tell your cow-orker Andy that the UNIX program Talk is not the same thing as instant messaging. Shame on him! Instant messaging is what the UNIX command 'write' is all about. Or any other myriad commands that network admins have used since the dawn of time to announce to users the fact that the system is coming down NOW, so log off or lose everything and don't come whining to me because I warned you.

That said, being one degree of separation away from the guy who invented Talk way out-geeks me. But wait -- this means I am (Sarah, Andy, Andy's friend) three degrees of separation away from him! My geek rating just went up. Thanks. In return, tell him that I am one degree away from Vint Cerf. Which makes him three degrees away from him, etc. and we're back to being even, except that he got the bit about Talk wrong.....

Ok, I'm going to bed now, really.

Here it is after midnight again. Oh well, I guess it's a trend for the week. It's not a good one, I usually try to be in bed by 11. Alas.

I'm trying to think of anything interesting that happened today. Not coming up with much. At least, not much I can talk about in public. (That makes me sound so mysterious....) Ah! My baby bean plants grew 4 inches over night! I swear, yesterday they weren't even poking their heads out of the ground. Today there are four of them as big as the weeds. I guess my dad was right. If the garden can grow weeds good, it can grow beans good. I hope I don't let them die before I get a snack from them.

I have had some feedback on this site. One comment said, Personally, I think your site needs more of an ENFP flair to it. Maybe something like: "welcome to my webpage my name is wendy i love unicorns stuffed animals and hugz!!!"

That's what I get for showing it to a bunch of smart-mouthed INTJ's. Others encouraged me to finish up the pictures page. I'll do that one of these days that I get home before midnight.

About the book: Over dinner tonight we discussed how (for us) the writing process is sometimes like being the producer of a movie. You place your actors on a set, get them in costume, and make sure they know what needs to be accomplished in the scene. Then you sit back and watch as it gets played out on the page. Sometimes, they work beautifully. The best of times, they ad-lib some really great lines and bring you through the scene brilliantly. Other times, the actors get cranky. Or they think they know better than you. So here's us, sitting behind the camera watching things unfold, and now and then you have to yell, "cut! what are you guys doing to my script?" so you do another take, and you spend the whole time prompting them on ear-buds. One goes off on an impromptu tirade, and you're begging the other to make them stop, without stepping out of character. That happened to my writing partner on his latest chapter. In the end he threw the script up in the air and stalked out, looking to kill the casting director. ("Who the hell is that? I didn't ask for someone that looked like that!") So I stepped in and had a little pow-wow with the actors and convinced them to try it my way for a little while. One of them still tried to give me attitude, but I showed him. They seemed ready to work with the original producer when he got back from being a dialogue coach on my set. I've got some good actors, but sometimes you can really see why I pay them to be actors and not writers. Their dialogue sucks.

Ah. Well, at least now I know exactly how much variance there is between my laptop's date/time and that of the server.

Yeah, I still haven't fixed the place below where I repeat myself. I'm working on it. I'm trying to get this post done before midnight so it doesn't look like I posted it on Tuesday. It's still Monday night to me, dangit.

I got up early this morning to write. I've discovered a problem with that. Whatever characters I'm writing in the morning tend to color the rest of my day. Today I've been writing someone that talks with a real blue streak. He has to. The character isn't realistic without it. (Really, Mom. He talks this way for a reason.) So for the rest of the day today I had to be careful not to answer people's questions in his tone of voice and .... colorful way of expressing himself. It could have really shocked some of the people who work for me. They'd think I finally snapped.

Anyway, Sarah's writing about police action on our street over at Fiendish Plot but I want you all to know I've been completely oblivious to it. I saw more police action down in the touristy section of the Magnificent Mile near where I work.

But I must post this immediately or it will be tragically too late to be Monday.

Weird. Now I broke blogger. Perfect. I'm not going to stay up any longer trying to fix it.

Thought I'd share the (partial) contents of two emails I sent tonight to the same person. Why? Because I'm too tired to write a new entry, and these notes speak to Sarah's assertions that I'm a geek godess.

E-mail #1, sent at 1:16 am, in response to an e-mail I picked up at 11:30am.

Subject: Re: missing piece
Parts/attachments: none

GRRR!

This never happens to me! It's impossible! I just spent an hour and a half
editing this for you, working hard, I might say, coming up with some
brilliant edits, and saving as I went. When I tried to attach the file to
this email, it somehow lost all memory of the file ever existing. It's
truly bizarre. All I can figure is that naming something edit.doc is a
really bad idea.

I mean, it can't just be gone. I know how computers work. It does have
evidence that I created it, but it thinks it 'moved' and find file doesn't
have a clue.

Anyway, below are my comments that went along with the attachment.
that no longer exists. I'll try to reconstruct my edits and send them
along. It's going to be a longer night than I thought.

E-mail #2, sent at 2:23 am.

Subject: Re: missing piece
Parts/attachments:
1 Shown 22 lines Text
2 24 KB Application, ""
3 24 KB Application, ""
----------------------------------------

Well, at least I know I'm not going crazy. (and it wasn't too difficult to
reconstruct my edits. i have a surprisingly one-track mind, I guess.)

This time, I wisely saved my work in two different places, and
sure enough I was able to duplicate the error.

Apparently, using the command-line ftp in windows98, if you mix up get and
put (as one is wont to do at 1am) it will overwrite the file you tried to
get when you meant to put, with a file that has nothing in it, which is
the same as deleting it.

This could either be a bug or a virus. You never can tell with windows.

Anyway, I have included two attachments. They are the same file. One of
them was uploaded in binary mode. The other in ASCII, because at this hour
I can't remember which way works with .doc files.

So anyway, let me know if you get it or if it doesn't work.

And good night, if you're still up.

WD

So now you know the truth. I only know how to fix stuff (not just on computers, in other things too) because I'm so frequently breaking them. If I didn't know how to recover from serious tactical errors, my life would be a real mess. (As opposed to a wacky bunch of cludges.)

This is really Saturday night you know. A long, long Saturday night. And yes, that post does have a lot to do with the writing process, though it may not be obvious at first.

So I'm doing what some people call "urban pioneering." What that means is that I've moved into a not-spectacular neighborhood, into a house that needs some work. The idea is that we fix up the house and make the neighborhood a nicer place to live because we're not buying or selling drugs from the nice boys out front.

Anyway, we have some great little garden space in our back yard. If left to its own devices, it grows into this spectacular rain forest, with a canopy, understory, everything. But if we let it do that, it's kind of hard to get through it to our cars. So we've planted a few things, and I'm trying to weed regularly. My family had a garden as a kid, and I wasn't always happy to work in it. But I enjoy it now, and I'm glad I learned what I did during the forced labor of my early years. I'm old enough now to marvel at the little miracles that happen in a garden. Bare dirt bursts into life (mostly weeds for me, but hey, it's life). Plants grow unaided into four-foot-tall masterpieces. And flowers -- wow, cool. I think I mentioned a few days ago that I planted some beans and peas. I'm quite excited to see if I can get dirt and water to turn into a side dish for dinner.

There are other miracles, too. Like how do I get dirt under my fingernails when I wore gardening gloves the entire time I was out there? And the durability of grass stains are truly amazing. Now, in an "urban" garden there are even more miracles. Especially an "urban pioneering" garden. See, not only does it grow weeds, it grows other things too. Over night, I'll walk out and discover a new crop of weeds to be harvested, and right in among them there are some french fries. Wow, cool! I didn't know those lept fully formed from the earth. But our garden grows even bigger things. Right now it's sporting a bathtub, two bicycles, and the most recent fruit is a metal shopping cart. There was a plastic one in the same spot a couple of months ago.

These things never move, once they arrive. The weeds grow up around them and through them. I really have no explanation for it.

Anyway, now it's time for me to go write about a dark and stormy night.

I was going to go to a movie tonight. I was going to spend $4 on the popcorn and zero dollars on the ticket. You see, I went to watch that awful movie where Tom Hanks was trapped on a desert island, and just as it was getting really bad (he was talking to his ex girlfriend) the film burned up. Right there in front of our eyes, it scorched, then flamed, then little bits of melted film dripped from the top of the screen for a while. We cheered. We also got free "we're very sorry, please come back here again" passes. That was the best part of the movie.

Anyway, I've taken to going to matinees lately, and so I haven't since then used this wonderful get-in-free card. So I decided to go see Atlantis tonight. Well, I arrive at 7:05 all ready for the 7:30 showing, and there is this line of at least 150 people buying tickets. I'm not kidding. I was aghast. There in the movie theater, I was aghast. My little pass got me in free, but I still had to go to the ticket counter. So I bolted. Ran away. Planned to come home and watch a video.

On the way home, I was marvelling at the daylight. (What is that big thing in the sky like a huge street light?) I realized I could get some Saturday chores done before I got home to watch my movie. So I went grocery shopping. Serious tactical error. I hadn't had supper yet. Where my original Friday night plans called for a whopping $4, I went and spent $250 at the grocery store. (And saved $19.32 with my preferred customer card. I feel so special.) Now, on the one hand, I won't have to go grocery shopping for at least a month, and I have enough toilet paper to last me two months. On the other hand.... I'm glad it's payday today.

For those of you concerned about the health of the Mac, it's still not handling a battery very well, but as long as it's hooked up to the wall it's pretty much OK. It gets adopted out soon.

I got to perform a resurection spell tonight. That was fun. No, not in the book. Sarah brought me a computer from 1992 and wanted me to make it live again so she could sell it at a charity garage sale. It's resting comfortably right now. It's a Macintosh laptop with a black and white screen. I couldn't make it work with the battery, but it's ok if you plug it into the wall.

The screen is still kind of trippy (fading in and out, wooo...) but I can't really tell if that's the computer's fault or the ancient wiring in my house, which is prone to surges and brown-outs. I'm letting it sit plugged in overnight with the battery installed, to see if it just needs to be recharged. The exciting opperations performed on it tonight include getting its trackball cleaned. Don't you wish you were me?

In the novel department -- my frist-draft reader suggested that I expand on three pages to make it a full chapter. It's now eleven pages. The theme from two paragraphs turned into four pages. I'm guessing it will get some nip-n-tuck. But hey, when I expand, I really expand.

I'm so pleased. I hadn't made any real plans for the fourth. I mostly just wanted to be at home and revel in not having to go to the office. But I wrote a todo list so that I wouldn't just sit around and watch movies all day. (Have you seen the 6 hour Pride and Prejudice from the BBC?) And in a shocking twist of events, I actually marked off everything on the list! And these were not (all) small things. I did 4 loads of laundry, wrote five chapters, and planted some beans in the back yard. Yay me! And I've still got a Saturday coming up, so I can spend that day cleaning the bathroom and fixing up my office. How cool is that?

I know, the thrilling weekends I have are the envy of you all. If it makes you feel any better, the chapter I wrote last night just before bed gave me nightmares.

PS. Don't miss Sarah's 4th of July entry. It explains why I spent every minute after dusk inside with the blinds drawn.

Well, I went to the gym last night, and I forget that sitting on my couch once I get home is a serious tactical error after having gone to the gym. Hard chairs only, with straight, stiff backs if I want to stay awake for more than five minutes.

So I fell asleep before my laptop finished booting. The fireworks in my neighborhood (not organized fireworks, just children and adults with a lighter and a desire to get their hand blown off) woke me up around midnight and I got from couch to bed before I fell asleep again. So now it's morning (and what a glorious morning of sleeping in!) and I'm writing my blogger entry for like, the last three days it seems.

Sarah wants to hear my opinion of A.I. Well, I don't know anyone who's seen it who doesn't think it should have ended about 20 minutes sooner than it did. But I have even more problems with it than that. The message it sent about love was disgusting. What the child robot felt wasn't love, it was a frightening kind of obsession. His 'brother' was psycho, his friends even more-so. Every woman in the movie was depicted in a demeaning way. (Except the one at the very beginning who questions the ethics). Ebert has pointed out in the past that hot air balloons have really never done anything good for a movie, and I have to say he's still not wrong in this case. Lots and lots of characters were just absolutely stupid, too. Who would purposefully buy a child that would never, ever grow up? You'd be seventy, with this eight-year-old following you around asking stupid questions, and you could never ever make it go away. Now there's a design flaw. And who could ever imagine that your grieving wife will be cheered up by a replacement child? And here's a great idea. Let's try to vilify a little boy holding a teddy bear. And speaking of Teddy, he was my favorite character, but they didn't do enough with him. The Jude Law character showed the most character development, and his last words (I am! I was!) were great. Some of the cinematography was cool. The effects were good. But really, I did not like this movie. Their online campaign wasn't bad, but it was too hard to find.

Enough of my griping. My day off is going to be spent getting the characters in my novel into even more trouble (fall back! fall back!) and doing laundry. Because I'm free, to do what I want, any old time.

Well, now I'm seriously upset. I just spent a good half hour writing a very witty entry here, and when I told it to 'post,' blogger kicked back with a 403 error. That means all my witty writing is gone because the server was too busy at that particular instant. That makes me sad. Somebody invest in the blogger people so they can upgrade.

I'm too tired to type it all out again. Suffice it to say I had a long day at work, and now I'm supposed to be writing my novel, but instead I'm lamenting the loss of a log entry. Grr. Hopefully tomorrow's entries will be better.

Ok, no more 404s. Some pretty lame pages that are little more than 404s, but I guess they're a little nicer looking. You know, since all those broken links aren't sitting out there bugging me anymore, it's probably going to take a while to get any real content to those pages. If you care, nag me about it.

Wow. Lots of typos and misspellings today. I obviously stayed up too late last night reading. (There were two books. Who Moved My Cheese? and Rising Stars: Born in Fire) I'd heard good things about both of them. One of them didn't disappoint.

Ebrius and I had a great dinner at a seafood restaurant last night. It was expensive, but we'll be back another day I'm sure. He helped me make [character name deleted] less pedantic in what was supposed to be a snappy comeback. He'd finished up a couple of chapters that I'd read parts of earlier. His book is moving right along now.

Alright. Apparently I forgot to tell Sarah, my housemate, that when I said I "launched" my personal site/blog what I really meant was "soft launch." That's a complicated, technical, industry term for don't-go-telling-everybody-about-it-the-thing-is-still-mostly-broke.

But thanks to the unexpected publicity from her site (it's called Fiendish Plot, and believe me, it is) I have been motivated to get all my links working today.

One of these days I also have to set her straight about the whole "geek goddess" thing.