Went to see the Chicago edition of the Broadway hit "The Lion King." The staging is just as amazing as everyone says it is, and everyone deserves all the credit they've gotten. Some of the custom-made contraptions were really fun (three bicycle wheels pushed across the stage creating the leaping motion of the attatched gazelles) and the elephant is quite a sight to see.

The plot is pretty straightforward - not exactly a lot of twists and turns here - and I wish if it were going to be three hours long it would be a little more involved plot-wise. But maybe that's just because I was surrounded by so many children and adults who had apparently slept through the movie every time their kids watched it. (There was actually a gasp of surprise in the audience at the end when the new baby was held up for everyone to see.)

I did get to see Sarah yell at a 13-year-old who wouldn't turn off his gameboy when the lights went down, and that was almost worth the money in itself.

Books: Blasted rewrites. I thought the ending might be weak on this chapter. My first reader tells me it's the beginning that's weak. I'm all topsy turvy on this chapter.

Houseguests arrive tomorrow. I've been a little preoccupied by cleaning and organizing so I can keep up the semblance of normal life while they're here.

Books: Well, the rewrite didn't go as well as I thought it did. I suppose I deserve that for all the times I've said things to my writing partner that have discouraged him. I'm a little lost on how to fix the problems, though. I think I need a little distance from it - come back to it a little later maybe so that I don't have so much invested in the wors on the page.

Books: Chapter 55 of 71. Let me do a little math here.... 16 chapters left to go? I guess then I have to figure out if I go back and make the minor edits my readers have found so far before I send it out to more readers. I suppose that would be the polite thing to do.

Where did July go? I swear I had it here just a minute ago.

Books: Apparent success with the chapter! As Sarah would say, Huzzah! There's a lot going on in it, but I think that's a good thing. It's like a signal... that we're nearing the end of the book and some of the loose ends are going to start getting tied up. (Wee! We're nearing the end of the book!)

Growing up geeky in a remote area comes with some disadvantages. I won't go into them all today (as most of them are beyond the scope of this website) but one of them is that you don't even get to hang out with other geeks at things like science fiction conventions and renaissance faires. That means as an adult, now living in not-so-remote an area, I feel obligated to attend some of these things just to comfort my wounded, lonely, childhood soul.

And build up my geek cred.

Thus it is, that yesterday I attended the Bristol Renaissance Faire on the border of Wisonsin and Illinois. Sarah came with me, to lead the way and make sure I enjoyed myself.

Now at least I can speak with authority on the subject.

General impressions? Well, I was surprised at the number of people who were there. I got a kick out of the ones who persisted in maintaining the image of "I'm too cool for this" - when everyone knows they paid $17 to get in there. I was impressed with the horses during the joust, and watching lances shatter has a certain amount of fascination to it. I probably would have had more fun if I was in better health and less hot (I know, it was in the low 80's. I begin to wilt at 75) but it was an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon.

I think I'm just too critical to be a true ren-faire geek. I scoffed at costumes made of cheap fabric, spent actual thinking-time on figuring out how Robin Hood and Queen Elizabeth managed to be at the same fair, and frowned at the girls who were wearing their period dresses wrong.

So apparently I'm not just a geek. I'm an arrogant geek.

No wonder I can only get men to flirt with me when I have my hair in sk8tr grrl pigtails, look sixteen, and walk away before they get a chance to get to know me.

Well, the homeless guy at the bus stop is gone. His couch too, and all his belongings. I'm taking it as a sign that he just decided to rearrange the furniture, and put it under a shady tree somewhere for the depths of the summer. Encouraging this belief is the fact that nobody moved the bus stop bench back to its previous location. It's still sitting at the far end of the block next to a vacant field and nowhere near a bus stop.

Books: This chapter has me seriously intimidated. Way too much talking involved now. One little slip and all the secrets come out too soon....

Sarah! Update your blog. You haven't posted since the 9th!

Books: I hope all the meddling plans I made tonight work out. I was having trouble with an all-boys chapter earlier. Now I've got to tackle an all-girls chapter. There's a lot more complicated scheming going on, believe me. That's what makes this one hard.

Today couldn't be all bad. Sarah brought me a big gift from New York even though I sort of broke her cat while she was gone. (I fed it too much and didn't even notice that it de-crypted the lock on the food-bags.)

Fortunately, Sarah has returned safe and sound and has read the manual on this particular pet.

Books: I might be able to delete a chapter or move it later and delete a different one! I'm so excited! (Rare for me. Usually I hate hacking out bits of this thing I worked so hard on, but now I see the light at the end of the tunnel and I just want to get there faster.)

Sarah, we need to add another item to our "You know your neighborhood is getting gentrified when..." list.

Friday night I saw a female yuppy riding her red, motorized scooter down our street at 11:30pm.

It made the drug dealer on the bike do a double-take.

I'm posting tonight not necessarily because I want to, but because Sarah yells at me when I don't. So.... uh, Hi.

Books: Today's lesson in writing is that sometimes rewriting, reorganizing and re-editing solves problems you didn't realize you had until the solution jumps off the page at you. It happened to both me and my writing partner this week. Being forced to edit a chapter for one thing grows into something new that clarifies issues you hadn't realized were murky until the explanation is sitting there in black and white.

One of the routes I take to work is on a huge street that has a couple of overpasses across major freeways. It's generally an entertaining street with interesting (read: odd) things going on. Along a particularly empty stretch there was a lonely bench at a bus stop. These are scattered around the city randomly, the only funny thing about it originally was that it was in a particularly useless spot.

Then one day I noticed that a homeless guy was sleeping on said bench. Again, not an unusual thing to see necessarily. It got a little more interesting when he was there the next day and the day after that. Usually someone notices and comes and makes them move along or helps them to a shelter.

Apparently, no one bothered this guy so he started collecting some of his paraphanelia around him - bags, boxes, blankets. Every couple of nights there was something new added to the bench environs. One night he had a pretty nice sleeping bag. It rained that night, and I idly wondered the next morning if his sleeping bag got wet.

No - he had made a tent out of some plastic, covering the entire bench. I thought surely someone would notice this and hussle him out. But no - the plastic remained, day after day. He wasn't always laying there, but his stuff was permanently attached.

Still not much of a big deal in this city, I'm afraid. He found a spot and was making it home. I was secretly a little bit proud of him for so thoroughly squatting on a forgotten piece of public land - right there on a major street where busses theoretically stop day and night.

I'm not telling this story to tug at your heartstrings, though. I'm telling it because tonight as I passed the usual spot I litterally howled with glee. (Ask Sarah, this doesn't happen often, and when it does - it tends to frighten people around me.) Here's the reason:

the guy's stuff was all still there, but the park bench was entirely gone. It had been replaced by a comfy brown couch, where the guy was laying down - feet propped up on one arm like he was watching tv in his livingroom. I don't care what else his problems are, this is a guy with hutzpa.

I still get the giggles thinking of it. Maybe next week he will have built himself a solid roof and a door. If so, I think I will donate a mailbox to him.


Books: I have conquered the chapter! It put up a good fight, but I came off victorious. Muahahahaha. Actually, it helps when the characters "show up to work" then you just have to watch what they do in your head and write it all down.

As any "regular" readers here know, I am easily distracted and tend to forget about this blog for long periods of time. Especially when the writing is going slowly and painfully. Sometimes I'm just not into "sharing my pain."

Anyway, it appears that while I was otherwise engaged, someone dropped by to spam my comments and generally behave badly. This would be flattering, except that it seems to be spillover from my dayjob.

Someday I'll get to have trolls all my very own....


Books: Stupid book about stupid men.

Being in the non-ritzy neighborhoods of Chicago on the Fourth of July is rather like being at a major fireworks event where they hand out all the goodies to the crowd. Fireworks displays of all kinds are happening everywhere around you. Many of them the professional kind.

This year I decided to do my part with a couple packages of sparklers. The intense heat backed off a bit by dark, and the night went crazy about nine o'clock. I sat on my porch steps and watched.

Last year the festivities were a bit subdued, I suppose because of the recent sad event. This year nobody had a problem with making the hood sound like a war zone. So I got a pretty good fireworks event in, didn't have to leave home or juggle crowds.


Books: Chapter 53 - a conversation between two young men. I've been trying to make it realistic, which means I'm learning all kinds of unusual things about how men communicate with each other. Apparently it really is all about who's bigger and how brave you're acting. (And apparently they all know when you're acting.)