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Checking In From The Great White North
It is cold. Really, saying anything else is just adding emphasize to how utterly cold it is. So, it is cold. Yeah.
Also, we have snow. This should come as no surprise, what with living in Minnesota, but it occurred to me that this will only be our second "White Christmas" since moving north from Oklahoma. We had a white Christmas the first year we lived here (1999), but have gone back to Oklahoma every year since, except for 2003 when the family came here and it didn't snow. So yeah, white Christmas, looking forward to it.
We still have no power in the garage. Neither does my immediate neighbor, but we can't find a tripped breaker or GFI anywhere, so tomorrow the electrician is coming out to take a look. If it involves more than mine or the neighbors townhome (or terraced house, depending on your part of the world) and garage, I may have to send them over to the association office to discuss what shall be done. I'm supposed to be doing my holiday baking tomorrow. We shall see how this turns out, with the possibility of having no power for part of the day. The electrician will be here at 7:30 in the morning, so I'm hopeful.
I reset my workspace, moving all the stuff that will be going to Goodwill or disbursed among friends into the study closet until such a time as we can have friends over to take what they want before loading up the rest and taking it away. I have the Dell laptop (the one with broken lid hinges) on a docking port and acting as a desktop. It's running like a champ, but this is also the machine that burped and crashed and lost everything a couple of years ago (fortunately I had backed-up most everything on CD, so I only lost a few pictures and a couple of days worth of writing). Right now it's still running Windows XP and MS Office 2003, but if (when) it crashes again, I'm wiping it clean and installing Linux and Open Office. In the meantime, I'll make sure to back up any documents I work on every night. I bought a little 2GB Cruzer Micro for just this purpose.
I'm working on Rija's Tale, moving along at a reasonable clip. All the short stories have stalled, which means they still are not ready. I add a sentence or two here and there to them from time to time, or make some notes, but I guess things need more time to percolate in my brain before they're ready to be real stories. In the meantime, we've reached the "Torture Rija" part of the novel. I'm sure my poor character is not looking forward to this (I'm not either, really). Of course, later she gets to bite someone on the nose, so hey. As a character, Rija is really starting to grow, going from reacting to having developed enough experience and confidence to act first in a tight spot. I'm also seeing a darkening of her character as she become less naive and angrier at her situation. Eventually I may have to work her away from the darkness and anger, but she is a somewhat amoral character to being with, and life's hard knocks are not making her any softer or kinder. We shall see where she goes from here.
Rija's Tale
Also, we have snow. This should come as no surprise, what with living in Minnesota, but it occurred to me that this will only be our second "White Christmas" since moving north from Oklahoma. We had a white Christmas the first year we lived here (1999), but have gone back to Oklahoma every year since, except for 2003 when the family came here and it didn't snow. So yeah, white Christmas, looking forward to it.
We still have no power in the garage. Neither does my immediate neighbor, but we can't find a tripped breaker or GFI anywhere, so tomorrow the electrician is coming out to take a look. If it involves more than mine or the neighbors townhome (or terraced house, depending on your part of the world) and garage, I may have to send them over to the association office to discuss what shall be done. I'm supposed to be doing my holiday baking tomorrow. We shall see how this turns out, with the possibility of having no power for part of the day. The electrician will be here at 7:30 in the morning, so I'm hopeful.
I reset my workspace, moving all the stuff that will be going to Goodwill or disbursed among friends into the study closet until such a time as we can have friends over to take what they want before loading up the rest and taking it away. I have the Dell laptop (the one with broken lid hinges) on a docking port and acting as a desktop. It's running like a champ, but this is also the machine that burped and crashed and lost everything a couple of years ago (fortunately I had backed-up most everything on CD, so I only lost a few pictures and a couple of days worth of writing). Right now it's still running Windows XP and MS Office 2003, but if (when) it crashes again, I'm wiping it clean and installing Linux and Open Office. In the meantime, I'll make sure to back up any documents I work on every night. I bought a little 2GB Cruzer Micro for just this purpose.
I'm working on Rija's Tale, moving along at a reasonable clip. All the short stories have stalled, which means they still are not ready. I add a sentence or two here and there to them from time to time, or make some notes, but I guess things need more time to percolate in my brain before they're ready to be real stories. In the meantime, we've reached the "Torture Rija" part of the novel. I'm sure my poor character is not looking forward to this (I'm not either, really). Of course, later she gets to bite someone on the nose, so hey. As a character, Rija is really starting to grow, going from reacting to having developed enough experience and confidence to act first in a tight spot. I'm also seeing a darkening of her character as she become less naive and angrier at her situation. Eventually I may have to work her away from the darkness and anger, but she is a somewhat amoral character to being with, and life's hard knocks are not making her any softer or kinder. We shall see where she goes from here.
Rija's Tale