Easily Distracted by Shiny Things

Since I have been so behind on posting. These, for those who don't read my facebook or who missed some, probably sum up several things I don't feel like discussing at length.

On the Desolation of Smaug:

I liked expanding Bard's story so he doesn't just appear at the end of the Dragon thing. I liked the dwarves in the mountain attempting to do something other than just wait for Bilbo and actually confronting Smaug, up to the point where it turned into more video game antics. (Also, you'd think they'd have, you know, some dwarf sized corridors....). Most of the other changes I think could have been dropped in favour of more time with Beorn and more of Smaug and Bilbo's banter, both from the book.
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(Re: Someone's comment that Legolas was there for the women....)

Legolas was indeed unnecessary (And I say that as a woman). He made a little sense being there as the son of the King, but only a little.

But what he really made me do is long for the Legolas of Lord of the Rings.

Jackson seems to have decided that he wasn't badass enough -- but *this* Legolas has me wondering why he let all those annoying humans and Hobbits slow him down in the Lord of the Rings. As he was shown in Smaug, he'd have been all the way to Mount Doom with the Ring before it even had time to tempt him, hopped over the giant black gate in a couple of Parkour tricks, killing all the guards in the process, chucked it in, surfed away from the lava explosion on a piece of debris, and wouldn't have even mussed his hair.
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My son:
Dec 19: As I just mentioned to Colin, I was just re-watching "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances". And, hearing it so often on screen, Joseph starts repeating "Mummy. Mummy."

Not sure whether to giggle or shudder. #WhoHumour

( Mid December Photos, including the Christmas Tree I made for JoJo. )

December 27 (The first not miserably freezing day in a while at that point, and only a day or two before a cold snap that lasted distressingly long. We're talking vicinity of -40 for DAYS cold snap... and when it wasn't that, it snowed...)
( photos behind cut )

Jan 2: JoJo has sung along to music a few times now. He's had some rhythm (Not enough, but some) for a while, and has seemed less random in his choice of notes and sounds, if not harmonizing at least clashing less and less.

But today, he found the actual melody for London Bridge.

Toddler progress is progress after all.


Jan 9: It's official. Joseph can climb out of his crib on his own.

He got out of his playpen (Used as a travel crib) twice on New Year's Eve, so it's not like we didn't know it was coming.... but still, sigh.

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Other:

Jan 4: We got to archery today! Current plan is to keep going on all Saturdays we can. (Though Not Imbolc, obviously, but I did reserve babysitting for the Friday night shoot)

(ED: we have kept this up. Shooting regularly again feels GOOD.)

Jan 8: First day of work since Before our trip to AB and BC! Finished the horse, other than the bits under and around water.
( photo behind cut )

Jan 15: Sigh. Mom was sick (Get well soon - and not for my sake) so no chance to mural paint because no babysitter. Then ploughed through the snow with a stroller to get JoJo and myself flu shots. Sigh. Well... on the plus side, the new orthotic insoles I slipped into my boots WORK LIKE AWESOME. A lot less pain now...

(ED: Plantar fasciitis. Had it before, but this last bout was BAD. Days of barely being able to walk bad. I still galloped around daily with Joseph on my shoulders, though, because awesome.)

Today:

"Imagination is a little white light, waiting for a chance to grow
bigger and bigger till it glows so bright it eliminates all you know..."

Wait, what?

Oh. ILLUMINATES.

Enunciate, Fred.

#FredPenner #mondegreen

Off to Folk Fest. Will be even more quiet here than usual.

Have some pics. No toddler shots, just my vanity.


( Hair, glasses, a mural )

At my brother's game last week, I borrowed a 4B pencil from Branwen, and began to doodle. Er. i thought I was doodling. Thus I used a paper that already had an ink scribble on it. I think instead I ended up with an anatomical study of a dragon, the kind I've been writing about with the forelimb and wing combined.

This is what I produced:

( Under cut for size purposes )

If I could *get* across the room to the folder with my other dragon sketches, much rougher and on lined paper, I'd be tempted to scan in some of those, too, though they're much more sketchy even than this. Plus the thorn unicorns.

Short version: I've been incredibly busy. I'm miles behind on LJ. And I'm rather tired.

Longer version: As of Tuesday last week, I'm working full-time (Seven hours a day Mon-Fri) for the first time since the Bakery deliberately dissolved my job from under me in 2006. (I've had individual weeks of working five days a week in between, but not consistently and not all for one business at a time. And of course, the schoolwork kept me from anything like laziness while it lasted). It's a contract that only goes to June 30th, albeit with the potential to be a permanent placement if the fit is good and nothing else intervenes. I feel almost bad for *wanting* that something to intervene, as after four days there, it's a nice office.

It's busy, with varied kinds of work - which I consider a plus. After the bakery where there was never enough work and RCC where there was never nothing at all to do but a lot of it was repetitive, I decided I prefer being busy. More, of course, there's a strong discouragement against beign lazy: the temp who was at my desk before me was apparently a bit lazy and spent work time on the internet, and a LOT careless; she managed to get malware onto the computer, which caused them to decide no personal computer use even on breaks.

The thing which makes this quite bearable is that the lunch break is an hour. And I'm downtown, a block from the library. And I have a Dana. So after I'm done eating, I can vanish a while and just type.

forodwaith,we have got to take advantage of this to get together at least a couple of times. Even if we don't have plans, around 12:30 or so, look for me in either the stairway kiosks or the tables by the Human Bean.

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My evenings, on the other hand, have been taken up with making site tokens (Clay pendants with crosses or crescents) for the event, to the point of missing several other activities I usually prefer (Dance practice, choir practice, etc.). This is one thing the new job threw off; I'd been intending to take more advantage of the free daytime hours to do the work.

Final tally is 83, of which Colin made about 15. We're expecting about 75 to the event I think, so that should be enough extras. They went to the person with the kiln today. Hopefully they were dry enough; a few were still slightly cool to the touch when I packed them (A pretty good sign of lingering moisture).

Still it was fun, if terribly messy and worse for my back and my exercise regime. And I have enough of a lump of clay left over to do *something* with.

Alas, this week will be catching up on other activities, and cleaning house for the post-revel.

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Writing wise:

I'm not working on the Serpent Prince at all. I started another project I probably shouldn't have, but the way the words have been flowing when I have had a chance to get to the computer, I can't wholly complain. Because I am working a bit at a time on the Dana, I decided to also start the editing for Bird of Dusk slightly earlier, so that I'm not constantly uploading and downloading. Not much so far, considering the lack of computer time.

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Sleep... twice in the last two weeks, I've napped in the evening. I think I've mentioned before, I don't do this. I usually *can't* sleep outside my usual sleeping hours unless I am ill or exhausted.

I really must remember that "Sleep is for the weak" is the creed of those who should know better.

In the realm of "Augh!":

I finally in the last couple of weeks got around to doing the china-painting on the fancy plates I made at the end of the last school year (So the black rims would have as much colour as the white centre area, and also so I could fix some things in the centre.) This... turned out to be an interesting experience.

First, I've mentioned that china paints are weird. They paint like watercolours but dry like oils, which means, if you are, like me, trying to paint on relief, they run off the main surfaces if they're given even a little too much water. Which leads to some messy looking edges (they do eventually dry enough to tweak this - a bit). But after a while, i got the hang of the basic work, and got some results I liked. But I ended up having to call on two different friends to fire for me, as I am without kiln. Both ended up with problems that are ABSOLUTELY NOT the friends' faults; these are the sort of things that just happen inside kilns, adn why, even with electric kilns, which are the most reliable and predictable of kilns, there must be a zen-like letting-go-of-expectations effect.

Firing One (The first four of the nine plates): The kiln overfired. Badly. As in, all the cones used to gauge a firing slumped over, and the one that should ahve slumped melted a bit. Fortunately, china paints fire at a very low temperature, so this didn't involve, say, melting the plates. It did mean I lost some colour I might not have otherwise lost. Still, better than they were, and pretty. Acceptable as far as I'm concerned, but this was the reason the other plates got fired elsewhere; the friend wasn't quite ready to risk a second firing

Firing Two: The colour remained a little more strongly, but not so much that I can't count it all a set and be done. Which is good.

Three plates cracked. Two of those three cracked *right through*. Evidence suggests it was in the first part of the firing. None of then cracked along prior crack lines, or anything useful like that which might explain why the clay reacted so badly. It was a *much* faster firing than the first, and that's probably the cause, but... from all my pruior experience with firings, this is seriously excessive. Fortunately, they cracked clean enough and in a single line, such that, while there's not hiding the damage, they could be put back together for display.

Epoxy is my friend.

ARGH!

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Finished sewing up the first of my three pieces for the coming event. The second, which goes under it, requires some stitch-ripping first, and of course it's in a place where I used Leetle Teeny stitches.

For the third, i need to look at my buttons. I don't think I have any small enough.

I also have two scrolls to paint for the same event. Well, one and a half; the St. George is mroe than half done. Albeit from years ago. Eep.

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Just finished Holly Black's Ironside. As well as being a really darn good book in its own right (no surprise...) it was inspiring me to try and trim down Bird of Dusk; not at the scene level, yet, but at the word level. Getting out about 400 words per chapter seems quite doable, even if it only cuts a novelette's worth to date, and I should lose at least a nvoella. The scene-by-scene "Justify yourself" comes later - ideally after the full draft is concluded - because it ends up involving a complete breakdown of each scene, colour-coded plot, subplot, character and theme notations, and a lot of mental gymnastics. but right now, I need ro reread to get all the details of the draft clear in my head anyhow, and hacking out a few thousand words simultaneously seems more efficient than doing that separately.

Of course, this looks like the wrong week for writing. Of course, it's the one nagging most at my brain.

And once again, we'll be leaving for another out-of-town thing. Second last one of the summer. The break between this one and the last was a real break, though, and I'm feeling much more enthused and less burned-out than before.

Well, this second, I'm feeling a bit like someone who got less than three hours of sleep last night. But that's self-inflicted; I chose quite clearly to work on painting pottery with china paints until the early hours. The results, if the plates do in fact turn out remotely like they look now, will be fairly worthwhile. There are flaws, mostly to do with getting used to a new medium during the final run - china paint behaves a little differently from most other paints I'm used to, being thinner than watercolour and yet drying slow like oil - and a lack of time to either do test pieces or attempt to add Yet More fine detail.

I'm debating which fiction to work on. I seem to have got enough of Merlin's Dive (The shiny new thingy I started at the end of the last trip) onto paper, and enough notes, that even if I leave it a while, I should be able to pick up again. Bird of Dusk seems to be ready to be worked on again. And I really would like to continue Soldier of the Road. So I'm taking bits of all the above on the Dana, so that during the drive to Minneapolis, I can make up my mind.

That's all for now. All of you take care.

1) One thing about that last post, with all the music. I decided a while ago that the Trial of Lancelot is a particularly good piece for writers to study for brevity and character. Six verses. Seven people. A complete story. Each of them is sketched as far as they need to be to make the story happen, there are no wasted words. Even Lancelot's almost repeating answers have different moods and depths; sympathetic to Tristan, almost chastizing to Gawain, and admitting his failings to his accusors.

2) From my post before *that*, Justine Larbalestier was successful in getting her wildly unrepresentative cover changed. So there's one strike against whitewashing. Hurrah!

3) Healing takes too too damn long. ( Cut for medical and female TMI )

4) I've seen no few shout-outs in fiction, ranging from overly cutesy and annoying to cool (I've occasionally tried out bands characters discuss.) But usually shout-outs are one or two conversations. I seem to have a full scene which is shout-out to the meta of a fandom. In which Beto gets inundated with frogs in honour of the episode of the same name. (Well, I needed a tv show for the MC and her boss to be working on... although they couldn't get Camryn Kaufmann in that universe.)

5) To my great astonishment, my computer decided yesterday to prove definitively that it belongs to a fantasy author. (My monitor is on the left side of the desk, below the cds. I couldn't have got monitor and ceiling in one shot.)

Some days, there are things happening in one's life that are big enough to really want talking about, but which just aren't appropriate for a public journal. Or, sometimes, just can't be easily discussed at this time.

This has been one of those weeks.

(All is well with me and Colin. I might have a very slight cold.)

So I'll talk about gardening.

I bought plants. Some I have even planted, mostly in pots. Others I can't because Colin needs to dig out a chunk of my usual garden area, and others I can't because I only just raked out the area I mean to use to make a new garden patch tonight. Digging it out and all that is for tomorrow. (The part of tomorrow where I don't drop off my passport application, that is.)

Nominally, this is late. But the hanging basket mom gave us suffered badly for being hung out at what was the appropriate time (Just after Victoria Day) as it got hit by one more frost. And most of the plants I've bought, while larger than they would be if bought in a more timely fashion, aren't quite at the point of suffering for being trapped in 4" pots.

Feeling kind of apathetic about doing things like writing and pottery and mandolin. (Goes with the not-talking-about-it thing, I suspect). But got some of the first done anyhow, and have things set up to do the second. I haven't been practicing the third as much as usual, but that's next on the agenda for tonight (And, not incidentally, last before bedtime.)

I get to go see Ruthie Foster and Blind Boys of Alabama on Wednesday! Mom and I, that is. I know Ruthie does a good show, And I've heard nothing short of enthusiasm about the Blind Boys from anyone who likes their style of gospel at all.

And Friday, I miss Heather Dale as it's the archery competition for our June SCA event. I hope she gets a good turnout. This is another Shakespearean event, complete with permission to go Midsummer Night's Dream and fairy - so I can use my old Rags, Tags, and Velvet fairy outfit. If it fits enough (Which it should, but...)