Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “mini/maxi.” Use “mini” (the smallest of something) or “maxi” (the largest) or both in your post. Have fun!
Last night as we took Kali outside it was snowing. I grabbed shoes and my new coat (thank you, Rizza!) and stood on the porch looking up. There is nothing as beautiful as white fluffs drifting down onto face and glasses. This gave me maximum enjoyment for a mini amount of snow. (Possibly 1/4 inch.) Most melted. More is expected tonight and tomorrow. Maybe another maximum thrill coming.
My son and I are on season 4 of 7 now. I finally like it. At one point a long time ago, my husband and I watched it weekly, and at one point, we both lost interest. Now the second watching, I was accompanied by my own geek son and his inside information of the characters. We’ve come full circle as I read comic books to him to help develop a desire to read, and soon I didn’t get to be a part of the comic team.
When he is not in the room, I have been bingeing Virgin River. I started from the beginning and soon realized that I had watched the first season. Now I am finished. But not before getting my husband into it, so he is off watching it again.
I need another ‘me’ binge to watch while knitting or editing. I have some like The Originals that I can totally ignore. I have no idea which season I am on or what is going on. I just know I don’t have commercials, and I don’t have to watch with attention.
I do the same with Star Treks. Although I can often bring some of the ideas into my writing. And I get sucked into the story on this one.
As everyone is getting excited about the Christmas line-ups, I am sad that things that barely got back are going into the holiday hiatus. I have loved Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19, and how well they approached the COVID19 situation.
I hope you all are finding ways to stay interested in the world and find good writing tools. I find those who put down TV or movies don’t understand the depth it takes to take the original writing, then adds so many other levels of arts: acting, music, make-up, costumes, scenery, so many people doing the best they can to bring stories to life. I love to read, purely read. But I find so much in other artforms, even the bad ones have put in a lot of work.
This was a compelling story. I loved that I got to ‘read’ it through Audible on Kindle Unlimited. It was quite interesting.
Normally, I don’t like war stories. And my mission has been for quite some time to read female writers and female main characters. Mostly because in my early life, I only had male books to read to. I am feeding my inner child. Even so, I make exceptions. This one qualified. It is based on a true story, and I did love the main character in most of the book.
Pina is the main character, and I think I loved him because he tried so hard to help his loved ones, and then he tried to help others to safety in a world that was going wrong all around him.
I highly recommend this book, especially the Audible version. It is longer than my usual read, but It kept me up until 4 AM a couple of times. I just didn’t want to leave him to fight without me. And the story, probably because it is based in a sucky reality, stayed with me into my sleep. I pray we never have that kind of thing happen in the world again!
I wanted to see the trees and nature for my day. My husband and Kali took me up to the campsite. It is only 14 miles from our home. Unfortunately, it is a rough dirt road. But well worth the drive!
Here I am giving a guided tour of the favorite campground for our family. Though it is only 14 miles away, as I mentioned before, it takes a while to drive it.
Kali isn’t a fan of the drive. When I let her out for a while to walk, I think she would have rather walked the whole way. Nope. I am not in that kind of shape.
After we got too cold to stand there, we climbed into the truck to come home. It was equally as long coming home (go figure!), but at the end of the dirt road, we saw a herd of deer just before getting on the highway. I took a couple pictures from the passenger seat across from Chris and his barely opened window, but maybe you can join me in enjoying the thrill of seeing these sweeties.
I played chicken with the yarn. At first, I tried a small pair of slipper socks, but there wasn’t enough. So I decided to try one more ear warmer. No yarn leftover, and a smaller head will have to wear it.
And look what Duolingo sent me in my email.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow where I age up from 07 to 17. 😉
More slipper socks finished late last night. I started the next pair but I’m afraid I may not have enough of that yarn.
This is a mesquite Bush out near our driveway. That is not snow. We’ve had a thick freezing fog and all the plants, even the weeds look like magical beings.
Sunday is a special day of the week for me, thanks to technology. A 3 AM bedtime means my day starts at 10ish. I turn on the laptop and run and get my toast and coffee (or tea). By the time I’ve taken out the dog and set up my bubble sitting, I am ready to place the laptop on the footrest of the recliner and the plate on my lap. No, I don’t stick my feet out. I sit in a chair, in half-lotus, as that is far more comfortable and keeps my stocking feet warmer. On frigid mornings, I throw my electric lap warmer (Thank you, Rizza 💜) over me before setting up the computer and breakfast.
Now I go to church. No camera on, I may or may not have brushed my hair yet. And who wants to watch me eat? The church is a Zoom meeting of Unitarian Universalist is in Reno, Nevada. When I lived there, I only went a handful of times. I used to be into the weekly get up, get dressed up, especially when my children were small. But now that I can go in comfort in my own time and clothing. I can sing with the congregation as I choose. No stand up, sit down, thank you very much, my coffee is great.
The last few weekends, I have been enjoying different stars showing up for Galaxycon.com.
The above was one of my favorites. Though I am double or triple her age, I relate to her life story a lot. And she is a writer. I picked up her latest book:
Today I got to meet Michael Biehn of the Mandalorian and this afternoon Jessica Jones’ stars:
Krysten Ritter “Jessica Jones”
Wil Traval “Will Simpson”
Both cons were fun. By the way, many of these are free live. You only have to give your email address to send the confirmation and URL to get to the interview. If like me, life gets in the way, your computer glitches, you can still click on the confirmation within 24-48 hours to watch a taped version. And many can be found later on the YouTubes. Here’s an example of what I am going to watch later on tonight:
Once again. Going to a con is something I don’t think I would do. I know this is going to sound weird, but I can’t deal with costumes and masks. One of my best friends LOVES this kind of thing. I certainly enjoy it through her. And the mask issue is still an issue during COVID19. I wear one if I need to. I love it when you wear one around me. It shows you care. But I need to see lips and gesticulations to understand people talking to me. And Halloween scares me. Haunted houses scare me. I always worry that a real crazy person with real weapons will be there. And I HATE when folks jump out to scare me.
When the lockdown ends, and all things go back to live events, I will be, once again, the fair-weather friend that probably won’t be there. When the pains started, I had to bow out of writer’s meetings and board games meetings, or, yeah, the church; I’d ask to be Skyped in, but everything virtual was still new and uncomfortable. I hope that people will still do things like this. My eyes can’t drive nights, I can’t take flu shots for being allergic to the base (nearly died), and pain often keeps me from doing things I want to do. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be a part of the meets. I’m sure I am not alone in hoping the zooming continues.
And the Tubes have great bits of help for people like me who are learning to edit their novels:
Oh, I forgot to say the other Sunday thing, and I think you all know what I’m going to say CBS Sunday Morning. My favorite part is the moment of zen at the end. By the way, YouTube has the full lineup of the show. Happy Birthday to my friend Yve and to PBS. And now:
Listen, since NaNoWriMo, my life is nothing but lists. I am editing using Word’s Editor and now Grammarly. The list in the editor is punctuation, spelling, concise, readability, grammar, etc. I don’t remember the exact list, but I spent the day yesterday and today going through Pandamapocalypse tick by tick. I finished Word’s editor, finally reaching zero mistakes. And now I have started Grammarly’s checklist. I can’t believe that having no mistakes on Word shows as 1,773 mistakes to remedy in Grammarly. As I get that done tomorrow, I will be copying and pasting from the Word version into my Scrivener, yWriter, and WriteItNow. Once that is done, I will reread the whole thing listening to the text-to-speech to catch the weird or uncomfortable turn of phrase that the editors don’t catch. And I still have a couple chapters to write, then send those chapters through the editorial lists. Gah!
I’ll bet most of those doing this exercise are speaking of Clause and naughty or nice. But this year was punishment enough! My happiness will be checking my list of books out of the library of novels in the raw and getting them into the real library someday. Goals take lists.
I’m sorry it took me so long to review this. I read it while deeply into NaNoWriMo, so taking the time from my own writing seemed impossible. But finally, here I am!
I love Jonelle Patrick’s writing. I always find myself drawn in by her characters and the virtual travel to Japan. I am not much into mysteries because most involve murder and finding who did the murdering. This mystery goes histories deep, and it is to find what happened to the tea bowls and the artist who made them. My way of describing this story sounds rather boring. The author makes this an adventure in two parts of Japan’s history. All the characters seem real and in the now with the reader. Best of all, in this book, there is no murder, even though in war times. Meanwhile, we learn a little about modern Japan while being taught about people’s rituals and beliefs from three different generations of Japan.
I was sad to leave the book in the end. As always, I want to know more. Don’t worry. You feel secure by the ending. Our main character, who has had to research the feudal and WWII Japans, grabs your heart as she tries to keep family and soul together.
Great job with something quite different in this genre Ms. Patrick!
On the main page at the top is the title Haven 1-4. If you go there you will find I have added 5-8. Or you can go here. HAVEN I am going to try and get the whole story up here. But still, need to keep editing Pandamapocalypse.
Oh, and I finished these slipper socks and started the next pair. I know! I had a lot of that yarn!
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
Where ancient wisdom meets modern technology. Stories that illuminate the wonders of science, culture, and life — crafted with human creativity and a touch of AI magic.
Darswords 
You must be logged in to post a comment.