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.
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.
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:
I had a marvelous Thanksgiving. I hope you did, too. As often as I have enjoyed Zoom calls, today I set one up. It worked but I felt silly as I didn’t find the automated thing to send everyone. I sent out a text message typing out the number and finally figuring out where the password was. Oh, well, like I said it worked. We got to talk to all our grown kids today. I was exceptionally surprised to wake up to an FB IM from my son! ❤
I even got to chat with my friends and that was fun, too.
Oh, and my son foot the bill, and my husband picked up the Thanksgiving Pizzas. Yum! No one slaved over a meal I never was fond of. And there is always pizza left for breakfast tomorrow morning.
.
SO all that means that I didn’t get my words for today. I think this is the first Thanksgiving that I didn’t. Even when we’ve gotten together at each other’s homes I’d bring my laptop and type while visiting. Oh, well, I do have a storyline that is making me happy to pursue. So only added 644 words making my total to date 42,435. I need 907 to make the required 43,342. I really do far more math during NaNo than the whole rest of the year combined!
Anyway, I am so sleepy I can’t write another word.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “the last thing you put in your fridge.” Start your post with the last thing you put in your fridge. Let your mind wander from there. Enjoy!
The last thing I put in my fridge was the ranch dressing that fell out because the last person who put it in didn’t make sure it was in there securely. I wanted to complain, but I am very grateful for a full fridge. We have been blessed this month with a little extra on our cards, and so when we got the boxes, the cabinets and fridge are full. In my life, that has hardly ever been the case. Not that I have ever been hungry. But just enough that I can find what I need in the fridge is the usual scene. I am so glad my husband is starting to like my vegetarian ways. Yes, he eats some meat but very seldom. My son does the same thing buying the occasional tofu meal. He loves Kimchi. I tried to cook it a lot once I learned about it. I make the rice and veggies on the side and make sure to fry the tofu to crispie-ish. The trouble with the lockdown is that we don’t get into town to find the Kimchi. I think I will try to order some on Amazon.
Yay! Got me some Kimchi, noodles, a cooker, and tofu coming. My mouth is drooling!
Okay, now for the NaNo word count: 35,167, still barely above the goal of 35,007 but, I’m happy. I like how the story is going. Not sure I should share until I am more sure where it is going. I’m having fun. That’s all that counts.
I didn’t have a finished product yesterday for Finished Friday. I had one slipper sock done, and while chatting with my friends, I nearly finished the other. Boom! Done today!
And I have the next pair toed and ready to make the next pair.
Where did this week go? Seems like just yesterday was Sunday. Today was actually the first day we had blue skies. It is been so smokey from the fires in California and Oregon.
Since my computer broke down I’ve been doing everything on the phone or on my Kindle Fire. It is much harder to blog and certainly harder to put in pictures or make something interesting. But we’re working on getting a laptop working for me again. I’m trying to get ready for NaNo and all kinds of things like that so–
I just wanted to stop in and say everybody’s fine here and I hope everybody out there is doing okay. Stay safe and try to find breathable air.
Looking out my window at a cloudy clear day, very little smoke.
A couple people have asked how we are doing. So far we are okay in our little Oregon town. But the news of nearby towns is tragic. My son is getting well. My other son broke his pinky toe in solidarity. I’m kidding. It is just a coincidence. But he’s okay. We’re okay. It is 2020 so keeping good thoughts for all of us, all of you, too!
I used 32 pegs of a KB Hers of a His and Hers Sock kit. The yarn is Scrubby Cotton. And it hurts and is hard to purl with. Since the pattern calls for one-row knit and one-row purl. that second row of each part of the garter stitch took me forever! And it hurt from pulling and pushing the little texture knots through the former stitch. The knit rows were easy-peasy. This took me a day and a half. Partly because I had to frog it due to the first loom, the wood with metal pegs sock loom, I think it is a KB also. I tried to pull the stitches onto a circular needle but the loom crunched apart in my hands so I just frogged the project. My brother was able to fix the broken loom back to new. But meanwhile, I just grabbed the Hers loom and started again.
If I had attempted this pattern by crocheting I think it would have been finished in an hour. Maybe it was the yarn and I should try it with the yarn recommended in Kristen’s tutorial. I think I’ll go order some of that when I get finished with this report. Here’s the Youtube tutorial again. I know! You watch this while I do a dish or two so I can report how it does its job.
Did you enjoy it? Yeah. I know. I was on my own doing those dishes. Oh, well. Oh, yeah. The dishrag easily did the job my scrubby sponge could. So there’s that. By the way, GoodKnitKisses has a left-handed tutorial, too.
I still have my craft project taking up the whole coffee table. Oh well, I think the family is used to me. They all have places to call their own. I lost my hobby room when my son moved in. So if anyone has a complaint… No one does. They are pretty mellow guys with their own hobbies so…
Speaking of guys, As of today, I have been married to this terrific man for 17 years. We’ve been together as of the fourth of July 25 years. Go us!!!
Oh, and it was a Monday because the Easy Writers group Zoomed. I do enjoy getting with this group of ladies. Each seems to have unique personalities and styles. Anyway, that answers the What Day Is It Anyway question. #WDIIA
That’s the One-Liner for Wednesday answering the #What Day Is It Anyway? question. Except the Half-birthday was two days ago. So here’s how it happened:
My friend sent out little boxes to those who attended. And she sent the Zoom address to get us to the party.
The box:
An alligator squirt gun, a shell-shaped soap, a Booktastic trivia card, a baggie of wipers, a postcard from the beach, and a beach ball. I immediately blew up the ball.
Sorry for the quality it is a picture of a picture, and so on, and so on.
So despite the lock-down, lack of money, Weather that tries not to look like June, my Half-Birthday Virtual Zooming Beach Party was a success! I have fun friends!
Do you remember when you were young and someone asked you how old you were? And you’d square your shoulders and tell them your age plus a half or three quarters or even larger fraction according to how much math had been imparted to your brain. Then somewhere mid-thirties or forties that all started changing. I, for one, reversed the numbers to reflect a smaller number. 41 became 14, 52 became 25. At one point that became useless. Face it. When that happens you have reached maturity. Scratch that, You’re old. Fantastic. I was hiding from my actual age the whole time I’ve been alive. Never happy with the moment wanting to be older or younger. I would have loved to be 33 forever. Mature enough to make my own decisions and young enough to do everything I ever wanted to do. At that age, I could even play in the park without feeling silly as my kids needed the accompanying adult on the slide and the swings. Then I could enjoy a drink and pretend to be a full adult.
Well, here I am at 07 and thinking maybe I should be the fan of the half or three-quarter again. Maybe if the world didn’t have a pandemic and other apocalyptic things like murder wasps, I wouldn’t embrace this. But for those of us with birthdays in December, which has never been a great month for those who were born under its cold, crazy, Christmasy times, the fact may be that many of us might not be here for our birthdays. If and when we do, all the better to show we fancy every moment of life.
So today I attended a half birthday Zoom party. There were elements of fantasy as this was with a cosplay bunch of friends. I could have sworn one of the ladies had elf ears. Anyway, I thought this idea was fun and look forward to my half birthday in a few days. We have life. Let’s celebrate it. even if only on Zoom with friends and family. It may be we are closer to loved ones now than ever before as we need to keep in touch often. Wouldn’t it be great if we could measure our lives in Love? Is Rent playing in my head again? Let me share the earworm. (One of my favorite songs of all time!)
Each second should have always been this precious. We should have never put aside our elders, how quickly we become one! As we try to save lives let’s make sure to pull it in and let it sit with us. Before COVID19 a car accident or cancer could rob us of a loved one but it was so seldom that we didn’t bring it in until it was too late. We’ve been given a bit of a gift to look at saving and loving our lives and loving the lives of others.
Half-Birthday? I’m a fan. I might even enjoy a three-quarter Birthday! Hey, remember being a newlywed? We got so sappy! Two-week anniversaries were fun! Let’s get back to that kind of excitement. Life is a gift. We can still be careful and distance and hand-wash, AND love life!
Per Linda:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “fan.” Use it by itself or find a word that starts or ends with it. Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
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.
Books, games, music, and life — filtered through the mind of a writer, drummer, and philosopher who thinks too deeply about all of it. If it moves something in your chest, I'm interested.
Darswords 
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