Thursday, October 21, 2010

oh say that you'll be true and never leave me blue suzie q

For some reason, my favorite editing music of choice lately has been the "blues rock" station on Pandora. I never really listened to much blues rock, probably because it's been occasionally critically acclaimed and I tend to prefer things that have never been praised by anyone with decent taste. But, it's interesting enough to keep me awake, funky enough that I think it gets me into a different mood than the music I usually write to, and not so well-known to me that I think I'll stab myself in the ear if I have to listen to any of it again.

As a result of my Pandora love, I upgraded to Pandora premium. The totally awesome thing is that Pandora and Tivo made an agreement to stream Pandora via Tivo, so I can listen to Pandora through the better speakers of my TV and without burning through my laptop battery while working on my couch. It's the little things that make me happy these days.

I failed to get out of bed early as I had intended; instead, I slept until eleven. I'm going to have to start getting up earlier, but this week may be a wash. So I showered, dressed myself before I wrecked myself, took care of some email, and went over to Borrone for a late lunch. There, I spent a couple of hours doing the reading and homework for my magazine class, which meant that I didn't have time to write today. When I left Borrone, I bought some groceries (since this whole being responsible for breakfast and lunch is really hard when I have no food in the house), cleaned up my living room, took care of some stuff online, chatted with a few friends, and ate a v. quick sandwich before dashing over to Stanford campus for class. Class was good, and I need to spend some quality time on it over the next few days, since my big assignment (a feature story) is due next week. Sigh.

When I got home from class, I procrastinated online for awhile (you know you're procrastinating when you sit through an entire three minute video advertisement for a machine that automagically debones whole chickens, turkeys, etc. and extrudes the remaining meat product) and then read the first quarter of the current version of my novel. It's really the first half of what I've got, but when the novel is finished, this will be approximately the first quarter. Verdict: a lot of great stuff so far, but I'm struggling with including enough information to ground the reader without bogging down the plot, and I think I have too many secondary characters, and a couple of the really important secondary characters haven't even made an appearance yet. So, I'm feeling good, but I also have a ton of work to do.

On top of the work I have to do for the book, plus the magazine class and the blogging class that is starting in two weeks, I also volunteered to help plan the awards ceremony for next year's romance conference, and the president of the romance organization contacted me today asking if she could put me up as the candidate for assistant chair of the ceremony committee at the board meeting in November. I'm excited about this, since I like planning events and so am happy to give back in this way, but at the same time perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned my qualifications (which she said were 'impressive') and pretended that my only skill was cat-rearing so that I didn't end up with an assistant chair position. Oh, well -- we all know taking a back seat when I have the skills for a front seat doesn't make me happy, so I'm going to let my excitement about this win out over my laziness.

Okay, it's bedtime -- in addition to reading the rest of my manuscript tomorrow, I need to do some serious stuff around the house to start getting ready for the kids who are coming over on Saturday. Goodnight!

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