Vacation Day

The raging temper tantrum seems to have passed. Lots of wasted drama in the past 24-hours. I started to detail some of it here then erased it.  I want to move past it and rehashing it won't help.  If I had to give myself marks for how I handled the preceding day's events, I'd give myself an 85-95% passing grade.  If anything, I detract marks for the raging blog-post of yesterday. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the way I conducted myself. 

It was mid-70's here today and Blair and I decided to escape for the day.  We got in the car about 8:30 this morning and drove to King, a tiny little North Carolina town for an egg and pancake breakfast. Then we drove into Mount Airy (home of everything Andy Griffith) and did some shopping. 

We stumbled into the cutest little store called Scarlet Begonias. It's a trendy gift store with eye-catching purses and jewelry and unique clothing and fun paintings and items for the house. I found a really cute orange travel purse and a semi-dressy drape that also looks good with jeans to wear around England (if you click on "clothing" under the "Gallery" heading, there's a montage of pictures and my orange purse is draped over a mannequin in the opening shot).

The owner was preparing for a book signing later that day and when I told her I'd written a gift book, she agreed to carry it.  Luckily, we'd driven my car that morning so I had some in the back seat. So Scarlet Begonias now carries Lessons In Stalking.  Yea!

We spent some more time exploring stores ("Opie's Candy Store," "Floyd's Barber Shop") then headed to Pilot Mountain for a 2-mile hike. The weather was glorious--it felt so good to be outside, far away from anything remotely resembling a laptop. We ended the day by swinging by and picking up groceries on our way home.

We're not as young as we used to be. The last part of our hike was straight up this very rocky terrain and we were feeling it.  And after we'd sat to drive the 30 minutes to the grocery store, both of us moaned as we exited the car.  Sore legs and buttocks. 

Blair is now collapsed on the coach watching basketball and I'm getting ready to go plop myself on the other couch with hot tea and a book.  A friend in my children writer's critique group loaned me a stash of her novels for middle-graders so I'm educating myself this week.  

Say a prayer for us that we're able to hobble our way out of bed tomorrow...

 Dena

The Tape Recorder That Didn't Take

Observe me sitting here, calmly avoiding having a massive panic attack.  Why so calm? I think I've panicked myself into a stupor.

I conducted an hour-long phone interview Tuesday with a nationally acclaimed and VERY BUSY expert.  Got great information and sat down this morning to transcribe the interview and write the piece up.  Guess what? The cord that connects the tape recorder to the phone was only 1/2 plugged in.  So as I played the tape this morning, I found I had an hour-long tape of me saying "Uh-huh" and "okay" and complete static where there should have been the voice of the expert.

Thank you doctor.  I'm ready for my medication now.

I really don't know what I'm going to do. Try to piece together from memory the best I can and then probably have to reconduct parts of the interview. 

I read about things like this happening in books on writing. There are horror stories and warnings to test your equipment and make sure you have back-up batteries, etc.  So I always test my equipment and I always have back-up batteries on hand.  I tested my recorder right before I called and it worked fine. I must have pulled the phone and disconnected the cord while dialing and just not have noticed it.

So. I'll just sit here.  NOT panicking.  Nope.  Very calm. Actually sort of funny.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Heated Eyelash Curler

Now I know the world has a screw loose.  Were any of you aware there was even such a product as an electric eyelash curler available on the market? Does not the general concept lend itself to a "Hmmm.  Maybe we should think about this..." approach?

In my writer's critique group this evening, we were discussing a scene in my middle grade novel where a bunch of 11 and 12 year old girls are in a cabin at camp. I was trying to convey that my main character, in comparison to the girls around her, is something of a tomboy with no interest in boys or curling irons or the perfect tan.  I missed on my description and someone suggested showing how the other girls acted by having them pull out their curling irons or eyelash curlers.

At the mention of eyelash curlers, one woman in our group volunteered that her mom had bought her an electric eyelash curler when she was a teen.

 None of us had ever heard of such a thing and burst out laughing. I told her I wasn't sure such an item existed and I was going to Google it when I arrived home. Sure enough, it's a real product.  Check out a sample by clicking here.

I don't know why I'm surprised.  Even the standard eyelash curlers look like some kind of medieval torture devices. Blair can't stand to watch me use one. Freaks him out.  I'm so glad I go that extra step to look pretty for him.

And, it turns out the joke is on me.  As I was searching sites to find links to post for this blog entry, I came across several descriptions on how to use a standard eyelash curler. The instructions state to hold a blow dryer on the curler for "no more than 5 seconds." Then you need to "test it with your hand to make sure it's not too hot" because you don't want to "burn your eye."

Who comes UP with these ideas???

Dinner with Writer Friends

I had such the lovely evening last night. I went to dinner at the house of a writer friend of mine. The reason for the dinner is that a writer friend of his was in town, a woman I had worked with a bit via e-mail but hadn't had the chance to meet. We clicked immediately and the three of us spent 4 hours discussing life, writing, travel, research, and a plethora of other topics. It was one of the those wonderful evenings where the conversation never wavered as we jumped from discussing the male/female ratio aspects of the brain to Myers-Briggs testing to how we'd all like to participate in an archeological dig. 

This woman writer is co-writing a novel that spans 7 million years.  It's historical fiction but her aim is to be so well-researched that even historians have a hard time telling where truth leaves off and fiction begins. She's travelled to Italy four times on research trips, examined 1,000 year old books, stood in 500,000 year old caves, and had astronomers realign the stars for her so she could see what the constellations in the heavens looked like  2million years ago.  I told her if she's ever in the market for a research assistant, I'm her gal....

Today is another one of those non-stop days.  I just got out of my 7:15 meeting and now have a 9-11:30, 12-1, 1:30-3, 3:30-4:30, dinner with friends at 5:30, then 7-10pm meetings.  I enjoy it though.  I like all my meetings and the people in them and the day really does fly by. 

Right now I'm sitting in The Green Bean, a local fair trade coffee house, getting ready to put in a few hours of work on Millicent, my middle-grade novel.  I have coffee (decaf!) and a muffin and I'm good to go.  Happy Wednesday.