It's a Mad World

My boss's father died this morning. I was again told - by his wife, now widow - that I was a ray of sunshine in his life. Every time I came in it just made him smile. I didn't know him very well but the impact it is having on my boss breaks my heart. And his, I know. I left their condo today thinking that one day that could be my family. Myself a new widow, my family gathering around to mourn the passing of my husband. If I am starting into my 80s, well that's a bittersweet thought....more bitter than sweet right now.

My boss is like the older brother I always wanted. And the older brother I never wanted. 12 years my senior and it only took a few months for us to fall into the easy relationship that siblings who work together have. Good natured ribbing and a fair amount of bickering. It's odd - despite everything I have never seen the inside of a therapists office, nor have I ever found the need for any kind of mood stabilizer...and he's on more than I can count. His mother said that of all her sons he is the most fragile and I think she's right. And by now I know how to deal with fragile - unlike before when my response was pure self-preservation - nothing but fight or flight. I am, however, leery of how he'll react. He has just lost his father.

I reacted by forcing myself to the gym, where I lasted 20 minutes and then threw in the towel. The How To Climb Like A Girl lessons have stuck with me. The finger-skin and muscles have not. Thursday evenings are still mostly member nights, so I'm going to force my way in then and see what I can do.

Unrelated news, but still resonating oddly with me: the psycho roommate has gotten married. I know this because I spy. It adds a new dimension to things and once I've digested it I'll be less weirded out. It could make an interesting twist for the villainy...a married villain? Does that happen?

At any rate, this is my mood today, please have some:

Dusting out my brain a bit

I'm going to climb tomorrow. I've been saying this for months, but I'm going tomorrow. It's been three months since I've done any serious physical activity and the muscles are showing it. It's sad. I'm hoping that it will release those endorphins I'm starting to miss...and I had an encounter with my boss's father (who is quite literally on death's door) that left me feeling a bit "what's the point?" So I'm having a Meaning of Life crisis on top of the waning endorphins. Where' Monty Python when you need him?

Other things to help: picked up a couple of trade-mags to re-start the agent search. What a total PITA. It's not like if I were going to take up modeling again or something: you show up, they think you've got that "Thing" (models aren't really good looking, they've just got that "thing" -- watch Top Model if you're curious) or they don't and you work or you don't. When you've spent years writing a (badass) novel you have to get it to the write selection of people before they'll even put it into their slush pile. And then you've got to have a kickass query letter and synopsis and then you've got to hope that a) they haven't already filled their projections for the year and b) the sample chapters you sent were in the right format and don't suck. Or at least that they show enough promise to get them to want to read more.

And you have to have current info for them.

Anyone know a literary agent? ;-)

I'm also finished compiling the "soundtrack" to the next novel. I use songs the way movies use them - they set my mood while I'm writing and that translates to the prose. In theory. So I need to build my "villian" and some of the secondary characters and then I'll outline it and do the necessary research.

The heroine is pretty well lined out - she's going to be one of the secondary characters from the first book a few years later. The villian will be loosely based on a man - then a boy - who I think about more than I should. Too many things remind me of him and so this will (should) be cathartic. Of course, when I made this decision, I started to wonder how much of his life reminds him of me. And because we all know how much I like spying, yes I googled him. Yes I found him. I have a rough idea of what he's doing with his life and while I'm happy that he's happy - I'm also happy that he's far far away.

Anyway - enough about that.

The other decision I made is that when the Bear is home for Christmas the husband, Tranny, Bear and I - and anyone else who wants in on it - are going to go to the Lizard Lounge. Relive a bit of that 22 year old craziness. Even if I'm still on the wagon....anyone got a glow stick?

Gimme the Beach Boys To Soothe My Soul

Ok, those aren't the real lyrics, and we didn't actually go to the beach, but the beach could have been in the plans if we'd wanted it to be and I'm not the only one who spent my formative years thinking that only the Beach Boys could soothe their souls (I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away....)

Just got back from a week in Florida. I'm fairly fried from the return trip; we were 1.5 hours out of Tampa and our plane took off at 7:30....you do the math. :-D Also, the rental was in my name so I'm the one who had to drive it up so guess who got to drive instead of sleep. In their defense, neither mom nor Kris slept. They chatted so we could all wake up.

google map of where we were: (roughly)


View Larger Map

So mostly there was laying about with some magazines/books/knitting and chatting and eating. Which is always nice.

I don't have a whole lot to say because, as mentioned above, I'm pretty fried. So I'll leave you with a little video (it's not long) that my aunt showed us. We were all rolling with laughter. It's funny because...it's true. Trust me :-)

Stars V. Avalanche...or Gay Chicken, Moby Dick Style

Stars game last night. We were a little late (Steve, J, and I) because traffic held J up. It was all cool, though. One train ride later and we were there in time to witness that the Stars were already up one. We found the Gang and kicked some would-be-usurpers out of our seats.

It would have been a Shut Out if I had kept my big mouth shut, but I jinxed it.

Photos on the googlepage :-)

Afterwards, J, Steve and I wandered down to the Neimans Tree and noticed the Pox on the city. Follow the vaguely naughty link to find out what that's all about.

http://www.yourdspot.com/


Leave for Florida tomorrow to visit the family. Can't wait. Looking forward to a nice, relaxing week doing a whole lot of Not Much.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A few PSAs

1) People live downtown. If you're standing in line for a motivational seminar at the Majestic Theatre on Sunday morning - don't just wander out in the street without looking. Buses, taxis, churchgoers and I could be coming down the street trying to get home. And we need to turn where you just walked out into the street without looking while you're carrying your baby. Good thing I have a horn...and the green light...and I naturally drive 5 miles an hour when there are people spilling off the sidewalk there. (Normally it's for the club at Harwood and Pacific because those hootchies and Thugs just meander across the road and then give you the finger for driving on your green light.) So seriously -- I know is elemetary-ish but for God's sake LOOK before you step off a sidewalk. If your wife hadn't have hit you, I might have. sheesh.

2) If you want to gather odd looks from people, hop on your early Christmas present (A shiny new red bike) and take a leisurely ride through Deep Ellum. You'll throw everyone for a loop. I can't wait until my cup holder comes in so I can ride my bike AND have a milkshake!

3) I've updated the googlepage. Follow the link on the right. The NY trip (on the vacation page) and the Halloween 07 (on the part pix page) are both full of photos now!

4) Stars game this Friday. I'll have my camera :-)

I've given up on the editing

I have a lot of half-assed photo editing programs. I've demo'd a couple and then there's what came with the computer and camera -- all of them are lacking something key. And very few of them are intuitive and/or easy to use. And one of them likes to save pictures where they can't be retrieved. Iphoto doesn't like you to be able to upload to the web directly from iphoto unless it's being published to your .mac account - so like if you're browing on tinypic you can't pull directly from iphoto. It's the dumbest thing apple has ever done and my only real complaint about their programs. Everything else rocks, but that. I'd also like it if you could shrink the resolution on iphoto. Fix those two things and my photo editing search will be over. Because frankly, I'm not getting paid to put a whole lot of effort into the post-editing, if you know what I mean. My pictures rock from the moment I click the shutter and if I have to do more than a bit of cropping/red eye/retouching then clearly I need to head back to classes.


Anyway - I've gotten the pumpkin patch page updated, finally. Next on the list: NYC and Halloween. yippie!

http://emily.steve.googlepages.com/pumpkinpatch

You know what I like?

Basketball. College Basketball. And, conveniently, guess what time of year it is? (www.goduke.com will get you what you need ;-) )

It's also Hockey season. November 16th, baby. If you're reading this and you also have plans for the Stars game that night, please keep in mind that the Neimans Tree Lighting is happening at the same time and parking is going to be nightmarish. And that I'll be taking pictures of the tree the next day, I guess. I <3 Christmas.

So I decided ( to change the subject) that the Pixelmator, which seemed so promising with its filters and its layers, is actually a gigantic waste of my time. It seems smart but really it's stupid. So I'm downloading an Aperture trial. NYC and Pumpkin Patch photos will be uploaded once I determine how much fiddling around I'll be doing with them.


In other news, I figured out the reason that I didn't get so into Halloween this year. Because while I certainly never stared Death in the face, I was reminded pretty frequently that it was in the next room and I was a lucky girl. Apparently I was reminded often enough that when Steve made an innocent comment at dinner in NY (the big family dinner) I snapped and told him that we're never talking about how close I came to dying again. Seriously. It pissed me off. So Halloween was anti=climactic and I find myself wanting to fast-forward to Christmas so I can decorate and do warm-fuzzy things. (I don't decorate for Thanksgiving. Too many phallic symbols and Turkey butts for my taste.)

But first I must strip our coffee table. It's glossy white which seemed like a good idea at the time but which now just does not work. I'll post pictures ;-) I'll do halloween, too. We hung out at Thomas's until my head drove us home. It was fun. Saw Celeste and Vinny and Caroline for 30 seconds. I think it's a good thing I'm so behind on the blogging and the webpage updates. I may be a genetically-trained archiver, but I still enjoying doing all of thee things I'm archiving. Fo sho.

Peace out. Yo.