Blog 5/15 -17

 5/15

My spam email for today says, "Congrats RishOut! You Have Been Accepted!"  It felt pretty good, even without clicking on it.

My nephew, nearly five now, is finally old enough to go on a hike with me.  So, I chose the easiest one around, figuring he would get tired a mile or so in and I'd end up carrying him.  But I never did.  In fact, once we were done, he insisted on going faster than me down the trail, despite me saying, "Slow down, dude, you're gonna fall."  And darn it, he didn't.

He told me he was thirsty, right from the start, and there was a drinking fountain in the park next to the bottom of the trail . . . but it wasn't turned on.  So I told him, "We can stop and take a drink when we reach the bridge."  Which we did.

Then I told him, when we get to the stream, there are places where you can stick your face in the water and drink like that, which seemed to really appeal to him.  But the water levels are MUCH lower this year than they were in 2020 and 2021, the other times I hiked this trail, and in fact, the riverbed was bone dry half a mile from the waterfall.

This is the fifth or sixth time I've made that particular hike, and it was the busiest I've seen it, probably because it wasn't too hot and wasn't too cold.  There was a family that was playing at the edge of the top of the waterfall, and when their mother told them to line up for a picture, one of the kids knocked over his metal water bottle, and the waterfall took it.  She tried to retrieve it before it went over, and the mom started yelling about letting it go, and "It's not worth your life!"

So my nephew and I took off to the bottom of the waterfall, and were the first to arrive to see the condition of the water bottle, which was now in four pieces at the base of the falls (the lid had broken into two, the neck had snapped off, and the rest of the bottle was smashed, but intact).  And the kid just walked into the falls to grab it . . . which soaked him in icy-cold runoff water.

But hey, at least I didn't have to go in too.

Writing or Exercising: Exercising

5/16

I didn't leave myself much time to write at the library today, but let's see if I can't get a couple hundred words in.

I got a bit in, finishing the scene I started last Thursday or so.  I know a real writer (yes, I talk about Real Writers a bit too much, don't I?) would have finished the scene by Saturday, I'm okay with being only semi-real.

Back on May the 4th, because it was Star Wars Day, cable television was showing a marathon of SW movies, and at the end of the day, ROGUE ONE was on.  I figured I'd sit down and watch it (it was at the part where they leave the Yavin IV base and call themselves "Rogue One").  But it was Pan & Scanned, and there were commercials, and after about fifteen minutes, I realized that I could just switch over to Disney+ and watch it there, unedited and in the correct aspect ratio.

And there was a moment when the big Walkers with the orange doors on them attack, when one of the alien Rebel characters shouted, "AT-AT!" and it gave me pause.  He actually said the name out loud . . . so why is there still argument over how you pronounce it?  Of course, I've said it to rhyme with bat-bat for forty years now (well, thirty-eight and a couple of months, technically), but over the last decade or so, a contingent of fans (ALL YOUNGER THAN ME) have been saying the letters aloud, like Ay-Tee Ay-Tee, claiming that that makes more sense.*

Writing or Exercising: Writing 

5/17

My story "Balms & Sears" is about a fourteen/fifteen year old boy who is able to heal people by touching them, and today I was writing a part where he explains to two of his friends about his abilities.  "How long have you been able to do it?" Corwyn asks, and Alec tells him he was five years old the first time he remembered doing it.

And then, for no reason that I could say, I wrote that scene out, not as dialogue (as I usually would), but as a vignette.  I figured I'd delete it and share it on my podcast, but then I thought, What if it was the opening scene?  A prologue that shows what the story's gonna be about, instead of how I've written it, where I tell the reader, '"Alec Brownwood had a unique ability . . ."?

Huh.

Writing or Exercising: Writing 

*Though, Bossk as my witness, I've never heard anyone say "Tee-Eye-Eee Fighter" and I would commit first degree manslaughter if I ever did.