July's almost done, and it started just five minutes ago. The blisters on my ankles are giving me serious grief this morning, as I see to scuff them against everything from chair legs to each other. I did not wake up at dawn this morning--which is highly unusual, here at the cabin--but I did wake up before my alarm went off. Last night, I finished my thousand words, started editing a podcast, then put on a DVD which I watched until really late at night--it was one of those British historical epics that was over three hours long.
This morning, I ate a little bit, grabbed my book and read it through to the end (I only had two chapters left), and finished editing my podcast (which means there'll be at least one Rish Outcast come August).
What does "perforce" mean?
It's fair to say this is the laziest day I've ever had here at the cabin. My brother was supposed to come up today to work on the solar panels, and I was going to help him, but he texted me right before I left and said he might not be able to make it. Now it's getting to be late afternoon, and it looks like he's a no-show. So, except for emptying out the ashes in the stove (which was a pretty dirty job, and when I dumped them outside, the wind blew them right back into me), and eventually hiking around the lake again in three hours or so, I'm just sitting, reading (made it exactly one sentence into a new book a little while ago before falling asleep
Outside, the cabin next door has been a flurry of activity. Many family members and scampering kids, and because it got hot in here, I had no choice but to open the windows and let the noise in (even so, these kids are way less obnoxious than the ones from up the ridge who bothered me last week while I was out on the deck, even pointing me out like I was the sole fat guy at a Guess model convention). But much worse than that, are the chainsaws going a lot down the way. Yes, two chainsaws buzzing in synch, as though it's a competition, or the world's lamest musical instrument (besides the banjo, I mean). It's dueling chainsaws out there, and I can't help but imagine two Volkswagen-sized wasps getting it on under the trees.
But those distractions would only really bother me if I was trying to sleep (which I did an hour ago) or trying to record. In audio editing and writing, that cacophony is only a bother if I let it be.
I wrote a little bit on the egg story, and what I need to do is get my recorder out and take a long walk, trying to work out where the story is going to go. So far, there's absolutely no antagonist, and if this were a movie you could expect to see a scientist or military operation as a bad guy, which is about as imaginative as a porn movie where a girl says, "There must be some way I can get a better grade in your class." Which makes me wonder if my buddy Dennis, who is a high school Math and Science teacher ever fantasizes about that sort of thing.
Did I mention my attempt to get a thousand sit-ups in this weekend? If not, hey, I'm mentioning it now.
Sit-ups Today: 377
Sit-ups In July: 3130
I went outside, briefly, and was surprised to see it getting dusk-like at five o'clock. Dark clouds had come in, covering the sun, and as I started my book, raindrops began to fall when I was only on page seven. The author is R.A. Salvatore, who I've never read before (except for one Star Wars novelization), though I once sat next to him at an airport, waiting for a plane back to Los Angeles. We chatted a bit, and he was very friendly, even though I had never read any of his books. We'll see if this is but the first of many of his tomes I pick up, or if it's not to my liking.
I think about my own writing, of course, and the many, many, many stories I have begun and then abandoned. Some of those were probably mediocre, or even bad stories, but I'm sure that some of them would have been good, and pleased somebody out there, even if it were just the seven listeners to the Rish Outcast. I think of the story I mentioned yesterday, where the couple is forced to raise an alien together even though she doesn't love him, and I wish that I had written it, just to find out how it ended.
I suppose, since I'm writing every single day--and we're only thirteen days away from me having written every day for half of a year--that I could resurrect the tale if I wanted to. Better to finish the stuff I'm currently working on, but even if I finished only one story every three weeks, that would still be eight more by the end of the year.
Of course, I won't be able to manage this daily thing for the rest of the year. One day, I'll simply declare shenanigans, and that'll be it. But that doesn't mean I won't still be writing. I would enjoy meeting up with the Rish of six months from now and ask him what stories he's working on, maybe have him share a completed one with me. I hope he'd be a little bit contented with the work that he's done, and with life in general, but part of me shudders to think of the Rish of the future, who keeps on getting older and less and less what he sought out to be when he was young. Poor guy.
Oh, that reminds me: I did get an email from Accounts Payable of the script I turned in the third draft of last month, having me send them a payment request for that last draft. To my surprise, they were apparently paying me double what they had agreed upon. That was good news, so I filled out the form and sent it in the same day.
Unfortunately, I got an email back mentioning that the amount was wrong, and I needed to submit a request for half that total. No big deal, I know, but still, it was with a little bit less gusto that I sent in the second form.
But money is money, and it makes the world go round, as I dunno, Mother Theresa said.
Words Today: 1175
Words In July: 17,212
I ran down to the lake again, about an hour earlier than I had yesterday. I had charged up my phone, and went for a walk in the woods as I waited for the sunset to arrive.
I stopped a time or two to take pictures, but something you could only see in video is the sheer number of mosquitos that were swarming around me. I did stop and do a song in this location:
But it would cost me.
I walked around as the sun started to dip in the sky, then set up my tri-pod in the same place as yesterday (well, more or less), but there were lots of clouds covering the sun and we didn't get the spectacular colors from the day before.*
So, I set up the phone (the old one), did a test recording, then did my song . . . and it started to rain. But the sun was still up, technically, so the only way you can tell is by watching the water behind me, where the various droplets rippled.
I finished the song, really belting the darn thing out (and sometime, I ought to make a mini-documentary on how I pick a song, try to learn it, and then screw it up in literally every Serenade that I do), and went over to stop the recording . . . and it was already stopped. So, I checked to see at what point the space ran out on my phone, then deleted a file, and ran back (before the light was gone) to finish the song. I did fine, I think, but we'll never know, because the phone was full again at the twenty-eight second mark.
I went ahead and did the song again, using my new phone, but by then, the light was gone. I wish I could have turned around and redone the end, but now I might just have to finish it someplace else. I cannot explain why I care about such things, but I do.
*Did I not mention that? I can't remember now, except to say that the first song I recorded on my phone had almost scary seconds-before-darkness colors, which I will probably never be able to replicate, including (somehow) turning my hair and beard into the orange of a Weasley sibling.
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