9-6
My cousin went on vacation with his family over the weekend, and that meant we wouldn't be getting together tonight, so I decided to pack up my stuff and hit the cabin a day early, and see if I couldn't get some more editing done. I keep forgetting to post the little progress bars on here, but you would not be impressed if I did it every day because, while I'm kicking names and taking ass as far as the recordings go (I think I'm thirty-six chapters in), I find it almost torturous to get the chapters edited. Every time my mouth makes that little clicking sound when I talk or I say "Roup," and the P at the end is too poppy, I have to cut it out, and that means that each chapter takes . . . well, it's forever in there, Daddy, it's forever in there!!!!!!!
I went out on the dam and did my run (ooh, I'll get to do two this trip), and inhaled a bug which I didn't cough up until I was done.
I'm sitting here watching the near-full moon moving up the side of the window. The weather is absolutely perfect here today, what I imagine a tropical island night would be, with pineapple-tasting drinks in coconuts and steel drum music in the distance and girls milling around with bikini tops on and almost glowing skin.
I got a chapter done, discovered I had mis-attributed a line to Halvery instead of Arcove, and opened another chapter. I also edited about fifteen minutes of my conversation with Marshal about parenting.
After that, I made myself the literal worst corn chowder I've ever had (it tasted like that time I accidentally bought a case of "diet" vegetable soup), and watched another movie from the library (which I haven't gone to in a full week now). It was TENET, which was visually spectacular, but even more confusing, somehow, than it had been the first time (I always figured that, if I ever saw it a second time, it would make way more sense, but really, that just made the bits that didn't make sense stand out even clearer). I hadn't hated the movie the first time I saw it, though I did speak to some who did, but I'm leaning more toward hating it now. Huh.
At the end of the night, I went up on the deck and rode my exercise bike while looking at the stars. There was a frog somewhere that was singing, and I kept hearing what sounded like a canine howling at the moon, but every time I'd stop peddling to listen closer, it would stop. There's no way they have wolves up here, right? Not with how gun-crazy folks were when it was settled (and still are).*
Exercise Day: Yes (5)
9-7
I woke before my alarm, but not very early. I made myself some bacon and eggs just now, while I listened to a podcast, and looking out the window and saw a young fawn walking by itself on the neighbor's property. Weirdly, I thought I might fill a tray or pan with water and take it over there, somewhere I can see from here, and observe whether the deer would drink the water I provide for them. Heck, I'm gonna do that now.
I wonder if deer have a heightened sense of smell like other animals do, and wouldn't partake of the water because it stinks of humans. In my experience, pretty and noble animals as they are, they don't strike me as smart enough to equate my gift with nasty, murderous humans. We'll see.
I was asked to narrate another story for the Kaleidocast podcast, which I believe has run two of my readings in the past. I took a break from audio editing to record it, and found it was the story of two alien intelligences who disagree about humanity, and ultimately battle for our fate. I think I'll do a fun robot effect on their voices, and if you don't like that . . . well, you can have the Balzac.
Back to editing. On the chapter I'm editing today, I can tell that it was the second or third chapter I had recorded that night, because my mouth is dry and some of the words are a bit more mealy-mouthed, a bit harder to get out. I hope Abbie doesn't notice, not when a full THIRD of a chapter I was editing last night was unusable because of the frayed microphone cord and I'll have to re-do tomorrow, if I remember.
As the moon rose, it looked close to full to me, and before long, I could hear the owls starting to call . . . along with something else. I only heard it twice before I decided the time had come to close the windows (so much for going out on the deck and riding the exercise bike, like I did last night). The noise was unlike anything, really, and the scene just writes itself. "Honey, what . . ." Carl licked his lips. "That sound?" It came again, long and echoey, like a woman giving birth, if somehow she'd gotten pregnant at eighty. "Yes? What . . . is it?" "That," Carl said, raising his chin, "is an elk, calling to a female. They call it trumpeting." "An elk," Marilyn said, relieved. "Oh." Carl nodded, keeping his confident, brave face. He didn't think it was an elk. He didn't know what it was.
Exercise Day: Yes (6)
*Just a reminder, good citizens, that if that terrible Obama is elected in 2008, he'll take away all your guns.
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