Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Crazy, Jam-packed, Chaotic Week: Complete

Well, this has been a hectic week. A quick recap, shall we?

Tuesday - I actually worked since I was getting the weekend off, then literally as soon as I was done with work Hubby and I drove about an hour to go see a free, public, park stage theater performance of "Chicago" with Ronoxym and Cyhyr, whose due date was literally the next day. The performance and seats were both "meh" but it was still a great time hanging out with the two of them for one of their last nights sans child.

Wednesday - Work, some down-time with the Hubby, then off to Spink's to do some last-minute wedding planning. Stayed until about midnight, causing me to go to bed at 1am - and wake at about 6:30 the next morning - two days in a row...

Thursday - Work, left early, prepped for the Jack & Jill party - the bachelor and bachelorette parties combined so the couple can party together, threw said party, stumbled home around midnight. So, three days of about 5hrs of sleep.

Friday - Last-minute prepping for Spink's wedding, laundry, the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, and writing my Matron-of-Honor speech.... at midnight.... I tried pausing to write about three different times that day, but my time got interrupted by more pressing matters. Now we're on day three of 1am-6:30 sleep schedule.

Saturday - THE WEDDING! Super-last-minute stuff the morning of, nearly didn't have time to get ready before the processional started, had the wedding, stayed for the clean-up, took Spink's wedding gifts to her home, took care of her cats, and then finally crashed at home at the semi-decent time of 11pm. That's when I found out that Cyhyr had her and Ron's daughter that morning! YAY! Congrats, you two!

So, I'm going to pause for two celebrations:
Spink, you and your new hubby look adorable together. Enjoy FINALLY
being Husband and Wife! <3
Cyhyr, you did so good. The pics are adorable, and you look
awesome. I'm sure she's going to have soooo much love from
you and Ron! Enjoy your new family. <3
 Alright, enough of the mushy stuff.....

Sunday was a "down" day. I didn't have anywhere to go, aside from taking care of Spink's cats, and so I relaxed, I read, and I tried to write a little. I was still too tired to create a coherent sentence, but I did manage to come up with a new character.

Temp's player decided she wants to do a one-night-only - presumably - game of Dread. So, I had to come up with a character for her game based on a list of archetypes I could choose from. I chose Waif.

About a decade ago, Hubby's one friend came up with an RPG where all the characters are on a foreign planet. For some reason that no one can explain, the average life span of humans dropped to 20, and so the world was populated by orphans running society. They broke themselves into factions based on intelligence, skill, and the jobs they were best suited for; kind of like Divergent. Sadly, this RPG didn't go for long before Hubby's friend abruptly stopped it. Still, I enjoyed the character I created, and so I decided that this would be my Waif character now. I wrote up the basic profile, and after my writing group tonight I'm going to work on the character's personality profile. See, Dread uses a questionnaire that the players are supposed to answer in first person as their character. This becomes the character's profile for use in the game. I'm excited to see what Artie - the character - comes up with!

But back to last week's writing. The final crazy day of my week was obviously yesterday. Finally back at work, followed by laundry and one last visit over to Spink's place in the morning to take care of the cats, and in the evening to give back her keys and spend some time with the newlyweds. I did manage SOME writing at work and at the laundromat this time, though.

I also managed to squeeze some writing in at work last week too, just not for the "Glitches" script, per se. I do have two "Glitches" free-writes, one of which I think I'll read tonight at Group. I needed to get the creative juices flowing, and so I went with just character interaction to try to get a feel of the dynamics among everyone. The one free-write was of a brand new character: Geoffrey "Fidget" Wilkins. I believe I mentioned him last summer or the summer previous. A quick recap is that he and Lucas were saved by Dom - or Mateo, I still haven't decided on "Neo-Wolverine's" name - from a government sanctioned research facility. Fidget is a Techno-Mind. Basically, he's a telepath, but he thinks in binary, and so his mental communication is with electronics. I was trying to really figure out how his powers work, and so that was my free-write: Fidget explaining his powers to me.

My other free-write is the one I'm going to read tonight. Dom - who is Mateo in this version; trying it out - is arguing with Emily about her use of the Glitch Reference and Identification Diagram in order to categorize her students. She feels it's a natural part of society, and he strongly feels like it's Humanity's way of turning Glitches into second-class citizens. It ended up being a 2pg, single spaced story. It will be interesting to get feedback about it.

But wait! Because we're not done yet!

I read Ron's AU about Devon and Trish - or Arson and Lighter in his version; only using their codenames and petnames for each other. It was enjoyable, but it had some flaws that I pointed out. He was polishing it this week, but for obvious reasons he hasn't touched it in a few days. I don't know if he'll post it anywhere online once he's done due to the mature content - sex and murder - but we're both still excited about it.

And of course, as with Please, Let Me Explain, Ron's story jump-started my own Muse. This time, instead of Willow whining that a line or two aren't right - causing me to completely shanghai the whole story - it's Trish in my head saying "Come on, we can do better. Show him how it's done."

So, a bit reluctantly since I didn't want to yet again steal Ron's story concept, I started up my version of the AU tale last Wednesday. I wasn't able to get much writing in this week, but I am up to about 2100 words.

I really can't control Trish....

Between the language, the violence, and the sexual content.... yeah, I might finish this story because it's fun, but it may never see the light of day. It just bypassed "mature" and headed straight for "NSFW." But, uh, thanks for getting me to write again, Ron!


Let's switch gears, shall we?

It's now a new month, which means it's also time to catch up on ModernMrsDarcy's 2016 Reading Challenge!

Honestly, I think I'm the only one in my group still actively participating, but the other women are all at least still reading; even if it isn't any of the reading challenge categories. That's still a win!

What about me, though, where do I stack up? Let's see:
Challenge created by ModernMrsDarcy
It may be hard to see, but I checked off "A book you've been meaning to read" by completing "Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer" this Sunday. At first, Hubby and I thought that maybe the Kane Chronicles were a bit lack-luster because they weren't Percy Jackson and Friends, but after reading Magnus Chase, I'm not sure where Riordan went wrong with the Kanes. Especially since I LOVED Egyptian mythology as a kid, and have always been kind of "whatever" about Norse mythology.

Yet, Magnus was hilarious. Riordan went back to a method that worked: oddball chapter titles, a snarky but still lovable main character, and LOTS of tongue-in-cheek sarcasm. I really enjoyed this book, as I predicted I would, which is why I was trying to hold off until September so that I could go straight into the next book in the series: "The Hammer of Thor."

Under normal circumstances, this is where I'd give my in-depth review, but I really don't want to give much away, and this blog post is hitting epic proportions already. So, I'll just state that for August I was able to fall back on the book I was aiming for last month: "Reformations" by Sandra Brewster, a woman who happens to be in my writing group. It finally made its way back to my local library, and so I picked it up over the weekend. Again, while technically NOT recommended by a librarian or book seller, enough of the women in the writing group have promoted Sandy's book for her that I'm going to count it for that category. It's fairly short, so if I breeze through it I might be able to play catch-up with another story.

I wouldn't know where it would fit on the challenge check list, but Ron already finished Riordan's latest: "The Hidden Oracle"; book one of "The Trials of Apollo." Anyway, he's offered it up for us to borrow, and since we're planning on swinging by to meet his little one today, I feel we'll be heading home with a souvenir. Something for Hubby to read while I go through "Reformations" and then possibly jump right into "Hidden Oracle" myself to finish off the month.

This plus my plans of turning August into Neo-Script-Frenzy Month; it's going to be a wonderfully hectic close to the summer!

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