miscellany

miscellany & tori

I know, I fail at updating. I have been a busy bee. Well, really, a combination of being sort of busy and also having nothing in particular to say, which seems to be the formula for lack of blog updating. Remind me not to make rash promises about updating every day anymore.

It decided to be summer all of a sudden, which is interesting and results in terribly flopsy kittens. Tessa is melting into the file box as I type.

Spent the week working on a new painting, hanging out with a friend from Smith I hadn’t seen in five years, and flouncing around in sundresses. And submerging myself in the new Tori Amos album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin.

I’ve loved Tori since I was 13 years old and first heard Little Earthquakes. I’ve grown up with her in a lot of ways, and each subsequent album seems to accompany me into my future, if that makes any sense. AAtS is interesting. It’s very mellow, that’s the first thing I noticed. It seems more like one long musical progression than a bunch of different songs, while certain tracks are standouts (I’m particularly fond of “Give” and “Lady in Blue” at the moment,) it blends very well. And I’m sure this sounds vaguely insulting, but it makes for very good background music. Maybe it’s just more atmospheric than some of her previous albums. I wasn’t sure what I thought about it at first but having listened to it pretty much non-stop for several days I really like it. You can hear the sound progression from American Doll Posse, but it’s, I don’t know, smoother and softer. Very much looking forward to seeing how it sounds live in August.

In other news, I am finishing up the latest round of edits on the novel. The boy and I are planning on sitting down with it this weekend and polishing it up, and by the end of the month it should be query-ready. So when I’m not questioning the clarity of character motivation and adding bits of dialogue to scenes I’m compiling my list of literary agents and worrying over synopsizing something that’s non-linear and 33% second person narration. My query letter is good, though, so that’s one less thing to worry about. I’ll be ready, I feel like I’m working at a good pace.

And I’m having a professional tarot reading on Wednesday, so that should help, too.

By erin, ago

i’m always home, i’m uncool.

I totally fail at the whole Blog Every Day In May concept. That’s what I get for picking the month Mercury is Retrograde, I suppose. Am still going to endeavor to post more than usual, to not be a quitter.

Expect this post to have little to no coherence. I am staying up until 3am when the boy is getting up to go golfing. Haven’t done this since last August or so. It’s quiet, I have 24 hours worth of Tori Amos on iTunes shuffle. I’m following Amanda Palmer’s Losers of Friday Night on Their Computers (#LOFNOTC) on Twitter. The surreality started early this evening, apparently.

The LOST season 5 finale was head-hurting and surprising and wonderful. I cried, because I couldn’t not at a certain point. I was left exhilarated and confused, which I think is the mark of a good LOST season finale. I’m excited for season 6, and I have lots to re-watch before next year. Also, I will never not be in love with Michael Emerson.

Going through files and notes and working on bits and pieces of my work-in-progress novel before I go back to editing the almost-query-ready novel on Monday or so. I am getting better at juggling multiple writing projects, moving my brain from one to another. Writing is turning into brain yoga, an analogy I had more to expand on moments ago and now whatever meaning it had has flitted away. I told you this was going to be incoherent.

I’m not an outlining girl, per se, but I’m trying to shape the draft I have into something more story-shaped. The draft is my 50something thousand words from NaNoWriMo ’08. I just re-read all of it and I like it, but the story hasn’t found its way into the pages yet. It’s almost like I spend each November digging for things and I have to wash everything off and shine it up to see what I’m finding, and now it’s a matter of seeing how it fits together and digging more to fill in the gaps.

I can see the shape of this one, now. There’s a lot to fill in but the shape is there.

Ok, it’s late and I’m sort of trying to work and I fear I stopped making sense before I started typing this. We planted flowers around the deck this afternoon. Pepsi Throwback is kind of awesome. My hair smells like peaches. I’m going to attempt to be productive now, or as close to productive as possible.

By erin, ago

hatbox!

My hatbox came! Yay!

I have suddenly, without warning or reason, developed a minor obsession with vintage luggage. No idea why. Maybe because vintage pieces of luggage seem like they have so much story in them even when they’re empty. But hey, luggage is useful and I thought of several practical uses for this piece so I went ahead and ordered it from jessjamesjake on Etsy. It arrived today and I love it, it’s even lovelier in person.

Closed!

Open!

The pattern inside is really lovely. It has that dusty vintage smell but it’s not overpowering. Am very, very pleased with my purchase.

Tessa, of course, prefers the box it came in:

I’m eyeballing all sorts of gorgeous vintage suitcases and things but I really have nowhere to put them. Am still looking for a good train case, though.

By erin, ago

small things

  • Met a small cat with no name today. She is a sweetheart, kind of crazy and kind of sweet and likes to lick fingers with her sandpaper tongue. I meant to take my camera and completely forgot, but she was a bit too quick for photo ops anyway. She’s mostly white with a fair amount of orange, as though a marmalade cat fell most of the way into a pool of marshmallow. We tried to help with naming but to no avail, hopefully she will tell my parents what her name is soon, though she seems to do just fine being called Kitty.
  • I have a wonderful little project that I’m working on that I am ever so excited about. Will be working on it for the next couple months and will likely debut it for my birthday in July and then it will be ongoing for, well, I’m not sure how long. We’ll see. A good long while, at least. Have a lot of work to do on it before then, but it will be fun work and I’m looking forward to it.
  • I have chocolate cake and red wine and there is rain pouring happily down outside.
By erin, ago

unintentional productivity

So, rather than working on anything I’d meant to work on today, I came up with a new project and spent most of my day playing around with ideas for it.

Because what I really needed was a new project. But I like this one! It has the potential to be really fun and something different for me, and as I mentioned before, currently craving change like a cravy thing.

Still need to work out details, and likely won’t have anything to show for it for a few weeks, but still. It’s nice to have things simmering.

I seem to have had a week of being productive in unintentional ways. Which is weird, but good.

Tomorrow I get to meet my parents’ new kitty. New kitty does not have a name yet, poor thing. And we will probably go see Star Trek on Sunday, because we said we were going to wait until it was out on dvd unless the reviews were phenomenal, and the reviews seem to be pretty darned phenomenal. Weekend of kitties and Star Trek. Sounds like a good weekend to me.

By erin, ago

miscellany with hat box (sans hat)

I changed my blog layout. I looked at WordPress layouts until my eyes hurt, and I settled on this one. I like it a lot, though I’m still adjusting to it. I was getting sick of the dark background, and I’ve been craving change lately the way you’d normally crave sugar or salt or caffeine.

Also, I bought a hat box. Or rather, a hat box-esque piece of vintage luggage. I had been eyeing it for a couple weeks and thought of an extra good use for it, so I decided to go ahead and get it. Pictures when it arrives, of course. Though I really need to stop looking through vintage luggage on Etsy, my Etsy addiction was bad enough already.

My photopaintings started the week with promises that they would be done by Friday and they are lying liars. Mostly I’m just waffling over the best way to handle a certain aspect, and once I figure that out they won’t take long at all, but the days are going by and I am continuing to waffle. Ah well.

In other news, LOST is awesome beyond all awesomeness this season and Bucket has fallen in love with the foam lounge chair. These things are actually related as I had to kick Bucket off the chair to watch LOST last night. She was not pleased.

By erin, ago