kittens

unplugged productivity & a kitty in the sunshine

Things I accomplished in my week of little-to-no internets, an unnumbered list.

  • Finished knitting the huge, boa-esque scarf that I have been working on for ages. Photos forthcoming. Of course, now that it is finished it is too warm outside to wear it. I have lousy knitting karma.
  • Read Shaun Tan’s Tales From Outer Suburbia on recommendation from Carey. I was a Tan fan already but this book is lovely bits of whimsical wonderment and I loved it to pieces. A perfect blend of words & pictures. This is going to be one of those books I read over & over, I can tell.
  • Managed to get a whole lot of revising done, including reworking a large part of the ending. I came up with the changes while completely hopped up on Sudafed and unable to breathe properly, but so far they still seem to work. Draft is still a mess, but it’s starting to look novel-shaped again. Sort of. If you squint.
  • Did not manage to properly get rid of this stupid cold. Am mostly better, but still congested. It is the cold that will not die no matter how much tea and vitamin C I give it. It makes me sad. *cough*

In other news, it’s disturbingly spring-like here. We had the windows open yesterday. It kind of freaked me out.

Tessa is enjoying the sunshine.

tessa sunshine march 2010

By erin, ago

iWednesday

I spent a large portion of the afternoon mesmerized by the shininess of the Apple iPad. Even though it has a horrible, horrible name. For about an hour I seriously considered getting one, since we were planning on replacing our MacBook later this year anyway and we don’t use it for that much. And it seemed like it would be a good happy medium between my iPhone lust and my AT&T loathing.

And then I realized since it’s app-based I can’t really do anything useful on it and would be deprived of my beloved Scrivener. So I am going to have to ignore the shiny for now. Someone call me when it runs OS X.

In better news, I tested USPS requested package pickup today and it seems to have worked just fine, so I now have an alternative to walking to the post office in the snow when I have something larger than print envelope sized to mail.

And we are rolling toward the end of our epic LOST re-watch. Season 5 is a lot more, um, inconsistent than I’d remembered. Still good, just missing something. But I know the finale will make me cry again, so maybe I’ll forgive the inconsistencies in a few days.

Still in revisionland, of course. I’m not sure I’m going to have a finished(ish) draft by as early in February as I’d wanted, but it’s starting to look novel-shaped again, which is something. It still needs massive amounts of work but the structure is getting there and that’s making my brain hurt marginally less.

Bucket, as always, remains unimpressed.

unimpressed bucket 2010

By erin, ago

miscellany & tessa in a bag

So far this week is all storybirds and sketching the tarot kings. I think I have strong sketches for all four kings now. I ended up starting them over and making them all a bit more modern and sort of formal yet casual and I think it works. I’m going to let them sit overnight and if I still like them in the morning I will start painting them tomorrow.

And then this long crazy tarot journey will be a happy squirrel and some detailing away from complete. Which is kind of baffling.

I am mentally dipping my toes back into revisionland again, though the holidays and the snow and something vaguely resembling a head cold are making it a bit difficult. I have Ideas. I am attempting to string them together into something cohesive. I feel like I’m deconstructing the old draft the way they deconstruct food on Top Chef and I’m worried that it won’t taste good but I can’t taste it properly until all the ingredients are on the plate. Someday I will be able to explain my writing process without metaphors but today is not that day.

Also, I got tickets to see Sleep No More a third and final time after the holidays. Sleep No More & revisionland are currently tied up in my head in this moody masquerade of darkness and tuxedos that smells like evergreen. There’s something in it that is precisely what the novel needs. If I can find a way to translate wordless immersive theatre into text.

But I’m trying not to worry about that too much yet. Here, have a photo of Tessa in a bag.

tessa in a bag

Kittens love the holidays. ‘Tis the season of bags and cardboard boxes.

By erin, ago

50k!

Well, 51,132. And I have at least 20, possibly 30 more before the end will roll around. Going to try to get it done before December.

Bucket remains unimpressed.

unimpressed bucket

By erin, ago

flopsy yawning kitten sort of day

yawning tessa

Tessa looks how I feel right now. Maybe without the yawning. But she’s been sprawled out in front of the fan all day and I would really like to be able to do the same but I don’t think I’d fit on that table and I have work to do. Lucky kitten.

I know, I should have the a/c on when it’s this humid. But we’ve had such a mild summer that we haven’t put the air conditioners up. It’s really not that bad with the fans, but it’s uncomfortable enough that I don’t really feel like doing much and would rather flop like Tessa. But I’m trying to be good.

Tarot Queens are going slow, mostly because the humidity makes it hard to paint. I still should be able to finish them by the end of the week, the base layers are down already and they mostly need detailing.

There will be sharable news on the literary agent search soon. I’m still playing the waiting game so nothing is definite yet. I think I’m actually getting better at the waiting game because I stopped biting my nails and I don’t freak out quite so much every time I have new mail.

I am not a summer creature, despite being born in July. I’m craving autumn already, with crisp leaves and pumpkin spice lattes and apple picking and none of this horrid humidity.

By erin, ago

floppy kittens, etsy sale

It quite suddenly decided to be proper summer around here. In the last week of July. The Kitten Flop Barometer is at Very High Flop.

(Or should that be Very Low Flop, since the floppiness is very low to the ground? Though Bucket is flopped on the table in front of the fan, while Tessa is flopped by my feet on top of a pile of papers that need to be shredded. The Kitten Flop Barometer is not a precise device.)

I seem to be in the middle of all sorts of things which involves a lot of thinking and waiting and not necessarily a lot of interesting blog fodder. Also, it’s hot, which is demotivating.

Things I am waiting for in the mail:

  • BPAL order including bottles of Belle Vinu, Imp & Lawn Gnome
  • DVD of Watchmen
  • New bank card, to replace the unfortunately compromised one.
  • Notice from the bank about all that fun bank fraud stuff. It’s like a money adventure, but not as fun as shopping. When all this is done I am totally buying new shoes.

And of course, I’m keeping an eye on my my e-mail inbox for agent responses. It’s been pretty quiet lately on that front.

I’m writing bits of all sorts of things. I have two big works in progress plus a fairy tale for my writing group and I’m pondering the queens for the tarot deck.

Also, I’m having a sale on original art over on Etsy. Breakdown of ridiculously low prices is over on the art blog. Here, have a very pretty widget to click and go check stuff out:

By erin, ago