"Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" Neil Sedaka

Stopped at the local farmers market today for some fresh vegetables. It was late in the day and the vendors were closing up.

Saw some nice looking peaches and stopped to get some. They were $8 bucks for a tray of eight. A little pricey perhaps, but they were pretty nice. I asked the young guy behind the counter if I could buy four. He said he didn't have a scale and wouldn't know how much to charge me. I looked at the peaches, the price on the sign, and then at the guy. It didn't seem like hard math to me.

All the while, another guy behind him was dumping peaches from the trays into a crate so they could be loaded back on the truck.

I don't know, maybe he just couldn't bring himself to break up the set. I could sympathize. So I let him keep all eight.

Status: 13,110 words, 66,890 to go.

"Sign, sign, everywhere a sign..." Five Man Electrical Band

Aren't there times in everyone's life when they really need a little help figuring out what do do next? Just a small signal to set them on the right path.

I came across this one today on my usual daily walk. It's probably as blatant a sign as one could hope for. Unfortunately, I hadn't particularly been looking for one. Determined to make the most of this gift, I stopped to consider the possibilities.

When I stumbled on the sign, I had been thinking about chrysanthemums. Following the arrow would eventually lead to the Home Depot. Where they sell, yep you guessed it, chrysanthemums.

Well what could I do? Only the arrogantly brave or supremely foolish would ignore such a clear sign. So I spent the afternoon planting chrysanthemums. A few other things too, you know, just to cover myself.

Status: Unchanged. As I just explained, I was planting flowers.

Mighty Oaks from Acorns Grow

I'm a tree hugger at heart. But sometimes common sense must prevail over wood love. This giant was ten feet around the base and thirty-five feet or more tall. It was diseased and leaning at an alarming angle, mostly over our neighbors house.


So we called this guy,

and for a Kings ransom,

performing death defying feats,

he handled it.

The mighty have fallen.

R.I.P old friend.

Status: 12,504 words, 67,496 to go.

Pardon?

Saw this sign stapled on a telephone pole. My first question was, baby what? Dog, cat, iguana? I don't think they meant an actual baby, but I'm not sure.

Maybe they meant baby things, like toys or clothes or furniture. Why didn't they say so? How much could another couple of inches of cardboard cost?

Just for fun I thought we should stop and offer to buy the baby. Support Staff didn't see the humor. I think he was afraid the sign was literally correct.

Status: 12,004 words, 67,996 to go.

Worst of the worst

Curious, I checked out my movie review from yesterday against the critics at Rotten Tomatoes. As often happens, my attention was immediately diverted.

They have compiled a list of the 100 worst movies, or as they call them, the Worst of the worst, according to their Tomatometer metrics. The movies reviewed were all released in the last decade. Of course, I had to check them out.

Though I've seen some clunkers in the last ten year, I was surprised to find I hadn't seen any of the ones on the list. I hadn't even heard of most of them. It didn't take much analysis to understand why not.

My standards for going to the movies aren't high, but I do have some. I studiously avoid movies that seem to contain fourteen year old humor(fart jokes, puke jokes, genitalia jokes), fourteen year old horror(razor fingered slashers of nubile females), fourteen year old sex fantasy(naked boobs, naked butts, ten inch tongues), fourteen year old sci-fi (cheesy aliens, cheesy spaceships, cheesy doors to hell), Jim Carrey, or Larry the Cable Guy.

I'm pretty much convinced the movies on the Tomato Worst list were written and directed by actual fourteen year old boys, whose Hollywood parents are extremely rich and supremely over-indulgent. Certainly sensible grown-ups wouldn't continue to make such schlock.

But then seeing what passes for entertainment on TV these days, it's quite likely Hollywood has been completely taken over by mindless fourteen year old's.

Status: 11,233 words, 68,767 to go.

Rascals

I've already said that I like the rascals of literature. I also like them in film. There's one that I've followed since I first saw his rascally smirk on a TV series called Moonlighting.

I got to see it again today when we went to see his new movie, Surrogates. The young guy behind the popcorn counter told me the movie had been previewed the previous evening. Apparently the older folks liked it, the younger ones not so much.

After watching it I can sort of understand why. It's essentially about robots who go to work while their owners control them from home. The controllers lie around on Barcaloungers in their pajamas eating ice cream while the robots face the drudgery of life. The robots are all young, beautiful and nearly indestructible, in a superman kind of way. The controllers are old, warty and have hair growing from places you don't want to know about. Older folks can relate.

The younger folks are already young, beautiful and indestructible so they don't get the movie premise of wanting a surrogate. My Support Staff suggests it strikes a little too close to home for them. They are the ones sitting at home in the Barcalounger, eating ice cream, playing on their computers pretending to have a life.

There was plenty of action; car crashes and buildings blowing up. Some violence too, though most of the blood was robot and green. Motor oil no doubt. Not a great movie, but entertaining. I liked it.

As far as I'm concerned, the rascal still has it.

Status: 10,691 words, 69,309 to go.

Itchy feet

Doesn't this make you want to go somewhere? What is it about railroad tracks vanishing into the distance that is so alluring. Perhaps it's the tantalizing promise of adventure just around the bend. What wonders lay in the misty distance; what peril, what enchantment?

All I know is this makes me yearn to get on the road and see someplace else in the big wide world. I wonder if there's such a thing as a hobo gene.

Status: 10,200 words, 69,800 to go.

Got any waterproof matches?

We've been back from vacation for a few days now and it's time to get back to work. Even though I didn't write much while I was away, I thought about my story a lot. I didn't remember exactly where I left off, so I spent a little time reading back a few pages to pick up the story flow.

I don't generally edit in the middle of the first draft. For me it's better to simply plunge ahead; get the basic plot down, get the characters introduced, and let them wander off to see if they lead someplace interesting, like some dark alley. I figure there's plenty of time, once the loose structure is set, to go back and fill in the the stuff that's missing. You know; what they wore, what they ate, if they had a dagger in their boot as well as a gun in their pocket.

I have to say this first draft is very spare compared to earlier ones. In some ways that's good. There's not a lot of excessive adjectives and adverbs to cut out. But in some places it's economical to the point of downright stinginess. More than once I found myself wondering where the action was taking place. Were they at home, the office, under Niagara Falls?

I definitely need to remember the lessons of my summer vacation. Pause for a moment and look around, then write it down. Otherwise my poor villain will be struggling to light a match on the Maid of the Mist.

Status: 10,000 words, 70,000 to go.

Rainy day cheer

I needed a little cheer on this misty, rainy day. This worked for me.

Status: 9,269 words, 70,731 words to go.

What's that noise?

For some time now, years really, my support staff and I have had trouble sleeping. We're disturbed by these mysterious sound waves that nobody else can hear. Realizing it's everywhere we go, we were convinced it was just us.

Over the last couple months, the subject of restless nights has cropped up in separate conversations with different friends. They were saying they used to have no trouble sleeping all night. But now they have a hard time staying asleep, often waking two or three times.

Then I noticed a lot of stories in magazines, the net, and on TV about the importance of sleep to our well being. The stories were followed by ads for some sort of sleep aid, usually pills of some kind.

So now I'm working on a conspiracy theory. I mean why not. Dan Brown made millions doing it. So let's see; it's the drug companies, the cable companies, the power companies, the government, and... I better throw in the Knights Templar, and maybe an albino monk too.

Yep, best seller written all over it.

Status: 8,634 words, 71,366 to go.

Here a Vampire, There a Vampire, Everywhere a Vampire.

Is it just me or are there vampires everywhere you look these days? I remember when it was mainly Bram Stoker and Anne Rice who wrote about them. Now there's blood running in the aisles at Barnes & Noble, and seeping from half the stations on television.

I blame Stephenie Meyer for the recent bloody mindedness. She has managed to turn vampires from cursed evil creatures into rock stars.

We now have the bad vampire gone good, the misunderstood vampire, the humanitarian vampire, the avenging vampire, the poor but proud vampire and the vampire that only wants to save you from yourself; presumably so he can drain you dry himself. Can the Broadway musical, singing and dancing vampire be next?

Please people, step away from the vampires.

Status: 8,041 words, 71,959 to go.

Dare ya not to smile

I loved this friendly cottage garden. It was tucked in back of a tiny log building at Abe's place in Indiana.

Writing Status: Unchanged. Back to work tomorrow.

I got the magic in me

I have this magical power. That might sound like a wonderful thing, and it would be if I could use it to do good. So far it's only brought me grief. It is thankfully, a limited magic and I try never to invoke it. It's far too dangerous. But sometimes it gets away from me when I'm not paying close attention. It happened today.

Fortunately, I live with a Wizard with powers of his own. He's generally able to undo the inadvertent mishaps that occur when my magical powers go astray. I have often watched him preform his counter spells; hunched over the calamity, waving his hands and muttering words I can't quite make out. He's amazingly persistent and eventually manages to overcome my magical devastation.

When everything is back to normal, he stares sternly at me. Then he says the same thing he's said a dozen times before. I nod and smile and pretend to understand his mystical words. Then, convinced of my remorse, he smiles kindly and invites me to lunch.

Lunch is a word I understand. Perhaps one day I will also grasp his powerful yet inscrutable incantation.

"Reboot after the Malware updates install."

Charlemagne Who?

I enjoy listening to recorded books in the car on long trips. My support staff does too. But we read many of the same books. So it's sometimes hard for us to find a mystery or thriller on tape that one of us hasn't already read.

To get around the problem, we decided to listen to a lecture series from The Teaching Company. The entire offering is called The Great Courses. We get them from our local library.

The first set we took out was about Mozart; his life and music. It was excellent. Next we decided to try something a little more highfalutin. We picked up a set called The Foundations of Western Civilization. The lecturer teaches at the University of Notre Dame and is a wonderful speaker. This series is also excellent. There are courses for pretty much everyone's taste.

I have to be honest and say I've always been interested in space and once bought a series of tapes on the universe by Steven Hawking. I think we were only about half way through the first of eight tapes when we started to talk over it. I've discovered it's the pretty pictures I like rather than knowing the physics behind it all. So I'll definitely pass on those, and the mathematics too.

Want your picture took?

A great thing about vacations is they give us time to stop and smell the flowers. In my case, the opportunity to see this lanky guy. He looks small but was in fact, at least two inches long.

So what, you may say, what's so great about a grasshopper? And that's my point. There's nothing very remarkable about a grasshopper unless you haven't seen one for a while.

He leapt from a bush and landed in front of me. He wandered around a little bit, not particularly fearful, or even very impressed that I was only inches away from him.

I drew closer. He twitched his antenna, rubbed his face, and looked expectantly back at me. I decided he wanted his fifteen seconds of fame. So here he is, in all his gangly glory.

A leggy guy who just wanted his picture taken.

Crusty old sailors

Anchored on the Ohio river on the Evansville, IN waterfront, is an old ship. Now what's interesting to me about this ship is the story of the men who saved it from the scrap yard.

This ship is the LST 325. It landed men and equipment on the beaches at Normandy.


After the war, the ship was given to Greece as part of the lend/lease program. They used it until 1999 and then consigned it to the scrap heap.

A group of US Navy guys decided to rescue it and bring it home. The thing that's so amazing, is this group of guys fought in WWII. Now you don't have to do hard math to understand these guys were all over 70.

The ship was in deplorable condition. So these men (about 100) went to Greece and over a few months time made it reasonably sea worthy. Essentially nothing had been done to it since it was built in 1942.




This is the first deck down. Sherman tanks were shackled to this deck for the voyage to Europe. Two rows of tanks ran from bow to stern.



The ship was designed to run right up onto the beach. A ramp on the tank deck lowered for the equipment to drive directly on to the land.

This ship is flat bottomed, sort of like a giant pontoon. Imagine it rocking and rolling across the Atlantic.

And it's slow. Our guide joked that LST stood for long, slow, target.


The top deck was used to transport vehicles with tires; jeeps, trucks, ambulances. Here's a picture as the ship was approaching a landing beach. The dark smoke hanging over the boat in the distance is enemy fire.

These ships ferried men and equipment from England to France, and seriously injured soldiers and German war prisoners back to England.

This was our tour guide in the wheel house.

He was not one of the twenty-nine men who sailed the ship home. (The rest of the men flew home.) The really amazing end of this story is that the youngest man on the return trip was 72; the oldest about 88. It took them nearly six months to nurse the old war horse from Greece, through the straits of Gibraltar and finally to Mobile, Al. Then they sailed it up the Mississippi to the Ohio for it's berth in IN.

Now you might think that's the end of the story. Maybe you picture the old ship settled in the mud for tourists like us to visit. But no. This group of men, including our guide, take the ship out every year. She's been to Clinton, WI, Peoria, IL, and a couple of other places. The destination for 2010 is Pittsburgh, PA.

Slowly but surely, with no funds from the Gov't, but with plenty of sweat from volunteers, they're refurbishing the ship.

If you get to Evansville, IN or Pittsburgh next summer, stop in for a tour. The story of these crusty and brave old sailors is awe inspiring.

Humble Beginnings

Stopped in Dale, Indiana for lunch at Windell's Cafe. A small restaurant started in 1947 and still going today. Serving homemade comfort food like meatloaf and fried chicken, rhubarb pie and peach cobbler. Stop in if you're ever down this way. Be sure to get the cornbread.


Next Indiana stop, the boyhood home of a compassionate man.



Tom and Nancy; Mom and pop.



Humble beginnings.



Rail splitter.



Farm house hewed from the dense forest.



Tom's woodworking shop.



Refused to let our house be divided.


Abraham. A great man.

One Day in May

Our intention was to stop for a couple of pictures at a place of luck and fortune. We found a haven of glory and homage. Sometimes a serendipitous detour rewards with a day of delight.


A home of tradition and grace.



Where beauty parades.



A garden of roses to honor warriors.



The knights who ride into battle.







On the turf of bravery and courage.
























And champions are wreathed with roses.

One day in May.

Is that a Revenuer?

Did several things today. Visited this one place in the hills. Learned a couple interesting facts, like prohibition lasted thirteen years. For some reason, I thought it had been some ill-fated but short experiment in our countries history. Not so. It was ill-fated and long. This particular family waited it out, and managed to recover. As Martha would say, "It's a good thing."



I love trucks. Not sure why, but I always have. This is my second most favorite kind. Also love fire engines. When the two are combined, well what could be better?



I mean, look at this beauty. How could I resist taking, you know, twenty-five pictures of it.
.

I've got one of these little guys sitting on my mantle at home. Isn't he handsome.

Status: 7,530 words, 72,470 to go.

Being Meryl Streep

Writing for me is like acting, except it's all in my head where only I can see it. What I mean is, when I write a scene, I play all the parts. I am the detective, the murderer and the shifty red herring guy. I have to stay in character; feel what that particular character would feel, react the way that character would react, say what that character would say.

I can handle three, sometimes four people in a scene before my head starts to hurt. When one character talks too long, I get bored and wonder what the others are doing. Pretty soon the silent ones start fidgeting with coffee cups, or table napkins, or sharp little daggers.

Things typically take an unplanned turn about then. My characters go off on tangents of their own making; saying and doing all manner of odd things. It can get interesting.

Most often it simply ends up in a pie fight.

Status: Unchanged. Traveling.

For all you Cinderella's

We're driving down the road minding our own business, and up pops this castle. Now I know what you're thinking. But no, it was long before the lunch time gin & tonic was quaffed.

Well naturally we had to have a picture. After all, how many castles does one see in a life time? That assumes one lives in the U.S. of course. Europe is positively over-run with them.

It's such a relief to know there are other places than Orlando for a Princess to go to feel at home. Now where did I leave that pot of gold?

Status: Unchanged. Traveling.

Things Remembered

Isn't it funny how little things, like a certain smell or taste, can instantly transport you back to a different time. It happened to me today just outside Mount Airy. The countryside is a little more rural up that way; the sides of the road more natural and not so neatly clipped.

A certain weed, with round lacy white flowers that look like doilies, had escaped the mowers. I hadn't seen it for years. I don't know it's name, but it used to grow all over the fields around where I was raised. And for just a moment, I was walking barefoot in that familiar field picking wild flowers.

Of course the next moment, I was digging burrs from my feet.

Status: Unchanged. Traveling

Is that a flying saucer?

The strangest thing happened today. We were driving in a residential area. As usual, I was busy "what ifing" good places to hide bodies. Suddenly the hood on the car in front of ours flipped up, banged against the windshield and then curled up onto the roof. The passenger side hinge held or the hood would have blown completely off.

The driver pulled over and stopped. And I wondered if he thought he was lucky or cursed. The old "glass half-empty or half-full" question. The bad news; he couldn't drive the car with the hood on the roof. The good news; he wasn't going seventy miles an hour down the freeway.

Having been in target range, I'm squarely in the glass half-full camp.

Status: 6,679 words, 73,321 to go.

Happy Labor Day

I love September. The heat of summer has peaked, and the days are still sunny and warm. I don't feel guilty about replacing the sad looking petunias in my planters with cheerful chrysanthemums. Sweet corn starts coming in from local farms, along with early apples.

I'm a little jealous of kids buying school supplies. My fingers itch to crack open the colorful cover of a new notebook and write on the pristine pages. I've always been drawn to jars of white paste, and don't really understand everyone's concern over taking a little taste. I love new staplers, and pens with glitter ink, and funny eraser animals. Thankfully, I've long since outgrown such juvenile stuff or my office would look like the inside of a first graders Hello Kitty backpack.

Now where did I put that fresh pack of pastel colored post-it notes?

Status: Unchanged. It's a holiday for goodness sake.

World's smallest cookie

I was looking for a sugar-free cookie to feed my sweet tooth but not add too many calories. There's this trend, of packaging things in individual serving sizes. That sounded good to me.

So I picked up this box of Murray's sugar-free Shortbread Bites, six pouches to the box. According to the advertising, each pouch is one serving, or 90 calories. Sounded great, afternoon snack all measured out. Price was ridiculously high, but hey, I'm willing to fork it over to save me from myself.

Opened the box. Six, very small, very flat pouches were inside. Box could have held about six more and still closed just fine.

Opened a pouch. Out came the smallest cookie in the world. Seriously, it could go in the Guinness book. The picture on the box was twice the size of the actual cookie.

Now in fairness, I have to say there were twelve of these little things in the pouch. All together they wouldn't make two normal sized cookies.

I couldn't figure out where the 90 calories were hidden. I mean, they're not only small, they're wafer thin, and they have a hole in the middle!

So I emptied the pouch in my hand and ate them all at once. Just thought the world should know the record's been taken.

Status: 6,206 words, 73,794 to go.

Kudo's to me

I gave myself a pat on the back this morning. And I can tell you, I'm tough to please.

When I stopped writing yesterday, it was because I didn't know where to go next. This morning, I struggled to connive ways to move by character from where I had left her, to where she needed to be. I had written myself into the equivalent of a blind alley.

Since it's not Sci-Fi or fantasy, she couldn't simply pull out a laser and blast her way out, or tap a series of bricks in the right order and enter another dimension. So I went back to the beginning of the scene. All I had wanted, was for her to get out of bed in the morning and ruminate a little about her restless night.

It's hard to cut a scene. After all, it might be the most brilliant thing I ever wrote. But I realized a simple action had taken far too many words to accomplish. Worse, they left me with no where to go.

So I started the scene over. A couple of short sentences put her in the right place. Once there, the rest of the scene flowed fast and smooth. And the best part, a thousand words later, I had also recovered my word count goal.

I saved the cut scene to use later. It's likely, I'll forget where I put it.

Status: 5,678 words, 74,322 to go.

Awwww

Blog:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208913/The-poodles-transformed-pandas-horses-snails-creative-grooming-dog-shows.html

I like the pirate.


Status: 5,249 words, 74,751 to go.

Why'd that house blow up Dad?

Nonfiction book: methland by Nick Reding

Fiction is my choice when reading for pleasure. I read nonfiction when researching information for a story I am writing. Sometimes the research can only be satisfied with intensely scholarly books. More often, I just need an overview with some true life examples.

Methland is a book about the effect on a small town in Iowa when the drug Crystal Meth came to stay. It's a chilling and interesting account. The narrative includes the stories of several individuals whose lives were impacted by the arrival of meth in their town.

It's a very readable book, touching on both the individuals, the town, and the national politics that could have stopped it but didn't. Thankfully the politics part is high level and brief.

If you want to read an eye opener about what is happening in rural America, not just with drugs, but Big Pharma and Big Ag, this would be an interesting place to start.

All I can say is, watch out for lots of men riding bicycles.

Status: 4,651 words, 75,349 to go.

Get 'em at Costco

A common question that people ask writers is where they get their ideas. I'm always tempted to say I buy them in bulk from Costco for ten dollars per hundred. So far I've managed to keep my sarcasm to myself.

The truth is, I seem to have an inherent "what if" component to my outlook on life. Perhaps it's because I got hooked on mysteries at a young age.

For me the problem is how to winnow my long list of ideas to a select few to work on. I can't go a day without passing a building or secluded spot that looks like a good place to hide a body. People catch my eye every day who would make intriguing or quirky characters. Daily news headlines get the "what if's" flying around the room like bats leaving a cave for their nightly feed.

But just in case, I'm saving my $2 off coupon for Costco.

Status: 4,038 words, 75,962 to go.

In the beginning...

When I start a new story, I'm always excited. Two or three of the main characters are already in my mind as complete people. I know what they look like, what they do for a living, their general outlook on life, and one or two of their quirks. I know their relationship to each other, though not necessarily how they get along.

I always know the main plot. In fact, the writing goes a lot smoother when I flow chart both the main plot and the sub-plots and where they connect to each other. The chart is simple, written in pencil on graph paper, which let's me easily change it if I want to. And I frequently do, at least a little.

I have a clear picture of the beginning and the end of the story. Sometimes, I write both those chapters first because they keep nagging at me if I don't. Together they make up about twenty to thirty pages.

It's those pesky three hundred pages in the middle that are the problem.

Status: 3,478 words, 76,522 to go.