Today I'm a Babbling Idiot

Yup. It's true. Babbling. Completely. Know why? It's because I haven't really slept in two days. It's because vampires are real.

I'm sure if you, dear reader, live in the world of acceptable reality, you're probably thinking, "Huh?" Read on, and I will enlighten you.

I may have mentioned in previous posts about my odd upstairs neighbors. They sleep all day, with the blinds tightly closed. They only surface after dark. And, just before dawn, there is always a crashing around upstairs and the sounds of dragging furniture around. Hmm. Coffins?

They tend to do their "living" at night. In fact, Friday night, after spending most of their "day" outside on the porch sharing the dark (very loudly) with friends, they decided to call it a day. At approximately 5:45 a.m. About 15 minutes before my alarm went off. This semester, I teach two math classes on Saturday. Beginning in the early morning. I went out on my patio and I let them know that I really enjoyed their conversation, but it was time for me to get up and go to work now. As an afterthought, I added that I also appreciated the fact that they kept me from having to use my alarm clock that day. It was very thoughtful on their part. Yeah. Right.

Repeat last night.

I love coffee. A lot. I've been mainlining it for the past couple of days. Hence, the babbling today.

Goals:

I'm changing my writing goals because I made a great discovery in Scrivener. Now, I'm sure it's evident to anyone who's even remotely competent in it. But I just figured out how, when in the corkboard view, to add things in between the cards to facilitate plotting. This is making my life SO much easier. Therefore...I'm changing my writing goal to simply finishing a very detailed plotting of "Immortal Blood." Any writing that comes from that will be a bonus.

I also have to add studying for my teaching certification exams. I've got to take three, and I've got to have them done by the end of June. So that's going to take time away from writing. Unfortunately. Teaching math is going to be my ticket out of Florida back to the land of cold and snow. Yeah!

See you all Wednesday!

Why Negative Coffee Times Negative Coffee Equals Positive Evil

The end of the semester is winding down here at the college. I didn't have a lot of students Monday, and when afternoon rolled around, I was fading fast. I'd only slept a few hours on Sunday night, and not well. My  coffee addiction tried to send me to the coffee stand downstairs, but my logical mind prevailed, reminding me that if I had coffee in the middle of the afternoon, I'd face another sleepless night. Oh, bother.

So, Kris, who was in the lab with me and studying for a Calculus final, began sketching my babbling on the board, in the form of a graph with a cracked coffee mug. The mug was slowly dripping coffee into the negative quadrant of the graph (any value here will be negative). We all know that, in algebra, a negative multiplied with another negative will give you a positive; in physics, we'd need to determine how fast we'd have to drink the coffee. (A linear function -- f(x) = x -- was drawn through the graph, bisecting the coffee mug and giving us an arbitrary line from which to determine how much coffee we had available to drink. Once it dripped below the line, we'd be * outta luck.)

So, by extrapolation, here are the parameters of the graph:

coffee = good
-coffee = bad
(-coffee)(-coffee) = +evil.

Makes sense, right? (Yes, and I agree, we should have had more work to do that afternoon!)

Goals? Oh, right, let's talk about that.

Pages: Met, thanks to Nano.

Exercise: Nope. I've been tutoring or dealing with pre-Christmas stuff whenever I've not been working.

Planning: Yes. So much so that around 4:30 this morning I woke up, realizing that I needed to find out the age of the "death" of Akhenaten so I could reasonably determine whether he had grey hair or not. Nothing like obsessing, right?

Food: Managed to stay away from the fried chicken still. Pizza, though, I ordered some because the guys asked me to. And since there was a new pizza on the menu, I tried it. I didn't like it. Yay! I did order a vegetarian pizza with light cheese, just so I could feel a bit better about my bad behavior.

How's everyone else doing?

Shaking Off the Heat Wave

Wow, it's been a small slice of hell for a good part of the country! Down here in Florida it's not been quite so bad - except for when the air conditioning starts to leak through the ceiling.

 Houston...we have a problem...

This is why apartment living is so great. All you have to do is call the nice men in the maintenance uniforms and things are fixed. Wicked cool. And now it is.

Started my rewrites yesterday. My prologue has changed quite a bit since some accidental research showed up some major mythological errors. Things are going a bit slower than I'd like because of my Calculus class - the whole class failed a major test yesterday. My professor's NOT happy. Oops...!

But as soon as I finish this, I'm back off to Egypt to play with dead people, werejackals, and a lovesick but possibly psychopathic immortal.

Who said work wasn't fun?

Happy writing!

Lara

A Whirlwind of Craziness...

Ok, here's the update on my chaotic world:

1. Got the car. It's great. I haven't been able to name it, though. I kept Serenity. She deserved more than an ignominious end in some junk yard. She's become a long-term fixer-upper project.

2. Calculus is kicking my butt. I've already had one quiz. I have another on Monday, and a major test on Wednesday. Sigh. This is NOT fun.

3. The only bright spot is my writing. I've about gotten to the point where everything needs to be printed, organized in its final form, and a first draft finished. Woo hoo! That's really the point I was aiming for, because once I know where I'm going, I can whip things out in no time. I usually see it like a movie that's scrolling about a foot in front of my face. Makes it much easier for me.

How are you all doing?

See you Wednesday!

Lara

I'm Baaaaaaccccckkkk.......

Hi everyone!

Final exams are over, and just about all of my students made it through - at least, the ones who put forth the actual effort. So, barring one staff meeting on Wednesday, I'm free for fiction! Woo hoo!!

So, in the midst of finals madness, a weak spot in my WIP struck me. I really didn't have a good reason for Hayleigh's research assistant, Nasir, to travel with her back to the US. Then I realized that her countdown for success (or failure and death) wouldn't begin until AFTER the artifact was translated. And, since Nasir is also part of the Bani Anubis werejackal clan, he MIGHT have knowledge she would need at a critical juncture. So...now he has a reason for being in Rhode Island.

I'm off to my on-campus office in about half an hour to get some work done. It's so much easier to write away from home - that way, other tasks don't take my attention from the page. Yay!

See you all on Wednesday!

Lara

What Planet Am I On...?

It's been a bit crazy this week. I pulled a couple of muscles on the sides of each legs. You know, the ones that curve from your butt to the top of your legs? Wow, talk about pain!! I walked like someone who was about 120 and lame to boot. Yeah, the dreadmill stuff didn't work so much this week. Today was the first day I was able to walk without too much pain. (And I still don't know how it happened...)

Writing? Planning? With final exams upon us, my students are grabbing all my time. I haven't done a thing. Except one. I did have a new story idea slam into my head. So I wrote that down and put it away in my file.

Exam last two weeks - they start tomorrow - and for my students they end on the 24th. I'm not foreseeing a lot of work accomplished until then.

This week I plan on pushing through the mud and getting through the exams to the freedom of the page!