Maggie’s Blog

3000 words done. Man, it feels like it should be so much more. I’ve been writing for about 3 hours straight. I guess my initial estimate was correct–I can write about 1000 words an hour when I’m really cruising.

Not sure I’ll be pushing on tonight–the momentum is dying, and I’m tired. Thinking that most likely if I push on, I’ll just have to rethink and rework the stuff I force. Will probably call it a night for now.

On a plus note, finished the entire Antagonist plot path, which is the foundation for the rest of the story. So yay! ^_^ I can see the end–now I just have to get the other characters there.

*Technically* the year ends tomorrow night at midnight, but I won’t have much time to write, since I’ll be hanging out with Kaku for New Year’s. New Year’s Day, I’ll have time until about 3 when Andy flies in (SUPER YAY!! I miss my boy), so that’ll be some more time. That will technically be 2009, but my new Chekhov year doesn’t begin until the first FULL week of 2009, so I’ve got 3 days of wiggle room. Thursday and Friday I have off from work, so I’ll use that time as well as I can. I’m not foreseeing much trouble in finishing the scrap draft by Saturday night. Saturday night! Eight years of thinking myself in circles may actually see some completion! (*awe*)

That’s right folks, I’m going for it. With little less than half the novel summary draft left to go, I’m going to dig in my heels and try to hammer out the rest tonight. Brace yourselves. I’ll be updating progress as the night goes on.

This has been a very interesting week. From the apparently psychotic Portland snow, the days of difficult travel (because Portland is anything but used to or equipped for dealing with said snow), delayed X-Mas Eve plans (due to said snow and power outages), to huge wedding/x-mas presents, video conferencing, more snow, flights to catch, and kitty emergencies, it’s been a wild week. I won’t recap everything now, because I’ve only just finished with the last of these things, and am frankly quite drained. 

Ozzy is all right now, for the most part. We had a little scare last night when there was obvious blood in his litter box. Tried to get him into an emergency vet clinic (after calling them and them recommending I do so), but after driving around in the insane snow tracks (because apparently Portland doesn’t plow…ever…) with the Jeep’s windows fogging up horribly and only smudging more when I tried to wipe it off, for nearly thirty minutes after Google Maps gave me the wrong directions to the animal hospital (it said I was supposed to go to a Bank of America, apparently), and after Ozzy had chewed his way through the cardboard carry-box (which the adoption center had given us back when we adopted the kitties) and run around the car while trying to climb on my lap and “help” me drive–I headed home defeated. 

Today, calmer and with far less cursing, I went to PetCo, got a proper carrying crate, and brought him in to the second vet clinic I looked up online last night. (Andy could only provide emotional support because he’s currently visiting his mom and brothers in TX, but that helped.) This place was very nice, and thankfully not very busy. They got Oz in right away, and although it was expensive, I had them do the blood work and whatnot to give him a good baseline for future assessments. He’s not a young cat anymore, and since we were planning to bring him and Mei in at some point anyway, I figured it wasn’t wasted money. I’d rather lean on the side of caution.

Anyway, long story short, Oz is home now, probably only suffering from an intestinal parasite which he now has medication for. He hates taking the medicine, but it’s a liquid, so it is a lot easier to get him to take it than if I had to give him a pill.

Now, I’m just tired and drained, and feeling the ache of the money no longer in my bank account. Ouch.

But I’m not the only one in financial ache, so I can’t complain. Apex Publications has also been hit pretty hard in these times, and if you’ve got even just a few bucks to spare, do check out their selection of really fantastic books. I know I have a number of them on my wish list! 

Also, keep an eye out on the Official Apex Blog! We’re going to have tons of content up there, all about SF/Horror/and writing. Be sure to check it out, as Yours Truly will likely be contributing fairly often! Starts on January 1st, so ring in the New Year with Apex! 

P.S.- To Kelly and Amanda–you guys just made my holidays. *LOVES!!*

Just read a post from one of my exceptionally talented friends, and she’s made me want to write out a list of things I want to do by the end of 2009. Likely, by comparison, it will be much less exciting, but tough! 

By the end of 2009:

- I want to have a 26 polished, stand-alone short stories, and I want to write them not caring about what anyone but myself thinks of them. 

- I want to pick up studying Chinese (Mandarin) again, or I want to start learning Spanish.

- I want to become more connected “religiously”, whatever that means–I’m not precisely sure myself

- I want to take the first steps in going back to school for a Masters in Elementary education. 

- I want to read more, regularly, both fiction and non-fiction

- I want to cook more

- I want to exercise regularly–whether that be finding a pool to do laps at or finding some kind of at-home regiment like pilates/yoga–something regular.

- I want to improve my painting/drawing

- I want to see more of Portland/Oregon and start making this place my own.

Heh heh, by comparison, definitely less exciting, but this last year was pretty busy for me–lots of life changes–so maybe it’s all right if this next year is a little calmer. ^_^

SO! Lots to cover since the last post. I won’t really try too hard. I’ll just recap this weekend so far.

FRIDAY
Worked–as usual, so nothing new there. BUT! We had the “corporate” X-mas party at Players later! Players is a restaurant/bar/arcade//bowing-alley. It was a ton of fun. We all got a few free drinks, the food was really surprisingly good, and then bowling-! Oh, bowling.

Okay, let’s have a little background here. I have bowled “for real” (8lb+ balls and all) maybe once in my whole life. Andy has gone twice. In short, we are not pros, by a long shot. The first round, I managed to scrape together something around 50. Yes, that bad. But not the worst on my team, surprisingly. Andy was on the SUPER TEAM, of which all the members broke 100 except for Andy (but he got 75, which compared to my 50, is darn good). He also had more strikes/etc.

But that second round. Oh man. I hit my stride. Still far from pro-levels, but I got two strikes, a spare, and worked my way up to a nice neat 98. But that’s not where the story stops–oh no! I WAS going to break 100, because we still had one more round, and with the way I was bowling, I knew I could get the 2 pins to top 100. But before I could do that, the alley cut off our game, because we had passed our “allotted time.” LAME.

But still, it was tons of fun, excellent company, good laughs, and just an overall great time.

SATURDAY

Slept in = awesome. Then we headed over to Safeway to get donuts (yum), and went on to Kohl’s, where my grandma had reserved us our x-mas present= a HUGE set of white dishes! YAY!!! Now we actually have more than the three bowls/four plates we’ve been barely scraping by on! XD! Love. This is something we desperately needed, and we’re looking forward to using very, very often.

Then when we got back, we called up Kaku, who had picked us up an X-box replacement (ours died, for some unknown reason) while he had a steep discount on gamestop hardware (he works at B&N). So we drove downtown to have lunch with him and his parents. We ate at this little deli next to Escape from NY Pizza, and it was delicious. Plus hanging out with Kaku (and his parents!) is always a ton of fun. But he had to work today, so we couldn’t hang out like we all usually do. Ah well. It’s the x-mas season, and B&N is one of those places that gets swamped over the holidays.

So Andy and I came back here (after a little shopping with Kaku at the Lloyd Center B&N so we could steal his discount–very sneaky of us, I’m sure, as we pass him stuff to buy for us at discounted prices lol), and I set to painting. I’ve had this SciFi idea in my head all week, so I decided to give it a shot. I’d sketched it out already, and decided to try the wet-on-wet style for the background.

I have decided that I do not like the wet-on-wet style. I like fighting the paint to get it to blend–makes for fewer brushstrokes. Still, the beginning of the painting isn’t horrible. I’m hoping I can polish it up a lot with details, but I’m going to have to wait at least a week or so for the bottom coat to dry before I can start layering new stuff. I’ll have to figure out another picture to work on until then. This time, no wet-on-wet.

Then we just finished eating our leftovers from Players and watching The Little Shop of Horrors–which I must say, was a heck of a lot funnier than I thought it would be. Good times! ^_^

Tomorrow, the goal is to top off all the submissions in my Apex inbox. I must say, all the recent peeps whose stories I’ve had to pass on have been exceptionally cool, professional people. I love that so much. Thanks you guys! It’s more appreciated than you know.

Writing Stuff: (more…)

So I finally got myself some brushes/paint/etc. to start trying to oil paint. Figured it’d be cheaper than therapy as a way to relieve stress, lol. Haven’t done much art in a while, and I was chomping at the bit to get going, so yesterday I got to it! This was my first attempt:

The picture is a little blurry, but I couldn’t use a flash. >.< Sorry about that. I was pretty happy with it, considering I’ve never oil-painted before. Still have a ton to learn (like more drastic differences in shadow/more realistic face structure/etc.) but I feel like this first attempt at least gives me hope that I might actually be able to paint more realistic people someday, with a lot of practice. Figure I’ll move on to portraits/full-body portraits next from pictures.

So today, I wanted to give it another go with some different styling. The day before I’d painted one half of the long canvas a reddish-purple, and wanted to try a portrait over it. I was originally shooting to create a likeness of one of my Thief characters, but the colors I selected (going more dramatic this time, to practice shading/face-structure again) and the facial structures (no sketch behind it this time) ended up creating a semi-David-Bowie/vampire look. Still, overall I’m really pretty happy with it. Will have to work on the translation of what’s-in-my-head to what’s-on-the-canvas, but still–for a second attempt, I’m content. ^_^

And for some other random pictures I’ve been meaning to post: Maple-Whiskey Salmon I made a week or two ago, and Mei and Ozzy on our bed.

Also, looks like I’m staying on at work for at least another month! YAY! So mid-January I’ll find out if I’m staying more permanently or if the temp job is going to end. At least I’ve got cash flow for the holiday season! ^_^

Now, off to do submissions and other Apexy work!

Writing Stuff: (more…)