Never a dull moment!

[nolawitch58]

In reverse order: Our adopted nephew, Nathan, will be back in town next Friday for a few days before he goes to his ordnance school in Florida. I'm picking him up at the airport after work. We shall have some fun.

Monday at writers' group, we found out that David had also gotten into Shirley Grau's workshop. Of course, swampytad wasn't at the other meeting on Wednesday because of the workshop. Laura from the Monday group found out on Tuesday that she'd gotten in after someone who had been previously accepted had his gall bladder go bad so he had to bow out. Laura is kind enough to share her notes and the initial reading assignments.

Having read all the assignments, I can safely say that most of it was depressing. There were six chunks of writing: Hills Like White Elephants and The Killers by Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Woods by Sherwood Anderson, A Worn Path by Eudora Welty, The Patriarch and Three by Shirley Ann Grau. I guess the point of literary fiction is to bum people out. The theme running through all of the stories is either death or suffering of some sort.

The library sent around an email patting those of us who didn't get in on the head and dangling the possiblity that they will have more workshops in the future. They didn't count on the response they got. With fifteen people per workshop, they could have easily had three sections since 47 people submitted. Laura is bringing her notes early Monday night and she, Cheryl, Rebecca and I are going to have a side workshop of our own. I've been itching to work on Ruxandra some more lately.

Wiccan Ethics has almost been through the Monday group for the first draft. I'm working the second draft through soon after. Once they're sick of seeing it, I'll submit it to a few publishers. The proposal in underway as well.

Doctor Who is back on SciFi. Yesterday's episode was "Voyage of the Damned" with Kylie Minogue. I watched Sarah Jane Adventures which preceeded the Doctor. I don't know if I'll continue to watch. It's too geared toward juveniles. Sarah Jane wasn't in the first episode very much. I don't get if her "adopted" son is supposed to be an alien or a clever robot or what. I'll give it another couple of episodes before I decide whether or not to ditch it. New episodes of House are on the horizon in a few weeks. I've got all the New Amsterdam episodes recorded and the last one airs Monday. It sucks that House has moved to Monday. I'll never see it unless it's recorded, which means I have to rely on hubby to record it for me.

The sequel to Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is released next week. It's called Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo. If it's half as good as the first movie, it will be hilarious. When Kal Penn joined the cast of House, I thought, "How nice that Kumar became a doctor after all. I bet his father is proud." Yeah, that's way silly.

Tomorrow will find me cleaning the house like a fiend. I hope I get all the worst tasks done then and fool with simpler things throughout the week until Friday. Maybe it will stay presentable and I'll host next month's Writers Alliance meeting here. That way I wouldn't have to travel. There's plenty of room. I've had classes with six to eight people in them here for years. As long as no one is massively allergic to cats, I don't see why not. I'll decide midweek if that's gonna happen.

Comments

[ph4red.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely waiting on Harold and Kumar Escape. Like you, it was funny how they kinda soft-linked Kal Penn's character in House. They've done it for other characters in other shows too (one of the last one's I remember was Ted McGinley's character on Married with Children, when he mentioned that, among other jobs, he was once a high-school coach.

Good luck with the progress on the Ethics book.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

you missed the Sarah Jane pilot, which introduced her adopted son: he's an alien-grown human, based on a sampling of a whole bunch of other humans that drank some evil alien soft drink (that was the mcguffin in the pilot episode). He doesn't have a belly button, since he wasn't born.

And I think I missed the first episode (I *have* a juvenile in the house, and it's almost too young for her, but not quite). I TiVo'ed the pilot, but I didn't set it as a season pass. Damn.

I didn't know you were working on a Wiccan Ethics book. Let me know when it's ready and I'll ask around my contacts in the publishing world. (Also, if you want another set of eyes to edit it, I'd be more than happy to).

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

You are stellar. While at work yesterday, I listed to "Dancing With Hecate" as I made order from the chaos and got boxes ready for Iron Mountain to pick up. The music made the tasks much easier. I was done by Noon. "Maiden, Mother and Crone" is my new earworm.

OK, now some of Sarah Jane's plot makes sense. If the focus is going to be on the kids, I'll probably skip the rest of them.

The Wiccan Ethics book is all Dorothy Morrison's fault. When I went up to Shreveport to their PPD last August, the trip was intended to be relaxing, sort of a brain vacation. Dorothy was hanging out with Velvet, Trixie, Rollie and me at the hotel pool. We were talking about anything and everything when the subject of ethics in the Pagan community came up. I don't know why I was surprised and appalled at the lack of ethics in general, but it implanted in my brain and forced me to formulate outlines and scribble notes all the way home on the interstate.

The last chapter is in the hands of my writers' group for critique. That makes the first draft they've all seen. Second draft should be through sometime in June or before I Ieave for vacation in July. I should be working on the proposal harder so I could have it done by Memorial Day. I'll send you a pdf of it when it's gotten most of the ugly out after the second draft. Thanks so much for the offer. The first draft was essentially a core dump of everything in my head. It's getting better after each pass through the group.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

I met Dorothy Morrison when we had our Canada gig a few years ago. She was a hoot. ("Oh, thank the Gods, another American!") I thought that was so funny - the Canadians treated us like rock stars, and we've never been treated better any any festival before or since. Maybe midwesterners/Texans are more polite to each other than New Yorkers (ya think?).