Arrant Nonsense

Is a pilot for a well-known regional airline.

On occasion, people leave their magazines on board. He snags them and brings them home to read, no matter what they are. He's very eclectic in his tastes.

He just showed me his latest acquisition and said "This is one of the harder ones to get through."

The magazine? EyeNet, a publication of the American Academy of Opthamology. The current article he's reading? "Retinoblastoma, Part One: Measured Enthusiasm for Intra-Arterial Therapy."

Gee, Hubby. YA THINK?

And now I'm attempting, frantically, to catch up with three days' worth of flist. I'm at skip=240 and still on Friday. So, yeah. May not get there. ETA: FINALLY. Skip=300. OMG. Protip: Do not read "Schlock Mercenary" out of order. Or it will make no sense.

I worked on some logistics for the next scene I want to write, and then the Hubby reminded me that (DUH!) Ben's a soldier and would look at this operation in a soldierly manner. And I've also figured out that I need to actually draw where everything is in the room so I can figure out, logically, what a soldier would do when faced with the situation that Ben is faced with here. Does he go for disabling the weapon, or freeing the girl? Which gives him more time to...?

Yeah, you guys don't get in on that part yet. *evil laughter*

Hubby's got some sort of bug...thing. So he's called in sick to work for tomorrow. No True Blood for me. Alas. But I'll at least have it for the next time he goes to work.

That writing seminar I posted about yesterday?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME. HE'S SENDING ME. IS HE AWESOME OR WHAT. CAPSLOCK IS NOT ENOUGH TO CONTAIN MY GLEE.

*does the Dance of Joy*

This is what it looks like when a spouse is behind your writing career, such as it is.

Okay, I finally caught up with my flist.

And then I ended up having to scramble to find markets for a couple of stories that, for one reason or another (although not because they were rejected per se; what a funny old business this is) had to go elsewhere. So that was fun too. But they're back out, go me for paying attention to the business side of this writing stuff again, even though I hate hate hate it. Have I mentioned I'm not looking forward to marketing the novelthing? Yeah. So not looking forward to that.

I've been roped into helping the poor Hubby with the transmission in his Durango. He's rebuilding it, and now we know why mechanics get the big bucks to do this. It's a two-person job just to get the damn thing unbolted. God only knows what he's going to find once he actually gets into it. I now have barked knuckles. Yay.

The handsome and talented jpsorrow had an entry the other day about writing characters of the opposite sex, and that got me thinking about why I write characters the way I do.

I may have mentioned before that I'm emotionally stunted. This may be why I find it easier to write male characters, who are almost expected to repress their emotions.

For example, not!Harry.

Here is a war vet, former POW, with severe PTSD. He does not talk about what he went through over there. "He holds a lot inside. Sometimes he drinks when he can't sleep." And most of this is because, I think, he's afraid that if he doesn't hold it inside...he'll crack wide open. At the same time, if he holds too much of it in, then the buildup itself will crack him open--and that won't be pretty either. And I'm not sure I bring this out enough in the "fallout of the climax" scene, although the first time he wolfs it's pretty apparent that this is going on, so maybe I don't need to actually say it again a hundred pages later. After all, my readers aren't stupid, so I'm pretty sure they can see what's happening there.

And then there's not!Harmony.

She cries. She cries... a lot. Most of the time it's because not!Harry is physically injured, because seeing his blood does bad things to her psyche. This may be because he's so emotionally injured that a physical injury to him pushes her own emotions over the top. But the thing is that she's the calm in the middle of his storm, so she has to be strong for him and can't really show him how much all this is affecting her. So, if she cries, she either has to do it while he's unconscious or out of the room.

Yeah. I've just realized I need to go through this thing yet again and see how I've handled that.

Yay for psychoanalyzing my characters.

at silly o'clock this morning, and of course completely spaced the fact that it was Mother's Day. None of us are at our best at 5am, after all.

However, he called me later, rather shamefaced, and wished me a happy Mother's Day. He said that I could go into his drawer and pull out a twenty and go out to dinner, if I wanted to. After going "awww," I told him that I'd really rather wait until he came home and then we could go out to dinner together.

Maybe, I mused, we could even get a sitter for Da Boy and go to the Desert Star, which we haven't been to in ages. We ooh'ed and ahh'ed over that idea, and so tomorrow I'm going to make us reservations. Not only that, but the lovely and effulgent bigsciencybrain and her Boyfriend-Critter are planning on coming down as well. *does the Dance of Joy*

We're also planning on an Antelope Island sojourn sometime this week, depending on the weather. *checks* Thursday and Friday look nice...

Writing? What is this "writing" of which you speak? Okay, yes. I will do 250 words before retiring. *nods firmly* Anyone can do that.

So, Rocky Mountain Raceways had their fifth race of the second round of the season tonight. The Hubby vacillated back and forth as to whether he actually wanted to go tonight, and finally decided at nearly the last minute that he did.

Good thing.

He won!

*happyflails*

It was a really odd night, because he had very few "conventional wins," but a lot of it is the luck of the draw and what your opponent does...and tonight it worked in his favor, for once.

That's two wins and two seconds this season. He's under the impression that he sort of sucks, but it's no wonder people don't want to run against him. *snerk*

Really, it was! *dances*

The drag race season has begun anew at Rocky Mountain Raceway, and thus we hied our way to the track yesterday around three-ish. Other than the Detroit locker in the Willys trying to throw us off the on-ramp a couple of times, the drive was without incident.

Now, as folks may or may not know, the Hubby had a slight meltdown last year. He went middle-age crazy, as it were. No drag racing, no jeeping, no working on the Mustang, no indulgence in any of the hobbies he's cultivated over the years. We bought an airplane instead. Yeah.

Therefore, he hasn't raced since the Halloween Classic at Boise since 2005. Which he kicked ASS at, BTW.

They had a test and tune a few weeks ago. His first run, the rear axle housing got separated from the frame. Made a god-awful noise. Remember when he set his pants on fire a little bit ago? That was him, repairing that.

So, what with the new repairs, and the fact that he hadn't raced in a LONG while, we didn't really expect a whole lot. Maybe he might win a few rounds, but usually, when I go... he gets knocked out in the first round. Because that's my life.

But last night...

LAST NIGHT.

Not only did he WIN every round, including the final one...

But he also cut a perfect .000 light.

I realize most of you have no idea what that means. Suffice to say that most racers go a lifetime without doing that.

So.

YAAAAAYYYY!!! Go, Hubby!

Drive's been cancelled.

I guess people would rather watch TRASH like "The Wedding Crashers" or "The Littlest Groom" than something with interesting characters, an engaging plot, and pretty cars. *growls*

They've only filmed six episodes. We may, the word from On High says, get the last two eps sometime in May, on consecutive Fridays. What I want is a boxed set of "Drive" and "The Inside," together. Am I going to get it? Eh, probably not. I swear, Fox has the crappiest track record in the world when it comes to Tim's shows. "Wonderfalls" was cancelled after three episodes, IIRC. *snuggles my box set of that show leik whoa*

In other news, the Hubby set his pants on fire doing some welding repair work on his race car. He came in and told me that his ankle felt warm, he looked down, and AUGH! Fortunately, it didn't burn through his pants, let alone his sock, so he's all right. *shakes head*

On the weight-losing front, I've actually been succeeding in doing it. We bought a new scale (finally), and it measures in even tenths of a pound. Apparently I'm doing something right, because I've been losing a steady four-tenths of a pound a day for the last week and a half or so. I was 132.8 this morning, which I haven't seen since before Thanksgiving, and I've dropped all the weight I gained in Moab plus a smidge.

And I just got an email from Writers of the Future telling me that they got my entry for the second quarter. *crosses fingers*

So, we went for our evening walk tonight, and I was talking about a technical thing in the random_urges fic I'm currently working on. And he thought about it for all of five seconds and said "But wouldn't it be better if..."

And he was right.

He's more mechanically-minded than I am, and so his brain works better in areas like that. And I love that I can bounce stuff off of him in the Firefly fandom and have him come out with things that improve the process for me immeasurably.

He is teh awesome.