Post 9.2.1.0 Dear Son Is Allergic To Minnesota

Dear Son and I are on a road trip that will eventually take us to the wedding of one of my nieces, or one of his cousins, depending on perspective.  Yesterday was the third day.  We discovered that he is allergic to Minnesota.  Seriously.  We crossed the state line, stopped at the first rest stop, and he threw up.

He complained that throwing up was not accompanied by feeling better, which to his mind is the purpose of throwing up.  I sympathized.  He's been feeling lurgy since then.  

Today we're visiting Beloved Son and his Dear Wife.  Eldest Offspring will fly in on Thursday and the four of us will continue the road trip to Ohio, the location of the wedding.  The day after the wedding, at the latest, we'll reverse the procedure, only with less visiting.  

It hasn't been too tough so far.  We've averaged twelve hours driving per day.  We've slept on real beds.  Dear Son has forced me to do stretches and squats every time we stop, which, thanks to my bladder, is often.  So my bones may be vibrating a bit but I'm not feeling run down.  

We passed the Spam Museum last night.  According to their website, "Referred to by some meat historians as The Guggenham, Porkopolis or M.O.M.A. (Museum Of Meat-Themed Awesomeness), the SPAM^® Museum is home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of spiced pork artifacts."  I can only say that there must be a SPAM^® processing plant nearby.  You can smell hot spam from the highway.  

There's a billboard near the exit saying that the Spam Museum is where Hawaiians go on vacation.  I've never been to Hawaii, but I've heard from those who have that you can get SPAM^® burgers at McDonalds, there. I've also never been to the Spam Museum, but Roadside America has a nice writeup.  There's also a shorter and less flip (and therefore less fun) writeup at Explore Minnesota.  Google shows pages of reviews and a few YouTube videos.  Not sure I'd want to watch someone else's tour, but if you're undecided as to whether or not to visit this free attraction, you might find one useful.

I'll tell you about the truck fire later.  It wasn't our truck.  We're driving in a van.  Oh, and the word of the day is uropatagium, a word I discovered here, in a review of a childrens' book centered around a pterosaur.  You know you need one of those.  

Post 9.2.0.0 Dear Son and the Tomatoes

Dear Son has been dying to find something to give to the neighbors.  These are the South Neighbors we’re talking about:  the ones that let the kids pet the puppies and hold the pheasant chicks – the ones who have occasionally been so negligent as to bake too many cookies or buy too many watermelons.

Dear Son has been dying to give them something, anything.  He’s had the tomatoes staked out (so to speak) as “something to give the neighbors” ever since he found out that those bushes would grow tomatoes.

Well, the tomatoes finally got ripe – three big ones and two “little, tiny, cute ones.”  It took him three tries before he caught them at home and he came back from that last, successful, trip just glowing.

He came up to and hugged himself to me and said, “Wasn’t that good?”  So I bent over and hugged him back and he whispered, eyes beaming, “You know what?  I told them a lie!”

“What lie?”

“I told them we had lots of tomatoes and we couldn’t eat them all.  Wasn’t that good?”

He was just so proud that he had the social niceties of giving-to-neighbors down.  Not only was he the one who thought of giving something back, he knew how to do it properly, too.

So I said, “Oh, that sure is good,” and hugged him harder.  It was the first time I’ve ever hugged a five-year-old for telling a lie.  It might be the last time, too.

Post 8.2.2.0 Musings of NaNoWriMo 2012 And Possibly About to Eat Out

My Dear Son has been suggesting that we get out of the house and write, so that we can catch up on our word count for NaNoWriMo.  While I appreciate this, because it is supportive of me wanting to write and because it is working, it does make writing kind of expensive, what with 'get out of the house' being a euphemism for going to a restaurant to eat and writing while and after we do that.

Dear Son is writing horror and I'm writing urban fantasy. Well, DS may be writing horror.  He doesn't read horror novels, so he's not sure if he's writing horror or if he's just writing an adventure story with zombies.

We went to Sizzler earlier and he got mostly caught up.  He's not completely happy with what he wrote.  From his complaints I don't think that means that he's not happy with the story so much as he's annoyed that it was so hard to get started and stay started and so it took more hours for that particular section.

I ran across some notes I made at a previous writing meetup, one of the ones at Empressa with everyone, and by the way, the last meetup had seven of us meeting, which may be a local record. 

The note reads: "Discussion of a book where the pov is the pets of the people in the story, one of which is jack the ripper."  I remember writing that and where my thoughts went after writing it, but I don't know if the idea, the reference to the book, came from something that somebody said or from something that I had read online earlier in the day.

However it started, I remember thinking of a possible story written from the pov of inanimate objects that are starting to accrete awareness after being in the proximity of a Mage to two. This is an expectable segue for someone who reads a lot of fantasy.

My thoughts went to to speculate that the thing coming to awareness fastest might be an altar, table, chair or whatever that one Mage tortures people to death on. It doesn't understand much, yet, and it can feel him feeding him in a way that brings it closer to life.  It feels a puppy gratitude to him. 

I don't know if it's the kind of thing that I'll ever try writing, but I think that if I do, it had better be a very short story. 

 

post 8.2.0.0 Nano group at Panera

We're here at Panera because Dear Son is keeping us on track with our writing.  The surest way I have to make something happen is to tell him that I want that something to happen, and when.  He's good at scheduling and saying now is the time to be doing this.  I tend to schedule things loosely and then wait until it isn't bothering anyone else.

Yes, I realise that's not the best way to get things done.

post 8.0.0.0 Random Writing Technology Difficulties

Had an Asimov flashback earlier today.  I didn't write it down, though, so it's gone.  It may come back, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Dear Son and I are currently eating and writing at Panera.  They have free wifi and outlets.  We're both using ipads.  He loaned me a synced keyboard.  I'm enjoying it and only sometimes stumbling when the ipad software won't accept a keystroke and needs to be touched instead.  

Also the delete key isn't where I expect it to be and when I go to make corrections I often ========.

I'm posting directly into the blog via Safari.  The first time I tried that on a commercial wifi, it lagged hideously.  This seems better.  

Because of the lag mentioned in the last paragraph, I've been logging writing stints into G+ drive and, after having trouble getting it from there to the blog and home computer, just emailing stints to myself.

-----

No, I don't Tweet.  My writing is choppy because that's the way that my mind and memory work, not because I've been Tweeted and Facebooked into short entries.  

I can write in a more continuous fashion, but that's not the purpose of this.  I don't remember if I explained what the purpose of this is, but if I haven't you well be operating in ignorance for awhile more as I'm not really in the mood to explain.

----

You know, this blog could use a table of topics.  It's going to become a snarl of interrelated bits and pieces, but the posts are numbered and hypothetical readers may be curious as to why one thing is numbered one way and another is numbered another.

Or, rather, all things are being numbered using the same system, but some things started with 1.0.0.0 and some started with 3.0.0.0.  I can make that list and since it's a blog, I can update it as I go along.