The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 09

[TheRedLantern]

Thank goodness for Mexican Coke

Hear! Hear!

Bottlers in Mexico still use cane sugar,

Well I read that first part wrong.

 

[iwatchus]

I gave up OJ when I became a T2 diabetic several years ago. It was the most substantial change I made in my diet and it made a big difference to me.

The light at the end of the tunnel of this draft is taunting me. Back to writing.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Wow, being too busy to hang out in the hangout is cutting into my time with you guys!

 

[Rustyoznail]

Wow, being too busy to hang out in the hangout is cutting into my time with you guys!

You do what you have to do, Millie. There's always someone keeping the coffee brewing.

 

[MrPixel]

C and I were watching the late news, and I had turned up the volume a little due to the ambient noise. We had opened the patio door to let the cooling evening air push out the staleness of the A/C.

Her: "Gawd. They sure are cranked up tonight."
Me: "Who?"
Her: "The frogs."

A small pond usually forms in the wild patch behind our house after heavy rains, and brings out the frog population.

Me: "Is that a problem?"
Her: "It's going to make it hard to go to sleep."
Me: "They'll stop eventually."
Her, sort of huffy: "Well when is that going to happen?"
Me: "When they croak."

I ducked just in time.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

@MillieDynamite - as long as you're thinking about us, we're good with it ...

Another rainy morning and I'm wondering where the sun went. The new grass is growing like crazy so I'm happy that worked out well.

I've got a fresh pot of coffee going and the teapot is hot. I tried some Darjeeling yesterday and I have to say it was different. There are fresh donuts and peach cobbler on the counter for those who want a snack.

I'll be over in the corner working on my story. Any muttering heard is due to my trying to figure out a locked room mystery, especially how I got into it in the first place ....

 

[TheRedLantern]

I had my third story go live this morning, so I'm in the period where my brain starts to fill up that empty space with self-doubt and second-guessing. Now that I've been through it twice, I'm able to greet that anxiety as part of the process and give it the silent "bro nod" that the guys at my gym give to each other.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Thanks. Raising a kid is harder than we figured on, even with folks saying, "It's the hardest job you'll ever have." I was like, he ain't me, it won't be that bad. Hum, their still smarter than I think they are.

You do what you have to do, Millie. There's always someone keeping the coffee brewing.

@MillieDynamite - as long as you're thinking about us, we're good with it ...

Another rainy morning and I'm wondering where the sun went. The new grass is growing like crazy so I'm happy that worked out well.

I've got a fresh pot of coffee going and the teapot is hot. I tried some Darjeeling yesterday and I have to say it was different. There are fresh donuts and peach cobbler on the counter for those who want a snack.

I'll be over in the corner working on my story. Any muttering heard is due to my trying to figure out a locked room mystery, especially how I got into it in the first place ....

 

[iwatchus]

And you don't stop worrying about them, even when they are in their thirties (and older)

 

[MillieDynamite]

I know they haven't stopped worrying about me, or my adopted siblings, the oldest is almost 48, the other 44.

 

[NotWise]

I brought my first Armenian cucumber of the year in from the garden yesterday. Today I brought in two more. Tomorrow, it will be four or five more. I may start pickling things early.

The old story I went back to work on started almost two years ago. It consisted of two threads: Hector's life at home, and Hector's life at work. My writing ground to a stop because I didn't know enough about what he was doing at work. I got frustrated and ripped the thing apart so I could write a different career. That mess has sitting around since fall of 2023.

I've rewritten the early part of the story and the whole synopsis to give him a different career. It's still a little hazy, but it looks like things are moving ahead again.

 

[NotWise]

I thought I'd mention this...

Mom, Sex, Guns, and Rock-no-Roll is still my lowest-rated story, but my WIWAW essay went up the 14th, and 11 of 12 votes since it posted have been 5* votes. I promoted it with a single post to BlueSky this morning with a big pointer to the essay and a little pointer to the story, and both the essay and the story have gotten a few votes just today--all 5* votes. The score rose from 3.96 to 4.14.

Anyone can add a WIWAW essay for their story, and it looks like a good thing to do, especially if the story might be controversial. It can help guide the right readers to the story.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

It's another cloudy morning with threats of severe thunderstorms this afternoon. This has been the wettest May, June, and July that I can remember. Usually, it's hot and dry. This year it's hot and wet ...

I've got a fresh pot of coffee going and the teapot is hot. There are donuts on the counter but the peach cobbler is all gone.

I'll be over in the corner working out the details of an investigation into figuring out how someone lost their memory ... Oh, wait, that's me ... I think ...

 

[Kumquatqueen]

It's very wet here - the nearest two Parkruns were both rained off, for safety reasons (one is very hilly). But after torrential rain all morning, it should just be intermittent drizzle for the next four days. I'll take that!

I also now own an air conditioner. The very concept feels horribly un-British, but if the weather keeps trying to copy places like Houston, then I'm following. Working from home is great most of the time, but the office does at least have sensible temperatures. The transport in between doesn't, for 2/3 the journey, though.

I've finished the final chapter in the Chain story Matchmaking for the Shy, which someone is just reading for me atm. Very pleased with that, because threading together various threads from the previous five chapters was a fascinating exercise, but I think I actually produced a good chapter and ending to the story.

Also managed a bit on a couple other drafts I've been stuck on - even if a beta reader did read one and say "it's good, except you need to get rid of about a quarter of it that isn't really this story". I kinda already knew that, but I'd been reluctant to kill my baby... I might just put a story in Non-Erotic, which contains various of my characters chatting away and not moving on any story!

 

[NotWise]

We have two women complaining about hot and wet. No men.

I've been harboring an idea for a story in Toys and Masturbation--actually started writing it at one point and couldn't get it long enough. Now, maybe there's a glimmer.

 

[NotWise]

Got three more votes and a comment on Mom, etc. over night. All 5* votes, and the comment (not anonymous!) was "Only the third time I've given five stars. I loved it." He's been around for fourteen years and has 549 favorite stories. I felt honored.

One of my other stories pulled in a comment that was a one-handed fantasy based on the theme of the story. I'll probably leave it, but sometimes those things make my skin crawl.

 

[NuclearFairy]

The first year we moved here we went through a summer without a drop of rain. But this year, a week hasn't gone by where it hasn't at least sprinkled. It's weird.

 

[MrPixel]

We have two women complaining about hot and wet. No men.

Then I'll complain to help even the score. We are now in a heat advisory on the cusp of a heat warning, with HXs approaching 110° by the middle of next week. And we've been in this rainy pattern, with pop-up downpours every third day or so. We're under a flash-flood warning right now.

There are 2' tall weeds in the backyard because I haven't been able to mow back there for three weeks given all the wet and mud.

Enormously frustrating, all of it. Just noticed this morning that the neighbor's chain-link fence is starting to lean, the soil is that saturated.

 

[MrPixel]

I also now own an air conditioner. The very concept feels horribly un-British, but if the weather keeps trying to copy places like Houston, then I'm following. Working from home is great most of the time, but the office does at least have sensible temperatures. The transport in between doesn't, for 2/3 the journey, though.

Ugh. It's become a vicious cycle now. A warming climate breeds increasing use of A/C, which causes more energy consumption, which contributes to the warming, u.s.w.

Spellcheck kept wanting to change "vicious" to "viscous". Yeah, maybe. Glancing out the window, the current downpour can possibly qualify as "viscous."

 

[NotWise]

Conditions here are just kinda meh. Highs are our normal low-mid 90sF. The heat index is lower than the temperature. No significant rain in a couple weeks, but we get light showers now and then.

The river has been dry since mid-week. More precisely, there's no water in the river's natural channel. It's in the irrigation canals and the conveyance channels.

I looked at the original date on my toy story (3/22), then merged my new notes into the old file. I can make a longer story out of it, but a plot is harder to come by. A plot might surprise and confuse the readers in Toys and Masturbation.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

We had an almost orchestral thunderstorm last night. We got maybe two inches of rain in as many hours and there were almost continuous booms and rattling windows and horizon-to-horizon sheets of light over the clouds, but no reports of flooding, lightning strikes or, Deo gratis, any of that monstrously destructive hail of recent memory. It was impressive enough that I got out of bed, poured myself a small snack and sat inside enjoying it for an hour.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Ugh. It's become a vicious cycle now. A warming climate breeds increasing use of A/C, which causes more energy consumption, which contributes to the warming, u.s.w.

Given the increase in solar as well as wind power in Europe, we're nearly at the point of having so much excess electricity in the daytime in summer that we need more people to have aircon to balance the grid. We now have multiple days at a time of no fossil fuels being used in the UK (and no-ones's building more biomass, and only replacing aging nuclear facilities).

Offshore wind in particular is growing incredibly fast. China is phasing out coal rapidly; India and developing countries may be able to a
skip the most polluting stages of industrialization. In time to stop runaway global warming? Let's hope so.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Our rainy season seems to have passed us after the 4th. A few late-night showers, but then again, too few to mention. (Oh, my, isn't that in a song?) After an extremely wet spring and June, we are now ready for the dog days. That reminds me, I need to listen to some 3-Dog-Night music and relax with some Irish coffee, with a generous helping of Jamison.

We had an almost orchestral thunderstorm last night. We got maybe two inches of rain in as many hours and there were almost continuous booms and rattling windows and horizon-to-horizon sheets of light over the clouds, but no reports of flooding, lightning strikes or, Deo gratis, any of that monstrously destructive hail of recent memory. It was impressive enough that I got out of bed, poured myself a small snack and sat inside enjoying it for an hour.

 

[iwatchus]

Ugh. It's become a vicious cycle now. A warming climate breeds increasing use of A/C, which causes more energy consumption, which contributes to the warming, u.s.w.

It is not just the power consumption. AC's don;t magically create cold. They simply move heat from inside to outside, creating even more heat while they do it. The prevalence of AC and the lack of vegetation are why cities are becoming little heat islands in the summer.

 

[iwatchus]

Bragging for a moment now that I am letting myself come up for air.

I finished the first draft of my first novel length story. It kept growing and ended up at 120K, exactly twice the length I had originally planned, despite dropping the last third of my original outline.

Now for the editing.