The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 09

[Kumquatqueen]

I bought a fan for my bedroom today, seeing as it's 35 degrees. And ice-cream. I note both Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's have suffered shrinkflation - you now only get 460ml instead of 500ml, which explains why the price hasn't gone up. Store premium brand is still cheaper and you get 485ml.

Time to live on fruit, salad, cold drinks and ice-cream for the next week.

 

[GrantBricksly]

I bought a fan for my bedroom today, seeing as it's 35 degrees. And ice-cream. I note both Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's have suffered shrinkflation - you now only get 460ml instead of 500ml, which explains why the price hasn't gone up. Store premium brand is still cheaper and you get 485ml.

Time to live on fruit, salad, cold drinks and ice-cream for the next week.

I had Fruit Salad and a Vegetable tray for dinner last night...lol. And having a cold Pasta salad today.

Going to be having mostly cold dinners from this point on...it's too damned hot.

 

[NotWise]

Steak and a tossed salad here. No cooking inside. The steak will be from the grill, and I won't start it until after the sunlight's off the patio.

The temp here is like 91F, and it should be a little warmer tomorrow, but that's all normal for us. Our highest average high is ~94F, and it comes right around July 4th, then the monsoons drag the average down.

 

[MrPixel]

Mexican for a late lunch. Experimenting with whether I can or cannot tolerate margaritas, usually frozen. Had a couple of recent episodes of feeling really bad afterwards. So far, so good, it must have been unrelated circumstances.

The thing I enjoy with the alcohol hit is that the induced relaxation gives me enough "freedom" to talk with C about our love life. Today's topic was how many men she has had in our 36 years together, and why she was forgetting about nearly all of the fun times with that. I was somewhat crushed that she had deleted most from her memory, but she was giddy in the recollections of how randy she once was. Happy to help, sweetheart.

We're at our studio and she's out on the acre picking up the litter before our lawn service chops things up into little bits. I kidded her about "no panties with that short dress." She protested, "Don't want to cause an accident." "Doesn't matter either way, you're still a head-turner." I got a smirk.

 

[iwatchus]

Dinner then an orchestral concert tonight

 

[filthytrancendence]

This may be a cautionary tale for @filthytrancendence.

My WIP builds to a single image at the beginning of a climactic sex scene. I've had that image in mind for a couple years now, so I wrote the story to reach that image.

I went back over the story after I reached the end, rereading and leaving comments on things to be fixed, and found a lot of problems with the sex scene that followed. I tried to fix the specific comments without getting far, then this morning realized that I'd basically just phoned in the entire sex scene. It was a mental slide down the backside of the climax.

I've definitely been there...

I actually just finished the rest of the buildup that gets the characters alone and then cut to black... or more accurately, cut to the 3rd PoV.

I've decided to write the next 2 chapters I have planned and then decide whether to actually insert the sex scene there or not. I'm kinda at that magic point where you can almost let the characters write themselves with this one. It's been a while since I've been there. It's pretty exciting.

 

[NotWise]

This week has been hard on our extended family. My wife's cousin passed away earlier in the week, and my daughter's mother-in-law passed away this morning. Two years ago it was July that sucked so bad. This year it's June.

 

[NotWise]

The steak was about the thickest steak I've ever grilled. I seasoned it and let it sit for five hours, seared it for six minutes, and let it cook at 450F for fifteen minutes to get it to medium-rare. It was too thick to take seasoning well, but it was nice and tender. The one steak split between the two of us still got us 10oz each.

Waiting on the patio while it cooked let me watch for bats. Our bat population was decimated a few years ago, and I haven't seen them since. I still take an evening or two a year to watch for them.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Sadly, the bat house we mounted on the garage has been empty for a couple of years. It's a shame.

 

[iwatchus]

Sadly, the bat house we mounted on the garage has been empty for a couple of years. It's a shame.

Are you in an area that has lost its bats to white nose?

 

[TarnishedPenny]

There have been some cases to a couple of hours to the south of us, which means a definite Possibly.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

It's cloudy this morning but the heat alert we've had all week has finally expired. It's only getting to the mid 80s today so I'm going to do some gardening today. I'm going to try to get some blackberries to make a cobbler.

There's a fresh pot of coffee brewing and the teapot is ready. There are donuts and danish on the counter.

I'll be over in the corner working on the next scene in my new story. It's coming along just fine and I'm hopeful that I can get it done in time for Christmas. My Muse seems to like me right now so the words are flowing ...

 

[iwatchus]

Ooh, a cherry danish. Thank you CK

I enjoyed the concert last night. All movie and show tunes, arranged for a small orchestra.

Getting solid writing done this morning, closing in on a reasonable full rough draft of the first chapter of a three chapter story -- my attempt to write an ethical mind control story. I bet it bombs, but I am having fun with it. But it is coming out much longer than I had anticipated. My guess right now is the first chapter will finish up around 30K, instead of the 20K I was expecting. And the whole story may exceed 100K.

Oh well, that means I better get back to slinging words at the page and seeing what sticks.

 

[Voboy]

Ever have a situation where you really want to write smut, but there’s no privacy?

I hate that situation.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Ever have a situation where you really want to write smut, but there’s no privacy?

I hate that situation.

I do most of my writing on my phone. Even on the bus I can angle it carefully...

Just not having the words come is my main problem. I managed to figure out a story in my head the other night, but now I come to write it, it's just not working - the characters are just standing around gormlessly.

 

[NotWise]

I do most of my writing on my phone. Even on the bus I can angle it carefully...

Just not having the words come is my main problem. I managed to figure out a story in my head the other night, but now I come to write it, it's just not working - the characters are just standing around gormlessly.

Maybe they should discuss the author, or the plot.

"What's she want us to do now?"

"We're supposed to talk."

"Talk about what? There's nothing going on."

"And she calls us gormless. Here. Throw your shoe at the window, and we'll talk about that."

 

[iwatchus]

Ever have a situation where you really want to write smut, but there’s no privacy?

I hate that situation.

It's been a problem since my son and his partner moved back into the house a month ago. I have finally decided to say fuck em. They can get embarrassed if they want.

 

[MrPixel]

Ooh, a cherry danish. Thank you CK

I love me a cheery Danish, too. But she's been a little grumpy this morning. (I think C is mostly Swedish, but definitely Scandinavian.)

A "night out" LW story in my head unrelated to my usual musings, last evening I thought I'd take a whack at first person past tense narrative. Horrible. Stilted. Awkward. 2K words into it, and I think it's going into the dustbin. Idea is valid, but I certainly can't make these words into something appealing to anybody. Where's the emoji for a crumpled-up bit of paper thrown at a trashcan across the room and missing it?

EDIT: Just dawned on me it is the perfect looks-like-AI-but-isn't piece. If it wasn't so truly awful I'd run it up the flagpole and see how fast it was rejected.

 

[NotWise]

The weather service needs to get their predictive tools talking to each other, or find a different way to present their predictions. At one place they tell me we have no chance of rain today. In another they tell me we'll have thundershowers.

They also bumped their predicted high by a couple more degrees. I need to get the lawn mowed now and run an errand so I can hide inside this afternoon.

I find myself rewriting everything after the climax of my WIP, and the second time through probably won't be enough. I'll do it, and start my second edit/review pass at the beginning. I'm not far from the point where I'll be seeing what I meant instead of what I wrote, then I'll have to take a different approach.

 

[_Lynn_]

I heard through the grapevine that my sister has breast cancer. Now I'm trying to figure out how (and if) I message her. Obviously we aren't close. My entire family has been dysfunctional forever.

 

[MrPixel]

The weather service needs to get their predictive tools talking to each other, or find a different way to present their predictions. At one place they tell me we have no chance of rain today. In another they tell me we'll have thundershowers.

That's practically a pattern here. TV forecast last night said three rounds of thunderstorms today as a cold front moves through. Here it is, the afternoon half gone, partly cloudy, and nary a drop. But this is pop-up storm season. Somebody 20 miles away is probably getting dumped on. The predictive graphic last night indicated that would be the case, and that maybe the bulk of it will be late tonight.

After I'm off here I need to plow through those bills mentioned the other day. No reason not to process them other than the tedium involved and the expected frustration with the websites on a couple. Why some companies have such horrible UIs is completely beyond me. We have one brokerage leftover from C's 401K rollover that infuriates me every time I log on. As soon as I talk with our usual brokerage, the balance is going to be transferred and I can wash my hands of their BS.

 

[MrPixel]

MmmMMM. C just brought in a handful of blackberries she just picked off the vines next to the office window. Delicious. Not enough to call it "lunch", but pretty darned close.

Maybe a consolation for a stupidly rainy spring where nothing got done and set us months behind on outside projects? They were good, but not that good.

 

[NotWise]

My wife is off to the annual volunteer appreciation barbecue for the ballet school where she volunteers as a seamstress. I've avoided that group for like fifteen years now, so dinner will be steamed shrimp with linguini in limoni topped with avocado and cherry tomato.

So, cooking indoors tonight, but not a lot.

I (re)wrote to the end of my WIP. There are still two comments embedded earlier in the story that I'll have to fix before I have a clean first pass. In the mean time, one of the cats is bringing me his toys, meowing loudly, and flopping by my feet to receive pets. Too bad for him that I cut my fingernails.

 

[NotWise]

Dinner, just before I grated reggiano all over it.



It was good summer food. A little parsley wouldn't have hurt it, either.

 

[NotWise]

It's a pleasant morning. I wish the same for you and yours.